Orchid & the Wasp

by Caoilinn Hughes

  There is one thing she can give him, she has realized. One thing that’s less crude than cash. ‘I get it,’ she says. ‘But just in the meantime, to have in the back of your head … How does ‘The Foess Creative Therapy Centre’ strike you, for a place to work out feelings?’

  Ronan’s squawking outside and Monica’s playing limbo with them, in a last-ditch effort to keep the peace. Guthrie takes a step back from Gael and looks guarded. ‘Sounds like three months is enough for the American Dream to catch.’

  Gael grins. ‘Think about it. You could combine art and helping people … and if it’s registered as a charity, then tax stuff would be a cinch–’

  ‘It’s a nice idea. Really nice of you to dream it up. I have to get the kids inside now. This is taking advantage of Monica. The temperature’s dropping, Soraca needs changing and we all need to eat.’ He goes to the door.

  ‘Guthrie?’

  ‘It’s been a busy day and I’m behind.’

  ‘There’s enough for a college fund.’ She pauses. ‘For both of them. And for you.’

  He stops, his back to her.

  ‘There’s enough to buy a building. You could live upstairs and the centre could be downstairs. You could buy it outright. No mortgage. And if it’s a charity, it would be a trust fund or something, we can work this out with the accountant. And you wouldn’t even have to change anything. If you really do like your life like this.’

  Those last words resound like ill-tuned timpani. So she jumps in with what she thinks is the right note: ‘It’s four-hundred-and-twenty thousand dollars, American dollars … Give or take.’

  Guthrie turns and watches her, somehow savagely. He stands there and she stands there for long enough that Monica has given up and the twins have run inside and are now screaming and climbing up their father’s body.

  ‘Is it enough then, Gael? Give or take?’

  The avalanche of children’s needs cascade upon him then and there is nothing to do but to dig and dig and dig for pocketfuls of air despite not knowing which way is up. Stunned, Gael stays and helps. She restrains herself in silent usefulness. The small, measly kind of usefulness that has no lasting effect. But that is what he seems to want from her. She had been wrong, to think it was respect.

  Later, in the middle of nonsense child-talk at the two-seater kitchen table, he says that maybe they could donate it to the Epilepsy Care Foundation. Gael holds her fork against her tongue. Hard. Or the St Vincent de Paul, he suggests, more convinced. Charities have been badly hit in the recession. Unemployment is at thirteen per cent. ‘But thirty per cent of people our age, Gael. Are unemployed. One in five mortgages are behind on payments. You know, Niall just told us he found his wife moving food around in the cupboard last night. She was crying so he asked what she was doing. It was so the kids would think she’d bought groceries.’

  Gael feels her throat contract. ‘Okay, Guthrie. We’ll do some research on charities later.’ Queasy, she puts her cutlery down and leaves the rest of her sausages and carrot-potato mash.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not thinking about your idea, by the way. It’s just a shock. I mean, it’s very hard to digest. So I’m just trying to … Are you not hungry?’

  Gael had put her fork and knife together and is helping to interest the twins in putting food into their mouths rather than smearing it around the house like mortar (as if the house weren’t already all mortar, too few bricks). ‘I ate on the plane, so. It’ll keep, though, for leftovers. For these monkeys.’

  They eat the cut-up sausage with their hands and the mash with bright green plastic spoons. The washing machine clatters and wallops from the bathroom like it’s cleaning grenades.

  Guthrie takes a measure of her. ‘We’re doing fine, Gael. We have what we need. You don’t think Dad would let me struggle for the basics? I turn down his money every month. I’m pleased if I’m able to do that.’

  Gael keeps swallowing, even though her mouth is dry. ‘Right. No.’ She takes a piece of sausage and spirals it in the air around Ronan, which must make him dizzy, because he closes his eyes and whinges. She can sense Guthrie’s contemplation like an unopened bill in the letterbox.

  After a while, he asks: ‘‘The Foess Centre for Creative Therapy,’ was it?’ His expression is drawn. Sharp cheekbones; slender, nostrilly nose; features cut like Waterford Crystal, which happens to have gone into receivership.

  ‘Creative Therapy Centre. Therapies. I don’t know,’ Gael says. ‘Just … that way it’s not FCCT. Which sounds … you know. FCTC is better, I think.’

  Guthrie stops Soraca from sliding down the high chair, which is getting a little tight for her. He looks changed, now. Brooding in a new way. ‘You’ve really thought about this?’

  Gael shrugs. For the ten or twenty seconds while she watched him clean up after the support-group. In those few seconds, this idea had trumped buy-a-couple-of-properties-while-they’re-still-piss-cheap-and-be-a-passive-income-landlord-wanker. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Amen,’ Soraca adds to the conversation.

  Guthrie laughs out of nowhere. ‘Were you saying your prayers, Sorch?’

  ‘Ya.’ She pulls her Velcro bib off and starts wiping the tabletop with it.

  Gael laughs too.

  ‘Is it because I forgot?’

  ‘You forgot,’ Soraca says. ‘Look, Ron!’ She holds out the dirty bib to her twin. He takes it and looks grateful. She slaps her freed chest and holds her hands there. ‘Amen.’

  ‘What are you praying for, Sorch?’ Guthrie asks.

  ‘I said it.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said it.’

  ‘Are you praying for Daddy?’

  ‘No, Daddy.’

  ‘What then?’

  Soraca spirals her head around and around, thrilled and annoyed at the attention. She collects her face in her hands and makes it go up and down. ‘Use the nice voice.’

  ‘You want me to use my nice voice?’ Guthrie says.

  ‘Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya.’

  ‘What’s my nice voice?’

  ‘Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya.’

  ‘Were you praying I’ll say yes?’

  ‘Ya.’

  ‘Saying ya is my nice voice?’

  ‘Ya.’

  ‘I should say yes?’

  ‘Ya.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Ya.’

  ‘Ya,’ Ronan says.

  Gael and Guthrie look at each other and burst out laughing. The twins scream and throw their food in delight. The washing machine goes into spin cycle and the whole house shakes so as to guess at an unopened gift.

  She asked to borrow the bicycle. She needed to speak with Mum, so would stay at her place. The futon wasn’t comfy but at least there was privacy. A door to shut on unwanted questions (Will you stay for Christmas? How much did each painting sell for and how and who bought them? What jobs are you up for? Are there friends you’ll catch up with while you’re home?) and the possibility of Ronan’s nocturnal visits. Sive wouldn’t be home, Guthrie said. She’d be at rehearsal. She’s covering maternity leave for the conductor of a Northside orchestra.

  ‘What? She never said!’ Gael beamed. ‘That’s great!’

  Guthrie checked himself before speaking. ‘Yeah. It is great.’

  It becomes clear what information had been withheld when Gael approaches the assembly hall at a dingy technical college in Drumcondra: that this is the kind of orchestra for which ‘community’ is the justification. Oh … my god, Gael mouths, as she locks up the bike – the clanking of metal links right at home in the concussing soundscape.

  The double doors to the hall are shut, likely thanks to a petition by deafened Drumcondrans. Gael sneaks in as discreetly as she can, but several players peer at her because the shaft of light from outside is so conspicuous in the dark, wood-panelled hall, not unlike a confessional (and perhaps better served as one). It’s a full orchestra – the whole shebang – arranged on fold-up chairs at the foot of a sta
ge. Sive had said not to come until seven, but Gael ignored her and has arrived at half five, after the rehearsal has begun. She’d wanted to hear them. To watch. Her first impression is that they’re warming up, but they’re actually halfway through a rendition of Lord of the Rings theme music. Resheathe your instruments! For the love of Tolkien! But then the flutes take over the melody from the strings and it’s even shriller and accidentally syncopated and like they’re blowing into the holes of crutches.

  Stood on a timber box, Sive looks all casual elegance in cream chinos and a ribbed burgundy polo-neck. She hasn’t noted Gael, busy with so many players having lost their place in the score. Hers are the exaggerated gesticulations reserved for inciting laughter in cranky babies. Macarena conducting. All the bows in the string sections are going in opposite directions, except for the bulk of second violins, who are all airbowing and so can concentrate on whether it should be an up- or downbow. The trombones also have their arms at conspicuously different angles. The first phrase after every pause is barely muttered, until the players gain confidence enough to sound out the notes by the tenth or twelfth bar. The best of the bunch are the trumpets, who have the Dummmmm-Dummmm-de-de-Dummmmmm main theme. They’re vaguely together and in tune, except that they can only play forte. Sive slashes her hands horizontally outward in the universal sign for stop-what-you’re-doing, but it takes another twenty seconds for the woodwinds to slide-whistle to silence.

  ‘John.’

  Sive addresses the French horn player, who is doing well to hold erect the monstrous instrument, given he’s in his nineties.

  ‘John,’ she repeats. He is deaf, it turns out. ‘What have you got at section D, John?’

  ‘WHERE?’ The lungs are robust.

  ‘D. Section D. What have you got at D?’

  Gael can tell the colour of his eyes from where she’s sitting on the floor at the back of the hall, due to his telescopic glasses. He buries his head in the music for a minute, searching for D. Then sits back, bald-faced, and declares with disgust: ‘NOTHING! SIXTEEN BARS OF IT.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. If you’ve got a rest, John, you’ve got a rest. Take the break.’

  John had been playing whatever notes occurred to him. He looks sore at the prospect of missing out on sixteen bars of action. There are only so many bars left in one’s life. No time left for wallflowering.

  ‘We’ll go one round through from the start,’ Sive says, ‘and then we’ll have our tea break. So, with biscuits as an incentive – I think Freya splashed out on Jaffa Cakes this week – I’d like to hear you confidently playing the notes. Together, if you please, and with expression. Intention. This is a dramatic, gutsy piece of music. Give it socks.’

  ‘Hobbits don’t wear socks,’ someone says, prompting laughter.

  ‘You’re not hobbits,’ Sive responds. ‘You’re orcs. You’re giants. You’re men of Gondor. Instruments up. On my count. One, two; one …’ Cue:

  Omnishambles.

  The tea break has the atmosphere of a disco. Sive is a celebrity everyone wants to stand near to and warning whispers about the voyeur-down-the-back reach her before Gael does. ‘That’s my daughter,’ Gael hears her tell them.

  Then she’s pulled along by arms so that she practically body-surfs the rest of the way to the table, where Sive stands beside the lined-up foam cups – spoonfuls of instant coffee in half of them, tea bags in the rest – several jugs, and a tin can with a coin slot cut out and the word Kitty written on masking tape. There are only two kettles, so the tea break is industrious, having to refill and boil the kettles non-stop before the second half cuts off the supply. Gael and Sive hug.

  ‘Ahhh, that’s nice,’ a lady says.

  ‘Lovely,’ someone agrees.

  ‘Does she play an instrument?’ a man wants to know. ‘Sive, does she?’

  Sive laughs. ‘She plays the instrument of her intellect better than most. And the clarinet, worse than Tristan.’

  Some of them scream at this and look for Tristan to make sure he heard. He’s a great one for taking the mick, someone explains.

  ‘Sandra has a spare clarinet so she does,’ the lady pipes up.

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘She does! Where’s Sandra?’

  ‘Have you the spare in the car, Sandra?’

  ‘Will I get it?’

  ‘Get it now.’

  ‘Go!’

  ‘She’ll have a go.’

  ‘Join in, so she will.’

  ‘Course she will.’

  ‘Oh yes, you’re more than welcome.’

  ‘Shove dem seats along over der, Barry, will yi?’

  Sive is grinning ear to ear, pouring hot water in a cup and letting Gael fend for herself.

  ‘I don’t have my contact lenses in,’ Gael says. ‘I couldn’t see the music at all, but thanks anyway. I’ll just listen.’

  ‘You seen the filum, though? You could give it a lash.’

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU, LONG OR SHORT?’ John asks. ‘SIGHTED, I MEAN SIGHTED.’

  Gael takes a Mikado biscuit and scoops out the jam along the centre with her pinky finger. The finger in her mouth, she says, ‘Astigmatism.’

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I suggest you give your own glasses a wipe, John,’ Sive says, and takes Gael by the elbow and through the crowd towards the back of the hall where it’s quiet. Her skin looks even more craquelured when she smiles, which she’s doing more often than ever.

  ‘Well, this is different!’ Gael says. ‘Why did I have the feeling there’d be no going back from Cash Converters?’

  Sive tilts her head to her shoulder and studies Gael.

  ‘Did you even talk to the NSO about doing the recording?’ Gael asks.

  She had been in touch with Sive regularly over the past weeks about interest in the oboe concerto. One soloist was very eager to present it to his Artistic Director, but it had to be in the form of a recording and Sive had to fly over. Others, too, had asked for a recording. Sive looks back up the hall at the ravenous tea drinkers. ‘It was very generous of you to spend that time on it, Gael. It was thoughtful and flattering and sweet, but–’

  ‘No! Don’t back out now!’

  ‘Let me finish.’

  Gael throws her hair back out of her eyes.

  Sive says, ‘As you know, I do happen to think the concerto you picked is the most viable. And, God forbid, worthy. But it’s been over two years, now, since I left the NSO. And these two years have taught me a lot about what I want at this stage of my life and what’s important.’

  ‘Let me guess–’

  ‘No,’ Sive says sternly, casting her grey eyes upon Gael. ‘I won’t have you guess at my deepest desires, thank you very much.’

  Gael feels small for a fraction of a second. She feels the half foot her mother has on her. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘This is what I miss. Conducting.’ Sive pauses. ‘Composing I love. But conducting, I’ve come to realize, I live for.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Gael says, a little shyly.

  ‘But I left my job at the worst possible time and, as you said, there is no going back. I’d have to wait for a conductor to die in this country to get back in. And who’s to say I won’t die first?’

  Gael tsks. Sive looks up at the group again and sees that they are dutifully finishing up and taking their seats. She checks her watch. ‘You know, it’s peculiar …’ She breaks off.

  ‘What?’ Gael asks, absolutely unable to know what would come next.

  Sive glances back at her. ‘You needn’t be on the floor by the way. There are chairs–’

  ‘I’ve got the bike. I’ll cycle back now and see you at home. Is Art in?’

  ‘We’ll put the bike in the back of the car,’ Sive says.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The second half is even better. They put brandy in the tea and whiskey in the coffee.’

  ‘It’s eleven minutes past six!’ someone barks: words clearly directed at Sive, who raises her eyebrows and hands Gael her
barely sipped coffee. ‘What were you saying, though?’ Gael asks, but her mother is gone. She brings the mug to her lips. Smells peat.

  Gael’s throat is sore from hysterics and her head is light with respite from thoughts of Harper and Guthrie by the time they slacken their bows and finish up.

  In the car, Gael waits for Sive to pick up from where they left off. She takes in the old Dublin streets, with the low splay of cement-coloured bungalow town houses and red-brick walls. Corner shops and bookies and Guinness signs and people with walking sticks and steel roller-shutters pulled down on restaurant and café fronts. Two-story Georgian houses with bay windows lining the richer avenues; huge coniferous trees for discretion. Once they’ve picked their way out of the Bridget’s Cross streets, Sive says that Art is open to moving with her. But they’ll wait another year, till the twins are closer to school. In any case, it will take her a while to find a decent orchestra. Art will go anywhere, as long as it’s not Oklahoma or Bolton. She laughs at something Gael can’t know.

  ‘So what’s wrong with him?’

  Sive glances at Gael charily. Both hands on the wheel.

  ‘How is he … so free and easy, to go anywhere … when he’s jobless, disowned, doesn’t drink, doesn’t drive, clearly loaded with baggage?’

  Sive takes one hand off the wheel and stretches her fingers as if letting something go again and again. Then does the other hand. Calcium deposits crackle. ‘How much has he told you?’

  ‘Only that he flew in the air force and has a son who lives in Cape Town and won’t let him meet his grandkids. That he lived in the States for yonks and got tattoos and that’s about it. And I lived with you guys for months. He’s almost as good a deflector as me!’

  ‘If we crashed, Gael, your ribs would puncture your lungs,’ Sive says in a hard voice. ‘Put your seat belt on properly.’ Gael does as she’s told. Sive takes her time with the wording. Pauses at length between phrases.

  ‘His wife was called Ruth. She died of an aneurysm at thirty-eight, playing tennis. She beat him forty-love. He chuckled when he told me that. As if it was a good line … He’d been a drinker long before she died. But around the time of her first anniversary, it began to spiral. He was in the British air force then. He felt she’d already become blurry and he wanted to have something to pin the forgetting on. He crash-landed a plane and was tested for blood alcohol. They gave him a dishonourable discharge. He couldn’t ever fly in Europe again. … Not that he believed she was in the sky, but having some distance from the ground she was buried in had been a form of relief. He felt that flying was an essential reminder that’s it not about the landing at all. That’s not what you’re holding out for … A bit like music. You’re not waiting for the final chord.’ Sive turns on the screen sprinkler and the wipers for a moment, until they can read the road markings again. ‘His father bullied him as a boy, telling him he was colour-blind so he wouldn’t qualify for a pilot’s licence. “See now, you only see red.” He’d go into the clinic for a flu jab and come out to be told by his father they’d detected early-stage diabetes. Another disqualification. An alcoholic himself, his father plied Art with drink and once, as a teenager, he woke up with his cheek to the kitchen tiles. He’d been ticketed for drunk and disorderly conduct, his father said, so that was that as regards piloting.’