The Song House

by Trezza Azzopardi

  thirty-four

  Alison doesn’t bother to ring the bell; she peers in through the front window, looking for signs of life. Not a shadow, not a flicker of movement within. Holding her umbrella sideways, she presses a pearly ear to the cold glass and listens.

  This is how Kenneth sees her, backlit in the faint glow from the carriage lamps, like a neighbour eavesdropping through a wall.

  Clear off! I said no Gypsies!

  Sensing his shadow in the hallway, the ghost of Kenneth passing the clock, Alison thinks he’s making one of his jokes. But the wait – presumably he’s gone to find the key? – gets longer, and the rain bouncing up from the gravel is speckling her ankles.

  William should get you certified, she yells, rapping her knuckles on the window. When he doesn’t reappear, she decides to try round the back of the house, to get in through the courtyard or the terrace. Except the gate in the adjoining wall is locked, and on the terrace side, a veiled moon shows her the steps are under water. Alison paces the driveway, unsure of what to do next. She’d promised William, but if he won’t let her in, what can she do? There’s the sound of a sash sliding open with a fierce clap, and then there’s Kenneth, poking his head out of an upstairs window.

  How now, you secret, black, and midnight hag, he shouts. His face is impossible to read, but he’s not so far away that she can’t smell the whisky coming off him.

  Actually, dear, I’m the eight o’clock hag. I was thinking you might need rescuing. I did phone, several times.

  A knell that summons me to Heaven or Hell.

  You can pretend all you like, Kenneth, you don’t fool me. But William is worried, she says, to the blunt shape above her, What with the valley cut off and you up here alone. That’s William your son, by the way, not Shakespeare. He asked me to call. Well, I’ve called.

  When Kenneth doesn’t answer, she makes one last attempt.

  Oh, and I’ve had a change of heart about witnessing your will. Call it an ‘advance decision’ on my part, but I don’t think you’re entirely compos mentis.

  He is down the stairs and has the door thrown wide before she has even got back in the car.

  Open Sesame, she says, shaking the droplets from her umbrella, Now, shall we talk?

  You see that?

  The men stop loading and watch as the figure draws into view, only to disappear again as the road dips. They pause, and in the rain’s respite, Sam Moore seizes the opportunity to flex and bend his aching fingers. Clamped rigid between his knees is a disgruntled ewe. Eyeing her at close range is a soaked Border collie, licking his lips with intent.

  Have a look, Sam says. Aaron leaps up onto the flatbed into the stew of waterlogged sheep, craning his neck to catch any sign of movement through the trees.

  Can’t see. Must’ve gone back. Hang on, there he is. He’s coming our way.

  The figure appears to wade slowly upwards out of the wash, turns back on itself and swims away into the black.

  He in trouble?

  Dunno. Maybe, Aaron says, jumping down again. At a nod from Sam, he grabs the spongy rear end of the ewe and to a count of one they hoist her into the back with the rest of the flock. Aaron swings the gate of the pick-up closed and leans on the battered rim.

  We’ll give him a minute, he says, See if he appears.

  Let’s go get him out, decides Sam, Stupid tosser.

  Alison says nothing about the state of the kitchen. She fills the kettle with water and lifts two cups from the draining board, but she can’t resist inspecting them, tilting them under the spotlights while Kenneth searches among the wine bottles.

  Had a disaster in the cellar, he’s saying, But I’ve saved most of them, look. Trouble is, when you clap eyes on them – temptation!

  And you can resist everything except temptation, I know, she says, But we’re having tea.

  No milk.

  We’re having it with lemon.

  Kenneth shrugs.

  No lemons.

  It’s the first chance she’s had to study him properly. She expected to find him unshaven, unkempt, was ready to be confronted by a shambling wreck. She’s surprised – and slightly perturbed – to find he looks as he always does; tanned, upright, a hint of mischief about him, a little boy hiding a secret. Better than he always does, in fact; less vague, more focused. Despite the rolled-up trousers and the ridiculous running shoes, or perhaps because of them, he has a youthful look about him. But when they carry their cups into the library, Alison notes the mess. He may look perfectly fine, but the old Kenneth would never let the records lie around all over the place, out of their sleeves, out of sequence. The floor is decorated with a criss-cross of muddy tracks; a sheer film of dust covers the surfaces.

  Where’s Freya when you need her, she says, by way of comment.

  Visiting her daughter in Cheshire, says Kenneth, Not that I need her, really. I manage well enough.

  Well enough, indeed, she echoes, gazing at the typewriter and the rank mug of mushroom water and the whisky bottle and the papers everywhere. She snatches one up from the chair as she bends to sit in it. Kenneth doesn’t try to take it from her; he makes a little nod of encouragement.

  Thoma Vryce, she reads, Was the water bailiff at the t ime it happened.

  At the time what happened?

  Kenneth settles back in his seat, attempts a quick sip of the tea, flinching as he scalds his lips.

  Will found a child in the barrow field. You remember? Years ago.

  Alison nods, jiggles her foot at the floor and the balled-up papers dotted all over it.

  And it’s taken you a ream of paper to write that?

  The point is . . . the point isn’t what’s written down, Ali. It’s what’s not written down, that’s the point. There was something not right about it. He’d found a child, and the child – you remember, there was a dog, belonged to the bailiff – the dog had savaged the child?

  I don’t remember the details. It was before I moved here. And, she says sharply, No one ever spoke of it.

  I know. He’d found a child and the water bailiff – Bryce – had got there just afterwards, and he took the dog away and he shot it.

  Good thing too, says Alison, You can never trust them once they’ve turned.

  Kenneth rubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t know how to get the words out in order, in a sequence she will understand.

  The thing is, there was a great hoo-ha in the village, the police and reporters and so on. The child had been missing, you see.

  So?

  So, Will hadn’t just rescued a child from the dog – he’d found her. He was a little hero.

  Nothing changes there, she says, trying to lift the atmosphere, He’s such a sweetie.

  But it didn’t seem heroic. It didn’t even seem real. I mean, when I came back, Rusty was incensed. She wouldn’t speak of it, not to anyone. And you know how she loved the limelight. Alison’s about to say that actually she doesn’t know, but Kenneth continues his line of thought.

  She wouldn’t even look at William. Wouldn’t be in the same room. We had to send him away again, you know, find another school for the poor chap. And he was strange too. He loved that dog, absolutely adored it, but he never said a word afterwards.

  Well, that would explain it, she says, stifling a yawn, Grief has that effect. And maybe Rusty was really angry with you, Kenneth, for ditching them both like that and running off with the maid.

  He checks her face to see if she’s joking. Satisfied that she doesn’t know about Grace, he shakes his head as if he’s already considered and dismissed the idea.

  No, Rusty was glad to be rid of me. And rid of Will too, as it turned out. How can a mother abandon her child?

  The same way a father can, says Alison.

  And Bryce. Always in the thick of it. Always something vaguely . . .

  Kenneth searches his mind for the right word,

  . . . Repellent about him. He was behaving oddly. I thought it was because he was worried he’d be pros
ecuted over the dog. The child’s father was Godfrey Crane’s son – the judge, you know – but we didn’t know that then, not for a while. There was another man about, making a nuisance. Can’t think of his name. Thing was, I was only gone a day or so, but when I came back, it was like that place.

  Alison looks askance.

  What place?

  In that film, where everyone is the same but different. Like they’ve been—

  Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, she says.

  That’s it. Even Rusty was different. As if she’d suddenly come to life, as if—

  A snort of laughter from Alison stops him.

  I think the opposite’s supposed to happen, my dear, she says, By the way, how is Rusty these days?

  She’s agreed to give me a divorce.

  The news has the effect of darkening the room. Alison can’t keep the surprise from her voice.

  After all these years! Has she given up the faith?

  I went to see her a couple of weeks ago, says Kenneth, Told her I’d made a will, told her what kind, what was in it. Said I was in love and would she set me free.

  This news is much more interesting to Alison than the heap of memories Kenneth has been forcing her to sift through, but she composes her face. She’s forgotten about Maggie and what William told her the last time they met. Instead she’s enjoying the tiny quickening of her pulse, the faint hope forming in her mind.

  All that’s out of the window now, of course, he says, actually getting up and moving to the glass, as if the word has suddenly reminded him of the object itself, Silly old fool that I am.

  From behind him comes Alison’s voice, low, defeated.

  A silly old fool and a most insensitive one, Kenneth.

  She’d been making good progress. The water in the lane outside the cottage was barely up to her calves, not much deeper than inside it. She sensed the daylight falling behind her, but couldn’t wait any longer; no one was coming. For all anyone knew, the place was deserted. Maggie wouldn’t spend another night there. It wasn’t the smell, nor the sensation that the walls had turned to blotting paper and were sucking up the river stink: it was the rats. She hadn’t anticipated rats. At first she thought it was someone at the front door – someone in trouble, perhaps, or that Aaron had come back and was trying to force his way in – but when she stood at the top of the landing and looked down, there was no one there. Then she caught a flash of movement in her peripheral vision, something alive, swimming through the hallway. For the next hour, as she sat in the middle of the bed and considered what to do, she could hear them squeaking and scrabbling in the rooms below. Time to leave.

  Maggie thought she could manage if she kept on the verge side, where the water was bound to be shallower. But the verge had disintegrated here and there, once collapsing underneath her, tipping her into a half-submerged fence. She’d tied her holdall around her neck to keep it safe, and it was heavy, much heavier once it had got wet, and kept slipping round her body. She cradled it like a baby in front of her. After half a mile, she lifted out the dreamcatcher box and threw the holdall away. Didn’t watch it jink and bobble over the surface; kept her eyes fixed ahead of her. Something glinted through the trees. Following the curve and dip of the road, she saw it again; white, hard-edged: a truck or van. The ford would be treacherous; already the noise in her ears was much louder, like the deafening rush of a weir, but the truck was a good sign. She broached it slowly, gripping a spindly hedgetop on one side of the field until that too was sunk, and then she waded through, holding the box above her head for as long as she could bear it. Knee-high now, nearly at the middle. It had grown so dark ahead of her she could no longer tell where the flood ended and the road began. Beneath the water, her boots had filled, liquid became solid; she could feel lumps of debris banging against her legs. She paused, trying to free herself of the sucking mud, but a quick twist of the current knocked her askew, almost snatching the box from her hands. So, let it go, then: let the notebook swim free, wash the past away. But she thought of the photograph of Nell, how it was all she had; and the part of her that wanted it to end dissolved in the froth breaking over her head. Under the surface, the water was brown as an old penny. Maggie slid sideways, backwards, choking, slipping, trying to regain her footing, trying to hold on to the box, choking and slipping and clawing water, clawing mud; fighting the pull of the current at first and then allowing it to carry her along.

  thirty-five

  After Alison leaves, Kenneth positions the stylus at the start of the record and plays the concert over again. He hears the music like rain, and there is still the actual rain, falling in shifts and shivers on the long windows, but Kenneth’s listening is much more intent than sound on a surface: he’s trying to hear his son.

  The boy was lying on his bed, pretending to read a copy of Mad magazine. Kenneth stared at the boy’s feet; how ugly they looked, how filthy the soles were, and it filled him with fury, the sight of the boy in shorts and a T-shirt, lying there on the clean white linen with such dirty feet. Kenneth had come all the way back, and his son wouldn’t even look at him. He doesn’t remember what they said to each other.

  A message had been sent to his club, telling him to return home immediately, but he didn’t get it because he wasn’t there. He had booked into a hotel. Had Grace with him, wanted one last night with her before he left. He was tempted to persuade her to follow him out there. Lots of ex-pats needing nannies in Bahrain, lovely weather, a fresh start for both of them. She had hair that looked like silk but felt like wire. Extraordinary texture. And her mouth was too big for her face, but he liked that, it suited her. It was sexy. He’d reserved a table for dinner but in the end it was room service they had, very late into the night, and they both got quite drunk. It didn’t matter; they could sleep in, maybe even spend the day in the park, like a pair of lovers, lying in the grass, getting sunburnt. His flight wasn’t until the following evening.

  They didn’t go to the park and she didn’t see him off at the airport, because it was so far and the trip was a bit of a drag in the heat and she was meeting someone at World’s End and really had to shift. It was a blessing really; he remembers feeling as if he were duty-bound to make the suggestion, but the thought of the two of them at the airport together brought home the reality of the idea: he didn’t want her in Bahrain at all. She promised him she’d think about it; said it over her shoulder, walking casually away from him, the tanned outline of her body clearly visible through the thin cheesecloth of her dress. She turned back once, and seeing him standing there in his suit with his case at his feet – watching her go – she put her hand up and smiled, and so he knew that was the end, of course. What would she have seen? A married man in an unfashionable suit; an older man, seventeen years older. Old enough, just about, to be her father.

  He was paged in departures. The public address announced an urgent message for Mr Kenneth Earl, and although he heard it, once standing in the toilet cubicle, and once again while he was washing his hands in the basin, he didn’t connect the name with himself. And the third time: he was looking for a novel to take him through the flight, hearing the creaking carousel of books, and, above it, the exact same message delivered in the same staticky monotone.

  He would like to remember what he’d said to William. He has to put himself back in the hole.

  Kenneth sat on the edge of the bed, laid his hand on his son’s bare feet and said,

  Will, I take it there’s been some adventure. You’re quite the hero, so Sharon says. What happened, son?

  But the boy wouldn’t talk.

  In another cell of his memory, the cell where such moments are hidden from the light, Kenneth sees himself and his son in the room, and the preferred, imagined memory evaporates like dew. He sees again the dirty bare soles of William’s feet – how it makes him rage to come back to that – and he’s towering over the boy, his hands curled into fists; he’s towering and shouting.

  Stand up, boy! Have you forgotten your manne
rs?

  And William slides off the edge of the bed and gets to his feet.

  Kenneth lets out a small, baffled cry: now, he wants to hear his son. Didn’t want to then. He thinks of his own father, who held to the dictum that children should be seen and not heard, and marvels at how, like some process of genetic osmosis, he had absorbed the rule. But his father had never hit him; can’t blame that on heredity. Rusty was quite different with the boy. They were always – Kenneth strains the word out – canoodling, him and her. Her little man. Wanted to take him places with them; the opera, the theatre. Why didn’t he want that too? He was only ever home for the holidays as it was. Why did he want the boy to have his own sitting room, for Christ’s sake? So that William could leave them in peace. To do what? He can’t remember because he doesn’t know. What was wrong with him? He gets up slowly, stiff and chilled from sitting so still for so long. He has an urge to light the fire, remembering at the last second, a lit match between his fingers, that William had stuffed the chimney with bin bags last winter to stop the heat escaping. Who’d light a fire in July, anyway? But everything’s so damp. He wants to light a fire and he can’t fathom why. Immobility, he says, taking himself off to the kitchen and refilling his glass. Immolation. He can’t sit on the terrace for the stink. What is it with this weather, that it smells so bad?

  Sam Moore pushes his crook further into the swirling mass. Behind him, Aaron is breathing heavily from the run down the hill. He tries to keep the torch steady so the light won’t bounce around, but even so, only the surface is lit, broken like glass into hundreds of tiny shards.

  See him?

  Sam doesn’t reply. He wades further into the wash, feeling about in the cold and dark. He lifts a dripping holdall from the middle of a nest of twigs and tosses it onto the bank, flinging up beside it a bent bicycle wheel, a length of plumbing hose, a single wellington boot. When he reaches the other side he puts his hands on his knees and bends double, scanning the ford for any sign of life.