The Other Family Part 20

'Impressive-'

'They came free with something.'

Margaret put a finger lightly on a white key.

'I'm getting the s.h.i.+vers-'

'Good s.h.i.+vers?' Scott said. He was almost laughing, twisting the cork out of the bottle and letting the champagne foam out and down the sides, over his hand.

'Just s.h.i.+vers,' Margaret said, 'just echoes. Just the past jumping up again like it wasn't over.'

Scott poured champagne into his flutes. He carried them down the room to the piano.

'Don't put them down!' Margaret said sharply.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Scott said. He handed her a gla.s.s. 'What shall we toast?'

Margaret looked doubtful.

'Dad?' Scott said.

'Don't think so, pet.'

'Us? Each other?'

Margaret eyed him.

'That wouldn't suit us either, dear.'

'OK,' Scott said, 'the piano itself, music, the future-'

Margaret gave a little snort.

'Don't get carried away-'

'I feel carried away. I am carried away. I want to be carried away.'

Margaret looked up at him. She took a sip of her champagne without toasting anything.

She said, 'Talking of carried, who paid for the carriage? Who paid for this to come up here?'

Scott hesitated. He looked fixedly at his drink. Then he said, 'I did.'

There was a silence. Margaret looked at him steadily. She took another sip of her drink.

'Why did you do that?'

'I wanted to,' Scott said. 'I needed to.'

'How did you arrange it?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'Who did you speak to?'

'Mam,' Scott said, 'it doesn't matter. It's done, it's sorted and I've got the piano. I couldn't bear to be obliged to them.'

'No,' Margaret said, 'I see that.' She paused, and then she said quietly, 'I wonder how it was, for her, when it went.'

Scott moved round behind the piano and leaned against the windowsill, his back to the view.

He said, 'She wasn't there.'

Margaret looked up sharply.

'What?'

' She wasn't there. It went while she was out. They arranged it that way on purpose. She'd gone out with a friend.'

'How do you know all this?'

Scott took a big swallow of champagne.

'Amy told me.'

'Amy-'

'I rang her.'

'Again? '

'Yes,' Scott said, 'I rang her to check she was OK about the piano, that she didn't think I was party to some kind of plot. I rang her to say I wanted to pay for the carriage.' He grinned at his drink. 'She said she thought they'd expect me to do that anyway.'

Margaret gave a second small snort.

'She said she hoped I'd really play it,' Scott said. 'She said she hoped it'd bring me luck. She said-' Scott stopped.

Margaret waited, holding her gla.s.s, the finger of her other hand still lightly poised on the piano key.

'What?'

'She said,' Scott said with emphasis, 'she said that one day she hoped she'd hear me play it. She wants, one day, to hear me play the piano. She said so.'

Margaret's finger went down on the middle C.

'And,' Scott said, 'I told her I hoped so too. I told her I'd like her to hear me play. I'd like it.'

'I see.'

Scott put his champagne gla.s.s down on the windowsill.

'Move over,' he said to his mother.

'What?'

'Move over,' Scott said. 'Make room for me.'

'What are you doing-'

'I'm going to play,' Scott said. 'I'm going to play Dad's piano and you're going to listen to me.'

Margaret moved to the right-hand edge of the piano stool. She felt as she used to feel at the beginning of one of Richie's concerts.

'What are you going to play?'

Scott settled himself. She watched him flex his right foot above the pedals, settle his hands lightly on the keys.

'Gershwin,' he said, '"Rhapsody In Blue". And you can cry if you want to.'

Margaret's throat was full.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' she said.

The door of Richie's practice room was shut. While he was alive, it had never been completely closed except on very rare occasions, because he liked to feel that his playing belonged to all of them, to the whole house; so much so that Chrissie had had to organize insulation for the party wall with the neighbouring house, and have ugly soundproofing tiles fixed to the ceiling. But now the door was firmly shut so that none of them, Chrissie said, would have to see the sharp dents in the carpet where the little wheels on the piano's legs had dug almost through to the canvas.

'It's worse than his shoes,' Chrissie said.

There was a silence when she said this. All the girls felt a different kind of relief once the piano had gone, but it wasn't, plainly, going to be possible to admit to it. Tamsin felt relieved because she might now be able to implement a few plans for the future; Dilly felt relieved because her own part in an alarming plot was over, and Amy felt relieved that justice had been done, and the piano was at last where it was supposed to be.

'I wouldn't expect,' Chrissie said, 'any of you to feel like I do.'

When she had come home, after her expedition with Sue, which had produced nothing except an abortive conversation about what work avenues Chrissie might explore next, she had found Tamsin and Dilly waiting tensely in the kitchen with the kettle on, and the corkscrew ready (which would she be in the mood for?) and Amy sitting cross-legged on the empty s.p.a.ce of dented carpet where the piano had once been.

'I didn't want,' Amy had said unhappily, 'for there to be nothing here when you came back.'

Chrissie had been quite silent. She stood in the doorway of the practice room holding her bag and her keys, and she looked at Amy, and then she looked all round the room, very slowly, as if she was checking to see what else was missing, and then she said, 'Did Sue know too?'

Amy nodded.

'Get up,' Chrissie said.

Amy got to her feet. Chrissie stepped forward and took her arm and pulled her out into the hall. Then she closed the door of the practice room, and propelled Amy down the hall to the kitchen.

Tamsin and Dilly were both there, both standing. Even Tamsin looked slightly scared. She opened her mouth to say, 'Gla.s.s of wine, Mum?' but nothing happened.

Chrissie let go of Amy and put her bag and her keys on the table. Then she said, 'I suppose this is the same impulse that makes you want me to clear out his clothes.'

'We want to help,' Tamsin said bravely.

'Yourselves, maybe,' Chrissie said. She sounded bitter.

Dilly said, on a wail, 'I didn't want it to go!'

'You can't do someone's grieving for them,' Chrissie said. 'You can't move someone on at the pace that suits you, not them.'

Amy cleared her throat. She said, 'But if we're going to live together, we count as much as you do. We can't be held back just because you won't move on.'

Tamsin gave a little gasp. Chrissie looked at Amy.

'Is that how you see it?'

'It's how it is,' Amy said. 'I knew you'd take it hard, that's why I sat there. But you could think why we did it, you could try and think sometimes.'

'You have a nerve,' Chrissie said.

Amy said rudely, 'Someone needs nerve round here.'

Chrissie stepped forward with sudden speed, reached out, and slapped her. She used her right hand, and the big ring she was wearing on her third finger caught Amy's cheekbone and left an instant small welt, a little scarlet bar under Amy's left eye. Then Chrissie burst into tears.

n.o.body moved. There was a singing silence except for Chrissie's crying. Then Tamsin darted forward and pushed Amy down the kitchen to the sink and turned the cold tap on.

'Ice is better,' Dilly said faintly. She moved towards the fridge and then Chrissie sprang after her, pus.h.i.+ng her out of the way, and clawing to get ice cubes. She ran unsteadily, still sobbing and sniffing, down the kitchen, bundling ice cubes clumsily into a disposable cloth. She held it unsteadily against Amy's face.

'Sorry, oh sorry, so sorry, darling, so-'

'It's OK,' Amy said. She stared ahead, not at her mother.

'It's a big deal, the piano,' Tamsin said. She still had an arm round Amy. Amy took the bundle of ice cubes in her own hand, and pressed it to her cheekbone.

'I should never-' Chrissie said, 'I'm so sorry, I'm-'

'We shouldn't have done it!' Dilly cried.

Tamsin glared at her.

'Sue-' Dilly said.

'Don't blame Sue,' Chrissie said. She drooped against the kitchen unit. 'Don't blame anyone.'

'It was Kevin's idea,' Tamsin said.

'What would he know-'

n.o.body reacted. Chrissie gave a huge sigh and tore off a length of kitchen paper to blow her nose.

'So it'll be another bill-'

'No,' Amy said. She was still staring ahead, holding the ice cubes to her face. 'No, no bill. He paid for it.'