Crescendo

by Charlotte Lamb

  'High tide at eight,' she told him.

  'How empty the sea looks from here.' He kept his gaze fixed on the wide expanse of water. 'Do you ever get tired of it?'

  'No,' she said simply.

  'Never lonely?' He asked that very lightly, yet again there was that undertone of something she did not understand.

  She shook her head. Gideon opened the window, the metal catch shedding a few flakes of rust. The wind rushed into the room and whipped Marina's hair into tangles, blowing it across Gideon's face, brushing his cheek and mouth, filling his nostrils with the clean fresh scent of it. He put a hand up and drew the strands away, holding them, staring at the silver glint of them in his fingers.

  'Beautiful hair,' he said quietly.

  They were standing very close. He looked from her hair to her and she saw the black eyes clearly, seeing the gradations of colour in the iris which separated the pupil, faint flecks of blue and yellow which at a distance were invisible but which deepened the iris to that jet black.

  'Have you got any luggage?' she asked a little shyly, very conscious of the way he was staring at her.

  'In the car,' he said, letting her hair drift from his fingers.

  She put up a hand to brush it back behind her shoulders.

  'Are you hungry?' she asked him. 'The bathroom is next door. I'll go down and start supper.'

  She walked to the door and Gideon watched her without moving. Turning as she went out, she said, 'Anything you can't eat?'

  'Mushrooms,' he said. 'They bring me out in a rash.'

  'I'll remember,' she promised, smiling. 'Straw- berries do that to me. One strawberry and I'm scarlet from head to toe.'

  Grandie was in the small parlour winding the old marble clock which had belonged to his father. He looked at her over his shoulder.

  'All right?' he asked gruffly.

  Marina gave him a puzzled look. 'Of course. Grandie, have you ever seen him before? Do you know him?'

  He turned his head away, adjusting the clock's position with great care. 'No,' he said after a pause, and she was convinced he lied. She had known Grandie all her life. He did not tell lies easily. Now she saw his ears were red. That was a sure sign.

  Going into the kitchen she pulled the door to after her and began to prepare a meal, grilling bacon, slicing tomatoes and breaking eggs. It would be a simple fried meal but it would be filling. She quickly laid the table. They always ate in the kitchen because it was easier. Slicing bread, she got down the butter and put that on the table too. The kettle boiled and she made tea. The bacon was spitting and bubbling cheerfully, exuding a deli­cious scent. Marina broke eggs into the pan and flicked fat over them. She already had a small rhubarb crumble in the oven. It needed to be re­heated, so she switched the oven on, then she walked to the door to call Grandie.

  Just as her hand touched the handle she heard Gideon's voice quite clearly in the parlour.

  'I know it's a risk. You don't need to tell me that. But it's one I've got to take.'

  'I don't like it.' Grandie sounded furious, his voice harsh.

  'I'm sorry,' Gideon said, but he sounded angry too. He did not sound apologetic. 'In the last resort it is my business, though.'

  'Yours?' Grandie's voice rose angrily.

  'Be quiet! Do you want her to hear?' Gideon's voice came closer. 'Is that door shut?'

  'What do you mean—yours?' demanded Grandie without answering the last question. 'If Marina suspects

  'She doesn't.'

  'You had no business coming here.'

  'I didn't intend to speak to her. I told you—she was on the edge of the cliff and I thought...' Gideon broke off, breathing thickly.

  'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, lad.' Grandie's voice had altered, become softer, filled with kindness. 'It must have shaken you.'

  'Shaken me?' Gideon laughed fiercely. 'I've never been so terrified in my life! I thought I wouldn't get to her in time.'

  There was a silence. Marina listened, her brow creased. She had been right, then: Grandie did know Gideon and there was something between them, something that made Grandie angry. What?

  She caught a sudden fierce splutter from the pan and raced to lift it from the hotplate. The eggs slid out on to the warmed plates. She served the rest of the meal and turned to call Grandie. He came after a moment and she said, 'The food's ready.'

  Grandie nodded. 'I'll give Gideon a shout.'

  There was no need. Gideon's wide shoulders were already filling the low doorway, his head bent. He inhaled the scent of the bacon.

  'I'm starving!'

  Marina smiled at him and gestured to a chair. 'Well, sit down and eat it while it's hot.' She picked up the fat brown teapot. 'Do you take sugar and milk?'

  'Please,' he said, already beginning to eat.

  Grandie ate more slowly, his face down. Marina pushed his cup of tea over to him, watching him. There was a worried crease between his brows and his face had a sombre look.

  Glancing at Gideon she wondered what it was all about. Somehow she could not believe that what­ever it was could be so very serious. Although she had only just met him Gideon had a face she trusted. The hard features were strong and con­fident. He was a man whose word could be relied on, she thought.

  While she ate, she toyed with the problem of his age. Late thirties? Was he married? Marina knew very little about men. She had lived in this isolated cottage with her grandfather all her life and had rarely met anyone but casual visitors. She had never become friendly with any of the local young men. She had no time. What spare time she had was always spent at the piano.

  Ruffy lay on the red-flagged kitchen floor, wait­ing expectantly for any scraps of food which were left. When she had finished her own meal Marina cut up bacon rinds for him and put them down. Ruffy wolfed them greedily. He had a passion for bacon rinds, but they had to be cut up or he would swallow them whole and get them stuck in his throat. As a puppy he had almost choked to death on one.

  'I'll help with the washing up,' said Gideon.

  Grandie hovered. Marina sensed a protest on his lips, but he said nothing. Gideon turned and looked at him levelly and Grandie went out without a word.

  'Your grandfather's rheumatism gives him much trouble?' Gideon asked.

  'Yes,' she sighed. T remember when I was little, Grandie used to pull up stinging nettles with his bare hands because he believed it helped his rheu­matism, but it didn't stop it getting worse.'

  Gideon nodded. 'It does help,' he told her. 'It's something like acupuncture. The sting of a bee has the same effect. They call it sympathetic magic, but it's based on a real effect.'

  'Our doctor calls it old wives' tales,' she laughed.

  Gideon smiled wryly. 'Professional jealousy.'

  She looked at his long, sinewy hands. They were finely shaped, their fingers deft and delicate as they moved, fine dark hairs on the backs of them and a wiry strength in them.

  'You've never had rheumatism,' she commented.

  He grinned. 'No, thank God.' He was drying and stacking rapidly. She finished the washing up and dried her hands, turning to watch at he began putting the plates away. A shiver ran down her back as she realised that he was automatically open­ing the right cupboards and putting the things in them without asking her.

  He turned, as if sensing her troubled feelings, and looked at her with dark eyes which were nar­rowed and probing. 'What's wrong? A headache?'

  Marina's eyes narrowed. 'No,' she said, and de- termined to ask him exactly what was going on, but just then Ruffy seized the trailing end of her tea towel and tugged playfully at it. She laughed, pull­ing it away from him, and he growled, tail wagging.

  Gideon had finished tidying the kitchen when she looked up again. 'Your grandfather tells me you play the piano,' he said. 'Will you play to me?'

  'If you like,' she agreed without mock modesty. She liked playing and she knew people liked listen­ing to her. She had begun to play when she was first able to sit on the piano stool. By then Grandie
's hands were beginning to make it hard for him to reach across the keys, his hand span narrowing and narrowing.

  She opened the door into the music room. It was the largest of the three rooms on the ground floor of the cottage. Although the ceilings were just as low, the floor space was double that of the parlour. Grandie had had two smaller rooms knocked into one years ago to accommodate the piano. It took up a large part of the room, a beautiful mellow in­strument which was professionally tuned by Grandie himself. His ear was perfect, though it was many years since he had played himself. He refused to play less than superbly. The disablement of his hands had been a tragedy which had laid waste his life for years. Now he seemed to be resigned to it.

  The walls were covered with souvenirs of his career, programmes, notices from newspapers, letters and signed photographs of artists he had worked with in the past.

  Marina sat on the shabby green brocade stool, flexing her hands. They were her fortune, Grandie told her often, her span enormous, her fingers and wrists supple and strong. One day, he had promised her, she should go to college in London and study under the best teachers, but for the moment Grandie was keeping her with him and Marina knew she could not have a better teacher anywhere in the world. Grandie had taught her everything she knew. Music was their whole life. Grandie poured out for her the treasures of his experience and knowledge and Marina absorbed them all like blotting paper, retaining everything, learning with the speed and eagerness of fanaticism.

  Without music she began to play an intricate piece of Liszt. It was her current practice piece and she did not particularly like it since it was a tran­scription from a Verdi opera and Marina did not enjoy music which was intended for one medium and had been transferred to another.

  The curtains in the room were drawn back and moonlight made silent patterns on the trees outside. The mist at sea had thickened. From time to time she caught the wail of a ghostly foghorn like the moan of an animal in pain.

  She passed from the Liszt to a piece of Chopin, her face drifting into reverie. Music made the back- cloth to her life. There were few people in it. Her parents had died before she even remembered them. Her first steps had been taken with her hand in Grandie's and her first words had been imitations of his. When his own life fell into ruins around him, Grandie had left the world which had until then been his life and retired to this cottage. In winter they often saw no one but the postman cycling past the gate once a day. Most people would have found it lonely, but for Marina and Grandie it was a world enriched by music and they regretted nothing.

  She sat gracefully, the silver-white hair flowing over her shoulders, her eyes on the window, un­aware now of the man listening to her.

  As she ended her eyes fell to the polished surface in front of her. She caught a misty reflection of a dark face imprinted behind the reflection of her own. For a second she had a fleeting sensation of deja vu, frowning. Surely it was not the first time she had ever seen their faces like that, mirrored together?

  She turned and Gideon sat looking at her, black eyes almost oriental in their impassivity, so that she could retrieve no shadow of a thought from their deep wells.

  'Thank you,' he said softly.

  The lack of extravagant praise, the quiet tone, made her blush as though he had paid her a fervent compliment. She swung on the stool, her small feet lifted off the ground, in the motion of a child.

  'Do you like music?'

  As soon as she had said it, her colour deepened and she looked at him, biting her lip.

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Why?' he asked, and suddenly his eyes were narrowed, half sheathed in heavy lids, hiding what­ever expression was in them.

  Marina did not know why she had apologised, only that suddenly she had felt as though she had insulted him, spoken in childish rudeness.

  She spread her hands in a troubled little gesture.

  'Of course you like it. I could tell.'

  For a moment he was silent, then he rose and smiled at her. 'Let's play brag,' he said, and walked out of the room into the kitchen. Grandie was sit­ting there by the old stove which heated all their water. Gideon went to the long mantelshelf above the stove and reached up to get an old pack of cards which were always kept there. 'Brag?' he said to Grandie with a lift of his dark brows, and Grandie gave him a wry little smile.

  A moment later they were all seated around the kitchen table, playing brag with enthusiasm, Grandie notching their scores with matchsticks in a battered old wooden scoring board.

  Marina said nothing to either of the two men, but She looked from one to the other curiously. It was yet another instance of the secret between them. Gideon had known before he reached up to the shelf that the cards were kept there. He had known that Grandie's favourite game was brag. Marina and Grandie had spent many nights playing cards in this kitchen. When she was a little girl, Grandie would exchange sweets for the points she had taken in their games. If he won outright she would owe him time, time he expected her to spend in practicing.

  How had Gideon known that? Unless the roots of his acquaintance with Grandie went back a long, long way, and if they did why had Marina never set eyes on him in her life before?

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARINA went to bed at ten as usual. The floors of the old house creaked noisily, the boards having shrunk and warped a good deal. On windy nights she often thought they sounded like complaining little voices. Tonight, though, she heard other voices —those of Grandie and Gideon downstairs in the kitchen. They had closed the door, but the sound came up through the low ceiling. She could not make out the words, but the tones were sharp and hostile. Grandie was arguing with their guest. Once or twice his voice sounded quite furious. Gideon answered quietly, softly, but with an unshakeable determination.

  'What does it mean?' Marina asked Meg and Emma. They sat in their accustomed places on the end of her bed, one against each wooden post. Meg was very small and very neat, with tidy black curls visible beneath her yellow velvet bonnet, small black shoes just below the hem of her matching velvet coat. She had been Edwardian, the doll be­longing to Grandie's sister Aunt Meg, who had died aged twelve. Marina thought of Meg as her cousin. During her rather isolated childhood she had in­vented this family for herself. The two dolls made it possible for her to have conversations. Emma was younger but larger, a floppy great rag doll with enormous sewn-on blue eyes and green ballet shoes tied on her feet. She had belonged to Marina's mother, Grandie said. He had never bought Marina a new doll and she would not have wanted one. These two were more than enough for her.

  They had been with her for so many years. She would not want to part with either of them. Look­ing at them now, kneeling on her bed in her brief white cotton nightie, she waited for their reply and got none at all.

  'You're useless, do you know that?'

  She climbed into bed. 'All the same, something funny is going on, I'm sure of that. Do you think Gideon knows a dark secret from Grandie's former life?' Her eyes widened. 'Maybe Gideon is Grandie's illegitimate son by a Russian ballet dancer or a French opera singer.'

  Meg's small face held ineffable contempt. Marina eyed her. 'No, maybe you're right,' she sighed.

  Romantic but unlikely. Grandmama would never have allowed it.' She had no real knowledge of her grandmother, but the large yellowed photograph of her in the parlour showed a lady with a forthright chin and speaking eyes. Marina could not imagine Grandie daring to be unfaithful to her.

  Grandmama had died thirty years ago. Marina's father had been a young man of twenty, but there were no photographs of him downstairs. Grandie was always elusive about him, brushing aside her questions. She screwed up her nose. Hadn't there once been a picture somewhere? She thought she

  remembered one, but she could not be sure and it had certainly now gone.

  Marina had a suspicion that her father had been rather wicked. In some way he had offended Grandie. She knew that her grandfather was very secretive about his past and the icy look which could invade h
is eyes was always enough to deter her from asking too many questions.

  Curling up, her cheek on her hand, she slowly slid into sleep and when she woke up the daylight was streaming into the room. For a moment she lay there, yawning, then she uncoiled, stretching, and said good morning to Meg and Emma. Washed and dressed, she made her bed and went down the stairs. Grandie had lately begun to stay in bed in the morning. He was seventy-one and was beginning to conserve what was left of his life force.

  It surprised her to walk into the kitchen and hear the kettle singing away. Gideon turned with a smile and Marina grinned back at him.

  'You're up early!'

  'It seemed a pity to waste such a day lying in bed.'

  She looked out of the low window. Gideon had drawn the red check curtains and sunlight streamed into the room. The dew was still sparkling on grass and flowers, the vivid crimson roses unfolding on the trellis, the scarlet of poppies trembling heavy- headed, white lilac clustered just behind them. A mistle-thrush sat on the lilac tree, turning his little glistening black eye to inspect the lawn for signs of insects. The sky above him was a brilliant blue.

  'It is a lovely day,' she agreed.

  'A day for a picnic,' said Gideon, spooning tea into the pot.

  Marina's eyes opened wide. 'A picnic?'