Sorrow and Bliss(14)
I said no, slowly, while trying to invent an alternative reason that would prevent her from going. ‘I was just wondering – before you came in, I was thinking about you getting into college. I was wondering who helped you.’
She said, ‘No one helped me!’ and charged softly back into the room after I picked up the tiny fork and speared a small potato and asked her how she did it in that case. Sitting in the space I tried to smooth out for her, Winsome began her story, undistracted by the fact that I was now eating the potato exactly the way her children weren’t allowed to, off the end of the fork as if it was an ice cream.
She said, she had taught herself to play on a piano in her school hall. Somebody had written the names of the notes in pencil on the keys and by the time she was twelve, she had finished all the grade books in the library and started sending away for sheet music. The Royal College of Music and its address on Prince Consort Road, London SW, was always printed on the back and she became, over time, desperate to see the place her music came from. At fifteen, she went to London on her own, intending only to stand in front of the building until her return train. But the sight of the students coming in and out, dressed in black, carrying instrument cases, made her jealous to the point of feeling sick and, somehow, she roused herself to go inside and ask the person on the front desk if anyone could apply. She was given a form, which she filled out at home that night, in pencil before pen and, two weeks later, she received an invitation to audition.
I interrupted and asked how she could prove what level she was, if she hadn’t done any exams.
My aunt closed her eyes, lifted her chin, took a deep breath and said as her eyes sprung open, ‘I lied.’ Her exhale was glorious.
On the day, she played flawlessly. But afterwards the examiners asked her to produce her certificates and she confessed. ‘Anticipating arrest, but,’ Winsome said, ‘they gave me a place on the spot, as soon as they discovered I had never had a lesson.’ She brought her hands together and placed them one over the other in her lap.
I put my fork down. ‘If I came out, would you play something?’
She said she was far too rusty, but was instantly on her feet and whisking the tray off my lap.
I got up and asked her if she needed the music on the desk. My aunt laughed and ushered me out.
*
From where she told me to sit, I watched her open the lid of the piano, adjust the stool, then lift her hands, soft wrists rising before her fingers, and hover them there for some seconds before letting them fall onto the keys. From the first devastating bar of whatever it was she was playing, the others began drifting into the room one by one, even the boys, even my mother.
Nobody said anything. The music was extraordinary. The sensation of it was physical, like warm water being washed over a wound, agonising and cleansing and curative. Ingrid came in and wedged herself into my chair, as Winsome was entering a section that got faster and faster until it no longer seemed like the music was being manufactured by her. My sister said holy shit. A series of violent chords followed by a sudden slowing down seemed to signal the end but instead of stopping, my aunt melted the final bars in to the beginning of O Holy Night.
My perception of Winsome belonged to my mother – I thought of her as old, punctilious, someone without an interior life or worthwhile passions. That was the first time I saw her for myself. Winsome was an adult, someone who took care, who loved order and beauty and laboured to create it as a gift to other people. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling and smiled. She was still wearing her wet apron.
The first person to say anything aloud was Rowland who had come in last and was standing in front of the fireplace with his elbow on the mantel like someone posing for a full-length portrait in oil. He called out for something a bit bloody cheerier and Winsome took a brisk turn into Joy to the World.
My mother stopped it by singing – a different song that my aunt could not follow her into because she was making it up. Her voice got higher and higher until Winsome improvised an ending and took her hands away from the piano, saying it was probably time for the Queen. But, according to my mother, we were all having fun. ‘And,’ she said, ‘I need to tell all of you, please, that when she was a teenager, my sister here was so convinced she was going to be famous, she used to practise with her head turned to the side – didn’t you Winnie? – in preparation for when you’d have to play while gazing out at your vast audience.’ Winsome tried to laugh before Rowland said right, and ordered everyone born after the coronation to make themselves scarce, unnecessarily since Ingrid, my cousins and Patrick had started evacuating during my mother’s speech. I got up and walked to the door. I wanted to apologise to Winsome but as I passed her, I looked at the floor, and went back to the downstairs room. I didn’t come out again until it was time to leave. In the backseat of the car, Ingrid told me she had unwrapped my presents for me. She said, ‘So much shit for the Don’t Like pile.’
I wasn’t better. I had just been given some of Christmas Day off. The next time I went to Belgravia, the piano was closed and covered.
*
I went back to university in January and did my exams. Foundations of Philosophy 1 was a take-home. I did it on the floor in my father’s study, pressing on the Shorter Oxford.
The paper came back with a comment at the bottom. ‘You write exquisitely and say very little.’ My father read the essay and said, ‘Yes. I think you chewed more than you bit off.’