by Meg Bignell
And Ria said, ‘Fuck that, Susannah. We can see how pissed off you are. Come on, out with it. Inner voice and all.’ Her eyebrows challenged me. ‘Come on. Let us have it.’
‘It’s a very personal thing, choosing an instrument,’ I suggested tentatively.
‘We had your arm measurements,’ said Hugh. ‘Sent the specs of your old viola off. This is a better fit.’
‘We know you personally,’ said Ria, ‘better than you know yourself, probably.’
‘But you don’t,’ I said. ‘You think you do, but you don’t. You don’t understand.’
‘Look, Susannah,’ Ria said gently. ‘This terrible thing happened. It was fucked up, but it wasn’t your fault. Everyone’s told you that a thousand times because it’s true. And it certainly wasn’t the fault of a bit of shaped-up, polished wood with strings.’
My hands trembled. I looked at them. Hugh covered them with his and said, ‘There’s no rush, but just sit with it for a while. You without a viola just isn’t right. You’ll see. But in your own time.’
Ria leaned in on us and said, ‘And just bear in mind that music isn’t —’ but I pushed through them to stand and said, ‘Please stop talking. I closed this door such a long time ago. Please, please don’t open it again.’ And with the measured steps of someone likely to fall, I quietly went to bed.
Ria flew out the next day. Thursday. She cried again when she left, which is highly unusual. Probably because the farewell was cordial. We’re never cordial. Usually she says, ‘Bugger off, then,’ and I say, ‘See you when I’m looking at you.’ This time she held me in a bear hug, put some tears on my shoulder and said, ‘Love you, Helen Burns. Sorry to be so crotchety.’ Which is a clever musical pun but neither of us laughed.
It’s not a bad thing she’s gone. Too much spruce and maple-glossed tension in the air. I’ve been so very sad, though, since my birthday. Heavy. This is what happens when people insist on opening the wrong door. I have a huge sense of something not done, like when you leave the supermarket with the feeling of having forgotten something for tonight’s curry and arrive home without coconut milk. I hate that feeling. I’ve tried to phone her twice but no answer yet. I remembered to unplug her phone charger and put it in her hand bag so it can’t be that …
MONDAY 21st AUGUST
Four things:
1) Hugh is being exceptionally kind. I think he knows how raw I am after the birthday and Ria leaving. I don’t feel I deserve his kindness because I’m still feeling crabby about that viola. I can’t help it. He put it on the same shelf as Eloise Driscoll. But I don’t want him to be cross either, so clearly he can’t win. No wonder he wanted to run away to the South Pole. The ice caps are melting down there but here, the glaciers are resolute and inching ahead.
2) No word from Ria yet.
3) I removed my cardigan from the bag that Hannah had given me at the concert and there was a card with it. It said:
Dear Susannah and Eloise,
Emily is back to normal again. Thank you for your help that day and please remember that it was an accident. I was very short that day. I’d had a shock. I’m sorry. We would love to have you over for lunch soon. We don’t know all that many people here any more and it would be great to see you all. Love, Hannah, Charlie, Emily and Nell. X
Her writing is so neat it looks like a font. And she left her phone number. I texted her straight away:
Dear Hannah,
Thank you for your note. We would love to see you all, but it must be at our house. It’s the least we can do for you all, and Emily’s nose.
Love, Susannah
I toyed with the idea of a ‘x’ but in the end left it off. I was in a brutal kind of mood because:
4) I ate five rescue remedy lozenges and went to see the school principal. I just said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have the name of a wonderful cellist friend of mine who is very happy to play for the musical in exchange for putting something in the newsletter about his bookshop.’
He said, ‘What a shame. It would have been nice for your children to see their mother perform. Eloise’s class is doing a unit on female role models.’
Of course they are.
Anyway, I did it, I said no. Lettercello will get a little publicity kick and Ria can shit in an envelope and post it.
We all miss Ria, but in some ways it’s nice to just be us again. I sat next to Hugh in front of the telly once the children were (pretending to be) tucked into bed and he put his arm around the bit of couch that I was sitting on and said of the man presenting the show, ‘What’s going on with that bloke’s hair?’ And it felt nice to be us again. I’ve put a blanket over the viola and hopefully that’ll stop any serious talk about me. I don’t want to be me; I want to be us. I thought about thanking him again for the viola, in case I hadn’t been grateful enough. But I thought better of it.
Things can swing so easily. Best not to push.
I have taken the batteries out of the vibrator and put them in my book light.
MONDAY 4th SEPTEMBER
Our wedding photo fell off the wall this morning. It didn’t break. This could be a sign of strength, but what if the falling off the wall bit was the sign? No one knocked it, and unless the house itself gave it a pointed nudge, it just unaccountably fell. Weird. Especially because Hugh is back in Melbourne. Some kind of hiccup on the overpass case. There’s no denying he is pleased about this development, even though he made a play of it being a thorn in his side. I know better. And as the original thorn, I do know. He was so buoyant this morning he could have floated across Bass Strait.
Valda is broadcasting some sort of Baroque opera music out her windows and I’m not in the mood. Handel?
I looked for a long time at the wedding photo and realised that I’m horribly jealous of that bride, all flushed with love and possibility. And I’m terrified that I’ll never feel those whirligig, hammering-heart feelings ever again. They’re like touchpaper, those feelings, setting things ablaze. A fire, by nature, does die down without fuel and attention. It’s easy to let it go out completely while you’re cleaning the oven … but fires need oxygen too, I suppose. Like children. Must try not to smother.
We can’t realistically be in full wedding day love all of the time, can we? Everyone must be a little bit out of love with their spouse on occasions. Such as when they leave a skid mark in the loo, or when they choose a continent of ice over a family … or when they turn out to be nothing like the brave, clever person you thought they were … Wait, this is not a good train of thought. I’ll go back again, to our wedding day. The right feelings were there. Hugh says it’s one of his most favourite memories.
Taroona, Hobart, 4th April 2003
I insisted that we have a really understated and simple wedding: no bells, whistles or drama. This was what I imagined Hugh would want. It was what I wanted myself to want. I rolled my eyes at expensive photographers and chandeliers hanging from trees and sentimental trinkets. I laughed at neurotic and demanding brides who cried over the shade of their fuchsias. I shrugged off offers of dress-hunting trips and wedding planners and videography.
I booked the church near Mum and Dad’s and the golf club down the road for the reception. Convenient, not a sniff of pretension. Hugh was concerned. ‘Come on, Zannah. This is your day. You need a bit of fluff and ribbon. Ask more people, get a string quartet in, hire some swans. You only get one chance.’
I laughed him off and said in a poetic fashion, ‘Our love will fill the vases and adorn the archways.’
When the day arrived, I woke up early in my parents’ house, looked out at the sun rising on my monumental day and pranced out into it for a solitary bridal walk. I must be glowing, I thought. People will know I’m a bride. But no one gave me a second glance, except perhaps to look askance at my expectant expression. I felt put out. By ten o’clock, with no bridesmaids ironing my silkens or putting cucumber on my eyes, I was a picture of unattractive snivelly-miff. I had Mum, of course, who was doing enough panicking for b
oth of us. Poor Mum, she’d been burdened with making the golf club rooms look ‘nice but not weddingy’. We’d spent the day before trying to scrub sticky bits off the carpet and secreting away dusty fake gladioli. I tried to convince her (and myself) that it was very retro chic. A dappled beige carpet, beery-scented, stained-bar-towel brand of chic. Mum’s white tulips and pale-pink cabbage roses didn’t stand a chance. Her tasteful pale blue suit was hanging in the bedroom next to my ‘elegantly understated’ (boring) dress, longing for a snowy white marquee and a garden. She made us tea and tried to stay perky when Alison turned up to check I wasn’t wearing red or something equally ruinous.
I started to fantasise about the bridal party that might have been, had I not been me. Had I been Hannah, for instance, I would have had a bevy of swished-up beauties bickering over who got to sit closest to me and take my posy while I was busy beneath the attentions of everyone in the room. (Gosh, I must hurry up and invite Hannah to lunch.)
Other than Ria, I was never very good with friends. Mum used to exclaim in shrill tones how much I enjoyed my own company, which was her way of saying my social skills were shithouse (also possibly a means of assuaging her own guilt over never producing a sibling for me). The truth is, I didn’t like my own company at all and had an unhealthily terrible view of myself. I blame all the brown corduroy Mum had me in early on. I had the odd friend in infant school. With the emphasis on odd. Mum used to invite children over if she felt sorry for them. Like a painfully shy girl with a built-up shoe, and a boy who had to burp to talk. Then, in Year Four, I was accepted into St Catherine’s on a music scholarship and in waltzed Gloria Mirrin with her blue mascara, her wildly exciting view of the world and her music.
On the wedding day it was just after eleven when she waltzed in again, this time bearing French champagne, a camera, a pink tulle dress, The Best of David Bowie, and Paul the hairdresser. ‘Shut up,’ she threw at me before I’d had a chance to say a word. ‘This day needs some tarting up. I’ve just been to the golf club. Dear God, what were you thinking? It’s like someone’s Great Aunt Bev’s organised the annual frugalism conference in there. Mrs M,’ she shot at my clearly relieved mother, ‘I’ve arranged for my aunts to meet you there in half an hour to help lift the place. They’re known around the traps as the Glitter Sisters. They know what they’re doing. We’ve got four hours and thirty-five minutes before race time. Let’s go.’ Mum looked suddenly happy and pink, which I realised with a pang is how mothers of only-child brides should look. She got her coat immediately, along with her box of silver cutlery and a candelabra.
I looked at Ria and said, ‘What a dick I am.’ She just nodded, poured champagne and turned up Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’.
While Mum and Ria’s Glitter Sisters were flinging frippery about at the golf club like footloose wedding fairies, Ria and I laughed and danced and sang and talked and primped and preened, and I realised that even though I’m an only child, I actually do have a sister.
We were fashioning a small veil out of an old lace curtain when Mum came back all jumpy and excited and Dad came in from golf. We hopped into our finery and Paul the hairdresser took a picture of the four of us together in the good room. It’s still one of my favourite pictures ever, even though I’m wearing purple eyeshadow. (It was a thing then; Ria said it brought out green eyes – she doesn’t get everything right.) I must try calling her again. (Find Skype password.)
Hugh and I were married in the church by a nervy new minister in transition lenses. He shook like a leaf while his black glasses slowly faded to grey. We tried not to laugh. A friend of Ria’s played Pachelbel on the flute. The congregation sang ‘All Beautiful the March of Days’, led by Ria, in full voice, and the minister, whose lenses had cleared and whose confidence seemed bolstered by not wanting his singing thunder stolen by the small loud woman in pink tulle. This time Hugh squeezed my hand and let out a laugh. We giggled a bit during our vows, the words of which I don’t remember, but I assume they were standard and brief. We kissed and laughed a bit more and it was done. Husband and wife.
Ria hugged me violently, punched Hugh hard in the arm and said, ‘It’ll be one to the nose if you don’t stay good to her.’
I’ve just looked up the standard Church of England vows. Head, body, mind, love, trust, sexual union, joyful commitment, children, good times and bad, la la la, unity, loyalty, forsake all others, faithful … wait – sexual union? Our minister didn’t say anything about sexual union; I’m positive he didn’t. He would have been too embarrassed and Hugh and I would have totally lost our senses and laughed all over the altar. I would have blushed and everyone in the church would have known that I was thinking about Hugh’s penis. Anyway, those traditional vows do assume quite a lot, don’t they? What if a couple don’t want children? What if they can’t? I didn’t give our words a second thought; neither of us did, we were so busy trying not to laugh.
Perhaps the minister should have added, ‘And you must accept with good grace and minimal grouchy yearnings that you cannot reasonably flirt with intent with anyone again, nor can you experience that loin-achingly amazing lustful sex that you get when you first consummate a chemically charged relationship.’
Anyway, when we arrived at the golf club for the reception, I cried. And laughed. It was the most loving, valiant and hilarious effort to polish a turd I’d ever seen. Ria said later that they’d tried the tasteful tack, but the beige brick internal walls triumphed so they went ‘the fully tacky tack’ and filled the room with pink carnations and gypsophila. I mean filled. It was like an eighties fairy garden in there. And someone had ‘borrowed’ a haul of white concrete swans and three swan tyres, which were also filled with flowers. Nothing was spared – golf trophies were adorned, the cake was a cloud of flowers, even the deer heads on the walls had carnations behind their ears. And by the time the entrée was served, Mum had some in her hair, which indicated considerable champagne consumption. In our state of excited hilarity, Hugh and I thought it simply (tizzily) perfect.
Now I wonder whether it seems like a bit of a joke. Me there, with my lace curtain veil and all those carried-away carnations.
Alison was horrified. ‘Dear God, this is appalling. Are you getting married or putting on a comedy show?’ she scoffed, looking disdainfully at the decor as though it might rear up and grubby her navy frockcoat with glitter. As it happened, she later cracked her tooth on a pink candied almond.
Hugh’s speech gave the day some sincerity, thank goodness. He managed to control his mirth for long enough to stand before our guests and say really nice things that made my mother cry and even seemed to satisfy Alison (pre–almond incident). Things like:
– ‘Susannah floated around university with absolutely no idea of how mesmerising she is. I was fascinated. I’d never met anyone like her.’
Goodness, did he really say that or am I just playing Chinese whispers with remembered rememberings?
– ‘Later I summoned the courage to talk to her and even ask her to play her viola. She was astounding. Up until then, music meant INXS, Stealers Wheel and the Carlton footy club song. Now I actually enjoy Classic FM, which says a lot about my extraordinary wife.’
My extraordinary wife. I remember the room sort of swayed when I heard those words. Surely they weren’t words for bumbling old me. But they were, and for a minute I was terrified the wobbly world would blurry away like one of those cheesy cinematic transitions. I wonder if he didn’t mean extra-ordinary.
– ‘I never thought I’d be the sort of person to recite poetry, but I’m an engineer and words are not my strong point, so I’m turning to someone who knows better. My friend (also introduced to me indirectly by my wife) Charlie Baudelaire, who said: “Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.” In other words, Susannah, you’re a weirdo but that’s why I love you.’
I wonder if he reflects on those words now. I think he’s changed his mind about strangeness …
His closet interest in poetry continued. For my t
hird-year composition I decided to adapt a poem to viola. I only knew T S Eliot and a bit of Wordsworth so I brought home The Oxford Book of Verse, and Hugh and I read bits to one another in plummy voices to see which might trigger some music. Days later, even after I’d settled on ‘In the Park’ by Tasmanian poet Gwen Harwood (she’d recently died and I was attracted to its simplicity), he was still reading poetry to himself. In the end he handed the book back and said, ‘Baudelaire’s your man, I reckon.’ I looked briefly at a translation of ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ but from memory there were rape and poison and daggers involved.
Hugh ended his speech by producing my viola, which he had smuggled in. ‘I knew Susannah wouldn’t want to speak but I thought she might play for us. And then we can all get pissed.’
I had nothing prepared but, as I was making my way self-consciously to my viola, I caught sight of myself in a mirror and was struck by the fact that I looked kind of pretty. Even my hair was being polite as it peeked out delicately from under its curtain. So I played ‘The Swan’ from Saint-Saën’s Carnival of the Animals. It’s not a showy piece, no drama to it, and kind of sad if you read it that way, but the sweep of feeling I had right then was that eye-stinging, heart-singing kind of joy. Coral-coloured joy. Or carnation pink. No rush any more, the music said, no more ugly duckling. You can glide through life with your head held high and your gorgeous husband at your side.
Afterwards, I was startled by tears in Hugh’s eyes, and by Ria saying, ‘You’ve never been an ugly duckling, you nincompoop.’
Of course, later they couldn’t get me off the viola. I played ‘Sweet Thing’ by our man Van, then some hops and jigs and vivace pieces until Hugh reminded me I should really have a dance too, with him. Back then the instrument was like another limb. I wasn’t all that balanced without it. But even when I put it back in its case and danced with Hugh, I felt perfectly balanced …