by Meg Bignell
LATER:
The girls and I have been preparing for Ria’s concert. We’ve had a little celebratory tea party and Eloise has kindly applied an egg and lemon mixture to my face. ‘It brightens and tightens the skin,’ she said. ‘I saw it on YouTube.’ Tightens is right. I could barely open my mouth to pop the fairy bread in. Mary-Lou has done my hair; she has done a heap of little plaits and used about thirty clips and ties of varying styles. I look like a merry-go-round. A tight-lipped merry-go-round, with hundreds and thousands stuck to my lemon-juice face.
We’re all going to Ria’s performance – Valda, Mum, Dad, Henry and Charmian too. Even Mary-Lou, which is such a rare treat for her given that the show starts at eight-thirty. Mary-Lou claims she’s never seen the stars, a suggestion I sort of laughed off but there’s a chance she’s right. What sort of mother never shows her child the stars? Anyway, the show is a Very Big Deal. I know because Ria’s personal assistant, Joseph, called here to make sure I thought Ria was in a good frame of mind.
‘Has she been looking after herself, do you think?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘she’s had a lot of fresh air, quite a bit of wine, lots of home-cooked meals and a good core workout from all the laughing. I’d definitely vouch for her preparedness.’
‘Oh, that’s good to hear.’ Joseph sounded genuinely relieved. ‘She’s not nervous?’
‘Are you joking? Ria’s never been nervous in her life.’ I must have sounded incredulous because Joseph said hurriedly, ‘Oh, I know, it’s just that she didn’t want me to come with her and there’s press everywhere down there and I was worried.’
‘It’s okay, Joseph. We’re looking after her. And, honestly, she’s not nervous. She’s never seen performance as performance, just as a wondrous sharing.’
Joseph didn’t sound placated. ‘Okay, thank you. Could you just make sure she has her warm water and pineapple juice? And could you tell her that I’ve watered her cyclamen and postponed her meeting with Richard Curtis.’
Sometimes I forget just how famous Ria Mirrin is. Our little Gloria.
We’re going out to dinner before the show, a treat from Ria for being her biggest fans and indispensable entourage (actually, she said, ‘hangiest hangers-on and smelliest smells’ but the restaurant was very posh so we know she meant ‘thank you’). Ooh la la. I’m not sure how to break it to Mary-Lou that I can’t possibly keep all her little plaits in, although Ria would probably get a good laugh out of them. She seems to really need our laughs, soaking them up as though she hasn’t had any for a while.
I realise too that I have laughed more with Ria in the last week than I have all year. I wish she would stay for good. I think Hugh does as well. I think he feels less responsible for me when Ria’s here. Or is it that Ria makes my difference seem more variant and less aberrant? She would never move back here, though. Her home is in London now. ‘Everything sounds tinny here,’ she said. ‘It’s probably the lack of wallpaper.’ She’s leaving in four days. Oh.
Going to shower.
Might wallpaper the bedrooms soon.
MONDAY 14th AUGUST
Oh, the concert! When there are people like Ria Mirrin, my Ria, who can take a piece of music and put it through their instrument and out into people’s souls, where it thrums at the heartstrings and makes marks in memory and says all the best things about music and performance and art; when there are those people, it’s okay for me to never play music again. Music has good hands; it doesn’t need my useless ones. And I say that in complete honesty, without a trace of bitter feeling or regret. I don’t need to play any more. Selling my viola was most definitely the right thing.
Tomorrow I will march straight to the principal’s office and finally say, ‘No, I won’t be playing for the school. I’m sorry, but perhaps I could make sushi in the canteen once in a while?’ I don’t know how to make sushi but I can learn. I can learn anything. What shall I learn? See, look at all these doors opening now that the big old heavy creaky one is finally closed for good.
Ria. She was breathtaking. We all adored it. The whole full-house concert hall adored it. She got the complete silence, gasp, standing ovation, the cheers and whistles, the shakes of the head, the tears. All of it. And she cried!!! Tough, old, don’t-blubber Ria cried and blew kisses and stayed onstage for a bit, when her trademark ending is to nod to the audience and walk straight off. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Wish I’d filmed that bit. Great for future blackmail. I’ve teased her already but she’s actually a little touchy, not quite teasable.
Hugh whistled, clapped his loudest and looked very moved, Raffy seemed entirely overcome, Jimmy cheered and Mary-Lou cried along with me and Ria. Actually, I sobbed. Noisily. Sobs are the best way to describe what it’s like to hear your best friend turn your favourite book into songs. I don’t have words. Eloise was her usual unmoveable self (which made me cry a bit more), but she smiled a lot and was clearly impressed.
At the dinner beforehand, Ria popped in unexpectedly from her pre-concert rituals with a birthday cake for me! It’s not my birthday until Wednesday, but how lovely!
Also, Hannah was at the concert! She must have spotted us in the foyer because she came up and said hello, and it was all a bit awkward for a minute because Hugh said, ‘Hannah!’ and looked thrilled and Hannah kissed his cheek and they did a sort of hug, and then Hannah gave me a plastic bag and said, ‘Thank you, Susannah, for this and for the card. I washed all the blood out.’ And for a weird minute I didn’t know what she was talking about but then I looked in the bag and saw my cardie.
Eloise asked, ‘How’s Emily?’ like the sensible girl she is and we talked about how fine Emily is and then the bells rang and we were ushered in to our VIP seats at the front of the dress circle while Hannah de Montagu went up to the gods and I tried not to feel smug.
I loved today.
TUESDAY 15th AUGUST
It’s late. I can’t sleep. Today I foolishly told Ria about being asked to play viola at school and inadvertently opened some kind of floodgate. Oh My Lordy. At first she was just typical Ria. ‘If you say no, I will shit in an envelope and post it to you from London.’ But then she made a completely startling speech; it went like this:
‘The combination of being very tired, quite emotional, you turning forty-four tomorrow and me leaving again leads me to say some things I vowed I wouldn’t say. One: I love you very much, so use that to brace yourself for this. Two: something happened to you in childbirth to make your skull VERY THICK because you can’t seem to understand that everyone is waiting for you to play again, everyone – Eloise needs to hear you play again. And the other children who have never heard you play. But mostly your husband, who fell in love with that show-off with the viola. She’s still there, Susannah, but only just. Only just. And if thickheaded Susannah Wash-house Parks keeps smothering Susannah Genius Mackay until she stops breathing altogether, I will never forgive her. Never. Three: I said Genius. Ge.Ni.Us. You didn’t even have to TRY at being a brilliant musician. You just are. I spent my life practising while you floated around with your perfect pitch, studying the stars and occasionally picking up your instrument to blow everyone’s socks off. It killed me, Susannah, to see it come so easily to you. But not as much as seeing that brilliance go down the gurgler with the baby’s fucking bathwater. And four: please refer back to one. I love you.’
Then she wiped her snotty nose because incredibly she was crying again, hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe, and went to bed.
I can’t believe it. Me, a genius? And did she say she was jealous of me? Inadequate, distracted me? She was wrong about lots of things. For one, I was always thickheaded. It wasn’t an accident of childbirth. I just am. From school I only remember useless things like what the floral emblem of South Australia is (Sturt’s Desert Pea). Also, I used to practise A LOT. Didn’t I? She’s the genius. Ask anyone. And the world doesn’t need my music. I still firmly believe that. It’s getting along perfectly without it, for fuck’s sake.
I’m cross. Ria was altogether harsh. But I shouldn’t swear, even though Ria does. All the time. She can’t say all those things just before my birthday, dammit. Before she leaves the country. It’s nearly my birthday now. I won’t sleep and tomorrow will show every one of my forty-four years.
WEDNESDAY 16th AUGUST
It’s six a.m. It’s my birthday. No one is awake yet. I got to sleep in the end, but only after I resolved to forgive Ria her outburst. She’s never had good reason to let anything conflict with her music. She’s not a mother, she’s never had a traumatic experience, so how could I expect her to understand?
Today is going to be a lovely day for both of us. Ria and I are going to send the children off to school and Hugh off to work and go to Mona for lunch. Mona is so un-Tasmanian. All the staff look like they fly-in, fly-out from Coolville. I can pretend I actually did leave the island. Also, now that I’m better acquainted with my vulva, I can have another look at the wall of vaginas and see where I sit on the dangly lab spectrum. The first time I saw the vulvas (Ria says it’s disrespectful not to give the work its actual name, which is Cunts and Other Conversations, but I know it’s just so she can hear me say that word), I thought it was some kind of ancient fossil display. Hopefully the Sparkle Project will save my vagina from an ancient fossil fate. Will birthday sex happen, I wonder?
LATER:
SPEECHLESS. What words must speak things should say can’t think oh dear me and oh.
LATER STILL:
I’m in bed. Under covers. Still in shock. Birthday sex won’t be happening. Can’t say why. Oh.
SATURDAY 19th AUGUST
So about my birthday. I think I’m sufficiently recovered to recount …
Mona was terrific as always. Ria and I got swept up in the intrigue of it and didn’t talk about violas. She was in a very caution-to-the-wind mood. We ate salted caramel cheesecake and truffles, and Ria bought a bottle of Henschke Hill of Grace, which cost a fortune and tasted like a castle with intricate wood panelling and a lot of basement. She said, ‘If this, your forty-fourth birthday, was your last day on earth, how would you spend it?’
And I answered, ‘With you and a bottle of extortionate wine, thank you very much. And maybe Keanu Reeves if he was about. And Hugh, of course. And the children. And Barky.’
And I realised I meant it (especially not Keanu).
We bounced on the enormous trampoline and sang Madonna songs in the Madonna room and got told off for touching the Fat Car. We laughed and laughed. I wished Hugh could’ve come. It was lovely.
But.
When we got home, Mum and Dad were there. Mum had collected the children from school for me. I was surprised to see Dad, though. Mum noticed me being surprised.
‘Dad wanted to come and see the children’s school,’ she said in a stilted voice, looking hard at Ria. ‘He was very pleased with Jimmy’s drawing of a capsicum. And the fort. They’ve taken forts away from schools on the mainland. Apparently they encourage warfare – ridiculous. Mrs Grubb was lovely. Is she from Launceston? I know some Launceston Grubbs.’
I eyed her suspiciously. I looked at Dad, who was reading the newspaper. ‘You liked the capsicum picture, Dad?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Dad to the paper. Mum cleared her throat and he looked up. ‘What?’
‘We met Eloise at her bus stop, didn’t we, Jack?’ Mum went on. ‘We’ve all had some cantaloupe. Quite a nice one for this time of year.’
‘Hugh here yet?’ asked Dad.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, looking at Ria. There was a knock at the door and a ‘Yooo-hooo!’ It was Henry.
‘Come in, Henry!’ called Ria. She looked at me and sang ‘Happy birthday to you’ in a light voice.
‘But I’ve had a birthday cake already,’ I said. ‘And lots of happy birthdays. And lunch today. That’s enough. I just want some cheese on toast now.’
But then Raffy turned up with Valda, and Mary-Lou said, ‘There is something very important soon,’ but got violently nudged by Jim and burst into tears.
Ria brought out some drinks and nibbles. Hugh arrived home.
‘Sorry.’ He was a bit breathless. ‘Am I late?’
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ I said. ‘But apparently I wouldn’t know.’
‘Everyone’s here,’ said Ria.
‘It’s time!’ shouted Raffy. His cheeks were flushed with excitement. Then Hugh disappeared from the room for a minute and there was a bit of silence, into which Mum said, ‘Just think, exactly forty-four years ago I was having my woo-woo sewn up by that darling Dr Johns.’ Raffy gasped; Eloise squeaked and clapped a hand over her eyes. Mum looked at them and said, ‘Darlings, it’s completely normal to develop a crush on your obstetrician.’
Then Hugh came back in carrying a huge box, the children did a synchronised ‘Tada!’ and Hugh laid the box at my feet. ‘Happy birthday, dear wife,’ he said and kissed me.
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.
‘You must have been wondering why you didn’t get any presents when you woke up,’ said Jimmy.
‘It’s from everyone,’ said Hugh. ‘Mostly Ria.’
‘From everyone,’ said Ria. ‘Raff put his pocket money in.’ Raffy beamed.
‘Open it and open it and open it,’ yelled Mary-Lou until Dad grabbed her and tucked her onto his knee. So open it I did.
Inside the box was a silver-wrapped parcel of a very familiar shape. My viola. They’ve bought back my viola, I thought, and then to my surprise, Thank God.
And as I tore back the silver paper, my heart beat again, double time, only I wished it wouldn’t. I wished it to stop altogether because what I was looking at was indeed a viola case, but it was new and shiny and definitely not mine.
I think back now to their dear expectant faces … I can see them as though I’d run outside to peek in through the window. Look at them – having plotted and gathered and bated their breath for me – now putting their joy and pride backstage to wait behind wide eyes for the cue. Fists clasped and held to breasts, happy little pause squeaks and Hugh (oh, Hugh) looking at my face, utterly terrified.
And there’s me, opening the case, peering ashen-faced at the glossy new instrument (I’d always wondered whether colour could really drain from people’s faces but, yes, look, there it goes from mine) and trying to smile but failing terribly.
I said ‘thank you’ and ‘wow’ and ‘it’s beautiful’, and then, while everyone waited for me to pick it up, I added, ‘I’m overcome.’ And then had a few minutes in the wardrobe in which I tried to catch my breath and think of what to say but couldn’t. So I went back out and peeked at it again, looked away and (because it seemed right) said, ‘Is it from England?’
‘Wales,’ said Ria, who by this stage had recognised my horror misgivings horror and began babbling to the rest of the room. ‘Grumpy old bugger, the luthier. Very bitter about the perfection of the violin and the neglect of the viola. But everyone who’s anyone recommended him. He says it’s a developing instrument and that he is the only one in the world who recognises that. Everyone else just copies old ones. Something like that.’
We all looked down at the instrument, as if waiting for it to pop up and say hello. It shined its dreadful gloss at me. The wood had a reddish-brown. It was mottled. Ugly. I’ve never, thanks to my hair, liked anything that warms to red.
‘He needed to know everything about you, Zannah,’ said Hugh. ‘We sent him your playing history, your style.’
‘I played him your recordings,’ added Ria, with a hint of urgency. ‘He’s got it right. He only has the best tonewoods. Apparently he has piles of really old spruce and maple from all over the world and he taps bits of it until he hears the magic. Yours is from Switzerland and Canada.’ She widened her eyes at me. ‘It’s called the Susannah Viola and he said it’s a triumph.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, in a voice that sounded suddenly like Mum’s. ‘It must have been very expensive.’
‘It was,’ said Valda, who was looking p
ointedly at me. More silence.
‘Yes, it was,’ piped Mary-Lou. ‘Dad said I’m not ever allowed to touch it because of all the money. Aren’t you allowed to touch it either, Mummy?’
No, I thought. No, I’m not. But I smiled and said, ‘Yes, I think I’m allowed to touch it, darling. But at the moment I just want to look at it. It’s so beautiful. Thank you, everyone.’ I did a stupid little show of blowing kisses.
‘The bow is Pernambuco – the best wood for bows,’ said Raffy. ‘And Mongolian horsehair. Henry found it.’
‘Oh, so you’re all in on this, then?’ I said with solarium brightness.
Another silence, then Mum spoke. ‘Well, plenty of time for you and Susannah Viola to get to know one another. I’m sure it’s something you want to do alone. Let’s have another drink, shall we?’ She held up her empty glass. Mum hardly drinks any more so this was a bad sign. Come on, Susannah. Lift your heavy spirits.
But Valda, who’d been watching me closely, said, ‘The viola plays the inner voice of the strings section. I, for one, would like to hear what your inner voice has to say. Or else I’ll go back to my television.’
I made an unattractive nasal laugh noise and said, ‘Oh, no one wants to hear my inner voice, do they?’
‘I do,’ said Hugh. But I crumpled up the silver paper and took it into the kitchen, calling, ‘Who wants more bickies and dip?’
Later, when everyone had gone and the children were in bed, Ria, Hugh and I were cleaning up and I said, ‘Thank you. I know how much effort you put into that gift. And the expense! It’s too much.’