Rough Music

by Patrick Gale

  “We’re both going to Cornwall,” Julian told her. “But you must be very patient. Here.” And he jiggled an old piece of cabbage leaf under her nose. Lady Percy sniffed the offering disdainfully, pinked a few times then retreated into her bedding. Julian climbed into the big front seat which stretched the width of the vehicle, tried on Ma’s driving gloves and driving shoes and helped himself to a sugar-dusted barley sugar from the tin she kept hidden there. Then he let himself out and obediently went to the garden to play.

  An only child, he saw nothing strange in being told to play when there was no one to play with. In fact he much preferred playing alone to playing with other children since other children invariably imposed rules and systems and overruled his suggestions—mildly posed through lack of aggressive group practice—as to what they should make-believe.

  The Governor’s House had always seemed to him to be enormous and now that he was going to school and gathering points of comparison, he was coming to see that the home he had taken for granted was undeniably strange. Nobody else he knew—he knew at least four other people well enough to visit and he had been to eight birthday parties—lived in a place with so many rooms that several of them were left empty. Pa told him it only seemed big because he was small and Ma said he was never to forget that the place didn’t belong to them but merely came with his father’s job. Neither could deny, however, that with its blackened masonry and louring tower and numberless windows, the place was a far cry from the stylized two-up-two-down pictured on Play School. The house had a vast basement, reached by a rickety set of steps through a trap door in the wooden floor of his father’s downstairs lavatory. In this sinister series of musty rooms, moldy wooden chairs were stacked and tattered posters about the Home Guard and First Aid Procedures curled away from yellowed walls. The Guides and Brownies used to meet down there but apparently they had stopped coming because they had found somewhere more congenial.

  At the top of the house, sunnier and drier, but no less dusty, there was an answering sequence of attics where ancient leather trunks and broken furniture were stored. There were moldering dresses and hats to try on, even a long black veil which scared Julian so much he had only tried it on once, and a First World War gas mask like a skull with a metal box on a long caterpillarish tube. Julian knew that bats nested here, although no one would believe him. He had also found, in strictest secrecy, that he could climb through one of the attic windows and explore the valleys, chimney stacks and unexpected skylight views of the roof. (Another great advantage of being single, he had discovered, was that one could stray into the more dangerous side of play with no risk of talebearing betrayal to grown-ups.) From up on the tiles he could see all Wandsworth, from Trinity Road and the gloomy church to the Common, and the railway cutting spanned by multiple bridges. Closer to, he could see the extent of the prison walls, see the uniformed officers coming and going through the door where Pa went to work and even see down into the yard where the prisoners exercised.

  Most secret of all, he could venture past the point where the internal dividing wall marked house from prison so that he was over the prison itself and could lie flat on the roof and peer gingerly down through one of the skylights that gave on to the nearest wing of cells. It was like a view into a strange kind of monkey house, where all the monkeys wore ties; a vista of cages and walkways full of harsh shouts and laughter and the clatter of heels on metal. He would watch for hours. It was as fascinating as watching an ants’ nest or the glass-sided beehive in the Horniman Museum. He knew that the men in tight uniform with hats on and truncheons were officers, controlled by Pa—who, like the queen, was so powerful he was never seen—and that the men in baggy blue suits, without hats or ties, were prisoners controlled by the officers. He also knew that the prisoners were said to be doing stir or porridge and that they called the officers screws and that he was never to say this word in front of his parents.

  The garden was bounded by high walls on three sides. Two, shaded by sticky-scented limes, had pavement and road beyond them. The third, unshaded for security reasons, divided Governor’s House from prison territory and was overlooked, for most of its length, by the prison factory where the inmates worked up hessian sacks for use by the Royal Mail and potato farmers. The humming of sewing machines and shouts and chatter from the workers so struck Julian that the word factory would never acquire quite the grim connotation for him that it had for others. From the sounds, at least, it seemed to him a place of release and even joy.

  “Men need to work,” Pa explained when questioned on the matter. (He always called them men, never prisoners or convicts.) “Without work, they become demoralized, which can lead to all kinds of trouble. Never underrate the dignity of labor, Julian.”

  It was through one of the factory windows that Julian had his first encounter with one of the men, apparently. He was too young to remember it but it was a story his mother liked to repeat in his hearing so that it had become a memory of sorts.

  “I opened the drawing-room window and I could hear him burbling away. Well naturally at first I assumed he was talking to himself, the way they do at that age. Then I realized there were gaps and I was hearing one half of a conversation. I looked out and there he was, all of four, chatting to one of the men through the factory window. Another man must have joined in as I looked out because I heard someone call out, ‘Wotcha Ginger!’ and this one got quite shirty and said, ‘I’m not ginger, I’m a nice little boy!’ I had no idea they could see out. I mean, I knew they could see the sky and the trees but nothing more. I put a blind in the downstairs loo the same week …”

  There was no other story about such conversations, so Julian assumed it was either an isolated incident or that he had been discouraged in some way. He could not remember her ever trying to stop him talking to the men and, so far as the trusties were concerned, she actively encouraged him. He knew this from an argument he had overheard between her and Pa when they were all sitting out in deckchairs after Sunday lunch once.

  “It’s not right to use him like that,” he had said. “You actively encourage him to talk to them.”

  “It does him no harm, John. He likes them,” she replied. “They’re harmless lifers rotting away in there. He’s like a grandson to them.”

  “Two wife-killers and a robber who raped his hostage. Quite harmless. Frances—”

  “They love him.”

  “Just be careful.”

  And she was.

  “You would tell me, darling, wouldn’t you, if any of the trusties—Bert, say, or Henry—ever said anything that was, well, not quite nice?”

  “Of course,” Julian assured her, very much the nice little boy. But his curiosity was piqued. Which were the wife-killers? How could one tell? How had they done it? And what was a rapist? Judging from the only picture he could find, The Rape of the Sabine Women, a rapist made ladies cross by picking them up in the air and tickling them with his beard when they had nothing on.

  The trusties said plenty of things that were not quite nice. Trailing around after them as they painted rooms, pruned the roses, mowed the lawns or forked out horse poo donated by the rag and bone man and the coal merchant, he had compiled a rich vocabulary of forbidden words. Unrepeatable and broadly incomprehensible, they were none the less precious for being useless.

  Rounding the corner from the drive, he found the trusties at work. They were also known as red bands because of the armbands they wore that showed they could be trusted. Friday was their gardening day. Joe was riding the lawn mower up and down, creating stripes and obviously enjoying himself. (The trusties took it in turns to mow the lawn, officially because it was considered a cushy number but actually, Julian believed, because the old machine was fun to ride and, as with a prize toy, they each wanted a go.) George and Bert were weeding. Henry was working his way around the edges of the grass, chopping off the straggly bits the lawnmower only squashed, using a pair of long-handled edging shears. As always, the screw in charge was sitting on
the steps of the Wendy House looking bored. Today it was Mr. Prescott, who always looked as though someone had stolen his Easter egg. Ma said everyone had to overlook this and be extra nice to him because his wife had died or left him or something, so Julian threw him a cheery, “Hello Mr. Prescott!” which met with the usual resentful stare.

  Meanwhile Henry looked up from his trimming, said, “Afternoon young Ginger,” and carried on. (He persisted in calling Julian Ginger despite the fact that his hair was brown and would only offer the maddening explanation—“You’ll find out soon enough.”) Judging by appearances, Mr. Prescott seemed a far more believable cutter-up-of-wives than the men he guarded and Julian was surprised this possibility had occurred to no one when Mrs. Prescott went missing. But then perhaps Henry was only a rapist and a bank robber. Bank robbers were often the heroes in cowboy films, unless they had Alan Ladd in them, who was always the sheriff. Perhaps you had to be a rapist too for it to count as a serious offense. It was all very confusing.

  Julian walked along behind Henry, picking up handfuls of the turf he had been shaving off the lawn’s edge and adding them to the heap in a wheelbarrow.

  “That’s very kind,” Henry said. “See that funny car of yours is all packed up, then.”

  “We’re going to Cornwall. All of us.”

  “Very nice. I was in Delabole during the war. Evacuee. Nothing sweeter than Cornish flowers. How long you going for?”

  “Two weeks.” Julian stared at the mermaid tattooed on Henry’s forearm. Once, when he was a bit younger, Henry had let him touch it, running his fingers through the hair to trace the voluptuous design. He wanted to touch it again but it was difficult to know how to ask and he feared the request would be viewed as not quite nice. He had a brief vision of Henry on the beach with him, wearing trunks for once instead of his oddly respectable prison uniform. He imagined his father telling him to guard Henry closely the way Mr. Prescott had to, imagined Henry’s grinning obedience as Julian buried his big legs in the sand for his own good.

  “Dad going too?”

  “Of course. He has to share the driving. Can I help you make a roll-up?”

  “Best not. Him Indoors is watching.”

  Julian glanced back and turned on Mr. Prescott a smile of such cloying sweetness that the officer turned away. “Not anymore,” he said.

  Barely interrupting his work to do so, Henry tossed a matchbox on to the grass. Well trained, Julian snatched it up and sat with his back to the Wendy House. There were some matches inside, a tiny foil packet of tobacco and some Rizla papers. Julian sprinkled a very little tobacco on to the paper as he had been taught, licked one side and rolled it up neatly. Small fingers, Henry said, did this job so well that in some countries children rolled up cigarettes in a factory instead of going to school. Julian had a small puff of one once, behind the Wendy House, when Henry let him. It made him feel sick and the taste was bad. He liked the smell, however. It was part of the smell the men gave off even out here in the open, with all the roses scenting the air about them, a good, brown, male smell, like the man who came to mend a window once or the car when you opened the bonnet when the engine was still hot or Pa when he came back from playing rugger with the prison officers’ club. It was a smell that once breathed in seemed to curl like a snake around Julian’s stomach so that he felt excited and rather queasy at the same time. He had the same feeling when he got close to Tom Sherry at school when they played Lions during break, only Antonia Pauffley kept joining in and spoiling everything.

  “So how do you get up on the roof, then?” Henry’s question was casual enough but he saw Julian flinch. “It’s all right. I won’t tell. I don’t want to spoil your fun. I know you’re safe enough. Not like some nippers.”

  Julian glanced toward the house. Ma was wedging a box of groceries under the dormobile table. Turning, she waved to him and headed back inside.

  “When did you see me?” he asked.

  “Yesterday afternoon. Must have been around three ’cause I was coming off my shift. My cell’s in that block. I just happened to glance up as we was coming up the stairs and I sees you peering down through the skylight like a bleeding pigeon. Pardon my French.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “So how’d you get up there, then?”

  “Easy. Through our attic. There’s a window with a broken catch at the far end and you go through on to a sort of valley in the roof. Then there’s a little wall at the far end, between the chimney stacks, and on the other side is the prison roof. I’ve been all over it. But …”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s our secret. You don’t tell anyone you told me and I won’t tell anyone I asked. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “So how do you get to your attic, then?”

  “Up the stairs, silly.”

  “Course you do. Now listen. You know how to use the jelly bone, don’t you?”

  “Course.”

  “Do you want to make a call for me?” Henry quite often asked him to make calls, usually about things that meant so little they might as well have been in code. Henry said they were about bets and dogs but Julian had his doubts.

  “Only if you tell me, you know. Another word.”

  Henry glanced over at his mates who were still working but out of earshot.

  “You’re on. When your mum’s not looking, I want you to ask the operator for Plaistow 9595.”

  “Plar’s Toe 9595.”

  “That’s it, and a nice lady’ll answer and you’re to tell her, ‘Henry says his mum’s birthday’s on Tuesday.’”

  “Is it really, Henry?”

  “Course.”

  “So what’s my word?”

  Henry looked about him, then whispered, “Beef curtains.” Julian was thunderstruck and delighted. “Look, your mum’s waving again. Reckon she wants you.”

  Julian scowled toward his mother, affecting manly reluctance. “Suppose so.”

  “Have a good holiday.”

  Julian got back on his feet, noting how the grass and daisies had left indentations all over his hot knees, and went to rejoin Ma. Soon she would let him call Pa on the internal telephone to ask how much longer he’d be, which is when he could make Henry’s call to Plar’s Toe. Then there’d be supper and a bath and then, still in broad summer light, he’d be allowed to cross the drive in his pajamas and dressing gown and go to bed in the car. He turned back to Henry, who looked up from the wheelbarrow and dismissed him with a wink of his startlingly blue eyes. The realization that Henry would never go on holiday, at least not until he was even older than he was now, however sad, somehow made the anticipation of pleasure all the sweeter.

  When he asked for Plar’s Toe 9595 a woman sounding like Mrs. Coley, only younger, answered. She was not very nice at all.

  “Hello,” Julian said politely. “Henry says to tell you his mother’s birthday is on Tuesday.”

  “Right you are, love,” she said. “And what’s your name?” He told her. “And where do you live?” When he told her Governor’s House, HM Prison, Wandsworth, London, she couldn’t speak for a while because she was laughing so much.

  Julian was rather cross. “Why are you laughing and why did you want my address?” he asked.

  “Nothing, darling. He’s got a nerve, that’s all. Keep your mouth shut and a token of our esteem will be coming your way.”

  She hung up first.

  Token of Esteem was almost as good as Height of Extravagance but both paled by comparison with the sinisterly suggestive Beef Curtains. Curled in the hall armchair, waiting for Pa to answer the internal telephone, he imagined the not quite nice woman in her palatial bedroom in Plar’s Toe drawing magnificent drapes made of dripping steak.

  BLUE HOUSE

  In his more vulnerable hours, throwing a fortieth-birthday lunchparty for himself, however casually, even dismissively he did it, struck Will as akin to inviting people to a wedding with no spo
use to parade. It was obscurely a failure, like buying your own scent or recognizing the family hand behind a Valentine’s card.

  A late starter in the relationships race, by virtue of virtue and confusion, he had not acquired a lover until he left home and went to university. Like many who choose to save themselves, he had perhaps dangerously high expectations: a great student love affair, too passionate not to go up in glorious, mildly tragic flames and then, later, a marriage of sorts, with dogs and artworks in lieu of children, in which the growing beauty of house and garden would lay out public evidence of a rare-field meeting of minds as of bodies.

  His fantasies fueled by Waugh and Forster, he found university life overpoweringly heterosexual after ten years of protective schooling. At party after sordid party he found himself leaning against the fridge lugubriously watching the Noah’s Ark proceedings with variations on the same waspish huddle of more-or-less gay onlookers. In so overlooked, overcritical and confined an environment, the great love failed to materialize. There were, however, three encounters repeated often enough to be hungrily counted as boyfriends. After two and two-thirds terms of reluctant chastity, he met a geologist from New Zealand, a comparative ancient of twenty-one. Then there was a period of horny mourning followed by liaisons with an impossibly sensitive drama student from the nearby polytechnic, so convinced everyone despised him that they came to, and with a depressive fourth-year linguist with no friends.