OUR DEAR TEAM MEMBER AND AUTHOR, DAWN TREACHER, IS SHARING HER SHORT STORY 'WHEN THE PIANO PLAYS'

Image by Martyn Cook from Pixabay

When The Piano Plays

Paint peeled on the walls, the ivy now crawling over the façade as if it had something to hide. It wasn’t until my mother died that I felt able to walk up the path to the front door of 21 Hinderson Close. I hadn’t wanted to go, in fact I had sworn I never would, not after that summer but then the letter arrived. Inside it was wrapped a photograph, faded now, creased as if it had been touched a thousand times. It was the picture of a young boy, his hair badly cut, wearing a school blazer, a boy I had never met.

I stood inside my mother’s house. It seemed so much smaller than I had remembered it. I had grown up here, learned to walk, knocked out my front tooth, kissed a boy in the garden when I was eleven. Now the walls were stained with age and dust crawled over every surface. The wooden shutters, which once helped shield us from the fierce summer heat, now kept out not only the light but life itself. I could still picture my mum sitting at the piano, her long flaxen hair falling over her shoulders. She loved an audience, it brought her alive, it made her smile when nothing else could.

The letter had been addressed to this very house, to my mum, in a hand I didn’t recognise. The script, gently sloping, gave away no clues and I couldn’t decipher the signature at the bottom. What the letter said, I will never know, for those lines had been scratched in thick black pen. The letter had been delivered to me, in the flat which I share with no one, in a plain brown envelope, the postmark illegible.

Only my elder sister, Adelle, attended Mum’s funeral. I simply didn’t want to, it wouldn’t have been right. Adelle had shut up Mum’s house, no one could live with its secrets, least of all me, so now it stood empty, though never forgotten. Who could forget? If Adelle said she had, then she is the liar, not me. I couldn’t stop looking at the photograph and I don’t know why but it seemed to be begging me to bring it here, where I couldn’t help believing the boy somehow belonged. I had found a small gold frame in a junk shop which seemed to suit it and now I placed the photograph on the mantelpiece next to a candlestick, encrusted with wax, in front of the mirror. The boy looked out of the frame at me as if he was saying, “remember me.” There are many things I have tried to forget but this boy wasn’t one of them.

It was cold that October day and I wondered why I’d decided to wear a dress without a jacket, open sandals instead of boots. I thought I saw the candle flicker in the mirror, but I must have imagined it. I pulled open the shutters letting a weak sunshine wash over the piano and across the wooden floor. Maybe I should have brought flowers. Mother always had yellow flowers in a vase, even though she knew Dad hated yellow.

A sound made me jump. Spinning round I saw the photograph had fallen off the mantelpiece and now lay face down on the hearthrug. I would have stooped to pick it up, only the piano started to play. It was Clair de Lune, the tune my mother used to play when we were children, the tune she was playing the day Dad died. The very sound made my breath freeze over. Those notes brought it all flooding back, the piercing scream of my sister, that look in my mother’s eye, Dad floating face down in the pond in the garden.

The music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An icy draught cut across the room, which was odd as all the windows were shut. It had been so airless when I had arrived that I thought I might suffocate. I picked up the photograph and placed it back on the mantelpiece. The room stood empty, the lid of the piano closed. I tried to convince myself that I had imagined it, after all, wasn’t I the one with a vivid imagination, delusional if you believed the gossip, the whispers behind closed doors.

My sister appeared to have touched nothing. Mum’s books still crowded round her favourite chair by the fire. Her sewing basket sat abandoned on the coffee table, her cross stitch unfinished. The room smelt damp with overtones of lavender, the lavender we had grown in the garden amongst the yellow roses, that mum had stitched into little cloth bags to keep the clothes moths at bay.

I left the living room and climbed the wooden staircase, my hand holding onto the worn bannister for reassurance. I felt drawn to my mum’s bedroom. It had always been such a pretty room, with floral wallpaper that matched the drapes and the curtain that hung below her white dressing table. Her perfume bottles still stood in a row, a string of pearls coiled on a china dish. But the colours had faded, just as my mum had the last time I saw her. I couldn’t bear to hear her speak or to even allow her to say my name. The doctor assured her things would soon be different, that I would respond to treatment, but how very wrong he turned out to be.

I was about to leave her room when I remembered her bedside cupboard. The top drawer had always been locked. It didn’t take me long to find the key in a box on her dressing table, hidden beneath a gold chain. The key fitted the lock perfectly. Inside, under a pile of old envelopes, I found a small leather bound note book. Between its pages was a piece of yellowed paper, a birth certificate, completed in copperplate handwriting.

Marcus Edward Simpkins

Simpkins had been my mum’s maiden name and Marcus had been born ten years before me, father unknown. The boy in the photograph, was his name Marcus too? On a shelf beside Mum’s bed stood a black picture frame. It held a photograph of me and my sister sitting in the garden with Mum. Dad stood behind us, posing for Uncle Harry. I had refused to keep still. I wondered if Dad knew. There was so much he never knew about my mum, did it really matter now? I replaced the notebook and leaving Mum’s bedroom headed back downstairs. I had only taken a few steps when I heard the front door open. I caught my breath as if my thoughts had been found out. Only my sister had a key. I called out but no one replied.

I could see the living room door from where I stood and in the doorway was a man. He stood with his back to me, his hair thinning, a tweed jacket hanging loosely on his thin frame, the fabric threadbare at the elbows. Had Adele sent him to check up on me, scared of what I might do. As if burning down this house might eradicate the memories that lived forever in my head. Hearing my footsteps stepping down into the hall, the man turned to look at me. He looked so much older than his picture, but his eyes were the same.

Marcus. The brother I never knew I had.

Again I heard the music, the keys of the piano.

“Does she always play that tune?” said Marcus, seemingly not in the least alarmed, unlike me.

I looked to the front door, judging how long it might take me to reach it. I’d outrun my sister in three seconds once, but I had been younger then. Maybe Mum had sent him herself.

“Why did you come?” I didn’t know what to say to him, even though he was my brother. He was my blood but I didn’t know him, but he knew me. He knew where I lived. Hadn’t he sent me his photograph. Did he know I would bring it here?

When Marcus spoke, his voice was deep but kind, it didn’t sting like my mother’s.

“She killed my father too,” said Marcus. “Only they never suspected mother, but I knew. I watched her smother him with a pillow whilst he slept. His feet twitched and then never moved again. That’s why she sent me away.”

I made it over to my mum’s chair and sank into its sagging cushions, suddenly so tired I could no longer stand.

“No one believed you either, did they?” said Marcus.

I shook my head. Not even my sister, who I had loved dearly once, who I begged not to leave me. Not the doctor, who so easily signed away my freedom.

“Let’s leave Mother to play, shall we?” said Marcus, taking my hand and pulling me out of the chair.

His hand was cold, so very cold, that I could barely feel it. I could see the fireplace through him, the candle flickering on the mantelpiece as he moved. I looked down at my own hand, so white my summer dress looked shockingly red against it. He led me out of the house and through the garden, past where once the pond had been before Mum had it filled in and turned into a flower bed.

If Mum still plays I cannot hear her, but I will see the terrified look in my dad’s eyes forever. When they find me, a yellow flower withered in my hand, I hope they realise I wasn’t mad. But now, I am so desperately glad that I am no longer alone.

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COMING SOON: On Wednesday, 18th June, we welcome amazing author, Lucy Brighton, who is sharing a chapter from her novel 'Finding Home'.