The Song House (28 page)

You see that?

The men stop loading and watch as the figure draws into view,
only to disappear again as the road dips. They pause, and in the
rain’s respite, Sam Moore seizes the opportunity to flex and
bend his aching fingers. Clamped rigid between his knees is a
disgruntled ewe. Eyeing her at close range is a soaked Border
collie, licking his lips with intent.

Have a look, Sam says. Aaron leaps up onto the flatbed into
the stew of waterlogged sheep, craning his neck to catch any
sign of movement through the trees.

Can’t see. Must’ve gone back. Hang on, there he is. He’s
coming our way.

The figure appears to wade slowly upwards out of the wash,
turns back on itself and swims away into the black.

He in trouble?

Dunno. Maybe, Aaron says, jumping down again. At a nod
from Sam, he grabs the spongy rear end of the ewe and to a
count of one they hoist her into the back with the rest of the
flock. Aaron swings the gate of the pick-up closed and leans
on the battered rim.

We’ll give him a minute, he says, See if he appears.

Let’s go get him out, decides Sam, Stupid tosser.

Alison says nothing about the state of the kitchen. She fills the
kettle with water and lifts two cups from the draining board,
but she can’t resist inspecting them, tilting them under the
spotlights while Kenneth searches among the wine bottles.

Had a disaster in the cellar, he’s saying, But I’ve saved most
of them, look. Trouble is, when you clap eyes on them – temptation!

And you can resist everything except temptation, I know,
she says, But we’re having tea.

No milk.

We’re having it with lemon.

Kenneth shrugs.

No lemons.

It’s the first chance she’s had to study him properly. She
expected to find him unshaven, unkempt, was ready to be
confronted by a shambling wreck. She’s surprised – and slightly
perturbed – to find he looks as he always does; tanned, upright,
a hint of mischief about him, a little boy hiding a secret. Better
than he always does, in fact; less vague, more focused. Despite
the rolled-up trousers and the ridiculous running shoes, or
perhaps because of them, he has a youthful look about him. But when they carry their cups into the library, Alison notes
the mess. He may look perfectly fine, but the old Kenneth
would never let the records lie around all over the place, out
of their sleeves, out of sequence. The floor is decorated with a
criss-cross of muddy tracks; a sheer film of dust covers the
surfaces.

Where’s Freya when you need her, she says, by way of
comment.

Visiting her daughter in Cheshire, says Kenneth, Not that I
need her, really. I manage well enough.

Well enough, indeed, she echoes, gazing at the typewriter
and the rank mug of mushroom water and the whisky bottle
and the papers everywhere. She snatches one up from the chair
as she bends to sit in it. Kenneth doesn’t try to take it from
her; he makes a little nod of encouragement.

Thoma Vryce, she reads, Was the water bailiff at
the t ime it happened.

At the time what happened?

Kenneth settles back in his seat, attempts a quick sip of the tea,
flinching as he scalds his lips.

Will found a child in the barrow field. You remember? Years
ago.

Alison nods, jiggles her foot at the floor and the balled-up
papers dotted all over it.

And it’s taken you a ream of paper to write that?

The point is . . . the point isn’t what’s written down, Ali. It’s
what’s not written down, that’s the point. There was something
not right about it. He’d found a child, and the child – you
remember, there was a dog, belonged to the bailiff – the dog
had savaged the child?

I don’t remember the details. It was before I moved here.
And, she says sharply, No one ever spoke of it.

I know. He’d found a child and the water bailiff – Bryce –
had got there just afterwards, and he took the dog away and
he shot it.

Good thing too, says Alison, You can never trust them once
they’ve turned.

Kenneth rubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t know how
to get the words out in order, in a sequence she will understand.

The thing is, there was a great hoo-ha in the village, the
police and reporters and so on. The child had been missing,
you see.

So?

So, Will hadn’t just rescued a child from the dog – he’d
found
her. He was a little hero.

Nothing changes there, she says, trying to lift the atmosphere,
He’s such a sweetie.

But it didn’t seem heroic. It didn’t even seem real. I mean,
when I came back, Rusty was incensed. She wouldn’t speak of
it, not to anyone. And you know how she loved the limelight.
Alison’s about to say that actually she doesn’t know, but
Kenneth continues his line of thought.

She wouldn’t even look at William. Wouldn’t be in the same
room. We had to send him away again, you know, find another
school for the poor chap. And he was strange too. He loved
that dog, absolutely adored it, but he never said a word afterwards.

Well, that would explain it, she says, stifling a yawn, Grief
has that effect. And maybe Rusty was really angry with
you
,
Kenneth, for ditching them both like that and running off with
the maid.

He checks her face to see if she’s joking. Satisfied that she
doesn’t know about Grace, he shakes his head as if he’s already
considered and dismissed the idea.

No, Rusty was glad to be rid of me. And rid of Will too, as
it turned out. How can a mother abandon her child?

The same way a father can, says Alison.

And Bryce. Always in the thick of it. Always something
vaguely . . .

Kenneth searches his mind for the right word,

. . . Repellent about him. He was behaving oddly. I thought
it was because he was worried he’d be prosecuted over the
dog. The child’s father was Godfrey Crane’s son – the judge,
you know – but we didn’t know that then, not for a while.
There was another man about, making a nuisance. Can’t think
of his name. Thing was, I was only gone a day or so, but when
I came back, it was like that place.

Alison looks askance.

What place?

In that film, where everyone is the same but different. Like
they’ve been—

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
, she says.

That’s it. Even Rusty was different. As if she’d suddenly come
to life, as if—

A snort of laughter from Alison stops him.

I think the opposite’s supposed to happen, my dear, she says,
By the way, how is Rusty these days?

She’s agreed to give me a divorce.

The news has the effect of darkening the room. Alison can’t
keep the surprise from her voice.

After all these years! Has she given up the faith?

I went to see her a couple of weeks ago, says Kenneth, Told
her I’d made a will, told her what kind, what was in it. Said I
was in love and would she set me free.

This news is much more interesting to Alison than the heap
of memories Kenneth has been forcing her to sift through, but
she composes her face. She’s forgotten about Maggie and what
William told her the last time they met. Instead she’s enjoying
the tiny quickening of her pulse, the faint hope forming in her
mind.

All that’s out of the window now, of course, he says, actually
getting up and moving to the glass, as if the word has
suddenly reminded him of the object itself, Silly old fool that
I am.

From behind him comes Alison’s voice, low, defeated.

A silly old fool and a most insensitive one, Kenneth.

She’d been making good progress. The water in the lane outside
the cottage was barely up to her calves, not much deeper than
inside it. She sensed the daylight falling behind her, but couldn’t
wait any longer; no one was coming. For all anyone knew, the
place was deserted. Maggie wouldn’t spend another night there.
It wasn’t the smell, nor the sensation that the walls had turned
to blotting paper and were sucking up the river stink: it was
the rats. She hadn’t anticipated rats. At first she thought it was
someone at the front door – someone in trouble, perhaps, or
that Aaron had come back and was trying to force his way in
– but when she stood at the top of the landing and looked
down, there was no one there. Then she caught a flash of movement
in her peripheral vision, something alive, swimming
through the hallway. For the next hour, as she sat in the middle
of the bed and considered what to do, she could hear them
squeaking and scrabbling in the rooms below. Time to leave.

Maggie thought she could manage if she kept on the verge
side, where the water was bound to be shallower. But the verge
had disintegrated here and there, once collapsing underneath
her, tipping her into a half-submerged fence. She’d tied her
holdall around her neck to keep it safe, and it was heavy, much
heavier once it had got wet, and kept slipping round her body.
She cradled it like a baby in front of her. After half a mile, she
lifted out the dreamcatcher box and threw the holdall away.
Didn’t watch it jink and bobble over the surface; kept her eyes
fixed ahead of her. Something glinted through the trees. Following
the curve and dip of the road, she saw it again; white,
hard-edged: a truck or van. The ford would be treacherous;
already the noise in her ears was much louder, like the deafening
rush of a weir, but the truck was a good sign. She
broached it slowly, gripping a spindly hedgetop on one side of
the field until that too was sunk, and then she waded through,
holding the box above her head for as long as she could bear
it. Knee-high now, nearly at the middle. It had grown so dark
ahead of her she could no longer tell where the flood ended
and the road began. Beneath the water, her boots had filled,
liquid became solid; she could feel lumps of debris banging
against her legs. She paused, trying to free herself of the sucking
mud, but a quick twist of the current knocked her askew, almost
snatching the box from her hands. So, let it go, then: let the
notebook swim free, wash the past away. But she thought of
the photograph of Nell, how it was all she had; and the part
of her that wanted it to end dissolved in the froth breaking
over her head. Under the surface, the water was brown as an
old penny. Maggie slid sideways, backwards, choking, slipping,
trying to regain her footing, trying to hold on to the box,
choking and slipping and clawing water, clawing mud; fighting
the pull of the current at first and then allowing it to carry
her along.

After Alison leaves, Kenneth positions the stylus at the start of
the record and plays the concert over again. He hears the music
like rain, and there is still the actual rain, falling in shifts and
shivers on the long windows, but Kenneth’s listening is much
more intent than sound on a surface: he’s trying to hear his
son.

The boy was lying on his bed, pretending to read a copy
of
Mad
magazine. Kenneth stared at the boy’s feet; how ugly
they looked, how filthy the soles were, and it filled him with
fury, the sight of the boy in shorts and a T-shirt, lying there on
the clean white linen with such dirty feet. Kenneth had come
all the way back, and his son wouldn’t even look at him. He
doesn’t remember what they said to each other.

A message had been sent to his club, telling him to return
home immediately, but he didn’t get it because he wasn’t there.
He had booked into a hotel. Had Grace with him, wanted one
last night with her before he left. He was tempted to persuade
her to follow him out there. Lots of ex-pats needing nannies
in Bahrain, lovely weather, a fresh start for both of them. She
had hair that looked like silk but felt like wire. Extraordinary
texture. And her mouth was too big for her face, but he liked
that, it suited her. It was sexy. He’d reserved a table for dinner
but in the end it was room service they had, very late into the
night, and they both got quite drunk. It didn’t matter; they
could sleep in, maybe even spend the day in the park, like a
pair of lovers, lying in the grass, getting sunburnt. His flight
wasn’t until the following evening.