Puccini's Ghosts by Morag Joss

peace. Eh, Lizzie? Hear it and tremble.’
    Lila studied his face and wondered why, when she might be kinder to him, she wasn’t. Maybe it was simply that kindness was too embarrassing in a house where endearments were never heard, and too risky, for what if she created in him an expectation of future kindness? She didn’t know how much she had.
    ‘The noise isn’t the point,’ she said.
    She meant it. In their house it was the silences that made her head ache with watchfulness; she was alert always to the danger of lips pressed together, an unknowable distance in the eyes, the cardigan adjusted pointlessly over the shoulders. In a perfect copy of her mother’s manner, she stood up from the table and with a single, slow blink turned her head to gaze past Raymond through the window. She couldn’t deny herself the sting of pleasure it gave her to dismiss him, and what difference would a little more unkindness make?
    A few minutes later she watched him cycle off in the rain towards Burnhead. She continued to stand, the remnants of his breakfast behind her.
Turandot
sounded to her now no more than a slanging match. She knew that the opera ended—how else?—in the triumph of true love, but there was a lot of wailing at the moon to be got through before that happened. People had to waste themselves; in the name of love they had to lie down and be trampled on and vow to tear out their hearts, and the idea exhausted her.
    By lunchtime she had not moved from the dining room.
Turandot
had been played all the way through and started over again; Act I came to an end with the crashing of gongs. She waited for Act II. Nothing came, then the music room door opened and she heard the clip-slap, clip-slap of Fleur’s mules along the hall. The sound faded to a sweet, sudden silence; Lila waited, listening. Only then, as if her other senses had just been allowed to waken, did she take in the crumby table, the used plates and cups and ashtray. She began clearing up, faintly puzzled. Surely breakfast had been days ago.
    It was while she was drying the cutlery she began to feel something else lurking under the silence. The atmosphere had changed. The rain had stopped; maybe things were about to get better, maybe some transformation was even now taking place. In a minute her mother would come downstairs and she would be happy. A tingle started in Lila’s chest. Such yearning was dangerous, and she tried to catch hold of the fantasy and tie it down. She wouldn’t, for instance, ask for her mother to become like Enid’s mum. Fleur could carry on being conspicuous and English, she could even go on playing her records and dressing in her youthful and expensive way that was unlike any other mother in Burnhead. But if she could be cheerful, not occasionally hilarious and alarming, but cheerful in a daily sort of way you could rely on. If she could only laugh things off a little bit and keep some good mood over in reserve.
    Lila let herself imagine how it would be. Her mother was in her bedroom now. She was washed and dressed, looking in her dressing-table mirror and clicking her tongue at herself, while sun slanted in through the window. The frivolous dressing gown—what had possessed her to buy that?—was cast on the floor ready to be thrown away. A white, solid, motherly kind of dressing gown was folded on the bed. She was about to turn and hurry downstairs; she would appear in the doorway with a dimply smile and take the tea towel from Lila’s hands. She would say, Oh here, Lila, give me that, I’ll finish up. You pop the kettle on and let’s think about what to do this afternoon.
    While Lila made tea she would put the dishes away, humming an easy tune, not one of her tragic ones. The day would open out like a story, filled with friendly talk, mellow with hope.
    Now it’s a rainy old day but that’s not going to stop us, she would say. There’s time to get into Ayr and back before your Dad’s home. You need some summer clothes.