The Devil's Music

by Jane Rusbridge

  It’s a relief to escape the noise and stifling air. I dawdle, going the long way round to the fish and chip shop via the harbour mouth. The mudflats are glazed with watery light but far to the west a dark bank of cumulus bellies, mountainous on the horizon. Rain will come before the day is out.

  Fish and chips under my coat to keep warm and dry, I shoulder open the front door. Voices.

  ‘No, I’m sure it hasn’t been,’ Sarah is saying as I enter the kitchen, her hand on Susie’s, her head tilted. The two women are sitting side by side at the kitchen table, turned towards each other confidingly. The table top is littered with coloured card, glitter and felt-tip pens. Wind gusts in through the front door and folded pieces of card with cotton wool stuck to them blow on to the floor. Susie is peeling glue off her fingers. A pile lies on the table like shed skin. She doesn’t look up as she says, ‘Shut the door.’ Another gust lifts the newspaper covering the table. Looks like Susie’s crying again.

  Sarah gets up to kiss me, a flake of glitter on her nose catching the light.

  ‘We’ve introduced ourselves and had a good long heart-to-heart,’ she says, pouring Susie another cup of tea from the pot. ‘And we’ve managed to keep the boys amused at the same time. See?’ Sarah holds up what appears to be a loo roll covered with cotton wool.

  ‘A snowman,’ she says, laughing at my confusion. ‘To be filled with sweets.’ She claps a hand over her mouth in mock horror. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that; it’s a surprise!’

  Today Sarah’s hair is lifted up and back the way I like it, exposing the swoop of her neck, the line of her jaw.

  ‘Do you want fish and chips? Or are you hurrying back to work?’

  ‘Not a difficult choice, is it?’ She arches an eyebrow and angles her head. She looks at me, the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. Time slows, syrupy between us. A pulse throbs just below her jaw line.

  ‘Use a fork, not your fingers!’

  Sarah and I pick up our cutlery.

  When the boys finish eating, Susie clears their plates and gives them the loo roll snowmen which they point like guns at each other, making firing noises. Before long one of them stomps around the table and lifts up his arms. Susie hauls him on to her lap, where he picks up a dessert spoon to examine his reflection.

  ‘Sarah’s been talking to me about your—’ Susie shifts awkwardly to pour herself a glass of water, a hand on the boy’s head as she lifts the glass jug over it ‘—sculptures.’ The word is loaded with a sneer.

  My hackles rise. ‘Yes, well, she knows more about it than I do. It’s how she earns a living.’ I don’t want to discuss this with Susie. ‘It’s the same old thing.’

  ‘Mmm. That’s what I told her.’ Susie grimaces and presses a hand to her side.

  ‘Sue, believe me. People are interested. I know it.’ Sarah’s hand squeezes my thigh under the table. ‘I’ve emailed photos to one or two people and had a great response. Some of his knot and rope work is extraordinarily beautiful, you know. That amazing sinnet! Wouldn’t mind betting this gallery in Glasgow are on the verge of sending him an invite.’

  ‘Glasgow?’ Susie’s doughy face is slack.

  ‘The shipbuilding history is a good connection.’

  Susie’s expression remains uncomprehending. The boy on her lap puts the spoon into his mouth and takes it out again, teeth clashing on the metal.

  ‘Well, all I can say is, it was always an awful nuisance, his thing with rope.’ She darts a glare at me.

  Oh, here we go. Susie has never met one of my women before. My instinct to steer well clear has obviously been spot on.

  ‘He tied a washing line around my neck once, you know. Got him into all sorts of trouble.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Sarah says smoothly. She picks my hand up from the table and studies it. Sarah makes a habit of examining my hands, exclaiming over their size, the thickness of my fingers. She’ll circle my palm with her thumb, lick the hair below my knuckles. My cock stirs.

  ‘The things boys get up to,’ she says, smiling broadly at Susie, showing those even white teeth.

  I stand up to pull off my sweater and fiddle with the heater.

  ‘Yes, well. And then, after—’ Susie stops, seems to change her mind about what she was going to say. ‘He was always up in his room messing about with string and rope when Dad thought he should be out playing rugby.’ She shifts to the edge of her seat and slides the little boy – I don’t know which twin it is – back to the floor, then faces Sarah as she flicks her hair over her shoulder. ‘It’s not statues, is it? It’s not pottery. Not – what’s the word? – ceramic. So how is it sculpture? I don’t understand.’

  This’ll get Sarah started. Sure enough, her eyes flash as she takes a breath ready to launch into discussion, but the kid has a thumb in his mouth and distracts Susie by tugging at the front of her dress with one hand.

  ‘No, darling.’ Susie strokes his hair. ‘Do you want a little nap?’ She struggles to her feet. ‘Please excuse us for a minute. I’ll just pop him in one of the bedrooms.’

  ‘Can you manage?’ Sarah rises quickly. ‘Will he let me?’ She holds her arms wide. He takes out his thumb, frowns at her, then burrows his head in Susie’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m strong as an ox.’ Susie wades out of the kitchen, the kid tangling his fist in her hair. The other twin slides down from the table to totter after her.

  ‘Phew.’ Sarah fetches another tumbler and helps herself to the open bottle of red standing by the breadbin. She puts both hands on my shoulders and propels me back to the table. ‘You are a quiet one! Sue’s told me the whole story.’

  ‘Story?’

  Sarah’s words are slightly slurred. Perhaps she had a drink before she arrived. She drank tea with the fish and chips, but she seems slightly pissed. I’m not the only one who keeps erratic hours. A positive thought. She’ll never want me to move in.

  ‘About your parents.’ Sarah pushes her chair back at an angle, kicks off her shoes and lifts her feet on to my lap. ‘Your mother.’ She swirls the red wine around her tumbler.

  Outside, the feathery tamarisk branches blow like hair in the wind. Right now, I’d like to go into the sun room and close the door. Leave the women and kids to get on with it.

  Sarah plays with the tip of her plait, fanning out the hair between her thumb and fingers, inspecting the ends. She sweeps her cheek with the little brush of hair, staring into space, preoccupied.

  ‘Has she.’ I make it a statement rather than a question. I’m not going to be manipulated into a conversation I don’t want.

  Sarah looks up. ‘Has who what?’

  ‘Susie. Told you.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. She says you’re not at all keen to trace your mother.’ Sarah rolls her head around, bending her neck this way and that, rotating her shoulders as if warming up for a dance session.

  ‘I’m not.’

  Sarah lifts her feet from my lap, swivelling off her chair to stand behind me and slide her fingers deep into my hair. She massages my scalp. It’s like a drug. My shoulders sink, my eyelids grow heavy. The sensation gradually blankets my thoughts. Sarah’s breath tickles my ear.

  To keep the edges of myself clear, I bite my lower lip. ‘He drove her out, our father. Now he’s dead.’ Staccato words. ‘That’s the story. Perhaps now she’ll get in touch – but that’s up to her. Unless she’s locked up.’

  ‘Locked up?’

  I raise my eyebrows at her.

  ‘You mean ...? But she wouldn’t be in an asylum,’ her fingers pause momentarily, ‘or whatever, after all this time, would she? Though you do hear ...’ The circles of pressure on my scalp begin again. ‘Anyway, Sue gave the impression—’

  ‘Susie needs money.’

  ‘Money? She didn’t—’

  ‘Our father left everything to our mother. If she’s dead, doesn’t make a claim, it will all come to us two.’

  Sarah says nothing for a while. She continues massaging my head. I close my ey
es. My mind floats and bobs.

  ‘It’s quite romantic that he never remarried, isn’t it?’

  ‘Romantic?’ My eyes fly open.

  ‘Well, he had a lonely life. She is sorry for him, Andrew.’

  Sarah doesn’t know what she’s talking about. No idea.

  ‘Now his life is over. She’s carrying a new one. It’s a balance. She’s a mother; she wants to confront her own mother. Makes sense to me. Karma, if you like. If Susie wanted the money, why would she make any attempt to find her? No. I reckon anger is what drives our Sue and, what’s more—’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ I sit up straight. Karma?

  ‘What?’

  ‘You sound like some kind of counsellor.’

  ‘Not surprising.’

  I’m wide awake now, ducking my head away from her hands.

  ‘One of my many accomplishments.’ She perches a hand on her hip. ‘I’ve worked in Marks and Spencer’s underwear department too. Very nice uniform,’ she says, pouting provocatively over a shoulder at me, boobs up.

  ‘Sarah—’ My chair scrapes the floor. Sarah is missing the point. No one, so far, has mentioned Elaine.

  ‘Shh! Sue must have dropped off.’ Sarah looks at her watch and picks up a long woollen scarf from the back of her chair. ‘I’d better shoot. Tell her goodbye. Only came round for a coffee.’ She winds the scarf round her neck several times. ‘Forgot you said she was coming down.’ She’s not meeting my eyes.

  I put a hand on her arm and feel the gritty powder of dried clay on her skin. ‘Can I show you something? Before you go?’ I want to see if she understands what I have done with the jelly shoe.

  I lead her through to the sun room.

  ‘What’s all the secrecy?’ she says, as I reach up to unbolt the door. I say nothing, all the time watching her face, noting her lifted eyebrows, the wry smile, the saucy glance up into my eyes. We stand in front of the upturned cardboard box on the table. I put my palms to its sides. Wait.

  I lift the box. She looks down.

  Sees the wooden box and frame, the jelly shoe with its toe immersed in freshly set concrete. Her face sags. Her head drops. A hand covers her mouth, fingertips pressing white into her cheek. Her pupils are huge.

  I want her to stand like that, holding that intake of breath, to go on staring, like a woman grieving at a grave, because, today, yesterday, ever since I poured dark wet concrete around the pink plastic tip of the jelly shoe, I haven’t been able to lift the cardboard box to look at it myself.

  Finally, she takes the cardboard box from my hands and replaces it. Neither of us says anything. She picks up each of my empty hands and kisses my fingertips. We walk out of the sun room and Sarah closes the internal door, sliding the bolt across.

  In the kitchen she put the back of her hand against my cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew.’

  Now perhaps she understands why I have no wish to see my mother.

  Her plait swings as she reaches for the door, then she pauses. ‘Oh, I’m up in London for a few days. Be in touch when I get back.’

  She holds on to the ends of her scarf and steps out into the wind.

  I begin to clear the table and wash the plates. The nooses are made, waiting to be hung from the rafter in the sun room. I’ll attach the jelly shoe to one. I haven’t yet decided what to hang from the others but they will be against the ceiling almost, and the rope ends will hang down to suggest the ropes of a bell tower. But the jelly shoe in its bed of concrete – this still needs some work – will rest on the ground, the rope end high and out of reach. Like an unreachable note. The Devil’s Music. Because one of the final things I did, while Elaine was still here, was practise my whistling.

  ‘You awake, Andy?’

  The sitting room is shadows. Outside, a full moon lights up a mackerel sky. It must be late afternoon. The wind has dropped, but the sea swell is heavy. Bad weather drawing closer. I lift my feet from the chair and stretch my arms above my head. ‘Am now, aren’t I?’

  Susie doesn’t laugh. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep.’ She lowers herself gingerly on to the sofa. ‘I do it all over the place. Put the children to bed and wake up, fully dressed, on one of their beds or on the floor in the middle of the night.’ She sighs. ‘I’ll have more energy once I’m not carrying this extra weight around.’ She rests a hand on her belly.

  ‘Will you get someone in to help?’

  ‘Someone?’ she echoes sarcastically. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Well ...’

  We both stare out at the moon.

  ‘Andy ... don’t be cross with me, will you, but because I hadn’t heard a thing and it was getting me down, waiting and not doing anything constructive so, when I found it, her address in America – I was having a clear-out, getting ready for Christmas – I sent a Christmas card.’

  She’s not making sense.

  ‘Sent a Christmas card?’

  ‘Yes. Most likely it will never reach her, she’s bound to have moved, we haven’t been in touch for years and years, but ... it’ll probably be a dead end.’

  ‘Susie, hang on a minute, who have you sent a Christmas card?’

  ‘Hoggie.’

  ‘Hoggie?’

  ‘Yes. Believe it or not I had to write “Dear Hoggie” because I’ve no idea of her first name.’

  ‘Harriet Amelia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Harriet Amelia Hogg!’ I always loved her name. And it strikes me, although her hair was red, it was like Sarah’s – long and wild – and she sometimes let me take out the combs and Kirby grips that kept it in place, and play with it. ‘Harriet Amelia Hogg. Remember?’

  ‘You’re not cross? I should really have consulted you first.’

  ‘Yes.’ I run a hand over the stubble on my jaw. ‘Susie, even if—’

  ‘I know, I know. Even if we find out where she is, she may not want—’

  ‘That’s not what I was going to say.’

  But I don’t know what I was going to say.

  We sit in silence once more. The twins clatter and burble in the kitchen. The moon races through the sky. The logical part of my brain works out it’s the cloud skimming the sky, not the moon. The visual confusion of speed and stasis is disorienting.

  Sudden silence from the kitchen.

  ‘MUMMY!’ A shriek.

  Susie jerks and hauls herself to the edge of the seat, using the arm of the sofa to lever herself up. She pauses. ‘I meant to say, she’s nice. Sarah.’

  ‘Yes. She said to say goodbye.’

  ‘I’m so glad she’ll think about Christmas. She was brilliant with the boys. She got kids?’ Susie is on her way to the kitchen. Both boys are wailing now.

  ‘Christmas?’

  ‘What?’ Susie shouts from the corridor.

  In the kitchen the twins have dolloped glue and glitter on to newspaper, cotton wool stuck to their fingers and jumpers. The yoghurt pot containing the glue has fallen on to the floor; both twins are still seated at the table, their faces screwed-up and red from yelling.

  ‘Only a glue emergency,’ says Susie, feet apart and breathing heavily as she watches the white puddle of glue spread on the lino.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ With the end of a cardboard tube I scrape the glue back into the pot.

  ‘Bread and jam for tea before we go home?’ Susie asks nobody in particular. She takes eight slices of white bread from the bag and lines them up on the bread board, spreading a thin layer of the butter substitute she’s brought down with her.

  ‘When’re you coming up? Shall I come down and get you? Hungry, boys?’ She’s struggling with the lid on the jam jar. She passes it over. The outside of the jar is sticky. I twist off the lid and stand, holding it and the jar. She notices my expression. ‘What?!’

  ‘Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, you know – big happy family time of year that’s about three weeks away. Or had you forgotten?’ She snatches the jam jar and begins spreading the buttered slices. ‘You had, hadn’t you?’

 
‘I don’t usually—’

  ‘I know you don’t usually.’ She presses two pieces of bread together with her palm and hacks them into quarters. ‘You don’t usually do family funerals; you don’t usually do family weddings!’

  Here we go again.

  She starts on another two slices, waves the knife at me. ‘But this year you’re here, not in some goddam foreign country miles away, and—’ she wipes her nose on the back of her hand ‘—and our father has just died.’ She fishes up her sleeves for the lump of tissue.

  ‘AND,’ she continues, voice shrill, ‘I’m just about to give birth to your nephew or niece, so it would be nice, just for ONCE, if you deigned to spend Christmas with your FAMILY!’

  She flings open a cupboard door to find side plates. A sense of helplessness washes over me. The Vicarage: all of us cooped up there for days on end.

  Susie puts two quarters of jam sandwich on to each of two plates. ‘Eat up, boys,’ she says brightly, putting the plates on the table and kissing each child on the head before walking towards me. ‘What were you planning?’ She’s lowered her voice, is almost hissing at me. ‘To stay down here and spend the whole time pissed out of your brain?’

  ‘Susie, I just haven’t thought—’

  ‘No. You wouldn’t.’ The skin is tight around her mouth. ‘That phone call last week, were you drunk?’

  ‘I’ve left home, Susie. I’m a grown-up.’

  ‘Yes, but ...’ Her voice is suddenly flat. ‘You sounded – weird.’ Her shoulders droop. ‘I was worried.’ She’s chewing the inside of her mouth. It would be so nice to see her smile for a change.

  ‘OK, OK.’ I hold up my hands, palms towards her, apologetic. ‘It was the rain. You know how it gets to me. Here it’s so noisy – with the wind – there’s no escape.’

  Susie shudders, nodding.

  ‘I’d a bit to drink at lunchtime then, after I phoned, I slept it off.’