A Darker Music by Maris Morton Read Free Book Online Page A

modern instruments produced different sounds, and styles of playing changed with the whims of fashion — but that didn’t matter.
    The Andante now. Tender and thoughtful, but always robust. Then the Minuet, declamatory, without losing the formality you expected from such a stately dance. In the middle of that was the Trio, up and down against the backing of plucked strings, almost like a country dance. Then the Allegro ma non troppo that ended the piece.
    She waited for the viola’s starring part, its darker sound giving added authority to the theme already stated by the violins; and, at last, that change of key to D major that was almost shocking and brought the quartet to an end.
    The CD made its little trill to let her know that the music was over. Clio touched her face and realised that her cheeks were wet. But these weren’t tears of sadness. They were the happy tears that came when one met a dear friend from the past, and discovered that the friendship was still alive and just as precious as it had always been.

6
    W HEN M ARY WENT OUTSIDE EARLY ON S ATURDAY to fetch oranges for Clio’s morning drink, she found a lacy covering of ice on the golden fruit. With Clio still asleep and no breakfast to prepare for Martin and his father, she had time to savour the morning. The sounds and smells of sheep were permeating the still, cold air. As the sun cleared the horizon, little puffs of steam rose from each bush and tree, with bigger clouds of vapour curling above the rainwater tanks and the roofs of the buildings. Among the branches of the orchard trees tiny spider webs, jewelled with ice, hung like fairy tinsel, and silken threads of gossamer drifted through the warming air like mysterious visitors from another world.
    The sun was still low, and the shadows lay in complicated stripes along the ground; the tops of the trees and roofs were gilded with light. With the sun warming her left cheek, Mary headed towards the ragged line of pine trees. The grass was vivid blue-green in the shadows, golden-green in the bands of light, and heavy with melting ice. Her cheeks stung with cold, and around her face the plume of her breath streamed like a ragged cloud, but she walked briskly and was soon sweating inside her jacket.
    With the first wash of the southerly wind in her face, Mary shivered. Through the pine trees the grey line of clouds lying along the horizon was already creeping over the sky, bringing with it the drizzle that would keep her inside for the rest of the day.
    Clio was eating two meals a day now, both of them tiny, and today would be a good time to do some forward planning. Next week she’d get an order of groceries from the Co-op. She could ask about the routine at afternoon tea tomorrow. But first she’d finish the audit of the freezers. If there were any beef or poultry bones in there, she could make some good hearty soup stock.
    Going through the freezers took most of the day, with a long break for a meal, and shorter ones while she thawed out her aching fingers. When Mary took her tea in, Clio was sitting up in bed propped on her pillows with headphones on, listening to music, and seemed perfectly contented, accepting the tray Mary offered with no more than a faint smile. If Clio wasn’t ready for another chat, that was fine.
    Mary settled to eat her own meal in the kitchen, the soft crackle of the fire as a counterpoint to the relentless dripping of rain from the roof into the underground tank outside the bay window. When she finished eating, she went back to Ellen’s room to look for the diaries Clio had mentioned. They’d be something to read.
    She found them stacked on the bottom shelf of the bookcase built in beside the fireplace: a series of ordinary exercise books, most of them with black imitation-leather covers. They were in no particular order, and Mary took the first to come to hand. The rest of the bookshelves offered little to interest her: a set of Dickens, Walter Scott, an old