by Nicci French
‘Back?’
‘Home.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Home.’
‘We have to get rid of the rug. I saw some huge bins on our way – we can just push it into one.’
She put her hand on the small of my back and pushed me onto the path.
‘What about his car?’ I said suddenly.
‘What about it?’
‘What do we do with it?’
‘You’re right. I didn’t think.’
‘Let’s just leave it somewhere in the middle of London, throw away the keys.’
‘If we leave it, someone will report it. The police will be called to tow it away. You always see it happening.’
‘We don’t have a choice.’
We walked slowly back to the car. The half-moon was high in the sky now and reflected in the water. I thought of him out there, lying on the bottom for the fish to nibble at.
‘I know,’ Sonia said. ‘We’ll drive it to Stansted.’
‘The airport? Why?’
‘We can just leave it in the long-stay car park. In most places cars get towed away after a few days, but people park cars there for weeks. Months, even.’
‘You think?’ I said doubtfully. I couldn’t work out if the idea was brilliant or crazy.
‘I can’t think of anything else. Can you?’
‘I can’t think of anything at all.’
I got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, then looked at her sitting beside me, so upright, fastening her seat-belt and pushing stray locks of hair behind her ears. ‘Do you want to know what happened?’ I asked.
‘Do you want to tell me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then wait.’
‘Sonia.’
‘Yes?’
‘You can’t tell anyone about this, ever.’
‘I know.’
‘Absolutely no one.’
She knew who I was talking about.
Before
I’ve never really had secrets. When I was at school I had friends who lived in their own families like spies. They led double lives, concealing sexual activity, dubious friends, cigarettes, drugs, laziness, delinquency, in some cases outright criminality. It seemed such hard work. There was so much to remember, so much to conceal. And all it took was a word at the wrong time, something left in the open, a lie that didn’t quite fit and everything would be exposed.
I didn’t see the point. I didn’t exactly rub my parents’ noses in my teenage behaviour, but if they asked a question, I answered it with the truth, if not necessarily the whole truth. I didn’t have secret lives, I didn’t have secret friends, I didn’t have secret admirers. I never kept a secret diary or, in fact, a diary of any kind. I never drank in secret or smoked in secret.
But I did have one secret, which, perhaps, on deeper consideration, was the reason I had agreed to Danielle’s ridiculous and irritating suggestion. It was a secret love, a secret passion, a secret obsession, which I kept in a case in the cupboard and only brought out when nobody was around. It was a Deering Senator five-string banjo.
Most of my memories of the gig that Danielle had seen were of what was wrong with it. It was under-rehearsed. One of the main musicians had dropped out at the last minute. We all knew it was the end of our college life and that lots of the people there wouldn’t meet again for years, if ever. But for me the occasion hadn’t lived up to all the emotion, and Danielle had just projected onto our performance emotions that weren’t there. Above all, we were lacking a banjo. How can you play bluegrass music without a banjo? You can’t.
It wasn’t until years later, when I was in Denmark Street to buy some sheet music, that I glanced at the windows of electric guitars and basses and there it was, nestled in the corner, looking at me like a pathetic little puppy begging me to buy it. It cost more money than I had in the bank so I went into the shop and beat the price down to all the money I had and walked away in such a state of shock that I forgot to buy the sheet music I had come for. I took it home like an adopted waif to join the family of instruments I already had, the electric keyboard, the fiddle, the guitar, the recorder I only played at school and the flute I hadn’t touched for years.
I suspected that for most people the banjo seemed a comical instrument, the sort of thing that would be played by a man wearing a red-and-white-striped jacket and a straw boater, singing slightly saucy novelty tunes. To ordinary people it probably even looked comical, its round body like a child’s drawing of a guitar and its metallic brittle tone lacking the warmth and colour of a guitar. It wasn’t like that at all for me. I can’t put it into words, not really. Music has always been a refuge for me. Probably what made me turn to it in the first place was that when I was a child we had a piano in a spare room, an old one that was battered and out of tune. When my parents started shouting at each other, I would go to that back room and play for hours and hours, losing myself in the strange songbooks and piles of sheet music they’d inherited along with the piano from some old aunt. That was what music had always been to me. Somewhere I could escape to, where there weren’t words, where you didn’t have to be clever.
Maybe that was the problem with Amos and me. Amos definitely fell into the clever category. He didn’t respect my intelligence, that was for sure. And I suppose I didn’t respect his musicianship. Amos loved music. He certainly loved listening to it. He could play, after a fashion – he did his grades when he was at school and all that – but it was never natural to him. For him, playing music was always a frustration. He could never translate what he heard in his head. He had a characteristic tense expression when he played, which at first made me laugh and then didn’t. I tried to teach him, in our early days together, manipulating his arms and neck as he crouched over the keyboard, attempting unsuccessfully to get him to loosen up, to let himself go. But I stopped that. Amos had a very developed sense of his own dignity.
I wouldn’t dare say this to anyone, but to me every instrument spoke with its own tone of voice. The banjo may seem shallow and silly to other people but to me it talked of something old and melancholy and neglected. Gradually, in the weeks after I had bought it I took it out of its case and tried to get it to speak with some kind of fluency. But I had never played it in front of anybody, not once. When Danielle asked me, I felt it, deep down, as a challenge.
I couldn’t think where we should play. My own flat was too small and the walls were dangerously thin. I mentioned the problem to Sally and she said we could come round to her house. I protested feebly, mentioning her child, her neighbours, the trouble and noise, her husband, but she absolutely insisted. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour,’ she said. ‘I feel I’m becoming more and more cut off from the world. I’d love to have people around.’
I was a little concerned to hear someone actually pleading with me to have a band rehearsal in their home, but I was too relieved to push the point much further. We decided on Sunday afternoon and then I rang everybody about it. It seemed alarmingly easy.
I arrived at Sally’s home in Stoke Newington ten minutes early but I still wasn’t the first.
‘Hayden’s already here,’ she said, as she opened the door.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’s playing with Lola.’
That wasn’t completely accurate. He was lying back on the sofa in the living room and Lola was clambering up his rangy frame, as if he was a piece of apparatus in an adventure playground. Her foot, in a grubby green sock, was firmly on his neck and one hand was flat against his stomach. He looked as if he was asleep, but when she toppled sideways as if she was going to fall head first onto the stripped-pine floor, he extended an arm and rescued her. She shrieked with laughter.
‘Lola, leave the poor man alone,’ said Sally, happily. ‘Bonnie’s here, Hayden.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up right now.’ He gave a groan. ‘Careful where you put your knee, young lady.’
Lola glared at me briefly
and went back to prodding Hayden.
‘Can I get you anything?’ said Sally. ‘Hayden’s had coffee and cake and some biscuits. I’m just making him some tea.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Lovely.’ I left the room and went in and out of the house, bringing my electric keyboard, my guitar and the banjo. Hayden didn’t offer to help or even say anything. He sat up, balancing Lola on one knee, and sipped the mug of tea Sally had brought him, his grey eyes watching me over the rim so that I felt suddenly self-conscious.
‘I brought a keyboard,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure if we’re going to need one and I’m rather hoping we don’t. This is just a first get-together. It’ll all be very casual.’
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me with an enigmatic smile playing on his lips. I felt that he was, in some curious way, making up his mind about me, which of course made me talk more.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘You should treat this as an audition of us. You might well decide that it isn’t worth your trouble, and if you do then it will be absolutely fine to –’
At which point, thank the Lord, the bell finally rang. I gestured helplessly and went to answer it. It was Joakim and Guy, who was battling with his equipment. ‘I didn’t bring the full kit,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what you wanted.’
He struggled through, followed by Joakim, who shrugged at me helplessly. I turned to close the door and almost shut it on Amos, who didn’t look amused. ‘I assumed I’m playing guitar,’ he said.
‘It’s all very casual,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter how casual it is. You still have to play an instrument.’
Neal arrived with his bass and amp, then Sonia, and suddenly it was like a party. Sally dashed around taking orders and bringing mugs of tea and coffee and trays of biscuits, cake and sandwiches.
‘Where’s Richard?’ I asked her.
‘He plays football on Sundays,’ she said.
‘He does know about this?’ I asked, suddenly anxious.
‘Of course he does. Why shouldn’t he?’
I’d had a horrible flashback to being about fifteen and having someone’s father come back unexpectedly to discover something happening that wasn’t meant to be. Meanwhile the party seemed to be showing no signs of turning into a rehearsal. Lola was running around screaming with what appeared to be happiness but might at any moment turn into a full-blown tantrum. Hayden had not yet got up from the sofa but he seemed entirely unconcerned about not knowing anyone. He was like a planet: sometimes a person would gravitate towards him and say something I couldn’t hear. I had the impression that everyone in the room was intensely aware of him, even when their back was turned to him and they were talking to someone else.
‘Who is he?’ said Joakim, close to my ear.
‘I met him through a friend.’
‘What’s he play?’
‘He’s brought a guitar, so I suppose . . .’
‘Is he any good?’ This was from Amos.
‘I don’t know.’
Amos looked around suspiciously. ‘There seem to be too many guitarists.’
‘I thought we could mix and match a bit. It’s all very casual.’
‘You keep saying that,’ said Amos, ‘but we’re going to be playing in public. We don’t want to make fools of ourselves.’
‘It’ll only be in front of Danielle’s friends and family. That’s not really making fools of ourselves.’
‘Aren’t you going to start? I’ve got to be away by five.’
‘That’ll be no problem.’
‘You’re supposed to be in charge,’ he said. ‘You need to assert yourself from the beginning. Come on, now.’ He clapped his hands in a way that made me feel glad we’d split up and irritated that I’d let him into the band. There was certainly one too many guitars; he was right about that.
‘Quiet,’ he continued. ‘Bonnie’s got something to say.’
There was an ominous silence. I coughed. This was ridiculous. I was used to dealing with thirty hormonal teenagers. I could handle this.
‘I’m grateful you all came,’ I said, ‘and grateful to Sally for letting us play here.’ I looked around but Sally had gone. I’d last seen her running out of the room in pursuit of Lola. ‘This is mainly a chance for us to meet up and get to know each other. I thought we could start by having a go with something simple.’
‘Have you got any music?’ said Amos.
‘We need to talk about what we want to play. Maybe some of you have suggestions. But my first idea is that we could try a tune. I mean a very basic tune that I could play and then everyone can have a go at it on their own instrument. If it works, then it’s a fun thing to dance to and it can go on pretty much indefinitely.’
There was much bustle as people took instruments out of cases and tuned them. Guy knocked one of his cymbals over. Neal switched on his amp, which resulted in feedback that virtually shook the house. I looked at Hayden. He hadn’t taken his guitar out of its case. In fact, he hadn’t noticeably moved. Was he contemptuous? Amused? Bored? Had he finally realized what he’d got himself into? Well, I’d warned him.
With trepidation, I took out my banjo. It was crazy but I would hardly have felt less nervous if I’d removed my shirt and bra. The sight of it was greeted with a murmur of surprise.
‘What the hell’s that?’ said Amos.
‘Are you actually going to play it?’ asked Neal, grinning.
But Hayden finally stood up and came over to me. He lifted the banjo out of my hands and cradled it as if it were a newborn baby. Then he ran his hands over the strings, releasing a high, delicate sound. He smiled at me. ‘Good,’ he said, and returned to the sofa.
‘I’m going to play a tune called “Nashville Blues”. Sorry, Sonia, there are no words to this one.’
‘That’s a relief,’ she said, to general laughter.
‘Guy,’ I continued, ‘you follow me. You’ll just need brushes. And you, Neal, as well. It should be easy enough for you. Then, when we’re done, maybe someone else can pick up the tune and we’ll see how it goes.’ I fitted the picks onto my fingers and fiddled a bit with the tuning. Then I looked at Neal and Guy. ‘Listen to a few bars and then follow me. OK?’
One of the things I love about the banjo is that the first note of a tune sound tentative and when you get going it sounds as if a clockwork motor has started and two people are playing at once. As I got into the tune I saw a slow smile coming over Sonia’s face and she began to nod in time. When I got to the end I went into a vamp. Then I looked around. ‘Anybody?’ I said.
Before anyone else could do anything, Amos stepped forward with his guitar and started to play. It sounded awful, so awful that after a few bars it became literally impossible for anyone to continue and we all ground to a halt in such disarray that everybody was laughing. Amos turned bright red.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ I said. ‘And brave. Let’s start again.’ I looked around. ‘Joakim. You have a go.’
I played through the tune, then looked at him and nodded. He started to play, frowning with concentration, glancing at me. It was all right, not bad, but then he pulled a face, stopped and shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he said, almost with a scowl. ‘Sorry. I just can’t.’
‘It was good,’ said Hayden, from the other side of the room. He stepped forward and took the fiddle and bow from Joakim’s hands. They looked tiny in his grip. ‘You did this, yes?’ He played the first notes just as Joakim had played them, glanced at me and nodded. I played the tune once more and looked at him. He smiled and played Joakim’s notes once more – then something mad happened. For a moment we weren’t in a sitting room in Stoke Newington, we were in the Deep South on J. J. Cale’s back porch with Ry Cooder and Earl Scruggs and God knew who else. As he played, Neal and Guy clung on, like fallen riders with a foot caught in a stirrup. He glanced at me in the way you do when you play together, keeping in time, signalling tiny shifts with your eyes. When he stopped, there was more laughter, but of a di
fferent kind.
‘That was amazing,’ Joakim stammered. His cheeks had flushed.
‘You did it,’ said Hayden, handing him back the fiddle. ‘You just need to let go.’
Amos was smiling as well. But not with his eyes.
After
We drove to Stansted in silence. It was three in the morning and the roads were practically deserted. Each time there were headlights in my rear-view mirror my mouth dried and my heart raced at the thought that it might be the police. This was what it must be like to be a criminal, I thought. But, of course, I was a criminal now. During the last few hours I had crossed a line into a different world.
At one point, Sonia ordered me to stop in front of a row of terraced houses. She got out of the car and dropped the plastic bag full of everything I’d collected in the flat into a dustbin that was standing on the pavement. She pushed it deep inside and wiped her hands on her trousers before climbing back into the car. I drove on. Later, we stopped at another bin and got rid of the rug.
‘Stop,’ said Sonia suddenly, as we reached the signs to the long-stay car park. I pulled over.
‘What is it?’
‘There are cameras at the barrier. When you take your ticket to get in, you’re staring into one.’
‘Then we can’t go there.’
‘Yes, we can.’ She opened the glove compartment and fished out a pair of sunglasses. ‘Put them on.’
‘But –’
‘Now your scarf. Tie it over your head. Oh, let me.’ She wrapped it tightly around and nearly throttled me with the knot. ‘Nobody would recognize you now.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll lie on the floor. Let’s go.’
She lay down in the back of the car and I drove into the car park. I took the ticket, the barrier rose and signs directed us to Zone G.
‘Hang on!’ Sonia said, from the floor. ‘Wait!’
‘What?’
‘Pull over. This is stupid. It’s not just at the entrance there are cameras – they’re everywhere. We haven’t thought this through properly. I must have been mad.’