‘Actually, get up, because I want to start by showing you how the piano works,’ I said, lifting the lid and watching his boyish profile obediently peer inside. I explained the working of the keys, hammers and dampers, and demonstrated the varying quantity and quality of tone. He watched with narrowed eyes, suddenly serious – as he might look, I imagined, in a masterclass or a rehearsal for a new ballet – but I had to stop him putting his hand inside.
‘No, you mustn’t touch, you could disturb the sensitive mechanism,’ I said. He started nodding with a smirk playing around his lips so I quickly forged on. I showed him the hand position.
‘How little are your hands, Rosi! How you play with those?’
‘With difficulty. You’re lucky, you’ve got nice long fingers and a good span. Short fingernails too – keep biting them, it’s good for piano. You just need to...’ I pulled his thumb to the side, trying not to blush. ‘That’s it.’
I explained the names of the piano keys, how they were written, time values, counting. He nodded vigorously, impatiently, as if willing me to go faster; I hoped he was taking it all in. And then it was time for him to try the right hand tunes while I accompanied him.
‘Again! Again!’ he said, counting us in with six-seven-eight until I reminded him that we weren’t dancing.
All was going well, if somewhat headlong, until we came to the left hand: he had difficulty reading the notes, complained that everything about them was ‘face down’, wanted to put the finger numbers on top of each note. He couldn’t bear to make mistakes, swearing in Spanish with words outrageously extreme for the situation; I thought it best not to let on that I knew what most of them meant.
‘It’s a problem for everyone, don’t worry. You’ll get used to it,’ I said.
‘Oh, two hands now!’ he said, looking at the New World Symphony theme, which went from the left hand to the right and then back again. I was going to leave it until the next lesson, but he was busy working out the notes. There was no stopping him; it was like riding a wild horse.
‘Again! Again!’ he was saying, nudging me to count him in and play my accompaniment. We played it over and over, and I noticed that he was soon looking down at his fingers and not watching the music.
‘That’s brilliant, but you’ve got to try and look at the music, not your hands.’
‘I think I know it now.’
‘Yes, but you need to be able to play without looking, and it will help you learn the left hand notes more quickly.’
‘Again!’ he said, ignoring me, mouth slightly open in concentration, looking at his third finger.
He wasn’t responding to verbal instruction, so I found myself putting my hand under his stubbly chin and lifting his face up to look at the music. The reaction was instant.
‘Ay, lo siento, I not listen to you, Rosi,’ he said, taking his hand off the keys, pulling me towards him and squeezing me.
‘Okay – forgiven!’ I gasped, wondering how often he was going to do that.
We tried again: there were mistakes, but he mostly kept his eyes on the music. As he’d said, he liked to please. I wondered how many more times we were going to play it. I’d been changing the accompaniment, experimenting with different harmonies.
He stopped and looked at me seriously for a moment. ‘I like the way you do that.’
‘What? Oh... just changing it a bit.’
‘No. When I am cross about a mistake, you make your part sad, calm. When I am correct, you make it like celebration. Is communication.’
Like a pas de deux, I thought. The nearest I’ll get to dancing with Alejandro Cortés.
8.
I was sitting at my desk eating a sandwich that stuck in my throat at each bite. Wondering. We might become good friends. And maybe... but no. Perhaps if I were ten years younger, young enough to be the girl he would eventually take back to Cuba with him, to start a family. I’d never been worried about age, embracing birthdays as excuses for extravagance, but suddenly it was the cruellest fate that I’d been born too early. Besides, I already had a family, and anyway, he couldn’t possibly find me attractive when he was surrounded by beautiful ballet dancers and Jessie.
‘Penny for them?’ asked Lisa. I realised I’d been gazing at the wall.
‘Oh... this and that. Does anyone actually read interim research reports?’ I scrolled through my morning’s work; I might just as well have stayed at home and done some uninterrupted piano practice while Jez was at Elizabeth’s and the boys were at school. ‘How’s it going with Damian?’
‘Okay I suppose...’ She got up and closed the door. ‘Don’t want him suddenly standing in the doorway listening! Just wish he could be a bit more... I don’t know... open. I just can’t work him out. But that thing with Isabel – I think you’re right, it was all in my head. We had a good evening out with his boss last night. You know Ricardo Pereira?’
‘Yeah, he’s a nice guy.’
‘Now there’s an understatement.’ I looked over at her. She was grinning and nodding her head.
‘You’re not hoping ... Oh God Lisa, he’s married. And anyway, what about –’
‘I’ve heard not very happily.’
‘What? No – I just tested his son’s eyes a month or so ago, he came over and was there with Ana as usual, they seemed fine.’
‘Hang on – he sits there and watches you test his son’s eyes?’ she asked.
‘No! He just pops over and thanks me... Look forget it, Lisa, he’s a sweetie, but he’s a Brazilian with a lovely Brazilian wife and they’re –’
‘Apparently he suddenly had to go home after a heated phone call in the clinic –’
‘Oh... that could have been anything –’
‘And rumour has it that he booked into a hotel for a week or more.’
I hesitated for a moment. ‘Again, doesn’t have to mean anything – perhaps they had builders in.’
‘Why are you so determined not to believe it?’
‘Because I don’t want to. It would be very sad – they were teenage sweethearts.’
She looked up from the notes she was sorting into two piles. ‘How well do you actually know Ricardo?’ she asked.
‘A bit... we were in the same hotel many years ago for the Florida meeting and since then I chat with him in the canteen sometimes. He’s one of the few doctors who don’t bore me to death – sorry, present company excepted – but I hardly ever see him these days, other than when I test Gabriel’s eyes.’
‘Right. Throw that gross sandwich away and come with me. You’re going to tell me all you know over – let’s see, Tuesday – might be gooseberry pie and custard.’
So there we were, in front of our puddings and tea, and it was time for me to tell her all I knew. Once I thought about it, however, I realised that although the connection between Ricardo and me was innocent, it was still going to have to be carefully censored in its telling.
‘So come on, what happened in Florida?’ she asked.
‘Well it was just after he’d beaten off all the Oxford-Cambridge and well-connected competition to his consultant post. Some of the doctors were treating him like some upstart savage boy, and Ana was trying to make him give it all up and go back to Brazil. He was feeling a bit... vulnerable.’ As was I, suspecting – correctly, as it turned out – that Jez was having an affair with the effusive author of a series of children’s books about garden insects.
‘Vulnerable? To you, you mean?’
‘No! I was just somebody he could talk to who wasn’t involved in all the bitching.’ And we walked along the beach for miles; drove to out-of-town restaurants where we could be sure not to meet anybody from the hospital. We joked about how we were having a pretend affair, but she might not have understood that.
‘So he didn’t try anything –’
‘No, Lisa! Please.’ But we did sort of lean against each other when sitting on his hotel room sofa, laughing as my front-of-the-eye talk printouts got mixed up with his back-of-the-eye stuff.
‘So come on, Rosie, tell me something interesting or...’ She started pulling my pudding away and I grabbed it back.
‘Well... let me see. He seems to have had a rather pressured upbringing in Rio. He wanted to be a swimmer... or was it a poet, I can’t remember... perhaps both. But his father sounds like a right tyrant and wouldn’t have it –’
‘I love swimming! Must bring it up sometime. Go on.’
‘So... bright boy, you know, father pushed him towards medicine. Weird when you think how committed he is now. Perhaps his father –’
‘And Ana?’
‘Well, as I say, teenage lovers. I think she was the daughter of a family friend. Trained to be a teacher.’ At eighteen there was an upset with her folks and his parents persuaded him to marry her. When they came over here she didn’t want to retrain, and he was disappointed by her lack of adaptability. But not unhappy, as far as I knew, so there was no point in raising Lisa’s hopes with this information.
‘So you sat around the hotel chatting about all this and –’
‘We went jet skiing, six of us, and I shared with him because everybody else was a couple... My God he was a madman on that thing.’
‘You had your arms round him, your legs –’
‘Oh stop it.’
‘But Rosie... he’s gorgeous – all that floppy black hair, those big sad eyes...’
‘Yes, but I had – and still have – a gorgeous husband with floppy fair hair and big eyes.’ But at the time, I wasn’t sure for how much longer. So I enjoyed the gentle affection and reassurance. And occasionally, if we knew we had to be somewhere and there was no risk of escalation, there was a brief kiss. Then he changed his flight back to London so that we could sleep together for the first time – on the plane that is. We thought that was very funny. But we didn’t sleep, we chatted, regretting each passing hour, because we both knew that when we got back we’d only see each other in the canteen, or in a corridor, surrounded by colleagues with antennae finely-tuned to hospital affairs. Even pretend ones.
‘Could you... sort of find out, if you talked to him?’
‘What – “Hi Ricardo, haven’t seen you for ages, but tell me, are you and Ana still okay or can I suggest a replacement?”’
She rapped my knuckle with a spoon and we went back to the office. I was relieved to see Damian there; she wouldn’t be able to talk about Ricardo anymore and I thought I might be able to get some work done.
I tried to get stuck into the report, putting my iPod on to block out Damian’s irritatingly loud and lengthy instructions to someone in the lab. Then half way through the afternoon I spotted Lisa waving and pointing and turned round to see Ricardo himself, of all people, obviously planning on coming up behind me and making me jump.
‘Nah – nobody creeps up on me! So how are you these days?’
‘Oh, you know, okay. Too much on, as ever.’ It had been a while since I’d seen him at such close proximity. He was looking rather older these days: a little tired around those big dark eyes, fuller around the face, a few grey strands in the black hair.
‘Going to the conference?’ I waited for him to tell me he was too busy; over time it had become just a polite enquiry, like between colleagues all over the department at this time of year. He seldom went, and when he did we were lucky if we bumped into each other for a coffee in the conference reception area.
‘I don’t know. My father’s in hospital – I might have to go to Brazil. You’re going?’
‘Yes. James insists, and anyway I can never resist a bit of free sun and sea. Sorry about your father –’
‘How’s the old Shell Motel these days?’
‘Oh no, nowadays I stay at that fancy one with the pillars. They’ve got a couple of tiny rooms that are within the budget, but nobody knows, so it’s nice and quiet.’
‘You mean nobody from here knows,’ he said, lowering his voice slightly.
‘Yup, it’s great. Never got used to coming back after the meeting and letting work colleagues see me in my bikini at the pool.’ He was nodding, with a slightly embarrassed smile. He, of course, had seen me in my bikini, but that had been a long time ago.
‘Look, I didn’t know your office was here... it’s a shame because Ana got you a present for testing Gabriel’s eyes and I’ve had it on my desk so long I’ve now lost it.’
‘Oh don’t worry – I really don’t need a present.’
‘Well, she’ll be cross, so maybe I’ll get you something.’
‘I seem to remember that you hate shopping, so honestly, don’t bother.’
He patted my shoulder and took the notes he was carrying over to Damian. Lisa was gazing at him stupidly, and it occurred to me that although I would like seeing a bit more of Ricardo, now his Fellow had a desk in our office, her interest in him was going to become rather tedious. I also started to feel a bit sorry for Damian; another Latin was unconsciously messing with an English heart.
9.
‘Hello, you must be Rosie. I’m Sarah. Is he ready?’
She looked vaguely familiar. A mother from school? A play date I didn’t know about? ‘I’m sorry, you’re...?’
‘Elizabeth’s daughter. Bit early I know, but we weren’t sure how held up we’d be with all that digging up of the A272,’ she said, with a forced laugh.
I was thinking how long it had been since I’d identified myself as someone’s daughter, rather than their mum. I was wondering whether her luscious auburn-brown hair was natural. But mostly I was wondering why Jez hadn’t told me about her; so difficult to match with her sharp-featured, no-nonsense mother and forgettable, featureless father. Maybe Jez hadn’t met her before, she was just driving them to the airport.
‘How’s Lucy?’ asked a little voice. Kenny had come to the door in his pants.
‘Fine. She’s gone back to the farmer now, she’s nearly as big as the other lambs.’ She smiled at Kenny as he started mumbling something about his sheep collection and wandered off to his room. So they had met.
‘I’ll go and see if he’s ready,’ I said, hoping for a few minutes alone with Jez, but then there he was, holdall over his shoulder and grinning with excitement like an 18-year-old off on a gap year.
‘I’ll call you when I get there,’ he said, and with a quick hug he was off, shutting the door behind him.
Kenny came back. ‘She didn’t wait to see my sheeps.’
‘Well I think they were in a hurry to get to the airport,’ I said, taking the squidgy toys from him and wanting to just lie down with them somewhere for a while, as if their soft innocence could help me think clearly.
I taught Kenny a couple more notes on the piano and then got down to practising myself. Kenny jumped up and down on the bed in time to the music, messing it up, which would have annoyed Jez, but for all I knew he’d be messing up a bed himself before the day was out. No. He wouldn’t. She’s probably not even going to Crete. Maybe he had told me about her, but in the middle of some gardening chatter.
We went to pick up Seb from the school bus stop and I braced myself for the constant pounding music that would fill the rest of the weekend – but hopefully not until he’d done a bit of work.
‘Seb you are going to get on with your revision, aren’t you.’
No response.
‘Seb!’ I shouted, going straight for full volume.
‘Oh what?’
‘Your revision... You’ve only got two weeks left until the exams.’
‘They’re not exams, they’re just tests.’
‘They’re end of year exams and you need to pass them. Where’s your revision timetable?’
No reply. I looked at his desk: just a letter to us regarding one of his Saturday detentions and a gaudy flyer listing forthcoming under-eighteens’ nights at Brighton Dancia. One of which, I noticed – and hoped he hadn’t – was that night.
I pulled his school bag out from under the bed. A few dog-eared text books, although none for the dreaded science. A thin folder with
some scrappy history notes and a March assignment marked ‘Why not finished?’ A beaten up and depleted maths set. No pencil case. Numerous hand-outs, so thoughtfully already hole-punched, but crumpled like packing material throughout.
‘This bag is a disgrace,’ I said, as I did on a regular basis, but this time I turned it upside down and emptied the contents onto the middle of the floor.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake! What’s the matter with you woman? You’re doing it again!’
I was doing it because Jez had simply given up. ‘Wasn’t Dad going to help you with your history last weekend?’
‘He was showing Kenny and that fat kid how to play cricket.’
Typical. He just couldn’t be bothered; it was always left to me. Even though I was blatantly not getting anywhere.
I launched into the much repeated diatribe about how he would lose his drama scholarship if he continued to misbehave and make no effort with his studies; how we couldn’t really afford the fees even with the fifty-percent-scholarship.
‘And there’s the play words. Where’s the script?’
‘At school.’
‘Well that’s just great isn’t it? Get on with the revision then.’
But he carried on reading the stupid donging messages. I took myself out of his room before I started losing it – within half an hour of his coming home and with a whole day and a half to get through – and went back to thumping up and down my scales until my hands ached and Kenny told me I’d break the piano.
So I went to make a coffee among splatters, crumbs and left-out sandwich ingredients.
‘Come and tidy up after yourself! How many times,’ I bellowed, but Seb was in the bathroom. I should have wondered what he had planned, showering in the afternoon, but I was distracted by hearing Kenny on the phone.
‘Hello it’s Kenny. I want Liam to play. He can come now.’ A pause. ‘Good.’
‘Look you have to ask me first, alright?’
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