Read Online The Devil's Music by Jane Rusbridge - Free Book Online Page B

almost run, would if it was permitted, across the forecourt towards the tall lighted windows of the hospital to push through the swing doors and be swept up by the current of routine and emergency before you even have time to remove your cloak. You’re laughing and chattering with the other nurses as Mr Robertson, the consultant oncologist with a penchant for patterned bow ties, passes, raises his tufted eyebrows that point in different directions, says, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ because he thinks you look like Ingrid Bergman – and from behind a clipboard Matron shoots stern looks through the thick brown frames of her glasses.
        And your Oxford lace-ups are marching down the corridor as your fingers pin your hat into your hair, your eyes glance at the watch swinging against your apron, you check the instruments fanned out, gleaming metal on white cloth, and the heat from the circle of lights above the operating table is on your face, fierce.
        But it’s the sun on your eyelids, glaring through the walls of the wigwam, that wakes you. You twist over, curled on your side, to face Andy and, as you do so, your breasts – swollen and tender, heavy with the milk Elaine doesn’t drink – shift position.
        Andy lies on his stomach, arms up on either side of his head, hair damp around his ears. He sleeps so soundly you could pick up a leg or an arm and let it down without him stirring. You run two fingertips across the top of his back, where his neck meets his shoulders and blond hairs lie against his skin. The hairs gather together, growing towards his spine. He’s breathing through his mouth because one cheek is squashed against the pillow, pushing his lips apart. They are moist. You remember your nipples spurting milk in response to his cries. Sometimes your breasts would be full and tight as they are now and you would go to him, nudge him awake, desperate for the relief as he latched on and began to suck. Often, when his lips slid from your nipple as he fell asleep, he’d have a milky blister from sucking. You’d lower him into his pram and wheel him down the garden knowing that his contented sleep was entirely due to you. You don’t want to spoil him , Michael had said.
        If you were to offer him your full breast now, if you were to dab his bottom lip with the tip of your nipple, would he, in his sleep, begin to suck? You bend towards him, feeling the heat rise up from his skin, and put your lips on his back, between his shoulder blades. His breathing is steady.
        You sit up. It’s stuffy in here, the air like a sponge. You should make yourself get on with something while he’s asleep. You crawl out of the wigwam and wander into the box room where it’s cooler. The sewing machine on its small table is surrounded by piles of folded curtain material. The mending basket is overflowing.
        You’ll ask Michael if you can go down to The Siding earlier this summer. Jean could come with you to help with the three children; she loves the railway carriage house as much as you do. You’ll feel better under the open skies, crunching over shingle banks, smelling the mudflats at low tide and sleeping to the suck and whisper of waves.
        Early days, is what you’d say to a patient. Take it easy, give yourself time.
        You have hours, day after day of time.
        You should finish the winter curtains as quickly as possible because you’ve bought some material in the sales to make curtains for The Siding. In the end-of-roll box there were several oddments of a pale blue splashed with huge dark cornflowers, very cheap, and just right for the small windows of the railway carriages – four rows of them; a lot of sewing to do. The first thing you’ll do when you get down there this summer is take down the pieces of limp towelling and sides-to-middle sheets. Make do and mend . You haven’t told Michael about the cornflower material; you scrimped on the housekeeping.
        The lining