Devils, for a change

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Good riddance!’ Joe grinned, got up, started fiddling with the controls. ‘Now we can watch Lucky Break in peace.’

  ‘I’d like to watch the Queen first, if you don’t mind.’ Hilary’s voice was quiet, quiet but steely.

  Joe stared at her in shock, mouth open, legs unsteady. ‘You what?’

  ‘I said I’d like to watch the Queen’s speech. I’ve never seen it, ever.’

  ‘But Lucky Break must have almost started. I can’t miss that. I watch it every week.’

  ‘It goes on for fifty minutes, Joe. You’ll only miss the first bit.’

  Joe took a step towards her, part threatening, part incredulous, stood uncertain by the sofa, sweat beading on his forehead. The room was stifling hot, in contrast to the draughty dining room. The fire seemed far too fierce; cruel flames twisting round the logs, which appeared to be in pain as they hissed and spurted, gave sudden twitching spasms before charring into ash.

  Joe grabbed the sofa arm, to steady himself, crouched right over Hilary, so that his whisky breath was blasting in her face. ‘You’re as bad as bloody Maureen. I might have guessed. All you fucking females are the same.’

  She tried to edge away. ‘Would you kindly watch your language, Joe. Maureen’s right. I do find it rather shocking.’

  ‘Oh, you find it rather shocking, do you?’ He lurched back, almost fell. ‘I suppose ordinary working people aren’t good enough for you. I’ll have you know it’s blokes like me what keeps the likes of you, shut up in those nunneries, never doing nothing, or sponging off the state.’

  ‘Look, please, Joe, I’m trying to listen to the Queen.’

  ‘What does she know, neither? She never had to earn no living, or scrimp and save to bring up seven kids. It was all nannies, weren’t it, and dirty great palaces, and handouts from the state.’ He was silent suddenly, staring at the Queen’s pale face, an old face like his own, which looked strained and almost weary, despite her duty smile.

  ‘At this season of Christmas, when we share our love and happiness with family and friends, we must also recall all those who live without love, or who are on their own, or battling with poverty or sickness …’

  ‘Where’s Rita?’ Joe demanded. ‘Where’s my coffee? If a man can’t get a cup of coffee in his own house on Christmas Day … I bet Prince fucking Philip isn’t told to wait till teatime. Ah, here it is, and about bloody time.’

  The door burst open – not Rita with the coffee, but Luke with his new vampire book. ‘Will you read this to me, Hilary?’

  ‘No, she fucking won’t, lad. She’s watching the Queen’s speech and no one’s allowed to say a bloody word. We’ve got two royal highnesses in here – Her Majesty the Queen and Princess bloody Hilary.’

  ‘Joe, please. Don’t use those words in front of Luke.’

  ‘He’s heard ’ em all before. And don’t you tell me how to treat my lad. You’ve never had no kids yourself, so you don’t know nothing anyway.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Hilary suddenly sprang up, banged her whisky glass down, strode across to Joe. She saw Luke dart out as swiftly as he’d entered, heard his footsteps thudding up the stairs. Her own heart was thumping in her chest, but she hardly even noticed it, was too startled by her voice – a new aggressive voice now booming through the room.

  ‘I know that kids are meant to have some love, and live in peace and quiet without all these rows and upsets. And I know it’s wrong for them to hear that no one wanted them, that their fathers considered drowning them at birth, or …’

  ‘Look here, my girl. I said that about Sylvie, not the boy, and, anyway, I …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She interrupted Joe as he had done with her, though for her it took some courage, was a completely new experience. Ivan had talked about her strength, used words like ‘spunk’ and ‘backbone’ – high time she proved him right then, used that strength and courage, for a change. ‘If Luke ever heard you say it, even about Sylvie, he might well think you felt the same in his case, wished he’d not been born or … Maybe you do think that, but it’s too late now, isn’t it? He is born. He’s here, alive. He needs a chance at least.’

  There was a sudden threatening silence, save for the gasping of the fire, the Queen’s gentle measured phrases about the Commonwealth, our Christian heritage. Hilary hardly heard the words, was fighting fear and guilt now, as she still stood her ground to Joe. Had she gone too far, sounded too belligerent? An image suddenly flashed into her mind: a Canada goose with Luke’s own wary eyes, feeding from Joe’s hand. Phhtt! She heard the arrow strike, pierce the creature’s breast; watched it struggle, collapse into itself, in a writhe of bloody feathers. If she submitted now, who else would dare defend those smaller weaker creatures, which men like Joe shot down? His two elder sons had roared off on their motorbikes, their first instinct to escape; Rita was still sobbing in the kitchen, Auntie Dot paralysed with fear.

  She refused to join those cowed and weeping women, who would go on suffering passively, never answer back or take a stand. She’d been the same herself – all her life, in fact – had let her father bully her, then allowed a whole succession of powerful tyrant men to tell her what to do – bishops, priests, the Pope, the Brignor chaplain: tyrant women, too – her Abbess, Mother Vicaress, cold-eyed Mother Mistress. She hadn’t even dared reply to Robert Harrington, had let him slap her, shout at her, call her selfish and unprincipled. She did have principles and she’d damn well make them clear.

  ‘Luke’s got to have some help, Joe, and he’s got to have it soon.’

  ‘He’s having help, for Christ’s sake – far too bloody much of it. I’ve already got the Social on my back, and now they say they’re sending round some fancy bloke connected with his school.’

  ‘Yes, what about his school? He told me they were going to send him somewhere else. Where, I’d like to know? To some school for hardened cases, which will only make him worse?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me. It’s that fucking Head at Wandsworth. He says he won’t put up with Luke no more, says he needs …’

  ‘But it is to do with you, Joe. You’re his father and you can push for what seems right for him, not allow them just to shunt him to some …’

  ‘He’s not going bloody nowhere – not for months. It takes an age, the Head said. He has to be assessed first, and every fucking busybody from our doctor to his teacher has to poke their nose in first, or come snooping round to spy on me and Rita, write their damn reports about what a pigsty it is here.’

  ‘But can’t you stop them, Joe, send him to another school before the assessment even starts – just an ordinary school, but a homely simple kindly sort of one, with a Head who has ideals, believes that boys like Luke need love and understanding, not constant threats and punishments. Luke’s own Head seems so callous, as if he’s really got it in for Luke, and has now simply washed his hands of him.’ She moved over to the window, stared out at the scrapyard, at the piles of junk and wreckage. ‘It’s wrong for children to be beaten down – wrong for anyone – to be made to feel they’re wicked all the time, or worthless human beings, damned to an existence where there isn’t any happiness or simple human love, only sin and penance. I know that, Joe, believe me. I know what harm it does, how soon it saps your confidence, removes all your joy in living, all your self-respect.’

  Joe strode towards the television, turned the volume up, so the Queen’s high-pitched voice was shrilling through the room, drowning Hilary’s own voice.

  ‘I just don’t understand you women – You made all that song and dance about this fucking bloody speech, and you haven’t heard a word of it. Why don’t you listen, girl, instead of yakking on yourself? I’ve had enough of bloody yap today, from you and all the rest.’

  Hilary winced against the noise, which was jarring in her ears, stunning the whole room. She darted forward, turned the volume down again, stood trembling by the set as the Queen’s face loomed into close-up, the age lines in her forehead cutting deeper now,
the lipsticked smile less steady.

  ‘To all of you, of every faith and race, I send you warmest wishes for a time of peace and joy during this most important festival of Christmas, in which we celebrate the birth of a small child. To you, and all your children, to all the children in the world, especially those unprivileged, I should like to say …’

  ‘Christ! She do go on – like every bloody woman. Can’t she wind it up, for fuck’s sake? Ah, she must have heard me – that’s the sign-off. “A very merry Christmas to you all.” ’ Joe repeated the greeting in his own mocking version of the Queen’s high breathy voice, then put two fingers up to her. ‘Ta, Ma’am, very much, and the same to you and yours. Now maybe I can switch on Lucky Break, or d’you want to hear the fucking national anthem?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Joe, thank you, but I don’t want you to swear. Almost every word you’ve used since I mentioned it before has been a …’

  ‘Christ all fucking mighty, woman, I didn’t invite you here to tell me what to do. I’ve had just about enough from you, poking your nose in where it don’t belong, like all them other buggers who keep bloody interfering. If I want to teach my son every swear-word in the book, or even stick the lad in bloody borstal, that’s my affair, thank you very much. Mind your own bloody business, will you, and if you don’t like my language, or the way I run my life, well you know where the fucking door is.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Hilary swept towards it, cymbals clashing, trumpets blaring, as the national anthem surged across the room, its last triumphant phrase braying out, full-volume, as she tugged the door, slammed it, hard, behind her.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Hilary strode round and round Liz’s half-denuded sitting room, still out of breath, still sweating from her frantic breakneck bike ride. The room was cold, the heating all turned off, yet she was burning with a mixture of anger, guilt and shock – anger with Joe Craddock, anger with herself. What in God’s name had she done, screaming like a harpy, deluding herself she was standing up for Luke, when she’d only made things worse for him? She’d left Joe so virulent, he’d probably turn his rancour on the boy, victimise his family. Easy for her to hurtle off, escape like Ron and Terry. Luke had no such option, had to stick it out. How naive she’d been, and stupid, to imagine simple love could heal his wounds; to have taken that heroic stand on behalf of bullied children, bludgeoned geese; seen herself as champion of the oppressed, challenging Goliath. That was pride and foolishness, not love.

  Yet the anger was still there – resentment that Joe Craddock should be allowed to tyrannise; rage with Luke’s headmaster; frustration with the boy himself that he wouldn’t even try to be less truculent. Almost without thinking, she sat down on the piano stool, banged back the lid of Liz’s ancient Broadwood. The husk of a dead fly was lying upside-down on middle C. She slapped it off, brought down a wild right hand, began to hit the keys at random, wincing at the maddened tide of sound; both hands thumping down now, feet vicious on the pedals. She was killing Goliath not with stones, or arrows, but with sheer booming hurting sound; hitting out at priests and Popes, attacking Joe and Robert, attacking her Superiors. She was startled by the noise, the volume of it, resonance; the way it seemed to fill and cower the room. That piano had more power and tone than she’d ever realised.

  She was even more astonished to realise she was playing – that what had started as brute fury now had sense and shape. Several chords had somehow come together to form a phrase she recognised, a phrase which spawned another, and another; had begun to flow, develop, grow into a tune. How extraordinary, incredible, that her hands still knew the notes, knew where to go and what to do, despite a practice-gap of over twenty years. They were stiff, admittedly, clumsy and unsupple, the nails too long, one finger sore from sewing, yet still retained their basic skills. She was no longer merely crashing chords, but actually making music – rough and simple music, yes – but with melody and structure, a growing sense of rhythm. It was like a minor miracle, something resurrected from the dead.

  She dared not stop, in case the magic vanished; continued playing fragments, weaving them together; suddenly changing to a piece she’d once practised quite obsessionally – the Beethoven Sonata she’d prepared for her Grade 8 exam, as long ago as 1966. She’d never taken the exam, had entered Brignor that same year, renouncing music as a dangerous source of pride, along with all the other skills which might tie her to the world. She was amazed she could still play the piece – or at least play parts of it – though she was making such a hash of it, the examiner would have shuddered, ordered her to stop. She was fluffing notes, forgetting notes, breaking off completely several times, yet hearing the whole movement perfect in her head, as if she’d recorded it on tape. She stumbled on an ascending run of semiquavers, groped for the arpeggios which followed; realised with a sense of shock that she had never really given up her music. Those phrases had been sounding for more than twenty years; muted, maybe, officially denied, but still always faintly playing in the recesses of her mind, despite her nun’s resolve to strip that mind of everything but God. Another sham, but one she now rejoiced in, since it had preserved her music, kept it still alive, like a valuable possession she had buried in the sand to conceal it from its predators, and was now digging up with excitement and relief.

  She went on playing, her already tired left hand repeating and repeating that mournful pleading figure in C minor, which sounded bitter, elegiac. As a girl of seventeen, she had never been aware of that edge of mounting anger beneath the desolation, the subtle change from endurance to revolt; the sudden switch of mood again, as a mocking second subject undercut the grief. There were whole new depths to this sonata, depths which as a schoolgirl she’d had no power to express, or even understand. Oh, she had assumed she was mature then, had prided herself on her artistic sensibility, even in her teens, but her emotions were too narrow, her whole life and mind too narrow. Only now, could she understand the vast new range of feeling which her one year in the world had opened up, and which made this music new and almost dangerous.

  Yet she was still betraying it by her infuriating clumsiness, her lack of all agility, her constant shaming lapses when she forgot whole passages; heard them in her mind still, but hadn’t the ability to convey them to their hands. She longed to play the piece with all the deft technique she’d had at seventeen, but added to the intensity of feeling she’d developed only recently; to make it soar and sing, bring out all its meaning and its power.

  Abruptly, she broke off, sat staring at the keys. She could do that, in fact. It needn’t stay an idle wish, some unrealistic fantasy like living in a lighthouse and becoming Gloria Harrington. Robert himself had told her she was passionate, had talents she must use. This was her main talent, a gift which hadn’t died, only been neglected. She could restore it if she wanted, nurse it back to health, start playing every day again. There were three pianos at the college, two uprights and a grand. She’d noticed them particularly, flung them envious glances as Andy showed her round. They’d probably let her use one, at least the oldest battered one, and if she really scrimped and saved, she could use every spare penny for piano lessons, find a teacher who didn’t charge too much, someone who might realise just how keen she was, how desperate to play.

  She jerked up to her feet, a dozen different pieces clashing in her head as she began fidgeting round the room; her fingers flexing as they remembered leaps and stretches, her mind churning with new schemes. She must re-plan her college term, to fit in daily practice; forget the footling hobbies she’d been planning for her leisure time. Tennis, sketching, swimming, were of no importance now. She could even start preparing for her Grade 8 examination, take it after all – a mere twenty-two years later – just to prove she could, provide her with a goal.

  She crossed the room again, unable to keep still; ran a restless thumb along the hard grooved ridges of the music-rest; traced the spray of ivy carved into the wood. She felt a real affection for this battle-scarred piano; its worn
and yellowed keys the colour of old teeth, its left flank streaked and faded by the sun, the bite-sized piece missing from the top. It had given her her freedom and her future, restored her to her powers.

  She opened the hinged lid of the padded music-stool, started sorting through the music stored inside; discovered favourite pieces, longed to play them all; longed to be a girl again, with her whole adult life in front of her, so she could devote it now to music, not to God. She couldn’t find the Beethoven, but why not start with Haydn, try to choose something quiet and calming? There was a book of Haydn sonatas crumpled at the bottom, its stained and curling pages filmed with dust. She wiped it with her sleeve, admired its handsome cover, which was decorated with a scroll of leaves and flowers, the composer’s name picked out in Gothic script, ‘Franz Joseph Haydn, 1732–1809.’

  The book slipped from her hands. Joseph Haydn. Joseph Craddock. She had forgotten Joe entirely, forgotten all her guilt and fury, even forgotten date and season. Yet just a mile or two away, the Craddocks were continuing their relentless Christmas Day, the one she’d hoped to leaven with her presence. Leaven! She eased up from the floor, fretted to the window with a shudder of embarrassment; peered out at the dark and shadowed garden. She could see not grass and shrubs, but Luke’s bruised and swollen face; see him in his bedroom, slumped down on the floor again, or maybe in the middle of a full-scale family row: Rita sobbing still, upset about her vanished guest; Maureen’s children squalling; Joe himself bellowing and cursing. She ought to phone immediately, apologise to Rita, ask to speak to Luke, at least try to reassure him, explain that …