Rook (30 page)

A sing-song round the piano, all three of them.

Where was Felicity in this memory? Had she already been sent away to school?

Well, just look where they all are now. Ada feels for the handkerchief tucked at her wrist. In no time at all, Nora was able play the piano better than her mother and, once the cello took over, she was like a wild thing possessed. This last year or two, music seemed to have lost its hold, until recently. Recently, it’s back with a vengeance, all hours of the day or the godforsaken night, angry, tuneless stuff winding up from the foundations, sawing through the fabric of the house. No sleep for anyone.

She had stubbed her toe on that ugly lump of wood just once too often. Twitched out a foot and kicked it back. A satisfying muffle of echoing notes and the instrument lay like an upturned beetle on the floor.

‘Johnny’s so long at the fair.’ She’s courting disaster with him, her daughter. All mouth and trousers, promising to pay the bills the church has run up what with this, that and the other, trying to get his Godwin Grave Project off the ground, astronomical legal bills and archaeologists’ fees. Never answers his emails, according to that nice young vicar, never answers his telephone. Only clap eyes on him when he’s after something. In all likelihood Nora will up sticks and follow him, go waltzing off back to London and that will be that.

The murmuring behind Ada has grown steadily louder, but it now ceases and plump little Eve is at her shoulder, asking something about sheet music. A reflection of the two of them moves on the dark facade of the piano. Behind their reflection the strings are stretched taut, the hammers at rest, ready to strike. In the shiny lid of the piano, curved like a fairground mirror, Eve’s body is squat and distorted. She makes no attempt to cover the shape of her pregnancy. Whereas Nora has always been so angular, has never possessed womanly curves.

Ada feels for her handkerchief again. She will not allow her emotions to get the better of her, not before the entire village on this special occasion. ‘This candle holder is a fire hazard.’ She points out the lopsided holder, but Eve has gone, moved away already, only her oily perfume remaining in the air. Ada’s question is mistimed, has interrupted Eve’s welcome address.

‘I’d like to welcome you all to Café Jetsam’s opening celebrations,’ Eve says to the listening room, which is stuffed full. All those people breathing. Don’t think of Brian trapped in that underground chamber. Ada’s vision telescopes; she sways on the piano stool.

‘All right, Mum?’ Her daughter is beside her, a big, capable hand on Ada’s shoulder. ‘Want some fresh air?’

In answer, Ada strikes a chord or two on the piano, and begins to play the sedate opening bars of ‘Greensleeves’. ‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong . . .’

35

Nora watches Ada from the doorway. Daily she seems more confused, uncertain and unsteady on her feet. On the other hand, she might simply be nervous about playing to such a crowded room. Although everyone in the village was invited, more people have come along for the opening of Café Jetsam than Eve and Stavros were expecting. All the seats are taken. People stand along both walls and are gathered at the back of the room. As Steve introduces the first song, Stavros appears beside her, his breath smelling of garlic.

‘Feta in the oven.’ Stavros offers an arm. ‘
Ella
. Come.’

She follows him to the boathouse kitchen, where she’s surprised to find Harry, Eve and Jonny, in heated discussion, the three of them crammed into the narrow space. Eve is flinging clean cutlery into a drawer.

‘In this day and age, how many people in this village go to church or believe in God?’ Jonny says.

‘Consecrated means,’ Eve waves a fork at Jonny, ‘associated with the sacred.’ She rams the emptied cutlery holder back into the dishwasher; Stavros raises his eyebrows at Nora, grabs a tray of crockery and heads off to lay up the tables in the shaded downstairs room of the café ready for when the music session is over.

‘The church council have agreed to appeal,’ Jonny replies. ‘A unanimous agreement, I’d like to point out.’ He loosens his tie and undoes his shirt collar. His shirt is sticking to his back.

Harry looks up from the orange he is peeling. ‘Human spirituality takes many different forms. Anything consecrated should be considered worthy of spiritual respect, whatever your beliefs.’

‘I’m an atheist. I have no beliefs.’

‘But you have a soul, a spirit,’ Harry says. He pauses as his eyes search Jonny’s face. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Besides all this,’ Eve waves a hand to hurry the two of them along in their discussion, ‘I’m not sure of your motives, Jonny. Bosham is a family village where people have lived for generations. The church is already enough of a tourist attraction because of the connection with the Bayeux Tapestry and the story of Cnut’s daughter. The lanes are narrow and many of the houses are old with front doors opening straight on to the road. Tourists take up all the space in our car park every day from April or May onwards. Do we really want more outsiders with cameras, rolling up in coachloads to ogle at a grave in our little Saxon church, even if it does belong to a king?’

Nora can hear the barely suppressed anger in Eve’s voice. She wonders how long they have been discussing this before she arrived. Harry sits on a stool, relaxed, apparently absorbed with separating the segments of his orange, but Eve and Jonny stand with their heads thrust forward like teenagers confronting each other.

Harry sighs melodramatically. ‘No seats in the Anchor for the locals.’

‘How will we all cope with the media interest that will descend, if it does turn out to be Harold II’s grave?’ Eve wraps her loose shirt protectively around her belly. ‘Worse, what if they start charging us entry to our own village church?’

The church door under the broad stone arch is never locked. Anyone, at any time, can push the weathered wood and step down in to the church.

‘Come off it, woman!’ Jonny’s usually malleable face is unsmiling. ‘You can’t tell me tourists won’t be a valuable source of income for you and your new café, as well as for many others.’

Eve crosses her arms and opens her mouth to reply, but Harry starts speaking first. ‘They do that at Rosslyn.’

‘Do what?’ Nora asks.

‘Charge entry. Used to see that church from miles away; beautiful, it was, across the fields, part of the landscape.’

Eve nods. ‘You can’t get anywhere near it since Dan Brown wrote that book. All scaffolding and screens. They don’t want you to catch a glimpse unless you have paid the whacking great entrance fee. No photos allowed, of course, because they make money from selling postcards. A church should belong to everyone. We shouldn’t have to pay to enter.’

‘Portaloos,’ adds Harry, nodding.

‘All you can see is the hideous ticket office like something at Disney World. Me and Stavro turned around and drove off. Way too sad.’

Harry smacks the counter top and they all look at him, but he’s gazing off into the middle distance. ‘Man,’ he shakes his head, ‘I’ve just got to wondering what our loss will be if we find out for sure Harold does
not
lie buried in the church?’

Jonny looks exasperated. ‘And your point is?’

‘My
point
—’ Harry looks up at the ceiling, rubs his chin and sighs, ‘is the mystery. Way too big a loss, the mystery.’

Eve nods and flushes. ‘All for a TV programme.’

‘The stories which beguile us, take us out of ourselves. We need them. And those stories about Harold would be lost.’

‘Some people prefer the definite. Facts, not fairy tales.’ Jonny lifts his eyes, staring at Eve again.

‘Facts, they have a habit of changing,’ Harry says.

‘It’s not
just
a TV programme, is it?’ Jonny says quietly, as if speaking only to Eve, and it dawns on Nora he may be trying to flirt with her. Not a good move. Eve, with her blue eyes and blonde hair, is used to men flirting and skilled at caustic put-downs.

‘What is it for then? To get your name in the headlines, you pretentious prick? And excuse me,’ Eve adds, before Jonny can retaliate, ‘but I have more important people than you to attend to.’

36

On the ground by the back wheel of Harry’s caravan lie several creased, bent tubes of paint and a piece of board covered with smears of colour.
Raw Sienna
, Nora reads,
Indian Red. Ultramarine White, Mars Orange, Rose Madder
.

She knocks on the caravan door. Blue and white striped fabric shifts at the open windows, and the rooflight is thrown open. This time of year, the heat must get unbearable. She wonders what he does for warmth in winter.

Harry’s unlaced work boots and a few rags which smell of turpentine and something oily like linseed sit on the bottom step of the caravan. She knocks again, wondering if it is perhaps not after all today they arranged she would come to help carry his paintings to Café Jetsam. The door falls open towards her. Although it is mid-afternoon, Harry is cleaning his teeth, the toothbrush still in his mouth. He has no shirt on and white paint streaked across his forehead. From the bottom of the steps, Nora can see a painting – the paint applied in thick slabs – on an easel behind him. Toothbrush between his teeth, he gives a nod, standing aside to indicate she should come in.

It is the first time she has visited him in his caravan. The double bed at the far end is made up and covered with a patchwork quilt, tucked under at the corners. On the bed lies an old scout blanket with badges from different countries sewn on to it, wrapped around something bulky. An enamel mug and bowl have been rinsed and left on the draining board. Overlapping on the floor are two or three rugs which might be prayer mats, dark red and sage green. The caravan smells like hay on a warm day, the smell she associates with Harry.

While he bends over the sink, rinses his mouth and spits, Nora takes a closer look at the painting on the easel. Harry has applied the paint to the canvas in such a way as to suggest a contrast in textures, capturing both the chalkiness and the sheen of the flint in the wall. Creamy climbing roses tumble through a high hedge, behind which rise the wooden shingles of Bosham church spire, the weathercock gleaming gold on the top. She knows these cream roses, opposite the beer garden of the Anchor Bleu. They flower, full and heavy-headed, in May.

Harry has added an upper and lower margin, instantly bringing to mind the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry. The lower margin is edged with a long row of stylised waves, as a child might draw, and a line of tiny naked human figures, their backs to the viewer as they walk into the sea. Now she is closer, she can see the figures are dancing, arms in the air, feet stepping over the waves. Something about the mood of joy and expectation reminds her of the woollen figures wading out to the dragon-headed longboats in that early scene on the Bayeux Tapestry. Harold and a few of his men, falcons on their shoulders and hunting hounds in their arms, their elaborate tunics hitched at the hip, their moustaches sprightly as they embark on their journey.

In the upper margin, a pale duck-egg blue, Harry has painted fifty or sixty motes of black crowded together in the shape of a tornado which swirls sideways towards a group of trees. These specks, she guesses, are rooks, although individually they are too small to tell. When she narrows her eyes and squints in the way she did as a child trying to look grown-up when her father took her to art galleries, the black specks become smoke, rising in the sky.