-Will-
I stare and stare at the tiles, willing them to give me a further memory. But they are saying nothing. They just sit there. Like, I suppose, tiles would do, not knowing their own significance. And James is hiding in a library somewhere, not talking to me either. I cannot stand their refusal to provide me with the further Max facts that I need to confront Sophie, so I leave. I go where a search on my phone has told me to: Yamaha Music (formerly Chappell of Bond Street), on Wardour Street. I could walk it or tube it, but that is too slow. I want a Max hit. I want to engage with pianos. Taxi it is.
And there they are, when I arrive, the pianos. In their black and white shiny glory. I don’t touch them at first. I just marvel at them. There are grand pianos, uprights, and some electronicy-looking ones. It is the grands that interest me most. For it’s a grand that’s on the cover of Max’s first album. I circle round the finest one I can find. Its lid is erect, held up by a long black rod. I can see right inside it; the strings, the hammers, the dampers. Its inner workings, revealed. Like someone has removed a scalp, trepanned away the skull, and shown me the brain. I move to run my hand over the strings, to stroke them, but an assistant moves forward. I see from the sign I am forbidden from touching the piano’s insides. But I must commune with it. I should sit under it, like I must have done when Daddy was alive. Should gaze up, admiringly. Stroke the ghost of the revered feet when they hit the pedals. Cover my hands with delighted horror when the impact of the hammer on the strings gets too much. But I suspect all of this would be forbidden too. So instead, I lower myself onto the piano stool and prepare to play.
It would be nice, would it not, if there was some genetic predisposition enabling me to play? I wonder. Will I just be able to run my fingers up and down the keys, play something wonderful, something Reigate, on the first go? I place a finger on one of the white keys. It has a wonderful glossiness, a sheen to it. I gently depress it, but not firmly enough to make a sound. Just stroking it for now.
The sales assistant who doesn’t like touching comes over to me.
“Do you play, sir?” he asks.
“My father was Max Reigate,” I say, as though that will explain everything. It should, but the assistant puts his head to one side and scrunches up his mouth and eyes like he’s trying to remember something. Ignorant staff.
“Max…?” he says.
“Reigate,” I say. “He was a genius. Wrote concertos. Died young. Murdered,” I say, because I might as well start putting the truth out there. “Tragic.”
“Gosh, well, I’ll have to look him up. And do you take after your father?” he asks. Because we have to get back to the sale, of course.
“So I’m told,” I say, thinking of Ellie and her doppelgangers.
“Won’t you play us a tune, then, sir?”
“I’m not ready for an audience yet,” I say, because I’m not. I don’t have enough ammunition, for any of it, to go to Sophie. I will soon, if James gets his research done properly. But I’m not meant to be thinking about that now. I’m meant to be spending time with my father.
“I’ll just continue browsing the keys,” I say to the shop assistant. “If I may?”
He holds up his hands and backs away. “For the son of Max Reigate, anything!” he says. Bloody sycophant. If I buy a piano it will be from a different assistant.
Buy one? Really? Should I? A piano. It could sit at home, and I could be with Max whenever I want to be. I could sit under the piano and smile up at his memory. When I get some more memories, that is. It wouldn’t be mourning; it would be remembering his legacy, like Ellie said I should. I could learn, gradually, to play it. Not a whole repertoire. Just bits of Max’s concerto. I raise my finger from the keys and then put it down again, more firmly, so that the key sounds. And I make my first bit of music. It sings to me, the piano. I play another note, then put my foot on one of the pedals, and it resonates beautifully, filling the shop with sound. I play a chord. Or rather a discord. It doesn’t sound good. Not the kind of rousing discord that Max got away with. He knew exactly how to handle the piano. I try another combination. Yes, that is better. I’ve found a rhythm. I smile with pride. I have made something original here. Daddy would be proud.
I am sold. I look at the price tag. I bring my fingers down in a crash. I could buy a car for that. One with five doors, like Ellie keeps nagging for. Or pay for a large part of a loft, decorate the nursery in the finest Chelsea wallpapers. There’s no way I could convince Ellie; and no way I could hide the expense from her. I stand up, giving the piano a final stroke as I depart, and wander over to the upright pianos. Hmm. Still temple-thumpingly expensive, but not as bad as the grands. My glance strays to some other, cheaper-looking pianos. Much more affordable. But oh! They are digital. I don’t want digital. I want real, with tangible insides that I can feel in my fingers, that I can gaze on and admire. The strings, the hammers, the dampers. I look back at the standard uprights again. I still wouldn’t be able to convince Ellie to part with the thousands of pounds that it would cost. But maybe I wouldn’t need to? It’s not so expensive that it would hamper our plans for the nursery, thanks to Gillian’s guilt money on the deposit. We would have less in our contingency fund, but so what? I’m not going to lose my job. And Ellie can get a job; I’ll put more pressure on her for that. She could even start before the baby is born. Don’t see why not. Perhaps maybe cancel the antenatal class, too – seems like a lot of money just for Ellie to learn to breathe, which I’m sure she can figure out from the internet, if she doesn’t already know. And I can get the piano delivered to my office. A bit unorthodox, maybe. But there’s nothing to say I can’t. And I don’t need a desk. That can go in the corridor. I can put my notes on top of the piano, and get one of those high-backed chairs to sit on. So really, when you think about the use I’m going to get from this beauty, its dual functionality as a creative work environment, it’s really a bargain. And somebody in the faculty must be able to play – they can teach me. All I need is Max Reigate’s sheet music, and I can have him in my office whenever I want.
So I do it. Blood thumping in my ears, I phone the bank. I make a transfer from our savings to our current account, and then I find a sales assistant. I’m about to go to one of the non-ignorant ones, but then I think maybe I can negotiate a discount from the sycophantic one. Plus if he gets my money, he will definitely go and find out about Max Reigate and the word will have been spread.
“I tell you what,” he says. “Just to keep it in the family, I’ll do 5% off for you.”
And when he says that, it triggers something in my head. Keep it in the family. The piano. You’d keep it in the family. Where was the piano? Max Reigate’s piano? I’d got the lousy crib but where was Daddy’s piano? The instrument of genius? This one, this new shiny lovely one, would do for the time being, but I need the very one his fingers have caressed. The one I would have sat under. The one whose stool I would have sat on, and echoed the movements of Daddy’s fingers. Sophie Travers. She must have it. She took his life and then she took the piano. And with it my life. My under piano, concert hall, genuine life. Well. When I find it and her, by which time I will have learnt to play, I will play her a tune from Daddy’s concerto. And I will make her cry. I will make her suffer.
We arrange delivery. The piano will appear at the appointed time at Guy’s Campus, then be cajoled upstairs to my room. With a last loving gaze and stroke of my new friend, I leave the shop and head out into the open. I’ll have to make sure I get to the bank statements before Ellie does for a while, that’s all. But if I treat her nicely, show excitement about little Leo, as he’s to be called, she won’t know anything, won’t suspect. In fact, I’ll call her now, be nice to her. Offer dinner. All that kind of thing. I pull out my phone. Seven missed calls, not heard over my new friend’s music. One from what looks like a Guy’s Campus number; six from voicemail. I call voicemail. It’s James. My heart skips a (Max Reigate) beat. Maybe he’s found something! I listen. No. No. He has found nothing. He sounds indignant. ‘I know it’s your lecture, Dr Spears, and I’m sure any new line of research is interesting, but I really must focus on typing up my existing research notes so you can feed them into your delivery notes. Max Reigate, in my view, having looked into it, is a dead end.’
Pompous urchin! Pompous cretinous urchin! The arrogance of failure. He lacks passion, that’s what it is. He’s been in that library, on the search engine, driven only by facts and task-completion. Of course Max Reigate isn’t in an index somewhere. You have to feel your way to the right sources, hunch your way through the clues, make links that the indexers haven’t found and then, then you will arrive at your answer. Like Ellie did, even though her answer was wrong. Shame I can’t turn to her for help, that all this must remain secret, for now. It’s all right when it’s her theories, not when it’s mine. Mine aren’t believable, apparently. Mine are the product of an over-worked, over-grieved brain, I’m told. Even the mumblings I made last week, before I’d worked out the full theory, are the sorts of misogynistic ramblings that you wouldn’t expect a man whose wife is about to embark on motherhood to put forward. Says Ellie. Except they’re not. They’re true. I know; the dreams and the memories have told me.
So I’m not going home to Ellie, not yet. I’m going back to Guy’s Campus. It’s me alone who has to find out about Max Reigate as a research subject. Me alone who will find the proof to back up my facts. Otherwise we will progress this slowly forever. I’ll placate Ellie later with flowers. Much later. For now, I must search. Because if I can confront Sophie Travers with the truth of my talk and die theory, if I can spread the word to the attendees at my lecture about what she did, that will be a start on the justice my father deserves. The rest won’t be so much justice, as revenge.