We both realise, don’t we, Sarah said, this place is about to blow apart?
A little like us?
She had turned on the television, next to the fridge. And I realised I’d never even noticed it was there. There were pictures of burning tyres, of black-masked youths in coastal cities, pulling up pavements.
I gave them two weeks’ notice. From today.
Because of me? I asked.
It’s becoming impossible, anyway. Every stone we move causes a crisis. I’m getting a little tired of police protection, riot shields.
They never worried her before, I thought. But every word was a potential crisis, at the moment. So I didn’t say it.
So you’re leaving? With Jenny?
I was hoping we might leave.
We meaning, all three of us?
That’s what it used to mean. To me, anyway.
And then we both heard it. The first arpeggio of the prelude to the first cello suite.
Oh God, she said. Help me, help me. It’s coming from her room.
It was perfectly, beautifully played. And as she shivered and I put my arms around her, I wondered how I could notice things like that. Then I realised. It wasn’t a cello playing. It was a violin.
Let me go and look, I said.
I can’t, she said. I can’t move. I know I should. I should go and protect her, but my legs won’t function.
Sit down, I whispered. And I wondered why I was whispering. But the beauty of the playing seemed to demand it.
I moved her towards a kitchen chair, as though she was a marionette. I could hear her breathing, soft and shallow, and thought she was about to faint. But she clutched at the table leg, so hard that the veins seemed to pop. And I let her go and walked slowly towards the music, and Jenny’s half-open bedroom door.
I pushed the door open, slowly, and heard it creak. I remembered I had heard a door creak before, to just that piece of music. But this was in a higher register, soaring towards the heavens. I felt I had never heard such chilling perfection. And the door swung to, and I saw Jenny standing by her perfectly tidy bed, playing her child’s violin.
She was poised, head to one side, her cheek indented by the chin rest. Her small fingers, which had hardly been able to form basic scales, glided over the tiny finger-board, and her bow coursed across the strings, like a professional.
I could only stand and listen until she had finished. I looked from Sarah to her and back again, both of them framed by the open doors.
Where did you learn that, love? I asked gently, when she had hit the last two high sustained notes.
She teaches me, she said, with that maddening simplicity of hers.
Who teaches you? I asked, rather redundantly.
You know who, Daddy, she said.
I took the violin from her hands, laid it on the bed with the bow and led her into the kitchen. Sarah stared at her as if she were a stranger, some kind of interloper into our domestic domain. But Jenny hardly noticed. She ran towards her in just that girlish way she had, and clambered up on to her knee.
Good morning, Mummy.
It’s not morning, darling. It’s the middle of the night.
Sorry. I woke up. I was practising.
Yes, I heard.
I have a new piece – she began and then stopped. Some childish instinct must have kept her from elaborating further. And I wondered at that strange intuition as I lifted her from her mother’s lap.
I’ll take you to bed, I said. Your mother needs to sleep. There, kiss her goodnight.
I leant her forwards, so her lips ended up on Sarah’s cheek. Sarah’s hand reached up to touch her hair. But she didn’t turn, or say a word, as if she couldn’t. Some questions can’t be asked, I surmised. I brought my lips to the crown of Sarah’s head, and realised, with a sickening lurch in my stomach, that Jenny and I both shared something that she didn’t.
Will you make sure she sleeps well tonight? Sarah asked, in barely a whisper.
I told her I would. So we both slept together that night, in the small wooden bed with the flower-pot covers and the wooden swan that hung from the strings that came from the light bulb. She said nothing more about the incident, fell almost immediately asleep in my arms as my feet dangled over the floor at the other end. And it was only in the morning, when she woke, that she made mention of any of it.
I was woken by her hand, tapping my cheek.
What happened to her, Daddy? she asked, briskly curious, so early in the morning.
Who? I asked. I felt it was my duty to pretend ignorance, although I already knew.
Little Petra.
Her parents lost her, I said as delicately as possible, when she was very young.
Like Hansel and Gretel, she said.
No, I told her, and began lifting her out of bed. Hansel and Gretel were left in the forest, as far as I remember. Something to do with a nasty stepmother.
So how did they lose her?
Maybe they lost her to music, I said, very anxious to change the subject.
She heard the music playing one day, and she followed it.
Yes, I told her. Something like that.
In the forest. There was a prince playing, in a clearing.
Maybe, I said.