Classical Music

by Cowley, Joy

  Mum went on laughing and shaking her head but she stood up. People moved back and in a moment there was a clear path between Mum and a small cottage piano on the far wall.

  ‘Here she comes,’ said Mr Ewing. ‘Let’s give our resident pianist a big hand.’

  Mum stood wobbling on her high heels, as people clapped. She took a couple of steps as though the floor were uneven and then reached out to Dad and Uncle Jack who came up on either side of her. They guided her over to the piano and pulled out the music stool. She sat down, swaying, and Delia thought she might fall off.

  ‘Play the old moonbeam,’ said Dad.

  ‘By the light of the silvery moon,’ said Mr Ewing.

  ‘No sirree!’ Dad wagged his finger at Mr Ewing. ‘The other one. You know, the “Moonlight”.’

  ‘How about “Black and White Rag”?’ said Uncle Jack. ‘You learned that yet?’

  Mum looked at Dad and Uncle Jack. Then she held onto the edge of the piano, to look back at Bea and Delia. ‘I am going,’ she said, ‘to play for Beatrice. She got drowned. Nearly. I am going to play for Bea.’ Then she turned back to the piano and rubbed her hands together.

  Delia knew what she meant, ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’ by Rimsky-Korsakov. Sometimes at home, Bea sat on the edge of the piano stool while Mum’s nimble little fingers whizzed in a buzzing whirl up and down the keys. Mum said that it was Bea’s tune and that it was really hard to play.

  Delia moved closer and touched Mum on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go back to the caravan,’ she pleaded.

  Mum took absolutely no notice. She put out one finger and stabbed a note. There was silence in the room. She lifted her hand and stabbed another note, leaning over the keyboard to look at her finger from all angles. Then she played a third note. There was a restless movement in the crowd and someone laughed with embarrassment. Delia pulled at her mother’s shoulder. ‘Please, Mum. Let’s go. Let’s go.’

  Mum swung round on the piano stool and smiled at Dad and Uncle Jack who smiled back at her as though there wasn’t a thing wrong in the whole wide world. Talk broke out, a quick buzz of conversation and people moved towards each other and their glasses.

  Delia wanted to fall down and die. ‘Let’s go!’ she cried.

  Slowly, Mum turned back to the piano. She held her hands out in front of her, turned them over and looked at them as though seeing them for the first time, then she brought them down on the keys.

  She was playing it. Oh, she was playing it! The conversation stopped as though it had been chopped off by an axe and everyone pressed forward to look. It was ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’ and she was playing it so fast, her fingers were a blur. Up and down the keyboard, buzzy, buzzy, buzzy, went those little hard hands hitting at such speed that the notes all fell on top of each other and ears couldn’t keep up. Her shoulders and arms danced along with her hands, up and down, up and down, and Uncle Jack lifted the lid of the piano to let out more sound. Buzzy, buzzy, buzzy. Zoom, zoom. People’s mouths were hanging open. Only Dad and Uncle Jack still laughed. But oh, she had never played it this fast before. There was a whole hive of bees racing around the room with frantic little engines, circling heads, diving on bottles and glasses, flying right through people and making holes in them that would last forever. Buzzy, buzzy.

  She lifted her hands and it was over.

  For a second no one did anything. Then there was a storm of noise, shouting, clapping, stamping, whistles. As Mum stood Dad and Uncle Jack grabbed her and hoisted her up on their shoulders. They walked with her around the room and she had to keep her head down to stop hitting the ceiling. People moved out of their way, looking up, calling out compliments and clapping. Mum wasn’t laughing now, just smiling politely, holding onto the collars of Dad’s and Uncle Jack’s shirts. They carried her to the door and then dropped her down.

  ‘More! More!’ people were shouting.

  But it was time to go home. Without a reply, they went outside, Mum in the middle, her arms across their backs, their arms over her shoulders and each other, Delia and Bea running to catch up.

  Dad sang, ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.’

  Mum and Uncle Jack joined in. ‘You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.’

  That’s how they walked back to the caravan, the three of them swaying and stumbling together and singing into the night. Delia grabbed Bea’s hand and they swung their arms, joining in.

  ‘The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms. But when I woke, dear, I was mistaken. So I hung my head and cried.’

  A moon had come up over the pine trees, like a rocking horse, and the air was full of little white moths which could have been bumble bees if the moon had been the sun.

  ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.’

  At the caravan, Uncle Jack said goodnight and went off through the trees to his tent. Mum and Dad laughed and kissed and pulled Delia and Bea close in a hug. The air was warm and in it Delia could still detect smoke and sausages. And beer. And sea. And pine trees. When she put her head back she could see the little moon caught in a net of branches.

  ‘You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.’

  10

  Delia

  I am both fascinated and frustrated by her singular point of view. For the past twenty miles she has been sketching character portraits of her son and daughter-in-law that are straight out of some comic book or B-grade movie. When I point this out to her, she says with perfect conviction, ‘I suppose clichés exist because there are so many of them.’

  There’s not much you can say to a supposition like that.

  This part of the Hutt Road is all new to me. Where did the miles of suburbia come from? What happened to the farms where we used to pick blackberries and mushrooms with Aunty Em? We come to the foreshore at Petone and I gasp at the spectacle of Wellington in a sunset, the sky above the hills bright orange, the dish of the harbour shimmering a dull tomato red.

  Bea misses it because she is talking about Francis and Chloe. ‘He asked me about pavlova and she deliberately. He wanted to know the three ways we served it. I didn’t get a chance to tell him.’

  She turns a corner towards the eastern bays and the blood-red sea glows at my right shoulder. Not quite. There is half a road between me and the beach. It makes me uncomfortable. I haven’t readjusted to driving on the left side. ‘Well tell me,’ I say.

  Bea glances in my direction.

  ‘Tell me about your three pavlovas. I’m interested.’

  She takes a deep breath. ‘There’s Mount Taranaki,’ she says and her voice has gone from shrill to gruff. ‘That’s a peaked mound of pavlova baked over a peach stuffed with praline, topped with cream. Not fluff squirted from a can, either. We beat fresh dairy cream. Then we have Rotorua which is a three-layered pavlova with caramel in between. Are you really interested?’

  ‘Yes, Bea, I am.’

  ‘The third one is Ninety Mile Beach. It’s flavoured with coriander and cardamon. It’s served with a mixture of cream and chestnut puree.’ She looks at me. ‘They’re my own recipes.’

  ‘How’s your new chef?’

  ‘Good. Excellent, in fact.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Margaret. Mrs Margaret McDonald.’ She smiles. ‘I’m not sure McDonald is a good name for a chef with Cordon Bleu training.’

  ‘Ah!’ I lean back in the seat. ‘Now I know why you no longer get your navel filled with liqueur.’

  ‘Oh Diddy!’

  ‘It was the only bright note at Mum’s funeral, you and your chef.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you that at her funeral. Diddy, I didn’t!’

  ‘No. You told me before their golden jubilee dinner when you were pouring Cointreau on the crêpe flambée.’

  ‘You remembered that?’

  ‘Oh God, B
ea. I remembered it over and over. That visit turned out so awful, I had to hang onto something funny. I thought of it during Mum’s Mass. Your navel filled up with alcohol and this little kitten of a chef.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Lawson. He was lovely, really and truly lovely.’

  ‘I thought his name was Rawson?’

  She looks vague. ‘Yes, you’re right. Imagine you remembering that. It was Rawson. And he had this funny surname. Stockport. The kitchen staff called him Stockpot. You know, Diddy, he had just the loveliest hips. The bone and muscle sort of rolled when he walked. I could have watched. Have you noticed that? The way there will be one thing about a man that is utterly captivating? Like the shape of his knuckles? Or his ears?’

  I laugh and shake my head.

  ‘I once knew this man who had achondroplasia.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Dwarfism. He was so lovely. He had a kind of heavy brow which made his eyes unbelievably intense. You know? They were compelling. You thought you could fall into them and never come out, they were so beautiful.’

  ‘Bea, you are amazing! You really are!’

  She dips the lights for an approaching car and says, ‘I was thinking about Lal. Has he always been?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ She puts the lights back up. ‘Well what about? I mean.’

  ‘No.’ I tell her.

  ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

  ‘Yes, I do. You were trying to ask me if I was homosexual. The answer is no. I’m not homosexual. I’m not heterosexual. I’m not anything sexual.’

  ‘What about when you were younger?’ she asks.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t.’

  I want to tell her to mind her own business but I say, ‘Autoerotic is the word you’re looking for.’

  She looks flustered. ‘Hasn’t there ever been anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But what about being in love?’

  I sit up straight. ‘Bea, as far as I’m concerned, sex has nothing to do with love. Of course, I love people. I love lots of people.’

  ‘You’re obviously fond of Lal.’

  ‘Lal and I love each other very deeply if you want to know, but it’s got nothing to do with sex. I happen to think that love is about giving. Sex is a completely selfish act. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not terribly important.’

  ‘Oh no, Diddy, you can’t say that. It’s the most glorious. The total surrender to love.’

  ‘Bullshit! It’s just an occasional itch. And if that itch happens to be on my body, then I’m the one who knows best how to scratch it.’

  ‘But Diddy!’ She looks genuinely distressed and she holds her breath, a sign that she is thinking of something to say that will be meaningful and proper. I am rescued from it by synchronicity, her street appearing in front of the car and, just around the corner, close to the beach, her house.

  What is it about wooden beach houses that makes them instantly recognisable from Cape Cod to California to Wellington? Even if you can’t see the ocean you know it’s there and you suspect that it comes up in the night to wrap invisible arms around clapboard walls, imprinting them with the smells of everything that has lived and died on the sea floor. The paint always has the same chipped look. The windowsills are always flaking. There are shells paths, geraniums and lavender and succulents, and bits of driftwood or a glass buoy by the porch. Tonight it’s too dark to see the ocean but I can smell it everywhere.

  Bea puts the key in the front door, opens it and turns on the light. I haul my baggage out of the trunk and go up the steps.

  Beach houses all have the same smell inside, too, sundried wood, sunwarmed carpet, furniture oil, old photos lined up on ledges as salty as sea urchins.

  Bea says, ‘Leave your suitcase in the sitting room and come on through.’ She is putting lights on in the kitchen. ‘Kick off your shoes. Make yourself at home.’

  It is as I would expect, a big and well-equipped kitchen although I don’t know who she would entertain here. At the end of the sink bench there is a solid block table and four padded chairs. By the wall under the window, a couch is covered with books, papers, letters. Bea gathers them with a few quick movements and says, ‘I left in a hurry. There wasn’t time.’

  ‘It’s a nice house. How long have you had it?’

  ‘Less than a year. It’s lovely living so close to the sea. Well, sit down. Sit down. What would you like to eat?’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Bea.’

  ‘I’m starving. You have to eat something. Remember what Dad used to tell us? If an animal is thin, it’s sick. Human beings are animals.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t mean you were too thin, Diddy.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did, Bea. You said it.’

  ‘I meant if you didn’t eat you could get sick. What about an omelette with herbs and fresh Gruyère?’

  ‘No thanks.’ I pick up a magazine and put it down. ‘Have you got any wine?’

  ‘Yes. Wine. I’ve got. But it’s not chilled, Diddy.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Where can I plug in my laptop?’

  While she is busy finding a bottle and glasses, I check my e-mail, letters of reassurance from Momo and Sylvie. Is it only when I am there that things go wrong? There is also a note from Antwan bearing happy news.

  I call out, ‘Bea, Regus and Holly have had a baby boy.’

  ‘Are they friends of yours?’ she asks, struggling with a corkscrew and a bottle wedged between her knees.

  ‘Regus is our flooring expert. I told you. He’s been on maternity leave. They wanted to have a home birth.’

  ‘It went well?’

  ‘Yes, very well. Eight pounds two ounces. Bea, they’ve called him Munro.’

  ‘They did? After you? That’s lovely, Diddy. What a nice thing for them to do. How’s Lal?’

  ‘He says the snowploughs are out.’

  ‘It’s snowing?’

  ‘Yep. Six inches in the last few hours.’

  She brings me a glass. ‘Munro,’ she says. ‘I’ve never heard it as a first name. It sounds quite manly, doesn’t it? I suppose they’ll be asking you to be godmother. Are they?’

  ‘Baptists.’

  ‘Oh. Well. It’s a nice thing for them to do.’ She puts her head on one side and says, ‘They’re like your family, aren’t they? Lal and Aaron and whatsisname. Your gang.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I suppose they are a surrogate family.’ I hold up my glass. ‘Cheers, Bea. Salud, amor y dinero.’

  She looks at me.

  ‘It means health, love and money,’ I explain.

  She laughs, slapping her knee. ‘I know what amor means. I thought you were saying, “Salute love and dinner.” I thought you were saying you were hungry.’

  She makes me an omelette and I eat it, well, most of it. I’m tired. Two glasses of wine and my body is reminding me that its clock is still set eight hours ahead.

  ‘I’m ready for bed, Bea. I’ve done a lot of walking, had a lot of sun, rescued a sheep.’

  ‘You’re sleeping in my room,’ she says. ‘I’ll have the spare bedroom.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ I stand up. ‘The spare room will be fine.’

  ‘You won’t get into it. Truly, Diddy. There’s so much stuff stored.’

  ‘If you can get into it, I can get into it. Where is it?’

  She pushes past me and leads the way through the lounge. I see what she means. The room has a narrow divan against the wall nearest the door. The rest of the space is taken up with boxes and the grand piano covered with a quilt. I put my suitcase on the bed and with both hands lift back the thick fabric that covers the piano lid. Under it is Mum’s old music stool.

  The phone rings in the kitchen and Bea goes off to answer. I raise the piano lid and play a few arpeggios. The keys are still and so are my fingers. The sound is muffled by the cov
er. Three notes are badly off. I pull out the stool and look inside it for sheet music. There is a scant collection and I expect that her library of music has either gone or been packed in boxes. I find some Scriabin, a little Bach.

  I hear Bea talking to someone. ‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘That’s really lovely.’

  Ah, Handel’s ‘Largo’, something at my level of accomplishment. I open the pages and rest them on the piano, aware that she was probably the last person to play the piece. I come close to smelling her perfume on it, the lightness of 4711.

  I could not document the amount of musical experience that has been perfumed by 4711. Not all of it piano, either. In an auditorium, the woodwinds breathe the opening bars of Debussy’s ‘L’Après Midi d’une Faune’ and at once the air is full of the old fragrance warmed by summer and a bass note of pine needles. I turn on Public Service radio and there is some unidentified Russian choral work, a cappella, perfect pitch, redolent with the same scent of pleasure and unease.

  Once, a few years ago, I bought a bottle of 4711. In Cologne, actually. But poured from the bottle, it was something quite different.

  I touch the first chord of Handel’s ‘Largo’ and hear a note off-key. That’s all right. With all the moves it has had, it’s a wonder that the piano can be played at all. There are no missing felts. No broken strings. La-la-de-dah, dum-de-de. That sounded awful. I’m more rusty than the instrument. I turn the page. The light is poor. The last time I played this, I didn’t have bifocals that broke up the staff and sent it wobbling down to the ledger lines.

  I remember her little hands. Mine are big, an octave and two. She said that if I’d had the ear to go with them, I would have been brilliant. She wasn’t putting me down. She never condemned or flattered anyone. She was making a statement of fact. How she would have loved to have had hands like mine which could have raked in the whole keyboard for her in a way her own would not, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, some of that expansive Chopin. Dum, dum, de-dum. Bea had her small hands but Bea’s fingers hated the piano. And then there was my big span with no life, no soul in it. How painful that must have been for her. La-la-la-la. Mediocre cum laude. But even so, playing gives me great pleasure. I don’t know why I haven’t had a piano in New York.