Playing with Keys. Julia Osborne

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      Seated at the piano at home, Sandra sorted through sheet music to find the Mozart Sonata. At her first lesson Mister L’estrange had announced: ‘Nine years old is quite late to begin lessons’. The scalding words still echoed. Music teachers were supposed to be encouraging, so what sort of encouragement was that? ‘Hmm, we shall see,’ he’d said. Like she was some sort of experiment.

      Mozart’s dizzying notes flew from her fingers. Sonata in C Major, first movement allegro, try to keep every note pure, bright ... a blur of semi-quavers, this bar fortissimo – all these darned grace notes diddle-diddle-diddle. Principal Theme andante ... Oops. Why did she have to learn this stupid piece, impossible to put her heart into it.

      She’d rather practise her own songs, threading them among the set study pieces, surprised that her mother never seemed to notice. Prue sometimes teased, mimicking her songs until Sandra drowned her voice with a loud set of scales or crashing bass chords. And in her dreams, Nick stood close beside her at the keyboard, turning the pages as she played.

      Nick Nick Nicholas Nick ... she hadn’t hummed his name like that since they moved to Sydney. It had disappeared on the endless seven hour train journey, changed by the rhythm of the wheels to a click click clickety click. Nick was at home at Wilga Park. Perhaps as he got used to a wheelchair and regained his strength, he would forget her ... but that was too too sad to think about.

      Concentrate on Mozart: Secondary Theme ... pianissimo ... those trills were not crisp enough. Would he recall that she’d visited him in hospital? In the midnight dimness of the ward, she had leaned over his bed, pressed her lips to Nick’s forehead in the precise spot where his own lips had kissed her. His eyelids had opened briefly, closed again. Did he recognize her?

      Only the nurse knew she was there – the nurse who’d found her searching for him on the third night, and told her Nick had been sent to Sydney for surgery. She hadn’t seen him again.

      She heaved a deep breath. Last page ... together she and Nick were riding their horses, the wind tossing manes and tails, Nick smiling beside her, cheeks flushed, brown hair blown back from his face as he leaned forward into a gallop. When they came to the steepest drops, the other riders fell back, leaving Nick the only one, the bravest one, shirt flapping as he disappeared into the distance with the final fortissimo chords.

      Angela came to the door, wiping her hands on an apron. ‘That sounded very nice from the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Finish up now, dinner’s on the table.’

      Her father and Prue were already seated. Angela continued, ‘Tomorrow you’ll have to start your practice earlier so you don’t run into meal time.’

      Don smiled a hello as he sliced his pork chop. ‘Pass the apple sauce, please,’ was all he said.

      Sandra wondered why her father was so quiet lately. He used to talk to them about his day in the office, stories about some of the customers, the odd reasons some people gave for wanting a loan – not that he ever told any names. One man even wanted to start a fish farm! When she asked her mother, Angela said he was weary from his new job and Sandra thought it was probably true. But an earlier companionship between them all was missing.

      Last winter, bundled into the car to travel the fifteen miles to Denalbo polocrosse field had been very special – even mugs of tea on the sidelines were joyous, cheering the game and talking to whoever was there. Especially Nick and the Morgans. And Lofty, whose family owned the farm next door, who’d been such a pest at school. Was it possible she missed Lofty, too?

      Now that they lived in Randwick, the household seemed to have become quieter. They still watched television together after dinner, seated on the brand new lounge suite, Ginger curled on Don’s lap. Rawhide remained a favourite and Don whistled through his teeth as usual until Angela said, ‘Shush.’

      The pile of magazines and books in the newspaper rack beside Angela’s chair grew and grew. She wanted a job in a florist shop to help her decide about a business of her own, and every night a book lay open on her lap, or the classified pages from the Herald, with circles drawn around relevant advertisements.

      Prue had abandoned learning to knit. It was too hot and sticky, she complained. Happy at school, some weekends she stayed overnight at a girl friend’s house. ‘We have midnight feasts,’ she skited to Sandra. ‘My friends have got hundreds of records.’

      ‘They have not,’ Sandra said sourly, but envious of the possibility.

      Prue ignored the rebuke. ‘My favourite’s Boom Boom Baby. Crash Craddock’s sooo good looking.’

      ‘I don’t care.’

      ‘He sings that his baby did the chicken in the middle of the room. What’s the chicken?’

      Sandra knew her companionship with Prue was slipping away. There were times when she missed how they used to ride their bikes to the creek, or drew pictures together, making up stories. But most of all she missed Emilia, missed all those afternoons after school, sitting on Emilia’s bed talking about everything and nothing, and at the weekends whizzing around the roller-skating rink or lazing in the warm grass at the old cemetery.

      At her new school, next to the confident city girls, she felt like a country bumpkin who would never fit in, with nothing to say of any interest to anyone. No matter how she dressed or how she did her hair, it never looked right. Maybe she should get a perm like some of the girls in her class? She tried to picture what she might look like with really curly hair, but when she brushed it thoroughly and wound it in a plait, she was glad for the thick weight of it. Nick had called her ‘my pretty piano player’, so why change what he liked?

      Meredith developed a suspicion that all was not as well as it should be, and often suggested that on Saturday mornings she and Sandra make an excursion into the city shops, or to Rowe Street to discover what was new in the art studios and decorators’ windows.

      On these days, thanks to auntie, Sandra returned home feeling better.

      23 Tyrell St.,

      Randwick, N.S.W.,

      19th March, 1961.

      Dear Emmy,

      I said I’d write with more news and here it is! No, I didn’t find the painting and I searched in all the rooms. It was loaned to the gallery so it must’ve been given back. I saw it with Nick, and he said I looked like the girl in the picture. I was sad not to see it again but I’m all right now.

      I had a lovely time with Aunt Meredith yesterday, we went to the tea room where I went with Nick, then we went to David Jones and pretended to buy hats. Auntie took all the pins out of her French roll so she could try one with net that came down over her eyes and looked so beautiful. She has red hair, I think maybe she dyes it.

      Auntie is really glamorous and not at all like Dad. She told me she used to dance the tango at the Trocadero which is a dance hall in the middle of Sydney. Her boyfriend was in the army! I worked out she’s 32, I wonder why she never got married. Sometimes I think it’d be good to be like her when I grow up. All I would do is study piano and play in concerts and travel the world. Mum says СКАЧАТЬ