Upright Piano Player (2 page)

He must have nodded off for he was surprised to feel his son’s hand cupping his elbow and helping him to his feet.

“Come into the kitchen, Dad, it’s quieter there.”

He was led to a wing-backed chair by the stove. The cushions yielded to his shape and he closed his eyes. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. He slept for six hours. When he awoke, he saw white plates stacked in columns on the kitchen table and rows of gleaming glasses. The room was tidy and clean. They must have been clearing up around
him, talking in whispers, if talking at all. When he stood up he had to hang on to the chair for support. These days, his left knee had a tendency to seize up if not flexed at regular intervals. He aimed a few kicks at an imaginary ball and was able to stand unaided. The kitchen was almost dark, the only light coming from a small lamp on the dresser. They had obviously wanted him to sleep. Their consideration seemed inappropriate.

“Oh, you’re ready.”

His son came into the room.

“We’re taking Beth home now. We can go by yours, if you want.”

“No, I’ve had a sleep. I can get myself home.”

His son was suddenly in his arms.

“It was an accident, Dad—an accident.”

Henry did not answer, but held him tight. There was the smell of wood smoke in his son’s hair and clothes. The family must have lit the fire in the front room, not for the warmth, he thought, but because on a day like this it would be unbearable to contemplate an empty grate. He kissed the soft skin at his son’s temple and let him go.

He was still in his suit, sitting in an armchair, when the phone rang. He knew what time it was for he had been awake listening to the radio—more mumbo jumbo about the reconstruction of Iraq. It was 4:00 a.m., but he was not surprised to get a call. He was slow getting out of the chair and trod on his book as he made his way to the phone. He supposed it would be his son.

He recognized the voice of his daughter-in-law.

“I didn’t wake you?”

“No, you didn’t wake me.”

“I’m glad. I don’t want you to be sleeping when I’m not.”

Before he could answer she had replaced the receiver. At last, blame had been apportioned. It was the first time she had spoken to him since the death of her son.

“Have a good time. Don’t get your feet wet!”

She had been at the front door crying out as they left. He had driven over to collect the boy for an outing. They were going to the wild fowl sanctuary to take photographs. His grandson had a good eye and was patient. He could sit motionless in the reeds for an hour if necessary. It was odd really. In the house he was a fidget like most small boys, but at the lake he grew up. They were both competitive and had turned the trips into a contest. The game was that they each had five shots, taken in turns on the same camera. Back home, he transferred the pictures onto his computer and the boy’s parents would later pick out the winner. More often than not, it was one of the boy’s photographs that won.

The bird sanctuary was only fifteen miles away and even at the weekends the roads were rarely busy. They never hurried—the car was not up to it, for one thing, but more than that they valued the time they had to talk. Once at the lake, it would be hurried whispers and sign language.

That afternoon, he had a good tale to tell.

“What is it, Grandpa, what happened?”

“This is one of my true stories, all right?”

The boy had smiled.

“Well, you know how early I get up? This morning I went
for the newspaper, same as usual, nobody around. On the way back, just after the humpback bridge, where I start to slow down for the left-hand turn, that’s where I saw it.”

He had hesitated and looked across at the boy, who had simply raised his eyebrows, old enough at eight to indulge a dramatic pause.

“It was a barn owl. It came up from the field and started flying alongside the car. I had the window down and the owl was no more than four feet from me at eye level. It was keeping pace with the car and, I promise you, it was staring at me all the way—as if I was a tasty field mouse.”

He had been rewarded with a giggle.

“I was doing twenty miles per hour and he stayed with me for two hundred yards, right until the turning, barely moving his wings to keep up.”

There was more he could have said. He could have said it had felt like a blessing. That he had marveled at the bird’s face—in close-up even flatter than you imagine, like a cartoon bird that has flown into a wall. It had seemed a gift. Like the sighting of a kingfisher, a singling out, a portent of favor.

How wrong can a man be?

He made himself some coffee. There were already three full mugs on the draining board. They must have been there a long time, for a skin of dust had turned the black surface gray. He put the fresh cup alongside them and opened the back door into the garden. The night air was cold so he closed the door. Such is the banality of grief: the endless repetition
of pointless activity. For two weeks he had walked the internal boundaries of his house, opening and closing windows, checking cupboards, peering into the empty fridge, climbing the stairs and wondering why. Even music had failed to bring relief. Every so often he would sit at the piano, but could never bring himself to play. Late in the day, fatigue would overcome his restlessness and force him into a chair, where he would sit waiting for sleep. Now with the confirmation of his guilt, that phase was over. He went back into the drawing room and took down the bottle of sleeping pills from the mantelpiece. Let’s try oblivion, he thought.

He awoke hours later. His mouth was dry and his first conscious thought was of the boy and the sequence he was trying to erase from his head. Slowly the sound filtered through, a domestic duet of running water and the clink of dishes. Someone was downstairs. His front door was never locked. It had been a point of principle when he moved up from London, one of the reasons for coming. He had wanted to believe that what had happened to him in London had been a big-city aberration; that here on the road to nowhere, the old certainties were still in place, that you could leave your house and car doors open and suffer no ill. He had been warned that it was no longer so and that his romanticism could be dangerous.

On the road to the lake they had pulled in at Barton’s petrol station. It was one of the few independents left and its two pumps were seldom used. Locals and tourists alike preferred
the facilities and lower prices of the Shell garage three miles on at the roundabout. Old man Barton had converted his redundant servicing bays into a mini-market and did a fair trade. It was a place where you could buy canned goods and jumbo packs of frozen chips, binding twine, shoe polish, a bag of coal, bread, newspapers, and, in season, fruit, vegetables, and flowers from the neighboring farms and gardens. The produce was displayed on tables outside and there was usually someone looking it over.

It was part of their ritual to call in at Barton’s for a bottle of chilled mineral water to take to the lake. The first time he had offered the boy a “swig” there had been a peal of laughter at the discovery of this new and disreputable-sounding word. Thereafter, it had been their name for bottled water.

“I’ll get the swig.”

He had jumped out of the car as he had done countless times before, leaving the door open and the engine running. Oh yes, and the camera case and tripod on the backseat. He winced at the memory. Later he had told the police that he had been aware of the young man at the tables, but had thought nothing of it.

He had been in the store perhaps a couple of minutes. He would have been out sooner if Barton’s married daughter had not sold him a raffle ticket when he went to pay. She had asked him to put his name and telephone number on the stub. Days later he had written it out again and timed himself. Fifteen seconds. It would not have made any difference. He could not blame her.

What happened while he was in the store he learned later
from the young man’s testimony. Lance Rivers was eighteen and addicted to heroin. He was hitching to his grandma’s in Lincoln, the last member of his family prepared to give him house room. He had pocketed some fruit from the table and was walking past the car when he had noticed the camera case. On impulse, he had jumped in and had been shocked to see the boy. He had yelled at him to get out and when the boy had opened the passenger door, he had slid across and shoved him hard, pulling the door to as the boy fell. Then he drove off. It was all a mad rush. He didn’t know that the boy’s foot had been caught up in the slack of the seat belt. He hadn’t heard the screams in the parking lot—it was a noisy old engine. He didn’t know that he was dragging the boy along the road at fifty miles per hour. He didn’t know why the driver behind him was flashing his headlights, his horn blaring. He didn’t know why a truck driver had forced him onto the verge at the roundabout. He didn’t know why the newspapers were calling him a monster. He hadn’t known the boy was there.

From inside the store he heard the car move off, the whining engine and clashing gears an overture of disaster. He ran to the entrance, fear turning his stomach, a sour vomit already in his throat. He threw open the door just in time to see the Land Rover leaving the parking lot in a cloud of black exhaust fumes. Through the haze he had seen the boy bouncing on the macadam. He was screaming “Grandpa!”—“Grandpa!”

He had chased after them screaming himself, God knows what—not words, he thought, just a scream, a never-ending
scream. He ran until his knee gave way. They had found him crawling along the side of the road.