My right hand had staged an uprising against the excessive demands I had made of it. Unlike Leon Fleisher, I wasn’t prepared to fight this. It took me twenty years to learn that focal dystonia is a kind of rebellion of the body, but the discovery made perfect sense. As a teenager I had agreed, deep down, with what my body was telling me, but had tried very hard to ignore it. It was the only powerful force in my life that I had refused immediately to obey.
Perhaps at this point other students would have tossed in the piano altogether, but the goal of obtaining my performance diploma remained. It was only a month or three away, I reasoned with myself, constitutionally unable to abandon a goal once set. And so I turned up to my weekly lessons with Mr McFarlane, kept practising at home—where the dystonia disappeared now that we had substituted a Brahms prelude for the Chopin—and dutifully passed my A. Mus. A. exam on 25 November 1989.
‘Memory work is commended. There was a sense of performance but do be careful not to allow the audience to be aware by your “grimaces” of everything you are not pleased with in your playing,’ noted one of the two examiners in her handwritten report.
Recently, my friend Kelsey and I discussed our musical adventures in high school. She is the only person from school I keep in touch with, but not only because we were expat Australians in the USA. As teenagers we’d spent a lot of time together rehearsing pieces for her to sing at school concerts with my accompaniment, from Schubert arias through to Lennon and McCartney.
‘I remember listening to you perform when you first arrived at Wenona,’ she recalled. ‘The headmistress asked you to play for the school, and it sounded amazing. I thought, Who on earth is that?’
It’s funny what you choose to remember. I had no recollection of the performance.
‘But I have to tell you,’ Kelsey said, ‘you never looked happy when you played.’
In This Real Night, Rose Aubrey despairs of a new piano teacher who insists she go back to the fundamentals of study. In her despair, Rose considers the tantalising prospect of abandoning the instrument altogether.
For as I sobbed I was only partly anguished. I also saw a vision of myself walking by the river near the Dog and Duck, as happy as the blessed dead, my mind flowing bright and unconfined and leisured as the Thames I looked on, because I had cast away the burden, so infinitely greater than myself who had to bear it, of my vocation. I would earn a living somehow.
Though I was never going to be a concert pianist, and though I’d never felt convinced beyond doubt that the piano was my vocation, I felt the liberation of having cast away the burden West describes. But it wasn’t until I discontinued lessons with Mr McFarlane and stopped practising my scales and arpeggios, my Mozart K280, my Bach ‘Prelude and Fugue in F minor’, my Brahms ‘Rhapsody’ and my Prokofiev ‘Gavotte’, that I felt how heavy and unreasonable my self-imposed burden of solo piano performance had been. After almost thirteen years, my highwire act riding the tension monocycle was over. Now, like Rose Aubrey, I’d have to think about ways to earn a living. I was studying for an Arts degree. I was still living at home. And, on the cusp of twenty, I was still a virgin.
27
AS THE BERRIMA PLOUGHED ITS WAY through the South Atlantic Ocean, Alice came to enjoy strolling the deck by herself after dinner with nothing but the depthless water below her and the stars above. On deck she avoided the couples who colonised the bow with their linked arms and their two abreast, preferring to stop halfway along the ship where its sooty exhalations were at their thinnest no matter which way the wind blew. She liked to inhale deeply and watch the wind whip the waves into stiff peaks; she found staring into the brilliantly lit nothingness unexpectedly soothing, the whoosh and slap of the water against the ship a reassuring sound of literal progress, even if she felt that she personally was making little.
According to that morning’s announcement during breakfast, they were but a few days from the port of Cape Town. How the crew knew that was beyond her, though every passenger was keenly aware that rounding the Cape of Good Hope represented the halfway mark of their voyage.
For years Alice had felt she was always being observed and judged, whether it was by her family, her music teachers, her neighbours or her choir. Even here, looking out on the middle of nowhere, she was surprised to feel surrounded, though it was by water. The crucial difference, Alice realised, was that while standing alone gazing outwards, observation flowed in one direction only. The stars weren’t watching her, nor was the sea waiting for her to fall in. The feeling of complete anonymity against the immense silence of sea and sky was intoxicating.
How long the tall fellow had been looking at her before she noticed him, Alice had no idea. He was very thin, with narrow shoulders and what was possibly a slight stoop, though it could easily have been an illusion produced by his leaning into the strong wind that gusted along the deck. The bones protruded from his face as if he were some hastily assembled piece of machinery. He wore a tweed flat cap in a herringbone pattern and regarded her patiently through wire-rimmed spectacles in the manner of someone who, although Alice hadn’t met him, seemed to know exactly who she was.
Instantly he reminded her of the man she’d not seen in years but who haunted her dreams—and of whom, despite her best efforts, she hadn’t quite been able to train herself to stop thinking.
Alice nodded at the thin man before turning back towards the ocean, reminding herself it was pointless and fanciful to entertain notions about a complete stranger. Look how far that had got her last time. With each wave the ship crested and sank, a pattern as common to music as to heartbreak. When Alice turned back the man was no longer there.
Once or twice since their encounter on the deck, Alice had nodded in acknowledgement at the hollow-cheeked man with the spectacles. She had noticed him during the dinner service, sitting with a few other seemingly unattached men at a table not far from her own, where she endured the talk with fellow travellers that grew smaller each meal. And she had seen him at the rear of the chapel when she was leaving after the service. His shyness radiated towards her, and Alice sensed that it would take only the smallest encouragement from her to see him walk awkwardly in her direction, all limbs and bony shoulders, to introduce himself. It amused her to think that just minutes earlier she had been singing in her clear soprano voice, and yet now she chose to remain silent. Choosing not to speak was a power of sorts, she supposed. She feared being bored immediately by the man with hope in his eyes. But perhaps her deeper fear was the return of hope in her own.
A few nights later Alice arrived at dinner to find him sitting next to her father, comparing the food heaped on their plates. She was impressed: her father’s powers of observation were greater than she had given him credit for. In his nervousness he stood up too fast, bumping the table so that the nearest drinks wobbled.
James Taylor introduced his daughter to Mr George Lloyd. ‘Mr Lloyd here’s returning from Cardiff, where he’s been visiting his mother.’
Alice was surprised to learn that he was a farmer’s labourer. He looked more the indoors type.
‘I was working out at Suntop farm, west of Yeoval district, saving up for my own lease,’ he said. ‘But there’s no place like home, is there?’
Alice wasn’t so sure. She was looking forward to the opportunity to miss it.
She felt sorry for the softly spoken man and wanted to put him at ease. He hunched over slightly when he talked, which made her suspect he was self-conscious about his height. His slender hands and elongated fingers looked better suited to a librarian or a pianist, though the tops of his hands appeared more wrinkled than she would have expected of someone his age. What was his age, anyway? About forty, maybe, though Nance had written that many locals looked older than their years due to the intensity of the Australian sun. Perhaps thirty-six. Who was she to be picky, at hers?
And did George enjoy the line of work he had chosen? After watching her father and brothers spend their working lives as human fodder for shipbuilders,
Alice couldn’t help but respect a man for wanting to be his own boss. And if he was still rake-thin after eating his mother’s meals for six months, George would never develop a belly like her father’s, sagging over his pants like excess baggage. George’s suit jacket hung off him as if it was pegged on a line.
Alice could tell George was dying to ask her what her plans were once they made it to Sydney. Any fantasy of staying aloof and mysterious evaporated with the ensuing line of conversation, in which her mother shared that her son-in-law would pick them up in Sydney and escort them on the train to Newcastle.
‘Why, that’s only three hours from Yeoval!’ George exclaimed, failing to temper his excitement.
Despite herself, Alice found his ineptitude charming. She liked how his eyes creased at their edges when he smiled. It gave her the sense that they’d had a lot of practice. Beyond the superficial resemblance, she thought, he really was nothing like John Henry Edwards. George could no more tell a lie or disguise his true intentions than he could hold back the tide. There was no deviation from the norm, no hidden nuances or secret agendas. George Lloyd was as straight as a cricket bat.
Alice emerged from her 10,000-mile odyssey with a suitcase, a shy suitor and a glimmer of hope. Though she was ten years younger than George, I suspect what she had learned about men and love had given her an edge on her future husband. Growing up, I never heard one rose-coloured narrative around the family Christmas dinner table of their shipboard meeting, or apocryphal stories of their courtship. Despite the romance that retrospect can too readily supply, my sense is that it wasn’t a primary motivator for either party.
For George, a lifetime bachelor with few prospects of finding a wife, the ship must have offered several opportunities to meet young women. But most of them would already have been attached to husbands, whether present or waiting for them in Sydney. So to meet Alice, unmarried and relatively old, must have struck George as an unexpected stroke of fortune. With poor eyesight and few assets of his own, he wasn’t exactly a prime candidate for a young woman’s affections; after all, for most women marriage was the biggest financial decision of their lives. But Alice was different: she wasn’t impressed by shows of wealth or displays of charm. She had once made the mistake of confusing them for genuine affection. What she was looking for was trustworthiness, reliability, steadfastness, sincerity—qualities that to an inexperienced girl in the flush of romance might appear dull, but shone steadily as moonlight to a woman whose life had changed forever because of their absence. After a long time spent travelling over a bottomless ocean, Alice’s feet once again touched solid ground.
George returned to his farm, and Alice secured a job cleaning a guesthouse not far from Nance’s home in the suburb of Merewether. The two corresponded for eight months before George formally proposed on his second visit to Newcastle. In 1922 Alice May Morrison Taylor disappeared for the second time. She became Mrs Alice Lloyd of Yeoval, New South Wales.
28
AFTER TWO YEARS OF PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP, David’s persistent charm and sense of humour had coaxed me from my metaphorical piano stool. Though I now called him my boyfriend, and was working three jobs so we could travel together after I finished my degree at the end of the year, our physical relationship was such a disappointment that I often regretted straying from the piano.
From a wobbly start to undergraduate study, I had worked out how to write for my professors. I completed a four-year honours degree in English Literature with a long essay on jazz poetry by Langston Hughes, Mina Loy and Philip Larkin. I was inspired by writers whose work in turn was inspired by musicians who sounded like nobody else. My fevered passion for jazz, which had only intensified after my abandonment of serious piano study, was channelled into my research. Theoretically speaking, the essay wasn’t sophisticated, but as an act of sublimation, it was total.
Having accidentally timed my graduation to coincide with the recession that the then Australian prime minister told us ‘we had to have’, I emerged with high marks and low prospects. My first-class Bachelor of Arts degree carried about the same vocational value as a coupon from a packet of cornflakes. But ever the ostrich, I decided not to worry about a job until I returned from my travels in the new year. What a luxury to be able to make that decision, I think now.
While we were overseas, David and I heard a lot of jazz: the Chick Corea Elektric Band in San Francisco, our first stop; unnamed musicians at Chumley’s speakeasy in New York, where my jaw dropped on first sight of the Manhattan I’d dreamed of for years, and pretty much stayed open every day we were there; and a trad jazz band at Le Caveau in Paris.
I was grateful for the hospitality of David’s extended family—we had places to stay in expensive cities, and meals we didn’t have to pay for—but I couldn’t shake the growing realisation that he and I weren’t a good match. My savings quickly dwindled, and I dreaded having to ask my parents for a temporary loan to get me home. David didn’t understand my concern; he was neither cautious with his travel money, nor concerned about how to access more. Unlike me, he hadn’t worked like mad around his classes to save up. Still studying Law and living at St Paul’s College, he worked no job. He’d simply asked his grandmother for the money, and she had given it to him.
By the time I was ready to come home, which was still ten long and expensive days before the date printed on my ticket, I’d decided our relationship was over. But in Rome, on the final leg of our journey, David shocked me by announcing he thought it was a good idea that we move in together. That night, whether prompted by a dodgy dinner or by his declaration, I went to the bathroom and was violently ill. Once again I was lying to myself and, by extension, to David. But I couldn’t afford to change my flight. I would end it when we got home.
During the trip, I sometimes phoned my parents to assure them that I was still alive. During one of those brief conversations, my mother informed me that I’d been offered a scholarship to undertake a graduate research degree at the University of Sydney: a meagre stipend that would pay for me to complete a Masters in English Literature, or an unimaginable PhD down the track. But there was a deadline for responding to the offer, which would close before I returned to Sydney. Without thinking too much—other than how handy it was to have that up my sleeve while I tried to get a real job—I asked my mother to accept the offer on my behalf. When I got back, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who had been omitting key information in the mistaken belief it was in the best interests of another person. My parents had chosen not to let me know that my brother, now eighteen, had been unexpectedly hospitalised for ten days while I was traipsing around Europe. ‘We didn’t want to spoil your trip,’ they explained. My love for my brother aside, I could have used an excuse to cut my trip short.
29
ALICE WOULD NEVER FORGET THE SIGHT of that poor piano arriving at Devon Farm, strapped to the top of a horse-drawn cart like a prisoner. The black upright was held in place with a complicated arrangement of canvas straps and ropes with knots and blankets to prevent the ropes from chafing it. From her kitchen window she watched the instrument sway and dip as the horses brought it nearer. What had it done to end up here in the middle of nowhere, she wondered as it lurched towards her. Of all the things they needed in this faithless dustbowl, and George organises for her to have a piano.
The heaving cart came to a stop not far from the back door, and the piano tilted forward at a slight angle, as if straining to be free of its shackles. She cringed at the thought of how out of tune it would be, while George hurried over to the driver, letting the flyscreen slam behind him. ‘Sorry!’ he yelled over his shoulder at his wife. She shut her eyes tightly to mitigate the sound. She had tried in vain to discourage George’s habit, especially in the six months since Charlotte was born.
On cue, the baby started wailing in her cot. Alice knew she had only a minute or two before the cries reached their crescendo, when she’d have no choice but to pick up Charlotte and try to placate her. Two minutes was tim
e enough to start a batch of scones, Alice decided. The men would be expecting tea when they were done moving the piano.
The sifted flour made dunes in the mixing bowl as Alice observed her husband through the window, trying to decipher his easy way with strangers. The firm handshake, the instant smile, the nodding, the skywards glance followed by what she assumed, based on experience, to be banal observations of the day’s weather—put together like a sequence of dance steps, George’s actions provided comfort of a kind she neither sought nor offered. Charlotte’s wails were insistent. Alice wiped her hands on her apron. The men would have to wait.
By the time she returned with the baby on her hip, George and the driver had untied the piano and coaxed it down a ramp covered in a faded rug. It would still be half an hour before they had cajoled it inside the house. Alice placed Charlotte in her bassinet on the kitchen floor while she finished making the scones and popped them in the oven. Unless she was wet or hungry, the baby girl cried little and seemed content to keep herself company. Alice found the latter both a point of pride and an enormous relief.
Charlotte’s fascination with every detail of her new life bewildered Alice. The baby stared contentedly at the ceiling cornices, the windowsills, the tap in the kitchen sink, and at the afternoon shadow cast by the wardrobe in Alice’s bedroom. When Alice looked around her, all she saw was dust. The dust was everywhere—in the sheets, the cutlery drawer, in her eyes, on her tongue and inside her nose. She fought it despite the feeling that the dancing motes mocked her efforts.
George and the driver groaned with the effort of lifting and sliding the piano using a combination of rugs and blankets. George caught Alice’s eye as he squatted for a moment in the kitchen doorway to catch his breath. He looked from her to the baby, smiling. ‘I thought the sitting room…?’ he said. She supposed he was looking for a gesture of gratitude or pleasure. She nodded. What could she say? All her life she had dreamed of having her own piano. Now here it stood, a jet-black colt restrained by two handlers, and it was as out of place and trapped as she was.
Girls at the Piano Page 18