There was a silence from next door. Marisa found herself tilting her head to hear what was going to happen now.
‘Now, what was that?’ said Alexei finally. ‘We are in a competition here?’
‘No,’ came a humbled voice.
‘No. Am I scary person?’
There was a slight pause at this as if it were possible the answer might be yes.
‘I am big person. But am I scary person?’
Yes, thought Marisa.
‘Uh, no?’
‘NO!’ roared Alexei cheerfully. ‘SO! You are not scary! And I am not scary! And there is nobody else here! So! Why are you scared?’
There was silence. Marisa felt slightly guilty but didn’t lean back or dare even start lettering again, in case she alerted them to her presence.
‘You must play like no one listens, like no one cares! If you play fast it must sound like you play slow, that you do not care.’
‘But I do care.’
‘Aha! And that is why my only job as teacher is for gettink you out of your own way!’
It was such a complicated syntax from the Russian it took Marisa – and, clearly, the boy next door – a moment or so to work out what he meant.
Getting you out of your own way. It struck Marisa forcibly. What would that be like? If she could get out of her own way?
‘Now,’ went on Alexei, ‘I want you to play. But this time you do not think nor of the notes nor of the music nor of me . . .’
Marisa half smiled, looking at her work. Nor of the heights, nor of the depths, nor of the present, nor of the future . . .
‘Think of . . . what you had for lunch three days ago!’
‘What?’
‘Play and at the end I want to know. What you haff for lunch three days ago.’
‘But . . .’
‘Do it!’
Tentatively, the boy started to play.
And, almost delighting in her own ability to tell the difference, Marisa nearly clapped her hands. Stripped of thinking about what he was playing, the boy’s fingers obeyed the part of his brain automatically while, presumably, the front bit responsible for harbouring nerves and anxiety and the world around vanished; kept busy wondering whether it had eaten a ham and cheese toasted sandwich or a pasta salad on Tuesday and whether Tuesday had been wet so it would have been a hot sandwich, or sunny in which case if would have been something lighter . . .
The difference was astonishing: the halting sense was gone and instead of it being one hand of the clock and now another, the entire piece danced together as if there was no gap between the low notes and the high notes, that they were all part of the same shimmering continuum, imbued, now, with joy and optimism.
She very nearly clapped again at the end, transfixed by the final rippling sound of the closing notes, but next door there was only silence.
‘You see,’ growled Alexei finally.
‘That’s . . .’ The young man sounded quite jolted. ‘Hang on, does this mean I have to think about lunch whenever I play?’
‘It means,’ said Mr Alexei, ‘you have to be gettink out of your own way.’
‘Thank you,’ said the boy.
There was another pause.
‘Uh. It was tomato soup.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
Chapter Thirty-three
About two weeks after the first storm came the second. It even had a name, this one: Storm Brian, scheduled to cross the Atlantic at terrifying speed, hit the north coast first then come straight across to Mount Polbearne before travelling on to the coast of Northern France.
Spring storms were common, but seemed to be more severe this year. Polly was worried; the lighthouse could take anything the weather could throw at it, and had indeed been built for that very purpose, but the bakery was on very low ground right along the harbour, with only the old crumbling walls protecting it from the wrath of the seas. The beautiful grey paint job done by her ex, Chris, seven years before, was very faded now and desperately needed redoing but they just didn’t have the cash. Huckle kept offering to take the black and white lighthouse paint and just stripe the bakery too but Polly kept refusing for the plain and simple reason that it would look absolutely ridiculous and she couldn’t bear having to explain it to everyone.
But the water had risen high with the last storm and she kept looking at the weather forecast satellite picture as the ominous circle of tight lines moved closer and closer.
‘Stop looking at that thing,’ said Huckle. ‘You’ll scare everyone.’
‘I am scared!’ said Polly. ‘It’s dangerous! For everyone along the seafront!’
‘Well, everyone just needs to go visit people further up the hill,’ said Huckle. ‘Come on. This is an island in Britain. How on earth could it not be very used to having storms?’
Being from humid Savannah, Georgia, which had vast electrical storms and excruciatingly damp heat in the summer time, Huckle had always found the British attitude to any kind of faintly extreme weather highly amusing (unless he was attempting to catch a train that had been cancelled because there were a few leaves on the line).
‘ARE WE HAVING A STORM?’ said Avery. He had been very, very impressed by the lightning they’d had the previous month. Daisy and Neil had been less impressed and had both been found in the cupboard under the winding staircase, trembling.
Huckle gave a ‘see?’ look at Polly and went and picked up Daisy who was gazing up with huge eyes.
‘Storms,’ he said, ‘are just the people upstairs moving their furniture.’
‘WHAT PEOPLE UPSTAIRS?’ said Daisy, suddenly even more petrified.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ hissed Polly. ‘Is that meant to make her feel better?’
‘Oh,’ said Huckle. ‘My mom always told me it was just God moving furniture and I thought it might help. It helped me.’
‘OH, IT’S GOD,’ said Avery flippantly. ‘YOU KNOW? GOD? IN THE SKY?’
‘Is he upstairs?’ asked Daisy in terror.
‘Yes,’ said Avery.
‘No!’ said Polly.
‘He’s everywhere,’ said Avery confidently.
Polly didn’t want to get into this right now.
‘Listen,’ she said, coming to sit on the old squashy sofa in front of the woodburner next to Daisy in her father’s arms. She beckoned to Avery, who joined her, and Neil sat between them on Polly’s shoulder.
‘We are in the safest place we can be. They built the lighthouses so safe that we can make other people safe and look after sailors.’
‘In case they crash. BANG!’ said Avery cheerfully. He slid off her lap and started acting out a dramatic shipwreck scene. ‘OH NO! BANG BANG! ARGH! I’VE FALLEN IN WATER ARGH I DIE!’
He performed a dramatic death scene then looked suspiciously at Daisy.
‘Come on! You can be a dying sailor! Arggh!’
Daisy shook her head mutinously and clung to her father.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ said Polly for what felt like the billionth time that year. ‘It’s going to be fine.’
‘It might not even hit us,’ said Huckle. ‘It might go straight past.’
Polly glanced at her weather app. That wasn’t what the bright warning sign was saying. That wasn’t what it was saying at all.