When our taxi arrives, we are very grateful to find that the driver has his heating up high. He spends most of the journey talking through a neck warmer which he has wrapped up to his nose; long tales of his two daughter’s mischief. He smiles through his eyes.
“And now they are able to reach the top cupboards,” the driver says, “they are devils. Always taking cash and chocolate. Devils in children’s pyjamas, yes.”
I nod along absently. “Yes, of course. Devils.”
London’s icy morning film is soon joined by tumultuous winds.
By the time our taxi arrives at the Royal Academy of Music, all the school’s red flags have been rolled up and taken inside to prevent them from blowing away. We shelter in the car for a few minutes and stare around. The rest of the A501 is being uprooted by the gales. Pedestrians are bent double, clothes streaming out behind them. Bits of rubbish fly through the air. All six lanes of traffic are backed up, flanked by trees which seem close to being torn from their recesses in the concrete.
“There’s our welcoming committee,” Mum says. She points through the taxi window. “We’d better go meet her, I suppose.”
I follow her gaze to the arched entrance of the Academy’s main building. A girl is standing there by the striped concrete, a hood pulled right over her head to her brow. She’s got a yellow folder tucked under one jacketed arm. The wind keeps pulling stray strands of dark hair from under her hood. She keeps tucking them back in. It’s a constant cycle.
Mum and I thank the taxi driver and step out into the wind. At once my hair is blown into a mess. My tie flies about the chest of my tuxedo. We hurry over to the girl, who hails us down.
“I’m Nicole,” she tells us. “I’m here to take you to your… ah, but isn’t this funny?”
Her eyes are upon me.
For a moment I stare blankly back, then I realise who Nicole is. She’s the girl from the Japanese takeaway who made me my miso soup. She looks somehow much older standing at this grand brick entrance than she had done over a greasy counter.
“Oh.” I shift from foot to foot. “Hello again.”
“Small world,” Nicole says. She looks at me for a while longer, then shrugs and turns to Mum. “In any case, I think we should use a side entrance. There are a number of younger students making a racket in through this way.”
“Yes, please.” Mum gestures. She looks keen to escape the wind. “Lead the way.”
Nicole walks us along the paved front of the Academy.
“I really do think it’s best that we dodge what students we can,” she tells us. The wind tears at her voice. “Because they’ll want to hear you speak about your interpretation.”
I frown. “I don’t want to do any speaking.”
“No, you’re not meant to.” Nicole shepherds us to the right, down a gap between two Academy buildings. “Students are supposed to analyse your performance themselves. But they’ll want you to give them clues, naturally.”
“We’ll zip our lips,” Mum says
Nicole leads us right around to the rear of the school, through a service door, and along several corridors to a humble studio. The room contains nothing more than a grand piano, several dismantled trestle tables leaned against a wall, and a window overlooking the A501. Black clouds are inching over the city sky now, incongruous to the continued lack of rain.
“You can dine downstairs if you want to,” Nicole says. She nods at the trestles. “Or you can bring food up here. That’s what I’d do. Management will be in touch in an hour or so.”
———
Mum and I heed Nicole’s advice and bring our dinner up to the studio to eat at the trestle tables. The meal is a spicy Jerusalem lamb soup, into which we dunk bits of sourdough with floury fingers. The heartiness of the food is perfect on a cold evening such as this.
And the evening is only meant to get colder.
As we Mum and I settle into a final hour of practice, our view of the A501 steadily clouds up with rain. We are distracted by the howling of wind, distant sirens, and the constant horns as traffic rolls by at walking pace. The window rattles in the gales. Droplets of water dance on the glass.
Once or twice, the studio lights flicker.
Then before I know it, I’m buttoning up my tuxedo onstage in the famous Duke’s Hall, winded by the speed with which this performance has snuck up on me. I can hear the murmur of the crowd through a draped curtain. Rain pummels a glass oculus in the ceiling.
For a moment I look at my twisted reflection in a gleaming Academy organ at the rear of the stage, then my name is called and the curtain rises. I walk to the edge of the stage and seat myself at the piano. A beat passes, and another. And I begin to play.
———
I am midway through Shibuya’s second movement when the lights go out.
There is no warning, no prelude; one moment I am navigating a nasty set of sweeping arpeggios, and the next I’ve been plunged into darkness. Muscle memory sustains me for several more bars before I hit a wrong note. The misplaced sound rings out into the dark and, as it fades, the audience begins to murmur. Rain lashes the oculus above.
I lower my hands from the piano. So much for the sweat on my neck being scrutinised. Technicians are chattering at the rear of the stage, and there’s a number of deans on their feet shouting over the hum of my lost crowd. None of it really matters. I navigate to the edge of the stage in the dark, drop a metre down to the floor, and find Mum in the first row of black chairs.
“Let’s get out of here,” I tell her. I help her out of her seat. “Come on.”
“Oh, but they’ve assured me it’ll be back on in—”
“No. I’m not restarting. Let’s go.”
We feel our way along the front row of seats to an exit. I catch snippets of students’ conversations as we pass them. Everything’s superfluous. Raindrops in a storm.
It takes fifteen minutes for Mum and I to find our way back to our studio in the main building. We adjust to the dark in time, but there are dozens of people filing out in all directions around us, so we have to fight our way up stairs and through doorways. Nobody stops to talk to us. Now that we’re part of the crowd they don’t seem to care.
“Fuck’s sake,” I say, when finally we reach the studio. “What a mess.”
Mum fixes me with a sympathetic smile.
“Can we call the taxi early?” I ask.
“I’ll try, honey. I’ll try.”
But it soon becomes apparent that the taxi will not pick us up early—in fact, as Mum spends twenty minutes pacing the studio and arguing on the phone, it becomes increasingly clear that the taxi isn’t prepared to pick us up at all.
“He says it’s too dangerous,” she tells me. “He says not till the red weather warning passes.”
“Which is in how long?”
She shrugs, and sets her phone down on the piano with its torch on. It gives a little light to the room.
I am not optimistic. Even if the taxi felt like picking us up, it’d have to fight through miles of backed up traffic. The A501 is a spectacle of brake lights and window wipers. It stretches in either direction from our window like a dense automobile scrapyard. The gutters are spilling out over the tarmac. A set of traffic lights blink amber. The city skyline is white with rain.
Mum joins me at the window. She embraces me from behind. “I’m sorry it didn’t go to plan.”
“That’s fine.”
“Why don’t we find some food?” she suggests. A gentle breath in my ear. “Make ourselves comfy while we wait?”
I turn on the spot and kiss her. It is the most natural thing in the world. For a while, the image of her naked body comes back to me, and my arousal of the previous night returns through the city fog. I pull her standing form tight against mine, bowing my face to her lips.
“Okay,” I say, when I draw away from her mouth. “Shall we go get that food?”
“Yes. Yes.” Mum lowers her hands from my back. She hesitates, then smiles. “Just… in a minute.”
“In a minute?”
“Yeah. Just a minute.”
And she lifts herself onto her tiptoes to kiss me again. Our noses knock together. Mum’s legs entwine with mine where we stand, her breasts printing my chest, her hands playing with the buttons of my tuxedo jacket—and as she leans into me, the hem of her dress slides up above one of my knees.
“Just one minute,” she repeats absently. Her tongue slides through my lips.
I let her inside, and savour her taste and texture. Wind drums the nearby window in its frame. I run the lace of her dress beneath my fingertips. Soon Mum has my jacket unbuttoned and on the floor. Her soft fingers move to my shirt next, untucking it from its belt. She touches my abs and stomach.
“Shall we move away from the window?” I whisper to her.
“Ha. Don’t want to give the traffic a show?”
“Not particularly. This is our moment.”
Mum smiles. Her hands peruse my waist, under the shirt. Though the contact is light that it tickles, it draws the breath from my lungs like a punch. There are goosebumps down my legs. She walks backwards through the studio, pulling me along by my abdomen. Our eyes lock.
“You look wonderful,” I tell her.
“Hmm.” Mum breaks away from me and picks at a lace shoulder strap. “If there’s one thing that does tire me out about all this carry-on, it’s the wardrobe.”
“More than the travelling?”
“Yeah, I dunno.” She smooths the dress down along her stomach. “At least when we’re travelling we don’t have to look the part. I can cosy up in trackies and a jumper, not these dolls-clothes.”
“I suppose so,” I say.
Privately, I think she looks beautiful in the blue dress. It catches the feeble light of her phone torch like an ocean in the dark. I’ve always enjoyed playing the formal part in my career, dressing up as though we were characters in an old film, hurdling into the rich man’s world of black tie and champagne.
For a second I frown: there is so much we’ve never discussed, in all our years performing.
Then Mum goes to the studio door and locks it, and the soft click of the bolt quickens my heart rate. She waits there with her hand on the studio doorknob, watching me. I feel strangely weightless standing here without her in my arms.
“It’s a precaution,” Mum tells me softly.
“Lovely.”
“Isn’t it?”
She approaches me where I stand. Her dress flows about her legs. There passes a brief tension before our bodies meet, and I take her in my arms once more. She leads me back to the grand piano.
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