“The last eight bars are meant to be pianissimo. There’s no way that was pianissimo.”
“You guys are all pianissimo. I have mezzo piano.”
“Bollocks! We talked about this on Wednesday. We all die away. Pianissimo. Logan?”
Libby and I look at the ground.
Mikka shrugs and cleans her violin with a yellow-stained cloth. She and Sam are always like this in the lead up to the first concert. Normally I make a joke, but not today. I didn’t get much sleep last night, worrying about Mum.
“Let’s run through the third and fourth and then have a break,” says Libby.
“What about those pianissimo bars?” asks Sam.
Libby sighs. “Mikka, he’s right. You could be softer at the end.”
Mikka makes a face. “Fine. Let’s just get on with the scherzo.”
The third movement is a crowd pleaser but rhythmically tricky. Mikka tends to push, and Sam tries to hold her back. I never know where to put myself. The first half goes well; we begin to relax and make a meal of the offbeat accents.
“Fuck!” Mikka falls off in the penultimate bar.
“Let’s try from ‘G’ to the end.”
“Maybe we should call it a night.” Libby looks at Mikka’s darkening face.
“We have to do the fourth movement,” says Sam. “It was pretty hairy on Wednesday. We’re performing it tomorrow, guys.”
“Fuck off, Sam,” says Mikka.
“What d’you think, bro? You’re very quiet,” says Sam.
Bastards. “Sort yourselves out for once. It’s a fucking waste of everyone’s time.” I weave around stands and sheets of music to my viola case. Everything in the motel is yellow or brown – good camouflage colours. I sense the others exchanging glances as I put my viola away. “I’m going out to get a real coffee. Does anyone else want one?”
Town is a 10-minute walk away, a chance to escape for a while.
I went to see Mum last night to make sure she had Jenny’s number. Mum was fiddling with her remote. She wanted to watch Coronation Street.
“I don’t know why it’s doing this,” she said. “It was working yesterday. I shouldn’t have bought such a cheap TV.”
I bought the TV for her last Christmas, and it wasn’t cheap. “Remember, you were watching a DVD? You have to switch it back to TV mode.”
Mum flicks through the channels and turns up the volume.
“Call Jenny if you need anything while I’m away, okay?” I had to shout to be heard over the drawn-out northern English vowels. I wrote Jenny’s number on half a dozen Post-it notes and stuck them around the house. Mum came to the front door during an ad break to see me off.
“See you in nine days, Mum. Monday week. I’ll call you most nights.”
“Why? I’m not ill.” Mum was listening out for the fragment of the Coronation Street theme song. “Why can’t you come? Are you going somewhere? Never mind, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
Mum likes to make out that she doesn’t know where I am or what I’m doing, that it isn’t important enough for her to remember. She keeps track of my brother Victor, who is a maths professor and always flying somewhere exotic, presenting at prestigious conferences. He often calls her from large international airports. Most of the places I go to don’t have an airport. I feel uneasy about Mum’s worsening memory, the look of bewilderment that frequently crosses her face. She seemed inordinately worried about missing Coronation Street as I gave her a hug goodbye.
I dawdle in town before returning to the motel. They’re all sitting at a pock-marked picnic table. Libby is drinking green tea and eating motel shortbread biscuits. Mikka throws her head back and laughs at something Sam says. I hold her coffee while she stubs out her cigarette. She reaches slowly behind Sam and pulls a slab of chocolate out of his bag.
The fourth movement goes really well. Mikka teases Sam about his solo, the buildup as he crawls up the A string, the little pause before the climax. She says she’ll tell Tina. Sam smiles. He has seemed insecure about Tina lately.
“What about the Mexican place up the road?” Sam puts his cello case in his room.
Libby stays behind. She doesn’t like spending her per diems on restaurants and cafes, so she lugs around two bags of groceries when we’re touring. She arranges for her mother to ring her on the motel landline while we are out so she can talk to her boys. She used to tell us about what they were up to. She might have been put off by the poorly disguised boredom on Mikka’s face.
During dinner, I duck out to give Mum a call. She says Jenny and her daughters dropped by with a lasagne, a bag of apples from their tree and some old North & South magazines.
Jenny and I had been together for three years when she started talking about having a family. I said something about wanting to see the world and getting further on in my career. The words slid out of my mouth. I never did go overseas, and I am still scraping together a living as a teacher and freelancer. Jenny is married with two children and has retrained as a lawyer. Her husband is a school teacher who knows how to fix rotting boards.
“You’ll get a good audience in Nelson. And you’re back home the next day?”
“No Mum, we’re going down the West Coast. Remember, we’re on tour?”
“Oh yes. Churches and community halls in small town New Zealand. Everyone in the audience will be related to everybody else.”
Jeez. I never know what she’s going to come up with these days. I will have to tell her about Ella before it’s too late. God knows how she’ll react when she finds out I have an 11-year-old daughter. I only found out myself a couple of months ago. At first, I wondered if it was some sort of bad taste joke and tried not to dwell on it. Now I find myself thinking about it when I’m doing the dishes or putting out the rubbish. I picture myself giving piggy-back rides.
Sam has a second beer and orders more nachos to soak it up. I have another red wine. Mikka doesn’t drink the night before a concert; she makes up for it afterwards. She is in the middle of a rapid exchange of texts – her boyfriend, her friends, her mother? All her relationships involve angst. It is because of Mikka that we made a rule that no one is allowed to make personal calls while we are in the car.
The hall is almost full for our concert in Nelson. I’m on auto pilot for the Haydn. It’s meant to be cold in Wellington. Mum’ll use her bar heaters and start a fire. I should have taken the oil heater out of her garage. I’ll text Jenny to remind Mum to use a hot water bottle instead of her electric blanket. I probably left mine on. I turned everything else off. I even remembered to stop my mail. It’d be easier if I had a flatmate. Male. Female flatmates are more trouble than they’re worth.
The applause lasts a long time, and we play an encore. The reviewer promises to include lots of good quotes for our publicity. She said the same thing last time. The usual people hang out in the green room after the concert. Every year they stay a little longer. Sam is good at dealing with the public but hasn’t figured out how to make them go home. Mikka’s eyes keep glazing over. She must have taken something – she seemed sluggish in the encore. It’s marked vivace. Even Libby looks worn out. Her concert gear used to be a svelte, sparkly number; these days it’s a floppy, layered black dress made by her sister.
After Hokitika, we head inland and hit the snow; Haast Pass is open one minute, closed the next. Every time we come down south, we practise putting chains on, just in case, which puts everyone in a bad mood. Getting stuck behind a car accident on Lindis Pass feels like the last straw. We’re stiff from travelling, and the door sales have been disappointing. We will only just break even.
When we first started touring, we’d take the wrong turn and end up in the middle of nowhere, having to search for food. We did crazy things like bungy jumping or wine tastings on the day of an evening performance. One night in Opotiki, we decided to swap rooms. All that flirting on stage, the tension in the backseat of the car, built up to a drunken grope on the threadbare carpet of Mikka’s motel unit. We avoided each other for a couple of days, and Mikka never flirted with me again. She often speaks to me as if I were a child who doesn’t understand.
“Logan, bar 7 is spiccato, not martelé. Can’t you hear? You sound way longer than everyone else.”
We’re in Oamaru, rehearsing a new work, Prophecies. “Actually, my part has printed martelé. And I’m not playing the same thing as everyone else. The viola has its own motif.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous. Why do we have to play this crap, anyway?”
We commissioned the damn thing. It meant we got funding to help with the cost of the composer and tour. Because of Prophecies, we were interviewed on radio and had decent write-ups before our concerts. The composer is John Williams, not the famous one, a retired music teacher who lives in Waitati. Some of Prophecies is beautiful, like the last section, where the first violin and cello play a melody against harmonics in the viola and second violin. It’s spooky, the way the first section foreshadows the end, fragments of the melody passing between instruments.
“Mikka, we’ve played a lot worse,” says Libby.
“You love the third section – the three plus three plus two, the accents, the double stops,” I say.
“I suppose. The second part is weird, sounds random.” Mikka hates anything atonal.
“It’s fine, in context. I actually like it all,” says Sam. “Let’s call John and ask him about the things we’re not sure about. Like bar seven – if he really meant for the viola to be martelé.”
Typical bloody cellist. Why shouldn’t the viola get its own motif?
“Remember, we’re meant to be touring this piece. And we need something to replace the Haydn,” says Sam. “It sounded bloody awful in Hokitika.”
“That’s because you played the slow movement like a dirge,” says Mikka.
“You set the speed.”
“Which you totally ignored. Your quavers dragged, you prick.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a foreign number; the prefix seems familiar.
“Probably someone trying to sell you something.”
“Someone has left you three million pounds. Please give us your bank details and all your passwords.”
“Betcha they’re Indian.”
It’s Victor. He starts off sounding English and turns Kiwi as we talk. “Sorry, I’m probably interrupting your rehearsal. Are you still playing with that psycho chick?”
“Sure am.” I put my viola down and walk out the sliding doors onto the veranda. The air smells like diesel, and the trucks are noisy. A bird squawks in a nearby tree. “What time is it over there?”
“Six in the morning. Hey, I talked to Mum. She didn’t seem right. She knew you were touring, but had no idea where you were and kept saying you should have come home by now. And she’s not eating because her stove has stopped working.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her stove. Jenny’s been taking her hot meals every few days. She’s also got a freezer full of microwave dinners.”
Victor suggests I take Mum to the doctor when I get back. As usual, he apologises for not being around and rattles off a list of the countries he is flying to in the next few months. “It’s that time of year, Logan. Conferences everywhere. I thought I’d skip them next year and come home for a bit. We can sort Mum out together.”
“Wanker!” says Sam when I tell the others. He remembers Victor from youth orchestra days when they were on the front stand of the cellos. Although Sam was the principal, Victor would always come in slightly ahead, making Sam look bad and destabilising the section. Mikka says a drink or three will sort me out. We go to the local Indian – Libby comes too – and get a couple of bottles of Riesling. Sam, who is the most Chinese-looking person I know, pretends he is French. He asks for ‘poulet de beurre’ and then tries to say ‘vegetable pakora’ with a French accent. For a short time, it almost feels like the old days again. As I begin to relax, I can’t help feeling uneasy about Mum.
“She’s probably tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle. Give her a break, man!” Sam collapses on the couch. I bring over a jug of water. “Drink up. We’re premiering Prophecies tomorrow, remember?”
The applause lasts a long time in Oamaru. John Williams bows and smiles. Someone in the audience asks him to explain the second movement. He speaks for several minutes, but no one can hear him. He gives a short bow and disappears through a side door. “I rest my case,” says Mikka.
We’ll go home for a couple of days before we head north. Sam seems subdued on the ferry. He has been texting a lot lately, walking away to talk on the phone. Sam tours with his orchestra too, which is tough on Tina. She’s probably not overjoyed about him working with Mikka. Tina’s only ever seen her on stage, dressed in her lacy black outfit with the beads or her blue satin number, body swaying, eyes connecting with ours. Off stage, Mikka looks quite ordinary.
I’m trying to decide between Export Gold and Riesling as I open the door to my flat. It’s cold, and Jenny would say it smells like mice. I switch on the heat pump and fetch some logs. Within five minutes, the fire is roaring and the smokiness creeps into the room. I lie on the rug and stare at the ceiling. Libby will be hanging out with her boys tonight. She might let them sleep in her bed. Sam and Tina’ll be talking, maybe arguing. I pull a cushion off the sofa and lie with my back to the fire. A girl called Annabel plays second violin in Sam’s orchestra. She’s nice, not uppity like some of the other violins, quite pretty too. I should ask her for coffee when the tour is over. I decide against having a drink. I need to keep my head clear for when I tell Mum about Ella.
Mum seems more like her old self, asking me about the tour and using my answers to steer the conversation to Victor. I talk about our new piece. She wants to know when we are going to perform it in ‘one of the major centres’ and if we are going to record it for a CD.
“Yeah maybe.” I can’t put it off any longer. “Mum, I really need to talk to you about something.”
“No. I’m not going into one of those homes.”
I put my hand on her arm and begin haltingly. I have never seen a photograph of Ella. I can’t even imagine what she looks like; I can barely remember her mother’s face. Saskia was my flatmate, a mousy girl who couldn’t eat dairy and usually cooked for herself. She was studying design at the polytech, and I was in the orchestra. It was such a cliché – on the mouldy couch in the middle of winter after sharing a bottle of wine. A month later, she moved in with her sister and the next I heard, she was back home in Auckland. I didn’t know she was pregnant. We moved in different circles; I never thought of her again until the letter from her solicitors. According to their client, I have an 11-year-old daughter.
“But I never met Saskia.” Mum looks scared. “Why did she wait so long to tell you?”
Saskia had intended to raise the child on her own. She was financially independent; her parents had set her up with her own business. A year ago, Saskia’s father died suddenly of a heart attack. She decided then that I had a right to know about Ella. Telling Ella about me was a different story – Saskia wants to wait until Ella is 16.
“I’m going to write to her, Mum. You’ll get to meet Ella.”
I pick the others up early the next morning. As we enter the Desert Road, I talk about recording Prophecies. It’s growing on me, but I wouldn’t buy a recording of it. Libby and Mikka agree.
“It would make an awesome title for a CD,” says Sam. “Face it. No one’s going to buy a CD of us playing Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Haydn.”
“Bastards.” says Mikka. “I’m sick of begging to music societies, playing stuff we don’t like just to get a few extra concerts.”
That’s rich. Mikka hardly ever does the leg work.
“You know what the audiences really love?” says Libby. “The Piazzolla and the Paganini. Logan’s arrangements.”
“We could do a whole CD of them!”
“I’d buy it.” Mikka smiles at me.
“You’d make way more money writing arrangements than you do playing the viola,” says Sam.
But I would have to write them first.
We stop in Taupo on our way north, a long-standing tradition. One year we all went for a midnight dip in the lake. Mikka said she thought her nipples would snap off like icicles. I can’t imagine us skinny dipping now, not even wearing wet suits. Mikka and Libby watch a movie, while Sam and I get rugged up and sit on the balcony off Mikka’s room. The sky changes colour, orange bleeding into grey. I ask Sam how things are going with Tina, and he asks me about Mum.
“I dunno. She’s away with the fairies one minute and on my case the next.”
“Bro.” Sam shakes his head.
“I told her about Ella.”
“Far out. Then you go and bugger off!”
I have a half-baked scheme to try and see Saskia when we pass through Auckland. Sam says I should go for it. It’d be good to meet in person. “But I’m not sure about that comb-over thing you’ve got going on.”
“Tosser!” I whip off his beanie and throw it over the balcony.
We laugh a lot, the next few days. In Whakatane, people mill around outside during the interval. They call ‘Bravo!’ after everything we play and ask for several encores. Mikka reminds me that we always feel good when we play up north because of the weather. I’m beginning to worry that we are having too good a time. Something is bound to disturb the happiness. As we leave Hamilton, I’m on everyone’s case, anxious to get to Auckland.
“Chill out, Logan. We’ve got the whole fucking day to get to Hokianga.”
I haven’t told the girls that I’m going to try and see Saskia. They’d do my head in, offering me advice. We get to Auckland in record time and spend 40 minutes crawling through the city. I drop them at the museum and drive to One Tree Hill where I dial Saskia’s work number. It rings on and goes to the answer phone. I don’t leave a message. I stare through the windscreen at the streets that splay endlessly in all directions. I have no idea where she lives or works. Her business website only gives a PO Box number.
Sam raises his eyebrows when I pick them up. I shake my head. He says he’ll drive.
“She knew you were coming though?”
Fuck. It’s like a wall that I walk smack into because I was looking the wrong way. She might have answered the phone if she knew I was in Auckland.
“Maybe on the way back, eh?” Sam pulls out into the traffic.
I email Saskia from an Internet café to tell her I’ll be passing through Auckland again soon. We play two concerts in the far north, spending our days on the beach. Our cottage has running water and electricity but no cell-phone coverage or Internet.
As we head out of Hokianga, Mikka says her phone is showing one bar. “Your phone just vibrated. There’s a text from Jenny.” Mikka appears in the rear-vision mirror, waving my phone around. “She says, ‘Yr mum’s in hospital. Fine now. Chck phone messages.’ Also six missed calls: two from Victor, two from Jenny, two from a blocked number. And three messages. Do you want me to listen to them?”
My hands start slipping off the steering wheel. Maybe she’s dead and they can’t get hold of me. I pull over onto the side of the road, but the phone has gone out of range again. Libby takes over driving. The phone messages are muffled. Mum fell over two days ago and was admitted to hospital with a broken wrist. A message from early this morning says she’s going home this afternoon. Jenny will pick her up. We keep going out of range as we wind our way around the coast. My phone rings, just as we reach Kaikohe. It’s Victor. I scramble out of the car.
“Where the fuck have you been? Everyone’s been trying to get hold of you.”
I start to explain, but he interrupts. He says Mum was reaching to pull some junk mail out of the bush near the letterbox when she fell. Jenny’s daughter saw her out the window of a bus. She helped her inside and called the ambulance.
“Mum’s fine now. Jenny said Mum kept talking about Dad. She was better after they rehydrated her.”
“Should I go home?”
Mikka is leaning against the car, having a smoke, her eye on me. We still have Kerikeri, Whangarei and Warkworth left.
“Logan, that’s not a decision I can make for you.”
I feel nine years old again, trying to justify why I’m going with my friends to a movie while my older brother is spending time with my dying grandfather. I tried to tell my parents that Victor already saw the movie the previous week. Victor always took the smaller piece of cake, the moth-eaten blanket, the faulty desk lamp. But only when my parents were watching. When he left for Oxford to start his DPhil, he told me I was selfish for dropping out of my law degree to do music. Our parents would spend the rest of their lives having to support me.
Sam and Mikka are bickering about the quickest route to Kerikeri. My indecisiveness is making everyone tense. I ring Jenny.
“Don’t worry, your Mum’s fine. She keeps asking about you though. Can you get home any sooner?”
I explain to Jenny about the concerts.
A long pause. “She’s meant to be going home today. Maybe they’ll delay her discharge if I explain. I suppose we can pop in and see her when she’s at home. There’ll be a nurse and Meals on Wheels. Okay Logan, we’ll manage. You do your concerts.”
The others are relieved that we don’t have to cancel the rest of the tour. We have a celebratory dinner when we get to Kerikeri. I try and explain to Mikka why I feel guilty about feeling happy. She says she doesn’t spend time on guilt or regret, because that would be a waste of her life. I play the remaining concerts but have no memory of them afterwards. I try harder to relax as we drive south, making me more on edge.
“Do us a favour and fly home.” says Mikka as we approach Auckland. “Eight more fucking hours with you in the car and I’ll go crazy.”
“And Saskia?” asks Sam. I shrug my shoulders. I never heard back from her. I wonder if I should give her a few more hours. I could hang around at the airport and fly home in the evening.
“God that’s sad, even for you,” says Mikka. They drop me at Auckland airport at lunchtime. I wait, watching my phone, and then get on the 6.45pm flight home.
My house is freezing, and there is a leak near the front door, probably from a gap in the window frame. I blast the carpet with a fan heater and lay out newspapers and an ice-cream container in case it rains during the night. My ears are ringing; pieces of furniture look like they are moving around all by themselves. I crawl into bed without getting undressed and fall asleep.
When I wake, it is broad daylight. My mail is in a large bundle under the table outside the front door. I toss most of it into my in-tray until I get to a thick envelope postmarked Auckland from Sedley and Sharp, Saskia’s lawyers. With my written consent, Ella will be told on her 13th birthday who her father is. There are a few paragraphs about paternity tests that I skim read. I put it away in a drawer and unpack my bags. I arrive at Mum’s with a merino shawl that I bought in a gift shop, a tour poster and some programmes. Jenny is there, having tea. Mum’s arm is in a bright-pink plaster. She gives me a long hug and wipes her eyes. She says I look very handsome in the poster, standing in the long grass.
“Is this for a tour? When are you leaving? I don’t know how Jenny copes with all your touring.” She frowns.
I stare at her. Is she trying to be funny?
“Logan just finished his tour, love.” Jenny puts her hand on Mum’s arm.
“Of course. How silly of me!”
We laugh. When Jenny gets up to leave, I give her the earrings I bought for her daughters.
I spend the day with Mum, making her lunch, watching the afternoon soaps and dozing a little. The Meals on Wheels lady drops by in the late afternoon. I make myself a sandwich while Mum eats smoked fish pie and green beans.
“What about Ella?” she asks. “Did you try and see her?”
I swallow a mouthful of sandwich without chewing it, and it’s painful. “No, Mum. But when she turns thirteen in a couple of years, I will get to meet her.”
“Two years? That’s such a long time, Logan. Too long for me.” She is staring at the table. I’m planning to talk to Saskia about telling Ella earlier, but I don’t want to raise Mum’s hopes.
When I was a teenager, Mum told me she knew that I was going to do something great one day. Even though Victor was top of his class and won all the prizes, I would shine in my own way.
“Mum, we’re thinking of making a CD. And it’s going to be all my stuff. It’ll take a lot of work to do all that arranging, but Sam thinks it’ll fly. Light classical, jazz, pop, some show tunes, things like that.”
Mum nods her head a few times. She lays down her knife and fork. “Isn’t that what you play at weddings? Doesn’t that mean that someone has already arranged it?”
“Yes, of course,” I say. She is staring at me as I try and get through my sandwich.
“I’ll put the kettle on.” I take the dishes to the kitchen. “They’ll be my own arrangements. We don’t always like the arrangements we play.” The fridge door is covered with pictures of Jenny and her daughters.
Mum doesn’t reply. The telly is on in the background, an ad with a man shouting about bargains. She never uses the mute button. I clean up, bring her a cup of tea and gather my things together. “Do you want anything, Mum? I’m off home.”
Mum is engrossed in a reality show about airports. She laughs and thumps her fist on the armrest, gripping the blanket with her uninjured hand. She nods as I give her a kiss.
“Logan, can you please turn on my electric blanket?” she yells, as I’m about to walk out the front door.
“Okay, don’t forget to turn it off when you go to bed!” One of these days, she’ll set the house on fire.
The next morning, I empty out the bottom drawer of my desk. Dusty sheets of half-used manuscript paper, abandoned parts. Scribbled on the back of an old programme is a list of pieces that Sam and I came up with late one night in Kaikoura. I sit at my desk with a pad of manuscript paper. I chew the end of my pencil; I can’t do anything without the scores.
My inbox has one new message. It’s from Saskia. I go to read it and push the wrong button; the computer starts shutting down. It takes ages to restart. She says they were up near the Bay of Islands most of last week and only just received my email. She’ll be in Wellington in a fortnight and is happy to meet me.
We probably drove past them. We might have had lunch at the same café. Maybe they walked by when we were sitting outside the motel in Whangarei. I try to remember all the faces. I read Saskia’s email again. “Looking forward to seeing you soon.” Maybe she will understand if I explain to her about Mum.
I write a brief reply and take out my viola. It’s been a couple of days and all the strings are out of tune. I adjust the pegs; the open fifths sound glorious. I begin playing the prelude from Bach’s first suite.