Free The Devil's Music by Jane Rusbridge Page B

comes in through the back door, asks if he can hold her and already he has his back to you, squatting down over the rug and moving a hand with fingers spread wide to catch Elaine’s eye. She quietens, gazing up at him.
        Reaching up to the cupboard for teacups and saucers, you watch as he puts his hands under Elaine’s arms to lift her. He straightens, holding her out at arm’s length as if gauging how best to hold a solid four-year-old child who has the wavering head of a newborn.
        ‘She’s ...,’ you begin, because Elaine will not be comfortable held like that, but he is speaking, ‘—such a bonny wee lass.’ He holds her now with her stomach firm against his chest, one arm running up her back and a broad hand spread across her shoulder blades. Blond hairs gleam on his forearm. Elaine’s head bobs at his shoulder, her neck straining.
        You swirl boiling water round the teapot as he dandles Elaine around the kitchen, murmuring to her and showing her things over his shoulder. He points out the cupboard doors, swinging them open and closed, open and closed. He flaps the tea towels hanging from the airer, pulls the roller towel on the back door so that it rattles and the moving stripes of colour catch her eye. Her head stills. Whenever he stops walking he lifts one heel up and down in a rapid, repetitive rhythm that jiggles Elaine’s body. She starts with her humming noise, a sort of musical groan in her throat that varies pitch with the vibrations of his movement. You stir the tea; the tension in your shoulders eases.
        He stands, holding Elaine, jiggling, while he drinks his tea and that’s when he tells you about his sixteen-year-old brother who lies on the settee for most of the day. He can’t speak a single word.
        ‘But he has a smile,’ Ian says. ‘A smile for his own breathing. Smiles ear to ear when you step into the room. You canny ask for more.’
        Ian refuses to sit to eat his sandwiches, so you pass them to him one by one from the greaseproof paper bundle he’s brought with him. He holds Elaine; she’s quiet and relaxed. He asks questions, and you are talking, about the children, and then about nursing. You find yourself telling him about studying for your final exams at St Mary’s, how cold the nursing home was. To keep warm, you and Pierce and Hoggie bought the cheapest tickets you could at Paddington Underground and travelled round and round the Inner Circle Line with your books. After the twelve-hour shifts on the wards, the lull of the train’s rhythm and the warm air made you dozy. You pinched the skin on each others’ arms to keep awake.
        When Elaine falls asleep in his arms, he passes her over and you carry her out to the pram. You stretch the cat net over and think of the Mary’s Penny you were awarded after four years of nursing training, its inscription, ‘Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ You were proud to be a nurse from St Mary’s. Is that why you’re still talking about it as if it were only yesterday? As Michael’s wife you have no need to work the wards. And now that he’s arranged for Mrs Hubbard to come and clean three times a week, the days have even less of a sense of purpose.
        Running your hands through your hair, feeling your skull, you find it, the lump – small, hard – from the dressmaker’s pin that anchored the nurse’s cap to your head. Fanned folds of fine starched muslin were held in place with two white Kirby grips at the back and, at the front, the pin pushed through the underside of the starched band, its sharp point embedded into your scalp. ‘It will,’ Sister Tutor said, ‘hold the cap in place, even in the storm of a surgeon’s fury.’ And once the hard round ‘pea’ had formed, the pin was no longer painful. The local hairdresser felt it. She met your eyes in the mirror and said, ‘Another nurse from St Mary’s?’ Nodding sagely, she tapped her scissors on the back of