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  ‘Not — not a blind piano tuner?’ asks Silas.

  ‘Certainly not a blind piano tuner. Many of us can see perfectly well.’

  Eric and Silas are clearly disappointed, and I feel enormously sorry for Kent. He has more than likely just found two possible fathers, and already he has proved to be a disappointment.

  ‘Well, I think it’s wonderful,’ I tell him. ‘We can play duets.’

  I think of the poor neglected piano in the room next door. Our new-found relation may be just the person to bring it back to life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It is decided that what with the approach of Christmas and the amount of work generated by the extra care needed by the animals in this most unforgiving of seasons, any DNA investigations can wait until the new year. But our new relation seems here to stay, at least for the time being.

  Meanwhile, it transpires that whatever Mary Riley may have been up to in her lifetime, she contrived to save quite a lot of money, all of which she left to her only son. Kent is now what he himself calls ‘a free man’. His piano tuning days are over. He has let his mother’s house, and bought himself a nice little caravan, which he has fitted up with all mod cons. With this in tow, he intends to tour the country, looking up friends (and putative fathers) and visiting those towns and cities he has never managed to see before. Kent says that he has ‘done’ abroad, and that it is wildly overrated. It’s time to reacquaint himself with the country of his birth. He admits that he was sad to leave his piano behind, but his inheritance wouldn’t stretch to a caravan large enough to accommodate it.

  Needless to say, Eric and Silas have invited him to stay on ‘so that we can all get to know each other’, so the caravan is now parked behind the outhouses, and Kent is rapidly becoming one of the household. I’m delighted, my parents are slightly puzzled and Blossom is indignant (‘too many people,’ she complains, although Kent keeps well out of her way). Kaz is another story.

  When she first meets him, she’s polite enough, but after a day or two, she begins to show a suspicious amount of interest in him.

  ‘This Kent person,’ she says casually, while we are seeing to the pigs. ‘He’s rather nice.’

  ‘How, rather nice?’ I ask her.

  ‘Quite sexy, actually.’ Kaz bends over the bucket of swill she’s mixing.

  ‘Oh Kaz, you can’t!’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. For a start, he’s too old for you. And anyway, aren’t you seeing someone else at the moment?’ For these days, it’s hard to keep up with Kaz’s love life.

  ‘Oh, him. He’s boring. I was giving him up anyway. No. I think it’s time for someone more mature.’ She winks at me.

  ‘Kaz, you can’t just use Kent because you want someone more mature. Hasn’t the poor guy had enough shocks for the time being?’

  ‘What’s got into you, Ruth? I’m not using anyone, and Kent is a grown man and can make his own decisions.’ She looks at me thoughtfully. ‘You know, I think you’re jealous!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  But in a way, she’s right. Having found this new almost-relation, I’m oddly reluctant to share him. Silas and Eric, as putative fathers, are different. But Kaz has no claim on Kent, and I want to keep it that way.

  ‘Well, nothing’s happened yet,’ says Kaz peaceably, as we return to the house. ‘We’ll just have to see, won’t we?’

  My parents have been given just as much information about Kent as Eric and Silas consider they need; they have been told that he is the son of an old friend (‘true, in a way’) and that he has come to visit. Further information will be forthcoming if the DNA results prove to be positive. As Silas points out, there is no point in shocking them unnecessarily. Both my uncles agree that my mother might well be pleased to have a nephew, but the circumstances (not to mention the confusion) surrounding his provenance might prove more difficult to explain, never mind accept.

  I am in a seventh heaven, for at last I have someone to make music with. While I clean up the piano, digging out everything from spiders’ webs to old socks and even a dead mouse from its dusty innards, Kent does his best to tune it.

  ‘I don’t think I can bring it up to concert pitch without breaking strings,’ he tells me. Fortunately, I am not blessed with perfect pitch, so I can just tune my violin down a fraction and we are ready to go. The piano is more honky-tonk than Steinway, but any piano is better than no piano, and I for one am not complaining.

  Kent proves to be an excellent pianist. I am unsurprised — I have come across many piano-tuners who are similarly gifted — but my uncles are amazed. Like many people, they have hitherto regarded piano tuners as second-rate musicians (if they can be counted as musicians at all), but Kent rapidly wins them over, and he and I entertain everyone with an evening of Mozart and Beethoven.

  Even my parents are impressed.

  ‘He plays very well. For a piano tuner,’ I hear Mum say to Dad.

  In addition to his music, Kent adds a great deal to the running of the household. He’s an excellent cook, bachelor-tidy in his habits, and good with the animals. He takes an interest in Silas’s taxidermy, and even assists Eric with his researches (although I suspect that he considers them to be a waste of time).

  As I watch him stooped over some task, or see his long fingers moving over the piano keys, I become increasingly convinced that he is indeed the son of Eric or Silas. In addition to the physical resemblance, he even shares some of their mannerisms. The way he shakes his head when he’s puzzled; the occasional amused lift of an eyebrow; the sound of his laugh. All these remind me of Eric and Silas. And while I was initially unsure as to whether having a son would be a good thing for my uncles, I’ve now been completely won round. I think that Eric and Silas are beginning to feel the same, for while they accepted Kent’s arrival with equanimity, I know they must have been disturbed by it. Now, it is as though they have always known him. He is, quite simply, part of the family.

  I am not the only one to have noticed a resemblance.

  ‘Family, is he?’ Blossom asks me, after Kent has been with us a week. It’s a question which she’s obviously been longing to ask, and the waiting’s finally got too much for her.

  ‘He’s the son of an old friend,’ I tell her. ‘She died recently.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What do you mean, hmm?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ says Blossom. ‘You know.’

  But now something happens to take my mind off life at Applegarth, for I have news of Amos. I’ve alerted everyone I can think of (friends, friends of friends, colleagues from the orchestra, even a dentist we once shared in London) and finally someone from the orchestra has received a postcard from Barbados, and has thoughtfully forwarded it to me. Palm trees and blue skies adorn the front, but on the back, the news isn’t good.

  Having a wonderful time in this amazing place. The people are so friendly that I feel as though I’ve come home. Even found a band to play in. May stay here for ever! December in England seems a very long way away. What’s there to come home to?

  ME! I want to tell him. There’s me to come home to, and our baby! Oh Amos! Please come home!

  But my tears fall uselessly onto the postcard, trickling across the sandy beach and the palm trees and smudging the ink of Amos’s handwriting. He has nice handwriting, and it occurs to me that I have never seen it before. There has never been any reason for us to correspond. And now, when there is every reason, I have no address to write to. Supposing Amos really does decide to stay on? Supposing he never comes back? He has always had a penchant for dark-skinned women. He could well settle down with a Caribbean wife and a brood of tawny children, with never a thought for (or come to that, any knowledge of) the child he’s left behind. Perhaps, in years to come, my son and I will voyage across the sea and try to find him. But of course by then it will be too late. We shall merely be an embarrassment; a cruel reminder of the life he’s tried to leave
behind.

  I suppose I could try writing to the British embassy in Barbados. Do embassies concern themselves with such domestic matters? Almost certainly not. Perhaps I should go to Barbados now to search for him? But I haven’t enough money, and I wouldn’t know where to start. Also, the idea of travelling, once so attractive, has become daunting to me in my pregnant and vulnerable state, and the prospect of running the gauntlet of airports and queues and the complications of foreign officialdom on my own is not one I relish. I need my family and friends; I need continuity; I need to feel safe. Spinning across the world in search of Amos doesn’t sound at all safe, especially as it is more than likely that I wouldn’t find him. Briefly, I wonder whether Mikey would come with me. But Mikey is still sulking in the aftermath of the wheelchair episode, and in any case, it wouldn’t be fair to take him away from Gavin at this early stage of their relationship. I shall just have to continue waiting, and see what happens. I wish most fervently that I had never seen that postcard. My friend meant kindly in sending it to me, but it has done nothing to raise my spirits.

  ‘What’s up, Ruth?’ Kaz has come into the kitchen to make herself some coffee.

  I tell her about the postcard. Kaz already knows about Amos, and has been on the whole sympathetic.

  ‘Mm.’ Kaz pours hot water into a mug. ‘Are you sure you really want this guy?’

  ‘No. Not absolutely sure. But I think I do.’

  ‘Better to have no man than the wrong man,’ Kaz tells me.

  ‘Do you think you’ll get married one day?’ I ask her.

  ‘I might, if I could find someone like Kent,’ she teases. I decide to ignore her. ‘But probably not. The only married couple I’ve ever had anything to do with were my parents. They were a nightmare together.’

  ‘What was your dad like?’

  ‘Oh, mousy, hen-pecked. A miserable little man, he was. Though I blame my mum.’

  ‘Did she make him very unhappy?’ I have often wondered about Blossom’s marriage.

  ‘She certainly did. But then, he asked for it. He was such a wimp. And he wouldn’t fight back.’

  ‘Why didn’t he leave her?’

  ‘Search me. She told him to often enough.’

  ‘Wasn’t she at all upset when he died?’

  Kaz laughs.

  ‘Not at all. At least no-one can call Mum a hypocrite.’

  ‘And Lazzo? Was he — close to your father?’

  ‘No. In any case, Lazzo wasn’t Dad’s.’

  ‘Ah.’ I was wondering how it was that the combination of a mousy little man and Blossom had managed to produce anything as large as Lazzo. ‘How does she reconcile that with her faith?’

  ‘I told you before. Mum’s selective when it comes to her faith. She takes the bits she wants, and discards the rest.’

  ‘How handy.’ I pause for a moment, envying Kaz’s ability to look ravishing whatever she happens to be wearing (today, dirty dungarees, an old flat cap belonging to my uncles and a torn trench coat). ‘Who was Lazzo’s father?’

  ‘No idea.’ Kaz spoons sugar into her coffee, and props herself against the sink.

  ‘Does no-one know?’

  ‘Mum probably does, but she’s not telling, and Lazzo doesn’t seem to care. I’m glad she had him, though. He’s a good lad, is our Lazzo.’

  ‘Yes. He’s wonderfully straightforward, isn’t he.’

  ‘Heart of gold,’ Kaz agrees.

  ‘And is Lazzo a Catholic?’

  Kaz laughs. ‘Well, he was an altar boy when he was little, but he ate all the communion wafers and was dismissed. Sacrilege, they called it, and Mum was furious. But I think he was just hungry, poor kid. Our Laz was always hungry. But no. He’s not really a Catholic any more, though Mum does sometimes try to drag him to Mass.’

  After Kaz has left the room, I ponder on the subject of God. Do I believe in Him? I was force fed with so much religion as a child, that I used to think that I had been put off for life, but of course God and religion are not necessarily the same thing. Thinking about it now, I decide that I probably do believe in something like God. Wide night skies, an expanse of sea, the music of Bach, the poetry of Shakespeare — they all seem to come from something beyond a mere coincidence of genes or particles. But they also seem to me to have little connection with the petty rules and regulations and the repetitive hymns, often sung to the accompaniment of a guitar, which are the life blood of the church attended by my parents. These prettify and reduce God, like the paintings of Holman Hunt, making Him small and ever so slightly sickly. My God, if I have one, is huge and powerful and mysterious.

  But then, what right have I to belittle a faith which gives so much comfort, and in which my parents have invested so much of their lives? Isn’t it possible that we are all right, in our different ways?

  I wander outdoors and make my way up to the hen house. A weak winter sun is shining on the Virgin, making her appear even more lifelike than usual, and someone has placed a bunch of Christmas roses on the ground beneath her. I envy the pilgrims their faith. It would be wonderful to believe that our Virgin really is a divine sign, and that the real Virgin Mary is still alive and well and doing good in the world.

  You know what it’s like, I tell her. You didn’t exactly plan your pregnancy, either, did you? You must have had a pretty difficult time. Please help me to cope.

  And please, if you have any influence at all, help me to find Amos.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Christmas at Applegarth is very different from any Christmas I’ve experienced before. The house is as full as ever, and Lazzo joins us for the day (Kaz tells us that Blossom doesn’t do Christmas, and probably won’t even notice her family’s absence). The turkey — an ill-tempered bird of enormous proportions who has spent the last few months chasing us round the garden and biting our legs — has been despatched and prepared, Mum has made a Christmas cake, and a real Christmas tree stands in the hallway, decked out with decorations which go back to my uncles’ and Mum’s childhood. Numerous dusty bottles of wine are brought up from the cellar, their labels washed off for identification purposes, and everyone has Christmas stockings.

  ‘What, all of us?’ Mum asked, when she was told what was to happen.

  ‘All of us,’ Silas told her. ‘Eric and I always give each other a stocking, but as there are so many of us, we thought we’d all draw lots and do each other’s.’

  I draw Kaz, and wonder what on earth I can put in it, for Kaz has a mind of her own when it comes to matters of taste. But in the event, she is thrilled.

  ‘I’ve never had a stocking before,’ she tells me, as she unwraps little parcels of chocolate and bath essence and some rather naughty knickers from the market. ‘I always wanted one as a kid, but Mum said no.’

  ‘Didn’t you get presents?’ I ask her. ‘You must have had something?’

  ‘Money usually. And maybe some sweets. Nothing much else, though. If I have kids, they’re going to have stockings just like this one.’ She pops a Malteser in her mouth. ‘What about you, Ruth? Will you give your child a Christmas stocking?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I should think so.’ It occurs to me that the baby should probably have one next year, but what does one put in the stocking of anyone so small? I know nothing at all about babies. Do they eat sweets? Play with toys? Do anything? No doubt I shall find out.

  My parents pay lip service to the stocking ritual (Mum has drawn Lazzo, and Dad, Silas), but I can see their hearts aren’t in it, and they hanker after the kind of Christmas they are used to. After a meal which is more mediaeval banquet than traditional Christmas lunch, they make their excuses, and drive off to spend the rest of the day with some of Mum’s new friends from church. In a way I’m pleased, for at least they are united in their discomfort at the goings-on at Applegarth. I feel for my mother’s situation, but I would hate my parents’ split to be permanent. Maybe it’s something to do with the perversity of my generation, for while we aren’t necessarily too bothered about marriage for
ourselves, we nonetheless expect out parents to stay securely within its boundaries.

  After they have left, everyone else continues to make inroads into the home-made wine, until Eric and Silas fall asleep in their chairs. Kaz, who is by now very drunk indeed, is draped across the table singing Jingle Bells, one pert little breast attempting to escape from the confines of her strappy little top. Kent, who says he needs some fresh air, is feeding the chickens. As for Lazzo, he is still admiring the contents of his stocking. Mum’s efforts have been unimaginative — among other things, sweets, socks, and a keyring — but she couldn’t have had a more appreciative recipient. Lazzo has unwrapped all the little parcels, and arranged his gifts in a neat row. I can see he’s longing to open some of the sweets, but doesn’t like to spoil the appearance of his arrangement.

  ‘Go on, Lazzo. Have one. That’s what they’re for,’ I urge him (although after the excesses of lunch time, I personally can’t imagine ever wanting to eat again).

  Lazzo picks up his packet of sweets and turns it over in his hands. Then he puts it back in its place.

  ‘Have one of mine.’ I take pity on him.

  ‘Ta.’ Absently, Lazzo takes a handful of toffees, which vanish without apparently any need for chewing on Lazzo’s part. ‘Never had presents like this,’ he tells me, picking up his keyring and stroking it.

  ‘Have you got some keys you can put on it?’ I ask him.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What, none at all?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘How do you get into the house when you go home?’

  ‘Key’s under a stone.’

  ‘Oh. Would you like a key?’

  Lazzo’s face brightens, and I forage in my bag and find an old front door key from a long-ago flat, wondering why it is that people never get around to throwing away old keys. Carefully, Lazzo attaches the key to his keyring, then holds it up for me to admire.

  ‘Perfect,’ I tell him.

  Lazzo nods happily. His capacity for finding pleasure in small things never fails to amaze me, and I feel oddly humbled. Here is someone who has never (as far as I know) experienced much in the way of parental love and appears to have very few possessions, and yet he appears perfectly content with his lot. I have heard Lazzo swear, certainly, and he has a very colourful vocabulary in that department, but I have never heard him complain. Whatever he is doing, he gives the impression that that is the thing he wants to be doing above all else. He may not be particularly clean (I notice that among Mum’s gifts there is a large can of cheap deodorant) and his table manners are appalling, but he is gentle and courteous and, in his own way, chivalrous. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that I have grown to love Lazzo.