LAURA MCDERMOTT HAD got up early to teach violin. Her first pupil on Saturday arrived at eight thirty and from then on she packed them in at half-hourly intervals until one o’clock. It made for a long morning but she had her mortgage to think of. She couldn’t teach nine pupils in a row without a dose of caffeine and a few drags on a cigarette, so she took a five-minute break by the back door between ten and twelve o’clock and tried to remember not to take it in the same lesson week on week. Some children were glad of a rest from her vigilance – they were told to carry on practising ‘Boogie Blues’ or ‘Sheltering in the Wood’ until her return – but others had been primed by parents to make sure they got their money’s worth. ‘Daddy pays you to teach me violin, not to smoke nasty cigarettes.’ That was Juno Bailey. She was transferred to the eight thirty slot. Mr Bailey now delivered Juno, wearing his red towelling dressing gown. Laura spotted him in the car.
Wilfie Golding was a sweetie. He was six and wanted her to be happy. He brought her presents – a pigeon feather or a picture he’d painted – and commented on her bracelets. When she had a child she wanted him to be like Wilfie Golding. She knew that if she suggested that he shared her break with her, Wilfie would be only too glad to fall in with the idea. He would sit on the back step while she sipped her coffee and he would never, ever, tell on her, even if they wasted the entire lesson. However, she had standards and wouldn’t take advantage of his good nature. She left him struggling with ‘Boogie Blues’ or ‘Sheltering in the Wood’, the same as the others, and he didn’t sputter to a stop in her absence, because he had a sense of rhythm and remembered to count.
She could hear him in the front room. ‘Ta ta tata ta, ta tata TAA,’ she sang from the kitchen. Then she leant forward and lit her cigarette from the gas jet under the coffee pot, before turning off the heat and pouring the coffee into a mug. The back door was already open, waiting for her. She sat on the step, hitching up her skirt so that the sun warmed her legs. She rang her boyfriend on her mobile but he was still in bed, half asleep. She told him she would call back later.
Wilfie was persevering. He was playing all the repeats and had gone for a reprise. When she returned to the front room, Laura was surprised to see that he had moved away from the music stand and was standing with his back to her, bowing away, up and down, and craning his head to look out of the window.
‘Mind the cat, Wilfie,’ she said. ‘You’re about to knock into it. Stop at the G. Ta tata TAA. Good.’
‘He’s gone now,’ Wilfie said.
‘Who’s gone?’ she asked.
Wilfie shrugged his shoulders. ‘A man,’ he said. He went back to the music stand. Laura picked up her violin.
At the end of the lesson Laura took Wilfie out to the car where his mum was waiting. ‘He’s doing fine,’ she said, as Wilfie’s mum leant across to let him in through the passenger door. ‘He played without the copy today. ’Bye, Wilfie, see you next week.’ She stood and waved as the car drove away, then went back up the path. As she was going into the house, Laura heard someone stop by the gate. She turned round. A man, wearing a dark shirt and pale jeans, was standing there. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Do you teach the violin?’ he said.
‘Yes, I do. Did someone recommend me?’
‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I was passing and saw the little chap with the violin case come out of the house.’
‘Wilfie.’ She paused. ‘Are you looking for a violin teacher?’ The man had no children with him but he had the look of a father, not a prospective pupil. He was better looking, though, than most of the fathers – nice eyes.
He hesitated. ‘Maybe. I have two daughters.’ He was plucking at the shrub in the pot by the gate. Laura had noticed earlier in the week that it had stopped producing new shoots and was going brown at the top.
‘Something’s happened to that plant. It could be die-back. Is that a particular disease, do you know, or does it simply mean well on the way to dead?’ she said.
He removed his hand quickly. ‘I don’t know.’
Laura glanced down the road. There was no sign of the silver jeep that Serge’s father drove. Serge was often late. Sometimes he came without his violin. Once he came without the bow. ‘Come in for a minute, if you like,’ she said. The man didn’t move. ‘Don’t, if you don’t want to,’ she added.
‘No, I will. Thank you. If it’s not too much trouble,’ he said, taking a step forward, shaking fragments of dead leaf from his hands.
Laura went into the house. The man followed and shut the door behind him so quietly that she turned round to check that it hadn’t been left open.
‘Is it all right to shut it?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I prefer it shut.’
‘The dads are usually full of themselves – on some kind of ego trip,’ she said. ‘It’s refreshing to meet one who isn’t. Really.’
The man didn’t sit down. He stood on the threadbare rug, looking round the front room. He was taking everything in. The white lanterns, smothered with dust, that were strung round the mirror and only looked pretty at night, the toppling stacks of sheet music, the upright piano, the innumerable candles in varying states of hardened drip. He said nothing, but judging from his expression he seemed to think it was a fascinating place. Laura, who also remained standing, didn’t launch into the usual questions: children’s names, ages, signs of musical potential. She was wondering if this man was as tentative in all walks of life – in bed, for example – and how that worked out. She rolled one of the beaded bracelets from her wrist and, pulling her hair back from her face into a knot, twisted the bracelet round the clump of hair.
‘I actually hate quite a few of them – the dads,’ she said, twisting the bracelet tighter. ‘Serge’s father wanted to pay for the lessons by debit or credit card. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t have one of those little machines where you punch in your pin number. “Hang on,” I said. “I’m not a shop or a service station. And I don’t give Nectar points, either. Or air miles.” That shut him up.’
The man nodded. While Laura was talking, he had glanced once or twice at the ceiling, as if wondering who was upstairs. She was finding it hard to get his full attention. ‘To be honest, it didn’t. Nothing shuts the dads up. That was just wishful thinking. But the kids are all right. I like kids, even if their parents have done their best to turn them into whingers. If I had a quid for every time they say they’ve got arm ache, I’d be as rich as they are.’
‘What’s the cure?’ the man asked.
‘Revolution. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘This is the dark age of materialism.’
‘Sorry, I meant for arm ache. I can imagine that the young ones might get a bit tired.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ she said. ‘I tell them to lie down on the floor and close their eyes. They soon get bored. Boredom is a form of anxiety.’
‘I suppose that’s right, I never thought of it like that.’
Laura wanted to suggest that he lay down on the floor. Certainly, he looked very uncomfortable standing up. She was thinking more in terms of Alexander Technique than anything more intimate, but she had a desire to put his head in her lap and stroke his hair. Maybe his forehead too, since it kept creasing up. She wondered how he’d react to the idea. He was diffident but she had a feeling he might say yes, although the floor was none too clean. She looked straight at him and for the first time he looked straight back.
‘You sing, don’t you?’ he said.
The doorbell rang. ‘That will be Serge,’ she said. ‘All music teachers sing – after a fashion. Stay there, I’ll just go and let him in.’
Laura returned, steering the boy over to the sofa, aware that she was putting malign pressure on his plump shoulder. ‘Start unpacking, Serge, and I’ll tune your violin for you in a second. I’m just going to find a prospectus.’
Laura went to the piano and picked up one of the sheets on which were printed a résumé of her teaching methods together with the term dates and her charges. ‘Have one of these.’ She handed it to her visitor. ‘Give me a call if you decide to go ahead. I’m fairly booked up but I’ll see what I can do. Perhaps your girls could join the Tuesday group.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. He took the sheet from her. He folded it and seemed as if he was about to put it in his pocket but he checked the movement and unfolded it, looked at it again. ‘Laura McDermott.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s me.’
Serge had taken out his violin from its blue felt interior and had put it between his knees as if it were a cello. Laura had been watching him out of the corner of her eye. Now he began to grind the bow over the strings. ‘Stop that, Serge,’ she said.
‘Is that your professional name?’ the man asked.
‘It’s my name,’ she said.
‘Laura,’ he said, but not addressing her, just saying the word – as if it wasn’t anyone’s name. He seemed perplexed. He put the sheet in his back pocket. ‘Does anyone else teach here?’
‘No.’
‘No one called Kirsty?’
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Who’s Kirsty?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve somehow. I don’t know . . .’ he tailed off. ‘I mustn’t take up any more of your time. You’ve been very kind.’ He straightened up and put his hand out to her. ‘Richard Epworth,’ he said, suddenly formal. She saw flecks of grey in his hair as he leant forward.
Serge had resumed the grinding, this time with the back of the bow. Laura put her hands over her ears.
‘I must go,’ Richard Epworth said.
‘Wise choice,’ Laura said. ‘I’ll see you out.’
She went to the front door with him and watched as Richard Epworth went down the path and through the gate. ‘Good luck,’ she called out. She didn’t know why.