Orchid & the Wasp

by Caoilinn Hughes

  She kneels down on the window-side rug, with her arms on the sill, her head on her arms and feels the radiator ribs against her chest and belly. The heating’s off because it’s August. She’s heard about how radiators hiss and spit steam non-stop in Manhattan; how people have their ceiling fans on and windows wide open during the brutal blizzards; how rats get in and you can’t tell what’s screaming.

  Only a week to go now before the flight and new horizons. Only a week left in the cramped study of her mother’s single-glazed flat with no spare rooms for her kids. Gael feels bad for having taken over Sive’s workspace since May, when she left London and Harper and finished up her degree from a distance, but she would make up for it. She would more than make up for the advantage that had been taken.

  The study is furnished in a we-just-downsized manner. There’s the futon Gael’s been sleeping on, a rug concealing glossy laminate flooring, a kitchen rack drilled into the wall from which small wind instruments hang for easy access (a piccolo is of more use to Sive than a wok), an electric piano in place of a desk (Gael’s laptop rests on its closed lid) and a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit stacked with Sive’s belongings: Penguin Classics she’s had since her days at UCD’s School of Music, sheet music categorized by group type (from Concert Bands to Wind Quintets), an ancient DVD collection (all the Fellinis and Viscontis in a nostalgic gesture to her minor in Italian, evidenced only by her pronunciation of bruschetta), Dictaphones and a thousand-strong set of vinyls bookended by the knurly bowls that her kids had pottered and painted at a craft class once. Another mother might have filled the bowls with potpourri. Sive had filled them with pencil shavings, leaded rubber shreds, snapped elastic bands, hangnails, scuffed bifocals.

  Removed from the provision of Jarleth’s roof, Sive’s belongings seem a kind of fort. On the floor by the piano-desk, an empty cafetière balances on a stack of original handwritten scores. The stack goes from the floor to hip height. From what Gael has gleaned by asking Art, Sive barely coped with having two newborns living with them in the old house for the first year. ‘The noise drove her doolally,’ Art said. More than the noise, Gael knew, she would have been fraught by the implication. For every common sound that can’t be quieted, an uncommon one goes unheard. Sive would stay up half the night working on compositions, wearing noise-cancelling headphones. Gael thought it mad she hadn’t been trying to get her work programmed. ‘You don’t understand how it works,’ Sive told Gael when she pushed. Sive felt no obligation to make herself understood.

  ‘So enlighten me?’

  ‘It’s writing to discover. Not to be discovered. At this stage.’

  Over the past fortnight, Gael has taken a selection of the scores to a seedy internet café in Ashtown to copy. The problem was that she didn’t know quite what she was betting on. How one might price these options. It’s impossible to tell how a symphony sounds by tutting, or to spot a masterpiece just by skimming, but Gael could tell which ones had the best titles and the value of titles is obvious. An oboe concerto called ‘You Don’t Want What I’ve Got’ was what she decided upon as her mother’s tender to the music patriciate. She wrote personalized cover letters for each recipient. Dozens of propositions to musical directors and artistic directors around the world. The New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, Dutch Concertgebouw, Boston Symphony, London Sinfonietta, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Each addressee she researched for tastes, suitability of the music, specific praises to bestow, names to drop, the statistics of their programming (‘It’s been fourteen years since you’ve done an oboe concerto and not once have you featured an Irish composer. But I don’t blame you. There’s been nothing worthwhile, until now’).

  But unless they have an existing relationship with the composer or its recommender, world-class orchestras won’t consider unsolicited scores, she’s learned. Without the backing of serious connections, they simply don’t care. Besides, musical directors, artistic directors, CEOs and principal conductors are all senior enough to have mail-sifting assistants who, in almost all cases, jettison unsolicited scores. Gael has to make a very compelling case if the music is to be looked at. Maybe ‘rare terminal illness’ puts ‘You Don’t Want What I’ve Got’ into sufficiently dramatic light?

  Much as Gael is a fan of the long shot, the more she’s read, the clearer it’s become that egos, over heartstrings, needed to be played to gain access to the classical music scene. She recalled Sive lauding her principal oboist from the NSO as their best musician and lamenting the fact that she’d ‘never been able to explode his talent into sound, because the oboe concerto repertoire is so thin. There’s the Mozart and the Strauss – the two concertos every oboist worth his reed has done to death.’ But if Gael plays her audience right and if the music’s good, this would be the most viable way of having a score considered.

  For a soloist on any instrument other than piano, violin or cello, a new work will at least prompt pussyfoot interest. Yes, the oboist would then have to fight for its inclusion on a programme, but when you’ve got an ipso facto novelty concerto, orchestras might just double down on the outlander by playing an unfamiliar work. Shoehorn it between an overture by a composer everybody knows and a major popular symphony. Dear Revered Oboist … The next challenge is in making it sound like a ‘proven work’. Taking snippets of reviews out of context is one thing, but if the orchestra’s management can’t hear it or watch it, if they can’t read a review, then there’s zero chance with the heavy lifters. She’s already received emails saying as much and requesting the recording.

  Blinking at the screen doesn’t clear the fog. Twelve fifteen p.m. She coughs. Better not be getting fucking sick.

  She’d submit composer-in-residency applications too if there were time, but Sive’s probably too old to be eligible and Gael has her own applications to get back to. If Sive’s conducting career has been brought rudely to an end, her composer’s career is just about to start. No one need know about her stint behind the Palmerstown Cash Converters’ till.

  These are the moves Sive would be making herself had she been born somewhere other than this don’t-get-ahead-of-yourself island. The recession made it worse: the false-humility epidemic. But it’s not enough for your relatives to know your worth. For your gifts to be put in a cabinet like ornamental photo frames, destined to tarnish. For your name to be printed on bills in the archive of your youth. As if success should be rationed and no one – excepting a certain sum of men – can go one better than their quota.

  Forget it. Compose.

  To Whom It May Concern.

  Cut. Paste. Alter. Send.

  Her email pings. She looks around. Coughs. What’s that smell? The fire alarm blares into action. The room is out-of-focus with smoke. Or she’s been looking at the screen for too long. No, it’s smoke. She leans in. Breathes through her sweater sleeve. On occasion, it pays to reply at once.

  As for the genius composer bit. Maybe we’d be losing something. Maybe not. Being a composer’s partly about coming up with ideas to give performers, but the bigger element is communicating those ideas. That takes in what’s on the page, but even more knowing how to use rehearsal time, how to clarify interpretation, manage personalities (you piss players off, you won’t get works played again, that’s a fact). I’ll look at your score, but if you can’t–

  She smacks the laptop shut and tucks it under her arm. Some fucker’s lecture. She slides along the varnished hallway floor on her socks all the way to the kitchen, where Art, clad in a loosely tied dressing gown, is directing the handle of a broom at the ceiling, poking all around the too-small alarm button like a maddening fairground game, trying to protect his ears from the wail.

  ‘Happy birthday, duck! Made you brekkie.’

  The whole stovetop is blackened and draped in charred tea towels. ‘What the hell?’ Gael wafts smoke from
her face with her laptop, which she sets on the table and goes to open the balcony door, past the open-plan living space. She darts back to the kitchen for a towel to direct the smoke outside. The alarm stops and starts again. Curses fling like divorcées.

  ‘No use being lippy,’ Art calls. ‘Just needs’ – he grunts and tugs – ‘t’ battery taken out.’ Having given up with the broom handle, he’s now up on a chair.

  ‘You need the battery taken out.’

  ‘I were making you crumpets’ – he pulls the alarm off the ceiling entirely so it’s hanging by wires and still going – ‘but what happened … I dozed off … partway through. But don’t fret. It’s easy fettled.’ He presses the button and the alarm stops, finally. He dismounts the stool with all the sound effects. Sizes up the embers in the pan. ‘We’ll scrape the burn off and bob a few candles in. Right as rain.’ He claps his hands.

  Silence. Gael turns on the extractor fan.

  ‘Good thinking,’ says Art.

  Gael takes a nectarine from the fruit bowl, looking witheringly at Art as she wipes it on her jeans.

  ‘Happy birthday, anyway!’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Just in time for a legal pint in America … and a concealed weapons permit. I don’t doubt that were planned.’

  There’s a little packet of birthday candles on the countertop. Gael tips one out and sticks it into the nectarine.

  Art starts folding the burnt tea towels into a neat pile. ‘I’ll make up a new batch, if you leave off glowering at me!’

  ‘I ate breakfast five hours ago.’

  ‘On a Saturday? Aw’ – Art shakes his head – ‘disappointing, that is. Nothing worse than having already ate breakfast on a Saturday.’

  ‘Hey, did the phone ring earlier? Like, half an hour ago?’

  Art tightens the belt of his green-and-navy striped robe. ‘Aye. Ta for reminding me. Some chancer from Microsoft.’ He does air quotes. ‘Swears my computer’s been hacked. Needs to talk me through resetting all the security.’ He goes over to the phone, which is off its cradle, mouthpiece to the table.

  ‘You there?’ he asks the receiver. ‘Ta for waiting. My computer’s switched on now, just like you said … Yerrit’s an ancient computer … Takes an age to boot up … My password? Oh, aye … ’od on, what’s your name, so I know what to call you … Peter, is it? … Peter. Jolly good. Tell me, Peter: does your mum know you’re a thief ? … Microsoft don’t phone people. Get an honest job. Tarra.’ He hangs up.

  Some nectarine spills down Gael’s chin. She tries to swallow it in between laughs so it doesn’t go up her nose, but it’s one of those unexpected laughs you snort your food for and Art’s registering the success with raised brows.

  ‘Peter from Microsoft’s Bangladeshi headquarters. I’d have done the hoovering had I thought he’d hang on for me. Had a shave. Mopped the floor. That’s half why I fell asleep cooking. Dreaming how long he’d hang on for his mark. He were so sure he had me. Oooo aye. I’d sounded just the type they like, them scammers. Crumbly. Lonely. Vulnerable.’

  Her laughter having turned into a cough, Gael goes to the balcony for fresh air. It’s a fine if blustery August day and gulls gracelessly pirouette on wind buffets. There’s blue sky behind the fast-moving clouds. The view is the same as from Sive’s study, but here, beyond all the cement, you can see more of what the suburb once was. Horse paddocks. Fallows. Hawthorn hedges for local kids to do covert body-barter behind (‘Giyiz fifty cent for a look’). Gorse for the finches to nest in. There’s a few acres of it yet – thistled green fields – and that’s where they look to now. Art runs his palms along the balcony rail like he’s dewrinkling a bedsheet. A mannerism for when he wants to say something. He does it on tables and counters and desks – all level surfaces: rubs his hands from the centre to as far as he can reach and back in again, as if his hands are wet cloths to wipe away all manner of spills. ‘Good to see you out the cave.’

  As a fresh graduate, Gael can’t hear the word cave without thinking of Plato. ‘I was forced to turn around and see the fire.’

  ‘All this time holed up working and you’ll soon be off. You’ve hardly spoke with your brother?’

  ‘I saw him on Thursday! I took the twins out so he could nap.’

  ‘But you’ve not stayed round at his?’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if I had. It’s like hanging out with a spectre.’ Gael’s cheeks flush a little. It’s not until she says it aloud that she’s articulating it so plainly to herself. ‘He’s so preoccupied, he can barely get to the end of a sentence.’

  ‘He’s got better.’

  ‘I can’t see how that’s possible.’

  ‘Trust me, duck. He has. This time last year …’

  Gael sighs and looks to the far left, to where the road curves out of sight.

  ‘But that’s why you ought to stay with him,’ Art says, ‘so you’ve time in the evening, while the kids are kipping.’

  ‘His gaff is pretty damn grim.’

  ‘It’s precious time, this.’

  ‘And Ronan’s a creepy little wraith when the sun goes down.’

  ‘A toffee poppet, that child.’

  ‘Poppet my ass! I had to barricade the living room door when I slept on Guth’s sofa ’cause I woke to Ronan stood in front of me in the middle of the night, staring. This far from my face.’ Gael holds her hand a few inches from Art’s nose. ‘Just kind of … swaying in the moonlight, mouth breathing. The smell of his nappy brought me to. Kids should be kept in cages at night. Not their dad’s double bed. I’m amazed he hasn’t rolled over one of them. Done himself a favour.’

  ‘The size of Guthrie, he wouldn’t harm a cricket by rolling over it.’ Art gives her a sidelong glare and says, ‘You best watch that wisecracking in America. They can be ever so credulous.’

  Gael looks at Art in wonder. ‘Am I getting fatherly advice for the first time in my life?’

  Art does an inward whistle through the gap in his front teeth where his gums have receded. ‘Not half.’

  ‘Avuncular advice then?’

  ‘I funk you what?’

  ‘And anyway, how would you know?’ she asks.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘About American humour?’

  ‘Oh, I only lived there fourteen years.’

  ‘No. Way.’

  ‘Way!’ Art says.

  ‘When? Where? Which state?’ For months, Gael’s been probing Art about his story and he never lets anything slip more than he wants to, but this has the feel of an unplanned admission. ‘What were you doing there? Gambling? Eloping?’

  ‘Listen here–’

  Gael gasps. ‘Evading your debt?’

  ‘Before I say no more of it–’

  ‘Come on!

  ‘I’ll not go on an’ on about it on your birthday–’

  ‘Don’t change the subject!’

  ‘But it’s important enough to warrant my being pushy.’

  ‘Forgodssake.’

  ‘Have a proper chat with Guthrie fore you go.’ Art’s hands, which have been grooming the railing, making the sound of jazz drum brushes, come to a rest. ‘He’s been having some ideas … he ought to run past you. He holds your opinion very highly.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ Gael says, genuinely incredulous.

  ‘I’d’ve no cause to say such a thing w’n’t it true.’

  Gael pauses for a moment. ‘What kind of ideas?’

  ‘Summit to do with healing. You’ll av to ask him.’

  Gael looks down at her socks. She’s wearing washed-out jeans rolled at the ankles and a dark-brown fine wool sweater. Some of her hair is held up by a teaspoon she stirred her coffee with. It’s grown out a bit now and nearly reaches her shoulder blades. ‘I think he’s past the point of no return. The way he’s doing things.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s–’

  ‘Not how you’d do things?’ Art says, a bit gruff.

  ‘Well–’

  ‘Not how you’d raise two babbies on you
r lonesome, at, what’s he now, nineteen?’

  ‘I got my degree, Art. If I wanted more lectures, there’s an MIT series online.’ Gael hurls her nectarine stone out over the road and into the wayside hedges. The sound of it landing doesn’t reach them in the second-floor flat. Not one to torture himself, Art heads in, but Gael apologizes and that stops him. ‘I’m cranky,’ she says. ‘Waiting to hear back from a shitload of things I’ve applied for. I feel fucking edgy.’

  Art leans against the white plastic frame of the sliding door. ‘Right?’ He’s got his knee cocked out so the robe is flapping in the weather. He doesn’t think of things like that. Some of the cars driving by are getting an eyeful. Only when he spots Gael sizing up his hulking calves and the bald patch on his inner knee does he reposition himself, sharpish. He’ll do something daffy in a minute, let out a trumpet fart or a drumroll burp or sing ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)’ in order to quash any tension that could be thought to have built up. Like a professor who gets accidentally kinky with an undergrad on the topic of thermodynamics and has to figure out how to put the heat back in the Bunsen burner, asap. It’s one of the reasons Gael likes Art: the ludicrous ways he finds to defuse a situation. But the energy he normally gives to that is moderated now, as if the bridge is a little too large between his experience and hers. ‘I thought you ’ad it all worked out?’

  ‘What? The interview stuff?’

  ‘It were Gael, with the revolver, in the lobby!’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah … I’m just …’ She watches her wording. ‘I’m allowing for the revolving door.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Working on backup options.’