Night Music

  She would make Matt and whichever of the men he brought with him the first of their many mugs of tea, then try to work out the answers to a dozen questions she had not until that point considered: where did she want the new light switches? What kind of light fittings? How far across did she want this opening? She thought she had never been more bored in her life, or more conscious of the efforts Mary had made while she had been lost in her music. And all the time she hung on impatiently for some quiet hour in which to practise, some time in which she could clear her mind and remember that she was more than the domestic servant she had become.

  She suspected that her children were enjoying this new parent. She could cook several dishes tolerably well now, had customised the east side of the house so that the rooms that were not sheathed in plastic and scaffolding had an air of homeliness. She helped, as far as possible, with homework. She was there, all the time.

  What they did not know was that she chafed at the never-endingness of it. No sooner had she cleaned one surface than it was dirty again. Clothes, even those barely worn, found themselves in crumpled heaps in linen baskets so that she yelled at Kitty and Thierry, hating her shrewish voice. Once, bored to within an inch of her sanity by the act of hanging out yet another lineful, she had simply turned, dropped the basket and walked straight into the lake, pausing only to remove her shoes. The water had been so shockingly cold that it had knocked the breath from her chest, and left her laughing for the sheer joy of feeling something. Matt had been on the scaffolding with his son, both staring at her in astonishment.

  'Is this your way of saying you want me to get on with the bathroom?' he had joked, and she had nodded, teeth chattering.

  Sometimes she wondered what Laurent would say if he saw her scrubbing in industrial rubber gloves at whatever pan she had burned. Or when he saw her swearing and pushing the rusting old lawnmower in a vain attempt to impose order on the gardens. Occasionally she pictured him seated on some piece of furniture with an amused smile. 'Alors, cherie! Mais qu'est-ce que c'est?' But all of this was as nothing compared with the growing list of problems that arose from Matt's work. It seemed as if every time she came across him he was prodding at a piece of rotting wood with the end of his ballpoint pen, or rubbing some rusting residue between his thumb and forefinger. The house was in an even worse condition than she had thought.

  Each day brought some nasty surprise: woodworm in joists, leaking pipework, an area of roof that needed replacing. Matt would outline the problem reluctantly, then add reassuringly: 'Don't worry. We'll find a way round it.' He made every problem seem surmountable, and had an air of calm capability that was magnetic. There was little, he told her comfortingly, that he hadn't seen before, even less that couldn't be rectified. So far she had handed over nearly half her savings for materials. The wood, electric cable, insulating boards and slates sat in neat piles in the outbuildings, next to overflowing skips, as if the house was a builders' merchant.

  He had warned her that they would be there for months. 'We'll try to keep out of your way,' he said. After a week she had known that that wasn't going to be possible. Plaster dust was everywhere, permeating not just every surface but every crevice of their bodies. Kitty's eyes were red and Isabel sneezed incessantly. All food had to be covered, and periodically Isabel would enter a room to find the floor missing, or a door off its hinges. 'At least it means something's happening, Mum,' said Kitty, who was surprisingly untroubled by the chaos, 'and it will be a proper home at the end of it.'

  Isabel tried to keep this thought in mind when she surveyed the rubble-strewn site they inhabited. She tried not to wonder whether the money would run out long before that happened.

  Isabel sat on the sofa, her legs folded under her, with a huge box of receipts and bank statements. Occasionally she would frown, and hold up two pieces of paper, as if she were comparing them, then throw them down in despair. Kitty, struggling with her homework, tried to ignore her. Thierry sat on the easy chair, hooked up to a computer game, only his thumbs moving. Mr Granger was downstairs, relining one of the flues. Above, Matt, Byron and Anthony were doing something momentous - or Kitty assumed it was: the drilling made the rest of the house shake, and puffs of plaster dust kept floating down the stairs, like the sinister breath of some demonic creature. And all the while it rained, which kept the skies low and grey and cast another layer of depression over the already gloomy house. The water dripped into buckets in the hallway and a bedroom, with a melancholic irregular beat.

  'Oh!' Isabel exclaimed, shoving the box away from her. 'I cannot look at another row of figures! How your father managed this day in and day out is beyond me.'

  'I wish he could help me with this maths,' said Kitty, sadly. 'I don't understand any of it.'

  Isabel stretched and went to peer over her shoulder. 'Oh, lovey, I'm sorry but I haven't a clue. Your daddy really was the clever one.'

  As they considered this, Thierry slid off his chair and went to the window. He began to hit the heavy drapes with his fist, so that clouds of dust billowed out.

  'Don't do that, T,' said Kitty, irritably.

  Thierry hit it harder, deliberately sending great powdery gusts into the air.

  Kitty scowled. 'Mum!' she protested.

  And then, when Isabel did nothing, 'Mum! Look at him!'

  Her mother walked over to him and stroked his head with a pale hand and said, looking up at the red velvet: 'They are awful, aren't they? Perhaps I should give them a good shake. Get the worst of it out.'

  'Oh, not now--' Kitty began, but it was too late. Her mother was shaking the curtains vigorously so that great clouds of dust flew into the room, making Thierry cough.

  'Don't worry,' Isabel said, as she swung them back and forth. 'I'll vacuum afterwards.'

  'I can't believe you--' Kitty gasped as the heavy curtain pole fell out of the plaster and landed on the floor, a good portion of the wall still attached to it. Her mother's hands covered her head as chunks of plaster rained down and the curtains settled, billowing around her. After an appalled silence, during which Kitty contemplated the great holes above the window, through which you could see the bricks, Isabel giggled.

  'Oh, Mum . . . what have you done?' Kitty came across to inspect the damage.

  Isabel shook plaster dust from her hair. 'They were horrible.'

  'Yes, but at least they were curtains. Now we don't have any.' Her mother could be infuriating. She was going to the CD player now. 'I don't care, Kitty. In the grand scheme of things, they're just curtains. I've spent all day bogged down in bloody curtains and bills and domestic stuff. I've had enough. Let's have some music.'

  Above, the banging had stopped. Oh, no, Kitty muttered silently. Please not now. Not while Anthony's here. 'Mum, I need to do my homework.'

  'And you also need some fun. I'll try to help you with the homework afterwards. Come on, Thierry, unhook me a curtain. I know what we can use them for.'

  Her mother stepped away from the stereo and Kitty heard the first bars of Bizet's Carmen. Oh, no, she thought. No, you can't. But Isabel was crouched near Thierry, pulling one of the curtains round her waist.

  'Mum, please . . .' Kitty said. But a few bars in her mother was lost in the music, swirling round in her new red outfit, swishing it round her shoulders as the aria reached its heady heights. Thierry picked up the other and mimicked her, his mouth shaping words he no longer said aloud. Exasperated, Kitty walked across the room to turn off the music, but caught her mother's smile at the sight of Thierry dancing, and saw that she was trapped. She stood, her arms folded, while they sashayed round each other, miming to the opera, and prayed it wouldn't last too long and that nobody would come downstairs.

  So, of course, Anthony arrived. Byron came first, carrying a shoulderload of waste wood to the stairs. But Anthony paused in the doorway, his woollen hat pulled low on his head, and peered round, a hammer in his hand. Kitty caught his eye and fought the urge to bury herself under the sofa. It was pretty well the most embarrassing
thing that had ever happened to her. Until her mother saw him, and, with a cry of 'Hey! Anthony!' hurled a curtain at him. 'Bullfight!' she yelled, and Thierry raised his fingers to his head.

  Kitty decided she actually wanted to die. Bullfight was the game they had played with their father, him waving towels around, she and Thierry attempting to charge him as he nipped out of the way. Her mother couldn't do Bullfight. It wasn't right. And Anthony would tell everyone at school that they were mad.

  But he caught the curtain, dropped his hammer and, in a second, was waving it for Thierry to charge through. Perhaps galvanised by the presence of another boy, Thierry's performance was increasingly bullish. As the music grew in pitch and fervour, he barrelled round the living room, sending rugs and coffee-tables flying, causing Anthony several times to collapse on to the sofa. Her mother stood in the corner by the stereo, helpless with laughter. Thierry was bellowing, his foot pawing the ground. And Anthony was grinning, sweeping aside his curtain with a flourish. 'Ole!' he shouted, and suddenly Kitty was shouting too. And for the first time in ages, with the noise and the shouting and everyone laughing, she was happy - really happy. Her mother had grabbed the other curtain again, and was swirling it around in time with the music, and Kitty made to grab it from her, and tussling over that piece of rotten scarlet fabric was funny. And then a crash from upstairs, heavy enough to make the floor beneath them tremble, stopped everything. The CD jammed on repeat, and Isabel crossed the room to turn it off. 'What the hell was that?' she said, and there came another, lesser crash, followed by a muffled exclamation.

  The curtain was settling around Kitty's feet as everyone bolted for the stairs, then stopped on the landing. There, clouds of plaster dust emanated from the doorway of the master bedroom, and Matt appeared, coughing and wiping his eyes. 'Christ. That was close,' he said. 'A few minutes earlier and it might have landed on Anthony.'

  Anthony stared into the room. He, too, was shocked and grey - either because he had blanched at the sight or because he was covered with dust. Isabel put a hand over her mouth and nose and went in, ignoring Matt's warning. Kitty followed.

  The ceiling had gone. Where once there had been a smoothly plastered surface, there was now a skeletal gap, through which it was possible to make out the ceiling of the empty attic room above. A great pile of timber and plaster lay at the centre of the room, the struts sticking upwards. Mum's bed was there, thought Kitty. All of that could have landed on her.

  'I was removing the light fitting to check the electrics,' said Matt, 'and the whole lot went whoosh, joists and all. Could have killed us. Could have killed anyone.'

  Mr Granger's face was pink from running. 'Thank the Lord you're all right,' he said. 'Thought the whole house were coming down. My old ticker's still pounding.'

  'Are we safe?' Isabel asked.

  'What?' said Matt.

  'Is that it - only rotten joists? Nothing else is likely to fall down?' Her eyes burned into his.

  Matt said nothing.

  'Never seen a floor joist come down like that before,' said the old man.

  'But that's it, isn't it?' Isabel insisted. 'Everything else is okay. It was just that room.' Kitty saw she was holding her violin. She must have picked it up when she thought the house was falling down.

  There was a brief silence. Say something, she willed Matt. Say it now.

  'It should be fine,' said Anthony, from behind her. 'I don't understand it. All the other floors upstairs are good. I've checked them myself. It was just this one.'

  'Yes, Anthony, but you don't have the experience to know that for sure,' Matt said.

  'But I'm sure--'

  'You're going to start issuing guarantees, are you, son? You can be absolutely sure that this building's rock solid?' He was staring at his son as if he was daring him to say something different.

  'What do you mean, Matt?'

  There was a brief silence.

  'I can't promise anything, Isabel.' He shook his head. 'I've told you what I think of this house. I can't reassure you.'

  Kitty was about to go back downstairs when she heard the explosion. A loud bang ricocheted round the walls.

  'What the bloody hell--' Isabel broke off.

  It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the house. Matt, his hair white with plaster dust, bolted for the stairs, Kitty, with her mother, behind him. Oh, God, she thought. This house is going to kill us all.

  She ran into Matt at the door. In the middle of the kitchen Byron held a gun to his shoulder. Several feet away, just outside the back door, lay a dead rat.

  'Bloody hell, mate,' said Matt, stepping into the kitchen. 'What have you been up to?'

  The rat's innards, a vivid red, spilled on to the cracked step. Byron seemed shocked too. 'I just came in to pick up the keys to the van and it was sitting there, bold as brass.'

  'Yuk,' breathed Thierry, suddenly animated.

  Kitty stared at the creature, feeling both repulsed by it and sorry for it. Her mother's hand tightened on her arm. She drew herself up to her full height. 'What the hell do you think you're doing, bringing a gun into my house? Are you some kind of madman?' Her voice was hoarse.

  'I didn't bring it,' said Byron. 'It's Pottisworth's.'

  Isabel did a double-take. 'What?'

  'He kept it at the top of that cupboard. Had done for years.' Byron gestured above the pantry. 'I thought you knew.'

  'But why were you shooting it?'

  'It's a rat. What were you going to do - ask it nicely to leave? You can't have rats in your kitchen.'

  'You're a maniac!' said Isabel, pushing past Kitty and shoving at him. 'Get out of my house!'

  'Mum!' Kitty grabbed her. Her mother was trembling.

  'Steady on, Isabel,' Matt said. 'Let's all calm down now.'

  'Tell him,' she demanded. 'He works for you. Tell him you cannot fire a gun in someone's house!'

  Matt's hand lay on her shoulder. 'Strictly speaking, it wasn't quite inside. But, yes, you're right. Byron, mate, that was a little extreme.'

  Byron was rubbing the back of his head. 'I'm sorry. I didn't think it was safe, with young kids around. This house has never had rats. Never. I thought if I got it quickly . . .'

  'It was safer to let a gun off in my kitchen?'

  'It wasn't in your kitchen,' said Byron. 'It was in the doorway.'

  Isabel stared at the dead creature, the colour drained from her face.

  'Don't fret, missus. No harm done,' Mr Granger said soothingly. 'I'll clear it up for you. Here, boy, you hand me that bit of newspaper. Come on now, Mrs Delancey, sit down and have a cup of tea. You've had a bit of a shock. Never a dull moment in this house, eh?'

  'Collapsing floors, rats, guns? What is this place?' Isabel said, as if to no one. 'What on earth have I done?' And then as Kitty stood, still breathing hard from the dancing, her mother turned and walked slowly from the kitchen, as if none of them was there, her violin clutched to her chest.

  That evening, the music that echoed across the water was frenzied. It held none of its usual melancholic beauty, but hit the air in furious, jagged notes.

  Kitty lay on her bed, knowing she should go up and talk to her mother, but she couldn't get too worked up about Byron or his stupid rat. She kept thinking about Anthony with his red curtain, the way he had grinned at her, as if he didn't think her family was mad. For the first time, Kitty was almost glad to be there.

  Henry and Asad, walking home, paused as the last note drew to an angry close.

  'PMT,' said Henry, knowledgeably.

  'I thought she said she was with the CSO,' said Asad.

  Across the lane, Laura McCarthy was finishing the washing-up. 'That noise,' she said, drying her hands on a tea-towel, 'is going to drive me insane. I don't understand why the woods don't swallow the sound, like they do everything else.'

  'Should have heard it earlier,' said Matt, who had been cheerful all evening, even when she'd told him her car needed two new tyres. 'Never seen anything like it. Have you,
Ant?'

  Anthony, eyes on the television, made a noncommittal sound.

  'What do you mean?' said Laura.

  Matt flicked open a can of beer. 'Mad as a March hare, that one. We'll be in by Christmas, Laura. Mark my words. Christmas at the latest.'

  Eleven

  There were few sights more beautiful than the Norfolk countryside in early summer, Nicholas observed, as he drove the last few miles to Little Barton, passing the flint cottages, the skeletal rows of pines whose only greenery teetered at the pinnacle of spindly trunks.

  Admittedly when one had left the unlovely environs of north-east London, almost anywhere seemed green and picturesque in comparison. But today, as the reservoirs, industrial parks and weary rows of pylons that marked the outskirts of the city melted away, the lush growth of the hedgerows and fresh-minted green of the verges had an almost unbearable piquancy. The symbolism was not lost on Nicholas Trent.

  The bank had pronounced itself happy to back him to a certain level, and wanted to see detailed plans. 'Good to see you,' Richard Winters had said, clapping him on the back. 'Can't keep a good man down, eh?'

  He had tried to tell himself many times that the woman might not want to sell. That there were plenty of other sites that could equally well accommodate his plans. But when he closed his eyes, he saw the Spanish House and its grounds. He saw the fabulous valley, surrounded by scenery so perfect it was hard to believe that it was not straight out of a picture book.

  And even though he had known he would have a more straightforward journey back to business with a smaller-scale development on some brownfield site in the city, he had still headed out of London towards Little Barton for the third time in a month. So that, once again, he could accidentally find himself in the place that preoccupied him, that showed itself in the glorious technicolour property brochures of his dreams.

  At work he had told them nothing. Every day he turned up at the agents' offices, punctual and polite, and subjected himself to the same stressed customers, the same unfathomable changes of mind, the same collapsing deals and unmet targets. Derek had become increasingly snappy - he had been passed over for the area-manager promotion - and Nicholas knew that the leaflet dropping and coffee runs were his way of taking it out on someone. But he no longer minded. In fact, he relished the opportunity to be out of the office, with its petty irritations and fervid jealousies, so that he could lose himself in his thoughts. His brain hummed with ideas.