Dearest Maggie,
I am in London. Wretched business meeting. Back in a few hours. Explore!
xK
ps. If you would like to cook for us tonight, there’s something in here to give you inspiration.
Wretched business meeting, indeed. She knows Kenneth is retired; knows – as anyone would who’d read the local press – the size of his golden handshake from Newton and Crane. She intuits that he spends most of his time upstairs in his office with his feet on the desk and his headphones clamped over his ears, listening to Mozart. Or in his den, trying to decipher his wild hieroglyphics.
Maggie looks in the fridge. Amongst the jars and yoghurt pots he has laid two Dover sole on a plate, covered with cling film. On the shelf below is a bottle wrapped in tissue. She can feel by its weight and shape that it’s champagne, but rips the paper off anyway. After she’s shut the fridge, she considers for a moment, then goes back to take an opened bottle of Chablis from the door. She carries it to the prefect’s office. Her notebook is still in her room, hidden under the mattress like a schoolgirl’s diary. Cradling the bottle of wine, she makes her way up to the first floor. If Kenneth’s not here, she thinks, there’s no reason for her to be stuffed under the stairs like a pair of old boots.
Passing the landing and Kenneth’s office, she pauses. Explore, he’d written, but when she tries the door, it won’t open. Maggie feels a surge of fury; apart from the cleaning lady, they are the only two people in this house. So why lock her out? She stalks the long corridor. A room on the right overlooks the staircase; this door at least is unlocked, but when she throws it open, she sees why. It’s a bedroom – a guest room, she supposes – furnished with polished antiques. She lies on the bed for a while. The quilt smells freshly laundered, the pillows plumped and smooth, as if awaiting the imminent arrival of a visitor. She listens to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall downstairs, stares at the ceiling. Tilting the neck of the bottle, she takes a couple of deep swigs. The wine tastes clean and sharp: immediately, she feels better, and takes another long drink. Maggie tries to work out how many rooms are on this floor. Five on this corridor, she guesses, and then at the very end there’s another locked door, just beyond the steep staircase leading to her bedsit. Which would put her in the servant’s quarters. She gets up, angry again, and swings open the door to the next room. It is almost exactly the same as the first, made up for immediate occupation. She searches the drawers of the dressing table; all unlined and empty. Perhaps this was Rusty’s room. But no, there’s nothing here to suggest a feminine presence, not a hairgrip, not a hair.
The next room is a shock, seemingly out of place: Kenneth’s bathroom. It’s enormous inside, high-ceilinged and hollow sounding. Maggie stands for a moment and breathes the scent of him. Gazing up to where the cornice at the far end of the ceiling disappears, she realizes that the room has been modified; that the door at the other end must lead into his bedroom. She closes the toilet seat and sits on it, takes another swig of wine. She hardly knows what she’s doing. Opposite the bath is a chaise longue with a velvet footstool beside it; on either side are two large potted palms in gilded bowls. The Victorian toilet with its high-level cistern and brass chain; the claw-foot bath; the chrome towel rail – all are spectacularly clean and shiny, just like new. But the washbasin has a residue of soap around the inside edge, and the mirrored cabinet above it is dappled with opaque white spots that come away when she rubs them and smell faintly of mint. Inside the cabinet, she finds a stockpile of lotions and pills and ointments. She tries not to feel the shame creeping up under her skin, and pulls out a bottle at random. It takes her a second before she realizes: he dyes his hair. Of course he does, she should know that. No man in his sixties would naturally have hair that dark. But his eyelashes? She sees his eyes again, the lucent blue of them, his direct, trusting gaze on her. Behind the gummy, misshapen tubes is a plastic bottle with a picture of fruit on the front: Think Well! Wild Blueberry Supplement, she reads. And then there is the Nytol, and a bottle of Sleep Tite, which, when she rattles it, feels almost empty. She catches a look at herself in the mirror, at her guilty face. It’s enough; she doesn’t want to see Kenneth’s bedroom now. She is fearful of the idea: leather slippers placed neatly at the side of the bed, a plaid dressing gown hanging on a hook behind the door. She doesn’t want to know if he has a magnifying glass on the bedside table or a reading light clipped to the headboard. She doesn’t want him to dye his hair, have sleepless nights. She wishes she didn’t care, because all of this is getting in the way. What she wants to find is arrogance, contempt for others, self-regard. And here, instead, is Kenneth; gentle and foolish, staving off the years with pills and lotions.
She sits on the edge of the bath and traces her hand along the wall, feeling beneath the paint and the lining paper a wide, ridged band, and it gives her an odd sensation when she touches it, as if her fingers are reading Braille. A revelation sparkles through her: the wall is a palimpsest of another room and another time. This bathroom is new – pretend old – and so are all the other rooms. The atrium downstairs with its pristine cushion covers and architectural greenery; the cold sitting room on the other side of the library with its smell of furniture polish; the barely used dining room – all fake. Whatever really went on in them, whatever lives were led, have been eradicated. No photographs. No personal items. No one lives here. These rooms don’t stand for anything, and they don’t signify anything, except the determination to wipe out what went before. All that is left of Kenneth’s past is the stuff he hoards in his den. And his music. He has retreated, she thinks, he has withdrawn himself from all of this. That’s why he wants to bottle up the good memories, because, despite his best efforts to cleanse his past, it’s all still here underneath: the odour of despair, the stink of loss. It makes her sorry; not for Kenneth’s family, and not for herself, but for him. Of course, he isn’t to blame; he’s an innocent, just as she was.
Like a ghost she retraces her steps, back down to the prefect’s office, to the empty page.
MAHLER, SYMPHONY NO.1 first movement.
You were fourteen, Kenneth, when you first heard this piece. Not much older than your son was when he stole me from my mother.
the river man
Thomas Bryce is sleeping, his chin on his chest, one arm hanging down the side of the chair. In his lap, his glasses rest on top of the newspaper, magnifying a corner of the racing page. The television in the corner of the room is flat-screened and massive. He keeps it switched on most of the time, and a cookery programme is starting now; the title sequence, of a brash fanfare followed by angry shouting, doesn’t disturb him. On the shelf behind Thomas the radio is turned down low; he keeps that on too, just in case. A fat spaniel lies stretched out in front of the dead fire. On the floor by his side, Thomas has left his dinner plate. A short while after he fell asleep, the dog bent over and licked it clean, before flopping herself back onto the rug.
Sometimes, when Thomas wakes up in the middle of the night, he’ll see nearly naked women on the television screen with their fingers in their knickers or sticking their thin buttocks in the air and pumping them up and down or pinching their nipples really hard. They want him to call or text; there’s writing at the bottom of the screen that Thomas now knows are messages from men, asking the girls to do things to themselves or each other. He doesn’t bother trying to decipher the messages any more, and he isn’t remotely stirred by what they get up to with their bodies. Their faces interest him. He likes the plumper ones, and the ones who look like they need a wash, and he likes to see the barely disguised boredom in their eyes. He wonders about how old they are, whether their boyfriends are sitting at home watching them and wanking off. Occasionally he’ll lean forward out of his chair, worrying that he’s seen a bruise or an insect crawling on them, satisfied that in the end, it’s just another tattoo. Often he’ll fall back into a restless sleep and won’t wake properly again until he hears the early morning shipping forecast on the r
adio.
Thomas doesn’t go to bed these days; there’s no point: his bladder wakes him frequently, the sharp urgency coming with no warning, or not enough warning to get downstairs to the toilet. He uses the bedroom only to change his clothes, which he does rather less often than the woman in the shop would like, standing there behind the counter with her can of Glade at the ready. No shame to her. He’d like to tell her what he thinks of her, so concerned with herself, worrying about a smell, frightened by the idea of germs. He’d like to tell her how everything dies in the end, how it all goes bad; he’s only reminding her of a natural process. And the landlord at the Winterbourne never makes any objection when he turns up there for his two pints of bitter. Thomas remembers the place when it used to be the New Inn and you could sit at any of the tables and pass the evening, having a drink and a smoke. Then it had a refit and started doing food and all that was left of the old pub was a long bench opposite the bar. The rest of the space was for diners. The landlord never said don’t sit there, he just got a waitress to put place mats out on all the tables and a reserved marker in the middle. Thomas would squash up on the bench with his pals, all in a line, and they’d watch people from town turn up in their cars and order from the menu and sit at the tables, candles glowing between them like a secret. Then the landlord asked would it be all right if he left Bramble at home. It wasn’t all right, and he told him so, and they boycotted the pub, him and Freddy Peel and Flynn and Flynn’s cousin Raymond. But they crept back, eventually, Thomas as well. These days, when the landlord isn’t looking, he sneaks Bramble under the bench where she’s happy to lie with everyone’s feet on her. These days, Thomas isn’t allowed to smoke in the pub any more. He wonders how long it will be before he isn’t allowed to drink.
Bramble’s not a bad dog, but she’s lazy. Her problem is she thinks she’s a pet. Thomas has had a few dogs in his lifetime, all working stock. He can tell that Bramble hasn’t ever been worked. Her previous owner put her in a rescue centre because he was too old to care for her. When the girl at the centre told him that, Thomas wondered if she thought that he was too old, too, at seventy-eight. He’s taught Bramble a few things, but she hasn’t got the nose for field work. Her retrieval is aimless at the best of times, and her delivery is poor: she drops the dummy anywhere. And she eats too much, foraging in the bins at the back of the lane when he tries to reduce her portions. Her breath is on him now, a happy, panting stink.
When morning comes, regardless of what kind of night he’s had, Thomas will go through his regime: turning off the sidelight to watch the dawn come up, quiet and steady, or quick and rash, through the window. Different day, different dawn, same routine. At seven-thirty, he’ll make some tea and toast, and take Bramble out for a stroll along the river. It’s what he does every day, and he walks the same route, never deviates. It was difficult to keep to it for the first few years, he’ll admit that. Despite his resolution to go on as before – to take the river path, track left down the far field and into the copse – by the time he’d re-emerged at the other end of the wood, Thomas would find himself half a mile off course. Sometimes he’d be knee-deep in a farmer’s crop; sometimes he’d be at the lane at the top of the village. Once, he was back at his own front door. As if his feet were wandering of their own accord, he thinks, As if they had a mind of their own. He’d had to steel himself, then. Whichever particular dog was at his heels, Thomas would retrace his steps, find the footpath, and continue the way he always did when he used to work the river: past the Earls’ place and along the bowl barrow field.
He pushes Bramble to one side, and shifts in his seat, testing the heaviness in his groin. There’s a politician on the radio answering questions, a man on the television is having an argument with another man. Thomas stumbles through to the kitchen and urinates into the sink, thin stop-start spurts, running the cold tap to help him. Through the window, the view is of the lane and the sinking sun, a greasy smear of amber hovering in the distant trees. He squints at it, willing the pressure in his bladder to subside, trying to concentrate.
He beat his problem eventually, although in a funny way the Earls helped: after the business had died down, they turned the field over to wheat. But then someone decided it was the site of an ancient monument and had to be protected. They could grow the wheat, they could reposition the culvert, but they couldn’t disturb the barrow. Now you wouldn’t know it was there, unless you were looking for it. Thomas tries not to think of what happened; there’s no point. He knows he will only relive it again in the morning, as he does every day when he passes the spot, passes the Earl place, passes the barrow where all those years ago he found the girl. He has beaten his problem, is what he always tells himself. It was Sonny that unearthed her. Now, Sonny, he was an exceptional hound.
part two
small hours
eleven
Kenneth tries to stop himself from checking his watch; time won’t move any faster just because he’s looking at it. Through the tinted window of the train, the lights of the tower blocks flee back to London, leaving only his reflection, staring uneasily in at him. He thinks about the number of times he’s made this trip in his life; countless occasions when he was a young boy coming home from school, then a hiatus of forty years or more, when he drove everywhere. Can’t do that now, wouldn’t trust himself now. Not after that last episode, cruising at speed the wrong way up the motorway, car headlights flashing like sparks in front of his eyes. He knew something was amiss; the central reservation was over on the passenger side, the one-way became inexplicably two-way. Too late, Kenneth realized that it was him going against the flow and not everyone else: by then, the sparks of those oncoming headlights had turned into the blue scroll of a squad car beacon.
A caution, and his licence revoked: he was told that he’d been lucky, but he didn’t feel lucky; he felt as though he’d had an arm cut off. Will suggested a chauffeur, not understanding, or choosing to ignore, the simple pleasure of driving, with only The Pearl Fishers or La Bohème for company.
Oh Mimi, he says, thinking of Maggie, You will love Jussi Björling, I just know it.
Kenneth decides he will play her some opera on his return. He checks his watch again.
Maggie is burning dinner. After she’d written up the song notes, she’d laid her head on the desk and closed her eyes: only the stained-glass woman in the window to watch over her, the light in the room gradually softening to caramel brown. She felt unable to move; couldn’t even reach up for the latch when the cool draught of river air rose up and scattered the pages. When she roused herself, it was to a dusk-filled room, the beam of a car playing over the walls as it swung up the drive. Maggie thought it would have to be William. Remembering Kenneth’s bathroom, she bolted up the stairs and checked herself in the mirror. Her face bore a long pink crease where she’d been lying on her sleeve, an imprint of mottled dots on her cheek. She filled the washbasin, smelling again Kenneth’s shaving soap, and splashed her face with water. As she was making her way back down, the doorbell rang twice, two short peremptory bursts, followed by an expectant silence. She wiped her hands along her dress, breathed in and out slowly, pulled the heavy door open. It was not William. Standing before her was a woman in a pale-blue trouser suit, her hair carefully coiffed, a diaphanous scarf around her neck. Maggie felt faint with relief. The woman barely glanced at her before pushing her way inside.
Can you tell Mr Earl that Mrs Taylor is here, she said, making a statement of the question, Where is he? In his den, I suppose. She set off so fast along the hallway, Maggie had to half-trot to keep up. She was oddly satisfied to see that the woman had a chalky white teardrop of bird excrement on the back of her jacket.
He’s not here, said Maggie, catching her up at the kitchen door.
The woman turned.
What do you mean, he’s not here? Of course he’s here, she said, peering into the kitchen, He’s always here.
He’s gone to London – on business, said Maggie. Even she thought
it sounded like a lie. The woman looked at her directly for the first time.
I do apologize, you must think me very rude. I’m Alison Taylor, she said, holding out her hand, A friend of Kenneth’s. And you are?
Maggie, she said, shaking the offered hand. She felt the cold lump of a diamond on the other woman’s finger, the bones beneath the gliss of hand cream.
And are you a guest, Maggie? she asked, and not waiting for a response, added, It seems rude to leave a guest all alone, don’t you think?
Maggie didn’t reply immediately. She was thinking that this was the woman who had styled the atrium, and probably all the other rooms too; could see right through the woman’s eyes and into her skull: friend of Kenneth or not, she wanted this house and her place in it.
I work for him, Maggie said, at last, And he’ll be back later this evening. Would you like to leave a message?
Alison Taylor turned her wrist over, sliding a gold bracelet around to reveal a small watch-face, which she studied, tapped with her fingernail, and jangled away again up her sleeve.
I don’t think so, she said, through a bleached smile, He’s clearly forgotten.
Maggie followed her out into the hall.
Was he supposed to meet you? she asked, unable to help herself, Only, he didn’t mention it.
Ah, and why would he? Are you his secretary?
Even though the smile was still in place, the woman’s tone was hostile.
I’m . . . we’re compiling an archive.
An archive. How fascinating. And what kind of archive are we compiling?
Maggie opened the door.
I think maybe Kenneth will want to tell you that, she said, marvelling at how smooth she sounded.
The Song House Page 8