by Zoe Morrison
‘Sounds like an interesting project,’ she said. ‘How’s it going?’
It was as if he were a sail and the wind had suddenly dropped. Poof! ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘don’t ask.’
‘I’ve been playing lately,’ she said, looking down, fiddling with her fork, ‘your “Song for Midwinter”.’
‘Really? Where did you find that? I thought it was out of print.’
‘In a shop in Canada, quite a while ago. A lot of people play you there, you know.’
‘International sales have been weirdly good, especially since the album that …’
But he didn’t finish. She had started to sing, quietly, but very clearly, and I realised it was the modern piece that she had played on the other side of the wall soon after we met.
‘You composed it at music school, I think?’
He nodded, watching her, wary.
‘It’s always bathed me in sunshine, that piece. It’s always felt to me like a spot of loveliness in an otherwise frigid, freezing world, yet at the same time it has this taint of melancholy, as if the sunshine is about to leave, which I suppose it always must.’
He asked her then about Canada, and her own musical history, and we heard about her research at the University of Toronto, and her studies at the Royal Conservatory. Then they got up and went into the front room, with me following. Richard started tinkering on the piano, Emily said that what he was playing reminded her of something (a piece I hadn’t heard of) then she played another modern piece, which they discussed, and on it went.
After a while, Richard said, ‘We should play the Rachmaninoff, me on the orchestra part in here, you doing the solo over there – test out this wall,’ and he slapped it with his hand.
I was appalled by this suggestion. I almost shouted, No!
‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said at once. ‘We couldn’t see each other or hear each other properly.’
‘All the more reason to try. It would all be done through listening, but a different sort of listening, almost an anticipation of sound. I mean, these acoustics are fascinating.’
‘I suppose …’ she said.
‘Come on, Mother, where’s the score?’
I didn’t move, I didn’t speak.
‘Is it in the study?’ And then he spied it, fallen beneath the piano. ‘Here we go. Great!’
As quickly as that she was heading next door, he was smoothing out the score on the stand of the Steinway, and they were playing the concerto together on either side of the wall.
It was appalling. Just as Emily had predicted, it did not work. In fact, I would say it was the worst rendition of any concerto on two pianos I had ever heard. Richard could hardly play it, he made mistake after mistake. The only thing that kept him going was the way he thumped the rhythm out in the bass. At first I could hardly hear Emily’s playing with him bashing away there beside me, but then it pirouetted through the wall, or over it, and Richard quietened down. But they clearly couldn’t hear each other properly over their own playing. Whenever they started to play together something ruined it: her tempo changed, or Richard would make another mistake, or she’d drop back as if waiting for him, and he would lower his volume, trying to hear her, but then she wouldn’t be able to hear him. I don’t think they played even one phrase together that night. Eventually she came back over.
‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘I thought I knew it, I did it for a mate once in college, but it turns out I don’t remember it at all. I was terrible, beyond appalling.’
She was smiling. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’
‘No, it was. But you were brilliant.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘I hear a lot of pianists, and like I said, you play with absolute beauty; it’s exceptional.’
For a second she did nothing, then she tilted back her head and laughed, and the only word I can think of to convey what she felt is delight. Then she turned to me and said, ‘What did you think, Alice?’
I said I thought it sounded absolutely terrible, the worst thing I had heard in my life, and that it was a ridiculous thing to even attempt in the first place. They both laughed as if I had made a great joke, and that was it, it was over, they both left.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Richard’s fish dish had been salty; I was drinking water, visiting the lavatory, walking around the house touching things: the banister, the lid of the piano, a bowl of oranges in the kitchen. I started to think someone else was walking around the house too; I could almost hear the footsteps behind me, and I jerked around once or twice, but no one was there. Frightened, I turned on all the lights. Even lit up, so unnaturally bright against the black of the night, the place frightened me. Who’s there? I called into the silent night, but no one answered.
77.
Currabin, December 20th, 2006
Joe Cocker, ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’. I turned it off, the sound of the tractor came back again, rrr-rrr, rrr-rrr.
‘I think he hates me, Alice.’
‘Really?’
‘He never even looks at me anymore. I could stand in front of him starkers, jiggle myself up and down and he wouldn’t even notice.’
Shirley’s entire face crumpled. It was the everyday agony of it, the casual disregard.
‘But you’re beautiful,’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ she wailed, ‘I’m not, not at all. I’m horrible!’
‘You are,’ I said. ‘Look at your face, the structure of it. The bones.’
‘Beneath all the blubber, you mean.’
Pause.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Beauty. I don’t know why we all go on so much about it. It’s such a distraction.’
We sat quietly for a bit.
‘Is he angry about something, but not saying it, is that it?’ I said.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. But what?’
‘Does he hurt you?’
‘Hurt me? Harold? God, no! Nothing like that. He’s just … oh, I don’t know.’
‘Is he distracted by something? His work, something about the block?’
‘No, I don’t know, maybe …’ she looked away.
‘Well, what would you like from him, I mean really like?’
‘Just …’ and she looked over towards the tractor. ‘Just to sit and have a conversation, for him to hear me, you know, see me, look at me when I speak, try to understand what I mean, be interested in that, really interested, and then tell me what he thinks, what he feels. Maybe over dinner, maybe with a candle or something,’ and her voice had become a whisper.
Eventually we got talking of other things: Shirley’s favourite television show, the people I visit in the nursing home, although I haven’t done it this week – I’ve been too busy writing this and preparing for my visitors.
I dusted their room again when I got up, running a soft cloth along the surfaces, then I made shortbread in the cool of the early morning, using cutters in the shapes of stars and hearts and angels which I’d found at a charity shop in Mildura.
After Shirley left, a bit wobbly, it has to be said, I became preoccupied with my own concerns again – specifically the prospect of my visitors; will they come? – and I got up and walked around the block.
It still hasn’t rained. The earth down by the oranges is pulled as tight as dry skin. Where it splits the cracks are as thick as my finger, and the dust around them is a fine powder, which will be lifted by the north wind and deposited in small clots on wind-screens and the sills of city windows.
78.
Oxford, January, 2006
The Monday after Emily returned I was waiting in the front room with the score in my hand. But instead of Emily walking up the path, it was Richard. There he was again at the door, a brown leather satchel in his hand.
‘She’s not here yet?’ he said, after he’d come in.
‘Who?’
‘Emily.’ He put the satchel on top of the piano. ‘She didn’t tell you?’
�
�Tell me what?’
‘We’re going to do another run-through of the concerto through the wall.’ He looked at me and added, ‘If that’s all right with you.’
‘How do you know she wants to do another run-through?’ I said at last.
‘What? She told me.’
‘What?’
‘She told me. Mum, I think you’ve got deafer. Have you thought about that visit to the doctor?’
‘How did she tell you?’
‘How? The phone.’ He gave me an odd look and peered out the window, looked at his watch. ‘I think I’ve got the time right.’
We stood in silence for a bit, then he flopped onto the couch.
‘You’re going to do that thing again,’ I said, looking down at him; it was all I could think of to say. ‘That horrible thing you did the other night? You’re going to repeat that?’
‘That’s the idea.’
They did play it again that day and, again, they were unable to play it together. I got up and stood behind Richard (by this point I had started to shake with the effort of suppressing my agitation) and when he stopped playing he turned around – and the expression on his face! I was expecting a look of displeasure, if not a great knot of frustration, but he was beaming, he was practically beatific.
‘This is pointless,’ I said.
‘Sorry?’ beaming, beaming.
‘This is a long process,’ I said.
‘Yes, and so interesting. These acoustics are fascinating.’
‘The acoustics?’
‘Yes, Mum. Acoustics, sound in time and space. It’s absolutely brilliant here. You’re forced to listen so much more carefully, you hear so many different things in the composition, it makes you appreciate it anew.’
‘This music here,’ I said, pointing at the score, ‘you’re appreciating this anew?’
‘Yes. And, you know, music in general. I’m seeing the compositional detail with much greater attention, but it’s also a different sort of attention: how the parts fit together, how they don’t, when they fall apart, the reasons for that. It’s so interesting.’
‘There’s a wall!’ I spluttered.
‘That’s the bloody reason.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You can hardly hear the music anyway, with what you’re doing.’
‘In some ways,’ nodding sagely, ‘that’s the most interesting part of all.’
They ended up crashing on for another hour before easing to a halt (how this was agreed upon I could not detect), then Richard packed away his books, kissed me on the cheek, and I watched him walk past his car and disappear.
I listened carefully after that, but didn’t hear anything. I pressed myself right up against the wall. Maybe a dull murmur of voices, but I couldn’t be sure.
He left Oxford hours later, his car’s engine roaring to life in the street. Then she started playing again. The music wound itself around the keyboard then seemed to climb right over it and out the window. I didn’t recognise the piece; it didn’t matter. What mattered was that her tone was unfettered once more, restored. As her playing rang into the night, I watched the moon rise above the houses, suspend itself above the meadow as if swinging on a string, then soar up and become smaller.
A few days later he arrived again.
‘She has a job, you know,’ I said, watching him unpack his satchel at the piano. ‘She’s an academic at the university, Oxford University, not that one on the hill. She’s got a senior lecture-ship in the department as well as a fellowship at Jesus.’
‘I do know that actually, Mum.’ He unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves. His shirt was wildly patterned with distressed edges. His hair was sticking up this time, not flopping over his face.
‘Her concert is very soon.’
‘I know, and in the Sheldonian with Mary Shergold conducting. It’s going to be great.’
He sat down at the piano, put a notebook and pencil at the end of the keyboard, opened the Rachmaninoff score, and started following the music along the stave with his finger, his lips moving soundlessly.
‘My point is that her time is very precious and should not be wasted. Cannot be wasted.’
He looked up at me. ‘Thank you, Mum.’
‘And what about that thing, that Scottish thing – have you finished that yet?’
He didn’t answer. Instead he got up, went to the wall and felt it with the tips of his fingers, caressing it, almost, as he had that first night. He pressed his hands flat against it, then his ear. He moved away, looked up to the ceiling, down to the floor, and pressed it again, as if testing its sturdiness.
‘What on earth are you doing? Stop that.’
He ignored me, then went back to the piano and picked up the score again.
‘You’re not helping her, you know,’ I said. ‘You’re doing the opposite.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This thing that you’re doing, it’s not a run-through; it’s chaotic and entirely unhelpful. It’s anti-music.’
‘Anti-music,’ he said, looking at me thoughtfully for a moment, ‘now, that’s very interesting.’ Then, as if something had been finalised: ‘I think it’s going quite well, all things considered, but, you’re right, we certainly need to do a lot more practice,’ and he dropped his hands onto the keys and played a few chords. ‘When did you last get this thing tuned? Bit overdue, isn’t it? Like me to arrange someone?’
Their playing that day was even worse, if that was possible. The way Richard played reminded me of a man I once saw trying to catch a butterfly mid-flight with his bare hands, chasing after it in vain, hands like great metallic claws opening and clasping. Emily’s playing, when I could hear it, was flat, smooth; it had no suggestion of her usual tone, or of all the work she had done on interpretation. It sounded like half of a duo, an accompaniment; they were both playing like that.
I got up and paced about, I was so worked up. I started to find it difficult to breathe; I leant over the banister, sucked the air back in.
I can see in retrospect that this may look like an over-reaction to what was simply a series of unsuccessful rehearsals, but it was more than this to me, it was a replay of things past and a herald of future disaster. Also, I missed hearing Emily’s playing and talking with her properly. We had not met on a Monday in the old way since she had returned. And that evening I didn’t see her afterwards either; Richard went over to her place as soon as they finished.
I heard music coming through the wall. Ditties played on the piano first, phrases, chords, like that first night after dinner. Then recorded music: classical (part of a Mozart piano concerto, some Vaughan Williams, more Samuel Barber), pop (or a cousin of pop; I recognised none of it; it was much less melodic than the pop Emily had played me), then more on the piano. It was very late when it stopped.
79.
Oxford, January, 2006
He started coming to Oxford from London almost every day. Something about the anticipation of it paralysed me. I would sit in the house, waiting for the afternoon to arrive like a thunderstorm, anticipating its doom. When I opened the door I would look conspicuously over his shoulder for her, he would peck me on the cheek and head straight for the piano, saying something like, Now, where’s that lovely Russian? Whenever he started playing she would come over, but never for long; she’d have a quick chat about nothing, flash me a smile, then go back next door and they would start to play.
And their playing, there was no rhythm to it, no sense of a pulse; how could there be when they could barely play the thing together? So intent were they on achieving basic coordination between the two parts that all feeling, nuance and spirit were lost. Her playing was bland, blurred; it could have been anyone playing.
I said nothing, partly because Richard never sought my opinion; he never turned around and said, What do you think, Mother? as Emily would have. If he wasn’t playing he was making notes, or staring at the wall, or at the score, or out the window. (I don’t think he even realised I was
there listening; one day I jerked up suddenly, sitting behind him, and he turned around quickly and with a slow, growing smile said, Didn’t see you there, Mother, how nice.) But most of all I didn’t say anything because I was sure it would soon stop, and I decided that the best thing to do would be to ignore it.
So the next time he arrived I went straight into the study. I didn’t even wait to say hello to Emily. I would file scores, I thought, I would finish the job. But instead I sat there, a score in each hand, listening to Emily’s playing disintegrate next door.
I went up to the bedroom, into the bathroom, then out into the garden, trying to get away from it. I even went into the little shed set against the back fence and stood there fingering the tools (hammer, chisel, axe, saw). Out there I could still hear it, two pianos playing together; that music seemed to penetrate everything – doors, floors, yards, walls.
I would outwalk it, I thought, and I went out the front door and stomped around the block, but even out of earshot it remained with me, it was like a wounded, needy animal, limping and swaying after me. I walked deliberately out of step with it, did ever longer circuits of the streets.
When I got back the house was empty, dark. For a minute I almost wanted to see Richard sitting at the piano with his back to me. Make up your mind, I jeered at myself: silence or disharmony? Is that the only choice? a little voice whispered back. Oh, go away, I thought.
The next day, as soon as he arrived, I walked out. Bye, Mother! he said brightly to my retreating back, and in his voice I heard not hurt but laughter.
80.