As the music from the club washed over her, Adeena felt herself come alive again. Black thoughts vanished. Maybe there was hope after all. She could almost hear her grandmother urging her to perform again, her face creased in solemnity.
She smiled and let out a wild whoop. Then closing her eyes added softly, “Thank-you.”
Adeena had to share the news. The loud pounding music was exactly what she needed, and it sucked her back into the club. When she got up to the second level and the empty table, she was puzzled at first.
Then she saw them on the dance floor as a robotic remix of Flaming Lips vocals began. Tara was jumping to the music and Philippe was close to her, perfectly in sync. They seemed completely lost in the moment.
Adeena wanted to join them.
She took a drink of her martini, watching Tara laugh at Philippe who was displaying moves that Adeena had never seen before. He was after all a slightly crazy downhill skier who liked to push himself to the extreme. Now, he was doing his best to defy the laws of gravity.
Adeena snaked her way through the pulsating dance floor. She started to move to the beat as she got closer to Tara and Philippe who finally noticed her and waved her over.
Adeena raised her arms again as she reached them shaking her head to the music as the bright lights danced over her coppery ringlets. Philippe put his arm around her waist and pulled Tara closer. They were all laughing as they started to dance arm-in-arm.
“What happened?” Philippe shouted over the music.
“I’ve got another chance!”
THE SETTING SUN threw long shadows across the porch of Margaret Rose’s cottage by the sea. William stared out the window and knew how black it would be soon, with so few outdoor lights. An old pick-up truck rambled slowly down the sheep path that served as the only link to the outside world.
William looked over at his wife Jackie and Fay, the nurse at the small kitchen table. Jackie was about to pour tea for both of them.
“I think Murdo’s back,” he said quietly, walking toward the front door. The women looked up and smiled.
“Aye. He’s good lad, that one,” Fay said, stirring a little milk into her tea. Jackie nodded in agreement. William opened the front door and Murdo stood before him holding two very full grocery bags.
“Thought maybe ye could use somethin’ fresh,” he said, handing one of the bags to William. The women looked over, their smiles brightening the room.
“Come in,” Jackie said, standing up.
“Thanks. I was in Montrose at the supermarket and wasn’t sure whit ye had,” Murdo said, placing the other bag of groceries on the kitchen counter.
William looked inside the bag Murdo had handed to him. He could see eggs, bacon, cheese and a carton of milk.
“Ye like raspberries?” Murdo asked. “Just picked them myself from the garden. I put some of those in for ye as well.”
Jackie pulled out a basket overflowing with plump raspberries. “Murdo! Thank you so much. Would you like to sit down? We just made tea.”
“No ma’am. Chores bin waitin’ patiently for me all day,” he replied, grinning. He looked at William and his smile faded. “How’s she doin’?”
William’s face felt heavy as he struggled to respond. After almost three days of watching his mother fade away, he knew the end was close. The cancer was winning.
“Not good,” he said. “But she doesn’t give up easy. A fighter ‘til the very end.” William’s eyes were moist. He was too tired to feel much anymore, but talking like this reminded him that his mother was nearly gone.
Murdo put a hand on his shoulder. “Maggie’s a good woman. Ye be proud of your mother and let me know if there is anything I can do,” he said. “I’m going home to pray for her.”
“Thanks. She told me how you took care of her when she was sick last time, and you took her to the clinic in Dundee. Thank-you Murdo. We appreciate it. Very much.” William was having a hard time now keeping his eyes from filling with tears.
There was complete silence in the little cottage as the evening light faded. A feeble voice finally broke the stillness.
“William? Ye still here?”
MARGARET ROSE LAY in her bed, feeling the darkness closing in. She knew her body was weak and her time was near. She felt a strange calm, but there was one last thing to do.
“William?” she said, looking up and seeing her son. She felt his hands holding both of hers.
“I’m here Mum,” he whispered. “I love you.”
Margaret Rose felt his devotion flowing through her. She had not been a very good mother, but she had never stopped loving him. Sending William to Canada broke her heart, but it gave him the chance to have a real life. And now he would be able to fix everything.
“Faith was right,” she said slowly, taking a deep breath.
“Your grandmother?”
“Aye, I didn’t understand before . . . but now I do.” She squinted through her eyelids, and let out another long, laboured breath. “Ye sent it to Adeena … the music?”
“Yes, Mum. It was delivered to today.”
“Thanks,” Margaret Rose said slowly, closing her eyes again. Then she pointed to the night table beside her bed, her eyes still closed. “Look.”
William glanced at the night table, covered with old black and white photographs. “The pictures?”
“No,” she whispered. “The drawer.”
William opened the night table drawer and gasped. “Mum! You took this?”
William picked up the leather-bound volume. It was the diary of Sir James Carnegie. Margaret Rose had taken it from Kinnaird castle.
“Help her,” she gasped, barely able to speak.
Her eyes were closed tightly. William put the diary down and put his arms around his mother. She could feel him close to her. She had so little energy left, barely any breath inside of her.
“Adeena … needs . . .” Her breathing was laboured, struggling as she fought to continue, “needs to . . .”
Her head fell onto her chin.
Margaret Rose was gone.
6
ADEENA AND HER grandmother skipped through a field of golden grass.
They gathered flowers, laughing like school girls under a turquoise sky. They collected long stems of lavender, handfuls of tangerine buttercups and a clutch of translucent wild flowers before finally flopping to the ground to begin arranging them.
They hummed a song both instinctively knew, smiling at each other as they worked. Their heads swayed in time to the music as the admired their floral creation.
It was a simple arrangement her grandmother placed in a delicate crystal vase that appeared out of nowhere. Then she stopped humming and with a blinding sun behind, stood before Adeena. The light formed a halo of dancing sunbeams around her grandmother’s head.
The heat of the morning sun touched Adeena’s face, and she woke with a start. With a half open eye she peered at the clock radio:
7:44 AM
Adeena could still see her grandmother’s face and the translucent flower arrangement. She laid her head back down on the pillow and closed her eyes with a sigh.
She wanted desperately to return to her dream.
AN HOUR LATER her father called. “Adeena? You awake?”
She held the phone to ear, her eyes closed, and her mind only half-conscious. “Dad? What? What is it?”
“Grandma,” he said in a quiet voice. “She’s gone.”
There was a moment of silence between them before Adeena gasped. “Oh God.”
“She loved you, very much.”
Adeena could barely talk. “I loved her too.”
Her dad listened for a few moments, feeling her pain all the way across the Atlantic. “Adeena?”
There was no response. She had dropped the phone and was sobbing like a little girl.
ADEENA CRIED FOR a long time, draining all the hurt until her eyes were red and burning. When the deluge finally ended, she lay drained and gasping on the bed. Fighting
for breath, she felt like she had run a marathon.
When she felt calm enough to sit up, she got up and shuffled over to the kitchen. She sat at her little glass table staring out over the ByWard Market and the city. She slowed her breathing with deep, deliberate breaths. A sense of calm was fighting to replace the grief.
She wanted to be strong to honour her grandmother.
Adeena gazed out the window and began humming to herself. It was the melody from her dream.
And then she stopped.
There was something familiar about it. She had heard it before. With a jolt, she realized it was the opening to the unfinished composition she had been struggling to complete for so long.
It had first come to her just as she was falling asleep one night as a teenager and she had literally jumped up and started transcribing, excitedly working out the notes and the chords on her dad’s piano. She got the first five bars down and then drew a blank.
She was going out with Kurt at the time, and they were working on a couple of songs. But this one was different, less pop, more symphonic, for piano and cello rather than guitar and drums. She had planned to share it with Kurt when she finished it, but they broke up and whenever she returned to the composition, she felt unable to complete it.
Adeena’s thoughts returned to her grandmother. Was she still with her? Adeena had never lost someone so close before. But somehow she still felt connected.
Yesterday had also been difficult. Tara had convinced her to go shopping in Montréal, and most of the two-hour drive was tense.
“Your job at the gallery is to be a researcher,” Tara began as they took the 417 out of the city, heading east. The top was down on the Audi and Tara had to strain to make herself heard above the wind and road noise.
“Yeah, I know that,” Adeena shouted, a little puzzled as she sipped her latté.
“So darling, you don’t go around busking with a five million dollar cello!”
Adeena nearly choked. “It’s worth that much?”
“According to our insurance agent it is!” Tara responded, moving into the passing lane and leaving the slower moving cars behind. Although she was a stickler for details, she had no patience for anyone driving at the ridiculous 100 kilometer per hour speed limit.
“But it’s a working instrument, Tar,” Adeena pleaded, raising her voice. “It is a cello that needs to be played on a regular basis. And I am a cellist! Wouldn’t it make sense for me to be the one who plays it?”
Tara’s Audi zoomed past the city limits of Ottawa through open pastures. There was a long pause. A gale force wind blowing through the women’s hair was the only sound to be heard.
Finally Tara shouted above the roar. “No. It does not!”
ADEENA THOUGHT BACK on the day, and the long fight that followed Tara’s pronouncement. It was quite a show of force. They were both still a little hung over from the night before, racing down the 417 with the top down, engaged in an all-out scream-fest.
Tara hated anything that wasn’t by the book, especially the book of protocols she lived and breathed as the assistant curator of the National Gallery of Canada. Adeena on the other hand, had no use for rules generally, and particularly not in this case.
“Why can’t you just trust me?” Adeena yelled. “No one can take care of that cello better than me!”
“You can’t even take care of yourself,” Tara responded. “You never have! You can’t not be in trouble and I’m not going through Grade 8 again.”
An image of bright red oil paint spilling all over Tara’s white-satin dress flashed through Adeena’s mind. The dress was a treasured family heirloom from Greece that Tara wore for a class presentation. “That wasn’t my fault,” Adeena responded. “I got pushed by the boys who were teasing you. Blame them for wrecking your stupid dress.”
“You were spitting at them, calling them pussies,” Tara shot back. “That was my mother’s wedding dress!”
Adeena recalled the day. “Sorry. It was an accident.”
“You’re an accident! An accident magnet, and you never change,” Tara continued. The dress incident was a sore spot that always got her fired up. “And now you’re going to blow it again, with Philippe.”
“What’s he got to do with this?”
“You don’t even know he’s alive,” Tara said. “The poor guy should be sainted.”
“Thanks! Guess I’m just a total bitch. What could he possibly see in me?” Adeena screamed over the howling breeze.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Tara yelled back. “At the rate you’re going, he’ll never marry you.”
“Holy shit! You take a fucking hate pill this morning?” Adeena shot back. “At least I have a boyfriend.”
From here the conversation degenerated even more. They accused each other of assorted crimes, sins, vices, and indiscretions, swearing that the other lacked good taste, moral judgment, honour and intelligence of any kind. It was cathartic for both of them, purging all the little annoyances they kept inside. The relationship-cleansing therapy continued to build as they sped down the highway.
By the time they crossed the Québec border and were approaching the bridge toward the island of Montréal, all the poison had been drained. Their voices were hoarse from shouting as they finally began to negotiate a peace treaty, from sheer exhaustion. Or maybe it was from a sense that neither of them was perfect.
Their friendship had survived worse.
In the end, Adeena agreed to get Tara’s signature when she checked the Duncan Cello out of security to do her research. However, Adeena could not play it until she got a security clearance, and then only under strict guidelines, including the need for a gallery technician to be present every time it was removed from its case.
Adeena thought it was all pretty dumb, but she agreed to the ‘rules’ as long as she got to play the Duncan Cello.
“But once the exhibit opens in October, you’ll have to leave it be,” Tara concluded. “Now, let’s talk about shopping? Where do you want to start?”
IT WAS ALMOST midnight when Adeena got home and flopped down onto her bed up on the tenth floor of her condo. She passed out and slept deeply until the dream about her grandmother and the bright sunlight woke her up.
Now, hours later, she lifted herself stiffly from her small table to make coffee. Her phone rang and she reached over to where it lay charging on the counter.
“Good morning Ms. Stuart,” a cheerful voice on the other end announced. “This is the front desk calling. We have a special delivery that arrived yesterday. Can you come down and sign for it?”
MARGARET ROSE HAD insisted that the package be sent across the Atlantic by courier. It had arrived in the afternoon, a special Saturday delivery, on the day she died, just a few minutes before she drew her final breath.
As Adeena opened the flat FedEx carton, she wondered why her grandmother wanted her to have this music. Why was it so important that it needed to be sent across the ocean in such a rush? And what does this have to do with me?
As she slid the document out of its cardboard sleeve she noticed a handwritten note from her father clipped to the top:
Pumpkin:
Your grandmother insisted I send this to you!
She said you would understand.
Love, Dad
Adeena carefully removed the score from the clear plastic bag and set it down on her table. There was no title on the document. Only the outline of a poorly sketched cello on the cover gave any hint of the personality behind the composer.
She delicately opened the faded sheaf of papers and laid the first two pages flat on the table. The paper had long ago faded to a sepia colour. The ink used was a rich shade of burnt-chocolate and the lettering a fine example of 18th Century calligraphy. The words were drawn with a flourish of upper case characters, with elegantly curled ascenders anchored by descenders with exaggerated bowls.
Adeena traced the inscription at the top of the first page with her finger:
Cantata No 1 a Voci
Soprano, Alto Tenore Basso,
Acompagnate di violini, Violincello e Piano Forte
To the left of the ledger lines were neatly written inscriptions: Violini, Violincello, Basso, Piano-Forte, Soprano, Alto. Adeena read the music, sounding out the music, trying to get a feel for it. As she continued to hum out loud, working out the melody in her head, she suddenly stopped with a gasp.
Was this the song that she and her grandmother hummed in her dream last night? The same notes that Adeena had written as a teenager in a fit of inspiration after a restless sleep one night?
Adeena looked again at the score, focusing on each section, and sounding the notes out loud to herself. She froze, covering her mouth with her hand in shock.
It was the same music.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON she got a call from Philippe. She told him about the passing of her grandmother.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know how close you two were.”
“Yeah, we were,” she replied, fighting to keep her eyes dry. “We really understood each other. And I know this might sound weird, but I think she was thinking about me,” she paused, “right until the end.”
Philippe listened to her breaking voice and quiet sobs. After a moment he asked gently, “Are you okay?”
She wiped her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” She blew out a deep breath, trying to be strong. “You’re in Toronto?”
“Yup. Just landed to do some more interviews. I can’t believe what I’ve unleashed,” he said. “My story in the Citizen created a buzz. Everyone’s running it – CBC, CTV and all the papers, Globe & Mail, National Post, even the New York Times. They’re all poking fun at the government paying three million dollars for a ten-page PDF. Three hundred thousand dollars a page!”
Song for a Lost Kingdom, Book I Page 6