by Penni Russon
I go up the escalator. My knees tremble as I climb to get up faster, nudging past other shoppers. I look around the crowded floor, full of shoppers and shoes on display and, well, things. So many useless things. I can’t imagine wanting any of it now.
I ask people if they’ve seen Sibbi. One rather crotchety old man says, ‘You should call the police. Leave it to the authorities. Don’t want to delay with a case like this.’
His wife tugs at him. ‘Come away, Frank. You’re frightening the girl.’
I am looking but I cannot see. Every minute that Sibbi is missing is another minute that Sibbi could be further away. All the awful possibilities crowd into my mind – Sibbi snatched by a stranger, run over by a car, wandering and wandering, more lost and frightened by the minute. The Sibbi in the school uniform – pale, diminished – haunts me.
I am supposed to be angry with Sibbi, but the fury is gone now. Did Sibbi run away because of me and the violin? Have I driven Sibbi away? When was the last time I took Sibbi anywhere, or played with her, or smiled, or said even one kind word? Could this be all my fault?
Stress narrows your focus. Breathe and be calm.
Breathe and be calm.
I stop in my tracks. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. And when I open them, it’s to see a girl in a Harrods uniform, not much older than me, rushing towards me.
SIBBI
THE ESCALATOR GLIDES Sibbi’s body down down down and Sibbi lives inside her body. Sibbi watches her feet, and when it gets to the end, she doesn’t step off, she lets the movement of the escalator slowly push her off and then a man behind bumps, and a woman bumps him and they are all cross with Sibbi.
Everybody has a body. Nobody doesn’t have a body.
Sorry not sorry. Sorry not sorry, her little stepping sandals say on the polished floors.
At first Sibbi is excited to see boxes and boxes of the toys she loves from her TV shows at home. But she doesn’t like the faces. They have bodies, but there is no one inside their bodies to think their thoughts.
‘Excuse me,’ she tries to say to a lady passing by, but the lady doesn’t hear her. She wants someone to lift the giant teddy down so she can give it a hug.
‘Excuse me.’
‘Where’s your mother, little girl?’ booms a big voice, but the man doesn’t stop to hear her answer.
It’s no use trying to talk to grown-ups. She sits down and waits for Mama to find out where she is.
ELSE
‘ARE YOU ELSE?’ the shop assistant says. ‘Your sister’s found. Your mum’s with her in the toy section, I’ll take you there if you like.’
I literally feel my knees buckle under me. All the air goes out of me. I actually start to cry, in front of this strange girl. After weeks – months – of holding it in, now the tears leak out.
‘Ah, go on then,’ the Harrods girl says. ‘Happy tears never hurt anyone.’
I’m scared now I’ve started I won’t be able to stop, but the tears dry up quite quickly. A flash flood.
Downstairs, Olly is holding Sibbi’s hand tightly.
‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ says Olly.
We go to the tearoom on the second floor. Olly clutches Sibbi’s hand tightly. I wish for a fleeting moment that Olly would hold my hand too. I still have a case of the serious what ifs, my brain still playing out various scenarios.
We order the British afternoon tea special: Earl Grey and crumpets and lemonade for Sibbi. She rests her head on her arms, watching the bubbles rise to the surface.
‘When we inherited the house,’ I say, ‘I thought it was like winning the lottery.’
Olly shrugs. ‘Winning the lottery is probably not always everything you think it’s going to be either.’
‘Everything’s so different here.’
‘Different better or different worse?’ Olly asks.
‘What do you think?’
Olly makes a face.
‘You’re obviously not happy,’ I say.
‘I’ve hardly given it a good go, though, have I, Else?’
‘You didn’t want to come!’
‘I’m just homesick. I mean, it’s not fatal. It will pass.’ Olly tries to look convincing, and fails. She finishes her tea. ‘I can’t face going back upstairs to pay for the uniforms. Would you mind if we came back another day?’
‘Sure,’ I say, hugely relieved that we haven’t bought the uniform. ‘Let’s do that. But I’m not coming home with you now. I have to go and return this violin. Will you be able to get home okay?’
‘I can manage,’ Olly says, though she looks nervous. ‘You don’t want me to come with you? Help explain?’
‘No. It’s something I need to do on my own.’
ELSE
LEV STARMAN OPENS the door. He does not seem surprised to see me.
I hold out the instrument. ‘I took it. And I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to keep it, I just wanted to play it. And then my sister cut the strings. She cut them with the good scissors. All the strings.’
‘Come in, but wait. I am seeing somebody. Ms Joanna Black.’
Lev Starman returns to his customer and the violin that sits on the table in front of him. Else can see that it has a long crack right down the front.
‘I will have to disassemble the instrument,’ Starman tells the woman.
‘No!’
‘It is what must happen in a case like this. You have to repair it from the inside, it cannot be repaired from the outside.’ Lev Starman looks at me. ‘You can restring a violin?’ he asks, abruptly.
I nod.
‘There are strings in the box there.’
I rummage in the box and finds the four strings I need, coiled in their paper packages. I thread the first string into the peg and begin winding.
‘Will it sound the same?’ Ms Black asks.
‘Never.’
‘Oh,’ Ms Black hides her face.
‘It will not sound like it did when it was new,’ says Starman. ‘It will retain its memory of you, but this fall is part of its history now. Maybe it retains the memory of this fall too.’
Ms Black continues to look worried.
‘All will be well,’ Starman assures her. ‘I’ll get the paperwork.’
I thread and wind the next string. Joanna Black looks up and smiles. ‘Did you play it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Else.’
‘Did you play the violin before your sister cut the strings, Else?’
‘Oh. No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Hm,’ says Ms Black. ‘That’s a shame. I have a tuner in my handbag if you want to tune the strings.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. I use the tuner to find A, then, by habit, I tune the rest of the violin by ear.
‘Play something now,’ invites Ms Black. ‘Anything you like.’
I freeze. All I can think of, all I can see swimming in front of my eyes like fish, are the notes for the Mozart piece, the piece I could never get right.
‘It’s been a while,’ I tell Ms Black.
Ms Black shrugs. ‘Did Mr Starman ever tell you that the world is not waiting for you to play the violin?’
‘Yeah!’ I say. ‘Actually, he did.’
‘He told me that too. The first time was years ago, when I was your age. My mother had brought me here to get a second-hand violin and I was furious, spoilt, because I wanted something new. We were not particularly well off. Not badly off either. Just ordinary.’
I nod.
‘The second time he told me,’ Ms Black remembers, ‘was six, seven years later. The constant cycle of auditions and rejections were grinding me down. I was appalled at the prospect of having to teach others to play while never playing professionally myself. My parents were pressuring me to retrain as a banker or some other utterly sensible thing. I returned to Lev Starman to sell my violin back to him.’
‘But you didn’t give up?’
‘I didn’t sell him the violin but I d
idn’t change my mind overnight. I thought about what he’d said. And I realised he wasn’t telling me not to play. He meant this: the world is not waiting for anyone to play the violin. Or write a poem. Or paint a picture. Paint, don’t paint. Write, don’t write. Play, don’t play.’ She shrugs. ‘You may as well play.’
‘And then you got a job with an orchestra?’
‘Not for a few years. I still struggled. I started up my own chamber group with some other graduates I knew. I began to enjoy teaching. I dabbled with composition. Now, let’s stop talking about me. Play something simple. Something you enjoy. What about a G melodic minor? That’s my favourite warm-up.’
‘Okay.’
I stand for a moment. I let the silence of the weeks I have not played pass through me. No judgement or fear, I tell myself. This is your chance to play. I draw the bow up, and the music of the scale flows through the room. As the last note lingers, I close my eyes and I play the opening bars of the Mozart.
At first the music flows but then I falter, forgetting the notes. I open my eyes, remembering the other woman in the room. Lev Starman has also returned and is waiting politely in the doorway for me to finish.
‘I don’t remember the rest,’ I say.
‘Mozart demands so much of us,’ Joanna Black says. ‘The notes are not so difficult here, but the expression is unnatural, don’t you think? It’s hard to understand what he wants us to say.’
‘Yes!’ I feel a little like crying or like laughing, I’m not sure which. ‘Oh, exactly, yes.’
‘They say Mozart is too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.’
‘Do they?’ I ask. ‘Do they really say that?’
Lev Starman gives Joanna Black papers to sign. He tells her, ‘It will be safe with me. You’ll have it back before semester begins. Ms Joanna Black teaches at the Royal Academy of Music,’ he tells me. ‘Now, this violin you have just strung, we shall lend this to Ms Black, yes? Until her own violin is finished.’
I have no right to feel disappointed. Why should Starman, or anyone, give me a violin? And yet I feel a sad sharp rift as I hand it over. Once again I am without a violin.
‘It was lovely to meet you, Else,’ says Joanna Blackman. ‘The world might not be waiting for you to play, but I am. Come and see me, please, before you decide to give it up forever.’
Once Joanna goes, I turn to the violin-maker.
‘Can I . . . can I help out around here? Cleaning, or, I don’t know, filing paperwork or something? To make it up to you.’
‘The harm is not permanent,’ says Mr Starman. ‘But the offer is appreciated.’
I spend the rest of the morning sweeping little curls of wood shavings and dust, emptying the bins.
‘You should go now. Adelaide works here on Saturday mornings. She can show you the jobs. You think you can learn to re-hair a bow?’
‘Yes! I’d like that. Thank you.’
‘There may be another instrument around here you can play in return. Let me see. Oh yes.’ He lifts a case from a high shelf. ‘It is just a student instrument, nothing special and not of my making. It’s just a repair and resell. But for now, on loan to you until you can save up enough to buy a new one.’
‘Thank you!’
As I walk through the streets, back to the house on Mortlake Road, I feel the music still, where it is located in the body, my wrist, my fingers, travelling up my arm, vibrating through my sternum and the delicate yet sturdy lines of my rib cage. At the thought of an instrument to play, my step quickens. And then, as if I am still in Australia, as if I am under a huge sky, in the rolling paddocks around the cottage on the hill, I break into a joyful run.
SIBBI
MAMA AND SIBBI step outside Harrods into the light and each breathes a sigh of relief. Mama looks for the entrance to the Underground. A big yellow double-decker bus trundles past covered in writing and colourful pictures.
Sibbi tugs at Mama’s sleeve. Mama has to lean in very close to hear her.
‘What does the writing say?’ Sibbi asks.
‘Um . . .’ Mama reads the side of the bus. ‘It says it’s a tourist bus,’ Mama says. ‘It takes you driving around all the sights and you can hop on and hop off where you like.’
‘Can we hop on?’ Sibbi asks.
‘Well,’ says Mama. ‘Maybe not today.’
‘Please?’
‘I’m worried about getting lost,’ Mama says. ‘What if we hop off and then we can’t find our way home?’
Sibbi stares up at her.
Mama sighs. ‘You still haven’t been to see Baby Prince George yet, have you? Daddy keeps saying he’ll take you but he’s so busy.’
‘Everybody is busy and I am always being so a-lonely.’
‘But I have been busy, Sibbi, I really do have to finish my thesis.’ Mama sighs. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Where’s our sense of adventure? I suppose as long as we can find our way back to the Underground, we can find our way home.’
Mama and Sibbi get on the yellow bus. ‘Good grief,’ she says when she hears how many English moneys the man wants, but she pays it all and then they go upstairs to find a seat.
‘Here we go,’ says Mama. ‘Here’s two just right for us.’ ‘I want to sit up the front,’ says Sibbi.
‘But there are already people sitting up the front. We can sit here. We’re nearly at the front.’
‘But I want to be at the front of the front.’
Mama looks up at the older couples sitting in the seats up the front. Both couples are pretending not to hear Sibbi. An older man crosses his arms and sets his mouth in a very hard, straight line.
‘We can sit here, Sibbi,’ Mama whispers. ‘This is the place where we can sit.’ Sibbi opens her mouth. ‘Or we can get off the bus,’ Mama says. And then she says, in a shaky voice that is not like Mama’s usual voice, ‘Please don’t make a fuss, Sibbi.’ The bus begins to rumble away and Sibbi sits down. ‘This is fun,’ says Mama, but Sibbi thinks it would be more fun if they were at the front of the front of the bus.
Mama studies the little map that came with the tickets. ‘Oh look!’ she says. ‘We’re quite close to Buckingham Palace. And there’s Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Downing Street, and Churchill’s war rooms.’
Sibbi doesn’t look the map. She looks out the window at green parks and big grand houses. They remind her of the dolls in the store. They have beautiful outsides, but no thoughts. Outhwaite House has its own thoughts.
Mama looks out the window. Sibbi can see Mama but she cannot see Mama’s thoughts. She knows they are in there, though.
The bus goes past Trafalgar Square, and Downing Street where the politicians go to work and the Prime Minister lives.
Sibbi thinks Big Ben, the clock tower with the gold face, is the castle where Baby Prince George lives.
Mama shakes her head. ‘It’s just a clock. Next stop, I think, Sibbi.’ And a minute or two later, the driver announces Buckingham Palace. ‘Shall we hop off?’
They get off the bus. ‘Look,’ says Mama. ‘The flag’s flying. That means she’s in.’ Mama gives Sibbi a little nudge.
‘But I don’t think this is the right place,’ Sibbi says, frowning.
‘Yeah, it is. Look at the guards with their funny hats. See?’ Mama points at a very straight-faced guard standing close by.
‘But . . . but it’s all the wrong shape. It doesn’t have the pointy bits.’
‘Turrets? Mm, I see what you mean. It’s not like the castles in storybooks. It does look . . . sort of strict and serious, doesn’t it? But I think being a queen is strict and serious in real life.’
‘Is Baby Prince George strict and serious?’
‘I don’t think any child can be serious all the time.’
Sibbi walks right up to the fence and presses her face against the railings.
‘Shall we go for a walk in the park, or hop on the next bus?’ Mama asks.
Sibbi looks at Mama. ‘I want to go inside. I want to see the Queen and have
tea.’
‘Oh honey,’ Mama says. ‘We’re not allowed.’
‘But you said she was home!’
‘Nobody’s allowed to go inside. You know that. You know we can’t just walk up to the door.’
Does Sibbi know that? Probably she does, but suddenly it is all too much. She sits down and begins to sob. ‘I want to see Baby Prince George, I want to see Ba-ba-ba-by Prince Ge-Ge-George.’
When you are four it can be hard to know what are your parents’ rules, and what are the world’s rules, and sometimes you blame your parents for things they really have no control over. And when you are a mama, it can be hard to untangle the strands of your child’s disappointment, anger and wilful disobedience. And so sometimes you blame your child for things they have no control over either.
Sibbi gets angry with Mama. Mama gets angry with Sibbi. Tourists sidestep the two of them as Sibbi flails and beats at Mama and Mama tries to calm Sibbi down. She tries bribing, begging, cajoling, threats of no television.
‘What do you want?’ she asks Sibbi eventually. ‘What do you want from me?’
But Sibbi, crying and wailing, does not know what she wants. She just wants. She is made of wanting. Wanting is a dark noisy scribble in her eyes and ears and throat and heart.
‘Are you going to do something about this child?’ a cross man asks as he steps over Sibbi’s legs. It is the same man who did not want to give up his front seat on the bus.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ says Mama, galvanised into action by rage (not at Sibbi, at the stern man) and she says a very, very rude word to the man that temporarily stuns Sibbi into silence. She hauls Sibbi, still kicking, into a nearby taxi, and gives the driver the address of Outhwaite House.
About halfway home Sibbi stops howling and quietens to a tired, babyish weeping, and Mama pulls her close and rocks her.
‘You feel warm,’ says Mama. ‘I wonder if you’re coming down with something.’
Sibbi rests her head on Mama’s shoulder and almost falls asleep, her grubby fingers in her mouth. She is pale and quiet now, tear-stained and dirty from lying on the street.
Mama gives her a little shake to wake her, though she is not really asleep. ‘Sibbi, darling, we’re home.’