by Patrick Gale
‘Give me a C minor scale, melodic, three octaves, as slow as you please.’
The acoustic was wonderful, a little like a bathroom’s. He enjoyed the scale.
‘Now major,’ she shouted as he neared the bottom again and this time she threw off some jazzy chords to accompany him. ‘G major next, then D minor harmonic,’ she called and he played out, excited by the rich tone the battered old instrument produced for him. ‘Are you happy?’ she asked when he’d finished.
‘Very.’
‘Good. I think it’s pretty special. It’ll certainly see you through to the next level. Your mum loves you very much.’
He wasn’t sure what to say to this. ‘I know,’ he muttered gruffly. ‘So . . . how does this work?’
She laughed at his embarrassment but took pity on him by delivering some swift instruction. She showed him how thumb position used the principle that a thumb pressed down hard an octave above the open A on the A string could form an anchor position in which notes could be sounded with the four fingers just as in first position but an octave higher. The difficulty, apart from any initial pain, was that the higher up the string a player travelled, the closer together the notes became and therefore the harder they were to play in tune. In addition, effectively shortening a string this way drastically reduced the instrument’s resonance.
His new cello no longer sounded rich. It sounded like an owl, an out-of-tune owl at that.
Carla smiled, wrinkling her nose in sympathy.
‘So what’s the point?’ he asked her.
‘Apart from the enormous range it gives us, thumb position’s what separates the sheep from the goats. Most cellists learn it – you can’t really get to Grade 8 without it, not that I want to put you through all those boring exams. They learn it, they know the principle, but they’re never confident, they’re never really in tune and they’d avoid it if they possibly could. For me, that’s the definition of an amateur cellist.’
Hearing this naturally made Eustace determined to master the new skill. She left him to explore the book while she, too, took herself off for a nap. It alternated increasingly difficult exercises with melodies arranged to use the hand stretches or string crossings. How challenging could it be? He resolved to work his way through the book within the year and to begin every practice session with a page of it, however tedious or screechy, even if his thumb bled.
He lost track of time. After a while the pain in his thumb wasn’t so bad, unless he attempted vibrato. The sound became a little less like an owl, he discovered, if he adjusted the distance of his bow from the bridge and didn’t press as hard into the string with it as he usually would. Since his father’s ban, he had often read his mother’s old copy of Ballet Shoes , no longer enviously dreaming of ballet classes but simply reading ballet as a tidy metaphor for any life of art and discipline. He watched old films like Intermezzo and Red Shoes in the same spirit, with a kind of thrilled recognition. He decided this pain in his thumb was like the necessary agony of young ballerinas learning to dance on points, aspiring to grace even as their shoe tips filled with blood.
He completed the first and second sections, resisting the lazy impulse to play on because sight-reading was easier than true practice, worked through them again, trying to show no mercy to poor tuning but wishing, too, that he had more slender fingertips to make accurate tuning easier. Amazing Grace proved especially challenging, because of the string crossing and the sudden large interval at the end of the second line. He played it again. And again. He tried playing it much lower, in first position, perfecting the tuning at that pitch, then in fourth and then again with his thumb pressed over the fingerboard. He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t know he had an audience until a man’s voice said, ‘Hello,’ between attempts.
Startled, he turned and recognized the pianist friend he had not seen since Carla’s long-ago Weston recital. He seemed quite unchanged, still neatly bearded, tanned and slight, leaning in the doorway as a satyr might have leaned against a tree. He looked different now, of course, in jeans and a cheesecloth shirt rather than white tie and tails.
‘Er, hello,’ Eustace told him. ‘I’m trying to learn thumb position. Sorry.’
‘No pain, no gain. You must be the famous Eustace. I’m Ebrahim.’
‘I remember. I came to your concert in Weston.’
Eustace made to stand but Ebrahim waved him back to his seat and came to sit at the piano. ‘Try that again.’
‘Amazing Grace ?’
‘Yes. Let’s see if I can put you off.’
So Eustace played Amazing Grace in thumb position while Ebrahim improvised an accompaniment of chords and ripples that started traditionally enough but soon introduced blue notes and remote, jazz harmonies.
‘Another verse!’ he called out as Eustace reached the last line. ‘Let’s try it quietly.’ So Eustace played it again quietly, using the side few hairs of his bow as Carla had taught him, to produce a glassy, ghostly tone while Ebrahim played chords on just the second and third beats of the bar, turning the song into a sad waltz. ‘And one more time,’ he said, ‘Appassionato .’
Eustace dug in his bow and attempted some vibrato, though it was hard to do so and stay in tune so high, but somehow Ebrahim, playing a sort of Liszt parody, made his efforts sound convincing and he laughed when he reached the end.
‘You’re getting there,’ Ebrahim said.
‘I hope to.’
‘That’s the new cello?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s put her through her paces.’
‘You think it’s a girl?’
‘Don’t you? She has hips. And she’s been around a bit. Do you know any Fauré? The first sonata, maybe?’
Eustace admitted he had recently learnt the Elégie .
‘Of course you have,’ Ebrahim said, letting Eustace see he was a bit of a tease. ‘It’s every cellist’s first grown-up showpiece, isn’t it?’
He played the solemn introduction but Eustace could manage no more than the first phrase before confessing he hadn’t memorized it yet. Suddenly businesslike, as though this was a lesson, Ebrahim riffled swiftly through a shelf of music beside the piano, found him the cello part and began again, still playing from memory himself. It was daunting, because Eustace had learnt the piece but never performed it and, of course, the copy had none of his own fingerings written in. But he found he was remembering most of them and the new cello’s sound made it ring out. Ebrahim made no allowances, playing out so that Eustace had to play out as well to match him.
‘Good,’ he said at the end. ‘Where’d all that passion come from? You’re what, eleven?’
‘Twelve. But you don’t have to try so hard, I think, because it’s such a sad piece.’
‘Do you know Après un Rêve ? It’s only an arrangement of one of his songs but it works so well. Here. You’re not scared of sight-reading?’
‘I love it. Carla says I should sight-read less and practise more.’
‘And Carla is always right. But good for you.’ Ebrahim dug out a single sheet of music and put it on the stand. ‘We’ll take it pretty slow,’ he said. ‘Just remember it’s a song. Yearning and regret. That sort of thing.’
And he launched into the introductory bars, barely giving Eustace time to note key signature and tenor clef. It was beautiful, with the sad restlessness that seemed to be Fauré’s hallmark. He fluffed a couple of notes, stammering apology as he did so, but Ebrahim seemed quite unbothered.
‘You’ve a good legato,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
‘But you need to be less rigid about tempo. Enjoy the turning points of the melody, like here.’ He played a section. ‘And here. Any accompanist worth their salt will be flexible and follow and anticipate you. You never want to overdo rubato, or it gets mannered and irritating, but in a piece like this, a song basically, where you have a singing line throughout, you need to flex to bring it alive. Want to try again? I love this piece.’
�
�Yes please.’ Eustace couldn’t believe he was playing with a professional. Ebrahim made it seem entirely normal, but then music was his life. And the second time through, Eustace allowed himself more time to indulge the melody.
‘That’s more like it,’ Ebrahim said when they’d finished. ‘Do you sing?’
‘Not really,’ Eustace admitted. ‘In fact, no. I don’t, except when we have to in school assembly.’
‘Pity. Listen to singing, then. There are song recitals on Radio 3 almost every day of the week. Learn to play like a singer. Because they’re having to use their breath, singers really think about the shape of a phrase, its high points and how to support them, and you can recreate that with your bow. Listen to me. I’m going on and I’m meant to be cooking. Cup of tea?’
‘Oh, I’ll practise a bit longer, thank you. But thanks for playing with me.’
Ebrahim grinned. ‘My pleasure.’ He stood from the piano and stretched so that his shirt rode up out of his jeans. ‘Are your mum and Carla out, then?’
‘Oh. No. They went upstairs for a nap,’ Eustace said. He caught a flicker of amusement in Ebrahim’s response.
‘Ah. Best not disturb them, then. Just come and find me in the kitchen when your poor thumb gets too sore.’ And he shut the door behind him so Eustace wouldn’t feel self-conscious about continuing.
Finally Eustace stopped because someone came down the outside steps with a bicycle and then in through the basement door and there was soon the sound of conversation added to the cooking smells coming down from the kitchen and he sensed he should be sociable rather than self-indulgent. He packed the new cello away, carefully wiping off rosin powder and finger marks with a handkerchief first and telling himself that now he had a cello all his own, he would do so every time he played it.
Ebrahim had thrown on a striped navy-blue apron and was frying spices and onion and chopping something. Another man, who seemed frighteningly large, with muscles that actually bulged and hair cut so short that it was a blond fuzz across his tanned scalp, was straddling a stool to watch him work, nursing a mug of tea in enormous, paint-splashed hands. He swung around and held out a paw to shake Eustace’s.
‘Eustace,’ he said. ‘I’m Louis. Have a stool. Tea? Stroopwafel ?’ He had an interesting guttural accent that wasn’t French or German. ‘I’m Dutch,’ he said, with a wolfish grin. ‘I’m also profoundly psychic.’
He tugged out a stool so that Eustace, too, could perch like him to watch Ebrahim cook. He poured him a mug of tea from the pot and passed him a deliciously chewy biscuit. It had a buttery layer in its middle.
‘This is very good,’ Eustace told him. ‘Thank you. Is that toffee inside?’
‘Treacle. Stroop . My mother thinks I’ll starve so she posts them to me from Gouda, where they make the best ones.’
‘Because of course nobody here knows how to bake,’ Ebrahim said, adding something liquid to the pan and shaking it so it sizzled. Their pans were quite unlike Mrs Fowler’s pans at home, being cast iron with wooden handles.
‘You like her spekulaas ,’ Louis said.
‘And her chocolate lebkuchen. I like her everything. It just amazes me she thinks Victoria sponge and scones and gingerbread and Christmas cake don’t count as baking.’
‘She knows they count. She’s reminding me where I come from.’
There was an attractively grainy quality to Louis’ voice enhanced by all this talk of cakes and biscuits.
‘Is my mother still napping?’ Eustace asked. ‘She never normally goes to bed in the afternoon.’
This wasn’t strictly true – his mother often used her recurrent headaches as a pretext for a siesta – but the kitchen clock said it was nearly six fifteen and he didn’t want Ebrahim and Louis to think her slovenly.
The others seemed to exchange a smile, although their eyes barely met to do so. They were quite unlike his parents, he realized, in that so much of their communication was unspoken, just somehow implied.
‘I’ll take them both a cuppa,’ Ebrahim said, pouring very brown tea from the pot.
‘I can do it,’ Eustace offered.
‘No, you stay here and eat another waffle and talk to the Dutchman. How does she have it?’
‘Oh. Well. She really likes weak Earl Grey, so it’s hardly coloured. And no milk.’
‘Ah.’ Ebrahim passed a mug of Indian tea to Louis. ‘You can have that,’ he said and started afresh with a daintier bone-china cup and an Earl Grey teabag. He caught Louis’ eye as he headed out to the stairs. ‘Could you, er?’
‘Sure,’ Louis said and stood to stir the contents of the saucepan. ‘Your eyes are on stalks, Man-Cub,’ he added softly.
‘Oh. Sorry,’ Eustace said. ‘I didn’t mean—’
Louis’ tone was kind and amused. ‘Anything you want to know, you have only to ask.’
‘Oh. Thank you. Yes.’ Only he wasn’t quite sure what Louis meant.
‘Are we your first gay couple?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, apart from the obvious, we’re no different to other couples. Sooner or later it’s just domesticity, you know? Did we remember to buy firelighters and why is your sister coming to stay yet again?’
‘My father’s mother lives with us. And my mother’s father.’
‘That must be terrible. Or is it OK for you? I mean, grandparents are different, right?’
‘It’s OK,’ Eustace said, enjoying his second waffle and knowing Weston could offer nothing closer to such exotic pleasure than a Wagon Wheel. ‘They’re very old now. But they’ve been there all my life, so I suppose that makes it normal. Have you always known you were . . . ?’
‘An artist? Always. I was never like the other boys.’
Eustace was confused and felt himself blush stupidly. Louis smiled and looked down to pick at some dried paint on his wrist. ‘Don’t worry. I know what you meant but the answer’s sort of the same. Either way there’s that period of worrying you’re the only one, of worrying you’re wired differently from everyone in your class. Two things you’ll learn as you get older: no, you’re not the only one and yes, you’re wired differently and that the difference is fantastic!’
Eustace felt they were talking in a code which only one of them fully understood but it left him feeling privileged, as though he had suddenly been admitted to one of the exclusive little gangs at school.
That dizzying sense of having gained access to another realm stayed with him all evening, as Louis taught him to make vinaigrette and let him lay the table, and as Ebrahim came back downstairs shortly followed by his mother and Carla, all of them rather giggly, all of them, he noticed, even his mother, shoeless. It was as though they had been drinking wine; only they had no bottle or glasses with them. They ate delicious food, all of it quite unlike the plainer things they tended to eat at home, because of the elderly residents’ delicate digestions. Louis set out little bowls of smoked almonds, olives and stuffed vine leaves and fingers of raw vegetables to dip into a mixture of Greek yoghurt and some sort of Indian pickle whose spiciness made Eustace’s nose tickle but left him craving more. Then they had a chicken curry bright with fresh coriander, which Eustace had never tasted before, and garlicky naan bread – another first – to mop up the sauce. And pudding was figs baked with chocolate inside them served with vanilla ice cream Ebrahim had actually made himself.
‘Do you always eat like this?’ Eustace asked them and they laughed.
‘I love cooking,’ Ebrahim said.
‘People who work from home,’ Louis added, ‘tend to crave distraction.’
‘Time you went to bed, young man,’ his mother told him. There had been something different about her all evening and now he realized it was because she had been laughing. It made her seem younger than she did at home, where the tone of her better moods rarely rose above a dry and weary wit.
‘Are you going to tuck me in?’ he asked and was pleased that they all laughed.
‘Don’t push it,’ she said and the others
laughed some more. ‘Sleep tight and if you wake very early, practise your thumb position very, very quietly.’
He impulsively kissed her cheek as he left the table and she surprised him by giving him a little hug as he did so. ‘Thank you for my cello,’ he said. ‘And for my thumb position book,’ he told Carla. ‘And for supper,’ he told the others. ‘It was delicious.’
‘Bed,’ his mother told him. ‘And don’t read too late.’
They were all quiet until he had left the room and closed the door behind him. He resisted the temptation to loiter outside and listen as their chatter resumed. He brushed his teeth swiftly then went to bed without showering, as strange bathrooms were unnerving. But with the bedside light on the little bedroom was cosy, despite the oddness of having no window, and having his new cello standing in its smart case at the foot of the bed gave him a feeling like Christmas and birthdays were supposed to feel and so rarely did.
CHAPTER FIVE
He decided to try sitting in the armchair for a change. He was not ill, after all, not in a way that gave him symptoms at least, so lying in a hospital bed made him feel fraudulent. He also worried it might stop him sleeping later. He experimented with watching television, flicking impatiently until he found a news channel, but realized he was taking nothing in beyond it seeming a report of wall to wall pain and bad tidings, so he switched it off and plugged in his little headphones instead and returned to listening to Naomi play the first Brahms sonata.
It was impossible to remain disengaged from music. The sonata was so familiar to him – his left hand could even summon its fingering with a little concentration – that it had the quality of an old friend, demanding attention as a right. He had bought a newspaper on the way in but had set it aside as an indulgence for later on. He had only briefly regretted forgetting to pack the eminently disposable novel he had set out by his case. To listen to music for a change, without either being in a concert hall or performing some domestic task at the same time, was a meditative treat.
Exciting though live performances often were, he knew too much of the strains involved ever to watch entirely without anxiety. Before Naomi re-entered his life as a friend, he had visited hers purely as a punter, watching her perform twice, with a pianist at the Wigmore Hall and in front of an orchestra at the Proms. He did not yet know what torment she had been going through but he sensed it, as everybody did. One of the things that people loved about her performances was her evident vulnerability. The sound that emerged was superb, the technique flawless, but the human cost was writ large in the way she paused to wipe her hands and brow between movements, and in her naked, laughing relief when each performance was over.