Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  There was distress in her voice. Poppy longed to reach out, to hug her to her, the daughter in need she hadn’t got, not masterful Janet, not Anna, deliberately self-distanced on the far side of the world.

  ‘OK, but just remember if ever you want help,’ she said. ‘Now I’ll change the subject. He’s pretty extraordinary to look at, don’t you think?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Capstone. He was standing on the other side of the car. I believe nobody knows much about him, though Mrs Capstone’s opponents must be digging away like mad. He doesn’t look English, does he?’

  Poppy could sense an inner sigh as Nell decided to come out of her carapace and play a guest’s part in keeping the conversation going.

  ‘He’s a Romanian, or maybe Bulgarian—something like that. What you’ve got, you see, is a corrupt capitalist system over here and a corrupt so-called socialist system over there. They make out they’re enemies, but really they need each other, so as to keep things the way they are, and that means they’ve got to do deals with each other. The systems don’t mesh, of course, so you’ve got to have people in the middle to sort things out. That’s what Capstone does, taking his pickings along the way, and that’s just about as much as anyone knows.’

  Poppy was impressed. Janet hadn’t known that much.

  ‘Do you know how they met?’ she asked. ‘It seems an unlikely kind of marriage.’

  ‘He’s got money. She’s posh, got a lot of the right friends.’

  ‘I suppose you do need someone to fund a career like hers, but I’d have thought it still wasn’t worth the risk, taking someone like him on. He looks such a pirate.’

  ‘She’s one, too. They’re the same kind, under the accents.’

  ‘I wonder. Of course she may be, and him not. I saw him for about three minutes. For all I know he’s got the soul of a book-keeper inside. He may be a mystery man, but perhaps he’s just mysteriously ordinary, and behaves like that to stop people realising. I think that’s the only picture I’ve seen of him, the one they showed.’

  ‘Expect he didn’t notice the camera was there. Tired, love?’

  Nelson was now lolling against Nell’s knee with his thumb in his mouth, gazing at Elias with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘Would he like a bath?’ said Poppy.

  ‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, poppet? Baths are a problem in the commune. Have you got an egg for his supper?’

  ‘I stocked up yesterday, luckily. What about you? I expect you’re a vegan or something. I’m afraid …’

  ‘Stereotyping, that is, Poppy. If you want to know, I’d eat steak every day, good and rare, supposing I could afford it.’

  ‘Best I can do is canned stew. Now let’s go and sort you out for the night, and I’ll clear a drawer and get a few of my clothes in here. And if you want to telephone your friends and find out what’s happening at the commune … I suppose they haven’t got a telephone … don’t laugh at me …’

  ‘You’re doing fine. And thanks, Poppy. But as a matter of fact, even if this hadn’t come up I’d have been leaving the commune.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were a sort of founder member.’

  ‘Things change. I don’t want to explain. It’ll only be a couple of days till I get something else lined up. Is that OK?

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Poppy.’

  OCTOBER 1989

  1

  The chairs were hard, the hall stuffy, the audience sparse. It was not Poppy’s kind of music, but a woman on her Polish course had been handing out free tickets and she’d felt it would have been feeble not to give it a try. Now she closed her eyes, trying to concentrate all her inner energies into the single sense of hearing. The first piece was an extended fanfare, an enjoyable mess of loud noise going nowhere in particular. It might have sounded more shaped and purposeful, she thought, in a different acoustic, with long echoes. The second piece was called Famine, and was described in the programme note as a political suite. Each short section started with a member of the ensemble reading some item to do with Ethiopia—a government statement, a UN report, an eyewitness account, a medical text about malnutrition—and then beginning a solo with the other members joining in one by one. The programme note explained that how they did this and what they played was partly dictated by the composer and partly chosen by themselves according to formulae she’d laid down. The music was clearly very demanding on the performers, with ceaseless shifts of tempo and volume. Poppy could discern no key, but she worked at listening almost as conscientiously as the performers worked at playing. When the piece ended she decided it hadn’t been worth her time, or theirs.

  In the interval she rose to rest her back and stood against the wall. The audience—youngish, casually earnest—mostly seemed to know each other, but the woman who’d given her the ticket didn’t seem to be there. She felt let down by this.

  Her lack of empathy with the music seemed to emphasise her solitariness.

  She was trying to eavesdrop on a group who were discussing some kind of confrontation with what sounded like a religious leader, a guru with inadequate charisma, perhaps, when a man’s voice, flat and gravelly, said ‘You weren’t, I take it, actually asleep? I wouldn’t blame you.’

  Poppy had been so wrapped in her isolation that it took her a moment to realise he had spoken to her. She turned and saw it was Mr Capstone. Though inconceivably out of context there was no mistaking his totem-emphatic features.

  ‘I was doing my best to listen,’ she said.

  ‘To what result?’

  ‘A bit disappointing, I thought. There were bits I quite liked—that funny little five-note twiddle that kept popping up in unlikely places, like the rabbits on the Peter Pan statue, I decided.’

  She hummed the phrase. The predatory mouth turned out to be capable of a smile.

  ‘A good image,’ he said. ‘Sentimental kitsch.’

  ‘But it didn’t belong. I think that was the trouble. I don’t think she really minded or understood about the famine. That’s probably uncharitable—I’m sure she minded but she didn’t understand.’

  ‘You may exercise your charitable bent if you wish. I think she neither minded nor understood. I would guess she has a politically activist partner or patron whom she’s trying to conform to. We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  ‘I brought my grandson to play with Deborah. I’m Poppy Tasker.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  He made no excuse for not having recognised her, though it wasn’t surprising. Her presence at a function like this must seem quite as unlikely to him as his did to her.

  ‘Do you think it’s worth staying for the second half?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got to give it a try, or I’d think less of myself. It’s not really my kind of music—I stop just before Tippett, I’m afraid, but I feel there must be something there if I listen the right way.’

  ‘Why did you come?’

  Poppy explained, and finished with a shrug and a laugh at having to present so inadequate a reason to a serious concert-goer. A solitary girl smoking in a doorway turned her head at the sound. Mr Capstone nodded and looked at her in silence, consideringly, for several seconds.

  ‘If I were to stick it out I could give you a lift home,’ he said. ‘You presumably live in our area.’

  ‘The other side of the park. But I’ll be quite all right on the Tube.’

  ‘I was in two minds in any case.’

  The piece that comprised the second half was by another composer, also a woman. To Poppy’s joy it began with the hornpipe from Pineapple Poll, played with great sparkle and gusto until things began to go astray, a couple of wrong notes, then braying trombone slides, then the tempi falling apart until what had been recognisable music degenerated into what to Poppy sounded like mere mess, though the players were still reading from their scores and playing
with what seemed to be full concentration, indeed effort, until the semblance of a key and beat emerged, and there was Begin the Beguine with the full yearning schmaltz. Then that too was allowed to fall apart, collapse and become chaos. Poppy concentrated with all her intellect on trying to follow some kind of thread through the tangle. The Beguine was still in there somewhere. Was the hornpipe? The Fauré Credo emerged, then something Poppy didn’t know but which sounded like one of the other Bachs, then Blues in the Night with a saxophone taking the Bessie Smith part, and so on. The last clear passage was of course God Save the Queen, but that too degenerated into a chordless bray which then deliquesced with instrument after instrument dropping out until all that was left was a penny whistle piping right at the top of its register. Then silence.

  At least it was something to talk about in the car, a low, softly upholstered, glossy, powerful object, an Audi or something.

  ‘I’d have to hear it several times before I could decide if it was anything more than a joke,’ said Poppy.

  ‘It would be worth the effort?’

  ‘I’ve probably got more spare time than you. Yes, I think so. It’s too much fun first time through, spotting what’s coming next, like one of those Christmas quizzes in the Observer, but I think I might get to like the original bits for their own sake. I thought I was just beginning to hear shapes and patterns. It’s a new language. I’ve just started Polish, and at first there didn’t even seem to be syllables. It’s like that.’

  ‘You play an instrument?’

  ‘No—in fact I don’t know much about music—the sort of thing musicians are taught, I mean. I had totally unmusical parents and I didn’t go to the sort of school which does much about it without being prodded. But when I married and my husband started taking me to the opera …’

  ‘Not here tonight?’

  ‘We’ve split up, but anyway he’d have hated it. He likes a stage to look at, and things happening, and singers. He used to get miffed when he saw me sitting there with my eyes shut—you know what tickets cost—so I started getting the records out of the library and listening to them before we went, over and over, teaching myself …’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘I’ll scramble an egg when I get home.’

  ‘Enough for two?’

  ‘Oh … if you like. It’s not at all …’

  ‘Scrambled eggs will do. Heard any Stockhausen?’

  ‘Only on radio, and even then … Isn’t there something called Hymnen? It goes on for ever, voices chanting, with tiny variations …’

  ‘You have to be there. Radio’s no use, or records. They are just pushing sounds out to anyone who happens to be listening, so the experience is dissipated. Go, and the sounds are moving inward to each listener, focused, concentrated. It is the reverse experience.’

  ‘I see what you mean, but I don’t know if I think like that. I agree that actually going to a concert forces me to concentrate, but I don’t …’

  ‘Not what I meant. The thing, the performance, of course exists as much as a book or a painting exists, for as long as the performance lasts. But none of them—performance, book, painting—is complete, is fully existent, until I experience it …’

  It was difficult for Poppy to pay attention and at the same time run through the steps needed to scratch together a supper she wouldn’t be ashamed of There were five eggs, a few rashers of bacon, the carrots should still be presentable, that pot of pesto—was there still a tin of peaches? He expected her to do her share of the talking, keeping her up to the mark with his abrupt, almost ferocious questions and comments.

  ‘What have you got against Tippett?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I expect I’m not quite ready. Teaching myself, you see, starting with the easy people like, you know, Mozart …’

  ‘Mozart is easy?’

  ‘No, of course not. He just seems easy when you’re starting. He gives you enough to keep you happy, straight off, even if you know nothing about it. It’s like the sort of wine you like when you’re eighteen … If you want wine with your eggs we’ll have to stop and buy some.’

  ‘Milk for me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m almost out. Mr Jinja will be open. On the corner after the next lights.’

  ‘So you’re not ready for Tippett …’

  The flat, normally so cloistral in its half-basement at the end of the cul-de-sac, seemed to vibrate with the energies of his presence. Poppy showed him into the living-room and lit the gas.

  ‘My kitchen’s too small for two,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind waiting. I’ll be about ten minutes. The loo’s opposite. Tell me if you don’t like cats and I’ll shut Elias in the kitchen.’

  ‘I like cats. May I have my milk at blood temperature, please?’

  Poppy heard him use the loo while she cooked. The sound reminded her of nights when Alex had come. No, this wasn’t going to be like that. He wanted to talk about music—it was clear Mrs Capstone was unable to satisfy that need, at least. Poppy liked to think of herself as an efficient user of her kitchen, and now made a point of putting the simple meal together with a speed that would impress him, the eggs on wholemeal toast, the bacon grilled crisp, the carrots sliced lengthwise to dip in the pesto. When she carried the tray through she found him sitting in her armchair with Elias purring on his lap. It is ridiculous the things about which one can feel a twitch of jealousy, but for size alone they made a fitting pair.

  ‘You’re honoured,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t do that for everyone.’

  He allowed her to wait on him, then ate in silence. As with music, he seemed to concentrate all his attention on the matter in hand, so Poppy stayed silent too. He finished by drinking his milk.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he put his mug down. ‘Exactly right.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Not for me. What do you make of my daughter?’

  ‘Oh, well …’

  ‘The truth, please.’

  ‘You’ve got to remember how much they can change. She’s obviously a difficult child now, but she may simply be getting through that phase of her life. I have a friend whose daughter lived a really vivid, weird, private imaginative life until she was about seven, and seems never to have had even a moment of mild fancy since. She’s thirty now. I’m biased about Deborah because she gets on so well with Toby. It’s as though there are two people in there, one being extremely self-willed and capricious, and the other standing back and rather coolly watching the effect she is having.’

  ‘Her psychiatrist says she is fighting to make a space for herself. My wife and I are considered to have strong personalities.’

  ‘I expect there’s something in that. I don’t know. I don’t get the impression she’s an unhappy child. Anyway I wouldn’t have thought there was a lot you or your wife or anyone else could do about it. Deborah will be what she chooses to be. I do think you can mess children around by having theories about them. My husband was brought up rigidly on the Truby King system, and it made … oh, you don’t want to know that. I think you should do whatever really feels right at the time, and in particular show that you love them. I thought you were doing fine when I saw you with her the other day.’

  ‘That’s very helpful. You’ll come to another concert with me?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to, but …’

  ‘I would appreciate a companion who is prepared to think about music. Not necessarily talk, but think, recognising it as a cerebral activity. I can’t always be sure of my free time, so it would mean asking you at short notice.’

  ‘I do evening classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  ‘Polish, you said?’

  ‘I’m only just starting. That’s Mondays. I do German on Wednesdays.’

  ‘Why Polish?’

  ‘Because the course fitted in. My German’s fairly good, but I wanted a third language, partly to see if
I could and partly to help me get a job. Polish worked out best, and besides, I thought, with such a lot happening there—it’s terribly exciting, isn’t it, even for a political innocent like me.’

  ‘It is the major event of our lifetimes.’

  ‘Do you know Poland?’

  ‘I am Polish by origin. My original name is unpronounceable in English so I chose a new one.’

  ‘It’s still a very unusual one. There aren’t any in the phone book.’

  ‘I didn’t wish to share my name. But you will be able to practise your Polish in the intervals of the concerts.’

  ‘I’ve only just started. I certainly won’t be up to talking about music.’

  ‘We will set aside ten minutes for telling each other that it’s a fine day but it’s going to rain. I’ll call you next time I’m likely to be free for something that might interest us both. You will need to progress beyond Tippett.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to try, but … well, there’s something you ought to know …’

  She hesitated again. Was there any way she could ask him not to tell Mrs Capstone? The big eyebrows had risen, amused, mocking. She floundered.

  ‘I don’t want … oh … you see it looks as if my daughter-in-law is going to be the Labour candidate at the next election.’

  He sat silent for an instant, and then burst into a big, raucous, uncontrollable laugh. He rose and slapped his thigh and stretched like a waking dog. He was a peasant in a mired farmyard, bellowing mirth at some rustic mishap.

  ‘And Deborah and Toby are getting on so well …’ she explained.

  ‘So I am to keep the affair secret from my family and you from yours!’ he said. ‘And Cherubino is hiding behind the curtain and Falstaff in the laundry basket! Wonderful! But her name is Jones, isn’t it? Were you twice married?’

  ‘Janet uses her maiden name. Do you think it matters?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s a triviality. Still, I think we will keep our meetings to ourselves, perhaps. Are you likely to meet any of your acquaintances at concerts of modern music?’