To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

I began to say before, in the rambling way by which I’m allowing this narrative to proceed, were lessoned similarly. But later they rebelled, emerging radiantly assured and unappeasing. Not apparently Roy Phipps.

Only in my novels have I played with the matches and the fire of injustice and utter barefaced self-obsession. And there too, in the end, a penalty is normally exacted.

All this divertissement has been solely to say that, confronted by Joseph’s continued urbanity, he had bought lunch, assisted a distraught woman even though it had made him ill, I couldn’t bring myself simply to run away.

I would, of course. But first civilities, the acknowledgement of his rights, must be attended to.

And therefore I’d waited once more in the foyer, and then hearing of the open room with the piano, I rose from the chair and followed him to see.

Once I was at the doorway, Joseph went straight to the piano. He dragged out a chair and sat down. “Too high,” he remarked, perhaps to me, or to the hotel in general. And then he put his hands on the keys.

“I’ll play you a tune,” he said, like my Maureen, all those years ago. And beauty had spread like butterfly wings from her fingers.

And with him?

He launched at once into a piece of Scott Joplin, the by now most well known one. It came out perfect, yet – flighty. Flighty. It had wings.

Once or twice, as he played, he glanced up and back at me. He didn’t smile now, he grinned. He looked happy. He looked – at home.

After this prelude he shot immediately into one of the etudes of Chopin. My father had played this. Joseph Traskul clearly demonstrated that “play” was not what one did with it. Filigreed streams dashed sparkling and hopeless to a bottomless sea. A few dark chords barred their way, but died.

Behind me a woman murmured, “My.”

The Americans had come, drawn by the sounds, which obviously were not the everyday musak of the hotel.

They stood, seemingly awestruck, then – passing me without a look – went into the room and sat down on some of the chairs.

Joseph played.

From Chopin he passed to Beethoven, and the character of the music changed – gorgeous despair to thundering rage. I believe it was the Appassionata. The room rang with the notes but more than that, with the power of the composition.

Maureen had played so very well.

But Joseph played as if each note sped new-born from his brain.

Now and then I’ve been to concerts. I had heard this kind of quality, ability and fire before.

Never like this.

Other people kept arriving. They passed by me as if I were some doorman, some of them even smiling or nodding at me as if I held the way for them.

In the end there must have been over fifty people sitting in the room, either on the chairs or tables, or the blue carpet.

If there was a pause, they applauded. But by now his face had set in a kind of visor of intention. He played on and on, one astonishing rendering leaping at once into another, Scott Joplin to Chopin to Beethoven to Rachmaninov to Prokofiev to Gershwin.

Certainly some of the staff of the hotel had come in. The manager had apparently come down, or so I was informed, to the doors. He had meant to put a stop to this, the piano was valuable, not there for idle tinkerings. But he too had stayed a while to listen, and gone away uncomplaining.

Joseph finished with a sudden little syncopated piece of jazz, the kind he’d spoken of. I didn’t know it, but I hardly know everything and that type of music, while I like it, I don’t know very well. Yet I had a feeling this one was really his own.

Lightly tapping in the last note, he sat back.

He sat there with his back to us, hands down at his sides.

The room erupted, naturally. They cheered.

At first he seemed to take no notice. He seemed nearly in a trance. Then he lifted his head, stood up and, walking round the chair, bowed to them theatrically, but grinning again.

When some of them approached, crowding round, asking him who he was, where he played, he was all graceful good humour. He just, he told them, tuned pianos. And now he was handing out those cards of his. He got plenty of potential customers. The air bubbled with praise.

Finally he extricated himself and came across to me at the door.

“Well, Dad. Made you proud of me for a minute, didn’t I?”

“You’re a wonderful and versatile pianist. But I’m not your father.”

The grin was gone. The smile was there instead.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Sure about that, are you?”

Lynda had had a ‘scare’, what she called a scare, which was her supposing herself pregnant by me. After we’d married, for indeed we did marry and are still married, since neither of us so far has found the need to apply for a divorce, she had another scare. This will indicate, accurately enough, that neither of us wanted children, or at least I did not. Perhaps she only wished not to have any by me. Both scares anyway came to nothing, or so she informed me. After all, I’d always gathered she was on the Pill.

We were together approximately two years. When she left, which was not because of her having fallen for anyone else, only because she had the chance of living with an aunt of hers near Manchester who had some money, which – as Lynda pointed out – we did not – it could just have been possible she was, unbeknownst to either of us – pregnant. Or should I say, really scared. Her leaving me occurred in 1977. I’d been more relieved than regretful. The washing-machine went on washing my shirts, and I could cook in fact rather better than Lynda. As for sex, now and then there had been someone after she went. Not very often. I’m not attractive to