by Jaye Peaches
I coasted, drifted uneventfully. Even Micah, my two-year date, hadn’t captured my heart or inspired me. He would stay over, we’d fuck, and he’d leave in the morning blowing me a kiss. Two years of sex with no thrills and mundane conservations over Chinese takeaways or pizzas.
* * * *
The suitcase wouldn’t fit through the loft door. “How long has this been up here?” I shouted down the hatchway.
“Your father put it up there,” Mum called up.
I jammed it, kicked with my feet and finally, it scraped past the ladder and tumbled onto the floor.
“Oh, well done, darling.”
The attic might have been a freezer, but I was sweating. Checking around, I spied many of my father’s relics. His fishing rod and tackle, the cricket bat ‘handed down through the generations’, he’d told me when I was a child, even though I’d been convinced he’d bought it at a Scout jumble sale. My father had liked to tease, embellish life’s minor happenings. I missed his tall tales.
I stayed for tea, listened to the village gossip then caught the bus home.
Clambering up the stairs to my bedroom, I passed Talia’s room. The headboard of her bed rattled rhythmically. Okay, she didn’t always go to his flat. Sometimes, he slept over, and she seemed to like to make a point of fucking loudly. I turned up the television volume and watched the lottery results. I never played the lottery, but that didn’t mean I didn’t believe in luck or fate.
Stefan sprang into my head. I pictured his curly dark hair licking about his face and his graceful conducting. I lay on the bed, crossed my ankles and squeezed my thighs together. Nope. No good. My luck would never take me that far from reality. I doubted I’d made an impression on him. He might have encouraged Debby to text me an apology, but it didn’t mean he’d kept me in his thoughts. Me? A waif, my mum called me. Clumsy, according to my sister, and based on my recent biking accident maybe not too far-fetched. A dreamer, my father’s conclusion. ‘A pretty girl with your head in the clouds,’ he’d remarked not long after my sixteenth birthday. The next day, he’d started coughing. A week later, he’d gone.
Chapter Two
I made use of all my available free time to practice the pieces. I’d passed the sight-reading stage and entered the next phase—repeating tricky phrases ad nauseam. However, my technique for some of the passages lacked confidence. I split a reed by the end of one lengthy practice. Perhaps, subconsciously, I’d been chewing on it.
I walked into the city center, hijacked the free Internet connection in a café and downloaded the pieces onto my iPod. After gulping down my drink, I headed off to walk behind the colleges and across The Backs—the meadows next to the River Cam—listening the whole time to the professional recordings. Cold, frosty air mushroomed my breath into white particles, and I stuffed my frozen hands in my pockets.
I blocked out the sounds of traffic, concentrating on the music in my ears. What was inspiring me to practice so much? I usually did a couple of hours at the weekend, not every day. I hung my head over the edge of the bridge, watching the ducks squawking and dipping their bills underwater. If there was a reason, I ignored it. I convinced myself I was doing this extra work for the good of my sinfonia. The sum of an orchestra was its parts, and I had a responsibility to perform at my best.
One area of vast improvement had been my arm. By the time Wednesday came around, I felt only a dull ache. Progress. I packed Nettie in her case and collected the music. My failure to sort out my bicycle made me wonder if I was too scared to ride it. I’d grown used to the bus timetable, planning my life around routes. Stepping out through the front door, yelling a goodbye to Talia, who’d just got back from her shift, I flung the scarf around my neck and set off for the bus stop only to halt outside the house. Parked right under the streetlight was a silver BMW. A very familiar sporty Z4 BMW.
Idiot. I should never have given him my address. My sensible father would have told me I’d acquired a potential stalker. However, instead of dashing down the street, I shuffled along the cracked paving stone, tripping slightly. I wavered and regained my balance. My legs then refused to move as I fixed my eyes on the person in the car. He opened the door, stood and waved at me.
“Callie. Come on!” he called over the roof of the car.
I crept forward. “What are you doing here?”
“Picking you up.” He gave me a bemused expression, as if it was obvious, which it was, but I didn’t want it to be. “I decided to give you another five minutes, but here you are. Plenty of time. Can’t have you standing in the cold when I drive past the bottom of your road. Come on,” he urged.
My things went in the boot again and, climbing into the passenger seat, I remembered my manners. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m quite happy to catch the bus. I have a pass and—”
He laughed. “Stop, will you? It’s fine.” He revved the engine and pulled away, flinging me back in my seat. Another nerve-racking journey to endure.
Stefan wore a suede jacket and underneath a black shirt. Very fetching with his black jeans. My overt inspection caught his attention. He ran his hand along the buttons of his shirt. “Coffee colored. Safer.”
I was mortified by his recollection of the previous week’s misadventure, and a rush of hot blood struck my face. Too hot.
The interior of the car had been heated prior to my arrival. I unwound the scarf, panting under my layers. I’d dressed in clothes suitable for standing at a cold bus stop, not baking in a snazzy sports car.
“Too hot?” He flicked a switch on his dashboard before I could answer. “Can’t have you overheating.”
I changed the subject quickly. I didn’t want to agree with him. “I’ve been practicing.” I sounded like an overeager pupil trying to impress her teacher. “I mean, I’m not sight-reading tonight.” Every time I spoke to Stefan, my tongue tied itself into knots.
“Good. I shall listen out.”
Great. Now I was drawing even more attention to my playing. I shrank down in my seat and opted to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the journey.
By the time we arrived, the hall heaved with people. Chairs scraped across the floor, metal stands clattered and the volume of toots and plucking rose as the players warmed up and tuned their instruments.
Cordelia and I positioned our chairs roughly behind the flautists and next to Heather the bassoonist, our usual spot. We tuned our instruments to each other then to the oboe, which sang out nearby. Gradually, the orchestra settled and the ringing of a single note occupied the hall.
I waited, fidgeting with Nettie. I drummed my fingers up and down the holes, feeling the silver keys that made up the elaborate mechanism. My clarinet, a B-flat version, was standard and the mainstream for use in orchestras. I couldn’t afford any other variants of the clarinet—the E-flat or A type. I had to make do with transposed music if the original score had been written for another member of the clarinet family. It made for challenging playing and difficult fingering sometimes.
I blew into Nettie, keeping her warm. The familiar buzz of the reed resonated against my lips. As a child, when I’d learned to play on a school clarinet, the keys often came loose and fell apart. The sensation of the reed had taken time to adapt to at first. It had made my lips numb after a few minutes. I’d toughened up and grown used to the tingling. Years later, with my own clarinet, bought by my parents on my fourteenth birthday, I hardly noticed the pressure of the vibrating reed on my lips.
Stefan lay out his music on his special conductor’s stand, which was larger in all dimensions. He positioned the black lectern at waist height, allowing him good visibility of the whole orchestra and space to move his arms.
“Capriccio, please,” he announced with a tap of his baton on the top of the stand.
The Rimsky-Korsakov. My newly discovered nemesis. Five movements, the first being the hardest for me with a clarinet solo.
My fingers shook. I couldn’t tell if it was pure nerves or whether I was
excited at playing a demanding piece.
Stefan raised his arms, gave us a bar of beats to familiarize us with the tempo. I breathed in and out, tapping my foot, then trilled my finger for the opening note. Please, don’t balls this up.
I fluffed it. Three bars into the solo my tongue flapped about, missing the notes, and although I kept going, it hadn’t been my best rendition. The more I fumbled with my notes, the greater my anxiety. I overblew Nettie. She screeched back at me. Embarrassed at my ineptitude, I fought with clammy hands and a nauseated stomach, churning and rumbling below. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made such a terrible noise. My vibrato wobbled and any semblance of rounded tone extinguished.
Stefan rattled his baton on the stand. “Let’s go back to the start of section A.”
My solo again. Get a grip, Callie.
I rallied. Somehow, my nerves settled and I managed to play through the section without errors. Not brilliantly and it lacked elegance, but I held my own. I glanced up to Stefan during a brief pause in my playing. He was concentrating on the strings. I had no idea if he’d been impressed, relieved or disappointed by my playing. I hated not knowing.
During coffee, I had no opportunity to ask. He spent most of the break chatting to the brass section. All men bar one. A mini brass band that often met separately to play their own pieces. The same camaraderie didn’t exist in the wind section. Mostly women and many with children, it meant different priorities. We rarely met outside of the weekly Wednesday gathering.
During the second half, the pressure was off. The Sibelius. I had the chance to relax more and watch Stefan. His conducting continued to mesmerize me. He occasionally swayed in time with the music, or bounced up and down on his toes. This wasn’t a job for him. Paid or not, he enjoyed the thrill of being in control of us.
I hadn’t expected a lift back, but he appeared at my side as I twisted Nettie apart. “Five minutes?”
“Sure.” I nodded.
He strolled off to collect his things.
The car was cold this time. I wrapped my scarf about my neck and waited for Stefan to wipe the condensation off the inside of the windshield.
“You’ve been practicing.”
I started, sitting up in my seat. Was that a question or a statement? “Yes, well…”
“You said you’d practiced.” He shifted the gear stick.
“Yeah. I sucked, didn’t I?” I deflated in my seat.
“What?” he blurted. “No. I thought you did well. Big improvement on last week.”
“I still fluffed—”
“It’s early days yet. The concert isn’t until Easter.”
“Don’t be nice. I was crap—”
“Callie. I wasn’t criticizing you.” He slammed the brake on at the lights. “You practice at home, yes?”
“Yes. Not ideal. Neighbors and—”
The man was determined to keep interrupting me. “I have no neighbors. Come to mine and we’ll run through the solo together.”
The car lurched forward, as did my pulse. It went from a nervous, irritated rate to ballistic in a split second. “Yours…? When…?” I stammered.
“Saturday morning?” he suggested.
Saturday. Shit. Valentine’s Day. “I can’t. I’m working. It’s a big day for florists.”
“Okay, Sunday.”
I swallowed. “Morning?”
“Eleven. I’ll make you lunch.”
It sounded like a date. Did I want a date with Stefan? My frazzled brain, tired from playing, now struggled to assimilate his intentions. “Food?”
“Yes, I take it you like to eat.” He turned to me for a second and he probably caught a brief glimpse of the knotted creases forming on my forehead.
How did he do it? Make me lose my tongue and all sense of self-assurance. I folded my arms across my chest, letting Nettie slip down my lap slightly. “Why is it that every time I sit in this car I come across like a wet blanket? Yes, of course I eat. What I want to know is why the hell would you take one member of an orchestra back to your house for individual lessons? Are you a music teacher?”
“Yes, as it happens. I prefer to teach vocal, not instruments. I occasionally teach the piano. My true calling is composing, but I don’t make a living from it at the moment. So, I teach at my studio apartment.” He entered my road, slowing down to a snail’s pace.
Back to flummoxed. “Oh. I don’t need lessons. I mean, I can’t afford—”
“I’m not asking you for money.” He pulled up outside my house. “Callie, would you do me the honor of coming to my place and playing the clarinet for me, because I think you have promise and I like hearing you play. Then I will cook lunch and we can chat and get to know each other.”
“A date?” I pushed.
“If you think it’s a date, then be my guest. I don’t do dates, not like romantic venues and dinners. I would like to help you. It’s your confidence that lets you down.”
I wanted to scowl, show some indignation, but he was right. My confidence failed me on the big occasions. Probably, deep down, it was why I chickened out of auditioning for music colleges. I chewed my lip. “How do I get to yours?”
“I’ll pick you up. Just before eleven.”
The window began to mist up again. We were shuttered behind steamed glass, and outside the darkness was impenetrable even under the nearby street light.
“All right. Sunday.”
Stefan smiled. A broad grin, one I’d not seen on his face yet. “Great. I’m really looking forward to it.”
I believed him. Who wouldn’t? His handsome face had captured me. I had the feeling a man was back in my life.
* * * *
Micah, my two-year affair, had been a disaster. A serious fuck-up according to my sister, who had judged him insufficient the moment she met him. I’d thought her harsh. Given that we disagreed on many issues, I’d ignored her warnings. It had been infuriating when I found out she was right.
It had begun well. An undergraduate at the university, he certainly had brains. Privately educated, spoon fed financially by his parents, he’d never worked and had no idea how to live responsibly. I’d fallen for his charm. He could beguile with his eloquent speech and wit. I’d met him at a party. Although I wasn’t a student, I’d socialized on the periphery since two of my friends from school went to Trinity College. Micah, wearing a tuxedo, knew how to play the part of a playboy. Dazzling from the outset, he’d flattered me with easy banter and I’d succumbed.
He’d fritted away his money on clothes and drink. Ashamed to admit it to his parents, he’d borrowed from me and I’d foolishly filled his pockets with small change. It added up and before I knew it, I’d let him sleep in my house, fed him and entertained his friends.
He’d trampled over me, shunned my friends and sneered at me in a drunken haze. I’d agreed to him fucking me to keep him quiet—a complete waste of my virginity. Boy, did it rile me still. He’d spun me out with the knack of polite regret. He’d sobered up then been all apologetic and sweet. It had taken the last six months of our toxic relationship for me to acknowledge that we weren’t going anywhere.
When I’d sent him packing after a major argument over money he owed me, he’d shrugged, collected his things from my drawers, stuffed them in a bag and left. After the initial jubilance of ditching him, I felt hollow, empty and despondent. He’d kept me company for two years and his absence had ended my social life. His friends had become mine and little else was left save the orchestra.
I had mourned him briefly. Then, after Charlene gave me one of her told-you-so speeches, I’d woken up and defended my relationship. I’d learned a lot from him. Blow jobs, I’d confessed. She’d shrieked down the telephone, telling me to hush and something about having no shame. Neither did big sis have any interest in my knowing how to mix a mean cocktail or how to watch my pennies because nobody else would. I refused to become bitter about my failure and brushed off Charlene’s criticisms and my mum’s sympathetic platitudes.
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Waiting to see Stefan, the rest of the week dragged. I clock-watched my way through work on Thursday and Friday, and when it came to Saturday, I relied on it being Valentine’s Day to make the day pass quicker. The shop heaved with walk-in customers, mainly men. Al dashed out to do deliveries and the store of red roses rapidly vanished. By teatime we were down to a few bunches.
My fingers ached from bundling up stems and trimming leaves. The pungent fragrance of roses, which at the beginning of the day almost reeked, had long since vaporized. I doubted I could smell anything. I trudged home and wallowed in a lavender bath, a different aroma.
I couldn’t sleep. I probably did, but it seemed as though I lay awake all night. I mentally played my clarinet, imagining myself having lessons. It had been years since anyone had taught me. I’d passed my Grade 8 in my late teens and everyone had expected me to apply to music college. I froze that summer. Locked myself in a spell of belated grief for my father and refused to countenance any more studying. I wanted freedom, so as soon as I’d saved a deposit for rent, I moved out and started working for Bridget.
Tossing about in my bed, I stroked my belly. My mum thought I was skinny, Micah had told me I was perfect, while I compared myself to fashion models and found myself wanting. Did Stefan find me attractive? My hair, long and flowing, I generally tied back. My eyes, light and surrounded by bountiful lashes, were my saving grace. The rest of me, I didn’t rate highly. I dressed plainly and hid my narrow waist.
Shit! I sat up in bed. What would I wear? I switched on my light, rummaged through my wardrobe and contemplated my meager collection. A dress? I didn’t bother in the winter months, as I hated tights. My longest skirt looked frumpy.
