The Devil's Music

by Jane Rusbridge

  ‘Another thing that drove everyone crazy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You not sleeping. Wandering about in the middle of the night.’ She rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. ‘Oh, let’s not argue. Why don’t you come back with me now?’

  ‘Christmas is three weeks away!’

  ‘Don’t sound so aghast.’

  I think rapidly. ‘Susie, you want to get sorted here first, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Sit down. Let me make you some tea.’ I pick up a quarter of jam sandwich from the breadboard and offer it to her. She shakes her head so I pop it, whole, into my own mouth, pick up another quarter and do the same, checking the boys aren’t watching. I lick jam from my fingers. And, obscurely, she’s smiling, her heart-shaped face lighting up. I smile back. ‘Tea, then?’

  I’ve got my back to her, filling the kettle when she says: ‘You’ll come, won’t you? It’ll be so nice to have you for Christmas.’

  ‘Earl Grey or PG Tips?’ She’s brought both down. I don’t drink tea. Perhaps she imagines I’ll invite guests.

  Then she’s fussing over the children, wiping jam from their fingers and mouths, putting them on the lavatory and chattering about the trials of the early stages of potty training. Every now and then she pauses, a hand to her side, to catch her breath. I return glue and glitter and cotton wool to the plastic crate and carry it out to the car.

  At last, I wave them off, promising to phone in a week or so. A light rain is falling. A taxi pulls away from Sarah’s house. Sarah – eyes dark and dramatic with make-up, hair piled up – blows a kiss from the passenger seat.

  Christmas.

  In avoiding the question of Christmas, I hadn’t found out exactly what Sarah had said. Glad she’ll think about Christmas. Why would she want to? It will be unbearable.

  I get the sheepskin and walk out towards the harbour mouth. The full moon casts shadows, mudflats liquid grey in its light.

  In fairy tales, parents send children out to the forest to die, or be killed. There are wicked, murdering stepmothers. In real-life murder cases, the first suspects are close family. Strange that I’ve ended up in Crete where they draw their families together, three generations often living closely with each other.

  I don’t know where these thoughts are leading me.

  Families: Sarah never mentions children. I’ve never thought to ask. She never mentions parents either, only friends – although perhaps it’s only that she refers to people by name rather than by a label of ownership. I gather from something Tom said that her parents were hippies. A ‘wild child’, she spent her childhood in one commune after another. Perhaps that sort of extended, patchwork family works better. A circle is so difficult to escape.

  Chapter 2

  Judy clutches the white bundle. Punch shrieks and whacks a stick on the side of the stage.

  Something terrible happens to the baby. Perhaps Punch strangles it – you can’t remember. Already a headache throbs.

  ‘Take care of Baby while I go and cook the dumplings,’ squawks Judy. She shoves the bundle into Punch’s arms and bobs off stage. Punch places the scrap of white on to the ground and rolls it from side to side.

  ‘Hush-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,’ he croons, batting the bundle between his flat wooden hands. His hooked nose and the slant of his painted eyes give his face the menace of a mask but Susie, cross-legged on the floor with the other children, mouth slightly agape, appears entranced. You crouch down behind her and run a hand over her blonde head.

  Several more children join the watchers on the floor. Their mothers step back a little into the folds of the curtains at the windows of the darkened social hall, turning to each other, their heads close in conversation. One of the women has the Marilyn Monroe look: peroxide blonde, arched brows and pouting, red lips. When she tilts her head back, laughing, breasts prominent in a tight-fitting top, you recognise her as the woman Michael danced with at Mr Robertson’s retirement do in the autumn.

  I open the front door with my new key.

  ‘You stupid, stupid woman!’ From the kitchen comes Father’s worst voice. The quiet, hard voice.

  Susie, clutching her satchel, tucks her head into her school scarf and runs with fast little steps through the hall and up the stairs. I follow, but in slow motion. I’m not scared. I step past his bag by the radiator. Past the tallboy; past the coat-rack. The kitchen doorway is just after the coat-rack. With each step, blood swishes in my ears. One STEP, another STEP: What’s the (STEP) time, (STEP) Mr (STEP) Wolf? The stairs – patterned carpet, stair rods – are just past the kitchen door. Then in-between my big steps and the blood swishing in my ears, there is a little voice, a tiny voice – like a blow of air, like someone whispering behind their hand, lips tickling my ear. I stop. And there it is again. The Voice!

  When you heard about Marilyn Monroe, you’d stood in the kitchen and wept. It was on the wireless one morning last August. Her death: the police discovering her body; the talk of sleeping pills; suicide.

  Susie and Andy were in the garden, the two of them fighting over the swing.

  Today your eyelids are swollen, eyelashes falling out. You mustn’t cry here.

  No contact, as agreed. You have heard nothing. Some nights you wake at the brink of orgasm, his beard between your thighs. During the day, it’s his voice haunting you, or his smell. Sweat and skin, the male smell of him caught in the roots of the thick hair on his chest.

  I shiver. There it is again.

  ‘Now!’ The Voice says.

  I breathe very deep into my lungs, and I am

  HOUDINI THE HANDCUFF KING!

  I can bend over backwards and pick up pins with my eyelashes.

  I’m in the hallway, almost at the kitchen door.

  ‘Now!’ The Voice says, ‘Now!’

  I drop my satchel and leap past the kitchen door. I pull open the door of the cupboard under the stairs and climb inside, shutting the door behind me.

  Straight away, Father opens it again. My eyes are screwed up tight, my arms round my knees.

  ‘A word with you, young man. Out!’

  I screw my eyes tighter, press my fingers to my eyelids. The Voice is fading.

  ‘Do you hear me? Out!’

  Rolling over, hands flat over my ears to get rid of HIS voice, I curl into a ball.

  Father grunts. His hand grips my arm, my ankle, pulling at me. ‘Do as you’re told, Andrew!’

  ‘Look out! Look out! He’s behind you!’ the children chorus. One little boy jumps up and down. ‘Be-hind you! Be-hind you!’ The words thud out as his feet hit the floor.

  ‘What’s Andy up to today?’

  You jump at Michael’s voice in your ear and straighten too quickly from bending to Susie, pushing the balled-up handkerchief up your sleeve. Blood rushes in your ears; the Punch and Judy furore ebbs and flows in waves of sound. Punch flings the white bundle out of the window and one or two of the children giggle uncertainly. You put a hand on Michael’s arm.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ You kiss his cheek. You mustn’t think about Marilyn Monroe, mustn’t think about Ian and cry here at a hospital social function. People will be watching. ‘I didn’t think we’d see you today. Andy’s with Hugh and Stephen.’

  Michael still has his white coat on, so it’ll only be a dart around the hall to show his face before he goes back to the operating theatre. He’s given Susie a sugar mouse from the Christmas tree. She holds it loosely, still wrapped, staring up at Judy, who is back on the tiny stage, screeching and beating Punch with the cudgel.

  Michael puts a hand on your shoulder to turn you back towards him. ‘You don’t think he might be spending a little too much time running wild with those boys? Mrs Cunningham told me she saw the three of them on the bridge throwing stones at the ducks on Tuesday.’

  A knot of tension throbs at the base of your skull. You can’t get it right.

  But, you don’t want Andy under your feet all the time. For the past few days
of the school holidays it’s been a relief to have him out of the way, down by the river with Hugh and Stephen, not ricocheting around the house baiting Susie. It’s exhausting keeping an eye on him all the time.

  Michael’s watching your face. You rub your forehead. ‘Most of what they get up to is harmless, Michael.’

  Hugh’s parents are musicians: Leonard plays in an orchestra; Mary sings. They have stage names: Leo and Maria. Maria wears flounced skirts with net petticoats. She plucks her eyebrows. These are all reasons for Michael to be wary of Hugh’s ‘suitability’ as a friend for Andrew.

  I tuck my head right down, my nose resting on the skin of my knees. It smells like blotting paper. Father grunts again, using two hands to pick me up. I’m in a ball on the carpet.

  ‘Stand up!’ His voice is very, very quiet.

  I’m rubber-ball hard. I rock to and fro, hands over my ears.

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘Now you’re ready,’ The Voice says clearly, ‘to begin your dance with death.’

  Houdini stands in a cage. He’s wearing swimming trunks. His ankles are in manacles, his wrists bound behind his back.

  A policeman on the stage whacks Punch with a truncheon.

  You lift your chin and look Michael in the eye. ‘It’s the holidays. Andy’s got to be able to let off a bit of steam, wouldn’t you say? He doesn’t want to be cooped up in the house with Susie and me all day.’

  Michael glances at his watch and is distracted by the time. ‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he says. ‘I’d better go.’ He reaches down to give Susie’s back a little rub. She lifts a hand as if to wave goodbye but doesn’t turn her head from the puppets. Her hand falls back to her lap.

  Michael weaves through the audience, pausing in the shadows at the back of the hall to speak to the Marilyn Monroe woman. Then he continues, stopping now and then to greet someone – a hand on a man’s shoulder, a smile and a dip of his dark head towards a group of ladies.

  He rarely suggests you bring the children into the hospital for a visit these days; it’s as if he tries to put them out of his mind. He never talks of Elaine.

  Gales of laughter ripple out as a clown swings a string of sausages around the stage. Punch smacks at them with his fingerless hands; Susie smiles and claps.

  Michael has a way of holding himself, his slender body charged with an energy and purpose that invigorates those around him. When he greets people, he touches them – a handshake, a pat on the back – or tilts his body towards them in a way that suggests concern, interest. It’s part of his charm, this attentiveness. It’s why the nurses blush and giggle, matron bustles and checks her watch before his ward rounds. You were once the same, drawn to his magnetism. Now you’re in bed before him, lying on the edge of the bed, as much space between your body and his as you can get, feigning sleep.

  ‘Andrew! Do you hear me?’ Father’s voice is hard, hissing.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I whisper to The Voice.

  ‘Muttering now?’ Spit lands on my arm.

  I open my eyes, inside the ball of my arms and legs. The skin on the inside of my wrist looks like a petal from one of Grampy’s roses.

  The ease of Michael’s movements through the hall somehow lends the impression that he’s host of this entire event, his own private Christmas party. And it’s not just the women that look at him. He’s in charge. His white coat sails out as he disappears out through the lighted doorway.

  A voice cuts into your thoughts: ‘– until you are dead. Dead. Dead.’

  ‘Michael! Please. Let him be.’ Mummy’s voice.

  His hands hold the top of my arms and at three-fifteen Houdini goes into his cabinet, wrists handcuffed in cuffs that have taken a Birmingham blacksmith five years to make and Father points at my chest with a finger and twelve minutes later Houdini reappears but with his wrists still fastened and his knees hurt so he asks for a cushion to kneel on and Father shakes me and at ten past four Houdini is floppy and sweating and she’s crying out again and Houdini asks if he can be unlocked to take off his coat but the crowd jeer and Father’s mouth is hot and words come out and Houdini uses a penknife to cut himself out of his coat then I taste my snot salty and ten minutes later Houdini is free but Father’s spit is on my face when the crowd carry him shoulder high around the Hippodrome and the wall is hard on my back and Father’s breathing on my face and everything is fuzzy and

  ‘I am Houdini the Handcuff King,’ I say, staring over Father’s shoulder at the gold-and-white wallpaper. ‘People still don’t know how I did what I did.’

  ‘Michael! He’s going to pass out.’

  ‘Pull yourself together!’

  darkness

  until I see sense

  Press my fingers over the woodworm holes.

  On the little stage there are the gallows and the hangman: Jack Ketch. Punch peers out from behind bars. You finger the pearls at your neck. You should have said something to Michael when Andy tied that noose around Susie’s neck. There was a look in Andy’s eye you couldn’t fathom. That was months ago. Now it’s far too late. And the notebook – perhaps you should have told Michael about that. The incident in the empty house Michael heard about from Stephen’s mother – how long might the poor boy have stayed there, tied up?

  What is best you no longer can tell. You seem incapable of making any decisions. What had you been thinking of, keeping these things secret? You look down at the top of Susie’s head, the white-blonde plaits tied with tartan ribbons, and bend to unwrap the discarded sugar mouse, even though you know Susie won’t eat it.

  The woman by the curtains has moved to the light of the doorway. She pats her Marilyn Monroe hair and plucks at the white cardigan around her shoulders. Glossy as a photograph, she’s like the women in Good Housekeeping’s The Happy Home. She flits out through the doorway, following Michael.

  ‘That’s the way to do it,’ Punch squawks.

  On the puppet stage Jack Ketch hangs, swinging limply, noose around his neck. Punch lurches around the gallows, back hunched, the bell on his jester’s hat jangling.

  You should tell him, tonight.

  ‘That’s the way to do it,’ Punch repeats. ‘That’s the way to do it. Now I’m free again for frolic and fun. Free for frolic and fun.’

  Chapter 3

  I’m wide awake in Grampy’s spare room. His snore comes through the wall.

  The bed is high, like in a fairy tale, with lots of mattresses piled up. I’ve been here a month now and only wet the bed once. The night Father made a bed up in the bath so that the mattress would not be ruined, the Voice said: ‘Now!’ and I ran through the snow to Grampy’s.

  Houdini wore a black silk blindfold to help him sleep.

  Under the cool of the pillow is Mum’s blue-and-turquoise scarf. I tie it around my head like Houdini’s blindfold.

  After the first night at Grampy’s, Mum brought shepherd’s pie and sat in the kitchen while me and Grampy ate. She’d brought homemade lemonade and Traffic Light biscuits too. She stamped the snow off her boots in the doorway and held her arms open for me and Susie.

  ‘I can’t think what has got into him,’ she said to Grampy later, shaking her head and pleating the seersucker tablecloth with her fingers. She had her coat on even though it was hot in the kitchen. Her face was red. ‘I can’t think. He is so angry. It’s all my fault.’

  Grampy put a hand on hers and said, ‘He’ll be fine. We’re good company for each other.’

  Mum said, ‘No, you—’ then just shook her head and looked at the tablecloth again.

  One day after school I went home to fetch my toboggan. It was Wednesday 7th February because I wrote it in my exercise book. Our teacher said ten inches of snow fell overnight. Even though it was not spring, Mum was spring cleaning. The doors of the kitchen cupboards were wide open and the packets and jars and bottles were all over the table and work surfaces. She held two jars up to the light. Her hair was messy and flat at the back. She had a jar of cinnamon in one hand and a
jar of Robinson’s Golden Shred in the other. She whirled round and held the two jars right next to my face. There were sticky fingerprints on the marmalade jar.

  ‘What do you think? The colour? Which? The marmalade ...’ Her eyes moved fast from one jar to the other and then she looked at me, blinked and snatched the jars away, holding them behind her back. ‘Of course it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Silly me!’ and laughed. ‘Silly me!’ She kissed the cinnamon jar as she put it back on the table with all the other jars and kissed me, squashing my face with both hands, her breath smelling of Sundays and sherry.

  ‘Now then, what have we here?’ Auntie Jean was on the back doorstep with Susie. They both had snow in their hair. ‘Let’s find out what’s on the television, you two.’ She shooed me and Susie into the hall.

  ‘Sit down now, duck,’ she said to Mum and took the jar of marmalade out of her hand. ‘No good for anyone this now, duck, is it?’ It was her baby-cooing voice, the one she uses with Grampy. And ‘duck’ is Grampy’s word. Mum’s empty hands hung down by her sides; she was smiling but then she started to cry and shake her head as well. Auntie Jean pressed Mum’s head against her chest.

  ‘Why don’t you put your wellies on and take your sister to see Gramps for a bit? Make sure you have your hats and gloves. Your Mum’s a bit under the weather. All this snow! I’m going to run her a hot bath and get her into bed with a hot-water bottle.’

  Auntie Jean used to run Mum a bath and put her to bed after Elaine was born.

  When I say No that is what it means. The Voice is angry like Father’s.

  Auntie Jean came to Grampy’s with clean pyjamas and took Susie to her house for the night. Mum was poorly. The day after that, Auntie Jean came round with Susie after school and said Mum was going away for a big rest. It would be fun because Susie was going to stay in Auntie Jean’s spare room and I was going to stay with Grampy and perhaps we would all go skating on the Thames.