H = chapter seven

The Piano Teacher

Chapter 7
by

Kim West

It was in the month of May that Eartha Dublaine traced Edward Stenton.
Twenty years had passed since the death of her child, and after much
searching, she had come across his faded advertisement in the village
post office.

Driving to his house early each morning from lodgings in a neighbouring
village, she settled into a pattern of observing his house for a month.
She was there to watch him from her car, as he opened his curtains each
morning and then pulled his paper in through the letterbox. She would
visualise his early morning shuffle to the back kitchen, putting his
kettle on as he glanced at the headlines. Mostly he was alone. Mostly,
he didn't go out of his garden. Mostly, it satisfied her somewhat to
think of him roaming about the place in the manner of a trapped animal.
She noted that every inch of his garden received regular scrutiny and
that not a stone was left unturned.

Eartha Dublaine quickly developed a particular antipathy for his next
door neighbour, who she saw from her observation post popping in and
out of her house like a demented weather woman. Whenever there was
movement in her neighbour's camp, Elsie would shoot out into the garden
to shake invisible crumbs from an unused tablecloth for puzzled birds,
or pull some imaginary weeds from the path, or pounce upon her
never-to-grow rose bush again, for further unnecessary pruning. Or
she'd be issuing Ronnie, her withered husband, on some fool's errand.
All this, just to catch a glimpse of her neighbour's business.

From her vantagepoint, Eartha had watched Edward as he greeted Denise,
noting the day and the regularity of her visits. Comparing Denise to
her own daughter, she guessed this young woman to be about the age
Abigail would have been. Not blonde like Abby, but dark and not at all
like the pretty angel child she had borne. She thought Denise dull,
shadowy and furtive.

One morning Eartha Dublaine found that Elsie, the foolish neighbour,
was staring over the poor old rose bush at her. Eartha snarled at her
and the stupid woman appeared to fall backwards with the shock of
discovery.
Abigail had been her first child. The others came later. It had seemed
a possible form of convalescence to procreate, but neither of the boys
could replace her. They were perfect, strong and defiant, but it was
Abigail who stole her heart, and Abigail who would forever in her
memory lie still and ashen in that hospital bed, surrounded by wires
and tubes and nurses intrusions.

"Leave her alone," she had yelled.

"Just leave her alone," she had cried as she had felt the empty
hopelessness of their struggles to revive her daughter.

"Abigail, my child
you skipped across that street
and under his wheel
and I wasn't there.
Abigail all alone with
your killer."