The Devil's Music (34 page)

    It’s a school day. Upstairs, I take my school uniform off and fold it on the chair ready for tomorrow.

The sky and the branches of the trees are reflected in the water. The boat moves between the two sets of trees and the two skies. It’s dreamy, like being nowhere.

    Last week it hailed in the night and I had a nightmare so I got into Grampy’s bed. Grampy told me the story of where rain comes from and where it goes to, and that all water has a memory, always trying to get back to where it came from. Like rivers always flowing back to the sea.

    Willows hang low at the edges of the river. Grampy points to a grebe’s nest, a mother grebe feeding its baby with a fish. ‘Your mother’s home tomorrow, you’ll be pleased to hear.’ He mops his forehead with his handkerchief.

    My chin’s on the back of my hand on the boat’s edge. I press my chin down and move it, backwards and forwards over the bones. It feels like all I am is a skeleton.

    Grampy puts his hanky back in his trouser pocket. ‘Will we make her a cake? I’ve got a chocolate mix somewhere. When we get home?’

    Grampy often makes suet puddings, or cakes from mixes. He says he misses cakes since Granny Clementine died, but Mum and Auntie Jean scoff and say that their mother never once used a cake mix in her life. I see a cake with candles and Smarties on top and Mum getting out the special cake forks because it’s a celebration cake.

    I pick at a quick. ‘Have we got any candles?’

    Grampy shakes his head. ‘But we can pop into Coynes on the way home. Now, duck, will we go as far as Temple Lock?’

    There are swans on the bank by Bisham Abbey, white feathers all over the muddy grass.

    ‘Look at that big cob.’ Grampy points, wiping his nose with his hanky as some grey-brown swans swim past. ‘Wonder which pen is his mate. They mate for life, you know.’

    Grampy sleeps alone in the double bed under the eaves, always on the side nearest the door because Granny Clem was frightened of burglars.

    ‘A strong homing instinct is the reason, so they say. But they also say a swan mourns when its mate dies.’

    Grampy goes once a week to take flowers to Granny Clementine’s grave. He doesn’t put them in a vase, just lays them on the rectangle of soil that’s over her coffin. He talks to her. He always says she’s gone to a better place. Like she might come back one day when, really, she’s dead.

    I put my fingers into the icy water. The swans are clicking softly.

    ‘I don’t want to go to the Swan Upping ever, ever again.’

    At the Swan Upping the men arrive in their skiffs with red-and-blue sails and pictures of swans stitched on to them. They wear hats with white feathers which means they are cowards.

    ‘Why not?’ Grampy has cut the engine, so the boat goes a bit sideways. Straight green weed is floating below the surface, like hair combed out by the river.

    ‘I hate it, the swans being ringed. They should all belong to the Queen.’ The water slips like shiny material over my fingers, like Mum’s scarf.

    ‘Ah, they do check the birds for injuries as well, you know. Fishing hooks, cuts made by fishing lines and so on.’

    ‘Ban fishing.’

    ‘It’s a tradition, Andrew, from the days when swans were served up at banquets. Can you imagine that?’

    ‘No.’

    Grampy blows his nose. The cold air is making his eyes watery. I keep quiet for a bit.

    A swan glides past. Once, when a swan tried to escape the Swan Uppers, it waddled up the bank on crooked black legs.

    ‘I was sick.’

    The swan moved on its bent black legs like an old person. I couldn’t bear the thought of it being caught.

    ‘You had the heatstroke.’

    ‘Heatstroke?’

    ‘Scorcher of a July, that year. And you were in bed by teatime. Quite poorly.’

    ‘I don’t remember.’

    ‘Yes. High temperature. Your mother was worried. Made a big fuss of you.’

    Grampy coughs and his breath puffs out on the air as he pulls on the starter lead and the engine revs into life. ‘I’m surprised you don’t remember.’

I walk into the kitchen holding the cake with its four candles already lit. Auntie Jean is at the sink peeling potatoes and Father leans on the work surface telling a joke about Matron losing her glasses. Mum is sitting on a kitchen chair with Susie on her lap. Under Mum’s eyes is all dark like coal dust but she’s wearing lipstick and a dress. Grampy is breathing loudly, like he’s just run a race.

    Everyone claps and says things about the cake all at once.

    ‘Come here and give me a cuddle,’ Mum says, lifting Susie to one side of her lap and opening her other arm wide. I put the cake carefully on the table and stand next to Mummy, leaning into her softness. She puts her arm around me and squeezes. I lean a bit more, but the softness and the silky material of her dress make me feel like I’m going to cry. She has powder on her cheeks like Stephen’s mum and her face smells different. Susie’s shoe buckle catches my arm. I move away.

    The cake has lots of chocolate icing that isn’t quite set and some of the Smarties have slid off, but Auntie Jean puts it on the tea trolley with the cups and saucers and plates and napkins in their rings and she wheels the trolley into the sitting room. We all sit round the fire and my face gets hot. Auntie Jean cuts up the cake and gives everyone a slice on a plate, with a cake fork and a napkin.

    ‘Dad, have you been out and about? You look done in,’ she says when she gets to him. Grampy’s eyes look at me across the room.

    ‘Just going down with a bit of cold.’ His voice is all thick.

    Auntie Jean bends close and puts her hand on his forehead. ‘Feels to me like you’re running a temperature.’

    Grampy puts a hand on her wrist and shakes his head. ‘I’ll be right as rain after a cup of tea.’ He puts his plate with the slice of cake on to a side table.

When me and Susie come in from feeding her rabbits and pouring hot water on the ice in their water bowls, Auntie Jean is helping Grampy up from his chair. ‘Let’s get you home. Hot-water bottle and whisky is what you need.’

    ‘Let me find the Vick.’ Mum jumps up.

    Grampy bends over his stick, his breathing noisy again. Auntie Jean holds his arm.

    Grampy has left his slice of cake on the wobbly table so I pick up the plate and run out to Auntie Jean’s car with it. Grampy is in the passenger seat, leaning his head back. He lifts his head up and takes the plate on his lap.

    ‘That’ll do nicely for later.’

Father is out on call at bedtime. Mum reads to me and Susie together in Susie’s room. She reads
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
, which I have read before but that doesn’t matter.

    While Mum stays to kiss Susie, I go to my room to wait for her to come and say goodnight. My feet are cold. The sheets are freezing too. I want a hot-water bottle and hot chocolate like at Grampy’s, but we’re not allowed drinks upstairs at home.

    Mum kneels by my bed in the dark. There is a narrow beam of light from the landing coming in through the open door. She rests her face near mine on the pillow.

    ‘I’m not really tired.’

    ‘You’re not?’

    ‘No. I go to bed later than this usually.’ I think of the two armchairs and the television and Grampy’s Aladdin’s Lamp.

    Mum strokes my hair. She smells of face powder. She yawns.

    ‘Didn’t you have enough rest?’

    ‘Pardon?’ Her hand stills.

    ‘It’s nearly Easter and you went away just after Christmas.’

    ‘Yes. I’m sorry it was such a long time, darling.’ She leans over and kisses my forehead. ‘It—’

    ‘It went really fast. You might need some more rest, that’s all.’ My insides are screwed up.

    ‘More rest?’

    ‘I could go back and keep Grampy company.’

    Mum straightens up. ‘I—’

    ‘He needs someone to look after him.’

    ‘You can go and stay whenever you like, Andy, you know that.’

    ‘Live, not stay.’ My nails are digging into the palms of my hands, which are by my sides under the covers.

    Mum kisses me on the forehead again. ‘I’m glad you had a nice time. How about a cuddle, Fatty Arbuckle?’

    Fatty Arbuckle is the name she called me a long time ago when I was little, because I was skinny. I’ve nearly forgotten it.

    I turn my head away on the pillow. Mum puts her hand on my chin and turns it back. With the landing light behind her head, I can’t see her face. ‘Andy, I know it’s been hard. Don’t be angry.’

    ‘I’m not.’ I pinch the flesh on both my thighs. ‘I just like being at Grampy’s.’

    ‘Well, I need a cuddle even if you don’t.’ She leans towards me again and tries to slip her arms around me. I keep my body rigid.

    ‘Night night,’ she whispers against my ear.

    I close my eyes. She sighs and gets up. I hear her leave the room, pulling the door to with a click.

The pink Spin curlers, in their open box by the wireless, are like the tiny bones of a foetus. You look away from them, down to the egg nestled in the hollow of your palm.

    The key turns in the front door and Jean hums in the hallway as she hangs up her coat and hat. She bursts into the kitchen, drags out a chair and flicks open her compact.

    ‘Thank God that’s the snow gone at last. How’re you feeling today?’ She holds the little mirror high.

    ‘Oh—’ You cover the curve of the egg’s lightness with your other hand ‘—a bit dazed I suppose, if I’m honest; a little – overwhelmed.’

    ‘Mmm.’ Jean snaps her handbag shut. ‘Right then, we’ll do the eggs first and afterwards you can sit back and relax while I do your hair.’ She nods towards the eggs lined up on the blue Formica. ‘How many?’

    The eggs balance on the table top, a tiny part of each shell resting there.

    ‘No idea.’

    Sun has angled into the kitchen, slanting on to the wallpaper: blue lines, red lines, horizontal and vertical; a pattern of pots of ivy on a shelf, repeated over and over again.

    The roller towel on the back door needs washing.

    The coal scuttle is empty.

    ‘Dad was quite poorly this morning.’ Jean squeezes past to reach the wireless. ‘I’ll nip in again later. His chest  ...’

    She bends her head, twiddling dials. Crackles, hisses: halves of words slide away.

    Jean has a new permanent, a gleaming cap of waves with curls like sausages behind her ears and at the nape of her neck. She’s thrilled with it and brought the curlers yesterday to show you. She wants to give you a Toni Home Perm today.

    She finds the Light Programme and joins in: ‘
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
—’ her singing sharp-edged as the key on a corned-beef tin.

    Above Jean’s head, through the window, you can see the tops of the row of elms at the bottom of the garden, swaying. In Morningside House you’d sat in the austere room with its narrow bed and watched an empty sky. You’d floated in the bubble of a different life, drifting, gazing down out on the world: in orbit. You thought about Yuri Gagarin, the first man ever to leave the earth, and wondered if he had felt the same peace in vast distances.

    You didn’t miss the children.

    Jean picks up an egg and holds it between thumb and forefinger up to the sunlight. ‘I thought you’d have made a start without me.’

    ‘No.’

    Jean circles the base of her egg with the ball of her thumb, then tweaks a needle from the pincushion on the table. Tongue between her lips, she jabs the point of the needle through the shell, then pauses, grimaces as she pushes the needle, firmly, further into the egg.

    ‘I always think of a little fluffy chick just as I’m stabbing the needle through the shell.’ Her fingers turn the needle round and round, side to side, stirring, to mix the yolk and the white. ‘Don’t you? Are you going to have a go, or wait for that one to hatch?’