chapter fourteen
‘How did your, ah, thing at the library go today? Your, um, what-do-ya-call-it, speech?’ asked Sam in a strangled voice, as though the question were being forcibly squeezed from him.
‘It went well,’ began Clementine.
‘Many people there?’ interrupted Sam. He piano-played his fingertips on the white linen tablecloth and scanned the restaurant feverishly, as if there were someone or something he needed. ‘How many would you say? Twenty? Thirty?’
‘Less than twenty,’ said Clementine. ‘One of them was Erika.’
She waited for a reaction and when none seemed forthcoming she said, ‘I didn’t really understand why she wanted to come.’
‘Well, Erika is your biggest fan,’ said Sam with a faint smile.
That was kind of a joke. It gave her hope for the night that he was making a joke. Sam had been the first man she ever dated who immediately and instinctively grasped the complexities of her friendship with Erika. He’d never reacted with impatience or incomprehension; he’d never said, ‘I don’t get it, if you don’t like her, don’t hang out with her!’ He’d just accepted Erika as part of the Clementine package, as if she were a difficult sister.
‘That’s true,’ said Clementine, and she laughed too loudly. ‘Although she left halfway through.’
Sam said nothing. He looked just to the right of her head, as if there were something interesting going on behind her.
‘How was work today?’ she said.
‘Fine,’ said Sam coldly. ‘Same as usual.’
(‘Your marriage is being tested, darling, but the best comes after the worst! Forgiveness and communication is the only way through!’ Clementine’s mother had said all this in a dramatic, passionate whisper to Clementine, as if she were imparting urgent words of wisdom before Clementine set off on some epic journey. They were standing together at the front door waiting for Sam, who had chosen that moment to sit down at the computer and answer an email that was apparently a matter of life and death, while the jarring sound of some terrible pop princess movie blared out from the television. Pam had made a tiny, unnecessary adjustment to the strap of Clementine’s dress. ‘The two of you need to talk! Talk it out! Say what you feel!’)
‘So how’s that “forward-thinking corporate culture” working out for you?’ said Clementine.
Once she could have said exactly those words and made him laugh, but now she could hear the thread of spite in her voice. Two musicians could play the same notes and sound entirely different. Intonation was everything.
‘It’s working out great for me.’ Sam looked at her with something like hatred. Clementine dropped her eyes. Sometimes when she looked at him, she felt like there was a sleeping snake tightly coiled within her chest; a snake that would one day hiss to life and strike with unimaginable, unforgivable consequences.
She changed the subject.
‘I have to admit I don’t really enjoy doing these talks,’ she said. Each time she felt so nervous, but it was an entirely different sort of anxiety from the kind she felt before a performance or even an audition. Her audiences always clapped, but it was subdued applause, and often she sensed an undertone of disapproval.
She looked out the rain-dotted giant glass window revealing a blurry postcard view of Sydney Harbour complete with the white sails of the Opera House, where she’d performed just two nights previously. ‘I sort of hate it.’
She glanced back at Sam. An expression of intense aggravation crossed his face. He virtually shuddered with it. ‘Then stop,’ he said. ‘Just stop it. Why do you keep doing them? You’re obsessed! You’ve got enough on your plate. You should be preparing for your audition. Are you even going to audition?’
‘Of course I’m still going to audition!’ said Clementine. Why did people keep asking her that? ‘I’ve been getting up at five am to practise every day!’ How could he not know that? She knew he’d been having trouble sleeping. She’d wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and hear his footsteps in the hallway or the muted sound of the television from downstairs. ‘Haven’t you heard me?’
‘I guess maybe I have heard you,’ said Sam uncomfortably. ‘I guess I didn’t put two and two – I didn’t realise you were practising.’
What did he think she was doing? Was the sound of the cello just irrelevant background noise to him? Or did he not care enough even to wonder?
She managed to keep the fractiousness she was feeling out of her voice. ‘And I went to Ainsley’s place today to practise in front of her and Hu.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam. He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘Well, great, I guess. How did it go?’
‘Fine. It went fine.’
It hadn’t gone fine. It had been strange and awful. Hu and Ainsley had argued quite vehemently over her performance of the first movement of her concerto.
‘Wonderful!’ Hu had said as soon as she finished. ‘Bravo. Give the girl a job.’ He looked expectantly at his wife, but Ainsley wasn’t smiling.
‘Well,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘You’ve obviously been working really hard. It was technically perfect. It’s just … I don’t know, it didn’t sound like you. If I was behind the screen I would never have picked it was you.’
‘So what?’ said Hu.
‘It was so accurate. Every single note precisely where it should be. I would have guessed it was an arrogant twenty-year-old whiz-kid straight out of the Con.’
‘And I say again, so what? If she played like that, she’d absolutely get through to the next round,’ said Hu. ‘I’d put her through for sure. You would too. I know you would.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think it would get her through the second round. There was something almost – don’t take this the wrong way, Clementine – but there was something almost robotic about it.’
Hu said, ‘How can she not take that the wrong way?’
‘We’re here to be honest,’ said Ainsley. ‘Not kind.’ Then she’d looked at Clementine and said suddenly, ‘Are you sure you still want it? After … everything?’
‘Of course she still wants it,’ said Hu. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Then their house phone had rung and Clementine had never got to answer what should have been a straightforward question.
‘How are Ainsley and Hu?’ asked Sam. She could see the strain it cost him just to ask an ordinary civil question. It was like watching him do a chin-up. ‘I haven’t seen them for a while.’
But he was trying, so she’d try too.
‘Good. They’re good. Hey, I was telling Hu how you got me to run on the spot before practising my excerpts and he said he had a teacher who made him do that!’ Sam looked at her dully. You would think it had been somebody else who’d pinned the bedsheet to the ceiling all those weeks ago, who’d yelled, ‘Run, soldier, run!’ She ploughed on. ‘His teacher also used to tell him to wake up and practise in the middle of the night, when he was still half-asleep, and to play after he’d had a few drinks, speaking of which – oh, good, here comes somebody.’
A young waiter approached their table and stood just a little too far back. ‘Would you like me to go through today’s specials?’ He squared his shoulders in the heroic manner of someone volunteering to do something perilous.
‘Yes, but we’re actually wondering about our drinks. We ordered two glasses of wine … um, a while ago.’ A million years ago.
Clementine tried to soften her words with a smile. The waiter was painfully young and sort of famished-looking. He’d be perfectly cast as a street urchin in Les Misérables.
‘You haven’t got your drinks yet?’ The waiter looked alarmed, as if he’d never heard of such a thing.
Clementine gestured at their table to indicate: No drinks. Just their two mobile phones placed at precise angles in front of them, ready to be snatched up in case of crisis, because that’s how they lived now, in readiness for crisis.
‘Maybe they’ve been forgotten,’ suggested Clementine.
‘Maybe,’ said the waiter. He glanced fearfully over his shoulder at the restaurant bar where a pretty waitress dreamily polished wineglasses.
‘You could check on them?’ said Clementine. For the love of God. Why was this swanky restaurant employing children? Starving children? Feed him and send him home.
‘Of course, right, it was two glasses of the …’
‘The Pepper Tree shiraz,’ said Clementine.
She could hear a fish-wifey, high-pitched note in her voice.
‘Right. Um. Shall I just go through the specials first?’
‘No,’ said Clementine at the same time as Sam said, ‘Sure, mate.’ He smiled up at the waiter. ‘Let’s hear the specials.’
He always snatched the Good Cop role for himself.
The waiter took a deep breath, clasped his hands choir-boy style and recited, ‘For an entrée we have a confit of salmon cooked in coriander, orange and mint.’
He stopped. His lips moved silently. Clementine pressed her fingertip against her phone. It lit up. No calls. Everything was fine.
Sam shifted in his chair, and gave the waiter a tiny ‘you can do it’ nod of encouragement, as though he were an affectionate parent in the audience at a poetry recital.
Watching her husband – the exasperating humanity of the man – Clementine felt an unexpected jolt of love, like one perfect, pure note. A velvety E-flat. But as soon as she registered the feeling, it was gone, and she felt nothing but itchy irritability as the waiter haltingly made his way through the longest list of specials in the history of fine dining.
‘A prosciutto and pepperoni, no wait, not pepperoni, a prosciutto and, um, a prosciutto and …’ He rocked forward and studied his shoes, lips compressed. Clementine met Sam’s gaze. Once Clementine would only have needed to fractionally widen her eyes to make Sam lose his composure, and in his desperation not to hurt the waiter’s feelings his face would have turned red while his eyes filled with tears of mirth.
But now they just looked steadily at each other and then away again, as if levity were against the new rules for life where they trod so very carefully, where they checked and double-checked, where they knew better than to relax, even for a moment.
The waiter continued on his torturous way, and Clementine distracted herself by playing the Brahms excerpt in her head while using her forearm as a pretend fingerboard under the tablecloth. The Brahms had lots of mini-phrases linked in one extended line. It needed to have that beautiful lyrical feel. Was Ainsley right? Was she focusing too much on technical perfection? ‘If you concentrate on the music the technical problems often solve themselves,’ Marianne used to tell her, but Clementine had come to believe she’d taken that advice too much to heart in every aspect of her life. She needed to be focused, to be disciplined, to clean up as she went, to pay her bills on time and follow the rules and grow the fuck up.
‘… with a beef and goats’ cheese parfait!’ The waiter finished his recital in the jubilant rush of a carol singer chorusing, and a partridge in a pear tree!
‘All sounds delicious,’ said Sam.
‘Do you want me to go back over anything?’ said the waiter.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Sam, and Clementine nearly laughed out loud. He’d always been good at delivering a dry, straight-faced line.
‘Right. So, you have a think, and in the meantime I’ll just check on your –’ The waiter looked at Clementine.
‘Shiraz,’ supplied Clementine. ‘Pepper Tree shiraz.’
‘Too easy.’ The waiter snapped his fingers, jaunty with relief now that he’d got through the specials.
‘So,’ said Sam, after the waiter had gone.
‘So,’ said Clementine.
‘What are you having?’ Sam lifted the menu in front of him like a newspaper.
‘Not sure,’ said Clementine, picking up her own menu. ‘It all looks good.’
She needed to make a joke. A joke about the waiter. The specials. The non-arrival of the drinks. The girl behind the bar still obliviously polishing glasses. There was so much potential material. For a moment, it felt as though everything rested on this. If she could just make the right joke right now she would save the night, save their marriage. Something about the girl taking a Buddhist approach to her job? Mindfully polishing her wineglasses? If only she’d mindfully pour their drinks? Dear God, when did she become the sort of person who mentally rehearsed flippant remarks?
Someone laughed in the restaurant. A man’s laugh. A deep, distinctive baritone laugh.
Clementine’s heart lurched. Sam’s head jerked up from the menu.
Not Vid. Not here. Not tonight.