Dead People's Music

by Sarah Laing

  My mother was impressed that I had found a date, but, siding with Samantha, she wouldn’t buy me a dress. ‘Why should I spend all that money on something that you’ll only wear one night? I don’t spend that on me. I’ll put a red taffeta frill on the bottom of your orchestra dress. That’ll spruce it up. You’ll look quite Spanish.’

  ‘No, Mum, I have to have something different. That orchestra dress would do for a nun.’

  ‘Well, we could go to the op shop to see if they have something. Plenty of girls would have only worn their dresses once. Or I still have a piece of green Thai silk in my trunk. We could whip you up something on the sewing machine.’

  ‘That’s all right. Maybe I’ll ask Megan if she has something she can lend me.’ The thought filled me with dread, but I didn’t want to wear anything my mother made either. It would probably be hastily run up after drinks at tennis, and she would piece fabric together where she didn’t have enough for a panel. Then, instead of hand-stitching, she would hem it on the machine, so that it rippled and veered. I could always try and make it myself, but I was such a perfectionist, and the machine alternately filled me with elation and anguish, causing me to cry and swear when I had to unstitch things and start again.

  ‘What about my mother’s trunk?’ suggested Dad, to Mum’s explanation of my stomping and sighing.

  ‘God knows where that is. I think I might have sent it to St Vincent de Paul,’ said Mum.

  ‘Over my dead body. It’s downstairs with my train.’ Dad had finally packed up his model train when my sister was three. She had broken a drawbridge by hoisting her dolls, and had pulled off model houses to stick around her own dolls’ house. Dad had relocated it to the locked basement, and it had never returned upstairs, though sometimes he suggested making space for it in the spare bedroom. My mother refused. ‘It makes you seem so childish. I know that you’re emotionally constipated, but I don’t want it rubbed in my face.’

  ‘Come with me, Rebecca,’ he said, and I felt excited and nervous to be invited into his lair.

  Opening the door to a smell of grease and damp, Dad switched on the naked light bulb. Everything was precisely organised, the fencing equipment occupying one quadrant, the tools the second, the railway the third. I moved towards it: I remembered it from childhood, when I thought I saw tiny real people waiting at the station. A miniature plastic stationmaster stood on the platform, hand outstretched to avert a disaster. There were hills with grazing sheep, a silo and an orchard. At the harbour, white horses danced across an aquamarine sea, and a crane winched a container onto a freight train. ‘Can you switch it on, Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, but the transformer makes an awful racket. I think it might blow soon.’

  ‘Why does it need a transformer?’

  ‘It’s American. My aunt sent it to me from New York, but it runs on different voltage. Mama put it away since it wouldn’t plug in, and I had to make do with my wooden train set. It was a source of frustration, until I had enough pocket money to buy the transformer myself.’ He lent over and flicked the switch. The transformer hummed, but the lights illuminated and the train chuffed around the miniature landscape. When the smell of burning dust got too pungent, Dad turned it off.

  ‘I think Mama’s old clothes are over here.’ He moved to the final quadrant, filled with file boxes and cabinets. Pushing back a leather suitcase, he revealed a tin sea chest. Klara Quinn was stencilled on it, the Quinn painted over Kirschen, her maiden name. He slid it out and opened it up to a layer of tissue paper, a waft of moth balls and stale lavender. ‘I don’t have much because my grandmother was in charge of going through Mama’s things and she sent a good deal to the Sallies, but she did have the sense to keep a few of her dresses.’ He pulled out a black velvet one, decayed in places. The velvet was soft, like the ears of a Labrador. ‘She used to wear this one when the orchestra performed. I got nervous whenever I saw it airing. I knew she would be leaving us for a couple of weeks to tour around the country, and if I was unlucky, the housekeeper would be looking after me.’ He undid another layer of tissue. ‘Now, this is the one I was thinking of. Mama wore this when she was a soloist. A friend of hers gave it to her, Mrs Wills. Sometimes I’d stay with her family when Mama went away. She was very motherly — I used to wish she was my mother. I think the dress had a story, but I can’t remember what it was and it’s no use asking Dad.’ He pulled out a heavy silk brocade dress, copper and chocolate brown, embossed with a spiralling, Art Nouveau pattern. He held it out to me. ‘It will match your eyes.’

  The dress wasn’t like anything that I’d seen in the shops or the Vogue pattern books. It was not bouffy, it didn’t have capped sleeves or ruching or flouncy bows. It wasn’t cobalt or emerald or fuchsia. I was unsure of it, and I was excited by it. I wouldn’t look like any of the other girls.

  I ran upstairs to my bedroom. I eased it over my hips, slipping my arms through the holes, and yelled for my mother to do me up. It had an old musty smell about it, but the fabric gleamed like new. I was sure a few days on the line would freshen it up. My mother pushed the domes into my back and tugged at the hooks, as if she were fitting me into a corset. Then she looked at me, at my trouble spots (not enough of a waist or bust) and smiled. ‘I think your father’s onto something for once.’

  I looked in the mirror. My face looked naked and my hair messy in contrast with the elegance of the dress, but from the chin down, it seemed like I had both a waist and a bust. The neckline was high so you couldn’t see my lack of cleavage or the spatter of pimples on my chest. The dress was heavy on me, but that made me feel strong, as if in armour, my imperfections shielded from the world.

  Bruno finally rang the Thursday before the ball, just when I was getting desperate, believing I’d been tricked. Lydia was lending him the car; he’d pick me up at 7.30 on Saturday night. What colour was I wearing? He’d try not to clash.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, conscious of the bright light above me, the waft of aftershave coming from him.

  ‘Hi. You look nice.’ He seemed nervous, not the relaxed version from Midnight Espresso.

  ‘So do you.’ He wasn’t wearing the customary tuxedo but a seventies-style brown suit with a gold pinstripe. He didn’t have a tie but he had a hat, a trilby or maybe a pork pie. On his feet were doc boots, and I felt embarrassed to be wearing a pair of insubstantial copper ballet slippers, even if they did match.

  ‘I brought you this.’ Not meeting my eye, he handed me an orchid with a bruised stem, attached to a safety pin and a small piece of fern. I recognised the flower from Lydia’s doorstep pots. She must have handed it over along with the car keys. I looked down the orchid’s throat into its sex organs, and felt scared to put it on.

  ‘Here, I’ll do that for you Rebecca,’ said my mother, bursting into the space between us. ‘You must be Bruno. I’m Helena, Rebecca’s mum.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Helena,’ said Bruno, and I saw her through his eyes: loud, frowsy, her lipstick (applied for his benefit) too bright, her waistband cutting into her fat. As soon as she’d secured the pin I grabbed my shawl to leave.

  ‘Got your kit, Rebecca?’ she said, squeezing my bag to check.

  ‘Mum! Of course.’

  ‘Just making sure. You have fun, darling.’ She smiled, but her eyes looked worried for me.

  I missed her when we were in the car alone. The silences were difficult to break and I wondered whether Lydia had pressured Bruno to be my date. We parked, then walked through the dark open spaces until we got to the hall. We crossed the threshold where my teachers stood in their best dresses, their lips glossed, their hair swept up. We handed over our tickets and they crossed off our names. Upstairs there was a covers band, not just a DJ like there was for the junior dances. My classmates were unrecognisable in their dark blue taffeta, their magenta gowns. Their hair, normally pulled back into ponytails, was styled, curled into buns and ringlets, threaded with gypsophila. Their ears were appendixed with gold and silver, matching jewels. They had for
cefields of perfume that clashed, causing small chemical reactions. But two girls had come in tuxedoes, pencil moustaches on their upper lips. Samantha and I had already speculated that they were lesbians — we were cool with that. I’d wondered whether I’d end up a lesbian through lack of a boyfriend. I could kiss a girl, perhaps Samantha, I was sure of it. The rumour went that girls tasted like fish, and I’d eaten oysters before — I quite liked them. There was a collective intake of breath as they danced past together, and I was excited, wishing that Samantha was here so we could congratulate each other on our astuteness.

  ‘Come on, let’s get this over and done with,’ said Bruno, walking into the thick of the dance floor. It had already divided into camps: circles of girls dancing around their handbags, and the close dancers, including Megan and her boyfriend, in the centre. The boys who were the circle dancers’ dates loitered by the windows, guffawing and taking swigs from Fanta bottles, undoubtedly cut with vodka.

  We were the in-betweeners, not ready to touch each other, (although I wanted to). We danced self-consciously to a Police cover. Bruno hammed it up a bit, moon-walking like Michael Jackson, and my secret self wanted to jump around to the song, but that wouldn’t be cool. The song was wrong for my dress, my shoes. I should have been waltzing, but they had given up that part of the formalities, investing the remainder of our ninety-dollar ball ticket money in strobe lights, dry ice and supper.

  ‘Hi, Rebecca,’ said Ursula, who was walking in, arm and arm with someone familiar. Was he one of the second violins from youth orchestra? He was tall and delicate-looking, his cheeks rouged with acne. But his grey eyes were full of emotion; maybe Ursula could see something that we couldn’t. He put his hands on Ursula’s hips and she giggled, stretching her arms up to rest on his shoulders. She leaned into him, her black velvet skirt merging with his pants. I stared at where their bodies met, imagining his penis, hard against her groin. I glanced at Bruno’s pants; they were non-committal.

  Then, the distinctive opening notes of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Here was something I was allowed to enjoy. I leapt up, forgetting my inappropriate dress, imagining my hair to be Kurt Cobain’s, Bruno’s shirt to be plaid. The first bars required a stomping, a swamp-dancing. It wasn’t until the chorus that I could jump around, that I could come undone.

  The music was having a similar effect on Bruno; he was yelling the words, playing air guitar. Normally I thought boys who did that were dicks, but I was strumming too. We were elated and ironic and united as we leapt into the last chord, demented cheerleaders, thrusting our invisible pompoms. Even the band transcended themselves, becoming Kurt for us, the lead singer splitting the seams of his pants in the effort of it all. Then, tired, spent, we smiled at each other, our eyes meeting properly for the first time. Jolt.

  ‘C’mon, let’s go downstairs,’ said Bruno. ‘Check out the supper.’

  It was as if they thought we hadn’t eaten before we came out, which might have been true in many cases. Some girls had been starving themselves for weeks. There were tureens of beef ragout and cakes and scones, sausage rolls and mini-quiches. There were jellies and loaves of French bread, salmon mousse in martini glasses. Bruno loaded up his plate, and I took a fruit salad, remembering Scarlett O’Hara’s mother’s instructions about not eating at parties. I’d had extra bread and butter before I left, staving off low blood sugars. I worried about my lipstick, and the small tunnel that might be eaten into it. We sat at trestle tables covered with newsprint. Nervously I ran my fingers across the underside of the table, finding it knobbly with gum. Bruno didn’t say anything as he ate; I nibbled at my pieces of peach and chewed my grapes, swallowing the pips to avoid spitting.

  ‘That band really sucks,’ said Bruno, ‘apart from the Nirvana, of course. It was like the singer was possessed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘They should have asked a real band. Bailter Space or King Loser or the Headless Chickens. That would have been cool.’

  ‘Or the Verlaines.’

  ‘You like New Zealand music?’

  ‘Yeah, I love it.’

  ‘I thought all you classical music geeks were purists.’

  ‘I’m not pure. If anything, I like alternative music better.’

  ‘Then why are you spending all this time on the cello? You could form a band yourself.’

  ‘I want to be in a band. But I can’t play the guitar or the bass.’

  ‘You could play the cello in a band. Don’t tell Mum I said this, but I think it sounds great beneath vocals.’

  ‘Why not tell your mum?’

  ‘It’s my official position that the cello is an annoying instrument. You’d understand if you’d grown up with a cellist.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why my dad’s not so keen on it — his mother was a cellist too.’

  ‘Well, if you ever decide to give the cello career the flick, you should study anthropology. It means you can apply Levi-Strauss theorems to stupid balls.’

  I felt like I’d been punched. He really didn’t want to be here. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you would hate this so much.’

  ‘I don’t hate it, I find it very funny. Look at that girl over there, now what is that all about? Is this a socially sanctioned construct that allows her to enact Neanderthal behaviour? Would she smoke her meat or eat it raw?’ He pointed to a pouty girl, leading a hapless boy around by his tie. ‘And what about those guys, are they a tribal group or what? Definitely raw meat, I’d say.’ Their wattled ears betrayed rugby club allegiances.

  ‘We can leave if you like.’

  ‘Sure, let’s go for a walk. We could climb Mount Victoria, check out the view.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, feeling sad to leave so soon, but happy that we would be going to a lookout, where couples went to smooch.

  The trek up Hawker Street was steep. ‘I went for a flat interview there,’ said Bruno, pointing at a falling down two-storey villa. ‘Said they were anarchists, which sounded cool. I thought they’d be really political. Turned out that they were a bunch of filthy skinheads. They had a pitbull that almost mauled me when I went through the gate, and there was a week of dishes piled up on the benches and the floor of the kitchen. You should have seen the flies, gross. The room they showed me had an enormous hole in the wall, and still they wanted eighty bucks a week rent.’

  We were coming up to the crest of the hill; there was the monastery. ‘Now there’s a place I did want to live, I even thought about becoming a priest so I could get a room,’ said Bruno.

  ‘It looks like it should be in Italy or Spain.’

  ‘I didn’t believe in God, though, which was a major barrier. Are you a believer?’

  I was taken aback by the question; my mother said you shouldn’t discuss politics or religion. We went to the cathedral at Easter and Christmas, to earn our eggs and turkey.

  ‘I’m not sure. I think I believe in ghosts.’ I didn’t mention the vampires; their grip on me was loosening, although I still slept with the hall light on, despite my father’s complaints about the power bill.

  ‘I’ve had some great ouija board sessions at our flat. Once some force took the glass and smashed it against the wall. It took us forever to get that spirit to go away. We had to promise not to reveal what was said before it would leave.’

  ‘Far out.’ The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  ‘Nah, only kidding. It was me who smashed the glass, but I totally had my friends going — they thought it was for real. Hey, should we keep on walking up the road, or should we climb this bank? It’ll be heaps quicker.’

  We stood looking up at the slope of pine trees, their downturned branches like Darth Vader cloaks.

  ‘I suppose we could climb it,’ I said, tucking my skirt up into my tights. My grandmother’s gown was not having the night it was intended for, and I hoped I wouldn’t rip it on a twig or stand on the hem.

  We pulled ourselves up by the roots, sometimes by low-hanging branches, the pine needles sliding beneath m
y slippers. I might lose one in the ascent, then I’d really be like Cinderella. When I thought I could go no further, my skirt tangling between my legs, I found myself on a track, slightly muddy from the recent rain. My shoes would be soiled, but I hoped it was for a good cause. I didn’t feel low blood sugary at all, in fact my mouth was slightly tacky as if I was high. For now, that was a good thing.

  The track led us up to the road, and we walked around until we came to the lower lookout with the bronze world map, the compass. We sat on it, the raised metal embossing our bums. I thought that I might lean against Bruno, that he might put his arm around me, but it was as if each of us were in a glass paperweight, unable to penetrate each other’s personal space.

  ‘Check out the Hutt Valley. It’s so flat,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Not Wellington.’ I gazed at the gold-foiled basin, the light-studded hills. It was calm and Wellington was beautiful.

  ‘I’ve been here and here and here,’ said Bruno, running his fingers across the Caribbean, Hawaii, the islands in the Pacific. ‘When Mum and Dad sailed across the world. Pity I can’t remember much except falling overboard. Luckily I could swim almost before I could walk.’ I could see Bruno, a little brown baby floating among the sharks. And then later on the boat deck, sucking on a green coconut. ‘What about you, have you been travelling?’

  ‘No, I’ve never left the country, but I’m going to London soon, remember?’ I said it as though it were a foregone conclusion that couldn’t be jinxed. ‘And I’m planning on going to Italy and then New York — that’s where my grandmother came from.’