The Piano

The piano stands upright and proud in a corner of a spare room. The keys have not been touched for a generation. Many are the colour of bad teeth. The name Bluthner is inscribed in gold leaf on the dark wood, a name so foreign sounding Jessica imagines it might have come from Africa, a place she has been reading about in an old encyclopaedia Aunt Linda has given her. A dark and sinful country, it would be sure to have tribes of Bluthners, she thinks.

One afternoon she walks up to the instrument purposefully. She knows what she must do. The house is quiet, her aunt is in the kitchen happily occupied baking a cake. She sits herself on the stool with its faded crimson cushion, places her feet gently on the pedals (she has been reading up on Piano in the encyclopaedia), spreads her fingers and counts slowly and deliberately from left to right until she identifies middle C. She pushes it down with her thumb. But there’s no sound. The piano is mute. She tries again. Still nothing. The key sticks and does not rise. She pushes the key to the right, which she has read is called D, and this time there is a response. She does it again, listens intently, is dissatisfied and moves to the next and the next and the next until she reaches the end of the keyboard. She goes the other way and does the same. She remembers how many keys have stuck, closes the lid, tucks the stool under and runs to the kitchen.

The piano does not sing, she tells her aunt.

It has lost its voice, Linda replies, offering Jessica a spoon covered in a sweet creamy mix. We will have to bring it back to life.

Peter tells his wife it’s time the boys should sleep separately from the girls. Linda prepares a room for Jessica and Elaine, engaging a tradesman to paint the walls a pale pink, running up some pretty curtains on her old Singer, buys a second-hand bunk bed from a charity shop in town. The first night Jessica sleeps uneasily on top wondering if her niece will be nasty to her. But Elaine isn’t interested. She’s thinking about a boy, thinking about him as her fingers massage a spot low down that produces a delicious sensation. From above Jessica hears her groans and wonders if Elaine might have tummy ache from eating too much milk pudding at dinner.

The piano tuner is booked for late morning when Linda knows there will be no one around. He is an old man, unshaven smelling of drink. The truck he drives is battered, belching grey smoke. He strips the instrument of its outer skin, revealing the massive upright ironwork frame inside, takes some tools from a blue canvas bag and sets to work. He shakes his head a lot, mutters incoherently under his breath, closes his eyes to assist concentration, or because he is tired, and after an hour tells Linda: It’s not worth the trouble, nor the money. It’s too far gone. Only value is firewood.

Jessica is upset when told the news.

It has a soul, she says, surprising her aunt. There must be someone else, someone who will understand.

Linda contacts another firm who send two young men driving a shiny white van, the company name in black copperplate on the sides, underneath the statement: Piano Surgeons. She feels more confident this time and is thrilled when they tell her after their preliminary examination that the Bluthner is worth restoration, that it is: A marvellous instrument, one of the finest of its age we have ever seen. Sure, it is rather sad at the moment after decades of neglect, but the soundboard is in excellent condition. We will restore its spirit.

Who is the pianist in the family? one of them asks as they prepare to move it into the van.

My daughter, Linda says without hesitation and without correcting herself.

Its absence raises no questions. Except for the patch of carpet on which it stood, lighter than the rest. Peter says they will need to get new flooring.

What was there? he asks.

When told he shakes his head in ignorance and moves away.

Linda engages a piano teacher. Her name, appropriate for a piano teacher, is Ethel, Ethel Jonkins, and she is, it will come as no surprise, a spinster. Jessica is delighted and can barely wait for the first lesson with the thought of meeting a real spinster. She hopes she is friendly.

She is bitterly disappointed however.

The lessons go badly from the start, Jessica complaining that Miss Jonkins must be a witch because she stinks of something awful, foul smelling. Mothballs, Linda can tell, very strong ones too.

She asks around and is directed to a Jonathan Swift. She visits his house on the edge of town and is impressed by the two grand pianos in what he describes grandiloquently as his music room. She examines the certificates hanging on the wall, the most impressive being from the London College of Music, dated 1947. She likes the fact he is the namesake of a famous writer. It adds another dimension and he is pleased she has made the connection. Few in this town are as well read as you, he says.

Is he a spinster? Jessica asks.

He is a bachelor, she answers, adding: It’s the same as a spinster, but for men.

Does he smell?

Linda says no, while recalling there was a dampness about the room.

Jessica is happy and the lessons proceed well for a few weeks, if made more difficult by the lack of the Bluthner at home. Mr Swift says she is welcome to drop by any afternoon to practice, an offer Linda accepts with enthusiasm, discreetly leaving a few dollars on a table in the hallway as a gratuity, though the teacher insists he is doing this for free because Jessica is such a delight to have around.

I have few visitors, he says.

Jessica listens to his stories about Mozart, the child prodigy he calls him.

The greatest musician who ever lived bar one: the incomparable Bach.

He turns his back on her, breathes deeply. She watches his shoulders relax, his long hands rest on the black and white keys and, though she cannot see them, knows his eyes are closed. Only then, settled in a space far removed from this, does he begin the sublime aria from the Goldberg Variations.

On the dusty drive home Jessica tells her aunt she is going to learn that piece. Linda is thrilled. It is one of her favourites. She still has a treasured vinyl recording of Glenn Gould’s interpretation, something she has revealed to no one. Nor this: that when she was young she too wanted to play the piano but her parents could never afford lessons, let alone the price of an instrument. Instead, she listened to the radio and, when she was old enough to work at weekends, saved hard to buy a record player.

She remembers sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the magic box, entranced, marvelling at how a needle trapped in a spiralling grove can reproduce this polyphony of sounds. She watches it bobbing this way and that, waiting for the moment at the end when it rises, moves back across the surface of the glistening black disk and, with a sharp click, comes to rest from where it started. Decades pass, she marries, has children, they move to the property and there, in a room, is the Bluthner, left by the last owner, or perhaps the one before. Who knows? Peter wants to get rid of it but she talks him out of it. It’s not in the way and maybe the children might show interest one day, she pleads. He acquiesces and soon forgets about it as work takes him criss-crossing the country, leaving him exhausted on his return, the last thing on his mind a battered piano. Finding it unplayable Linda forgets about it too. Until the day Jessica sits on the faded crimson cushion.

Bach now occupies Jessica’s thoughts. In her encyclopaedia she reads the entry about him over and over. Though there are lots of words she does not understand, Cantata, Counterpoint, Fugue, she believes she has found a soul mate, even if he is an old and dead German composer.

That night an electrical storm breaks the silence, igniting the sky with jabs of white, filling clouds with bursts of light. In bed, restless and agitated she finds comfort humming the Goldberg aria as, above, Elaine moans with another, though similarly sublime, pleasure.

Years later it’s Elaine who provides this ending to the story.

There was this piano in the house, she says. No one ever touched it. Don’t even know how it came to be there. Anyhow, Jess decides one day she wants to play. She’s been reading something in a magazine I think. Maybe a book. It’s a long time ago. She sits down, pretends to play, you know, like she’s inspired. A little Miss Mozart. Except there’s no sound. All the keys are stuck. So we spend a fortune getting it fixed. Not that money was a problem. Then she wants a teacher. So mum goes and finds one. Why, I don’t know. She fell over backwards to please. Every day we’d hear Jess practising scales and nursery rhymes, over and over. That’s when I decided I’d do something to stop the noise.

I get to thinking. If the keys were stuck once they can be stuck a second time. Except I’ll do a proper job. I went to the shed and found a big tin of gunk that had been left behind when workmen were laying lino in the bathroom. I knew it would do the job perfectly. I waited till everyone was asleep, crept out, tipped the gunk over the keys, put down the lid and, for good measure, smeared that too. I felt so happy.

Mum was hysterical when she found what’d happened. She knew it was me. Well, I’d made no secret of not liking my step-sister ever since she’d first arrived and mum knew I thought she paid more attention to Jess than me. I thought mum considered her more her daughter than I really was. But she couldn’t change. It was like she needed to protect her. I don’t think Jess ever needed protecting. She put on being vulnerable so she got what she wanted. That was her way. Dad wasn’t bothered. I think he was pleased. He didn’t like her either. They got into a blazing row, mum and dad. They’d had rows before but this was something different. Savage. Lashing into one other. We were all petrified thinking they were going to kill the other. Everyone was crying. I thought: This is her fault, Jess’s fault. If she’d never come into this family this would never have happened. Then dad hit her. Hit mum, left her reeling. He spits something out of his mouth. I thought he was spitting at her but it was some blood. I don’t know. Maybe he’d bit himself. I don’t know. But everyone else thought he’d spat at mum.

He goes up to the piano and starts to push it out of the room. It’s on wheels but they were stiff and it was only because he was so mad and had this super-human strength you get when you’re mad, that he managed to move it at all. I could see the indents being made in the floor, glue dripping. He must have been covered in the stuff but he didn’t notice. He was going to get rid of that piano whatever it took.

And he did. He tipped it over the balcony. Took out the rails as well. They never managed to fix them properly. You can still see the difference if you know where to look. The piano stayed there for weeks. On its end. Upright like a headstone. Flies and ants stuck in the glue. Dead or dying.

I don’t know who took it away or when, but it disappeared.

Just like Jess when she was older. Ran off who knows where. She’s still a missing person.

Mum was never the same. I think she blamed herself. One day I watched her take armfuls of old records into the yard, fetch the petrol can from the shed that dad used to fill the mower, slosh some over and set them alight. She stood there for ages watching them burn, bending and twisting like liquorice.