Free The Perils and Dangers of this Night by Stephen Gregory Page A

bluesman finishing a late-night set in a
smoky club. Then there was silence.
    It was broken when the two indignant voices started
again – 'What are you doing?' from Dr Kemp and the
same 'Who is that?' from a querulous Mrs Kemp.
    The dark figure at the piano stood up and came
forwards. The man seemed to lope across the hall. He
was, somehow, a part of the shadows cast by the tower
of the Christmas tree and the flickering light of the fire.
    He approached Mrs Kemp first. With a beautiful smile,
he leaned down to her, took her hand in a graceful,
swooping movement and kissed it. 'Mrs Kemp,' he said,
'you're as lovely as ever . . .' and as she flushed and stared
up at him, for the way he loomed was so overwhelming
that it seemed to preclude the presence of her husband a
few feet away, he added, 'It's Pryce. Surely you remember
me?'
    I watched the wonderful transformation of the headmaster's
face. All of the anger, the exasperation, the
hostility, seemed to slip away from Dr Kemp. He actually
looked younger, suddenly, in that second. With a look of
real affection and a sincere welcome in his voice, he
stepped forwards with his hand outstretched and said,
'Jeremy Pryce? Well, how marvellous . . .'
    'No.' It was Mrs Kemp who interrupted. She turned
her face up to her husband. She was still flushed from the
young man's kiss, and her beautiful hair caught the light
of the fire. 'No,' she said, and her voice was slightly
hoarse, 'it isn't Jeremy, it's Martin. It's Martin Pryce.'
    Another transformation of Dr Kemp's face. His outstretched
hand seemed to freeze in mid-air. His face froze
too. His smile set, taut and cold. He took hold of the
man's hand and shook it, briefly.
    'Martin Pryce,' he said, and added with an enormous
effort, 'welcome back to Foxwood Manor.'
    Night fell. It fell on the woodlands and all of the
creatures that sniffed and scurried and swerved through
the darkness. The treetops creaked and the dry leaves
rustled. There was no moonlight. The stars were
smothered in cloud. Cold.
    The night gathered around the old house and the
people inside it. In the great hall, Mrs Kemp sat at the fire
with the two visitors, Martin Pryce and his friend Sophie.
Oddly unnerved by their presence, I'd found an excuse to
get away and just watch what was happening from the
shadows. Mrs Kemp leaned towards them and refilled
their glasses with sherry.
    Dr Kemp was in the furthest, most shadowy corner of
the hall. He'd opened the top of the piano and was
leaning deep inside with a torch and a set of tuning keys.
From time to time, as the voices at the fireside murmured
politely in deference to the almost holy ritual that the
headmaster was performing, he would emerge from
inside the piano, his hair flopping and his glasses slipping
off the end of his nose, and he would strike a bass note.
The sounds were oddly plangent in the big room, with a
hollow reverberation from the oak panels and high
ceiling as though the hall were another corner of the
forest outside.
    Mrs Kemp was trying to make some conversation,
volunteering a few reminiscences of Martin's days as a
boy at the school and attempting to draw out the
stammering Sophie, but it was halting, desultory, with
the headmaster huffing and puffing in the corner, with the
melancholy notes of the piano hanging in the air like the
hum of a bell. In any case, she could see that Pryce was
content to sit back and drink, swallowing several glasses
of their good sherry in unnecessarily big gulps until his
teeth and lips gleamed in the firelight and his eyes shone.
    Suddenly, Dr Kemp straightened up and then sat himself
at the keyboard. He launched into a Chopin sonata,
playing with a panache, a verve which seemed a bit put on,
a false and inappropriate bravado. To me, it just sounded
wrong. The three at the fireside raised their eyebrows at
each other and smiled with relief, for the music was bright
and vigorous, altering the mood in an instant. 'That's
better,' Mrs Kemp mouthed silently at the