‘It’s amazing,’ she says, in French. ‘It’s better than it was before.’
Her heart softens in her chest. She hadn’t realised, in the dreadfulness of sleeping on beaches and under motorway flyovers, just how hard she’d found it to be parted from her instrument and how much anger she’d been harbouring towards the drunken dickheads who’d broken it. But more than that, she hadn’t realised just how much she’d missed playing it.
She counts out the twenty-euro notes on to the counter and Monsieur Vincent writes her out a receipt, tears it from a pad, hands it to her. Then he pulls two Chupa Chups lollipops from a display on his counter and hands one to each of the children.
‘Look after your mother,’ he says to Marco. ‘And your sister.’
In the just-cooling evening air outside the shop, Lucy untwists the cellophane wrapper from Stella’s lollipop and hands it to her. Then they walk towards the touristic centre, her children sucking their sweets, the dog snuffling at the hot pavement looking for discarded chicken bones or spilt ice creams. Lucy still has no appetite. The meeting with Michael killed it off completely.
The early diners have just arrived: older holidaymakers or ones with small children. This is a tougher crowd than the later one. The later crowd has been drinking; they’re not embarrassed to approach the lady in the floaty voile skirt and strappy vest, with the tanned sinewy arms, the large breasts, the nose stud and ankle bracelet, with the two beautiful, tired-looking children sitting on a yoga mat behind her in the shade, the scruffy Jack Russell with its head on its paws. They’re not distracted by irritable toddlers up past their bedtimes. Or cynically wondering if she’ll spend the money on drugs or booze, if the children and the dog are just for show, if she’ll beat them when they get home if she hasn’t made enough money. She’s heard everything over the years. She’s been accused of it all. She’s grown a very thick skin.
She takes the hat from her rucksack, the one that Marco used to call the ‘money hat’; now he calls it the ‘begging hat’. He hates that hat.
She places it on the ground in front of her and she unclips her fiddle case. She checks behind her that her children are settled. Marco has a book to read. Stella is colouring in. Marco looks up at her wearily. ‘How long are we going to be here?’
So much teenage attitude, so many months yet to go before he turns thirteen.
‘Until I’ve made enough money for a week at the Blue House.’
‘How much is that?’
‘Fifteen euros a night.’
‘I don’t know why you didn’t just ask my dad for some more money. He could have spared it. He could have given you another hundred. So easily.’
‘Marco. You know why. Now please, just let me get on with it.’
Marco tuts and raises his eyebrows; then he lets his gaze drop to his book.
Lucy lifts her fiddle to her chin, points her right foot away from her body, closes her eyes, breathes in deep, and plays.
It is a good night; the passing of the storm last night has calmed the ether, it’s not quite so hot and people are more relaxed. Lots of people stop tonight to stand and watch Lucy play her fiddle. She plays Pogues songs and Dexys Midnight Runners’ songs; during her rendition of ‘Come On Eileen’ alone she calculates roughly fifteen euros being thrown into her hat. People dance and smile; one couple in their thirties give her a ten-euro note because they just got engaged. An older woman gives her five because her father used to play the fiddle and it reminded her of a happy childhood. By nine thirty Lucy has played in three locations and has nearly seventy euros.
She gathers the children, the dog, their bags. Stella can barely keep her eyes open and Lucy feels nostalgic for the days of the buggy when she could just scoop Stella into it at the end of the night and then scoop her out and straight into bed. But now she has to wake her hard, force her to walk, try not to shout when she whines that she’s too tired.
The Blue House is a ten-minute walk away, halfway up the hill to Castle Park. It’s a long thin house, originally painted baby blue, a once elegant townhouse, constructed for its views across the Mediterranean, now peeling and grey and weather-beaten with cracked windowpanes and ivy clinging to drainpipes. A man called Giuseppe bought it in the 1960s, let it go to rack and ruin and then sold it to a landlord who filled it up with itinerants, a family to a room, shared bathrooms, cockroaches, no facilities, cash only. The landlord lets Giuseppe stay on in a studio apartment on the ground floor in return for maintenance and management and a small rent.
Giuseppe loves Lucy. ‘If I had had a daughter,’ he always says, ‘she would have been like you. I swear it.’
For a few weeks after her fiddle was broken Lucy had not paid any rent and had been waiting, waiting for the landlord to kick her out. Then another tenant had told her that Giuseppe had been paying her rent for her. She’d packed a bag that same day and left without saying goodbye.
Lucy feels nervous now as they reach the turning for the Blue House; she starts to panic. What if Giuseppe doesn’t have a room for her? What if he is angry that she left without saying goodbye and slams the door in her face? What if he’s gone? Died? The house has burned down?
But he comes to the door, peers through the gap left by the security chain and he smiles, a wall of brown teeth glimpsed through a bush of salt and pepper beard. He spies her fiddle in its case and smiles wider still. ‘My girl,’ he says, unclipping the chain and opening the door. ‘My children. My dog! Come in!’
The dog goes mad with joy, jumps into Giuseppe’s arms and nearly knocks him backwards. Stella wraps her arms around his legs and Marco pushes himself against Giuseppe and lets him kiss the top of his head.
‘I have seventy euros,’ she says. ‘Enough for a few nights.’
‘You have your fiddle. You stay as long as you like. You look thin. You all look thin. I only have bread. And some ham. It’s not good ham though, but I have good butter, so …’
They follow him into his apartment on the ground floor. The dog immediately jumps on to the sofa and curls himself into a ball, looks at Lucy as if to say, Finally. Giuseppe goes to his tiny kitchenette and returns with bread and ham and three tiny dimpled glass bottles of Orangina. Lucy sits next to the dog and strokes his neck and breathes out, feels her insides untwist and unfurl and settle into place. And then she puts her hand into her rucksack to feel for her phone. The battery died some time during the night. She finds her charger and says to Giovanni, ‘Is it OK if I charge my phone?’
‘Of course, my love. There’s an empty socket here.’
She plugs it in and holds the on button down, waiting for it to spring into life.
The notification is still there.
The baby is 25.
She sits with the children over the coffee table and watches them eat the bread and ham. The humiliations of the last week start to wash away, like footprints on the shore. Her children are safe. There is food. She has her fiddle. She has a bed to sleep in. She has money in her purse.
Giuseppe watches the children eat too. He glances at her and smiles. ‘I was so worried about you all. Where have you been?’
‘Oh,’ she says lightly, ‘staying with a friend.’
‘N—’ Marco begins.
She prods him with her elbow and turns to Giuseppe. ‘A little bird told me what you’d been doing, you naughty man. And I couldn’t have that. I just couldn’t. And I knew if I told you I was going you’d have persuaded me to stay. So I had to sneak off and, honestly, we’ve been fine. We’ve been absolutely fine. I mean, look at us! We’re all fine.’ She pulls the dog on to her lap and squeezes him.
‘And you have your fiddle back?’
‘Yes, I have my fiddle back. So … is there a room? It doesn’t have to be our usual room. It can be any room. Any room at all.’
‘There is a room. It’s at the back though, so no view. And a little dark. And the shower is broken, just a tap. You can have it for twelve euros a night.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy says, ‘yes please!’ She puts the dog down and gets to her feet and hugs Giuseppe. He smells dusty and old, a little dirty, but she doesn’t care. ‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘thank you so much.’
That night the three of them sleep in a tiny double bed in the dark room at the back of the house where the sound of tyres hissing on the hot tarmac outside competes with the creaking of a crappy plastic fan as it oscillates across the room, the television of the people in the room next door and a fly caught somewhere in between the curtains and the window. Stella has her fist in Lucy’s face, Marco is moaning gently in his sleep and the dog is snoring. But Lucy sleeps hard and deep and long for the first time in over a week.
14
CHELSEA, 1988