Classical Music

by Cowley, Joy

  It seemed that it never rained that summer and the light was fierce, hard on the eyes. In the middle of the day, the birds were quiet, the sheep disappeared into black shadows under trees and the only movement came from tiny blue butterflies in the brown grasses. The windsock hung limp on its post and near it, the beautiful yellow Tiger Moth sat in its own shadow, blocks of wood in front of its wheels and ropes tying it to the fence in case a wind came up. Only once during shearing season was it windy and then not too bad, a nor’wester that blew leaves about and had the windsock doing a one-legged dance. When iron on the woolshed began to rattle, the men went out to put more ropes on the plane and that night, with the windsock still dancing, Uncle Jack said he wouldn’t be able to fly back to Palmerston North. He’d have to sleep in the woolshed. Could he borrow Frank’s sleeping bag?

  Dad said, no, no, he wouldn’t hear of it. Jack could have one of the girls’ rooms. The girls could sleep together.

  Both Diddy and Beatrice started yelling, ‘My room! My room! Uncle Jack?’ but he said he wouldn’t put anyone out. The woolshed was good enough. He’d slept in worse places in the Australian bush.

  Mum said, ‘You wouldn’t be putting anyone out.’ But the way she spoke it sounded the opposite.

  ‘Have my bed, Uncle Jack,’ pleaded Beatrice. ‘It’s really comfortable.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Diddy. ‘She eats toast in her bed.’

  ‘I do not! Diddy picks her nose and wipes it on the pillow. I saw her!’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ screamed Diddy. ‘Mum she’s telling lies again.’

  ‘You can’t sleep in the woolshed,’ Dad said to Uncle Jack.

  ‘All right,’ said Uncle Jack. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch by the piano.’

  Beatrice remembered how she and Diddy had clamoured, pulling at Uncle Jack’s arms and yelling. She also remembered how her mother went all funny at the mention of the piano.

  ‘It’s not comfortable enough,’ Dad said.

  ‘Couch or woolshed,’ said Uncle Jack.

  Later that evening, Mum made up a bed on the couch with sheets, two blankets and two pillows. She also put over the grand piano a big double bed blanket that reached nearly to the floor.

  Shearing was over, transport trucks had driven in to pick up the wool bales and wether lambs, and it was almost time to air out the caravan, pack the food, surfboards, swimsuits, games, leave the cat and dog to a once-daily visit from Mrs Rawiri, and drive to the beach. That summer they were going south, through the Manawatu Gorge, to Foxton. Beatrice had already put out the clothes she would wear and her third best doll Marigold. It was hard choosing a doll. Alice wasn’t cuddly, Poppy had a funny smell and she didn’t want to get sand in the hair and eyes of her best sleeping dolls, Verbena and Teresa. She also packed the roller-skates she’s got for Christmas. She couldn’t skate yet but Diddy could teach her.

  Then, two mornings before the holiday, Dad said he had invited Uncle Jack. He said it at the breakfast table, as though it was nothing, and Beatrice sat dead still for a moment, wondering if she had heard right. Diddy was silent, too. Then she and Beatrice bounced up and down laughing and shouting and rattling their spoons on their plates. Uncle Jack’s coming! Super duper Gary Cooper! Hubba hubba ding ding!

  Mum said to Dad, ‘You invited Jack Holland on our holiday?’

  Dad turned his hands over palm upwards. ‘He was shearing every day and he wouldn’t accept a penny. Not even a few beers.’

  ‘You invited him without asking me?’ she said.

  ‘Actually, I thought he would refuse,’ said Dad. ‘I did think that.’

  ‘What made you think it?’ she asked.

  ‘His job at the aero club. I thought he’d be tied up.’

  ‘He told you he started the job in February. I heard him say that, Frank.’

  Dad wiped his hair with his hand. ‘Well, it’s done now. He’ll be bringing his tent and sleeping bag. He said he’d pay his own way.’

  ‘Is he going to sit in the car with us?’ said Beatrice, thinking how he could be in the middle with her and Diddy on each side. That would be fair.

  ‘We can put in the other surfboard!’ shouted Diddy. ‘Does Uncle Jack play beach cricket?’

  ‘Wait!’ said Mum. ‘We’re not going.’ She looked at Beatrice and Diddy. ‘We are not going on a holiday with Jack Holland. If your Dad wants his company, that’s quite all right, they can go on their own.’

  ‘Agnes –’ said Dad, reaching across the table.

  She pulled her hands away and put them in her lap. ‘You and Jack can take the caravan to Foxton Beach. The girls and I will go and stay with Em.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay with Aunty Em!’ Beatrice began to cry.

  Dad said, ‘I know I should have mentioned it. But it just slipped out. He said, “What day are you leaving?” And I said, “If you’re not doing anything –”’

  ‘You had no right,’ said Mum.

  Through her tears, Beatrice looked at her mother’s face white with anger, the mouth like a knife blade. It was all Beatrice’s fault. Dozens of times she’d said to Uncle Jack why don’t you come on holiday with us? Why don’t you? Her crying got louder and louder until Dad told her to stop it or leave the table.

  ‘The girls and I are not going and that’s an end to it,’ said Mum. ‘I will not discuss it further.’

  Diddy didn’t cry. Afterwards she told Beatrice not to worry, that they would all go on holiday, Uncle Jack included. Diddy said had Bea noticed that when Dad really wanted something, really, really wanted it, he got his own way? Mum would give in. She’d have to. They could look in the garage for the extra surfboard.

  One day, maybe at that time or maybe earlier, Beatrice had asked Mum why she hated Uncle Jack.

  Mum had looked surprised. ‘Bea, that’s an awful word. We don’t hate anyone. Hatred is a sin against God and it hurts Jesus.’

  Beatrice stood there, waiting, her hands behind her back.

  ‘Jack has been your father’s friend for years, before you and Diddy were born, before I knew your father. He’s – he’s a man’s man.’

  ‘What’s a man’s man?’

  ‘Well.’ Mum pushed Beatrice’s hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears. ‘Men and women are different. Some men are a bit. A bit rough. They’re just like that.’

  ‘You mean like swearing?’

  ‘He shouldn’t talk like that in front of you girls.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘He’s what we call a rough diamond. Bea, I told you, I don’t want you and Diddy pestering Jack Holland. Girls should have the company of other girls and women. Just you leave him alone.’

  But when Beatrice told Diddy, Diddy said, ha ha ha, pig’s feathers. Mum didn’t like Uncle Jack because he wasn’t a Catholic, it was as simple as that.

  Both the car and the caravan were pre-war, the car a 1939 Chevrolet and the caravan oval-shaped, made of plywood painted pink with small windows and a fly-screen door. Inside there was a table that could be put down to make a double bed and two seats where the girls slept. There was also a wardrobe, small stove, a sink and bench and some cupboards with sliding doors. Large objects like the wooden surfboards, the tin buckets and the sack with the flounder net were strapped to a metal rack at the back of the caravan. That year there was also the deckchair and beach umbrella that Dad had made for Mum. They had matching blue and white striped canvas and they still smelled of varnish.

  Beatrice and Diddy had on their new shorts and blouses. Mum never wore shorts or slacks. She had a green sunfrock with a jacket and a green cloth sunhat that tied under the chin. There was cardboard in the brim of the sunhat. Beatrice had watched it going around and around on the sewing machine. Mum said that if she got caught in a thunderstorm she would be wearing a lettuce leaf. Beatrice wondered why anyone would want to wear a lettuce leaf, then she realised that Mum had been talking about the hat.

  They had to travel very slowly, pulling over to let cars pass.
Dad said the caravan would shimmy at any speed over forty. Shimmy. That was a lovely word. Beatrice thought it meant shine. She thought the pink paint might glisten with rainbow colours like oil on water and she kept glancing back just in case it happened. Diddy had out her drawing book and was sketching pictures of horses. Beatrice laid Marigold across her knee, took off all her baby clothes, pretend washed her with a handkerchief and put the clothes back on. The bonnet and jacket had belonged to Beatrice when she was a small baby. The wool had turned yellow, it was so long ago.

  When they came near Palmerston North, Dad stopped the car to look at a street map. Mum stared out of the window but she didn’t say anything. They drove down a street by the river and found Uncle Jack’s house true enough, although the garage wasn’t nearly big enough for his aeroplane. Dad said Uncle Jack kept his Triumph in there.

  ‘Has he got two planes?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘Triumph motorbike,’ said Dad.

  Mum stayed in the car. Diddy and Beatrice followed Dad to the house and when Uncle Jack opened the door, they flew at him as they always did. He lifted them up, one hanging on each arm, but when they asked him to do it again he told them to scoot because he needed to throw a few clothes in a bag.

  They wandered into the lounge looking at Uncle Jack’s things. There wasn’t much furniture but the walls were nearly covered with photos and above the fireplace there was a broken propeller that had been made into a clock. They soon realised that in nearly every picture, he was with people they didn’t know. This gave Bea a funny feeling, especially when she looked at photos of Uncle Jack with ladies in beautiful dresses or bathing suits.

  Diddy said, ‘I think these were all taken in Australia. Before he came here.’ She was looking at a picture of him standing in front of a plane, with his arm raised.

  ‘What’s that he’s got?’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Diddy.

  ‘Move over and let me see.’ She pushed Diddy and Diddy pushed her back. She called, ‘Dad? Dad? Diddy won’t let me see.’

  ‘It’s a snake,’ said Diddy, making a face at her.

  It was, too. Uncle Jack was laughing and holding it up by the head. Snakes were supposed to be curvy but this hung as straight as a stick. It must have been dead.

  ‘There are no snakes in New Zealand,’ Beatrice told Diddy. ‘Only in Australia.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Beatrice went around the four walls again, jumping to see the photos hung up high, and when she was sure, she said, ‘There aren’t any children. No children, Diddy.’

  ‘Of course he hasn’t got any children,’ said Diddy. ‘He isn’t married.’

  ‘He’s got us,’ said Beatrice. She bounced up and down on the old velvet armchair by the fireplace. ‘Uncle Jack’s got us.’

  ‘Stop that!’ Diddy said.

  Dad was in the hall, talking through the bedroom door telling Uncle Jack that he was not to take his motorbike. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, bugger it, Frank. You know the way it is.’

  ‘We’ll all go in the car,’ said Dad.

  ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’ said Uncle Jack. ‘I get stuck with no bloody transport.’

  ‘It’ll work out, Jacko. It’ll work. My car is your car. Any time you need transport, take it. You don’t even need to ask, you just pick up the keys. We’re not taking the bike.’

  Uncle Jack came out with a small suitcase, a tent sack and a sleeping bag rolled inside a blow-up mattress. Dad helped him to carry it to the door.

  Beatrice put out a finger and touched the ginger hairs on Uncle Jack’s arm. ‘You’re going to sit with me and Diddy,’ she said.

  But when they went out to the car they found that Mum had moved into the back seat. For the rest of the journey all Beatrice saw of Uncle Jack was the back of his head and all she heard from him was talk about Percival Proctor who was not a man but a new aeroplane coming to the Middle Districts Aero Club. But it was all right, because Mum had a pack of cards in her bag and they played Five Hundred in the back seat until they arrived at the Foxton Beach camping ground.

  Beatrice couldn’t say it to Diddy, so she told her doll Marigold. Under a pine tree at the back of the caravan she whispered in Marigold’s ear that Uncle Jack was the nicest man in the world, nicer than Dad, nicer than Father Brennan, nicer than the Pope. She was going to say nicer than God but God was in heaven, not the world. Even though Mum was mean to him, Uncle Jack was friendly to Mum. Not that she ever said mean things. She didn’t. She wouldn’t talk to him at all or even look at him. But he would keep on smiling at her the way he smiled at Beatrice and Diddy and he would never forget to say nice things.

  ‘That’s a pretty dress, lamb chop. Doesn’t she look grouse, Frank? Wouldn’t think she’s had two kids.’

  ‘Bloody good food, Aggie. No fridge, half a stove. You’re a bloody marvel.’

  ‘How’s my Betty Grable this morning? Still as beautiful as ever?

  She wouldn’t look at him and yet it never made him mad. Sometimes he’d stand with his head on one side, smiling at her, and then he’d walk off whistling to his tent which was at the end of the pine trees, near the sand dunes.

  The quickest way to the beach was through the sand dunes. If they had a lot of gear to carry Dad took the car and they drove around the road way, but when they were just going for a swim, they would run past the other caravans to Uncle Jack’s tent. If he wasn’t already with them, they’d yell, ‘Swimmo! Swimmo, Uncle Jack!’ and he’d come stumbling out in his swim shorts and they would all race over the sand dunes to the beach and the long foaming waves.

  Mum never went in the sea. She didn’t even own a bathing costume. If the car wasn’t there with her deckchair and umbrella on board, she would sit on a driftwood log in the soft sand, minding their towels and sandals and calling out if she thought Bea was going in too deep. Bea was an adult before she realised that her mother didn’t swim because she was mortally afraid of water.

  Her most potent memory of those first days of holiday was the way her mother ignored Uncle Jack. Everything else was lovely. The caravan was a dear little pink house full of pine-scented shade, the beach sparkled with good weather and Dad was as happy as anyone had seen him, laughing and kissing Mum in the middle of the road, playing beach cricket and pretending he’d swallowed the ball, surfing with Uncle Jack and having swimming races. He and Uncle Jack stood on their heads with their feet against the caravan wall, trying to drink bottles of beer upside down but they laughed too much and nearly choked, the beer spraying out of their mouths and into the sand. Mum did not laugh. She made bread. She washed the tea towels. She rubbed sunburn lotion on Bea’s arms and she played noughts and crosses with Beatrice when Diddy went roller-skating with some big girls. But she would not change her mind about Uncle Jack, and every night Beatrice prayed that God would make Uncle Jack a Catholic so Mum would like him.

  On the fourth night, a sound woke Beatrice from a deep sleep. She thought at first it was Diddy, but her sister was lying on her back, her arms flung out, her mouth open not quite snoring. Beatrice twisted onto her stomach to look out the screen door and she saw her mother in her nightgown, sitting on the bench by the picnic table, her head resting on her arms. Her shoulders were shaking.

  Beatrice kicked off her blanket and felt her way down the caravan to the big bed under the far window. Dad’s hand was on the pillow near his face. She shook it. He raised his head off the pillow, turned and put his arm out to the space beside him. Without saying a thing, he climbed out of bed and pushed past Beatrice. The caravan creaked and shook as he went to the door.

  Beatrice climbed into her own bed next to Marigold and lay on her stomach with the pillow under her chin so she could see. Dad was sitting on the bench beside Mum, his arm about her, talking in such a soft voice that the words didn’t reach the caravan. Mum sat up, her shoulders still shaking, and he put his hand on her hair, stroking it and lifting up the strands, letting them fall a
gain. Suddenly, Mum swung around, hugged his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. Beatrice watched. They kissed and kissed, not like a Mum and Dad but like people in the films. Then they got up and went for a walk.

  A long time later, they came back to the caravan. Beatrice sat up as they went past but Dad turned back and whispered to her to lie down. He tucked the blanket under her chin. ‘Go to sleep,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s just missing her piano.’

  7

  Delia

  ‘So you had a party last night,’ said Francis. He and Chloe are at the door, dark suit, black dress, suitcase beside them. Their smiles are too bright for my head.

  ‘I hope we didn’t wake you up,’ I mumble.

  ‘We went back to sleep,’ Chloe says cheerfully. ‘Is Beatrice up? We need to put our luggage in the boot of her car.’

  ‘I think she’s in the shower.’

  ‘Car keys,’ says Francis.

  ‘Oh sure. I know where they are.’ I press my hand to my left eye which is threatening to fall out, and grope on the bench behind the empty wine bottles. Did we drink three entire bottles of chardonnay? We deserve to die.

  They go off with the quick energy of the young, Francis carrying the suitcases, Chloe twirling the key ring on her forefinger. They’re dressed for a funeral which is appropriate because I feel like one. The face in the mirror tells me that a thousand dollars of laser treatment has gone down the tube in one night of reckless imbibing. I look a hundred years old. Lal, dear slow Lal who measures life with teaspoons, would say, serve you right. I don’t think he’s been drunk since his student days and that is almost beyond memory, although I do have a hazy image of five of us once sitting in an elevator riding the floors, drinking rum and Coke after an anti-Vietnam rally. Where was that? What year?

  Bea takes forever to dry her hair and when at last she emerges, Chloe and Francis have set our table with four places, apple juice, tea and toast. They have managerial skills fine-tuned by a mob of children and simply assume that Bea and I will be eating before the funeral.