I sulked off into my bedroom as Nick and his friends roared down the highway. My violin lay across my bed and I swung it eagerly under my chin, Nick’s road trip fading into insignificance. Andrew had given me a Sevcík study to play and I had shrunk in terror at the amount of notes on the page. But I was beginning to make sense of the piece, bowing through the semiquavers slowly at first, then faster.
My fingers began to sting as they grated against the strings. Sarah poked her head into my bedroom.
“I think we’ve had enough of that for one night, thank you.”
“But-”
“Abigail-” She was wearing the old flannelette shirt she worked in when things in the park needed fixing. “Our guests didn’t pay to listen to you all night.” Her heavy footsteps disappeared into the kitchen. “Those curtains in twenty-nine C are in hideous condition, David,” she was saying to Dad in a muffled drone.
I glanced at my red fingertips and then back at the music. Just ten more minutes, I decided, so I could get the triplets right. I began to bow gently to make sure my parents couldn’t hear, then allowed myself to drift into the music, my playing growing louder and louder. I became suddenly aware of my mother talking again.
“I’ve had just about enough of that damn violin. I’ve a good mind to take her out of lessons.”
I opened the door and poked my head into the passage, gnawing at my thumbnail.
“Oh Sarah, be reasonable. You know how much she loves it. I’ll just have a chat to her and ask her to keep the practising down a bit.”
“That’s not the point. It’s taking over her entire life. What about her schoolwork? And that teacher of hers… I don’t trust him. He’s filling her head with all sorts of ideas.”
I heard Dad chuckle and imagined Sarah’s cheeks flushing with rage.
“Her school work’s fine,” he said. “You know that. And Andrew was only doing what he thought was best for her. Maybe he’s right. Maybe she does have a lot of talent.”
“He wants her to go away!”
Dad gave a slight laugh. “To study more! You make it sound like he’s sending her to work on the railroads or something!”
“So you support him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m taking her out of lessons.” Sarah’s voice was stony. I was about to rush into the kitchen when Dad replied:
“No you’re not. You’re being completely irrational. It’s not fair to Abby.”
“No,” Mum retorted. “What’s not fair is that her teacher is letting her believe this ridiculous obsession can actually lead somewhere!”
“Who says it can’t?”
Sarah huffed loudly.
I was glad when Dad stood up to Mum. It didn’t happen very often because Dad didn’t like fighting in the house. Peace and quiet, that was his thing. That was why he had finally settled in Acacia Beach after roaming around Queensland for a year after his mother had died. Peace and quiet.
When I was little, he used to take me into the deep water on a surfboard he had bought from a garage sale. I would cling to the sides of the board as the water level rose slowly above Dad’s knees, then his waist, all the way to his chest. When the tide was out, we could go so far away from shore that the people on the beach looked like Lego men under pinwheel umbrellas. I would lie with my eyes closed and listen to the hollow tapping of water against the bottom of the board. Dad pushed me in wide circles around his body.
“Peace and quiet, ‘eh possum,” he would say. “Nothing like it in the world.”
Dad met Sarah-Marie at the supermarket when he was twenty-eight and she was thirty. “I was about to buy a bag of apricots,” he told me once, “when your mum pointed out you could buy them in a can for half the price. She’s a thinker, isn’t she…”
This was my parents’ relationship. Not a marriage of convenience, but one of practicality, of tinned apricots and ticking biological clocks. There was nothing to suggest they didn’t love each other, but also little evidence for it. I rarely saw them touch and when they spoke it was usually about the park or one of us. Wedding vows sealed with a handshake. Children delivered by stork. Ending up with such dull parents felt like the world’s biggest injustice. They were instant coffee, butterless toast, while I overflowed with desperation. Andrew had shown me a way out. I would do anything to take it.
FOUR
I walked to my violin lesson the next day. Straight from school to avoid crossing paths with my mother. Andrew was playing the Tempest Sonata on the piano. I stood at the top of the basement steps, listening in amazement. Rhythms pounded into each other. Chords rippled and shivered. Major into minor; lyricism into a churning allegro. It reminded me of the storms that pounded Acacia Beach at Christmas time. Perfect blue one minute, black the next.
“That was so awesome,” I gushed, as Andrew lifted the pedal on the final chord.
He turned in surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Are you mad at something?” I asked. “Your playing sounded angry.”
“It’s Beethoven,” he said. “He was a pretty angry guy.” He stood up from the piano and hunted around the room for his violin.
I twisted the buttons on my school dress. “Sorry my mum got mad at you the other day.”
“You weren’t supposed to hear that conversation. I didn’t think you were home.”
“How come you didn’t want me to hear it? Didn’t you think I’d want to go? Because I do. I really want to go.” I passed him my violin. “Can you loosen my pegs?”
He slackened my strings and tuned them to his. “I didn’t want you to hear it because I thought your parents would probably say no. I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.” He handed me back my violin.
“Dad says Mum’s being unreasonable. She wanted me to stop lessons.”
“Stop lessons? That’s a bit over-the-top isn’t it?” He paused. “Hey don’t tell your mum I said that.” He grabbed my music and laid it out on the stand. “How did you go with the Sevcík?”
“Do you really think I’m good enough to get in to a proper music school?” I asked.
“Yes. You’re very talented, Abby.”
“Somewhere away from here?”
Andrew nodded.
“Another country?”
“If that’s what you want. Any chance your mum will change her mind?”
I shook my head. You can’t make the deaf hear. “She says you can’t make a career out of playing music.”
Andrew picked at the frayed pocket on his jeans. I could tell he was trying to think of something polite to say.
“It’s not easy,” he told me finally. “You have to be dedicated.”
“And you have to be somewhere other than this stupid town.”
Andrew laughed a little. “Well…” he said noncommittally. “I wish you’d decided to learn the piano.”
It had only ever been violin, ever since my ninth birthday when I found an old stringless three-quarter at a second hand market in Cairns. I had taken it to the music shop and had the man put strings on it for me. He showed me how to balance the bow across my fingers, then I rushed home and taught myself Hot Cross Buns.
I frowned. “What if Mum makes me stop violin?”
Andrew smiled reassuringly. “Let’s not get carried away.”
Our family went to visit my grandmother who had moved from Acacia Beach to Cairns. Nick had gotten back from camping that morning and slept in the back seat with his mouth open. Tim and I took turns throwing things at him until an M&M smacked him on the chin and he woke up snorting like a pug dog.
Sarah’s mother lived in a semi-detached near the sugar plantations. We could see the great tunnels of green and yellow cane from her back window. Neat rows that danced like a chorus line when the trade winds blew. I’d been at Grandma’s once to see the farmers burn the crops before the harvest. Stood with my head pressed to the glass for an hour, watching flames as high as the house tear through the jester hat leaves. It felt like t
he end of the world.
Grandma was cooking roast beef when we arrived. The smell wafted through the house, covering the hint of potpourri and cat. I sat at the kitchen bench and watched Grandma cook. She poured the juices out of the baking dish and used them to make gravy. She never used gravy powder like Mum did. I loved Grandma’s gravy, even though it sometimes turned out white instead of brown.
The cat circled my ankles and leapt onto the bench.
“Shoo!” Grandma waved her hands furiously and the flesh under her arms wobbled. “What a naughty boy.”
“He likes the smell of your roast beef,” I grinned. “So do I. Is it nearly ready?”
“Patience, chicken. The wait will make it taste even better.” Grandma glided across the kitchen to the fridge, her floral dress swishing around her calves.
I loved Grandma’s dresses. They were always so colourful, with wide, swirling skirts. When I was little, Grandma would let me try on all her dresses and parade around the house like a princess. My favourite was red with sunflowers on the skirt. Last time I had seen it, the waistband came to my ankles.
“How come you never wear that dress anymore?” I always asked.
“That old thing?” Grandma would reply. I thought she had probably taken it to the op shop, but didn’t want to ask.
I kicked my legs under the bench, my toes drumming a rhythm against the woodwork.
Grandma handed me a peeler and a bag of carrots. “You can peel these for me, chicken. Like your mum used to do when she was your age.”
Sarah’s childhood was something I rarely thought about. It was hard to imagine her as anything other than the crinkly, hard-shelled mother she’d become.
Sarah was an only child. She had grown up in Acacia Beach without, it seemed, giving any thought to the existence of an outside world. Her life had played itself out like she was ticking items off a shopping list. High school certificate. Steady job as the council receptionist. Sensible marriage. Then came the family business and dutiful production of children. Nick the obligatory, me the accident and Tim the afterthought.
I was determined that Sarah’s colourless life wouldn’t be mine. My sunny grandma was everything my mother was not. If it weren’t for their shared narrow nose and coffee brown eyes- traits I’d been handed as well- I’d have doubted they were even related. I wondered if Sarah’s bristly shell was a product of her dreary life, or a legacy of her long-dead father. Either way, my grandma went some way to allaying my fear that becoming my mother was inevitable.
“I’m going to be a concert violinist,” I announced suddenly, peel dangling off my fingers. Grandma looked up from her saucepan.
“A concert violinist! Isn’t that lovely. Your mum must be happy you’re so musical, mustn’t she.”
I huffed. “She hates it. Why did you think she’d be happy?”
Grandma raised her fluffy grey eyebrows, deep folds setting in her forehead. “Well she used to do music when she was a little girl. I thought she would have liked to have another musician in the family.”
“Mum did music?”
“Oh yes.” Grandma went back to stirring her gravy. “She was quite the Liberace.”
I chewed my lip. “She never said.”
“Damn lumps,” said Grandma.
Mum came to kiss me goodnight. She pottered around the bedroom in the dark, picking up clothes off the floor and folding them over the back of my desk chair.
“This room is a pig-sty,” she said.
I rolled onto my side and watched her through the mosquito net. “How come you never told me you did music?”
Mum turned around and put her hands on her hips. “Who told you that?”
“Grandma said you were quite the Liberace.”
Mum gave a short, unenthused chuckle and stepped under the netting. She gave me a quick kiss. I felt a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her bun tickle my cheek. She had done her hair nicely to go and visit her mother. She had even worn a dress. It was plain blue, not as exciting as Grandma’s, but I was still glad she had made an effort. Her dark hair was turning grey around her ears but she looked younger when she was out of her baggy shorts and shirt.
Mum tucked the bottom of the sheets under the mattress. I wriggled my legs to try and loosen them again.
“Abigail… Stop it.”
“But I like my sheets untucked. I can move around more.”
“What do you need to move around for in your sleep?”
“Can you still play?” I asked suddenly.
“No,” said Mum, climbing out from underneath the net. “I didn’t learn for very long. It was nothing really.”
“Oh.”
“Goodnight,” said Mum. I watched the shadows change as a car drove under the street light outside my room.
“Goodnight.”
FIVE
We brought in the New Year in a fairly unfestive way. Rachel grabbed a pot out of her kitchen cupboard and ran down the street belting it with a spoon until the neighbours told her to shut up. Justin and I lay on our backs across the footpath and watched the world’s lamest fireworks trickle above the road. Suddenly he leant over and pecked my lips. My heart banged against my ribs.
“What was that for?”
“Dunno. It’s New Years. I just thought…”
“Do you feel any different?” I asked.
Justin rolled his head to one side so his eyes met mine. “Not really. Do you?”
I didn’t answer. My head was tingling like there was fizzy drink in it.
“What now?” I asked.
“What do you mean ‘what now’?”
“You and me,” I said, excited that there suddenly seemed to be a ‘you and me’ to speak of.
Justin just shrugged.
I should have seen it coming even then. Should have got up off the footpath and left him lying alone in the dust. Instead, I lay awake all night and twitched my mouth around, feeling the place where Justin’s lips had touched mine.
After that night, I began to think of him as my boyfriend, though I only ever said it to myself. We started to sit a little closer when we played Nintendo. Started to wrestle in the rock pool a little more often.
I was busting with self-importance when I went to visit Hayley and her new baby, Oliver.
I sat beside her on the couch. The baby wriggled in her arms and waved his tiny fists.
“I kissed someone,” I whispered. Andrew was leaning against the doorframe and I didn’t want him to hear.
Hayley smiled. “Who?”
Her hair was pulled into a knot on top of her head. It made her look older. I chose not to hear and held out the wrapped up teddy bear I had bought with my peg money.
“Here,” I said.
“Thank you, sweetie,” said Hayley. “You can open it for him.”
I unwrapped the present and held it out to the baby.
Hayley kissed my cheek. “It’s gorgeous. Oliver will love it.”
I made the bear dance on my knees and blathered on at Hayley for a while with all the questions I had saved up since the saga of the New Year’s kiss.
“What should I do next?”
“Do you think he really likes me?”
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“Can I baby-sit?”
Finally, Hayley announced she was putting Oliver to bed and Andrew walked me to the porch.
“Pooey nappies for you,” I told him.
“Yeah I’m up to my elbows in crap,” he laughed. “Thanks for the visit. Are you ready to start lessons again soon?”
“Sure. Look.” I held out a finger. “I got a blister cos I practised for three hours last night.”
Andrew put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen Abs, take it easy okay. I’m really glad you’re practising so much, but make sure you have a holiday as well.”
“I will,” I promised.
“Good. Three hours a day is a lot at your age. It’s a lot for anyone.”
“I can handle it,” I said. “I’m go
ing to be a concert violinist.”
Andrew smiled. “Yeah. I got that after the four billionth time you told me.”
“Melbourne Arts College sent me some stuff,” I said. “All about scholarships and things.”
“Great. Are your parents letting you audition?”
I shook my head despondently. “Not yet. I’ll work on them.” Sarah was hopeless, I knew, but maybe I could somehow convince Dad.
“I’ll call you next week about lessons,” said Andrew, shooing a fly away from his face. I ran across the nature strip and back to my house, without thinking of Justin once.
***
That year was the busiest winter rush I could remember. The caravan park had been booked out for weeks and our house was always surrounded by cars, tourists with Akubras and kids in see-through bathers. Justin’s dad kept saying:
“What is this, bush week?” and we all laughed, even though no-one really knew what he meant.
Rachel and I ran down to the rock pool with the boys in tow. Andrew and Hayley had taken Oliver to the beach.
Rachel grabbed my arm. “Oh my God! Look! It’s your hot violin teacher!”
I dropped my towel on the sand. “Would you stop saying that?”
“You’re such a square,” laughed Rachel, tucking her glasses into her beach bag. “I’m just looking. It’s not like I’m going to do anything.”
“I never know with you.”
Justin, Hugh and Tim thundered up behind us, spraying sand over our towels. Rachel huffed dramatically.
“Wanna play Marco Polo?” asked Tim.
Rachel’s anger vanished. “Okay!”
“Maybe later,” I said. “I have to go ask Hayley something.”
Justin grabbed my arm. “Come on. You never do stuff with us any more.”
“In a minute,” I promised.
Hayley was spreading her beach towel over the sand with the baby on her hip.
“Can I play with Oliver?”
“Sure. Look, he sits up by himself now, don’t you, baby?”
Music From Standing Waves Page 3
