The Upright Piano Player

by David Abbott

  “He didn’t do anything, just walked by and looked over—but I thought you’d like to know.”

  “Quite right, Mrs. Abraham, thank you for calling. You won’t forget to give my message to Mr. Cage, will you?”

  His dismissive reply puzzled her. She buttoned her raincoat, aware that there was much in the world that escaped her—and happy, for the most part, that it did.

  As she locked the front door it crossed her mind that the young man might be hanging around, so she was not entirely surprised to see him as she turned the corner, though she had not expected to see him flat on his back. Her first thought was that he had slipped, her second that he had been mugged for as she drew closer she saw that his hands were up, shielding his eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  As he turned his head, she saw that he was holding a small camera.

  “Oh, it’s you. I’m fine, just trying to get a shot of these blossoms. Always got my camera with me, just in case.”

  She looked up and saw the white blossom against the blue of the sky. It was like one of the covers of the Country Life magazine that Mr. Cage got every week.

  “It looks lovely,” she said.

  “That should do it.”

  He stood up and she saw that he had been lying on his newspaper—the pages spread out like a sheet.

  “About all they’re good for,” he said as he gathered up the pages. “Nothing but bad news, is there?”

  His jacket had been folded neatly on a low garden wall and before he put it on, he looked it over carefully. There was some brick dust on a sleeve and he gave the jacket a gentle shake. He decided to take a chance.

  “Talking of which, I was sorry to read about Mrs. Cage. Have you seen the obituary?” He offered her a page of his newspaper.

  She was startled. “Yes, I have, thank you.”

  “Well then, I’ll find a bin for this lot and I’ll be off.”

  She watched him slip the camera into his pocket and walk up to the Fulham Road. He raised his arm in farewell as he turned the corner. She sat down on the wall, feeling faint. She wanted a cigarette though she had not smoked for seven years. In her handbag she found a cough sweet and sucking it brought the saliva back to her mouth. The young man’s recklessness had frightened her. He should not have mentioned Mrs. Cage; he was meant to be a stranger who liked gardens.

  37

  Ed Needy was in Maude’s bed. He was worrying about the company’s share price.

  “Yesterday, it was down another eight pence.”

  Maude lay on her back looking up at the skylight. It was dawn and rain was washing the grime from the glass. I can postpone the window cleaner for another couple of weeks, she thought, before answering.

  “Is that significant?”

  “Who knows?”

  Ed was not yet a rich man. He had arrived at Henry Cage & Partners too late for the initial division of equity and although he had accumulated share options, presently valued at £315,000, he still had almost a year to wait until he could cash in the first tranche. If the share price continued to fall, his money could disappear. He had hoped that with the ousting of Henry, business would boom, but, if anything, the opposite had happened.

  Charles had urged patience.

  “A company’s image is nearly always three years behind the reality,” he had said. “We’re not suddenly going to get a Toys ‘R’ Us or a tobacco company at our door, simply because we will now do business with them. It doesn’t work like that. Some of them will want to punish us for Henry’s fastidiousness and keep us waiting; others are happy where they are—and most of them haven’t even heard of us. It will take time, but word will get around, aided and abetted by some strategically placed PR.”

  He had smiled—“Not in a hurry, are you, Ed?”

  It was easy for him to be sanguine. Over the past ten years of a rising market, the partners had sold off blocks of shares at regular intervals and put the money into bonds or houses in Regency crescents and fashionable shires. It was all right for them—they were home and dry; the company could go belly-up and they would still go on enjoying their safe, platinum lives.

  He sighed, looking at the rain.

  “Why don’t they just give me socking great cash bonuses like Goldman Sachs?”

  “I guess they want you to feel involved with the company. You know—ownership, the family, belonging.”

  She was parroting something she had heard Henry say, but it did not console him.

  “I’m not temperamentally suited to option schemes. I worry. I call up the share price on my screen twenty times a day. It’s a nightmare.”

  She saw him look at his watch. Any moment now, he would swing out of bed and claim first use of the bathroom. He would be in there for twenty-five minutes, leaving all the towels folded and all the surfaces wiped down. If he had used the loo, the end of the toilet paper would be folded to form an arrowhead. She had never been to his flat, but she imagined it to be a temple to prissiness.

  He slept with her once a week on Tuesday nights (Wednesday being the only day when he did not have a 6:30 a.m. session at the gym). He was not married, had no regular girlfriend, and they were both discreet and undemanding. It was a relationship devoid of drama. He was courteous and considerate, but he obviously did not adore her. It was like living at home, with the bonus of weekly sex. She was surprised to find herself happy with the arrangement. For the moment.

  “See you later,” he said on his way out.

  She went to the window and watched him cross the road. Luckily, his car had not been blocked in.

  Ed was on the sixth floor with Charles when she arrived at the office. She made herself a coffee and went into his private meeting room, where the newspapers had been left on the table. First thing every morning, she went through the papers for him, highlighting with a yellow marker any items that mentioned the company, their clients, the clients’ industries, or the competition. She also flagged all relevant personnel moves. It was a task that Maude enjoyed and over the weeks she had broadened the range of his reading, marking out social trends, significant awards, deaths and marriages, even the odd bit of gossip about people he might know. He had been appreciative.

  The tabloids had not detained her for long that morning and she picked up the Times hoping for richer pickings. On the obituaries page she saw a photograph of Henry with his arm around the shoulder of a laughing, dark-haired woman. So that was Nessa; she looked too nice to kick out. Poor Henry. She read the obituary and gave it a yellow frame.

  38

  On the plane Henry tried to read, but he found he could not concentrate. He put down his book and picked up the in-flight magazine. On the cover was a photograph of Venice. He heard a small bleat of distress and looked around before realizing that the sound had come from his own throat. There were only four other passengers in the cabin and they were all sleeping. Nobody had heard his involuntary cry. He looked again at the cover. It was essentially a photograph of a sunset, but in the shadows of the foreground he had recognized a familiar restaurant with its few tables set by the water’s edge.

  It was a restaurant that he and Nessa had loved. It was the best place in all of Venice to watch the sun go down. Sometimes, while they dined, a cruise ship would glide by, obscuring even the lofty warehouses on the opposite bank of the Giudecca canal. The passengers had a grandstand view of the city and they lined every deck, some of them waving to the diners below. Nessa would always wave in return, but only once had she been able to persuade Henry to respond. He had raised his arm as though he were catching a ball. He remembered her laughter. She had called it a greeting without feeling—no better than a gloved handshake.

  The restaurant was owned by a young married couple. She cooked and he took care of the front of the house. The food they served was sublime. At midday, a fisherman docked his small boat just yards from the restaurant’s front door and the couple came out to the quay and chose the fish for dinner that night. The menu was handwritten and f
orever changing. They served either what was fresh from the sea or irresistible in the market.

  Henry had once built a business lecture around the restaurant. It had been on one of his favorite themes. He believed that good businesses are an act of will and that the desire to be great has to be constant. Companies do not lose their energy and integrity overnight. They fade by degrees. A small cut here, a compromise there, and before you know it you are running an ordinary outfit.

  Quality in any enterprise is always under attack and particularly so during periods of growth. In the lecture, he had shown the restaurant as it was and had then outlined how easily it could have lost its way by making a series of what appeared to be rational management decisions. He had taken his audience through these hypothetical changes—all of them logical, all of them deadly.

  Happily, in real life, the restaurant had not changed. It had remained enchanting and unique.

  He thought of the last time he and Nessa had been there together. The sky had been heavy with cloud, a storm predicted around midnight. They had the place to themselves and had chosen a table well back from the anticipated turbulence of the water. They had not been seated long before a priest had joined them on the terrace, an elderly man, balding and slim, in dog collar and black suit and clutching a copy of the New Yorker. Henry had been intrigued.

  When the waiter arrived, it was obvious that the priest was a regular. He was shown to the table next to them.

  “He’s wearing white socks—how sweet,” Nessa had said.

  The priest had ordered his dinner in Italian, switching to English in mid-sentence. The owner had called him Padre.

  The storm had arrived earlier than predicted, a dry storm as it had turned out. At the first sight of lightning the priest had started counting out loud. He had got to eight before the thunder came—a deep rumble and then three sharp explosions, almost overhead.

  “God’s artillery,” he had said, turning his chair to talk to them. “But we must sit tight. It would be a sin to abandon such food.”

  He had been keen for company.

  “I’m American, though my ancestors were a mixed lot. My mother had a place in Venice and I came to live with her when I retired from my ministry. I have been here several years. There are worse fates.”

  “Where were you before?” Henry had asked.

  “First in Washington and then in New York, where I had many disagreements with Cardinal Spellman.”

  He had told them he was writing a memoir. He was planning to call it Thick because one conservative bishop had once told him that the Vatican had a file this thick of his liberal transgressions. He had opened his hand to show a gap of five inches between his thumb and index finger.

  “An apt title, wouldn’t you say?”

  He had talked of the writers and painters he had known and seemed gratified that he had been criticized by his superiors for his friendships with the rich and famous.

  “I love rich people no less fervently than the needy. My only guiding belief has been that the Church should never make anyone cry.”

  When they got up to leave, he had asked them to “say a prayer for an old priest.”

  Nessa had kissed him on both cheeks and proclaimed it the best dinner she had ever had in Venice—with the best company.

  That Sunday, they had attended mass at the Chiesa delle Zitelle, a church not always open, and rarely used by tourists. Apart from themselves, the congregation had consisted of nineteen elderly women and just three men.

  Henry had whispered to Nessa, “God gathers first those whom he loves best.”

  She had replied, “It’s not God who gathers the men, it’s younger women.”

  Henry settled back in his seat. Even in memory, Nessa could make him laugh. He closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

  39

  Henry did not have the look of a grieving man. Careless about eating since Nessa’s death, he had become trim and his daily walks on the beach had given him a tan. He felt indecently presentable. Even Mrs. Abraham, who had greeted him with tears, had been unable to resist saying, “You look well, anyhow.”

  They were sitting at the kitchen table. In front of him, in neat stacks, were what seemed to be hundreds of letters. He could see that some of the envelopes were black-edged and on many he recognized the logo of Henry Cage & Partners.

  “It looks as though I have a lot to do,” he said.

  Mrs. Abraham had not thought it appropriate to tell Henry of the policeman’s visit while he was in Florida, but now she was impatient to tell him her news.

  “He had a photograph of the garden and me opening the front door. It was taken by this girl who was with the man they think might be responsible for the vandalism.” The words tumbled from her.

  “I didn’t think to tell you when I saw them taking the pictures—must have been a few weeks ago—I mean people are always taking snaps of this street, aren’t they?” She paused for breath. “The detective wants you to ring him.”

  Henry was amused to see that her face was flushed with excitement.

  “Did Cummings have a picture of the man?”

  “Yes, an old one, but it was him all right—smart-looking chap.”

  “I’ll get in touch and see what it’s all about. Now, I’d better get this suitcase up the stairs.”

  He was deliberately businesslike.

  “If you want to get off early, Mrs. Abraham, that would suit me. I didn’t sleep on the flight, and could do with a rest. We’ll talk some more tomorrow morning.”

  He was aware of her disappointment as he climbed the stairs. He should have stayed and talked to her. He had remembered to bring her an Order of Service from the funeral, but it was still in his suitcase. He stopped and turned to see her putting on her coat.

  “Oh, I should tell you, Peggy, that Nessa wanted me to give you a check for £10,000—from her estate. I’ll let you have it when the lawyers are through.”

  He thought she was going to collapse. Her hand went up to her mouth and she wobbled, but as he came down the stairs she shook her head and bolted through the front door.

  Surprisingly, there had been no such request in Nessa’s will. Perhaps she knew I would take care of it, he thought.

  He went to see Cummings early next morning at Chelsea police station. The interview was more frank than on previous occasions, but not completely so.

  “I do recognize the man, yes. I had a run-in with him on millennium night. I was pushed into him by the crowd and he kicked and head-butted me.”

  “And did you ever see him again?”

  “Once, in the Sloane Square brasserie.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “He complained about me to the manager. He said I was staring at his girlfriend. I was asked to leave.”

  “And did you?”

  “I was embarrassed. It wasn’t true.”

  The photograph of his house and front garden lay on the table between them. Cummings explained how he had come by it.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s our man, Mr. Cage. His name is Colin Bateman. There’s a history of violence. Did Mrs. Abraham tell you he was outside your house again last week?”

  “No—we haven’t had much chance to talk.”

  “We had him in for a chat and I’ve warned him off, but that’s about all we can do. We can’t prove anything. A few weeks ago he hammered a masonry nail through a dog’s skull to even a score, but I can’t prove that either—his girlfriend was quick with an alibi. But sooner or later, he’ll slip up—they all do—and then we’ll have him.”

  He was a decent man and Henry felt the need to reassure him.

  “I’m sure you will, but I’ve decided to sell the house.

  I’m going to live in Norfolk. My son and his wife live there already—and my grandson.”

  Cummings noted the softening of Henry’s voice at the mention of a grandson.

  “Well, in the meantime, let’s hope our man takes my warning to heart. I wish you a quick sale and a more pea
ceful life in the country.”

  He stood up and held out his hand. The interview was over.

  As Henry left, he felt for the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He had intended to hand over the Polaroids to Cummings, but the need had not arisen and he was thankful to be spared the embarrassment of an explanation.

  He decided to walk home via Blacklands Terrace and the John Sandoe bookshop, just off the King’s Road. Like all the bookshops he loved, it was a miracle of compression. Books were everywhere. On the staircase to the paperbacks room, stacks of books were kept on the treads, leaving little room for going up or down. (It was rumored that no one with a shoe size of over ten had ever made it up there.)

  The shop seemed to order only books that Henry wanted to read and he quickened his step, eager to see what treasures were on the tables. The store was busy and he browsed for half an hour, careful as he moved from one pile of books to another not to hurry the customer next to him. Good manners are a given in bookshops. “I don’t suppose you have a copy of …” The tone is invariably considerate. Between a book’s covers there may be passion, bile, mayhem, or murder, but in the quiet spaces where it awaits its fate (either acceptance or indifference) all is calm. For Henry, bookshops had always been restorative, and buoyed by his visit he bought Thom Gunn’s latest book of poems and left.

  It was just after 2:00 and the King’s Road was busy. A young woman cut across him and darted through the open doors of Body Shop. He recognized her as the head-butter’s girlfriend and from her haste he imagined she was late back from lunch. He followed her into the shop only to see her disappear through the staff door. He waited, affecting an interest in a display of exfoliating sponges. The packaging informed him that they had been “ingeniously recycled from plastic bottles.” When he looked up, she was back in the shop, standing behind the till, wearing a black Body Shop T-shirt. He could not help noticing how beautifully her breasts conformed to the images he had in his inside pocket. He turned and walked towards her.