Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Martha took them without looking. “Do you know what Ted just said to me, Mayland? He said age doesn’t matter.”

  Long shot a burning glance at the young man’s back. “Impudent puppy. It certainly does matter!”

  “Oh, well, don’t be upset by it,” said Martha. “How could he know? He’s only in his twenties. Scarcely older than Pádraig. But doesn’t Ted have an appealing smile, my dear?”

  Then, in the same tone, she added, “I wonder if he’s on something?”

  “Casadh an t’súgáin”

  “I feel that I have to… to make up for twenty years of practice that I haven’t had.” Pádraig put his flute down on the dressing room table. The old rosewood tube had but one key and a worn silver mouthpiece. The Paolo Santori button accordion which lay next to it was brand-new and bright red.

  “Well, you can’t,” stated Elen Evans, sitting herself beside him. “So don’t bang your head against walls.” She gazed at nothing-at-all in the corner of the dressing room. “Besides, Pat, you don’t need to.”

  Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin had a baby face. He set his smallish mouth stubbornly. “I missed the bridge last night that Martha wrote out for me and everything. Nobody else has to get music written out for them. You do it all yourself.”

  Elen had to giggle. “You got it a bit different, that’s all, ducks. Seriously, how could anyone but me arrange things for this one-of-a-kind dinosaur I play? Martha gave you that bridge because you asked her to, and though it was pretty nice of her, it was no better than the kind of thing you fuss around with, and probably lots harder to finger. After all, it’s not her instrument.

  “And believe me, Pat—no one but ourselves dreamed there was anything amiss last night, and we only knew because you practiced the thing so much. Too much, I think.”

  “George knew, and that was what counts.”

  Hearing St. Ives’s name, Elen sat quite still for a moment. Then she propped an ankle over the opposite knee and played with the flounce of her skirt. “Diddle St. Ives, Pat. He’s a cancer to all concerned. In fact, let me be nice and catty for a moment: he’s not who Martha wanted for the tour. I myself might have thought twice about coming, had I known he’d be in the group.”

  Pádraig looked up from his sulk. “You say he’s not who Martha wanted? There was someone else?”

  Since Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin ended all his questions on a fall of the voice, it took Elen a fraction of a second to realize they were questions. “Folsom,” she replied. “Seán Folsom. We were set up until a month before the tour and bang! He’s got a cracked spine. Fell off a roof. St. Ives was what she could get.”

  A smile touched Pádraig’s face, like a glimpse of sun on a dark day. He hit her on the upper arm, rather too hard. “She only asked him then? She asked me six months before. She asked me first.” But he was immediately sober again.

  “You say you wouldn’t have come. But you came after all.”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t let Martha Macnamara down; not for any reason. I wouldn’t, for one thing. She’s too decent a lady. And then professionally, it’d be the kiss of death, wouldn’t it? Everyone knows she’s good, and she fulfills her promises. Both to the houses and to the people she works with. So I gave a great sigh and said ‘La!’ And here I am.”

  “I’m glad,” said Pádraig, and then he looked away. “But I think it isn’t Martha herself who keeps everything right but her boyfriend.”

  Elen grinned, and this encouragement was enough to induce Pádraig to add, “And they aren’t married, are they?”

  Elen Evans sat up straight on the hard bench. “I’m sure I never asked. They don’t project that image, as Ted might say, but I never thought it my business…”

  Pádraig shot her a glance almost gleeful in its mischief. “But isn’t it funny? They are not young kids, to be getting in trouble. Why are they at it?”

  Elen opened her mouth but no sound came out for some seconds. Pádraig laughed aloud flat the expression on her face. At last she clapped both long-nailed hands on her knees and said, “My dear infant, how long have you been out?”

  The baby face went bleak again and he turned half away. “Not long enough to play with Macnamara’s Band. Martha knew I blew it too.”

  Evans hit her knees again, much harder. “You moron! More of that, Sullivan, and I’ll haul back and hit you one.”

  Pádraig had pulled back one sleeve of his dazzling sweater and was scratching a red spot on his forearm. “Go ahead. I’m not worth anything anyway.”

  With complete spontaneity Elen did so, slamming him in the center of the chest with her right fist. Pádraig fell backward, landing on his rear on the concrete floor. Elen hopped, cursed, and licked her palm, where her sharp harper’s nails had bit into her hand. Then she saw Pádraig flat out on the concrete staring up at her.

  “Pat! What have I done? I’ve hurt you!” She got down on her knees and put her wounded hand behind his head.

  “Not at all. I fell over from the surprise of it,” he said, disentangling his legs from the bench. He grinned and blushed simultaneously. “It was a rotten hit. No strength in it.”

  “I’m not in practice. My aggressions are more subtle.” Elen got up and dusted off the lavender cotton of her skirt. With a moment’s alarm she made sure the fall had not done harm to any of the instruments that had been left in the room for the afternoon. She pushed back her little curls of hair and sighed. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Landaman Hall was as much a theater as a concert hall, and as in many theaters, the back of the stage opened directly onto a loading dock, which was usually closed by roll-up steel doors. These were on the east side, and barely visible along the alley that ran between the Hall and the supermarket which adjoined.

  As Martha and company passed in front of the building on their way back to the motel from the beach, Long happened to look in and see a square of darkness where the doors hung. “That’s odd,” he said and strolled down the alley, still carrying Marty.

  Martha had been a few steps in front, and his sudden diversion took her aback. “What’s odd?” She followed him into the cool shadow of the alley. It was chilly, after the sun, and pleasant to the skin.

  The right-hand door was open, and she could look up into the ceiling of the backstage. No lower, though, because she was not a tall woman and the dock was high. “Don’t they know we left our sound equipment in there? Or is Santa Cruz so faultlessly honest…?”

  Long chuckled and expressed disbelief. Setting Marty on her feet, he grabbed the lip of the dock in his hands and heaved up.

  There was the disheartening hiss mid pull of silk unraveling. He dropped again and stared at the rusty bolt which had caught his jacket front. “Oh, damn,” he said very primly, and sought about in his pocket.

  “It can be mended,” said Martha, but Long was too involved to pay attention. He drew out a pigskin box about half the size of a cigarette case. It had some very pretty little nail trimmers in it, and a small pair of scissors, and also stainless-steel tweezers, which he took out and held at the very tips of his long fingers. With surgical care he reached into the tangle of hanging threads and puckered fabric and pulled.

  Fascinated, both Marty and her grandmother watched one thread after another sucked back into its place in the weave. Long’s face was hard with concentration. At last he let out a sigh and snapped the pigskin case closed. “It will never be the same,” he said, and gave one more rueful glance at the dock.

  “I’ll use the door after the approved manner.”

  Martha thought that was just as well, considering not only the dirt but also the possibility that thieves had opened the door up there. If one had to walk in on thieves, one could at least avoid doing so head first, clawing at the concrete. Besides, there was a large stone or cement pediment of some kind, tilted at a nasty angle over the edge of the dock. Being theatrical in nature, it was probably papier-mâché, and it did have a cable wrapped around its middle, holding it in, but still �
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  It piqued Mr. Long that he had not been given the key to the Hall. Most managements along the tour had been more trusting. Or more realistic. It was mere luck, now, that he found a man vacuuming the lobby, and it was sheer persistence that made him continue his rapping on the glass door until the fellow heard him over the racket of his machine. He was a colorless man dressed in janitorial drab.

  Infuriating. The fellow refused to admit the dock gate was open. No one had been in the theater all day except himself and the musicians, and the big steel gates were never opened except for deliveries. He did give Long the key from the front stage to backstage.

  The carpet and seats of Landaman. Hall were dark blue plush, which exuded odors musty and a feeling of chill restraint. The woodwork, in the orchestra pit and up the sides of the stage, was gray. The walls were white, but of course in the dim light they appeared gray also, and Mr. Long felt a moment’s doubt that Macnamara’s Band would be able to infuse warmth into such a sepulchral chamber. Especially with the lack of warmth existing within the group itself.

  But one would never know that, he reflected as he went through the doorway that led to the stage-left stairs. On stage, they gave the impression that they were one mind and one heart, and even the creaky little digs and puns with which they filled the time between numbers seemed imbued with family feeling.

  Six weeks ago it had seemed that Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin’s rough antics and awkwardness around Elen Evans would prevent any lasting peace—not that they showed it on stage. Eight weeks ago St. Ives had spent his days gazing at Weird Teddy Poznan with clear and steady loathing. That had been before Pádraig’s Celtic cachet had worn off. And Elen, too, had exchanged some muted hisses with Teddy over sound levels. Who would have thought the great antagonism of the tour (and Martha said at least one was inevitable) would have been St. Ives versus Pádraig?

  Long crossed the waxed, white-wood stage, stepping neatly around the swags of rope and the black cables of their own equipment. Perhaps, he thought, it was more accurately stated St. Ives versus Everybody. He yawned. Coughed.

  The wall which divided the front stage from the back was jointed and ran in tracks in the floor and ceiling. It was padlocked shut, but set into one of its sections was a door of normal size and shape, with a Yale lock in it. A stiff double loop of black cable pecked from beneath the door, and Long wondered if it was part of the band’s equipage. If so, then perhaps there had been thieves. He glanced over his shoulder at the bulky boxes on stage: the tuners, the amps, the complex gear that made it possible for Elen’s triple harp to compete against the sound of the pipes. It appeared intact. He turned the key in the lock and touched the doorknob—

  Which flew out of his hand. Long snapped face-front in time to see the entire wooden door flying away from him across the day-lit backstage, as though it had taken wing. It was a sight designed to engrave itself upon a man’s memory: the upright rectangle, with empty brass hinges on one side and brass knob at the other, outlined starkly against the larger rectangle of the open dock gate, with an open trunk full of pipes at the right edge of the rectangle, looking like a sea trap overflowing with crustaceans, and the white wall of the supermarket beyond. Surreal. Dada. Perfect Magritte.

  Then Long himself was picked up by the foot and slammed to the floor. He landed on his side, and his head was only saved from impact by his flailing right arm. The same incomprehensible force which had sucked away the door rushed him across the dirty floor of the backstage, past the trunk and toward the open dock.

  He heard a crash which did not sound like wood and he heard Marty cry out. He saw that the thing which had him was the black cable that had been stretched under the door. He curled into a ball, and twisted the snag from his foot, but as he came free he went over the concrete dock and into space.

  The lip of the dock was below Long, and by instinct he grabbed on to it. So large were his spindle-fingered hands, and so strong, that his grip held, and Mr. Long came to earth feet first, slamming his stomach and the side of his face only slightly against the side of the dock.

  There was Martha, standing two feet to the right of him, holding Marty against her. Martha’s mouth was wide open, showing her very nice teeth.

  Marty wore a small replica of her grandmother’s expression. “Daddo!” she cried, and hopped in place. “How wonderful! Do it again.”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Martha. “Whatever it was, Mayland, once was enough.” She glanced from him to the door, which had come apart, to the pulverized pediment that had first gone over the edge.

  Long released his grip on the dock. His hands were scraped and the left one was a touch bloody. He felt a sore spot over his left cheekbone. His clothing was very dusty.

  He peered left and right. “At least,” he said in a shaky voice, “at least this time I missed the bolt in the wall.” Mr. Long stepped back from the dock.

  At his feet lay the door, which had come unlaminated. He took it by the knob (somewhat gingerly) and lifted it to examine the other side.

  There was more of that black cable, snarled—no, tied—to the other side of the knob. A foot away from that knot was another which seemed to do nothing but tie off a fifteen-foot loop of the stuff. The far end of the cable lay in a pile of shards, gravel, and stone dust. “That was a little pillar,” offered Martha. “That toppled over the side here. The black cord was tied around it.” With both hands Martha prevented Marty from making her own investigations.

  Long stood back and surveyed the whole mess. “No pins in the door,” he said, and shook his head in wonder. “By all the auspices! A trap.”

  “It might have killed someone,” said Martha.

  “It most certainly might have killed someone,” said Long, rubbing his face.

  There was a howl of profanity from up on the loading dock, and they all glanced over to see the theater janitor, whose pale face was livid. “What the hell is going on here?” he roared, gesturing grandly over the wreckage.

  No one had an answer for him.

  “It would help if the janitor could remember exactly which of us had been going in and out this morning,” said Martha, sitting on the toilet seat lid with an expression of worry on her face.

  Mr. Long was in the bathtub, soaking his battered body. He stared at the shower head with his eyes unfocused. Occasionally he made small sounds of discomfort. “Of us, Martha? Does the deed proclaim itself the work of one of Macnamara’s Band? That fellow doesn’t strike me as the best watchdog to be had. Any demented soul—”

  “Setting a trap for a perfect stranger? Possible, I guess. But”—Martha clapped her hands on her knees—“there is no crazy like a crazy musician.”

  Long let his gaze drift from Martha to the shower curtain and thence down to his toes, which were sticking out of the water: very dark. “Not for a perfect stranger. There was reason to expect someone in particular to be using that door.”

  “Huh?”

  Long closed his eyes and recalled the tableau of the sailing door once more. “In the far corner of that back room was St. Ives’s music trunk, filled with pipes. I noticed it on my trip through.”

  “Ouch,” said Martha, in reference to Long’s short flight, and then “Ouch!” in a different tone, as the implications struck her. “And yet you still think it wasn’t one of the band?”

  He stirred, making warm waves that sloshed over his scraped cheekbone. I think rather that we can’t know. Unless someone tells us. Or we call the police in.”

  Martha’s face tightened. “Jesus! Do you think we should?”

  Long, in contrast, closed his eyes. “I have been thinking about it. Had it not been myself who touched that door… Had it been George, he might have been killed. Had it been Marty…” Long scowled and nudged open the hot-water faucet with his left foot. “But I’m inclined to believe that the catching of the foot was not really part of the joke as planned. Perhaps the punch line was only to make a person—George, let’s say—stand like a fool while a part of
his usual reality suddenly behaved in very unusual fashion. The door, however, had a large gap at the bottom—a carpet had been there, possibly—and the finished setup turned out to be about ten feet too long to work. Hence the knot and the loop under the door.”

  Martha looked very dubious. “So no police?”

  Long shook his head and sedately lowered his head under the waves.

  Pádraig seemed to have a great deal of difficulty understanding. “To play a trick on Mayland? Naw, he’s the last person I’d rag. Now, Ellie here. She’d be great sport to tease.” He poked the harper in the ribs. She did not look pleased.

  Martha tried again to explain that the joke was probably not intended for Long, but for George, but that it was a badly thought out and dangerous joke anyway. Halfway through her explanation, she realized she was assuming Pádraig was the joker, and that it wasn’t fair. Her explanation faded off.

  Pádraig didn’t look offended, however. He leaned against the south door of the theater with his hands in his pockets and he nodded all the while she spoke.

  “Terrible. Was the old man much hurt? A shame, if it was supposed to be George.”

  “It would have been pretty shameful if it had been George!” said Martha, losing her temper. Pádraig took a startled step backward. “Don’t twist my ear, Auntie Martha! It wasn’t me that did it.”

  He spoke simply and looked her in the eyes, but Martha still wasn’t certain she believed him. He was so much the obvious suspect. She glanced at Elen, who had been standing in the shade, pretending not to listen. “It wasn’t her, either,” added Pádraig. “I’ve hardly let the lass out of my sight all day. I’m trying to get her out of patience with me, you see, and I can’t seem to do it.”

  Elen broke into a laugh more robust than her figure and face seemed to promise. “It’s true. He’s been a pest. So unless we did it together, this deadfall could not have been set up by Pat. Or me.”