by Eva Meijer
* * *
I wake up at half past four for the fourth morning in succession. I listen to the city, almost silent at this hour. Every morning voices swell up, die down after a few hours, then grow louder as the afternoon progresses, only to die down further as the evening comes to a close, whispering the night in. The wind moves the windows and the curtains, branches, leaves. Houses keep the wind outside, let laughter in. Footsteps make the street speak. Horses’ hooves mark time. Motor engines lay low bass notes under the sound of wheels on stone. I make sounds too. At night I can hear myself: breath, heart, thoughts. I miss the sea, the fields of my childhood, the silence that the Blackbirds let you hear. The past: that which means you’re here now. No: the past is a hill in the distance which can never come closer, but which can also never really recede. Now is a face in the crowds that suddenly gains expression, that looks back at you, passes you by.
Olive has written to say that Kingsley has perhaps started a new life in France, that he’s met a girl there. That seems like a tall story to me—he hasn’t any reason not to get in touch with us, and although letters might take a long time to reach home they are arriving again. The army hasn’t yet responded to our enquiries. I last saw him a week before he left for France, in the pub. Thea was there too. They’d just heard they were sending them to the Front, but Kingsley was no different than usual. Serene. Margie was in France too. He was going to get in touch with her, if he had the chance. There was drinking and lively tales—about the girls there, and the drink, and battles that failed to come. They sang popular songs, which everyone could sing along to, except me, which made Kingsley and his pals laugh out loud, seeing that I was the musician. After that evening there were just two letters home, to my parents.
My eyes are smarting. I’d better go for a walk. I quietly get dressed, open the door, pad across the velvety carpet down the stairs—my feet know the stair treads, know how big a step they must take.
I walk towards the Thames through the darkness. In the shopping street I see a tramp and two streets further on a group of washerwomen. No one else is around at all. In the distance I can hear a Blackbird. He calls differently to the Blackbirds at home. Three gliding notes, a trill at the end. I hum the tune back. Next time I must bring a pencil and paper with me. A second Blackbird sings the answer. I scan the trees. The first one repeats its song. I can hear where the sound is coming from, but I can’t see the birds. They fall silent, I walk on. Tomorrow I’ll come again, and then I’ll bring a notebook with me.
* * *
“Brahms’s First Symphony.” Stockdale is giving out the parts. “Gwen, in the second movement you’ll play principal violin.”
Billie smiles at me, shifts to one side. She gives my leg a little pat as I sit down.
I blush. I’ve played solo previously, in a Mozart piece, but then two days before the premiere Stockdale gave my part to Davey, because I wasn’t yet ready for it.
“It’ll be fine,” Billie whispers.
We have to start the piece three times over because the tempo isn’t correct. I can feel my heartbeat quicken as we get close to the solo, and play softer than usual, too soft, see Billie glance at me, wrestle my way through the notes—what I’m playing is right, but it simply has no meaning. We play the piece again, and again, and then Stockdale sends us home. “I take it that everyone understands what the homework is? Gwen, will you stay behind for a moment?”
I pack away my violin, daren’t look at him directly.
“Sit down.” With a flamboyant gesture he points to the chair beside him.
“It was awful, wasn’t it?”
He waves the words away. “It’ll be all right. As long as you practise. Do you think you’ll manage that?”
“I have practised.”
“I realise that, but I mean that you’ll have to work harder, really hard. And I think that’s the best thing for you. But we don’t have to do this. I can easily give the solo to Billie.”
I shake my head. “I can do it.”
“Good.” He gives me a pat. “I think your parents will want to be at the premiere.”
That night there are coloured rings around the full moon. A glory, Kingsley once told me.
* * *
Two weeks later I go to Wales for a long weekend. Olive wrote that Mother doesn’t want to leave her bed and Father’s doing nothing at all about it. My shoes feel like lead that morning and my feet too. It’s not the right time to return.
“The Lost Sheep!” My father is waiting at the station in his best suit. The lines by his mouth are deeper when he smiles at me; there are thick grey hairs in his bushy eyebrows. He kisses my cheek and picks up my heavy suitcase. On the way home I tell him about the orchestra, about my solo, about the Magpie I found last spring, which I kept in a box for a few weeks, before setting it free again. When I ask him about his poems he says they’re still worthless, that he can’t quite put his finger on what’s wrong. We walk over a carpet of leaves, mud in the centre, borders shifted by the wind. When we reach the houses, we stop talking.
The house is smaller than I remember; paint is peeling off the window frames. There’s a wreath on the front door, evergreen branches braided with red ribbons. Cook opens the door and embraces me. “My dear. I’m so pleased to see you.” She pushes me away from her to take a good look at me, and then draws me close again. “You’re a proper young lady now. And how is your fiddle playing?”
“Sis.” Olive is coming down the stairs. “Good to see you home at last.” She’s wearing a long grey dress. There’s a faint blueness round her eyes, but I can’t tell if she’s wearing eye shadow or if it’s the colour of her skin. She kisses my left cheek. No perfume, just the smell of old paper.
My father hands Cook my suitcase. “Dudley has his study in your old bedroom. Cook has made up the guest room for you.”
“Tea is in an hour’s time,” Olive says. “Perhaps you could ask Mother if she’ll join us.”
I follow Cook upstairs, hesitating on the last few steps. The door to my mother’s room is ajar. Cook keeps walking, and on the second flight calls out again that she’s so pleased I’m home. “Me too,” I say. I knock, and then open the door.
The room is in semi-darkness. I walk to the window, push the curtains aside a little and then open the top window—fresh air will do her good. My mother is sitting straight up in bed, with pillows behind her back. She’s wearing a dressing gown over her nightdress. “Gwennie. Come here and give your mother a kiss.”
I sit on the edge of her bed and allow myself to be embraced—perfume, cigarettes, the smell of sleep. On her night table there’s a cup of tea, half a sandwich, an ashtray. Beside the plate there’s a pile of letters.
“It’s so awful, Gwen. When I got your letter, I knew immediately that there was something wrong. I had heart trouble already, you know, I wrote to you about that, and now the problem has started all over again.” She holds her breast. “Here.” She speaks about Dudley, says that Kingsley is really the second son she’s lost.
My leg has gone to sleep. I change position. “Will you come down for tea?”
She smiles. “Can you close the window, darling? I can’t bear the draught.”
“Mother, I asked you a question.”
She stares at me, then with her left hand sketches a horizon in the air. “You mustn’t think you can simply come here and boss me around.”
“I was just asking you something.”
“Oh, just asking me something.”
I stand up, close the window, move to the door. “Till later, then.”
On the first floor, I enter my old room. The bookshelves are empty. My bird books are nowhere to be seen.
We wait a quarter of an hour. “Let’s start,” my father says. He helps himself to a sandwich, and takes a bite, swallowing it without chewing.
“I’ll go upstairs, then.” Olive fiercely pushes her chair back.
Dudley takes a scone from the serving plate.
“Do you
play music still?” I ask him. He used to play the cello.
“No.” He shoves the scone into his mouth.
“What a shame.”
Olive returns, shakes her head. My father leaves, making his way to his bedroom. When he’s out of earshot, Olive leans towards me. “There are stories going round that they’re not dead, but were sent to a camp. That they’ll be back soon. But don’t tell Mother and Father. I don’t want to give them false hopes.”
“How do you know?”
“Margie wrote to me. One of her friends was a soldier there.”
“Kingsley would write to us if he got the chance, surely?”
“Perhaps he’s wounded.” Olive swallows. The corner of her mouth curls up for a moment. “Or he’s confused.”
“Perhaps he just doesn’t want to come back.” Dudley puts his fork down. “That’s something I can picture. That he prefers it like it is. Nice and peaceful.”
We both stare at him.
“I’d jolly well like that too.” He takes a large gulp of milk; drops slide down his chin, fall onto his collar. “Nice bit of sunshine, jolly little drink, nice bit of cheese.”
“I don’t think he’s had much time for jolly little drinks and nice bits of cheese,” I say.
Dudley wipes the milk from his chin with his cuff, then shrugs his shoulders. “I can well imagine it. After all, he won’t get any money now.”
Olive looks startled.
“What do you mean?” I frown at him.
“Haven’t they told you yet?” Dudley laughs. “Those who leave home won’t get a thing.”
I wipe my mouth on my napkin and go upstairs. I knock three times.
“Yes?” My father doesn’t turn.
“Will you come bird-watching? We can walk to the woods or the beach. Just a short stroll.”
“Sorry. I want to finish this.” He takes off his spectacles and polishes the lenses with a handkerchief.
“Does Charles still come by sometimes?”
“Charles?” He puts on his glasses and turns towards me.
“Oh, come on, Papa. The Crow!”
“Oh yes, of course. I haven’t seen him for some time now. I did spot him last year, I believe. He came less and less, though, once you were gone.” He coughs. “Was there anything else?”
I walk to the woods along the path behind the house, then through the fields to the beach. Charles is nowhere to be seen. He should be alive still—he wasn’t all that old. Perhaps he’s just gone away. Perhaps he’s angry with me and that’s why he won’t show himself. He could be anywhere. There’s no point in carrying on searching. On the beach a fine rain draws grey stripes in the air—grey sand, grey sea, grey sky. My lips are salty. I hum out notes to hear my voice—they blow away.
Mother doesn’t come downstairs at all during the weekend.
“Goodbye, Mama.” I lean down, kiss her cheek.
“So you’re going away from us again.” She turns away from me.
“The train leaves in two hours. I still have to pack. Olive is coming to the station with me.”
“You’ve done your duty. Visiting your old mother.”
“I wanted to see you all.”
“You haven’t come home for four years.”
“And none of you have come to London either.” I take a deep breath and try to make my voice sound friendlier. “In a couple of weeks we’ll hold the premiere of our new piece, and I have a solo. Would you all like to come? There’s a good hotel near the concert hall. Stockdale would appreciate it too.”
She looks at me a moment, then smiles. “Would you close the door properly when you leave? There’s such a terrible draught in here.”
Olive writes, some months later, to let me know that she’s heard from Kingsley. He said in his letter that he was sorry he hadn’t written earlier, that he’d met a young woman, that he has a son now, called Jacques after her father, that he works in a butcher’s shop with his father-in-law, somewhere in the north of France, that he’ll stay there for the foreseeable future, that he’ll write again soon, that he hopes to see us before long, that he has to save up for a visit, that he hopes all is well, that it’s beautiful where he lives, long fields with sunflowers and hills and a sun that’s warmer and yellower than here.
STAR 6
My friend Garth Christian, a naturalist who also writes about bird behaviour, sent me an article about an experiment on Jackdaws, which showed that they could learn to count. “Can your birds do this too?” he had written above it. That set me thinking. Star did not roost inside the house, yet at six o’clock every morning she was the first to arrive for a nut. The next morning, when she was at the windowsill again, I decided to try it out.
“No,” I said to her. “First, you have to tap.” I looked into her eyes and said very clearly: “Tap. Tap.” I tapped my knuckles on the wood. Star tapped her beak twice against the window frame. Then she flew to my hand for her nut. I knew that Star was intelligent, but I had not expected this—she knew exactly what I wanted! It made me think of Twist, another very unusual Great Tit, who would give me a kiss if I asked her. The next day I again asked Star to tap, and once more she did what I requested. We repeated the experiment another four times that day, and each time she tapped back.
The next day there was a problem. Star flew into the house, tapped on the wood three times, and flew to my hand for her nut. I did not give her it because I wanted her to imitate my tapping—after all, I was teaching her to count. So then she flew off, quite off ended. By her standards she stayed away for rather a long time afterwards, four hours at least, and on returning she again tapped three times on the window frame. So then I gave her the nut she wanted, because she clearly thought she had done something well and I did not wish to off end her anew. The next time, fortunately, she waited for my instructions.
The following step was to teach her how to tap out the correct numbers. If I tapped twice, she had to tap twice in response, and only then would she receive her nut. She swiftly understood. Tapping two was successful, three too, but when I gave four taps she looked doubtfully at me, as if she could not hear them well. I was tapping with my knuckles on wood. Perhaps that sound was too dark and muffled. I then tried with a pencil and that worked very well. We practised in that manner during the following weeks: four, five, six and then seven taps. She tapped the larger numbers in groups of two, three and four. Eight, for example, was tapped as two groups of four, very occasionally as three-three-two. Star usually cooperated extremely well, and often wanted to tap of her own accord, although there were also some mornings when she could not be persuaded. If she felt like tapping, then she would perch on the edge of the window, her head pointing at her feet; if she did not wish to do it, she held her beak in the air. She obviously found it fun, but only in the right circumstances, and I did not always understand what those were.
In February the lessons were interrupted because the territorial war had broken out again. Baldhead was too weak to do battle and Star took on both Smoke and Inkey. Females rarely fight with males. I had never witnessed it before and never saw it again. During this period, if I tapped for Star, she simply gave me a sidelong glance, and if I did not offer her a nut, she would hammer on the wood until I gave in. A few times, when there was a lull in the squabbles, we had a couple of tapping sessions, but Star had her mind on other matters.
1921
We’re sitting in a semicircle with the first violins, twenty-eight legs in dark trousers and stockings. “More expression,” Stockdale snaps at Joan, who nervously lowers her eyes. “And a strict one, two, three. Stress on the one.” We’ve started the piece thirteen times already and each time something is wrong. But the problem lies with Stockdale himself, who keeps changing the tempo—this time it’s faster—as if his mind isn’t quite on the task. “All together,” Stockdale says. We start on the upbeat. I close my eyes and let myself be carried along by the cellist beside me. He’s always just a little too quick, a fraction, so if I play a little slow
er, then it’s right. “No, no, stop.” Stockdale shakes his head. “That’s enough. We’ll resume tomorrow. Joan, I really expect more feeling, more energy. I don’t want it louder but fuller. If you continue like this, I think we won’t be able to carry on together.”
Joan has tears in her eyes. She rubs at her gaunt cheeks, making them more hollow.
“Don’t take any notice of him,” I say when Stockdale has gone. “His uncertainty is affecting your performance.” Not just her performance, but her whole self, as if she were his echo. I put my violin in its case. It’s not performing that irritates me, never, it’s the people.