Kim was in the middle of a nasty divorce.
Clementine wondered if she was at the beginning of a nasty divorce. Today, as Sam left for the ferry she’d said, ‘Have a good day at work,’ and she was sure she’d caught him rolling his eyes, as if he’d never heard anything so inane, or as if she was the last person in the world he wanted to wish him a good day at work. It had hurt, a sudden sharp sting, like a reprimand, like when her C string snapped this morning just as she’d bent her head and pinged her cheek. That had never happened to her before. She didn’t even know it was possible. There was too much tension in her playing. Too much tension in her body. Too much tension in her home. The sting of the string had felt personal, and she’d sat there in the dark early morning and refused to let herself press her fingertips to her cheek.
She parked her car right near the entrance to the park. She was twenty minutes early because she’d still allowed a twenty-minute ‘getting lost’ buffer just in case. She yawned and studied the weather. The rain might hold off just long enough for the ceremony. If the bride was lucky.
She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
Today she had got up at five am and had worked with the metronome on the Beethoven excerpt. ‘Feel the inner pulse,’ Marianne used to say, although then she’d suddenly cry, ‘Too choppy! Too choppy!’
Clementine massaged her aching shoulder. Her first cello teacher, Mr Winterbottom (her older brothers and her father all called him Mr Winter-Bum), used to say, ‘Nobody plays pain-free,’ if Clementine ever complained that something hurt. Clementine’s mother hadn’t liked that at all. Pam had researched the Alexander technique and in fact the exercises still helped when Clementine remembered to do them.
Mr Winterbottom used to tap her knee with his bow and say, ‘More practice, missy, you can’t coast on your talent, because I can assure you, you don’t have enough to spare,’ and, ‘It’s hard for you to put the emotionality in your music because you’re too young, you’ve never actually felt anything. You need to have your heart broken.’ When she was sixteen he’d sent her to audition for the Sydney Youth Orchestra but told her that she had no hope of getting in, she simply wasn’t good enough, though it would be good experience. There was no screen, just the audition panel, all smiling supportively, but after she sat down with her cello, she couldn’t even put her bow to her strings because she was so stricken by unexpected terror. It was like a terrible illness had befallen her. She stood up and walked off the stage without playing a note. There just didn’t seem to be any other option. Mr Winterbottom said he’d never been so ashamed of a student in all his teaching days, and he had a lot of students. Kids lugging cello cases came and went from his house all day long: a production line of cellists learning to self-loathe.
After the audition debacle her mother had found her a new teacher, and her beloved Marianne had said on the first day that auditions were unnatural and frightening and she herself had always hated them and that she would never send Clementine for an audition for which she wasn’t properly prepared.
Why had cancer pointed its cruel, random finger at beautiful Marianne and not Mr Awful Winter-Bum, who was still alive and well and churning out neurotic musicians?
Clementine opened her eyes and sighed as a tiny spatter of raindrops fell upon the windscreen. It was the rain warming up before its big entrance. She turned on the radio and heard an announcer say: ‘As Sydney’s “Big Wet” continues, people have been warned to stay away from stormwater drains and creeks.’
Her phone rang on the seat next to her and she snatched it up to look at the screen. There was no name but she recognised that particular configuration of numbers.
Vid.
He’d called so many times since the barbeque she’d learned to recognise his number, but she never bothered to program his details into her phone, because he wasn’t a friend, he was an acquaintance, a friend’s neighbour, who she never wanted to see again. Erika had no right to give him her number. Vid and Tiffany should have passed on any messages through her. What did he want from her?