Night Music (27 page)

‘Do you want to come in?’ she said, gesturing into the kitchen. Thierry, who had been doing his homework, was already out of his chair.

‘No, no,’ said Byron. ‘Probably best out here.’ He nodded towards the garden, and Isabel stepped out, closing the door behind her.

Oh, God, she thought. He’s going to want money for all the things he’s left. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘It’s Thierry,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’ she said, anxious now.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said hastily. ‘It’s just I’ve sold most of my pups – well, reserved them for people – and before I get rid of the last two, I was wondering whether you’d want one. Thierry’s grown fond of them, you see.’

She saw that two black and white puppies were wrestling in a box on the ground nearby.

‘They’re nearly ready to go,’ he went on, ‘and I just thought . . . well, he seems to get a lot from being around animals.’ He hesitated, as if he was afraid he might say too much. ‘I make him shout for them.’

‘Shout for them?’

‘I tell him he has to call them so that he can train them. I get him to do it in the woods.’

‘And he does?’

Byron nodded. ‘Gets quite loud sometimes.’

A huge lump came into Isabel’s throat at the thought of her silent son’s voice ringing out. ‘What does he say?’

‘Nothing much. Just shouts their names and “Here”, “Sit”, that kind of thing. I thought it was good to have him making some sound. I think he finds it easier in the woods.’

They stood facing each other, silent.

‘How much have you been selling them for?’ Isabel asked.

‘Oh, a couple of hundred each.’ And then, as he saw Isabel’s face, he added, ‘But not for you. For Thierry. I wasn’t planning on . . .’

‘On what?’

‘Charging you.’

Isabel coloured. ‘I’ll pay what everyone else pays.’

‘But that’s not what I—’

‘It’s better if I pay. Then we’re square.’ Her arms folded across her chest.

‘Look, I didn’t come to sell you a puppy. I came to ask if Thierry would like one. A gift. But I had to check with you first that it was okay.’

Why would you give us something for free? Isabel wanted to ask, but the question stalled on her lips.

‘It’s the runt of the litter,’ he added, pointing to the darker of the two.

She suspected this wasn’t true but she couldn’t challenge him. She bent down and lifted it from the box. It squirmed against her, trying to lick her neck. ‘You’ve given us an awful lot already,’ she said, sombrely.

‘Not really. Round here most people help each other out.’

‘All that stuff,’ she said. ‘The firewood, the hens –’

‘– weren’t really from me. I told Colin you’d be happy to swap those wooden pallets for some layers. Really. It’s nothing to get worked up about.’ He picked up the other puppy. ‘Be good to see that little chap go to a good home.’

She looked at him, this unreadable man whose discomfort mirrored her own. She realised he was younger than she had thought, that his size, his strength, his containment masked something like vulnerability. And she did what she could to unbend. ‘Then thank you,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I think – I know he’d love to have a puppy of his own.’

‘He’s—’

Byron broke off as a van emerged from the trees. Isabel flushed when she recognised the distinctive sound of its diesel engine. Some childish part of her wanted to run inside and wait for it to go away.

But, of course, it didn’t. Matt jumped down from the cab and strolled casually to the back door, then saw them. Isabel noticed distantly that Byron took a couple of steps away from her as the older man approached.

‘Byron, did you pick up that insulation?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And have you finished clearing the drainage?’

Byron nodded.

His questions answered, Matt half turned from him, as if he was of no more interest. Byron, Isabel saw, had retreated into himself, as if his body were a shell. His face was blank.

‘Sorry I haven’t been round.’ Matt stood directly in front of Isabel. ‘Been caught up on a job in Long Barton.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Isabel. ‘Really.’

‘But I wanted you to know I’ll be back tomorrow. As usual.’ He was looking at her intently, as if there were some extra meaning in what he had said.

Isabel held the puppy closer to her chest, grateful for the excuse to focus elsewhere than on his eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said.

He didn’t move. She met his eyes, straightening her shoulders. He held them slightly longer than necessary but, apparently unable to read anything in them, at last looked away.

‘Whose is the pup?’ he said.

‘Mine,’ Byron told him.

‘Bit young to be out, isn’t he?’

Byron took the puppy from Isabel and put it back in the box. ‘I’m taking them home now,’ he said.

Matt did not seem to want to go. His gaze flickered from one to the other, until he turned to Byron. ‘I forgot to mention – from tomorrow I’ll want you on the Dawson job. All right? They’ve some land needs clearing. Oh, and I’ve got something for you.’ He brought out an envelope, and began to count out bank notes ostentatiously. ‘. . . and twenty. There’s your wages.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t spend them all at once.’

Byron took the money stiffly. His eyes burned.

‘So, Byron, we don’t want to be bothering Mrs Delancey all evening. Do you want a lift back into the village?’

‘No,’ said Byron. ‘I’m parked the other side of the lake.’ At the sound of his whistle, his two dogs appeared and bounded after him as he strode down the path. Isabel fought the urge to call him back.

Matt watched him go, then turned to her. His swagger had diminished. ‘Isabel,’ he said quietly, ‘I wanted to talk—’

The kitchen door opened and Kitty appeared, a strand of hair in the corner of her mouth. ‘Are you going to help me with supper?’ she said, briefly removing it. ‘You’ve been ages out here.’

With relief, Isabel turned back to him. ‘Sorry. I can’t talk now.’

Kitty held out a colander. ‘Most of the potatoes have got bits growing out of them.’

‘Look –’ she said abruptly, ‘we have . . . I have enough to cover the other works you suggested.’ She registered his sudden look of pleasure and realised he might think she had some other reason for keeping him there. ‘The pipework, the heating and the bathroom. We really need the bathroom.’

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Fine.’ She slipped through the kitchen door and closed it thankfully behind her.

Sixteen

Byron Firth was a man of few expectations, but even he had to admit that the house on Appleby Lane was not what he had imagined. He had predicted it would be small, semi-detached, perhaps a little like the house he and his sister had left, or in a 1970s cul-de-sac with a small, boxy garden front and back.

Two bedrooms, his sister had said, and he had suspected it might even be a maisonette or a council flat. But this was a thatched cottage set on a quiet lane in a third of an acre, almost a parody of an olde-English idyll, with heavy beams and flowerbeds.

‘D’you want anything else, Byron?’

He leaned back in the plush comfort of the sofa. ‘No, thanks. It was delicious.’

‘Jason’s just putting the kettle on. He wants to show you some plans we have for the garden. Hedging and stuff. Maybe you can give him some advice.’

Byron knew that Jason would want to do no such thing. The two men had never really warmed to each other. Byron regarded Jan’s boyfriends – any potential stepfather to Lily – with suspicion. But he understood what she was trying to do and, mindful of their hospitality, he was content to play along.

‘Sure. Just say when,’ he said.

Summer had arrived abruptly in this small corner of England. In the woods this meant a riot of activity, with green shoots firing upwards from coppiced trunks, and a carpet of flowers at the east side that had lasted weeks.

As his sister went back to the immaculate kitchen, Byron allowed his head to sink on to the cushions and closed his eyes. The roast beef had been delicious. But the sofa . . . He had not imagined how luxurious a sofa could feel until he had spent several weeks sleeping on a concrete floor. He was physically tough, but now he wondered how he would get through another night in the boiler room.

It was taking longer than he’d hoped. The old man at Catton’s End had not yet paid for the smaller bitch, and Mrs Dorney from the garden centre wanted her puppy after she had moved house.

He had found a tied cottage three miles away, on a huge dairy farm. They didn’t mind the dogs, and might even put the odd bit of work his way, but until all of the puppies were gone, he couldn’t raise the full deposit. Even the proceeds of their sale would not add up to the amount the landlord was asking. He would have to take all the overtime Matt could offer.

‘Can you help me put this chair together?’ Lily climbed on to his lap and handed him the pieces of the dolls’-house furniture he had brought with him. She had shown him her room, and the dolls’ house ‘Uncle Jason’ had given her. It was almost three feet tall, with a thatched roof of straw.

‘He wanted her to feel welcome,’ Jan had said. ‘He made it himself. It’s a copy of this cottage.’

He had been surprised by the monosyllabic Jason, and not for the first time that day. Nothing in the man’s demeanour had hinted that he might be capable of creating something like that. ‘Pass me the glue, Lily.’ He leaned forward, careful not to let the little tube drip.

‘Can you do the kitchen stuff next?’

‘Sure.’

She eyed him with a mischievous smile.

‘Mum’s friend Sarah fancies you. Mum told her she could have you as long as she took your laundry too.’

She had said as much to him when he’d handed his clothes over. ‘Jeez, Byron. How long since you did this lot?’ She had held the laundry bag away from her. ‘This isn’t like you.’

‘My mate’s machine’s broken down. I got a bit behind.’ He pretended to be diverted by the garden. It was the worst thing about where he was staying. The nearest launderette was sixteen miles away, which would cost him valuable pounds in diesel. If he rinsed things in the lake, they still looked dirty and took several days to dry. Sometimes, as he sat listening to Isabel’s music, he pictured himself sneaking into the laundry room and secretly using her machine. But that would feel furtive and wrong. What if she found a stray sock?

Now he listened comfortably to the distant spin of his sister’s machine. A full stomach, a soft place to sit and the prospect of clean clothes. He handed Lily the fixed dolls’ chair. It took little in life to make a person happy, when you thought about it.

‘She’s quite pretty,’ said Lily. ‘She’s got long hair.’

‘Byron.’ Jason came in and sat in one of the easy chairs.

Byron pushed himself a little more upright on the sofa. It would be so easy to fall asleep. ‘Nice place,’ he said. ‘Everything. It’s . . . really nice.’

‘I did most of the building work with my dad a few years back.’

‘It’s better than our old house.’ Lily was applying stickers to the wooden furniture. ‘Although I did like it.’

Byron smiled at her as he remarked to Jason, ‘You’ll be giving Matt McCarthy a run for his money.’

‘No offence, mate, but I wouldn’t have that man in my house. Not with all the stories you hear about him.’

What stories? Byron wanted to ask.

Lily was humming tunelessly as she arranged and rearranged the dolls’ furniture. Eventually Jason said, ‘Lily, sweetheart, can you go and ask your mum if she wants me to get some more biscuits?’

Lily scrambled up and went to the kitchen, drawn by the magic word. When she was out of earshot Jason muttered, ‘Look, Byron, I know you haven’t been that happy about me and your sister—’

Byron tried to interrupt, but Jason held up a hand. ‘No, let me finish. She told me what happened to you. Prison and stuff. And I want you to know something.’

His gaze was piercing and sincere. ‘I will never lay a finger on your sister or Lily. I’m not . . . that kind of man. I wanted you to know that. And I wanted you to know that if I’d been you I’d probably have done the same.’

Byron swallowed – hard. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘He fell badly,’ he said eventually. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Yeah. She said.’

The ‘but’ hung in the air. Through the door, Byron could hear the kettle boiling, the clatter of cups being pulled out of cupboards.

‘Anyway, just so you know, I’ll probably ask her to marry me, when they’re settled in and that.’

Byron allowed his head to sink back on to the cushions, trying to digest this latest twist, the new version of a man he had been predisposed to dislike. He was different in his own home. Perhaps most people were.

Several long minutes passed.

‘I’ll see what’s going on with the tea,’ Jason said. ‘White no sugar, isn’t it?’

‘Thanks,’ said Byron.

Then his sister popped out of the kitchen with a tray. ‘I don’t know why you’re going on about biscuits,’ she said, nudging Jason as she sat down beside him. ‘You know we finished off the last of the digestives this morning.’

She poured a mug and handed it to her brother. ‘You still haven’t told me – even though you landed me with half a ton of washing. Who is this mate you’re staying with?’

For three days Thierry was sure he had heard it. He had been passing by the barns on the far side of the house and there it was, a growling, whimpering noise, but muffled, a bit like it was underground. ‘Probably fox cubs,’ Byron had said, when he motioned to him. ‘They’ll be in an earth somewhere. Come on, we’ve got pheasants to feed.’ Byron had told him you should never disturb wild animals without a reason, especially the young. If you picked up a baby, or disturbed a nest, the parents might get scared and never come back.

But Byron wasn’t here today. Thierry stood in the sun, very still, tilting his head to gauge where the sound was coming from. Upstairs he could hear music in Kitty’s room, where she and Mum were painting. Mum had said Kitty could have anything she liked on her walls. He was going to ask if he could have the planets. He liked the thought of having the solar system outside his window and inside too.