Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
ORLA
I am writing this at the table in the garden.
It is already warm and has been light for well over an hour – it was before five when I was woken by Aengus and Iseult playing tag on my bed, frantic to be allowed outside to lay waste to the bird population.
Now, of course, having had their breakfast and a lengthy wash, they are stretched out on the flagstones in the sun, only rousing occasionally to scold furiously at a magpie.
And for me, the day stretches ahead, almost featureless. The house is empty except for me and the cats – there are no lodgers, no meals to cook, no responsibilities. Only Barney will come this afternoon to spend an hour or two at the piano.
Unlike my daughter, I have no ear for music, but I can tell that he is improving.
Not only that – there is a visible change in him when he sits down at that piano.
It’s as if two things are happening to him at once: first, the weight of sadness that bows his shoulders when he arrives seems to lift; as soon as his hands touch the keys a smile appears on his face and by the time he leaves he is lighter, freer.
And second, the gawkiness and awkwardness of his early adolescence leaves him, replaced by assurance – almost cockiness – that reminds me of his father.
His entire body seems to be saying, Look at me! I’m good at this!
I wonder why Gray didn’t discover this gift and nurture it – why there is no piano in the front room of number eight like the one I bought for Beatrice to play.
Even if, like me, he didn’t care a jot for music and actively disliked classical music, he cared about his children very deeply.
To deprive Barney of something that will bring such pride and happiness for the child’s whole lifetime seems bizarre to me – almost cruel.
But perhaps this talent and passion of Barney’s has only revealed itself now. Maybe some boys are late bloomers. I grew up in a household of women; I went to boarding school with girls and only met my own daughter when she was a young woman of twenty-two – boys are a mystery to me.
And so is his late father, in his own way.
I knew Gray as Anna’s husband, Lulu and Barney’s father, my neighbour.
A successful man who had turned his creative passion into a thriving business.
But the funeral brought home to me that his life before he and Anna moved to Damask Square is a total blank: Gray never spoke to me about his past. And at the funeral, although there were dozens of people there to pay their respects – friends, neighbours, colleagues, Anna’s sisters and their husbands, Anna’s mother and father – there was no one who might have known him as Nigel.
Anna must know his history, or at least some of it. But she has never spoken to me about any in-laws, either, nor any old friends of Gray’s. I wonder why.