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Raymond Nickford - author of Literary & Psychological Suspense
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Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Haunted Books
ISBN-10: B005NWRKCQ
Type: Fiction
Pages: 286
Copyright: July 9, 2011
ISBN-13: 9781465853516
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Gerard's wish is to break out of paranoia and mental illness to re-discover daughter Rosie's love.
He takes her to violin lessons and tries to trust Ruth, Rosie's music tutor, to help him to know how to bond with his daughter but Ruth, it seems, clings to his child as she clings to the dolls he finds at the bottom of her garden well.
Gerard's wish is to break out of paranoia, discover daughter Rosie's love. Is the eerie music tutor Ruth's foul-smelling well a place where wishes happen? Ashamed he cannot relate to his daughter, Rosie, Gerard accompanies and stays with her for violin lessons at the home of tutor, Ruth Stein.
Ruth, fascinating him for her musical sensitivity, becomes a confidante. Against his better judgement and his wife's reservations - the paranoid, Gerard, can only cling to believing the tutor can bring him closer to Rosie.
Soon, he must wrestle with his suspicions again, for Ruth mothers Rosie, almost smothers...
Reaching out to a broken doll, propped in the darkness at the bottom of Ruth's garden well, Gerard wants to believe that what he touches and smells is just the decay of sacks enfolding a doll; the closest to a child that the lonely old spinster could cling. Investigating, Gerard's fears for Rosie’s safety begin to mount.
Rosie draws closer to her father, notices his new concern but, if she is in danger, can he save her and can Gerard still triumph over the emotional void of paranoia; feel, accept, he and Rosie could share the love of which others speak?
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
Gerard Botolph picked up the child-sized violin he’d bought for his daughter. He plucked. The reply was a strange baleful tone, an eerie jangling… reminding of the music tutor’s advertisement in the Malvern Gazette. Seven-year-olds were welcome.
‘Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow, Rosie. I’ll take you to see Miss Stein.’ He found himself speaking into the empty room.
He took a last glance at her violin. An unaccountable sweat had transferred itself to the soundboard.
‘What does “ Miss Stein LRAM” mean, Dad?’
‘Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music. Don’t point, Rosie, please.’
Twice over, he’d been clumsy. He’d remembered to add the “please” but a “sorry” might have taken some of the bite from his correction. After all, Rosie only pointed her finger at the brass plate above the middle panel of an imposing front door. Yet no Botolph, right back to Joseph Babbington Botolph, the first in the line of stockbrokers would point, except to the size of his wallet. Even the surname was as ugly as their love, for none was ever given, unless in return for success. Success first. That was the Botolph expectation.
‘We don’t want Miss Stein to come to the door and find a finger pointing into her navel.’ He spoke softly this time, trying to relax his hand around hers. It was just a playful shake, he told himself. Yes, playful.
‘Remember ? First impressions?’
Her hand felt snug in his, the warmth not just thermal.
‘Why are you holding my hand, Dad?’
He peered down. She stood smart in the freshly washed cotton dress which Sandra, the au pair, had ironed. Rosie’s hand slid out of his.
She stood, corrected, in her school’s blue-and-white check summer dress. He’d tried, but it was too late for his “sorry”.
‘What are first… ’
‘Impressions, Rosie?’
‘Are they like… ’
The door opened before Gerard could answer. The bronze plate gave way to a blaze of exotic summer flowers. They cascaded on a cream background designed into a smocked sun dress. The dress was strappy enough to have adorned to better effect the figure of a lady fifty years younger than the wrinkled old woman standing inside the garment.
‘You must be little Rosie! Can I call you Rosie?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘Oh come on, those big brown eyes are looking up at Ruth! Not “Miss”.’ Ruth isn’t your dragon of a schoolteacher!’ Ruth mimicked a dragon, but judging by Rosie’s fallen mouth, the tutor must have appeared to her more ape than dragon. If so, the moment of trauma was passed, for Rosie’s lips melted into a smile.
‘See? Ruthy’s funny… and a teacher!’ Ruth assured.
‘Not - not “funny” like -’ Rosie turned to her father, then bit her lip.
‘Come on now, dear. I’m going to show you the wonderful new world in music and you’re going to show me the wonderful world in your smile, before it wilted. The bending heads of my petunias wilt, so forlorn when I forget to water them. You haven’t lost it have you? The smile?’
‘Daddy loses his smile - often! So wouldn’t his wilt ?’
‘Well, dear, we won’t go to places we shouldn’t, don’t you think?’
Rosie’s lips were quickly sealed again. He had made her serious when, beneath, she was precocious, even though sometimes stumbling on her words, Gerard realised.
As Ruth bent closer to her pupil, he puzzled at the innocence which Ruth cultivated to disguise a woman in her late eighties. She possessed girlishly-long hair, bouffant at the front but elaborately worked to a single plait, hanging down a half-bare back, the miracle ultimately terminating at the base of her spine.
‘I’m Gerard Botolph - and you are Ruth Stein, I presume?’
‘Oh yes! Your Daddy can presume! Can’t he Rosie?’ Ruth said, taking Rosie’s hand and speaking through her instead; Ruth the ventriloquist but Gerard the dummy still standing on her doorstep.
‘My goodness me! Where did you get these nice long fingers? Are they going to play on one of my violins? Are they? I’m afraid they can’t play on the violin Daddy has bought for you. It looks too large to me and we have to look at the length of your little arms first.’
‘I’ve got quite large arms.’ Rosie seemed to plead for Ruth’s approval.
‘We must test, compare, measure, Rosie Botolph!’ Ruth cupped her hand around Rosie’s head and began to lead her into the hall of Laburnum Lodge.
‘Test, compare, measure!’ Rosie enthused, smiling up at the tutor. ‘And maybe be dragons after?’
‘Most certainly dragons after - and Ruth is the biggest dragon of them all!’ Ruth awkwardly bent to meet Rosie at eye level.
Biggest dragon of them all... Gerard shivered. The doubting was due to his tablet. He’d be calm once the Diazepam kicked in. Halston said it might be early symptoms of paranoia but too early for the doctor to treat as such. He was no psychotic, more a wreck of the Botolph expectation.
After all, the tutor, as she engaged Rosie, was so refreshingly open. As Ruth spilled with high spirits she seemed, at times, as readable as a child’s fairy tale. Gerard would rely on sixth sense. She possessed energy too, liveliness, exotic flowers, sunshine and little kindnesses in the form of caramelised eggs; like the one she was placing in Rosie’s palm… there could be nothing sinister about kindness.
She was taking a metronome off the hall table, holding it out to Rosie, making a pantomime of a hen clucking to its rhythm. Silly, childlike - but winning. No Botolph could ever do that. She’d brought to Rosie a smile to make the sun come out.
Rosie was looking up; her smile transferred to him.
‘Dad? You’re - you’re waiting for me,’ she frowned, ‘watching me choose my egg sweet and watching Ruth when she makes me laugh with her clucking hen noises. You - you can smile too, Dad. Ruth isn’t a dragon, like Mrs Fenton at school. Ruth’s a play dragon!’
Rosie seemed as comfortable as an ivy on a tree trunk to stand beside Ruth. Gerard would forget his reservations about the tutor. That’s all they were - qualms. The lady was zany, dressed like a cockatoo but not unhinged.
‘... inside, Mr Botolph?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, you’re welcome - to step inside? Wait? ’Til our Rosie’s lesson is finished?’
Gerard turned instead to his daughter for a response. ‘Daddy doesn’t seem too sure - does he, Rosie? Are you coming inside, Mr Botolph?’
It registered; for the quizzing and kindliness in the tutor’s eyes told him he was welcome.
‘Inside, yes, just the “dire tonic”, Ruth - if you’ll forgive the pun.’
‘Oh ho! An ex stockbroker who appreciates the diatonic! He starts on the right note with Ruth!’ she grinned.
He followed the music tutor into the hall. She was holding his daughter’s hand while Rosie looked up at her, seeming to make a solemn vow to be a model pupil. For the old lady was surely the first adult ever to allow Rosie to play clucking hens.
But as the door chain rattled behind the three, Gerard felt a wave of nausea; a warning he needed to get Rosie and himself out, but there was no way out. He crushed the packet of Diazepam in the lining of his pocket. The doubting had started.
‘Shall we see if you’re as tall as my double-bass, our Rosie?’
‘“Our” Rosie?’ Gerard challenged. Something about the intimacy with which the tutor crouched level to his daughter’s face made his question slip out.
‘If we’re to test your height: it’s back right in to the wall and stand - straight!’ Ruth, apparently unaware of his rebuke, hovered around Rosie.
“Our” Rosie… he wondered again whether he could repeat his question, oblige her to face what seemed her delusion; for forty minutes Rosie might become her child. Had she fulfilled herself as a musician and tutor but, too late, craved to fulfil herself as a mother ?
He’d seen plenty of photographs of her, collections of them framed on the wall, some propped on slim pedestal tables along the hallway, but none with husband or child. Yes children, flocks of them, but always showing instruments or presentation certificates in their hands or junior ensembles behind them.
‘Can’t get any straighter, our Rosie. Now, let’s see who’s tallest, shall we?’ Ruth said, distracting Gerard from his thoughts as she loomed over his daughter again before the double bass. ‘Well, I think Rosie Botolph’s got just a little bit more growing to do before she’s as tall as: “Bertie the Bass. Tall and deep. Rosie to chase, with lots of sleep”!’ she sang.
The old Botolph decorum dictated he should do no more than stand and watch her pantomime until he was invited from the hallway into the music room itself. After all, the diversion must have only been Ruth’s practiced way of relaxing her pupil before instruction, little different to his relaxing a fresh recruit on a first day at the bank.
But the diversion seemed to have gone on a shade too long. He felt unease again; this time about the lady whose advertisement seemed to have left him standing half-willingly yet irreversibly in the hallway of her house.
‘I’ve now ten little followers coming to my Thursday lessons. Two more and I’d have twelve - just like disciples. Wouldn’t I, Rosie?’
But Rosie was more interested in following with wonderment the pattern of deep velvety colours in the flowers of her new friend’s dress.
That word - “disciples” - it returned to Gerard while he glanced at a child-size violin propped against a recess beside the fireplace; the instrument reminded of the small violin he bought for Rosie and thought of breaking.
Disciples… breaking… like bread at the Last Supper… the last…
The violin seemed to warn, still more loudly than when he first plucked its strings and they replied with a grotesque jangle. But if it warned, who was going to be crucified?
He glanced again at Rosie. She was abandoned to laughter as Ruth pretended now to hide her in the case to the large double bass.
But then he caught something in the glint of Ruth’s eyes and the shiver wouldn’t leave him.
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