The Concert Pianist

by Conrad Williams

  He was always welcome. They loved having him around. He amused them, brought stories of the big wide world, and was helpful, too. He would split logs, or Flymo lawns, or dig a trench to channel flood water. He knew about plants and flowers and pruning and planting and was lithe with a scythe when the time came to slay the battalions of stinging nettles that rose around the brook every year. And he was good at fitting in. One summer he stayed for a month, sleeping in the barn on a sofa bed, and joining them for meals. He knew when to come forward in the ebb and flow of family life and when to recede, offering kitchen services or keeping the kids entertained, as required, and then disappearing on long evening walks so Peter and Clarissa could have their privacy. Peter’s upright was stowed in the barn and occasionally Philip would fancy a bash, to their delight, making something rather beautiful of the old instrument. He preferred not to play or think music on the whole. His main aim, when he came, was to indulge the children. He made a tree house for little James and purchased track to add to his train set, toasted in over orange juice and Budweiser.

  James was a confiding child who brought constant news from the world of play: tree-house dramas, train-set dilemmas, imaginary-friend updates. The boy had rubbery fingers and big brown eyes. He was amazingly gallant towards his little sister, calming her down when she freaked at a video, soothing her when she hurt herself. Katie was more assertive than James. She felt quite at liberty to switch mood as the pressures of the day dictated - from angelic to demonic. A wealth of frowns and cross looks was meted out to parents, toys, passing animals - all in the service of a healthy independence. Despite a certain shortness of fuse, Katie was endearingly suggestible and sweetly responsive to the sights and sounds Philip showed her on their trails through the wood. His appeals to her imagination would be rewarded by that little hand that came up to grasp his when they came to a stile, or entered a field with a resident cow nearer than she required.

  Peter he had known since music-college days. After three years playing cello in a professional quartet, he backed out of music and trained as a solicitor, an incongruous switch that suited him down to the ground. All his great qualities as a musician, qualities of flow and exuberance, generosity and verve, were manifest in his character generally, and Philip envied his freedom from practice and performance. Peter had proved that you could live on a lot less music and still be fulfilled.

  When he thought of Clarissa, Philip pictured a loveliness that flowed from her smile and light-brown hair, as she looked fondly over her shoulder at life - at the warmth and admiration that readily flowed back towards her and her lovely behind. She was easy and sexy and domestically laid-back, casting her happy spell over house and garden. She extended her motherliness to Philip, not minding much if he caught her nude in the bathroom by accident, as if there was plenty more of that on offer if anyone wanted it. And when he came down with the flu, she moved him to the guest room, and brought him consommé and crackers, and cooled his forehead with a flannel, like her very own child. He remembered the dove-soft call of her voice as she checked on him before bedtime, coming in in her nightdress with a jug of barley water and a packet of pills to sit on the chair and dab his brow; and then Peter came in, too, and they both looked at him with such tender concern.

  A couple of nights later he was a bit better, taking it easy. He lay in bed listening to the beams and pipes creaking all around him. There was a bump, and then a giggle. He concentrated on his book, taking it firmly in hand and turning on his side. A few paragraphs later he heard deep breathing. He glanced up at the door. He had not witnessed anything quite like this before. The breathing itself was pretty loud and rather strange from the point of view of mere inhalation and of course he knew that they were making love in their room and that, quite blamelessly, tucked in bed, paperback in the crook of his thumb, Laura Ashley wallpaper all around him, he was privy to a moment of passion, which he could not screen out. There was an eventual gasp, a falling-off, the twang of a bedspring as bodies rearranged themselves, followed by the familiar creaking door and soft padding to the bathroom.

  Philip smiled to himself. He did not mind in the least. It was so nice to know that the people he loved loved each other in this way. The house was happy, its strongest desires fulfilled within its own realm.

  The last time he saw them was over New Year. He went down with Laura. Clarissa’s brother Jack was there, too. The weather had turned bitingly cold and he treasured the memory of an evening gathered around the television set watching a black-and-white version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. They sat in armchairs and sofas, passing the chocolates and a bottle of malt, relishing their snug cosiness before the wood-burning stove and the shadows thrown by candles on the beamy ceiling. Clarissa clutched Peter’s arm with girly fright at the sound of the hound, and Philip smiled at the demonic vitality of Peter Cushing’s Holmes. Jack flung a log on the fire and spun the lid off a bottle of Talisker with practised ease, and even as they cuddled in their seats, snow was piling up outside, rising on window ledges, drifting against the barn, smothering the garden in white felt, which dazzled the whole house the next morning - abrilliant festive winterlight - sending the children into a frenzy. Porridge, bacon, coffee, then woolly socks, wellingtons, mittens for the kids. Peter, Jack and Philip were out in the barn before you could say ‘Who’ll clean the dishes?’, pulling sledges and toboggans on to the drive, crunching across the snow with childish glee, Katie and James venturing more cautiously into the deepest drifts they had ever seen. Snowballs flew at the women as they came out in their coats. Horrible revenges were taken later. Before long they were trooping off to the top of the hill and the mother of all tobogganing sessions.

  The snow was drifty and sparkly and then suddenly sparse. The fields were frozen and knobbly underfoot. There were stiff cowpats and slivers of ice, mercilessly scuppered by James’s heel. Peter tested the thickness of ice on the edge of the lake, masochistically relishing the fright when it cracked and moved underfoot. Jack had his eye on the steepest incline for tobogganing and soon they were aloft the hill, gazing across white-carpeted fields like a scene from Brueghel, and girding themselves for the downward plunge. Jack went first, zipping through spats of wild turbulence and then creamy speed. Peter tried his luck on a plastic toboggan that shuddered all the way down and evicted him into a drift; then Philip pitched off, Jamie in front, finger-steering to hold course as they swished at an almost scary speed to the bottom of the hill and came to a halt with perfect dignity. ‘Again! Again!’ cried Jamie, and Philip turned to see how far behind they’d left the others, specks on the hill. He remembered climbing up the slope with a gratifying sense of exertion, smiling as Laura belted past, and gaining the top with Jamie, gazing in boyish delight across the whitened panorama of countryside, raised to a dazzle by the cobalt sky and splintering sun.

  Later, when they were exhausted and cold and coming home to what Jack described as the ‘obligatory’ whisky mac, he looked up with satisfaction to see the cottage, stuck there in the white landscape, a Hansel and Gretel dwelling with a wisp of smoke curling from its chimney pot.

  They would sit around the kitchen table, slicing leeks and scoring sprouts, sipping whatever concoction Jack pressed into their hands, and after lunch the children played outside, and Philip gathered logs and stacked them in the inglenook and there they sat in the heat of the stove, reading and snoozing, Laura making intelligent conversation with adults and children alike. It was this wood-burning stove that set the house ablaze two months later.

  Neighbouring farmers said you could see the conflagration from a few miles away. By the time the fire engines arrived the flames were leaping high into the night, casting a sparking orange glow into the black sky like a Guy Fawkes bonfire. The roof collapsed on one side before the fire was brought under control. The old buttress on the north wall was left free-standing. A whole section of the first floor had been consumed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The cameraman sat in the back of the c
ar: Ed, a human tripod, gangly, with a vulture hairmop and pointy chin. He was a ‘very nice man’, claimed Derek, classic film-crew material, indeed, hardworking, salt of the earth with a tavern smile and a trouser pocket full of Rizlas. He’d left the wife, unfortunately. ‘She’s a bit mad’ - frown - and now, advised Derek, he was knocking off some Italian bird. ‘Giovanna, is it?’ ‘Yep. Giovanna. Quite a handful. In every sense.’

  Derek briefed Ed as Philip drove the car.

  ‘We’re retracing footsteps to a place of special inspiration. You’ll want to cover hills, trees, tweeting birds, the property in long shot. We’ll mic Philip outside and follow him up the drive like it’s memory lane. Hold on Philip closely as he explains what this place meant to him.’

  ‘OK. Sort of retreat, is it?’

  ‘Should we be thinking in terms of a particular piano concerto or Debussy-type thing?’ Derek smiled at Philip. ‘I know I’m a philistine.’

  ‘Not really.’

  He drove carefully, hardly aware of the others. He had planned to come anyway and then Derek had phoned and offered to film the trip. BBC 4 had signed off the documentary on a tiny budget.

  ‘This was my retreat from music, actually.’

  He had not been back for several years, he told them. He made no mention of the fire.

  ‘You came here for breaks, away from the madding crowd?’

  Philip wanted Derek’s reaction, his first-time reaction, and he needed somebody around.

  ‘It’s a very beautiful stretch of countryside.’

  ‘Do I need a boom, Ed?’

  ‘Bit of a fiddle, to be honest.’

  ‘The leads on the fucking camera are about three feet long.’

  ‘We’ll be jerking each other around like a pair of Siamese twins.’

  Philip was calm. He felt ready at last.

  They parked on the lane.

  ‘I’m going to have to push and pull you into available light, but try to ignore Ed. Get him side-on.’

  ‘You’ll be asking questions, though,’ said Ed. ‘Better to have me on the right, light side, and then you put questions sort of over my shoulder.’

  Derek frowned, adjusting his earphones.

  Ed delicately attached the mic to Philip’s jacket.

  The sky was blue: a light wind rustled the leaves overhead.

  He turned to walk along the drive.

  It was the same: same light fall, same bustle of greenery.

  Derek caught up with him as they came to the barn. ‘Places like this are going for eight hundred grand these days. Friends of yours?’ He ushered Ed across. Ed’s PD 450 was incongruously small, a hand-held bird of a camera.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Expecting us?’

  ‘Not here any more.’

  ‘Aga-saga novelist, more like,’ said Ed, with a crooked smile. ‘Derek will charm them.’

  He wielded the camera in a pan around the back of the barn, the drive, the trees, the side of Philip’s head.

  ‘This was a special place for you?’ Derek seemed officially to begin the documentary.

  ‘I had my childhood here.’

  ‘What? When were . . .’

  They came to the end of the drive, the barn wall receding to expose the house.

  ‘Oh!’

  Derek’s expression changed, humorous consternation. He looked at Philip to check his reaction.

  ‘Is that . . .?’

  The house was a charred wreck. The roof had collapsed on one side, the window frames were blackened, weeds growing out from within. Debris lay on the flower beds.

  Philip went up the footpath towards what used to be the front door.

  ‘It was a fifteenth-century farm cottage. In fact, I think bits of it were earlier. Absolutely ancient. No foundations. It just sat on the clay.’

  Frowning, Derek came alongside. Ed followed, his camera seesawing to take in the ruin. Philip leaned on the empty window frame. Glass lay on the sill.

  They peered inside at the tar-blackened remains of the sitting room, just a shell now, the rear wall a parapet of rubble, the inglenook intact, the floor covered in soot, slivers of glass. He looked up through the vanished ceiling to the sky.

  Close up he could hear Derek’s breathing.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  Philip remembered the arrangement of furniture, the grouping of chairs around the fire, the pine chest, a bookcase above the TV set, all vanished, melted away by heat.

  ‘Some years ago now.’

  Derek hesitated. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  Philip moved on again, around to the back of the house, as if in search of something particular.

  ‘We used to have breakfast in this area here. There was a trellis smothered in wisteria.’

  The trellis had been crushed into a flat mess by half a toppled chimney. Segments of brick lay on the paving stones. A cascade of roof tiles covered the doorstep.

  He stepped through a hole in the back wall. There were stumps of masonry on the living-room floor. The soot was impacted, solid underfoot. The ceiling’s thick main beam lay on the ground burnt to a spindle of carbon.

  ‘That might not . . . doesn’t look too safe in here.’

  ‘They all died.’ He turned.

  Derek stared back at him. He stepped into the living room, shared a quick glance with Ed.

  Philip gazed at the remains of the stairs - a series of charred posts zigzagging up the wall. The tongue-and-groove panel behind the downstairs loo had burnt away.

  ‘You could get it for less than eight hundred thousand now,’ he said.

  Derek nodded slowly. He was pale. It was taking him a moment or two to recover his presence of mind. There was an acrid smell in the room.

  Philip stood by the foot of the incinerated staircase, looking up at the landing. Katie’s bedroom was at the end on the right. Peter and Clarissa’s bedroom was just sky now. He felt strange. He touched his stomach where the pain came from. The house reeked of dank bitter smoke.

  Derek guided Ed towards Philip.

  Philip frowned as the sensation passed.

  ‘How does it feel to be here now?’

  They waited for him to answer. He looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘The heat was intense. Nobody could have survived, you see.’

  ‘A family?’

  Philip turned to face the camera. ‘Apparently a passing driver saw the blaze, called the emergency services on his mobile. He saw a man running round the house with a hose. The man was naked.’

  ‘This was your friend?’

  ‘You’re pulling on the camera, Derek.’

  ‘Your best friend?’

  ‘Hard to work out what happened. Maybe he jumped from the bedroom window. He got out and then he went in again. Didn’t make it. Nobody came out.’

  Derek blinked, looking up at the half-roof.

  ‘Timber frame, wattle and daub.’

  Derek hooked his finger at Ed.

  Philip surveyed the wreckage around them.

  ‘Why have you come back today?’

  ‘Oh . . . uh . . .’

  ‘D’you mind standing . . . That’s it.’

  Behind Philip was a section of ceiling that had buckled and cracked open, its wires and pipes jutting out like the innards of a severed limb.

  There was the sound of breaking glass from under Ed’s reversing foot.

  Derek tried again. ‘Isn’t this rather traumatic?’

  Philip imagined Clarissa peering from the kitchen door, looking around to see where the children were.

  ‘So you wanted to come . . .’

  He swallowed. It was gathering now.

  ‘Please.’

  He felt a cold tingling across the back of his shoulders and neck. The room seemed to colour itself in again, filling up with furniture, the curly top of Peter’s head in the chair below him, Clarissa coming from the kitchen; and then it released back into the mess in front of him.

  ‘I came to acknowledge something,’ he s
aid, turning to Derek.

  Derek drew close, adjusting his earphones.

  ‘Can you leave me for a moment?’

  ‘Oh! . . . Sure . . . Sure. Come on, Ed.’

  Ed lowered the camera, looked around grimly.

  It felt strange to be alone. He stood quite still, let his eyes wander. He was waiting to feel something. He expected the emotion to come suddenly, a welling and glutting, the original agony. He was so close to its source, stepping into the past every few seconds, coming back to the spectacle around him.

  They seemed absent. Their spirits had deserted the place, leaving it doubly desolate.

  He forced himself to picture things: the stencils on the loo wall, the spider plant on the mantelpiece, Peter’s slippers by the fire, the children’s toy box behind the armchair, the pale light from the window falling on chair covers, Katie’s plastic mermaid tucked under the valance.

  Nothing came to fill the emptiness inside him. He exhaled, almost frustrated, like a woman in labour making slow progress. Nothing would come into him, nothing would invade him except silence and emptiness and things that were not.

  He trod out of the building.

  Derek and Ed sat on the grass amongst buttercups and daisies. Ed had retrieved a flask from his shoulder bag in the car and was taking a swig. Philip walked across the lawn and sat down next to them. They took it in turns with the flask, circulating it two or three times. The vodka had a bracing effect on Philip, a hint of heartburn.