Ghost Music Read online

  “Pity you didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Somebody to share your memories with.”

  “But you have a brother, don’t you, and you’re always telling me what a pain in the ass he is.”

  “Toby, yes. But he and me, we couldn’t be more different. He’s a jock. He thinks that a diminishing chord is a piece of string that you keep cutting bits off.”

  Kate laughed. “I think we’d better get ourselves some sleep. I want to take you sightseeing tomorrow, Kensington Gardens. And on Thursday we can go to Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parli-ay-ment.”

  * * *

  Kate fell asleep first, curling herself up into the fetal position, with her back to me. I put my arm around her waist and held her close. The Philips apartment was very hushed, but I could still hear the muffled roaring of London’s traffic, like a distant stampede.

  I don’t know how much longer it took me to fall asleep, but I was right down in the bottom of a well when I heard a phone ringing. At first I thought I was dreaming it, but it went on and on. After it had been ringing for over a minute, I sat up.

  Kate was still fast asleep, and breathing heavily. But the phone kept on ringing, with one of those shrill, demanding, old-fashioned rings, and it didn’t seem as if anybody was going to answer it.

  I eased myself out of bed. The drapes didn’t quite meet in the middle so the room was suffused with enough orange streetlight for me to see where I was going. I made my way to the door and opened it. The phone was ringing in the library. I considered knocking on David’s bedroom door and waking him up, but then I thought, no, if he’s so comatose that he can’t hear this persistent ringing, he needs his sleep more than I do.

  I went limping into the library, went across to David’s desk and picked up the receiver. Hoarsely, I said, “Hello? This is the Philips residence.”

  At first, I could hear nothing but a soft crackling noise.

  “Hello?” I repeated. “Do you know what time it is? It’s a quarter of two in the goddamned morning!”

  More soft crackling. It must have been a wrong number, or a fault. I was about to hang up when I heard a desperate voice shout out, “No! Please! No! That hurts too much! No! Please don’t do that, please don’t do that! No! Not my eyes! No no no that hurts!”

  It sounded like a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, his voice barely broken. “Hello?” I replied. “Hello, who is this? Can you hear me?”

  “Please I can’t stand it, please don’t do it again! Please, I’m begging you!”

  “Who is this?” I shouted. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are!”

  “No no no, please! Aaaaaahhh!” the boy screamed, and went on screaming.

  It was horrifying, but he wouldn’t answer me and tell me who he was, or else he couldn’t. In the end I couldn’t stand the screaming any longer and I clumsily hung up.

  I stood there for a few moments, my heart thumping, wondering what to do. Then I picked the receiver up again and dialed the operator.

  After a long wait, a disinterested West Indian voice said, “Operator services. How can I help?”

  “I’ve just had a phone call. A young boy was screaming. I don’t know who he was but it sounded like somebody was hurting him.”

  “I suggest you call the police, sir.”

  “I wondered if you could tell me what number he was calling from, that’s all.”

  “Have you tried ring-back? You dial one-four-seven-one.”

  “No, I haven’t. Can’t you do it for me?”

  “Hold on, sir, and I’ll try.”

  I waited and waited, and eventually she came back to me. “Your number has received no calls, sir, since August the twenty-second.”

  “That can’t be right. I just answered it, only a few minutes ago.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I have the records on my computer screen, right in front of me. The last incoming call was received on Thursday, August the twenty-second, at thirteen-oh-three.”

  “But there’s a banker living here . . . and his wife. You can’t tell me that nobody’s called them in over a month.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. That’s what the records are telling me. There have been no outgoing calls either.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I put down the phone and tried to think what to do next. I had heard a boy screaming, no doubt about it, but if there had been no phone call, how?

  One thing I was sure of: there was no point in calling the police. I had never had any dealings with the British constabulary, but if they were anything like the New York cops who had investigated the break-in at my previous apartment, I would finish up feeling like I was some kind of crackpot, or worse.

  “Heard a lad screaming, did you, sir? Even though nobody actually rang? Taking any medication, sir?”

  I left the library and went back to bed. As I tried to make myself comfortable, Kate stirred and muttered something in her sleep, but didn’t wake up. I lay awake for more than an hour, with my mind churning over and over. How come the Philipses hadn’t received any phone calls since August? Maybe they always used their cell phones, instead of their landline. Maybe they always communicated with their friends and their business colleagues by e-mail.

  Outside, it began to rain again, and I could hear water gurgling down the guttering. I kept hearing that young boy’s voice, too, screaming in pain.

  “Please don’t do that, please don’t do that! No no no that hurts!”

  * * *

  When I woke up the next morning, it was still dark and it was still raining. David had already left for the office, but Helena made us a breakfast of boiled eggs and toast and Earl Grey tea. We sat at the kitchen table looking at the puddles on the patio.

  Helena said, “Look at it. Hard to think we had so many barbecues out there, isn’t it? I love barbecues.”

  “Helena makes the most wonderful lamb kebabs,” said Kate.

  “So how did you and Kate first meet?” I asked Helena.

  “Oh, we’ve known Kate for a long time, haven’t we, Kate?”

  Kate smiled, and nodded.

  “You should take Gideon to the Courtauld Institute. They have some wonderful Impressionists—Renoir, Gauguin—Van Gogh with his bandaged ear.”

  “Actually I was thinking of taking him to Kensington Gardens, to see Peter Pan.”

  “Oh,” said Helena. For some reason she didn’t look too happy about that. She stood up and collected our plates and our egg cups. I had a strong feeling that something was wrong, but when I looked across at Kate, I couldn’t catch her eye.

  “Helena . . . it’s important. He needs to see it sometime.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  Kate stood up, and laid her hand on Helena’s shoulder. “It won’t go on forever, Helena, I promise you.”

  Helena had her back to me, but she lifted her hand to her eyes, and I could tell that she was wiping away tears. “You’re a good girl, Kate. Don’t worry about me. I’m just being ridiculous.”

  Kate hugged her. “No, you’re not. Don’t ever think that. After what you and David had to go through—”

  Helena gave a sniff and turned around, smiling. “Don’t you take any notice of me, Gideon. I was always too emotional. Would you like some more toast? I have some lime and lemon marmalade if you fancy it.”

  * * *

  We walked to Kensington Gardens, arm in arm, under a large black umbrella.

  As we walked, I told Kate all about the phone call, and the boy screaming.

  “I called the operator, but he said that nobody had called the Philipses’ phone since August. They hadn’t made any outward calls either. I mean, that just doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  “It will.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it will’?”

  Kate kissed me. “Look,” she said. “There’s Prince Albert.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it will’? Are you trying to tell me you don’t beli
eve me?”

  “Of course I believe you. I don’t sleep with liars.”

  “What about Victor?”

  “Victor is a whole lot of things, but he’s not a liar.”

  She led me up toward the tall Gothic spire of the Albert Memorial. It was surrounded by sculptured animals from all four corners of the Victorian Empire—a camel, a bull, a buffalo and an elephant. Under its elaborately decorated canopy sat a gilded statue of Prince Albert, looking seriously miserable.

  “He doesn’t seem too happy, does he?” said Kate.

  “Of course not,” I told her. “He’s dead.”

  “Being dead doesn’t make people unhappy. It’s how they die.”

  “And you know that for sure, do you?”

  Kate laughed, and pulled herself away from me, and went skipping off along the path. “Come on, slowpoke! You keep boasting how fit you are!”

  Eighteen

  She ran out of breath after fifty yards, and I caught up with her, and held her tight, and kissed her. Her hair was wet, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were as gray as the sky.

  “Let’s go see Peter Pan,” she said. “He never died, but he was never happy either.”

  We walked along the crisscross pathways, between the leafless trees. A group of nannies were sitting under a cluster of umbrellas, surrounded by prams and strollers. A small boy was throwing sticks for a golden retriever. Above our heads, completely obscured by the clouds, a passenger jet thundered on its way to Heathrow airport, almost drowning out our conversation.

  “Here he is,” said Kate. “The boy who never grew up.”

  The bronze statue of Peter Pan blowing his pipes was much smaller than I had imagined. He was standing on top of a sculptured tree stump, which was infested with fairies and mice and squirrels and rabbits.

  Kate said, “They put up this statue in the middle of the night, so that it would look as if it had appeared by magic.”

  A boy who had appeared in the middle of the night, as if by magic. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please I’m begging you.

  “You’re thinking about that phone call again.”

  “I feel guilty about it now. Maybe I should have called the police.”

  “Gideon—if there was no call, how could they have traced it? You said yourself there was no way of knowing who the boy was.”

  “All the same, I still feel I should have done something.”

  “Such as what?”

  We left Peter Pan with raindrops dripping from the ends of his panpipes and we walked back toward the Albert Memorial.

  “Maybe we should go to the theater tonight,” I suggested. “One of those British farces where everybody winds up in everybody else’s bedroom. I could use a little light relief.”

  As we neared the Albert Memorial, I saw two men and a young teenage boy walking toward us on one of the intersecting pathways. The men were wearing heavy overcoats, one black and one dark gray. The boy, who was walking between them, wore a navy blue duffel coat with the hood up.

  I wouldn’t normally have noticed them, but when they were less than seventy-five yards away, the boy appeared to stumble, and both men took hold of his arms to support him. Is he drunk? I thought. It was only eleven fifteen in the morning. A little early to be plastered.

  The three of them came nearer and nearer. The man in the black coat was wearing a black cap and dark glasses so it was difficult for me to see his face, but all the same he had a hawklike nose that reminded me of Victor’s friend Jack. The other man had iron gray hair greased straight back from his forehead, and one of those rough, broad, Slavic faces with sandblasted skin.

  They crossed our path only a few feet in front of us. As they did so, the boy turned toward me and for a split second I saw his face inside his hood. Both of his eyes were scarlet, as if he had been hit in the face. One side of his mouth was swollen and his lips were split. Underneath his nose he wore a black mustache of dried blood.

  I stopped. The men and the boy continued on their way, walking quite fast. I stood staring at them as they headed away from us.

  “What’s wrong?” said Kate.

  “Didn’t you see that boy’s face? It looked like somebody had beat up on him.”

  “Gideon . . .”

  “I’m going to go after them . . . just to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Don’t, Gideon. Those two men seem to be taking good care of him.”

  “Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. Maybe it was them who beat up on him. I’m only going to ask.”

  The men and the boy were already a hundred yards away. When they reached the next intersecting path, they turned sharp right, and for a moment I lost sight of them behind the trees.

  “Look—wait here—” I told Kate. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  I jogged off along the path. It was starting to rain again, hard, and when I glanced back, I saw that Kate had put up our umbrella.

  I glimpsed the men and the boy up ahead of me, between the trees, and I couldn’t believe how far they had managed to walk in such a short space of time. I ran faster, with my shoes splashing in the puddles and my raincoat making a loud jostling noise. A Japanese couple in plastic rain hats turned around to stare at me.

  When I reached the right-hand path, however, the men and the boy seemed to have disappeared, even though the path ran dead straight for over a quarter of a mile. There were two nannies, pushing strollers, and an old woman in a pink nylon raincoat, walking her poodle, but no sign of the men and the boy anyplace.

  I thought that maybe they had left the path and made off between the trees. I ran a short way across the grass, so that I could catch sight of them again, but they had vanished.

  As she passed me, the old woman in the pink nylon raincoat said, “You should be careful, young man. You’ll catch your death.”

  I walked back to rejoin Kate. “You’re soaking,” she said. She handed me the umbrella to hold, and she took out an embroidered handkerchief and dabbed my face with it.

  “I can’t understand it,” I told her. “They totally disappeared.”

  “That’s London for you. One minute somebody’s there, the next they’re not. So many twists and turns, not like New York. So many blind alleys.”

  I shook my head. “That still doesn’t explain how they lost me so quick.”

  “Come on,” said Kate. “I’ll buy you some good old British fish ’n chips.”

  * * *

  That evening, back at the Philipses’ apartment, the atmosphere was noticeably strained, although I couldn’t work out why. Helena made only a light supper of crackers and cheese because we had eaten so much at lunchtime. She seemed fidgety and nervous, and she kept getting up from the table and peering out into the back garden, as if she thought that there was somebody out there.

  David didn’t join us for supper, but stayed in his library with the door only a little way open. He was talking on the phone, but with very long pauses in between his sentences. As I passed on my way to the living room, I heard him say, “Yes . . . yes, I know what you want. But I can’t. How can you expect me to agree to that?”

  Around 8:30, Kate and I went out for a walk. It had stopped raining, and the wind had changed, so that it was much warmer, and the sidewalks were drying up. We walked all the way down to the Chelsea Embankment and along the Thames. The Albert Bridge was strung with colored lights, and their reflection danced in the darkness of the water.

  Kate said, “There’s something about London . . . I always think the people here are very secretive. I think the whole city is secretive. All kinds of things go on behind closed doors, but nobody talks about them.”

  We leaned on the parapet overlooking the river. “Is David in some kind of trouble?” I asked her.

  “You heard him on the phone?”

  “Yes . . . it sounded like somebody was trying to put the squeeze on him.”

  “He is a banker. He must be under a whole lot of pressure, most of the time.”<
br />
  “I know. But it didn’t sound like a business call to me.”

  Kate said nothing. I watched her for a while, the way the evening wind stirred her hair. Then I said, “Would you ever leave Victor? Divorce him?”

  “For you, you mean?”

  “No, for Brad Pitt. Of course I mean for me.”

  She was silent for nearly half a minute. Then she said, “It would be good, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s already good. If you left him, it could be terrific.”

  “The trouble is, I can’t. Not yet, anyhow.”

  “Why not? The guy’s an orangutan. And he’s a Tony Bennett fan, for God’s sake.”

  She smiled, and took hold of my hand. “Let’s go for a nightcap, shall we? There’s a wine bar just up there.”

  “So you’re not going to answer my question?”

  “I thought I already did. I can’t leave him, Gideon, no matter how much I might want to.”

  “What—he has some kind of secret hold over you? He knows that you cheated in your grade school spelling bee? You had ‘necessary’ written in ballpoint on the palm of your hand? What?”

  We went to a crowded wine bar called Corkers, and sat next to a couple who had obviously had the fight to end all fights, because they spent over a half hour glowering at each other and not saying a word.

  Kate said, “I just want you to know that you are more important to me than anybody I have ever met. Ever. And for so many different reasons. And I do want to see much more of you.”

  “But you still can’t leave Victor?”

  She gave me the smallest shake of her head. “No, I can’t. And if you understood why, you wouldn’t want to see me again.”

  “Kate—I’m a very open-minded guy. At least I like to think so. What can you have possibly done that would make me not want to see you again?”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Gideon. But it’s the one thing you couldn’t bear.”

  “You used to be a man? You had a sex-change operation?”

  Again she shook her head, although she gave me a smile, too.