Puccini's Ghosts (20 page)

‘Pardon,’ he said. ‘Shall we be getting along?’

When the bus came he led the way inside without explaining why he was abandoning the lark of going upstairs. He sat saying nothing as the bus lurched along, and Lila’s doubts gathered again.

In quiet terror she asked, ‘Penny for them. What are you thinking about?’ giving him the chance to say I’m thinking about you, and dispel the clouds.

‘Nothing.’

‘You must be thinking about something.’

‘Well, yes, I am in a way,’ he said, frowning. ‘Nothing important.’

They rode on in a silence that was deeper and now as much Lila’s as his, while her mind raced to find excuses for him. It did not occur to her to put his withdrawal down to simple boorishness; she was disproportionately respectful of other people’s silences. At 5 Seaview Villas she had waited out enough of them to know that silences were not merely one of the things that adults imposed on children. They were a mark of separation between the two states; it was one of the privileges of adulthood to clam up and control the atmosphere, a ploy by which children were kept halted, guessing, on the edge of grown-ups’ lives. So she reminded herself that Joe was five years older than she was and probably just further on than she in the mastery of unfathomable behaviour.

They had got off the bus and were walking over the bridge when she could bear it no more. The glitter of the morning was falling away, spoiled. She had had him to herself all this time and she had wasted her chance, and now she was about to lose him in the crowd made by Uncle George and her mother. They were claiming him back before she could find out why he wouldn’t speak to her.

‘What’s the matter? Joe, what’s the matter? Is it
me
?’

Joe stopped. ‘What? Nothing’s the matter!’ He spoke as if she had been pestering him for hours. Then he saw that she was about to cry. ‘Look, of course it’s not you! Sometimes…things…they get on my mind. That’s all. Things you don’t know anything about. Things I have to think about, okay?’

He started to walk away and Lila grabbed his arm. He shook her off gently and kept going. ‘Hey! Come on, look, I told you…I’ve just got things on my mind, okay?’

‘Tell me! I want to know. What things?’ she bleated after him. ‘I want to help! How can I
help
you if I don’t know?’

At heart she knew that she was not making an offer of help at all, but a plea to be included.

Joe stopped, exasperated. ‘Look. Just…this thing, this whole thing George started. I mean, other things as well. There’s a lot to it. You won’t understand.’

‘Yes I will! I do understand! I know it’s a lot to organise, I know we need to get lots more people! I know it’ll be hard work! That’s the point!’

‘I didn’t…Look, that’s not what I…’

‘Okay! Okay! I know! There’s casting, tickets, publicity, the band, the lights, the set. The costumes. Headdresses. I know!’

Joe shook his head. ‘Aw, Jesus! For God’s sake. That’s not what I’m talking about.’

‘Well,
what
then?’ Lila shouted. ‘
Tell
me!’

Joe took her hand. She let him, though it was a humiliation to be so ready to be appeased while not yet knowing if appeasement would be offered. She waited in terror for him to drop her hand, to reject her for the sake of whatever secrets were whispering in his head. But he raised it and touched it with his lips.

‘You’re quite a little fireball. Forgive me,
la bella
Liù,’ he said. She pulled her hand away. ‘
La bella
Liù. The Princess Turandot is no contest for Liù. Allow me to pledge to you,’ Joe reached for her hand again, ‘my undying respect.’

Respect did not sound quite right. Lila could hear the same tone with which he had mocked Senga and her gang, and he had put a certain look in his eyes. She withdrew her hand once more.

‘I don’t believe in pledges,’ she said, mimicking his grandeur. ‘Why should I?’

‘Ah,
la bella
Liù requires proof, a token?’ Joe said, thumping his chest, still acting. They started walking again and now he was darting to and fro in front of her. It was impossible not to laugh. Any of their neighbours might be looking out of their windows.
Oh, aren’t they a lovely couple, I remember when they first met.
They would all be on the pavement in front of the church to see the bride come out.

‘
La bella
Liù shall have…what? What does Madame Liù desire?’ Joe cried. This time he took both her hands.

Lila said, ‘Desire? Nothing. I don’t want anything.’

She blushed. She wanted everything, could he not see it? She knew that wants on the preposterous scale of her own must be kept hidden, for now. Still, she was imagining his first, shy gift: a little vase, a book of poetry, a shining, unreal jewel. Something in silver perhaps, a tiny object about which a modest and tender poem could be written. There it would be in times to come; the two of them would hold hands as she explained to their lively and artistic friends:
This was the very first thing Joe gave me.

He said, ‘Well, I shall think of something. And you must promise to keep it as a little memento of me! Promise!’ Then he dropped her hands and dashed on ahead.

Lila followed him slowly, watching him disappear up the side of the house. Why would she need a memento of him when she would see him every day? He must mean a memento of him as Calaf, or a memento of the time they met. She would get used to it. Her life would soon be full of little events deserving of tokens of commemoration.
Keep it as a little memento of me. Promise.
He did not hear her whisper after him, once the dizziness in her head cleared, that she would promise him anything he cared to ask.

She could not expect to understand yet what it all meant: his changes of mood, the banter that faded away when she was the only audience, the holding out and snatching away of little signs. Already she accepted that being confused was another thing that was now her due, a trial to be passed on the way to forming herself into the perfect template that would fit over Joe’s nature precisely. At that point she would merge with him completely, but meanwhile there were bound to be occasional rough corners and misunderstandings to be honed away.

i
t’s Christine’s doing, I have no doubt, that brings pastor Luke to the door. She knows from the announcement in the paper where the service is being held and she’s rung and tipped him off to come and see if I’m going off my head. Luke’s not in holy clothes this time. He’s in jeans and a checked shirt with a white T-shirt showing at the neck, a padded jacket and a hat with earflaps. Hands in pockets, stamping on the threshold.

He says, Hey, it’s a frosty one, isn’t it? His breath forms a cloud around his head. At this rate I guess it could even snow, it sure feels cold enough.

I know he thinks to catch me off guard, dressed like that, and means to sneak in a prayer before I can stop him.

I’m not expecting you, am I? I say. I could have been out.

Well, I tried calling you, he says, but no-one’s been answering. Are you okay, Lila? Hey, you okay? You look a little upset.

Well, maybe, I say, wiping my eyes with the bundle of papers I happen to be holding. Maybe you telephoned but maybe I don’t always answer. I’m busy. I’m busy now, in fact.

Good! That’s one reason I’m here, I thought maybe you could use a hand. His teeth really are very impressive. He stamps his feet again and blows on his hands.

Oh, all right then, I say.

He follows me inside quickly and I take him into the music room. You can tell it’s a music room because the piano is still there, though of course the Decca stereogram has gone. She had it sent down.

Fine piano, Luke says. Do you play?

Needs tuning, I say.

We look around for a while. Luke is searching for a way, I can tell, to bring God into it, into these stale remnants, the quiet wreckage left by people—and among them I count myself—who had their chances once and squandered them so long ago that it should not still matter. Luke will want to insist it does matter and I predict that his attempts to proffer higher meaning will offend me, because the way I see it God is either inattentive or plain uncooperative and either way it adds up to the same thing. I wonder if it daunts him. God I mean, not Luke. Maybe even God realises that where his presence hasn’t been noted within living memory is a place he isn’t wanted, though that realisation would entail an unexpected degree of humility on his part. More likely, to me, is the thought that he just
isn’t
. But to spare Luke that view into the void, I start to tell him a bit about the piano.

Our eyes are now fixed on it, perhaps because it is the only object in the room that retains any possibility of life. The chairs and the spindly coffee table look somehow extinct.

You call it fine, I say, but that night, that night when everybody comes to the first opera meeting, my mother’s Decca stereogram outclasses that piano by a mile. That’s what people notice.

Decca stereogram? Luke laughs. That’s going back some!

I turn away. It’s in the same place as always, right here along the wall. It’s her favourite possession: a walnut-veneered rectangle of pure status. It stands on black legs with brass rings at their bases, it’s got slide-away doors and a panel of dials like a dashboard that lights up all greenish, the latest thing.

The stereogram eclipses the piano completely, I tell Luke. Do you understand what I’m saying?

I hear what you say, he assures me. You’re talking about a long time ago, right? About stuff that’s gone. It’s not here, right?

But I see it, here in the crowded room. I stay where I am and Luke goes away somewhere, I have an idea he’s putting on the kettle. I know the room: the carpet that does not go all the way to the skirting board and shows linoleum in a herringbone pattern of olive green and yellow at its edges, the lampshade overhead of thick, pale green glass, the empty grate in July. A smell of linseed and dust.

People—more people than have ever gathered here before—occupy all the dining chairs and every stool we can find. They are squeezed up, two in every armchair and more on the arms, others are leaning, perching where they can and the younger ones sit cross-legged on the floor. Our chairs are mortifying: wartime brown with wooden arms, now re-covered in red and charcoal, but the room is so crowded tonight they can hardly be seen. (He hung on to two of those chairs and here they are still, re-covered again in stretch nylon in a pattern of dark green leaves.)

How many people are here? I hear their voices murmuring small, balanced remarks over cups of tea. These people are nearly all dead now, their quirks and mistakes and stupidities evened out and neatly put by as if their lives were a pile of ironing. But I am here, too, yellow chiffon scarf in the hair and the dirndl skirt all over again, anxious in my wrong clothes, watching the door. Joe walks in, moving slowly. When Uncle George asks him to go and find more chairs, he looks sullen.

Do you think, Uncle George says through his teeth, I can do everything myself?

Joe glares and exits. He and I are still somewhat in disgrace for skipping off to Burnhead on Thursday but Joe is brazening it out, claiming that he was drumming up support for the meeting. The thrill I am getting from sharing a bond of criminality with him outweighs any fall from grace in Uncle George’s eyes. Uncle George sometimes looks a little seedy and unwell, now. He says
nil desperandum
too often. I do not meet his eyes because I am afraid that there may be a look in mine that will reveal to him how I have changed. But whenever I remember about going to London with him, I feel nicer about him, and try to be helpful. Maybe I should feel confused about this, but all I feel is powerful.

The trickle of arrivals for the meeting thickens, and slows again, and by twenty to seven there are well over three dozen people crammed into the music room.

Enid is sitting with her mother. I am glad to see that Enid’s mum is as placid and solid here as she is at Sew Right, behind the sewing machine. I have an idea she is the same everywhere. Enid sticks her tongue out at me. Behind her, to my dismay, sit Senga, Linda and Deirdre. They kick and poke and giggle behind their hands.

My mother glides into the room like a knowing guest, like a visiting priestess. The other women are in cotton skirts and twinsets; she is in oyster chiffon that drifts around her body like smoke. She does this. Her clothes are not just superior, they are antithetical. When Burnhead womanhood is wearing tiny floral prints she’s in pared-down black and white. They turn out in tweeds and she’s in bias-cut crêpe-de-chine, get them in navy check and she’ll be in caramel zig-zags. I’m not sure if it’s deliberate. She presents herself like an exhibit, some untouchable artefact from an exotic and distant civilisation. Her value is not explicit and to guess at it would be vulgar and irrelevant.

She finds a stool at the back of the room. I think she feels awkward about our house filling up with people she knows slightly or not at all. She doesn’t have friends as such; her dealings with people are skewed and unnatural because she wants too much and expects too little. She is not quite at ease with those by whom she would like to be regarded a social equal, the wives of the town’s professional men—Moira Mather, Delia Hunter the doctor’s wife, who are both here—but nor is she quite friends with ordinary folk like Mrs Mathieson and Enid’s mum to whom all she conveys is her sense that deference is due to her, along with faint surprise that they turn out to have perfectly nice manners after all. She is only really comfortable giving orders to the shopkeepers, I think.