by Meg Bignell
(I just checked the mirror for glow. None yet. No twinkle in the eyes. More like an extra fanny between my eyebrows from all the frowning I do. I’m more of an irritant than anything. Hugh was irritated this morning when I said, ‘Lightbulbs can’t go in the recycling.’)
THURSDAY 16th MARCH
I have been very busy sorting through everyone’s clothes, bagging up things for St Vinnie’s and doing Hugh’s filing. And I will NOT get huffy when no one notices.
I feel quite glowy already.
Is it selfish to do selfless acts in order to feel selfless?
LATER:
Eloise is annoyed with me for giving away her unicorn crop top. Just when she’s pinned a Matisse print above her bed and started saying no to cake, she reminds you that she hasn’t yet exited childhood. So confusing. She refuses to play Guess Who? with Raffy these days, their favourite thing. He said he doesn’t really mind because ‘Every day is a game of Guess Who? with Eloise in the house.’
He has a good brain, Raffy. I wonder when he might start to exert it slightly. People sometimes ask – I think because he doesn’t like sport and looks so like Hugh – whether Raffy might follow the engineering path. I don’t think he’s too concerned about finding any path. Jim, on the other hand, discovers a different one every week. This week it’s the Olympic Water Polo Team Path. I don’t want to be a squasher of dreams but, for goodness sake, handball in a pool? On a Friday night? I think I prefer the Circus Path.
Meanwhile Hugh is huffing and puffing about not being able to find the phone number for the man who does the gutter thingos. Seems I cleaned it up. No thanks for that hour’s work. He can do his own filing in future.
I’m not supposed to expect thanks either, am I? Right.
SUNDAY 19th MARCH
Today we took Valda to Henry’s gorgeous new shop. I’ve neglected both of them, Valda and Henry. Poor Valda. Despite her general grump, she is deserving of some selfless acts. She doesn’t have any family that I know of, no children, no Neville. And even if she did, neighbourly caregiving should be habitual and involuntary. Like a morning wee.
I knew Valda would enjoy Lettercello. Henry has a few antiques as well as books, and Valda and Neville were quite into history. At least I’m guessing they were; there are old maps framed on Valda’s sitting room walls and a dusty old stuffed owl on the mantelpiece. I think Valda feels a bit tentative about taking herself anywhere these days. She’s pretty wobbly and needs a wheelchair for longer outings.
I was a bit alarmed at the sight of the wheelchair. And I’d bumped her into the doorframe and run over her coat before we even got in the car. The children were looking wide-eyed from the car windows in a ‘this is not a good idea’ sort of way. I thought about taking her back inside and saying, ‘Well, wasn’t that lovely. How about all those books!’ and letting her think the dementia has her. But I didn’t, because that is evil and would have rendered me irreversibly selfish forevermore, my confidence mortally wounded and my marriage down the gurgler, doomed.
So I took on the persona of one of those sturdy British nurses in Hyde Park and got her in the car (bit jumbly when you’re not sure which arm to support, etc.) and even got the chair folded up and into the boot. And off we go, I thought. Jolly good.
In the car, Valda sniffed and said, ‘Could we open a window? Either someone’s passed wind or there’s fruit under the seat. I think probably fruit. These sorts of cars always have something under the seat.’ These sorts of cars.
The children sniggered in the back because wind passing is not something people do these days; everyone lets one rip or pops off. Farting should just be farting, in my book.
So I opened the window and turned up the radio slightly to block out further sniggers (or farts) and Valda said, ‘Good God. There’s a midget,’ because we happened to drive past a dwarf/little person. And then Mary-Lou said, ‘What’s a midget?’ so I turned the radio up a bit more and Valda said, ‘Everything has to be so loud these days,’ so I turned it down again.
Two minutes later we pulled up outside Henry’s shop and Mary-Lou said, ‘I thought you said we were going to a museum.’
‘This is Henry’s shop. It’s like a museum,’ I said. ‘You want to see Henry, don’t you?’
‘I told Dad we were going to a museum,’ she said with a sniffle. ‘I want to see the map of Antarctica made of ice and the husky dogs.’
Of course you do, I thought.
‘I think Henry has birds,’ I said.
‘Dead birds?’ Jimmy frowned. He loves birds.
Valda raised her eyebrows and said, ‘We could go to the museum afterwards. I’d like to do a brass rubbing.’
And I said, ‘Let’s see how we go,’ which is mother for ‘No’.
Outside the car I couldn’t get the wheelchair to fold back out. It was cold but I worked up a sweat. And then I jammed my finger and some tears came and I was cross with myself for being pathetic.
Valda said, ‘We could have been through the museum and having a scone by now.’
Jimmy got it in the end. It clicked smoothly into place for him. Valda patted his head and said, ‘Thankfully someone has some sense,’ and I noticed for the first time that Valda has a small wart on her nose.
Oh, Henry’s shop! It’s a dream! I want to move in. (‘Helloooo, Henry. Where can I pop my sleeping bundle?’) Of course it’s beautiful, with Henry’s taste. He has antiques trips to France – ooh la la. Just being in a bookshop makes me feel good about the world. And antiques smell like wisdom. He plans to play his cello there some Sundays, along with other musicians.
Lettercello is housed in a dear little stone building in the shadow of St Brigid’s Church. It has a shingled roof and a village green, walls of books, Henry’s priceless clock collection on display, ‘Where’s the Playground Susie’ on the record player and a huge bamboo cage with budgerigars of the most perfect blue. And a Henry, who is the only cellist in the world with a passion for country music. He wishes he’d been like Glen Campbell and picked up a guitar at four instead of a cello. Every morning he gets up at five a.m. and does an hour of cello practice, then half an hour of guitar.
I do a cold sweat when I think of the hours and hours that his fingers have danced the fingerboard, while mine have all stiffened and jellied. I told him once that I thought my hands wouldn’t recover. ‘Nonsense,’ Henry said in his quiet way. ‘You’ll have strength back in no time. If you practise.’ He keeps sending me links to finger rehabilitation exercises and new compositions. We haven’t talked much about why I stopped, although he knows. His heart is too soft for such hard things.
Sometimes the envy I feel for Henry’s unhurried, gentle life is so strong I could chew on it. Even more so now he has Lettercello, I realise. I’m the same about Ria’s glamorous, high-profile life too, sometimes. Without my small/enormous attachments (i.e. fruit of loins) and Hugh’s trousers to wash, I could be as gentle and calming as Henry, couldn’t I? I could change my name to Serene, carry an attractive air of mystery. As I am, my heart’s mostly on my sleeve, along with the morning’s eggs and some dishwater.
Anyway, today we found Henry presiding over his small but exquisite shipment of French antiques, carefully cleaning a gramaphone with a beautiful blue painted horn. His hired ‘indispensable barista-slash-bookworm’ Charmian (oh my goodness, she is just like a young Barbra Streisand – all up-do and swishy eyeliner) was seeing to customers in the books section. It was like entering another, older world. Even the children kept a respectful, wide-eyed silence. I wished I’d put them in pinnies. (Raffy was wearing a shrunken T-shirt that showed his belly, Jimmy was in his boardshorts and Mary-Lou had put on her most frothy frills. I must pay more attention to weekend outfits.)
Henry was thrilled to see us. ‘Susannah! And some little Susannahs. What a delight!’
He greeted Valda fondly, asked if she’d warmed to Waylon Jennings yet, then made us tea. Valda was disarmed of her grumpy mood (or ‘Henried’ as we used to say in the orchestr
a) and asked whether something could go on the gramophone. So Henry gave her a box of vinyl records, from which she selected a recording of Dame Joan Sutherland singing Bellini.
We all listened, Henry and Charmian attending to things and Valda apparently somewhere else in the folds of time. Raffy came in and leaned on me and listened to Dame Joan too. ‘Who was that singing?’ he asked when the music finished.
‘That was Dame Joan Sutherland,’ said Valda, ‘my dear friend.’ Which is a lovely way to describe your favourite music.
‘Mum’s best friend, Ria, is a very famous pianist,’ said Raffy. ‘She is Ria Mirrin.’
Charmian gasped. ‘Ria Mirrin! My God, I love her film work. She’s your friend?’
‘Yes,’ said Raffy. ‘They had scholarships to the same school and they grew up together in each other’s houses because Ria was like an orphan. Then they played music together a lot. Mum has her viola in the wardrobe for when she’s finished raising us.’
‘You play viola?’ breathed Charmian. ‘With Ria Mirrin?’
‘Mum was the best student at the Con,’ said Raffy and I discovered that I was blushing with pride. I am proud of me, I suppose. Of that me at least. Also, I wasn’t aware that Raffy could take in so much detail. And recount it. He should be doing better in history.
‘Ria told him that,’ I said. ‘She exaggerates.’
‘No, it was Dad who told me that. He said you were dazzling.’
‘And he’s right,’ added Henry. ‘Dazzling. She has absolute pitch. Perfect pitch. We all hated her and loved her for it.’
Charmian gasped and said, ‘But isn’t perfect pitch, like, one in a million?’
‘One in ten thousand,’ said Raffy. How does he know that?
I sort of mumbled and blushed a bit more and then Henry said, ‘How is that beautiful viola of yours?’
Charmian sighed. ‘Yes, your viola. It must have stories and stories.’
It does have stories and stories, my viola. It was made by Baldwin Malcolmson in Scotland in 1837, from sycamore. Inside there’s an inscription that says, Made especially for Miss Eloise Driscoll. I bought it in 1992 with the money I won in a youth orchestra competition. My playing was good enough without Eloise Driscoll, but infinitely better with. So pure and sensitive were her notes that if there was any love or mischief or grizzle in me, out it would come in the music. There’s a similar instrument called a viola d’amore, distinct for its sympathetic or resonant strings, which are an underlying choir of finer strings played indirectly through resonance. My viola didn’t have actual resonant strings, but they were most definitely sympathetic. I was forced to moderate my moods for fear of extraneous and inappropriate influences (the Coralie incident is a prime example). In that way, I guess, for me, playing was a sort of meditation, mindfulness: the stuff that everyone bangs on about as being key to better life control. Oh …
It was Ria who suggested I name my first baby Eloise. When I was pregnant with her and still playing, I imagined her tiny listening ears and her little hands reaching for the sound. Sometimes I thought I could hear her baby cries in the notes; other times the loving, patient, slightly worried tones of the future, new-mother me. As it happened, those ones outdid the music in the end. And I rarely heard Eloise cry at all.
I told Charmian and Henry about Eloise Driscoll, and a bit about the Coralie story. They listened, enraptured … my most avid listeners since Max the Wardrobe Man. I forgot that Valda was listening too, until she said, ‘The story isn’t finished yet, though, is it? That’s to say, why aren’t you still playing?’
I swallowed.
‘You could play here one Sunday?’ suggested Charmian in a voice so open and unguarded that for a moment I thought I could. But then my heart took a nervous dive.
‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘Oh, please do,’ said Charmian. ‘We’re calling it The Goodtime Hour, only it’ll go all afternoon. All sorts of music.’
‘What a lovely idea. But no, I’m sorry. I haven’t played for ten years.’ I looked at my hands. Eleven and a half.
‘Leave her be,’ Henry said in his gentle voice, his hand on my shoulder. Then he said, ‘Is it really ten years? You haven’t picked it up at all?’
‘Not really,’ I whispered.
He shook his head sadly and said, ‘I would give away all my clocks to turn back the time, Susannah.’ His eyes shone.
Valda was watching us suspiciously. ‘Why can’t you play?’ she asked sharply.
I tried to laugh. ‘I’m so busy and I hate to not give it everything.’
‘What rot,’ said Valda. ‘If you are given a talent, it is your duty to make the most of it.’
‘No, it’s my duty to be with my children,’ I said, my voice wobbling.
‘You should use your parenthood,’ said Valda, ‘In fact, you must, in the interests of visibility – art and literature has more dogs than babies. And more abortions.’
‘It’s all too mundane,’ I said.
‘Oh!’ said Charmian. ‘But artists use mundane things all the time – look at still life, all jugs and eggplants. Just promise us you’ll bring the viola in for a visit one day, at least? You don’t have to play it …’ She trailed off because there were some tears in my eyes.
I sniffed and said, ‘Sorry, it’s not a happy story,’ but Valda cut in with, ‘The trouble with your generation is you have too many choices.’ She looked as though she might spit at my feet. God, that woman would make a dead horse gallop.
I nodded weakly and Henry said, ‘I’m mixing brandies.’ Then he looked at me so sadly that I smiled and said, ‘I’ll play again one day.’ The old lie felt easy and familiar.
Valda was sick of the subject anyway. ‘Now, show me these birds, Jimmy,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ll have to be getting home soon. I have a mind to find my old records, and Neville will be in a mood.’
I never can tell where Valda sits on the dementia spectrum; one minute she’s all ghost and wobble and forget, the next she’s the poster girl for insight. I was glad for her shortness for once. It spared me from further questioning.
If I allow myself to think about it, I can’t see the music in parenthood. It’s just white noise, with no space. No room of one’s own.
Charmian is not Tasmanian. (She told me when the others were looking at the birds.) I already knew that without actually knowing it, as we do. She’s from the mainland and has spent the last ten years travelling the world. ‘I’ve never been good at sitting still,’ she told me. ‘I moved around a lot as a child so I’m good at goodbyes.’
‘I’m trying to entice her to stay,’ said Henry with a sigh. ‘I’m spiking her tea with dreams. But she’ll up and disappear one day.’
‘I don’t follow dreams. I follow travel plans,’ said Charmian.
‘You don’t have dreams?’ I asked, because it seemed an encouraging idea.
‘I do. I just don’t know they’re dreams until I’m looking at them.’
That seems like wisdom to me. I should have emptied my head of dreams and expectations years and years ago. No dreams, no disappointments.
Or perhaps I should have up and disappeared while I had the chance.
Henry gave Valda the Joan Sutherland.
Then, despite me not fumbling with the wheelchair again and Valda looking very pleased with the outing, I left feeling all mixed. Delighted by Lettercello and dear Henry and the striking Charmian, but hollow somehow, as though a shiny steam train had passed by without me on it. I read somewhere that the Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos; algos means suffering. So nostosalgos or nostalgia is the suffering caused by never returning …
But there’s something else too. I’m ashamed to say it: for a minute there, I felt admired. It was a nice feeling, but then it was gone. Imagine being admired by people like Henry and Charmian, with all their style and perfectly formed raisin d’être.
Later, when I was home jabbing at the s-bend with a coathanger, I wondered if Lettercello was all just a figme
nt of my imagination.
Contemporary life is so miscellaneous.
LATER:
I just sat on the chair in Eloise’s room for a very long time. She still has that dearest little snore. I had to sit on my hands to stop myself from touching her face, patting her back, tucking in her bedclothes. Once I would have hopped in and curled around her like a parenthesis, keeping in the trust and turning out the hurt. Can’t do that now. Her legs are so long. And she might be cross with me. Last time I sat in there – probably over a year ago – I did pat her and she woke up a bit. She whispered, ‘Hi, Mum,’ without even looking. She’s so used to me.
Long legs, short years. I realise that I miss the very basic caregiving things. When they needed me to wash them and dry them and dress them and spoonfeed them, my hands were full and useful and making amends. Atonement by ablution. No one needs me to wipe their bottom any more. No more stools of repentance.
I mustn’t forget to back up my photos.
TUESDAY 21st MARCH
!!!!!!!!!!!I had a VERY exciting early morning phone call from Ria today!!!!!!!!!!!!
‘HELEN?! If you’re wearing socks, prepare to have them knocked off.’
‘You found Caroline Smedley-Warren?’
‘No.’
‘Princess Di is alive and living in your spare flat?’
‘Yes, but it’s not that.’
‘You met a man?’
‘Fuck no. Ewww.’ (Ria had one long-term, disastrous relationship and has since sworn off boyfriends forever. And girlfriends, although she had a lovely one for a minute in 1999. No, Ria is a self-proclaimed partita – a short solo piece with her own harmonic structure.)
‘You’ve taken up the tuba?’
‘No. On my list, though.’
‘I give up, then. Nothing can be as exciting as Caroline or the tuba.’