by Lucy Lawrie
YOU KNOW WHO I AM
I gasped, jerked back from the workbench.
‘Okaaaay,’ Steve said. ‘Don’t panic, Janey. When we unleash our creativity the results can be . . . unexpected. Especially if it’s the first time you’ve done it in a while. Take it easy. Stop if you want to.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked again.
No, no. I know who you are and I can’t bear it.
The pen moved – quicker this time:
HATTIE. HATTIE. HATTIE.
Steve stepped back, banging into a stool, scraping it across the floor.
The room filled with silence again: deep, underwater silence. Steve, Jody and the others seemed to have melted away.
You. It’s you. It can’t be you.
My hand – my treacherous, traitorous hand – scribbled two words, then in one last, convulsive effort, a third, before it fell, dead still, onto the paper:
LISTEN JANEY LISTEN
*
‘Wait,’ called Steve. ‘Hold up a sec!’
But I was gone. Out of the classroom, clattering down the stairs and out onto the street. The quickest way to get home was to cut through the Colonies, with their neat rows of tiny terraced houses, and walk through Stockbridge. I stopped to catch my breath on the bridge over the Water of Leith.
What had just happened? Had those little black words really crawled onto the page from my subconscious? Had my inner child just been unleashed by a packet of coloured pens and a blank sheet of paper? That might have been easier to accept if I’d had any sense of being in charge of my hand, in that moment when it began to write. But I could still feel that hot rush of panic at the loss of control, like the moment you knew you were going to vomit.
My lungs were too tight, the air wouldn’t come. Pinpricks of light burst into my field of vision.
Calm down.
I closed my eyes and let the rush of the water fill my head. For a moment, I was back in Glen Eddle, aged nine, standing calf-deep in the stream, the water pressing cold through the thin rubber of my wellies. I’d learned that if I closed my eyes, the imperative of keeping my balance would make thinking impossible, and the roar of the water would wash my mind clean and cool.
Hattie.
It had to be Hattie Marlowe, I reasoned. But why would my hand pretend to be her now, twenty-five years after I’d last seen her? I’d become quite comfortable with the idea that she was getting on with her life somewhere, probably now with a clutch of gorgeous, tyrannical children, or a slick city career. In fact, I realised now how much I’d relied on that assumption. The world had always been that little bit warmer, lifted a semitone into a sweeter key, because of the thought that Hattie was in it somewhere.
Could she – the actual Hattie – be trying to reach me?
Ridiculous. Even after everything that had happened back then, it was ridiculous.
And anyway, there was Facebook. Or the St Katherine’s Alumni Association. She’d be able to find me. No need to communicate through left-handed writing via ‘The Art of Love’.
Unless.
No. Not dead. Please.
*
Later on, at home, in the quiet of my bedroom, I pulled a blue cardboard folder out from the bottom of my sock drawer. A folder with one word – ‘Hattie’ – written on the front. I remembered how strange it had felt to write her name there in permanent marker, as though I was laying bare some fragile thing no one was meant to see.
I slid the pictures out and laid them on my bed. And I peered into them as though they might, just this one time, awake from their hidden half-life and start talking back.
But no. This could never do any good. If Hattie – my oldest, dearest friend Hattie – wanted me to listen, then there was only one thing to do. I put the pictures back into their folder, telling myself I wouldn’t look at them again.
On a deep shelf in the box room, high up by the tiny window that let in a little light from the tenement stairwell, I found a red and white Woolworths bag. It was still where I’d put it when I’d moved in.
And inside it, Hattie’s diary. I sat down cross-legged on the box room floor and started reading.
2
Hattie’s Diary, 1989
Authorised readers: Janey Johnston
Unauthorised readers: STOP and think how you would feel if an unauthorised person read your most private, intimate thoughts. YES JUST STOP.
Thursday, September 7th
My new piano teacher, Miss Fortune, gave me this notebook today. It’s meant to be so I can record moments of musical inspiration. So if I hear something interesting, going about my everyday life, I can write it down and make up a musical composition about it later. The examples she gave were (1) a blackbird singing in the garden, and (2) a man dropping stones in a well.
But I don’t want to be a composer. So I’m going to write about strange happenings in everyday life. Starting with HER.
The lesson didn’t get off to a good start, because I heard Mum being rude about me when Miss Fortune was showing her out. They’d left me in the music room – a big room at the front of the flat that smelled of cigarettes and cats. Miss Fortune said something I couldn’t hear, and then Mum laughed and said, ‘I’m not expecting miracles. She’s not going to be another James, we know that. Just do what you can. Thank you so much.’
Then the door of the flat clanged shut and Miss Fortune came back into the room. She was wearing a dress with flowers on it, kind of belted in at the waist with a long, sticking-out skirt. She’s quite old-fashioned, looks like she should have oven gloves and be smiling and taking a pie out of the oven. That kind of old-fashioned.
I suddenly thought of her sitting on the toilet, having to hold that big skirt out of the way. The wheesh-wheeshing sound.
I stared down at the music case on my lap and tried to think of Amadeus with his hairball, dying in surgery. But in fact I didn’t even have to think about that, because I hate my new music case so much. It’s brown, with a leather handle that feels like a rat’s tail.
Miss Fortune sat down next to me and lifted her eyebrows.
‘So! You are Hattie. Ha-ri-e-tta. You and I are going to have the most wonderful time. While we’re in this room, we’re on a flying carpet. It will take us wherever we want to go. All around the world! Back in time for tea! Anywhere! All we need is our imaginations.’
She raised her hands, as though to say, ‘What are you waiting for?’ And that’s when I noticed it. Her right hand was all withered. Some of the fingers were too small, and twisted inwards.
I looked away quickly – down at the rug, which didn’t look anything like a flying carpet. It was green with gold stripes through it, faded at the end nearest the window.
‘What can you play?’ she said.
‘I did my grade four last year. I did pieces by . . .’ They were all so boring, I couldn’t remember. ‘They’re in my, er, music case.’
I looked up to find her eyes fixed on me. And not in a good way.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered.
I could hear the clock on the mantelpiece, ticking away. Miss Fortune breathed in deeply, and the hairs inside her nostrils quivered. They were darker than the hair on her head, which was a sort of apricot colour, arranged in stiff-looking waves.
She nodded in the direction of the grand piano. ‘Sit! No, don’t open your music case. Just play what comes into your head.’
That’s when I noticed the metronome. It was made of dark wood, in a tall pyramid shape, with a picture of an eye – a horrible, staring eye! – attached to its swinging arm.
I sat there, paralysed. I could hear children shouting in the playground across the street, and the time ticking past on the clock, but I couldn’t touch that piano, not with that thing sitting on top of it.
Eventually she sighed and came over. She put a hand on my chest, and the other one – the horrid clawy one – at the bottom of my back. She straightened me up.
‘Thaaaat’s it.’ Her breath smelt of tomato soup. ‘Feee
el the music coming up from here.’ She jabbed the middle of my stomach. ‘From here! Now try!’
She stepped back triumphantly, crossing her arms. One leg stayed stuck out in front, the high heel of the shoe planted on the ground, toe pointed up towards the ceiling. She looked as if she might be about to do Scottish country dancing. The long up-and-down bit in Strip the Willow, maybe.
I realised there was no getting out of it, and quickly played ‘I Know Him So Well’. It wasn’t too hard to pick out the top line in C major, and add some broken chords underneath. My face felt hot when I’d finished.
The corner of her mouth kinked up in a snarl. ‘Banal,’ she said, under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear. ‘We’ll do listening for the rest of the lesson.’
She went over and put an old-fashioned record on the record player, then sat down in one of the armchairs and lit a cigarette.
‘Sit down, dear,’ she said. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’
Friday, September 8th
Sadly, our biology teacher this term is Mrs White.
But at least Janey is sitting next to me. Nobody seems to have told Mrs White that we aren’t meant to sit next to each other because of the talking – ha ha!
I told Janey about Miss Fortune while we were supposed to be looking at pollen under the microscope.
She looked at me, all wide-eyed and mischievous, and dropped polleny water on her skirt.
‘D’you think she’s a witch?’ she said.
I knew Janey was only playing, but it was the first time she’d smiled all day.
‘Ye-ees. I think she could be.’
But just then the fire bell went, and we had to file out of the building and stand in the playing fields in the rain. It was only a practice, but they said afterwards that we’d done very badly, so there’d be another practice before half-term.
Note of musical inspiration: fire bell, plus stampede of feet.
Thursday, September 14th
When I arrived for my piano lesson, she already had music playing – I could hear it from out on the street. Something big and orchestral. She let me in without speaking. Then she sat down in her armchair, closed her eyes, and her mouth stretched. It stretched into a long, dry, orange lipstick smile. She didn’t move the whole lesson, except that she sometimes did conducting with an imaginary baton – the way Dad does sometimes when he gets carried away. I didn’t want to close my own eyes, because I had this feeling she might have been sort of lying in wait, waiting for me to do that. I watched the needle quivering, lifting and falling, as the record spun round and round. It made me feel a bit dizzy.
When the clock reached five past five (my lesson was meant to finish at five!!), the music stopped. She sat there, with her eyes closed, for another four minutes.
Her eyes popped open, wide between her spidery lashes.
‘Sublime,’ she whispered. ‘No?’
‘Yes!’ I nodded earnestly.
‘Next week, same time?’
‘Yes.’ I grabbed my music case.
‘A moment, please.’ She held out her hand.
I stared. What was I supposed to have done?
‘Music case.’
I handed it to her, and she looked through the stuff in it. My grade four pieces, mostly. Then she picked up one of her own music books from the top of the piano, and slid it into my music case.
‘I’ve given you a book of finger-strengthening exercises. Fun for Ten Fingers.’ She laughed, as though it was a very funny joke, though I don’t see what’s funny, personally, about making a poor talentless girl struggle with finger exercises. ‘Let’s see what you make of that. Goodbye, my dear.’
It was fish fingers for tea. And then Mr Kipling individual apple pies with custard. I had a second apple pie, but Mum drifted off upstairs to lie down and told me to get on with my homework. It was just French tonight – some boring thing about cheese-making, but I had to do it properly because me and Janey got into trouble today for saying quelle dommage too often in the conversation exercise. Madame Malo seems to have twigged that it’s her catchphrase.
It was about eight o’clock when I heard it. Somebody playing the piano at the top of the house. Not the Steinway in the first-floor drawing room – that’s always locked – but the upright on the top landing, outside my bedroom. Someone was just playing the same three notes up and down, up and down, near the bottom of the piano. When I walked out into the hallway, and peered up the stairwell, it stopped. The cupola was dark, and the dark seemed very thick. Like paint. As though the night was pressing against the glass, trying to get in.
It can’t have been Mum. She never touches either of the pianos. And once she’s gone for a lie-down it’s hours until she gets up again.
The other option is Mrs Patel – could she have been dusting the keys? But in fact I saw her leave before dinner so I don’t even know why I thought that.
When I was finishing the last cheese-making sentence, I thought I heard the piano notes again, but I didn’t go to investigate. The logical explanation is that it is just mice running over the keys or something.
I didn’t want to go up to bed. This house is far too big, especially with just Mum and me living here now. The footsteps echo on the chessboard tiles in the hall. They make me think of The Hound of the Baskervilles. That old film version. And the banister makes strange shadow patterns against the walls.
If there is a nest of mice living inside the piano, then I suppose that might be quite good, as it might make it dangerous to practise.
Friday, September 15th
No biology today, so I wangled things so I was in the same cross-country running group as Janey. It was freezing and my legs were tingling – no trackie bums allowed until after half-term, said Miss Partridge. Janey made me laugh by saying her legs looked like big raw sausages, all blotchy and pink.
We walked all the way round, except when Miss Partridge was watching, so I was able to tell Janey the story. When I got to the bit about the piano playing itself, she kind of twisted her lip between her teeth, the way she does when she’s thinking, and she said, in a very serious voice, ‘We’ll discuss this in the pavilion.’
The pavilion smells of wet wool and sweat and old boots, and there are always chunks of grassy mud all over the floor that people have trailed in. It’s a pretty disgusting place.
While we were sitting on the bench, leaning down low to unlace our boots, Janey turned her face to mine and said, in a very quiet voice, that she thinks Miss Fortune probably has psychopathic powers and is somehow responsible for what happened with the piano.
I wasn’t sure, because after all it was only three notes.
‘But don’t worry,’ she said, laying her hand on my boot for a second. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
She said her granny has agreed to her having piano lessons as long as she doesn’t get any silly ideas about it (they are trying to stop Janey from going the same way as her mother, whose life has been ruined by having too much creative spirit). Her plan is that I should get Mum to phone her granny and recommend Miss Fortune. Janey could then go to lessons, and since she’s not interested in learning the piano, she could be sort of like undercover, building a case against Miss F.
‘But I’m not interested in learning the piano either,’ I said.
‘Well, we can both be undercover, then.’
‘Do you know what you’re getting yourself into, though?’ I asked. ‘You’d have to do scales and sight-reading and stuff.’
Janey’s never been very musical. Miss Spylaw put her in detention last term for ‘wilful deafness’ – though it wasn’t her fault, she just had the chime bars lined up the wrong way.
She kicked off her left boot and sat up. She shrugged her shoulders, not caring, eyes shining.
I said, ‘I mean, I have to do it, because of Dad and everything . . .’
‘Why? Because your dad’s a composer?’
Janey never seems to have grasped that Dad is actually quite famous. His last two m
usicals sold millions of tickets.
She’s funny, the way she’s sometimes just not that impressed with people. Take Maddie Naylor, for example, whose dad owns Naylor Construction. They have a mansion in Easter Belmont Road, like in Dynasty or something. Most people suck up to Maddie because she has these amazing parties – the last one actually included a helicopter ride. But Janey won’t talk to Maddie because she snatched her crisps at break one time, staining her character forever. Because it wasn’t like Maddie needed crisps. She gets crisps every day. Whereas Janey only had crisps once last term.
I did try and practise tonight. I wish I hadn’t because now I have the added problem of TL.
3
Janey
‘Ooh, is that Daddy?’
I thought I’d heard the low rumble of a taxi idling outside, and sure enough when I got to the window I saw Murray crossing the street in a couple of quick strides, his overcoat flapping behind him.
‘Pig of a day,’ he announced neutrally, unwinding his scarf as he stepped inside. ‘Where’s the Pipster?’
‘I hiding!’ A giggle emanated from the sitting room, followed by a volley of light thumps as the little feet set into forward motion.
‘Daddyyyyy!’
Murray grabbed Pip and whooshed him up high so that he screamed in delight, his legs flailing.
‘Hide-e-seek,’ said Pip, fixing Murray with an urgent look as he was lowered to the ground. ‘I hide.’ And he ran off into the sitting room. I nodded towards the shadow visible at the hinge of the door, and Murray shot me a wink.
‘Where’s Pip?’ he called. Then he turned to me. ‘God, I’m bushed.’
‘I’ll make tea.’
‘Where’s Pip-squeak?’
‘I hiding,’ reminded Pip, in a sing-song voice, from behind the door.
‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum . . . Is he in . . . the bathroom? No . . .’
A peal of giggles, strangled and mischievous in Pip’s attempt to repress them.
It was a short game, lasting only until I got to the kitchen, when squeals rang out through the flat: the sound of Pip being caught, dangled upside down and tickled.