1974
Ankle-deep in fallen leaves, two boys in school blazers and shorts searched for the last of the conkers beneath the spreading branches of a horse chestnut. Their bare knees, purple with cold, were encrusted with scabs and dried mud. The smaller boy, dark and shorter by a head, though not much younger, sniffed occasionally and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His companion looked up and watched him, his bright blue eyes concerned.
Theo hoped Colin wasn’t crying again. It wasn’t really that he minded Colin crying. Theo was used now to members of his family crying. They all seemed to do it at one time or another - even his father, which had surprised Theo. It was just that he felt sorry for his cousin and didn’t know what he could do to cheer him up, so he preferred him not to cry.
Colin pounced on an outsize conker and, his face shining with triumph and smeared snot, held the specimen up for Theo to admire. ‘What a whopper, eh?’
Theo smiled with relief, nodded and bent again to his task. Colin polished the already gleaming conker on the sleeve of his blazer and dropped it into his satchel, saying, ‘I’m going to show that one to Dad. It’s even bigger than his.’
Theo knew Colin was referring to a conker on a piece of filthy string they’d found in a drawer in Colin’s bedroom, Rory’s old room, at Orchard Farm. Rory hadn’t explained its presence - Rory never spoke - but Flora had realised what it was as soon as Colin had shown her. She’d explained that Rory’s monster conker had been retired, undefeated champion and veteran of a hundred or more encounters in which it had literally smashed the opposition. Colin had held the aged conker, dull now but still intact, weighed it in his palm and replaced it reverently at the back of the drawer where he’d found it.
Theo knew his uncle would say nothing about Colin’s conker, would probably barely glance at it. ‘You could show it to my mum, too,’ he said gently. ‘She might be interested.’ Theo didn’t really think his mother would be, but he’d noticed that she was often kind to Colin. He thought it was worth a try.
Dropping his modest haul into his blazer pockets Theo hoisted his satchel on to his shoulder. ‘It’s getting dark. We’d better go. Gran’ll be worried about you.’
‘D’you want to come round and play?’
‘I’d have to ask my mum.’
‘C’mon then.’
The boys set off in the direction of the vicarage, kicking piles of leaves into the air as they walked. Theo loved to be outdoors. There was so much to see, hear and smell. He lifted his head and inhaled the mixture of damp, decay, bonfire- and chimney-smoke that signalled autumn. Plunging his hands into his pockets, he fondled the cool, smooth conkers, listening for the gentle knocking sound as they tumbled over one another.
Theo wrapped his fingers round a conker and thought of his Uncle Rory and the hand that seemed perpetually encased in plaster as operation succeeded operation. The fingertips protruded beyond the plaster but they didn’t move. They were pale and soft, somehow dead-looking, like the baby bird Theo had found on the garden path at the vicarage last spring. His father had said the mother bird had thrown the baby out of the nest because there was something wrong with it and it was too weak to survive. The dead bird had lain on the path, an object of Theo’s pity and fascination, until Hugh had cleared it away with a shovel.
When Theo looked at his uncle’s fingers peeping out from their plaster casing he felt the same confused mixture of feelings, but didn’t understand why. The baby bird was dead. Uncle Rory wasn’t dead, it had been Great Aunt Ettie who’d died. Thinking of Ettie and the funeral brought tears to Theo’s eyes. To distract himself he broke a long but companionable silence with an abrupt question. ‘Why d’you think your dad doesn’t talk any more?’
‘Dunno…’ Colin looked down at his feet as they tossed leaves into the air.
‘ ’Cos he’s sad, I suppose.’
‘You’d think,’ said Theo, frowning, ‘if he was sad, he’d cry.’
‘He did. Mum said he cried a lot. When it first happened.’
‘Oh. My dad cried too.’
‘Your dad?’
‘I only heard him, I didn’t see him. He was in his study. He’d been to visit your dad at the hospital, I think… I didn’t know men cried.’
‘Oh, yeah, sometimes. But things have to be pretty bad.’
‘Well, they were, weren’t they?’
They walked on in silence until Colin said, his voice leaden with disappointment, ‘I don’t think I’m going to get a bike for Christmas.’
Theo hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether Colin, being slightly younger, had yet discovered that Father Christmas wasn’t real and he certainly didn’t want to add to his cousin’s troubles. ‘Why’s that?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Mum said we can’t afford it. She says we’ve all got to get used to going without. But it won’t be for ever,’ Colin added cheerfully. ‘She’s going to get a proper job and she says when Dad is better he’ll get some work too. But there won’t be any bike for Christmas.’
Theo was silent and felt once again the ache somewhere in his chest that he thought might go away if only he could think of a way to help Colin. ‘I’ve asked for roller skates,’ he said helpfully.
Colin’s face brightened. ‘Yeah, skates would be good.’
‘I expect you could have those. Ask your mum. Or Gran. She’d get them for you. Maybe you could have a bike for your birthday.’
‘Maybe,’ Colin said doubtfully.
‘I haven’t got a bike either.’
Colin felt cheered by this admission and wondered whether Theo would like to be his special friend. Colin hadn’t acquired a special friend since moving to Theo’s school and he wasn’t sure if cousins qualified.
‘Actually,’ Theo continued, ‘I’d rather have skates than a bike.’
‘Yeah, so would I.’ Colin hoped this expression of solidarity, though insincere, would somehow cement relations. He liked Theo, who wasn’t like the other boys. He seemed not to notice how often Colin cried. Theo didn’t say much, but what he said was always kind and often interesting. Colin remembered that was how it used to be with his dad, before the accident. Mum talked a lot and you didn’t really need to listen because it was usually the same old stuff about clean hands or dirty shoes or tidying your room, but whenever his Dad used to talk to him Colin always wished he’d say more. Now of course he didn’t say anything at all. Ever.
As if reading his cousin’s mind, Theo asked, ‘D’you think he’ll ever talk again? Your dad, I mean.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Colin said, with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. ‘Mum said so. But she didn’t say when.’
‘Don’t suppose she knows,’ Theo said reasonably.
Colin felt depressed again and wondered how they could get the conversation back on to skates. He was about to ask Theo if he would like to be his special friend when his cousin said, ‘D’you know what my dad said about your dad?’
‘What?’
‘My dad said he can’t speak because he can’t find the words.’
‘What words?’
‘Words to say how sad he feels. My dad says your dad feels so bad, it isn’t possible for him to describe it.’
Colin digested this, then said, ‘He could talk about something else.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, he could say Hello. Or Goodnight. He could say Please and Thank you. He doesn’t have to talk about… the accident. We don’t.’
‘Do you talk to him?’
‘Mum does. I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘ ’Cos I feel stupid! I know he’s not going to answer, so I don’t bother any more.’
‘What about Lottie?’
Colin shrugged, embarrassed. ‘She sings.’
‘Sings?’
‘Yeah. She sits on his lap or she lies on the bed and sings to him.’
‘What does she sing?’
‘I dunno. Hymns. Skipping rhymes. Girls’ stuff,’ he added, pulling a fac
e.
‘Skipping rhymes? Why?’
‘ ’Cos she doesn’t know what to say, I s’pose.’
Theo smiled at the thought of little Lottie bouncing on the bed singing rhymes. His heart felt suddenly lighter. ‘Perhaps Uncle Rory will sing.’ Colin stopped rooting among the fallen leaves and stared up at Theo. ‘Perhaps he’ll sing one day. Instead of talking. If he doesn’t know how to say how bad he feels, perhaps he’ll sing it. Like Lottie.’
Colin looked doubtful as he tried to grasp this new and unexpected idea. ‘Dad never used to sing. Except when he was shaving. He used to hum a bit. And sometimes when we were in traffic jams—’ He flinched as he remembered the story of the accident, the explanations, all the tears, the fear that his father might die.
‘I think he’ll sing one day,’ Theo said, confident now. ‘I think one day he’ll just open his mouth and start singing. Then he’ll probably start talking. Gran said that’s what happened when he was little.’
Colin frowned. ‘What - my dad?’
‘Yes. Gran said when he was really little he didn’t talk and everybody worried about him. Then one day he started singing to people and then everything was all right! I think that’s what’ll happen. But maybe not yet. Maybe when he isn’t so sad.’
‘D’you think it would help if we sang to him?’
‘It might. Does he like Lottie singing to him?’
‘Dunno. He doesn’t say anything, does he?’
‘My dad says the important thing is that we all tell Uncle Rory how much we love him and that we want him to get better.’
‘Why?’
‘Don’t know, But my dad said it was really important.’
‘Theo?’ Colin swallowed and squeezed the conker he was holding very tight. ‘D’you think my dad’ll die?’
‘No, of course not! Not if we all believe he’s going to get better. I mean, if we all believe it, he’ll have to get better, won’t he? Like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.’
‘She was a fairy.’
‘Yes… But she didn’t die,’ Theo said desperately.
Colin could see Theo was now close to tears and tried to change the subject. ‘D’you believe in fairies?’
‘No,’ Theo said firmly. ‘But I believe in your dad.’
Although she felt it was akin to an act of vandalism, Dora eventually locked the piano at Orchard Farm after she found Theo in there one day, playing very quietly. She barely coped. It was the first time the keys had been touched since the accident, but she managed to maintain her usual composure, even when Theo explained he’d wanted to play the piano because he thought it was sad it was never touched now by Aunt Ettie or Uncle Rory. He’d wondered if it was possible for a piano to feel lonely.
When Dora told me, I badly wanted to tell Rory what his son had said, but I didn’t. It couldn’t possibly have helped. In fact I said very little to Rory. I told him I’d stopped drinking but not why. (He would have known why.) Eventually I said nothing at all. I sat in silence with him. He allowed me to hold his good hand which, when we were alone, I carried to my mouth and kissed. Otherwise I sat still and silent. When I could bear it no longer I held him, unresisting, unresponsive, in my arms.
I knew nothing in this world or the next could compensate for the loss he’d sustained. By sharing his silence, I hoped to convey to him that I knew there was nothing that would help, that I accepted there was nothing. I thought in some strange way it might spare Rory some pain if I at least didn’t contaminate his room with hopes and lies, the need for him to be well, for him to speak.
I didn’t need Rory to speak. We were beyond speech - always had been, always would be. What was silence to us? I just needed Rory to exist. Death was the only thing that could ever come between us.
And death was the only thing that ever did come between us.
Chapter 17
It wasn’t until after the accident that we realised the high regard in which Rory was held by the musical world. He was headline news in the music press and journalists requested interviews even while he was still in shock. When their calls weren’t returned they door-stepped Grace and pestered her for an interview. She declined but some of the more unscrupulous hacks pointed out that personal interest stories about Rory - particularly those with a tragic angle - would keep his back catalogue selling nicely and that in turn would keep money trickling into the fast-emptying Dunbar coffers. Grace told the journalists to ‘Bugger off and leave us alone!’
Rory’s agent was inundated with cards and letters of condolence from all over the world. Some were from music-lovers, many were from students and musicians. Some enclosed cheques and Grace agonised over what to do with them. At first she wanted to return them, but Hugh said it would be a shame to deprive the donors of the feeling they’d helped in some small way. Then Grace thought of donating them to the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, but in the end we persuaded her to keep them.
Hugh gave Colin and Theo a map of the world and they drew crosses on it marking every place from which Rory received a letter. Grace and I answered every letter and card between us, explaining Rory wasn’t well enough to write himself. We refrained from mentioning he hadn’t even looked at them. When, seated at his bedside, Grace ran out of things to say, she’d remove a sheaf of letters from her handbag and read excerpts to him, but Rory showed no interest.
Some people sent gifts with their letters: books, poems, paintings, good luck charms, religious icons, photographs of themselves. (Rory’s admirers appeared to include a disproportionate number of middle-aged men and I began to suspect Hugh’s feelings for my brother weren’t quite as extraordinary as I’d thought.) A woman in Tokyo sent a white silk kimono ablaze with gold chrysanthemums. It looked like an antique. The sender was an elderly piano teacher who’d been to all of Rory’s concerts in Japan. Grace was so overcome by both the present and the letter she sent the woman a large photograph of Rory and his family. She inscribed the photo, faking his signature, arguing that the woman would never know the difference.
Many people wrote about - some even sent - music to be played by the left hand only. It turned out that there was a substantial repertoire of pieces written by, among others, Strauss, Ravel and Britten. A famous pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, had lost his right arm in World War I and he’d commissioned composers to write pieces for him so that he could continue to play. Grace already knew the Ravel piano concerto for left hand and said it was a very demanding piece, a great concerto in its own right.
Grace and Hugh fell upon these pieces of music, overjoyed to think that Rory would still be able to play, but I took it upon myself to suggest to Grace that she shouldn’t show these particular letters and gifts to Rory yet - maybe not for a long time. If I knew my brother (and I did, in every sense, including the carnal) Rory would be incensed by the music. He wouldn’t even consider some cut-down version of what he used to be able to play. If I knew Rory, he would cut music out of his life altogether before he’d settle for second best, before he’d accept any kind of limitations or make any concession to his disability.
So Grace filed the music and letters away carefully in what she called, with conscious irony, her Hope Chest, a wooden box in which she stored all the things she hoped Rory would one day look at and appreciate: the letters and cards, the presents, the retrospective articles from music journals, advertisements for his records (which enjoyed a macabre popularity after the accident), family photographs taken at Christmas and New Year, school photos of the children, photos of friends’ weddings and babies, programmes for concerts which Grace attended on her own, including a precious sheet of mimeographed coloured paper issued by the children’s school, recording the musical contributions of Colin, Lottie and Theo to the Christmas concert of 1974.
These were souvenirs of life as it was lived in the year that Rory left us, the year he was absent as well as silent. Grace couldn’t bear to shut the kimono away, so she put it on one of Ettie’s old padded coat-hangers and hung it on the door of the nursery, t
he bedroom she would share with Rory when he eventually came home. The golden chrysanthemums glowed and the white silk rippled as she passed, but the garment hung there, empty, like her life, waiting for Rory to fill it.
In an attempt to cheer ourselves up, Grace and I celebrated her thirty-second birthday with a modest girls’ night out in Ipswich. We saw Shampoo at the cinema and enjoyed ogling Warren Beatty, then we went for a pizza and drank far too much chianti. By the time we’d broached the second bottle, the conversation was loud, racy and utterly hilarious. Well, we thought so.
Too much was drunk and too much was said. Companions in booze, misery and sexual frustration, Grace and I found we liked each other and had a lot more in common than love for Rory.
1975
‘Darling!’ Grace was aghast. ‘I can’t believe you’re not getting laid either! Gosh, what a coincidence!’
‘Keep your voice down! We’re getting some very funny looks. If you carry on like that, we might get some very funny offers.’
‘Sorry! But how awful for you. Is Hugh just not interested?’
‘No, not really. I don’t know that I am now, Not any more, so it really doesn’t matter. Grace, do stop pouring. The glass is full.’
‘Oops! Oh, bugger. Now I’ve made a mess of the cloth.’
‘And what is worse,’ Flora said sternly, ‘you’ve wasted some of our precious wine.’
‘Oh, let’s order another bottle. Damn the expense! We haven’t had pudding yet. Tell me about Hugh. I’m curious.’
Flora picked up her menu and appeared to study it. ‘It seems rather disloyal to talk about it.’
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