Upright Piano Player (18 page)

“It was a new dress, Henry. And she didn’t buy it for me.”

The reproach was not unexpected, but its curtness irritated. There was a kind of laconic, Will Rogers sagacity about Jack, as though in his youth he had watched too many westerns where the heroes had spat out more tobacco juice than words. Henry suddenly yearned for the unstudied remark, the incoherence of careless anger.

“No, she didn’t. So what were you doing there? Just do me a favor and shut the fuck up.”

“Carpe diem, Henry. Seize the dame.”

Henry slipped low into his seat and put his feet up on the dashboard, cheerfully aware that Jack would be worried about the paintwork.

They drove without talking, both men surprised by Henry’s outburst.

Tom and Jane had traveled light, their soft duffel bags an easy fit in the overhead lockers. Living on the beach presented few sartorial challenges and what summer clothes they needed they kept permanently at Nessa’s house. On this trip they had brought nothing but shirts and shorts for a growing Hal and gifts for Nessa. A few days before, she had e-mailed them asking for two Ordnance Survey maps of Norfolk—sheets 132 and 133.

“I’ll be able to pick out your house and remember our
walks along the coastline,” she had written. The e-mail’s implicit acknowledgment that his mother would never visit Norfolk again had alarmed Tom. Now just two hours away from seeing her he felt nervous. He tightened his grip on the trolley as Hal pulled them eagerly into the arrivals lounge. “What are those men doing?”

“They’re drivers, Hal. On the cards are the names of the people they’ve come to collect.”

“Someone’s collecting me then.”

It was Hal who had seen the two men first. They were standing amongst the waiting drivers and Henry was holding a sign: the boy’s name written in red capital letters on the back of one of Jack’s menus.

Maude had retreated to her mother’s side looking for comfort. What she had forgotten was that her mother had never been remotely comforting. Mrs. Singer was a quiet woman who lived in a quiet house with a largely silent man. She was a tax accountant with a local firm, where her lack of exuberance had soon propelled her to a senior position. Her husband was an insurance broker and commuted to High Holborn. On weekdays, they both dressed in similarly conservative suiting. She wore the collar of her white shirt folded outside the lapels of her jacket in the manner of cricket stars of the 1950s. He buttoned his shirt at the neck and set it off with one of his five weekday ties, worn in strict rotation, each one as reticent as the next.

Since the birth of their daughter in 1969, Mr. Singer had adopted the role of junior partner in the marriage. He had an exaggerated regard for the bond between mothers and daughters and when Maude had become serious about a career in ballet he had been overjoyed. This indeed was woman’s work, no need for him to get involved.

It was Mrs. Singer who had juggled her work hours to
ferry Maude to and from her lessons in Bristol. It was Mrs. Singer who had driven her to London for the interviews at the Royal Ballet School and she who signed the checks that had kept her there.

Confronted by a willful child, Mrs. Singer had been dutiful, nothing more. She had seen that Maude was already, at fifteen, the wrong shape to be a star—too long in the body and too short in the legs to aspire for anything better than the back row in the corps de ballet—and someone else’s corps de ballet at that, not—definitely not—the Royal Ballet’s.

So it had proved. Maude had moved from one small company to another, dancing in minor European cities, often on stages erected in piazzas and parks. The music was always recorded, no orchestra within twenty kilometers of the performance. When Maude had tripped over a speaker cable and injured her knee, it had provided her (and all concerned) with an honorable exit.

Mrs. Singer had remained supportive, but unconvinced, when her daughter had turned to History of Art. Why, she wondered, could her daughter’s generation not just get a job? Why all this need for fulfillment? Was a career that put food on the table not good enough? Why did it have to feed the soul as well? Never having looked for such bounty herself, she was bemused by her daughter’s expectations.

Maude had long recognized the muted nature of her mother’s support. At the Ballet School’s end-of-year performance, invariably staged at a real theater, and sometimes at the Opera
House itself, it was mandatory for the parents, relatives, and friends to give the cast a standing ovation.

As the dancers took their final bows, Maude would see her mother drawn to her feet by the example of her neighbors—applauding, yes, but the only parent in the auditorium who managed to do it without smiling.

Emotion was avoided in the Singer household. Never once had Maude heard her parents raise their voices. From the age of twelve, the silence at family meals, companionable to her parents, had been torture for her. The clink of the cutlery, the moist smack of their chewing, and their audible swallows had driven her, more or less permanently, from the family table. She had contrived to be at friends’ houses at mealtimes, or failing that, would invent hosts and eat at the Telcote Café, near the school. She funded her meals by judicious dips into her mother’s purse, noticed by Mrs. Singer, but ignored. When seen occasionally by staff, eating her supper at the Telcote, she would explain that both her parents had jobs that kept them working late. At parent-teacher evenings, the Singers were greeted with the cold courtesy reserved for inadequate parents.

Maude stayed in Bristol for three days. Her decision to go back to London had been greeted with neither obvious relief nor entreaties to stay longer.

“I’m off,” Maude announced.

“I expect you’ll sort things out, Maude. You usually do.”

This pleasantry was delivered as Mrs. Singer sat on the half landing loo, her voice just loud enough to penetrate the door.

Maude had been halfway down the stairs on her way to the station.

“Thanks for the tête-à-tête, Mum,” she had called out.

A week later, Maude returned to work at the brasserie. She was behind with her rent and needed money more than she needed escape from Henry. The time away had eased her anxiety about seeing him again. He was, after all, a sensible man and she could deal with his hurt feelings. It had been a mistake getting that close, but no real harm had been done. She reminded herself that she had always been good at closing things down and the foolish dreams of Paris and Rome had disappeared. But despite her best intentions, she found herself looking for Henry each morning and the slow realization that he had changed his routine had irked her. It was a blow to her pride, if not her heart.

The weather had become warm, a southerly wind bringing a false spring to London. The tables on the pavement had suddenly become popular and she was glad of the extra activity. Being busy meant there were more tips and less time for thought. She was aware that she was in a state of limbo, in a meaningless job with no attachment to anything or anyone. On her days off she stayed in bed. Until her first payday there was little food in the flat. At the staff table, she ate as heartily as was seemly.

One night she returned late from work and found a letter from Henry on the ledge in the ground floor hallway. She saw with a sense of puzzlement the American stamps. On the back of the envelope he had written “If not known, return to sender” and his London address. She had climbed the stairs
and fallen onto her bed before opening the letter. It had been written on hotel notepaper.

She folded the letter carefully before tearing it into small pieces.

When he hit Eileen he was always careful to open his hand and just give her a slapping around. He could not afford to leave any bruises that the camera would pick up. Especially not now when she had just got her body all over a brochure for a local tanning parlor. Not the kind of job he really wanted for her, but it was a start.

“Sorry, love, didn’t mean to lose it.”

“Yeah, well you didn’t lose it enough to put a mark on me, did you?”

She would sulk now for a few days. It used to be that he could talk her round in no time.

“I’m sorry.”

“Piss off. You don’t care about me. You going to be around when I’m forty and my tits are on the floor? I don’t think so.”

“That’s a long way off, love.” Colin forced a smile and put his arm around her bare shoulders. She shrugged him off.

He slapped her again across the ear. She shrieked and fell onto the bed, her knees pulled up against her chest.

“I’m going out.”

At the door he looked back at her and went down on one
knee. It was a nice shot—if you had the camera down here you could see everything.

When she heard the outside door close she went to the window. They were living in his mother’s council flat although his mother was not there. She had found her son’s contempt more bruising than his fists and had unofficially moved in with her sister in Ealing.

From the window Eileen saw Colin cross Ebury Street, walking fast. She knew he was going to the gym. He was keen to build up the muscles in his injured arm. He had told her he was going back on the scaffolds as soon as he was fit; he said he missed the lads.

Her head was hurting and she was tempted to lie there and fall asleep, but she had to be at work by 9:30. She had run up a lot of jobs since coming to London, mostly in shops. She would stick with them for a while and then get fed up with working on Saturdays and go on the dole. At the moment she was working in the Body Shop, which Colin in a good mood had said was appropriate. She quite liked it there. It smelt nice and was close to the flat and there were no men on the staff. Men meant gropes in the stockroom and jokes about her chest.

In the bath, soothed by sustainable tree oils from somewhere in South America (she couldn’t remember where), she weighed for the umpteenth time the pros and cons of leaving Colin. On the plus side, she still fancied him. He was not bad in bed, but she was never sure he really liked it. Often, it was bang, bang and all over, like he had needed a glass of water. But there had been worse, and he was clever and knew about photography. He had got her the tanning parlor job—£200
for two hours’ work—and even though he had kept half for himself, it was her first bit of modeling and the start of better things to come. She believed him about that. On the downside, she knew there was something freaky about him, like stalking that bloke in Chelsea, dragging her round to take pictures of his house. What was that all about? Sometimes he frightened her. Not just the hitting, but the moody stuff and silences. Often, he would not talk to her. He could spend thirty minutes polishing his shoes and not say a word.

She suspected that he didn’t really care about her. He was just using her; but then in a way, she was using him, too.

Drying herself in front of the mirrored wall, she dropped the towel and stood waiting for the glass to de-mist. When she could see herself, she struck a pose, copied from the Marilyn Monroe poster she had in her bedroom at home—hands clasped behind the head, weight on the left leg, right knee slightly bent, belly pushed out—yes, she looked good. She let her hair fall forward, screening her face.

“Why don’t you guys go someplace on your own?” Jack was looking at Tom and Jane.

They were all outside, sitting on the deck. Jack had come round for supper. Henry was going to barbecue later.

“What a great idea,” Nessa said. “Tom and Jane, please go—you’ve not had much time to yourselves, have you?”

“Yeah, and take my car, not that tinny rental thing you’ve got. Go in style, my friends.”

So it was decided.

Tom and Jane left in the Impala, bound for Boynton Beach and a place that Jack had recommended, right on the waterfront.