by Zoe Morrison
He took a ring out of his pocket. No box, just the ring. It had a cluster of diamonds on it. I remember looking at it and starting to feel very cold, and thinking how quickly it had all happened – the light dropping, the summer ending, the sun disappearing to the other side of the earth. I knew there had been an enormous misunderstanding, and that I had to immediately set it right, but I was shocked to find myself in such a situation. I prevaricated.
‘Where do people live,’ I heard myself say, ‘when they marry in Oxford? Do they live in the college?’
He looked at me sideways. ‘Most wives want a house of their own in North Oxford.’
‘North Oxford …’
‘Up there,’ pointing north, smiling, the ring still in his fingers.
‘And these houses in North Oxford …’ I said, all the time thinking: how could such a mistake have been made? ‘Do these houses have pianos in them?’
‘Oh, absolutely. Lots of pianos. A piano in every room.’
Which I started to imagine for just a second – streets of houses with a piano in every room, the space the instruments would take up, having to walk around a piano when you wanted to get to the sink or lavatory or a chest of drawers, and the noise, the ruinous din when they were all played at once.
‘And other rooms, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Studies, and so on …’ (I had actually started to think about composing, of putting some of that imagined music onto paper.)
‘I would have a study, of course,’ frowning. ‘Alice, the question is a rather larger one. Should I do this?’ and he went to kneel in the dirt before me.
‘No! Don’t! Please. Oh no, get up, get up,’ and I started to cry. And into the terrible silence that followed I said, ‘You’ll get your trousers dirty, they’re always so clean.’
He got up silently, sat down, and that look on his face, it was awful. I put my hands over my face. It felt horrible to disappoint him. Everything was falling, steel, ladders, scaffold, plank after plank, all the things that had felt so tall and solid, they had turned out to be nothing, nothing more than words and touches and a few outings in a university town over a dry English summer.
‘Edward, I have spoken to you so much about it, you know that I am going back to —’
‘Oh yes,’ jaw clenched, ‘Australia,’ as if he hated the entire continent, as if he were spitting at it.
Then everything changed. His face relaxed, he became calm, his voice was silken. ‘I have taken you by surprise. Look,’ he said, pointing to my hands, ‘you’re shaking. I had no idea this would be a shock to you. I thought this was what you wanted.’
But why would he say that? Had he not heard what I’d said? Any of it?
‘We’ve spoken so much of me going home,’ I said again.
‘I think you need some more time to think it through.’
‘All right.’ I just wanted to leave that place.
He put the ring back in his pocket, took my limp hand, raised it to his mouth. He seemed happier now.
‘You’re freezing,’ rubbing my hand. ‘Here,’ taking off his jacket, putting it around my shoulders on top of the shawl he’d given me. ‘All right?’ He smiled at me.
‘All right,’ I nodded, staring at the steps.
‘You can let me know in a couple of days. Write me a letter. Or send a telegram. You have the address?’
‘Of course. Edward, look —’
‘Why don’t we go and find the others,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ll go and find your friends.’
By the time we got back only the stragglers were left: the double bass player who criticised everyone’s playing, and a pianist who played nothing but Strauss. The bass player told us that a group had gone to swim in the river, and I remembered Hetty talking about it on the train. I could just imagine it, the clothes discarded on the bank, the naked drop into the cool, deep water, limbs paddling furiously, mud squelched between toes, the shrieks, the laughter. I was so sorry to have missed it.
At the station, when he handed me onto the train, Edward kissed me, and I felt embarrassed by that, doing those sorts of things in public. As the train pulled away, I waved.
A few days later I still felt as though I’d been hit by something. I was nauseated and having trouble sleeping. And there was nothing that could fix it– no Wednesdays left, no talking to him, embracing him. Several times I took out a sheet of my best writing paper and began a letter to him, but I didn’t know what to write. I had said it all already, yet it was as if I had said nothing; as if he had heard nothing.
I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone else, not even to George or Hetty, when they disliked him anyway. Finally I took out a sheet of airmail paper, fluttered it onto my desk, flattened it with my hand and wrote to my mother. I told her of the Summer School, and Edward, including his proposal. Then I asked if she knew of the places in Australia where concert pianists could perform and whether there was a culture that fostered excellence in performance musicians. I sealed it quickly and sent it airmail.
23.
Oxford, October 9th, 2005
I heard the Liszt again. It was night-time, I was in bed. The music was very soft, the notes sneaked into the room and crouched on the carpet beside where I lay. I reached down, touched the carpet, imagined touching the notes too, shaping them myself. When it came to the part where the singing melody begins, that grand old theme, only the right hand continued. A skeleton of notes glued together, notes like long, curved bones. Then that stopped too and the silent night eased back in.
24.
London, August, 1950
A telegram from Australia arrived for me at the Royal College. The porter was on his annual holiday in Blackpool and Frank, the temporary replacement, did not know me. I never checked the telegram box because I never received telegrams, so it remained uncollected.
A couple of weeks later another telegram arrived from Australia. When it wasn’t collected Frank looked at it with consternation; these telegrams from Australia were starting to clutter up the box, which was, strictly speaking, for newly arrived telegrams. They would need to be put somewhere else.
When a third telegram arrived he let a morning pass, an afternoon. Then he found another box, scrawled ‘Uncollected Telegrams’ on the side, put mine in it and placed it in a dark corner of the foyer beyond the student pigeonholes, where it wouldn’t get in the way. And that, for a while, is where my telegrams stayed.
25.
London, September, 1950
A week after the Summer School finished I was on the grass in Hyde Park with those of my friends who were still in London, talking about such serious matters as whether George should shave off his beard.
My plan was to sail to Australia once Hetty and George had left. I’d been told I’d get a cheaper ticket and the chance of a better berth if I went down to the wharf and bought it at the last minute. I was adamant all my goodbyes would take place in London; I did not want anyone waving from a pier in Tilbury.
Around lunchtime we got up to go back to the college. The foyer, as we entered, was dark after the bright sunshine of the park. So I did not see the figure rising from the long bench that looked like a pew, I was not looking in that direction, I was laughing with my friends. Only when the dark shape walked towards me did I recognise who it was.
‘Edward.’
‘Alice,’ he said. ‘Hetty,’ nodding, ‘George. Mary.’ He went on, ‘Hilary, Solomon, Edmund.’ I hadn’t realised he knew their names.
I had on an old dress (I’d always worn my good clothes to Oxford); I hadn’t done my hair. And I had still not written to him.
‘Would you like to walk?’ he said, gesturing to the gate, and he smiled at me.
He looked different in London; he looked even better: taller, broader, more expansive. A coloured hanky was folded in his pocket, it could have been a bloom.
We walked about aimlessly, not saying much. Perhaps he had chosen to forget about that last night in Oxford – that would be ideal; we could say good
bye properly. From time to time my stomach rumbled audibly, which I found embarrassing. I soon realised that the silence between us meant he hadn’t forgotten about that night, and it started to feel, bizarrely, like a form of punishment.
‘I should have written,’ I said eventually.
‘Oh no,’ he said at once, ‘never mind about all that,’ and he smiled at me again.
Ah, the relief. It was behind us. He was going to save face this way, by ignoring it. We kept walking.
‘I have something to show you,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘A surprise.’
‘A surprise …’
We were back in Hyde Park, down one of those narrow paths closely planted with shade-loving plants on both sides, camellias, azaleas. He took my hand, swung it.
‘I think you’ll like it.’
‘Well, where is it then? Is it here, in the park?’
‘No. It’s in Oxford.’
‘Oxford?’
‘I thought you might like to come and see it.’
‘Go with you to Oxford?’
‘Unless you have other plans,’ glancing at me. ‘I wouldn’t want to interrupt something.’
My feet kept up an even pace. ‘I was going to practise this afternoon.’
‘You’d be back by dinner. There’s a train in twenty minutes. If we head in that direction,’ pointing straight down the path, ‘we’ll make it easily.’
Not so aimless our walking, then.
‘I have intruded,’ he went on. ‘You have other plans. I should have let you know I was going to be in London today.’
‘No, no, it’s just …’ And then I started to think that perhaps this was the opportunity to have a proper conversation, clear things up, depart on good terms; it was what I wanted. And it really was good to see him again, smiling like that.
‘I haven’t brought a cardigan,’ I said. ‘I don’t have my purse.’
He took off his jacket, put it on me. He bent down, picked a pink azalea, tucked it behind my ear: ‘As lovely as ever.’ He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out slowly, like a conjurer, two first-class train tickets. ‘No purse needed.’ Then he reached forward, took out of the pocket of the jacket a paper bag, opened it: a banana. (No one saw bananas in England much in those years after the war.) ‘In case you get hungry.’
Into the great shade of Paddington Station, stepping up into the carriage. At Reading the train started to sway, our bodies braced against the motion; by then he was holding my hand; he kissed me on the cheek.
We got into a taxi at the station and he gave an address in North Oxford; the car veered left, away from most of the colleges and university buildings. Past grocers and news-agents; past children on the pavements (I had never seen a child before in Oxford). What was he going to show me? An obscure gallery? A painting of two lovers parting? (Funny how you can retain a redundant idea in your head when it’s of comfort.)
We pulled up in a suburban street lined with large houses. He hadn’t said anything for a while. I thought he seemed nervous.
‘Well, what a mystery!’ I said, to lighten things, to be kind.
‘Up here,’ he said, serious, and he opened a squat iron gate in front of one of the houses. It was a grand terrace with a flight of steps, recently washed, up to the front door, and a big bay window at the front to the right. It rose two or three storeys.
I walked up the path, up the steps; he opened the door. It was cold inside, goose bumps pricked on my arms. The hall was dark, empty. There was a smell of dust, wood smoke and a sharp sourness.
‘In here,’ reaching in front of me, opening a door into the front room with that big window. The light was brilliant, such a contrast to the hall, and then I saw it, the grand piano by the window.
‘Try it,’ he said, gesturing to the instrument.
I was a bit reluctant. What were we doing here? Besides, there was no seat. The place was unfurnished, except for the piano. I stepped over to it, saw it was a Steinway, raised the lid. I played a few chords with my right hand.
‘Lovely tone.’
‘You told me you like Steinways.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘All right,’ looking away.
‘I haven’t got around to buying any other furniture yet.’
And that was when the panic started to rise, an insistent flutter ascending from my stomach into my throat.
‘When did you buy it?’ I said, looking around.
‘Last week.’
‘Last week. So … recently.’
‘Come and have a look,’ impatiently. ‘It’s quite sizeable.’
We tramped around each floor of that empty place. I dutifully examined the rooms as he opened and closed each door, and I commended them, politely. It was a large house and it might be lovely, I thought at one point, if it were repainted in light colours to offset the terrible heaviness that came with so little natural light. The right furnishings would help too. Plus the footsteps of happy people, of course. I peeked out of a window into the garden. Hip-high weeds, a shed set against the back fence. Yes, you could make something of this place, I thought, but it would take work, and after it was finished it would still be a huge, dark old terrace with too many stairs. We climbed all the way down then stood in the hall near the door.
‘You’ve done so well,’ I said. ‘What a big house, and so much potential. I’m sure you’ll be very happy here.’
He didn’t reply. There was no more delaying it, denying it.
‘Edward,’ reaching out to touch the plaster, ‘you know how much I care for you, and how much I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve had together. It was a magical summer. It’s just that I haven’t been back to Australia since I left, I haven’t seen my parents, and I’ve always known that —’
‘You’re not still on about that, are you?’
I looked at his face, his gaze trained on me, so rigid. How tired I felt then, how fed up with it all. Why could he not listen? Why did this man not hear what I had to say?
‘Well yes, I am, actually.’
‘I wanted to show this place to you straight away,’ he said slowly, articulating each word carefully, ‘because you seemed unusually interested in houses and their floorplans and contents.’ And I think it was only then that I realised how angry he was.
‘And what an impressive place it is —’
But he was on me, he had lunged forward and was kissing me, his hands were on my arms, and I kissed him back for a moment, but then he pressed me hard into the wall with his chest and his hands moved down to my skirt, and I didn’t want this, not at all, and I was so scared that I found myself suddenly unable to speak, my throat had closed. I finally got out a hoarse no, no, launched myself towards the door, threw it open, I was down the steps, out of the gate, into the street, looking around wildly, trying to work out which way to go.
Part of the horror was the sheer awkwardness of it, standing there looking around while he locked up, because my train ticket was in his pocket, and I hadn’t brought any money. Standing in the street trying to regain some semblance of dignity, smoothing down my old dress, still grubby from the morning in the park, and wishing, most of all, to be out of there, to be out of Oxford.
‘I’ll get a taxi,’ he said, coming towards me.
‘I can easily walk,’ edging a little down the street. ‘Why don’t you just point me in the direction of —’
‘There’s one coming.’
And there was indeed, trundling up the street as if on cue.
At the station I handed him his jacket, he gave me the ticket, looking hard at me.
‘Goodbye, Edward.’
‘I shall call in at the College.’
‘Well,’ I said, looking at the tracks. ‘I sail soon.’
I went straight to my room, washed my face, neck and hands, where he had touched me, kissed me. I put on a clean top, trousers, a sweater, did my hair, put on some lipstick and went down to dinner
.
‘Where have you been all afternoon?’ Hetty said.
I waited a minute before I spoke. ‘Oxford.’
‘Oxford?’
I was very hungry, I realised, my hands had started to shake. There was some bread on the table, I reached out, took a slice. Yesterday’s bread, dry, I ate it quickly, drank some water, reached for another slice. Hetty, watching, started to laugh.
‘I missed lunch,’ I said. ‘I had a banana.’
‘A banana. He gave you a banana? What was it like?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘It was like a banana, Hetty. A banana is just a banana, as it turns out.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘He’s bought a house,’ I said after a bit.
She looked at me, still didn’t say anything. Then she reached out, picked up a piece of the dry bread and pinched it tight between her fingers.
26.
London, September, 1950
George was leaving in a week to begin his position with the orchestra in Wales. Hetty was also about to leave – the relative in Edinburgh was waiting for her. She hadn’t a job yet but was going to keep looking. Work for musicians was never easy to find. In my head my career back home was settled, though sometimes I felt flickers of doubt; natural nerves, I thought, when one was about to embark on a new stage of life – I pushed them down.
We played a few times as a trio that week, just for ourselves, slowly for a change, savouring it. Afterwards I found myself walking around the parts of the city that were now familiar, thinking about the areas I still didn’t know. I went to the National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery, looked at all my favourites, found some new ones too. I lay in Hyde Park, watched the clouds pass. Every time I returned to my room I half-expected to see Edward in the foyer, rising from that pew-like seat, but I never did.
