The Upright Piano Player

by David Abbott

  “You can drop me off in Fakenham and I’ll get myself back to London.”

  When he answered, she could hear the bruising in his voice.

  “Would you? That would probably be for the best.”

  He left her at a hotel in the center of town where she could get a taxi to Norwich and then the train to Liverpool Street. They had parted awkwardly.

  “I must give you some money.”

  “I have a credit card.”

  “No, no.”

  He shifted on the seat, reaching into his trouser pocket. The seat belt made it difficult, but he did not think to release it. Maude sat looking straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry it’s turned out like this.”

  She took the money. He walked round the car and let her out. They did not touch. A flutter of hands and she was in the hotel.

  It’s over, he thought as he drove away. She’s not going to sleep with a bloody grandfather.

  Driving through a small town he saw a newsagent with toys in the window. He stopped, hoping to find something for Hal. He tried in vain to remember what Tom had played with at four. A train set? Or was it Lego? In the event, it did not matter, for the main toy section on the first floor was closed. On Sundays, they sold only things for the beach—balls, kites, crab lines, and fishing nets. He bought a kite that looked unlike any kite he had ever seen, assured by the teenage shop assistant that it would do the business.

  He wanted to stop at a pub and steady himself with a large whiskey, but feared arriving with alcohol on his breath. He did not want that to be his defining aroma when meeting Hal.

  Outside Tom’s village, he pulled off the road. He was shaking. He prayed that he would be able to hide his anger. He locked the car and clutching the kite walked into the village.

  Tom and Hal were at the window of the front bedroom watching for the Mercedes.

  “I guess it will be a Mercedes,” Tom said. “That’s what he always used to drive.”

  “I don’t think he’s got a car, Daddy.”

  At that moment Tom saw his father in the distance. He knew him instantly: the same spare frame, his hair still dark, and worn slightly too long as he remembered. As often with tall people, his father walked with his eyes downcast as though the ground were treacherous; but now the steps were more tentative and Tom realized that Henry was aging and the knowledge made him gasp.

  “There he is—that’s him.”

  Hal was gone—out the front door and running down the street, disregarding every parental warning. From the window Tom saw that the road was safe and fought back the inclination to shout out a warning. He saw the small boy run up to the man and stop. He saw the man kneel down and place a hand on the boy’s shoulder, the kite lowered carefully to the ground. They were talking, the boy uncharacteristically still as one question followed another. When the man finally stood up, the boy held out his hand and brought him to the house.

  15

  “Grandpa, do you like organic vegetables?”

  The boy had insisted that Henry should sit next to him at lunch and had kept up a merry chatter throughout the meal.

  “They’re very good for you, you know.”

  Henry had told a story. Once on holiday with Nessa in Venice, they had sat next to a large party of American socialites at lunch. The hostess was a woman called Nan something or other—he had seen her photograph in magazines. The women were all thin and more vivid than their menfolk. They were on their sixth carafe of wine and the talk was careless. They were discussing wealth and an Englishman had said in all seriousness, or so it had seemed to Henry, “that the main difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich eat smaller vegetables.”

  Tom and Jane had laughed, but Hal had been puzzled.

  “Excuse me, Grandpa, we eat small vegetables, but we’re not rich, are we, Daddy?”

  After lunch they had taken the kite to the beach at Salthouse. The wind had been perfect and the kite had performed as promised. There had been a tacit agreement to fill the afternoon with activity. When the wind dropped, Hal took charge, recruiting his grandfather to search for the white round pebbles he needed for his collection. On the way back, they had made a detour to show Henry the duck pond by the roadside.

  “Watch the cars,” Tom had said.

  Several of them were parked at the water’s edge and at intervals a window would be lowered and a handful of bread thrown onto the water. Sated swans ate only the food that fell into their immediate orbit, content to let the ducks and gulls squabble over the rest.

  They went back to the house for tea.

  “Why don’t you and Hal go up and make the toast, while I give Henry a tour of the shop.”

  If it had been prearranged, Jane had made the suggestion seem entirely spontaneous.

  There were three rooms given over to books, each with a couple of chairs for reading. In one room there was British fiction, in another, American novels and short stories, and in the third room, poetry. The shelves were full and there were vases of spring flowers on the window ledges. He hoped there would be time to browse after tea.

  “He’s been so excited and nervous about you coming.”

  “He is a wonderful little boy.”

  “Yes, he is wonderful—but not so little. I’m talking about Tom.”

  Jane opened the door to the office.

  “Come and sit down, Henry, I want to show you something.”

  The office had a window overlooking the salt marshes. Henry perched himself on the edge of a chair looking out onto the view. Jane had gone back into the shop.

  “You’re probably familiar with this.”

  She had brought back a small blue cloth-covered book. He looked at the title: Journal of Katherine Mansfield.

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “When we started the shop, some of the stock was ours—books we owned—and some we got from book fairs and house sales; rather a mixed lot.”

  She was talking slowly, as if reluctant to make her point.

  “Sorting them out, I flicked through this one, the way you do, and I noticed an underlining—the only one in the whole book. I thought the person who did it must have been so unhappy.”

  She gave him the book, open at the right place. He would always remember that the lines were at the top of page six:

  It is as though God opened his hand and let you dance on it a little, and then shut it up so tight—so tight that you could not even cry.

  The underlining, in pencil, was not a neat and studious exercise aided by a ruler, but deep, freehand wounds in the paper. Henry was suddenly fearful.

  “And then I turned to the front and saw Tom’s signature; it was one of his university books.”

  She was standing in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest, holding herself so firmly that her fingers had almost disappeared into the folds of her woolen sleeves.

  “Living all these years without you has been tough for Tom. If you ever reject him again, I promise you, I will haunt your days.”

  She let her hands fall to her side.

  “Come on, let’s join the men.”

  Following her up the stairs, Henry thought, My God, how Nessa must love this woman!

  After tea and toast, Hal had climbed onto Henry’s lap and clasped his face, the little fingers warm on Henry’s cheeks. Then with the gentlest of pressure, like a good barber, he had indicated how he wanted Henry to move his head. He had studied Henry’s face in silence, as though committing it to memory. Then with a smile, he had hopped down from the chair.

  Henry had left half an hour later. He had asked after Nessa, but Tom had said that she wanted to give him all the news herself. They had walked back to the car with him. Strangers driving through the village would have seen a family tableau—a pretty woman with corn-colored hair, linking arms with an older man, the other two, so obviously father and son, skipping on ahead. “Ahh,” they might have exclaimed.

  Back in London, Henry checked his messages. There was nothing. H
e realized that he was disappointed. He had a shower but knew he would not sleep. His head was too full of the day’s events. It had been a good day, better than he could have hoped for—the day he became a grandfather, the day he had been reunited with his son and Jane. So why, he wondered, was there no elation?

  He went downstairs and made a coffee, careful to choose the decaffeinated beans. In the drawing room, the shutters were open and there was enough light for him to see what he was doing. The Polaroids were still there, entombed in their book of verse. He looked again at the splayed legs of the head-butter’s girlfriend, thinking of Maude.

  16

  He had always had a temper. A short fuse, his mother had called it—said it twice to the magistrate. She had been wearing a black wool suit from As Good As New, a genteel second-hand shop just off Elyston Street. It was July and nearly ninety degrees and most of the people there were in cotton and linen. He was ashamed of her red face and damp hair. He knew she had bought the suit to impress the court. As if the magistrate would not know, just by looking at her, that tomorrow she would be mooching around in a cotton shift with bra straps slipping down her fat, mottled arms. Colin did not dislike his mother; he just couldn’t stand the sight of her. Even as a young boy he had rejected her taste. He would not wear the T-shirts she bought with their Disney tack and patterns and would hold out for solid colors. He had grown up sleek and stark and full of scorn.

  In court that day, she had spoken of her son’s violence as though it were dandruff, unattractive but passing. The magistrates had weighed her care-worn loyalty against the boy’s record and sentenced him to nine months at a youth correction center near Croydon.

  He had spent his sixteenth birthday there. Joe the warden and his wife had laid out a few bowls of crisps and a birthday cake on the table tennis table. He remembered the cake, a shop-bought Victoria sponge with sixteen previously owned candles ringed around the edge. Some of the candles were so stunted, it was unlikely that the flames would last long enough for Colin to draw breath. He did not even try. Before Joe could light the blackened wicks, Colin had fled to his room.

  Within a week he had started cutting his arms. He had managed to hide it from them for a couple of months, but one day in the washroom, Joe had come in unexpectedly and seen the fine tracery of scars on Colin’s arms. There had been a few sessions with the regional psychiatrist and they had decided to send him home three months early. The cutting had stopped as soon as he was back in London. His mother had wanted him to add to his three O-levels, but all he wanted was work and money. He was tall and strong for his age and had been taken on as “the boy” by a scaffolding company. The work was good—it paid well and he liked being up high, looking down on people. He lived with his mother in her council flat off Ebury Street, casually slapping her whenever the mood took him.

  He heard the bleep of a monitor; they must be checking his blood pressure. He was conscious that his left arm was raised high, in some kind of a sling. He looked up and saw that he was on a drip as well. He was surprised. All this for a broken arm? Come summer, he would have to go through airport security with two steel plates in his arm. Can’t put them in a plastic tray, can you? Not that he had any cash for a holiday—he would not be back on the scaffolding for a while, if ever. Not much call for a bloke with a weak arm. Shouldn’t have lost it with Big Dave; not a floor up, that’s for certain.

  He frowned at the memory of his fall and the scuffle that had preceded it. A brawl later denied by both men to a succession of cynical listeners: the boss, the union official, a bored policeman.

  There was the click of high heels in the corridor. He relaxed. That will be Eileen, maybe she will have some good news. As the drugs claimed him once more he comforted himself: he had seen the way men looked at her body, there was money in that sort of look. Drifting off, he wondered what the old perv with the Mercedes had thought of the photos.

  The next day they had him up early.

  “Your girlfriend looks nice.” Marlene, the Irish nurse, was getting him ready to go down for his X-rays.

  “She’s nice enough.”

  “Oh, I can see you’re a sweet talker.”

  They showed him the X-rays. He had snapped both the bones in his left forearm. Now the breaks were straddled by two steel plates, the screws clearly visible. The surgeon was pleased. They had been clean breaks. He did not anticipate any problems. When the swelling subsided they would put on the plaster cast, which he would need to wear for six weeks.

  Back in the ward, he asked for more painkillers and slept. When he awoke, the afternoon had gone and Eileen was sitting by his bed. She had brought grapes.

  “Very original.”

  “They’re seedless. I thought they’re easier to eat.”

  “I’ve still got one hand—and I can still spit.”

  “Sorry.”

  Careful, keep it down, keep it down; what did the shrink at the remand home say? Count to ten and think of something pleasant. Jesus, seven years training to come up with that. Don’t upset the girl, though. Go easy.

  “I’m sorry. It’s the pain.”

  Look at her, eyes brimming over.

  “Come back tomorrow, I’ll be better then. Sorry, and all that.”

  He closed his eyes and heard the rustle of paper as she put the grapes on the locker. Did she say goodbye? Next day, he could not remember.

  17

  Mrs. Abraham had her routines. On Mondays, she did the washing and ironing. She liked to come in about a quarter to nine, get the machines going, and then sit at the kitchen table with her Daily Mail and a coffee until a beep from the laundry room told her that the first wash was ready. She looked forward to this leisurely prelude to the working week. Monday was the only day that she did not read her newspaper on the bus. She had built a life of carefully contrived small treats and she understood the value of postponed pleasure.

  When she saw Henry at the kitchen table, still in his dressing gown—a cup of steaming coffee at his right hand and the Times laid out before him—she had not bothered to disguise her irritation.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Abraham.”

  Henry had been tempted to mention that it was his house and that he even had the right to breakfast at his own table, but caution prevailed. He sensed that his unexpected presence had ruined Mrs. Abraham’s morning. A man of fixed routines himself, he was respectful of the agendas of others. Besides, she was very good at ironing his shirts, savvy enough to know that one ironed away from the collar points. Such expertise was not to be jeopardized in this day and age.

  “It’s just a one-off. Sorry. Business as usual tomorrow.”

  The following morning he arrived at the brasserie five minutes before it opened. Peering in, he could see waiters standing in the shadows. He tried to identify Maude, but the figures were indistinct, only their white aprons detectable in the gloom. He had a premonition that she had left, that he would never see her again. He knew that he could find his way to her flat, but he would not try. If she had moved on, it was a clear sign that she did not want to see him and he would not go where he was not wanted.

  “Is Maude in today?”

  He had tried to make the question seem casual, planning his movements in advance. He saw himself as in a movie, a cup of coffee held halfway to his lips—a smiling, urbane man pausing to ask the kind of polite question you would ask—no more than a regular customer inquiring after a familiar waiter, small talk as you settled the bill.

  “She doesn’t work here anymore. She phoned in yesterday.”

  “Oh.” He felt his stomach lurch, but took a sip of coffee to show that the news was inconsequential. “I hope she’s gone on to something exciting.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He left a tip, larger than usual. On the way out, he saw the head-butter’s girlfriend sitting alone at a window table. He looked away, but not before their eyes had met. He was not sure, but he thought she had smiled at him.


  Out on the street, a crowd was emerging from the underground. People with fast walks and destinations. He was caught in their flow until the traffic lights at Lower Sloane Street halted the tide and he was able to peel away into the square. He walked to the fountain. The pond had been drained for the winter, but there had been enough rain to coat the bottom with a soupy mix of leaves, fag ends, paper bags, and God knows what else.

  As he watched, a police car bullied its way round the square, its siren screaming. The morning stretched out in front of him. He decided to walk around until the bookshops opened. There, at least, he would find diversion, if not solace.

  Crossing the Kings Road at the junction with Cadogan Gardens he heard the sound of men shouting. A small crowd had gathered and he joined them. A van driver, young and large, was exchanging obscenities with a taxi driver, small and old. Both men were out of their vehicles, squaring up in the middle of the road—traffic building up behind them, horns blaring.

  “You don’t park on zigzags, you cunt—you fucking idiot.”

  “Why don’t you just piss off?”

  As Henry watched, the slanging turned to wrestling, the bigger man holding the cab driver in a headlock, and all the while screaming at him, “You don’t park on zigzags, you fucking arsehole.” He was jerking the smaller man up and down and the taxi driver, short of breath, had stopped answering back.

  Henry looked at the people around him. Most of the men were smiling and quite a few of the women, too. Just imagine the hilarity if the big chap managed to break the small man’s neck! What a laugh that would be! Henry pushed through the crowd.

  It had been surprisingly easy to part the two men. He had simply walked up to them and said, “Calm down, or you’ll get yourselves into trouble.”

  The van driver had backed off and Henry had shepherded the older man back into his taxi.

  “I wasn’t parked on the bloody zigzag, I was letting someone off.”