The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Was there anything?' Laurence began.

'No. I was just going out.' His neighbour stayed watching them as they climbed up to the next floor.

'Sorry,' Laurence said as soon as they were in his flat and he had lit the fire. 'Perfectly harmless. But something a bit odd about him.'

Mary looked amused. 'It's al right. He was just awkward in the way men are who live by themselves for years.'

She slapped her hand across her mouth.

'There I go again, piling on one insult after another. I hope you know I don't mean you.'

'One of your droopy widowers who, having the misfortune to be living a single life, has falen into unsavoury habits?'

'You know I don't think that and I certainly don't mean you.' She lightly batted her fists on his chest.

He looked at her. Her eyes were only a little lower in level than his, grey-green and clear. Her smile faded a little and her lips parted almost imperceptibly. He held her gently by the upper arms, locking her gaze for what seemed like a minute but was probably no time at al, and then let her go. She looked away, apparently confused.

Laurence went through to his bedroom, leaving Mary to warm herself by the fire.

'May I play the piano?' she asked.

'You can try,' he caled through, 'but it's probably unplayable. It hasn't been tuned since ... for ages.'

He knelt down by his bedroom wardrobe to see whether he had any spare linen at the bottom. He heard her open the piano lid and pul the stool closer. Then the stool lid opened and there was silence. He rocked back on his heels to peer through the doorway. She was standing, leafing through some sheet music, staring at it intently with her head bobbing. Then he realised she was hearing the music in her mind. She looked up, saw him gazing at her and laughed.

'Sorry, just trying to work out what I won't disgrace myself with.' She paused and indicated the front sheet. ''Louise Scudamore'. Scudamore? Was that your wife? Was she good? At the piano?'

'She practised a lot,' said Laurence, remembering her playing rather heavily, leaning forward with a look of fraught concentration on her face and her nose screwed up. 'Her biggest trouble was that she needed spectacles.'

He remembered how hard Louise had tried. Her mother had thought her exceptional.

'Actualy,' he went on, with a sudden burst of honesty, 'she was probably a bit hopeless, but she enjoyed it and she loved the piano. That's why I've kept it, even though I can't play a note.'

'You should learn to play. It would relax you.'

'I don't know any teachers,' he countered. 'Anyway, I'm far too relaxed half the time. I need to be less relaxed.'

She looked at him knowingly. 'I don't think so, Laurie. I don't think you're ever truly relaxed. In fact, I seem to recal thinking you were a very coiled-up, contained man when I first met you.'

He was about to protest but she had already returned to the music.

'Right, Liszt. That's a good start,' she said, sitting down. 'I used to be quite good at this. Or perhaps not?' she said, as she began to play, faltering a little on the first notes.

He finaly found a pair of sheets. They were old and had been neatly turned, sides to middle, but they were clean and without holes. While she was engrossed in the music he held them to his face to check they didn't smel damp. When he shook them out, they were plainly for a double bed. Swags of embroidered flowers and bows decorated the upper edges. He found one recently laundered pilowcase and for the lower pilow kept the case already on it, smoothing it with his hand.

She went on playing. Her touch was assured but the tone was pretty awful. When he'd finished making the bed— her bed, he realised with pleasure—adding an extra blanket under the eiderdown because she might not be used to a bedroom as cold as his could be, he stood in the doorway and watched her. She thudded on a dead key, and not for the first time.

'It's stuck,' she said. 'You realy ought to get this tuned, Laurie. It's a good piano, a wiling one. It deserves to be tuned.'

'Pianos have personalities?'

'Of course they do. There are good pianos and bad pianos, wiling ones and disobliging ones, modest ones and blustering ones. And this one shouldn't be abandoned.'

She leaned over and touched a slightly warped panel on the front where a shel in faded mother-of-pearl inlay was contained in a cartouche.

'Nor should her finery be neglected. When we stil lived in the country, I had a lovely piano: a smal Bluthner. Wel, it was my mother's, realy. My paternal grandfather had given it to her as a wedding present. My mother could play beautifuly, much better than I can. When I was very little we used to laugh when she played duets with my grandfather.'

'You haven't got it now?'

'No. No room and anyway it was too valuable. We had to sel it.'

'I didn't realise...' Laurence began.

'Actualy father was dreadful with money,' she said. 'Hopeless. The house in Suffolk was in trust for John. My grandfather—my other one, my mother's father—

must have seen the way things were going long before he died. My father was realy kind—wel, you know he