* * *
Now my bedroom door is shut to protect me, not humiliate me. I can walk out of it anytime I choose and no one will come in unless I ask them. I leave the hurtful memories in the past and edge the bow onto the strings. I remember what I can do. I trust Nadia to keep the doors closed and I play.
* * *
I put fresh flowers on the kitchen table—big white daisies from the hipster florist near my shop—and set the whole thing up as a formal dinner party. The tablecloth is white and I only have to hide one red wine stain with a glass.
I do have a separate dining room, but I have rearranged the furniture in there. I have folded down the leaves of the table and heaved it to one side of the room. Three of the dining room chairs form a small semicircle, three music stands unfolded and set up in front of them. My music is on my stand; Nadia and Mr. Williams will bring theirs with them.
One chair is set apart from the other two and, between them and tied to the lamp shades, is a large white bedsheet. This is Nadia’s deep psychological plan and makes me wonder what they’re teaching at A-level nowadays.
This is the first time I’ve seen the Cremona cello out in the real world. I get my phone and sit on the floor next to it. Nadia would call the photograph that I am compelled to take a cello selfie. It’s a great photo, a good one of me and a beauty of the instrument. I fire it off to David and wonder what his Sunday holds.
I have decided not to say anything to Nadia about the diary entry, at least not tonight. I’m the last person to make a judgment on her condition, I’d imagine. At the moment, though, I may be the only person who cares.
* * *
In the evening, Nadia is the first to arrive. She’s looking beautiful. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and down her back and she’s wearing a black skirt, puffed out and very short, a black jumper and bright red tights. She has her violin case on her back and, to my surprise, a bottle of wine in her hand.
“I thought you’d given up drinking.” It is suddenly important in the light of everything I’ve read.
“Your trolley was full of white,” she says. And then explains, “In the supermarket. So I bought you a bottle of white.”
“Thanks.” She is a box of surprises, a zigzag of child and woman.
“What’s for dinner? It smells really good. You don’t usually cook, do you?”
“Not when it’s just me. Pointless. By the time I’ve cooked it I can never be bothered to eat it.”
“I’d be the same, I expect.” There is something in her tone that makes it clear she has no intention of ending up like me.
We walk through to the dining room to get her violin out. Even having her stand in the same room as my cello with her violin case is making me feel dizzy. I breathe deeply.
I sold her this fiddle. It’s a beauty. Her parents’ budget was fairly high; they ended up spending £30,000. I’d love her to play one I’d made, but I have to admit that this instrument really does suit her playing style. It has a quiet sound; it’s not a pushy violin. It’s for playing in trios and quartets more than for orchestra work. Nadia wanted something that would serve her well for her music college audition and this little Italian violin is certainly that. She already knows that she will get offers from Manchester, Oslo, London, and Paris. The choice of where to study will be hers.
“Drink?” I ask her.
“Can I have a glass of water? Or Coke or something?”
I look at her twice and then remember that she doesn’t know what I’m thinking.
“Is that OK? Grace?”
“Sorry, yes, of course. Fizzy water?”
“Fine. Are we playing before we eat?”
I nod. “Definitely.” I pour myself a large glass of wine. I’m going to need it.
Nadia accepts the glass of water and sips at it. She narrows her eyes slightly. I can see she’s about to ask me something she thinks is a little near the knuckle.
“So,” she says, “Mr. Williams. Gay?”
“Nadia.” I tut as if it’s something I’ve never wondered about. “How would I know? It’s none of my business.”
“But?”
“Well, I assume so. Although I’m not sure. He might just be a camp old sort, you know, and straight. Does it matter?”
She shrugs. “Of course not. I was just interested. Bet you are as well.”
“I know his partner died eighteen years ago and he’s not met anyone since. But beyond that, I don’t know much about him at all.”
“Mission, then. I’ll find out.” She nods at me just as the doorbell rings.
Mr. Williams has dressed up for a concert. He is wearing a beautifully tailored black suit, a white shirt, and a gold cravat. His black lace-up shoes are shined until silver arcs of light are reflected in them from my ceiling lamps.
I feel horribly underdressed. I did stop to think about my outfit but settled on blue linen trousers and a pale yellow tunic top. A silver necklace with large drops of Polish amber lifts the look a little, but it’s still casual compared with Mr. Williams.
He has put his violin case down on the floor and takes two bottles of wine out of a cloth bag he had over his shoulder.
“One of each, dear, couldn’t decide.”
They are nice wines; he has chosen with care. David would approve.
“Thank you, that’s so kind. Would you like a gin and tonic or wine or . . . ?”
“Gin, and it would be lovely, thanks. I play better after a sharpener, I find.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get Alan’s fiddle ready in time for today.” I am genuinely sorry. It would have been very sweet for him to have played the new version of Alan’s violin at the same time as I tried the Cremona cello, but I couldn’t get both done. “It’s really coming on, though. It’s going to work brilliantly. I’m going to cut a new bass bar and I’ve started thinning down the neck. It’ll sound great.”
“I have every faith in you, dear,” says Mr. Williams, and accepts a large gin in a tumbler. “Smashing. Bottoms up.”
We all take a drink. I feel guilty about mine and put it down on the table; I need all my senses sharp to judge the sound of this instrument. I’ve got to get it right.
The Cremona instruments are judged on their appearance first; they’re not looking for anything out of the ordinary—they’re looking for perfection. They want to see an even color and a clear depth to the finish. They want to see the flame of the wood magnified by the opacity of the varnish, not obscured or altered by it. What the judges want is, oddly, not what any customer would want. Customers want their instruments to be individual; they want to see character and distinctiveness. If I don’t win and wanted to sell my Cremona cello to a player after the competition, I would have to make it look older, give its high shine a little sanding down, flatten a corner here and there.
If I win, the competition organizers will buy the cello from me. They would pay their set price, higher than most makers would ever ask for an instrument, and that would become the value of my cello and all subsequent ones. All the winning instruments, over all the years the competition has run, are displayed in a museum in Cremona. I am determined to keep believing I can join them. I don’t know who’d be prouder, David or me. I look around the kitchen and realize Mr. Williams and Nadia would be part of that equation too. I am not as alone as I once was.
We take our drinks through to the dining room and start the tune-up. Mr. Williams and I both tune to the A string of Nadia’s violin, partly because she has perfect pitch and partly because she will play the lead violin part. The whole string section tunes to the A string of the first violin, even the basses. I tell myself that this is just tuning, something I do in the shop, something I do all the time in front of customers. The sweat is clinging onto the edges of my hair and my hands are shaking, but I’m holding on.
I assume Mr. Williams thinks the giant bedsheet, strung between us like a ghost, is part of playing a new instrument. He hasn’t even commented on it. Perhaps he doesn’t find it od
d.
At last we’re all ready. I can tell just from the tuning I’ve done and the process of getting the bridge in place, the sound post right, that this cello is going to be unusually good.
“Do you want to just play something solo first, Grace? Something to christen it?” Mr. Williams asks.
He can’t see me behind the sheet. He cannot see the panic on my face, the fear in my eyes. I am keeping my ragged breathing deliberately quiet. I will do this.
“Let’s just get going.”
Instruments made of wood wake up as vibrations start going through them. They never sound as good on the first bowing as they will after a few hours’ playing in. The mark of a great instrument, as opposed to a good one, is that it will continue to get better over time. Years of playing will open up depths of sound the wood is keeping in its rings, its knots, its pattern.
I’m shaking; I can feel my lungs tighten, the muscles between my ribs constrict with fear. So much work has gone into this; it is the bearer of my hopes and dreams.
I think of my future children, their music practice, my need to coach and coax them.
I think of Nadia and her loneliness among all the noise and chatter, about how much she needs me to prove to her that she matters.
I think of Mr. Williams and his losses, how we need to grab things while we can, hold them dear.
I think about David, his low, calm voice, his kind eyes, how much he loves me.
Together they push Nikolai out of the picture; they diffuse his frustrations, the memory of his pursed, angry mouth and how he shouted at me.
Nadia has only written out the shortest part of her symphony, but even in this fledgling state it is extraordinary. I stare at the music, swimming in front of me, and realize that it opens with just the cello.
I am alone. I am responsible for my own sound—my own life—this is the moment I decide whether I am heard or not.
The first note I play is a low C, melancholic and full.
It’s beautiful. It is the lowest string on the instrument and, without my fingers on it, produces the deepest sound—the lowest note my cello can make. It vibrates around the room and when it’s finished, there is nothing but silence.
It is as if the note has left a hole in the air that carried it.
I look up. The sheet is gone, crumpled onto the floor. Nadia’s mouth is open wide in wonder at the clarity of the sound. Mr. Williams’s grin is so big that his eyes have almost disappeared into the concertina folds of his wrinkled skin.
Rather than fill the tingling air with fear, I start to play.
There are only two bars of solo before the violins join in. This piece is everything Nadia had played to me, with layers and layers more. It is complex and simple, pointed and angular and—simultaneously—soft and gentle. Its themes are clear and accessible, its phrases perfectly timed.
There is a beautiful dialogue towards the end of this short section, a fragment that showcases—perfectly—the relationship between the instruments. The cello calls and the violin answers and then they turn—elegantly—and continue their discussion the other way around. They compete and tussle, and then they are smooth and harmonious, dependent on each other. It is us, Nadia and me, unmistakably and clearly. She has written about us.
I have never been so touched.
I don’t know whether to jump up and throw my arms around Nadia or to fling myself at her feet.
She throws a tissue into my lap. “You need to blow your nose.”
I realize I am crying. The tears threaten to fall onto the shoulder of my competition cello. I manage a smile and blow my nose loudly.
“What next, Grace?” asks Mr. Williams. We are high as kites; we need to carry on.
“Piazzolla’s ‘Libertango.’ I’m in a very ‘Libertango’ mood.”
The “Libertango” is the perfect piece and I have missed playing it with other people so much. The CDs that I play along to are a pathetic substitute and I am joyful to have real humans take their place.
My bow slides gracefully across the strings, my left hand shoots up and down the fingerboard, squeezing the high notes from the top register, pulling long, cool, low notes like toffee from the bottom two strings.
I am in Argentina, it is a smoky café, the smells and the dark are what I expect from such a country. I imagine the close and humid air inside the room, the yellowed ceiling; the drinkers lined up along the bar, ancient men perched on stools, one toe touching the floor and the other hooked behind the horizontal brass bar that keeps the legs of the old wooden stool in place. The orchestra of my imagination is a small man hunched over a wheezing accordion and a violin player, tall and swarthy; a man who looks dangerous. Maybe somewhere behind the scene is a woman with bells or castanets, and loud square heels on black shoes. She will dance as we play.
Outside my fantasy bar, through the louvered doors with peeling paint, there is a forest of green. There are vast cliffs sweeping down to crashing rivers, wide rolling plains of short yellow grass, waterfalls that drown out all other sound. Across the whole country the heat remains the dominant force, smothering the people, the plants, the animals, in an escalating pressure.
Nadia joins the tune. Her violin is high and reedy compared to the voluptuous sound of the cello, but she makes it work for both of us.
I picture the red swirling skirts of the dancing woman, her tumbling black hair slick with oil or water, long tattered ribbons tied around her wrists and floating against the fabric of her skirt.
Mr. Williams picks up the simpler line, playing a steadying beat to liberate the two of us, Nadia and me, to play our hearts out. I lean farther forward over the cello, feeling the heat in the strings; Nadia stands and the elbow of her bowing arms flies in and out with the speed of a machine.
We are an engine, the three of us, and we play with exactness, precision. We play like we are making a pact with the devil. We run through the music three times, stretching out the tune because we can’t bear to hear it end. Somehow, on the last note of the third turn around, we just stop. The silence is deafening. It feels like smoke.
“Bravo! Bravo!” shouts Mr. Williams.
Nadia is grinning like a demon. We are untidy, sweaty. We are all excited and aflame.
“The sound, Grace.” Mr. Williams points towards the cello with his bow. He holds his violin by its neck, the rounded bottom of it on his knee. “I can’t believe the sound of that instrument.”
“It’s fantastic, Grace. Amazing.” Nadia really means it. Her makeup is slightly smudgy on one eyelid where the speed of the music left her sweating.
“I didn’t think it would do that.” I shake my head, pat the front of the cello like it is a horse.
“Imagine what it’s going to sound like when it opens up.” Mr. Williams is invigorated; there is a shine to his smile that makes him look years younger. “My late partner adored the ‘Libertango,’ any tango, actually.”
Nadia doesn’t miss her chance. “What was your partner’s name, Mr. Williams?”
“Leslie,” he says, or perhaps he says “Lesley.” I smile inwardly at Nadia’s enthusiastic frustration—it is painted across her face. She is the same Nadia, the same girl. Perhaps her diary entries were complete fantasy. They were certainly all her own business.
* * *
In this ordinary white dining room with its ubiquitous pine table and chairs, the mundane beige carpet, the few photographs and paintings, magic has happened. The cello has enchanted us to believe we can fulfill our promises, work through our dreams, banish our fears.
I really have faith in this cello.
I know it can win.
Chapter Twelve
The night is a runaway success.
We play on for over an hour, running through personal favorites and crowd pleasers, even though our audience is imaginary.
We eat far too late and the salad starter I’d prepared has pools of oil and vinegar in the damp leaves where the dressing has separated in protest. We drink and laugh an
d play some more; the music joining and bonding our odd little trio.
The cello continues to open. I will give it at least three hours’ exercise a day between now and when it gets packed into its case and shipped to Italy. I resolve to go to the gym more and improve my muscle tone to do the cello justice.
It is late when they leave. I am tired and extraordinarily happy. I want to thank David for the encouragement, to be able to share this success with him, but he’s an hour ahead in France and it will be one thirty in the morning.
I think about texting so that he will have the message in the morning, but it doesn’t feel like enough—and I have too many superlatives to say about my cello. I have too many promises to make him about the things I will play for him.
Already I am trying to list adjectives to describe the cello’s sound. Normally, the words I’d use are abstract nouns—profundity or broadness or subtlety. The music this instrument makes warrants real, heavy words. It keeps making me think of food: of chocolate, of treacle, of dark burnt toast and melting yellow butter.
I decide to ring David’s phone. He won’t pick up—the phone is permanently on silent unless he’s here—and it won’t disturb him. I haven’t heard his voice in days and he will be needing to hear mine, too.
I press the green button—his is the only number I call from this phone, a redial will only reach him. The bill goes straight to his account, something he insists on as he could be anywhere in the world and our long nighttime chats cost a fortune.
I know where I will start my monologue. I will talk first about the cello and its sound. Then I will explain what happened, that I wasn’t playing alone, that there has been a miracle. He will be able to hear the smile and the enthusiasm in my voice—he’ll be able to hear that I’ve also had a few drinks—and he’ll know that I’m managing well in his absence. It will be one less worry for him in the morning.
David’s answerphone is set to come on after four rings. I count them off as I hear them. After the third, to my surprise, he answers.
“Hey.” He is whispering, his voice is thick with tiredness.
Goodbye, Paris Page 10
