Crescendo

Grandie ate more slowly, his face down. Marina pushed his cup of tea over to him, watching him. There was a worried crease between his brows and his face had a sombre look.

Glancing at Gideon she wondered what it was all about. Somehow she could not believe that what­ever it was could be so very serious. Although she had only just met him Gideon had a face she trusted. The hard features were strong and con­fident. He was a man whose word could be relied on, she thought.

While she ate, she toyed with the problem of his age. Late thirties? Was he married? Marina knew very little about men. She had lived in this isolated cottage with her grandfather all her life and had rarely met anyone but casual visitors. She had never become friendly with any of the local young men. She had no time. What spare time she had was always spent at the piano.

Ruffy lay on the red-flagged kitchen floor, wait­ing expectantly for any scraps of food which were left. When she had finished her own meal Marina cut up bacon rinds for him and put them down. Ruffy wolfed them greedily. He had a passion for bacon rinds, but they had to be cut up or he would swallow them whole and get them stuck in his throat. As a puppy he had almost choked to death on one.

'I'll help with the washing up,' said Gideon.

Grandie hovered. Marina sensed a protest on his lips, but he said nothing. Gideon turned and looked at him levelly and Grandie went out without a word.

'Your grandfather's rheumatism gives him much trouble?' Gideon asked.

'Yes,' she sighed. T remember when I was little, Grandie used to pull up stinging nettles with his bare hands because he believed it helped his rheu­matism, but it didn't stop it getting worse.'

Gideon nodded. 'It does help,' he told her. 'It's something like acupuncture. The sting of a bee has the same effect. They call it sympathetic magic, but it's based on a real effect.'

'Our doctor calls it old wives' tales,' she laughed.

Gideon smiled wryly. 'Professional jealousy.'

She looked at his long, sinewy hands. They were finely shaped, their fingers deft and delicate as they moved, fine dark hairs on the backs of them and a wiry strength in them.

'You've never had rheumatism,' she commented.

He grinned. 'No, thank God.' He was drying and stacking rapidly. She finished the washing up and dried her hands, turning to watch at he began putting the plates away. A shiver ran down her back as she realised that he was automatically open­ing the right cupboards and putting the things in them without asking her.

He turned, as if sensing her troubled feelings, and looked at her with dark eyes which were nar­rowed and probing. 'What's wrong? A headache?'

Marina's eyes narrowed. 'No,' she said, and de- termined to ask him exactly what was going on, but just then Ruffy seized the trailing end of her tea towel and tugged playfully at it. She laughed, pull­ing it away from him, and he growled, tail wagging.

Gideon had finished tidying the kitchen when she looked up again. 'Your grandfather tells me you play the piano,' he said. 'Will you play to me?'

'If you like,' she agreed without mock modesty. She liked playing and she knew people liked listen­ing to her. She had begun to play when she was first able to sit on the piano stool. By then Grandie

's hands were beginning to make it hard for him to reach across the keys, his hand span narrowing and narrowing.

She opened the door into the music room. It was the largest of the three rooms on the ground floor of the cottage. Although the ceilings were just as low, the floor space was double that of the parlour. Grandie had had two smaller rooms knocked into one years ago to accommodate the piano. It took up a large part of the room, a beautiful mellow in­strument which was professionally tuned by Grandie himself. His ear was perfect, though it was many years since he had played himself. He refused to play less than superbly. The disablement of his hands had been a tragedy which had laid waste his life for years. Now he seemed to be resigned to it.

The walls were covered with souvenirs of his career, programmes, notices from newspapers, letters and signed photographs of artists he had worked with in the past.

Marina sat on the shabby green brocade stool, flexing her hands. They were her fortune, Grandie told her often, her span enormous, her fingers and wrists supple and strong. One day, he had promised her, she should go to college in London and study under the best teachers, but for the moment Grandie was keeping her with him and Marina knew she could not have a better teacher anywhere in the world. Grandie had taught her everything she knew. Music was their whole life. Grandie poured out for her the treasures of his experience and knowledge and Marina absorbed them all like blotting paper, retaining everything, learning with the speed and eagerness of fanaticism.

Without music she began to play an intricate piece of Liszt. It was her current practice piece and she did not particularly like it since it was a tran­scription from a Verdi opera and Marina did not enjoy music which was intended for one medium and had been transferred to another.

The curtains in the room were drawn back and moonlight made silent patterns on the trees outside. The mist at sea had thickened. From time to time she caught the wail of a ghostly foghorn like the moan of an animal in pain.

She passed from the Liszt to a piece of Chopin, her face drifting into reverie. Music made the back- cloth to her life. There were few people in it. Her parents had died before she even remembered them. Her first steps had been taken with her hand in Grandie's and her first words had been imitations of his. When his own life fell into ruins around him, Grandie had left the world which had until then been his life and retired to this cottage. In winter they often saw no one but the postman cycling past the gate once a day. Most people would have found it lonely, but for Marina and Grandie it was a world enriched by music and they regretted nothing.

She sat gracefully, the silver-white hair flowing over her shoulders, her eyes on the window, un­aware now of the man listening to her.

As she ended her eyes fell to the polished surface in front of her. She caught a misty reflection of a dark face imprinted behind the reflection of her own. For a second she had a fleeting sensation of deja vu, frowning. Surely it was not the first time she had ever seen their faces like that, mirrored together?

She turned and Gideon sat looking at her, black eyes almost oriental in their impassivity, so that she could retrieve no shadow of a thought from their deep wells.

'Thank you,' he said softly.

The lack of extravagant praise, the quiet tone, made her blush as though he had paid her a fervent compliment. She swung on the stool, her small feet lifted off the ground, in the motion of a child.