Change of Heart, page 14
Fleur didn’t worry. She just lay in bed in despair. She had wanted so much to play her mother her tune, not to show off, but because she thought it was beautiful and she wanted her mother to love it as well. Instead she had ended up damaging the piano, which most probably she would never be allowed to play again. Somehow it all seemed so wrong, so desperately unfair.
Just as Fleur had thought, the following day – after a piano technician had been summoned from Worcester to repair the damage – the piano was placed out of bounds.
‘When you go to proper school in the autumn you can learn it, if you still want to,’ her mother told her. ‘If you’re still that keen and you prove to have any talent for it, then we might – but I only say might – we might then review the situation.’
‘Couldn’t we have a piano of our own?’ Fleur asked, having summoned up all her courage.
‘Oh don’t be silly, Fleur,’ Amelia replied. ‘For a start we’re only renting this house, and anyway where would we put it? We couldn’t put some cheap and ugly old piano in that lovely drawing room, and there’s certainly no room in Daddy’s study.’
‘We could put it in the kitchen,’ Fleur tried, remembering a friend in London whose parents had a piano in their kitchen. ‘The kitchen’s quite big.’
‘We are not having a piano in the kitchen, Fleur. The kitchen is for cooking and eating,’ Amelia replied, hoping that would put paid to the argument. ‘Besides, Daddy would not take kindly to paying out for something we don’t even know you can play yet.’
‘I can play it,’ Fleur replied, staring at the floor where she was shuffling her feet. ‘If only you’d let me show you.’
‘Now you’re being silly again, Fleur,’ Amelia sighed, opening the doors to the garden. ‘You can’t possibly say you can play the piano when all you’ve done is just mess around on one for a few minutes. Now off you go. It’s stopped raining at long last, so why don’t you go out and play in the garden? It’s what you’ve been waiting for. And what you’d really rather be doing, I’m sure.’
It wasn’t, but then Fleur was too shy to argue with her mother and answer her back. Instead she did as she was told and went out to play horses in the lovely garden, only to find that the very game she had always loved playing now bored her, and that all she really wanted was to sneak back inside the house, climb up on the stool and play the piano she could see through the windows waiting for her in the empty drawing room.
However, strong though the temptation was, Fleur bided her time until at last it was the day of the week for her mother to go into Worcester to get her hair done, and she was left alone in the house with Deanie, who was preparing to tackle a mound of ironing in the kitchen.
‘I’m going to do this in the drawing room, Deanie,’ she told the old woman, showing her the jigsaw puzzle she’d just fetched from her toy chest.
‘You can do it at the table here, child,’ Deanie replied, turning her radio on full blast. ‘You can do it where I may keep my eye on you.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Fleur replied, heading for the door. ‘Your radio’s too loud.’
Knowing that Deanie trusted her and didn’t really mean what she said, Fleur tucked the puzzle under her arm, took some cookies from the jar to keep her going and, easily avoiding Deanie’s half-hearted attempt at a smacked hand, ran off into the drawing room. Slowly and carefully she eased the door almost shut before quickly laying out the jigsaw on the wood floor. As soon as she had it in some sort of order, she set about completing some of the outside as fast as she could, and then once she was satisfied she had enough for a plausible alibi and that Deanie couldn’t see or hear her, Fleur ran to the piano stool, climbed up, and began to play at once.
Even so at first she only played pianissimo, just in case – as it often seemed – Deanie wasn’t quite as deaf as she made out. But every time she tiptoed back to the door to check, she was relieved to see that her old nurse was still busy with her washing and ironing and paying her no attention whatsoever. As one last confidence booster Fleur banged out a double-fisted discord to see if that would bring about any reaction, then seeing that it didn’t, finally she turned her full attention to the keyboard and to learning how to play some more of her favourite tunes.
By the time she saw her mother’s car turning into the drive over an hour later Fleur had not only mastered two handed versions of ‘London’s Burning’ and ‘Three Blind Mice’, but she had even made up a tune of her own which she had decided to call ‘Running Deer’ since it had been inspired by seeing the herd of red deer running distantly across the parkland. As her mother got out of the car, Fleur jumped down from the piano, and having closed the lid carefully and replaced the pile of music books in the stool, she returned to her jigsaw, lying down in front of it on the floor as if that was where she’d been all morning.
‘Oh,’ Amelia said as she came in and saw Fleur conspicuously putting away the bits of a jigsaw, ‘I’d rather have liked to have seen that. You know I always like to see puzzles when they’ve been done.’
‘You’ve seen it, Mummy,’ Fleur said, trying to sound as bored as she could. ‘It’s that old one of that castle.’
‘Ah,’ Amelia said suspecting nothing, her mind on a cup of coffee and a cigarette. ‘Anyway – come on, I’ve bought you some fish fingers for lunch. They’re a new sort.’
That was Fleur’s routine for the rest of the school holidays. Whenever her mother was out in the city and Deanie was distracted with household chores, Fleur would retire with a puzzle or a game to the drawing room to play the piano. No-one suspected, and she was never once caught in the act, at least not to her knowledge.
One person saw her, a fact of which Fleur wasn’t aware. One rainy day early in September a week before Fleur started school, she was busy playing her latest composition while Deanie scrubbed and polished the kitchen floor to the sound of her favourite radio programme, both of them unaware they had a visitor. Having tried and failed to get through on the telephone, due to the volume at which Deanie was playing the radio, Lady Stourton had called at The Folly on her way past, and having tried the doorbell several times and heard the sound of a radio blaring somewhere in the house, she had then walked round to the garden to see if she could attract anyone’s attention at the French windows. When she saw Fleur sitting at the piano she hesitated before knocking, to look a little closer, and to listen. Although she could still just hear the radio playing somewhere in the back of the house, the predominant sound was that of the piano, and what she heard made her hesitate even longer before announcing her presence – so extraordinary was the music being made by the child at the keyboard.
She had no notion what Fleur was playing but what it sounded like was Bach, formal and rhythmic, graceful and flowing: the linear melody in the right hand being propelled by simple but strict bass figures in the left, although the music was confined to just the two middle octaves. The child sat bolt upright at the piano with her head still, apparently staring ahead of her rather than down at the notes she was playing. Only when Lady Stourton caught sight of Fleur’s face in the mirror beyond the piano did she see that in fact the child had her eyes tight closed.
How long Lady Stourton stood there she had no idea. What she did know was that she was witnessing genius, the gift that people say has no country, the thing that is born from the unconscious and understood neither by those who own it nor by those who witness it, the miracle which enables a child to sit at a piano and play like an angel without having to understand one thing about it but just to play like an angel, without inhibition and straight from the heart.
Once she grasped the importance of what she was seeing, Lady Stourton decided against knocking on the glass and disturbing the child lest she might frighten her out of what seemed to be a trance. Instead she made her way round to the back door to rap sharply on the side window with the head of her cane in order to be heard above the radio.
‘Oh lor,’ Deanie groaned when she opened the door and saw who it was. ‘You don’t have to say. You been standing ringing the front door without ever me hearing you. What must you be thinking. Come in, ma’am, come in.’
The old woman stood aside, anxiously wiping her perfectly clean hands on her apron as Lady Stourton walked into the kitchen.
‘One was just going to leave one’s card,’ Lady Stourton said, casting a doubtful eye on the improvements Amelia had already begun to make on the old kitchen, ‘when one heard music.’
‘That’ll have been my radio, ma’am,’ Deanie sighed, having already switched it off when she realized she had a caller. ‘It’s a mite loud ’cos of my hearing. What can I do for you?’
‘The child,’ Lady Stourton said, placing both hands on the silver top of her cane. When she saw the child’s old nurse was staring blankly back at her, she raised her voice and tried again. ‘The child, Nanny. Do you know what she’s doing?’
‘She’s playing in the sitting room, ma’am,’ Deanie replied. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Has one any idea what she is playing, Nanny?’
‘Aye.’ Deanie nodded. ‘She said she were playing cards right enough. Patience or some such. Why? She’s not up to something, is she? ’Cos if she is—’
Deanie made to leave the room but Lady Stourton stopped her by raising her cane in front of her.
‘No no, Nanny, the child is not up to anything. At least not anything about which you need concern yourself. Can you not hear what she’s doing?’
Deanie frowned, leaning her head slightly towards the door.
‘She’s not playing your piano, is she?’ Deanie wondered. ‘Because if she is, it’s not as if she hasn’t been told—’
Lady Stourton’s cane was still in place.
‘But why shouldn’t she play my piano, Nanny? Heaven’s above one gave one’s express permission.’
‘Her mother won’t have it,’ Deanie replied, regarding both Lady Stourton and her raised cane dubiously. ‘Least not without the proper supervision.’
‘The child plays under her mother’s supervision, yes?’
Deanie paused, still wondering whether or not to hint at the truth before deciding against it.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘She only played the once, then her mother told her she was to wait till she went to school. To see if she had any real talent. That’s why I was worried in case she were playing. Her mother won’t have her playing your piano, you see. Least not till she knows how.’
Lady Stourton eyed Deanie steadily before she too decided to keep Fleur’s secret.
‘Very well,’ she announced, dropping her cane back down. ‘Kindly tell your employers I called with an invitation for her and the child to come to tea on Friday.’ Lady Stourton gave Deanie two visiting cards which she had taken from her handbag. ‘Perhaps Mrs Fisher could telephone should it not prove convenient.’
After Lady Stourton had left, Deanie went at once through to the drawing room to see exactly what Fleur was doing, only to find Fleur sitting at the card table playing Racing Demon, exactly as she said she had been intending to do. Fleur looked up and smiled as she tapped out her cards and asked Deanie if she might have a drink, before returning to her game of Patience.
13
THREE OTHER WOMEN were invited to tea at Stoke Park on that Friday, all described by Lady Stourton as ‘neighbours’ although even the nearest lived over fifteen miles away. All of them had children approximate to Fleur’s age, but there the similarities ended. It seemed clear from the nature of their conversation that the other three women all knew each other well. But after the initial polite interchanges even Fleur – sitting silently beside her mother on the old faded damask sofa – became aware of her mother’s struggle to join in the conversation around her which seemed entirely about horses and hunting, before she fell into a silence as complete as Fleur’s own.
Later Fleur experienced similar difficulties with the other children Lady Stourton had invited. They also all knew each other, and since all they also wanted to talk about was their ponies, like her mother Fleur found that she, too, had nothing in common with them. Only a tall, friendly, freckled-faced girl called Lucy who proved to be Lady Stourton’s granddaughter appeared polite enough to try to make friends with her, but once she had found out that Fleur didn’t ride, however good her intentions, she too soon ran out of conversation and she eventually turned away to talk to the children she already knew.
Even worse, as Fleur had been hoping that once they had finished tea they might at least go out into the garden and play, it began to rain heavily. So instead of being able to go and look at Lucy’s pony, or walk across the parkland to see the sheep and the lambs grazing in a distant paddock, the children ended up in a large and obviously unused playroom with only a derelict model railway, the games box and an upright piano for their amusement.
Fleur didn’t know how to play the board game in which the rest of the children immediately became absorbed, so she found herself left out and alone and wandered round the large, barely furnished room in search of something to amuse her. For a while she played with what was left of the derelict train set, pushing the few carriages which still had their wheels through a tunnel and over a bridge, and then finally boring of that she turned her attention to the upright piano.
She had seen it the moment she had come in, and try as she might to ignore its charms, her eyes kept coming back to it and her fingers itched to play it. She hadn’t played the piano in The Folly now for almost a week, since her mother had insisted that Fleur accompany her into Worcester on the two occasions she had visited the city in that time, almost as if she had known what Fleur was doing when her back was turned. For a moment Fleur thought Deanie must have heard her and told her mother in confidence, but when the reasons for taking Fleur with her emerged – namely a visit to the dentist and to the stationer’s to buy her what she would need for her new school – Fleur realized her secret was safe. And she felt it was safe to play this piano, the playroom being so far from where the adults were all gathered, most of all because playing it would go some of the way to relieving the suffocating shyness she was feeling.
Yet even so, for a moment she hesitated, as if she knew that once she began to play something would be over and gone for ever, which in fact it was, for when Fleur finally took a deep breath and sat down at the keyboard of the old upright playroom piano her youth was lost and forever gone.
It was Lucy who in her innocence gave the game away. Everyone was in the hall getting ready to leave, the children struggling into their raincoats while their parents said their goodbyes. Having been buttoned by her mother into her bright shiny pink mackintosh and prompted to go and thank Lady Stourton, Fleur did as she was told and crossed the flagstoned floor to where the old lady stood leaning on her cane. As she made her way over Lucy joined her, taking her hand.
‘Can I have piano lessons, Grandmother?’ Lucy asked, before Fleur had a chance to speak.
‘And just why would you want piano lessons, Lucy?’ Lady Stourton enquired.
‘Because I want to play the piano like Fleur,’ Lucy replied, just as Amelia walked up behind them.
Lady Stourton drew herself upright and, having given Amelia one of her most significant glances, returned her attentions to the two small girls in front of her.
‘Have you been using the playroom piano, child?’ she enquired of Fleur. ‘It really is a perfectly dreadful instrument.’
‘That would hardly matter to Fleur,’ Amelia said with a little laugh. ‘Seeing that she doesn’t play the piano. Unless you’ve been telling your new friend Lucy here whoppers, Fleur.’
‘No she can play,’ Lucy said gravely. ‘We’ve all just heard her. And she plays really well. Just like someone on a record.’
‘Don’t you just love children’s imaginations, Lady Stourton?’ Amelia asked her hostess, adjusting Fleur’s rain hat while Fleur stood clutching one of her feet held up behind her.
‘Yes, but in this instance I don’t think they are imagining things, Mrs Fisher,’ Lady Stourton replied. ‘Are you, Lucy Lockett?’
‘No, Grandmother. Fleur really can play. That’s why I want lessons. So please can I have piano lessons? Please?’
‘It’s no good asking me, child,’ her grandmother said. ‘You’re going to have to ask your mother.’
‘But she said I was to ask you. She said something about not affording it.’
‘Oh heavens,’ Amelia said with another laugh. ‘If Fleur’s as good as you say she is, Lucy, then perhaps she should teach you.’
‘Even better,’ Lady Stourton said, ‘perhaps first of all Fleur should play for us.’
‘But she can’t, Lady Stourton,’ Amelia replied, now beginning to worry in case the old lady insisted and Fleur made a fool of them both in front of not only Lady Stourton, but also the other mothers who were all gathering around. ‘She’s never had a lesson in her life, and she’s not allowed to play the piano at The Folly. Your grand piano.’
‘But why ever not?’ asked Lady Stourton, and she gave Amelia a puzzled look. ‘One gave one’s permission.’
‘In case something happened, I mean. It’s such a lovely instrument.’
‘Hmmm,’ Lady Stourton said, extending a hand to Fleur. ‘Then one could be in for something of a surprise. Come along, my dear.’
The four of them returned to the drawing room where Lady Stourton opened up a magnificent Steinway grand before winding the piano stool up to its full height.
As soon as she saw the instrument Fleur made to move forward.
‘Whatever have you been up to, Fleur?’ Amelia whispered, catching her by the shoulder and bending down.
‘Nothing, Mummy.’
‘Then what is all this about?’ her mother hissed.
Fleur didn’t have the chance to reply as Lucy came up to pull her by her other hand.
‘Play everyone the last thing you played, Fleur,’ she said, as Fleur let go of Lady Stourton’s hand and followed Lucy over to the piano. ‘What was it called?’
