ALICE WOULD NEVER FORGET THE SIGHT of that poor piano arriving at Devon Farm, strapped to the top of a horse-drawn cart like a prisoner. The black upright was held in place with a complicated arrangement of canvas straps and ropes with knots and blankets to prevent the ropes from chafing it. From her kitchen window she watched the instrument sway and dip as the horses brought it nearer. What had it done to end up here in the middle of nowhere, she wondered as it lurched towards her. Of all the things they needed in this faithless dustbowl, and George organises for her to have a piano.
The heaving cart came to a stop not far from the back door, and the piano tilted forward at a slight angle, as if straining to be free of its shackles. She cringed at the thought of how out of tune it would be, while George hurried over to the driver, letting the flyscreen slam behind him. ‘Sorry!’ he yelled over his shoulder at his wife. She shut her eyes tightly to mitigate the sound. She had tried in vain to discourage George’s habit, especially in the six months since Charlotte was born.
On cue, the baby started wailing in her cot. Alice knew she had only a minute or two before the cries reached their crescendo, when she’d have no choice but to pick up Charlotte and try to placate her. Two minutes was time enough to start a batch of scones, Alice decided. The men would be expecting tea when they were done moving the piano.
The sifted flour made dunes in the mixing bowl as Alice observed her husband through the window, trying to decipher his easy way with strangers. The firm handshake, the instant smile, the nodding, the skywards glance followed by what she assumed, based on experience, to be banal observations of the day’s weather—put together like a sequence of dance steps, George’s actions provided comfort of a kind she neither sought nor offered. Charlotte’s wails were insistent. Alice wiped her hands on her apron. The men would have to wait.
By the time she returned with the baby on her hip, George and the driver had untied the piano and coaxed it down a ramp covered in a faded rug. It would still be half an hour before they had cajoled it inside the house. Alice placed Charlotte in her bassinet on the kitchen floor while she finished making the scones and popped them in the oven. Unless she was wet or hungry, the baby girl cried little and seemed content to keep herself company. Alice found the latter both a point of pride and an enormous relief.
Charlotte’s fascination with every detail of her new life bewildered Alice. The baby stared contentedly at the ceiling cornices, the windowsills, the tap in the kitchen sink, and at the afternoon shadow cast by the wardrobe in Alice’s bedroom. When Alice looked around her, all she saw was dust. The dust was everywhere—in the sheets, the cutlery drawer, in her eyes, on her tongue and inside her nose. She fought it despite the feeling that the dancing motes mocked her efforts.
George and the driver groaned with the effort of lifting and sliding the piano using a combination of rugs and blankets. George caught Alice’s eye as he squatted for a moment in the kitchen doorway to catch his breath. He looked from her to the baby, smiling. ‘I thought the sitting room…?’ he said. She supposed he was looking for a gesture of gratitude or pleasure. She nodded. What could she say? All her life she had dreamed of having her own piano. Now here it stood, a jet-black colt restrained by two handlers, and it was as out of place and trapped as she was.
While the men positioned the instrument in the darkest corner of the front room, Alice set out the tea and scones. The driver had the sense to consume two scones and a cup of scalding black tea quickly before leaving the friendly farmer to his stern-faced wife.
‘I thought you’d be happy,’ George said into his teacup, once the rattle of the departing cart had faded.
‘I am,’ she said, thinking how words covered over the truth of things like the paperbark over the cool trunks of the gum trees. ‘Just…surprised, that’s all.’ She put her hand on George’s shoulder and softened her expression.
He looked up at her quickly, as she had expected him to do, seeking permission for the next step, which was to reach for her hand and squeeze it. A husband, afraid of his own wife. She didn’t know whether to cry, or laugh in his face.
Alice felt the gulf between them, as vast as the ocean she had crossed, but had no clue how to bridge it even if she’d wanted to. George would expect her to welcome him into her bed tonight. He rarely dared approach her since the baby arrived, and because of the piano she felt she could not say no. She found the physical act itself unremarkable, if messy; what she feared lay beyond the realm of the senses, too easily deceived, in the invisible country of intimacy. It was a land to which she seemed to be refused entry. This time she hoped to have a boy.
Alice sat down to familiarise herself with the piano, George’s eyes hot on the back of her neck. It didn’t feel like she had imagined it would, having a piano of her own at last. The piano room of her dreams was devoted to music, with a gramophone in the corner opposite the instrument, etchings of the great composers hung on one wall, and shelves stacked neatly with choral arrangements. On Devon Farm, the piano competed for space with a large wireless, a settee and a big basket of wool punctured with crochet and knitting needles. She wanted to disappear at the piano, to slide down the rabbit hole on her fingertips to a musical world of her own making, like she used to do when she was a girl and her brothers were running amok. Instead she was the focus of her husband’s attention.
Alice didn’t care for the reflection the instrument cast back at her. In her home-made apron and with her permanent cigarette, she reminded herself of no one more than her mother. Despite the heat of the afternoon, the ivory keys were cool to her fingertips. She did her best not to flinch at how flat the notes were. At first her fingers felt like dancers who couldn’t remember their routine. But slowly they found their way through some of the old Scottish songs, and the notated music formed a picture in her mind’s eye as clear as John Henry Edwards’ face. At the end of each piece, Alice recalled, was the same instruction. Da capo, it said. Return to the beginning.
‘Maybe you’ll teach Charlotte to play, when she’s old enough,’ came George’s voice behind her. Until this moment Alice hadn’t thought about her daughter learning the instrument, and was shocked to feel her stomach lurch at the idea.
When she’d told George that she was expecting a baby, he had choked back tears and suggested that they should name a girl after Alice’s mother. She had smiled and nodded her agreement, thinking how impossible it was to make a fresh start of anything in life. At the end of everything was da capo.