Goodbye, Paris

by Anstey Harris

  I have learnt, over the years, to avoid thinking about David’s home life. To imagine that he and his wife share a bedroom, that they used to talk in the dark like we do, would twist a cruel knife deep into an already livid injury.

  For me, suspending my disbelief has become as natural as breathing. I have had eight years to practice. I know that I am doing wrong; I am not a natural mistress, not an accomplished fisher of other women’s husbands, but the way that David and I met, the way we began, is very different from most other love stories. Our relationship is not, and never has been, without its reasons.

  * * *

  When I get home, the mail is piled against the inside of the door. There is something so bleak about the little eruption of communication, so impersonal. It reminds me—every time—that the whole world ticks and turns when I’m with David, even though we feel as if we’ve enchanted ourselves.

  I walk around my empty house making an inventory of the silence. Everything is as tidy as I left it: the carpets hoovered, little furrows of tamed fibers not trodden down by anyone; the clean dishes put away in the cupboards; the bedspread neat and flat.

  In my en suite there is a spider in the bath. He is round and black and stubborn. He’s probably been there for days, absolutely certain that this is his bath and his alone.

  I poke him gently with one finger, trying to get him to walk onto my open palm and to safety. He rears up, furious and ineffectual.

  “I’m only trying to help,” I whisper at him.

  I look around for something soft enough to rescue the spider with. I’m already worried that I might have damaged his fragile little legs when I tried to coax him onto my hand. The nailbrush has soft filaments and he grudgingly takes the lifeline I’ve offered. I put the brush and its precious cargo on the floor behind the basin. When I look back, after I’ve unpacked my wash bag, the spider has gone. I’m relieved I didn’t hurt him. Not for the first time I am conscious of how much this house could do with a pet.

  “Just you and me, I’m afraid,” I say to the hiding spider.

  * * *

  It is ten o’clock and a warm, patient day; I have much to be grateful for. David left for Spain at first light this morning and I didn’t want to stay in the apartment without him. I was on the train, rushing across English soil, by eight. There is a whole day to fill with whatever I want now; bright, clear hours of quiet. No one is expecting me, no one knows I’m home.

  I go downstairs into the sitting room and open the windows. The smell of sunshine seems to ease the silence and I feel instantly better, positive.

  There is still a thrill to knowing I have the time—and the privacy—to play. My cello stands silent in the corner of the sitting room and its pull is hypnotic. Before I met David, I spent every spare minute I had, or could find, playing the cello. With him—for the first time—I didn’t resent the diversion; there was room for them both, albeit alternately, in my life. One day, I promise myself, I will bring them together.

  I take my cello from its stand. I sit down and turn the tiny fine tuners on the tailpiece until the strings tighten to pitch. I flick the A string with my fingertip and feel the vibration against my cheek. I listen for the note, gauging how close it is to perfect.

  Outside, birds call into the warm air and the occasional car rattles past in the street. I am alone and I am ready to play.

  I fill my mind with the choices, tunes vie with one another to come to the front, to be the one I pick. It is only ever going to be “La Follia.”

  I take the bow from its case.

  I roll the silver button at the end of the bow between my fingers and the hair shortens and draws into place.

  With my eyes closed, I picture the notes, the first bars of “La Follia.”

  I put my fingers in position across the strings and the previous twenty-four hours run away from me through the neck of the cello and out along its lightning conductor into the floor. The tension runs from my arm into the wood of the bow and I’m gone.

  My knees poke out, bony and white, cushioning the pointed lower bouts of the cello, and the scroll rests, where it belongs, against my ear. The cello takes up its rightful place and I become nothing more than a mechanical part of it.

  This is what I have always done, how I have always found myself when I’ve been lost. When I first went to music college, eighteen years old and paralyzingly shy, when ringing my parents from the pay phone in the corridor just made me miss them even more, I would feel the strength in the neck of my cello, flatten the prints of my fingers into the strings, and forget.

  I play and play; through thirst, past hunger, making tiredness just a dent in my soul. I play beyond David’s marriage, his holiday, even how frightened I was when he disappeared below the platform.

  I play on until the world is flat again and the spaces between my heartbeats are as even as the rhythm on the stave in front of me.

  * * *

  There is a tapping on the window. I worry I’ve been too loud, that my neighbors are trying to nap on this lovely afternoon and think I’ve turned my stereo up full blast. According to the sitting room clock, I’ve been playing for almost three hours.

  Whoever tapped on the window has moved, sideways, to the front door. The doorbell is a piercing squeal through the notes I left hanging in the air. It draws a definite line under my tune.

  It is Nadia.

  “Holy fuck, Grace. Was that you?” She has her feet planted firmly on my doormat, her face close to mine.

  I’m too slow and it’s not convincing. “Was what me?”

  “That was you, Grace. That was you playing the cello. I thought it was a CD. Jesus.”

  A terror inside me threatens to rise out of my mouth. I can feel my skin pulsing scarlet and my forehead beading with sweat.

  “Are you all right?” asks Nadia. She looks quite concerned.

  I open my mouth but I feel too sick to speak. I put one hand out onto the door frame.

  “Fuck’s sake, Grace, what is it?” Nadia steps into the hallway. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I’m fine.” My mouth is full of dust, my tongue and tonsils too big for the dry space. I try to swallow but I can’t. There is a fizz on my skin as every tiny hair raises in defense. Purple blotches of panic manifest themselves across my forearms.

  Even the thought of someone hearing me play can leave my head swimming, my lungs tight and choked. I haven’t played in front of anyone for over twenty years. I squeeze my sweating palms together.

  “Do you want, I dunno, a glass of water or something? Cup of tea?”

  Nadia is genuinely worried.

  I nod. My shoulders slump against the cool paintwork of the hallway wall. I wipe my palms on my skirt, to rub away the imaginary dirt, the shame of being heard. For other people it is rats or heights or blood, but this is the stuff of my nightmares.

  Nadia is in the kitchen, her back to me as she fills the kettle. “Is it too warm for tea? Should we have a cold drink?” She opens the fridge. “No, then. Because there’s nothing in here, Grace. Not even milk.” She hasn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation, hasn’t noticed my agitation.

  I force myself to speak, hoping I can change the subject, compose myself before she comes back into the hall.

  “I was in France.” I sound petulant. I don’t know why I’m defending myself to my seventeen-year-old Saturday shop assistant, but Nadia often makes me feel like this. I fight for some neutral territory. “How was business while I was away?”

  Nadia has been watching the shop for me. She is teenaged, rude and angry, but she is a wonder with the customers. They adore her.

  David gets on particularly well with Nadia. Something about the two of them really chimes. I know it’s because he’s so experienced with teenagers that he can talk without being patronizing, because that’s what he does at home, but I fight down those intrusive truths.

  Last year David and Nadia cooked up a plan—a surprise for me—between them. The subterfuge and pl
anning that went into it warms my heart. The Cremona Triennale is a violin-making competition that carries the title of Best in the World: to win a gold there is as good as any Olympic medal. There are four categories: violin, viola, cello, and double bass. David decided to enter me for the cello competition and Nadia agreed to give him all the technical information he needed. I’ve always wanted to enter but, like so many things I yearn for, I was just too afraid. David had absolute faith that I could do it, but, just in case, he made sure my application was in—a done deal—before he told me.

  It’s not just vanity or fame at stake; the winners of each category are considered the top makers in the world. Collectors from every country desire their work and the price of their instruments skyrockets. Winning would mean I could close my shop and work from home, a home far closer to David.

  Talking about the new cello is my way back in, my way to direct the conversation onto solid ground, away from the precipice of my fears. I need to move her attention out of this room. “I finished the varnish on the Cremona cello. Did you see?”

  Nadia is more desperate to tell me what she thinks of the cello than I am to hear about it; my blood is only just slowing back down. There is still an uncomfortable thunder in my ears, my skin is still prickling hot, but Nadia has moved on.

  While she is talking, I lose concentration. To the left of her, the fridge front is stuck with a montage of photos of David and me. The one of us in New York is on my eye level; I am face-to-face with David’s smile, with the way his arm drapes across my shoulder. I can see the blurred skyscrapers in the background down long straight streets.

  Eventually, when we have our own family, this trickle of time will become a torrent. David will move in here; he will bring items of his past, connections, permanent fixtures. We will have spare bedrooms for his older children and they will require pictures of the holidays they had when they were younger; even this trip to Spain will be photographed, will be part of their arsenal of memories.

  Perhaps, eventually, when everything is sorted—when the children David and I will have are older, school-aged or even at university—things will be civilized with his ex-wife. Maybe she will move on too, remarry, build her own new collection of travels and experiences and photographs. When that happens, perhaps the pictures of their lives together will be split between the two homes, the two new families.

  “And one of the customers kept looking at my tits while I was playing.”

  I startle back into Nadia’s conversation. “Jesus, who did? What?”

  “No one, but you weren’t fucking listening and you are now.”

  I mumble an apology and pour boiling water onto herbal tea bags. It’s not what I want and even less likely to be Nadia’s first choice, but there’s no milk or juice. There’s not really anything at all if Nadia were to open the cupboards and look, but luckily she doesn’t.

  I need to ask Nadia what really happened in my shop while I was away, but before I can speak, she wheels around to look at me. Her eyes are bright as a blackbird’s; I swear she has prey in her sights.

  “So why didn’t I know you play cello like that? Why doesn’t anyone?”

  I pull a chair out from under the kitchen table and sit down. I don’t look at her. “Leave it, Nad. Please.”

  Maybe an older person might have noticed the need to drop the subject, heard the flat surrender in my voice, but Nadia is only seventeen. “You’re amazing. I’m not kidding you. I honestly thought you were a fucking recording. Why haven’t you played before?”

  The inside of my mouth feels like it will crack. My lips are stuck together as if I have varnished over both of them and the gap between them has disappeared. Only David knows why I won’t play in public; can’t play, even for him.

  I put my elbows on the table, cover my eyes with my fingers and press hard. It loosens my mouth. “I got kicked out of music college.”

  “No way.”

  “When I was nineteen. I don’t talk about it. I never have.” Except, I think to myself, to David—and even when I tell David, I only tell him parts of it.

  I stuck out like a sore thumb all my life. Carrying a cello around everywhere you go isn’t really something you can hide. I didn’t fit in anywhere until I got to music college. There, finally, I was completely normal. More than normal: for once, I was good at something that other people wanted to be good at too. That hadn’t happened at school; no one cared about music there—the badges of honor in the sixth form were hockey or tennis or, the ultimate, getting a boyfriend with a car. I didn’t excel in any of those. I didn’t even compete.

  At music school I did, finally, find a boyfriend. A boy as studious as me, as shy and quiet. A boy with black straight hair and white straight teeth. A boy who slept with my best friend on what was already the worst day of my life.

  “I was thrown out,” I say to Nadia when the memories become too much. “I didn’t even do my second year.”

  I press my fingers down on the kitchen table to try and keep calm. My fingernails glow white from the blotchy pink skin around them.

  “So what? You’re fucking awesome. Play anyway.” Nadia is away with the idea. She is too young to understand that life doesn’t always let you have what you want.

  “It’s not what I’m good at. I’m a restorer and a maker. Not a performer.”

  She is shaking her head slowly. Nadia wears black eyeliner, thickly painted, across the outside edges of her eyelids. It tapers to tiny flicks and makes her already almond eyes even more striking. Her father is Arabic and she takes her coloring and bone structure directly from his side of the family. Her mother is a tall, thin European with a marked sense of style. Nadia has the best of both parents. “College isn’t everything,” she decides.

  “Isn’t it?” I’m short of breath, uncomfortable with the subject. I wish she would just go home.

  “It really isn’t. They don’t know shit.” She tries smiling at me. “So you never play in front of anyone else? Not even David?”

  I shake my head. I wish it were otherwise.

  “Do you want to?” Nadia has a way with the truth that’s like an arrow. Sometimes her perception amazes me.

  I want to play for David, almost more than I want anything. I’ve tried counseling; I’ve tried therapy. I’ve sat in front of him—motionless behind the cello—trying not to cry, until he finally took the cello from me, held my hands in his, and begged me to just be happy with what we have.

  When David finally leaves his wife and we set up a home together, I know—in a fundamental way—that it will all be fine. I will be able to play for him and he will sit, content, and listen.

  “So anyway, your secret’s out now,” says Nadia.

  I still have a mental picture of David and I jump, worried that she knows.

  “You’re a brilliant player. Awesome.”

  At college, Nikolai Dernov had despaired of me. He was the most eminent professor in our conservatoire, his reputation as a musician and a teacher rippled across the world. In my second month there, I was picked for his personal master class: Nikolai Dernov’s famed quintet. I remember trembling as I read the pale orange slip of paper in my pigeonhole, telling my mum on the phone in awed tones. Only the very best played for Nikolai.

  We crowded into a small rehearsal room as summoned; the heating was up too high and the air was thick. There were six of us when there should only have been five: one of us was playing for survival from the first draw of the bow across the strings. I probably would have been too frightened to stay at all if it hadn’t been for the smile of the dark-haired boy with the viola.

  The creased and photocopied sheet music that had been in our pigeonholes with the invitation was Mozart’s String Quartet no. 5 in D Major. Even though he’d clearly picked a piece we should be familiar with, Nikolai could not possibly have known that I had spent a three-day workshop that summer, organized by my youth orchestra, playing just that piece. I could almost play it with my eyes shut.

  As soon as
we started to play, the heat of the room, the claustrophobic shyness, and the weight of what was expected of us disappeared. I swept through the bars and codas, my head moving with the music, my eyes closing in happiness when the other instruments melted into a perfect liquid sound around me.

  As I soared into my favorite part of the piece, Nikolai rapped on my music stand with the side of his hand. The stand wobbled and the air was suddenly silent, the room so quiet that the sheet music made an audible shh as it slithered onto the tiled floor.

  “Is this a quintet I am building here?” Nikolai roared. “Or is it a solo showcase for one musician who does not know the meaning of ‘together’? A player who is too proud to be anything but the star?”

  The other players stared at me from around the circle, their bows lifted from the strings, their fingers frozen where they had been when Nikolai had broken the spell.

  I didn’t care what Nikolai said next as long as he didn’t expect me to talk back. No one had ever spoken to me like that in my life and I had nothing to say. My other tutors, conductors, mentors, they had only had praise for me, had only ever talked about my talent.

  I clenched my teeth to stop my lips from trembling.

  “And the rest of you. While this girl needs to learn to listen, the rest of you need to learn to play like that. I have never seen sight-reading like it.”

  I looked at my feet, burning with shame. I should have told him that I wasn’t sight-reading—that I knew the piece like the back of my hand—but my mouth was frozen, my words numb.

  To the right of me, the boy with the dark hair edged the tip of his viola bow towards me. It was a tiny gesture of solidarity, a minuscule proof that he didn’t hate me, even if Nikolai was using me to humiliate the others.

  And then it wasn’t me who Nikolai asked to leave. It was the only other boy in the group, another cellist. We would be a “viola quintet”: two girls playing violin, the dark-haired boy and a Scottish girl on viola, and me. The single cellist imposter.

  Each rehearsal after that, I fell a little bit more in love with Shota, the boy with dark hair. And each rehearsal, Nikolai became more convinced that he’d picked the wrong cellist.