Second Fiddle

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Gillian

  I couldn’t believe it when Mags told me what she’d said to her mother’s friend. She gets away with it because she’s such a child, I suppose.

  “You didn’t!” I squealed. “Why did you say that about your mother?”

  Did I mention before about Mags’s deficiencies in the tact and diplomacy department? Possibly not. But believe me, she could learn a thing or two from a crab about keeping your mouth shut and your eyes open.

  “To warn him off, of course,” she said, tossing her hair, only with that new hairstyle, it doesn’t work so well. “Men are always terrified of women who want babies. And anyway, it’s true.”

  What does she know about what men are afraid of? She’s only eleven. (Oooh, that’s so not true! I’m twelve and a quarter. She’s always trying to make me sound much younger than her. It’s just so she can boss me around. Signed: Mags)

  “But why would you want to warn him off?” I asked. “Why shouldn’t your mother have a boyfriend if she wants one?”

  I wish someone would be my mum’s boyfriend. Then we might start to have something like a life in our family.

  “I would have thought that was obvious,” Mags said pompously. She can be quite a pompous little madam when she wants.

  “It’s not obvious at all,” was all I said. I didn’t want to provoke her.

  “But my dad.…”

  “Is dead,” I said flatly.

  I didn’t mean it to come out rudely. I just meant to shake her out of her haughty mood, but as soon as I’d said it, I realized I’d gone too far. You have to be careful around people who have had a death in the family. They’re sort of fragile and spiky at the same time.

  There was a moment of complete silence between us. The stream gurgled complacently on.

  “Well,” Mags said stiffly, at last, “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much sympathy from you, with your violin and your snooty mother and your wandering father and your precious audition.”

  I gasped. Now she was the one who was going too far.

  “I thought you were on my side,” I said.

  “And I thought you were on mine.”

  We glowered at each other, our elbows on the flat rock she claims is a table, our chins resting on our hands. The silence between us stiffened. You could almost taste the anger in the air. She was plainly the one in the wrong. OK, I’d been a bit insensitive, but she was the one who’d attacked me and my family. But I’m older, so I thought the best thing was to resist the impulse to snarl at her.

  “Your dress is pretty,” I said at last, for something friendly to say.

  “It doesn’t fit,” she said, but she looked as if she might be thawing out a bit. There was silence again for a while, but it was a slightly friendlier silence. “Sorry,” she added eventually.

  “Yeah, same here,” I muttered. “Sorry.”

  I didn’t mind apologizing, once she said it first. She was the one who’d insulted me, after all.

  Then she changed the subject. She asked me if I’d told the people at the school that I was coming for the audition.

  “Today’s the deadline,” she said, as if I didn’t know.

  I had accepted, of course.

  “It’s in two weeks,” I said, “and I still don’t see how I’m going to get there.”

  “We’ll think of something,” she said. Alarm bells started to ring for me. She was off on her quest again. “We’ll just have to fall back on our own resources, is all. There are lots of things we can try.”

  “But I have so much practice to do,” I wailed. “I should be working six or seven hours a day, and all I do is sit around sending text messages and working out ways to contact Dad.”

  “Six or seven hours!” she gasped in amazement. “That’s torture!” You see what I mean. People just don’t understand.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s what you do if you are a real musician. I do three, sometimes four. But it’s not enough before an audition.”

  “OK,” said Mags. “Tell you what. You concentrate on your practicing, I’ll do the rest.”

  I shook my head, but what could I say? I couldn’t very well stop her, and besides, it would be useful if she found him for me and delivered him like a trout in a net. A trout with a check for a hundred euro in its mouth!

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  I don’t like Mags’s ideas. They are all half-baked and come out of books, as far as I can tell. She thinks she’s Hercule Poirot or the Secret Seven or someone.

  Mags

  “Brendan Regan?” said Grandpa, leaning back in his armchair and giving his toes a delighted wiggle. He loves to be consulted. “Of course I know him. Obviously, I know the locals—I’ve lived here all my life. The Regans, now let me see. Yes, they used to live a mile or two out the road, they had a dairy farm, but after the old man died—terrible farmer he was—they sold up and moved into town, into that new estate over the other side of the woods. Brendan was never interested in farming. Just as well, if he was going to turn out as bad a farmer as his father. He’s in computers, something like that. He has his own business, very successful I believe. Drives a flash car. Married a foreigner, I think. Or maybe she’s from Dublin. What do you want to know for?”

  I hugged myself. “Oh, just making inquiries,” I said.

  My grandfather laughed. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I said mysteriously. “Is he separated?”

  “From his wife? Hmm, I heard that, yes. She’s peculiar, I believe. An opera singer, if you don’t mind.”

  “Really?” I said, remembering Zelda’s beautiful speaking voice. An opera singer was certainly a bit unusual in Ballybeg, but even if she’d been a bank clerk, people would have called Zelda peculiar. “And where does he live now?”

  “How should I know?” Grandpa was turning grumpy again. He only liked questions that he knew the answers to.

  I thought carefully before my next move. There was no point in saying anything that would make Grandpa even grumpier. The thing was not to make him uncomfortable by asking a question he couldn’t answer.

  “I bet you could find out, though,” I said at last. “I’m sure you have contacts. You know everything that happens around here, I’d say.”

  “Oh, I could find out if I really wanted to know,” he agreed.

  I said no more. No point in pushing my luck. I’d wait and see.

  Grandpa came up with the goods, as I had known he would. It was two days later. I was making a jam sandwich in his kitchen. Grandpa always has a good range of jams to choose from. Raspberry today, I thought, though I don’t like the tiny raspberry pips. They stick in your teeth. Someone told me once that the jam people had the pips made specially out of wood to put in the jam, so people would think it was really made of raspberries, but I didn’t believe that. It was obviously made of raspberries, because it tasted of raspberries. Besides, there was a picture of raspberries on the front of the jar. That clinched it, in my view.

  The door creaked open. I wasn’t surprised. My grandfather always opens doors by pushing at them with his stick. I knew he’d shuffle in after the door in a moment, and he did.

  “That Brendan Regan you were asking about,” he said.

  “Hmm?” I said, not looking at him, pretending not to be all that interested. I carefully lined up the top slice over the bottom slice and reached for a bread knife.

  “He’s living over in Ballymore, on the main street, in a flat over the dry cleaner’s.”

  “Is he?”

  “He is. Why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, it’s just that … Hey! There’s a wasp! They love jam, don’t they? Bit early, though, for wasps, isn’t it?”

  There was no wasp. I just didn’t want to have to answer my grandfather’s awkward questions, so I went hunting around the kitchen with a rolled-up newspaper and whooshed the imaginary wasp out the window.

  Gillian

  “Over the
dry cleaner’s!” I said. My nose curled up when Mags told me what she’d found out. “It must be smelly!”

  “Yes,” she said. “But that’s not important. The point is, we know where to find him. Will we pay him a little visit?”

  I didn’t answer. Mags looked up from the hole she’d been digging with a dessert spoon by the side of the “table” rock. She was hollowing out a shallow depression in its shade. It would be a good place to keep her lunch, she’d said, in the cool of the rock’s shadow, and with the bottom of the lunch box nestled into the damp earth. Not that she owned a lunch box, but I suppose she could acquire one, now that she was going to have a woodland larder to keep it in. Quite the little Maid Marian, she is.

  “We could go tomorrow,” she said after a few moments.

  Tomorrow! Well, there was no point in postponing it indefinitely, I suppose, and I did still need the money.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “I thought you’d be pleased!” she said, and gave another ferocious dig with her spoon. “Do you not want to see him?”

  “I do, yeah,” I said, though I didn’t exactly want to see him. I wanted to get the money so I could go to the audition. Mags didn’t seem to get that. I think she thought this was all about bringing father and daughter together. Some hope of that!

  “OK,” she said. “Meet you here tomorrow, ten o’clock?”

  “No, I told you,” I said, though actually I don’t think I had, “I practice in the mornings.”

  “All right, at lunchtime so.” She’s a persistent little pest.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Well then,” Mags said, “after lunch. Say three o’clock? I think the afternoon bus is at three-thirty. I’ll check.”

  I nodded.

  “Durn newsince,” I heard her muttering under her breath in that stupid voice she puts on sometimes. I hope I wasn’t the nuisance. Cheeky monkey!

  Mags

  Gillian didn’t turn up the next day. I waited fairly patiently till ten past, then a quarter past three. I started to get jumpy after that. If Gillian didn’t come soon, we’d miss the bus. I’d give her five more minutes.

  I sighed and rested my elbows on the table rock. It hadn’t rained for ages and the stream was low. It trickled over its stony bed and chattered quietly to itself. You’d never think it was the same stream that usually whisked busily down from the hills, rabbiting on to itself at nineteen to the dozen, no time to stop and chat. I felt a bit like the lazy stream today, not much whiz and bounce. It had gotten terribly hot. I suppose that was why.

  Three twenty-one. Still no sign of Gillian. Maybe she’d got delayed. In that case, there would be no point in her coming to meet me here. If she had any sense, I thought, she would have decided to go straight to the bus stop, hoping I would think to meet her there instead. Yes, that’s probably what had happened, I told myself. I checked my watch again. Still three twenty-one. If I raced, I might make it. I’d forgotten to check the timetable, but I was pretty sure the bus went at three thirty or thereabouts.

  I was sorry now that I was wearing my going-visiting clothes—the too-tight summer dress and a pair of light, open sandals, not much more than flip-flops, really. I’d have been better able to race through the trees in my runners and jeans. It was too hot for clothes like that, though, once you got out of the shade of the woods.

  I chased along, stumbling over roots and mossy stones. As I passed under the foresters’ hut, I noticed that the door was open. I didn’t have time to stop and see if Tim was about. I kept going. As I ran, I had the weirdest sensation that a scrap of violin music was streaming after me, wafting over my head.

  Once I emerged from the woods, I had a flat, paved road to run on and I picked up speed. By the time I reached the bus stop in the village, I thought my eardrums were going to burst with the force of the blood pounding in my head, and every bit of me felt swollen to twice its proper size. My heart was trying to leap out of my body and my lungs hurt every time I breathed. I slumped against the cool metal pole of the bus stop, in the shade of a large sycamore tree that grew out of the pavement, and gulped huge painful breaths. When I licked my swollen lips, I tasted salt. I found a tissue and mopped my sweat-beaded face with it. I wished I had something to drink, but—wouldn’t you know it?—I’d left my water bottle cooling in the stream.

  Gradually my heart began to settle back into its place inside me and I could breathe at a more normal pace. Where was this flipping bus, after all that running? I dabbed the sweat off my eyelids and checked my watch. Three twenty-nine. A whole minute to spare. And where was flipping Gillian? I looked around. Not a solitary other person. July. People were away on their holidays or out in the sunshine, gardening or catching skin cancer, not waiting for a smelly, hot bus to the next town.

  Here it came now. I couldn’t see it yet, but I could hear the clanking, rumbling, wheezing sound it made. It sounded as if it were about a hundred and had emphysema. I was amazed that it was going to be exactly on time. It never was. Blast Gillian anyway! Where could she have got to? All that running for nothing! Didn’t she want to find her father? I leaned against the bus stop and closed my eyes. Perspiration still clung to me. I could feel the clamminess all over my skin, under my clothes.

  The bus clanked and rumbled closer and closer, the noise seeming to get right inside my body. I stayed where I was, eyes closed, waiting for the horrible, smelly, noisy, belching creature to pass me by, move on, and leave me with some peace to decide what I was going to do next.

  But it didn’t do that. Instead, it stopped with a shudder, though I hadn’t hailed it. The engine’s rumbling was worse when the bus wasn’t moving, more concentrated. I opened my eyes just as the door clattered back, leaving the doorway gaping. The driver’s voice shouted cheerily at me over the noise of the engine: “Well, are you just making friends with that bus stop, or are you getting on?”

  “Me?” I said. “Oh, I’m just waiting for someone.”

  “You mean, you’re not getting on? I stopped for nothing?” The bus driver pouted, pretending to be hurt that I didn’t want to get on his bus.

  I laughed. “Oh well,” I said, without really thinking, “sure, now that you’re here, maybe I’ll go for a spin.” I stepped up into the bus as I spoke.

  “Why wouldn’t you?” said the driver, and gave me a wink. I delved into my pocket and found some change.

  It seemed to be even hotter inside the bus than outside in the sunshine. There was a smell of old dust and old seats and oil, and there wasn’t a single other passenger. No wonder the driver had hoped I’d get on. He must be lonely.

  “Ballymore?” said the driver.

  “How did you know?” I asked, handing over my fare.

  “That’s where I’m going to,” he said.

  “Well then,” I said, and put my hand out for my ticket.

  “Sorry, machine’s broken,” he said.

  “Well then,” I said again, and sat a few seats back from the driver, close enough that he felt he had company, but not so close that I would feel obliged to talk to him. I had to think. What on earth was I doing, going to Ballymore all by myself? I’d better tell my mother. That was the deal. I could wander around Ballybeg, but if I left the area, especially if I was on my own, I had to report in by phone. I dug in my pocket again and fished out my mobile. The little screen was dead and dark. Sometimes it turns itself off if it hasn’t been used for a while. I pressed the ON button and the screen flickered blue. Then it went dead again. Out of charge. I pressed ON again, harder this time. This time it didn’t even flicker. Completely dead. Well then, I thought, and stuck it back in my pocket. My mother need never know, I thought hopefully, if I got home by about five as usual.

  It only took fifteen minutes to get to Ballymore. The bus stopped in a small square with sapling trees around it and benches for people to sit on while they waited for the bus. I wobbled to the front and asked the driver about the time of the bus back to Ballybeg.

  “The
re isn’t one,” he said. “The last bus from Ballymore to Ballybeg left ten minutes ago. Summer timetable.”

  A wave of panic washed over me. I was stranded in this strange town, with my phone out of charge.

  “What! You drove me here, knowing I had no way of getting home again!”

  The driver laughed. “Don’t blame me. I don’t write the timetable. Anyway, you never said you wanted to come back.”

  “But.…”

  For goodness’ sake. What did he think? Was I going to hitch a ride from a passing swallow, like Thumbelina?

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I assumed you would make your own arrangements about coming home. I’m not in charge of looking after stray kids, you know. Who are you going to see?”

  “Someone,” I muttered.

  “Well, I hope it’s someone with a car. Is it?”

  I didn’t really want to pursue this conversation. I shrugged. “I s’pose,” I said.

  “Right so,” he said, “now off you get now, young lady. I have to take this bus to the depot and then I’m off duty. Good-bye. Have a nice day.”

  And to think I had sat near the front, just to keep him company! Now what was I going to do? I looked around the deserted streets. An old woman came out of a grocery shop and crossed the road, her shopping bag banging against her knees. A car turned into the main street out of a side street, cruised along to the T-junction at the far end of town, and then turned right and disappeared. Two small boys came out of a house with bright pink geraniums in the window and started to kick a ball about on the footpath. This place was no busier than Ballybeg. Being so deserted made it scary, somehow. And it was horribly hot.

  I started to walk down the main street, towards the T-junction, looking in the shop windows as I passed. A jewelry shop. A pub. A clothes shop, with a sheet of yellow see-through plastic spread over the clothes to protect them from the sun. Clothes wearing sunglasses! I snorted to myself. It made them look immensely dreary, all a horrible medicine color. A hardware shop. Another pub. A vegetable shop. A small cafe. A snooker place. A stationery shop. Nobody seemed to be in any of them, neither customers nor shopkeepers. Perhaps they were all sitting in the back with their feet in basins of cold water, willing customers not to come. Another pub. Even the pubs seemed empty, though I didn’t actually look inside. A bookshop. A dry cleaner’s. Another … A dry cleaner’s! I stepped back to look at it. The door opened and a Chinese person came out on a blast of hot and chemical-smelling air. I smiled at the Chinese person. The Chinese person smiled back. I was ridiculously pleased to see a friendly face.