‘Yeah?’ he said.
Hayley touched her ears and raised her eyebrows – it was a query as well as a request. Reluctantly he removed one of the ear-plugs.
She assumed by his head nodding that he was listening to rap – he listened only to rap and classical. ‘Both ear-plugs,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’
The second ear-plug came out. Her brother did not look pleased.
‘This better be important,’ he said. ‘I’m busy.’
Callum spent half his life on the web. In fact, between his piano and cyberspace there was little time for real face-to-face contact. If he didn’t watch himself he’d turn into a Ramsay Blake – not that Callum would regard that as the fate worse than death that she did.
He patted the bed next to him. ‘Have a look at this, Hay.’ Clearly he’d forgiven her interruption. ‘It’s a great new site. Been up only a few weeks but it’s going through the stratosphere. It’s called “Ask Nemo” and it’s all about lists.’
She looked at the screen. ‘That’s not Nemo,’ she said. ‘It’s Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. Nem-OZ-inee.’
He shook his head slowly, a look of bemusement on his face. ‘I don’t know where you find such stuff –’ nor did he wait for her to tell him. ‘You can ask anything.’ He hunkered into his topic. ‘How many new postage stamps issued in any one month; the number of words in a five-minute rap; YouTube usage by country; people in the world over two hundred and ten centimetres. You ask and the answer appears – usually immediately, sometimes in a couple of minutes. If it’s a hard question you might have to wait a few hours.’
‘Like why people kill other people? That’s a hard one. Or is there a God?’
‘No, no, no, not that sort of question. Those questions don’t have proper answers, a single answer. For Nemo, there has to be a definite right answer.’
‘Okay then. How about asking your online know-it-all if our parents are getting divorced.’
Callum turned to her with an expression that suggested she was crazy. ‘Why on earth would they do that?’
Sometimes he was so exasperating. ‘Haven’t you noticed? Our father has left home, he’s disappeared.’
‘He sends me texts, there’s been phone calls.’
‘But he’s not here, Cal, in his own home where he’s supposed to be. As for our mother, she’s not out looking for him, she’s hanging around with that cripple Ramsay.’
‘He’s a brilliant pianist.’
‘I don’t think he’s playing the piano for her. Anyway, it’s beside the point. She’s not where she belongs, and neither is Dad.’
Callum sat in silence, his lips pressed together, his head now nodding in time to whatever thoughts were passing through. At last he spoke. ‘It’s not as if they like each other.’
‘Exactly,’ Hayley said. ‘But that’s not new – they’ve never liked each other. This time it’s different. It looks to me as if they’ve separated and haven’t bothered to tell us.’
Again he was silent, pondering the possibilities. ‘I refuse to live in two places.’
‘I don’t think it’s at that stage yet, after all, Dad’s only been gone a few weeks. But I do think we should tell him to come home.’
‘From New York?’
‘He’s not in New York, stupid. Don’t you read your texts?’
‘Yeah, of course I do – from my friends. But it’s different with parents.’ He looked vaguely confused. ‘Do you read all Mum and Dad’s messages?’
Hayley took a deep breath – she had to remain calm, she had to stick to the task. Best just to ignore his question.
‘Our father collected Addie, the arrival of his texts show he’s in the same time zone as we are. Anyway, even before he told us he’d not gone far – that was one of the texts you neglected to read – I always knew he wasn’t in New York; I checked his desk and his passport’s still there.’
Callum looked at her admiringly. ‘Sometimes you surprise me.’
Actually she had felt very uncomfortable riffling through her father’s desk. She’d be furious if she discovered someone had gone through her things. But she was desperate.
‘We have to do something, Cal.’ And popped a humourless laugh. ‘Too bad your Mnemosyne can’t help with things that actually matter, things which affect your life.’
There was a long silence. ‘I miss him,’ Hayley said finally. She was holding back tears. ‘I want him to come home.’
Cal mumbled something about missing him too. Then in a clearer voice he said, ‘What we need is a plan.’
Finally it seemed she had moved him. And he sounded so purposeful that suddenly the woeful situation of a moment ago seemed less hopeless. With his age and her common sense they should manage to find a solution – although she didn’t underestimate the difficulty ahead. There was an awful stubbornness to parents, and kids were rarely able to make them do anything they didn’t want to do.
She glanced at her watch. As urgent as the parental problem was, their planning would have to wait. ‘I have to dash,’ she said to Callum. ‘I’ve got a gig tonight.’
Callum, about to reconnect himself, paused, and again that admiring expression. ‘That’s great, Hay. Where?’ And when she mentioned an inner-city pub, commented: ‘It certainly beats an old concert hall.’
She could see he was interested. ‘Why don’t you come along? Although,’ she nodded at his sweat pants, ‘you’ll need to change.’
He took a moment to consider and then shut his laptop and leapt off the bed. ‘You’re on.’
Up on stage Hayley was unrecognisable. Sophisticated and so cool, she could be one of those famous, mostly dead singers from the 1960s, huge posters of whom adorned the walls of the pub. Callum recognised Jimi Hendrix, whose soft-brimmed hat looked exactly like the one Hayley was wearing, and Joan Baez, whose long black hair was just like Hay’s, and the great Janis Joplin too. And there was something about Hay’s soaring, no-holds-barred voice that was reminiscent of someone famous, although he couldn’t recall who. In appearance and in her music, his sister belonged with these old singers from the sixties, but Hayley didn’t take drugs, or at least not to his knowledge. And it occurred to him seeing her up there, her head thrown back, eyes closed, her body synchronised with the music, there was much he didn’t know about his little sister. His parents knew even less.
The crowd was a mass of waving arms and throbbing bodies, he was pleased to have found a space separate from the main pack. The place was not as he expected, more church-hall-crossed-with-ageing-suburban-pub than cool-music-venue – and this place was reputed to be among the coolest music venues around. He’d long intended to check it out but never seemed to find the time nor, for that matter, the company. And now he was here, thanks to his little sister.
There was a small cluster of tables and chairs to one side – ‘For any oldies,’ Hayley explained when they first arrived. ‘Like parents or critics, or impresarios with deep pockets waving a contract at us.’ On the opposite side was a bar, and in between and in front of the stage, a space crammed with a couple of hundred people.
His sister and her band were a hit. This was no high-school group.
‘Although I did play with a bunch of school friends,’ Hayley had said earlier in the evening as the band was setting up. ‘So I haven’t been lying. MagneticBlue is new for me, I just haven’t managed to tell our parents.’ She splayed her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘What opportunities have there been?’
Their parents, Callum was thinking, would be frantic if they knew their daughter was playing in pubs with rock stars twice her age.
‘So how did you get with these guys?’
‘Adam,’ she pointed out the lead guitar, ‘is Maddy Stamp’s brother.’
Maddy was Hayley’s best friend. Maddy was, like Hayley, sixteen. The brother looked to be at least thirty.
‘He’s twenty-eight,’ Hayley said. ‘Just not his best at the moment.’ She leaned in closer and lowered her voi
ce. She smelled of incense, or at least Callum thought it was incense. ‘Adam’s miserable. His boyfriend dumped him. He did it on Facebook. Can you believe that?’
Callum could, but his sister looked so shocked he decided to look shocked too.
‘Adam also does vocals. He started MagneticBlue with Brenda –’ she nodded at the keyboard player, ‘and Dude –’ she pointed to a one-man band equipped with drums, xylophone, harmonica and pipes. ‘The fourth member and lead singer was a girl called Sissy.’ Hayley assumed an expression of mock horror. ‘If I was called Sissy I’d know my parents hated me.’ She explained about Sissy’s accident. ‘So the band was looking for a stand-in singer and Adam had heard me sing. And the rest,’ she suddenly looked her age, ‘is history.’
‘And Brenda and Dude – how old are they?’
‘Thirty, but they don’t seem that old. They’re an item. Brenda’s pregnant.’ Suddenly she was struck with an idea. ‘We’ll be looking for a keyboard player to fill in when Brenda has the baby.’
His sister didn’t have a clue. ‘Forget it, Hay. You know I can’t play modern stuff.’
‘Have you ever tried?’
He hadn’t – apart from jazz. And not jazz improvisation, he’d be hopeless without sheet music. Hayley was smiling, she was clearly very taken with her idea. ‘You should think about it, Cal. Your life lacks balance. I wouldn’t want you to turn into Ramsay Blake, just like I wouldn’t want to end up a music teacher like our mother.’
No chance of that, Callum was thinking as he watched his sister perform. She was swept up in the rhythms and sweeping the crowd along with her. He didn’t know the song, something about love gone wrong and nothing special about the lyrics, but the music was a fist-at-the-throat ache, with a syncopated blues rhythm in the bass, and a fugal treble that played between his sister and tenor harmonica. Something simultaneously sad and sexy about this music – about his sister too; all eyes were on her, girls, guys, she was seducing the lot. And where she managed to acquire that pure, aged voice was beyond him; his mother and father could sing, so could he for that matter, but nothing like this. Her voice was a mix of honey and grit; she didn’t play a bad guitar either.
The band moved from one song to the next without stopping for applause, although there were whistles and whoops of recognition with the first notes of each song. Callum was accustomed to respect and admiration when he played, but there was something else happening here. It was not adulation – the audience was too much a partner in the music for that. In fact, so intense was the engagement of the audience, Callum could not imagine the band sounding nearly as good if playing in a studio or practising in someone’s garage. As much as Callum enjoyed the connection with an audience, he also knew that some of his best performances happened at home with only the dog in the room. This audience seemed to add to the exhilaration of the music, the euphoria – yes, that was the word he was wanting, euphoria. Just being here was like being high.
MagneticBlue played for an hour then they signed CDs, although not Hayley – ‘The next album will have me as lead singer.’ Afterwards they withdrew to an adjacent room to wind down. The others drank alcohol, his sister had a coke. When the next band started up, someone ordered another round.
‘Not for me,’ Hayley said.
‘Are you ready to leave?’ Adam asked.
She nodded. ‘Maths assignment. Need to put in a couple of hours’ work before bed.’ She turned to Callum. ‘Coming?’
He paused long enough for her to tell him to stay. And when still he hesitated, Adam assured him he didn’t need help getting her home. ‘I’m a seasoned taxi-driver when it comes to your sister.’
‘Okay then,’ Callum said to Hayley. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind, I’ll hang out a while longer.’
There was a vacant chair at one of the oldies’ tables. If he was going to stay he might as well be comfortable. He collected a beer, nodded to the others at the table, settled back and let the music have its way with him.
Chapter 14. A Shift in the Centre of Gravity
At last Nina heard from TIF, a phone call from Charlie Goldstein to let her know the group was rethinking their project.
‘We’ve cooled on the monument idea,’ he said. And then he laughed. ‘You can count us as one of your successes, even though we never made it to the contract stage.’
She laughed too, but at the same time was disappointed. She’d been looking forward to seeing them again.
‘After you left our last meeting we talked for another hour,’ he said. ‘We were all drawn to the notion of the counter-monument, but at the same time we were struck afresh by the power of words.’ He paused, and in the silence she heard a mobile phone ring. ‘Since then, there’s been a lot of thinking and many emails.’
The group had met again that morning, and all of them had come to much the same conclusion: that their existing program, with modifications to reach more orthodox believers, addressed the group’s current values and aims. That perhaps one day there might be a monument, but this was not the time. They would, Charlie said, be circulating their thoughts to TIF’s larger group of supporters in the next few days.
‘You’ve done a great job with us,’ he said in conclusion. ‘And I promise if a monument is ever back on our agenda you’ll hear from us.’
The phone rang off. She stood in the tiny kitchen, oddly stilled. She was sorry not to be seeing them again, yet she was aware of a sense of satisfaction about the project. So celebrate, she told herself, celebrate the conclusion of what had been, after all, a successful job.
A celebration warranted company, and Zoe was her first choice. But there was no point in contacting her: Zoe either ignored her calls, or, should they speak, she deflected all inquiries with a light and cheery tone that was meant to disguise the mess she was in. Nina rang Sean instead. He clearly had forgiven her because he picked up on the first ring. But he didn’t give her the chance to explain about TIF, he didn’t even wait for her ‘hello’.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I need to make some changes.’
She quickly shifted from TIF to the last time she and Sean met, to his communism book and the trip to Cuba.
‘So, what’s the next venture going to be?’ she asked.
‘No, not work. Ramsay. I’ve been thinking about Ramsay.’
He’d never stopped thinking about Ramsay – which was, as far as Nina could see, Sean’s crucial problem. She tried to sound casual. ‘What about Ramsay?’
‘I haven’t decided anything yet, but,’ and there was a long pause, ‘I’m thinking it’s time I paid him a visit.’
‘Time to face your demons?’ She spoke quietly.
‘Time to face my demon. Singular.’ Then he spoke in a rush. ‘Can’t talk. Still deliberating. I’ll keep you posted.’ And then he was gone.
It didn’t matter he was not ready to talk. That he was at least thinking about the wretched stalemate with his brother was a giant leap forward. She had long feared that being so accustomed to dragging the weight of Ramsay around, Sean would never cut himself loose. But maybe, at last, he might manage to free himself. With such a possibility she did not mind going out for a celebratory meal alone.
She had locked the flat and was waiting at the lift when her phone rang. Her first thought was Sean had changed his mind, that he did in fact want to talk about Ramsay. When she saw it was Daniel, it wasn’t so much shock or surprise she felt, more a sense of strangeness to see his name appear on her phone. It had been such a long time. In his emails he’d made it clear he wanted to talk to her, but she’d resisted, not wanting to be caught up in his desires and desperations. But now, with the phone ringing in her hand, she hesitated – long enough for the call to ring out, but a hesitation nonetheless. When the ringing stopped, she turned around and re-entered the flat.
His message was brief: I’m hoping you might be ready to speak to me. If not now, soon.
Even at her most hurt and angry she had never stopped wanting to speak t
o him. She’d got on with her life, a different life from the one she shared with him, but interesting and satisfying enough. And she’d never stopped missing him.
Others might allow a single terrible betrayal to erase all that was good in a marriage, and in the first raw months this was exactly what she did – as a means of moving forward, she expected. But now? She couldn’t say what she wanted with him. Although a phone call was just a phone call, it wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t a commitment; it was contact, contact she longed for.
So why deprive yourself? she said aloud. And laughed, she who had become a specialist in deprivation this past year.
She weighed the phone in her hand, she turned it over in her palm, she stared through the window at the treetops. She wasn’t deliberating, she wasn’t debating the pros and cons; the decision, she realised, had been made.
She texted him: I’ll Skype you in a few minutes.
She went into the bathroom and was about to brush out her hair – he had always preferred it hanging loose – then changed her mind and pulled it into an even tighter knot; she refreshed her lipstick and touched up her eye makeup. She was dressed in a lovely wisp of a frock she had bought for her breakfast with Felix. Its marine blues and greens, so light and summery would present a stark contrast with drab, wintry, middle-of-the-night London – it would also suggest she was not at home in Primrose Hill. But as to her exact location, this beige, undistinguished apartment would not be releasing any secrets. She checked herself in the bedroom’s full-length mirror, a view well beyond the capacity of Skype: she looked good, and while such things shouldn’t matter, they did.
She had bought some Tasmanian cider. Now she poured herself a glass, collected her computer and sat on the couch; if she were a smoker she would have lit up and made sure to have had a full pack close by. Her heart was banging against her stomach, her throat was tight. She selected his name, she heard the connection tone, everything seemed to occur in slow motion.
The Memory Trap Page 26
