The Music Shop

  Kit does not go home. He sold his parents’ house when they died and he bought a warehouse apartment. He follows Ilse up to the executive suite (he brings another sandwich) and lies flat out on the bed beside hers. They talk for the rest of the night, remembering Frank and the music shop, and all the people he once helped. He tells her more about his radio show, and Ilse speaks about her career as a violin teacher. Twenty-one years can be condensed to very few words. Is that a good thing or a bad one? It’s just the way it is.

  ‘Frank was so in love with you,’ he says. ‘We all were. Even Father Anthony.’

  Her heart begins to beat fast with the sudden shock of hope, and the relief too of hearing it spoken at last, Frank’s feeling for her. She tries to breathe deep. She says, ‘Maud wasn’t in love with me.’

  ‘Maud was in love with Frank.’

  ‘Is she still?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Nevertheless I felt it even today. As if she was trying to get rid of me.’

  It occurs to her there is something, even after all these years, about all three of them, something separated. Unfinished. Unfinished symphonies, she thinks. Even Kit – with all his energy – has a loneliness stored in his smile. But what will it take to complete them? A miracle? At the very least, a small piece of human magic. Far away Ilse can hear sirens and drunken shouting. Where are you, Frank? She strokes her throat with her hand, trying to make the fingers of her left hand become his, willing him to be with her. To be safe. She thinks of herself, in this executive room, and herself in her mother’s apartment, and herself as a young woman, walking beside Frank, and it is as though all those versions of her life exist concurrently. It is hard to work out which is the most real.

  When Kit begins to snore, she eases the plate from his hands and pulls the covers over him.

  It turns out there are even more care homes in the city than tattoo salons. The following morning, Ilse and Kit stand either side of the receptionist as she scrolls through the listings on her computer. They have happy names like Sunnyview and Meadowbanks through Ilse doubts they have a single sunny view or meadowbank between them.

  The receptionist has turned a blind eye to the fact that both Kit and Ilse emerged from the lift at eight in the morning. Though she has asked if he is really the Late Night Surgery DJ from the radio? She loves his programme, she says.

  ‘I rang in once.’ She blushes all round her blue uniform scarf.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I didn’t know if I should leave my job and go to India.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘You said the world’s your oyster.’ She clicks her mouse on PRINT. Six pages of care homes shunt from her printer. She fastens them with a stapler and hands them over. She gives him an embarrassed smile. ‘One day I will go,’ she says.

  In the hotel restaurant, Ilse sifts through one page after another, marking up the homes she considers most likely. Really this is guesswork. She hasn’t a clue. She points again at all the care homes on her list. She’s supposed to be heading back to Germany tomorrow. It could take her weeks to drive round all these places.

  Kit knocks back a glass of detoxifying green juice and laughs. ‘Have you never heard of Facebook? The mobile phone?’

  An hour later, he has sampled everything the breakfast buffet has to offer, and also located Father Anthony in a home called House of Hope.

  ‘Frank?’ the girl says. ‘Oh. I know that name. Mr Anthony goes on about him all the time.’

  The House of Hope is a vast single-storeyed building furnished with handrails and security buzzers, and does not look very hopeful at all. The girl leads the way along a corridor. She wears jogging trousers and a T-shirt over which she has a blue plastic apron, so thin it could have been made from a bin liner.

  The girl’s crepe-sole shoes go shlop shlop in the silence; the corridor is lined, wall to wall, in old brown carpet that feels sucky underfoot. There are windows on one side, doors on the other. Sunlight measures itself out in regular oblongs and there is a very strong chemical smell that has clearly been used to overpower other very strong smells that are more of the human variety.

  Ilse glances briefly from one of the windows and finds a view of the car park, containing only her hire car.

  ‘Frank this, Frank that,’ says the girl. ‘Sometimes we shut the door and leave him to it.’

  ‘What if he falls? Or he’s lonely?’

  The girl shrugs. ‘He can ring his buzzer.’ She pushes open a door.

  ‘Shouldn’t we knock?’

  But the girl is already inside the room and yelling, ‘Here you go, Mr Anthony. You’ve got yourself some visitors.’

  The room is small. There is nothing here except the necessities. Not even a photograph, and the buzzer is in fact held to the wall with a strip of Sellotape.

  Father Anthony waits in an armchair by the window. Beyond the bars there is a view of a brick wall that can’t be more than ten feet away. What is left of his hair stands up in peaks, his eyes are rheumy with age, his glasses held together with Elastoplast.

  ‘Don’t get up, don’t get up!’ yells Kit.

  But the old priest does. He flies up and embraces them as if he has been praying for this day for years.

  ‘I’m not sure we are allowed to abduct residents, Kit,’ says Ilse, pulling left on to the dual carriageway.

  ‘We’re not abducting him. We’re taking him for a day out. I told the girl we were family.’

  ‘Did she mind?’

  ‘No. She asked for my autograph.’

  Father Anthony sits on the back seat. He has wound down the window and the cold air rushes through his hair. He holds his face up, smiling.

  Ilse Brauchmann has lost track of how many cafés she has visited in the last few days. She orders another black coffee, Father Anthony orders a glass of milk; Kit asks if he could have the full English afternoon tea, even though strictly speaking it is only halfway through the morning.

  The waitress blushes and says of course, and is he by any chance the man—

  ‘I am,’ he says brightly. ‘Would you like a signed photo?’

  Father Anthony holds Ilse’s hand and tells her all he knows about Frank. Yes, it’s true he lost everything. Yes, it’s also true he turned his back on music. And yes, he is probably still alive.

  ‘Where is he?’ She’s on her feet and grabbing her car keys before the old ex-priest has finished his sentence.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Father Anthony rubs his face in his hands. ‘I don’t know where he is any more. He used to come and visit sometimes. Walked all the way there, and all the way back. People liked him. He had time for everyone. Then one day he said there was something he had to do, and he wouldn’t be able to see me for some time.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I get things confused.’ His eyes well up. Ilse takes his hand. He might be frail but there is life in him.

  ‘What did he have to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just said he needed a regular job.’

  ‘Why would that be a problem?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Father Anthony’s face puckers all over with emotion. ‘Oh my goodness, I am so happy to see you.’

  They drive back through the city. They go to the park, they visit the police station, they walk the length of Castlegate but they don’t even know what they are looking for. Every time she feels she has Frank in her sights, he seems to disappear down another alleyway. They end up parking on Unity Street, and standing outside the boarded-up parade. It’s mid-afternoon and a soft pink light fills the air so that the row of abandoned shops glows with a warmth of its own. Even the blackened bricks of the music shop have beauty.

  ‘It was a good time,’ murmurs Kit. ‘We didn’t even know how good it was.’

  ‘Oh but we did,’ says Father Anthony. ‘We knew it was special. We loved helping people and Frank loved that more than anyone. But I think he lost his way. It happens sometimes.’

 
Ilse asks if he would like supper with her at the hotel. He nods and says he would like that very much.

  As she drives them back to the old docklands area, Kit talking nineteen to the dozen, Father Anthony’s face beaming in her rear-view mirror, she allows her mind to drift. She pictures the music shop as it once was, the boxes of vinyl, the booths with the little mother-of-pearl birds, the old Persian runner. She hears Maud’s voice, all over again. Sometimes it’s best if you move on—

  She almost hits the pavement.

  ‘Whoa!’ says Kit.

  If Maud has not seen Frank for fifteen years, why does she still have the key to his shop?

  The answer is waiting in the hotel foyer.

  ‘Oh shit. It’s her.’

  Kit actually leaps behind Ilse and grips on to her shoulders. Father Anthony raises his hands to his mouth, in wonderment. At her computer, the receptionist stares.

  Maud stands in front of the decorative wall of moving water, hands on hips, legs wide, like some kind of official police barrier.

  ‘I know what happened to Frank,’ she says. ‘I lied.’

  Over dinner in the hotel restaurant, Ilse learns the final piece in the puzzle. Maud has to repeat herself many times because the acoustics do not lend themselves to whispering, and Father Anthony is now very hard of hearing and Kit is constantly interrupting with questions.

  ‘Frank is where?’ ‘What?’ ‘How?’

  She didn’t tell Ilse the whole story two days ago because she thought it would be best for everyone to leave him alone. ‘Besides,’ she reaches for cigarettes and slams them back in her handbag, pulling out Nicorettes, ‘you were the last person I expected to see. I’ve been angry with you for a long time.’

  She needs them to understand. Frank isn’t Frank any more. He’s empty. ‘In fact,’ she says repeatedly, ‘he’s a twat.’

  Ilse feels a light, hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach. Everything seems fluttery and liable to fall apart at any minute. ‘So where is he? What does he do that’s such a secret?’

  Frank works in the food factory. He makes the cheese and onion flavouring for the cheese and onion crisps.

  ‘That’s it?’ repeats Kit. ‘That’s what he does?’

  Father Anthony shakes his head sadly. ‘Oh my,’ he murmurs.

  He managed to keep a key for the shop and Maud looks after it. Sometimes – when things are bad – he sleeps there, or lends it to a friend. She has no idea where he spends the rest of his time.

  ‘But why does he work in the food factory?’ repeats Kit. ‘He hated that place. He gave me a job so I wouldn’t have to work there. He said there was more music in his little toe than there was in the food factory.’

  Maud empties a bottle of red wine into her glass. ‘It’s like he doesn’t want to be found any more. Like he wants to hurt himself.’ She adds that it’s getting to the point she expects to find his body one day, just curled up on the street. Every Saturday lunchtime, he eats a burger in the shopping mall. Apart from his job at the food factory, it’s the only time he goes out in public.

  ‘Why does he go there?’ asks Ilse.

  ‘The mall is a dive,’ says Kit.

  ‘It’s what he does. Don’t ask me why. I think there’s some weekly voucher system with the factory.’

  ‘Can we see him?’ Ilse’s question comes the same time as the pudding menu. ‘What can we do?’

  For once Kit doesn’t even think about food. He waits, they all wait, for Maud’s answer.

  ‘You need to wake the fucker up. God knows how. But you need to do it big time.’

  Ilse sits in her hotel room, writing everything down in order to understand. What has taken two hours to tell can be reduced to one half-page of foolscap paper.

  All night she asks herself the same question. How? How do you find a man who has hidden himself away? Who has put himself to sleep? How do you wake up such a man? Why can’t she just go to him? She knows the answer. Frank would run, and she can’t afford to lose him any more times. Besides, there are occasions in life when the simple and the ordinary will not suffice.

  Think, she tells herself. Think.

  What would Frank have done, if this had been another customer? Someone who really needed help and didn’t know how to find it?

  She writes the question over and over, and underlines it.

  Father Anthony is asleep on the extra bed. Maud has crashed out on the sofa. Kit is doing his Late Night Surgereeee on the radio. Ilse has promised to tune in and she does, she listens quietly with her ear to the speaker, as Kit tells people how to fix their lives, and gives them songs to help them feel better. At the very end, he says he has a special message for dear friends. He plays ‘Keep On Keepin’ On’ by Curtis Mayfield.

  ‘How?’ she says aloud. ‘How do we do it? How do we help you, Frank?’

  By the time Kit returns in his Lycra and bicycle clips, she has the answer.

  The cure is in the disease. She of all people should know that.

  Frank needs to hear the one record he could never bear.

  The following morning, Ilse Brauchmann is back at reception. She asks the woman with the blue scarf if she could possibly check into the executive suite for an extra week? She tries not to think about her bank account.

  ‘Will your friends be staying?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I believe they will.’

  It’s the first time she’s laughed in days.

  43

  Hallelujah!

  THERE ARE A number of ways of listening to the Messiah. You can go to a live performance. If you have a local music shop, you can buy it there. You can take it out from the library – so long as your library still exists, and also has a music department. You can buy it online and have it delivered without even having to leave your home. Easiest of all, you can download it. Search it; ping it; there you go. Hallelujah.

  But how do you bring the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to a man who refuses to listen to music? Ilse, Father Anthony, Kit and Maud sit in the window of the Singing Teapot café. It is Kit who has led them here.

  As soon as the waitress spots Ilse, she barks she’s not open yet. Then she drops her Hoover. ‘Oh my God, it’s you!’ Before Ilse can reply the waitress – no longer a young woman, but certainly a larger one – bear-hugs her. When she smiles, her whole face joins in the fun. ‘Let me fix something for you.’

  She disappears through her saloon doors.

  Once again the group discuss the options. They have done nothing else all morning. How can they get Frank to hear the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’? Maud suggests physical violence. An ambush, or something. Father Anthony folds a paper bird and asks what about singing it? ‘Me?’ says Ilse. ‘But where will I do that?’ And anyway, the whole point about the Messiah is that it is a choir. Lots of voices must sing for it to have its full impact.

  Kit counts heads. ‘One, two, three, four—’

  ‘I’m not fucking singing,’ says Maud.

  It is strangely reassuring.

  No, they will have to surprise Frank. If they want him to listen to the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, they have to catch him unawares, and the sound has to be so big he can’t ignore it. Ilse suggests singing outside the food factory. Kit points out they will get mugged if they sing Handel outside the food factory. What if they sing on Unity Street? Nobody will hear them if they sing on the street, and anyway there is no guarantee that Frank will sleep in his shop. The only way to play it to him is to trap him somewhere very public where he can’t run away, and where sound is contained.

  ‘Ah ah ah!’ says Kit, as if he has trodden on something ouchy. ‘The shopping mall! On Saturday!’

  Good idea. They need to play it to him while he eats his burger.

  But how?

  Could they play a CD on a ghetto blaster at the next table? suggests Kit.

  ‘A CD?’ barks Maud. ‘Why not bash him on the head while you’re at it?’

  She is right. They have to play the record. So what about a wind-u
p gramophone?

  Yes, they are getting warmer now.

  ‘But we need to find a way of making the sound big,’ says Ilse. ‘So it really gets him in his heart. I don’t know. Do we get several gramophones?’

  Everyone makes a polite face. But not a convinced one.

  ‘Ooo oo oo.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Kit?’

  ‘I guess he’s having another idea,’ says Maud.

  Kit explains several times but he is excited and the sentences are coming thick and fast, sometimes back-to-front. ‘A happening! Lots of …! People …! A flash! A mob!’

  ‘A what? A what?’ says Ilse.

  The waitress interrupts with her tray. She lays the table with tea, milk, slices of lemon, sugar and a selection of little homemade pastries. Pink iced coconut. Coffee macaroons. Red velvet cakes.

  She draws up a chair and she can’t help herself. She just has to take hold of Ilse’s hand and stroke it.

  ‘So what are we planning here?’

  Kit draws a deep breath. He sits very still, as if he is balancing something precious on top of his head, and tries to explain all over again. A happening is an event. It’s a thing that happens. And a flash mob is when a group of people get together in a public space, usually somewhere like a shopping mall, and they perform a piece of music or a dance or anything like that as if it’s just happening by chance. ‘It’s brilliant!’ he keeps saying. ‘It’s amazing!’ The participants make it look like a spur of the moment decision, as if they all happen to want to do the same thing at the same time, in the same venue.

  ‘But what is the point?’ asks Maud.

  The point, Kit explains, is that a flash mob event has no point. Its point is the sheer beauty of doing something joyful that is also unnecessary, unexpected and free of charge.

  Ilse says, ‘But it would take months to arrange a performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus”. We’d have to advertise for singers. Find a rehearsal space. And what about the musicians? There’s no way we can do that by Saturday.’

  Kit wafts his hand. He has just eaten an entire slice of iced coconut in one mouthful.

  (‘It does tend to stick to the teeth,’ concedes the waitress. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the recipe right yet.’)