Jean feels her eyes prickle with tears. He talks about her mother more than ever.
‘Yes, Bertie, I did. He’s coming on Wednesday.’
‘Well done you. Jeanie’s lesson is on Thursday, that’ll be perfect.’
A silence. She imagines her father poised as if with his hands over the keys of the piano, squinting at the sheet in front of him, trying to remember where he was in the score.See if you can take it all in with one glance, Jeanie, he used to say when they sat down together to play duets.See if you can breathe the notes in through your eyes.They’d practice every morning before school, him turning the pages for her as she worked her way through the Chopin preludes.Easy does it, Jeanie girlie, like you’re stroking a cat in the dark.She’d go and wash up her breakfast bowl, pour the orange juice her father never remembered she didn’t like down the sink and grab her school bag from the kitchen table. By then he’d be playing his beloved Dvorák and she’d let the front door shut behind her with a bang, picking her way through the flowerbed growing wild with roses and honeysuckle to the window, where she’d wave goodbye at him and he would blow a kiss without missing a single note.
‘I lit a candle for my late wife, Hannah, this morning. And then you know what happened? A crow came and sat on the windowsill. Not the Crow ofThe Apple and the Pearl, just an ordinary corvus, but still. Everyone said the Crow didn’t have favourites but I believe Hannah proved that wrong. It saved her one night, you know. All Souls’ in1979, and there was a line of them on horseback waiting outside the stage door. All of them greedy for Hannah – it was terrifying. But then the Crow was there, spitting and cawing and hissing around Hannah’s head and it grew like this black monster in the sky and we were all in the mud with the fury of it.’
A pause. ‘I’m sorry, I must get off the phone. My daughter might ring at any minute and I don’t want to miss her. All Souls’, you know, and the Grub is never a safe place on the day of the dead. It’s been lovely speaking to you.’
‘Of course, I understand.’ She wishes he would know her just for a moment more before she hangs up but the phone goes dead.
It’s not the first time she’s heard the story of her mother being rescued by the Crow, but it didn’t happen on All Souls’ before. She looks out over the graves towards the Grub shrouded in mist. Wouldn’t it be better to have a kind of lottery system, where the Fae folk get some kind of tribute at regular intervals? At least you could prepare, say your goodbyes, make your peace with the ugliness of the loose ends of your life. She rubs the phone screen with her thumb. If she gets taken today, All Souls’, when her father says the Grub is not safe, is that the kind of last conversation he can treasure for whatever remains of his life?
Quickly, she swipes through her phone to find her son’s number and calls him. It rings and rings and she tries to think of something nice and loving and not at all nosy to say to his voicemail when he picks up the phone, somethinghe could listen to with love if she is, in fact, heading off with the fairies today.
‘Mum! Nice to hear you but I haven’t got long. I’m just off out.’
‘Sorry love, I didn’t mean to disturb you, we can talk later if you want.’
‘No, it’s okay, I’m a bit early. How are you?’
‘I’m fine but are you all right? You sound like you’ve got a cold.’
‘Just hungover,’ Sam says with a laugh. ‘Went to a Halloween party last night dressed as Dracula and the lads from across the road brought a bottle of tequila. Feeling a little ropey.’
‘Have you had a good breakfast? A fry-up will sort you out.’
‘Done all that. Kind of helped. Listen, I was going to go and see Granddad next weekend, is that okay?’
‘That’s great darling, I think he’d really like to see you. He sort of drifts in and out while you’re talking to him so remember what we talked about?’
‘Yeah. Just go with it. I’ll take my sax. He never gets confused when we’re playing.’
Jean feels that prickle behind her eyes again. What exactly is she doing here messing about with creatures from the spirit realm when her family need her?
‘Mum? You still there?’
‘Yes, darling, I’m here.’
‘It’s just that – and I hate to ask – but I’m running a bit short on cash.’
There it is. That’s what she’s doing here. The sale of the house paid for university; half her salary goes to Hillview and the other goes to Dracula costumes and tequila shots.
‘Have you spoken to your father?’
There’s a silence at the other end of the line. She knows what he’s going to say but she admires the way he wrestles with it. She remembers how, when he was a little boy, he’d come home on a Sunday evening after he’d spent the day with Ricky fractious and smelling of cigarette smoke and beer. When she put his dinner in front of him he’d gobble it down as if he’d not been fed all day. And she’d ask, as casually as she could,did you have fun with Dad today?and Sam would look up at her, mouth full and eyes wide and nod slowly.I was very good, Mum, he’d say, and her heart would crack a little along the fault lines his father had ripped into it.I did exactly as I was told.
‘Dad’s cheque bounced.’
That lowdown, no-good piece of shit. She cannot imagine what she was thinking. Two years of her life she spent with that neanderthal! When she saw him at Sam’s end-of-year performance last year, nothing, not a single sliver of whatever had drawn her to him, remained. He was no longer sleek or lithe or gave off that wild perfume of sex and danger. He was just a middle-aged man with a paunch and a roving eye, and when she sat next to him as they listened to the jazz standards played well, if with little personality, it was as if she were sitting next to a stranger.
‘Right. I’ll transfer you something today. But maybe give it a rest with the fancy cocktails.’
‘It wasn’tmytequila, Mum. I only drink cheap stuff, I’m saving to get a new amp.’
Three generations of utterly broke musicians, four if you count her mother’s mother who sang and danced in music halls until she gave birth in her dressing room after a show. Jean had loved that old woman. She spent every night of her childhood with her while her parents were performing, snuggled under the covers with her grandmother singing songs with the bawdy bits swapped out for nursery rhymes. She died when Jean was twelve. Then her mother a year later, of the cancer that was already curling itself around her stomach as she stood holding Jean’s hand over the old woman’s coffin, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to sing ‘Daisy Bell’, the song her mother had been famous for. A one-two punch, losing them both.
