Music and Freedom

by Zoe Morrison

  I stopped watching them; I looked around. Where was I? I had no idea how to get home. There was a bus stop nearby; I waited, sitting on the bench. When a bus pulled up I got on. It must have been some sort of special service because it did a long loop around the entire city then set me down in the centre. I walked back to Chardwell Road.

  I checked her place again, but it was dark, no one was there. Outside my house I stopped; I could not go in. I could not bear even the thought of going in.

  I walked back into the city. I went into a department store that was open late. Bright lights, racks of clothing, flute music. I found the bathroom, sat on a lavatory seat in a locked cubicle and dozed. A voice woke me, saying that the store was closing. I walked back past the racks of clothes, the lights, the flute music, back into the street.

  That night I looked for her all around that ancient city. I looked everywhere I could reach: in the windows of the college and university buildings (startling many a person from various pursuits); down through those mesh-covered windows that indicate rooms below street level. I looked in the cobbled lanes and ancient streets he had once shown me, but there was not a trace of her in any of those places. (Did she ever even exist? I started to wonder at one point.) When people on the streets were getting scarce (except for those late-night revellers by the kebab vans, whom I avoided), I stopped looking with my eyes and used my ears instead. I listened for her. I heard an entire room throbbing with washing machines, a man bawling on a phone, a door banging repeatedly. Soon I was able to blot out all that and listen only for her music. I heard someone practising the trumpet, the crash of a dance beat, the warbling of a carol.

  I kept walking outwards through suburban streets to empty roads so long they were landscapes in themselves and lined by fences and fields. Out there it was only the wind I could hear after a while, and my own footfall, and then the silence itself, which soon became beautiful to me; it was conducive to thought.

  Eventually I found myself back at the house, I let myself in and headed straight for the kitchen. I got the axe from the pantry, took it up to the front room, lifted it as high as I could and let it fall. A note rang out, a B, a key flew past me, the axe bit the carpet. I went for a leg next, a sideways chop, and then some indiscriminate hacking. The wood was dry and over-varnished but gradually the cut became deeper. Finally, with a hum so sonorous it was really a sigh (and not an unhappy one, I found, to my surprise), the thing knelt before me. I left the axe on the floor.

  Now the sun was a widening slit on the horizon and I walked straight towards it. It led me to the meadow, which stretched before me like a great body of water, and I swam into it. I soon realised I was moving up and down more than I was moving forward, and then I felt compelled to lie down, but in all that water I would drown, surely. As a compromise I started to crawl, but that didn’t last long either, the ground was too muddy. I turned onto my back and lay looking up at the stars. We moved in tandem for a while until they started to fade and that slit on the horizon widened and widened to become a great hole torn in the side of the world. With great relief, indeed enchantment, I turned my head towards it.

  88.

  Oxford, February 26th, 2006

  ‘Drink this.’

  I lifted an arm, it made a crackling sound. I sipped.

  I saw that I was wrapped in silver; I was wrapped in the sky. Turning my head I could see a box filled with flashing lines and numbers and I seemed to be tethered to it. It was not unlike one of Edward’s graphs, that box, except for the lights and movement.

  Richard was walking to me, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the hard, shiny floor.

  ‘Mum,’ sitting down heavily, ‘you’re with us.’

  I looked around, but it was only Richard and me in that white room.

  ‘Someone found you lying in the meadow. You were coated in ice.’

  ‘A frosty climate.’

  ‘What?’

  A gurney squeaked by in the corridor.

  ‘Hypothermia … dehydration … malnourishment … exhaustion … untreated tear in the leg … Third World complaints, or those of a mountain climber … You could have died.’ I only heard bits of what he was saying.

  I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, Richard had gone.

  I sipped the drink, heard that crackle again when I lifted my arm.

  Someone washed me, a warm sponge smelling of disinfectant searched my skin.

  I was propped up, a shelf was wheeled in front of me, a meal presented. I ate slowly, thoroughly. It was night again.

  I tried to get out of the bed but my legs wouldn’t let me, and tubes were still attached to my wrist. I listened to the box beside me, which seemed to be set to F sharp, although I couldn’t be sure. I had perfect pitch as a child; not anymore. I made up chords and harmonies around the note, then a melody augmented by the squeak and pitch of wheeling trolleys, the beat of feet and sudden voices. I invented a clef to take account of these things; it looped around an outsized stave then shot off the page like an exploding star.

  In the morning Richard was there again, standing at the door with a group of people who all looked the same. They watched him move his hands as he talked, as if he were conducting. I glided my hands over the doorframe, floated up to the cornices, drifted through the window, danced on the lawn.

  He came over. ‘How are you, Mum?’ There was a different air to him that day, which alerted me. ‘I have some great news. They’ve got a place for you in one of the best nursing homes in the area. It’s like a miracle, they’re so hard to come by.’

  I was waiting, I was listening.

  ‘You usually have to wait months.’

  I started pushing myself up. My leg was heavy; they had done something to it. I knew this would happen, I thought.

  ‘It has a music room,’ he said, ‘and a beautiful garden.’

  I didn’t blame him; it was understandable. But none of this made the prospect attractive. A nursing home! A long-stay hospice, more like it, and in that respect no different from the house I had lived in. And a hospice was not what I was after, not anymore.

  ‘Hypothermia,’ he was saying again, then another verse: ‘You weren’t eating … You hadn’t washed … The house was in a state … You burnt valuable papers and books that a lot of people wanted … You went wandering … You got lost … You had an incident with an axe.’

  ‘Oh that,’ I said, waving a hand. ‘A minor matter. Poetic flourish. Don’t read too much into it. A little piece of history.’

  ‘What?’ Silence, then he resumed. ‘I can’t just sit by and watch you destroy yourself, Mum …’ His voice broke and I had to look away.

  ‘Where is Emily?’ I said.

  ‘She had to go to a meeting. She visited before.’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘She was here last night. She sat by your bed. You were asleep.’

  He spoke again of the nursing home, how it was an outstanding model of its sort, how I would be transitioned there straight from the hospital, and he started to discuss some of the logistics – what things would I want brought in from home? As he was talking a woman in a wheelchair slowly inched herself past the open door, down the corridor: an elderly woman, her head tipped to one side, her eyes unblinking, her tongue lolling. And amid all this she just walked in, Emily. She had on a white jumper, her hair was glossy and fanned out over her shoulders.

  ‘Alice,’ she said, ‘you’re awake. How are you?’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said.

  ‘Great. I’m so glad to hear it. It doesn’t surprise me. Richard, could we have a word?’ and he got up and they both left the room.

  I heard voices in the corridor, their voices, which soon rose and grew heated.

  ‘So passive,’ I heard him say, ‘just sits there,’ and then her voice, angry. ‘Passivity is the strongest indication of …’ but then the voices suddenly dropped and went away.

  Another meal was wheeled in front of me; someone took my blood pressure. />
  Emily came back in by herself, and she looked different. Her face was red, she was frowning. I stared at her, willing.

  ‘Alice, I need to apologise,’ she said.

  I frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘For not coming around to visit.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. You were busy. Besides,’ an afterthought, ‘Richard says you were here last night.’

  ‘I mean back at the house. I told you I was busy with work, but that wasn’t quite right. In any case, I’m very sorry to have stopped coming without really saying anything.’

  ‘It was good in the end, a good thing to happen. A gift.’

  She rearranged herself in the chair.

  ‘I got swept away.’ And her face started to crumple. ‘With Richard, and … and all of it. It’s been an amazing time, life-changing.’ I watched her face, such misery, watched her struggle to take a breath. ‘I’ve got my feet back now,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘They’re saying you could have died. I feel partly responsible.’

  ‘What? No,’ very annoyed. ‘Those stupid doctors.’

  ‘They’re saying you’re to go into a nursing home. I was talking with the staff.’

  ‘Richard’s been telling me about it.’

  ‘Yes. We disagree on this, fundamentally.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘We do. I’m very angry with him about it.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ I said. ‘A disagreement.’

  She looked at me for a minute, then got up.

  ‘Alice, do you think you could stand another visitor? Do you think you could bear with me for a bit while I look someone up?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  I put the television on, switched it to mute, watched people’s actions, their mouths, hands, bodies moving with no sound.

  A few hours later Emily came back, accompanied by a man in a bow-tie with a fastidious air about him. She introduced him as a professor of medicine at the university with a special interest in hands and wrists. He had a dedicated treatment program in London, she said, where he also conducted research. He stood patiently while she said all this, his own small, pale hands crossed in his lap, the short cuffs of his pink shirt exposing narrow wrists. When she finished speaking he said, May I? And he took my hands in his.

  He looked at them, he turned them over, he pressed and prodded parts. He asked me questions about the paralysis I had experienced, how it had started and progressed, whether it had manifested since. He told us that focal dystonia was a neurological condition that causes involuntary bodily contractions. Research in primates had shown that over-training particular fingers can result in focal hand dystonia, so some musicians’ dystonia may be related to only certain movements of the hands, or even certain pieces of music.

  Emily said something about the contribution of anxiety and perfectionism to the condition, and they discussed the relative contribution of emotional and physical components to causation.

  ‘Well,’ he said finally, and for the first time he smiled, a small, close-lipped movement, ‘with the right treatment – hand exercises at the piano, injections of Botox, and possibly some cognitive therapy – I believe that you would be able to play the piano again. I would be happy to treat you myself at my centre in London. There would be no charge as we are particularly short of elderly research subjects at the moment. I do hope that assists.’

  Emily smiled at him broadly, and escorted him from the room.

  I sat looking at the wall in front of me. Richard came back in.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said.

  ‘I got Butterworth in,’ Emily said coming back in behind him. ‘You just missed him.’

  Richard frowned, rubbed his head. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that Alice’s hand condition is treatable, that he will be happy to look after her himself for free, and that focal dystonia can cause enormous emotional distress in musicians, which would explain any uncharacteristic behaviour, rendering her removal to a nursing home entirely inappropriate.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘I don’t think this really changes matters,’ he said eventually. ‘How is treatment of her hands going to make her eat again and look after herself properly?’

  ‘As I’ve explained, treating her hands will reduce her emotional distress. You need to —’

  ‘Think this through? I’ve lived and breathed this my whole —’

  ‘And here is the solution! Why would you not want to at least try letting her stay in her own home and taking her for treatment? I will take her!’

  Their argument got worse.

  ‘Please leave,’ she said at one point, but he didn’t leave. He stood there with his arms crossed.

  ‘What do you think, Alice?’ and by this point her face was pale, her voice strained. ‘Have any of us even asked you what you think?’

  I looked from one to the other.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Richard said, ‘this is fucking ridiculous. She is not competent enough to —’

  ‘Alice, I can guarantee that I will look in on you a few times a day —’

  ‘You can’t,’ he broke in. ‘You don’t have the time; don’t do this to yourself. And what about that job in London – so that’s all off now, is it?’

  ‘I will arrange a meal service and a cleaner for you, Alice.’

  ‘And you’re paying for this? And will stand over her pleading, begging her to eat?’

  ‘I’ll do whatever is required to assure all the relevant people that you are capable of living independently, as you have done for many years.’

  At this point Richard looked up at the ceiling, snorted.

  She turned to him. ‘The reason why I’d like you to leave,’ she said, ‘is not only because I’m so unimpressed by your treatment of your mother, but also because I don’t think she feels able to speak freely in front of you.’

  All the blood left his face; he turned and left.

  She sat motionless, as if something enormous had just been dropped in front of her.

  I looked around the room for a bit, patted the sheet.

  ‘Emily,’ I said, ‘how is the concerto going?’

  She roused herself.

  ‘Fine. Great. I had a rehearsal with the orchestra the other day, which went well. We have another one next week. You can come along if you like. I mean if it wouldn’t —’

  ‘So you’re still doing the concert?’

  ‘Yes,’ frowning, looking at me. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You don’t practise. I never hear you practise it.’

  She stared at me, she gaped.

  ‘Alice,’ she said. ‘Oh Alice, I should have said. I just assumed Richard had told you. I practise in the Sheldonian now; they let me use the piano there that I’ll be performing on. If I can’t use that I play on a similar one in the music department. There’s also a suite there with two pianos side by side that Richard and I use – did you really think I wasn’t practising at all?’

  I tried to sit up. The room had become brighter, I was noticing the colour of the walls, the texture of the bedclothes, the smell of the air.

  ‘I was mistaken,’ I said.

  More tears welled in her eyes. She looked so sad it was almost unbearable. Then I saw something by the door, just a flash, I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Why do you play his music?’ I said.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Richard’s.’

  ‘I love it,’ she said, and then she smiled. ‘It falls so easily beneath my hands,’ the tears were falling again. ‘I’ve had such —’ and she could hardly get it out, ‘such pleasure at the piano playing it. It just feels right. Something I am part of, or was …’

  I couldn’t bear it now, how sad she was.

  ‘It’s not Billy Joel,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ trying to smile, ‘it’s not.’

  ‘Or Cyndi Lauper.’

  ‘No,’ but now the tears were sl
iding again. It was as if the wave of grief, of realisation, had now hit her.

  ‘I suppose the problem is,’ I said, looking away, ‘that such music will inevitably stop. I mean it has to, doesn’t it? No music can go on forever; we all have to stop playing at some point, and what then?’

  ‘And then the good part begins.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ turning back to look at her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, as if tired now, tired of it all. ‘Real life, I suppose. Living.’ She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, sat up a bit. ‘Anyway, Alice,’ voice back to normal, ‘what do you think of this plan to keep you out of a nursing home and to help you play the piano again? We can make this happen, we really can – you heard the professor. I’d really like to help you do this. I feel I owe you this.’

  ‘Owe me? Not at all. It’s quite the other way round, I can assure you.’

  ‘Alice, you completely changed my approach to the piano, and to music – to life. You don’t realise it, but you helped me so much. And it’s because of you that I met Richard —’ She stopped, took a breath. ‘Also, someone ought to have told you about treatment for dystonia years ago; it’s not right. Just think of it, Alice. Think of it. You playing the piano again after so many years,’ and now she was staring at me, no tears anymore.

  And I did think about it then, playing the piano again, playing scales, arpeggios, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Brahms (if not Rachmaninoff) and other pieces that I did not yet even know. And Emily would be next door, and she would come around at least once every day. And when I finished playing she would put her head around the door and say, That was very good, play it again, and I probably would.

  There was a flash by the door again, I was sure I had seen it. ‘It’s a very kind offer,’ I said. ‘The kindest of offers.’

  ‘I think this is the right thing to do, Alice.’

  I looked at her carefully, at her eyes, which had been all-seeing, and didn’t look away. At her mouth that spoke such wise words, at her hands that could catch and hold so many things, at her broad shoulders, which carried so much and so easily, and I thought then of all she had said and done, of the time we had spent together, and how I’d felt in October and November and December, and I concluded that this was enough. Yes, this was enough, and so I said: ‘No thank you, Emily.’