The Devil's Music

by Jane Rusbridge

  ‘Music?’ Sarah deflects Denise’s question by turning up the music full volume. ‘What do you think, everyone?’

  I smile at her, but she doesn’t seem to notice my gratitude. Now that I listen to the music, I think it sounds old-fashioned, almost music hall. Lots of accordion.

  Tom and Denise, it turns out, are two of Sarah’s tango ‘pupils’. They have brought a bag full of tango gear and they take it into the studio to prepare themselves.

  ‘Now,’ Sarah says, standing behind me and running her fingers through my hair. ‘Can we tie this back? Do you have anything?’

  I hand her a length of string from the front pocket of my jeans. The brush strokes are firm as she smooths my hair back into a ponytail. Only my mother has ever brushed my hair before. I lean my head back against her groin, but she moves away saying, ‘Now, shoes.’ From the hallway she fetches a pair of smart black shoes with a slightly stacked heel.

  ‘Haven’t worn stacks since the seventies,’ I joke, as she crouches down to put them on me. She’s fed me, brushed my hair, now she’s putting on my shoes. I look down on her bent head, the fluid curve of her swan-like neck and the intricate weaving of her hair into its neat pleat. I run a forefinger slowly down the side of her neck, seeing her head flung back, her breathing hoarse in her throat. She gets up from her knees.

  In the studio, Sarah has made floor-space. The other two are already gliding around, concentrating on each other. Sarah stands in the centre of the cleared space and beckons me over to stand close to her. She’s looking to the left, into the middle distance. I look in the same direction.

  ‘It’s important,’ she articulates slowly, ‘that you understand that the improvisational nature of tango requests the complete attention of both of us, each to the other.’

  She’s speaking differently, with a sort of serious politeness.

  Complete attention. Her eyes are green-blue glass, sea glass. I won’t ask her to say it again.

  ‘OK.’ She straightens her spine.

  I do the same.

  The posture has lifted her breasts, making them prominent, tilting towards my chest and I find I’m mimicking her stature, lifting my rib cage. She puts a hand on her belly to indicate I should hold my stomach muscles taut. I look down at the top of her head, waiting for eye contact.

  ‘Now, I’m going to lead, and it’s my body movements you need to be listening to.’ Her eyes are focused at some point over my shoulder, her face serene. ‘I’ll not be giving clues with my eyes. On a crowded dance floor, as the male dancer, I would be looking for spaces to move into.’ She takes my right hand in her left, and then opens her hand. ‘Palms flat: a light pressure.’

  Her right hand is light at the small of my back. ‘To begin with, I would suggest you close your eyes so that your other senses will be more acute.’

  ‘Other senses?’

  ‘Mainly touch. Close your eyes. We’ll just stand and listen to the music.’

  I close my eyes. I smell her hair, think of sex, my head between her thighs, the arch of her body, and my erection is growing. Then she’s backed away, creating a space between us that I move to fill, a few hesitant paces forwards, as she steps back. I’m terrified of treading on her toes, so I open my eyes briefly and see our feet, the dusty floor. I stumble. She stops.

  ‘Wait,’ she says in my ear.

  I close my eyes again. I find I can judge the size of her steps through the dip of her back beneath my palm. She’s turning us in another direction, a slight pressure of one hip towards me and we’re moving sideways, slow paces, a twist of her hips and it’s a swift turn I don’t quite keep up with. Another turn and her upper body moves beneath my fingertips, a slight pull of her raised hand tells me I must step backwards.

  ‘Don’t think,’ she whispers, ‘let your body listen to my body.’

  The track ends and she stops, but it’s a pause in motion, she’s going to dance on to the next track. She’s waiting, soaking up the new pulse.

  We stop dancing before I want to, my mind and body so absorbed by the dance that I haven’t been aware of anything else.

  ‘It’s like a trance,’ I say, without thinking, and check her expression in case this is a crass thing to say.

  ‘Better, because it’s a shared experience.’

  I’m keen to start dancing again; no more talk.

  ‘It’s a wonderfully de-stressing activity, wouldn’t you say?’ She moves away from me to the sink in the corner of the studio and fills a blue wine glass with water. ‘I’m trying to advertise tango as something that anyone can do, maybe if life is getting too much, if their jobs are stressful. For example, I visit offices in London, where I teach, and encourage businessmen to come along. I go into hospitals and speak to the doctors. I send letters to headmistresses and headmasters.’

  ‘You sound like a missionary.’

  ‘It is a sort of mission, I suppose.’

  ‘I could dance all night with you. Let’s do some more.’

  ‘We should take a breather. Come up to a class with me sometime. Let’s make some coffee now.’

  Everyone declines coffee in favour of the Jack Daniels that Tom has brought. Sarah lights little candles in glass cups and switches off the electric lights. Denise falls asleep, her head on Tom’s lap as he talks on. He’s a born storyteller, demanding nothing but an audience of listeners, and I wonder where he gets that confidence from, the knowledge that people will want to listen to him.

  By the time they leave we’re all wilting. Tom has extracted a promise from me that I’ll look at an old seaman’s chest of his. He wants some beckets made for it. Denise, predictably, wants a doormat like the one I made Sarah last week.

  Sarah and I fall into her bed and I’m asleep instantly.

  Chapter 12

  Last night, it was so cold you were worried it would snow. Then what? Even though today is the day you’re going to tell Ian it’s over, all you could think was, then what? Michael eventually got up and went to sleep in the spare room, complaining you were keeping him awake.

  You stop at the postbox on the corner of Sutton Road and there he is, his Lambretta parked just up the road. Just the sight of his face, the way he stands looking into the middle distance because he hasn’t seen you yet, brings a leap of joy. He nods a greeting as he squeezes into the passenger seat, wrapping his sheepskin jacket more closely and sinking his beard into his scarf. No Jamie today; another reason to feel guilty.

  He won’t kiss you until you’re at least as far as Maidenhead – because it’s not safe, because you might be seen.

  This is part of what you can’t cope with, the pretence. When you’re not with him you are stripped, brutally, turned inside out like a sleeve – you become both the empty sleeve, soft lining exposed, and the arm left cold.

  ‘We’d manage,’ Ian has said, over and over again. He wants you and the children with him in the houseboat.

  He phoned the house last week, breaking an unspoken rule, and Michael answered. Ian made some excuse about a friend, or someone wanting a painting job done, with a similar telephone number, and Michael came off the phone chuckling, but it gave you a scare.

  Then he’d written to you – another risk – because he was desperate to tell you about a small house he’d seen that you could renovate together, perhaps if you went back to nursing, and he worked in the evenings. The letter was filled with drawings, of the house, of ideas for the house, of you standing in the doorway, together.

  ‘But then, when would we have time to renovate the house?’ you’d asked him later. ‘We’d either be working or looking after the children.’

  It’s just make-believe. Michael would never allow it, would never tolerate the loss of face. Michael would make life impossible.

  You shake your head, trying to clear your thoughts.

  Ian winds down the window and rests his chin on his hand, elbow propped on the car window, looking out. There is frost on the grass.

  ‘Ian, could you—?’

>   ‘Sorry,’ he winds up the glass again. ‘I’m sorry ...’ He twists round to face you.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ You fiddle with the heater control. The fan is rattling but there’s no heat. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Ay.’ He pulls off his scarf. ‘A job.’

  The traffic lights are green but the car sputters and almost stalls. It doesn’t like the cold. A few flakes of snow are falling like clumps of feathers.

  ‘But that’s wonderful! A job? A decorating job? Another commission?’

  ‘Teaching.’

  ‘Ian—’ You’re wondering at his bleak tone, then it hits you – where around here would he teach art? Your voice comes out as a croak: ‘Where?’

  He leans close, a hand on your thigh, and he’s talking, fast and soft, about being together, about the rarity of love, about not living a life that’s a lie. You can tell he’s rehearsed this speech – the reasonable phrases, the believable possibilities. Perhaps if the two of you took on Jamie as well as your three children, his parents might help financially.

  His optimism is young, naive. It would be a scandal. You would be the scarlet woman, labelled unfit to care for your children. You keep your eyes on the road, saying nothing.

  ‘I’ll be needing tae let them know.’

  ‘Where?’

  A lady steps out on to the zebra crossing but it’s too late to stop the car. She waves her walking stick and scowls her disapproval from the kerb.

  ‘Pull over.’

  You glance in the rear mirror and swerve into a bus lay-by. The engine stalls. You pull the choke further out and try to start it up again, wanting to keep the heater going, for what it’s worth. The starter motor coughs and splutters.

  Try again. Don’t look at his face.

  Try a third time. The starter motor is fainter.

  This day is not right.

  ‘It’s flooded, the engine.’ He puts a hand on your arm, takes your hand in both of his. ‘Paris.’

  You’ve been struck, the breath knocked from you.

  ‘Come with me.’

  You shake your head, wordless.

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  ‘Thing is, Andy,’ Susie tugs her flapping coat across her body, shouting over the roar of the tumbling shingle and the slap of the canvas above us, ‘we should probably think about a prospective buyer.’ She lifts her hands to her ears and, again, the wind wrenches her coat open. She looks like a starvation victim – jumper stretched over distended belly, legs spindly in leggings that bag round the knee. I look away.

  ‘The tatty old canvas ... I’m just not sure.’ She winces and pulls her collar up. ‘This wind! Please can we go inside now?’

  I’ve brought Susie straight round to the seaward side of the house to show her the work I’ve done on the veranda, hoping she’ll be OK with it. Maybe even pleased. We’re on the new decking area. A shipload of two-by-four was washed up during the last storm. Planks scattered breakwater after breakwater for miles along on the beach. Sarah and I hefted more than fifty up the beach and piled them in a satisfying stack between our two houses. Good, broad planks for decking. Susie just looks miserable huddled in her coat. She hasn’t even glanced at the star-shaped sinnet that sways, thick and heavy, in the wind. I’ve hung the sinnet around three sides of the decking area, suspended from three-foot-high steel needles at intervals along the rope’s length.

  ‘What about that?’ I point.

  ‘The rope?’ Head tilted, eyes narrowed, she considers. ‘Looks nice. You made it, I suppose?’

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Well, it looks sort of weird, with that pointy-edge.’

  Thanks, Susie. ‘It’s star-shaped.’

  She cocks her head again, squinting. ‘Is it?’

  ‘In cross-section, it’s star-shaped.’

  ‘Well –’ She seems about to add something, but she then sighs as if she’s bored with the whole thing. ‘Bit like a seaside pub, with all this.’ She gestures towards my collection of battered lobster cages, the heaps of nets. ‘People will be wandering in off the beach and ordering a pint!’ She laughs, lifting a red-knuckled hand to her mouth. It’s not a happy laugh.

  ‘None of that’s permanent.’

  I shove the door open with my foot, then remember, too late, I’d intended to steer her away from the sun room. It’s full of rope work and stuff I don’t want her seeing. But, hands shoved deep into her pockets, shoulders hunched, she hurries through the creaking sun room, stepping between the piles of jigsaws, books with no covers and squashed tubes of paint from the old trunk. She’s so busy watching where she treads she doesn’t notice much else.

  ‘What a mess! Looks like the boys’ room on a rainy day.’

  The kids aren’t setting foot in here. I’ve put a bolt high up on the internal door of the sun room. I’ll tell Susie the bolt is to stop them escaping on to the beach. Richard was supposed be left in charge today, but there was some last-minute ‘commitment’. Henry’s at a friend’s, but the twins are here, asleep in the car.

  ‘Kitchen looks good.’ She sniffs the air. ‘Fresh paint!’

  She goes to check on the twins, leaving the front door ajar. It shudders back on its hinges, wind frisking through the house. When she returns, she’s out of breath, her nose red against the pallor of her skin. The twins are still asleep, thank God. I light the Calor gas heater.

  ‘Drink? To warm up?’

  She wipes her nose with a lumpy piece of tissue from her coat pocket. ‘No. I’m fine. Give me a quick guided tour while they’re out of action.’

  We start off along the corridor of one of the Pullmans. Although it’s narrow – only about the width of my shoulders – I’ve repainted all the wood, white, as agreed, and with the row of south-facing windows the corridor’s bright with light from the open sky beyond.

  ‘I love these windows,’ she says, tracing SMOKING with her forefinger. ‘Are they Victorian? That’s when the carriages were made, isn’t it?’

  She turns into the last compartment opening off the corridor. I’ve used white gloss on the wooden walls and curved ceilings in here too, and repaired the rope luggage shelves above the bunk beds. The rectangular frames that used to hold the advertisements I’ve painted light blue, at Sarah’s suggestion. Looped along the sides of the beds is a three-strand rope made from the cornflower curtains, ripped linen sheets and some ancient, thin beach towels. Susie will probably mention pubs again.

  I scuff my foot on a flap of old linoleum. ‘Floor still needs doing.’

  ‘And maybe something simple at the windows?’ she says.

  She touches everything and sighs. Now she’s running a hand over the gleaming gloss.

  ‘It all looks so much better, doesn’t it?’ Her hand is on the blue-and-white rope. ‘Where did you get this?’

  But before I can answer, she’s pushed past me and opened the door to the next compartment, the one Elaine shared with our mother.

  ‘Goodness!’ She steps in.

  I’ve reused rope from fishnets, new ones, fanning knotted rope above the bedheads. Tom gave me the nets in exchange for the doormat I’m making for Denise. He not only supplied the necessary rope and twine for the beckets for his old chart chest, but insisted on paying me for my time making them. We consulted Ashley’s. He flicked through the book, reading out phrases which, for some reason, he found uproariously hilarious. Finally, he chose beckets with Six Strand Round Sinnet bails and Manrope Knots which suited the carved cleats very well.

  I’m telling Susie most of this, but she has her back to me, fingering the fan of net above the low iron-framed bed that was once our mother’s. She’s not listening.

  ‘Our old spirograph, do you remember it, Andy? That’s what it reminds me of, this shape.’

  I can see how the parabola of interlocking lines might remind her of spirograph patterns.

  ‘It’s very pretty; so feminine. Expensive?’

  ‘No ...—’

&
nbsp; Susie winces again, passing a hand over her eyes. She flops. Her knees give way. Before I get to her, she’s steadied herself, a hand on the iron bedhead. Back straight to counterbalance the weight of her belly, she lowers herself down on to the bed using one arm as a prop. Head hanging, she draws deep, shaky breaths.

  ‘Susie ...’

  ‘I’m OK. Little woozy. Probably blood sugar.’

  ‘Tea? Some toast?’

  Her drooping head, a ragged line of scalp parting thin hair, turns from side to side. She takes more deep breaths, a hand stroking the paisley eiderdown, sliding a finger in and out of rips in the silky material.

  I begin to tell her, again, where the netting came from. Her shoulders rise and fall. I can’t see her face. Finally, when she looks up, her face is blotched with tears.

  ‘I haven’t heard a thing, Andrew.’

  ‘About the—?’

  She sniffs and drags out the lump of tissue. I gather she’s not referring to the netting or the beckets.

  ‘Sorry.’ She blows her nose and dusty bits of tissue float on the air.

  Her body tilts towards mine as the mattress sinks under my weight. I put an arm around her shoulders. I’m shocked how loose and haphazard her bones feel beneath my palm. No flesh or muscle to give strength or hold them together.

  ‘It’s a long drive. Perhaps you—’

  ‘The twins! I’d forgotten.’ She levers herself up to vertical, then rocks as if she’s losing her balance. I leap to catch her. Briefly, she collapses on to me before sighing and pushing herself upright again. She wavers unsteadily back down the corridor and out to the Volvo.

  I carry the box of food supplies and a plastic crate of stuff for the boys in from the car. Susie shuts herself in the kitchen, a barricade of old deckchairs around the gas heater, and tries to keep the twins contained in the one warm room. The twins flick the light switches on and off, on and off. Open drawers and slam them shut. Take saucepans and lids and chopping boards out of cupboards and bang them around. Condensation runs down the window. I pace about a bit, wondering how we can possibly spend the whole day like this, then hit on the idea of going out to fetch fish and chips for lunch. After some dithering over what the kids are allowed to eat, Susie writes a list which she presses into my hand. ‘No salt. No vinegar. Don’t forget!’