The Ghost Sonata

by Allison, Jennifer

  Suddenly, Gilda’s mind was a thousand miles away from the mundane subject of page-turning. If she had been a cat, she would have puffed herself up to three times her normal size and hissed, because she had just spied something that made her feel like clawing someone.

  On a velvet bench in the reception area, Jenny Pickles and Julian sat next to each other. The two appeared to be deeply absorbed in conversation: Julian turned his body completely toward Jenny and gestured with broad enthusiasm. Jenny simply sat with her legs crossed, swinging a foot adorned with a delicately pointy shoe.

  He’s telling her a story, Gilda thought. She felt something very unpleasant—a hot, liquid drop of jealousy that burned the lining of her stomach. She noticed with annoyance that Jenny looked cute. There was no denying it: her vibrant red hair looked fantastic after using hot rollers. What in the world were the two of them talking about?

  “Looks like that Jenny Pickles chick is trying to steal your boyfriend,” Wendy observed.

  “There’s no law against people talking to each other, Wendy.” Gilda did her best to squelch the cauldron of envy that fumed and bubbled inside her.

  “Gilda, you’re totally jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “I don’t blame you. How does she get her hair to look like that?”

  “Hot rollers.”

  “I knew there was something about that girl I didn’t like.”

  “They’re just talking, okay?”

  “Looks like flirting to me.”

  “It’s not like Julian is officially my boyfriend, Wendy. We just had lunch one time.”

  “You said you were in love.”

  “Are you trying to help me or hurt me right now?”

  “I’m just saying, it looks like something’s going on over there. So why don’t you just stroll over and break things up?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you could join in the conversation?”

  “Maybe I’ll do just that.”

  “Go fight for your man! I really want to see what happens when you walk over there.”

  “I bet you do.”

  But Gilda discovered that she couldn’t move. There was no denying the fact that Jenny and Julian looked interested in each other. A warm circle seemed to envelop them—a force field that made the idea of interrupting them with small talk akin to throwing cold water on sunbathers napping by a swimming pool. Gilda watched as Jenny and Julian laughed uproariously at something.

  I bet he’s telling her that dumb story about Waldgrave and his cat, Gilda thought.

  “I suggest you go break up the lovefest over there,” said Wendy.

  “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking of something to say.”

  “How about, ‘Hey! How’s it going?’”

  “Too mundane.”

  “While you think of something brilliant to say, I’m going to find a practice room.”

  “Okay.” Gilda sighed. “See you onstage.”

  Gilda edged her way toward Julian and Jenny and found a spot where she could stand partly concealed by a plant. She watched Jenny take delicate sips from a water bottle as Julian talked. She watched with horror as Jenny offered Julian a sip of water and he accepted. The two of them were swapping spit!

  Gilda scanned the room to see if she could flirt with someone else in an attempt to make Julian jealous, but the only people in sight were Professor Heslop and a plump, bearded man who handed out brochures at the entrance to the performance hall.

  A heavyset woman with leathery, freckled skin and red hair sidled up to Gilda to watch the flirting couple. With a wave of annoyance, Gilda knew right away that this had to be Jenny’s mother.

  “Leave it to my girl to find a beau in any country!” Ms. Pickles drawled. “That Jenny picks up boys like a dog picks up fleas.”

  “Maybe you should take her to the vet,” Gilda blurted.

  “Pardon?” Jenny’s mother regarded Gilda through narrowed eyes.

  “Oh—I meant the boy she’s chatting with looks like he might have fleas.” Gilda hoped Ms. Pickles was the type who would prefer to see her daughter receive the attentions of one of the damp-haired, bespectacled boys in the competition.

  “Julian is a little different, I guess. But my lord, how he plays the pianah! I don’t know when I’ve heard someone so talented—except my Jenny, of course.” Ms. Pickles squinted fiercely at Julian, as if she might be able to actually see the substance of his talent if she focused intensely enough. “His piano teacher thinks that if he just buckled down a little, he could actually win this whole competition.”

  “He’s very talented,” said Gilda, wanting to squelch Ms. Pickles’s enthusiasm. “But you should hear him talk.”

  “Don’t you love hearing that English accent?”

  “I mean, he’s got a real potty mouth. I bet the two of them are cursing up a storm over there as we speak.” Gilda glanced at Julian, who still appeared to be telling an anecdote that required exuberant gestures.

  “Now that can’t be true! Last night he was such a gentleman. Oh, how he kept us laughing!”

  Gilda felt as if she had been socked in the stomach. Last night?!

  “Jenny and I went to the Eagle and Child Pub to get a bite to eat and soak up the atmosphere after she finished her practice session. We were just sitting there chewing the fat when, who do we see but Julian and his piano teacher, Mr. Goodwin, who is such a lovely man, bless his heart. And Julian recognized Jenny right away from the competition, so the next thing we knew, we were all sitting together, and Julian is telling us stories about the quaint little town he’s from called Creeping—such an interesting name. . . .”

  “Crawling,” said Gilda grimly.

  “Oh, yes. Crawling. And he told us such impressive stories about his father’s chain of hotels all across the country—”

  “He said his father owns hotels?”

  “Oh my goodness, yes. And Julian, bless his heart, he entertains the family’s guests—sometimes even royalty—by giving recitals. He said he keeps everyone up all night singing.”

  Gilda felt outraged and confused. Hadn’t Julian said that his father installed toilets for a living? Which of these stories was made-up—and why?

  “He told me his father installs toilets.” Gilda decided, a bit cattily, that Jenny’s mother might as well know this fact.

  “Oh no, sugar. People like him pay others to do that. Anyway, he offered to show Jenny around the city today after the competition. He knows about the interesting places the American tourists always miss.”

  Gilda felt her face growing hot. “Ms. Pickles,” she said, doing her best to emphasize the ridiculousness of the word Pickles.

  “Please call me Martha.”

  “Martha Pickles, I think you should know that Julian has a rather unsavory reputation. You might think twice about letting your daughter go wandering around town with him.” Gilda realized she knew nothing whatsoever about Julian’s reputation, but at the moment, she felt too jealous to care.

  “I think English boys are such gentlemen compared with American boys,” Ms. Pickles insisted. “They speak so politely, and Julian comes from such an accomplished family. I would love for Jenny to marry into a really upscale English family like that someday.”

  Gilda stifled an urge to gag openly at Ms. Pickles’s reference to marriage. By now, she felt nearly as irritated with herself as she felt toward Julian and Jenny. More than anything, she hated the fact that she cared that Julian was talking to Jenny. She felt as if she had left some part of herself across the room where they were sitting, and that she would do almost anything to get it back.

  Ms. Pickles frowned as Julian leaned toward Jenny to examine a pendant that hung around the neck of her daughter’s rather low-cut dress. “I suppose I could tag along to chaperone their little date. . . .” Ms. Pickles mused. “But Jenny won’t like it.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  “Geelda! What are you doing?” Gilda was startl
ed to turn around and find Mrs. Mendelovich’s kohl-rimmed, flashing eyes gazing into her own. “You are supposed to be on stage!” Mrs. Mendelovich grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the performance hall with surprising strength.

  Gilda had no choice but to meekly follow Wendy’s teacher into the performance hall.

  26

  The Page-Turner

  Alone on the stage floor of the Holywell Music Room, Gilda felt slightly ridiculous sitting next to the grand piano in her “tainted royalty” outfit. She was aware of the many eyes gazing down upon her from the upper rows of the performance hall.

  I am an experienced page-turner, Gilda told herself, hoping that asserting this untruth might somehow make it a true fact. I’ve done this a million times, and I’m the best in the business.

  Professors Maddox and Waldgrave were greeted with a smattering of applause as they entered the performance hall. Carrying his cat under his arm, Professor Waldgrave strode across the room wearing a shapeless, oversize sweater that hung well past his hips—a sweater that resembled a bizarre minidress or a shortened version of a monk’s hooded cloak. His face looked weary. Professor Maddox also looked tired: her eyes were noticeably puffy despite evidence of an attempt to brighten her dark undereye circles with concealer and blue eyeliner.

  Maybe the two of them got into a big lover’s quarrel last night, Gilda mused. She gave them a little hello wave just to be friendly. Professor Maddox waved back politely, but Professor Waldgrave looked momentarily alarmed, as if Gilda had suddenly given him the finger.

  “Good morning!” Professor Heslop strode into the room, projecting her voice into the upper rows. “I want to welcome everyone to the sight-reading portion of the Young International Virtuosos Competition. In a moment, I will unseal the sight-reading music for the first performer. None of the competitors has seen this music before. How do I know this? Because this rather difficult piece was only very recently composed by a graduate composition student here at Oxford University.”

  Professor Heslop ripped open the envelope to reveal the sight-reading music. She placed it on the piano’s music stand. Gilda gasped: the pages of the dense score were literally black with tiny notes.

  “Announcing sight-reading performer number one,” said Professor Heslop.

  A tall, thin boy whose long, frizzy hair seemed to float around his head walked onstage, eyed Gilda suspiciously, and sat down at the piano bench. He looked at the music and swore under his breath in German. Sighing, he took a very long time adjusting the piano seat.

  “Anytime now, performer number one!” shouted Professor Waldgrave.

  Performer number one abruptly launched into the music, and Gilda struggled to follow him in the score. It was hard enough to make sense of the dissonant, contemporary music, and the task was made even more difficult because the boy’s hair blocked much of Gilda’s view. As he played he muttered to himself.

  Gilda felt a knot of dread forming. What was this boy going to do if she turned his page at the wrong spot? It must be nearly time to turn the page, Gilda thought, realizing that she had absolutely no clue where performer number one was in the music. She stood up and moved closer, hoping that he would give her some sign when it was time to turn.

  Just then, a rotund man sitting in the front row broke into a coughing fit and a woman in a back row joined in with a series of loud sneezes.

  To Gilda’s surprise, the boy abruptly stopped playing and gazed out into the audience. “Why don’t we all have a big, hacking cough right now and get it out of our system, shall we?” He spoke with a German accent.

  Gilda slapped her hand over her mouth to suppress a fit of giggles and a group of college students laughed heartily at this outburst.

  Professor Waldgrave looked furious. “That’s enough from you, performer number one.”

  “But Professor,” the boy protested, “the audience was being inconsiderate.”

  “A professional would keep playing even if every person in the audience leaned over and vomited simultaneously.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m completely serious, despite the fact that I share your sensitivity to sound. Do you have perfect pitch?”

  “No.”

  “Here we go,” muttered Professor Maddox, who sat with her chin resting in her palm. “The old ‘victim of perfect pitch’ stor y.”

  “I have perfect pitch,” Professor Waldgrave continued, ignoring Professor Maddox, “and when I was a boy, my parents owned a record player that played every piece of music in a slightly warped way—so that it sounded as if it was written in a lower key. After listening to that absolutely diseased record player for years, many of the major piano works sounded so wrong to me that I couldn’t bear to hear them.”

  “That’s horrible,” said the German boy.

  “That wasn’t the worst of it. I also was so sensitive to every extraneous sound that I could hardly perform. Once—during a recital—the ticking of a clock began to drive me mad—a loud, persistent tick-tock, tick-tock that seemed to grow louder and louder, until I couldn’t bear it any longer. I stood up from the piano, walked through the audience, climbed up on a chair, and dismantled the clock while everyone watched.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did. People thought I was mad; I was the only one in the room who had even noticed the clock.”

  “You were very sensitive,” said the German boy.

  “I was very insensitive. Because if I could hear a clock, I wasn’t listening to the music, was I? And that’s your problem, performer number one. You need to become a better listener. You need to become someone who actually listens to himself play.”

  Performer number one glumly tucked his hair behind his ears in response.

  “And cut down on the German swearing while you’re at it.”

  “Shall we continue with the piano competition, then?” said Professor Maddox. “These lengthy reminiscences are causing us to fall behind schedule.”

  “Next performer please!”

  Gilda breathed a sigh of relief. The first performer had exited the stage and she hadn’t had to turn a single page. With any luck, the next few competitors would also lose their tempers and get disqualified. Gilda’s feeling of hope was immediately dashed, however, because Jenny Pickles had just walked onstage.

  Gilda offered Jenny a sullen, tight-lipped greeting, avoiding her eyes. She imagined herself whispering “Stay away from Julian” in Jenny’s ear as she played. But as Jenny performed, Gilda found it difficult to maintain the intensity of her resentment. For one thing, Jenny helpfully whispered “Now!” every time she needed her page turned, and she never grimaced or muttered “Too late!” under her breath as Wendy often did during practice sessions. Because of this, Gilda managed to turn pages without embarrassing herself—a goal that suddenly seemed more desirable than sabotaging Jenny’s performance.

  Jenny was followed by musicians including a girl who kept asking if she could start over (she wasn’t allowed to), a boy who hummed to himself as his fingers moved across the keyboard, a girl who shed tears as she exited the stage, and a boy who meticulously wiped the keyboard with a rag, as if afraid of catching some disease from the sweaty fingers of other musicians. Everyone missed notes, but Gilda was beginning to recognize the patterns of this bizarre composition—the glissando that signaled the first page turn, the series of octaves that meant it was time to turn the last page. Now she knew how to stand up at the right moment, place her gloved hand over the top of the page, and wait for the pianist to give her a subtle signal—usually a little nod of the head.

  As Professor Heslop announced performer number eight, Ming Fong walked toward the piano wearing her lacy dress and the bright red flower in her hair. She regarded Gilda coolly, but Gilda noticed a twinge of alarm in her eyes. “No page-turning, please,” she said in a low voice.

  An hour ago, Gilda would have been thrilled to hear this, but now she felt more confident in her skills. “I’m supposed to turn your
pages,” Gilda whispered. She flashed Ming Fong what she hoped was a menacing smile. “It’s my job.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Listen, Ming Fong. I’m the official page-turner for the competition, and your pages are bloody well going to be turned!”

  “Is there a problem up there?” Professor Waldgrave eyed the two of them with impatience.

  “She doesn’t want me to turn her pages.”

  “Then don’t turn them.”

  Ming Fong turned her attention primly to her music, and Gilda leaned back in her chair. She couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed when Ming Fong delivered what sounded like the most close-to-perfect performance she had heard yet. I hope Wendy can’t hear her playing from backstage, Gilda thought. Once again, she tried to send Wendy a psychic message: Forget everything around you and just remember: you’re good at this.

  Wendy walked onstage looking pale. She walked slowly, dragging her feet with a shuffling gait, as if she didn’t want to arrive at her destination too quickly.

  I need to talk to Wendy about her walk, Gilda thought. She doesn’t look confident.

  “You can do it,” Gilda whispered as Wendy took a seat at the piano and adjusted the bench. “Everybody else has screwed this up completely.”

  Wendy’s eyebrows flew up when she saw the score, but a moment later, she managed to play through the entire piece from beginning to end with surprising ease.

  Wendy is a great sight-reader, Gilda thought. In fact, she might be even better than Ming Fong. Again, Gilda noticed that both judges regarded Wendy with interest, as if they wanted to remember her. By now Professor Waldgrave’s cat had curled up contentedly for a nap. I hope it’s purring, Gilda thought.

  “You totally nailed it!” Gilda whispered as Wendy reached the end of the piece. She flashed Professor Waldgrave a brilliant smile and did her best to send him a psychic message: Give Wendy a high score!

  “Here comes your boyfriend,” Wendy replied in a low voice as she stood up to take a bow.

  Waiting with Professor Heslop at the backstage door, Julian’s face brightened with surprise when he glimpsed Gilda sitting in the page-turner’s chair next to the piano. But was there also something nervous and evasive about his smile? Gilda felt irritated that her stomach still felt fluttery when he looked at her. You’re mad at him, Gilda reminded herself.