Classical Music

by Cowley, Joy

  I go out to the car, mopping my face and wondering how many people have said those exact words? All of them, I think. You wouldn’t want him back, blah-blah. It’s a blessed release, blah-blah. He had a good life. Why doesn’t someone just come out with, ‘Hear your father dropped off his perch and you’re feeling bloody awful.’ Not likely. Life is full of clichés, especially at the end. That’s the way it is.

  As we drive to the motel, Chloe says, ‘Did Francis tell you about the client from New York?’

  ‘His suit looked nice,’ I say. ‘You know the last time he wore it was to Grandma’s funeral?’

  Frank laughs. ‘Mother, you won’t believe this. How many million people in Manhattan? This bloke is relocating to Sydney and he tells me that the New York apartment he just sold was completely redesigned and redecorated by Delia Munro.’

  ‘Isn’t it a small world?’ says Chloe.

  ‘He says she’s got a great reputation. Last year there was half a page in the Sunday Times.’

  ‘He couldn’t believe that Francis was her nephew,’ Chloe says.

  ‘The sous-chef at Kiwiana,’ I tell them. ‘Julia’s her name. She used to work at a restaurant in Auckland owned by someone very famous. Worth billions. He kicked the bucket. Heart attack. And the family bought him this elegant designer suit to lay him out in. Pure silk and alpaca. Thousands of dollars worth. Well, the undertakers didn’t screw the lid of the coffin down properly and coming out of the church.’ I start wheezing with laughter. ‘Coming out of the church one of the pall-bearers stumbles. The coffin gets dropped and the tycoon rolls out. He’s wrapped in newspaper!’

  Frank looks at me.

  ‘Plain newspaper! The undertakers had flogged the suit. The family wouldn’t have found out if. If they’d have.’

  ‘Sounds like one of those urban myths,’ says Frank.

  ‘It’s true. It actually happened.’

  ‘Stories like that abound,’ he says.

  ‘This, Frank, is gospel. Ask Julie. She’ll tell you. There was a court case and.’

  Neither of them speaks. After a while, Chloe says, ‘We’re hoping now you’ve got more time you’ll come to Sydney. The children would like to see you again, Beatrice.’

  ‘You’re welcome to stay with us,’ says Francis.

  ‘After the baby’s born,’ Chloe says.

  ‘Thank you.’ Lie, lie. ‘I would like that.’

  We pull up outside the motel and I go into the office for their key while Frank pulls the bags out of the car.

  The man in the office is called Billy. That’s what he said yesterday, ‘Billy rhyming with Willy,’ flicking his eyebrows at me. He is thirty maybe, thirty-five, these days they all look impossibly young, and is sweetly running to fat. There are fleshy gaps between the buttons of his shirt and a pinch-size roll under his chin.

  ‘Gooday, love,’ he says. Three days of eye talk and he has moved to a new familiarity. Oh, he can pick them, all right.

  ‘The key for 208. My son and his wife. You remember I booked the adjacent unit for them?’

  He picks a key from a board. ‘Never!’ he says, dangling it between his fingers.

  ‘I spoke to you about it yesterday morning.’

  ‘Never you got a married son,’ he grins as he leans across the counter, and down the neck hole of his shirt I see a gold chain dangling in a lawn of black hair. Men make such a fuss of women’s chests. Do they realise that women feel the same about theirs?

  I snatch at the key, my eyes meeting his, clash, clash, as he pulls it back out of reach. ‘He’s older than you,’ I say.

  He laughs, his breath sweet with gum and presses the key warmly into my hand. ‘I always reckon women age like wine. Some turns to vinegar but others get to be so –’ He looks over my shoulder and his face goes blank.

  ‘Have you got the key, Mother?’ says the voice behind me.

  Saint bloody Francis.

  3

  1953

  For the rest of her life Delia would remember it as a day of gold. The images, the feeling, even the sky turned gold in her memory, although in fact the sky was blue and it was the plane in it that was as yellow as a buttercup. The music was definitely golden, a Chopin waltz that ran up and down Midas keys and her mother, bent over the keyboard, was wriggling her shoulders and head the way she did when she got full of the piece she was playing. Memory said, golden mother, golden fingers, golden light on the floor and the lid of the piano, golden sunflowers at the window, summer golden grass and golden fire dropping out of the sky. Actually, it wasn’t like that. Delia didn’t hear the plane, partly because of the piano and partly because she was at the kitchen table, deeply occupied with a coloured pencil drawing of a medieval castle for a school project. It was Bea who came running in yelling, ‘Uncle Jack’s here! Uncle Jack! Uncle Jack!’

  The piano stopped, the pencil fell onto the table and the house trembled with a noise of the aeroplane engine which sounded like Mum’s old sewing machine with the pedal flat down. Delia pushed her chair back. ‘Mum, it’s Uncle Jack.’

  Her mother’s back was straight with listening but she didn’t turn around or speak. The machine vibrations stitched up all the air in the room so that they were breathing it in and it was growing in them like another heartbeat.

  ‘Mum?’ Delia smiled at the back of her mother’s head, willing her to be pleased.

  The spine stayed as stiff as iron but the hands went back to the piano keys. It was the Chopin waltz again, fast and very loud.

  They ran out, Delia, Bea, tripping over the gumboots in the back porch, pushing each other, stumbling down the path to the woolshed, their heads tilted to the sky, hands waving, waving, oh Uncle Jack, can you see us?

  The yellow Tiger Moth was circling low over the house, the black letters under its wings as big as newspaper headlines, ZK-BFA, and he saw them all right. The round head of the flying helmet was nodding, the goggles glinting, a hand waving hello to the scallywags, the ratbags, the honey pies, the niftiest girls in the world, and then the yellow wings tipped the other way, heading for the paddock where Dad had cleared a landing strip. They chased after it, Bea puffing because her legs were short, and climbed onto the barbed wire fence by the orange windsock that hung like an elephant’s trunk. ‘Uncle Jack! Uncle Jack!’ Each shielded her eyes with her left hand and waved with her right, yelling, although he would not have heard a thing.

  The aeroplane waggled its wings in the sun, turned, then dropped down towards them, angled so that they could clearly see him in the rear cockpit, goggles like beetle’s eyes and his big-teeth grin and the leather jacket that he had let Delia wear, with half the sleeves flapping over her hands. Down it came, the golden noise of it washing over them and then suddenly the feeling of it was too much for Delia. She brought her right hand down on a barb on the top wire and closed her fist until the pain took over.

  The wheels touched the grass, bounced a little and then the tail skid came down. The aeroplane taxied almost to the end of the paddock and turned around, trundling back to them. It blew a rush of dust and straw in their faces and they backed off the fence, coughing and wiping their eyes.

  Uncle Jack didn’t put down the little gate of his cockpit but jumped over it, one hand on the back of the seat, and in a second had flicked open the luggage space behind him, taking from it two triangular blocks of wood with ropes hanging off them. In the same quick way, he wedged the wood under the wheels. The Tiger Moth chugged quietly against them, its wings trembling, its propeller making a slow circle of light.

  He came to them, pulling off his gloves and lifting his goggles up on his helmet. Delia saw the fizzy blue of his eyes framed by the deep marks left by the goggles.

  ‘Hi sugar!’ He put his hand on Delia’s head. ‘Hi Buzzy Bea!’ The other hand rested on Bea’s plaits. ‘Where’s my pal Frankie?’

  ‘Back up the hill!’ Bea shouted. ‘He’s got fly strike!’

  Delia put her hand on Bea’s arm to silence her. ‘It’s the h
ot weather. The blowflies have been bothering the sheep. He’s got the motorbike. He probably saw you coming.’

  ‘He paints flyspray stuff on sheeps’ bums,’ shouted Bea, laughing and squirming.

  Delia glared at her. Bea always did this kind of thing to get attention. She was nine, old enough to know better.

  ‘What say we go and look for him,’ laughed Uncle Jack. ‘Anyone want a ride?’

  ‘Me, me, me!’ Bea was trying to get her chubby leg over the fence but her dress got caught on a barb.

  ‘Delia first because she’s the oldest,’ said Uncle Jack, lifting Delia over the fence as easy as can be. As he set her on the ground he grabbed her right hand and opened it to look at the blue and red hole in the middle of her palm. She would have to lie about that. How could she explain that when a big feeling hurt her she had to find another hurt to take her mind off it? But she didn’t need to say anything. Before he could ask the question in his eyes, Bea was bawling and saying, ‘It’s not fair! It’s not fair!’

  ‘You’ll be second, honey bun,’ he said.

  ‘I saw you first,’ sobbed Bea. ‘Delia was inside and she didn’t even –’

  ‘No blubbering near my Tiger. It rusts the instruments.’ He unbuttoned his leather jacket, shrugged it off and draped it around Bea’s shoulders. The weight of it brought her down from the fence and she stood on the grass, shoulders bent, her wet face glowing.

  ‘Keep it warm for me, my little Buzzy Bea. We’ll be back pronto.’

  He was wearing a white nylon shirt that flapped in the wind from the propeller and Delia could see the gingery hairs on his chest as he strapped her into the front cockpit. He tightened the cross of canvas webbing across her chest. ‘That feel okey-doke?’ he yelled. ‘You sure you’re going to be warm enough? It’s cold up there.’

  She nodded. She was trembling, though not with cold. She had never been in an aeroplane before but couldn’t tell him that lest he think her too much of a kid and change his mind. She looked at the dials, the pedals at her feet, the black stick with the knob a little above her knees. It was called a joystick. She knew that from reading Biggles books.

  He followed her gaze. ‘It’s a trainer,’ he said. ‘Kitted out for dual. Hold your mouth the right way and I might let you fly it. How old did you say you were?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Nah,’ he laughed. ‘Not a day under twenty-one. Come on, let’s see if the helmet fits you.’

  It was almost the same as his, a leather hat with lambswool inside, goggles sitting on top, a strap with a buckle and a tube like a doctor’s stethoscope hanging from the ear things.

  ‘This is a Gosport tube. I’ll plug this in and you’ll hear me from the back cockpit. You want to talk to me, just yell here. Okay? Okay! Don’t touch anything until I tell you.’ He did the helmet up under her chin and pulled the goggles down over her eyes. They were made of perspex and a little scratched but she could see through them fine. She lifted her hand to wave to Bea but only her fingertips moved. He tugged again at the harness and then put up the hatch, the little gate into the cockpit with two bolts to keep it in place.

  Delia sat up straight and looked at everything, the yellow wings above and below, the struts, the wires, the bulge of the petrol tank, the propeller that whirred wind into her face and hair. Uncle Jack was pulling away the triangular chocks. It was going to happen. She was going to fly.

  A lever at her side moved forward, the engine roared and the aeroplane shook like a startled horse. Slowly it turned around and rolled across the paddock, bumping towards the place where it had landed. The sun was in her eyes, splintered by scratches in the goggles, chopped up by the propeller. The dry summer hills shimmered into liquid shapes that flowed around her, hurting with their beauty. She clenched her hands in her lap and saw it all, the knobs and levers that shifted by themselves, the lichen on the fenceposts, Beatrice sitting in the yellow grass with the jacket over her knees, the elephant’s trunk barely moving. Uncle Jack’s voice, stretched out thin by the tube, said in her ears, ‘Trim okay, mixture back rich, fuel okay, ignition, harness and hatches. Final cockpit check done, sugar puss. Are you ready?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You okay up there?’

  ‘Yes, YES!’ she yelled.

  ‘Here we go, kiddo.’

  The engine grew louder, the wheels faster, the bumps bigger. They roared past Bea who was waving both arms and Mum who was running to the fence, waving, and then the knob between Delia’s knees moved back into the hem of her dress, the joystick, and the bumps had gone and the wheels were off the ground. They were in the air.

  She held her hands so tight that the pain from the barbed wire went right up her arm and became a part of her laughter. The fences were falling away, the house, the woolshed, the tractor like a little brown toy. The sky shifted sideways and they were flying back over the strip. Beatrice and Mum together at the fence, small as insects under the orange splash of the windsock and there was a different kind of bumping, the wings bouncing in the bright golden air.

  ‘How’d you like that, sugar puss?’

  ‘I love it! I just love it!’

  His laugh was warm in the helmet. ‘Okay. Now let’s look for Frankie Munro. Did they ever tell you I was their best man?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘He’s beaut. A real corker, your Dad.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked down at a lumpy mattress of hills, burned yellow and blue with shadow in the creases, and the clusters of sheep as small as maggots. The wind whipped her hair against her goggles. The plane bucked and shivered, making her stomach drop.

  ‘Thermals,’ he said. ‘It’s the heat. You get uneven air like potholes in a road.’

  ‘I can see our shadow!’ she yelled. It was underneath them, a dark plane shape sailing over the hills.

  ‘You know how fast we’re travelling? Look at the gauge in front of you. Forty-eight miles per hour cruising speed, altitude 1100 feet and climbing. Can you spot your Dad?’

  She tried to lean over the edge of the cockpit but the straps held her shoulders down. ‘No.’

  ‘Look to port!’ he said and the joystick moved sideways. The wings tilted the other way and she saw a dark blob moving with smaller dark specks behind, her father on his motorbike, the dogs running after.

  ‘He’s not looking!’ she yelled into the talking tube.

  ‘He will. Want some fun?’

  ‘Yes! Oh yes!’

  They climbed into the sky in a slow spiral until the man on the motorbike was a tiny dot and the hills had shrunk to small ripples in a wider landscape of roads and houses rimmed by sea. The sun’s glitter was fierce but there was no warmth and Delia’s arms were blotched red and blue, pimpled below the sleeves of her cotton dress. The droning of the engine was even, like the buzzing of a big bumblebee, but they weren’t going anywhere, just round and round with the nose pointing up and the propeller spinning away the blueness of the sky. After a long time, Uncle Jack levelled the plane and shouted in her ears, ‘Right, kiddo, want to fly?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Can you reach the rudders?’ he said. ‘Those are the bars by your feet.’

  She looked down and was relieved to discover that her sandals barely touched the metal strips. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll do that bit. See the stick? Put your hand on it and just do what I say. I’ll tell you to pull it right back and then I’ll tell you to push it forward. Ready?’

  She nodded, her right hand over the black knob.

  ‘Got it?’ he said and she felt it waggle under her fingers.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Slowly pull it back, back. That’s it. Back some more.’

  She drew it towards her until the knob was almost in her lap. The aeroplane was rising up, nose in the air.

  ‘Back until she stalls,’ yelled Uncle Jack.

  Suddenly, the engine cut out. The propeller slowed, stopped and the plane was sitting on its tail in a silent sky, the only no
ise the whistling of wind in the wires.

  ‘Stick forward!’ yelled Uncle Jack. ‘Forward!’ And already he had begun to push it for her. ‘This is where the fun starts, kiddo.’

  The plane’s nose dropped until the brown hills were directly in front of her, then the line of the horizon tipped up and turned. She got a funny feeling in her stomach. Around the horizon went and around and around, the browns and blues mixing up like the colours of a spinning top and no sound at all but the wooshing of the wind. The pressure in her stomach grew bigger and pinned her into the seat. It was hard to breathe. Then the pedals in front of her feet moved and the stick flicked sideways in her hand and the horizon came back right side up. The engine started and all her insides floated down into their right places again. But her heart was slip-slopping in her ears and chest and hands and she was breathing fast as though she had been running.

  ‘Like that?’ yelled Uncle Jack.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘We did a spin. Look down there.’

  They were much closer to the ground now and she could see her father’s red shirt, the way his gumboots were stuck out on either side of the motorbike, the dogs racing about barking. Dad was looking up and waving both arms, crossing them over his head. She put her arm out of the cockpit to wave back.

  ‘Hold on, kiddo,’ said Uncle Jack. ‘We’ll give him a little buzz.’

  The engine bellowed and instantly the horizon tipped again. The earth was above her, the sky below. She gripped the edge of her seat as her haunches rose from it. The straps bit into her shoulders. She was hanging in them, hanging upside down. Uncle Jack was laughing in her ears. He swung the Tiger Moth over and she dropped back into her seat.

  ‘That was a barrel roll,’ he said. ‘Want to bet old Frankie gets to the airstrip before we do?’

  They were all at the airstrip, Dad, the dogs, Mum, Beatrice, and no one waved as the plane landed. Dad ran over, happy to see Uncle Jack. He climbed up on the wing and leaned over the back cockpit, punching Uncle Jack on the shoulder and yelling, ‘Hell, Jack. What the blazes, Jack. Good to see you, you old villain.’