by Zoe Morrison
(My fantasy: someone would take them to an auction house. I liked to picture an auctioneer with a gavel the size of a giant hammer in his hands, and as the bidding went up and up he would start to hit the scores again and again, demanding a better price. But no, the scores would be taken to the Oxfam shop, if I was lucky, and priced for next to nothing.)
And then night fell, at least I thought it had. I could hardly tell the difference between day and night in that study, and when I went out to the hall and dialled the number he said, each word carefully articulated, ‘You need to identify yourself and state what your issue is or stop this right now, and if you don’t I will call the police.’ For a moment I appreciated this idea – me not talking being reason to call the police. He hadn’t hung up and I sat there frozen. I heard breathing and suddenly I wanted to cup his breath in my hands and inhale it. Then the line went dead.
Later that night I heard the Beethoven again, but with less punch to it, as if it were reflecting on the man who, near his end, had heard strange music in his head too.
11.
Whitby, April, 1949
In my final year of school Miss May asked me to play for a man visiting from the Royal College of Music in London.
‘They have some scholarships available for their one-year Diploma of Performance. It would be an audition.’
I must have looked as surprised as I felt.
‘I’ve told them about you. He is visiting especially. You’re brilliant, you know. You must take this further. It’s a gift.’
I fiddled with my books. I had not heard my playing described that way often and for just a moment the sun rose inside me, its rays rippling out. But I was not going to music college in London. I had done my time; I was going home.
‘Why don’t you just do the audition? It’s unlikely you’ll get it. He’s travelling all over England listening to people.’ She paused. ‘Well, I’ve gone and invited him now, I don’t think we can disappoint.’
I had a polished performance repertoire, it was easily done. I could play whatever he wanted.
When Miss May received the letter two weeks later, she read it in front of me, sitting at the piano, eyes travelling fast.
‘You’ve got it. Oh Alice, they want you!’ and she leapt up and embraced me.
I blanched, gave her a quick hug back. ‘Do I have to say yes?’
‘What? Alice! It’s a full scholarship to the Royal College of Music. You cannot pass it up. Few have even been considered, let alone offered such a thing.’
‘Oh, I’m very grateful,’ I murmured.
How weary I was by then of such expressions of gratitude, of saying thank you for things I had not even asked for, of saying thank you because I had nothing in the first place. In my head I started to walk to the little harbour at the bottom of the town, where I went on weekends to watch the sea, the birds, and the boats, sitting on an old wooden bench, the texture of the damp wood crumbly beneath my hands.
‘It’s only for a year,’ she was saying. ‘Can’t Australia wait?’
I put my book bag down on the floor. I had a sudden impulse to grapple the piano into my arms and throw it out the window.
‘Tell me more about it,’ I said.
She told me that the most talented young musicians in the land went there to learn and play together, become friends, and discover the cultural attractions of the capital. It sounded good, the way she put it.
‘When do they need to know?’
‘Soon. There’ll be a second round of offers depending on who takes up the first. As I said, it’s only for a —’
‘I’ll write to Mother.’
‘You’d better telegram.’
‘She won’t telegram back. It’s too expensive.’
‘I’ll let the College know,’ Miss May said, ‘that due to geography, our response will suffer a mild delay.’
Dear Alice, my mother wrote back, air-mail. Of course you take the scholarship. Is it a full scholarship? We can’t afford to help. There is no money left here, the block is in ruins and your father is very unwell. I send you our congratulations. You have worked hard and done well. And this last bit is the only time she ever said it: I miss you. I have been counting the days for some time. For years. Ever since you left. I will be there with you in spirit. You and your playing. Your music.
I wanted to sprint towards her then, across all the oceans, towards those words, that rare love. I hatched a plan. I would visit Australia before I went to London. The trip there and back would take more than two months (the notion was ridiculous, no one did that). I wrote to her in a rush, suggesting it. The response was swift.
The notion is absurd, she wrote. You find the money for such a folly. You lift it from the land with your hands. She said I was to go to the Royal College and work as hard as I could.
I cried and cried. It was only another year, but I remembered what I always did: the delight on my parents’ faces when I played well; the feeling of my mother’s arms around me; the beauty of the wide open land, the big, hot, white sky, the birdsong of a butcher bird, a pallid cuckoo, a grey shrike-thrush.
‘I have nowhere to be,’ I told Miss May at my next lesson, ‘over the summer.’
‘But won’t you stay on here?’
The thought of finishing school then hanging around for months with the little girls, the usual humiliations compounded tenfold.
‘Actually,’ she said, glancing away. ‘I think I might write to the Royal College. There will be scholars and students there over the summer, visiting and so forth. You can go there early, get a head start.’
I frowned, it sounded unlikely.
There was no room available at the hall of residence I would be living in when term started, but there was a room available in another, where I could take all my meals. I could use the College facilities. What’s more, Miss May must have mentioned my lack of finances, because an advance on my first stipend cheque was enclosed.
Before I left I spent a week with a friend, Esther, a day-girl who lived in Whitby in a big cottage on a hill with a garden full of flowers. When I arrived, her mother, Rachel, was standing at the door, her arm extended, Esther’s little sister peeking out behind her. I walked down the hall with my carpet bag. Most of the windows were open and the place smelt of the sea, the flowers, and something baking. We ate scones in the back garden that afternoon with blackberry jam. The next day Rachel offered to do some washing for me. I refused, of course, not wanting to impose, but she insisted. From where Esther and I were sitting I could see into the little laundry house, Rachel’s back bent over the basket, her arms working fast, sorting the wash. I can still see the way she started to move in slow motion when she reached my clothes. Most of them, and there weren’t many, she ended up throwing out; a couple of things she mended. Then she must have asked discreetly around the parish. She assembled a good-as-new wardrobe for me to take to London, including several concert gowns, and even a smart suitcase.
Oh Alice, she said on our way to the station, almost weepy, this is a special occasion, it really is. Alice Murray, she said, off to the Royal College of Music.
Oh Mama, sighed Esther, don’t be such a sap. But she rubbed her shoulder anyway and gave her a kiss.
They stood close to each other on the platform. They did their hair in the same way; they started waving in the same way. I turned from the window back to the empty carriage. The train snaked its way to London on the same line that had taken me north. The carriage was peaceful after the bustle of the school and Esther’s house, and as the evening slipped into night the gentle rock of the train sent me to sleep. During the night the carriage grew cold and I covered myself with my coat and slept on.
Esther’s father had drawn me a map of the route from the station to the College the night before, sitting at the old kitchen table. Rachel was in the rocking chair, sipping the tea he made her every night after dinner; I remember the scraping sound of the chair as it rocked back and forth on the floor. When he’d finished
he handed me the map and said, Not a chance you’ll get lost now, not a chance in the world.
The train slowed, stopped. I stepped off, into London.
12.
London, June, 1949
‘Alice Murray. Yes, we’ve been expecting you,’ the porter said at the entrance of the hall of residence, and he took me to my room. He stood by the door, telling me when meals were served. Then he put down the case and left. I sat on the bed, bent over to take off my shoes.
I crept around the place in my socks. All the doors were open; the rooms were empty, just stripped beds and bare cupboards. I was the only one there. I nearly laughed, just to hear the sound of it bouncing off the white walls. There were a couple of months before College began and I had no one to answer to, no one at all.
I started practising for several hours a day. And then not as much; I lay on my bed instead and read. I’d found a well-stocked bookshelf in a lounge on the ground floor. Some other students had arrived and I saw them at meals, and on the walk to and from my practice, but I avoided them. I wasn’t lonely; I was an only child from a land that lay flat, still and quiet.
I soon discovered Hyde Park and walked all over it, inspecting flowerbeds, trees. I’d lie on the grass and read stories for hours, I even wrote some poetry. Then I started walking around the city. In Whitby, all the shopkeepers knew my uniform and often my name; in Currabin everyone knew everything. Here, I was anonymous. I walked around shops; I stepped into churches and famous buildings. I visited all the galleries and saw paintings by artists I had never heard of; I picked out favourites. Then I’d feel guilty about doing these things, I’d think of my parents working hard on the block, or in the house, and the next day I’d practise for longer than ever.
I was still playing the repertoire I had learnt from my mother and Miss May. One day I walked down the empty aisles of the College music library pulling out scores. I didn’t know what I was looking for, perhaps something that reflected the huge city I was getting to know, those sights, the art, all that I was feeling and thinking. Perhaps I wanted to hear great cathedrals of sound, music that came from my hands like an architect’s grand buildings. But I did not know where to look for that sort of music. Sometimes I played whatever came into my head, lines of music and harmony that became more and more complex, but I didn’t remember it the day after and I never wrote it down.
In September, everyone began to arrive. I moved into a bright, modern hall of residence that filled with the sounds of voices, running feet, banging doors. And in the College I heard the sounds of all sorts of musical instruments.
13.
London, October, 1949
My piano teacher, Arthur Joiner, specialised in Beethoven. He liked the late works best, which form the edge between the Classical and Romantic eras. The first time I played for him he sat listening behind his desk. The room was big, neat, tasteful, a few framed watercolours of vague landscapes on the walls. Out the window I caught a glimpse of the glazed iron roof of the Royal Albert Hall. When I finished he got up very quickly. ‘Oh, ho, ho,’ he said, and then he leant sideways on the desk, awkwardly. I had surprised him.
In the lessons that followed he adjusted my technique to create more control and depth to my touch. I took note of everything he said and worked hard at it. I felt that what he was teaching me was improving my sound and allowing me to achieve more at the piano, expanding my repertoire. But then he did something that surprised me. He hardly said a thing. During my lessons I would play and afterwards he would make a couple of brief comments, which I wrote down and used as my guide for the following week. I had expected his teaching to be driven, demanding, formidable. What was the matter? I could tell he was holding something back.
I checked with him that I was progressing as he wanted. He nodded, his face impassive. Yet there was nothing further, and certainly no encouragement. He never spoke of my future.
I worked even harder. I entered competitions. I won some, including the prestigious College Concerto Competition for my year level, and after that Joiner said, Well, I suppose you work quite hard, don’t you?
I felt enraged by this, and also bewildered. I looked around his neat room, all the pens and papers in precisely the correct spot, my hands and wrists positioned exactly as he wanted, the Beethoven played just right, too, every note and rest and dynamic in place: he was fastidious about everything. Perhaps he was one of those people who thought that a woman of my station should aim to be nothing more than Miss May’s successor.
I remembered something that had happened when I was at boarding school. I was at the house of a relative, the daughter of the great-aunt. I stayed with her rarely: as soon as I met her I could tell she didn’t like me. She probably resented the dent my fees and upkeep had made to her inheritance, the potential obligation I represented. Or perhaps it was something else.
She knew I was musical. I hadn’t spoken of it, but she received everything the school wrote about me. And she had a piano in the parlour. One weekend I asked if I could do some practice. Oh, she said, trailing off, all right then. I was working on a Mozart concerto and that day I mastered a particularly tricky section and was pleased by the music and by what I had accomplished. I went down the hall and into the kitchen where she was sitting with her husband.
He was reading the paper and raised his eyes. She slowly, finally, acknowledged me, then looked over my shoulder and said, So what are you up to now, then?
It was as if, with just a few words and gestures, they had made that music I had been playing disappear.
At the Royal College the fact of my playing was unassail able, but its quality, my ability, my talent, my future: all this was subjective, definable.
I withdrew during my lessons, I hardly spoke. I found my feelings about it coloured what I felt about the Beethoven I was studying; those long, involved sonatas with their technical demands. I came to dislike them.
At the end of the year I performed in front of the piano professors, almost all of them applauded enthusiastically and they gave me top marks. Yet my eyes found their way to Joiner, his slow clap, that way he touched his moustache.
Pianists were not only assigned a piano teacher, but also to accompanying work, or an ensemble. I had been put into a piano trio with Hetty on the violin and George on the cello. When Joiner began to frustrate me, I gravitated towards the trio and organised our frequent rehearsals.
Hetty was from Edinburgh and on a partial scholarship (a rich infirm relative was paying the remainder; Hetty had to nurse her for a spell once she’d finished at the College). The sound she made on the violin tore at me. I yearned for it at strange times – like when I was in the bath or out walking. Hetty was tall, had buck teeth, and when she finished playing she would lift her bow and hold it for a second, mid-air, then lower everything and wriggle her shoulders, not even bothering to look at you.
George was tall and thin, had messy orange hair, knobbly elbows and knees and when he played he pulled weird expressions on his face. The sound he made crawled right up into me and wrapped itself around me. There was a depth to it, layers of velvet in it, one note contained many. It was as if I could finally relax, I could just close my eyes and smile and be warm. He was from the slums of Liverpool and an older gentleman had paid for all his lessons, encouraged him, even got him elocution classes.
We played together well from the outset and improved quickly. It was the first time I had played with others in that way and I enjoyed it immeasurably. Interweaving my music with theirs, accompanying them when it was asked for, playing above them when the music said. Rushing and dropping and stopping together, tossing the notes high, lifting off at exactly the same time. When we performed, it felt to me as though we were holding each other’s hand, had closed our eyes and were rushing together across a dark field.
One of the professors took a particular interest in us (a Marxist; he used to hold readings of Das Kapital in his rooms with various music playing in the background). He gave us pieces by new c
omposers from England and Europe, and got us free tickets to London concerts, sometimes more than one in a night. We would run from theatre to theatre, Bruch’s Violin Concerto, Beethoven’s Ninth, then wander home afterwards, walking on air, piggy-backing one another, screaming with laughter. The city dogs would yap, windows slam, curses would be hurled from doors, and we didn’t care, we were night vandals.
We spent most of our free time together, and by second term a loose group of other students had formed around us. We sat and talked in the common room or in Hyde Park, went to dances and the cinema. I met my first boyfriend, Lucas, in the common room, where from the windows you could see right into the labs of Imperial College next door. He took me to a dance, turned out to be a terrible dancer, yet insisted I remain with him all evening. So I broke up with him after that and went with Clarence, another pianist: he didn’t last long, either. I wasn’t serious about any of those boys I went with at the College, I was too busy for courting, and, besides, soon I would be going home.
At the Saturday cinema there was an advertisement that made all my friends smile and nudge me. It was for the Assisted Migration Scheme or Ten Pound Poms, and was silly, amusing. People in various states of undress or unpreparedness rushed aboard a boat to Australia, desperate to reach their fantastic new home. They all stood on deck smiling and waving. I really liked that ad, it lit me up, and I liked my friends noticing it, too. I hadn’t looked or sounded Australian for years, but they all knew where I was from, and where I was going.
14.
Oxford, June, 1950
Towards the end of the academic year the three of us were selected to take part in a prestigious series of master classes and concerts to be held in Oxford over the summer. George and I were invited as soloists as well as ensemble artists, Hetty as part of the trio. To accept meant delaying my return to Australia until the end of September and my impulse was to say no, but if I didn’t go Hetty couldn’t either, because there would be no trio. Then I heard what an honour it was to be selected (I liked the thought of telling Joiner). My mother wrote to say that if the Royal College was paying, of course I should go. So I accepted on the proviso that I’d sail as soon as it finished; by then I had saved enough from my stipend for a cheap ticket.