by Miranda Lee
Felicity walking onto the stage was a good distraction. He hadn’t forgotten that she was going to play at some stage this afternoon and he was really looking forward to it, though he rather suspected Mrs Johnson’s effusive praise earlier over Felicity’s abilities as a pianist might be exaggerated.
‘Reminds me of you, Nicolas,’ the old lady had said.
Unlikely, given Felicity was a girl and only twelve. Although she looked older standing there in a pale blue dress and shoes that had heels. Her long dark hair swung around her slender shoulders the way Serina’s did when she walked. She was, however, taller than her mother. There again, her father had been tall.
‘Act number one,’ Felicity announced into the microphone, ‘will be Jonathon Clarke. Jonathon is in fourth grade and he’s going to juggle. Jonathon?’ She waved towards the wings and a skinny, nervous-looking boy with short brown hair and glasses emerged. Some taped music started, but Jonathon didn’t. Whoever was behind the scenes stopped the tape, then started again.
Nicolas had a feeling that he wasn’t seeing the winner.
Rocky Creek Primary School didn’t have a great deal of talent, Nicolas accepted by the time he’d sat through eight very mediocre acts. But what the kids lacked in talent they made up for in enthusiasm. There was a real buzz in the hall, which was full to the brim with parents, locals and some concert-goers not so local.
None of them seemed disappointed with the acts so far, applauding wildly at the end of each. Nicolas, who appreciated he’d been spoiled by years of seeing top performers all over the world, put aside his super-critic hat and kept his comments on the kind and constructive side. The audience seemed appreciative of his ability to find praise for even the worst performance.
So far he’d endured the hapless Jonathon, who’d dropped more clubs than he caught; a gymnastic-style dance troop of fifth-grade girls whose movements often got out of sync; a poetry reading of ‘The Man From Snow River’, complete with stick horses thundering across the stage in the background; two separate country and western singers with absolutely no originality; a twelve-year-old magician whose magic was straight out of a do-it-yourself manual; an Elvis impersonator, who’d been hilarious, because he was so atrocious. And last but not least, a ten-year-old boy named Cory, playing the spoons.
Actually, he wasn’t half-bad. If no one better came along, Nicolas was going to give Cory first prize.
Only two to go, according to the program. A twelve-year-old hip-hop dancer named Kirsty. And an eleven-year-old girl—her name was Isabella—singing ‘Danny Boy’.
He should have known ‘Danny Boy’ would get in there somewhere.
Kirsty was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. She was darned good. But Isabella was clearly the star act of the night, the audience falling silent the moment she opened her mouth, her voice as pure and as clear as a bell.
Everyone clapped wildly when she finished, Nicolas included. He didn’t have to think too hard over who would win, or who would be runner-up. He’d make that second prize a dead heat between Kirsty, the hip-hop dancer, and Cory, the spoon boy. It would be simple to add a bit of money to the prize pool himself, if need be.
But before any of this could happen, however, there was one event left: Felicity’s special performance.
Nicolas found his heartbeat quickening when she walked back out onto the stage.
Surely he couldn’t be nervous for her.
But he was, nervous as hell.
Nicolas had never been nervous himself before a performance. He used to be excited. He could not wait to get out there, to show what he could do, to blow his audience away with his brilliance.
But then he’d always been super confident when it came to playing the piano. Girls—especially young girls like Felicity—rarely possessed that kind of confidence.
Yet as he watched her cross to the centre of the stage, there was no hesitation in her stride. She stopped there for a moment, faced the audience and bowed, at the same time throwing him a smile that wasn’t just confident. It was super confident.
‘Wait till you hear this,’ Felicity’s principal whispered from where he was sitting beside Nicolas at the judge’s table. ‘Felicity would have won hands down if she’d entered, you know.’
It was a telling remark, coming so soon after Isabella’s almost faultless rendition of ‘Danny Boy’.
Nicolas watched, his mouth drying as Felicity moved over to the piano that had not been used as yet that night, Isabella having sung unaccompanied and the dancers using recorded music.
Another smile came his way after she sat down on the stool and lifted her hands to the keys.
‘I have chosen to play this medley of pieces in honour of our very special guest here tonight,’ she said to the audience. ‘I cannot hope to play them as well as he once did. But I will do my best and hope he forgives my mistakes.’
What mistakes? Nicolas was to think numbly thirty seconds later as Felicity’s fingers flew over the keys. He’d never heard Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ performed any better by one so young. In no time the fast, flashy piece was over, Felicity switching with effortless ease and surprising sensitivity into the haunting adagio from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Lastly, just as everyone in the audience was almost in tears, she launched into Chopin’s very showy polonaise ‘Heroic’, a piece requiring great technical brilliance and showmanship.
Chopin was a favourite choice of composer amongst concert pianists, especially his polonaises. This particular one had been a staple of Nicolas’s list. He watched, totally amazed, as Felicity attacked the wild sweep of notes with the same kind of panache and passion that he’d possessed, which the critics had loved. She never looked up at any sheets of music because there were none there. She was playing from memory as he’d always done.
Nicolas could not believe it. Only twelve and already she could play like this. Why, she could take the world by storm in a few years!
Felicity finished the polonaise with a flourish, bending over the keys in a long, dramatic pause before slowly lifting her hands. She tossed her hair back from her shoulders as she stood up, taking her time to turn and bow to the audience, all the while with a ‘Yes, I know I’m good’ expression on her face.
It was then that she broke into a grin and winked at him.
The cheeky minx, Nicolas thought as he jumped to his feet, clapping and shouting ‘Bravo!’ as European audiences sometimes did. Everyone else in the hall started doing likewise and Felicity finally began to look a little embarrassed. It was left to the principal of the school to hurry up onto the stage and bring some order back into proceedings.
‘Wasn’t that just wonderful, folks?’ he said, and gave a by then embarrassed-looking Felicity a shoulder squeeze. ‘Not only is our school captain a great little pianist, but she’s also a great little organiser. We have her to thank for the presence here tonight of our esteemed guest and judge, Mr Nicolas Dupre. For anyone who doesn’t know, Mr Dupre was Australia’s most famous concert pianist till a tragic accident cut short his career a decade ago. But you can’t keep a Rocky Creek lad down for long. He then went on to become an equally famous theatrical entrepreneur. Some of you might have seen the segment about him on TV a few years ago. Anyway, we are most grateful that he found the time to be with us here tonight. He came a long way. Now…we come to the most important part of the evening. Will Mr Dupre please come up onto the stage and announce the winners?’
Nicolas rose, and made his way forward to some ear-splitting applause.
Serina wasn’t clapping, however, her hands twisting in her lap as she watched Nicolas mount the short flight of steps then walk across the stage to where Felicity and Fred Tarleton were standing.
He looked magnificent, dressed in a charcoal-grey suit which must have cost a small fortune. Not only did it fit his body to perfection, but there also wasn’t a single wrinkle where the sleeves met his broad shoulders. His shirt was blue, about the same colour as his eyes. His tie
was dark blue and grey striped. Only his collar-length blond hair spoiled his image as a millionaire businessman. That, and the inherent sensuality in his face.
Serina heard a few soft sighs from the women in the audience.
In a way, those sounds provided a degree of comfort. How could she blame herself for being besotted by the man when perfect strangers were affected by him?
But it wasn’t his sex appeal that was causing her hands to be wrung. Or her stomach to be hopelessly in knots. It was the fear that he might have seen the truth during Felicity’s astounding performance just now.
Surely he must have seen what was so obvious to her. That this was his own flesh and blood playing up there. His genes, not Greg’s.
She leant forward in her seat to get a closer look at the expression on his face when he approached Felicity. When his daughter smiled up at him, he smiled back, just as happily, without hesitation, without even a hint of distress or anger.
He hadn’t seen! He didn’t even suspect!
Perversely, any relief Serina felt was tinged by a bitter resentment. What was it about men that they had no sensitivity, or intuition? He should have seen what was obvious. But no, they only saw what they wanted to see. Or what their male ego let them see, and believe.
Nicolas had believed she didn’t love him all those years ago, and he believed it once again today. Yet she’d shown him in that bedroom this afternoon how much she did.
She shook her head and sank back into her seat.
‘He hasn’t changed much,’ Mrs Johnson said from where she was sitting on the right side of Serina.
‘No,’ Serina agreed with considerable irony. He was still a blind fool!
‘Hush up, you two,’ her mother said impatiently from the other side of Serina.
Nicolas took the microphone from Fred Tarleton and faced the audience.
‘Firstly,’ he said, ‘my heartiest congratulations, Felicity, for what was, indeed, a spectacular performance. I know I could not have done better myself at your age. Such prodigious talent is a tribute to the dedication and skill of her teacher, Mrs Johnson, who was my own first teacher. Mrs Johnson…’ He bowed gallantly towards the old lady. ‘I salute you.’
‘I take that back,’ Mrs Johnson murmured. ‘He has changed. The boy I taught had no charm whatsoever.’
A swift sidewards glance showed Serina the old lady was preening under his praise and that well-learned charm.
Her teeth clenched down hard in her jaw.
She sat there, silently fuming—which was insane!—as he went through the process of allotting the prizes, exerting more of his charm and gaining more approval from the audience as he awarded not one but two runner-up prizes. It had been a foregone conclusion that once Felicity was out of the running that Isabella would win. Not that Serina minded that. Isabella was a delightful girl with a truly lovely voice.
Serina tried telling herself she should be grateful that Nicolas hadn’t twigged to the truth. Possibly she would be, in time.
Just not right now!
‘I have one last presentation to make before today’s event comes to a close,’ Nicolas said, everyone in the hall falling silent and snapping to attention. ‘Felicity, I think you should be the one to receive this.’ And he extracted from the breast pocket of his suit jacket what looked like a cheque. ‘It was your lovely letter that brought me here. A touching letter, folks, about her dad’s tragic death in the Victorian bushfires. As you all know, this afternoon was a fund-raiser for the local bushfire brigade of which her dad was president. Now as much as you have all turned out in wonderful numbers and paid your money at the door, I made enquires about what it would cost to buy just one of those new firefighting trucks that Felicity told me about and I don’t think you’re going to make it today, not unless I give things a helping hand. So here you are, dear girl. I think it should be enough.’
Serina watched her daughter’s eyes widen as she stared at the cheque, watched her daughter then throw her arms around Nicolas. By the time Nicolas disengaged her, Felicity’s big brown eyes were dancing with happiness.
‘It’s for three hundred thousand dollars!’ she shouted to everyone.
Everyone began to clap. Everyone, that is, but Serina, who was crying. Her mother put an arm around her shoulders.
‘There there, love. I know. It’s still hard. But I’m sure Greg must be happy tonight, looking down at his daughter from heaven. Happy and proud.’
Serina cried all the harder…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE after-concert party was in full swing, with Nicolas being bombarded with both finger food and conversation. People kept coming up to him to congratulate him on a job well done and to say thank you, the girls from Serina’s office included—though not Serina, he noted ruefully. She kept her distance, even when her own mother and Mrs Johnson were chatting to him.
Felicity brought along her paternal grandparents, Franny and Bert Harmon, whom he’d never met before. They looked like they were in their late seventies and rather an odd couple: Bert was tall and thin whilst Franny was very short and plump. But both of them had grey hair and dark, gentle eyes.
‘Nanna and Pop bought your old house, you know,’ Felicity said after she’d introduced them.
‘Really?’
‘And your old piano. That’s what I first learned to play on.’
Nicolas was quite startled by this news. He’d imagined that her having piano lessons had been Serina’s doing, that Felicity would have learned to play on her mother’s piano. Serina had had her own instrument long before Nicolas acquired his, courtesy of a competition he’d won. Till then he’d always practised on Mrs Johnson’s piano.
‘Whenever I went to stay at Nanna and Pop’s,’ Felicity went on, ‘I could hear the kids having lessons next door at Mrs Johnson’s. Her music room was just over the fence from my bedroom window. I used to love to lie in bed and listen.’
Nicolas could hardly believe what he was hearing. Talk about coincidence!
‘Then, one day, when I was about three,’ Felicity continued, ‘I can’t actually remember this…but Pop tells me he came downstairs and I was trying to play. He decided then and there I should have lessons. To tell the truth, Mum wasn’t all that keen but Dad was, even though he wasn’t musical at all.’
‘Tone deaf Greg was,’ Franny said with a nod. ‘But he was so proud of you, love. I’m sure he would have been very proud of you tonight. The way you played. Nicolas was right. You were quite magnificent.’
‘If you moved to Sydney to attend the conservatorium of music,’ Nicolas said to her, ‘you would become an even better pianist. In a few years, you could be giving concerts all over the world.’
Felicity looked very taken aback. ‘But I would hate that,’ she said very forthrightly. ‘I love playing the piano, Nicolas, but I don’t want to do it for a living. Good heavens, no! I’m going to become a vet.’
‘A vet,’ he echoed blankly.
‘Golly, yes. Who’d want to be a concert pianist?’ she went on with the tactlessness of youth. ‘I can’t think of anything more boring. Playing the piano is fun, but not all the time. Oh, sorry, Nicolas,’ she added, suddenly realising what she’d just said. ‘I forgot for a moment. Still, I’ll bet you enjoy yourself a lot more doing what you’re doing now than thumping away on the keys for hours and hours every day. Which is what I’d have to do if I wanted to become a concert pianist. I know because Mrs Johnson said so. “If you want to make a career of the piano, Felicity,”’ she pronounced in a perfect imitation of Mrs Johnson’s somewhat haughty voice, ‘“you have to practise, practise, practise.” Well I practised like mad for weeks for tonight’s performance and I can tell you I’ve had more than enough of that piano for a while. I’m not going to touch a key over the Christmas holidays. Now, I really do have to go help the others with the food and stuff, or they’d think I’m slacking. Thank you again, Nicolas,’ she said as she gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Don’t go without saying goo
dbye.’
‘A vet,’ Nicolas muttered drily as he watched Felicity hurry away to join her friends. What a horrible waste of talent!
‘She’s animal mad, is our Felicity,’ Bert piped up. ‘Not domestic animals so much. Wildlife. She and Kirsty—who’s her very best friend, the one who did the hip-hop dance—they’re always hunting around in the bush looking for injured animals and birds. Kirsty’s folks have an acreage just out of town.’
‘I see,’ Nicolas said politely. Though he didn’t at all. All he could see was that she was wasting a musical talent that was beyond exceptional.
‘To tell the truth, Mr Dupre,’ Bert went on, ‘Mother and I are glad Felicity wants to be a vet. That way, even if she goes away to study for a while after leaving school, she’ll eventually come back to live in this area. She’s all we have now that our son has gone. Greg was an only child, you see. We always hoped that he and Serina would have more kiddies, but that wasn’t to be.’
‘His having had the mumps as a young lad had something to do with that,’ Franny added. ‘He had some tests done when Serina didn’t fall for a baby again and they said he had a low sperm count. So we’re lucky to have one grandchild. We’d be totally lost without Felicity, wouldn’t we, Bert? She brings us such joy. Do you remember the day she was born? She was amazing from the word go. Didn’t look like a newborn. Why, she could have passed for three months old. And she was so beautiful. Nothing like Greg when he was born. He looked like a wizened-up monkey for weeks. Of course she’s taken after Serina with her looks and her musical talent. Not so much in nature though. Felicity’s a real little goer, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, but extremely stubborn. It’s thankful she has a good heart to temper her ambitions. But I know Serina has trouble with her sometimes. We help as much as we can. And Serina’s mother does, too, of course. The girl really needs a father figure. Greg was wonderful with her, not too indulgent. He recognised she needed direction. Felicity adored him. Oh dear,’ Franny said suddenly, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘Sorry. I thought I was over doing this.’
