The Sparkle Pages

by Meg Bignell

  WEDNESDAY 27th DECEMBER

  I let him talk. A little bit. He came to bed after me last night, and at first I pretended to be asleep but I could feel him lying there looking at me.

  ‘Say what you need to say before you burst,’ I said to the dark. ‘Be gentle.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Wait!’ I said and sat up, turned on the light. I needed to check his face for untruths. Then I lay down again and whispered, ‘Go.’

  ‘Will you stay calm?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That was some performance, Susannah.’

  ‘I was hoping to outperform you,’ I said. ‘How do you think I went?’

  ‘I think you went close.’

  ‘Silly Mummy,’ I said in a cold, ugly voice.

  He took another breath. ‘Will you let me explain a bit more?’

  I stayed silent, so he continued. ‘We were in Melbourne. The judge had just decided to award damages. We were excited —’

  ‘Stop!’ I screwed my face up on a vision of elated April flinging herself at Hugh, his hands on her … I tried to talk to my heart. Be calm, be calm, here’s some oxygen …

  He paused, but went on. ‘It was just a kiss. The second time was the following day and I stopped it before it even really started. It hasn’t happened again. It won’t happen again. I promise. Zannah, you’re my only … the only one.’

  I sat up and said, ‘Have you been messaging one another a lot?’ I remembered his emojis.

  ‘Yes. For work. Mostly.’

  ‘Do you ever send her the kiss-blow emoji?’

  ‘What? No. I don’t know. I might have.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Susannah, there’s no excuse, but she was so enthusiastic about everything. She wanted to know all the things I know. She admired me. It’s my stupid ego …’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ I said, ‘how she wears a ring on her little finger to remind her to put integrity before her ego?’ I picked up his left hand and touched the gold band on his ring finger.

  ‘Zannah …’

  ‘How long did you kiss her for?’

  ‘What? I don’t know.’

  ‘Approximately.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe ten seconds, if that.’

  I put my hand over my mouth.

  ‘Zannah, are you going to be sick?’

  ‘No.’ But I vomited through my hand and all over the bed.

  ‘Oh, Zannah. Oh, no. I’m so sorry. It was nothing —’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me it was nothing. Nothing doesn’t look like this.’ We looked at each other – his stricken face, my green one – the mess on the bed. I gathered myself and the bedclothes up and made for the bathroom.

  ‘Zannah, I promise it was just kissing, I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  I said, ‘Shut up. I want to go home.’

  It’s a terrible thing to feel homesick in your own home. It’s after ten and I’m still in my nightie. In the wardrobe. I must try to move my parts. Perhaps to the garden.

  LATER:

  Mum came over this afternoon with a cake for Eloise and a hamper of food. She found me in the garden violently shearing dead heads off the daisies.

  ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘I have cake and goodies for the birthday girl. I didn’t think there’d be much of the sort happening here.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘And speaking of cake,’ she said, ‘didn’t you take the cake on Christmas Day? What a spectacle. It was hideous. You certainly didn’t inherit your histrionical streak from me.’

  ‘But, Mum,’ I said. ‘Hugh kissed another woman – he’s been having an emotional affair with April.’

  ‘What? Just a kiss? By the looks of you, I thought he’d got someone pregnant.’ She took the shears from me. ‘Goodness, leave the poor daisies alone. None of this is their fault.’

  ‘I’m so angry with him,’ I said as the old tears fell.

  ‘And I don’t blame you, darling, not for a minute. He absolutely did wrong by you. And April.’

  ‘I don’t care about April.’

  ‘Anger is a good thing. It’s there to shield your sensitive parts, but the problem is that your sensitive parts are extensive, aren’t they?’ She tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. ‘So your anger has to be enormous.’

  ‘He deserves every bit of it.’

  ‘You’re right. That Hugh Parks is evil to the core. I’ve always known it. Men like him are the scourge of society: lecherous, conniving and grubby. I say we find him and give him what he deserves. Revenge is ours!’ She held the shears aloft and gave the air a few snips.

  ‘Mum, this is not a joke. I feel really betrayed.’

  ‘Actually, revenge is quite a good idea. Go and find yourself someone to kiss. Settle the score, spare the daisies, move on.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘It seems to me you’ve had quite the emotional affair with yourself of late anyway, darling, sorry to say.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m your mother. I’ve been watching. I saw you in that leopard-print dress.’

  ‘Mum, Hugh has been dalliancing with another woman!’

  ‘Well, go and get a divorce, then,’ she said. ‘Quick smart, neat and clean. Best for the children.’ She watched me turn white and then held my face by the chin. ‘He’s a good man, Susannah. He loves you. You love him. That’s your umbrella; get under it with him, snuggle up and weather the storm.’

  Mary-Lou, Raffy and Jim ran into the garden then, and Mum said, ‘Oh, look. Here’s a pair of wellies and a macintosh. All the better. Hello, darlings. Where’s the birthday girl?’

  They left me in the garden. The sun peeped out from behind the trees.

  THURSDAY 28th DECEMBER

  I’m in the wardrobe with the new viola at my feet. I just opened the case and whispered a little apology speech. It was, ‘I’m sorry I called you ugly. You’re really not. You remind me of horse chestnuts when they’ve just popped out of their husks and they always make me smile. I’m sorry I dismissed you. But mostly I’m sorry I used you to say such horrible things. In such an inarticulate way. I broke all my musician rules and I have no excuses.’ Then I closed the case up again and made myself think.

  Perhaps I have outperformed Hugh’s bad behaviour. Yes, he kissed April twice, indulged in some textual intercourse, did the wrong thing, but I’ve just had a read back through this diary and dear God, I’m so irritated by me. I was the one baring my soul to a wardrobe man and fantasising about divorce. I was the one being altogether careless and neurotic with our sparks. And now there are none. If I were my one and only, I’d go and kiss a bright, supple, environmentally aware graduate too. Hugh has probably done us all a favour. I will stop thinkering about with our family. Stop blurring myself with sentiments and none-such and let everything just be. Even if that means it will fall.

  So there we are, then. Herein lies the end of the Resolution. Almost a year of trying far too hard. And now, all the low notes have drowned out the high notes, and my work here is surely done.

  SPARKLE PROJECT ABORTED.

  SATURDAY 30th DECEMBER

  Two things have happened to make me pull myself out of the too-hard basket. (It’s cavernous and scary in there, with a pile of holey school tights, a filthy oven and cobwebs in the cornices.)

  This is the first:

  I was at least brave enough to slink over towards Valda’s house yesterday, but I lost my nerve at her hedge and stopped, backtracked, stopped again. Then I heard, ‘I can see the top of your doleful head. Bring it back and open its trap.’

  I wanted to run, but she was right. Doleful I was. So I walked to her steps, stood before her and delivered an impromptu, clumsy but heartfelt speech. Something like: ‘Oh, Valda. I know I was awful. And you singing so beautifully and so merry for a change. I mean, you’re often merry, just not so merry. And your song was a gift, a lovely holly-wrapped but not prickly Christmas gift. I can’t explain my actions. I think I went pop!’

  She
waited until the pause was long enough for my discomfort to bloom and then said, ‘Come closer, please. I want to tell you a story.’

  So I meekly sat in the chair beside her and waited while she set aside her knitting and repositioned herself.

  ‘Neville hated me singing, you know. Hated it.’

  ‘No!’ I was aghast. ‘But how could he?’

  ‘Oh, he liked it well enough at first. The first time he saw me it was from an audience at the Odeon when I was sixteen. He said he thought he’d seen an angel.’

  ‘He was very charming,’ I said, remembering the sepia photograph on the wall in Valda’s hallway of the two of them walking along the street, dressed formally in hats and coats, with the candid smiles of a couple dashing off to begin their glamorous life together.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Valda. ‘He charmed me. I was swept. We were married when I was nineteen, right when the Conservatorium received an opera tutor from Vienna after the war. Just as I was told I might go somewhere.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think Neville found himself to be very, very jealous.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t think he could help it. He was cross about anything to do with my career. He found an idiot doctor who told me I wouldn’t conceive if I continued to place such exertions on my internal organs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I believed him. I did so want a baby. We tried. But it wasn’t to be. That was hard. Neville blamed the voice training. Of course it’s codswallop but he really believed it. He couldn’t bear to hear me sing. And in the end, four years after we were married, I stopped.’

  To my dismay, Valda pressed her fists to her eyes and gave a little sob. My heart hurt.

  ‘Oh, Valda,’ I said, taking one of her hands. It was cold. ‘I thought you stopped when he died, not when you were married.’

  ‘I started again when he died.’ She laughed. ‘After his funeral. It was a pitiful sound at first, I tell you, but I haven’t forgotten how to open my false vocal folds.’

  ‘So no mutual respect, gentle handling, kindness and conversation?’

  ‘Not much.’ She sighed. ‘Those were the things I wished for, but …’

  ‘The old bastard.’ I was still amazed.

  ‘To be fair,’ she sniffed, ‘it was different then. Women were there to tend to their husbands. And he was a good man in many ways. I was only frightened of him a few times.’

  ‘Well, that’s a few times too many. You should never, ever be afraid of your husband,’ I said.

  She sighed and said, ‘Oh, well. When he got weak and ill I wasn’t afraid any more. And I didn’t look after him as well as I might have. Sometimes I put him in respite care just so I could listen to music and go to the pictures. And once I put earthworms in his chocolate cake.’

  ‘You could have left him, Valda. You could have had a glittering career.’

  ‘But I did love him,’ she said, a tear spilling over. ‘And I’d made my vows. I didn’t have the choices you have today.’

  Spoilt by choices …

  We sat for a few minutes in silence and then she picked up her knitting again and said, ‘Well, don’t just sit there with your teeth in your head. You have some mending to do.’

  I can’t believe it. All along, that nasty old Neville had taken Valda’s voice, that wonderful voice …

  And the other thing is this:

  Ria’s oldest brother, Trent, turned up this morning with an enormous, Christmas-wrapped parcel. Enormous.

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said apologetically. ‘I hold no responsibility, but it had strict instructions to get it to you before Christmas. Sorry it’s late but we weren’t sure, after the paperweights …’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘She had some dumb ideas, that one. And we kind of skipped Christmas this year, you know …’

  The children and I (Hugh was over at the Hadleys’ helping Josh pack up his garage) helped Trent carry the parcel inside. There was much excitement. Mary-Lou skipped alongside and said, ‘It’s probably going to be a horse.’

  ‘I hope it is,’ said Trent, with a wink at her. It reminded me that he was the gentlest brother, the one who winked at Ria like that and always called her Glory. ‘Just let me know if you want me to come back and take it away again. Good to see you, little Susie.’ He gave my shoulder a pat and I tried to smile, but it came out all wonky.

  It wasn’t a horse. It was Deborah Smedley-Warren; I knew as soon as I saw her petite beige feet, identical to her sister’s. We slid her out of the box and stood her up against the wall. She was wearing Ria’s Father Christmas costume and holding a sign that said, Merry Christmas to my dearest favourite hooligans, may your days be daisy and your bum-trumpets trumpety. Love Deborah and Ria. PS Please check my sack.

  We found a hessian sack at the bottom of the box and inside it was a squashy turquoise unicorn for Mary-Lou, a Star Wars Lego set for Jimmy, a boxed set of Australian music for Raffy, a pearl bracelet for Eloise and a Leatherman pocket knife for Hugh. And for me, a cassette tape.

  I left the children with Deborah and their presents and retrieved my old cassette stereo from Raffy’s room. I took it into the wardrobe and, with shaking hands, put the cassette in. The tears had been trickling since we found Deborah but now they positively streamed in anticipation of the music. It wasn’t music, though. It was Ria’s voice. Or rather, the voice of Caroline/Deborah Smedley-Warren. ‘Hello, Susannah,’ said the voice. ‘I’ve decided to move down here with you if you don’t mind. Bit miserable up there in cold, lonely London. And I have a feeling you might need me.’ Ria laughed then, and I gasped with the nearness of it. Then she said, in her normal, dear voice, ‘Hi there, Helen Burns. I hope this has reached you before you sobbed all your guts out and died a terrible eviscerated death. I know you’ve been crying too much. You’ve never been one to bottle up your emotions. But I want to say that you should stop now. You’ll dry yourself up and that won’t do the passion any good. How’s that going? Have you serenaded him yet? Have you picked up that glorious viola? You know it doesn’t have any guilt-baggage steeped into it, so it’ll be easy to play. Spruced-up spruce is not nearly as absorbent as un-buffed sycamore.’

  There was a pause, and the sound of a deep breath.

  ‘Ah, the viola,’ came her voice again, weighted now, perhaps labouring under the weight of tears. ‘Have you noticed that lots of those dead composers wrote for viola at the end of their lives? Maybe it’s the perfect instrument for telling all their secrets and finally letting go.’

  Ria laughed again, then, ‘Fucking hell. I sound like a complete tosser, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, just that it seems to me now, towards the end of your year, you should just let all the secrets out. Don’t you think? In the best way you know how. And if you don’t remember what that sounds like, I have all your recordings right here in one place, so you can remind yourself ’til the cows come home. The first piece isn’t you, obviously. It’s me. It’s called “L’Albatros” and it’s an adaption of the poem by Baudelaire. He wrote about an albatross being a beautiful, huge-winged bird who was extraordinary in flight but a bit of a bumbler on land because its wings got in the way of walking. Reminded me of you, with your great long viola arms. And if I need to spell it out even more: for fuck’s sake, have another look at that painting Hugh did of the albatross, okay? I’m signing off now. Love you, Helen Susannah Burns. Don’t disappoint me now. Always and always, your Ria.’

  ‘L’Albatros’. It was a simple piano piece, not long – about three or four minutes, perhaps. A fantasia. High and slow, sustained, graceful. Then lower and elegant, exciting. But a crash and the music turned comical and clumsy, ambiguous andantino. I thought of Ria’s failing hands on those beloved keys of hers. But then a sort of escape and a catch in your heart and a slowing, a relief. And then an onwards sort of feeling, with a very light arpeggio that made me think of a shiny day and a sequined sea.

  ‘Exilé sur le sol au milieu huées,

  Ses ailes de géa
nt l’empêchent de marcher.’

  I looked it up, the poem. And, dammit, now I’m crying for a fictional albatross. And a bit for me, with my bumbling arms and my nowhere hands.

  I listened to the whole cassette. All my compositions, all the recordings of the TSO we did in the ballroom at Government House in Hobart, my cadenzas, the hurried etudes we had to record at the Con, the silly little fantasias Ria and I made up together. She’d kept them all. I just closed my flooding eyes and listened. The last two pieces were her beautifully polished version of the ‘Starlit Sonata’, followed by my original. She always loved an extended coda.

  ‘My most favourite sound,’ came Hugh’s voice when the last note had gone. I opened my eyes to find him standing in the doorway. ‘I like your version best. Ria’s is more lightweight, or something. Would that be right?’ He looked suddenly shy.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘When we were looking at violas for you, and talking to the luthier, I learnt that it’s the world’s most imperfect instrument. In its upper register it splutters; down low it grumbles. It needs strings half a foot longer for complete resonance but then it would be unplayable.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said again.

  ‘He said that he’s tried to perfect it, but some things are better left alone. He said that in its limitations and tempers and troubles, there are the most wonderful possibilities.’

  For a long moment we didn’t speak. His eyes were shaded with a desperate need to make things better. I’ve seen that exact shading before. Years ago, that terrible afternoon when we sat on the couch with our baby girl and waited for the nanny to come home. Right now, he stepped towards me with his arms heavy at his sides and said, ‘So I won’t try to jump in to improve our structures, but I want you to know that even when I’m not beside you, I’m not going anywhere without you. It’s been high adventure so far, and I want quite a lot more.’

  ‘And perhaps,’ I said, ‘I never should have tried to manufacture passion.’

  ‘Yes, because listen …’ He pressed rewind on the cassette player, hit play on the ‘Starlit Sonata’ and we listened again to the tender, sparkly recapitulation. ‘There it is,’ he said, taking my hands and putting them to his lips. ‘The real thing; it’s been here all along.’