Tittle: White Maiden In Red
Genres: AU, AR, Romance, Drama, Music, Slice of Life.
"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent." —Victor Hugo
Chapter 1: The White Maiden Who Fell to Earth
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0
There was once a music shop.
From the outside it looked like any shop, in any backstreet. It had no name above the door. No record display in the window. There was just a homemade poster stuck to the glass. For the music you need! Everyone welcome! We only sell VINYL! If closed, please telephone – though after that it was anyone's guess because, along with more happy exclamation marks, the only legible numbers were an 8 that could well be a 3, and two other things that might be triangles.
Inside, the shop was cram-packed. Boxes everywhere, stocked with every kind of record in every speed, size and colour, and not one of them classified. An old counter stood to the right of the door and, at the back, two listening booths towered either side of a turntable; more like bedroom furniture than regular booths. Behind the turntable sat the owner, Ruby Rose, a gentle heart young woman, smoking and playing records. Her shop was often open into the night – just as it was often closed into the morning – music playing, coloured lamps waltzing, all sorts of people searching for records.
Classical, rock, jazz, blues, heavy metal, punk … As long as it was on vinyl, there were no taboos. And if you told Ruby the kind of thing you wanted, or simply how you felt that day, she had the right track in minutes. It was a knack she had. A gift. She knew what people needed even when they didn't know it themselves.
"Now why not give this a try?" she'd say, showing back her unique red hair and silver eyes. "I've got a feeling. I just think it will work—"
«────── « Break » ──────»
1
Ruby sat smoking behind her turntable, same as always, watching the window. Mid-afternoon, and it was almost dark out there. The day had hardly been a day at all. A drop in temperature had brought the beginnings of a frost and Maine Street glittered beneath the street lights. The air had a kind of blue feel.
The other four shops on the parade were already closed but she had put on the lava lamps and the electric fire. The music shop was warm and colourfully lit. At the counter, Blake Belladonna the tattooist stood flicking through fanzines while Father Oz made an origami flower. Her best friend and assistant, Yang Xiao Long had collected all the Emmylou Harris and was trying to arrange them in alphabetical order without Ruby noticing.
"I had no customers again," said Blake, very loud. even though Ruby was at the back of the shop and she was at the front, there was technically no need to shout. The shops on Maine Street were only the size of a front room. "Are you listening?"
"I'm listening."
"You don't look like you're listening."
Ruby took off her headphones. Smiled. She felt laugh lines spring all over her face and her eyes crinkled at the corners. "See? I'm always listening."
Blake made a noise like 'Ham.' Then she said, "One man called in, but it wasn't for a tattoo. He just wanted directions to the new precinct."
Father Oz said he'd sold a paperweight in his gift shop. Also, a leather bookmark with the Lord's Prayer stamped on it. He seemed more than happy about that.
"If it stays like this, I'll be closed by summer."
"You won't, Blake. You'll be fine" They had this conversation all the time. She said how awful things were, and Ruby said they weren't, Blake, they weren't. You two are like old married couple, Yang told them, which might have been funny except that she said it every night, and besides, they weren't a couple. Ruby was very much a single woman.
"Do you know how many funerals the undertakers have had?"
"No, Blake."
"Two. Two since Christmas. What's wrong with people?"
"Maybe they're not dying," suggested Yang.
"Of course they're dying. People don't come here any more. All they want is that crap on the high street."
Only last month the florist had gone. Her empty shop stood on one end of the parade like a bad tooth, and a few nights ago the baker's window – he was at the other end – had been defaced with slogans. Ruby had fetched a bucket of soapy water but it took all morning to wash them off.
"There have always been shops on Maine Street," said Father Oz.
"We're a community. We belong here."
Yang passed with a box of new 12-inch singles, narrowly missing a lava lamp. She seemed to have abandoned Emmylou Harris. "We had another shoplifter today," she said, apropos of not very much at all. "First he flipped because we had no CDs. Then he asked to look at a record and made a run for it."
"What was it this time?"
"Genesis. Invisible Touch."
"What did you do, Ruby?"
"Oh, she did the usual," said Yang.
Yes, Ruby had done the sort of thing she always did. She'd grabbed her old suede jacket and loped after the young man until she caught him at the bus stop. (What kind of thief waited for the number 11?) She'd said, between deep breaths, that she would call the police unless the lad came back and tried something new in the listening booth. He could keep the Genesis record if he wanted the thing so much, though it broke Ruby's heart that he was nicking the wrong one – their early stuff was tons better. He could have the album for nothing, and even the sleeve; "so long as you try 'Fingal's Cave'. If you like Genesis, trust me. You'll love Mendelssohn."
"I wish you'd think about selling the new CDs," said Father Oz.
"Are you joking?" laughed Yang. "She'd rather die than sell CDs."
Then the door opened and ding-dong; a new customer. Ruby felt a ping of excitement.
A tidy, middle-aged man followed the Persian runner that led all the way to the turntable. everything about this man seemed ordinary – his coat, his hair, even his ears – as if he had been deliberately assembled so that no one would look at him twice. Head bowed, he crept past the counter to his right, where Blake stood with Father Oz and Yang, and behind them all the records stored in cardboard master bags. He passed the old wooden shelving to his left, the door that led up to Ruby's flat, the central table, and all the plastic crates piled with surplus stock. Not even a sideways glance at the patchwork of album sleeves and homemade posters thumbtacked by Yang all over the walls. At the turntable, he stopped and pulled out a handkerchief. His eyes were red dots.
"Are you all right?" Ruby asked in her worried voice. "How can I help you today?"
"The thing is, you see, I only like Chopin."
Ruby remembered now. This man had come in a few months ago. He had been looking for something to calm his nerves before his wedding.
"You bought the Nocturnes," she said.
The man wriggled his mouth. He didn't seem used to the idea that anyone would remember him. "I've got myself in another spot of difficulty. I wondered if you might – find something else for me?"
Ruby smiled, she always smiled when a customer asked for help. She asked the same questions she always asked. Did the man know what he was looking for? (Yes. Chopin.) Had he heard anything else that he liked? (Yes. Chopin.) Could he hum it? (No. He didn't think he could.)
The man shot a look over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening but they weren't. Over the years, they'd seen everything in the music shop. There were the regular customers, of course, who came to find new records, but often people wanted something more. Ruby had helped them through illness, grief, loss of confidence and jobs, as well as the more everyday things like football results and the weather. Not that she knew about all those things but really it was a matter of listening, and she had endless patience. As a kid, she could stand for hours with a piece of bread in her hand, hoping for a bird.
But the man was gazing at Ruby. He was waiting.
"You just want me to find you the right record? You don't know what, but so long as it's Chopin, you'll be OK?"
"Yes, yes," said the man. That was it exactly.
So what did he need? Ruby pushed away her fringe – it flopped straight back, but there it was, the thing had a life of its own – she cupped her chin in her hands and she listened as if she were trying to find a radio signal in the ether. Something beautiful? Something slow? She barely moved, she just listened.
But when it came, it was such a blast, it took Ruby's breath away. Of course. What this man needed wasn't Chopin. It wasn't even a nocturne. What he needed was—
"Wait!" Ruby was already on her feet.
She lumbered around the shop, tugging out album sleeves, skirting past Yang, and ducking her head to dodge a light fitting. She needed to find the right match for the music she had heard from the man who only liked Chopin. Piano, yes. She could hear piano. But the man needed something else as well. Something that was both tender and huge. Where would Ruby find that? Beethoven? No, that would be too much. Beethoven might just floor a man like this one. What he needed was a good friend.
"Can I help you, Ruby?" asked Yang. Actually she said "Ca' I hel'?" because her energetic mouth was full of chocolate biscuit. Yang wasn't simple or even backward, as people sometimes suggested, she was just gauche and wildly overenthusiastic, raised in a small suburban house by an insane mother and a drunkard father. Ruby had grown fond of Yang in the last few years, in the way that she had once cared for her broken van and her mother's record player. She found that if you treated her like a young terrier, sending her out for regular walks and occupying her with easy tasks, she was less liable to cause serious damage.
But what was the music she was looking for? What was it?
Ruby wanted a song that would arrive like a little raft and carry this man safely home.
Piano. Yes. Brass? That could work. A voice? Maybe. Something powerful and passionate that could sound both complicated and yet so simple it was obvious—
That was it. She got it. She knew what the man needed. She swung behind the counter and pulled out the right record. But when she rushed back to her turntable, mumbling, "Side two, track five. This is it. Yes, this is the one!" the man gave a sigh that was almost a sob it was so desperate.
"No, no. Who's this? Aretha Franklin?"
"Oh No Not My Baby. This is it. This is the song."
"But I told you. I want Chopin. Pop isn't going to help."
"Aretha is soul. You can't argue with Aretha."
"Spirit in the Dark? No, no. I don't want this record. It's not what I came for."
Ruby smiled at him, while the man twisted and twisted his handkerchief. "I know it's not what you want, but trust me, today it's what you need. What have you got to lose?"
The man sent one last look in the direction of the door. Father Oz gave a sympathetic shrug, as if to say, Why not? We've all been there. "Go on, then," said the man who only liked Chopin.
Yang sprang forward and led him to a listening booth, not exactly holding his hand, but leading the way with outstretched arms as if parts of the man were in danger of dropping off at any moment. Light bloomed from the lava lamps in shifting patterns of pink and apple-green and gold. The booths were nothing like the ones in Woolworths – those were more like standing up in a hairdryer. Their headphones were so greasy, Blake said, you had to shower afterwards. No, these booths Ruby had made herself from a pair of matching Victorian wardrobes of incredible magnitude she had spotted in a skip. She had sawn off the feet, removed the hanging rails and sets of drawers, and drilled small holes to connect each one with cable to her turntable. Ruby had found two armchairs, small enough to fit inside, but comfortable. She had even polished the wood until it gleamed like black gloss paint, revealing a delicate inlay in the doors of mother-of-pearl birds and flowers. The booths were beautiful when you really looked.
The man stepped in and made a sideways shuffle – there was very little space; he was being asked to sit in a piece of bedroom furniture, after all – and took his place. Ruby helped with the headphones and shut the door.
"Are you all right in there?"
"This won't work," the man called back. "I only like Chopin."
At her turntable, Ruby eased the record from its sleeve and lifted the stylus. Tick, tick went the needle, riding the grooves. She flicked the speaker switch so that it would play through the whole shop. Tick, tick—
Vinyl had a life of its own. All you could do was wait.
«────── « Break » ──────»
2
Tick, tick. It was dark inside the booth, with a hushed feeling, like hiding in a cupboard. The silence fizzed.
Everyone had warned him. Be careful, they'd said. He just wouldn't listen. So he asked her to marry him and he couldn't believe his luck when she said yes – her so beautiful, him so ordinary. Then he took her a bottle of champagne after the wedding breakfast, and there she was, upside down in the honeymoon suite. At first he couldn't work it out. He had to take a really good look. He saw a dress like a sticky meringue with four legs poking out, two with black socks, one with a garter. And then he realized. It was his new wife and his best man. He left the bottle on the floor, along with two glasses, and shut the door.
He couldn't get that picture out of his head. He played Chopin, he took pills from the doctor, and none of it made a difference. He stopped going out; he cried at the drop of a hat. He felt so bad he called in sick at work.
Tick, tick—
The song started. A twang of guitar, a blast of horns, a chirruping 'sweet-sweet-ba-by' and then a bam-bam-bam-bam from percussion.
What was Ruby thinking? This wasn't the music he needed. He went to pull off the headphones—
"When ma friends tol' me you had someone noo," began the singer, this Aretha, her voice clear and steady, "I didn' believe a single word was true."
It was like meeting a stranger in the dark, saying to them, "You'll never guess what?" and the stranger saying, "Hey, but that's exactly how it is for me."
He stopped thinking about his wife and his sadness and he listened to Aretha as if she were a voice inside his head.
She told him her story – something like this. everyone said her man was a cheat; even her own mother said it. But Aretha wouldn't believe them. He was not like those other BOYS who lead you ON. Who tell you LIES. She started the song calmly enough but by the time she got to the chorus she was practically screaming the words. Her voice was a little boat and the music was a Japanese wave, but Aretha kept riding it, up and down. It was downright pig-headed, the way she kept believing in him. There were strings, the bobble of the guitar, a horn riff, percussion, all telling her she was wrong – 'Wohhh!' shrilled the backing vocals, like a Greek chorus of girlfriends – but no, she hung on tight. Her voice pulled the words this way and that, soaring up over the top and then scooping right down low. Aretha knew. She knew how desperate it felt, to love a cheat. How lonely.
He sat very, very still. And he listened.
«────── « Break » ──────»
3
Ruby shook a cigarette from the packet and as she smoked, she watched the door of the booth. She hoped she wasn't wrong about this song. Sometimes all that people needed was to know they were not alone. Other times it was more a question of keeping them in touch with their feelings until they wore them out – people clung to what was familiar, even when it was painful.
"The thing about vinyl," her mother used to say, "is that you have to look after it, Ruby." She could picture Summer Rose now, in their white house by the sea, dressed in a red scarf and white kimono as she played her Bach or Beethoven or whatever else she'd had delivered. Summer told stories about records, little things to help her listen, and she spoke about composers as if they were lovers. She wore massive sunglasses even when it was raining, actually even when it was pitch black, and her arms were looped with so many bangles she jingled when she laughed. She had no interest in normal mothery things. Jam sandwiches, for instance, cut into triangles. A nice casserole for her supper or cherry linctus when she had a cough. If she showed her a shell, or a ribbon of seaweed, she tended to lob it straight back at the sea, and whenever she drove the old Rover into town it was Ruby who had to remind her about the handbrake. (She had an unfortunate habit of rolling forward.) Yes, being a regular mother was anathema to Summer but when it came to vinyl, she displayed a care that verged on sacred. And she could talk music for hours.
The song began to fade. The door of the booth gave a click and opened. Off went those mother-of-pearl birds, shaking their wings and taking flight.
The man who only liked Chopin didn't come out. He stood at the door, looking candlewax-white and a bit sick.
"Well?" said Ruby. "How was it?"
"Well?" Over at the counter, Blake, Father Oz and Yang were all waiting too. Yang jumped first on one leg and then on the other. Father Oz had lifted his round glasses on top of his head and wore them like a hairband. Blake frowned.
The man who only liked Chopin began to laugh. "Wow, that was something. How did you know I needed Aretha? How did you do that, Ruby?"
"Do what? I just played you a good song."
"Did Aretha Franklin make any more records?'
Now it was Ruby's turn to laugh. "She did actually. You're in luck. She made a lot. She really liked singing."
She played the whole record, side one and then side two. As she listened, Ruby smoked and danced in the cramped space behind her turntable, rolling her shoulders and swinging her hips – watching her, even Blake began to sway – while Yang did something that was possibly the funky chicken, but could equally be to do with her new shoes hurting her feet. It was Aretha at her best. everyone should own a copy of Spirit in the Dark.
Afterwards Yang made cups of tea and Ruby listened at her turntable while the man told her more about his wife. How he couldn't so much as touch her after the wedding. How she'd moved out a month ago to live with his best man. It was a relief, he said, just to tell someone all this. Ruby nodded as she listened and reassured the man, over and over, that he could come to the shop whenever he needed. "Just bang on the door if I'm not open. It doesn't matter what time it is. I'm always here. You don't need to be on your own."
They were small things really, and pretty obvious ones, but the man smiled as if Ruby had given him a brand-new heart.
"Have you ever been in a mess like this?" he asked. "Have you ever been in love?"
Ruby laughed. "I'm done with all that. My shop is all I need."
"These days she hardly leaves," piped up Father Oz.
"Could I listen to my song again?"
"Of course you can listen again."
The man shut himself back in the booth and Ruby reset the needle on the vinyl. "When ma friends tol' me you had someone noo …" Her gaze drifted to the window.
So empty and quiet out there. Nothing coming, nothing going, just the thin blue light, the cold. Ruby could not play music, she could not read a score, she had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when she sat in front of a customer and truly listened, she heard a kind of song. She wasn't talking a full-blown symphony. It would be a few notes; at the most, a strain. And it didn't happen all the time, only when she let go of being Ruby and inhabited a space that was more in the middle. It had been this way ever since she could remember. 'Intuition,' Father Oz called it. 'Weird shit': that was Blake.
So what did it matter if she had no one in particular in her life? She was happy alone. She lit up another smoke.
And then she saw her. She was looking straight at her.
«────── « Break » ──────»
4
The first time Ruby saw her shop, she burst out laughing. Ha ha ha. Great joyous lungfuls. It was ten years ago: Britain was in its first recession since the war. The miners were on strike and a three-day week was in force.
She had been wandering the city for hours. She had no idea where she was heading. She passed the cathedral, the network of old alleys, passages and cobbled lanes that surrounded it, with their trinket shops and cafés. She walked the length of Castlegate, the main shopping precinct in the city, staring at the big windows, and she visited the clock tower. Further on she noticed gates to a park, a queue at the dole office, she tried an amusement arcade and afterwards browsed a line of market stalls; then she followed several residential roads in the direction of the old docks. She only stopped at Maine Street because it was a cul-de-sac with a pub and six shops on one side, and a row of Victorian brown-brick houses on the other. Short of climbing rooftops, she couldn't physically go any further.
And so she paused and she really looked at it; this little run-down street. An Italian flag at the window of one house, the smell of spices bursting from its neighbour, a woman in a headdress shelling peas on her doorstep, a gang of kids pushing a trolley, a set of letters painted across another façade, advertising Rooms to Let. She stared at the parade of shops. An undertaker, a Polish bakery, a religious gift shop, the empty shell with a For Sale notice at the window, then a tattoo parlour, and finally a florist. She saw two old men in the undertaker's window offering tissues to a woman who was crying. She saw a boy pointing to a cake in the bakery; another man in his fifties helping a girl choose a plastic Jesus in Articles of Faith. She saw a black haired woman with painted skin mopping her floor, a pair of curtains at her window and the word TATTOOISTA on the glass, while an old lady in a sari emerged from the florist with an armful of flowers, calling her thank you as she closed the door. It was the everyday ordinariness of it that moved her.
That, and the usefulness, as if this diverse mix of people had always been there, like mothers and fathers, helping others to find what they needed. In her mind's eye, the future appeared to her in the same way she had seen the distant horizon materializing out of a sea mist at the white house; blurred and remote, but beautiful and full of hope. That was when she began to laugh, and it was years since Ruby had laughed like that. She went straight to the estate agent.
"Of course the shop needs a little love, ma'am," said the agent, putting down his sandwich and searching for the keys. "You will have to use your imagination once we're inside."
A little love? The interior was a wreck. It was choked with rubbish and the stench was sickening – clearly people had been using it as a toilet. Someone had even ripped up the floorboards and lit a fire.
"I like it," said Ruby. And she touched the walls, just to reassure them.
"Yes, I'll pay the full asking price."
"Really? You don't want to make an offer?"
"No. It's right for me. I don't want to haggle."
Ask Ruby to love a nice house with a garden, all mod cons, she would have turned on her heels. Ask her to fall in love with another human being, she'd have fled. But this. Broken as it was, and manky and misused – yes, this was on her level. She admitted to the estate agent she didn't have any experience with DIY but guessed it couldn't be so hard if you got a book from the library. She also admitted she didn't have much of a clue about shops. Summer had only ever had things sent by special delivery. He mentioned Harrods, Fortnum's and Deutsche Grammophon.
The estate agent – whose wife drove to the supermarket every Saturday – couldn't believe his luck. The property had been empty for a year and the parade was on its last legs; lumps of masonry had a habit of dropping to the ground whenever someone slammed a door. Beyond it lay an expanse of rubble where a bomb had hit the street in '41. Last time the agent looked, he'd seen scrappy children playing there, and also a tethered goat. The street was a complete mish-mash. One day a developer would have the sense to flatten the whole lot and build a car park.
But Ruby didn't seem to notice. Instead he suggested a beer in England's Glory, the pub on the corner. There was something about this gentle silver eyed young woman, with her choppy red hair and shabby clothes, her funny lollopy way of walking as if she still hadn't got the measure of her feet, that baffled the estate agent. A kind of innocence you didn't often see. Her hands were soft as powder puffs; clearly she'd never done a day's hard work. And she couldn't stop talking about records.
When the agent asked what had brought her to this particular nook, Ruby said her van had just stopped. (Nook was estate-agent speak. There was nothing nookish about this corner of England. It was an eyesore. Its main industry was processed food. Flavoured snacks, to be precise. When the wind blew in the wrong direction, the entire city smelt of cheese and onion.)
But the estate agent was not the only one who was being fanciful. Ruby too could have been more specific. She could have said her van had not exactly been going for the last twenty miles. And she might also have mentioned that since the death of Summer, her life was a write-off; she didn't even have the white house by the sea. Recently she'd been on the move, and sleeping rough, and waiting for a solution to jump out at her. And now here it was. If she could run a small shop in a dead-end street, without the complications of love or ties – if she could put everything into serving ordinary people and avoid receiving anything in return – she thought she might just about get by. She sold her van for scrap and signed the paperwork that afternoon. She didn't even wait for a survey.
"So you're gonna open a music shop?" Blake asked, the first time they met. She was a beautiful, gothic young woman with fringes that she dyed different colours to suit her mood – generally very dark colours that were not to be found in nature. Her skin was an inky web of hearts and flowers.
Ruby looked up from the kerb where she was sitting in the sun. She held a notepad and pencil. She was drawing smiley faces.
"Yes," she said. "I'm going to help people find music."
"What about Woolworths?"
"What about Woolworths?"
"There's one on Castlegate. It's a ten-minute walk from here."
"Oh," said Ruby. "I wondered where I was going to get chart singles." She went back to the notepad.
"You mean you have no stock?"
"Stock?"
She rolled her eyes. "Cassette tapes and stuff?"
"I have all my old records in my van. But I won't sell tapes. There's no beauty in tapes. I'll just sell vinyl."
"What about the people who want to buy tapes?"
Ruby smiled. To Blake confusion, she turned a scalded shade of red as if she'd just been attacked with a blowtorch. "They can go to Woolworths."
"The old woman who used to own your shop sold sewing stuff. No one came, you know. She lost her marbles. Ended up in a home."
Ruby made a mental note not to depend on Blake if she was ever in need of good cheer.
She began the refit straight away. In one morning alone, she dragged out a washing machine, a car battery, a mower and an iron cot. Ivy was uprooted, floors swept, window frames prised open. Now empty, the shop was suddenly full of potential. It seemed so much bigger from the inside than if you were just passing. A counter could go here to the side of the door, a turntable at the back. There was even room for two listening booths. She bought a bag of tools and set to work.
Ruby might have cut a lonely figure but this did not make her unusual on Maine Street, where many people had once been alone. And barely a day went by without someone popping her head round the door – actually through the door, there was as yet no glass – to take over the work. Ruby found them records by way of payment. The shopkeepers she had observed so carefully now took her under their wing. She learnt more about the ex- priest who had retired early for personal reasons and poured a drink around the same time he poured a bowl of cornflakes. She learnt more about the old twin brothers whose family had run the funeral business for four generations, and sometimes held hands like children. She heard the story of the Polish baker, and she began to realize that when the tattooist scowled, it might actually be a smile.
Inside the shop, broken floorboards were replaced. Walls were replastered. Pipes were repaired, roof tiles fitted, and so were windows. The staircase to the flat was made safe and the building was replumbed. When her cash ran out, Ruby applied to the bank for a loan.
"You won't get it," said Blake.
It turned out the bank manager's wife had just had a baby. The poor woman had not slept in weeks. The bank manager confessed to Ruby he had no idea how to help his wife; he'd tried everything. Ruby sat forward – the chair was on the small side, in point of fact it was verging on miniature – and listened with her chin in her hands. She forgot all about the loan. She just listened. It was only at the very end of the interview that the bank manager read through Ruby's paperwork and said that since she had no experience in retail, the bank would never agree. "You seem a good woman," he said. "But with inflation as high as it is, we can't take any risks." As well as the recession, everyone was worrying about the Cold War. They fully expected to wake up one morning and find Soviet tanks parked outside the Co-op.
Ruby returned to the bank the following day with two records – Waltz for Debby by Bill Evans, and the canticles of Hildegard von Bingen – along with a note, listing the tracks the manager's wife should play. She also included a lullaby. ("Your wife doesn't have to listen to this," she had scribbled. "This is Must for the baby.") The lullaby was not an obvious choice and neither was it classical. It was 'Wild Thing' by The Troggs.
But it worked. The bank manager wrote to Ruby. (Beautifully typed.) His wife had slept. And the moment the baby heard her lullaby, he too fell into a kind of trance, as if for the first time someone had recognized the animal inside him and made a safe place for it. The bank manager added that it would be a pleasure to provide the full loan. He enclosed the necessary paperwork – he had taken the liberty of filling in the form on Ruby's behalf. He finished the letter with best wishes for the future and his name: 'Stephen'. From that day on, they became good friends.
Simple wooden shelves were built. Ruby bought a proper turntable and a pair of JBL speakers. In the early days the shop was stocked entirely with her own albums and singles. Because she loved them and knew everything about them, she arranged them carefully in boxes; not by genre, or letters of the alphabet, but more instinctively. She put Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, for instance, beside Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. ("Same thing, different time," she said.) For Ruby, music was like a garden – it sowed seeds in far-flung places. People would miss out on so many wonderful things if they only stuck with what they knew.
For a couple of years no reps would visit. It looked more like a shed than a shop, one of them said. There was the big Woolworths on Castlegate and a new Our Price Records had opened less than ten miles away. Then when Never Mind the Bollocks was released in '77, Ruby was the only record shop owner within a twenty-mile radius who would take it. She sold out in two days. She had to borrow Blake's Cortina and drive to London to buy an entire new stock. She filled her shop with small independent labels she'd never even heard of until then. Cherry Red Records, Good Vibrations, Object Music, Factory, Postcard, Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, 4AD. In the early eighties, a rep dropped by every day. They unpacked promotional T-shirts, posters, tickets. even freebies; ten records for the price of one. No matter that she refused to stock cassette tapes; the music shop was on the map, and so was Maine Street. Ruby was so busy on Saturdays she advertised for an assistant, though Yang was the only applicant who produced a homemade CV, listing every club she had joined – Cubs, Scouts (both the landed and the sea variety), as well as St John Ambulance cadets, the National Philatelic Society and the Diana Ross fan club. She was clearly desperate to escape.
Now that CDs were on the rise, a few customers and reps had stopped calling at the music shop. Out of date, they called Ruby. Pigheaded. But it was kind of cool, everyone else agreed. When someone has the passion to stand up for something crazy, it makes other problems in people's lives seem more straightforward. And anyway – as Ruby was often pointing out – customers could go to Woolworths or Our Price if they wanted a cassette, or even a new CD. They had stacks of the things.
How could anyone get excited about a piece of shiny plastic? CDs wouldn't last, they were a gimmick, and so were cassettes. "I don't care what anyone tells me. The future's vinyl," she said.
«────── « Break » ──────»
5
She was standing outside. A white haired woman in a red coat. Afterwards Ruby could have sworn she was trying to tell her something, that there was a special glimmer in her eyes even then, but that was probably one of those details that come with hindsight. The simple fact was that one minute there she was, pale face pressed to the window, her hands cupped to her head like two small flaps, then – bang. The pavement seemed to swallow her. She was gone.
"Did you see that?" called Father Oz. His mouth gave up and he stopped talking.
Ruby loped to the door and threw it open, followed by Yang, Blake and the old priest. The woman was lying on her back on the pavement, caught in the river of light from the music shop. She was still and absolutely straight. Her hands were flat at her sides – she was wearing gloves – and her shoes poked upwards. She had never seen her before.
"What could have happened?" said Father Oz.
"Oh my God. Is she dead?" asked Yang.
Ruby was at her side and on her knees without noticing, though once she was down, she sort of wished she was back up. The woman's eyes were closed and there was no trace of blood. Her face was small and definite – her mouth and nose were perfect proportion – slim eyebrows, a delicate chin that appeared even smaller given the exaggerated width of her jawbone, a and neck as long as a stem. There was something about her that was both fragile and incredibly strong.
Father Oz unbuttoned his cardigan and draped it over her. Yang's training as a St John Ambulance cadet now crashed to the fore and she too ran to help. The most important thing in an emergency, she said, was to assess the situation as quickly as possible, without panic, and then to offer the patient reassurance. If she required medical attention she would do her best, though the honest truth was that she hadn't progressed beyond bandaging a table leg.
"Her pulse, Ruby," whispered Father Oz. "Feel her pulse."
Ruby slipped her fingertips beneath her collar. The skin was so soft, it was like touching something you shouldn't.
"Is she breathing?" asked Yang. Sounding panicky.
"I don't know."
At the age close to thirty, Ruby had only seen one dead body and that was her mother's. This stillness didn't feel final; it was more as though the woman had put herself on hold. She might be in her late twenties. Thirty, at a push.
By now a few people had appeared from the houses opposite. Somebody said to fetch blankets, someone else said to get her into the warmth, another person said you shouldn't move her in case her neck was broken. Then a man began to shout about ringing for an ambulance. The chaos was completely at odds with the stillness that seemed to wind like the finest thread around Ruby and this woman, pulling them together and away from everything else. The rest of the world had receded, irrelevant, watery, distant.
"Hello?" said Ruby. "Can you hear me? Hello?"
A flicker of life crept into her face. Slowly her eyelids lifted. It came as a shock to meet her eyes. They were astonishingly large, and blue as clear sea.
"She's alive!" someone shouted. And someone else said, "She opened her eyes!" They still sounded miles away.
She fixed Ruby with those great blue eyes. She didn't smile. She just stared as if she were seeing right through to the heart of her. Then they closed again.
Father Oz bowed closer. "Keep talking."
Keep talking? What could Ruby say? She was used to people standing at her turntable, a little nervous, a little ordinary, but not stretched out on the pavement and swinging in and out of wakefulness. "You have to stay with me. You have to keep listening to me, OK?"
She realized how cold it was. even with her jacket on, she was trembling.
"Stay with me," she said; "I'm here." She thought that sounded pretty much like someone who knew what she was talking about, so she said it again, in a slightly extended Long Player Version. "You must stay with me because here I am." The woman didn't respond.
"We'd better carry her inside," said Father Oz.
Ruby bent closer. She attempted to lift the woman without appearing to do anything so intimate as touch her. As she brought her to sitting, her head flopped against her mouth and she smelt the musk of her hair. So now here she was, on her knees, with a sleeping or possibly unconscious woman in her arms – but not, she was pretty sure now, a dying one – and a crowd of people, urging her to stand up, stay put, wait for an ambulance, get her inside.
"Shall I help?" asked Yang, now blowing on the woman in an effort to keep her warm. Woof, woof, woof.
"Please don't, Yang." said Ruby.
To her relief, Father Oz knelt opposite. He had clearly done this kind of thing before. He whispered, "Ready?" and then he seemed to bear the weight of the woman as they rose to their feet.
"You take her now," said Father Oz.
"Me?"
"Don't look so terrified. I'm right beside you."
Ruby carried her towards the shop, feeling the way with her plimsolls. It seemed to take an unconscionably long time. Now that she was in her arms, there was more of her than she had imagined, and her legs were turned to mush. Years ago she had to help her mother up the stairs if she'd had one too many gin cocktails.
Yang rushed ahead to swing open the door and inside the shop Father Oz pulled crates out of the way to clear a space on the Persian runner, while Blake appeared with towels and an industrial-size bottle of Dettol. (What she intended to do with them, no one dared ask.) Ruby lowered the woman to the ground.
"Go and fetch her a blanket." Who said that? Probably Father Oz. Upstairs in her flat, Ruby pushed past boxes of records. She couldn't think straight. A feeling had welled up from somewhere deep inside her, she didn't even know where, some place out in the shadows where things happened from a different time, or a part of her life that she had left behind. It was the way she had gazed up at her. Eyes closed and then bing. A look of such radiance and intensity she could not see how she would ever get away from it.
Ruby lumbered from room to room, grabbing things as she saw them, a blanket, a glass of water, some plasters, and then just as she reached the stairs it occurred to her she might be hungry so she ran back for a box of Ritz crackers.
By the time she made it down, the shop was full. People were offering coats – a few had fetched blankets – but the woman was already on her feet. She looked even lovelier now that she was vertical. Despite the excitement around her, she remained with her spine very straight, her neck tall, and her long arms folded back like a pair of wings. She just seemed to be in a different space from everyone else. Her snow white hair was half pinned up, half falling down.
She checked her coat and tie belt – not that either of them was remotely wonky – and then her gaze roamed the crowd until it settled on Ruby. Once again, their eyes locked and everything else gave way and disappeared.
"Was mache ich hier?" she murmured. Her voice was hushed and broken, as if she had a cold. Then in English: "excuse me."
She made a rush for the door. People were saying, "Who are you?" "What happened?" "Are you OK now?" Yang was calling, "Wait! Wait!" and someone else was saying stop, stop, they had rung for an ambulance. But she took no notice. She pushed past, almost rudely, threw herself out of the shop and turned right in the direction of the city centre.
Ruby stepped outside and watched as she rushed past the religious gift shop, the funeral parlour, the Polish bakery and the pub on the corner. Her shoes went crack crack on the sparkling pavement as if she were snapping things in half. Streetlamps bored funnels into the dark and the windows of the houses opposite were yellow squares. At the end of Maine Street she turned left towards Castlegate – she didn't look back.
It was years since Ruby had felt so naked and light. She had to lean against the door, and breathe deeply.
She wondered if she was coming down with something.
When Ruby was fifteen, her mother hit the earth like a falling planet. Afterwards she sat every day at her bedside, unable to move, more clothes than person, staring at the tube taped to her mother mouth, the clipboard at the foot of her bed, not to mention the plastic cups of coffee or beef soup – it all looked the same – that she bought from the vending machine and failed to drink. Summer left her her entire music collection; the old Dansette Major, the endless boxes of vinyl. Then came the other news, and it was like being ripped open. She couldn't even sing 'Hallelujah' at her funeral.
"Who was that woman?" Father Oz asked later in England's Glory. He held a glass of pineapple juice because he was teetotal these days. The man who only liked Chopin had bought a full round and was sharing a bar stool with Yang. Mr Boniek, the baker, had joined them, his grey hair freshly slicked and his trousers pressed with a crease; it always came as a surprise to see him without a coating of flour. Plastic bunting hung above the bar from the Royal Wedding two years ago.
Everyone wanted to speculate about the foreign woman who had fainted. even the regulars began to chip in. A line of old men at the bar agreed she must have been on holiday. A woman in curlers wondered if she was on the run, while a man with three teeth suggested she could have been a doctor or lawyer based on her fancy clothes.
"She looked like a film star to me," said Yang.
"Don't be a pillock. Why would a film star come all the way out here?"
"Well, I don't know. Maybe she was a lost film star."
The man who only liked Chopin regretted he hadn't seen her properly. He'd been so caught up in Aretha, the first he knew of the woman fainting was when he opened the door of the booth and saw her running away. He asked if anyone fancied pork scratchings. ("I do," said Yang.)
Father Oz agreed that regardless of whether or not she was a tourist, a doctor or indeed a film star, she didn't look like the sort of person who usually came down Maine Street. She was elegantly dressed, for a start – her clothes were actually colour-coordinated and appeared to have no holes – though why a woman would fall to the ground outside a music shop remained a mystery. A wonderful accident.
"So why did she faint?" repeated Yang.
Why indeed? Again, everyone had a host of opinions. even the people who had not been there; especially them, in fact. Was it the cold? Was she ill? Low blood pressure? Was she on drugs? Or had she just not eaten all day? The more they guessed, the more mysterious and enchanting she became.
Blake grabbed her drink and sucked with unnecessary violence on the straw. "Anyone would think none of you had been with a woman before." (She had a point.) "Anyone would think you never left Maine Street." (Yet again, Blake had a point.) "The woman probably got hit by a piece of falling masonry. She'll probably sue you for damages, Ruby."
She sat hunched over her beer, not really drinking and not speaking either. There was something completely different about her, something she had never met before. It wasn't the way she dressed. It wasn't even the way she looked or spoke. But what was it? She couldn't get it. Her thoughts seemed made of wood.
The Quids brothers arrived from the funeral parlour, muffled up against the cold. Quids #1 ordered port and lemon at the bar while Quids #2 fetched chairs. They too had heard all about the woman.
"Apparently you almost dropped her," said Quids. (Was this #1 or #2? Impossible to know. For a time they had worn different ties to help people tell them apart but there was a rumour they had swapped them, just for the fun of it.)
"Shame you two didn't get there first," said Blake. "She'd be in a hole by now."
No one quite knew what to do with that remark. They decided to sit very still and wait for it to go away.
Knowing her sexual preference, Junior the barman put down his tea towel and began to grin. "Shame she didn't need the kiss of life. Eh, Ruby? Know what I mean?" Well, everyone thought that was hilarious; Yang laughed so hard she almost catapulted Chopin Man off their bar stool.
"Are you all right there, Ruby?" said Father Oz. "You've not made a sound."
That was it. Ruby got it. She realized the thing that was so different about her.
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