The Devil's Music (17 page)

    A few blows. Felt rips, plywood splinters. Soon, most of the veranda roof lies on the ground below. Above me arches the elation of a scoop of blue. That colour. In Crete, blue is everywhere. Snatches of sky pulled down into everyday life. Blue railings on the terraces of tavernas and spills of blue paint on the uneven paving; faded blue-and-white check tablecloths; a blue jug filled with Vasilis’s home-made wine; blue doors and window frames against whitewashed walls.

    No clouds. The sky is empty of motion. I want movement. We had a painting when I was a child. It hung halfway up the stairs. A square-rigged ship, sails billowing in a storm-tossed ocean under swollen skies. It’s that suggestion of time and distance I need; sails against sky. Canvas – the old tent. I’ll rip it up. Hang some strips of canvas. Maybe use the rope once the Shroud Knots are grafted. Work some pairs of Star Knots, perhaps a solid sinnet too. Back in Crete, that’s what I’d planned, to try
Ashley
’s sixty-one-strand pentalpha. I’ll need the pantograph. The pentalpha is a complex sinnet, star-shaped in cross section. Perfect, if I can do it. A bit of research and preparation is required. I’ll need
Ashley
’s instructions and diagrams.

    I carry the kitchen chair back inside.

    First, some sort of table will be necessary to hold the strands in place as I work. The old washing basket in the shed – I could use the circular base of that, the wicker’s rotten anyway. There must be a broomstick I can use for legs, some inch brads or nails somewhere.

    I rummage about in the shed. In the far corner, I glimpse a metal frame with wheels. A carrycot. Elaine’s carrycot. What the bloody hell’s that doing here? Somebody has loaded it with chunks of driftwood. The hardboard shows through rips in the plastic covering. I lurch through the piles of junk. Get that wood out, I hear someone mutter, GET THAT BLOODY WOOD OUT!

Jelly makes a sighing noise, a little whimper, like Honey when she wants to go for a walk.

    ‘They’ll be back soon, Jelly. Don’t be sad.’

    I shiggle her carrycot to make the eebie jeebies go away.

    The sea’s right out, thin and flat. No one else on the sand but me and Jelly and Honey on the edge of the pebbles, and a man digging for lugworms a long way away. When Mummy and Susie come back with the ice creams, I’m going to make an enormous sandcastle with my new spade.

   
I’m leaving you in charge, Andrew
, Mummy said, holding Susie’s hand.

    Honey chomps and slobbers on a bit of wood. She’s wet, the fur on her legs and on her tummy all dark and stuck together like little feathers. She’s got her head on one side, chewing, the piece of wood pushed right up into the corner of her mouth, her black lips stretching back to show her gums. Her teeth are long and pointy.

    Jelly’s whining gets louder. She wriggles on her back as if she’s itchy. Her head’s right at the top and her feet are right at the bottom of the carrycot. She’s much too big and fat for it. Even though she’s four, she hasn’t stopped being a baby. She cries a lot.

    When I was nearly four, Susie was born and I helped Mummy with things like passing Johnson’s Baby Powder and lining up the cotton buds. I wonder if Jelly will always be a baby and what it will be like when she’s the same size as a grown-up and I have to call her Elaine, her real name.

    I lie on my back to see the same as she sees. Wind blows white bits of cloud across the sky. I practise my whistling. Grampy says whistling is the Devil’s music. It might call up a storm or a death by drowning.

    Jelly has stopped wriggling. I blow some spit bubbles for her, but she’s not watching. ‘Now, Jelly,’ I lean right over her, my shadow big and dark, ‘I’ve made you a pool and now I’m going to make drip people next to it. Or shall I write your name in the sand?’

    We talk to Jelly in questions, same as when we say to Honey, do you want to Fetch? And Honey fetches her special tennis ball with no fur left. Or, do you want a choccy-drop? And she stands by the larder door.

    I put a finger on the place where Jelly’s neck joins her chest and stroke the little dip there. Her skin is soft and white. I whisper my question right into her ear, ‘Which would you like, Jelly?’

    Her head goes from side to side. She’s staring at the tassels on the carrycot canopy. I take a deep breath in and blow them, puffing out my cheeks like the wind.

    Mummy and Susie are a very long time.

    Honey stops chomping. She drops her stick on the pebbles and nudges it, looking sideways at me. Then she sniffs at the stick, wrinkling up her nose to show her teeth. She gives one bark.

    I know what she wants, but I’m pretending I don’t.

    Honey jumps up, brings her stick over and drops it on the pebbles by my feet. Her nose touches my ankle. Wind blows, cold on the wetness. She looks at the stick; me; the stick. Her eyebrows twitch.

    I pick up a pebble and roll it in my hand. I watch the lugworm man digging his hole.

    Honey pushes at my arm with her nose, her pink tongue curling out to give me a lick. She rests her chin on me and looks sad. I put my arms around her and rub her seaweedy fur. On the top of her head where the fur is thin, I can feel her skull.

    Suddenly she’s up. She leaps around her stick, crouching down and bouncing up, pebbles flying everywhere. The stick’s all slimy with slobber when I grab it and run, run on to the hard sand. Honey – chasing, crazy – overtakes me, her body curled like a ball, a bundle of legs, as she gallops towards the sea, skids around and comes back. Another skid and sand sprays up as she turns and gallops off again, her ears blown inside out by the wind.

    I fling the stick as hard as I can. Honey races past the man’s lugworm bucket. He stops digging and watches the sand fly. He holds a hand above his eyes to look at me, then at Elaine’s carrycot on the edge of the pebbles.

    I go back.

    Jelly’s eyes are closed now, her mouth open.
She’s not all there, Andrew
. I put my face right down to hers, but all I can smell is the hot plastic of the sides of the carrycot.

    I don’t like strangers looking at Jelly.

    I’m going to write her real name in the sand with my new spade.

    On Saturday night, Auntie Jean and Mummy talked about Elaine when I was in bed. They thought I couldn’t hear. Mummy was crying again. They said about her going away into a Home, and I thought of Gladys at school who has warts on her fingers and smells like left-over gravy. She lives at the Barnardo’s Home. We whisper ‘Fleabags’ behind our hands. I’d rather be dead than be like Gladys.

    My new spade is red metal with a wooden handle. It’s got a sharp edge that cuts through the sand. Susie has my old spade. It’s small and rubbery with swirls of red and blue and green like plasticine colours rolled together.

    I carve an E in the sand, five paces high and three paces wide. By the time I’ve drawn the bottom line of the E, the top line has gone blurry, rubbing itself out. I stand and paddle my feet up and down, up and down on the sand to make sinking sand. Real sinking sand comes when you’re not expecting it and suddenly you’re up to your ankles in slime. Sometimes there are hard bits under your feet, the bones of people who’ve drowned. I paddle more. My feet sink lower and lower until cold sand rings my ankles and my feet are deep under heavy wetness. Now Elaine’s ‘E’ has melted back into the sand.

    The man digging for lugworms has thrown Honey’s stick for her but she brings it back to me. He starts digging a new round hole. My hole has nearly filled up with sand and water again so I kneel over and use my arms to heave out more sand. It slides all over my bare legs. When I take my soggy jumper off, the chilly wind gives me goose bumps.

    I make my hole deeper, but water and sand come back to fill it. I have to be much faster. The metal disc with Honey’s name on it jingles on her collar as she jumps and leaps all around me. She starts to dig with me, her paws flying. Sand sprays up between her back legs. I copy her, cupping my hands, chucking sand between my legs; panting.

    If Elaine is not all here, like Mummy says to people, there must be a part of her that is somewhere else. Like Grampy says Granny is in a better place. Really, she’s dead. I know, because we visit her headstone in the graveyard and leave her favourite flowers there. But Grampy talks to her and blows a goodbye kiss.

    Elaine starts again with her whimpers. I feel sorry that she just lies in the carrycot and can’t get out and play with us in the sand so I shiggle the sides of the carrycot a bit more to try and make her laugh. She doesn’t do her giggle much any more, even when I lick the bottoms of her feet. Mummy says she’s sore somewhere, they don’t know where. I think they mean in her head. She wears nappies still, so perhaps it’s them that make her sore. Or perhaps she’s hungry because she only has milk from a bottle or sometimes mushed-up food. No nice food like chocolate, or even Parma violets which are only little. I thought she’d like them.

    Now she’s crying and coughing with a sound like she’s going to be sick. I still can’t see Mummy and Susie coming back from the ice-cream van. I push the canopy back and see that Elaine’s head is squashed right up at the top of the carrycot and her hair is stuck down and wet with sweat. I put my hands under her arms and try to sit her up. She’s heavy and very wobbly. She can’t sit up by herself yet.

    She takes a deep breath in. Her face goes red. She opens her mouth wide and screams. I lay her down again.

    I’ll have to wash the sand off. She’s different from me and doesn’t like the feel of sand on her skin, which I do know already so I wish I hadn’t touched her with my sandy hands. I lick one of her fat feet and explain how to make sand go soft by pressing down so that the water comes through, or by squeezing the sand in your fist. That’s how to make drip people, I tell her, but her mouth is big and wet and red with screaming.

    Honey has gone for a swim. Her head is a dot in the water.

    Elaine doesn’t stop screaming even when I play Boo! over the side of the carrycot.

    The man digging holes is looking again.

    I’ll fetch some nice clear water in the bucket to wash the sand off her and stop her being so hot and cross. I tip Susie’s slipper shells out of the bucket. I’ll have to run because I’m not supposed to leave Elaine. I’m in charge. The tide is far out, the sea a grey line.

    Honey comes back from the sea and starts shaking her head from side to side. I grab her collar and drag her away from Elaine just as she starts to twist her whole body faster and faster and seawater droplets fly out, spreading everywhere and spattering me.

    Now Honey’s here, I can go. I spread my towel on the sand. Elaine is heavy, but I just manage to lift her out of the carrycot. I lay her on her back. She stops crying and gasps a little bit, screwing up her eyes because the sky is big and bright even though the sun keeps going behind the clouds. She stops crying and kicks her legs like she’s happy.

The bucket is full to the brim but water sloshes out when I run, so I have to go back to fill it up again. This time I walk, watching the water in the bucket, my legs moving straight and hard. Ripples of sand press into my feet. Splashes of water spill and leave dark patches on my salty-white skin.

    I’m on to the flat sand now. Honey is trotting in a circle round and round Elaine and I can see Mummy walking across the pebbles with the ice creams, taking huge steps because she doesn’t want them to melt. Susie is left behind. She stops and shakes her head, holds up her arms. What a cry baby.

    Elaine is probably even more sandy now because I can see that she has rolled over on to her tummy to play on the heap of wet sand by my pool. I am pleased that she has done that. Honey stops going round and round and sits down next to her. She points her nose in the air and starts to bark, loud short barks.

    The lugworm man throws down his spade and he’s running past me, his hands pumping like he’s trying to win a race.

    Mummy reaches my pool and, for a second, she stands very straight. My tummy slops downwards. The ice creams fall out of her hands on to the sand. Honey dips her nose to them. Mummy scoops Elaine up and wraps her arms round her. Mummy lifts her face up to the sky and her mouth is in a big O with a high sound that doesn’t stop.