Page 7 of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt

‘Please, I shouldn’t have said that to you,’ said Evelyn now. ‘We all know that you are not mad, and, in fact, hide just how clever you are. The reason they were thinking of sending you to a psychiatrist was to find out what it is you feel unable to communicate with us all when we know that you can.’

As always, I shook my head firmly. They all knew myanswer to that question was that I had a fever and that I couldn’t remember speaking to Bel. Which wasn’t really a lie.

‘They are trying to help you, my dear, not harm you. Please, do not look so terrified. See,’ Evelyn said as she reached for a brown parcel sitting next to her chair, ‘this is for you, for the winter.’

I took the brown parcel from her hands, and it felt like my birthday. It was a long time since I’d had a parcel of any kind to open. I almost wanted to savour it, but Evelyn encouraged me to tear the paper open. Inside were a colourful striped scarf and woollen hat.

‘Try them on then, young man. See if they fit.’

Even though I was hot as a furnace, I did so. The scarf fitted me perfectly – how could it not? But the woollen hat was slightly too big, and the first time I pulled it on, it fell over my eyes.

‘Give it to me,’ Evelyn said, and I watched her fold back the front of the hat. ‘There. That’ll do it. What do you think?’

That I might die of heat stroke if I keep them on any longer...

I nodded enthusiastically, then stood up, walked over to her and gave her a hug. When I pulled away, I realised my eyes were full of tears.

‘Aw now, silly boy, you know how much I love my knitting. I made hundreds of those for our boys at the front,’ she added.

I turned round to walk back to my chair, the words ‘thank you’ hovering on my lips, but I held them tight together. Taking off my hat and scarf, I folded them and reverently placed them back in their brown paper.

‘Now then, it’s time for both you and me to be in our beds,’ she said, looking up at the clock that sat on the mantelpiece above the fire. ‘But first I must tell you that today I had some wonderful news.’ I saw her indicate a letter sitting behindthe clock. ‘That there is from my son Louis. He is coming to visit me on my day off. Now, what do you think of that?’

I nodded enthusiastically, but inside I realised that a little bit of me was jealous of this magnificent Louis, who could do no wrong in his mother’s eyes. I thought I might hate him.

‘I’d like you to come across and meet him. He will take me out for lunch in the village, and we shall be back at half past three. Why don’t you come and say hello at four?’

I nodded, and tried not to look as sulky as I felt. Giving her a small wave and a big smile as I tapped my package, I left her room. I curled up in bed that night, feeling unsettled about this competitor for Evelyn’s affections arriving, and what she had said about the psychiatrist man that the Landowskis might make me visit.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

On Sunday afternoon, I washed my face in the bowl of water provided for me every day by one of the maids. Up here on the attic floor, we didn’t have ‘facilities’ (which was another thing that Elsa and Antoinette complained about, because they had to go downstairs in the night to do their business). I brushed my hair and decided I would not wear a woollen jumper, because the chances were that if her son was here, Evelyn would have lit the most roaring of fires. Downstairs, I let myself out of the kitchen door and began my normal walk towards her front door. Then a sound made me stop dead in my tracks. I listened to it and closed my eyes, a smile appearing on my lips because they just couldn’t help but do anything else. I knew the piece of music too, and that it was being played by not quite a master like my father, but someone who had trained for many years.

Gathering myself together as the music stopped, I put one foot in front of the other and arrived at Evelyn’s front door and knocked upon it. Immediately it was opened by a tall thin man, who I knew was nineteen.

‘Hello there,’ he said with a smile. ‘You must be the young waif that has joined the household since I last visited.’

He ushered me inside and my eyes darted around the room for the instrument he had just been playing. The violin was sitting in the chair I normally sat in, and I couldn’t help but stare at it.

‘Hello,’ Evelyn said. ‘This is Louis, my son.’

I nodded, but still my eyes could not leave that simple piece of wood that had been magically transformed from a tree into an instrument that could make the most glorious sounds on God’s earth. In my opinion, anyway.

‘You heard my son play?’ Evelyn had not missed the way I was staring at the instrument.

I nodded, every bit of me wanting to reach for it and put it snugly under my chin, lift the bow and draw the notes from it.

‘Would you like to hold it?’

I looked up at Louis, who reminded me of his mother in male form, with the same sweet smile. I nodded vehemently. He handed it to me and I took it as reverently as if I was holding the golden fleece. Then, almost automatically, I put the instrument under my chin.

‘So you play,’ said Louis.

It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

I nodded again.

‘Then let’s hear you,’ he said, reaching for the bow and handing it to me. Having heard him play, I knew the instrument was perfectly tuned, but I buzzed the bow across the strings anyway, trying to get the feel of it. It was heavier thanthe one Papa and I had played, more solid somehow, and I wondered whether I would be able to draw those notes out. It was such a very long time since I had last held a violin in my hands. Closing my eyes, I did what Papa had always taught me and began to caress the strings. I wasn’t even sure before I began what it was I would play, but the beautiful notes of the Allemande from Bach’s Violin Partita began to pour out of me. I was taken by surprise when the sound came to an end, and then there was silence. And clapping.