Free The Devil's Music by Jane Rusbridge Page A

the hospital. You smudge the tears from your face with the heel of your hand.
        ‘We can’t go on like this.’ He gestures towards the contents of the room, the tasselled bedside lamps, the pink roses on the eiderdown, as if this is the unsatisfactory clutter of your marriage. ‘You’re exhausted.’
        There’s dust on the glass top of the dressing table, a pattern of spring flowers on the curtains: wisteria blue, the colour of Elaine’s eyes.
        You look back to him. ‘No.’
        ‘Well, someone has to do something, make a decision, soon.’
        He closes the door. A distant rattle from a passing train. Anger scrapes in your stomach.
        M.D. he always says, M.D. Why can’t he say what he means? Why can’t he just say, ‘Mentally Deficient’?
        You get up, walk through to the box room where Elaine is lying on her back, awake, but silent and still in the early morning light. Andy is curled, asleep on the floor beside her cot, wrapped in his eiderdown.
     
    Later, you reach into the cupboard under the sink for Vim and a cloth. From behind the closed door of the dining room comes the muffled sound of movement: a ladder dragged across bare floorboards; the metallic ring of a wallpaper scraper. The broad, tawny-haired man has been in there for hours, since before you took the children to school. It’s difficult to concentrate. Elaine is propped up with cushions in her usual place on a rug on the floor, but there’s a charge to the air – someone else, not a child but an adult, in the house all day. You can’t shake off the sense of his presence. You notice fragments of yourself: the angle of your wrist and gold watch; toes peeping out from cutaway shoes; bare legs beneath the flared skirt of your gaily patterned sundress.
        It’s warm for May; perhaps you could offer him a drink.
        Outside the dining room you pause; listen. There’s the shift of boots on gritty boards; a sigh. You knock on the door before opening it. The dining room is unrecognisable, a space heaped with dust sheets and paint pots, strips of wallpaper hanging from the walls. The brown tiled surround of the fireplace is surreal: order and pattern in the middle of the chaos. You sniff, feeling a sneeze at the back of your nose. The air smells of soot and glue.
        ‘Some tea?’ Your voice echoes in the uncarpeted room. ‘And would you like to take your lunch in the kitchen?’
        ‘Ay, if you’re sure now.’ His accent gives the words a different texture. You concentrate so as to catch the separate sounds and make sense of them. Scottish? Irish? He strides towards you, then halts, glancing down at his filthy boots. ‘I’ll take these off, will I not?’
        He bends and his sudden dipping movement is startling – the bulk of him so close, his head down at your feet, his shoulder muscles swelling as he tugs at his shoelaces. You turn quickly to the kitchen.
        He pads after you, the top part of his overalls hanging down from his waist. Underneath, stretched over his torso, is a faded cotton T-shirt that seems incongruous – a child’s item of clothing. He’s young, possibly ten years younger than you. Michael mentioned a few details when he arranged for the redecoration. He’s the son of a patient, a struggling artist living in a houseboat on the river. His name ... is it Ian? The family is from somewhere north of Aberdeen.
        There’s a patch of sweat on his chest and coppery hair surges at the neck of his T-shirt. His hair is tousled and pale with plaster dust. He puts a hand up to it, and through a rip in the seam under the arm of his T-shirt you catch a glimpse of his underarm hair: thick, fluffy, almost blond.
        ‘Ach, I’ll mebbe step outside. Hae a wee dust doon.’ He grins like a boy.
        From her rug on the floor, Elaine whimpers. She’s miserable today, her chin red and sore from the dribble. You put the tea towel and cutlery down on the draining board. He