“Are you going to practise now?” my father asks as I stand.
I nod. I should really be studying two new pieces for tomorrow—the Haydn is going well, but the Mozart is pretty difficult, or at any rate fast, and I’ve spent too little time on it.
I meet my mother on the staircase. She takes me in her arms and presses my head against her shoulder. She holds me just a little too tight.
“Mama,” I say, and wriggle free.
I go up the stairs two steps at a time: the music is already in my head.
On my bed I tune up and think about Dimitri, the nervy one. I don’t want to marry him or be his girl. Do I want to see him again? I play a little melody to warm up my fingers. Perhaps. He wants me.
The Haydn piece starts calmly—my fingers know the way, as far as the modulation. I search for the correct positions, think without thinking, do it all by touch, play what isn’t right till it’s nearly right. Notes give shape to other people’s thoughts, from former times, become mine, allow my thoughts to disappear, change them into music.
After an hour I put the violin down, its strings resting on the blankets, and search for the Mozart piece in my sheet music—my left hand is already working the fingering out on the bed. I look at the oak tree by the window, the ancient bark, and feel its form inside my fingers; the branches are pointing at the window and every now and then they let a leaf fall—green leaves with brown edges. Trees carry the whole year within them, broken into pieces by the seasons. A day is broken into pieces by appointments, words, promises, thoughts. A street is broken into pieces by footsteps, houses, poplars (houses for Blackbirds, for Blue Tits).
My eyes are drawn to the garden wall, where there’s a little figure sitting, biting her nails.
I’d forgotten all about her.
I open the window. “Hey! Have you been sitting there long?” My voice wafts back into the room.
Patricia stands, waves at me. “Are you coming?”
The window closes itself. I only have to step back from it.
“Are you here on holiday?” I ask.
“More or less. My parents are fed up of me and Paul has an extra room. They want me to get married after the summer and they’ve even decided who it’ll be.”
She doesn’t really look like Paul but she has the same expression—eyes screwed up a little, a small frown. “Who, then?”
“Shall we go to the beach?”
“It’s rather windy.”
“Exactly! Want a ciggie?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“You’re only young once.” She takes a cigarette from a tin case.
“What’s it like in London?” We’re walking down the gravel path towards the pebble beach. There’s a green haze on the white wall behind us, solidified sea breath.
“Just as boring as here. That is to say: there’s enough to do, but not enough breathing space. Everyone knows everyone else. If ever you do anything you mustn’t do, then everyone knows about it immediately. Certainly if you’re a woman.” She pulls her left shoe off. “Ow.”
“I’d keep your shoes on a while, if I were you. A little further on it turns to sand.”
She gives me the shoe, which is warm—the leather soft, someone’s skin—and leans her hand on my shoulder as she brushes fragments of shell from her foot with her other hand.
“So they want me to get married.” She hesitates. “To someone I had a relationship with. But all he wants is a beautiful wife to match his beautiful house.”
“I’ll never marry.” As I say it I know that it’s true.
She laughs. “What will you do then?”
“I’ll study music. I want to play in an orchestra. What about you?”
“I’m going to be a writer.” She looks exultant, but also a little earnest.
“I used to write stories about the birds in the garden. But who’d want to read about birds?”
“I’d like to read those stories.” She takes my arm. I get goose bumps.
We’re walking across the narrow ledge, past the boats and towards the sandy beach. Light-blue water shifts into dark blue, into dark-blue sky. I tell her I’m afraid of words sometimes, because they trap things that you’d better not trap—it’s much easier to say what I mean with the violin. She says it can’t be words that frighten me, because words are just husks, carriers of something else.
Meanwhile the sun breaks the clouds in two above the horizon, a mouth speaking light, smiling at the margins.
One day Dudley is there when I come home from my violin lesson. He is sitting in a chair by the window, gazing at the garden. “Hallo, Duddie. It’s good to see you home again.” My voice sounds strangely polite.
“I’m pleased to be home too.” He keeps staring out of the window, as if something is happening outside. But only the grass is moving, and the shrubs.
“How’s your leg now?”
“No idea.”
Cook rings the bell. Tea is ready. I go upstairs to put away my violin. Mike is singing in the garden. Ta-da-da, tada.
Dudley sits opposite me at teatime. His eyes continue to avoid mine and he doesn’t speak to anyone. Mother talks: about the neighbour, whom she suspects of having a love affair, about an argument with her sister, about an evening playing cards with her friend, who was being frightfully peevish. Father comes to sit with us a while, mutters something about a poem he started composing last night, and then leaves again.
When Cook brings the sandwiches, Mother clasps her forehead. “It’s doing it again. I must go to bed.” Cook fetches Tessa from the kitchen to help my mother up the stairs.
Dudley takes a sandwich from the plate. He chews with his lips slightly open, so that his mouth acts like a sound box. He eats sluggishly, bite by bite: before humans were able to speak they chewed at each other. Cook pours the tea for us. I can feel Olive looking at me, but I don’t look sideways—the laughter is already bubbling up. Dudley doesn’t seem to notice. He takes a fairy cake. Crumbs linger in his moustache, falling beside his plate at every bite.
“You’re making a mess,” Olive says, pressing her lips together.
He takes another little cake, and this time he deliberately brushes the crumbs out of his moustache, dropping them by his plate.
“Ugh,” I say.
“Ugh,” he says. “Do you know what’s disgusting? Your sham sympathy. It doesn’t matter two hoots to you whatever happens. You just think about your violin.” He turns to Olive. “And you just want to fit in. Mimicking Mother. That’s what you enjoy.”
I take a bite from my sandwich and think about the Mozart. I can play it in my head now and usually my hands are swift to follow. Dudley licks a finger, brushes it across the table so that the crumbs stick to it, licks it clean. And again.
Olive pushes her chair back. The legs give a little hop on the wooden floor. There is a half-eaten sandwich on her plate, a waxing moon.
Before I stand I look briefly at Dudley. His eyes are calm, as if he has said nothing at all. He helps himself to another cake.
“I’ve come to say goodbye.” Patricia steps out of the shadow of the oak tree. “You don’t have to come with me.”
“But I jolly well can,” I say.
She picks up the big suitcase. I take the small one. We walk through the light towards the darkness. Beyond the curve the path by the railway line is roofed with branches. She tells me about her plans for when she is back in London, about her book. I tell her about the new piece I’m studying, a Chopin waltz. Little stones are shifted by our feet, stones that perhaps are seldom shifted. A train passes, and then it’s quiet again—only ducks quacking in the distance and the wind making the grass rustle.