by Sarah Laing
‘You want to go clubbing tonight? Let’s celebrate before the next onslaught. We could get some E.’
We’d just done the first of our history and theory exams and we had another week’s study leave until we had to do our mid-year performance exams.
‘You think we should? I’m bit worried about my Mendelssohn.’
‘You’ll be fine. I heard you in the practice studio, you sounded great. Nigel’s just making you neurotic, he’s too screwed up about his carpal-tunnel-thwarted career. He won’t be assessing you; they get external people for that. Besides, I don’t think the comedown’s so bad on E as it is on acid or speed.’
Nigel had been more difficult lately, having reluctantly let me play a concerto and then complaining because my phrasing was cold. I’d put it down to girl trouble; the witchy contralto had ditched him for a tenor.
‘Have you tried E?’ I asked Lily.
‘No, but everybody’s doing it.’
The club was populated by lots of young men in tight white T-shirts, some imprinted with smiley faces, white ankle socks and desert boots. ‘I prefer gay clubs,’ said Lily. ‘Less groping. You want a cigarette?’
‘Have one of mine.’ I had taken to buying packets myself; it was no use pretending that I was a social smoker. The lights were strobing and the air was filled with dry ice, and there were two levels of dance floors, throbbing with bodies. The music was house, which I didn’t understand, but I knew that after a few drinks, after the promised E, it would all make sense. Most of the clientele already seemed to be high. They knew what it was like to be part of the music.
We pushed our way through people, some in lycra hotpants, their genitals bulging obscenely, on our way to the bar. I looked up to the shadowy DJ box. DJs here had cult status, these unassuming men and sometimes women in baggy clothes, headphones, with plastic crates of records. You could hardly see them behind all the smoke, but at some point of the evening, everyone would wave their arms up at them in a sweaty worship. Lily bought us tequila shooters, handing me a lemon, pouring salt on web of skin between my thumb and forefinger. ‘So I think it’s bite down on the lemon, drink the tequila, then lick the salt.’
‘Are you sure? Isn’t it the other way round?’ I licked my salt first. ‘Oh my God, I have to go to the loo.’
‘I’ll meet you there. I’m going to try and score.’
The toilets were lit with ultra-violet lights, stopping the junkies from finding their veins and highlighting dandruff. There were trannies in the ladies, bending over to restick their eyelashes, hands down their fronts to readjust their fake (chicken) breasts. I looked drab and washed out in comparison, despite my careful application of mascara, my sequinned silver top, my hair fudged up into spikes. I went into a vacant cubicle, scarred with graffiti and crude sharpie drawings of anal sex, pee on the toilet seat — not all the trannies had mastered peeing sitting down. I squatted above the bowl, holding my jeans so they didn’t descend into the muck, and there was Lily’s voice: ‘I love your dress, where did you get it from?’
‘It’s Westwood, doll,’ said the decidedly bass tone. ‘Where did you get those?’ S/he must have been pointing at Lily’s boots, their soles ten centimetres of rubber, all buckles and zips.
‘Same place as you got yours. Beck? Are you in there?’
‘Yes,’ I called, flushing the toilet, wiping the contaminated drips off the back of my thighs, rearranging my dull clothes. ‘Coming.’
Lily’s eyes were shining when I got out. ‘Look what I’ve got us. No, don’t look, close your eyes and open your mouth.’
Lily placed the tablet on my tongue.
‘Do I chew it? Or suck it?’
‘Just eat it. You’ll feel great.’
‘Okay.’ Would I grow or shrink? Would I fall down a rabbit hole?
Lily took my hand and pulled me out of the bathroom, onto the dance floor. We pushed our way through the clusters of people until we found a pocket we could inhabit. Already the music sounded better to me, even though I was sure the drug wouldn’t be kicking in till later. Lily threw herself into geometric configurations, changing position as the lights flashed. She looked so cool and I tried to follow suit, feeling all elbows and rice-sack torso. But the more I danced, the better I felt about it, until I was lithe and whippetish. I was waving my hands in the air: I could have been on a music video. I felt the sweat gather at my temples, but I shook my head like a dog gone swimming. I danced and I danced and dancing was like fucking and my whole body was resounding with the beat and the little bleeps sounded as complex as Bach’s organ music and this was a cathedral. I was filled with love and the holy spirit and I reached out and grabbed Lily and I stroked her velvety arm. I kissed her and we danced, we danced until time disappeared, all the seconds fell off the clock and whirled around us like dust.
‘You want some water, Beck?’ Lily yelled into my ear.
‘Yeah, that would be great.’ I was thirsty, really thirsty. I could drink a bucket of water. We made our way to the bar and Lily handed over four quid for two bottles of water. I cracked open the lid and drank it down and then bought another bottle.
‘I’m just going to have a little sit-down,’ I said.
‘Okay, but I’m going back on the dance floor. I don’t think I could sit still if I tried.’
I watched her wend her way into the people, her pierced ears flashing, her stubble glinting on her beautiful head. Her skull was perfectly smooth and round, not dented or flat at the back. I wanted to hold it in my hands, to rub my cheek across its pelt. But instead I felt the leather of the banquette, and the world receding, sucked into ovoid shapes. It must be the drugs. If I closed my eyes, maybe I could straighten out my head.
The next thing I knew, there were people leaning over me. They were dressed in white, and the lights were no longer red and green, but yellow. My right arm felt sore. I looked down: there was a IV tube at my elbow. I tried to sit up, but there were straps around my torso. I realised that we were moving.
‘She’s coming round. Three minutes, not bad. Don’t know how long she was out for,’ said a lipless red-faced man, his accent Cockney.
‘Lily?’
‘Your friend? She’s gone home now. Good thing she was around, no Medic Alert bracelet on you. I wouldn’t have even thought to test your blood sugars if she hadn’t told us you were diabetic. I’d have thought you were just another dance party casualty who drowned themselves with water. I’ve known a few diabetics who’ve got permanent brain damage by being mistaken for druggies. Not our fault, it’s your responsibility.’
‘Oh.’ I felt too weak to respond, as if I were only skin, as if my juice, my pulp had been squeezed from me. My head hurt.
‘Just going to do another BS, ducks. Give me a finger.’
My hand was limp, plundered.
‘4.2, we’re over the threshold. We’re taking you into the hospital anyway, doctors will want to assess you.’
It was strange to be pushed into hospital, to be put in a bed, for the first time since I was diagnosed. I felt awful, miserable, and I didn’t know whether it was because of the E or because of the sugar starvation my brain had suffered. The doctors came and peered into my eyes, banged hammers on my knees to test my reflexes. They listened to my heart and took my blood pressure. Then they let me sleep.
‘So you took drugs, right?’ The doctor was young, handsome. He looked Indian but he had an English accent. His hair was styled, sideburns contouring each cheekbone. Underneath his white coat he wore a T-shirt.
‘Your friend, she told the paramedics you’d taken E earlier in the evening.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know it’s mental to take drugs when you have type one diabetes. Start taking them regularly and you’ll forget to give yourself your insulin. Then you’ll be in a right pickle.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not advocating that you ever do this again — in fact I think you’d be bloody stupid if you did — but you should have at least ke
pt testing your blood sugars. You still can on E — you’re not away with the fairies. If you’d drunk some juice or had a handful of jellybeans, you wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.’
‘Okay,’ I said. My head was still sore, and fuzzy, and the details of the night were daubs of colour and touch.
‘Some of my colleagues wouldn’t even be giving you this advice, but I think it’s better for you to know. You’ve just got to keep testing, make sure you’ve got sugar on you. Eat a cheese sandwich before you even take the bloody things. And buy yourself a Medic Alert bracelet.’
The doctor looked at my test results, and then I was discharged. I made my way out into the sorry excuse for a morning, mascara run-off silting my cheeks, my coat thrown over my sparkly dancing top. Why hadn’t Lily stuck around? I’d have to find the right tube back to my hostel. I wasn’t even sure where I was. I was alone and depressed and still so very tired. And I didn’t know how I would find the energy to practise for my exam, the one I dreaded.
CHAPTER 21
Wellington, 1960
Klara’s elbows pointed behind her like wings, fingers fumbling with the zip of the copper silk brocade dress. It didn’t seem right, wearing a hand-me-down for her New Zealand solo debut. But it wasn’t like they had very much money: Owen was always taking risks with young painters, rather than selling the landscapes that would earn him a steady income. The dress had fine parentage, though: Shirley had been sent it by her friend, the Lord Mayor of London’s wife, and after wearing it to Gregory’s law firm ball had no further use for it. Klara had got thinner since they first met, Shirley stouter with each baby. Klara had taken it to a dressmaker to get it altered. ‘You have a lovely figure,’ the dressmaker said. ‘Make sure you look after it.’
Her figure was thanks to her vigorous cello playing, and those stairs she had to haul the instrument up and down. She walked to and from school every day to pick up Frank, even though he told her he was much too old for that, and often walked a few paces ahead or behind. Frank was doing well at school, excelling in maths and sciences, making his way through his red and black arithmetic book as Klara had once worked through her scales. He was in the soccer team, and Owen went to watch each Saturday, despite his perpetual hangover. Frankie was always constructing things: Meccano buildings, kitset planes made of balsa wood, which he painted in British Air Force colours. Klara couldn’t bear his obsession with military insignia, but Owen said she had to let boys be boys.
‘Let me help you with this,’ said Owen, lifting her hair to fasten the amber necklace, a gift from Vera. Klara had no jewels of her own; they were probably in some Nazi’s Swiss bank account vault, stolen from her mother when she was taken to the camp. She had applied for some reparation, but, poor as she was, she didn’t want the money; she wanted the jewels she could remember flashing on her mother’s ears.
‘Careful,’ said Klara, as Owen caught a strand in the clasp.
Klara tried to quell her fear as she walked on stage. The orchestra members were opening their music, and some smiled at her; others stared straight ahead. The hall was full, not that she could see much apart from the glint off spectacles, high and low. But she could hear the audience moving, like rats in the attic. She held her cello by the neck, the spike not yet extended because she didn’t want it to catch on her dress. Scott, the plump conductor, welcomed her with exaggerated clapping. He’d been flown over from America to conduct the orchestra for a year, and he’d been to Juillard himself, a few years after her. But he knew some of her old friends and he had filled her in on what they were doing. Her quartet friends had kicked out the second violinist because he stole the first violinist’s wife, going on to perform throughout the Americas and Europe. A few musicians had secured places in the New York Philharmonic, others in Midwestern and West Coast orchestras. Some had successful solo careers, but an awful lot had sunk into obscurity, were now teachers, wives and mothers, radio DJs, music administrators. A flautist had been spied in a peep show in Hell’s Kitchen. A bassoonist had committed suicide. Scott had started off as a timpani player, but decided he’d travel more as a conductor. New Zealand he viewed as a training ground. It was obscure and he would be able to make mistakes before he returned to the States, triumphant and accomplished.
Klara sat and extended the spike, digging it into the wooden stage floor. Her hands wobbled so much she thought she might drop the bow, but she took a big, calming breath, looked up at Scott as he raised his baton, the orchestra crested and she bit down on the opening E. There was nowhere to go but forward. She was on a raft, the orchestra foaming beneath her; then it was dark and slow, allowing her to meander. A dragonfly of flute flitted past her, but then came a waterfall, and she was double stopping, racing up the fingerboard, the orchestra triumphant as she flew over the edge. It took a few seconds for her to land, and that’s when her knee started to shake — violently, it was as if it didn’t belong to her at all. The brocade trembled, the copper coils writhing, but then she had to play again and it stopped. Now she was a leaf drying on a sunny rock. The orchestra burbled alongside her, children fishing for tadpoles with old stockings. She was one of those children, taking tadpoles in a wet jar up to her mother, a picnic blanket spread beneath her. She dropped the jar, notes sharding, running now, burying her head in the soft valley between her mother’s breasts. There she stayed for a moment until the music wrenched her out again, the final chord, thrumming in the aftershock.
The applause was loud and insistent. They didn’t stand for her, but they clapped and clapped, bringing her a bouquet of flowers. Her cheeks were burning and Scott leant forward to hug her, to kiss her on both cheeks, smelling of cologne and sweat. ‘Nice one, kiddo,’ he whispered in her ear. She looked down and there were Owen and Frankie, their faces shining, their grins wide. Frankie looked excited, for once not resisting her music. Mama, bravo! she heard him cry, and she wanted to bend down, to pluck him out of the audience and to swing him around.
She didn’t go home after the performance but left Owen to take Frank to bed. Let her be the one who stayed out drinking for once. Frank would be going to boarding school next year; this was the last year that she needed to make arrangements, to compensate for her absences. Scott was going to buy everyone champagne, if such a thing was to be found in this country, perhaps at De Bretts on Lambton Quay. He’d become a regular at Parsons bookstore and had taken to having afternoon tea at Kirkaldies, stuffing himself with scones and cakes from the three-tiered plates with none of the hesitation that Klara had first experienced. He’d quickly discovered mince pies and sausage rolls. He’d been impressed with how they’d played. ‘Not bad for an orchestra from little old New Zealand. Of course I take full credit.’ And the orchestra didn’t mind him being patronising; they embraced him, as did all of Wellington. He ordered oysters; he had an appetite, a personality to suit his stature. Maybe it would have been easier for Klara too, if she hadn’t been so scared of subsequent loss.
‘You were wonderful. You played beautifully,’ a violinist told her.
‘It made me excited to be part of this orchestra, as if we really could be world standard after all,’ said a viola player who was also a carpenter.
Klara felt giddy, her heart still palpitating, knees wobbling with ghost tremors, drinking all the champagne that Scott could pour her. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her towards him for another kiss, this time on the lips.
Dropped home by taxi, she couldn’t sleep that night, thinking of the performance, thinking of all the phrases where she’d faltered. Her body buzzed beneath the wool blankets; it was as if she had absorbed all the orchestra’s nerves, flying like bees into her hive. And the compliments, what did they mean? There had been no standing ovation; were people saying those things to be nice? Was Scott flattering her as a career move? Would she even have had a chance to perform solo if she were still in the States? Owen snored on, oblivious to her distress, his toenail snagging on her shin.
She woke the next
morning, feeling ragged and bleary, conscious that she had slept for only a few hours. She’d have to get up to make sure Frank had breakfast and got to school on time. She dragged herself out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown and slippers, securing the tie around her waist. She felt ashamed when she saw the brocade dress crumpled on the floor and picked it up, placing it carefully on the hanger Owen’s mother had crocheted, hanging it in the window to air. It was as if the dress had absorbed the entire bar; she could even catch whiffs of Scott’s cologne, and the smell turned her stomach. She couldn’t sleep with him, no matter what he promised.
Owen was already up, eating his toast and drinking her precious coffee. There was still some left in the percolator and she poured herself a cup, putting in extra sugar and milk, gulping it down as it scalded her throat.
Frank too was eating toast. He hadn’t waited for her to make it, and she was pleased he was showing some independence; he was ready for boarding school after all. She placed two slices in the toaster and sat at the table, her head in her hands. Owen snorted at her. ‘Rough night, was it, Klara? Don’t worry, I won’t clank the pots like you do.’
‘I don’t do this as often as you, Owen. This is the first time in years.’
Owen said nothing, shaking the wrinkles out of his paper. ‘I wonder whether they’re going to run a review in tonight’s Post.’