House, as lights flicker on around the O2, letting the smell of the river as the tide retreats rinse my thoughts away, before the gathering
darkness drives me back to the door in the wall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sunday night
Sonia
By the time I get back, the light outside’s completely gone. I take care to look in through the high windows before opening Jez’s door. He’s sitting on the
bed, blowing at the mouth organ, his bad foot propped up on the cushion, so I open the door and slide in, locking it behind me and pushing the key deep into my trouser pocket. I’m prepared
for tears or sulks or even anger, so I’m taken aback when he speaks.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says the minute he sees me. ‘About the way you’re taking care of me. About locking the door, and that you’re Helen’s friend and
all that. I think it’s something you’re planning between you for my birthday on Wednesday.’
He looks at me with a triumphant half smile on his lips and I see that he’s expecting me not to let on. That he assumes I am under oath to Helen not to tell him. So I just give a little
knowing smile back. He shrugs, grins. ‘I won’t tell,’ he says.
I look at him. I don’t want to lie to you, I think. But when you came to me at that time on a February afternoon as the light was dying, as if it were meant, you made me feel a strange
calm deep down in my soul that has been lost to me for so long I barely remember it existed. I need to keep you here, safe in the music room and I cannot let you go just yet.
I stop. Look up, expecting a response from Jez, and realize that after all I have not voiced any of this, though the thoughts were as lucid as if I’d spoken them.
I put his meal on the table by his bed. It’s a lovely supper, though the juice is laced with more of my mother’s pills. I don’t feel any compunction about this, I know the
drugs will help Jez relax, to sleep.
‘Let’s get you better,’ I say quietly. ‘Look, I’m lending you my laptop. What film would you like to watch?’
When he’s settled, satisfied with the explanation he’s come up with, and drowsy with the pills, I go down to lie on my own bed. Overcome with exhaustion, I listen to the sounds
outside.
There’s the harsh whoop of a police launch bounding east along the river, the drone of a plane coming in to City Airport. The shriek of a car alarm out on the road. How I miss the soft,
guttural blasts of the foghorns. You used to hear them on winters’ nights out there, long and low, one answering another, call and response, as if those enormous ships were playing together.
The house felt safe when I heard that sound. A haven away from the storms and the ravings of the world down below.
The thought of the foghorns conjures a memory. I’m not sure, as this scene comes back to me, whether it happened once, or many times. What I do know is the feeling. The sensation of the
silk around my wrists and ankles, accompanied by the bass sound of the foghorns on the river, vibrating through the room, through the springs of the old iron bed.
My mother originally used the music room as a dressing room. It’s why it has its own en suite with a shower and a bidet (very chic in the seventies when it was installed). In those days
the room was full of coat racks, hat boxes and scarves, and there was a cupboard full of my mother’s dresses, coats and fur wraps.
That night, my parents were out. I must have been fourteen. Seb was with me. He and I stood on chairs staring out of the high windows, watching ships, lit up in the dark, move lugubriously
upriver towards Tower Bridge. The light was dying, there was a drab mist. Occasionally a foghorn would boom from the river, long, deep and mournful. A fire was alight in the wood burner. At some
point I must have annoyed Seb. I don’t remember what I said but I do remember the Chinese burn he gave me, taking my forearm between his hands, twisting the skin until I cried out at the
darkness drives me back to the door in the wall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sunday night
Sonia
By the time I get back, the light outside’s completely gone. I take care to look in through the high windows before opening Jez’s door. He’s sitting on the
bed, blowing at the mouth organ, his bad foot propped up on the cushion, so I open the door and slide in, locking it behind me and pushing the key deep into my trouser pocket. I’m prepared
for tears or sulks or even anger, so I’m taken aback when he speaks.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says the minute he sees me. ‘About the way you’re taking care of me. About locking the door, and that you’re Helen’s friend and
all that. I think it’s something you’re planning between you for my birthday on Wednesday.’
He looks at me with a triumphant half smile on his lips and I see that he’s expecting me not to let on. That he assumes I am under oath to Helen not to tell him. So I just give a little
knowing smile back. He shrugs, grins. ‘I won’t tell,’ he says.
I look at him. I don’t want to lie to you, I think. But when you came to me at that time on a February afternoon as the light was dying, as if it were meant, you made me feel a strange
calm deep down in my soul that has been lost to me for so long I barely remember it existed. I need to keep you here, safe in the music room and I cannot let you go just yet.
I stop. Look up, expecting a response from Jez, and realize that after all I have not voiced any of this, though the thoughts were as lucid as if I’d spoken them.
I put his meal on the table by his bed. It’s a lovely supper, though the juice is laced with more of my mother’s pills. I don’t feel any compunction about this, I know the
drugs will help Jez relax, to sleep.
‘Let’s get you better,’ I say quietly. ‘Look, I’m lending you my laptop. What film would you like to watch?’
When he’s settled, satisfied with the explanation he’s come up with, and drowsy with the pills, I go down to lie on my own bed. Overcome with exhaustion, I listen to the sounds
outside.
There’s the harsh whoop of a police launch bounding east along the river, the drone of a plane coming in to City Airport. The shriek of a car alarm out on the road. How I miss the soft,
guttural blasts of the foghorns. You used to hear them on winters’ nights out there, long and low, one answering another, call and response, as if those enormous ships were playing together.
The house felt safe when I heard that sound. A haven away from the storms and the ravings of the world down below.
The thought of the foghorns conjures a memory. I’m not sure, as this scene comes back to me, whether it happened once, or many times. What I do know is the feeling. The sensation of the
silk around my wrists and ankles, accompanied by the bass sound of the foghorns on the river, vibrating through the room, through the springs of the old iron bed.
My mother originally used the music room as a dressing room. It’s why it has its own en suite with a shower and a bidet (very chic in the seventies when it was installed). In those days
the room was full of coat racks, hat boxes and scarves, and there was a cupboard full of my mother’s dresses, coats and fur wraps.
That night, my parents were out. I must have been fourteen. Seb was with me. He and I stood on chairs staring out of the high windows, watching ships, lit up in the dark, move lugubriously
upriver towards Tower Bridge. The light was dying, there was a drab mist. Occasionally a foghorn would boom from the river, long, deep and mournful. A fire was alight in the wood burner. At some
point I must have annoyed Seb. I don’t remember what I said but I do remember the Chinese burn he gave me, taking my forearm between his hands, twisting the skin until I cried out at the
Similar Books
