Nocturne (5 page)

Nikki was listening too. She knows much more about music than I
do.

‘
Flute,
’
she said.
‘
And I think it
’
s the real thing.
’

‘
What do you mean ?
’

‘
Someone
’
s playing. It
’
s not recorded.
’

On cue, as if we
’
d been overheard, the playing stopped, then started
again, picking up a particular phrase, repeating it in a different tempo,
first quicker, then slower before retur
ning to the original interpreta
tion, busying along, a perfect musical echo of the way we happened to
be feeling.

We were drinking the wine out of plastic picnic mugs, the only ones I
could find. Nikki raised hers.

‘
Trust you,
’
she said.
‘
Most of us have to put up with head bangers
and ghetto blasters.
’

I grinned, touching mugs. Everything was slipping nicely into place.
I don
’
t think I
’
d felt so happy for years.

Nikki left late that night. We
’
d got the back bedroom into some kind
of order and unpacked most of the cardboard boxes. I
’
d already hired
a guy to put a couple of extra shelves
up
in the kitchen and we
’
d
distributed my meagre collection of spices and pickle jars to add a bit
of colour to the bare white walls. Tomorrow, Nikki would be back
with her two cats. She was off to South Africa for six months on a
fashion assignment and I
’
d volunteered to look after them while she
was away. After putting up with me for nearly six weeks, it was the
least I could do.

Way past midnight, I went to bed. Even with the few bits and pieces
I
’
d brought up from Petersfield, the place already felt like home. Like a
favourite old sweater, it fitted beautifully, snug and warm and
unaccountably familiar, and I lay under the duvet, listening to the
ticking of the central heating pipes, wondering just what I
’
d
done to
deserve such a perfect
landfall. The second bedroom, I
’
d decided,
would make an ideal study. I
’
d buy a flatpack desk, and line the walls
with all the books I
’
d never had time to read at university, and if I
played my cards right with Brendan, I was sure I could borrow one of
the Doubleact laptops. At that point, with the door closed on the
world, I could get down to some serious work, developing various
documentary ideas, lashing together a raft of submissions that would
float me away from the cesspit of late-night adult entertainment. I
smiled, tallying the ideas in my head, getting them into some kind of
order, and the last thing I remember before drifting off to sleep was the
sound of the flute again, somewhere overhead, two notes only, the
softest imaginable touch.

I awoke late
r than usual
, pulling on a pair of old tracksuit bottoms and a
s
weatshirt before filling the electric kettle in the kitchen. At the top of
the road, by the bus stop, I
’
d noticed a newsagent
’
s that was bound to
sell milk and I was out of my flat and halfway down the communal hall
before I registered the flowers. They were lying on the floor outside my
door, a bunch of blue flag iris, beautifully wrapped, ribboned and
bowed. I picked them up. There was a plain white card tucked inside.
In purple italic script, it read
‘
Welcome Home
’
. I turned the card over.
There was no name, just the message.

I looked upstairs, knowing they must have come from the flautist in
the top flat. Only he had access to the hall. Anyone else would have
needed to ring at the front door. I hesitated a moment. Should I go up
there now? Introduce myself? Say thank you? Or should I leave it until
later? Get myself showered and half-decent? I looked at the card again,
struck by the
r
ightness
of the message.
Home
. How come he could
echo my own thoughts so exactly? How come he
knew
?
I gri
nned, not
knowing the answer
but
recognising that little tingle of anticipatory
excitement which occasionally signalled something special in my life.

Nikki came later with the cats, Pinot and Noir. We shut them in the
kitchen with saucers of milk and a big fat mountain of boiled fish, and
spent lunchtime in a pub in Stamford Hill. Afterwards, Nikki braced
herself for a tearful parting from the cats then pushed off. By mid-
afternoon I was alone again, buried in the Sunday papers, promising
myself an evening with the sander. I
’
d make a real start on the
floorboards. With luck, I could have the front room finished by
Christmas.

I was halfway through an article on flamenco dancing when I heard
a door closing overhead and the sound of footsteps on the stairs. By the
time I got to the hall, he was standing by the front door, his back to me.
He was wearing jeans and an old suede jacket and a nice pair of desert
boots. His tousled hair was beginning to grey in exactly the way you
’
d
associate with soulful flute music, and when he turned round, the low
winter sunshine through the glass panes of the front door rimmed his
face in gold.

I thanked him for the flowers and told him it was a lovely gesture. At
first, I wondered whether he
’
d heard me but then he shrugged and
made a loose, eloquent movement with his hand and said it was
nothing.

‘
I
hope you
’
ll be happy here,
’
he
murmured.

He had the door open now and with the sunshine pouring down the
hall it was even harder to see his face but I thought I detected the
remains of a bruise under his left eye, the flesh yellowed and purpled. I
heard myself asking about milk deliveries, and which day of the week
the dustmen called, anything to prolong the conversation. He gave me
the name of a local dairy. He spoke softly, taking his time. An educated
man, I thought, trying to guess at his age. Forty-five? Fifty?

‘
We were listening to you playing the flute yesterday?
’
I said.
‘
You
play wonderfully.
’

‘
We?
’

I nodded, explaining about Nikki. She was my best friend. She was
off to South Africa. I paused, expecting a comment. None came.

‘
Do you mind cats?
’
I asked him.

‘
Not at all.
’

‘
You like them?
’

‘
Very much.
’

‘
Thank God for that.
’

He looked at me with a quizzical smile, saying nothing. He had a big
broad face and the fact that he hadn
’
t shaved for several days gave it a
strange depth. His eyes were slightly sunken, and his nose was a little
bent, and I remember thinking it was the kind of face that belonged on
the moodier book covers. It spoke of a life lived to the limits, of
numberless experiences barely survived. It fascinated me.

I was telling him about Pinot and Noir, how much they meant to
Nikki, what a responsibility I
’
d taken on.

‘
It
’
ll work out,
’
he told me. I
know it will.
’

‘
How do you mean?
’

‘
I can see it in your face. You have an aura, an affinity. The cats will
know that. They
’
ll sense it.
’

Something in his voice snagged, just the tiniest tremor on the nerve
ends, and I asked him what he meant, relieved when he
explained
about his own cats. H
e
’
d adopted two strays. They
’
d been old and fat
and he
’
d spoiled them to death.

‘
Literally.
’
He frowned.

‘
You mean they died?
’

‘
I
’
m afraid so.
’

‘
Don
’
t you miss them?
’

‘
Sometimes.
’

‘
Why don
’
t you get a couple more?
’

‘
Good idea.
’

We looked at each other for a moment longer and then he stepped
out into the sunshine and pulled the door shut behind him. The
abruptness of his departure took me a bit by surprise and left me
wondering whether, in some subtle way, I
’
d offended him. Maybe it
was uncool to get so effusive about a bunch of flowers. Maybe they
should have gone unacknowledged. I frowned, retreating back into
my flat, and I went into the front room and stood in the bay window
for a full minute, watching him walk to the top of the road. He walked
slowly, with a great deliberation, his head bent. My father had been
like that, for a year or so before he
’
d died, and I found myself revising
my estimate of his age. Definitely fifty. Probably older. Nice, though,
in that mysterious, rather enticing way that goes with the unexpected
and the unusual.

Christmas came and went
- I
spent most of it with my mother - and
over the next month or so my new neighbour and I saw less of each
other than you
’
d probably imagine. For one thing, I
’
d become
maniacally busy at work, filling in for another girl called Solange
who
’
d got whiplash in a traffic accident and spent hours visiting some
far-flung chiropractor. This, oddly enough, turned out to be a blessing.
My computer skills are pretty good and the stuff they gave me -
booking contracts and production schedules - got churned out
quicker than usual with the result that I began to lose my bimbo image.
The last thing that Brendan Quayle would ever do was take me
seriously but there were a couple of occasions when yours truly dug
him out of nasty corners and the little notes he took the trouble to send
me afterwards seemed genuinely grateful.

With my usual insight, it had taken me the best part of my first
month to realise that Brendan was in fact married to the other partner
in the company, a savage blonde called Sandra Merricks, and the more
I saw of her, the more I understood Brendan
’
s incessant womanising.
The extravagant plays he made for me, and for more or less anyone
else in a skirt, were obviously pleas for help. How else could he survive
a marriage to someone who
’
d long ago abandoned real life for the
tyranny of the Sage spreadsheet?

We were friends enough by now for me occasionally to say yes to the
constant invitations for meals or a drink,
and over a bowl of noodles in
mid January he dropped his guard long enough for me to glimpse a
little of the bewilderment that lay behind.