Facing the Music. Andrea Goldsmith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ fingers, gentle, persuasive and rubbing the film off her memories. And began to talk, and once started, found herself unable to stop. On and on she went, fuelling the narrative with more and more port, talking not about Duncan, there was nothing to say about Duncan, but of the nights with strangers, the drugs, the booze, the car at the top of the cliff. She talked about the loss of her cello, about the years of shuffling uppers and downers in a bid to maintain appearances.

      ‘And so I passed my childhood – not exactly in a state of innocence.’ Then, more to herself, ‘It really was an awful time.’

      Lewis had listened without interruption. When she was finished, he sat in the silence, shaking his head in disbelief, and in his face a sympathy Anna found intolerable.

      ‘I did all right,’ she said quickly. ‘I must have, I’m here to tell the story.’

      ‘It’s a wonder they didn’t lock you up.’

      ‘But that’s just it!’ Anna was triumphant. ‘Only by doing what I did, all that crazy behaviour, could I be normal when it was required. Neither my parents nor my teachers thought anything was wrong.’ She paused. ‘Well, not until I refused to work with Duncan, then they couldn’t help noticing there was a problem.’

      Lewis could not believe her parents didn’t know. ‘They must have done. All those years of stealing the car and staying out all night, you must have looked like death at breakfast.’

      Anna shrugged. ‘They never said anything, and if they did know yet did nothing about it, then they deserved to lose me, deserved a lot worse than that.’

      The next morning Anna was too embarrassed to face him. She stayed in bed listening to the stirrings in the flat, waiting for him to leave. After the front door closed, she must have remained where she was, for by the time she got up, the shape of the piece had formed. She could not remember moving from the bed, could not remember the search for pencil and paper, did not know exactly how she began, it all seemed to happen on a fresh plane of consciousness, one clear of bitterness and burnt-out dreams.

      There was no doubt, however, about the music. It was a composition for flute and piano, far freer than her father’s work, drawn in the first instance from the London streets where she had walked so often, walking away from her past – not forgetting it, mustn’t forget, just creating a little distance – streets packed with people and traffic, old buildings solid amongst the new, decaying monuments, the human stories in the shadows, threads of sound like the voices of a fugue peeled apart then left to mingle and reconnect in a not-always-comfortable union. The music took up the motion of the city, moving between the landscape and the people, the past and the present. Duncan had never been interested in the flute, had regarded it as light-weight and prissy, far too feminine for his liking. It was an instrument for detail, Anna now decided, and Duncan had never been one for detail.

      As the piece evolved, thoughts and images that had flitted by during her London wanderings reappeared, almost as if they had been waiting to be used. So many thoughts, so many memories – of Duncan and her childhood, but also memories not specifically her own. As she wrote her music, she recalled the derelict grave of a young man killed in action in 1943, and the rough-hewn accent of the ancient woman downstairs, and found herself, only twenty years old, but with an entire century in her grasp. It dawned on her that it is the detail, the ordinary aspects of life which are full of meaning, that form the backbone to memory and understanding, but you have to be alert or you’ll miss the cues.

      As she roamed through London she had noticed everything: dusty faces, fenced-in parks, gilt-edged tourists lugging cameras, a man dragging a German Shepherd on a lead while talking into a dictaphone, his two young children walking solemnly behind. She saw the man and thought of her father, understanding, perhaps for the first time, that the only way Duncan could have assumed a right to her childhood was because he did not see the child, saw only an extension of himself. Duncan always acted as if there were no past, not much present either except in his desire for admiration, it was only the future that mattered. Duncan, a man who eschewed detail, a man who believed he could do anything, was a man without memory, and without memory he lacked moral judgement. This, she decided, was the prerequisite to a no-fault life – no memory.

      All the details that nourished memory she gave to the flute: the grime and shadows, the cracks in the pavement, the man with his dog and dictaphone, transforming them into a scrambling, mid-range, percussive torrent above the rocky chords of the piano. And Duncan was there, more a presence than an intrusion, and unusually benign. We have worn out words, Anna had thought. Who can trust the written histories to fill up memory? Who can believe my father? But buildings with their enduring scars, and landscapes and strangers, are quite another matter. And music too.

      She wrote the city, she wrote the memories, working in a way new to her, utterly engrossed, answerable to no one, moving between the table and the old upright in the living-room, stopping neither for rest nor nourishment and discovering for the first time the supple pleasures of her own music.

      When Lewis returned that evening, he was surprised to find her at home. He slipped in quietly, sat in the living-room and listened. After a while she turned to him and asked if he would take up the flute part. Hours later, when they had finished for the night, Anna smiled and embraced him. ‘It’s called London Nocturne – not particularly original I know.’ And still smiling, ‘It’s for you.’

      Nearly twelve years ago in a pokey Islington flat, and so much music since. And other cityscapes too, the latest, Colony, for cello and orchestra, inspired by Hobart, and written for Madelaine Beck. Madelaine had been thrilled, such a commotion when she rang from London, the playing of phrases over the telephone, the minutes ticking by – not that Madelaine Beck and Eve Carstairs were short of money, but still an impromptu concert at two dollars a minute seemed something of an indulgence. Then Eve was on the phone. Everyone was talking about the new work, she said, and everyone expected Anna to be present at the première. ‘I’ve told them you will, you and Lily both. I’ll organise everything from this end, all you have to do is pack your bags and get to the airport.’

      Anna had protested at the time, the huge distance, the difficulty of taking Lily out of school, but now as she clambered down the slope back to her house, and Duncan just a few hours away, she wanted to be far from here, wanted to be with her friends. She collected her belongings, made a last minute check of the house and locked up. No sooner had she done so than the phone rang. Immediately she thought of Lily, unlocked the door and rushed inside.

      ‘I thought I must have missed you.’

      It was Eve, and of course it would be, Anna had written to her as soon as she had heard from Duncan.

      ‘I’ve just received your letter. What could he possibly want?’

      ‘He says he’s sick, certainly he sounds sick, but who knows with Duncan?’

      ‘You couldn’t just ignore him?’

      ‘I never could, if I’d done so years ago my life would have been very different. I have to go, but I’ll make it brief, just a couple of days.’

      Anna heard Eve light a cigarette, heard the deep inhalation.

      ‘I’ve never liked your father, never. He’s not a man to be trusted.’

      ‘I know, Eve, but for the first time in my life, I feel I have the upper hand.’

      There was more puffing on her cigarette and more anxious words.

      ‘Eve, please, stop worrying. I’ve been away twelve years, what can he do in a couple of days? I’ll be fine. СКАЧАТЬ