by Zoe Morrison
‘Mum, it’s me. Open up.’
I stood still.
‘I know you’re in there. I can hear you.’
I still didn’t move.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, just open the bloody door, will you? It’s freezing out here.’
He started to knock in the rhythm of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, then he started to sing. It was no use. I opened the door, and there he was. Face flushed, hair longer than I remembered it, tall, broad-shouldered. My child.
Quentin Kidd was standing on the pavement looking up at us. I nudged the door closed, headed towards the kitchen. But Richard had gone straight into the study and was examining the bookshelves. He turned when I followed him in.
‘Jesus, Mum, you’re skin and bone. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
He frowned, looked around the room, frowned again.
‘Where has it all gone? These shelves were full.’
When I didn’t say anything he went over to the desk, which looked small in front of him, and started opening drawers.
‘What are you working on at the moment?’ I said.
‘Mum, where are the manuscripts?’ pointing into the drawer. ‘There was a whole stack of them in here.’
I couldn’t speak.
‘Have you done something with them?’ he said impatiently, and when I still didn’t answer his voice softened slightly. ‘Do you not remember, is that it? Are you having trouble remembering? Do you even know the papers I’m talking about?’
I tried not to take offence, but I knew what he was getting at, what he thought.
He turned away, started rubbing his face. There was dark stubble on his cheeks, his chin, I watched his hands work over it. I knew I would have to tell him.
‘What’s this all about, Mum? Grief? Or are you embarrassed about not remembering things? Is that it?’ and when I still didn’t answer he muttered something to himself which sounded like ‘sheer fucking lunacy’.
‘You know,’ I started, ‘your father wasn’t a kind person.’
‘Jesus, Mum. Do you think I don’t know that? He was an arsehole.’
‘He was very clever. He could be charming.’
‘Charming, you think? Look, Mum, I have no compunction whatsoever about flogging his stuff to the highest bidder. And nor should you. If you’ve lost them, where should I start looking?’
I noticed then that the hem had fallen down at the back of one of the legs of his pants, and I was about to say, why don’t we have a cup of tea, but by then he was standing right over me.
‘Mum, if things are this bad, don’t you think we ought to go to your doctor? Edward did tell me that you have these periods when —’
That did it.
‘Richard, I haven’t known how to say this to you, but I destroyed those papers. I burnt them all, plus a number of other things —’
‘You burnt them?’
‘Don’t … please —’
‘You didn’t. Please say this isn’t true! I can’t believe —’
‘Now, Richard, you —’
‘Jesus Christ! I can’t believe it!’ He was a voluble person, Richard, when he got going, and then I started to make some noise too, what with being in that room and being shouted at – I might have screamed. And then we heard footsteps in the hall and there she was, Emily, standing in the door of the study with bare feet, wearing a dressing gown. We stopped immediately and both looked at her.
III
74.
Currabin, December 19th, 2006
I wish I could describe the stillness of this place, the silence. I wish I could name the birds I hear, and the old gum trees that sway over there, by the fence. But I don’t know them; I am a stranger here now. At times the silence feels immense and I turn on the radio to a station that plays pop songs, mostly from the eighties. The Eurythmics, ‘The Miracle of Love’. Fleetwood Mac, ‘Little Lies’, Icehouse ‘Crazy’. But after about four or five songs this music starts to grate and I switch it off; the silence is restored. Silence? It’s the wrong word. The place is full of sounds, actually, different sounds, ones I’m still learning. I like it in the early mornings when I come out with my coffee to sit on the veranda and think about what I shall write. And last thing at night, I like that time too, when the darkness around me is everything except for the sky lit up above, that soaring dome of dark speckled with light, with stars, shooting ones and falling ones.
For a while now, sitting here, I have been thinking about the idea of love. I used to think love was akin to being fully heard by another, so much so that we are almost of that other, and they of us. But I do not think that anymore. I think it is the not-hearing part of love, and our response to it, that makes it what it is. The work of love, the concentration on the other beyond anything that is reasonable, the retreat, the weary return, the attempts at reconnection, the beginning again, and then again. The failure of love, the acceptance of this, the second chance, and the one after. The attention on what to others would be nothing – a smile, a gesture – so that nothing becomes something to delight in. But I did not see any of this a year ago in Oxford, because I was still thinking so much about what love was not.
75.
Oxford, January, 2006
‘What’s going on? Alice! Are you all right?’
Richard stepped forward. ‘She’s fine.’
‘You get back!’ She shouted this.
‘Jesus, all right,’ and he stepped back, palms up.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m calling the police,’ and she grabbed at the pocket of her gown for her mobile.
‘Great idea.’ He got his phone out too. They stood, phones at the ready, neither of them moving.
‘Do you know this man, Alice?’ eyes flicking to me, flicking back to him.
‘How did you even get in?’
‘The door was wide open. Alice, can you speak? Are you okay? Please, let me know if you can hear me.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much, she often gets like this.’
‘She could have had a stroke! Alice, shall I call an ambulance?’
‘Who are you? I’m Richard, her son.’
‘Her son? She doesn’t have a son.’
‘Ha! Excellent. Come on, Mum, buck up.’
I smiled at Emily.
‘Thank goodness, here, let me …’ and she took my elbow.
‘You got yourself a bit worked up, didn’t you, Mum? Frightened yourself.’
I didn’t look at him. I walked out of the room, down the hall, the two of them following.
‘You were shouting at her.’
‘There was some noise coming back.’
‘I’ve still half a mind to ring the police. Alice, is this really your son?’
I was in the kitchen by this time. I picked up the kettle, held it under the tap. I was so weary all of a sudden.
‘Emily,’ turning, ‘this is Richard, my son; Richard, this is my neighbour, Emily.’
‘Right,’ she said, ‘okay,’ then no one said anything.
I turned off the tap, replaced the lid of the kettle.
‘Well, if that’s the case and you’re all right now, Alice, I’ll go back next door. But I’ll be right there if —’
‘Hang on, you still haven’t said who you are.’
‘Alice said; I’m her neighbour.’
‘But you can’t just walk in here like that; I mean, what were you thinking? Do you do this often?’
‘As I said,’ and I glanced at Emily then because of the tone of her voice, and she was looking right at Richard, ‘I heard a man shouting, which was you, abusing your mother, and then I heard screaming. I was very concerned. Thank goodness I was able to get in. I would have hammered the door down.’
I put the kettle on the stove, pressed the knob, the ignition ticked over, failing to catch. I leant over, looked at the element, the stove boomed alight, I stood back. I looked at Richard then, he mus
t have been embarrassed. He was good at hiding it.
‘Do you always just walk in here?’ he asked again, leaning back against the bench.
‘Obviously I usually knock.’
‘You visit my mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
She laughed, shook her head, then she said, ‘We talk about music.’
‘Music?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you some sort of social worker?’
‘Social worker? No.’
I got the milk out of the fridge.
‘Sorry, I’m still not quite following. You know my mother how?’
‘Look, I’ve told you. We’re neighbours, we have some mutual interests, we’ve become friends. Is this concept unfamiliar to you?’
‘Mutual interests?’ he snorted. ‘Sounds like you’re joint fucking hedge-fund investors.’
Language, Richard, I would have once said, you’re not to speak like that. It was as if I were struck mute, in another dimension entirely, or they were. I couldn’t believe they were talking to one another. I got the cups and saucers down, spooned tea into the pot.
‘Do you live far away?’ she said.
‘I live in London.’
‘London? Wow. I was thinking you must live overseas, given I’ve never seen you visiting your mother before.’
He looked to one side, the long fringe of his hair hanging down in front of his face. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ he muttered, then, louder, ‘What sort of music?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What sort of music do you discuss together?’
‘What a strange question,’ she said. ‘Well, what do we talk about, Alice?’
‘Eighties pop,’ I said.
Emily laughed then; Richard’s eyes were agog.
‘Rachmaninoff,’ she said, shrugging.
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you look very familiar.’
‘Me?’
He was wearing a shirt with several buttons undone, tight pants, pointy shoes.
‘You look very much like the composer Richard Haywood.’
The whistle started on the kettle.
‘You’re him, aren’t you?’
‘Mother, going to get that?’
‘I thought I knew your face.’
‘Mother?’
I was too busy watching the expressions on Emily’s face. He lunged for the kettle, lifted it up.
I made the tea, handed it to them, the cups rattling against the saucers.
They left together, not long after, walking down the hall in silence. I watched them from the front window talking in the street, on the pavement between the two houses. Emily was making what looked like a fervent point. She was moving her hands about, talking intently; Richard was nodding, and then he started up, equally passionately. What were they talking about? She turned suddenly and went back next door; he got into his car slowly and after a few minutes he drove away.
76.
Oxford, January, 2006
The next day Richard arrived at the front door in the late afternoon.
‘Hello,’ he shouted, shouldering his way down the hall, carrying several bulging shopping bags. He dumped them on the kitchen bench, started unpacking food. ‘I thought I might cook some dinner,’ he said, very loudly.
This was such a shock that it took me a few minutes to realise what must have happened. Emily must have told him off, I thought, not only for shouting at his mother but for not caring for her either. Something had pricked him. At any other time it would have been wonderful to see him, but I didn’t want him so near Emily now, although I didn’t know exactly why.
He started to prepare the food; his movements were rapid, he was humming to himself. He almost seemed nervous. We didn’t talk much, didn’t look each other in the eye. He busied himself with peeling potatoes, chopping herbs, slicing tomatoes, mashing anchovies, pitting olives, pausing every now and then to brush his hair back from his face. I realised, looking at him, that he liked cooking and that he was probably good at it. I remembered making biscuits with him when he was very young, showing him how to press his little thumb into the rounds of dough, then put half a teaspoon of jam into the hollow. I remembered the concentrated way he did this, and the accuracy; he was only two at the time. And now there he was, a man in my kitchen, years of a life behind him that I could hardly conceive. I tried to see that little boy in his features; the two now seemed completely different people.
As he was testing the potatoes in the saucepan with the tip of a knife, a rapid piano scale, a perfect arc of notes, tipped itself into the house.
‘Is that her?’ looking at me.
I didn’t say anything; he put the knife down and walked into the hall.
‘That’s really loud out there,’ he said, coming back, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. When I still didn’t reply he went back to the bench and starting making a salad.
Next came a Mussorgsky study, thrown off effortlessly. Richard looked at me, raised his eyebrows. Then she started playing the concerto.
‘That’s the Rach Two,’ he said straight away. ‘Mum? That’s the Rach Two.’
‘It is.’
He stood listening with his hands flat on the bench, entirely still, looking only at the wall in front of him. When she finished the movement he said, ‘She’s a concert pianist.’
‘No, she’s not.’
‘Of course she is, that was extraordinarily good. Even I could listen to that,’ and he went straight up the hall as if homing in on a scent.
I stayed in the kitchen, not moving. As if by not moving I could make things stop. When she started to play the Rachmaninoff again I heard him play a crude version of the orchestral accompaniment on the piano. I rushed up the hall.
‘Stop that. You’re going to disturb her.’ But she had stopped already.
He leapt up, went over to the wall and started feeling it with his hands, palms flat, tapping it, pressing it, his ear to the plaster. There was a knock at the door; he rushed to it.
‘Hello there,’ he said, scraping his hair back from his face with both his hands.
‘Hi,’ looking at him, then past him, her eyes reaching me. She was wearing jeans and a dark sweater with a high neck.
‘How are you, Alice?’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Come in,’ he said.
I looked at him, sharply. Come in?
‘No thanks,’ she said quickly, ‘I just wanted to see who was playing.’
‘That was me.’
‘Indeed. And back so soon.’
‘Actually, I’m making Mum dinner.’
A pause, then: ‘That’s nice, that’s good.’
‘I’ve completely over-catered,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you join us?’
I stared at him.
‘No, I won’t interrupt,’ she said.
‘You’re not interrupting anything, I can assure you. Isn’t that right, Mum? You know, I have to say, the way you played that Rach Two was stunning.’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘Thank you.’
‘I usually hate Rachmaninoff, turns my stomach – over-wrought bloody nonsense – but that was really something. There are some weird acoustics going on here with this wall, which seems quite permeable; I can’t understand why it hasn’t been noticed before,’ his eyes moved to me, then away. ‘Maybe things changed in the structure of the place over the winter, all that wet, the flooding and so forth. Your tone,’ he went on, ‘your touch, they’re so beautiful, so clear, and something else I can’t quite put my finger on …’
‘Thank you,’ she said again, after a small pause.
‘What are you playing on over there?’
‘A second-hand upright.’
‘No!’
‘Well, yes, actually.’
‘Truly? I mean, I can’t stand Rachmaninoff ordinarily —’
‘You mentioned that.’
‘But that was ver
y different … what’s the right way of putting it …’ and we both watched him. ‘None of the overdone Russian angst,’ he said, making a comical motion with his arms, pulling a face. ‘Lighter, but bringing out all sorts of things I haven’t heard in it before, or even thought of. Without the usual pathos, but played so naturally it somehow made it sadder, and also grander. It reminds me of how Imogen Cooper plays Mozart. Or how Glenn Gould plays Bach. Yes, you are the Imogen and Glenn love-child of Rachmaninoff.’
She laughed a little then, or was it more of a snort?
I felt I needed to say something, make a noise, at least, but what? It was as if I were watching something in slow motion, a crash, an accident. My mouth was open, my heart nearly stopping.
‘Please come in and have dinner with us. I’d love to hear more about your playing.’
‘I’ve just started to practise for the first time since I got off an international flight.’
‘Well, you should eat then. I’m serious, it’s the best thing for jet-lag, eat a huge meal as soon as you arrive.’
‘I arrived two nights ago.’
‘So you must be starving. Come on. It will only take, what, twenty minutes. The food’s ready, waiting, just down there.’ He pointed to the kitchen.
She laughed again, didn’t move. She looked at me.
‘What do you think, Alice? You might like to have dinner with your son by yourself since he’s come up especially.’
‘Oh,’ I said, waving an arm about.
‘Not a cogent answer, Mum. Try words.’
What could I say?
‘Come in,’ I said, of course.
We sat at the table and Richard served us plates of food – fish with the fancy sauce, the potatoes artfully arranged – wiping the edges of the plates with a tea-towel before he set them down. Emily asked him about his work and he spoke volubly – flinging his arms about, nearly knocking over a glass – about a work commissioned jointly by an orchestra in Scotland and the Scottish parliament, although I couldn’t work out if he’d been commissioned to compose it himself or someone else was involved. In any case it had to include some Scottish folk music known as mouth music, or lilting – music created to dance to in times when instruments were scarce, or unaffordable, or banned, so the emphasis was on the rhythm, he explained, and the melody, rather than the lyrics, which were often just nonsense words. He demonstrated in a whiny voice, hi-higgledy-dee-dee-dee, tilting his head from side to side and rolling his eyes. Emily didn’t laugh at this, I noticed, she just watched him. I’d never seen him like this; I was still stunned.