The Science of Appearances

by Jacinta Halloran

  She’d practised those arpeggios over and over, her fingers flying over tables and dressers, her school desk, any surface she encountered, while she hummed the tune in her head — that sad, grand tune that built on itself, over and over, so that she felt it building inside her too, sadder and deeper, till she almost cried. It was exactly like moonlight, eerie and beautiful. She’d wanted to be the best pianist in the world, and play that sonata everywhere she went. She’d planned to play it on an outdoor stage under a full moon, her piano ringed with candles. After her father died the piano lessons had to stop, and though she still played the Moonlight Sonata in her head, her fingers grew out of practice.

  This piano is soft and sad, but as she listens to its unexpected notes, its fluidity, she can see how regimented the Moonlight Sonata was. The tick of the metronome always drove her crazy. ‘You have to play to time, Mary,’ Miss Poole said. ‘It’s not ritardando here.’

  ‘But I feel it slower.’

  ‘Oh, Mary,’ said Miss Poole. ‘You’re such a romantic.’

  This pianist’s a romantic, too. He bends over the keys as if whispering to them. (‘Straight back, Mary,’ Miss Poole always said.) The music seems to be speeding up and then slowing down so that she can’t count the beat, but the beat doesn’t matter. The double bass thrums low, vibrating in her head, or her heart — mingling with the pulsing of her blood. Then the trumpet starts up and she hears the sound that brought her here. She knows the trumpet from the war, all the reveilles and Last Posts played in the town hall and the cemetery, but this trumpet is muffled and hesitant. It seems to ask a question for which there’s no answer, but the question needs to be asked, even so. It threads an uncertain path, this music. It tells her that it’s all right not to know.

  When it’s finished she returns to Clarissa and Lucien. ‘I love it,’ she tells them. ‘I simply love it.’

  Clarissa laughs. ‘You’re one of a kind, aren’t you? Sorry, that sounded patronising. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that you do seem so unusually yourself.’

  Mary considers this. How easy they are to talk to. They seem to know things about the world that she’s not even begun to consider. There’s an air of certainty about them, but it’s not like Tom’s fixity. They’re certain, but they’re also open and curious. She rolls her glass between her hands. The wine is warm and sweet, heavy against the back of her throat, and she begins to feels blurred and untethered.

  ‘Where do you hail from, Madeleine?’ Lucien asks. ‘How is it that you turned up like a spirit outside our window?’

  She tells them about the kiosk, and about Robbie. She tells them, too, of her background — just the parts she wants to tell — but decides at the last minute not to mention Kyneton. ‘It’s a country town, of no great importance,’ she says, waving her hand.

  ‘Good for you,’ says Lucien. ‘Bet you’re having more fun here.’

  Clarissa holds her glass to her cheek and looks at her carefully. ‘How old are you, Madeleine? Do you mind me asking?’

  ‘I’m seventeen. Eighteen in September.’

  Lucien whistles. ‘You’re quite the adventurer. Packed a lot in already. Good for you.’

  Clarissa slowly fans her face. ‘Shut up, Luce,’ she says sharply. ‘Go and get us another round.’

  Mary holds her breath, hoping that Lucien won’t scowl or raise his voice or grab Clarissa by the wrist, so that Clarissa suddenly breaks down in tears or begs forgiveness for her boldness. To fight would be to descend into ordinary mortal behaviour, but Clarissa and Lucien are something more than mortal — rarefied, unpredictable, shimmering with a quality she can’t yet define. One day she’ll come to recognise it for what it is: privilege and money; a sense of entitlement as instinctive as breathing. But now she thinks of the kitchen in Kyneton, of her father sitting with the paper while her mother peeled potatoes at the sink. They wouldn’t speak, save for the occasional word tossed back and forth — not angry words, exactly, but something strung taut between them so that sometimes, as she set the table around her father, she found herself waiting for something to fall, break, smash into pieces. At other times, the silence was so heavy that when she entered the room she felt the weight of it pressing like a headache.

  After watching Lucien make his way to the bar, Clarissa says to Mary, ‘Don’t worry about Luce. He can be a bit obvious sometimes, but he’s very well intentioned.’

  ‘I think he’s lovely. I’m sorry I can’t pay him back for the wine.’

  Clarissa laughs. ‘God, don’t give it another thought. He’s as rich as Croesus — he gets the most appallingly huge allowance from his father. He’s always looking for ways to spend it.’ She beckons Mary closer and makes room for her at the windowsill. ‘So, now that we’re alone I wanted to ask if you’re all right with your boyfriend. You’re taking precautions, aren’t you? Against pregnancy?’

  ‘Oh! Yes, Robbie’s very careful. His father’s a doctor, so it’s been drummed into him.’

  ‘Good.’ Clarissa says. ‘You must think I’m very presumptuous but I’m only asking because you’re young, and you don’t have your mother around. Not that many mothers would advise their daughters anyway, I suppose, when it came to sex. Mine never did.’

  Sex. Mary’s never heard the word spoken aloud before, not in this way. She’s heard mention of the fairer sex, and the difference between the sexes. But to use the word to mean the doing, the touching and kissing, the actual death-defying act … Sex. Wine. Jazz. Clarissa. Lucien. Her new lexicon. The world’s become a different place in the space of an evening.

  ‘Your parents must be worried,’ Clarissa says. ‘Don’t you think you should contact them, just to put their minds at ease?’

  ‘My father’s dead.’ The words take her by surprise. ‘There’s only my mother and my twin brother at home.’

  ‘You have a twin? You must miss him terribly.’ Clarissa nudges her. ‘Or is he an evil twin?’

  Mary tries to smile. ‘Oh no, he’s very good.’ On a hot night like this, while she’d toss and turn and swear she’d never get to sleep, Dom would open their bedroom window and light a citronella candle to keep the mosquitoes away. A rogue tear runs down her cheek. Yes, she misses him; misses his ribbing, his unlimited common sense, his plain and simple goodness. He can’t swim in the sea or listen to jazz. Dear Dom. He’s unable to escape as she has.

  Clarissa takes her hand and squeezes it. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she says. ‘I can see it hasn’t been easy.’

  Lucien returns with their drinks. ‘Been chatting with the pianist. They’re off to tour America soon. New York, Chicago, New Orleans. Said I’d ask the old man to chip in for expenses. He’s all for supporting struggling artists.’

  ‘Yes, you struggle terribly, don’t you, Luce?’ Clarissa says, patting his arm.

  ‘Are you an artist?’ Mary asks Lucien.

  ‘Oh, I dabble.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Clarissa says. ‘He’s a brilliant painter. He just doesn’t take himself seriously enough.’

  ‘I want to be an artist,’ Mary says. ‘That’s why I’ve come to Melbourne. That, and to be with Robbie.’

  ‘The pursuit of art and love,’ says Lucien. He blows a smoke ring out the window. ‘You’re a true artist, my dear. True artists follow their heart.’

  ~

  Somewhere in the Union basement a piano’s being played. Dominic follows the music down the stairs and across the dim space to a half-open door. A tall, rangy figure in a black coat hunches over an upright piano. Others sit trance-like on the floor, legs extended, backs against the wall. The tune’s something that Mary played — he remembers the bare bones of the melody in her hands, the tinny, melancholy mess she made of it. This pianist is fleshing the melody out, making it ominous and grand. He leans against the wall and listens, thinking of Mary in their old house, her feet arching to the pedals, the sinewed span of
her hands against the keys, the determined reach of her arms. Back then she was small, not often brave, never decisive, but at the piano she was fierce.

  ‘What’s that music?’ he asks a student who wanders out when the piece is finished.

  ‘Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven.’ There’s alcohol on his breath. ‘You’re obviously not a music-lover.’

  ‘Not really. My twin sister used to play that tune.’ Moonlight Sonata: no wonder Mary was mad for it. It was all in the name. ‘That’s the only reason I asked.’

  10

  In the glasshouse the air smells of living things: mosses and fungi; the pheromones of insects; the busy, wet warm earth. Their genetics lecturer is Dr Rupert Kingsley, just returned from Cambridge. ‘Cambridge?’ Tibble says, as Kingsley enters. ‘More like the Congo.’ Tibble’s right: the man’s as lean as a whip, and weather-beaten in a Stanley and Livingstone way. A pith helmet atop his unruly hair wouldn’t look astray.

  ‘Congratulations on choosing the most exciting subject on offer at this university,’ Kingsley begins. His eyes burn blue in his suntanned face. ‘We’re on the brink of great discoveries in the field of plant genetics, discoveries that have the potential to increase food production to levels never before envisaged.’

  Tibble pretends to yawn. ‘Ah, brave new world! Why do I feel like I’ve heard all this before?’

  Rupert Kingsley tells them of recombination, backcross breeding, selection for disease resistance. ‘With a steady pair of hands and a sharp eye,’ he says, ‘you can create a new cultivar: wheat that’s resistant to rust, a tomato that grows only as big as your thumb.’ He explains the concept of hybrid vigour — that the progeny of a cross between parents are often superior to the parents themselves.

  ‘Jesus, I’d hope so,’ Tibble mutters. ‘I’d hate to think I might turn out to be a worse specimen than my olds.’

  Kingsley shows them how it’s done. ‘Choose your parent plants carefully. Select for height, vigour, flower colour.’ He lifts a pea plant away from the rest. ‘We can’t choose our own parents,’ he says with a well-rehearsed smile, ‘but as breeders we can choose for our plants.’

  ‘But aren’t we playing God, Dr Kingsley? Messing about with Nature like this?’ A girl’s voice. Everyone turns to look. It’s Marion Travers, occupier of the front row, font of wisdom in every lecture. She won’t get blasted.

  ‘Nature plays God with itself all the time, Miss Travers. We call it natural selection.’ Kingsley holds up his hand and the laughter subsides. ‘Think of yourself as a bird or a bee, pollinating a plant just as Nature designed them to do. Except that we do it with scissors and forceps, and an outcome in mind. Perhaps God intended that we take control of Nature.’ He holds them all in his bright-eyed gaze. ‘Why, otherwise, would he have made us with a large brain and opposable thumbs?’

  He waves them away, each to a pea plant. Tibble lines up next to Dom. He picks up a pair of scissors and snips them in the air. ‘Do you have any bloody idea what we’re supposed to be doing?’

  Dominic nods. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then lead on, Macduff.’

  They have barely identified the parts of the plant when Kingsley comes up beside them. ‘I’ve been asking a few of the others why they’ve chosen this subject.’ He hones in on Tibble. ‘What about you, sir?’

  Tibble looks trapped. ‘Ahh, I’m interested in twins.’

  Kingsley leans forward. ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because — because I’m one. Non-identical,’ he says quickly, glancing at Dom. ‘I have a sister.’

  Kingsley seems satisfied. ‘Grist to the mill here — what’s your name?’

  ‘John Tibble.’

  ‘Grist to the mill here, Mr Tibble.’

  ‘How so, Dr Kingsley?’ Dom asks.

  Kingsley turns to Dom, and Tibble rolls his eyes. Sorry, he mouths behind Kingsley’s back. ‘Twin studies and the field of genetics have gone hand in hand, ever since Francis Galton suggested the study of twins as a means to understand heredity,’ Kingsley says. ‘Classical twin studies compare monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs in order to separate out the relative influences of genes and environment. Mr Tibble is part of the control group, as it were.’ He turns back to Tibble. ‘Well done. A good answer.’

  Tibble shudders as Kingsley moves away. ‘That man bloody spooks me.’

  ‘You’re going to be tagged as the twin now, you know,’ Dom tells his friend.

  Tibble laughs. ‘Thanks for getting me off the hook, for once in my life.’

  His mother’s letters come every second Tuesday, dated the previous Sunday. Dear Dominic, she writes, and his heart quickens as he reads her salutation. Should he be home, sitting with her in the evenings as she darns his socks, just as she once darned his father’s? An image comes to mind: his father’s socked feet, a darn of red wool in one of the heels, on the day of his death. He remembers how it jarred — not just the splash of red against the dark floor, but the sight of his father’s feet, long and narrow, protruding from behind the bed, turned inwards so that the big toe of one foot nestled in the instep of the other. In that unhinged moment, as Doctor Cameron opened his parents’ bedroom door while he, Dom, stood behind him in the hallway, he’d glimpsed for the very first time his father’s unshod feet.

  I hope you are well and progressing with your studies. Has the book I bought you come in handy yet?

  Had his father’s socks always been darned in red? Were there green and blue patches too, enclosed in brown leather as his father stood on the platform at the front of the class? He likes to think of his mother colluding in something so frivolous, smiling to herself as she raised the lid of her sewing basket to choose the brightest yarn. Again he sees his father’s feet, and now there’s something so fragile in them that he understands why his father always wore shoes.

  Do you have any news of Mary? I know you couldn’t, as you would have let me know the moment you had. Still, I need to put it down on paper, so that you’ll know I’m thinking of her, and praying that you’ll find her. Mrs Corrigan still asks every time I see her, and Mrs Cameron, too, which is good of her, I suppose, given that Mary gave her no notice.

  Do you ever see Robert Cameron? Mrs Cameron never fails to tell me how well he’s going with his studies. I know that I’ll be able to tell her the same, once I hear the results of your first exams. You were always cleverer than he.

  He sits on his bed in the Rose Street bungalow. Despite the coolness of the evening, he’s opened the windows wide so that he might hear something other than his own breathing, his own thoughts. The sound of traffic on Bell Street reaches him — a steady, lulling hum, his new evening serenade. In Beauchamp Street it was the banjo frogs on the river, singing through the nights of spring, rejoicing in the end of the long, cold Kyneton winter. He’d rejoiced with them, back then.

  How is the food at the Nevilles’ ? I hope you’re not going hungry. I’ll send you another fruitcake next week.

  He has his mother’s letters, the cakes that taste of her kitchen, his armoury of hand-knitted jumpers and scarves. He has the knowledge of his mother’s love, buffering him, setting him straight. What does Mary have?

  ~

  Among all the treasures in Miss Edna Poole’s parlour — the china shepherdess, the braided silk cushions that Toby commandeered — Mary’s favourites were the Russian dolls that nestled on a cabinet in a tight family cluster. She imagined them watching her as she played. When she lifted her fingers from the final chord, she’d turn to see their large blue eyes, their red headscarves, the gold flowers and leaves painted on their swollen bellies. Their sweet half-smiles were for her, identical smiles of approval, except for the smallest, who had a frightened, sulky look. ‘Get through this piece without a single mistake, and you can play with the dolls for five minutes,’ Miss Poole would say in the early days, when playing with dolls mattered more. Sometimes she manag
ed it, and Miss Poole sat with Toby while she opened each doll and placed them one inside the other, whispering their secret names: Ruby, Holly, Rose, Pavlova (which Dom had told her was a Russian name) and Linka, which she thought just might be. The baby didn’t have a name. She liked the unpacking best; the unscrewing of a belly to reveal another doll within, all the while knowing that another hid inside. They protected one another. When they were lined up side by side she saw that their smiles were turned towards their younger sister. Why, then, was the baby so afraid?

  Donald’s given her a green silk robe, embroidered on each side with a golden dragon breathing fire. She undresses — everything off except jewellery, he’s told her — and as she pulls on the robe she thinks of Miss Poole’s Russian dolls. Layers removed, something else within, until the final layer, the frightened, cosseted baby. She need only to shed one more layer, nothing to fear.

  The Wednesday after she’d met Lucien and Clarissa, Lucien sent her a note. To Miss Madeleine, c/o St Kilda Pier Kiosk. And inside: I’ve spoken to Donald Moore, who runs the art classes of which we spoke at the Esplanade Hotel. He’s happy to trial you for modelling work. It’s a start, n’est-ce pas? A foot in the door. Good luck! Lucien.

  ‘Who the hell is Madeleine?’ Tom asked, holding up the envelope.

  ‘My stage name,’ Mary sung, dancing around the room. ‘It’ll soon be up in lights, just like Atlantic Ethyl at the junction.’

  ‘You’re cracked, Mary Quinn. Stark raving loony.’

  Donald returns. ‘We’re ready for you now, Madeleine. Take my advice: don’t look at the students. Pretend they’re not there. Go straight to the couch. I’ll let you know when it’s time to disrobe and lie down.’

  After the chill of the corridor, the studio feels warm and alive. Mary follows Donald, head down, glad she’s painted her toenails vermillion — they are bold, bolder than she feels.