Music and Freedom

by Zoe Morrison

  The next day, listening to that strange music, I started to hear my own performance of the concerto, with all its horrifying faults, and all the shame that had been stuffed away rolled up and over me. And the day after that, when it began again, I crashed my arms onto the piano and the strange music stopped for a minute, but then it arose somewhere else.

  I turned on the radio, which made it disappear. It was a program where people ring up and request a love song. I heard Cyndi Lauper, ‘True Colors’, one of Emily’s many favourites. The synthesiser playing an Alberti bass, the sentimental melody, the babyish voice telling me she sees my true colours and that they are beautiful, like a rainbow. I felt wetness on my face and looked up, thinking, this house, this damn house, now the ceiling didn’t work, let alone the walls. I turned off the radio, raged up the hall into the study and started pulling things onto the floor – books, papers, scores.

  I heard a knock at the door; I lunged for it. A man stood in the shadow of the porch: thin hair, a mousy moustache.

  ‘Yes?’

  I am here to enquire about the disappearance of a type of music from the house next door. I am here to enquire about the disappearance of a woman —

  ‘I’ve got your groceries,’ holding up the crate. ‘Shall I bring them in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Uh, okay,’ and then he looked closely at me. ‘Everything all right in there, love?’

  And this was when they asked? I thought. Now?

  ‘Just leave them there,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  I dragged them down the hall. After that I left the house, every bit of me pulling every other bit. It was rubbish day the next day, bins were out already, more were still to come, tomorrow morning they would all be gone and the street would be strewn with litter. How many crescendos are there in this world, I thought, how many diminuendos, accelerandos, ritardandos?

  The strange music had stopped when I returned and I felt a good deal better; perhaps it was the exertion, or the fresh air. I decided I would eat something, would cook myself dinner, then go around to Emily’s and ask her what had happened to her practice, and what this new music was. Of course I would do this, I thought, and why had I not done so already?

  I went into the front room, pulling off my coat and gloves, thinking about what I was going to cook, but I only got one glove off because now I was listening to something else.

  Breathing, I thought, moving closer. Yes, breathing, but with a note in it. Then a shh!, a titter, soft laughter.

  I should have moved away from the wall, but I stayed; I was plastered to the plaster.

  Several random notes were pressed on the piano – clusters, bunches, sudden bangs, like things dropped – then a tapping began, wood against wall. And then a puffing sounded, a sudden blowing out of breath, and over this a cooing drifted in treble clef, lightly at first, meandering, until it funnelled into a crescendo, full-throated. It dropped, then rose, then dropped, then rose, and so it went on for some time until it finally dropped and stopped.

  I stepped backwards, tripped, felt pain, and then the carpet beneath my hands. I sat in the dark, blood beating.

  I woke in the middle of the night, still in the clothes I had walked in – the purple scarf, the one red glove. I went into the bathroom, drank water from the tap. Rising, I caught myself in the mirror, leant forward, touched a finger to glass, moved back.

  Downstairs, I turned on the light in the study and started gathering up all the papers, scores and books I had pulled onto the floor. I pulled them into piles then pushed the piles across the floor into the front room and stacked them against the wall, making sure they would not fall. I stacked them higher and higher until a new wall began to form, and when I could reach no further I got a chair from the kitchen and reached some more.

  86.

  Oxford, February 23rd, 2006

  I was lying on my side with the new wall behind me and the old wall behind it. I lay listening. No strange music. No notes, scales or arpeggios. No Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff or even Cyndi Lauper. I heard a car backfire somewhere far off, then the hysterical yap of a small dog. I got up, looked out. Morning light glinting off the wet road. Leaves lay in dark, fecund clumps on the tiles of the porch next door. A wind was bothering the bare limbs of the trees, a car approached on the other side of the road, wheels dipping in the gutter, throwing up water in slow motion. I will wash, I thought, I will dress, I will brush my hair; I did none of these things. I sat on the lid of the lavatory for a long time then got into bed.

  When I woke late in the day there was a strange taste in my mouth. Blood, I thought, but wasn’t sure. I went downstairs, made a cup of tea, sat holding it at the kitchen table. I switched on the radio. Hey folks! a DJ said. All you lovers out there! Do you want —. I snapped it off, then wrenched the plug from the wall and carried it, cord trailing, out the back door and left it on the cement. I washed the mug, got dressed, got the axe from the shed, put it in the pantry and left the house.

  It was the beat that I remember most, the way it thudded so suddenly in my veins, just a tap at first, a lone tambourine, then a snare drum, soon the snap of a cymbal, now the punch of the bass. Before I knew it there was a whole marching band of them, huge drums hit on both sides, rotating wrists, flicking sticks, marching knees, marching feet, and nothing to hear but the beat, nothing to see but those sticks hitting the skins, the boom of it shuddering every bit of you, shaking my bones, quaking my veins, gathering itself after so many years, and the speed of it, like a barrel down a hill, faster and faster, a mind of its own, boom-boom! BOOM-BOOM!

  Out the door, down the footpath, through the gate, down the easement, into the yard. There was a wall of glass, a wood-framed door. I knocked, waited, then leant, hands cupped, against the glass and looked through it. A black couch, a white rug, a table, bookshelves, an upright piano, pieces of paper strewn around it. I waited for a while but she wasn’t there.

  Into the city, the streets were busy, Hilary term in full swing. Past the museum, past the library, the bookshop, the pub, college walls soaring beside me, a dark valley between them. The building reared before me: Geography. I stepped in.

  The porter was standing behind a desk with his back to me. I walked past him into a hall with a shiny wooden floor, antlers and old framed maps on the walls and a curved, carved staircase in front of me. I started up it, went through the door at the top into a narrow corridor.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  High heels, tucked in blouse; a secretary.

  ‘I am looking for Dr Emily Green,’ with a posh accent.

  ‘I haven’t seen her in today,’ voice artificially loud.

  ‘Do you know where I might find her?’

  ‘You could try the college,’ turning away.

  ‘Jesus?’

  ‘I think so,’ voice sing-song, back inside her room.

  Natives in the maps, I saw, on my way back down, their bare backs turned. Across the shiny floor again, polished nightly, surely, all those feet. The porter didn’t look up as I left; no reason to, I suppose.

  Over to the college. Two men in uniforms in the lodge. I strode past them into a quadrangle lined with rows of swaying daffodils (strange that, no daffodils up anywhere else; a micro-climate in there, perhaps). A young woman walked towards me, short hair, glasses, androgynous; I asked her where the room was, she gestured to a building.

  ‘It’s locked though,’ pushing her glasses up, ‘you need a code. You might ask the porters,’ and she peered at me, not suspicious, I didn’t think, just curious, making her point.

  I waited until someone came down the stairs, a boy, taking two at a time, caught the door. Her office had a notice on the door listing consultation times. I waited outside, but the minutes slid by and I knew she wasn’t there either.

  Back on the streets, looking above collars, scarves, below hats, bicycle helmets, looking at faces, looking at hands, peering at sleeves, x-raying gloves, then thinking, thinking of more places. Was s
he at a film? She sometimes mentioned those. I walked to the cinema, scrutinised a milling, waiting crowd, but she wasn’t there. Had she gone to a yoga class? I went over to the hall she’d talked about, but the door was locked, the place was empty. Out to dinner with friends? She did that a bit. I walked in and out of restaurants along Walton Street, then some in the city, and at times I thought I saw a woman who looked like her sitting at a table eating, but it was never her.

  It was getting too dark to see anything clearly; I walked back to Chardwell Road and checked her place again, then went back to the house, but when I opened the door and saw the stairs in front of me they had become insurmountable. One of my legs hurt, I seemed to have injured it – all that marching. But also the stairs took me too far into the house, the thought of which I suddenly couldn’t bear. I sat in the front room instead, by the window, kept watch from there, the hurt leg propped up on a chair.

  Night extended, the silent time approached, descended; I kept looking out of the window, peering into the dark. My leg started to throb; it was where the beat now resided.

  Morning. I was still at the window, looking at that scene, the gate, the footpath, the identical houses, the street, the gutter. But I didn’t see him coming, just heard the knock on the door, no, the flick. It took me a long time to reach it, as if there were numerous doors and gates I needed to unlock before getting to it. There he stood, beaming like a full moon, holding up a paper bag of food.

  ‘Mum, how are you? I just need to check something out with the wall in the front room, if you don’t mind.’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Hel-lo. Mum? Would it be possible to come in?’

  I stepped back slowly. He was smiling widely.

  ‘I won’t do this now,’ he said, ‘because I know you wouldn’t like it, but sometimes I do just want to give you a great big hug.’

  My hand was still twisted on the door-knob; I was staring at it, trying to work out how to untwist it.

  ‘Mum? Are you okay? You seem a bit … out of it. Shall I cook you some breakfast? I was thinking the other day that I could cook a big stack of meals and —’ But he had stopped. He was standing in the doorway to the front room, looking at the new wall I had made of papers and books, which I’d forgotten about.

  ‘What’s this?’ voice low.

  ‘Filing,’ I said, and I started down the hall, thinking he would follow me, and that I would get to the kitchen first, where the axe was still in the pantry, but he didn’t follow me, he kept standing there looking at the wall.

  ‘Filing? What do you mean, filing? Jesus Christ,’ and he moved his arms about, ‘look at this!’ And then he looked at me and said, ‘Oh my God.’

  What did he see, I thought, what did he see that I had missed?

  ‘Mum? What’s happened? Are you limping? What’s going on?’

  I walked into the kitchen and went to go to the pantry, but he came in behind me and started looking in the cupboards. I sat down at the table; he walked straight out of the back door. I got up again to reach the pantry but as quick as that he was back in the room, tall, very loud.

  ‘There are bags of food out there. The food I’ve had delivered you’ve just tipped out there. My God!’

  I looked at his shaking arm, the pointing finger.

  ‘Have you not been eating again? Is that it? Are you not feeding yourself?’

  I had started to shake too. I was holding the edge of the table. He grabbed the bag of food he’d brought from London, pulled a plate from the cupboard, crashed it down, piled food onto it.

  ‘You have to eat. You’re making yourself sick.’

  I glanced at the mounds of shiny pallid dough, festooned with fruit, chocolate, nuts, icing.

  ‘Go on,’ pushing it closer to me. ‘Eat something.’

  I looked away, started to get up again from the table. He yanked open a cupboard and then the fridge, crashed a skillet onto the stove, opened a carton of eggs. ‘Mum, do you know what day it is?’ he cracked some eggs, threw the shells into the sink.

  ‘Who’s the prime minister?’ he said, pouring the eggs into the hot spluttering pan.

  Now I was moving towards the pantry, putting the kettle on the stove on my way, thinking about how, exactly, I would place my body.

  ‘Who am I?’ he said.

  I hadn’t put any water in the kettle. I went back to the stove, picked it up, took it to the sink. He lunged forward and wrenched the gas off.

  ‘I knew it was on!’ I said, more loudly than I had meant to.

  ‘All right, all right,’ flapping his arms.

  ‘Where is she?’ I said then; I couldn’t help it.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Jesus, what are you talking about? Calm down.’

  ‘Where is she? I can’t find her. I’ve looked and looked!’

  ‘Mum, I think you might have finally flipped.’

  ‘Since you started coming she’s stopped practising properly.’

  ‘Ahhh.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘I need to know what —’

  ‘What do you think I’ve done?’

  ‘I won’t allow it, Richard, I —’

  ‘I love her! Can’t you see? I love her.’ And his voice was anguished, but it was more than this, or other than this; it was as if he had been waiting to proclaim it.

  ‘Love?’ I said. ‘Love?’ But like an echo.

  ‘Yes, Mum, at last.’

  He turned and walked back down the hall.

  87.

  Oxford, February 25th, 2006

  The phone was ringing.

  ‘Mum? I’ve rung the doctor, she can —’

  I hung up, pulled the socket from the wall.

  I felt wetness again, looked up. This house, this damn house, it was collapsing entirely, it was time to go.

  Hands sliding along the walls. Through the gate. Down the path. Across the yard. To the glass.

  ‘Emily!’ I shouted, thumping on the glass wall. ‘Emily!’ But she wasn’t there.

  I walked into town again. The beat was uneven now (boom-BOOM! Boom-BOOM!). I stopped, listened; nothing. I kept walking. Boom-BOOM! Stopped again. It was my leg, I thought, I was still limping.

  I reached Geography and walked in, but something was wrong with me that day: walking wrong, looking wrong, sounding wrong.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  I pretended not to hear, kept walking.

  ‘Excuse me! Can I help you?’

  ‘I am looking,’ accent haughty, ‘for one of your staff.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Emily Green.’

  ‘Not in.’

  He was taller, this one, and thinner. He had a lunchbox open on the desk behind him that had been packed carefully; I glimpsed a neatly cut sandwich, a square of yellow cake in plastic, a shiny apple. I limped around him, went into the hall, but before I could cross that shiny floor he stopped me.

  ‘She’s not in,’ louder, and that floor, like glass; we were just balancing, teetering.

  ‘You need to leave.’

  ‘I need to find her. I have been looking for her for a very long time.’

  ‘Off we go now,’ cupping his hand under my elbow.

  I sat on the kerb, resting, remembering.

  One of the nights after Edward died I went to Evensong in the college chapel. It was dark, lit only by candles, and everyone looked at me when I walked in, so I sat in the first pew I came to and sat very still.

  I heard a growl behind me, an old man clearing his throat, readying it for speech, for outrage. You can’t sit there, he said, and I froze, my bowels liquefied. It’s Fellows only. Then, swooping towards us out of the dark, a woman in a black robe, white collar, spectacles, her hair in a neat bob. Everyone is welcome in this chapel, she hissed. It’s Fellows only! he rasped. She’s sitting in the wrong place! Everyone is welcome in this chapel, she repeated, more loudly. I groped for my handb
ag under the pew and fled.

  I got up from the kerb and went over to Emily’s college. I made to stride through the gate but one of the guards got in front of me.

  ‘No tours today, ma’am.’

  After some remonstration he showed me out.

  I sat down on the pavement again, leant against the wall to wait; I had those consultation hours in mind. After a while the guard came out, looked at me, came over.

  ‘Is there someone we can call, love? What’s your name?’ and he leant down, reached for my handbag. I snatched it to me and with a shot of pure pain down my injured leg I rose and scuttled off.

  I looked for her in restaurants, cafes, bookshops, libraries. I looked for a young woman whose hands could stretch a thirteenth and turn a thin steel string into a bell, a mouth, a lung, a soul.

  My breath was ragged and I was tiring. The bells of the city started to chime their slow, unsynchronised cascade, reminding me of a conversation with Edward when we were courting: Did you know, he said, that the bell in the tower at Christ Church College still follows a time five minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time? Oxford Time, it’s called. Why? I said. Because, he answered, it is their history and they think it is right.

  I came to a bike path; cycles were swooping out of the bleak light towards me, curving, tipping, bells ringing, people shouting. I huddled to one side, but kept inching forward. The path was lined by a hedge, recently trimmed, the rough ends sticking out, sticking into me, and those bicycles kept swooping, weaving. I came to the end of the path. There was a hill before me; a group of young men and women dressed in shorts and singlets were running up and down it. They started up the hill together, but it wasn’t long before they parted. When they got to the top, the fastest waited, but as soon as the slow ones arrived they ran back down. After a while the slowest couldn’t keep up at all, they looked exhausted. One stopped, bent at the waist and vomited, another walked for a minute in jagged circles, but the others kept going as fast as they could, up and down, up and down.