The Devil's Music (11 page)

    ‘Some tea?’ Your voice echoes in the uncarpeted room. ‘And would you like to take your lunch in the kitchen?’

    ‘Ay, if you’re sure now.’ His accent gives the words a different texture. You concentrate so as to catch the separate sounds and make sense of them. Scottish? Irish? He strides towards you, then halts, glancing down at his filthy boots. ‘I’ll take these off, will I not?’

    He bends and his sudden dipping movement is startling – the bulk of him so close, his head down at your feet, his shoulder muscles swelling as he tugs at his shoelaces. You turn quickly to the kitchen.

    He pads after you, the top part of his overalls hanging down from his waist. Underneath, stretched over his torso, is a faded cotton T-shirt that seems incongruous – a child’s item of clothing. He’s young, possibly ten years younger than you. Michael mentioned a few details when he arranged for the redecoration. He’s the son of a patient, a struggling artist living in a houseboat on the river. His name ... is it Ian? The family is from somewhere north of Aberdeen.

    There’s a patch of sweat on his chest and coppery hair surges at the neck of his T-shirt. His hair is tousled and pale with plaster dust. He puts a hand up to it, and through a rip in the seam under the arm of his T-shirt you catch a glimpse of his underarm hair: thick, fluffy, almost blond.

    ‘Ach, I’ll mebbe step outside. Hae a wee dust doon.’ He grins like a boy.

    From her rug on the floor, Elaine whimpers. She’s miserable today, her chin red and sore from the dribble. You put the tea towel and cutlery down on the draining board. He comes in through the back door, asks if he can hold her and already he has his back to you, squatting down over the rug and moving a hand with fingers spread wide to catch Elaine’s eye. She quietens, gazing up at him.

    Reaching up to the cupboard for teacups and saucers, you watch as he puts his hands under Elaine’s arms to lift her. He straightens, holding her out at arm’s length as if gauging how best to hold a solid four-year-old child who has the wavering head of a newborn.

    ‘She’s ...,’ you begin, because Elaine will not be comfortable held like that, but he is speaking, ‘—such a bonny wee lass.’ He holds her now with her stomach firm against his chest, one arm running up her back and a broad hand spread across her shoulder blades. Blond hairs gleam on his forearm. Elaine’s head bobs at his shoulder, her neck straining.

    You swirl boiling water round the teapot as he dandles Elaine around the kitchen, murmuring to her and showing her things over his shoulder. He points out the cupboard doors, swinging them open and closed, open and closed. He flaps the tea towels hanging from the airer, pulls the roller towel on the back door so that it rattles and the moving stripes of colour catch her eye. Her head stills. Whenever he stops walking he lifts one heel up and down in a rapid, repetitive rhythm that jiggles Elaine’s body. She starts with her humming noise, a sort of musical groan in her throat that varies pitch with the vibrations of his movement. You stir the tea; the tension in your shoulders eases.

    He stands, holding Elaine, jiggling, while he drinks his tea and that’s when he tells you about his sixteen-year-old brother who lies on the settee for most of the day. He can’t speak a single word.

    ‘But he has a smile,’ Ian says. ‘A smile for his own breathing. Smiles ear to ear when you step into the room. You canny ask for more.’

    Ian refuses to sit to eat his sandwiches, so you pass them to him one by one from the greaseproof paper bundle he’s brought with him. He holds Elaine; she’s quiet and relaxed. He asks questions, and you are talking, about the children, and then about nursing. You find yourself telling him about studying for your final exams at St Mary’s, how cold the nursing home was. To keep warm, you and Pierce and Hoggie bought the cheapest tickets you could at Paddington Underground and travelled round and round the Inner Circle Line with your books. After the twelve-hour shifts on the wards, the lull of the train’s rhythm and the warm air made you dozy. You pinched the skin on each others’ arms to keep awake.

    When Elaine falls asleep in his arms, he passes her over and you carry her out to the pram. You stretch the cat net over and think of the Mary’s Penny you were awarded after four years of nursing training, its inscription, ‘Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ You were proud to be a nurse from St Mary’s. Is that why you’re still talking about it as if it were only yesterday? As Michael’s wife you have no need to work the wards. And now that he’s arranged for Mrs Hubbard to come and clean three times a week, the days have even less of a sense of purpose.

    Running your hands through your hair, feeling your skull, you find it, the lump – small, hard – from the dressmaker’s pin that anchored the nurse’s cap to your head. Fanned folds of fine starched muslin were held in place with two white Kirby grips at the back and, at the front, the pin pushed through the underside of the starched band, its sharp point embedded into your scalp. ‘It will,’ Sister Tutor said, ‘hold the cap in place, even in the storm of a surgeon’s fury.’ And once the hard round ‘pea’ had formed, the pin was no longer painful. The local hairdresser felt it. She met your eyes in the mirror and said, ‘Another nurse from St Mary’s?’ Nodding sagely, she tapped her scissors on the back of your chair. ‘Can always tell.’

    By the time you step back into the kitchen, it’s empty. Ian has returned to the dining room and the door is closed.

Susie is five. I need to teach her about knots and untying.

    The garage doors rattle in the wind. On the concrete there’s a wet patch where the rain blows in. Father’s saws hang on nails, big saw down to little saw. By his vice is the tin of green jelly stuff for cleaning his hands. There’s the smell of dirty metal and pine-tree sawdust and the dark brown stuff Father paints on the garden fences every summer. I’m not allowed in here by myself.

    Mummy’s peg basket is by the door, next to her wellies. And the bundle that is the new washing line. It’s tied in loops.

    I open the door leading back into the house, turning the handle slowly, peering round like they do in films, to check if anyone’s about. The painting man has finished his cup of tea and gone back into the dining room. I think about going to see him but now I have the washing line. Across the hallway in the kitchen I see Mummy’s back and her arms lift and fall because she’s washing jumpers at the sink. She is singing ‘la la lah’ with the radio. On the floor, Elaine is propped up with lots of cushions. She’s half-sitting, half-lying, her chin right down on her bib. The bib stops dribble soaking into her clothes and making her chest sore, but it makes her chin sore instead. I waggle the washing line at her and put a finger to my lips so that she knows it’s a secret. Elaine wobbles her body a little bit from side to side a couple of times. Elaine is four now but she wobbles because she’s fat like a Jelly Baby, much fatter than me or Susie, that’s why Jelly is my special name for her. I wave to Jelly and do our Secret Sign, before I tiptoe up the stairs.

    Susie has my old wigwam in her bedroom. The sides have got too short for the poles and I can see her ankles and slippers moving about inside. She’s talking to her dolls. I stick my head in through the flaps.

    ‘Look what I found.’ I flick the washing line like a whip to shake out the kinks.

    Susie is putting her golliwog in a dress Elaine has got too big for. It looks very stupid. She’s undone the plaits on her Indian headdress and the black hair is all in crinkles round her ears.

    ‘Go away.’

    ‘How about I put all the animals in a stockade for you?’

    She looks at the new washing line on the floor. ‘All right.’ She closes the flaps of the wigwam again.

    There are three teddies and a big blue elephant and Eeyore to tie up. Then there’s Susie’s new hobby horse which was a present from a patient. Susie’s hobby horse doesn’t look like a real horse. Its eyes and mane are painted on to its wooden head. My hobby horse is furry and grey and has real glass eyes and a real woolly mane that shakes about. Mummy made it out of Father’s old grey dressing gown. I rub at the painted eyes on Susie’s hobby horse with my finger and pull on its leather harness. It would come off if I had some scissors or Hugh’s penknife. Susie’s horse could have the red dressing-gown cord from my horse instead.

    Grampy says the Fiador Knot is the cowboy’s best emergency bridle, but it’s hard to do without two cords of different colours and I can’t cut the washing line. So I make Harness Loops for each animal, joining them all together, then I crawl back into the wigwam.

    Susie has wrapped Looby Lou in a shawl and is rocking her to and fro in her arms. ‘Shhh, Andy. Sshhh!’ She puts a finger to her mouth. ‘It’s night time.’

    ‘You need to know some knots, don’t you? To keep the animals safe from rustlers.’

    ‘Tell Big Doll. I’m the Mummy. Big Doll can be the animal looker-afterer. She can stay out all night.’

    Susie does not like Big Doll. Big Doll came from another one of Father’s patients. The patient saw Mummy and Susie at the surgery once and said to Father, ‘What an
adorable
child.’

    Father lifted Susie on to his lap at teatime and stroked her hair and said to her, ‘Do you know you are adorable, Susie? Someone else apart from me thinks you’re adorable. Mrs Reeves thinks:
A, you’re adorable, B, you’re so beautiful, C, you’re a cutie full of charm
...’ and he sang the whole song.

    Big Doll came in a huge box on Christmas Eve when the tea trolley was in the sitting room and the fire was lit. Father answered the door. Patients are supposed to see him at the surgery, not at home. It was Mrs Reeves and she said, ‘Merry Christmas, Michael,’ and didn’t call him Doctor.

    Big Doll has hard arms and legs and she walks and talks. In her back she has a string with a ring on it to pull. ‘I want my mummy,’ she says, and, ‘Is it time for bed?’ Her hair is orange and has a funny smell. Every bedtime Susie makes Mummy put her out on the landing.

    I fetch Big Doll from the landing. Big Doll can only stand and walk, she can’t sit down. Susie has poked in one of her eyes and it does not open now. I tie a Jack Ketch’s Collar around Big Doll’s neck and stand her in the stockade with the other animals. Her fingers stick out straight.

    I make another running noose. Now I’ll teach Susie how to untie a Jack Ketch’s Collar. Jack Ketch was a hangman, but not a very good one. I crawl back into the wigwam. ‘Just try this on.’

    She holds out her wrist.

    ‘No, nit twit.’ I put the running noose over her head and her headdress gets knocked crooked.

    ‘No,’ she says, ‘take it off.’

    ‘Sit still. Sit
still
!’

    The black hair from her headdress gets in the way and her face is all red and cross. She’s turning her head this way and that and pulling with her fingers at the washing line around her neck. ‘It’s too tight, Andy,’ she says, ‘too tight! It
hurts
.’ Her fingers pull at my fingers.

    ‘It’s nearly done.’

    ‘Noooo!’ She stamps her foot. ‘I don’t like it.’

    She’s wriggling and slapping at my hands. She’s very silly.

    ‘SIT STILL! SIT STILL!’ I hold her ankles, she falls over and my teeth press hard together. There’s a hot fizz in my chest that tells me I can hurt her.

    She’s kicking and yelling, ‘I’m telling!’ She gets up and runs out of the room, the washing line trailing behind her down the stairs. All the teddies and Eeyore and Big Doll and everything get pulled across the floor because they’re all joined together with the washing line. She spoils everything. I kick the wigwam pole.

    ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Susie screams.

    Thump and stop, thump and stop – her feet go down the stairs one at a time. She can go down them properly but today she’s being a cry-baby and making a fuss. I sit on the yellow-and-black carpet in her room and listen. There’s the painting man’s voice and Mummy’s laugh. After a while, Mummy’s footsteps come slowly up the stairs. The smell of cigarette smoke comes into the bedroom with her.

    ‘Susie’s so silly. I was showing her how to undo it.’

    But Mummy’s face is boiling red and she slaps my leg.

    It doesn’t hurt.

    She puts her face next to mine and says in a very quiet voice, ‘Don’t you ever, ever fool around with that washing line again. What on earth? Round her neck?’