by Penni Russon
‘You can meet him if you’re interested. Grandad, I mean, not Prince George. He’s just around the corner.’
Adelaide’s face is open and kind, as if she doesn’t ever notice how badly I behave, how rude and reticent I am.
I cannot seem to help my rudeness, this invisible barrier between me and the rest of the world. Even at the dinner table, surrounded by her family, I am imprisoned in my own mood. At night after everyone else has gone to bed I wander the house, as silent as the ghosts Sibbi keeps claiming to see. I get on the internet and lurk, watching my friends chatting online, but I never have anything to say. I read the emails they send me and look at the photographs. I am a ghost, watching from a great distance, never answering.
‘Come on,’ says Adelaide. ‘It’s not far from here.’
And then I’m caught up in her wake, not exactly saying yes, but somehow not saying no either.
ELSE
ADELAIDE KEEPS UP a steady stream of chatter, and perhaps this is what keeps me tethered to her. I don’t contribute anything to the conversation. Adelaide seems the type to not take anything personally.
‘Here we are,’ she says. ‘Just down here. Look, you can see the sign.’
Lev Starman
Violin and Bow Maker.
Maintenance, Restoration, Repair.
Adelaide goes down and taps on the door. ‘He’s not answering,’ she calls.
‘Oh well.’ I turn to go, though I admit I am a tiny bit disappointed.
‘Oh no, it’s all right,’ Adelaide says. ‘I’ve got a key. Grandad won’t mind. I’d say he’s having a kip upstairs.’
‘Kip? Isn’t that smoked fish?’
‘That’s kipper,’ Adelaide says. ‘And my grandfather is Slovenian. And vegetarian. So he prefers pickled turnips, which are actually surprisingly tasty, especially with cheese.’
I stand on the footpath, watching Adelaide disappear into the shop. Okay, so I could just walk away right now. Why am I here anyway, torturing myself by looking at something I can’t have anymore? But wait, I didn’t even want my violin anyway. I’d made my own decision, just like I was always saying I should. That’s what it meant to be grown up – making a decision and sticking to it. Like Dave should have done with the fences.
Adelaide stuck her head out of the shop. ‘So are you coming?’
It wouldn’t hurt to just look. Just to prove to myself that I can be here, be around violins, and it doesn’t matter. And I’ve never seen a violin being made. It’s natural that I’d still be interested in that, even if I didn’t want to play myself anymore. I could have a quick look, and then go home.
I expect it to be dark and close in the workshop, so I’m surprised when I step through the low doorway to find sun streaming in through high windows.
All around the walls and on the work benches are parts of violins, bodies without necks, ribs laid out, jars of pegs, tail-guts.
It makes me feel sad for my lost violin. Not sorry for myself, but sorry for the instrument, quiet in its case. I hope Rick will discover it on his travels, and find it a home, maybe with some teenage girl in the middle of nowhere who’ll appreciate the gift.
‘See.’ Adelaide points to an impossibly tiny violin. ‘Did you ever have a quarter size, or even an eighth? That’s a sixty-fourth.’
Okay. Despite myself, I’m charmed. ‘For Prince George? It looks like a toy.’
‘It really plays,’ says Adelaide.
‘Do you think George ever actually played it?’
Adelaide shrugs. ‘Grandad’s getting it ready to go on tour.’
We hear steps, shuffling overhead.
‘That’s Grandad,’ says Adelaide. ‘I’ll just go and tell him we’re here.’
‘Oh no, don’t . . . please don’t.’ My heart is racing, though I don’t know why. ‘I should leave. I didn’t mean to bother him.’
‘It’s no bother. Would you like to play one?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, I’d love to hear you play. I bet you’re brilliant.’
‘I’m really not,’ I tell her.
‘I’ll be back in two ticks,’ Adelaide says. ‘I’ll make us a coffee and see if Grandad’s about. Stay here.’
In the studio alone with the violins, the temptation to play is strong. Maybe there’s no harm in just picking one up, holding it to my shoulder.
There’s a full-sized violin sitting in an open case near the door. I pick it up. My muscles ache with remembering. I lift it to my chin. My other arm wants a bow. Potential energy fizzes in the air, like the moment in a performance when the conductor lifts their arms.
‘Well, Adelaide’s friend. Are you going to play something?’
I jump and turns around.
‘I’m sorry,’ says the violin-maker. ‘I did not mean to startle you.’
He isn’t so very old: his eyes and his hands are young. But his curly hair is silver grey and his face is creased from frowning at fine, detailed work.
‘There’s no bow.’ I put the violin gently back in the case.
The violin-maker raises his eyebrows and gazes deliberately around the walls, lined with bows. ‘What would you have played?’ he asks.
The only piece I can think of is the Mozart. ‘I don’t play,’ I say. ‘Not anymore.’
‘I see,’ says the violin-maker. He looks at me a long time.
‘I mean, I used to. But I guess I got as good as I was going to get.’
The violin-maker nods. He picks up a bow from the bench and inspects it, then swaps it for another. He tightens the tension screw and hands it to me with a piece of rosin. Automatically, again more from muscle memory than conscious thought, I rub rosin on the bow.
‘I mean,’ I say, a little defensively. ‘I was pretty good. You know. But there’s a point –’
‘It stopped being enjoyable. It became work.’
‘Yes. Well, no!’ I frown, confused. ‘I don’t mind work.’
‘Ah,’ he says, and thinks for a moment. ‘So. There was no flow.’
I’m trying to be annoyed at this quick, brutal assessment of my highly personal, complicated situation. I don’t know exactly what he means by this word – flow – and yet it is acutely precise. Playing stopped being unconscious and fluid – flowing. I no longer felt like an extension of the instrument. My movements had become jagged and awkward, as if my body and the violin were resisting each other.
Adelaide calls down the stairs, ‘Would you like sugar in your coffee, Else?’
‘No thanks,’ I say. I offer the bow to the violin-maker and he takes it. He picks up the violin I was playing and plays a few bright notes.
He says, ‘The world is not waiting for you to play the violin.’
I realise I’ve been holding my breath. ‘Sorry? What?’
‘No one will ask you to play. No one will miss you. I have seen great players give up, and no one comes looking for them. There are many other great players to take their place.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I get it. I’m not special.’
‘But I think,’ the man continues as if I haven’t spoken, ‘I think you will miss it. I think you are already missing it, and that is why you are here.’
I feel the small room closing in. I look at the empty, half-built violins, the stray parts, and suddenly it looks like a room full of bones. I step back towards the door.
‘Tell Adelaide . . . Oh, don’t worry. Don’t tell her anything. Or tell her sorry. I am sorry. I should never have come.’
I fall out the door into the alley, take a breath and runs. I run fast, run until my breath comes out in ragged sobs. I run all the way back to Outhwaite House where I stop, because I have nowhere else to go. I look down and realises I am still holding the violin-maker’s rosin in my hand.
SIBBI
‘I ARE LONELY,’ says Sibbi.
Lo-o-onely, sighs the shadow in the attic.
‘Hang on a minute,’ says Olly, typing. ‘Let me just finish this . . .’ She looks up. ‘Oh, Sibb
i, I’m sorry. Give me five minutes, and then I’ll come and play with you.’
Sibbi goes into the hallway. She drags her finger along the wall. She goes back into the kitchen. ‘Has it been five minutes?’ she asks.
‘Sibbi,’ Olly says. ‘No.’
One minute later: ‘What about now?’
‘Sibbi! The more you pester, the longer I’ll take.’
Sibbi goes back into the hallway. Oscar and Finn burst through the open front door and Sibbi glimpses the street, trees and sunlight.
‘Hey, Sibmonster!” Finn says. ‘What’s doing?’
‘I’m being lonely,’ Sib says. ‘I’m always being so alone-ly.’
The front door opens again. A bicycle bell rings. A truck rattles past. Somebody calls to a cat. And then the door closes and the hallway is dim and quiet. It’s Clancy and Pippa this time.
Olly comes out into the hallway. ‘Oh great, you’re all here. You can play with Sib then.’ She disappears back into the kitchen.
CLANCY
‘CAN’T YOU TAKE her?’ Oscar says to me and Pippa. ‘We were just going to grab our cricket gear and head back to the park. There’s a game starting and they said they’d wait five minutes for us.’
‘We played Go Fish with her yesterday,’ I say.
Sibbi’s wide eyes go from Oscar to me, back to Oscar.
‘We could play something else,’ Finn says, taking pity on Sibbi. ‘What about Kick the Can?’
‘The back yard’s too small for Kick the Can,’ says Oscar. ‘There’s not enough hiding places.’
‘What’s Kick the Can?’ Pippa asks.
‘We can play it inside,’ says Finn.
‘It’s too loud,’ I say. ‘It’ll upset Mum. It’s a cross between hide-and-seek, and tiggy,’ I tell Pippa. ‘Or tag or chasey, whatever you call it here.’
‘What about Sardines, then?’ Pippa suggests. ‘That’s a good one for indoors.’
‘How do you play?’
Pippa quickly runs through the rules. One person hides and everyone else looks. If they find the hider, they squeeze in and hide too, everyone squished in together like sardines in a tin.
‘Shall we do dip-dip?’ Oscar says.
We all stick a foot in, including Sibbi.
‘There’s a party on the hill would you like to come,’ chants Oscar.
His finger lands on me.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Then bring a bottle of rum-a-tum-tum,’ Oscar sings. His finger points to Pippa’s foot.
‘What do I say?’ she asks.
‘Can’t afford it,’ answers Finn.
‘Can’t afford it,’ says Pippa.
‘Then pack your bags and off you go.’
Finn pulls his foot in.
‘We do it differently,’ Pippa says. ‘There’s a party on the hill, can you come? Say yes.’
‘Yes,’ says Oscar.
‘Bring your own bread and butter and a bun.’ Pippa’s finger rests on Sibbi. ‘It’s the same.’
‘Can’t afford it,’ says Sibbi.
‘Who is your best friend?’ Pippa’s finger lands on me this time. She looks at me expectantly.
‘You,’ I say, and it gives me a strange tickle at the back of my mouth. I’ve never had a best friend before.
Pippa keeps chanting. ‘Pippa will be there with her knickers in the air. O-U-T spells out.’
It goes around a couple more times, until it’s between Oscar and Sibbi. ‘Hang on a sec,’ Oscar says, just as it’s about to land on him. ‘Let’s do it our way.’
‘That’s cheating,’ says Pippa. ‘You just don’t want to be It.’
‘Oh, come on,’ says Finn. ‘Don’t start fighting. Just do it again or we’ll never play.’
Of course Sibbi is It. Pippa shoots Oscar a filthy look.
‘You hide first,’ says Pippa. ‘And if we find you, we hide with you. Do you understand how to play?’
‘She’s not stupid,’ says Oscar.
SIBBI
EVERYONE CLOSES THEIR eyes and begins to count together. Sibbi runs up the stairs. She runs right up, up to the third floor where Clancy and the twins and her parents’ bedrooms are. She goes to the attic door and jiggles the handle. It’s still locked, but it wants to be opened.
The others are coming. Sibbi slips behind her parent’s’ door and waits.
She hears her own breath. She hears the children walking up the stairs and around the second floor.
She hears, very faintly, the rattle of the locked door . . .
She feels something slip in next to her, hide beside her . . .
She reaches out. It’s Finn. Her hand finds his and they press in together, waiting for the others.
ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE
ALMOST ANNIE SIGHS. ‘They grow up so fast, don’t they?’
‘Do you think?’ says Hardly Alice. ‘I think it takes forever.’
‘Remember when Pippa could see us? Strange how they grow out of it.’
‘He sees us sometimes,’ Alice says, pointing at Finn. ‘He thinks he does anyway. Just out of the corner of his eye, but if he turns around . . . There’s nothing there.’
‘There is,’ says Annie. ‘There’s us.’
‘Yes,’ sighs Alice. ‘Here we are. Here we always are.’
CLANCY
DOWNSTAIRS, OSCAR SAYS to Pippa, ‘Watch out for Sibbi’s ghosts.’
‘Ghosts?’ asks Pippa. ‘There are no ghosts. I’d know if there were ghosts here.’ She looks only the slightest bit uncertain.
‘Are there really ghosts here?’ Pippa whispers when Oscar goes looking in the lounge room.
‘Only Sibbi’s seen them,’ I say. ‘Though . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well. There is something creepy about that door upstairs, the locked one.’
‘You mustn’t ever open the upstairs door,’ Pippa says, and then puts her hand to her mouth. ‘I don’t know why I said that. But I know it’s true.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s weird. It needs to stay locked. But it wants to be opened.’
‘A door can’t want anything.’
‘I know. A door can’t. So what . . .?’
‘Wa-ha-ha-ha-HA!’ Oscar leaps out at us from Dorothy’s study, then falls about laughing. ‘Scaredy cats.’
‘Are not,’ says Pippa. But we stick close together on the stairs.
ELSE
IT TAKES ME a few days of exploring to find my way back to Lev Starman, Violin-maker. When I finally find the alleyway, I realise I’ve already walked past it at least once, maybe twice, it’s so narrow and hidden away.
I dig the rosin out of my canvas satchel, and knock on the workshop door. I wait. No answer, but perhaps he’s upstairs? I knock again. After an age, I hear him shuffle down the stairs.
He opens the door and looks at me uncertainly.
I hold out the rosin. He grunts and steps aside, inviting me in.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t meant to take it.’
Lev Starman shrugs. ‘I did not even notice it was gone.’ He looks around the studio. ‘I would hardly notice a violin missing until someone came in asking for it.’
‘What are you working on today?’ I ask, curious despite myself. ‘The little violin for Prince George?’
‘A bauble. A toy. What does a small child need with a violin? Likely he will never play it, or even touch it and one day it will end up in a museum somewhere. A quaint curiosity.’ He tilts his head and looks at me. ‘That’s how you feel, isn’t it?’
‘Why are you making it then?’
‘No one requires its existence, yet it exists. It amused me to make it, and it hurts no one. And if there is a message in it, it is that music is important, even if you are a little king.’
When I think about music, it makes me feel dizzy, like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down. Music is so big, much bigger than me. I used to believe in it, it used to fit in the palm of my hand like a secret, or a present. Now I�
�m not sure what I believe in.
‘Look at this one here. This is one of the first violins I ever made. It is the one you were holding the other day, yes?’
I look at the instrument and nod, remembering the weight of it in my hands.
‘The woman I made it for died a few years ago. Her husband flew back with it from America to return it to me. The instrument outlived the player. It will outlive its maker too. Isn’t that extraordinary?’
But what is the purpose, I wonder, of a violin without a player? Why exist, even forever, if you are never played?
‘The little king’s violin is finished,’ Lev Starman tells me. ‘You may take a look if you like. I must go back upstairs now to my paperwork, for the bills don’t pay themselves any more than a violin can make itself. You can let yourself out.’
‘Are you . . . are you sure? You hardly know me!’
Lev Starman laughs. ‘You came back, four days later, to bring me rosin.’ He shrugs again. ‘I think you are a good girl. Please. Play one, if you want.’
Lev Starman shuffles back up the staircase. I am filled with pity for him for being old. (And yet I suspect that Lev Starman pities me for being young.)
I walk over to the workbench and open the tiny violin case and look at Prince George’s tiny violin. I wish I had brought Sibbi with me to see it. I feel a pang of guilt, thinking of Sibbi sitting on the steps at home with her chin resting on her arms, watching me go. I shake my head to get rid of the vision. Lev Starman, Violin-maker, is wrong. I am not sure what I am or who I am meant to be without music. But I am quite sure I am not a good girl.
SIBBI
SIBBI AND THE twins are playing a game of hide-and-seek.
Sibbi hears Finn come down the stairs. He is looking in the girls’ bedroom, she thinks. He tiptoes into Dorothy’s study, the one room in the house that still makes the children feel like visitors. Like intruders. He doesn’t see Sibbi at first. He goes into the room and looks around. He follows the noise. He finds Sibbi behind the curtains.
Sibbi has a permanent marker in her hand. On the wall is a dark, black scribble. Sibbi usually likes to draw girls with eyelashes and love-hearts for mouths, or dogs with fingers and toes, or fat birds sprouting stumpy wings and long stick legs. But this is ugly, babyish drawing.
