Strange Music (26 page)

‘Skulking is the word that comes to mind,' he told them. ‘Were you going back to visit the scene of your discoveries this morning?'

Andrew said, ‘Yes.'

Thomas said, ‘No.'

Then both said, ‘Could be.'

‘Well, all you'd see now is how quickly nature gets everything back to normal. By next week you'd never know anything had happened there. Tell me – suppose all the grown-ups in the community went away for two weeks, leaving you enough food and money and all that, what d'you think would happen? What would The Tribe do?'

They looked at each other and giggled. Thoughts of death coming closer to home had not yet struck them, then.

‘I'm serious,' Eric said.

After a moment's thought, Tommy said, ‘We wouldn't have to wash every day.'

‘And we wouldn't wear socks at all,' Andrew added.

‘And eat when we liked . . .'

They warmed to the fantasy.

‘And leave the washing-up until it fell over by itself . . .'

‘. . . like Chris and Julie did.'

‘And go in the secret passage anytime we liked.'

Tommy nudged Andrew and looked daggers at him.

‘What's this secret passage, then?' Eric asked.

‘Nothing.'

‘It's just a . . . just a story.'

‘Where is it, though?'

‘Nowhere,' Tommy insisted.

Eric fixed a friendly eye on Andrew and waited.

Andrew said, ‘We don't let the little ones go in there.'

Tommy flailed the air and tore out notional clumps of hair, shouting, ‘Now you've done it! Now you've done it!'

‘He won't split.' Andrew looked pleadingly at Eric. ‘You won't split, will you!'

‘I'd better see it for myself before I answer that, don't you think?' he replied.

Saturday, 30 June 1951

‘Why is Eric in the chair?' Isabella asked as soon as her husband declared the meeting open.

‘Because you chose to sit on the sofa, my dearest,' he told her. ‘Do you want to swap? I'd much rather sit quietly at the back,
not interrupting the chairman before he's managed to speak a word
, and take down the minutes – I adore anything to do with creative writing, as you know.'

‘No, no – just don't bore everybody.'

‘For example! No, please don't answer. It was demonstrative, not interrogatory. Well, I'll call upon Tony to give us his—'

‘One other thing,' Isabella continued. ‘Why is it “Residents Association” without an apostrophe? “Residents” has always had an apostrophe before.'

‘Because, my dearest one, it's an association
of
residents, not an association
owned by
residents.'

‘Don't we own it, then?'

‘Not as an independent entity – an
ipsos res
. If we all went to live elsewhere, it would cease to exist, though it might very well be replaced by a
different
association
of
different residents,
mutatis mutandis
, as it were. Now may I call on—'

‘You always add in bits of Latin when you know your argument is weak.'

‘Ah, but you only ever point that out
after
you've already lost. Can Tony now give us his report? Brave fellow – he has actually ventured into these catacombs that surround us all.'

‘They're nothing extraordinary,' Tony assured them. ‘They're the original kind of
tanking
– literally “tanks” of air surrounding the foundations and cellar walls of a house so as to ventilate them and keep them dry. Today we use heavy-duty plastic sheeting, of course, but back in the eighteenth century they'd build a wall about so far away from the actual cellar wall – I mean, I could just about walk straight on but it was easier to go sideways-on. Anyway, this wall comes up to about a foot below ground level and they've bridged across the top with a couple of layers of thick slate and then lead, which they bent upward and took it up to ground level. And then they covered all that over with a flower border, which is all that we can see above ground, of course. And the actual cellar walls all have a thick, damp course down there at the base – several layers of slate –
this
thick. So moisture has a pretty hard job getting through anywhere. That's why our cellars are so remarkably dry.'

‘I guess the only question we really want answered,' Hilary said, ‘is “is it safe?”'

‘You'd be happy for Andrew and Guy to go down there?' Faith asked.

‘To
carry on
going down there,' Tony said. ‘Yes, frankly, though I'd like to build something more permanent to replace the stool that Arthur and May have so generously donated.'

‘We don't want that thing back,' May said hastily. ‘Not after what they've done to it, thank you very much.'

‘Willard went down there, too,' Eric said. ‘Before he and Marianne went to Sweden. He asked me to tell the meeting he thought it safe enough. In fact, considering all the other opportunities for sudden death and injury that surround us here, they're probably more out of harm's way down there than in most other places.'

‘Me, too,' Sally put in. ‘I agree with Tony and Willard. It's scary because it's pitch black but structurally it's safe. Safer than Rosy Primrose. We really ought to fix that slate lean-to roof at the back.'

‘Not on the agenda,' Eric insisted. ‘We dealt with that at the last regular meeting.'

‘But that's all we
ever
do – deal with it at meetings – never out there on the site.'

‘And there's hardly any putty left on the glazing on the glasshouse-side,' Nicole added. ‘The bits that the Johnsons never quite finished. Those panes of glass could do serious . . .'

‘Not on the agenda!' Eric trumpeted before either of the Johnsons could leap in.

‘Not on
your
agenda, maybe, but they ought to be on everyone's . . .'

‘Maynard told us a pane fell out last week and almost hit Theo,' Hilary said.

‘Theo never breathed a word about that,' Sally told her.

‘The agenda . . .' Eric began.

‘Can't we move on and discuss this as Any Other Business?' Adam suggested.

‘There isn't Any Other Business. This is an Extraordinary General Meeting to discuss just . . .'

‘Did it break?' Sally asked. ‘The pane of glass?'

‘Maynard didn't say.'

Faith winked at Alex; whenever he had complained of pointless admin meetings at the
BBC
, she had told him, ‘Just you wait!'

Isabella wanted to bring up the subject of the cleaning rota for the back hall. ‘This week it's . . .'

‘This week it's not on the agenda,' Eric insisted again.

‘. . . it's supposed to be Chris and Judith who . . .'

‘Her name is Julie,' Chris said.

‘Yes. It's supposed to be your turn. I had to put on wellington boots just to walk across to collect our milk and the post. It's disgusting.'

‘But it's not the weekend until tomorrow,' Chris objected. ‘Our week still has a day to run – before we
have to
clean it. We always leave it to the last possible day.'

‘All right!' Eric shouted. ‘We can declare ourselves content that The Tribe should continue to enjoy their secret passage unhindered until they're too fat, too lazy, too old, or too bored to want to any more. And then we can discuss what to do about Rosy Primrose
ad terrorem omnium
. All in favour?'

‘Oh, but I didn't think we'd finished discussing that subject yet,' Nicole objected.

‘We had –
de facto
but not
de jure
,' Eric assured her, wondering why Isabella was no longer rising to his cod-Latin. ‘All in favour of continuing with consideration of the agenda?'

‘You haven't made any notes yet,' Isabella pointed out.

‘
De minimis non curant lex
,' he assured her.

She rose and walked toward the kitchen, saying, ‘I'm going to make us some caviar canapés.'

‘Fishpaste nibbles,' Eric assured them in a stage whisper. ‘Now who has a further point to make on the subject of The Tribe's secret passage?'

They actually managed another ten minutes of ‘further points.' Sally wondered if it wouldn't benefit from lighting; others thought that would rob the place of its mystery, scariness, and attraction; some thought that not a bad idea; some said that childhood should have its moments of danger and threat – as long as they were more apparent than real; there was agreement that candles and matches should be so strictly forbidden that the entry hole would be bricked up at the first violation (but all realized that that was just a decision on paper); the architects insisted that ventilation bricks, not solid ones, would be used in that case. And should there be a cut-off age – say, no child under four? Many thought that a good idea until Arthur pointed out that children mature at different ages, so the best cut-off would be decided by the child him- or herself; some would go down without a qualm at the age of three while another five-year-old might get scared in less than a minute down there and scream to go out. Eric noted (but did not minute) that the permissive parents leaned toward the political right while the proscriptive ones were of a more leftward slant – just as he had expected. In fact, he was able to close the entire discussion happy in the knowledge that its conclusions were near enough to the minutes he had already written earlier that day for them not to need retyping.

Isabella reappeared with the caviar canapés and two bottles of Krug, which opened with a satisfactory,
pop!

‘Someone's not short of a bob or two,' Tony commented.

‘Don't you believe it,' Isabella assured him. ‘The caviar is left over from the Crespigny show, yesterday, and the champers is courtesy of Faith and Alex.'

‘Faith, actually,' Alex said.

‘Doubleday, actually,' Faith added. ‘We launched a new series last week and I was rather ambitious with the drinks requisition. Wartime habits die hard.'

Cigarettes were stubbed and the meeting broke up into gossiping groups.

‘Don't quote me on this,' Terence said, ‘but Rex, a friend of mine on
The Telegraph,
tells me that these two missing diplomats have gone over to Moscow. One of them, Maclean – this'll interest some of you – Maclean ate his last meal in London at Schmidt's in Charlotte Street! Anyway, it's all going to come out in the next week or so. We'll now have paranoid governments for years to come – of either party.'

‘What about those telegrams?' Tony asked between puffs as he rekindled his pipe.

‘It seems they weren't actually from them. Some woman friend of theirs in Cairo sent them – making it look as if they'd run away there. But they're already in Moscow – and the real stink is that they aren't diplomats at all. They were actually at the top of the Secret Service. It'll be . . . I mean, it could bring down the government.'

‘Too late!' Nicole put in. ‘This government has already fell. Fallen. Back in the spring, when Bevan, the only true socialist, resigned over the health service. That was the kiss of death.'

‘
Á la
Judas Iscariot?' Eric asked.

‘Ignore him,' Isabella advised.

Nicole ignored him. ‘We'll have another general election soon and all the Bevanites will get back and then we'll have a truly socialist government at last.'

‘Unless, of course, the Tories win,' Eric said.

Nicole just laughed.

‘We kicked Churchill out once and we can do it again,' Tony said.

Eric began to sing – to the tune of
The Red Flag
: ‘The working class / Can kiss my arse—' at which Nicole rammed a fish-paste nibble into his conveniently wide open mouth.

Angela, rummaging in Felix's shoulder bag in vain hope of finding a box of tissues, pulled out a notebook. She was about to stuff it back when Felix took it from her and opened it at a certain page. He passed it, still open, back to her and said, ‘Who's that?'

She saw the likeness in a flash and laughed, saying, ‘You've caught him to a T!' She held up the book for all to see. ‘Look, everyone! Who's this?'

Immediately several voices cried, ‘Tony!'

The man himself stared at it and said, ‘You sod! You're not going to make a sculpture of me like that, I hope?'

‘You'd never hold the pose,' Felix said.

On their way back to the Tithe Barn after the meeting, Angela repeated Tony's question about turning the sketch of him into a sculpture.

Felix laughed. ‘I would do it if I got one particular commission for one particular place – the main gate at Mauthausen.'

It shocked her. Felix went on to explain that almost his last conscious memory, as they carried him on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance on the day of liberation, was the sight of Tony standing on one leg and raising the other boot in order to tap his pipe on its heel so as to dislodge the tobacco ash.

‘And so it was the first drawing you did when you began to convalesce?'

‘No. I did it here, in town, after my first visit – my very first visit – to the Dower House. I was standing on the front steps and Tony and Nicole came up from inspecting the septic tanks and Tony stopped at the edge of the drive and tapped out the tobacco ash . . . exactly the same. At the time I thought it was hugely symbolic – the same gesture at my liberation and again at my . . . well, what was to be my homecoming.'

‘And don't you still think so?' she asked.