“We both washed ours outside in the rain,” said Sharon proudly, “even though we lived in a steel town and the air was full of black specks.”
Bill, Petra saw, was paying close attention as Maxine applied mascara to Petra’s lashes. With his fair, messy hair and slightly shambling look he reminded Petra of some actor. Sharon would know. Petra noticed Bill smiling, too, whenever Sharon spoke. At first Petra felt a flare of anger, because she thought he was laughing at her friend as Marcus used to; then she calmed down and realized, to her greater surprise, that he simply liked Sharon, and had on sight. They liked each other, after—what—three or four minutes? Sharon had always made friends easily, unlike her. Listening to her here in London, far from home, Petra could suddenly hear how strong Sha’s Welsh accent was, and she felt the quick surge of homesickness, swaying within, like the swell of the sea. That’s how Petra had talked for more than half her life, and she hadn’t even been able to hear it. What are the other things about yourself that you don’t know?
One thing she did know, for sure, was this: When you are offered the chance to meet a ghost, the man you were in love with a quarter of a century ago—half a life away—there is only one sensible thing to do. Just say no. Smile politely and say, thank you, but no thank you. I am a grown woman now, not a bit like the girl who loved that boy. I am a happily married woman.… Correction: I am a soon to be unhappily unmarried woman, with a daughter of my own. Nothing could be more shameful than to seek the past; nothing could be more tragic, or more laughable.
And yet. First love is the deepest. You don’t just fall in love, you capsize. It feels like drowning, but the thought of rescue is unwelcome. Other loves may come along, but the first breathes on inside you. And the things I still know about him: the date of his birth, his stepmother’s name, his passion for horses, his beach hideaway, the instrument he learned to play when he was lonely. Drums.
For two years I wore brown, because it was his favorite color. Can you believe it? I was a sallow teenager. I looked terrible in brown. I looked yellow in brown. But it was a small sacrifice to make. For David, I knew, would be pleased. Thanks to me, he would never be lonely again.
“Julia Roberts.”
Petra woke from her reflections with a jump. “What?” she said.
Sharon wasn’t addressing Petra in particular, just anyone who would listen, which was everyone in the room. “I was saying to Maxine, make me into Julia Roberts. You know, basically fantastic. Ringlets down to my waist. So if Richard Gere happens to be in Las Vegas, and he’s driving down the Strip, like, he’ll stop and go, ‘Hey, I know you!’ ”
“Sharon, my love,” said Petra, “the character you are describing is a tall brunette from Los Angeles in thigh-high boots. She is also a prostitute. You are a blond Welsh housewife, five foot three, and, as far as I know, nobody pays you for sex.”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?” This was Bill, leaning forward, genuinely intrigued.
“Well, this one time, Mal bought me an ice-cream maker for Valentine’s, a Friday it was, and I took one look and sent the kids away to their nan’s until Sunday lunchtime.” She gave the dirtiest laugh that Nightingale Publishing had heard in twenty years. Then she said, by way of an airy afterthought, “You should have seen my banana splits.”
Maxine dropped her scissors. Petra buried her head in her hands, feeling her new haircut, for the first time, soft between her fingers, then looked up and met Bill’s smile with her own. He said, “Would you excuse me?”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Petra said. “We really didn’t mean to be rude—”
“No, no, please, carry on. The ruder the better. I was just starting to learn something really interesting about dairy products. There’s honestly nothing I would rather do than sit here pretending to be a hairbrush and listening to women’s fantasies. Half the magazines we produce here consist of little else. I could literally take down everything Sharon says in shorthand and transcribe it directly into the next issue …”
“ ‘How an Ice-cream Sundae Saved My Sex Life, by Mum of Two,’ ” said Sharon. “With or Without Cherries? You Decide.”
“Exactly. You are clearly our perfect reader,” said Bill. “Would you like a job?”
Sharon grinned at him in the mirror and wrinkled her nose. “Gerraway with you, mun. Things to do back home. Thanks for the offer.”
“Anytime,” said Bill, adding, “No, it’s just that I have a conference call in …” He looked at his watch. “Ninety seconds.” He moved toward the door, then looked back at Petra. “Um …”
“Petra, please.”
“Petra. When you’re done, could you just nip down to my office? One floor down, turn left out of the lift. We just have boring paperwork to go through for the trip.”
“Sign my life away in blood.”
“That sort of thing. Shall we say half an hour?”
“More like five bloody hours with that lot in your hair,” said Sharon. The door closed. “Ooh, Pet, how about that? Nip down and see me sometime.”
“Sha …” Petra looked in the mirror at her stylist, who shook her head in wonderment, as if to say: Is she always like this, your friend?
“What’s a conference call, anyway?” Sharon asked.
“Oh, you talk to a lot of people all at the same time, at once. Except you don’t,” said Petra. “You just talk across them and nothing gets sorted out.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Sharon. “Well, he should come to Gower, shouldn’t he? Get that for free round my way, no charge. Mal hasn’t finished a sentence in twenty years. Poor bugger,” she added, with a voice full of love.
“How do you want it?”
“Oh, just milk, please.”
“Anything to eat? You must be exhausted after sitting in that chair all morning having your hair cut.”
“No, thanks. Sharon and I are going out for lunch in half an hour, and I think she may have some sort of medieval banquet in mind. We could well be rowing down to Hampton Court and having swan or something. I think her idea of London is quite …”
“Grounded in history?”
“I was going to say bonkers, but, yes, that sounds better. Just tea, please.”
They are sitting at a round table, in a booth at the back of the cafeteria. “The throbbing heart of Nightingale Publishing,” Bill had said, as he led her downstairs from his office; they had gone through the details of the trip in less than ten minutes—so fast, indeed, that she wondered, for a moment, why he had bothered to summon her. His secretary could have brought the papers up to the makeup room and done it there. Then he had invited Petra to have a cup of coffee. “We like to think it’s the strangest taste on the South Bank, and we want you to have something to remember this day by,” he said. So she had said yes, after a pause, hoping he wouldn’t notice the fluster in her expression. Then she had chosen tea.
“So, what have you been doing all this time?” he asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean, since entering the competition in—when was it?”
“Nineteen seventy-four.”
“B.C. or A.D.?”
“Now you’re being the rude one.”
“I apologize. It’s just that, you know, it was quite some time ago …”
Petra groans. “Please don’t remind me. Am I a mad old witch? Is that what you thought, when they told you I called up?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Well, I was hoping for witch, obviously. Samantha from Bewitched. With twitchy nose and spells and everything.”
“What about mad?”
“Oddly enough, I didn’t think it was that mad. Remember, I’m old, too. In fact I’m about twice your age.” Petra opened her mouth to protest, but he didn’t stop. “So I remember the whole Cassidy thing. I was right in the middle of it.”
“You can’t have been. No boys allowed.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What?”
“So you do think I’m mad.” For some reason, she finds she is enjoying this.
“No, I think the madness has … matured. Like wine. Deepened into something else, perhaps.” Bill studies her closely. Amazing hands. Long fingers. Cellist, he suddenly remembers. He tries to think of a piece he can talk intelligently to her about. Borodin, Second String Quartet. His mum’s favorite. They had the slow movement played at her funeral. One of those bits of music so beautiful it soothes the cares of the world while telling you the world is too beautiful to last. Like Bill’s mother. Petra is sure to know it.
“So I’m vintage mad.” Petra laughs.
“Perfect.”
“Like this tea.”
“Christ, I hope not. Is it really as bad as it looks?”
“Even worse. It looks like the Thames.” She takes a spoon and stirs. Then she says, “In answer to your question, I haven’t spent the last quarter of a century thinking about David Cassidy, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you look …” Bill stops.
“Careful.”
“I am being extremely careful.” He sips his coffee. “Meaning you are obviously someone who has widened her view of the world.”
“Is that so unusual?”
“Much more than you’d think, I’m afraid. I know an awful lot of people who don’t want to know any more than they did at fifteen. I mean really know. As if they’d taken one look at the world and thought, Not me, mate. Mostly men.”
“Well, there are times you can’t blame them,” Petra says. She is talking quietly now, almost too quietly, and Bill finds himself having to lean across the table.
“True,” he says. “Never underestimate the wish not to know.” He looks at her, as she stares down into her tea.
“Or the wish that you hadn’t had to find out,” she says, after a while.
“Ah yes, all the unsavory truths. Mostly men again.”
“You mean men finding out about women?”
“Other way round,” he says. “What do you see in your tea leaves, Gypsy fortune-teller?”
Petra dips her spoon and swills the tea around. “Your future appears to be brown,” she says at last.
“My favorite color,” he replies, and is taken aback when Petra looks up, sharply. But she says nothing, so Bill goes on.
“So what did you want to know? What have you learned all this while?”
“Well, I did music at the Royal Academy. Cello and a bit of piano. Then I played professionally, which earned me a fortune. Sometimes as much as twenty-three pounds a night. Now I do music therapy. That’s my job.”
“Music therapy?”
“Yes, you know. Using music as an aid to mental and spiritual health.” She feels as if she is reading from a script.
“For troubled souls, you mean. Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,” Bill says.
“If you like. I see quite a few savage breasts. Damaged kids mostly.” Petra hates talking about her job. People always jump to the wrong conclusion. More cautiously, she tries again. “When they hear about a job like mine people always call it ‘putting something back.’ ”
“And it’s not?”
“I feel I get more out of the kids, and the music, than they … It fills me up …” She trails off.
Bill smiles. “So it’s true then.”
“What is?”
“I knew it.”
“What did you know?”
“You have been thinking about David Cassidy all this time.”
Petra looks at him and narrows her eyes. “Never stopped.”
Bill sits back. “Tell me everything,” he says.
16
Getting to Know You: Music Therapy with Ashley
By Petra Williams, B.Mus., R.M.Th.
ABSTRACT
This case study describes weekly sessions over a two-year period with a ten-year-old girl with severe emotional problems. Ashley was referred to music therapy because of aggressive behavior and learning difficulties at school. Her mother was taking part in a drug-rehabilitation program at the time. Ashley had an excellent sense of rhythm and the weekly sessions became a place where we could improvise together and she could explore her feelings in a place she felt safe. The case study also illustrates how the child’s defensive modes of expression were worked with musically, to help her communicate her needs without anger and to modify some of her destructive tendencies so that she could mix with her peers and start to enjoy a more fulfilling life. During the sessions, an unconscious accord between Ashley and the therapist was created to not speak directly of her personal story, which was too hard and too sad. Rather, it was decided to let the music tell the story for her.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Ashley thinks of herself as the Girl That Nobody Loves. She was her mother’s fourth child, but did not share the same father as her three older siblings. Ashley was conceived during one of her stepfather’s periodic absences from the family home, and it appears that he never accepted her, frequently telling the child she was a “cuckoo in the nest.” Ashley’s own father never lived with her mother and disappeared from his daughter’s life altogether when she was four. He spent a period in prison, though she often said “my dad’s in heaven.” Social workers described the family as “chaotic,” and all four children had been taken into care for their own protection on two occasions.
Ashley is a graceful, pretty child who fought hard with her natural advantages to make herself as dislikable as she feels she is. She shows moderate deficits in cognitive and language areas, generally functioning at between one year and eighteen months behind the average for her age level. Her closest relationship was with her deceased grandmother—“Nana”—a pub landlady who played the piano and sang songs to Ashley throughout her infancy. Particular favorites were show tunes from musicals by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Although her speech is often muddled, Ashley can incorporate song lyrics with great enjoyment and accuracy into conversation. Her teachers express surprise that such a “challenging” child could show glimpses of verbal precocity.
The death of her nana, six months before Ashley first came to me, seemed to be the trigger for increasingly violent outbursts at school. Such background information as I had about her came from her head teacher, Rosemary, who felt the child showed signs of depression arising from erratic maternal care. Some mornings, she would turn up to school dressed for a party in brand-new trainers with ribbons in her hair; on others she wore grubby clothes and was teased by her peers about her personal hygiene. “Smelly Ashley” is how she often describes herself in our role play. Rosemary felt that music therapy should be tried as a last resort after occupational therapy and swimming lessons had failed to make a difference.
Petra saves what she’s done, closes her file and then the laptop. It is dark in the room except for the fuzzy orange glow cast by the lamp in the road outside. Through the bay window, freckled with late-summer dust, she can look into the house opposite, an exact copy of her own solid Victorian semi, and watch the shadow play of another family. Observing how other people’s families work has always fascinated her. She reaches for the switch on the desk lamp, but changes her mind. Hello darkness, my old friend.
When she was making music with Ashley she felt she knew exactly what she was doing, which made a change from the rest of her life, but now she finds she can’t write it up. A case history requires her to impose the technical language of her profession—cognitive deficits, transference reactions—on the living child who came into her room one freezing February afternoon. Ashley refused to speak, yet was simultaneously shouting her distress. Undersized for her age, the girl wore a crop top with a Playboy bunny motif and dirty white terry-cloth shorts; the puppy
fat wobbling between the two garments was mottled blue with cold. It was toward the middle of their fourth session together, with Petra guiding the child’s hands over the piano keys, that Ashley took out her chewing gum and sang “Getting to Know You.”
The crystal-clear diction of Deborah Kerr’s governess in The King and I had traveled down forty years or more, via Ashley’s nana on a pub piano, to a child-woman who probably had a vocabulary of no more than two thousand words. Petra made a point of not breaking down during sessions. The child’s emotions were always more important than any she might have, but that day with Ashley it was a struggle to compose herself sufficiently to be able to echo and answer the child’s song with the bit about getting to like her, getting to hope that Ashley liked her back.
And then the final verse together, the girl’s and the woman’s voices twined together in a silvery helix of sound.
Music can reach the parts that language can’t, it can perforate the armor that a wounded self builds very early to protect itself; that is why the therapy works, if it does work, and maybe the fact that the process is mysterious and beyond language is what makes it so hard to write down.
Bill Finn could write it down, Petra is suddenly sure of it. At the makeover, Bill asked about her job, questions that suggested he might even be interested in the answers, which he couldn’t possibly be. Petra knows that metropolitan type. Actually, she doesn’t know those types, not personally. But she’s read about them. Always flitting between the latest book launch and opening night, everything is marvelous or incredible or terribly interesting, if only as a ploy to make yourself interesting to the other person. Maybe that was unfair. Maybe Bill was more than the sum of his glossy magazines. They were sitting in the cafeteria at Nightingale Publishing when Petra found herself telling him about Ashley’s laugh, the most joyful she had ever heard, and thus the most crushing because it came from a place with no previous record of joy. Bill wanted to know exactly how the music therapy got through to a kid like Ashley.
I Think I Love You Page 26