Terry had decided to make this room, one of the many indistinguishable reception rooms, his workshop. He doubted that it had ever been used for that purpose before. The house felt grand, and though it didn’t provide many clues, he imagined it had been designed with only luxury in mind. The reception rooms would have been filled with occasional furniture, countless armchairs to nestle into, little mahogany writing desks for penning love letters or replying to dinner invitations. As he unwrapped dainty teacups and their saucers, vases and ornaments, he thought that it was very likely that once the house would have been filled with such knick-knacks. Except that now, as he arranged them carefully on the table, they looked out of place. Absence and neglect had filled the house so entirely that everything else seemed like an affront.
“Dad?”
It shocked him into nearly dropping the teacup in his hand. He placed it down carefully. “Ava, you made me jump.”
“Sorry. What are you doing?” Framed by the doorway, dressed in her school uniform but still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she looked more like a child than ever.
“I thought I’d start work today. Come in, come in. Take a look around.” He used his best shop voice.
Ava entered the room, picking up bits and pieces that took her fancy. She seemed to like the things that opened and closed, playing with the hinges or the catches, mostly timepieces or ornate pillboxes. She was opening the front of a carriage clock when something in one of the cardboard boxes caught her eye.
“What’s that?”
Terry pulled it out and dusted it down. It was a black box, decorated with brightly coloured images of birds in flight. “It’s a music box,” he said. “Look . . .” and as he opened it, it began a to play the notes of a lullaby.
“It’s beautiful.” Ava reached for it. She ran her fingers over the surface.
“It’s black lacquer,” Terry said, competing with the mechanical tune, “undoubtedly nineteenth century, though the origin is harder to pinpoint. I’d say European, though it looks Japanese. There was a lot of mock oriental stuff then.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ava repeated, holding it up in the light. “Look, there’s a girl here,” she said, delighted at her discovery, “and another this side but with wings.” She turned the box around. “Is she an angel?”
Terry put on his glasses and examined it more closely. “I’d forgotten about this piece. No, she’s no angel, I think it’s Philomela. You see the bird this side?” He pointed, “The girl is the bird. She’s transforming into it.”
“Why?”
Terry shuffled in his chair. “Well, Philomela was very beautiful and her brother in-law wanted her very much. He engineered it so that she was alone in a cabin in the woods where he, er . . .” Terry searched for a euphemism. “Where he had his way with her. Then he cut out her tongue so she could never tell anyone what he’d done.”
“Gruesome.”
“Yes. But Philomela had a plan. She wove the story of his actions into a tapestry and sent it to her sister, who helped her escape. When the brother in-law pursued them, the gods took pity on them, transforming them into birds. Philomela was transformed into the nightingale, the bird with the sweetest voice. I suppose to compensate for a life of silence.”
Ava smiled. Terry smiled too; he’d omitted the bit about Philomela’s sister’s revenge on her husband, how she had murdered their son and fed him to his unknowing father. Somehow infanticide seemed to tarnish the whole story.
Ava picked up the box. “Can I have it?”
Terry shrugged, “Well I’d say it would fetch at least £200.”
“Really?”
“Shall we say. . . a clean bedroom and a hug?”
Ava pretended to think about it. “How about two hugs and I’ll wash up instead.”
Terry was so impressed with her bartering skills that he was more than happy to forfeit the clean bedroom. “Deal.”
They shook on it.
Ava turned before she got to the door. “One thing I don’t get, why a tapestry? It seems like a lot of effort. Why not just write a letter?”
“A letter would have been expected. Only something more subtle would get past the guards. Sometimes we don’t see the messages that are right in front of us.”
Ava seemed satisfied with that answer and left Terry among his relics.
Terry spent the rest of the day in a frenzy of activity. He’d unpacked most of the boxes and sanded a few smaller pieces of furniture. The room smelt of varnish and woodworm treatment. Ava would be home from school soon and he was looking forward to showing her the progress he’d made.
He was repairing a Georgian chest when he first heard the tapping sound. He strained his ears, listening. A dull repetitive tap. Terry walked about the room, checking the various timepieces that were scattered about. It wasn’t a ticking. It was hardly noticeable but it was there, a quiet but indisputable tap, tap, tap.
He walked out into the hallway. The tapping louder now that he’d left the noise of his workshop behind. It was a noise that would drive him mad if he didn’t discover the source.
The doorbell broke him from his reverie and for once he was glad to hear it. Any sound was better than that incessant tapping. He jogged to the door, imagining he had wings like the valkyries, excited to see Ava after a long day. Except it wasn’t Ava.
Terry froze. For a moment he thought Prue had come back. That she’d somehow wangled her way back into the world of the living to take Ava from him. Then the woman removed her sunglasses and he could see a younger face, kinder eyes.
Philippa.
“Some Gothic mansion you got here,” Prue’s sister said, looking the place up and down. “I hope you’ve had a priest round to bless it.”
Terry stood speechless. The resemblance had always been uncanny, though they were not twins. It was as if Prue was resurrected before him, but a younger version, closer to the woman he had married. He’d seen Philippa at the funeral of course, shocked then at how strong the resemblance had become over the years. They kept their distance. They always had.
“Come in,” Terry said recovering. They leant in for an awkward kiss. “If you dare . . .” he added in an attempt to relieve the tension.
Philippa raised her eyebrows but followed him inside.
“It’s big.”
“More rooms than I know what to do with. We have a music room, don’t you know.”
“A haunted library as well, I suppose, and a madwoman in the attic.”
“We definitely have one of those,” Terry said, relieved to see Ava coming up the path.
“Aunty Philippa!” Ava ran the rest of the distance.
“Mad as a hatter,” Philippa agreed as Ava bounded into her.
“Why don’t you give Aunty Philippa the grand tour?” Terry said once the hugging was done.
“Sure,” Ava said, straightening her uniform. “If you care to follow me.”
Terry and Philippa exchanged glances and fell in step behind her.
“Nice piano,” Philippa said, stopping at the music room.
“It was here when we arrived,” Terry explained. “The only thing the previous tenants left. But it’s broken.”
“May I?” Philippa asked, walking to it before Terry could object. She sat and pressed at the keys. Terry was reminded of the tapping noise he’d heard earlier, realizing that it had stopped in the interim.
“Silenced,” Philippa said.
“Pardon?”
“I think it’s been silenced. It’s not broken. It’s so people can practise without causing a racket. It can be reversed, I know a guy who could fix it.”
“Really?” Ava exclaimed.
“I can teach you, if you like? I used to play,” as she demonstrated with a silent flourish. “I’m a bit rusty but I’d be willing to share what I know. First things first,” she said glancing at the urn, “let’s get this piano to make s
ome noise.”
Terry found he could tolerate the quiet of the house in the daytime if it meant music in the evenings. Sitting in his workshop he listened to the snatches of melodies next door as Ava took her piano lesson. He could differentiate between them, Philippa’s fluid cadenzas and Ava’s hesitant and static playing. But Ava was improving. When Philippa left, Ava practiced on her own and he could make out the beginnings of tunes, the foundations of compositions he partially recognized.
It wasn’t just the music that he looked forward to but the laughter. The house seemed alive with female voices. Sitting in his workshop he listened to his daughter’s voice, laughing over the sound of the piano, and thought it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
“Aunty Philippa said I need to practise more,” Ava said at dinner.
“You play every day as it is,” Terry replied, though he didn’t mind Philippa’s sudden involvement. In fact, he was surprised how naturally she slipped into their lives. It was important for Ava to have some familiarity, he reasoned. He helped himself to more of Ava’s signature dish, the surprise being copious amounts of jalapenos. His mouth made an O shape as he tried to breath through the heat.
“But I want to get really good,” Ava insisted. “I need to work on my tempo apparently and not rush the rests.”
“Rests?’”
“The silent bits in between the playing. Aunty Philippa says silence is as important as the sound the notes make. She told me about this composer who wrote a composition of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.”
“I bet the audience wanted their money back.”
“It was revolutionary.”
“You can’t compose silence,” Terry said, pouring himself a glass of water. “It just exists. He didn’t create anything that wasn’t already there.”
“But it wasn’t there. Not until the composer closed the lid of the piano to mark the beginning of the movement. People listened more patiently than they would anywhere else because they were in a concert hall. Can you imagine how long four minutes of silence must have felt when you expected music?”
Terry thought of how quiet the house was in the daytime when he was alone in his workshop. But even then there were the sounds of sanding wood, the ticking of clocks.
“Except it wasn’t silence,” Ava continued. “People shifted in their seats, coughed. Some even walked out. That was the music he wanted the audience to listen to.”
“Sounds a little lazy if you ask me,” said Terry. “He wasn’t the author of those sounds, he didn’t plan that the man in the back row would cough, or that the lady at the front would tut.”
“But he created the opportunity for those sounds, they never would have existed if he hadn’t made the silence.”
Terry looked at his daughter. He hadn’t expected to have such a thought provoking conversation over dinner. Though still in her school uniform, she suddenly looked like a young woman and unmistakably like her mother.
That night Terry dreamt of the music room. It was full of people, dressed in black, sitting around the piano as if for a recital. Terry walked among them, noticing how still they all sat, their heads cast down. He saw instruments in their laps or at their feet. He tripped over a cello, the strings catching on his trousers, but it didn’t make a sound. Nor did the cellist stoop to pick up the instrument. It was so quiet that even the sound of his footsteps seemed to have been silenced somehow. Terry stamped his foot, trying to make as much noise as he could, and when that failed he knocked over a set of cymbals, expecting the vibrations to shatter the silence. But nothing dented the stillness of the room. He tried to address the gathering but his voice faltered, the people didn’t even look at him. Terry grabbed the nearest man by his lapels and shook him roughly, but the man merely stared back vacantly. Terry tried to scream into the man’s face, pouring all his confusion and rage into one almighty cry, but no sound came and his throat became hoarse with the effort.
In the background he heard the piano.
Dissonant notes at first, but gradually they merged to form the beginnings of a melody. He avoided looking at what was on top of the piano but glanced across at the keyboard. The lid was down. To signify the beginning of the movement, he remembered. But how could that be? The melody began to gain speed, the volume creeping higher and higher, the playing becoming more crazed, more erratic, building toward an inevitable and deafening crescendo—
Terry sat bolt upright in bed.
He breathed deeply, trying to steady himself, fancying he could hear the sound of his racing heartbeat. As it slowed he was conscious of another sound. He strained his ears and thought he heard the same dissonant notes from his dream.
It was the piano.
It echoed through the corridors of the old house, drifting up the stairs, filling the rooms and recesses with its melancholic air.
Ava.
Terry pulled aside the covers and began down the stairs. He pushed his dream to the back of his mind as he followed the melody to the music room, opening the door with a thud.
The music stopped.
“Ava?”
Ava sat at the piano in her nightclothes. Her fingers were stretched out on the polished veneer of the piano lid. Had she closed it suddenly when he entered the room?
Terry walked towards her in the silence. She opened her eyes slowly as if waking up. She looked around dazedly at her surroundings.
“It’s ok,” Terry soothed, placing his arm around her, gently bringing her to her feet. “You’ve had a bad dream. Let’s get you back to bed.”
As he closed the door, he looked one last time at the piano but saw only the urn.
Ava was quieter than normal the next day. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept at all. There was no laughter during the piano lesson that evening either. Listening in his workshop, Terry could only hear Philippa’s voice giving instructions between the playing. At the end of the lesson Terry walked Philippa to the door.
“Is everything ok with Ava?” she asked before she left. “She seemed a little subdued.”
Terry shrugged. He wasn’t ready to verbalize his concerns. “Teenagers,” he offered.
Philippa looked at Terry for longer than was necessary before saying her goodbyes.
Walking back inside, Terry couldn’t quieten his qualms. Ava had hardly uttered a word to him all day. Even at dinnertime, when she was usually so chatty. And she’d hardly touched her food. If something was on her mind he wanted her to be able to talk to him about it. He wondered if she could. She’d always had Prue befo . . .
Shhhhh!
He stopped in his tracks.
He was outside the music room. For a moment he thought he must have been speaking aloud, that Ava overhearing must have shushed him. But listening now, all he could hear was Ava’s playing. He edged closer to the door. For a moment he was sure he heard two voices instead of one. Whispers, muffled by the sound of the piano. And in the background, a soft syllable. Shhh. Shhh.
Shhhhhhh!
Terry opened the door.
Ava sat at the piano. The lid was closed.
“Who were you talking to, Ava?”
Ava looked at her father bemused.
“Ava?”
Ava shook her head and made her way up the stairs to her bedroom.
The silent treatment continued for the rest of the week. Terry was reminded of Prue’s sullen moods when they’d been together. She could go weeks without speaking to him if she wanted to. It was the worst kind of punishment. Terry hadn’t expected Ava to inherit her mother’s morose temperament; she’d always seemed so much more like him. Terry would have preferred Ava to shout at him, or skulk up to her bedroom and play her abysmal music as loud as her speakers would allow. But the house was as silent as his daughter.
The only exception was her piano lessons, when for a brief hour the house was filled with gentle refrains and familiar melo
dies. When Philippa left, Ava practised on her own, always the same song; the one he’d heard her play when sleepwalking. A sad, slow air that gradually built, stopping frustratingly short, just before the final crescendo. Terry wished she would play something else but she was as deaf to that request as she was to his pleas to open up.
The only time Ava said anything now, apart from the monosyllabic replies to his questions, was when she was alone at the piano. Listening at the door, Terry was sure he could hear whispers, hushed beneath the dark melody that had come to haunt him.
He resolved to speak to Philippa about it. Maybe she’d noticed something strange during their piano lessons. Seizing the next available opportunity, he took Philippa into his workroom and closed the door.
“Well, she follows instructions,” Philippa assured him, “but she doesn’t say any more than is absolutely necessary. Her playing though . . .”
“Yes, she’s very good,” Terry conceded. “Except that when she practises, she only plays the same tune over and over. It’s driving me mad.”
Philippa asked him if he could identify it. He hummed it instead, feeling a little self-conscious.
Philippa looked away. She shrugged after a few moments. “Sorry, I don’t recognize it. Listen, I’m sure whatever this is will blow over. Ava is adjusting.” She placed her hand on his arm. “She’s been through an awful lot.”
Terry leant in closer, “That’s not all. When you’re gone I hear her talking in the piano room. Talking to . . .”
Philippa nodded. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. She’s obviously not ready to let go of Prue just yet. At least she’s talking.”
“I suppose.” But Terry couldn’t see past how morbid it was.
“Besides, why do you think people visit gravestones?” Philippa continued. “They offload. The dead have no choice but to listen.”
When Ava went to school that day Terry went straight to the piano room. He needed to address the strange influence the urn was having on his daughter. Despite what Philippa said, there was something unnatural about the communication in the piano room.
Shadows & Tall Trees Page 11