Chapter 2: The Magic of Silence
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1
"Music is about silence, little rose." Summer said in the white house by the sea.
"Yes, Summer." Ruby never called her "Mother".
A box of new Long Players stood on the table, this month's delivery from the subscription club. She pulled out the first one, and unwrapped the paper. Beethoven. Symphony No. 5.
"Music comes out of silence and at the end it goes back to it. It's a journey. You see?"
"Yes, Summer." Though Ruby didn't see. Not yet. She was only six.
Easing the new record from its sleeve, Summer raised it towards the window. She tipped it this way, that way. Black as liquorice and twice as shiny. Ruby breathed in the beautiful smell.
"And of course the silence at the beginning of a piece of music is always different from the silence at the end."
"Why, Summer?"
"Because if you listen, the world changes. It's like falling in love. Only no one gets hurt." Summer gave a throaty laugh and reached for a cigarette. "Now, then. Would you open the Dansette, Ruby?"
Ruby walked slowly towards the gramophone. This was the superior model – the Dansette Major – with a grey leatherette finish and a deep red trim. When She twisted the top dial, the gramophone woke with a low buzzy growl. She lifted the lid open and eased it back on its hinges.
"Ready?"
"Yes, Summer."
She lowered the disc on to the spindle and Ruby held her breath as the tone arm jerked to life.
"Brace yourself," she said. "Here come the most famous four notes in history."
Da da da dum. The sound crept out of the silence like a great beast emerging from the sea. Da da da dum.
"Hear that?" She lifted the needle.
"What, Summer?"
"You heard the little pause in the middle?"
"Yes."
"You see? You see what Beethoven's doing? There is silence inside music too. It's like reaching a hole. You don't know what will happen next."
After that, they lay side by side on the floor. Her mother, sucking a chain of Sobranie cigarettes. Ruby in her pyjamas. If they wanted to speak, they whispered, as though they were watching the music from behind a tree. "You hear that?" "You hear this?" "Yes, Summer, yes." Ruby had suggested once she might get a job as a teacher and to her confusion Summer howled with laughter. She knew about music because she loved it. Her father could have been a pianist if he hadn't married money. Instead he drank a lot and had affairs.
"But sometimes he told me about music," she said another time. She went very still.
Over time, Summer played all the silences she loved. The more Ruby listened, the more she understood. Silence could be exciting, it could be scary, it could be like flying, or even a really good joke. Years later, she would hear that final pause in "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles – the one that gave just enough time to breathe before the last chord fell like a piece of furniture from the sky – and she would dance with joy at the sheer audacity of it.
But Summer's favourite was the "Hallelujah Chorus". The brief moment of anticipation before the timpani-pounding climax. It had her in floods. Every time.
Silence was where the magic happened.
«────── « Break » ──────»
2
"Ruby, you need to help me. It went just like this."
Three days later, old Mrs Nykos was singing in one of the booths with her white chihuahua on her lap. Ruby sat behind her turntable, trying to help. The turntable was a large wooden unit and it doubled as an office; it held a drift of invoices as well as cigarettes, mugs, tissues, catalogues, replacement styluses, bananas – she seemed to live on them – and a large number of small broken things. The latest broken thing was Ruby's yellow canister pencil sharpener, which had functioned as both a sharpener and a rubber until Yang borrowed it. Yang had an ability to fall over things that were not even there – Ruby had given her a permanent job to save her from a lifetime in the food factory – so really the breaking of the pencil sharpener should not have come as any kind of surprise, but it had bothered Ruby.
It was a small thing but she couldn't snap it back together. And she liked that pencil sharpener.
"Are you listening to me?"
"Yes, Mrs Nykos."
The old lady had a tune in her head and she would get no sleep until Ruby found the record. Mrs Nykos got a tune in her head at least once a week and it could take several hours to locate it. This one was something about a hill. At least she thought it was.
"Tell me where you heard it, Mrs Nykos," said Ruby, putting down the two halves of her pencil sharpener and lighting a cigarette instead. "Was it on the radio?"
"Not the radio, Ruby. I don't have a radio."
"You do have a radio."
"I did have a radio but I don't any more. It stopped."
Mrs Nykos' radio was a huge old Bakelite thing about the size of a microwave, and Ruby had visited her several times to fix it. She didn't know how to fix sharpeners and she didn't know how to fix old radios, but normally the problem was more a matter of plugging it in, or turning up the volume, and she knew how to do both those things. Besides, Mrs Nykos lived alone with her chihuahua across the street and she was one of Ruby's oldest customers.
"How could it just stop?" she asked.
Mrs Nykos said she had no idea. It was now on its side with its legs in the air. If she didn't believe her, she should come and take a look. Then she began to sing again. Her voice was high and fine, surprisingly girlish for an old Greek woman in her eighties. Recently her hands had begun to shake, and her neck too, as if it couldn't quite get the right balance for her head.
"Is it Mozart?" asked Ruby.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Sounds more like Petula Clark," said Yang.
"Are you both fools?" Undeterred, Mrs Nykos lifted her chin and sang some more.
Ruby closed her eyes. She dug her fingertips into the soft sockets, trying to concentrate. She felt churned up. It wasn't just the sharpener. She couldn't stop thinking about the white haired woman who had fainted. It had been like this the first time Summer played her La Bohème. Again when she saw David Bowie on Top of the Pops performing "Starman", and the night she heard John Peel playing "New Rose" by The Damned. What she had felt in those moments was like being wired up to something explosive. It was so new to her, it had felt all wrong – and at the same time she had known it was entirely right. But that was music. Not a stranger in a red coat.
And yet when Ruby had knelt at her side on the pavement, when she had touched her neck for the pulse – when she carried her towards her shop – everything had changed. She had gazed at her as if she knew her, but she was a complete mystery. She had never heard such silence in a person. Nothing had come from her. Not one note.
"Pst, pst, Ruby." Yang's warm mouth whispered violently in Ruby's ear. "Pst, pst. She's back. The woman who ran away."
She was standing on the doormat, so that even though she was inside the shop, she appeared more outside it. Ruby felt her heart surge as if on a wave. She was wearing the same red coat and held a bag in one hand, a potted plant in the other. Something had happened with her hair – bits of it were piled up on top of her head like a flower, while other bits hung loose. Her too-short fringe only accentuated the roundness of her eyes and mouth. How could so much irregular loveliness have been put together in one small frame? She was terrified.
Yang was already skipping forward to help. "It's you! It's you! Hello! Are you OK now? Are you better?"
"I am looking for the woman," she said in her wispy voice and choppy accent, "who runs this shop."
Yang swung her leg like a pendulum while explaining that she was the assistant manager. When she was excited or nervous, she had a way of talking in exclamation marks, suggesting everything was a marvellous surprise. She added that she wished she had a proper uniform! Like the sales assistants at Woolworths! With a badge that said "Yang Xio Long WELCOMES YOU"! She made all her own pin badges, she said. She pointed to a selection on her camouflage jacket. Wham!, Culture Club, Haircut 100, as well as I Shot JR, Frankie says Relax, Coal not Dole and Choose Life!
This was possibly more information than the woman required. She'd only walked into a record shop. She said, "Is there another woman who works here, please?" She spoke slowly, casting her gaze, as if she wasn't sure she would find the right words and was wondering if they might have the goodness to appear like cue cards somewhere to her left and right.
Ruby eyeballed the door to her flat. It was only a matter of feet away. If she crawled on her hands and knees she might escape without her noticing—
"Yes, Ruby is sitting right there," said Yang, pointing expansively. "Behind her turntable."
So there was nothing for it. Ruby shambled past the central table, only halfway she lost her nerve and stopped to rearrange a few record sleeves.
The woman crossed the floor as if she didn't quite trust it. She stood on one side of the unit. Ruby stood on the other. She smelt of lemon and expensive soap.
"I was just passing," she said. "I'm new here."
Ruby's eyes were fixed on an album sleeve, and yet she had no idea what she was looking at. She listened and listened – and it was exactly the same as before. Nothing came from her. If anything, it was like listening to an absence of sound.
"I was just passing," she repeated. "That"s all."
Yang went the colour of a cooked prawn and rushed to the door, gabbling something about Blu-Tack from Woolworths. Before Ruby could ask what the hell the blond was up to, she flew out.
What do you say to a woman with a potted plant, whose tender long neck you have touched even before you said "Hello", and whom you have thought about ever since she ran out of your shop? In the circumstances, Ruby thought the best thing would be to look like a shopkeeper who was extremely busy doing shop-like things. So she flipped through record sleeves. Yang had clearly been here before her – a stack of Bs had been gathered up and placed together in something almost amounting to alphabetical order. Bach was beside Beethoven and Brahms, along with Count Basie, The Beat, The B-52s, Art Blakey, Big Star, Chuck Berry, The Beatles and Burt Bacharach. (But also Thin Lizzy.)
She said, "What a lot of records." Ruby said, "Yes."
She said, "How many?"
"I don't know." Then Ruby said, "I have even more upstairs." Granted this was not the most exciting dialogue, but at least there was a lot of basic truth in it.
"I see you don't have any sections?"
"I put records where I think they should go. I am more interested in what it's like when you – when you, uh, you know…"
Ruby dared a glance at her. Her eyes were so wide they were practically popping from their sockets. "What?" she asked.
"When you – listen. So if a customer asks for Rubber Soul, they usually find something else they would like as well. Not just The Beatles but maybe something, uh, classical as well; a record they wouldn't have tried if the two weren't together." This part of Ruby's answer was addressed to her plimsolls. In fact, now she examined her feet it occurred to her her shoes were the size of loaves and held together with electrical tape. She wondered why it hadn't occurred to her to buy new ones.
Her shoes were narrow – pointed toe, slim heel. Ruby thought her small bare foot would fit in her hand.
She said, "You don't sell CDs?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"CDs? They are round things—"
"CDs aren't music. They're toys. And before you ask, I don't sell cassette tapes either."
Ruby hoped she hadn't read her mind – about her feet in her hands, and so on.
"Oh, by the way," she said, "this is for you."
The woman held out the plant. It was about the size of a child's fist and covered in vicious prickles. She wasn't sure how you accepted a gift like that without getting hurt.
Ruby said, "Did you faint? The other day?"
"I decided to have a little nap."
She stared straight at her with her huge, blue eyes. Then her great bud of a mouth did something funny.
It smiled.
Two dimples punctured her cheeks. Ruby's heart seemed to fall over. She said, "I didn't really. That was a joke."
"A what?"
"A joke? To make you laugh?"
"Oh. I see. Yes." HA HA HA she went. HA HA HA.
"Ruby," interrupted an imperious voice from behind. "Are you intending to spend all day with that young lady?"
Mrs Nykos. Ruby had completely forgotten her.
"Wait!" Ruby said to the white-haired-woman-in-red-with-a-cactus-plant. "don't go!"
She shot back to her turntable, in so far as she ever shot anywhere, and opening her Music Master catalogue she made a show of flipping through the pages. Words spilled. All she could think of was her, waiting still and silent. Never mind Mrs Nykos, what music did this woman need? Blues? Motown? Mozart? Patti Smith? Ruby hadn't a clue. And she was still none the wiser as to why she had fainted. Where was Yang when you actually needed her?
"Ruby, are you listening to me?"
"Of course I'm listening, Mrs Nykos."
The old lady sat with her chihuahua in the booth, the door wide open – there was something mildly unsettling about that – while Ruby moved around the shop, fetching one track after another. "Solsbury Hill? The Fool On The Hill? Blueberry Hill? No, wait." She stopped in her tracks. "There is a green hill far away?"
That was it. Bingo. Mrs Nykos hobbled from the booth with her chihuahua clutched to her chest like a pop-eyed brooch. She told Ruby she was a good woman, there weren't many in the world; now she could sleep. Ruby fetched the record from its sleeve behind the counter, and tapped the details into her sales return machine, same as always, only nothing about this was the same as always because here she was, this woman with her rod-like back, her head lifted proudly, one heel dug deep and the toe pointing upwards, watching her steadily, but so unknown.
"You seem to have an audience." She drifted towards her turntable but she pointed her finger over her shoulder at the window.
Five faces were smudged against the glass: Yang, the baker, Father Oz and the two Quids brothers. Blake was also with them, but she was not looking inside the shop. She had her back to it and was apparently surveying the street, though it would be a small miracle if anything went and happened out there.
Clearly Yang had not gone to Woolworths at all – she'd run straight to the other shops along the parade to share the news about the return of the mysterious woman. You'd think a new star had been spotted in the sky and now here they all were, waiting for Ruby to identify it.
Yang pushed open the door – ding-dong – and the shopkeepers shuffled inside in single file. They got extremely busy pretending they weren't there. The baker stood in a puddle of flour, Father Oz began folding an origami bird, the Quids brothers passed their hats through their hands like wheels, while Yang unwrapped the foil from a chocolate biscuit in a meditative manner. Blake just scowled. She was dressed in Doc Martens, her leather jacket, stripy tights and a sort of sticking-out netting skirt. She looked every bit the bad fairy.
Ruby felt both colossally large and vacuous. everyone seemed to be waiting for her to say something enlightening.
"Is there anything I can help you with today? A record?" It was the best she could think of, in the circumstances.
At first the woman didn't reply. She just remained standing in her still and solemn way, as if she honestly believed she was addressing someone else. Then the penny must have dropped.
"Oh no," she answered. "I don't listen to music."
A jolt passed through the shop. Everyone stopped what they (weren't) doing and all-out stared. Yang was open-mouthed. You could fit a whole plum in there.
"You don't listen to music?" Ruby repeated her sentence very slowly and even so, it made no sense. "Why not?"
She gave an awkward smile. "I don't know."
"Do you like jazz? Do you like classical?" This was Yang. She had obviously decided Ruby required assistance and was rushing around the shop, pulling out record sleeves and holding them up. "Do you like choral? We don't have the Messiah because Ruby can't listen to that one, but we have loads of other stuff."
"I don't know," murmured the woman. "I am not sure."
"We have all sorts of music. don't we, Ruby?"
But now Ruby seemed to have mislaid her vocabulary. Silences were springing out like potholes.
Father Oz came to the rescue. He told the woman it was lovely to see her again, they had all been worried; she was always welcome on Maine Street. An ease came over her as she listened, as if she were breathing suddenly all the way to her feet. He repeated that he hoped she was feeling better and assured her that if they could help her in any way, they would.
Fortunately the woman remembered something. "Do you know a record called the Four Seasons?"
"We have the Four Seasons!" sang Yang. "We have that one!"
She fetched the album cover and gave it to her. She looked and looked, which was strange because it was only a picture of trees and some red autumny leaves.
"Would you like to listen?" said Yang, already bounding towards the booth.
"No." She sounded terrified. She turned again to Ruby. Hitched up her chin. "Couldn't you just tell me about it?"
"What do you want to know?" Ruby stared at her, equally terrified.
"I have no idea. I was just hoping you could introduce me to this record. But that was a stupid idea. Sorry." Her accent made the English words sound broken up; she hit her 'd's like 't's. Stupit.
"You can introduce her to this record, Ruby," said Father Oz softly.
"You can do that."
So Ruby told her the "Four Seasons" were a set of concertos by a composer called Vivaldi. Vivaldi was Italian and lived in the Baroque period. In reply she nodded her exquisite head.
"Would I like it?" she asked. "Do you like it?"
Would she like it? Ruby hadn't a clue. "Well, everyone likes the Four Seasons."
"I don't," said Blake.
"I do," said Father Oz.
"Us too," said the Quids brothers.
"Oh, I like it very much," agreed Mr Boniek.
"I love it~," sang Yang.
"Is there anything else could you tell me?" asked the woman.
So Ruby attempted to explain that Vivaldi was telling a story in the "Four Seasons". It was why she kept it with her concept albums, like Ziggy Stardust, At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash, ABC's The Lexicon of Love and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Concept albums told a story over a number of tracks; Vivaldi's happened to be one about the seasons. Sentences were falling out of Ruby's mouth and she hoped they had verbs in them. She added that people knew the "Four Seasons" so well that even when they listened they didn't actually hear it. They didn't get the little trills that were birds, or the staccato notes like slipping on ice. She reached for a smoke and realized she had one.
"Well," said Blake, marching to Ruby's side and folding her arms. "Look at that. It must be closing time." It was like being sweet-talked by a traffic warden. Not entirely without complications. "Are you going to buy that record, or what?"
Humbled, the woman moved to the counter where she began to fill out a cheque in such a hurry she failed to remove her gloves. Weiss Schnee. Despite the funny way she gripped her pen, her signature was careful and neat. It gave away nothing.
Yang said, "That's a very nice name."
"Oh." She unclipped her bag and replaced her chequebook. "Do you know it?" She shot another glance at Ruby.
"German?" asked Father Oz. She nodded.
"Are you visiting?"
"I just arrived."
"To stay?"
"I don't know yet."
"How do you say your name?" interrupted Yang.
"WAICE. Waice Shnee."
Ruby tried to repeat it but couldn't. Her mouth just wasn't ready. But everyone else was ready. They couldn't wait to give it a try. everyone except Blake. "Waice, Waice Shnee," they repeated, so that now it sounded less of a name and more like a blessing before dinner.
Taking hold of her record, she thanked Ruby again and then, since she didn't seem to know what else to do, she moved to the door.
"I hope you like it," called Ruby. She was beginning to feel more confident. She even put her arm in a big sisterly way around Yang. "I hope you come back. I'm always here. I could find you another record—"
She hesitated at the door, lingering with a troubled expression, as if she were trying to make up her mind how to respond. Then she opened her mouth and said something so devastating it was like being whacked with a stick. "I can't. I'm getting married. I'm an extremely busy person." With that, she swung the door back on its hinges and all but threw herself into the street.
So it was over. The thing was lost before it had begun. Ruby paced the Persian runner, up and down, trying to shake her off. Because if she thought too hard about her, she might want other things, and after that it would be a house of cards. No one would be able to put her back together. She lumbered over to her turntable. Well, she would never see her again. GOOD. She was getting married. She was an extremely busy person. That was all GOOD too. It had been a close shave but she was unscathed. She had her shop, her customers; yes, life was exactly as she had always wanted. No risk of loss or pain. Really she should be grateful she had someone else—
And there it was. Her prickly cactus. Beside it, her yellow pencil sharpener. The two broken halves neatly replaced to form a whole. So perfect, and so ordinary, it hurt to keep looking.
"Oh dear me," called Father Oz from the counter. "She's left her handbag. What will you do now, Ruby?"
«────── « Break » ──────»
3
"People called Vivaldi the Red Priest," said Summer. "Because he had this fabulous red hair."
Balancing the new LP in her hand, she began to clean it. Jingle, jingle, went her bracelets.
"But poor Vivaldi, he wasn't cut out to be a priest. He liked the ladies too much and he couldn't get through Mass because he had asthma."
She lifted the vinyl towards the French windows and they checked for scratches. She tipped it this way. That way. Light spilled over it like water.
"So Vivaldi got a job as a violin teacher at an orphanage for girls. These girls, they were not your average girls, they were shit-hot musicians. So whenever Vivaldi wanted to show off how clever one of them was, he knocked out a new concerto. Now then. Can you open the Dansette?"
"Yes, Summer."
She lowered the disc on to the spindle and Ruby held her breath, afraid the slightest movement might distract it.
"People play Vivaldi as background music, but he was doing big new things in his time. He took one instrument and he made it the star of the show. No one had tried that before. And he was painting pictures with music. That was new too. So you've got to listen. There will be wind and rain and a storm. There will be birds and flies, and a day so hot you can hardly move. There will even be a cuckoo and a sheepdog. You've got to lie on the floor and close your eyes and really listen."
"Yes, Summer."
"Vivaldi was so famous he was like a film star. There was a time everyone wanted to hear Vivaldi, but when he died, they'd all moved on. He had nothing at the end. Do you know the saddest thing?"
"No, Summer."
"No one went to his funeral. There was no music for Vivaldi at the end."
Other mothers told their child bedtime stories; not this one. Summer took her to see Bambi for her eighth birthday and she had to lie in a darkened room afterwards. "Never ask me to watch another film with a fucking talking fawn," she said. Summer had been raised by nannies and the odd tutor – she said she just didn't know the mother recipe. When she saw her parents as a child, it was to bid them good night. Daddy, drunk at the piano – Lissen to thisss, Sum – mummy, sour and grieving. Mummy's true love had been felled at xpres. Daddy was the back-up plan. She never forgave him for that.
Over time, Summer showed Ruby other pictures in music. The trout in Schubert's quintet, the lark ascending in Vaughan Williams, the cuckoo in Beethoven's "Pastoral". Then, as Ruby discovered music of her own, she showed her pictures too. "Listen to this, Summer!" And she would. If it was music, she would come running. She showed her the way João Gilberto could whisper, so that you could hear a little buzzy bee in your ear, or the way Joni Mitchell sang "Blu-oo-oo" and you saw her all alone in the dark. And what about the low baritone sax in Van Morrison's "Into The Mystic", Must like a real foghorn? There were pictures in all kinds of music, once you stopped to listen.
"It breaks my heart," said Summer, the day she played Vivaldi. "When I think of the Red Priest and no music for him at the end."
«────── « Break » ──────»
4
Sometime, if a sales rep was being particularly obtuse, Ruby went through all the reasons vinyl was better than CD or cassette tape.
It wasn't just 1) the ARTWORK and SLEEVE NOTES on the album sleeve. It wasn't 2) the possibility of a HIDDEN TRACK, or a little MESSAGE carved in the final groove. It wasn't 3) the mahogany richness of the QUALITY OF SOUND. (But CD sound was clean, the reps argued. It had no surface noise. To which Ruby replied, "Clean? What"s music got to do with clean? Where is the humanity in clean? Life has surface noise! Do you want to listen to furniture polish?")
It wasn't even 4) the RITUAL of checking the record before carefully lowering the stylus. No, most of all it was about the JOURNEY. 5) The journey that an album made from one track to another, with a hiatus in the middle, when you had to get up and flip the record over in order to finish. With vinyl, you couldn't just sit there like a lemon. You had to GET UP OFF YOUR ARSE and TAKE PART.
"You see?" she would say. By this point she might be shouting. She could also be lumbering up and down the shop, in a glistening sweat. "You see now why you will never get me to sell CDs? We are human beings. We need lovely things we can see and hold. Yes, vinyl can be a pain. it's not convenient. It gets scratched. But that's the point. We are acknowledging the importance of music and beauty in our lives. You don't get that if you're not prepared to make AN EFFORT."
And the reps would laugh and say yeah, yeah, they got it, Ruby. But they had their jobs to do. They had their sales targets to meet. Roman the EMI rep, who had been coming since the early days of punk, warned that record companies would soon be fading out vinyl altogether. Production costs were too high. "End of story, mate." If you wanted to run a music shop in 1988, you had to stock CDs.
To which Ruby would reply, "Get out of here." And possibly throw something. "I'm never going to change."
So what was Ruby going to do about Weiss Schnee's red bag? Ruby was going to do what she always did when life got confusing, and that was absolutely nothing. If that didn't work, she would do the next thing she always did when life was confusing, and hide. ("You have a talent for it," a girlfriend told her once.)
"But Waice Shnee will need it," said Yang in England's Glory, where the shopkeepers of Maine Street had met to discuss the latest development.
"It matches Waice Shnee's coat." Yang had been practising her name ever since she left. Now that she had mastered it, she was keen to demonstrate her new skill wherever she spied an opportunity.
"If she wants her handbag," said Ruby, "she knows where to find it."
"Exactly," agreed Blake, "the woman's got legs." Only, the way she said "legs" made them sound mildly unsavoury. Like an infection, for instance. Or horns. "I don't know why you're all so keen to see her again."
"She was just very lovely," said Yang, who tended to say things as she saw and felt them. "I wonder who she's getting married to?"
There followed yet more speculation which got wilder the more they speculated. Father Oz suggested someone involved in finance, the Quids brothers thought the man would be a lawyer, Yang was sticking with the film theme for Weiss Schnee and was certain her fiancé must be a famous American actor, while the man with three teeth suggested foreign royalty.
Yang had already checked the contents of the bag; nothing other than her chequebook and a tube of hand cream. She'd left no clue as to who she was or where she and her fiancé were staying. She had wrapped the bag in bubble wrap and tucked it in the drawer beneath the counter for safe-keeping.
"I still don't understand," she said. "Why does she not listen to music? And what was she doing outside our shop?" Confusion got the better of her and she sat with both hands on top of her head.
She had made a good point, though, and no one knew the answer. Why would a woman come to a record shop if she didn't listen to music? Why would she want Ruby to tell her about the "Four Seasons"? And never mind those questions, WHY had she fainted? What was she doing in Maine Street in the first place?
"In my opinion," said Father Oz, "she came for a reason. Just as she left her bag for a reason." He gazed over his spectacles with a lopsided smile; it had become that way after he'd once tried balancing on a spiked railing. Apparently he was remonstrating with God at the time. Ruby had carried him all the way to the ambulance. He was lucky he hadn't lost his eye, the doctors said.
"Do you mean that she left her bag deliberately?" asked one of the Quids brothers.
Father Oz said yes. She had made an unconscious decision to leave her bag. It was her soul speaking. She said she was too busy to return but actually she needed to come back.
"The woman sounds a right psycho," said Blake. She laughed and tried to catch Ruby's eye, but she hadn't the stomach for connection of any kind. She sat with her arms hugged around her shoulders, adrift and confused. She couldn't seem to get warm.
"I still don't know what Ruby should do about her handbag," admitted Mr Boniek.
Yang scratched her hair as if she had something alive in there. "I could make posters. Saying, Have you lost your bag? I could put one in the shop window, and another in the bus stop. Then she'll come back and we can find out who she really is."
"We could all put up posters," said one of the Quids brothers.
And so it was agreed. Yang would make posters. They would tape one in every window and they would put them up on Castlegate. So long as she was still in the city, she was bound to return.
As they left the pub Father Oz touched Ruby's arm and asked if she needed to talk.
"Not really," said Ruby.
But Father Oz followed her anyway.
The music shop glowed a beautiful deep blue in the dark. At the far end, light flickered on the booths as if they were breathing. Ruby led the way past the central table and opened the door to her flat. If it was cramped in the shop, the double-storeyed flat was even more so. A kitchen and bedroom on the first floor, two single rooms and a bathroom on the second; all of them crowded with boxes of vinyl. There were no curtains as such, just an old Indian coverlet that Blake had given her one Christmas and she'd nailed above the bedroom window.
Father Oz made his way to the kitchen sink and stepped in a bucket.
"Oh yes," said Ruby, too late. "Mind that." There was also a new leak in the ceiling.
She found eggs at the back of the fridge, along with butter, and a loaf of Polish bread.
"Something's wrong," said Father Oz. "I can tell."
Ruby stood with her back towards the priest, stirring the eggs over the heat. "Do you want beans?"
Father Oz said yes, please. He would like beans. Then he said, "Are you in trouble?"
For a moment, Ruby stood eyeing the eggs in the pan. They were on the point of solidifying into a texture that was more like omelette. Ruby tipped them on to plates, pushed old magazines out of the way and they sat opposite each other in the yellow cone of light from the overhead bulb.
"If you need a napkin, it will have to be the tea towel," said Ruby.
Father Oz watched her solemnly from across the table. "This is a feast. Thank you."
They ate in silence. Afterwards Ruby poured tea from the pot and they stood at the kitchen window looking out. It was one of the highest points of the city. You could see the old gas works, the tower blocks, the endless streets of houses. In windows all around them, people did the small, routine things they always did. Watching television, washing dishes, getting ready for bed. Moonlight cast a shine over the rooftops; they stretched, like thousands of fish scales, all the way down to the factories and docks, where smoke melted upwards in pale columns. Stars were tiny, cold points speckling the sky.
"Remember when you and I used to go night-walking?" Ruby nodded and lit up. "You saved my life, Ruby."
"You saved your life. I just found you jazz."
They kept looking to the window. Their reflections were ghosts on the glass; young Ruby and the ageing ex-priest. Far away a blue light flashed its passage towards the docks.
"She likes you."
"Who likes me?"
"Weiss Schnee."
"In case you didn't hear, she has a fiancé. She's getting married. I don't know why you all keep going on about her."
"I'm just making a simple observation."
"Well, would you stop? With your simple observations? Can we drink our tea and look out the window?" There was an impatience in her voice that made her ashamed.
"I'm only saying that beneath that fringe, you're an attractive woman. it's too late for me but you've got years. And it pains me, the way you insist on being alone."
"It's easier."
"CDs are easier. You don't want those."
They carried their mugs through to the bedroom and played jazz for the rest of the night. All their old favorites – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Grant Green – not saying much, just sitting on the mattress and listening to records like in the old days when Ruby had kept Father Oz company through the worst, fetching him buckets when he needed to be sick, or blankets when he was shaking so hard he wanted to scream and his joints hurt as if they were being twisted. Round about seven in the morning, a faint silvery light eased into the sky, and then came other colours, tangerine and gold and green. Clouds hung like black bones and smoke lifted from the food factories. The morning shift had started.
"God help them," said Father Oz. "Poor souls." His eyelids dropped and snapped open and dropped again.
Ruby said, "I am in trouble. you're right. I like her. I don't know why." She spoke very quietly and slowly, more a shaping of her mouth than a full-blown sentence. She just wanted to know how it felt, to say those things, whether or not it hurt. She reached for a new cigarette and her hand shook a little as she struck a match but she was still breathing, wasn't she, the world was still turning. The lit-up tip of her cigarette was an orange flower in the dark. "But she's got someone else. She'll probably be gone tomorrow. So, hey. That's that. Finito. End of story."
The old priest lay asleep with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands thin and papery. In the distance, traffic was already moving and it was a soft sound, more a lullaby than anything else.
Finally Ruby slept too. She dreamt she was back in the white house by the sea, with its jumble of turrets and gabled windows, ornate chimneys and overlapping roofs, perched on the edge of a clifftop. Summer's family had made their fortune in cigarettes but the house was all that was left. It had turned out her daddy was a gambler and a coke head. Dead by fifty. Her mother died months later.
In Ruby's dream, the tall windows were wide open, sucking the curtains in and out with a life of their own. "Summer!" she began to shout. "Summer!" She chased from one room to another. The drawing room, the ballroom, the old billiard room. She threw open the French doors and tore out to the garden where tamarisk trees grew with their feathery plumes of pink blossom. She even jogged down the limestone stairway to the beach that was bordered with thousands of red flowers. But wherever she went, there was no sign of her mother. Nothing but the waves breaking in twos and threes on the sand. The fizz of the end.
Shaken, Ruby rose and washed her face and made a mug of tea for Father Oz. She couldn't stop seeing the white house by the sea. She couldn't put away the loneliness that swallowed her.
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