Rough Music

by Patrick Gale

  He was just smiling at her. From under that mustache. She leaned to scoop up her wine glass. She had intended to drink no more but it was there and she was thirsty and he’d laugh at her if she went to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Was she not a good mother?” she asked. “Why was she so sensitive about it?”

  “I dunno.” He shrugged and watched a moth that was crashing around the lampshade. “She was probably hopeless. It was probably amazing she was ever focused for long enough to give birth. She did a lot of acid, you know.”

  Frances had no idea what he meant by this but suspected it had to do with drugs and merely nodded in what she hoped was an understanding manner.

  “She’d forget to buy food or forget to change Skip’s diaper. Babies bored her. Once or twice she even left her behind in shops. But she was great once Skip started to talk. They’d play weird games. She could enter into a fantasy so completely it was almost creepy to watch, but the kid loved it. They’d have been fighting constantly by now. Skip has twice the stubbornness.”

  “And double the dangerous charm.” They laughed then stopped laughing and for a few terrifying moments they just sat there and stared at each other. Frances felt a kind of space yawn open between them, a cool clarity in which it would be permissible to say anything. Here was a man without rules. Nothing seemed to bother him. She understood how this could have goaded such a wife.

  There was a low mumble from Julian’s room. She turned, listening. “It’s a dream,” she said softly. “He’ll probably roll over and stop soon but sometimes they’re really bad and he …” She stopped to listen again. Julian’s mumble quite suddenly became a muffled shout swiftly replaced by a thin, hoarse cry. She jumped up and hurried over. She knew not to turn on the light. Sudden light could make it worse, like waking a sleepwalker. “I’m here,” she murmured. “Was it a bad dream? It’s all right. I’m here.” She crouched beside the bed and laid an arm across him as if to shield him. He sprang up and clutched her. He had taken too much sun on the beach; his body was fiery, his little pajamas damp with sweat. “Oof!” she sighed. “You’re burning up. Tell me about it? Was it so bad?”

  “I can’t,” he cried. “I don’t know. I can’t.”

  “Monsters?”

  “No,” he said, sounding almost cross. “Just people. Lots of people.”

  “Well I’m here now. It was only a dream.” She rocked him gently. “Here. Magic pearls.” It was a babyhood habit; he had always clutched at her pearls as she nursed him and they had come to acquire a potent ability to calm him; a sort of luxury comfort blanket. He clutched at them now, though in a spirit of humoring her rather than out of any real belief. “Try to sleep, hmm? Try to sleep. Listen to the sea. I’ll open your window. No wonder you’re so hot.”

  “The moths were getting in.”

  “They won’t if you keep the light off. And they can’t hurt you. They’re just butterflies that prefer the moon. Here.” She opened the window then returned to the bed to stroke his hair off his forehead and kiss his brow. It tasted of salt, of boy-bacon. “Hear it?” He nodded. “Count the waves on the sand in your head,” she told him. “Bet you can’t get to a hundred.”

  “One,” he said sleepily. “Two.”

  “Night,” she whispered. She kissed him again and rose to go.

  “Ma?”

  “What?”

  “Leave the door open this time.”

  The open door was oddly sobering, like having a dressing-gowned child bearing mutely indignant witness from the room’s corner. She did not sit down properly again but merely sank on the armchair’s arm.

  “Does he dream often?” Bill asked.

  She nodded. “But he doesn’t always have the words to describe them. Once you get the words you can control the dreams. He reads so much and he’s so imaginative that he often doesn’t seem to see the boundaries between dreaming and waking or films and real life. I am Lana Turner. John is Captain Hook. As often as not, it isn’t a nightmare so much as a dream about things he doesn’t understand. How about Skip?”

  “After Becky died it was bad for a while. Now, not really. Or if she does, she doesn’t tell me. Funny that. I almost resent it now that her dreams are getting private.”

  “Oh, I think they always were,” she said, standing. “They tell us things to keep us quiet, like we tell them fairy tales. They learn the dreams we’ll accept and pretend to have those ones. I’m quite sure they dream monstrous things we’ll never get to hear about until they grow up to write novels and spill it all out. Now I must call John! It’s late. Open another bottle if you want to.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  As she passed his chair on the way to the veranda he briefly caught at her hand with his. He did not clasp it so much as brush it, letting her fingers trail through his. It was so fleeting a gesture she was past him and outside before it had fully registered. And even then she wondered if they had merely touched by accident and she had misinterpreted it.

  It was cold out now. She snatched a cardigan of John’s she had left on the veranda railing and shivered as she pulled it about her. She was glad of the hard climb to the car park. It would sober her up even further than Julian had done. John, she thought. John, John, John. But John was now pictured in her head with his hard-faced sister, lost in cruel chatter with her, and only turned to his wife with a look of mild resentment, as to a meddlesome child. No more wine tomorrow, she decided.

  The telephone kiosk’s yellowish light loomed up ahead. She clicked open her purse and felt for change.

  BLUE HOUSE

  “Oh, now I feel awful about this,” Frances said, seeing Will cross from one bedroom to another with his bedding in a great bundle.

  “So don’t,” he told her.

  She took the pillows off the heap he was carrying only her hands were having a bad day and she dropped them. “Sorry.”

  “Leave them,” he said with quiet impatience. “I’ll get them in a bit.”

  “But that room’s so tiny,” she said, following him.

  “It’s fine. It’s got the same view. Look. Better. Windows in two directions.”

  “And those tiny twin beds. Let’s put the boys in here.”

  “Mum, it would feel funny sharing a double with Sandy. I wouldn’t sleep a wink and I’m sure he wouldn’t either. Honestly. We’ll be fine in here. And the boys are always sharing so they won’t mind and they’re nearer to the door in the bigger room so they can stomp outside in the morning without waking us all.”

  “Well at least let me help you make that bed up.”

  “Mum? It’s fine.” He threw the bedding down carelessly and took her hands, leading her out of the room again. “You’ve been fidgeting all day.”

  “Have I?”

  “You know you have. You should get some rest before they get here. And don’t let the boys run you ragged the way you usually do.”

  “Yes, sit down and be peaceful, for pity’s sake,” John muttered from inside a newspaper.

  “All right,” she said, with an abrupt understanding that she had been irritating them all day, and she forced herself to sit on the sofa and keep still, despite a kind of burning in her hands to be active. Her back ached and the backs of her legs, which she knew was a bad sign although she forgot now who had told her so or what it betokened.

  Although there was little to be done, just two new beds to make up, she had woken up on a small rush of excitement and been able to think about little else all day. She had found a broom and swept the floors clear of sand. She had dragged poor John to a supermarket in Wadebridge and half-filled a trolley before forgetting what it was Will had suggested they buy or what she had planned to cook. She had found some children’s books in a secondhand shop in case the weather turned bad again and the boys brought nothing to read. She had even baked a cake; a Victoria sponge, which was to form a party pudding for supper tonight, sandwiched with fresh raspberries and brown-flecked vanilla ice cream from Trenellion dairy.

&nbs
p; “We’re only guests, remember,” John told her quietly now. “Will’s the host,” and she felt sulkily checked, like an unruly child, and cross too that she should be treated like one. It was one of the things she had come to resent most about aging; not the physical aspect, the drying out and stiffening up, but the social one, of being hectored to do less, move less, live less effectively. It was as though the only acceptable way to face old age was in a spirit of glassy contemplation and composure, to become a fund of quaint old stories (so long as one did not repeat them too often), a calm old lap on which babies might be placed and an undemanding extra presence at a dining table.

  Grandmotherhood had taken her by stealth. It was assumed, because she was not an easy woman, that she would respond badly, resent being made to feel old and insist on the children calling her Frances, as though they were cosmopolitan intimates and not relatives at all. A year or two before she too might have predicted such a reaction. Nothing had prepared her for the sensation of near-idolatry each child inspired in her. It was like motherhood, only refined, all the worries and guilts burned off, so that all that remained was a slightly indecent hunger to feel their flesh and give them pleasure. Cake, ice cream, excursions, all the indulgences she had felt she must limit with her own children, she lavished on her daughter’s, as though to buy them for herself.

  Similarly her relations with her son-in-law lacked the difficulties others had led her to expect. It was like having a son only without the worry that she could have raised him better. It helped, of course, that Sandy had chosen to live so far from his own parents for the sake of marriage and work, and had thus chosen Frances and John much as he had chosen their daughter. He confided in her, but not too much. He advised her, but not unduly. He even flirted with her on occasion. The only complication in all this was the guilt she felt when she sometimes wished Will had turned out more like Sandy, less secretive, more—dirty word but no other would do—normal. She suspected that she appreciated Sandy more than her daughter did, who had a way of saying The Boys to indicate husband as well as sons, lumping them all in to the same parcel of weary, womanly caretaking.

  Aware of John’s keeping an eye on her, she behaved impeccably, occupying her restless hands by stabbing away at her tapestry while Will made the rooms ready. He moved his clothes into the smaller room. He laid the table, found extra chairs, conjured up a small vase of wild flowers from the hedge at the garden’s rear and all the while she stitched and kept up equable chat. Tapestry was a habit she had acquired in the middle years of her marriage, pressed by a vicar’s wife into making kneelers. She had long since given up pictorial designs, since her eyesight was too poor to count stitches in the patterns. She contented herself with geometric patterns in the Florentine style, and even after the onset of her trouble found they took less concentration than books and could be pursued quite successfully while her mind skittered elsewhere. Seeing her at such a placid, Victorian pastime had always seemed to please John, which amused her. She supposed the male equivalent would be for him to sit across from her while she stitched, reading aloud from some inspiring text.

  At last she heard a car coming down the drive and a horn toot-tooting.

  “Ah,” said John, who had dozed off.

  “They’re here, they’re here!” she cried and lurched to her feet, dropping the tapestry in her hurry and not bothering to pick it up. “Darling?”

  “Coming.”

  But before she could reach the French windows, Hugo, the eldest, came racing along the veranda shouting. “It’s brilliant. Granny!” he yelled, finding them. He threw his arms round her waist, hugging her tight and said something that was muffled by her shirt.

  “What darling?”

  He pulled back. “I’m so happy,” he said.

  “Well we’re happy too,” she said and laughed.

  “Grandpa!” He threw himself at John in much the same way, then grabbed his hands and stood on his shoes. “Walk me,” he said. He was too old for the game but it was a ritual between them and John took a few obliging steps. “Now show me where we’re sleeping.”

  “You and Oscar are in here,” John said. “In a big bed.” Hugo kept hold of his hand as they went to inspect the room. Perhaps because Sandy was so easily physical with them the grandchildren were uninhibited with John as the children had never been.

  She hurried out toward the car and found Sandy coming toward her with Oscar in his arms, still drowsy so looking about half his age.

  “Frances,” he said and kissed her. “Sorry we’re late. Hideous motorway trouble after Bristol.”

  “You’re not late. Cold supper anyway.”

  “Oz? Look who it is! Very tired small person, I’m afraid.”

  Oscar rubbed his eyes and peered at Frances, too sleepy to speak. She stroked his hair, which was still baby-soft.

  “Shall I run a bath?” she asked.

  “Straight to bed I think,” he said and took in the bungalow. “What an amazing place! Boy heaven. These two’ll run mad.”

  “Good. It isn’t a proper holiday without children. It feels all sad and grown up and pointless.” Will passed at that moment, carrying luggage, and she felt disloyal in case he had heard, so created a diversion. “And look what I bought!” she said and gave the wind vane a spin so that the sculpture sprang into motion. The sandal whacked on the wood and startled Oscar who jerked awake properly and started to cry. “Oh fuck,” she said. “Sorry.” While Oscar was borne off to bed, she fetched more things from the car.

  John emerged with Hugo and led him down to the sea. Stooping to catch what the boy was saying, he looked suddenly the part of old man. A dog must have visited the garden. Frances walked on some shit on her way back in. Encumbered with bags, she scraped her shoe as clean as she could on a patch of rough grass then kicked both shoes off below the veranda meaning to clean them later. She had forgotten about Will’s change of rooms. Thinking to look in on little Oscar before he fell asleep, she dumped the bags with the others on the sofa and walked to the small room on the house’s near corner. And saw something she should not have seen.

  Will was reaching up to slide a suitcase on top of the wardrobe and Sandy, sitting on one of the beds, placed his hands on Will’s backside. The gesture was unmistakable; he did it with the same slow, tender absorption with which a man would cup a woman’s breasts in his palms. She froze, staring, unseen.

  “Oi!” Will said and shook him off, laughing, whereupon Sandy whacked his bottom instead. So it was only a joke.

  Sandy saw her and grinned. “You have no idea, Frances, how long I have waited to share a room with your son.”

  “Oh, behave,” Will told him, turning.

  Frances did her best to laugh but this was not her kind of humor. Sandy was a rugger player, she reminded herself. He had a weakness for horseplay and the company of men. It was embarrassing but harmless. She went to soothe her startled nerves and indulge herself by tucking Oscar into bed.

  He was already tucked in, tiny in the double bed, but the strange, new room had woken him up enough for a bedtime story. It was not really a little boy’s tale but she sat on the bed beside him and told him “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” because it seemed suitable for an encounter with an unfamiliar bedroom.

  They ate early, almost immediately, so that Hugo would not feel left out but could be hustled off to bed too. Her cake was a success, especially with Sandy who flattered her by having three helpings. She liked a man who was unashamed to eat. Will was a good cook, of course, but both he and John had always had a way of eating so little or so slowly that they made a hungry woman feel she must be greedy. Sandy made her feel, as John and Will had not, that she was a lone woman in an allmale household. It felt good, rejuvenating.

  Hugo ate his pudding sitting on her lap because he was at once determined to eat it now and heavy with a long day’s excitement. Despite being so exhausted, he continued to ask questions. Was that last piece for Oscar? When would Oscar eat it? How soon could they swim? Wa
s it true that there were basking sharks here? If Oscar didn’t know the pudding existed, would he miss his helping if someone else ate it? Will parried each question with all seriousness, as though the child were a fellow adult, and she felt afresh her sorrow that he had no children of his own yet. Yet? Dared she still use that little word even to herself? Miracles happened. “Bedtime,” she murmured, kissing Hugo’s hair.

  “But it’s still light,” he said and wriggled around on her lap to play with her pearls the way her own children had, clutching them in a small fist and counting them between his fingers like a rosary.

  “Those come from deep in the sea,” she told him.

  “I know,” he said. “In shellfish. Does it hurt when they take them out?”

  “I don’t know,” she said in all honesty. “I hope not. I think it’s probably like having your wallet stolen; it doesn’t hurt, it just makes you cross until you get another one.” She looked up and saw Will watching them and smiling sadly.

  “He must be the age I was when you sent me to boarding school.”

  “Surely not,” John said. “Far too young.”

  She had a bad feeling, the kind she got when her words were not going to come out right.

  “Nine next birthday,” Sandy said.

  “Exactly the same age, then,” Will said with a kind of triumph. “Just imagine.”

  “It’s different,” she said, meaning now. “It’s all different. Come on. Bedtime for Julian.”

  “I’m not called Julian.”

  In her confusion she stood, easing Hugo off her lap too abruptly. Whining, fighting dismissal, he had not let go of her pearls. The rope snapped and suddenly they were everywhere. “Shit,” she shouted. “Shit!”