The Taxi Queue Page 11

  Richard himself had been dumb at the crematorium in Essex where Jamie’s funeral had taken place. He hadn’t opened his mouth. There had been no hymns and no communal prayers – nothing to join in with. Music was played on the sound system and strangers got up to speak. The chapel had been packed. People were crammed into the pews and others, including Richard himself, were standing at the back. The family, dressed in black party clothes, had occupied the front, no doubt with Jamie’s half-sisters among them. Richard had no way of knowing who was who and had been too stunned to start guessing. At the end of the service the doors had been opened by an attendant and Richard had gone outside before the traditional peeling off from the front began. He stepped off the tarmac where the cars of the next funeral were waiting, on to a wide gravel path. The air was still damp from an early-morning downpour. There was a metal gate at the far end of the path, flanked by conifers, and he kept walking towards it through pools of water that hadn’t yet drained away. The printed service sheet was in his pocket. He had no recall of what was written on it. Neither music nor words were what had bound him and Jamie together. ‘Are you asleep?’ Richard used to say in the night, having dozed and woken. ‘Not any more,’ Jamie replied. The quietest part of the night was the best for Richard. Then he forgot himself. He was frightened by what had bound him to Jamie and by its vanishing.

  Somewhere, on the way back to London from Essex, Richard lost the printed sheet – of all things to lose. He couldn’t understand what had happened to it. He had shown his ticket on the train, bought another ticket for the tube, let himself in with his door key. He had gone through his pockets again and again. His feet were sopping wet.

  The door on the other side of the church creaked open. The sunlight came in, making a path that extended beyond where Richard was standing; a tapering wedge of bright dust. He heard footsteps, habituated and purposeful, going towards the east end of the church. He waited until they were safely away, then he turned and made for the exit.

  Setting off back down the hill to the car, Richard took the same route that he had taken to come up, only in reverse; that is, avoiding Abe’s road. The houses he passed were large, red-brick, tile-hung, with complicated chimneys and excrescences. The plots around them were deep and the tall trees, as old as the buildings, hid the smaller houses that lay behind. Possibly, in winter, odd rooftop shapes emerged between the branches, but at this time of year new leaves were growing, expanding by the hour, filling the gaps. The proximity of the next road only a hundred or so metres away – and the fact that this was the end of Richard’s Saturday excursion, not the beginning – caused a kind of diffused anguish in him, which grew worse with every step.

  Richard remembered every detail of Abe’s house. He was still preoccupied by having discovered it. An address was almost as impersonal as a telephone number but a house that he had stood in front of, and could call to mind, had substance. Seeing the cottage with the blue door and the broken gate had been, in an odd way, like meeting Abe for a second time. He could place him. Richard had to admit that he had been reassured by the look of the exterior, its innate respectability. There had been moments since January when he had wondered whom exactly he had brought home with him. He was in no doubt of the wrongness of what he had done, but he had been troubled also by a lack of judgement of another kind and of the risk he had taken.

  Richard guessed that the couple in the café had known each other for a while – longer than a night. No one would make such heavy weather of a single night. On the scale between fantasy and reality, it was hard to know where to place such a small unit of time. Richard put it nearer fantasy but he wasn’t certain. He tried not to think of Abe. People fell over themselves to help you improve your memory, prepared to sell you books, lectures, vitamins, sticky notes, gingko biloba. There was the man in the ad who would teach you to remember if you sent him a cheque. The pen-and-ink sketch of his face had appeared in the newspapers, unchanged, since Richard’s childhood. But forgetting was just as much of an art. Richard wished, for present use, that he had retained more knowledge of the period following Jamie’s death – that he had paid more attention to the signs of recovery along the way. He imagined that, had he kept some sort of diary, progress would have appeared in the entries – in the words themselves – showing how, on given dates, he had re-entered the everyday world. But there was no diary. He hadn’t had the concentration to write and besides, the idea of fixing those weeks would have been hateful to him.

  Richard’s awareness of his surroundings and of the fine weather had gone. The strengthening heat was making him tense. He took his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and rubbed it over his face. In his mind he was going down a parallel road. In this case, literally, the parallel road, and imagining he was on it, telling himself that he could have been on it and might as well be there. He walked more and more slowly, like a machine winding down, and eventually came to a halt. A dog in a nearby house started yapping and jumping up at the window, maddened by the stranger who lingered by his territory. The yapping became more frantic and the dog hurled itself at the glass. Richard started walking again, back up the hill. He seemed to be heading all the way to the top. But there was an unmade-up lane to the right which cut through to the next street. Richard took it and emerged in Abe’s road.

  2

  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 violi
n.

  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.

  3

  VIVIENNE BLEW THE film of dust that the afternoon sun had made visible on the mantelpiece. Then she picked up the out-of-date At Home invitation propped up against the wall – Paula and Hartley asking them to lunch on Easter Sunday – and tore it in half.

  ‘Richard?’ Vivienne said.

  He was sitting on the sofa, tipped back, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I was tired that’s all. It’s been a long week,’ he said.

  ‘We all have weeks,’ Vivienne said.

  Through the closed door of the living room Richard could hear the clucking voices of cartoon characters of a DVD the girls were watching in the kitchen. ‘I know, I know, it was all my fault. I’ve said so. But I was only twenty minutes late. Diane Whats-her-name, the coach, was there. The girls were fine.’

  Vivienne hadn’t reproached him when he first returned ho
me from the tennis courts, choosing instead to have Saturday lunch in peace. Now he understood why she had shut all the doors.

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve been late picking the girls up,’ Vivienne said. She walked over to the waste-paper basket and dropped the two halves of the invitation into it.

  ‘When was the first, then? Tennis has only just started,’ Richard said.

  ‘After Julian’s party. I didn’t say anything about tennis.’

  Richard got up from the sofa and walked over to the window, nearly tripping over the stack of English holiday cottage brochures that lay on the floor.

  ‘I’ll get rid of those. I keep forgetting about them,’ Vivienne said.

  ‘It’s not for another month or so, is it?’

  There was no escaping Frances’s seventieth-birthday weekend. Whatever good feelings Richard had had about it had dispersed. A cottage near the Cuckmere estuary in Sussex had been chosen and a deposit put down. He tried to visualise the silvery loops of the Cuckmere River snaking down to the sea, as if he were seeing it from a light aircraft or a vantage point high on the Downs. He tried not to home in on the ‘Lovely cottage, sleeps six’. He thought of driving alone along the motorway – a long, grey, straight stretch between hills – and that also helped.

  ‘The first weekend in June. You definitely can’t get away on the Friday afternoon?’ Vivienne said.

  ‘No. I’ve already told you. I’ve got a dinner to go to. I’ll drive down later. There’ll be less traffic.’

  The neighbour who lived across the road was about to cut his hedge with an electric trimmer. Wearing a baseball cap, goggles and heavy leather gauntlets, Craig looked like a dangerous gnome. He caught sight of Richard gazing out and raised his free hand. Richard responded with a nod. The motor started up and Craig began to plane the fuzzy top of the foliage with even strokes.