Secret of the Song

by Cathie Hartigan

  ‘Of course, Donna Maria, I see.’ But I didn’t really see. I did know what happened between man and wife, and between many that weren’t. But still, knowing there’s a church round the corner isn’t the same as sitting through mass.

  ‘But more and more, he is troubled.’ She pulled the sheet between two hands, as if testing its strength, then went on, her voice lower, almost a whisper. ‘It is in his nature to seek the edge of the abyss – the glorious moment where life, love and death become one. Think of his music, Silvia, think of how he stretches our understanding of the dance between Heaven and Hell.’ I swallowed. Truth was, I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘And then,’ she went on, turning the sheet into a noose and twisting it round her neck, ‘afterwards … he likes me to hurt him.’

  Ah. This was affirmation for what I had heard lying next door in the dark. I coughed a little and thought to say something bland. ‘It isn’t a sin for man and wife to—’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She laughed grimly. ‘I don’t think Don Carlo would agree with you. He says he must do penance.’

  ‘But surely …’ I fell silent, being at a loss. What did I know about such things?

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said, holding up her hand and letting the sheet fall away. ‘But we should say no more. Enough of this now. Fetch me the water, Silvia. We must get some sleep before the guests arrive tomorrow.’ The tone in her voice was firm, but then, as an afterthought, she said: ‘Have you ever known love, Silvia?’

  ‘Not yet, my lady.’

  She sighed again and I left her to fetch the water. That the Prince was strange was no news to me. That he might be becoming more so, seeded fear within me and much as I tried to keep my thoughts on the feasting of the next day, that fear would keep bobbing back up, like drowned things do, their corpses bloated and rotten. In my mind all of them had the grey fishy face of Don Carlo Gesualdo.

  Chapter Seven

  I showed Robert the tyre marks on the bag and his eyebrows wiggled up and down. It’s the nearest he gets to laughing.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ I said, emptying the pieces onto the counter. The ukulele was a heap of kindling knotted together with nylon. ‘It’s brand new. I’ll have to replace it.’

  ‘Good job it’s not a Stradivarius then.’

  The irritating thing, and what I didn’t tell Robert, was that the breakage had been my own fault. I hadn’t been looking. Why not? Because I’d turned back to wave at Jon. The bag was whisked out of my hand by the low-slung mirror on the door of the bus, and there was a pop and a crunch as if the bus had driven over a huge packet of crisps. I doubt the driver noticed. He didn’t stop.

  Shock is so odd. It was rather like when the boy drowned. At first I kept saying I was fine. After all, the bus hadn’t hit me, although I did feel a ricochet from the impact. Fine, fine, I could still hear my voice in my mind, loud and determined, but then I wasn’t fine and started to cry. Jon had rushed back, retrieved the bag and when he saw me wobble, wrapped me in his arms. Part of me wanted to stay there forever. Not the sensible part though.

  Robert said something that while dreaming, I hadn’t heard. ‘So? What did Jon think of Daniela?’

  ‘He said he thought she was rather good.’

  ‘Did he?’ Robert snorted. ‘That’s an understatement. He’d probably say the same about Maria Callas.’

  ‘Now that really would be a coup. I’ve heard of music being discovered or published after death, but actual performance from beyond the grave?’

  I chose not to tell Mollie about the ukulele. It occurred to me that the children might not know they even existed. They could wait until Mrs Brown returned; in the meantime, improving the choir was a far better idea. I remembered the summer concert and the choir’s feeble singing. All the children twitchily miming, except for Mollie, of course. Her voice had soared over the rest. Not really appropriate for choral singing, but without her I don’t think the others would have made any headway over Mrs Brown’s idiosyncratic piano playing.

  I would take a regular choir practice and get the kids to look up and open their mouths rather than mumble into their chins. Singing was something everyone should do, wasn’t it? At least, they should be given the opportunity. My own school choir had been fun but then, I’d been fortunate that the teacher had been new and enthusiastic, and had given us songs that we wanted to sing. I took in a deep, reviving breath and hopped smartly across the road, avoiding a bus turning into Cheeke Street. Yes, a choir. The important thing was to keep it fun and inspire them with the right music.

  ‘So you think a choir’s a good idea?’ I asked. Mollie, Jon and I were finishing supper, squeezed round my kitchen table.

  ‘Oh definitely,’ said Jon, ‘much better than—’

  ‘Do you want some more strudel?’

  He looked surprised, then down at his nearly full plate, and said: ‘Oh yes, go on. I mean, what were you going to do with a load of—’

  ‘Cream on it?’ I interrupted, glaring at him and nodding towards Mollie who was purposefully sawing at the pastry with her spoon.

  ‘Mmm, thanks.’ He held out his plate. ‘Are you all right there, Mollie?’

  ‘Yes,’ She tilted her chin up. ‘I think a choir is a much better idea than giving out all those ukuleles. ’Specially as you can’t even play one.’

  Every now and again there’s a certain disdain in her eye that I hope doesn’t come from me. It was her turn for a glare.

  ‘Does everyone know about them?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘only me. I saw them when Miss Price asked me to fetch the lighty-up globe from the cupboard.’

  ‘Oh, good. Don’t tell anyone then.’

  ‘Can we do The Lion King?’

  When did she become so skilful at this trading business?

  Jon did offer to do the washing-up, and if I hadn’t been my mum’s daughter I would have left the kitchen in chaos and gone in the other room to play as well. So I only had myself to blame when I resented the subsequent music and laughter.

  Mollie’s keyboard skills were coming on even though she refused to have lessons. When she wanted to know something – ‘it would be cheaper if she asked mummy’ – that’s what she told the piano teacher I’d found. Now she asked Jon. After all, he was much more fun.

  I watched them from the doorway, their backs to me, two heads bobbing to the beat of the reggae number Jon had taught her. Behind them, the city’s streetlights glistened thousand-fold in the raindrops slipping down the window, their sparkly stage backdrop. It was a happy scene and really, I should have been glad and I would have been, had it not been for the mammoth that stood quietly in the middle of the room. It had been there in the cafe, at the last rehearsal, in fact every rehearsal for I don’t know how many years. How had it grown so huge? Once upon a time, it was a baby mammoth, but steadily and on no food at all, there was this monster.

  ‘Bedtime, Mollie,’ I said, when the neighbours began falling heavily and at regular intervals against the party wall.

  ‘No, not yet,’ she said, confidently. ‘Jon’s got to show me the beginning of The Lion King.’

  I wondered if there might be a scene but perhaps because Jon was there, she was reasonable and went with only mild protest. I tucked her in and went to kiss her forehead but she put her hand up to stop me.

  ‘I wish you and Jon would get together,’ she said. ‘Then he wouldn’t have to go home.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Well, you know … it’s not that easy. We’re good friends.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you very good friends? It’s obvious.’

  Children. They will keep learning things. New vocabulary. How to spot mammoths.

  Lying on the sofa, with Horse-Riding Barbie under his elbow, Jon was reading one of the books about Gesualdo I’d left in a heap on the coffee table.

  ‘Bloody business, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Was it?’ I said. ‘I haven’t got past Gesualdo’s list of titles. Best is yet to come then?’

>   ‘Sort of, although I doubt the bit about the monk ravishing the corpse was true.’

  ‘Good grief, I —‘ He looked up and I sensed the mammoth begin to shuffle about behind me. I swallowed. ‘Do you want tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Nope, neither. I want you to sit down and I’ll tell you what I’ve learnt so far.’ He clapped the book shut and drummed his fingers on the cover. ‘You know me, I can’t be bothered to read all this, but I think I’ve got the outline. And you know what? I might write the opera.’

  ‘It’s been done.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Several times, and a ballet.’

  ‘What about a musical?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  I sat down on the arm of the sofa, but Jon swivelled round and put his feet on the coffee table. ‘Come and sit here,’ he said, patting the space next to him, ‘then you can put your feet up too.’

  So I did.

  ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ he began.

  ‘Does it say that?’

  ‘No, but it might have been. Besides, I thought you’d be too old for Once upon a time.’

  ‘Too old?’ I said. ‘How can anyone be too old for a good story? Off you go, I’m all ears.’

  Except I wasn’t. Immediately, I glanced at his ears. They were perfectly nice, flat to the head and with proper lobes …

  ‘Hello?’ He waved at me. ‘Earth to Lisa.’

  Did I blush? Probably, but I got comfortable and he began.

  ‘Okay then, once upon a time, there was—’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I can’t let that go. When are we talking? Approximately?

  ‘1580s?’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘Right. So there was a young man called Carlo Gesualdo, who came into a mega number of titles when his older brother died. Duke of this, Prince of that. Seems to have been called Don Carlo mostly. The family seat is at a place called, guess what?’

  ‘Gesualdo?’

  ‘Got it in one. So, now he’s got titles and land, Gesualdo needs to get himself a wife.’

  Fancy, I thought.

  ‘So straight away, Gesualdo married his cousin Maria D’Avalos. She’s already been married twice and has two children.’

  ‘That’s going some. What happened to the husbands?’

  ‘Well …’ He took a breath. ‘It seems Maria was quite a girl. Because she was still in mourning for the last husband, they bothered to get a Papal annulment of the marriage so that she could marry Gesualdo.’

  ‘Probably pregnant.’

  ‘Maybe, but from what I gather, she was very attractive.’

  ‘Is there a picture?’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, having found a fuzzy black and white enlargement of the only surviving image in the background of a large portrait of the Madonna and Child. ‘She looks like a nun in that headgear.’ He gave the book to me. ‘Seen one nun, seen ’em all?’

  I laughed.

  ‘She was definitely no nun though,’ he said. ‘Rumour has it the husbands died of exhaustion.’

  We both had another look and tried to invest the blandly demure features with some allure. Perhaps it was the big eyes that made me think of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

  ‘She’s not exactly Jessica Rabbit, is she?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe if she let her hair down?’ Jon suddenly turned and looked at me. ‘Who knows what …’ He slowed then stopped.

  For some reason my heart gave one of those awkward hoppy-skippy things it does sometimes. He was so close. There was a moment, a fleeting still sort of moment, as if a frame in a film had got stuck but then, slicing through the silence, came a frightened cry.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, sitting bolt upright. ‘Is that Mollie?’

  I was already on my way. In the amber glow of her nightlight, my little girl was thrashing about, fighting her imaginary demons with clenched fists. I gathered her to me, making soothing there-there noises, rocking her back and forth as I used to when she was tiny.

  ‘They’re coming,’ she hiccuped. ‘I can hear them.’ Her voice was shot through with fright.

  ‘It’s all right, Mollie. It’s just a bad dream. Everything’s all right.’ I tightened my grip on her and gradually she relaxed and pulled away from me and opened her eyes. I wasn’t prepared for the searing and almost deafening scream that came next, her whole body suddenly tense as piano wire.

  ‘It’s him! He’s here!’ she screamed even louder. ‘No! Nooo …’ Her eyes were wide and wild as she stared over my shoulder and for a moment I felt her fear and a great shiver passed through me. I looked behind me and saw Jon, a black shadow, standing in the doorway.

  ‘It’s me, Mollie,’ he said. ‘Only me. Don’t be scared.’

  He stepped into the light and at once she flopped into my arms again. A second later, she was fast asleep. Had she ever been awake? I laid her back down and pulled the duvet up round her shoulders. Even the shaft of bright light from the hallway that fell across her face didn’t disturb her. She looked completely untroubled.

  The same couldn’t be said for Jon. Out in the hall, the shock on his face was clear.

  ‘Bloody hell, Lisa.’ He swiped his hand over his forehead as if trying to erase something. ‘What’s going on there?’

  ‘I don’t know. She used to have nightmares when she was little, but never with that screaming and—’

  ‘Being scared of me?’

  ‘Oh it isn’t you, Jon. She was really asleep even though her eyes were open. As soon as you came in and spoke to her, she was fine. You know the brain can do funny things.’

  ‘Poor Mollie. It’s not funny for her.’

  ‘No, it certainly isn’t.’ I sighed and felt the long outward breath take all my energy away with it. It was as much as I could do to stand.

  ‘I’d better go.’ He smiled albeit thinly. ‘Perhaps she won’t remember.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

  My front door shared a landing with the flat next door and as Jon was saying goodbye, the other door opened. It was my first sighting of the new neighbours, a balding, burly man and glimpsed behind him a very elderly woman. His mother?

  ‘Everything all right?’ said the man, ‘only we heard …’

  That was all I needed. Social services and the police would be round next.

  Once they’d been reassured and Jon had left, I checked on Mollie again then had a quick tidy up. When I got to the books about Gesualdo I noticed something rather odd. Also on the heap was my copy of the Gesualdo madrigal. I remembered it having a dark red stain on the back and thinking someone must have spilt a drop of wine on it years ago. Now there were two blots. Both Jon and I had had a glass of red with our supper, but I didn’t remember either of us bringing the glass into the sitting room. I thought I’d washed both glasses at the same time but Jon must have had another while I was saying goodnight to Mollie. Strange though. Especially as that meant he must have drunk the wine, then washed, dried and put the glass away all in the space of five minutes.

  I didn’t know what to think, so wiped my hand across the paper to see if it was dry. Yes, quite dry. Of course it is, you numpty, I murmured. Get a bloody grip. And then, even as the thought entered my head, the music fell from my hand. Just like that. Bam … straight down onto the coffee table and open at the frontispiece.

  God, it gave me the creeps. I’d made a copy of it when ghoulish curiosity had forced my hand at the photocopier. I had another look at it. Whoever did the engraving was certainly skilled. It reminded me of those weird drawings where the more you look, the more you discover. Your perspective alters. For instance, when I’d looked at it before, I’d thought it merely fantastical but as I focused on the drowning figure disappearing beneath the waves, what was real and what imagined began to merge in my mind. There was the boy. He looked exactly like the boy.

  A belligerent siren began wailing loudly out in the night and I snapped the music
shut and shoved it in the bag, breaking what seemed almost like a spell. You must be tired, I told myself, tired and fanciful. That’s the trouble.

  Even so, I found myself flexing my hands and fingers after I turned out the lights. Yep, there was nothing wrong with my grip so I don’t know why I’d dropped the music. And the drop of blood? Blood? Why did I say blood? It was wine. Of course, it was.

  Chapter Eight

  Napoli 1588

  Napoli was the noisiest place! And at the Palazzo preparations for the feast meant no peace in or out. I remembered the afternoons I sat sewing in my father’s wood store, listening to nothing but the wind in our olive trees and the petulant conversation of the chickens, and almost felt homesick. But only for a moment.

  There was much consternation in the kitchen as the Prince had insisted that all the guests were equipped with forks at the table. The cook had let us try them out and there had been so much laughter that Pietro had come to quell the noise.

  Laura and I attended Donna Maria in the morning and apart from the slightest lift of an eyebrow and the touch of her hand to her lips, there was no mention of the noises I’d heard during the night. Laura padded around behind me, making a nuisance of herself, but she could press a linen undergarment better than most and I was far too busy to do such a task. Donna Maria had chosen to appear in turquoise silk trimmed with gold braid. I was sorry that we did not trim with fur, but my lady insisted the wine and company would warm her well enough.

  My heart beat faster to see her in the finished gown. My own work on the most beautiful woman at the feast. All eyes would be upon her. But Donna Maria was not a painting or a statue. She would seek out a splash of sunlight in a cool room, sigh with delight as I pulled the silk nightdress over her body each night, and would sometimes pour the water in her washing bowl from one cupped hand to another. ‘I like how it feels,’ she said to me, laughing. She was a one for touching – people and things – and there was something about the way she did it that made me feel uncomfortable.