The Devil's Music (23 page)

I have a new, cloudy blue marble in my pocket. It’s a Saturday and I want to knock for Hugh and Stephen.

    Mum has put lipstick on. There’s a cardboard box in the car packed with bottles of whisky and ginger ale, chocolates and some tins of soup. In her shopping basket under the tea towel there’s a spiced lamb roll and flapjack which she was baking yesterday when I got in from school. She’s wearing a little red hat and a red silky scarf. She stands in the kitchen doorway waving, her gloves and the car keys in her hand.

    ‘Mmmm, you smell nice,’ Father says. ‘Be off with you now.’ He kisses her on the lips.

    She puts her hand up to her hair. ‘If you’re sure you’re not too tired, Michael?’

    Father has just come in from morning surgery. He’s hung his jacket on the back of the kitchen chair and is unfastening his cufflinks. He begins rolling up his sleeves. ‘I think we’ll manage, between us, don’t you?’ He winks at me.

    Father never winks at me.

    Mum’s going to visit one of her nursing friends. She’s got a new flat and Mum’s staying the night because it’s a long way away.

    I wanted to go and stay with Grampy, or go and visit the new flat too, but Mum laughed and kissed the top of my head and said it’s a boring long drive and anyway it will be all nurse talk.

    ‘Leave them to it. Nurses and their chatter.’ Father pulls a face, blowing from his mouth so his hair flies up. ‘You want to avoid that at all costs!’

    ‘And the new flat has no garden, nowhere to kick a ball about,’ Mum adds. ‘Daddy’s got lots of projects for the both of you up his sleeve, you just wait!’

    She makes it sound like a treat, staying at home with him and not even being allowed to call for Stephen and Hugh. Susie made a big fuss about staying the night with Auntie Jean. ‘Want Daddy! Want Daddy!’ She stamped her feet up and down, up and down like she was running on the spot. I don’t know why they didn’t just let her stay here.

    Father and I spend the afternoon hammering and sawing to make a run for Susie’s rabbits from wood and chicken wire. When we finish the rabbit run we make a bonfire with bits of wood and empty cereal boxes and sugar cartons and newspapers. The sparks fly up orange and red.

    Father says, ‘Time for tea, do you think?’

    I watch Father’s back while he’s busy on the other side of the kitchen. I lick my finger and rub it along the blue Formica of the kitchen table. Then I put my finger in my mouth and suck it. But I need to lick the blue to feel it properly.

    Father puts slices of Spam on to two plates. ‘Sit up straight, Andrew. Stop swinging your legs about.’

    I don’t know how Father knows this is what I am doing, because he has his back to me. I swing one leg a bit.

    Nothing.

    Both legs; the chair makes a little squeak.

    ‘Andrew, what have I just said?’

    Father comes across to the stove and picks up the pan with the mashed potato, goes back to the counter again and dollops potato on to a plate which he puts in front of me. On the plate are lumps of beetroot in a puddle of dark red. The bottom of the pile of mashed potato is dark red. I poke a slice of Spam with my fork and push it to the side of the plate, away from the red. I cut off a piece of Spam and put it in my mouth but there is some red taste. It stings. I swallow the lump of Spam whole. I am very hungry so I fork mouthfuls of mash from the top of the heap before it all goes red.

    ‘Don’t use your fork like a shovel,’ Father says. ‘Your mother  ...’

    My mouth is filled with potato that doesn’t taste of potato. I spit it out. The smell of the dark-red vinegary liquid is in my head and my mouth and makes my throat squeeze. I run to the sink and cough and spit. I’m hot.

    ‘Andrew, for heaven’s sake. You—’

    ‘I HATE the red stuff! I HATE beetroot!’ Words and bits of potato jump out. ‘And Mummy says I DON’T have to eat it if I don’t want to.’

    I am already at the kitchen door when Father shouts, ‘Go to your bed. Now!’

    My heart is a football in my chest. The house is wrong when she’s not here. I lie on the bed, then slip off and roll underneath into the dust and dark. I shut my eyes tight and think of Grampy’s front gate, clicking it shut and running up the garden path, in through the back door, feeling my way in the dark hallway past the snake skin from India and the wooden bear that’s taller than me. The bear is sharpening its claws on a tree trunk and there are wooden branches for coats to hang on. There is the smell of buses on wet days. Between the bear’s legs there’s a metal bucket for umbrellas, but there are no umbrellas in there. There are two bottles of linseed oil and Grampy’s sail-maker’s palm and needles. Next to the bear are Grampy’s cardboard boxes with different bits of rope. I put my hand in to touch them.

    Under the bed I say the names of the different types of ropes, one after the other. In the top box that says FAIRY LIQUID:

house-line

cod-line

nettle-stuff

and samson lines of hemp.

    Underneath:

hawser rope

shroud laid rope

cable laid rope.

    I am still awake.

    I creep downstairs and past the sitting-room door. Father is reading his
BMJ
under the circle of light from the standard lamp. I let myself out of the back door, leaving it open because of the noise the metal strip makes.

    Outside it is very dark and I don’t stop running till I get to the bridge. There’s the slimy mud smell of the water sliding underneath. The river is black and shiny. There are plipping sounds.

    The metal handrail on the bridge smells like blood. I take a deep breath of cold air and I am Houdini standing on the bridge. I wait for The Voice to give me commands. The black water is ice. There is a round hole for me to dive into. The policemen put the long chain round me first, then the handcuffs and leg irons. From the banks, the crowds watch.

    ‘Handcuff me and put leg irons on! I am Houdini the Handcuff King!’ My words are puffs of white on the air.

    At the freak shows or in the police stations I always escape. I am in the newspaper. I make lots of money by magic.

    The ducks flap their wings and make a noise. I don’t have any bread. The swans glide by like they are kings and queens, their wings snow white in the dark. I could fly into the night sky on a swan’s back, white feathers soft and warm around me.

    When I get to the other side of the bridge I run as fast as I can down the narrow footpaths between the high walls and fences to Grampy’s back gate.

    ‘What have we here?’ says Grampy, coming out of his front room with the newspaper in his hand and spectacles on his forehead. ‘Pyjamas? You’d better come in and get warmed up, my Treasure.’

    Knots keep treasures safe.

Head on my arms at the table in the sun room under the fluorescent tube’s hum, I’m startled by Sarah’s loud rap.

    I reach for her as soon as the front door is open but she ducks to evade my arms and storms into the kitchen, pacing up and down, relighting a skinny spliff. Her hair is up off her back, wrapped in a strip of multicoloured material. She’s wearing her clay-splattered overalls. Smudges of clay coat her forearms. I sneak a look at my watch: 2.30 am. Has she been working at this time? Where was she earlier?

    Every time I touch her she twitches my hand off, or twists out of reach. She refuses a drink of any sort, refuses food. I ask her what’s up and she mutters,
Nothing
, glaring at the black window. I sit at the kitchen table, where I’ve been working on Hangman’s Knots.

    With a sigh she flounces from the kitchen and flings herself on to the old sofa, untying her baseball boots. I trail after her. She complains about the stark light from the naked bulb over our heads so I switch it off. I tell her about some netting and two old lobster pots I found today, but don’t mention the nooses or the jelly shoe. Maybe she’d like a look tomorrow, if she’s around. She doesn’t appear to be listening so I don’t say much. ‘Where’ve you been these last few days?’ I add.

    ‘For fuck’s sake, Andrew! I can’t be at your beck and call. A couple of drunken shags do not equal a long-term commitment. Go and find someone your own age.’ Sarah grabs a baseball boot and pulls it on again. She struggles with the laces. With every tug she gives them, the broken old sofa springs lurch.

    I can’t imagine why she’s in such a foul temper. I only asked her what she was doing tomorrow.

    ‘I just can’t be doing with it. Why can men never accept that a woman might just want sex without any strings, like they always do? They want to have their cake and eat it. It always boils down to ownership, possession, putting a label on a woman saying MINE and then going off to fuck someone else in secret because it’s more fun.’

    I can’t follow her argument but her energy is infectious; I’m slightly fuzzy from an afternoon’s drinking and would really like to get her into bed right now, while her blood is up. She’s trying to plait the great mass of her hair, a rubber band between her teeth, but her hands are shaking.

    ‘Sarah—’

    As she leans forward to search under the sofa for her other baseball boot, the tops of her buttocks swell over the waistband of her jeans. I plunge my hand down there, deep to the fatter flesh where her skin is cool. She leaps like a scalded cat and the baseball boot flies through the air, catching me on the chin.

    I grab her wrists, holding her arms above her head as she struggles. Wanting to avoid a kick in the balls, I get behind her, strapping her arms down with mine. She grunts, stamping her feet and trying to jab her elbows into my guts. I bury my nose in the damp wisps of hair at the back of her neck, groin zapping and buzzing, my erection pressed against her.

    Suddenly she freezes, panting. Through her T-shirt, her nipples are up. I take my chance, scoop her in my arms and fling her over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift to carry her to my bedroom. Then I remember the child-sized bunk bed. It’ll have to be the sofa. She’s inert as a sack of coal as I ease her down, but as soon as her back is on the cushions she’s lithe and slippery, trying to get away. I pin her wrists easily with one hand. With the other I grapple with my flies, watching her face. Her eyes are unreadable, until she catches sight of my erection. She smiles, a broad slow smile with white even teeth. Mimes a bite, her teeth clashing. I can feel her lips smile beneath my kiss.

Later, lying on the sofa, she smokes a fag and tells me that tomorrow – or rather, later today – she will load the Diving Woman into a van and take her to the warehouse where a mould will be made. ‘I hate it,’ she says, jabbing her cigarette stub into a saucer, ‘I hate this stage – the whole fucking process from now on, the way she’ll become something else. Brass; a metal thing I’ve never touched. She’ll be a water feature in somebody’s garden. It’s like a death. Every time: a death.’

    I spring up from the sofa and pull on my jeans. She watches as I buckle my belt. I’m almost out of the room when she calls, ‘Andrew?’ her voice soft.

    ‘Going for a run-off. Coffee?’

    When I turn from the toilet bowl, she’s in the doorway. The wild mass of her untied hair smells fusty, of warm skin after sex, and its silver and brown corkscrews more or less shield the front of her body, head to hip. Like mermaid’s hair. She puts a hand on my arm. ‘Andrew, did—?’

    ‘’Scuse me.’ I walk past her.

    ‘I’ll do without the coffee, thanks,’ she says minutes later, walking into the kitchen. She’s fully dressed, wearing one of my jumpers over her overalls. ‘I need to get some sleep.’

    What chance do I have of sleeping?

    She comes over to the stove and leans on me, slipping a hand into the back pocket of my jeans. She has shadows under her eyes. It’s the first time I’ve seen her looking tired; exhausted. She’s usually so feisty. ‘Tell you what,’ she says, ‘how about we make a dancing date? Not tomorrow, the next day?’ She eyes my feet. ‘Got any shoes with slippery soles?’

    ‘No. Will this be—?’

    ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have something that’ll fit in one of my boxes of teaching gear. You up for it?’