Read Online The Song House by Trezza Azzopardi - Free Book Online

truth.
    I used to go to festivals in Charmouth. You know, free festivals,
like raves. Didn’t matter if you couldn’t dance so well,
nobody minded.
    Kenneth frowns at her.
    Raves. They’re a nuisance, all that noise and litter. All that
destruction. Can’t say I see you enjoying that .
    They weren’t illegal. It was folky, Kenneth, like, um, like an
outdoor barn dance. It was very peaceful. Lots of tree hugging.
She has his attention again.
    You’ve actually hugged a tree?
    Don’t knock it until you try it, she says, It’s quite soothing.
But not with that monster in the courtyard – the one with
the scary eyes.
    She’s about to ask him about it when Kenneth swipes the notebook
from her hands. A leap of panic as he takes the pen. He
bends away from her, shielding it with his arm like a schoolboy
as she tries to snatch it back. On the cover he writes, in broad
capitals, THIS BOOK BELONGS TO MAGGIE. IF FOUND, PLEASE
RETURN TO—
    Where? Bilbo Baggins at Bag End?
    Har har. Give it back. You’re not allowed to see it until we’re
finished. And we’ll never get finished if we don’t get on.
    Relax, he says, waving her away, We’ve got all day. We’ve got
all summer. Haven’t we, Maggie, the whole lovely summer
ahead.
    When she doesn’t reply, he scrawls two more words on the
book and makes to give it back, holding the edge so it’s trapped
between them. EARL HOUSE is written beneath her name.
    You will stay, won’t you? The Fates have ordained it. Or the
fairies, if you prefer.
    Where were we? she says, finally gaining possession, the
book safe again. She won’t be sidetracked by his teasing.
    We were dancing.
    You said something about Dusty, she says, and guesses, Dusty
Springfield?
    Rusty , he says, First met her in the Sunset Strip. He raises
his eyebrows, Soho.
    Was she a performer? asks Maggie.
    Kenneth smiles, puts his head on one side in what looks like
a gesture of forgiveness,
    Not exactly, he says, Dear old Rusty. She was my wife.

 

eight
    Every time she touches the keys, the noise of the machine
drills into her head. Maggie works quickly, not checking what
she types, keen to be out of Kenneth’s memories and back into
her own.

    Lonnie Donegan
    My Old Man’s a Dustman, but he wasn’t was
he, Kenneth? Your old man was a high court
judge, and he knew my grandfather. They’re
both dead now; presiding in Heaven.

    Alvin Robinson
    A sound that smells like a swamp, says
Kenneth. RIP Alvin, lie deep.

    Robert Johnson
    Not much of a name for the devil. You don’t
scare me. Dead and gone, dead and gone.

    Ike Turner
    You’re dead too but you don’t sound it.
Kenneth likes dancing to you. He says the
spaces in between are as important as the
sounds. Listen to the gaps, he says, They
are music too.
    I’m doing that, Kenneth, I’m listening to
the gaps and I’m trying to fill the spaces.
Not dead yet.

    Upstairs, Kenneth sits at the desk in his office, his ear cocked
to the open door. He can hear, with bright satisfaction, the
stabbing sound of the typewriter keys, amplified and hollowed
by the wooden staircase. From the irregular stops and starts of
noise that Maggie makes, he can tell that she’s a far from expert
typist. And he has looked over her shoulder in the library:
despite her claim to have shorthand, her notes could be read
by anyone. So, she is a fraud. So what? He’s a fraud too. And
none of that matters to him now, if it ever did. From his first
glimpse of her, he knew that she belonged here, with him.
There is a pause, a vast, empty stretch of silence, where nothing
seems to happen and Kenneth wonders if she’s finished for the
day. He presses the nib of his fountain pen onto the blotter
and marks out his shortcomings in furry blue blobs: his age;
varicose vein like an elver climbing up his leg; hair falling out
where it should be growing and growing where it shouldn’t.
How big his earlobes are. The terrible, irrevocable