Life, Death and Gold Leather Trousers

by Fiona Foden

  I lie as still as I can, listening to the voices in the hallroom. That man’s arrived, and his voice drifts upstairs.

  Man: “I’m looking for something for my son. An electric, preferably, that he can really get stuck into…”

  Mum: “Well, let’s see, shall we? Come through and I’ll show you. That’s the bass, obviously…”

  Man: “No, I’m not looking for a bass…”

  Mum: “So how about this?”

  A pause. I can picture this stranger picking up my guitar, stroking its glass-smooth surface, thinking: Yes, my boy would like this. And I imagine Mum flashing her broad, open smile, the way she did to boost business at Tony’s chippie, and the way she’ll persuade people to book luxury holidays at the travel agents’.

  Man: “This is nice, very nice. Quite special.”

  Mum: “Well, you know who owned it, don’t you?”

  Man: “Yeah.” Pause. “Look … I have to be straight with you. I don’t have a lot to spend. I just came round ’cause you’re so local. You don’t have anything more … ordinary, do you?”

  Mum: “’Fraid not. Why don’t you try it anyway? There’s a small crack here, d’you see? That’s where it was mended but you’d never know, would you, unless you looked really closely…”

  Man: “No, it’s in really good nick…”

  I poke my toes out of the water, expecting them to be gold too, like my hands. But the gold has gone, dissolved in the bath, like the pictures in my head of Riley and me in a band.

  Mum: “Do you play?”

  Man: “Not really. To be honest, I haven’t picked up a guitar in years…”

  Mum: “Go on, have a little strum. Or I could ask my daughter to play it for you – she’s very good… I’ll give her a shout, shall I?”

  Man: “Doesn’t she want to keep it?”

  Mum (clears throat): “Um … I feel a bit bad about this, actually. But we’ve been through quite an upheaval lately and, well … I’m thinking that, if I sell this stuff, I might be able to take my two girls on a proper holiday…”

  What? She thinks I’d like a holiday more than Jupe’s guitar? I want to jump out of this bath right now, fling on my dressing gown and rush down and tell her – but I can’t, not in front of a stranger. I scowl at the toenails that I never get around to painting. What’s the point, when you go to the beach to swim and mess about rather than posing in your bikini for the boys?

  The man’s finger-picking a song now. “It’s a fantastic instrument,” he says finally, “but I’m sorry, I’m not in your price league…”

  “Look,” Mum says, “take it away, see how your son gets on with it. Have it on loan for a while. Then maybe we can work something out…”

  “Are you sure?”

  No! I want to scream. We’re not sure at all…

  “I really want this to be over,” Mum continues, “so we can all move on. It’s not easy, you see, having my brother’s things around…”

  “Well, I can understand that,” the man says, “and I’m sure my son would love it.”

  “Clover!” Lily hisses against the locked bathroom door. “There’s a man downstairs! He’s gonna—”

  “Go away!” I hiss back at her.

  “But…”

  “Just leave me alone, go to bed.” I glare at the film of gold scum that’s now floating on the water and hear Lily padding across the landing to our room.

  “Anyway,” the stranger enthuses downstairs, “thanks so much for this, Mrs, er…”

  “Kerry. Call me Kerry…”

  “OK, um, Kerry, you know we’ll take care of it…” There’s more chatter which I can’t pick up on my radar, then the front door clicks shut and he’s gone.

  I didn’t even notice the bath water going cold, and now I’m shivering. The pads of my fingertips, which toughened up from a summer of playing, don’t look like a guitarist’s fingertips any more. They’re just wrinkly from the water, like prunes.

  Dear Jupe,

  It’s gone. The sunset guitar, I mean. I can’t believe what Mum’s done. I went downstairs and double-checked and yeah – she’d given it away.

  Given it! “Why did you do it?” I yelled at her.

  She looked totally shocked. “I thought we’d agreed…” she started.

  “We didn’t agree anything,” I shouted back. Mum looked really sorry then, and tried to explain that the man had obviously been a big fan of Jupe’s.

  “I thought I was doing the right thing,” she added, looking helpless. “He obviously loved your uncle’s music…”

  Obviously, it meant not a diddly thing that I loved you too.

  Your niece,

  Clover xxx

  Over the next couple of days, I don’t play much. I’m just not in the mood. Instead, I hang out in the garden with Ed, watching him building his gym. There’s a proper concrete base now, and he’s started to put up the brick walls. I can tell he’s upset about the sunset guitar too, because he won’t be drawn into talking about it – and anyway, he’s too loyal to Mum. He’s also way too busy to shout, “Hey, Clover! Play from the heart!”

  Maybe I don’t have the heart for music after all. I tell Jess about my plan to quit going to Niall’s and take up – I don’t know – the triangle instead.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she retorts, lounging in shorts and a vest on my rumpled bed. “The triangle’s not an instrument.”

  “What is it then?”

  “It’s … it’s a shape.”

  “Well,” I add, “I don’t see the point any more.”

  “Is it because of Riley?” she asks. I pause, not wanting to admit that she’s right, at least partly. “I can’t believe you’re thinking of stopping music because of him,” she adds, “after your promise to Jupe and everything…”

  “It’s not that,” I insist. “It’s … other stuff.”

  Jess’s cheeks flush. “Sorry,” she mutters. “It’s just… I think you should put him right out of your mind…”

  “This is nothing to do with Riley Hart, OK? It’s Jupe’s guitar. Mum practically gave it away…”

  “Well, aren’t there any others left?” Jess asks, as if it’s that simple.

  “Just the bass,” I grumble.

  “Go fetch it, then,” she commands.

  “What for?” I ask, feeling dumber by the second.

  “Let’s have a play-about with it. If you’re desperate for someone to play with, you can teach me.”

  “But I don’t know how to play it either!” I say, exasperated.

  “Of course you do. You’ve been learning guitar for long enough to play a little bit of bass, and you taught me those three chords…”

  She only wants to help, so I can’t tell her it’d be hopeless. “D’you still remember them?” I ask.

  “What, A, C and G? Probably,” she says with a grin. “Anyway, let’s have a go.”

  The bass is languishing behind the TV, dulled by a thin layer of dust. Of course, Jess doesn’t have a clue how to play it, and neither do I, but we plug it into the amp and work out which notes the strings are. She twangs experimentally while I try to play along on the acoustic. It sounds awful. I’m so glad Mum and Lily are out shopping with Ed, because he’d be up here in a second, bestowing us with his musical knowledge.

  Then we start to sound a teensy bit less awful. I look at Jess, at her face all tanned from Majorca, scrunched in concentration. She’s only playing two notes really, but they happen to be the right ones occasionally, and it no longer matters what we sound like because it’s fun. “You should get some lessons from Niall,” I tell her, knowing that her parents would think nothing of forking out for one-to-one lessons instead of group ones, like I have.

  “Maybe,” she says with a shrug.

  “You can borrow this bass if you like.”
/>   “You sure?” she asks.

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  We spend the next couple of hours playing and even manage to carry on when the others come back and Mum’s music starts up downstairs. Lily comes up and picks out a rhythm on the drums, and we shut our bedroom door and keep on playing all afternoon. And it sets me thinking that maybe Jess is right – I really should put Riley right out of my mind. It’s not as if I can’t start a band without him.

  As for Jess and Lily … well, we sound rough, of course, and I’d hate to think that Jupe is cringing at all our wrong notes and missed beats from his cloud. But doesn’t everyone have to start somewhere?

  Over the next week, Ed hammers and bashes late into the evening. “Nearly done,” he calls out jovially when Betty peeps over the fence. She mumbles something I can’t pick up. “Yeah, I reckon it’ll be perfect,” he adds.

  “Mum,” I venture, glancing through the kitchen window, “d’you mind Ed building a gym out there?”

  “What?” she says. “Oh, that – um … well…” She shrugs. “To be honest, love, I was hoping Ed would give up all that bodybuilding stuff. He’s such a softie, you know, underneath…” I shudder involuntarily. “Those muscles don’t really suit him,” she adds. Discussing Ed’s body in any detail makes me feel pretty pukey, so I turn away and busy myself with drying the dishes. “Anyway,” Mum adds, “was that Jess playing bass earlier today?”

  “Yeah, she’s just trying to find her way around it…”

  Mum smiles. “You’ve been playing a lot this week…”

  “It’s not too noisy, is it?” I ask, expecting a lecture.

  She pauses, then says, “It’s not too bad, actually, and none of the neighbours have complained so far. In fact,” she adds, “Betty told me she enjoys hearing young people’s music…”

  Right, so she needn’t have sold the sunset guitar after all?

  Mum’s eyes sparkle. “Lily’s pretty good, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, a natural, I reckon.”

  “Thinking of starting a band, are you?” Mum asks.

  A kernel of excitement fizzles inside me. “Yeah,” I say firmly, “I think I am.”

  Dad phones next morning, asking if I could pop round to his flat. I march round to his place and press the downstairs buzzer, even though the bottom door’s unlocked. That way, if he’s drawing Bernice in the nude, at least she’ll have time to dive back into her clothes and be normal.

  Dad comes down to greet me, all smiles. I needn’t have worried about a nudie drawing scenario because Bernice isn’t even here. “Listen,” Dad says as we head up to the flat, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?” I ask, loitering in the tiny kitchen while he makes tea. There’s a photo of Dad and Bernice stuck to one of the cupboards on the wall. Their smiles look a bit frozen, as if they’ve asked a stranger to take the photo and it’s taken too long.

  “I, um…” He grins lopsidedly. “It’s, ar…”

  “Dad, what is it?”

  He chuckles softly. “It’s … you see, I wanted to clear it with you first, and Lily of course, before … before I do anything. You’re my number-one girls, you know that?”

  I nod, and butterflies start up inside me. Guess I do know, even if I’ve felt a bit relegated lately.

  “And … whatever happens,” he stutters, “nothing’s going to change that, OK?”

  I nod. “Yeah, Dad.”

  “Clover, um … I might be getting married again.”

  The butterflies flit away and I’m all still inside. “But … aren’t you still married to Mum?” I whisper.

  “Yes, of course, but when that’s all finalized…”

  “When you’re divorced, you mean?” My eyes fill with tears.

  “Clover, sweetheart, it’s not going to happen next week or anything, but eventually…” He holds me tight and I breathe deeply, wanting to stay there, being held by him. “You do understand, don’t you?”

  I nod and pull away. “It’s all right, Dad. I mean, Mum’s with Ed now…”

  “It’s all happened a bit quickly, hasn’t it?”

  “Just a bit,” I say with a small laugh. We head out for a walk then, along the shore. Dad chats away but I’m not in the mood for talking.

  “Clover,” he says, turning to inspect my face, “is something else bothering you?”

  I sigh, not wanting to go into the whole Riley thing with Dad. He wouldn’t understand, and anyway, I’m banning myself from thinking about Riley these days. Instead, it’s guitar stuff that spills out: about Mum giving away the sunset one, and how unfair it all is.

  “That’s not right,” Dad agrees, sitting beside me on a rock. “Your mum shouldn’t have done that. Not the special one. The one you—”

  “Dad,” I cut in, “I know Jupe was really upset when it broke, and there was a huge row and everything, but…”

  He blows air through his nose. “You can say that again.”

  “What I can’t understand is why we never went back to see him. It was an accident; I was only a kid … why didn’t we ever get in touch with him again?”

  It’s Dad who goes quiet then. “Well … it was a pretty big scene,” he begins.

  “Yes, I know…”

  “…And it really shocked your mum, what she’d done, losing control of the car like that…”

  “But we were all OK,” I remind him. “The farmer helped us, and we took the train back home…”

  “We might not have been, though,” Dad says gently. “We missed a tree by this much.” He holds his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart.

  “Did we? I don’t remember that…”

  “It’s true, Clover. Your mum was in shock. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. And all these years she’s blamed Jupe for that. I know it sounds crazy, but maybe it was easier for her to direct all her anger at him instead of facing up to what could have happened…”

  “What could’ve happened?” I ask.

  Dad sighs, looking me right in the eye. “Well, we could’ve been injured or worse…”

  I feel sick to my stomach. “Killed, you mean?”

  “Who knows? We were very lucky.”

  I get up and start walking, my head spinning as I try to make sense of what Dad’s said.

  “That doesn’t explain Jupe,” I add as he falls into step with me. “Why didn’t he ever want to see us again?”

  “He did,” Dad says, putting an arm around my shoulders. “He borrowed a car and drove to Copper Beach once, about a month after it’d happened. He came to our house, but your mum was at work, and he trailed around all the chippies in town until he found her.”

  “What happened then?” I ask, frowning.

  Dad scrunches his brow. “They had a quick coffee together. As you can imagine, your mum wasn’t particularly pleased to see him, and when she blurted out that she’d nearly crashed the car, Jupe was furious. He couldn’t believe she’d put you and Lily in danger. He started shouting at her, right there in the café – Tony had to march him out.”

  “God,” I breathe. “So he did care about us after all.” I pause, thinking about all the times I wrote to him when he never replied. “I used to send Jupe letters, did you know that?” I add. “And he never wrote back.”

  “He tried to,” Dad says hesitantly. “No, I didn’t know you’d written, but I know he wrote to you.”

  “He didn’t, Dad!” I protest. “It’s as if he just stopped caring…”

  Dad takes my hand and squeezes it. “He wrote to you,” he says softly, “but your mum took the letters before you saw them.”

  “What – she hid them from me? Why?” My heart’s beating hard and fast.

  “I don’t know, Clover. She probably threw them away…”

  “But that’s so unfair!” I cry.<
br />
  We stop at the point where the stone steps lead up to the seafront. “If you were feeling bad about something – really bad, I mean – then you wouldn’t want anything to remind you about it, would you?”

  “But it was only letters,” I snap. “How many were there, anyway?”

  Dad shakes his head sadly. “Not many. Three or four, maybe. The thing is, we all make mistakes, we all do bad things we’re ashamed of…”

  I wonder if he’s thinking about how he walked out on me, Lily and Mum. “But we don’t lie, Dad,” I say firmly.

  “I think,” he says, “your mum knew how much Jupe meant to you, and that if you’d seen his letters, that would have made you want to go back to Crickle Cottage even more. And she just couldn’t do that. Sometimes,” he adds, holding my hand tightly, “it’s easier to just let things fade away.”

  I fall silent as we head into town, trying to take it all in. Aren’t adults incredible, the way they can just rub someone out, like a stain, as if they’d never existed? Lily might practise her cartwheels in our bedroom while I’m knee-deep in homework, and babble away when I’m trying to get to sleep – and sometimes, admittedly, I fantasize about Ed’s mysterious shed actually being a new bedroom for me. A Lily-free zone with a shrieking alarm that’d go off if anyone under the age of thirteen tried to enter. But I can’t ever imagine cutting her out of my life.

  “I, um, I’d better get back,” I say finally as we reach the end of the precinct.

  “I’ll walk home with you,” Dad says.

  “No, Dad, I’ll be fine.”

  Dad nods. “OK. Um, Clover,” he adds, “d’you mind not telling Lily about me getting married again? And don’t mention it to Bernice, either, when you see her…”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  He smiles sheepishly. “I, um … haven’t asked her yet,” he says.

  I plan to walk home the long way because I need time to think without Ed hammering away, making my brain judder. What’s Mum going to say when I tell her I know about Jupe’s letters? And why, when we hadn’t been in touch all those years, did Jupe want us to sort out his stuff? Maybe he didn’t have anyone else to ask. I can’t imagine my life ever being that empty.