The Song House (16 page)

Thank you, she says, and taking this as an instruction to stop,
he closes his fist around the handkerchief and then stares at it,
mystified.

A handkerchief, a handkerchief, who said that? he asks.

Othello, she says.

They fall silent again. Kenneth stuffs it back into his pocket,
gazing around for another distraction. He pours himself a glass
of water and drinks it in one.

Now. Tell me about these, he says, pulling the flowers from
the jar and laying them like specimens on the tablecloth.

This one’s rosemary, she says, touching the needles, For
remembrance.

When she doesn’t continue, he picks up another and holds it
out.

And what’s this?

She smiles faintly,

Purple basil. To keep the flies away, she says, Also, for love. At this, he smiles back at her.

And for banishment, she says.

Banishment? Did you say banishment? I thought it was just
for making pesto. And this white one? he asks, stroking the
petals with his finger.

Bladder campion. It’s a weed. Grows all over here.

I’ve seen it, says Kenneth, nodding, Horrible name for such
a beautiful thing. They do say a weed is just a flower in the
wrong place.

She doesn’t answer that. They sit together under the tree. The
sky has gone the colour of putty, there’s no breeze to be felt,
no air. He doesn’t take his eyes from her, watches her sip at
her water, watches the dance of light and shade on her face.
He asks her once, twice, if something – someone – scared her.
She must tell him, he says, he has a gun. When she meets his
eye, he can tell it’s to look for the joke.

I do, Maggie. And I would kill anyone who tried to hurt
you.

There, he’s admitted it, and the admission is a pure release. Her
mouth moves but still she says nothing; something has shocked
her, if he can only find out what.

I’ve tried to write up your song notes, she says, finally, It
was hard for me.

Kenneth passes his hand over his face and feels how greasy his
skin is. He’s still quite tired. After William had left, he took a
nap in his den, fed the fish, tried and failed to work on his
catalogue of objects. He’d like a gin and tonic now, or better
still a vodka martini. He can almost taste the tight, glacial pitch
of it. He glances at his watch: half past four. Pours himself
another glass of water and drinks it. But still he’s thirsty.

I didn’t really say anything, he says, Not very encouraging.

Maybe you should write them yourself, she says, Without
me. Because – well, I’m not cut out for the job, am I?

Kenneth detects an edge in her voice.

Perhaps I don’t want someone ‘cut out for the job’, he says,
sounding petulant, Perhaps I want you.

You don’t know anything about me.

With her head down again and her hair hanging over her face,
Kenneth can’t read her expression. He wants to lift the hair
away, he wants to say, Don’t do that, don’t hide inside yourself like that, like a frightened animal. You’re too good for that.
Instead, he bends forward, trying to meet her gaze.

I know three things for sure, he says quietly, One, I do very
much like having you here; two, you like music, thank God in
Heaven; and three – and this is crucial – we both like Chablis!
Maggie gives a slow blink.

Not the best qualifications for the job.

When I interviewed you, I said I wanted someone to sit in
a corner and listen to me. What a frightful old bore I was. But
look at me now, he says, bouncing his feet on the grass, You’ve
taught me all sorts – how to get rid of unwanted gifts, how
to cool the blood with cold water . . . and about herbs, and
bats, and echo-thingy.

Echolocation, she says.

Echolocation. Exactly. I’ve read up about it. Bats use sound
to see. They’re like me and you, he says,We see things in sounds.
How wonderful is that? Now I’ll admit, I’ve no wish ever to
replay that period in my life again, when Rusty wasn’t well.
But it’s a small setback. Shall we just draw a line under it and
move on? Nineteen seventy-six. That was
not
a very good year,
he says.

It was a terrible year, says Maggie.

But surely you weren’t born? he says, Or – or you were just
a baby?

Not quite a baby. I was four.

She looks at him directly. Her eyes on him are full of light.

Seems a lifetime ago. Being four, that is, he adds quickly, I
can’t say I can recall anything before I started school.

Songs, says Maggie, I remember songs.

Do you? Maybe we could play them? When shall we do it? Do you have the records to hand?

She shakes her head.

Never mind, he says, We can find them again, Maggie. And
then we can listen to
your
music. I’d love that.

He leans across the table to pour her more water, thinking again of the bottle of Stoli in the freezer. But he won’t leave
her now.

They’ll be easy to find, will they? There’s a very good
second-hand record shop in town. We could go hunting.
He offers her the full glass, holding it out in front of her.

If you had the Internet, you could probably download them,
she says.

Kenneth pulls a baffled, ironic face.

God! You’re beginning to sound like Will. Got the lecture
again today, how cut off I am from the outside world, how –
decrepit.

He hunches closer to her, lowering his voice.

Do
you
know what ‘happy slapping’ is? he whispers, Is it
something to do with kinky sex?

Maggie tilts her head back, and Kenneth, like a child, copies
her, sees the branches of the cedar hanging above them. He
wonders if he’s guessed correctly, until she says,

It’s a form of bullying. Kids do it – one of them will hit
someone, and the rest of them film it on their mobiles.

I’m definitely not getting one of those phones, he says,
folding his arms.

It’s not a requirement of the purchase, she says, smiling
properly now, You wouldn’t have to slap anyone.

Wouldn’t dream of it, he says, and, cocking his head on one
side, considers, Well, I’d quite like to give those buggers down
at the golf club a swift kick up the arse. Balls flying everywhere.
Marching about in those ridiculous clothes. But that
phone business, it’s – it’s beyond comprehension. Why would
anyone do that?

It’s a way of using technology, says Maggie, Ingenious, if it
wasn’t so cruel. When I was younger, it was graffiti on the toilet
wall. So and so is a slag, phone this number for sex . . .

Has that happened to you?

No, says Maggie, patiently, I was just giving an example.

Good, he says, because I would have to shoot them too. I hate bullies. Will was always getting picked on at school.

Maggie strokes her eyebrow with her finger.

He was bullied?

He was a lonely child, says Kenneth, Very secretive. And he
had, he still has it, this . . . front. It made the others distrust
him.

But
he
wasn’t cruel? she asks.

No. Underneath all the bravado, he’s hypersensitive.

She asks again.

He wouldn’t hurt anyone, wouldn’t get – violent?

No! He’s soft as butter, that boy. He wants to meet you, by
the way. He was very curious.

What did you tell him?

Kenneth lets out a theatrical sigh, hangs his head to one side.

I’d like to have told him that I think you’re lovely and kind
and beautiful and just what a chap needs in his dotage.

But?

But I couldn’t remember the word at the time, he says, I
couldn’t remember ‘dotage’. I went through them all, dosage,
and postage, and sewage and—

Maggie lets out a yelp of laughter, presses her hand to her
chest.

‘These strong Egyptian fetters I must break or lose myself
in postage’! she cries.

What’s that, Maggie? That’s Shakespeare, too, isn’t it?

Yes, but
I
can’t remember who says it, she lies, You know,
Kenneth, I bet the archive was his idea, wasn’t it? To keep you
out of the real world, where people forget things all the time
and have to face actual problems, like pain and loss and – and
chaos. Some things are better left forgotten. And as for that
rubbish in your den, you don’t need a catalogue, you need a
bonfire. You need to burn it.

Ah, but Will thinks I’m losing my grip on things, Kenneth
says, He asked me what day it was.

And what day
is
it? she asks.

Haven’t the foggiest, he says, grinning at her.

Me neither, she says, and he feels such a choke of gratitude
that he has to look away. She looks away too. She can’t bring
herself to tell him what she’s going to do. They sit together in
the shade, staring out over the sloping lawn and into the trees.
Kenneth sees a possible future beyond them. Maggie sees the
glinting river.

Oh Nelly you’re a funny one got a face like a pickled onion, got
a nose like a squashed tomato and—

Onward Christian shoulders, marching off to war. With the cross
of Jesus, going on before!

She sang her way through the songs she knew, hymns she could
remember from Sunday school, leaning against the sweating
brick, legs pulled up under her pyjama top. She really wanted
to pee, but there were things moving about on the floor: mice,
or could be big mice. The boy had put his chewing gum in
the bowl; that would make it a bin, not a potty. But she really
wanted to go.

Maggie looks back to her last entry, flipping the pages of the
notebook. It seems appropriate that she’s working from back
to front, as if the end will simply emerge as the beginning;
the final page will become the first. She checks again, reading
through what she’d written about how William took her away
and put her in the trunk room. She’s sure it was a trunk room;
she’s sure of the location. But it wasn’t where she thought it
was. Fine, she tells herself, That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen
that way. A child of four, what could she know about geography?
But something is still wrong with the entry. Reading
her words again, it takes Maggie a moment to see what is different: she’s removed herself from the memory; there’s no
I
.
She’s managed, without thinking, to displace herself from the
centre, and put William there instead. She has imagined what
she thought would be impossible: what it would be like to be
him. Maggie looks up to the stained-glass lady for guidance,
sees the rain clouds beyond the window, their bellies laced with
purple and black.

That’s okay, she says, That’s classic.

Maggie knows from the counselling she’s had how she copes.
She separates; she’s very good at splitting and dividing: black
and white, then and now, sound and silence. The first time she
started to modify her body, it was random and awkward. She
pulled her hair out, one strand at a time, then a few, then in
the end, whole clumps. The feeling was delicious to start with,
and painful; the waiting moment, the tugging, the release as it
fell away through her fingers. She did it when she was bored,
when her mind was racing, before she went to sleep. Like all
habits, it was new and real and
something
in the beginning, and
then after a while it just became the thing she did. She ate the
evidence, crushing the fine filaments of hair under her teeth,
rolling the strands around her tongue; a gritty swallow. When
the bald patches became noticeable, she had to think of another
way. She couldn’t bear the thought of burning herself, although
she knew girls who did it, with matches or lighters or more
often the red tip of a cigarette. It was the smell she most disliked.
They had a coven at school, the girls who branded and cut
and etched. They called it ‘contouring’, as if it were a treatment
you’d have done in a hair salon or beauty parlour. The
girls who contoured knew each other without knowing how.
Then one day Janine showed her how she did it; with a safety
razor, on the inner arm, high up. When Maggie tried cutting,
she marvelled at the small streaks of itchiness that bobbled red,
the feel of secretly glowing in hidden places. None of them
wanted to be found out: it made it bearable, to sit in maths or
history, and let the heat of a fresh wound take you away.

It was reopening a wound that gave Maggie the greatest
relief: like returning to the site of a hard-won battle. And she
hated the bumpiness of a scab forming, she’d want the skin
smooth and perfect again, so she’d slice or pick it off. Catching
the edge of a long scab with her fingernail, she’d pull, carefully
and slowly, astonished at the acute point of pain, at the
way the old skin came away, leaving a shiny pink weal beneath.
New skin. Incredible. Sometimes, it would well up again with
freckles of blood, bright shiny beads of wet. And then she
would lick the wound, or talk to it: How does that feel, does
that feel all right?

She knew one morning, in needlework class, that it had to
stop. She’d been watching the teacher demonstrate how to
stitch a hem. All the girls had gathered round Mrs Evans as she
bent over the machine, head down, following the rapid stab of
needle into fabric, feeding it through with her slim fingers.
Maggie saw how the material ran over the plate, how it glided,
really; how the hem went in rough on one side and came out
smooth and neat on the other. And then she was considering
how that might feel. How it might feel to stitch through the
skin, to stitch it together, smooth and neat. Fold it over, hide
the rough edge from the eye. The surface would be perfect.
That was when Maggie realized she was thinking of her skin
as if it didn’t actually belong to her.

There have been times since when she’s actively planned to
modify some part of her; gone to Boots or Superdrug and
bought razors and antiseptic wipes and plasters, and then she
would battle for hours to conquer the feeling. Like a recovering
alcoholic, she would tell herself: just last this day, just this
one day, and the urgency would gradually drain out of her. Or
she’d argue herself out of it. This is so boring, she’d say. You
are so predictable. Can’t you think of anything more inventive
than this? What are you like?