Frozen Music

by Marika Cobbold

  Frozen Music

  MARIKA COBBOLD

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Part Two

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Three

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Part Four

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgment

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Prologue

  My name is Esther Fisher and I’m just about to walk out on the only man I’ve ever loved. I’m thirty-four and a latecomer to love, which makes this all the harder.

  I pause in the doorway of the house before stepping out into the dark November morning. The cold air makes me cough as I feel my way across the garden, my suitcase in one hand. My coat sleeve gets caught on one of Astrid’s roses. The blooms are long gone; it’s winter after all, but the thorns remain, always there, ready to catch you.

  I’m leaving the island on the seven o’clock ferry. I can just see it approach through the mist so I’ll have to hurry if I’m to make it on board. But still I linger by the wooden gate. I turn and cast one last glance up at the blue-painted wooden house. There’s no one at the window. I pick up my suitcase and walk down the hill towards the harbour, cracking the frost beneath my feet.

  I had found love at last, and truth, and that was the problem, because in my life they turned out to be each other’s enemies. Like rain and harvest, starlight and sunrise, my mother and reality.

  I have to try to make light of it. How else do you survive in a world which seems like a nursery ruled over by a capricious six-year-old?

  So where is Nanny? Or God? I don’t know.

  Part One

  One

  My mother wanted me to be a child prodigy. I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Not that I knew much about what that entailed, I was only nine after all, but I had heard it said that a psychiatrist was someone who looked into people’s minds, and I really liked the idea of that: I already liked looking at people’s outsides – ‘It’s rude to stare, Esther, how many times do I have to tell you?’ – so to be able to see right inside their heads as well sounded very interesting, almost as interesting as talking to the animals, like Dr Dolittle. And I enjoyed the reaction from grown-ups when they asked me, the way they always do when they can’t think of anything else to say, what I wanted to be when I grew up. Then, as often as not, they would answer themselves, ‘An air hostess, I wouldn’t mind guessing, or maybe a nurse?’

  ‘A psychiatrist,’ I’d say. That usually shut them up.

  Right now, Audrey, my mother, was speaking to me as she drifted through my bedroom, messing it up. ‘Have you practised your flute, darling?’

  I didn’t answer her straight away. I was busy practising on her, staring at her head, trying to see through her high forehead and into her mind. I was concentrating hard, and just for a moment I thought I had succeeded, as I glimpsed something green, a Harrods bag probably, and something swirling, dancing. Then everything got covered in a pink mist.

  ‘Esther, what are you doing? You look quite demented.’

  I frowned at her; it wasn’t my mind that was covered in a pink mist.

  ‘I asked you if you had practised your flute today?’ She picked up my teddy bear on her way through the room and, of course, put him down in the wrong place. I took him from the small wicker chair and put him back on my pillow where he belonged, dead centre.

  ‘Life is Art, Esther, Art is Life. I don’t expect you to understand, not yet, but trust me, it’s the only truth I know.’

  ‘I know lots of true things,’ I said proudly. Audrey was annoying, but she was my mother and I yearned for her approval.

  ‘Oh childhood, childhood, enjoy its rosy innocence while it lasts.’ Audrey sighed and absent-mindedly picked up my doll’s teapot from the top shelf of the small blue dresser, wandering off to the window, the pot in her hand. ‘So pretty,’ she mumbled. I couldn’t tell if she meant the teapot or the Kensington street below – the cherry trees were in blossom – but I did know that she was going to put the teapot back in the wrong place.

  My mother turned away from the window and fixed me with her soft blue gaze. ‘Now get on with your practice, an hour at least. That little Japanese girl, Miko… Misho… you know the one I mean? – Divine – She practises five hours a day, apparently, which is why she is well on her way to becoming a world-class performer.’

  ‘I don’t like the flute, I like the trumpet.’ In my mind I saw the glinting brass and heard its triumphant noisiness.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Esther, the trumpet is a hideous solo instrument, hideous. Anyway, your music teacher tells me you have it in you to be a very good flautist indeed.’

  ‘I have it in me to be a very good psychiatrist who plays the trumpet,’ I insisted.

  My mother ignored me, the way she ignored most problems. ‘And when you’ve finished, Janet will give you your tea; then you must come and say hello to Olivia.’ Audrey had reached the door before she remembered the teapot in her hand. With a vague glance around my room she put it down on my bedside table, rather than back in its place on the dresser. I was pleased; I liked it best when things happened the way I expected.

  ‘And do a drawing for Olivia, will you. I know she’d like that.’ My mother blew me a kiss and disappeared out on to the landing, leaving behind her instructions and the sweet scent of gardenia.

  I put the teapot back on the top shelf of the dresser (I had to draw my chair up to reach), giving my flute in its velvet-lined case a nasty look as I passed. Then I returned to my game of the French Revolution. I had managed to construct a guillotine from an old Rice Krispies packet and some elastic bands, but Barbie’s and Ken’s heads remained resolutely fixed to their rubbery necks. ‘Problems, problems, problems,’ I muttered as the crowd – two anatomically correct dolls (one boy, one girl), an inflatable crocodile, a Beatles doll (Ringo) and a cuddly rabbit, normally called Rupert but known now as Jean for the purpose of the game – grew restless.

  Janet was clearing away the tea. I didn’t want to leave the table. I liked the large basement kitchen best of all the rooms in the house and I liked Janet, our housekeeper. Janet was sensible. She wore shoes you could walk in and it didn’t seem to bother her if her hair got wet from the rain. She spoke in short, clear sentences and her mood hardly ever changed from its customary brisk friendliness. You knew where you were with Janet.

  ‘Come on, Esther, off you go. Your mother and her friend are waiting for you.’

  ‘She’s very tall, Olivia,’ I said, staying where I was.

  ‘You say that about everyone.’ Janet gave my chair a little shove as she passed on her way to the fridge. ‘You’re short, have you ever thought about that?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be short,’ I protested. ‘I’m nine years old.’ But I slipped off my chair and ambled upstairs, dragging my feet on the parquet floor of the hall a
nd the cream stair carpet, pausing briefly on the first-floor landing to pinch an apple from the copper bowl where they had been arranged by Audrey in a cider-scented pyramid. I could hear her languid murmuring and the louder, firmer tones of Olivia Davies, her old school friend. I bit into my apple and tried to conjure up a picture of her. All I saw was a mass of hair, darkish brown and wavy, not unlike my own. As I looked at the picture in my mind I ran my fingers through my hair, twisting a strand round and round my index finger.

  ‘Esther, is that you out there?’ my mother called and with another bite of my apple I sidled into the drawing-room, feeling shy all of a sudden. ‘Darling, what have you done to your hair? You look like a Hottentot. Oh, never mind. Come and say hello nicely.’

  I shot Audrey a mutinous glance. Why did she insist on treating me like a child? Then I remembered; I was one. I felt more cross than ever.

  ‘There’s no need to kiss me.’ Olivia smiled. She put out her large hand to take mine as I approached from across the room, a dutiful pucker already formed on my lips. I released it into a smile as she added, ‘After all, Esther, we hardly know each other.’

  I had forgotten what a nice, sensible person Olivia was. Transferring my apple to the pocket of my red dungarees, I put my hand in hers and she shook it firmly. I was looking hard at her face, wanting to see if I could count all the freckles on her left cheek before she let go of my hand: one two three four five… as I counted I began to get flustered. Suddenly it was really important that I managed them all… six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen… the numbers raced through my mind as if chased by some monster or a wolf. There was still a big bit to go. Fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen…

  ‘Esther, how many times have I had to tell you, you’re not to stare at people,’ my mother’s voice interrupted my counting.

  ‘Can I have my hand back now?’ Olivia asked nicely.

  I shook my head, counting feverishly, thirty thirty-one thirty-two thirty-three…

  ‘Let go of Olivia’s hand immediately,’ Audrey snapped and I dropped it as if it were stolen chocolate. I still had an area on her cheek the size of half a crown to count, but it was too late. I grinned stupidly. ‘And don’t grimace, child.’ Audrey sighed.

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into her.’ My mother’s voice followed me like an embarrassing smell as I padded across the room to my favourite chair. It was green, shabby and worn, and very different from the rest of the furniture in our house, but Madox, my father, had decreed that it should stay and my mother, although muttering darkly at it as she passed, had not dared to throw it out. I liked it because it was large enough for me to curl up in and almost disappear, and because it didn’t matter if I spilt anything on it or dropped flakes of chocolate down the side of the seat cushion. In fact, my mother was almost pleased if she saw me eat while sitting there, or if I forgot to take my shoes off when I put my feet up, and normally she was the fussiest person in the world. Tucking my legs up under me I fished out what was left of my apple from my pocket and took a bite, resting my head against the back of the chair. It smelt comfortingly of dirty wool and old pipe smoke.

  ‘So there I’ll be,’ Olivia was saying, ‘the mother of an instant family. A boy of twelve called Linus. Strange little chap, podgy, mostly quiet.’

  ‘That’s a mercy, that he’s quiet I mean. Boys can be so… so hideously there.’ Audrey lit a cigarette and I sniffed the first tobacco sweetness before the smoke turned acrid, and munched on my apple.

  ‘Then, all of a sudden he’ll have these outbursts.’

  ‘Outbursts?’ Audrey asked. I stopped chewing and leant forward in my chair.

  ‘Sudden explosions of joy. I think that’s the best way of describing it. Very disconcerting and drives his father up the wall, but then, to be fair to the little chap, any child would. Bertil is such a perfectionist, and so utterly in control and on top of life, so bloody good at everything he does. I told you he’s an architect, didn’t I?’

  ‘Darling, he sounds exhausting.’ At that they both laughed, although I couldn’t see what was funny. Instead I wondered if Olivia would be impressed to hear that I knew what perfectionist meant. Then again, if I spoke they would remember I was there and I would be told to go away and play, when I much preferred to stay in the large green chair and listen to the grown-ups talk and imagine what I would be like if I were one. That afternoon I very much wanted to have freckles all over, like Olivia, and large hands with big rings set with stones.

  ‘Of course it’s hard for a child to grow up without a mother,’ Olivia said and I felt like pointing out to her that it was hard for a child to grow up with a mother too. ‘And the way it happened can’t have made it any easier,’ she went on. ‘Not that the boy knows much about it. Bertil wants to protect him for as long as possible. Actually, I doubt that he’ll ever feel ready to speak of it. I certainly can’t get much out of him.’

  I was confused. What did they need to protect this Linus from? Where was his mother?

  ‘How did she die? The first wife?’

  So the boy’s mother was dead. I too wanted to know how. We had just learnt about leprosy at school. Lots of people used to die from leprosy and they still did, in Africa. If Linus’s mother had died a long time ago as they said she had, maybe that was it. I could see why they didn’t want to tell Linus. It’s horrible. Their fingers and toes fall off and their noses…

  ‘Linus was five or six, something like that,’ Olivia said. I liked her shoes as well. They were nicer than Janet’s, but they still looked as if you could run pretty fast in them. When we were out together, Audrey, Madox and I, we always had to wait for Audrey to catch up and sometimes we had to stop at some boring old café just so that she would be able to rest her feet. She always said it had nothing to do with those shoes she wore, all pointy and high-heeled, but I didn’t believe her. Once I suggested that she bought a pair like Janet’s, I even offered to find out which shop Janet got hers from, but Audrey had just laughed and said, ‘Honestly, darling, do you think I would be caught dead wearing shoes like that?’ Obviously there was something very wrong with Janet’s shoes, but I couldn’t see it myself. I had thought then, and I thought now, that being caught dead was precisely what she might be if she carried on wearing those silly shoes she liked if some lion or tiger or something chased her and she couldn’t run.

  ‘So have you got a photo of your Bertil?’

  ‘Not on me, no.’

  ‘No starry-eyed romantic you.’ Audrey laughed and shook her head. ‘When I was engaged to Madox I carried his picture in this tiny silk purse around my neck, next to my heart.’

  ‘When Linus’s mother died, did he have to wear black clothes?’ My voice, coming from the depths of the green armchair, seemed to startle them. They both turned round and stared at me as if they were indeed surprised to see me still in the room.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Olivia said finally. ‘But I shouldn’t think so. He was very young.’

  ‘Maybe he had to wear a black band around his arm?’ I suggested.

  ‘Esther, Olivia wasn’t there. Now why don’t you run along and play? Do a nice picture for Olivia.’

  I knew it! Being told to draw a picture was the oldest trick of them all when it came to getting rid of children. ‘Why don’t you run along to your room and draw me a really pretty picture,’ Audrey would say. But then when I’d done one and I showed it to her it was as if she had forgotten that she had ever asked me for one. Honestly, it made you think she never wanted a picture in the first place.

  ‘Come on, Esther, do what Mummy asked you and draw Olivia a really nice picture to take back to Sweden with her.’

  I always told myself I wouldn’t fall for it again, but what choice did I have? Reluctantly, I propelled myself off the chair and pottered off, pausing briefly in the doorway. ‘When Amy Tillesly’s grandmother died Amy had to wear a black band around her arm for a whole month.’ I remembered because I had wanted to wear one very badly m
yself. There was no comment from my mother or Olivia so, disgruntled, I trundled upstairs to my bedroom, right at the top of the house. I brought out my coloured pencils and my drawing pad and set to work, lying flat on my tummy on the green rug. When I had finished I sat back on my heels and inspected the result. It was quite good, I thought. There was a tall old man, I had written Bertle underneath just in case Olivia didn’t recognise him, and next to him stood a small round boy, Linus of course, wearing shorts and a cap. I looked some more at my picture and scratched the tip of my nose with my crayon, then I picked up a black one instead and drew a black band round the boy’s arm.

  ‘You will grow up to be the kind of man who sits on his hat.’ With his teacher’s words ringing in his ears, Linus Stendal trudged through the wintry streets of Gothenburg. He felt the colour rise in his cheeks at the memory of the titters that had rippled through the classroom and he blinked and shook himself. No matter, it was over for that day. He was on his way home and already it was getting dark. The first snow of the winter had fallen the night before, but it had not been cold enough in the centre of town to allow it to rest on the ground. Instead it had melted to a grey slush that seeped through the joins of his black zip-up ankle boots and settled in a mess on the toe-caps. People were hurrying past, their heads bent low against the icy wind, its gusts like a shower of glass needles against the face. Linus pulled his red woolly hat further down his forehead, but he kept his steady slow pace of walking. Dawdling, his father called it and it drove him crazy with irritation.

  ‘When I was your age I ran everywhere, I didn’t even know the meaning of the word “walk”,’ Bertil would say. Well, Linus just wasn’t made for running. Not only because of his roundness, but more because of his thoughts; they simply couldn’t catch up with him if he walked too fast.

  A stream of cars passed, their headlights on, the sound of their tyres squelching through the slush-filled gutters. That sound meant winter had really come and Linus, for one, was glad. He liked being indoors best, and in winter people did not nag him quite so much to go outside and play. Right now his model kit, a Spitfire, lay waiting for him in his bedroom in the large third-floor apartment he shared with his father. Thinking of the model kit made Linus speed up so that now he was keeping pace with everyone else. It had taken him almost two months to save up enough money to buy the kit, and even then he had had to dip into his emergency funds stored in a black-and-yellow tin hidden in a shoebox at the back of his wardrobe. Last night he had brought all the components of the kit out of their packaging, easing each piece from its plastic frame, snapping the little plastic stalks that held them in place, carefully, before arranging them all on his blue Formica-topped desk, ready for today. He crossed the street, his cheeks pink with pleasurable anticipation. Still, at Paleys café he paused for a moment, as he always did, to look through the large windows at the round marble-topped tables and small straight-backed gilt chairs, and at the counter at the front of the shop, laden with pastries and cakes and buns of every kind. Linus and his mother used to go there together before the accident. He had been little then, but he remembered the last time they went. It was winter, like now, and he had burrowed his face into the sleeve of her coat. If he closed his eyes he could feel the coarse softness of the fur against his cheek and the faint smell of camphor. With a little sigh he hurried on his way.