Sunday 29 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Seven

Startled, Emily tore her eyes from the contraption and looked at Mr Crouch. He stood so still that she would swear his lips had never moved. Yet she had heard him speak to her quite clearly.

She finally found her voice. “Mr Crouch”, she scratched out meekly. “How do you know my name?”

“Well, Miss Button, how is it you have come to know mine?”

Emily bit her tongue, wary that many possible answers to that question were likely to offend.

“Well Mr Crouch, I heard it from a friend.”

Emily remembered too late that Tabitha had sworn her to secrecy, but told herself Tabitha just meant nobody else was to know, whereas of course Mr Crouch already knew whether or not she had been here.

“I see, a friend. You had never heard of me before then?”

Emily wasn’t sure what to say. She was getting so tangled up in her widening web of fibs she decided she would try telling the truth, albeit carefully.

“Well,” she drew out, “some of the children have made up some stories about you, which I know can’t be true, but it does mean that I have heard of you that way.”

“And what sort of stories, pray tell, would these be?”

Mr Crouch was now looking directly at Emily. His gaze seemed to use his sharp nose to spear its way deep inside her and she was unable to tear her own eyes away from his, even though she felt he was reading far too much there.

“Oh just silly things that I don’t even really remember.”

“I see.”

Emily noted this was the second time he had said this in a queer kind of way, and felt with a shudder that whereas most people used it as an expression, Mr Crouch really could ‘see’ what she was saying. She told herself she must be very careful about what she allowed to come to her mind and what pictures she drew on to answer his questions, for she feared giving too much away.

She was afraid of speaking out of turn, but more afraid of where his questions might go, so blurted out her question again.

“You still haven’t said how you knew my name, Mr Crouch.”

“I was told you might come and see me,” he said, his long, bony fingers entwining as his palms rubbed together, “by someone we both know quite well.”

“Tabitha?” It had jumped out before she could help herself.

“Mmmmm,” Mr Crouch murmured, but Emily could not quite make out whether this was indeed an affirmation or he had simply slipped into his own thoughts.

Emily couldn’t bear the silence that followed, and blurted out another thing that had been on her mind.

“And why did you say you were expecting me?”

“Hmmm? Oh, we can get to that later. Oh dear, I’m being a terrible host, I’m yet to even offer you a drink. A cup of tea?”

A cup of tea? What a strange thing to offer. As much as she liked to think of herself as far more grown up than her 11 years might suggest, Emily still thought it very unusual. But then she didn’t imagine Mr Crouch had many guests, particularly young guests, so such matters were no doubt outside his understanding. She felt a pang of sympathy for him then. Maybe he wasn’t the ogre he was made out to be, was simply the victim of too much gossip and storytelling, Chinese whispers that turned the meaningless to the monstrous.

“Um, yes please, that would be most lovely.”

Emily put on her best grown-up voice again, feeling the offer of tea showed Mr Crouch was treating her as an equal.

“Just excuse me one moment, I’ll be right back.”

Mr Crouch glided in his seemingly weightless way over to the stairs, his head soon disappearing and the rest of his body swallowed step by creaky step.

Friday 27 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Six

The voice wasn’t Emily’s, it was that of Mr Crouch. He knew why she was there then, he must have known all along. The butterflies in her tummy had turned into little starlings now, thrashing about as though desperately seeking a way to break free. She had never been so terrified in her life, but nor had she ever hungered so deeply. Her need for the music box unsettled Emily, she knew she had got into something far bigger than she could comprehend. But a part of her was also thinking ‘I’ve done it – I’ve come to Mr Crouch’s store, where nobody else dares come – me, Emily Button!’.

This sense that she must be braver than the rest of them was helping to carry her through. For too long she had stopped herself from taking risks, from having as much fun as she wanted, let the voice of reason that came to her in her mother’s warning tone tell her what to do. Well not this time, not when she was this close. She took a few steps into the next room, just enough that there was room for the door to swing back in place and for Mr Crouch to step through. She watched as he carried the candle over to a table and waited for him to light the lantern. He kept the wick very short, but even in this feeble light whose splayed fingers spilled across the room she was able to make out more than she had at any stage since she had been out on the street – how long ago that now seemed!

Mr Crouch stood silently, Emily guessing it was to give her time to take in her surrounds. Along the wall on her left ran a long workbench, as far as she could see, above which hung shelf upon shelf of bottles and flasks with various coloured liquids, the largest ones on the bottom shelf and smaller ones each step up. The top two shelves were then taken up by little jars full of powders. On the bench itself were a few more of the bottles, some beakers and test tubes, a burner and clamps and stands of various sizes, and a few books. A writing book sat open, arching up as though it couldn’t wait for the next splash of ink, reaching for the quill that sat just out of its reach.

Along the right hand wall Emily saw Mr Crouch kept row after row of important looking books, uniformly sized leather-bound volumes. From where she stood none of the titles could be seen, but their gold-lettering shone back at her quite fiercely. They ran all the way along the wall until stopping abruptly at a staircase, its steep wooden steps disappearing into the ceiling in a very thin, miserly thoroughfare.

Beyond Mr Crouch, towards the back of the room, she saw them. Stacked almost floor to ceiling were hundreds upon hundreds of small wooden boxes. Emily’s heart suddenly soared but almost as quickly dropped when she realised that though the right size, none were anything like the music box Tabitha had; they were bare, unadorned wooden boxes whose purpose she could only put down to some form of storage – they certainly weren’t pieces of which anybody could be proud, or be moved to envy. As her eyes drifted across, Mr Crouch glided to the right.

Looking past where he had been standing, right down the back of the room, Emily saw a vast glass chamber. She couldn’t believe she had not seen it before. It sat perched upon a large metal structure that must be a machine of some sort, for it had a large panel with a dizzying array of buttons and switches. Emily’s eyes traced the chamber almost as far as the ceiling, noticing that a number of rubber tubes led out from the top. Her eye followed them to their ends, where they reached what she now saw was a metal helmet, held in place in mid-air by a sturdy looking frame. Beneath the frame sat a plain wooden chair, facing the chamber.

“Welcome, Emily Button, to my life’s work.”

Wednesday 25 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Five

The door closed noiselessly behind them, engulfing the two in utter darkness. After the brightness of the street it was a shock to have stepped into this inky abyss where she could barely tell up from down. Worse was the silence; so thick, so bottomlessly deep, she felt she would never be able to pierce it, that her tiny voice had no chance against its oppressive might – would be swallowed before it could even leave her chest. Yet both the darkness and silence were broken by the flinty scratch of a match being struck. The whoosh that followed as the phosphorous sparked, sucking oxygen to its nascent flame, seemed louder to Emily than she felt it should. Her relief at the flash of light quickly evaporated as she sharply sucked in a gulp of oxygen of her own, petrified at the way the shadows played across Mr Crouch’s sharply angular face, dancing demons who seemed to relish her despair.

The flame was tipped from the match to the head of a candle, where after a brief shadowy dance it settled into a gently wavering teardrop. It was brighter than it had been and Emily realised the match was still alight. She watched as it gobbled up the rest of the stick, seeming not so much to extinguish as to slip its way into Mr Crouch’s fingers.

“I don’t use this room here.”

Emily realised he was addressing her, although his back was now turned and he was walking away from the door through which they had entered.

“It’s too close to the street, too noisy, I work further back.”

Each time he stopped talking the deathly silence threatened to engulf her, wrapping its icy tendrils through her hair and around her shoulders, sizing her up like a tailor will when selecting how big a bolt of cloth he should cut off for his customer. But as soon as it grew so unbearable that Emily found herself wishing for it to break, the sound of Mr Crouch’s deep voice, as smooth and rich as drinking chocolate, had her wishing for the silence again. There was something about it that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He definitely wasn’t from around here, it was too lacking in that sharp, chipped delivery, but she could not place it in with any of the more common continental accents.

What concerned her most was the way it drew her in so closely, as though it was right there inside her head. It seemed not to be taking the usual path through the air to her ears, but sitting right there next to her own inner voice, the Emily she heard when she was merely thinking. She put this down to a trick of the dark, but not very convincingly.

They were most of the way across the room now she realised, seeing a door loom from the shadows. Emily saw Mr Crouch reach around his neck and lift something off, then heard a jangling that must have been keys. As he paused to select the key, Emily took the opportunity to glance around. There was little she could make out from the weak candle flame, and what she could see failed to tell her much at all. She could no longer make out the front door or where the blacked out windows must be. The few shapes she could make out were covered in heavy blankets that sagged with inattention. Their forms suggested they might have a counter or perhaps some furniture underneath, but they seemed not to have moved for years and years. A layer of dust stretching across the floor to where they stood supported this, with a few scuffed tracks around the doorway and leading back from where they had walked in the only signs that anyone ever passed through here anymore.

The jangling stopped as Mr Crouch found the key he was seeking. He slid it into the keyhole and her heart jumped at the sound of the bolt turning. Emily suddenly wondered why Mr Crouch had locked the door for such a short period as his trip to the front door, but then realised she had not heard the front door open so perhaps he had simply been returning to the shop from some errand or other.

The door creaked open and Mr Crouch ushered Emily through.

“Ladies before gentleman,” he said, gesturing with his free hand. The chain of keys returned to his neck, slipping under his collar. Emily stepped past him, realising for the first time just how tall he was. She barely came up to his belt, and there was plenty more of him above that as his long, tapered torso reached higher and higher, supporting a face that from where she stood looked like it might be almost as long.

His pointy chin was poking out and his sharp nose was held high, giving Emily the creepy feeling she was being sniffed as she passed. Above this his high forehead disappeared beneath his top-hat, jet black and very expensive looking. She caught a sudden flash in his eyes as she stepped through to the next room and a voice in her head shouted ‘run’ – not hers, not his, but one she had never heard before her. But then came another voice, pushing out the first.

“If you leave now you’ll never have another chance.”

Monday 23 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Four

Now Emily’s mother was certainly not insane, as father explained, she had merely had a turn and the best doctors in the land for looking after a turn like that happened to be at the Institute.

Luckily, nobody had ever found out that this was the ‘hospital’ where her mother had spent six long weeks.

Emily tried another tack. “Dudley, if you promise to me that you don’t say a word to anyone about me being here, and if you also promise to leave me be for now, then I will come and see you tomorrow afternoon.”

She could think of nothing she wanted to do less, but she had to think of something.

“You promise?”

“Dudley, I swear on my grandmother’s grave. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

She saw the cogs clumsily turning in his boney head, his mouth screwed up to one side and his eyes blinking rapidly.

“Well, okay then, as long as you mean it and aren’t playing a dirty trick on me.”

“I mean it Dudley, I really do.”

“Well, see you tomorrow,” he said.

All the while they had been walking slowly down High Street, passing the butcher, the bakery, the greengrocer and the bank. By now they were about half way down, near Mr Pickles’ Confectionary Store. Emily reached into her purse and pulled out a shiny new coin. She had been saving it for a treat for herself, but pressed it into Dudley’s palm. “Why don’t you go into Mr Pickles’ and get yourself some sweets? Then you can tell me about them tomorrow.”

With a smile and nod, he stood outside the store while she kept walking. She turned when she reached the corner and saw he was still looking after her, so she shooed him in with a wave of the hand.

Now she was going to be quite late, Emily realised with a huff. That Dudley was nothing but trouble. But she could never stay too mad with him – she half understood this was because she was flattered by the attention, but Emily was still much better at realising the keenness of her own feelings than really understanding anyone else’s.

Stepping along quickly now, Emily had little time to really take in her surroundings. While she normally loved looking around on trips to the centre of town with mother, now all she could think about was getting to the end of the street. Her short little legs were almost a blur as she pumped her elbows like pistons, willing herself along. If only she had wheels on the bottom of her feet, or wings with which she could swoop above it all and land right where she needed!

The street whirred by in a flash of window displays, fading signs, barrows of goods pushed out onto the street and other passersby – all grown-ups. She was going so fast she almost ran straight into Mr Brown the postmaster and just about tripped over the tiny little dog being dragged along by the enormous wife of the innkeeper, its teeth bared and snapping as his lead was jerked away from her just in time. By the time she saw the harbour Emily was just about out of breath. She deliberately slowed for the length of the last block, trying to regather her composure. She caught a glimpse of herself in the window of a barbershop as she went by, looking almost as red as the candy striped pole beyond the window.

“Okay Emily Button, you stop that now,” she admonished.” You just be yourself and don’t let your worry get the better of you.”

By now the smell of the sea wrapped her in its consuming embrace, the salty soup of the air somehow both refreshing and making her a little drowsy. She loved the sea, though she rarely got to be near it. Mother would only rarely visit, despite the town being perched on its very edge. Though she felt she shouldn’t dawdle for long, Emily could not resist standing out here a moment, gazing down to the harbour where ships were getting ready to slide off from their moorings, heading to destinations far, wide and mysterious, to places too magical and beyond her understanding to truly comprehend.

How she longed to be on one. The nights when the breeze would carry the unmistakeable scent of the sea across the town, up the hill and into her bedroom, were her favourite nights. She would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, the shadow puppets dancing on it cast by the trees that lay just beyond, picturing the boats in the harbour pulling out and setting sail. She would imagine herself stowed away on board, curled up behind some barrels of rum or salted pork, or wrapped up in some spare sailcloth so that nobody would find her until it was too late, they would have to keep her aboard. She wouldn’t mind working, helping out in the kitchen or scampering around above deck – best of all would be a role as a lookout, high in the crow’s nest. Her eagle eyes would spot things before anyone else could, she would quickly earn a reputation as the finest lookout on the seven seas. She would watch the cat’s paws pad across the ocean top, turning her face to them and waiting for the wind to hit, licking the crusting salt off her dry lips.

The finest, most handsome captains would clamour for her to be on their ship, she would bring good luck and much fortune with her special talent. But such was the lot of a girl, a young girl at that, that she knew this was all but a dream, a flight of fancy that could never be. Mother would miss her too terribly, while father would expressly forbid it. She came crashing back to earth, but more determined than ever that there must be more to her life than living out other people’s expectations, more to look forward to than sewing and cooking and cleaning. In what could only have been a few seconds, the music box had convinced her of all this and more.

Emily had reached Mr Crouch’s store. Standing outside, taking in its blackened and dusty windows, its air of musty sadness and stale whiff of danger, her resolve – so strong only moments prior - all but dissolved. She must be crazy. What was she doing here, what made her think she could possibly face Mr Crouch, let alone bring up the music box with him? It was madness. She should just go home now and pretend that it had never happened, that she had never come here. Emily bent down to her socks, reached to her ankle and pulled out her rock. “You silly thing,” she whispered. “What lunacy you get me caught up in!”

Emily straightened up and turned to go. Not more than one step had she taken before she ran straight into a big, black, unmoveable mass - falling flat on her tail. A little dazed, she passed her hand across her face and looked up. An electric chill ran right up and down her spine, setting her every hair on end.

“Emily Button; I’ve been expecting you.”

Friday 20 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Three

Emily closed the door behind her quietly, the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.

She’d done it! But she felt a knot in her tummy, which she knew was only partly fear. She hated fibbing to her mother. She recalled Pinocchio’s fate, that little wooden puppet who wanted so desperately to be a boy, but whose every lie showed for all the world to see. Absentmindedly her hand went to her nose, rubbing its button end. This was different. This was a one-off in exceptional circumstances. She would make it up to mother somehow.

Nevertheless the knot was still there. To take her mind of it, she tried to picture some of her favourite things. She began with remembering her first real friend, Hopalong. Hopalong was a bunny who used to live in their yard, when she was but three or four. Hopalong was freakishly white, so white her eyes would hurt if she played with him too long on a sunny day. He loved to be petted, for his fur to be stroked away from his front to his back, and day after day she would spend grooming him to his shiny best.

One day, when she was nine, she returned home to find mother sitting on her bed. She knew from the sad smile she wore that the news was not good.

“Honey, come and sit here. Now listen to me, you’re not to get too upset, I’m telling you this because you’re a big girl now and you must know about these things. While you were away I went into the yard and, well, we’ve had a visitor. Hopalong won’t be staying here any longer, he’s passed away. He’s died Emily.”

“What happened?”

“Well you don’t need to know all that, but Mr fox came by and wasn’t very nice to Hopalong. But he’s somewhere quite wonderful now, with grass as far as the eye can see, and clean hay every day, and carrot after carrot after carrot.”

“But who will look after his coat?”

“Why he’ll have the finest coat imaginable, where he’s gone they have people who will look after his coat every minute of the day. He will be the most handsome bunny around.”

Emily kept a brave face but as soon as mother left the room she threw herself down onto the bed. Racked with sobs, her eyes and nose ran all over her pillow. For hours it seemed she cried and cried, deep down unsure whether it was for Hopalong or for herself. She was desperately lonely and Hopalong had been the perfect friend – welcoming, loyal, loving, warm.

Lost in her thoughts, finally having put the music box to the back of her mind for the first time since she had seen it, it was some time before Emily felt his presence. His shadow first gave him away, then the shuffling of his dragged feet, while his breathing, hard and through the mouth, gave away who it was.
“Dudley Dimple what on earth do you think you’re doing,” she demanded, pirouetting to a standstill.
“How dare you creep up on me like that!”

By now Emily had reached the top end of High Street. Mr Crouch’s store was down the harbour end, amidst the bars and the tailors and the fishmongers. This was the last thing she needed.

“Hi Emily. I wasn’t creeping up. I’ve been trying to get your attention, but you’re off in one of your daydreams again.”

“I most certainly am not!” she huffed, crossing her arms defensively. “I just haven’t got time for nincompoops like you right now. Or ever!”

She was not usually so short with Dudley, but his timing was a disaster. He harboured a crush on her; this she knew. She had heard it from Tabitha, and heard many of the boys teasing him about it. The trouble was, she was very much in love with his elder brother Thomas, who was almost 14. Her heart turned back-flips any time he was near, butterflies flittering around and making her feel most unsettled. She hated when it happened, knowing how red and flushed she was getting, passionately cursing her inability to concentrate. Dudley no doubt had a heart of gold, but it was matched with a head of lead.

A shadow passed over Dudley’s face and his fat lower lip slip up and swallowed his thin top lip, looking to Emily like nothing so much as a slug gorging on a rose petal. Disgusted but relenting, she softened her tone.

“Look, Dudley, I’m sorry, you just frightened me. I guess I wasn’t paying attention, but you simply can’t go around sneaking up like that. You’ll scare someone half to death someday, someone far less forgiving than me.”

She found she often took this tone with Dudley, firm but gentle and guiding, and began wondering whether she would make a good mother one day, or perhaps a school teacher.

“Okay Emily. I’m really sorry. But I just wanted to know what you’re doing down here, all by yourself. I’m sure your mother doesn’t want you walking down this far into town by yourself.”

“Yes, well, I’ve have you know she has sent me on a very important errand,” she said haughtily, raising her shoulders as high as she could and broadening her chest, hoping her ‘grown-up voice’ would be convincing. But she squeaked out the last two words, somewhat undoing her effort.

“Your mother? Mrs Button? I should think not. Everyone knows she would never let you up here by yourself. Even Dudley Dimple knows that.”

Dudley Dimple
Is ever so simple
Thick as two planks of wood
Yet Emily Button
The poor love glutton
Thinks he’s sweet as Christmas pud!


She never found out who came up with that one, but had heard it more than enough. The last thing she needed was for someone to see her here with him now. It’s true she had been quite friendly with him at once stage, but this had been in the vain hope of seeing more of Thomas. Emily was crushed when Thomas started taking with Wanda Hildegard, the snooty daughter of the bank manager. After that she could not abide the thought of Dudley as he reminded her too much of Thomas, while being nothing like him at all.

What mattered most now, however, was getting to Mr Crouch’s store quickly so she could sneak back home, hide her music box away and make her way over to Tabitha’s so she would keep her word to mother.

“Okay Dudley, you’re right. Mother doesn’t know I’m here – it’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“That’s right. I’m getting her a present for her birthday.”

“Oh. Well I can help with that.”

“No you can’t Dudley, you simply cannot.”

“Why? I like presents.”

“Because you can’t keep a secret, that’s why not.”

“Can too.” There went the slug again, exasperating Emily further. She simply did not have time for this.

“Dudley, remember when I told you about how mother had been into the hospital. How you promised never to tell anyone. And how the next day, the very first thing people would say to me was ‘oh Emily, I hope you’ll be okay’.”

Dudley looked down. Emily followed his gaze and saw his stumpy, shoeless, filthy feet, the short fat toes squashed together like a pen full of pigs – she half expected them to start squealing.

“I didn’t mean that. I only told Jimmy.”

“Jimmy couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his teeth were cemented and his lips were sewn together.”

She hadn’t meant to tell anyone, Dudley of all people. But it just came out and, she had to admit, it was like a massive weight had been lifted off her chest when she said it. But she regretted it almost as quickly, especially when father had expressly forbid her from telling a soul, from breathing a word about it. Even she wasn’t supposed to know, but she had overheard father talking about it with Dr Hopkins at the front door. For it wasn’t just any hospital, but the hospital on the hill – The Edgewood Institute for the Insane.

Saturday 14 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter Two

Emily couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, her damp sheet tangled around her feet. Try as she might she simply could not shake the vision of that music box. Harder still to shake was the angel choir which refused to leave her be, soaring around her room, sitting in the rafters and on the sill, mocking her with its unearthly song.

It all came back to her – the weightlessness, the feeling of true freedom. What really stayed with her though, what had touched her the deepest, was the music. She had never had a particular affinity with music, but it had spoken to her in a way she had never before experienced, touched her in a way she could never imagine. In all her 11 years she had never realised there were parts of her outside her conscious understanding, aspects of herself that were waiting to be unearthed.

All night long it played on her mind. The first birds of the morning chirruped at her window, promising an imminent dawn. Emily finally fell into a troubled, exhausted sleep, her decision made.

Waking from a deep foggy slumber, the night’s plan slowly returned to Emily. In the light of day she shook with terror at the thought of Mr Crouch peering down his crooked nose at her, his beady eyes locking on hers. She simply couldn’t do it, not Emily Button. But Tabitha did it, and anything Tabitha could do...

She knew it couldn’t wait. The longer she put it off, the more she would talk herself out of it. It had to be today. Emily went to her dresser and opened the top draw. She drew it out and reached her hand in until it arrived at the back left hand corner. Her hand closed around the handkerchief and drew it out. Unfolding the cotton wrapping, it revealed its bounty – a pink stone she had been given by Mrs Livingstone, the dear old lady who she did chores for when she lived next door. Mrs Livingstone had moved away further up the coast to look after her mother, but left the stone that Emily had long admired.

She wasn’t generally a superstitious girl, but Emily knew this stone was good luck. She had it with her when her mother had gone into hospital and she pulled through, and she had it with her when she stayed at her grandmother’s and found that silk purse with the coins out in the street. She couldn’t bring herself to keep it, handing it to her grandmother, but she felt it was still an example of luck.

Emily returned the stone to the handkerchief and carefully rewrapped it, placing the bundle inside her right sock, pushing it down to the ankle. She would need all the luck she could muster, firstly to convince mother to let her leave the house after lunch (with so many chores still to do!) but even more so if she were to actually approach Mr Crouch’s store.

The mere thought of it was simply too horrible – preposterous in fact. The more she thought about it the more she considered the idea the silly concoction of a fevered mind. Yet each time her thoughts returned to the box, to its intricate pleasures and magical delights. Now she knew about it, she could not rest until she could call one her own.

The morning was the slowest she could remember. The clock on the parlour wall ticked more loudly than normal, echoing through the still house. It was so unbearable she had to leave, had to make her way upstairs where it could not taunt her so.

“Emily, I thought you were dusting downstairs.”

“I was ma-ma, but I’ve finished,” she fibbed, hoping mother would not examine her work too closely.

“I thought I would get a start up here.”

“Okay, but only if you’re sure.”

Emily went through the motions but could not concentrate. She was thinking about a story she had heard from one of the neighbourhood children recently. Toby was a scoundrel to be sure, with scabby knees and a mouth as filthy as his unwashed clothes. But he seemed to know things before most of the other children. He liked to spin his stories out, make a big song and dance out of them until the gathering circle swelled with fear and excitement, dressing up his tales with the actions and voices of those who inhabited them. She thought he was a terrible boy, but was as mesmerised as any of the others when he was in full flight.

Toby had told the tale of a boy named Peter who used to live down the end of our street. He said that Peter had been an ordinary boy just like the rest of them, until one day someone had dared him to go into Mr Couch’s store. Peter was still new to the area and was yet to be regaled with all the stories about Mr Crouch, so had nothing to fear. He marched up to the store, with a group of five or six of the older boys peering from around the corner. They watched him disappear through the front door after an interminable wait.

For over an hour they waited, growing more and more worried by the minute. Finally it grew too late for them to be out and they each snuck home. The next day they regathered at their usual meeting place, but Peter did not arrive. Sebastian, the eldest, summoned up the courage to go and knock on the door of Mr and Mrs Goldheart, Peter’s parents. The door opened an inch only to be slammed in his face before he could say a word. Shaken but determined, Sebastian went around to the rear of the house and climbed onto the back wall. Like an alley cat he tiptoed along the top of the side fence, lifting himself onto some piping so he could peer through the back window.

What he saw he would never say, but the normally unflappable rogue returned looking deathly white, paler than a ghost. It proved to be the last any of them ever saw of Peter again.

Emily had told herself that she never really believed this story, deciding there must be a perfectly logical explanation as to what had really happened to Peter. Perhaps he had simply gone to live with relatives – he did have many brother and sisters, maybe more than his mother and father could afford to look after. Nevertheless, it did seem very strange, and Sebastian certainly seemed to keep as far away from Mr Crouch as the rest of them.

But if that was true, Emily reasoned, then how was Tabitha able to do it? She wanted desperately to ask her friend more, but hated to let on how jealous she was about the music box and did not want anybody knowing what she planned, not even her best friend.

After what felt an eternity, lunchtime finally arrived. Emily’s lack of appetite meant she did little more than push food around her plate, but she didn’t want her mother thinking anything was amiss, so she carefully dropped bits of her roast beef and potatoes into a paper towel on her lap, carefully bundling them up and taking them out into the yard when she was finally excused. She whistled gently until Mr Puddlesworth the neighbour’s purring Persian peered his head over the fence, smelling out the roast beef and padding quickly into the yard.

“Now don’t you go blabbing!” Emily admonished as he nibbled on the beef, knowing Mr Puddlesworth was all too readily prone to gossip.

“If you do there will be no more treats where that came from.”

Mr Puddlesworth rubbed against her leg and purred contentedly, cementing their deal. He was less interested in the potato, so Emily had to dig it into the flower bed with a trowel, burying it behind the nasturtiums.

Now for the tricky part. Emily knew mother would not let her up into High Street by herself, but she had a plan. She would tell her she was going to Tabitha’s, which meant only travelling to the next street across. She was loathe to fib to mother, but decided that as long as she went to Tabitha’s after visiting Mr Crouch’s store, then she really wasn’t fibbing at all, simply leaving out a few details. Emily knew this was not really good enough, but felt the circumstances allowed for special measures.

“Ma-ma?”

“Yes dear?”

“Would you mind terribly if I were to go and see Tabitha now?”

“Well Emily, you have been there an awful lot lately. Don’t you think you might like to spend the afternoon here for a change? I could really do with your help.”

This wasn’t going at all well. Emily felt heat rising from the collar of her periwinkle dress, threatening to spill over the lace edges. She fought it back, swallowing with difficulty as though her potato from lunch was sitting right at the back of her throat. Picturing it there in the garden, she felt hotter again. Clenching a handful of hem, she gushed.

“Oh ma-ma! I would dearly like to stay, but you know Tabitha has been unwell. She has been missing so many of her lessons that I felt I should help her make some of them up.”

She had no idea where this came from, but wherever it was she was very grateful as she saw mother’s face soften.

“Oh okay then Emily,” she relented,” “but do try not to get under Mrs Tibbits’ feet won’t you dear?”

“I promise ma-ma!” Emily threw her arms around her mother’s neck, burying her face in her hair. She skipped to the door before her mother could change her mind, turned around to blow a last goodbye kiss, then set out into the street.

Saturday 7 April 2007

The Music Box: Chapter One

IT was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Emerald green, etched with fantastical figures, writhing in twisted consort. Jade faces peered back at Emily, their sharp gazes piercing her very soul. As she watched the box seemed to cast a light of its own, a subtle glow that danced on Tabitha’s smiling face.

“Want to see inside?”

Emily had lost her voice but nodded vigorously.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course of course!” she burst out, surprising herself with the urgency of her desire to see within. She realised her nails were digging into her palms, leaving on each four perfect crescent moons.

As Emily watched with widening eyes, Tabitha slowly opened the lid. Her breath stopped. A miniature kingdom was held within, a tiny, mountainous world. As she looked more closely she saw little villages spread across the landscape, each inhabited by a population seemingly oblivious to her staring. Smoke wafted from various chimneys and the golden light and length of shadows suggested the day was drawing towards night.

Then she heard it. An angelic choir whose unearthly voices rang with a purity and drama the likes of which she had never heard. This music was not that of Bach, or Wagner, or even Mozart – it was beyond even the imagination of these tortured musical geniuses who conversed daily with the gods.

Emily let these angels lift her by the shoulders and succumbed to weightlessness. She felt herself sweep down into the box, passing over the plains from village to village, soaring over the foothills and around the mountainside. As she whirred by she could feel the tumbling mix of cool evening air and the heat being released by the earth, she could smell the moist grass, the flowers releasing a last burst of perfume before closing up for the night, the assorted animals in their pens. She could hear the children giggling as they chased each other around corners, the weary admonitions of mothers beating dust from bed covers, the scuffing of boots of the men trudging back from the fields, hands blistered and stomachs growling.

A sudden whoosh and a heavy clap – Tabitha had closed the lid on the box. Emily slowly regathered herself, still somewhat dizzy and decidedly flushed of face. She quizzically appraised her friend. Tabitha’s family certainly weren’t well-to-do enough to explain the genesis of this music box – any music box really, let alone one so unusual.

“Where did you get it from?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Oh come on, you know I won’t tell anybody.”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Tabitha, we’re best friends. I promise I won’t say anything.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I just do is all.”

“Okay, but you have to swear – not a word to anybody.”

Emily could not bear to tear her eyes away from the box. Still it glowed, a pulsing light that seemed to follow the still rapid beating of her little heart.

“I swear.”

“Well, you know Mr Crouch?”

Of course Emily knew who Mr Crouch was. All the children in Seaforth knew who Mr Crouch was. A tall, deathly pale man who seemed to have had every last ounce of blood drained from him. He was forever frowning from behind his monocle and was never seen without a crisp black suit, top-hat and cane, his shiny black boots coming to the cruellest of points.

Mr Crouch had a shop in the high street and its windows were entirely blacked out. The children were all terrified witless of him and only the boldest dared sing the skipping song that some of the older ones had devised:

Old man Crouch
Is a one-eyed grouch
With a heart that’s black as soot
If he sees you stare
He’ll eat you then and there
Leaving nothing but your foot!


She shuddered with a wild but petrified glee whenever she heard the song or caught sight of Mr Crouch in town. Once she had asked her mother about him but her mother told her to hush and never say that name again.

“Of course I know him,” Emily said, wary of using his name even without mother around.

“Well that’s who I got it from.”

Emily’s eyes opened wide. She couldn’t believe what she had heard. Tabitha was always a bit braver than she, that was true, but Emily knew she had always been as terrified of Mr Crouch as any of the other children.

“How?”

“From his shop.”

“But how could you pay for such a thing?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gave it to me.”

“But surely you had to give him something?”

“Not a thing.”

“Why would he just give something like that away?”

“Who knows? Maybe he’s lonely and just wanted somebody to like him.”

Emily’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t think straight while the music box was still there, the faces still watching her so intently, as though to hear what she might say to Tabitha next. But they were going to have to wait, as at that moment Tabitha’s mother loomed in the doorway. Emily turned to see what Tabitha’s mother would say about the music box, but looking back at Tabitha she saw the box was gone.

“Emily, Tabitha’s having tea now, I think it’s time you headed home – your mother will be most worried.”

“Yes Mrs Tibbits.”

Emily stood from Tabitha’s bed and walked slowly towards the door. She looked back and saw Tabitha had retrieved her music box from beneath the blanket under which she had hidden it when her mother appeared. Burning envy took hold.

Sunday 1 April 2007

Vinyl Diaries V: Pixies (Part II)

Away with the Pixies

In Heaven, everything is fine.

If Pixies really have seen or indeed been to the other side, I can only imagine they saw themselves looking back.

I should be too old for this by now, but then so should they. And if they can enjoy it, well so can I. It was like being a teen all over again as the train crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, taking us to the Luna Park amusement park, a fairly fitting venue for the Pixies sideshow. Rock'n'roll freaks, they are definitely sideshow alley material.

The sparse stage was set up quite cosily, with the rapturous response to the band's arrival seeming to spark something special for them from the very start.

The delightful Kim Deal is never without a huge grin of course, but it seemed even wider as she opened the night with In Heaven. Not everyone seemed all that familiar with the track, but as soon as it was clear that not only would we be getting Wave of Mutilation but that it would be the sleepy wash of the UK Surf version, it began to sink in - after all this time, not only was this Pixies but it was as brilliantly tight and dreamy as we could have wished.

The tempo raced away as Bone Machine crunched into gear, while the bouncing bass of Here Comes Your Man sent us all aswoon - and abounce.

The songwriting craft at the heart of their music becomes even clearer when you can see how it is all brought together, seamlessly entwining almost contradictory elements to create a harmoniously complex beast, as shown next in This Monkey's Gone to Heaven.

Frank's scream may not be as bone-rattling and teeth dislodging as back in his prime, but it's still an amazing primal release of whatever those bizarre demons are he seems still to carry around, the disfigured monkey on his back that even now he just feels so unable to shake.

In the sleepy west of the woody east... It's edu-kational!

I've got the softest of soft spots for UMass, I must admit. A handful of years ago I actually spent a year studying at the very college where it all began, more than once thinking that it was the closest I was ever going to get to a Pixies moment. It pleased my little pop-heart no end to be taking the same film classes Frank Black had taken, watching films on the same screen that inspired Debaser. Well, they played it. I was smiling already, so I smiled a bit more.

The electric shock of their Jesus and Mary Chain cover Head On was a jittering jangle that slid nicely into the crooney Caribou, getting back to nature in a strangely Frank way.

From here, things got messy. Gloriously so. A ragged, dirty, heaviness kept in check by an almost hidden melodic imperative, the sleaze factor was notched up a little by the low-slung Subbacultcha and its black-clad characters 'looking like an erotic vulture'. Number 13 Baby was almost at the other end of the high-low spectrum, Mr Black pinching his voice into near falsetto.

But it's back to the scream as "hips like Cinderella" spin on in on the back of the darkly thumping bass of Tame. Joey and Frank played off and against each other deliciously towards the end, drawing some beautiful looping and colliding duelling guitar moments that brought shivers.

Did I mention sleaze? We hadn't seen real sleaze until Hey and its whore choir, sliding into a murky Gouge Away. The tempo was upped again and again as Mr Grieves and The Holiday Song passed in quick and chaotic succession and rolled on into the original take of Wave of Mutilation.

A short breather followed the last ringing outro, but there was still no respite yet. If anything the sound was filling out even further, richly quilted despite there was a restraint to the playing that didn't quite explain the density.

Planet of Sound was wickedly wild and led neatly into a cracking Debaser. Cracking remained the order of the evening as Crackity Jones whipped frenziedly into Something to Tell You, before the crazy Spanish adventures of Isla de Encanta and delightfully dodgy documentation of incestuous union that is Nimrod's Son.

The sheer weight of musical ideas was getting almost too much to take, with this latter part of the set reminding how intense these four can be. Another of the Spanish outings in Vamos followed and Joey took centre stage, working voodoo magic on his weeping guitar. With a drumstick to assist he conjured up devil after devil, sparking spirals of looping feedback into the air before shattering it all into a million pieces, only to pick it all back up again and blow us all clear away.

We were stranded way out in the water, which could only mean one thing - the musical wonder that is Where Is My Mind. As deliciously brilliant as the evening had been this was perhaps their first truly transcendental moment, opening doorways to somewhere well beyond the here and now and allowing us to float off through the widening cracks. On that note they left us to our astral travelling, savouring what had been.

But not for too long mind, as returning to the stage they handed the vocal duties over to drummer David Lovering, which could only mean one thing - La La Love You. A strange little number, it's kind of weird seeing them all adding their layered 'I love you' to the song, given the ongoing tension that even at their most musically together still seems to be simmering on a personal level.

While hoping against hope that it was going to be one of those nights that seems never to end, of course it had to. And while they hadn't played Velouria or Alec Eiffel yet, there was one missing tune that they simply had to close with.

So Kim returned to the microphone and kicked off with that most blissful of bass lines. "And this I know, his teeth as white as snow." A gas it was, indeed, to see Gigantic in all its poptastic glory.

It had happened - Pixies, (Pixies!) in full flight and, at least at this moment, loving every single moment of it. Even Frank couldn't help but crack a smile.