The Music Shop

  Of course she made no music when he listened. The woman he had permitted himself to fall in love with didn’t exist. She was a musician. She played on records.

  After the death of Peg, he’d had to be so careful with his thoughts. He might be doing something very straightforward, like putting on a pair of socks, and out of nowhere the truth would rise up in front of him. He had tried to be angry for what she had done but he was so wounded he couldn’t find it in himself to feel anything but the pain. It was like losing something vital that he could not do without, while also realizing that it had never been his in the first place. So he taught himself to deal with the facts one by one. All right, she’s dead. I have to start again. But then he got to the next part, her final abandonment, and it was like meeting a flood. He couldn’t get round it. He couldn’t even have it out with her. Everything they had done together, all the music they shared, it had meant nothing. He meant nothing. How else to explain what she had done?

  So there he lay, thinking of Ilse Brauchmann and thinking of Peg, and everything began to merge, and he couldn’t tell the difference any more between the way he had felt fifteen years ago, and the way he felt now. When he slept it was brief, but he clung to unconsciousness, hoping it would never be light again.

  The next time Frank woke, he found he was still dressed and sunshine was slanting through the window. He wondered why everything seemed so flat and empty, and then he remembered. He had lost the thing he thought he had. Once again he had tried to love and been betrayed. The Ilse he loved didn’t exist. The woman he loved didn’t exist.

  When he heard Kit knocking on the door of the shop he went down in a towel and opened up. Kit watched Frank as if he were afraid he might combust. He said quietly, ‘It’s Tuesday. It’s your music lesson today.’

  ‘I can’t do it. I can’t face her.’

  Everything had worked until Ilse Brauchmann fell into his life.

  36

  Requiem

  TICK, TICK, WENT the record. Mozart’s Requiem. Peg said nothing. She just blew out smoke and listened, a look of fear on her face.

  In the last few years of her life, she became more spiritual. It would be an exaggeration to say she found God – Peg wouldn’t find God if he leapt out of a cupboard, shouting ‘Boo!’ – but she talked about the fact her parents were dead by her age, and she developed an interest in things other than sex.

  She listened to sacred choral music. She also took up painting by numbers and random acts of philanthropy.

  Peg sent cheques to a few local charities and hung the walls of the old billiard room with her artwork. Botticelli’s Venus, as well as some shepherdesses in the style of Gainsborough. As a result of her kindness to a care home she was invited to a Christmas ball for benefactors, where she was treated like royalty. She didn’t sleep with anyone – most of them were on Zimmer frames – but she came home ecstatic. The following day she sent a cheque to a home for orphans in Africa.

  She talked a lot about Handel’s funeral as well as Beethoven’s; all those people who showed up to pay their respects. She talked about Vivaldi too, and no music at the end. It could get her really wound up. She played the Mozart Requiem, Rachmaninov’s Vespers, Fauré, Schubert, Brahms, Verdi, Cherubini. The ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, of course. She loved that.

  So it went on. Frank and Peg rubbing along, the white house getting more decrepit, the weekly delivery of groceries and records.

  Until the evening he saw a blue light flashing up the drive, and a police car arrived.

  ‘I’m afraid there has been a terrible accident.’

  37

  The True Story of Ilse Brauchmann

  ‘I HAVEN’T A clue what’s going on,’ said the red face in front of him. ‘But if you don’t come and sort it out, I’m going to deep-fry your balls.’

  Frank wondered what it was with the women of this city that when it came to threats, they seemed to involve such malicious intent towards a man’s private parts. She was wearing a small black dress, but her head was missing something. A stiff white cap—

  The Singing Teapot waitress.

  What was she doing in front of his turntable? And why was she pointing at him with a wooden spoon?

  ‘I just talked to the nice woman next door,’ she said.

  ‘Do you mean Maud?’

  ‘She told me to dish it to you straight.’

  Suddenly Frank felt both weak and afraid. He reached for a smoke.

  ‘That poor lady is waiting in my café. She won’t eat. She won’t drink her squash. She’s just sitting there, waiting for you. She looks ill.’

  ‘It’s best if you keep out of this.’

  The waitress slammed both hands on the edge of his turntable, narrowly missing the potted cactus. It seemed to have sprouted another immense pink flower. She bent close.

  ‘It’s Tuesday. It’s past six o’clock. You are here. She is there. I have bought the ingredients for the Weekly Special out of my own pocket. So get to my café.’

  As he mutely followed her to the door, he felt Kit’s eyes boring through him.

  ‘What shall I do while you’re gone, Frank?’

  ‘I have no idea. Why don’t you try getting something right for once?’

  But really he was talking to himself.

  ‘You’re a musician.’

  Frank and Ilse sat opposite one another at their regular table in the window of the Singing Teapot. She looked ill – the waitress was right – her body seemed folded in on itself, but his head was throbbing and his skin was freezing, and he was under no doubt that he looked even worse than she did. The album sleeve of the ‘Four Seasons’ lay between them. ‘A violinist,’ he said.

  She gave a sigh without sound. ‘Frank—’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Sunlight caught the upper halves of the old buildings opposite. The sky was still very blue; like looking up at something lovely from the depths of a hole. It seemed a long time since they’d talked about the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, or even the night it snowed and she showed him her hands.

  The waitress appeared from the kitchen, sweating hard, and laid the table. She made a business of straightening their knives and forks, as if they were children and incapable of taking care of themselves.

  ‘I can’t eat,’ said Frank.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Ilse.

  The waitress ignored them and brought two plates from the kitchen, bearing them like gifts.

  ‘Tartiflette. It’s an Alpine dish. Ketchup?’ She produced an extremely large plastic tomato. ‘Bon appétit.’

  At least eating was something to do that was not talking. The waitress watched from her stool until they had finished. There was no noise but the obedient clink and scrape of knife and fork. Outside a man laughed and it was a distant sound, as if once again Ilse and Frank had slipped free of their moorings and were drifting in a space of their own.

  When they were finished, the waitress gathered up their plates and crept back to her stool.

  Frank looked at Ilse.

  Ilse looked at Frank.

  Eyes like vinyl.

  ‘Can we start again?’

  She told her story.

  So Maud was right – Ilse Brauchmann was a violinist. But Ilse had been telling the truth when she told Frank she didn’t listen to music any more. Kit too was right: she had to give up on music when her arthritis set in. She gave up playing and she gave up listening. She turned her back on the thing she loved.

  The first time Ilse held a violin she was six. It was her teacher who noticed that if she wanted something, the child often sang for it. So the teacher introduced her to the only instrument she had to offer.

  As she told this part of the story, Ilse Brauchmann’s neck stretched up and tilted back like a swan’s. She opened her arms and her eyes shone, as if her body was preparing to welcome the violin for the first time. It looked the most natural thing in the world. Of course she was a violinist.

  She described how the
teacher had put the bow in her hand and shown her what to do. In the time it took to draw the bow across four strings, Ilse knew. It was as if her future had turned up, all dressed and ready to go. She would be a violinist. And she laughed as she said that. ‘I was so happy, Frank.’

  The teacher was delighted. This little girl was a prodigy! She actually used that word; everything she showed Ilse how to play, she could do. The teacher showed her scales, arpeggios, runs, pizzicato; she got them right at the drop of a hat. ‘Everyone was so pleased. Look, they kept saying. Look what this child can do! The music was inside me. I didn’t even have to try.’

  Within no time, Ilse had outgrown her teacher. Her parents were not well off but they paid for a tutor. At Christmas there was a concert and while other children were squeaking on recorders and bashing drums, there was little Ilse Brauchmann – with her dark, serious eyes – playing her violin.

  So she went through school, practising every morning, every lunchtime, every evening, until she was old enough to go to music college. She was with other students who played music; there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about their futures. She went from college to an orchestra – she was one of the few who got a job straight away. She recorded the ‘Four Seasons’ when she was only twenty. It was the high point of her life. There was talk of a tour.

  And then it had begun; the thing with her hands.

  At first it was just a little tremble, like a muzzy electric current, and sometimes her fingers locked, for no good reason. Then it got worse.

  She started to lose control. She hid the problem, she gave excuses, but she began to make mistakes. Little things at first, but they got to be stupid mistakes that even a child wouldn’t make. Her fingers might go stiff on the struts. Or she would feel a shock of pain and suddenly jerk the bow. She was relegated from first violinist to second, then third, then fourth.

  Ilse looked down at her hands and Frank sat waiting for more. This great big man; he was nothing but liquid.

  ‘My knuckles began to swell. It was awful. My fingers completely locked. Some days I couldn’t move them. The pain woke me at night and it was worse after rain. The conductor took me aside. He told me they were letting me go. I was beside myself. I begged. I wept. I shouted. What will I do? I said. This is my life. He said, ‘You could play for ballet classes.’

  She touched her mouth with her fingertips, forbidding herself to cry. Frank reached out but she kept still and so his arm remained, beached, on the table.

  ‘I wanted to be great. I didn’t want to be—’ She struggled to find the word. She even looked for it under the ashtray. ‘Normal.’

  It was fair to say she got very low after that. She took a job wait-ressing and that was when she met Richard. He had no interest in music, especially not classical, and so long as she didn’t have to look at what she had lost from her life, so long as she remained in hiding, she could just about bear it. Then – things got complicated and she left for England.

  ‘Is that when you came to the music shop?’

  She spoke the rest of the story very slowly, with a soft note of wonder in her voice, as if she were discovering things while she said them, and realizing how precious they were.

  ‘I can picture it now. A cold, dark day in January. I had just arrived. I knew no one. Then I saw it, this little shop, on a run-down street. I went closer. I read the poster in the window. I saw all those records, the coloured lamps, people looking for music. It was so beautiful. I thought – Stand here for a minute. See if you can do it.’

  ‘So why did you faint?’ His fingers began tearing up the paper napkin. In fact now he looked, Frank discovered that he had already torn up several. There was a little pile of torn-up napkin all around him, as if he were making some kind of nest.

  ‘It was too much. But the next thing I knew, you were there. You told me to stay with you. And there was something so kind about the way you said it.’

  The waitress passed Frank a fresh pile of paper napkins. ‘Bon appétit.’ He felt a need to keep tearing things.

  Ilse said, ‘After that, I tried to stay away. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the way you told me everything would be OK. So I brought the plant as a thank-you. I didn’t intend to stay but then Mrs Roussos interrupted, and you asked if I wanted a record—’

  ‘You asked for the “Four Seasons”.’

  ‘It was the first record that came into my head. I didn’t want to buy the thing—’ Here came the blush in her cheeks. He realized he had become inordinately fond of those two red circles.

  Briefly he remembered the group of shopkeepers sitting around the little table in England’s Glory, trying to decide what to do with her handbag. In his mind’s eye, it was like seeing tiny people. Children.

  ‘So did you listen to the record?’

  ‘I couldn’t face it. I stayed away from the shop. Then I saw Kit’s posters. About my bag. I made him a shirt to say thank you. But you threw me out. That was unkind, Frank. I almost left that night.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘The “Four Seasons”.’ She took his cigarette and it dangled between her fingers. No one else smoked a cigarette like Ilse Brauchmann.

  ‘I bought a really cheap record player and I listened. I felt – for the first time in years – the magic. I thought, maybe I could do it again. With this man’s help, I could have my life back. Because you didn’t talk about the technique of music. You told me how it felt when you listened. I got a job as a cleaner. A few offices. Nothing fancy. I asked you to give me lessons. And I didn’t ask it as a favour. I gave you good money.’

  ‘You said cash was no problem.’

  ‘That was a lie. I tried to tell the truth about who I was – but you wouldn’t let me. This was a business arrangement, you said.’

  He hung his head. She was right. He remembered now. The way she had stood in front of him after their second lesson, twisting her hands. Frank, there’s something you need to know. You will hate me. ‘I have been so happy here, Frank. It has been like breathing again. Every record you gave me has been a little bit more like breathing.’

  ‘What did Richard make of all this?’

  He lit a fresh cigarette and passed it to her but she didn’t take it and neither did he, so it sat in the ashtray between them, smoking all by itself.

  She said, ‘Are you serious?’

  Even the waitress shot to her feet. ‘Are you serious, Frank?’

  It was like hearing stereo when you’ve got very comfortable with mono.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

  Ilse Brauchmann’s eyes stacked with tears. ‘Ohh,’ she murmured. ‘Was werde ich tun?’

  It was the waitress who filled the space between them, and also the silence. ‘She doesn’t have a fiancé, you great buffoon. What do you think she’s doing here all by herself? They split up. He’s back in Germany where she left him. Or travelling. Or doing whatever it is that he does. How could she be with a man who doesn’t like music? She just didn’t want you to think she was desperate. The truth’s been staring you in the face the whole flipping time. She fell in love with you from the start.’

  What followed was a PAUSE. Time stopped. The ground went whoooooosh. Frank was free-falling. Empty. Sick. He couldn’t feel his feet any more. Come to think of it, he couldn’t find his head. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

  Frank looked at Ilse.

  Ilse looked at Frank.

  Tears poured from her eyes. ‘It’s true, Frank. I love you.’

  He stared at Ilse Brauchmann, as she gazed back at him across their little table, smiling and crying, and he wanted to be a man who said I love you too.

  But he wasn’t. He never had been. He didn’t even know the shape of the words.

  It was as dangerous as taking a running leap from a cliff. Supposing he said, Yes, I love you too, and she laughed? Or supposing they went back to the music shop, and spent a night together, and then she woke in the morning and said, Actual
ly, Frank, I’ll see you around. Because, given the lessons life had taught him, this was what would follow, as sure as night followed day, as sure as side A went on to side B. But this time it would be more pain than he could bear. He looked at Ilse Brauchmann and all he could see was the empty white house by the sea.

  So he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What?’ said the waitress, beginning to laugh.

  Even Ilse Brauchmann’s face had found a smile. They thought he was mucking about. They thought they were home and dry. ‘You can’t? Can’t what, Frank?’

  ‘I can’t do this.’ He was on his feet. Or rather, his legs. His legs had made a decision to go home. He staggered into the next table.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m a mess. You can’t love me.’

  She stared up at him as if she had not seen him before.

  ‘Really,’ he said. ‘I mean it. Don’t. Love. Me.’

  She began to make strange tiny sounds. ‘Ah ah ah.’ Expulsions of air that came irregularly and were barely audible. As if she was stabbing herself with a needle, very sharp and deep. ‘You bloody man.’

  And the way she said it was how it always was with Ilse Brauchmann, her broken accent exposing the words for what they truly meant so that he heard them as if they had been forged for the very first time. She was right. He was no more than one massive, gaping, unhealed wound. He stumbled to the door. Swung it open. Felt the warm air.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted the waitress, charging forward. ‘Wait!’

  ‘No, it’s over,’ said Ilse Brauchmann. ‘Let him go. I’m finished with England.’ She had the tired voice of someone who sees no way out.

  But even as Frank lumbered from the café, he was awaiting something, some divine intervention, the alley to close, the sun to carry him back. He pulled and pulled with his mouth but couldn’t get enough breath in his lungs. Ahead, two lovers stood necking in a doorway.

  He began to run. Slower at first, and then harder and harder.