The Gambler and the Castle Read online

seen: black track marks on her forearms. Track marks that looked strikingly similar to the ones he had seen many years ago on his heroin-addicted friend’s arms. He backpedalled away from her and retreated to the threshold of his room, keeping his eye on her as he slowly shut the door.

  He paced the width of the room. Trying to focus on his composition was taxing enough without dealing with the nagging suspicion that he was being spied upon by a near-dead drug addict working for that fat Pole. And now his stomach started to ache.

  Two fingers down the back of his throat was all it took to empty his stomach into the basin. The pistachios… Were they poisonous? He hacked several times, clearing the burning acid from his oesophagus, and rinsed his mouth until he couldn’t taste the sick anymore.

  Returning to the piano, he sat with his hands resting on the keys. He stared at that blank page that had yet to be written. Blank white pages had always been Ian’s most welcoming friends on good days and most feared enemies on bad.

  And he had had a string of bad days. Bad weeks, in fact. Months even. Months? Has it been that long?

  Is this just a slump, or is it the end of me? Fall off the horse, get back on. Fall off, get on. But what if the horse doesn’t move? What if the horse is facing the wrong way? Trying isn’t good enough. What if I’m empty? Can a dying star be restored? No, certainly not. Can an artist become creatively impoverished? Perhaps.

  Perhaps indeed…

  Ian’s arthritic hands were trembling as the steel claws of self-doubt tightened their grip around his gut and stole the air from the room. All his life he had found himself on the periphery of society, never quite fitting in. Music was his only release and the only connection he had ever made with others. Without it he was nothing. Only his Pipsie made him feel wanted. He wanted to pick up the telephone and call her, but their phone had stopped working before he moved out to the country and they hadn’t got round to fixing it yet.

  He closed the sheet music book for first time since he had arrived at the house and realised he had all but forgotten the title of the piece. Pipsie had chosen it for him. On the front cover, in Pipsie’s cursive handwriting, was: The Gambler.

  With Mrs Walters still sitting at the window, Ian locked his room and put the key in his coat pocket before heading down the passage to the main hall that led off to the other parts of the house – the study, the library, several other passageways, the entrance foyer and the back patio, which followed through to the back garden. Several members of staff were milling about, cleaning, carrying things, looking busy. A few were on their breaks, reading the papers, chatting and drinking tea. Ambling in the direction of the study, Ian saw Hanna asking Geoffrey to take a look at a hole in the eastern fence bordering Walstead Cemetery and Remembrance Garden.

  Geoffrey had several tools in one hand and a rusted old door handle in the other. Ian glanced back at the entrance foyer – the front door’s new handle was so shiny it looked like pure gold. Ian liked the idea of the house getting fixed and cleaned up. Pipsie must be pleased.

  “It’s nice to see you getting out and about this afternoon, Mr Hawes.”

  Ian spun around to see Geoffrey smiling broadly at him. The rotten stains on his twisted teeth together with the yellowy-brown tuft in the middle of his otherwise grey moustache betrayed his nicotine addiction.

  “Finished playing piano?” Hanna asked. The question was drawn out and spoken with such flat intonation that Ian couldn’t tell if she was ridiculing him.

  “I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that Mrs Walters has moved to the window at the far end of the passage. She seems happier there,” Ian said.

  Hanna’s eyes narrowed on him. She mumbled something under her breath and disappeared off into the study.

  “What’s this I hear about a hole in the fence?” Ian asked the groundsman.

  The wire fence had been forced up from the ground, space enough for a hound to fit through. The hole had obviously been used several times as the grass under the break had been worn down to mud. Droplets of cool rain blew into Ian’s face as he wondered what sort of vermin the cemetery’s caretakers had allowed to roam free that could cause such vandalism.

  The groundsman stood over the opening with his arms folded as though waiting for some creature to hop through it. And he didn’t seem to mind the rain at all - his hood wasn’t even covering his head.

  Ian pulled his own hood back, exposing his head to the rain. At first he felt rather childish. Naked even. But, oddly, it was somewhat liberating. As his silver hair became heavy with water it began to flatten, cooling his scalp.

  With his hair drenched, the water began to run in little streams down his face and into his eyes and mouth if he opened it. This feeling of being fully clothed, yet exposed to the icy rain brought back the bitter-sweet memory of an incident he had long forgotten about. When he was nineteen, living with his parents and brother and sister down in Cornwall, and just starting to write his own music, he struggled to be creative in a house full of noise and activity. His mother was a housewife, his older sister was between jobs and his younger brother was enjoying the school holidays. Ian couldn’t concentrate and, on one such day, he went down to the yacht club and took his uncle’s sixteen-foot Hobie catamaran out to sea. With little warning, the weather turned and Ian soon found himself facing a squall like he had never seen before. He had left the house without telling anybody, wanting to be alone. But now he would’ve given anything to be with them.

  The boat capsized onto its side several times, throwing Ian into the sea. And every time it keeled over, Ian would fight hard against the wind, the rain and the pounding waves to recover the craft the right way up and keep it from heading into the rocky peninsula. When eventually he beached the vessel four miles down from the yacht club, he was soaked to the bone and blue with cold.

  But having survived the storm, he was so elated and overcome with relief that he broke out into hysterical fits of laughter and tears. He had faced death like a mouse in a snake pit and he had won.

  The days to follow brought forth some of the most creative and inspired musical compositions Ian would ever come to write. Success ensued, Ian moved to a large flat in London and hardly ever left the city. He started to forget what it was like to expose himself to the elements. His life knew no danger any longer and as a result his senses had become dull. Life had become dull.

  “What caused this?” Ian asked, drinking the rainwater that entered his mouth as he spoke. The groundsman crouched down and tried to straighten the fencing with his hands. “We’ll need to fix that properly. I don’t want whatever it is getting back in,” Ian said.

  “Going to fetch my toolbox,” Geoffrey said as he headed back to the house.

  Looking through the lead-grey chain-link fence, Ian scanned Walstead Cemetery’s neglected grounds. From the fence line the grass thinned out and within a few feet disappeared completely, giving way to undergrowth and mulch. The eroded, moss-ridden headstones were toppling over, the plots were overrun with weeds, and the shrubs and trees had become so overgrown that it was looking more like the scrubby woodland behind the cemetery that trailed all the way to the railway track and over the next hill. From here Ian could see the cemetery’s front entrance on the main road – the double gate was closed with a chain wound around it and padlocked.

  Ian decided he would wait at the fence for the groundsman to return, but after several minutes the clouds darkened above him, swallowing most of what little sunlight was left, and the wind picked up, sounding a high-pitched whistle in his ears.

  With the heavy rain, most of the lawn had turned to sludge and his shoes were beginning to get sucked deeper into the mud. He had to shift his weight from one foot to the other, treading on the thicker, grassy bits.

  The clouds had become so thick now that, under the dense branches and rain-soaked leaves, Ian could hardly see beyond the first line of gravestones; even these were no more than silhouettes a shade lighter than the pitch black of the rest of th
e grounds.

  Ian looked back over his shoulder. Geoffrey was nowhere to be seen.

  “Geoffrey!” Ian called out, but his voice drowned in the gale. He could scarcely hear it himself.

  Ian faced the cemetery once more. The rustling treetops caused the ominous darkness below to shift and distort. Shadows took on form like demons at play. Something about the haunting sight frightened Ian and he made up his mind to go back inside the house.

  But instead of turning back, he found himself just standing at the fence, watching the darkness.

  Out of the pitch black of night a spotlight burned into Ian’s eyes, and he heard the spirited applause of an audience, two thousand strong. Rendered blind by the light, he smiled and bowed his head. Ian Hawes took his seat in front of the grand piano and ran his fingers lightly over the black and white keys. The clapping quietened down and he positioned his fingers on their marks. He took a breath and started playing The Gambler.

  Lost in the tide of the music, he played without thinking. His fingers found their own way as they had done all his life and he finished the entire piece without stopping until the very last note was played. A few seconds of silence were followed by such thunderous applause and cheering that the stage vibrated underfoot. The spotlight dimmed