by Meg Bignell
Ria took a dramatic intake of breath. ‘It has to do with a certain three-movement sonata, circa 1992.’
‘What sonata?’
Ria hummed into the phone: a faraway, familiar tune. I listened for a minute, then interrupted. ‘Wrong key.’
She ignored me. ‘Your brilliant, agonising, astronomy-inspired “Starlit Sonata” could be making a comeback.’
‘What do you mean?’ My voice was chilly with suspicion.
‘Settle down, sunshine. You don’t have to touch a string, but I might have slipped on a banana peel and accidentally revised your sonata for piano. In G major.’
I scoff-snorted. ‘And?’
‘Annnd …’ The rest came out in a rush. ‘I have a big production company interested in it for a major motion picture.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘I wouldn’t joke about this, you dick. Give me some credit.’
‘In G major?’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Your composition might be hitting the mainstream big time and you’re worried about the key. You bloody nerd.’
‘Oh my God.’ I went to the mirror and looked into my wide eyes. To share the moment with myself? Check it was real? ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘I stole your music. Are you pissed off? If it happens, you’ll get all the composition credit. And cash. Lots of cash. Of course. Do you mind?’
‘No,’ I said without thinking. ‘I don’t think I do. It’s written. It might as well be shared.’ I winked at myself and I thought I saw an eye twinkle.
‘Jesus, what’s going on?’ Ria asked. ‘I thought I’d have a tantrum on my hands.’
‘I’m not saying I’ll perform it.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s a happy kids’ film, not a weepy biopic.’
‘Right,’ I said doubtfully.
‘Of course, you can perform if you want to.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Thought as much.’ There was silence, then, ‘One day I’ll have a tantrum about that but not now because fucking hooray for Susannah Mackay’s “Starlit Sonata”. I always said you were a genius.’
‘What’s the film?’ I asked when she’d calmed down.
‘Pollyanna.’
Good old astronomy, eh? Finally I can justify the time and expense of my presence in the physics department to Mum and Dad. It would have been more apt to name it the ‘I Want Hugh Parks to Love Me Sonata’. It’s still probably my best composition, not that I did much more composition: too busy with paid work. Anyway, go astronomy, possibly paying its little way. Ria sent me the new recording, in the new key; it’s perfect for Pollyanna, not so lovelorn. I was unerringly, agonisingly lovestruck back then …
Hobart, 1992
I did meet Hugh in the library for cram sessions. This was when I actually got to know him and realised he was a genuinely nice bloke. Sometimes I forgot that I wanted him to shut up and press against me in the stacks. And I wasn’t so flustered. We talked about real stuff, like how rubber bands are made and which country we’d most like to live in when we left Tasmania. We made each other laugh, sometimes uncontrollably. We had a game called ‘What’s my thesis?’ in which we had to match library patrons with their likely thesis topic: ‘Ego-driven Architecture’, ‘Farts in Modern Poetry’ and so on. Hugh liked to observe the students in the poetry section most of all. ‘Look at all those poetry people,’ he’d say. ‘It’s like they all know something we don’t.’ Sometimes he’d take a book of poems off the shelf and recite a bit in a silly voice. ‘The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free …’ and so on.
Things we didn’t talk about included my frenzied recital at the nursing home and his girlfriend, Hannah. Sometimes I could almost convince myself that our study sessions were not at all about studying. But he never lingered and always, once the session was done, made purposefully for the car park. I pictured Hannah waiting for him somewhere with those white teeth and one of those focaccia sandwiches that were so trendy at the time. ‘Here’s your lunch, darling.’
On the day of the exam we met half an hour before so I could recite my answers to him in a last-ditch attempt to make them stick. As we walked in, he squeezed my arm, which very nearly made my precarious learnings stream out into the ether. I am sure I walked into the room with the posture of a Guatemalan woman with the month’s victuals on my head.
When the exam was over, Hugh and I had a short debrief and then he said, ‘See you soon,’ and made for his car in the usual manner. I watched him go and felt myself deflate, as hopes, dreams and physics facts poured out of the toppling basket on my head to the concrete at my feet. Coralie’s words fluttered around my heart – Perhaps, simply tell him, do you think? – and for a heart-flipping moment I teetered, so thoroughly muddled by fatigue and the breathless, unfamiliar notion of doing something properly brave and real. And then he was gone and it was too late and there was only the dull expanse of summer and, beyond that, university semesters without Hugh in them.
Later I realised that, unrequited love aside, the big yawning feeling I had in my chest was there because I’d let a true-proper friend get away. I missed the laughs already.
Despite the extra effort, I failed Astronomy. Rightly so, really. I still can’t explain the speed of light or the formation of stars, but then sometimes I can’t remember what I did yesterday or what my dreams are, so …
I was too full of unrequited fervour to worry about failing the class. I had choir to fall on as my repeat elective, which would keep me safely inside the Con and not take too much time away from the more intense second year. I had ‘Starlit Sonata’ to think about too, which I spent the summer tweaking and refining (while pining) for the graduation ceremony in February. And, of course, I still had true-proper Ria, who patiently listened to my heart-wrenchings and then flicked each one wryly into her large pile of things not to ‘give a red rooster’s wrinkled arsehole’ about. She reasoned that the only things we should worry about were:
1) Our carefully curated (snobby and obscure) collection of music
2) Our instruments and playing them
3) Sticky date pudding
4) Cheap champagne
5) Ways to get out of Tasmania.
Number five took up most of our spare time because, of course, no one worth anything ever stayed on in backwatery old Tasmania. This was fuelled by a lot of number one, and even more number four.
I still have trouble believing that I haven’t lived anywhere but this island. I had dreamed about Places Far Away ever since I saw Aled Jones on the telly singing Christmas carols to the Queen in 1984. I remember holding tight to my viola case and whispering that one day it would sing in ancient cathedrals and theatres too …
I’m writing this from the gymnastics hall. I’m here for two hours on a Tuesday now because Raff has decided to give it a try and I fear that if I display anything but encouragement, he will enter adulthood all bent up in a couch shape. I give him and gymnastics four weeks at the most. Mary-Lou is swinging on a handrail with her friends. I’m scared she’ll fall on her head and break her neck but no one else’s mother is jumping up and telling them to stop. Risk-taking is vital for human development, a psychologist once told me. So should I sit here and hope that some other catastrophist mother will go and tell the little girls to stop swinging on the handrails? I’ll bet if I do that, someone will fracture a skull. This wiry carpet is laid straight over a concrete floor, I can tell.
Right, I’m back. The little girls are now playing duck, duck, goose in the space between the café and the bench seats. My suggestion. Two of the girls protested and a small group of parents looked a bit miffed about me bossing their children. They whispered to each other and tilted their chins in my direction, but I don’t care. I’m going with my gut, and we all know a mother’s intuition should not be ignored. And if only they knew what terrible things can happen when we’re distracted …
Anyway, the girls look as though they’re enjoying their game. And I ca
n record a bit more history. I love this retelling; it puts me back there, when Hugh was all mystery and intrigue with dreamed-up bits. The Hugh whose skin I’d never touched and whose poos I’d never caught a whiff of who was unspoilt by the basics. He is lovely. I see other women thinking he’s lovely. They flutter and giggle and things, tell him he’s funny. They must wonder what he’s doing with me.
I want to go home and have a good look at him, see if I can see that Hugh again. I’d be amazed all over again that he’s mine.
I shouldn’t get my hopes up, though. He’s likely to ask whether I’ve found the BAS statements or noticed that the dog’s rego’s expired. A child will wail. Someone will sneak a biscuit before dinner and I will yell.
I wonder if he ever sees that me. Probably not, I’ve only glimpsed her a handful of times myself so …
Hobart, February 1993
The graduation ceremony performance was my biggest audience yet. I knew my music inside and out but I was still nervous – tripping up stairs or having my dress tucked into my knickers were things that happened to me. Mum bought me a simple black dress and paid for my hair to be professionally tamed. We put it all together with respectable results. Mum teared up and Ria said, ‘Holy shit. You’ll be ditching me for the beautiful people soon.’
It went pretty well, considering two things: 1) I was introduced as ‘one of the university’s most promising instrumentalists’, which set the expectations fearfully high. And (much more unnerving) 2) I spotted Hugh in the audience: the muse to my starry-night melancholia. He was right at the front and smiling up at me. I smiled back, then blushed and looked at my mum. She nodded encouragingly and mimed doing some deep breaths. Ria was at the piano as my accompanist, her eyebrows and one corner of her mouth going up in a distinct ‘you’re a moron’ expression. My bottom clenched in embarrassment.
I took some of Mum’s deep breaths, tried to blank my mind but couldn’t, remembered the passionné of the nursing home and decided to let a bit of that feeling take over again. I lifted my viola, held my breath and played. In it all went, all the heart-aching, middle-night waking, all the wist and wanting and wasted wishments. The composition didn’t sound much like mine any more. It was sort of distant and otherworldly, like it was something private between it and my viola. I didn’t feel all that involved.
The applause, when it came, didn’t seem as though it was for me either. I even did a few little claps on my leg as if to join in. Mum was out of her seat, and so were a few others, then a few more and then most of the hall. Hugh was not clapping or standing but just looking up at me, with a nod and a big smile. I smiled back and felt, for the first time ever, very proud to be me.
It is, like Coralie said, a milestone memory.
Afterwards, I even forgot that Hugh was there somewhere, until he touched me on the shoulder, smiled, kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘Wow. Really, Susannah. Wow. You’re a star. And not an exploding ball of gas sort of star.’
It felt like the best thing anyone had ever said to me. I might have put my hand to the spot on my cheek where the kiss had been and gazed up at him like a child before a cupcake. ‘Why are you here?’ was all I could think of to say. Rude.
He looked momentarily uncomfortable, unusual for him. ‘I heard you were performing.’
‘Really? You came to see me?’
‘Well, I was kind of literally blown away the first time. I was curious to see more.’
I remember I let out a ridiculous giggle, blushed and said, ‘Well, we could meet in the library again and I could teach you about music and stuff.’
He laughed and said, ‘We could.’ Then, much to my embarrassment, he rushed off.
Ria was in hysterics later when we were debriefing over champagne in my room. ‘That is the best pick-up line ever!’ This level of glee from Ria was not a good sign.
‘I wasn’t meaning it like that. I was referring to our astronomy lessons. And I was caught off guard. I don’t know what to do with compliments. I should have told him about failing astronomy.’
‘He knows.’
‘What? How?’
‘I told him.’
‘Did you? When?’
‘When I told him you’d written a piece about stars and gave him a ticket to the graduation show.’
‘What? What else did you tell him?’ I was panic-stricken.
‘Calm your arse. I didn’t tell him about your heart being lost in the minor third.’
‘So why did you ask him to come?’
‘I’d had about enough of my best friend moping about like a Mopey McNohope. And I’ve never ever heard you play like that – it was completely excoriated, agonising beauty. He needed to see the business he’s silent partnered: his co-creation. It’s like you two had a perfect baby together and he didn’t know.’
My panic eased slightly. ‘You promise you didn’t tell him anything else?’
‘I didn’t need to. The music sorted that out. It wasn’t a lament, Susannah. It was a serenade.’
I said there was a strong chance I might wallop her in the cake hole so she should probably leave, but instead she said, ‘Oh, but the romance of composing a song for one’s beloved,’ and broke out in a sleazy rendition of Neil Sedaka’s ‘Star Crossed Lovers’.
I didn’t find it remotely funny. Instead I lost my temper. I’d never, since we’d met at Junior Strings in 1984, had cause to be angry with Ria before; she’d never been able to put a foot wrong. She was the sage to my monkey. When I first set eyes on her she was playing a half-sized cello and I thought she was exquisite and demure. She turned out to be nothing of the sort. Exquisite to look at, yes, fairy-like even, with chestnut plaits as thick as her arms. But a more determined, potty-mouthed, lion-hearted girl-woman has never lived. She was heralded as a prodigy at age nine and went on to learn everything she could about music with absolute dedication. She plays seven instruments, three at a professional standard, and is these days properly up in lights. Piano seems to be her lasting love, but one never knows with Ria. She’ll probably take up the bassoon at age seventy and blow everyone away. When one day I was made to cry by our scary music teacher, she directed that fierce heart my way and has never wavered. I owe her pretty much everything, actually. (And now a film score.)
Ria watched me lose my temper. She munched on my Savoury Shapes and listened as I yelled about it being none of her business – ridiculous because I’d well and truly made the whole Hugh (un)affair her business by pouring out my riddled heart to her every day for almost a year. When I’d run out of things to yell, she said, ‘Look, it was your viola who spilled the love beans, not me, sunshine. And he was fascinated. I saw it in his eyes.’ She threw her hands in the air and yelled, ‘Tu nescio quam fulgentes estis!’ which she tried to tell me means ‘Bog off, you silly cow,’ but later admitted the true translation: ‘You don’t know how brilliant you are.’
Ria loves Latin. She and I memorised a heap of Latin insults. Very useful for throwing at snooty teachers or know-it-all mature-age students. It was nasty, but we felt good about ourselves for keeping a dying language alive. ‘Bliteus belua es!’ (You’re a beastly idiot!) Ria would exclaim while giving hearty applause after a pompous performance. ‘Quis est haec simia?’ (Who is this monkey?)
After the graduation concert, I tried my best to put Hugh out of my mind and enjoy what remained of the summer. I even had a little forget-him fling with a gorgeous surfie at the beach who kissed me by the light of the beach fire, told me I was beautiful and made me wish I had a guitar and a poncho. But I didn’t mind when a week later I spotted him on the jetty cuddling the prettiest girl in town.
Back at uni, when summer had spat me out into second year, Ria signed us up for touch football and dragged me along. Hugh was the coach. He winked at us from under his cap and beautiful summer tan. There is no end to Ria’s wile.
Hark, I hear the grumble of gymnastics finished. Home. I’m going to put on my glowiest smile and see if I can get a wink out of Hugh. My Hugh.<
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WEDNESDAY 22nd MARCH
When we got home after gymnastics, Hugh wasn’t there. I’d forgotten he had that Women in Engineering thingo to go to. He’s appointed a woman electrical engineer! I shouldn’t have put an exclamation mark there; why shouldn’t he appoint a woman? ‘She was the best candidate by far,’ he said. But still, I’m proud of him for being progressive. Her name’s April. She’s Canadian but went to uni here and then did an extra electrical specialty, a doctorate. I met her last week. Very nice, so young (twenty-six), strange laugh, nods a lot. Not Hugh’s type at all, so those particular butterflies can rest. Hugh says she has a lot of zeal. I think that’s why she nods, all the zeal.
When Hugh eventually got home, he said that April gave a very impressive talk and that she’s been the director of the Women in Engineering Tasmania branch since she graduated. That is impressive. We were eating our late dinner of meatballs, which were a bit cold in the middle and distinctly grey, so I said, ‘My Starlit Sonata’s being looked at by a production company in England for one of their films.’
He was shocked at first, then thrilled. Genuinely thrilled. He gave me a kiss and said, ‘That’s amazing, Zannah. Really amazing.’ And he looked at me in an old way and I felt warm, but soon he was saying, ‘There you are, see? People want your music. That’s what you should be doing, Zannah.’ And I had to say, ‘Thank you,’ and clear the dishes. He sighed and walked away.
Once he would have tried to fix things; suggest I go and see Henry, talk to an expert, watch the orchestra play, listen to my old recordings, anything to ‘get the music back’. I’ve long given up trying to make him understand about being too injured to play any more. About my cold, gone-away hands.
Once we were in bed he said, ‘We should have everyone from work over for dinner, now that we have April and Katrina.’ (Katrina is the new office manager; she’s fifty-something and looks as though she could organise a gay wedding in Southern Somalia. I can see that the office is far better off in her very capable hands.) I did not feel excited by the prospect of hosting a work dinner. Not because I don’t like them – I do – just because I’m terrible at entertaining. But in the spirit of others (and inner glow), I said, ‘That would be lovely. When?’