The Devil's Music (31 page)

I tuck my head right down, my nose resting on the skin of my knees. It smells like blotting paper. Father grunts again, using two hands to pick me up. I’m in a ball on the carpet.

    ‘Stand up!’ His voice is very, very quiet.

    I’m rubber-ball hard. I rock to and fro, hands over my ears.

    ‘I’m waiting.’

    ‘
Now you’re ready
,’ The Voice says clearly, ‘
to begin your dance with death
.’

    Houdini stands in a cage. He’s wearing swimming trunks. His ankles are in manacles, his wrists bound behind his back.

A policeman on the stage whacks Punch with a truncheon.

    You lift your chin and look Michael in the eye. ‘It’s the holidays. Andy’s got to be able to let off a bit of steam, wouldn’t you say? He doesn’t want to be cooped up in the house with Susie and me all day.’

    Michael glances at his watch and is distracted by the time. ‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he says. ‘I’d better go.’ He reaches down to give Susie’s back a little rub. She lifts a hand as if to wave goodbye but doesn’t turn her head from the puppets. Her hand falls back to her lap.

    Michael weaves through the audience, pausing in the shadows at the back of the hall to speak to the Marilyn Monroe woman. Then he continues, stopping now and then to greet someone – a hand on a man’s shoulder, a smile and a dip of his dark head towards a group of ladies.

    He rarely suggests you bring the children into the hospital for a visit these days; it’s as if he tries to put them out of his mind. He never talks of Elaine.

    Gales of laughter ripple out as a clown swings a string of sausages around the stage. Punch smacks at them with his fingerless hands; Susie smiles and claps.

    Michael has a way of holding himself, his slender body charged with an energy and purpose that invigorates those around him. When he greets people, he touches them – a handshake, a pat on the back – or tilts his body towards them in a way that suggests concern, interest. It’s part of his charm, this attentiveness. It’s why the nurses blush and giggle, matron bustles and checks her watch before his ward rounds. You were once the same, drawn to his magnetism. Now you’re in bed before him, lying on the edge of the bed, as much space between your body and his as you can get, feigning sleep.

‘Andrew! Do you hear me?’ Father’s voice is hard, hissing.

    ‘I’m listening,’ I whisper to The Voice.

    ‘Muttering now?’ Spit lands on my arm.

    I open my eyes, inside the ball of my arms and legs. The skin on the inside of my wrist looks like a petal from one of Grampy’s roses.

The ease of Michael’s movements through the hall somehow lends the impression that he’s host of this entire event, his own private Christmas party. And it’s not just the women that look at him. He’s in charge. His white coat sails out as he disappears out through the lighted doorway.

    A voice cuts into your thoughts: ‘– until you are dead. Dead. Dead.’

‘Michael! Please. Let him be.’ Mummy’s voice.

    His hands hold the top of my arms
and at three-fifteen Houdini goes into his cabinet, wrists handcuffed in cuffs that have taken a Birmingham blacksmith five years to make
and Father points at my chest with a finger
and twelve minutes later Houdini reappears but with his wrists still fastened and his knees hurt so he asks for a cushion to kneel on
and Father shakes me and
at ten past four Houdini is floppy and sweating and
she’s crying out again and
Houdini asks if he can be unlocked to take off his coat but the crowd jeer
and Father’s mouth is hot and words come out
and Houdini uses a penknife to cut himself out of his coat then
I taste my snot salty
and ten minutes later Houdini is free
but Father’s spit is on my face
when the crowd carry him shoulder high around the Hippodrome
and the wall is hard on my back and Father’s breathing on my face and everything is fuzzy and

    ‘I am Houdini the Handcuff King,’ I say, staring over Father’s shoulder at the gold-and-white wallpaper. ‘People still don’t know how I did what I did.’

    ‘Michael! He’s going to pass out.’

    ‘Pull yourself together!’

    darkness

    until I see sense

    Press my fingers over the woodworm holes.

On the little stage there are the gallows and the hangman: Jack Ketch. Punch peers out from behind bars. You finger the pearls at your neck. You should have said something to Michael when Andy tied that noose around Susie’s neck. There was a look in Andy’s eye you couldn’t fathom. That was months ago. Now it’s far too late. And the notebook – perhaps you should have told Michael about that. The incident in the empty house Michael heard about from Stephen’s mother – how long might the poor boy have stayed there, tied up?

    What is best you no longer can tell. You seem incapable of making any decisions. What had you been thinking of, keeping these things secret? You look down at the top of Susie’s head, the white-blonde plaits tied with tartan ribbons, and bend to unwrap the discarded sugar mouse, even though you know Susie won’t eat it.

    The woman by the curtains has moved to the light of the doorway. She pats her Marilyn Monroe hair and plucks at the white cardigan around her shoulders. Glossy as a photograph, she’s like the women in
Good Housekeeping
’s
The Happy Home
. She flits out through the doorway, following Michael.

    ‘That’s the way to do it,’ Punch squawks.

    On the puppet stage Jack Ketch hangs, swinging limply, noose around his neck. Punch lurches around the gallows, back hunched, the bell on his jester’s hat jangling.

    You should tell him, tonight.

    ‘That’s the way to do it,’ Punch repeats. ‘That’s the way to do it. Now I’m free again for frolic and fun. Free for frolic and fun.’

I’m wide awake in Grampy’s spare room. His snore comes through the wall.

    The bed is high, like in a fairy tale, with lots of mattresses piled up. I’ve been here a month now and only wet the bed once. The night Father made a bed up in the bath so that the mattress would not be ruined, the Voice said: ‘
Now!
’ and I ran through the snow to Grampy’s.

    Houdini wore a black silk blindfold to help him sleep.

    Under the cool of the pillow is Mum’s blue-and-turquoise scarf. I tie it around my head like Houdini’s blindfold.

    After the first night at Grampy’s, Mum brought shepherd’s pie and sat in the kitchen while me and Grampy ate. She’d brought homemade lemonade and Traffic Light biscuits too. She stamped the snow off her boots in the doorway and held her arms open for me and Susie.

    ‘I can’t think what has got into him,’ she said to Grampy later, shaking her head and pleating the seersucker tablecloth with her fingers. She had her coat on even though it was hot in the kitchen. Her face was red. ‘I can’t think. He is so angry. It’s all my fault.’

    Grampy put a hand on hers and said, ‘He’ll be fine. We’re good company for each other.’

    Mum said, ‘No, you—’ then just shook her head and looked at the tablecloth again.

    One day after school I went home to fetch my toboggan. It was Wednesday 7th February because I wrote it in my exercise book. Our teacher said ten inches of snow fell overnight. Even though it was not spring, Mum was spring cleaning. The doors of the kitchen cupboards were wide open and the packets and jars and bottles were all over the table and work surfaces. She held two jars up to the light. Her hair was messy and flat at the back. She had a jar of cinnamon in one hand and a jar of Robinson’s Golden Shred in the other. She whirled round and held the two jars right next to my face. There were sticky fingerprints on the marmalade jar.