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.