The Music Shop

  ‘Did you see that?’ called Father Anthony. His mouth gave up and he stopped talking.

  Frank loped to the door and threw it open, followed by Kit, Maud and the old priest. The woman was lying on her back on the pavement, caught in the river of light from the music shop. She was still and absolutely straight. Her hands were flat at her sides – she was wearing gloves – and her shoes poked upwards. He had never seen her before.

  ‘What could have happened?’ said Father Anthony.

  ‘Oh my God. Is she dead?’ asked Kit.

  Frank was at her side and on his knees without noticing, though once he was down, he sort of wished he was back up. The woman’s eyes were closed and there was no trace of blood. Her face was small and definite – her mouth and nose almost too big – slim eyebrows, a delicate chin that appeared even smaller given the exaggerated width of her jawbone, a neck as long as a stem, and the skin around her nose so freckled it was as if someone had dipped a brush in paint and spattered her, just for the fun of it. There was something about her that was both fragile and incredibly strong.

  Father Anthony unbuttoned his cardigan and draped it over her. Kit’s training as a St John Ambulance cadet now crashed to the fore and he too ran to help. The most important thing in an emergency, he said, was to assess the situation as quickly as possible, without panic, and then to offer the patient reassurance. If she required medical attention he would do his best, though the honest truth was that he hadn’t progressed beyond bandaging a table leg.

  ‘Her pulse, Frank,’ whispered Father Anthony. ‘Feel her pulse.’

  Frank slipped his fingertips beneath her collar. The skin was so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn’t.

  ‘Is she breathing?’ asked Kit. Sounding panicky.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  At the age of forty, Frank had only seen one dead body and that was his mother’s. This stillness didn’t feel final; it was more as though the woman had put herself on hold. She might be in her late twenties. Thirty, at a push.

  By now a few people had appeared from the houses opposite. Somebody said to fetch blankets, someone else said to get her into the warmth, another person said you shouldn’t move her in case her neck was broken. Then a man began to shout about ringing for an ambulance. The chaos was completely at odds with the stillness that seemed to wind like the finest thread around Frank and this woman, pulling them together and away from everything else. The rest of the world had receded, irrelevant, watery, distant.

  ‘Hello?’ said Frank. ‘Can you hear me? Hello?’

  A flicker of life crept into her face. Slowly her eyelids lifted. It came as a shock to meet her eyes. They were astonishingly large, and black as vinyl.

  ‘She’s alive!’ someone shouted. And someone else said, ‘She opened her eyes!’ They still sounded miles away.

  She fixed Frank with those great big eyes. She didn’t smile. She just stared as if she were seeing right through to the heart of him. Then they closed again.

  Father Anthony bowed closer. ‘Keep talking.’

  Keep talking? What could Frank say? He was used to people standing at his turntable, a little nervous, a little ordinary, but not stretched out on the pavement and swinging in and out of wakefulness. ‘You have to stay with me. You have to keep listening to me, OK?’

  He realized how cold it was. Even with his jacket on, he was trembling.

  ‘Stay with me,’ he said; ‘I’m here.’ He thought that sounded pretty much like someone who knew what he was talking about, so he said it again, in a slightly extended Long Player version. ‘You must stay with me because here I am.’ She didn’t respond.

  ‘We’d better carry her inside,’ said Father Anthony.

  Frank bent closer. He attempted to lift the woman without appearing to do anything so intimate as touch her. As he brought her to sitting, her head flopped against his mouth and he smelt the musk of her hair. So now here he was, on his knees, with a sleeping or possibly unconscious woman in his arms – but not, he was pretty sure now, a dying one – and a crowd of people, urging him to stand up, stay put, wait for an ambulance, get her inside.

  ‘Shall I help?’ asked Kit, now blowing on her in an effort to keep her warm. Woof, woof, woof.

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Frank.

  To his relief, Father Anthony knelt opposite. He had clearly done this kind of thing before. He whispered, ‘Ready?’ and then he seemed to bear the weight of the woman as the two men rose to their feet.

  ‘You take her now,’ said Father Anthony.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t look so terrified. I’m right beside you.’

  Frank carried her towards the shop, feeling the way with his plimsolls. It seemed to take an unconscionably long time. Now that she was in his arms, there was more of her than he had imagined, and his legs were turned to mush. Years ago he had to help his mother up the stairs if she’d had one too many gin cocktails, but no one in their right mind would have attempted lifting Peg. She’d have flattened you.

  Kit rushed ahead to swing open the door and inside the shop Father Anthony pulled crates out of the way to clear a space on the Persian runner, while Maud appeared with towels and an industrial-size bottle of Dettol. (What she intended to do with them, no one dared ask.) Frank lowered the woman to the ground.

  ‘Go and fetch her a blanket.’ Who said that? Probably Father Anthony.

  Upstairs in his flat, Frank pushed past boxes of records. He couldn’t think straight. A feeling had welled up from somewhere deep inside him, he didn’t even know where, some place out in the shadows where things happened from a different time, or a part of his life that he had left behind. It was the way she had gazed up at him. Eyes closed and then bing. A look of such radiance and intensity he could not see how he would ever get away from it.

  Frank lumbered from room to room, grabbing things as he saw them, a blanket, a glass of water, some plasters, and then just as he reached the stairs it occurred to him she might be hungry so he ran back for a box of Ritz crackers.

  By the time he made it down, the shop was full. People were offering coats – a few had fetched blankets – but the woman was already on her feet. She looked even lovelier now that she was vertical. Despite the excitement around her, she remained with her spine very straight, her neck tall, and her long arms folded back like a pair of wings. She just seemed to be in a different space from everyone else. Her dark hair was half pinned up, half falling down.

  She checked her coat and tie belt – not that either of them was remotely wonky – and then her gaze roamed the crowd until it settled on Frank. Once again, their eyes locked and everything else gave way and disappeared.

  ‘Was mache ich hier?’ she murmured. Her voice was hushed and broken, as if she had a cold. Then in English: ‘Excuse me.’

  She made a rush for the door. People were saying, ‘Who are you?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Are you OK now?’ Kit was calling, ‘Wait! Wait!’ and someone else was saying stop, stop, they had rung for an ambulance. But she took no notice. She pushed past, almost rudely, threw herself out of the shop and turned right in the direction of the city centre.

  Frank stepped outside and watched as she rushed past the religious gift shop, the funeral parlour, the Polish bakery and the pub on the corner. Her shoes went crack crack on the sparkling pavement as if she were snapping things in half. Streetlamps bored funnels into the dark and the windows of the houses opposite were yellow squares. At the end of Unity Street she turned left towards Castlegate – she didn’t look back.

  It was years since Frank had felt so naked and light. He had to lean against the door, and breathe deeply.

  He wondered if he was coming down with something.

  When Frank was twenty-five, his mother hit the earth like a falling planet. Afterwards he sat every day at her bedside, unable to move, more clothes than man, staring at the tube taped to her mouth, the clipboard at the foot of her bed, not to mention the plastic cups of coffee or beef so
up – it all looked the same – that he bought from the vending machine and failed to drink. She left him her entire music collection; the old Dansette Major, the endless boxes of vinyl. Then came the other news, and it was like being ripped open. He couldn’t even sing ‘Hallelujah’ at her funeral.

  ‘Who was that woman?’ Father Anthony asked later in England’s Glory. He held a glass of pineapple juice because he was teetotal these days. The man who only liked Chopin had bought a full round and was sharing a bar stool with Kit. Mr Novak, the baker, had joined them, his grey hair freshly slicked and his trousers pressed with a crease; it always came as a surprise to see him without a coating of flour. Plastic bunting hung above the bar from the Royal Wedding two years ago.

  Everyone wanted to speculate about the foreign woman who had fainted. Even the regulars began to chip in. A line of old men at the bar agreed she must have been on holiday. A woman in curlers wondered if she was on the run, while a man with three teeth suggested she could have been a doctor. They wore green coats.

  ‘So do leprechauns,’ said Maud.

  ‘She looked like a film star to me,’ said Kit.

  ‘Don’t be a pillock. Why would a film star come all the way out here?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe she was a lost film star.’

  The man who only liked Chopin regretted he hadn’t seen her properly. He’d been so caught up in Aretha, the first he knew of the woman fainting was when he opened the door of the booth and saw her running away. He asked if anyone fancied pork scratchings. (‘I do,’ said Kit.)

  Father Anthony agreed that regardless of whether or not she was a tourist, a doctor or indeed a film star, she didn’t look like the sort of person who usually came down Unity Street. She was elegantly dressed, for a start – her clothes were actually colour-coordinated and appeared to have no holes – though why a woman would fall to the ground outside a music shop remained a mystery. A wonderful accident.

  ‘So why did she faint?’ repeated Kit.

  Why indeed? Again, everyone had a host of opinions. Even the people who had not been there; especially them, in fact. Was it the cold? Was she ill? Low blood pressure? Was she on drugs? Or had she just not eaten all day? The more they guessed, the more mysterious and enchanting she became.

  Maud grabbed her drink and sucked with unnecessary violence on the straw. ‘Anyone would think none of you had been with a woman before.’ (She had a point.) ‘Anyone would think you never left Unity Street.’ (Yet again, Maud had a point.) ‘The woman probably got hit by a piece of falling masonry. She’ll probably sue you for damages, Frank.’

  He sat hunched over his beer, not really drinking and not speaking either.

  There was something completely different about her, something he had never met before. It wasn’t the way she dressed. It wasn’t even the way she looked or spoke. But what was it? He couldn’t get it. His thoughts seemed made of wood.

  The Williams brothers arrived from the funeral parlour, muffled up against the cold. Williams #1 ordered port and lemon at the bar while Williams #2 fetched chairs. They too had heard all about the woman.

  ‘Apparently you almost dropped her,’ said Williams. (Was this #1 or #2? Impossible to know. For a time they had worn different ties to help people tell them apart but there was a rumour they had swapped them, just for the fun of it.)

  ‘Shame you two didn’t get there first,’ said Maud. ‘She’d be in a hole by now.’

  No one quite knew what to do with that remark. They decided to sit very still and wait for it to go away.

  Pete the barman put down his tea towel and began to grin. ‘Shame she didn’t need the kiss of life. Eh, Frank? Know what I mean?’ Well, everyone thought that was hilarious; Kit laughed so hard he almost catapulted Chopin Man off their bar stool.

  ‘Are you all right there?’ said Father Anthony. ‘You’ve not made a sound.’

  That was it. Frank got it. He realized the thing that was so different about her.

  6

  The Magic of Silence

  ‘MUSIC IS ABOUT silence,’ she said in the white house by the sea.

  ‘Yes, Peg.’ He never called her ‘mother’.

  A box of new Long Players stood on the table, this month’s delivery from the subscription club. She pulled out the first one, and unwrapped the paper. Beethoven. Symphony No. 5.

  ‘Music comes out of silence and at the end it goes back to it. It’s a journey. You see?’

  ‘Yes, Peg.’ Though he didn’t see. Not yet. He was only six.

  Easing the new record from its sleeve, she raised it towards the window. She tipped it this way, that way. Black as liquorice and twice as shiny. He breathed in the beautiful smell.

  ‘And of course the silence at the beginning of a piece of music is always different from the silence at the end.’

  ‘Why, Peg?’

  ‘Because if you listen, the world changes. It’s like falling in love. Only no one gets hurt.’ She gave a throaty laugh and reached for a cigarette. ‘Now, then. Would you open the Dansette?’

  Frank walked slowly towards the gramophone. This was the superior model – the Dansette Major – with a grey leatherette finish and a deep red trim. When he twisted the top dial, the gramophone woke with a low buzzy growl. He lifted the lid open and eased it back on its hinges.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes, Peg.’

  She lowered the disc on to the spindle and he held his breath as the tone arm jerked to life.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ she said. ‘Here come the most famous four notes in history.’

  Da da da dum. The sound crept out of the silence like a great beast emerging from the sea. Da da da dum.

  ‘Hear that?’ She lifted the needle.

  ‘What, Peg?’

  ‘You heard the little pause in the middle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You see? You see what Beethoven’s doing? There is silence inside music too. It’s like reaching a hole. You don’t know what will happen next.’

  After that, they lay side by side on the floor. Her, sucking a chain of Sobranie cigarettes. Frank in his pyjamas. If they wanted to speak, they whispered, as though they were watching the music from behind a tree. ‘You hear that?’ ‘You hear this?’ ‘Yes, Peg, yes.’ He had suggested once she might get a job as a teacher and to his confusion Peg howled with laughter. She knew about music because she loved it. Her father could have been a pianist if he hadn’t married money. Instead he drank a lot and had affairs. ‘But sometimes he told me about music,’ she said another time. She went very still.

  Over time, Peg played all the silences she loved. The more Frank listened, the more he understood. Silence could be exciting, it could be scary, it could be like flying, or even a really good joke. Years later, he would hear that final pause in ‘A Day In The Life’ by The Beatles – the one that gave just enough time to breathe before the last chord fell like a piece of furniture from the sky – and he would dance with joy at the sheer audacity of it.

  But Peg’s favourite was the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. The brief moment of anticipation before the timpani-pounding climax. It had her in floods. Every time.

  Silence was where the magic happened.

  7

  The Four Seasons

  ‘FRANK, YOU NEED to help me. It went just like this.’

  Three days later, old Mrs Roussos was singing in one of the booths with her white chihuahua on her lap. Frank sat behind his turntable, trying to help. The turntable was a large wooden unit and it doubled as an office; it held a drift of invoices as well as cigarettes, mugs, tissues, catalogues, replacement styluses, bananas – he seemed to live on them – and a large number of small broken things. The latest broken thing was Frank’s yellow canister pencil sharpener, which had functioned as both a sharpener and a rubber until Kit borrowed it. Kit had an ability to fall over things that were not even there – Frank had given him a permanent job to save him from a lifetime in the food factory – so really the breaking of the pe
ncil sharpener should not have come as any kind of surprise, but it had bothered Frank.

  It was a small thing but he couldn’t snap it back together.

  And he liked that pencil sharpener.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Roussos.’

  The old lady had a tune in her head and she would get no sleep until Frank found the record. Mrs Roussos got a tune in her head at least once a week and it could take several hours to locate it. This one was something about a hill. At least she thought it was.

  ‘Tell me where you heard it, Mrs Roussos,’ said Frank, putting down the two halves of his pencil sharpener and lighting a cigarette instead. ‘Was it on the radio?’

  ‘Not the radio, Frank. I don’t have a radio.’

  ‘You do have a radio.’

  ‘I did have a radio but I don’t any more. It stopped.’

  Mrs Roussos’ radio was a huge old Bakelite thing about the size of a microwave, and Frank had visited her several times to fix it. He didn’t know how to fix sharpeners and he didn’t know how to fix old radios, but normally the problem was more a matter of plugging it in, or turning up the volume, and he knew how to do both those things. Besides, Mrs Roussos lived alone with her chihuahua across the street and she was one of Frank’s oldest customers. ‘How could it just stop?’ he asked.

  Mrs Roussos said she had no idea. It was now on its side with its legs in the air. If she didn’t believe him, he should come and take a look. Then she began to sing again. Her voice was high and fine, surprisingly girlish for an old Greek woman in her eighties. Recently her hands had begun to shake, and her neck too, as if it couldn’t quite get the right balance for her head.

  ‘Is it Mozart?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’