The Devil's Music (26 page)

Me and Mum were making butterscotch Angel Delight, pouring it into four little glass dishes, for tea. Stephen’s mum came round. Susie was unwrapping the Cadbury’s flake, ready to sprinkle it on top. Stephen’s mum had angry red lips and wobbly cheeks like Stephen’s, only hers were all powdery. When I saw who it was at the door, I ran and hid in the laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden. I stayed there until it was nearly dark. Stephen’s mum told my mum what we’d done. She threw my Angel Delight away and shouted at me. Susie ate all the Cadbury’s flake. There was none left for me.

    I had to write a letter to say sorry and take it round with Mum. Stephen sat on the sofa at his house. He was wearing his too-small plimsolls and looking at them. While I said sorry, he put one foot and then the other up on the edge of the coffee table, over and over, one foot then the other.

    Stephen’s such a tell tale tit.

The car glides along. Andy is curled up on the back seat under the old hospital blanket, sound asleep. Michael’s silent, looking straight ahead as he drives. He’s wearing his gold cufflinks. Semi-detached houses line the road. Lights come on in bow-fronted windows and give glimpses of lives: a bookcase in an alcove, a standard lamp throwing a circle of light over the white antimacassar on the back of an armchair. A couple stand at their bow-fronted bedroom window. The curtains are half drawn. He’s behind her, kissing her neck as she wriggles to one side, trying to reach for the curtains, laughing and smiling.
Ian
. Blood leaps to the surface of your cheeks, your body’s automatic reaction. There is no point. It’s tearing you apart. You have to try to hold everything together.

    It’s half past five. On an ordinary day you’d be in your blue-and-white kitchen, peeling potatoes, cooking mince for the children’s tea. Yesterday you made apple snow with Bramleys from the garden for Jean to give Susie for pudding today. You turn from the bow-fronted houses and stare ahead at the tarmac.

    ‘Well, that was very productive.’ Michael’s voice makes you jump. ‘His opinion is that Andrew’s trying to deal with the fear of separation; from you. Attention-seeking, as I’ve thought all along. He used something he refers to as the “squiggle game”, and came up with some very interesting—’

    Michael and the psychologist shaking hands in the doorway; Michael’s gold cufflinks and his St Andrews tie.

    ‘What is this squiggle game?’ You twist to face him. ‘Andrew told me he had to finish some drawings.’

    Michael glances at you. ‘Well, clearly that’s a child’s perspective and therefore somewhat limited. I believe he draws a line or two, and then interprets the drawings that the child goes on to produce from those starting points.’

    ‘And this is the basis for a diagnosis that could affect Andy’s whole life, the way we live
our
lives?’ Blood pounds at your breast bone. ‘A few scribbles on a piece of paper!’ You loosen the scarf at your neck. ‘It sounds about as accurate as reading tea leaves!’ You clap a hand over your mouth.

    Listen to Michael.

    Take slow breaths.

    The scarf slithers on to your lap, its silky raspberry colour cools your hands.

    ‘Are you feeling nauseous?’ Michael’s eyes assess you.

    ‘No!’ Too abrupt. ‘No, no, I’m fine. Really.’

   
breathe

    ‘so – what did he say about Andrew’s drawings?’

    ‘Well, apparently Andrew translated seven out of the ten drawings into something associated with rope or string, and—’

    ‘Surely
any
little squiggle of pencil on paper could look like string!’

    Michael thuds the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Would you like to hear what he said, or not?’

    You look out of the window at the houses again. Most now have drawn curtains. ‘Sorry. Yes. Please. Sorry. Sorry.’

    ‘Well, out of ten drawings, Andrew’s included a lasso, two whips, two crops, a yo-yo and a knot, indicating an unhealthy preoccupation with rope.’

    ‘And how does he get from that, to the idea that Andrew is worried about losing me?’ But as you say it, you can see how. String. Joining. Umbilical cord. ‘No – I see how he might.’

    You rest your head in your hands. ‘Michael, he was wearing his cowboy hat. He had his toy gun with him. Is a lasso so surprising? Did you tell him what my father’s occupation was? Why do
you
think he’s so interested in rope?’

    Michael shifts his hands up the wheel, placing them in the ten-to-two position that he taught you to use. He says nothing. You lean back and close your eyes, seeing Andy in his cowboy hat, his toy gun in the holster at his hip. A lasso whirls through the air, falling around a horse’s neck. Rope tightens on the bulge of muscle. The animal strains, eyes rolling as it bucks and paws the ground. A whip cracks and raises dust. You’ve watched the cowboy and Indian films that Andy loves so much. You lift your chin up from your coat collar. ‘He didn’t even bother to speak with me.’

    ‘Don’t overreact. He has to take into account your medical history. You were too distressed for him to pursue the interview. Incoherent, was the word I believe he used. Besides, I was able to give him all the necessary details.’

    In profile, the familiar shift of his jaw bone warns you. Heat flares behind your eyes, making them water. This time it’s anger. You want to force him to look at you and recount his conversation with the psychologist. Because it will have been a conversation, not questions and answers. You want to ask Michael about the ‘facts’ he gave. He’ll have changed things. Andy’s love of stories, his vivid imagination, will have become a tendency to tell lies. A fascination with texture and colour and smell will have become the indicators of some sort of mental abnormality. You’ve failed Andy today, yet again.
Your medical history to take into account
. Your throat squeezes tight and the tears come once more. Your nose is running.

    ‘Mummy?’ Andy’s head bobs near your shoulder, his hand gripping the back of your seat. ‘Mummy? Where are we?’

    Michael glances in the rear-view mirror. ‘We just got a bit lost here, Andrew. Got our bearings now.’ He passes you a neatly folded handkerchief with the laundry mark at the corner. ‘Let’s just concentrate on getting home in one piece, shall we?’

Sarah’s wearing the blue dress – ‘Turquoise, Andrew,’ she tells me, when I say it’s sexy, ‘turquoise, not blue’ – and high-heeled shoes. Her calves are bare and tanned. I wonder how that can be, in November. There’s energy in her movements, the flex of her well-developed calf muscles, the taut line of muscle in her thighs that shows through the draping fabric of her dress as she walks to and fro across the kitchen.

    She brings three more wine glasses to the table. I stand up. I didn’t expect this, the looming threat of a social occasion with strangers.

    ‘Before you say anything at all,’ she says, looking me in the eye, ‘they’re childhood friends of mine. They’re more family than my family so if you think you can’t handle it you can leave now.’

    So she has her priorities.

    I swill a mouthful of Shiraz. ‘Am I that predictable?’

    ‘Oh, I know your sort of old.’

    My ‘sort’ doesn’t sound favourable. As I gather myself to leave, the doorbell rings. They don’t wait for Sarah to get to the door. A grizzled guy with a thin grey ponytail and a bushy beard carries a guitar into the kitchen. He reaches for my hand immediately. ‘Tom,’ he says. His hand is huge and calloused. ‘You must be Andrew.’

    I nod and smile. It doesn’t seem necessary to say anything in response because behind him follows a Mary Hopkins lookalike, slender with blonde hair flopping down. They both fling their arms around Sarah at the same time. Sarah has tears in her eyes. Some back-rubbing and kissing and murmuring about ‘Such good news’ goes on, so I finish the glass of wine and pour myself another. I can feel myself retracting, snail-like, but can’t leave now, much as I want to.

    Mary Hopkins slips her shoes off, comes over and bends down to kiss me on both cheeks. Her face is round, scrubbed-clean. ‘I’m Denise. Can I sit here, next to you? Or will Sarah fight me for this seat, do you think?’ Her voice is so soft that I have to lean towards her to catch the words.

    ‘Yeah, I bloody will. Piss off and sit over there next to your own bloke.’

    Everyone else laughs. This might be OK. The three of them have enough to say between them without me being required to even open my mouth. Sarah leans her thigh on mine and the conversation leaps and bounds. We share tapas which Denise has prepared and brought. Often they interrupt or talk over each other, quarrel over the accuracy of details that they want me to know, like how long they have all known each other.

    Sarah and Tom met building sandcastles on this beach when they were still in terry nappies. Denise was a late arrival to the sandcastle gang, but no one can remember the exact dates of anything, so they argue and discuss whether or not to search for childhood photos. Their childhood summers sound uncannily similar to mine: crowds of children gathering on the sand at low tide, parents sitting in deckchairs, distant on the pebbles, everyone digging and patting as fast as possible to build a castle big enough for six or ten or maybe more children to stand on as the tide comes in.

    ‘I gather you’re one of us too,’ says Tom. ‘Childhood holidays here, now living the dream full time? A common story round here.’

    ‘I’m only here for the time being.’

    ‘Perhaps we all built sandcastles together,’ says Denise looking across the table at me thoughtfully. ‘I had twin brothers. Everyone remembers them. They wore matching multicoloured striped jumpers knitted by my mother.’

    Knees and feet, are what I remember, the imprints of fingers on the sand; salty white skin, sand-coated calves; girls’ hair in rat’s tails, stiff with salt. But, thinking about it, I maybe remember two boys in striped jumpers, blond, older than me. Or maybe they’re in one of the old photographs, pictures of a row of children, in jumpers and sagging knitted swimming costumes, standing on a sandcastle as the tide came in.

    ‘It’s a bit like college reunion after twenty years,’ Sarah says, ‘something incestuous about it somehow.’

    I watch her laugh. I didn’t know that she’d had childhood summers down here. I put a hand on her knee and she covers it with hers.

    Tom and Denise are happy to talk about themselves, their lives together, and I listen. Tom was in the music business until five years ago when his father died and left him the Pullman carriage house. He gave up gigs and hotel rooms and took up fishing. It’s his boat I see out there, just offshore, most nights. He’s passionate about the Pullmans and promises to show me a photograph of their carriage being transported here by Ted Broadbridge’s drogue timber wagon and a team of six horses.

    Since their children have grown up and left home, Denise has got into various New Age alternative therapies – aromatherapy, something called ‘shamanic dreaming’ – and sees clients in a room in their Pullman, ‘Buffers’.

    ‘What’s yours called?’ Denise asks. Her question startles me. My guard has dropped.

    ‘The Siding.’

    ‘That one! Been mostly empty for years and years, hasn’t it? Such a shame. Did your parents own it originally? I’d love a look inside.’

    Denise, I suspect, is one of those intense women, like a counsellor I was sent to once, with a tendency to probe into every microscopic and painful detail of other people’s lives. I know exactly what Denise would say about my dreams, because I’ve been told before. My subconscious mind is telling me something. Tonight Tom and Sarah have dominated the conversation; a one-to-one with Denise would be beyond sufferance.