13

Perth, 2000

‘Useless!’ James tossed off the word as if he couldn’t be bothered with it or what it referred to anymore and she searched his face for signs of irony. It was as bleak as malice. They were walking around the beach area, down a sandy road, talking about a recent concert. No one invested so much feeling into a phrase as James. But even as Celia was yet again thinking I can’t be doing with this man’s bearishness anymore, he stopped to admire foxgloves in a garden, regarding them with hands clasped behind his back, rapt and humble.

He was particularly fond of trees. Some offered more shade than others, he said; some, like people were more generous with their endowments. But he still had a lot of time for the smaller, exquisite ones.

‘What about flowers,’ she asked. ‘Which are the generous flowers?’

‘Oh well of course you’d have to say nasturtiums for one,’ he said, pausing to look at her, giving it thought and rubbing the palm of his hand in circles around his chest with that sensual gesture. ‘They call them weeds,’ he said, but to James they were simply beautiful things sometimes living in the wrong place.

‘Like you,’ she said. ‘You’re a beautiful thing living in the wrong place.’ He had just been complaining of the suburban street he lived in and the politics of his neighbours. Only Celia, a good twenty years his junior, dared talk to him in this way. Only she could judge his softening mood and the readiness for a laugh. And what a laugh: ‘Hah!’ he cried, or shouted, the syllable full of mad delight, the voice of a young man though he hadn’t been young for some decades. He never did more than that one brief burst of fun – no ha-ha-hee-hee for James.

But here he was in hospital. Celia turned up at the appointed time – according to his explicit telephone instructions – armed with an orange, a paper plate and a knife to cut it into quarters, as he’d requested. And he was quite grumpy, would barely look at her – completely absorbed in his own sleeplessness, discomfort, and unmoved by the assembly of three women. For within minutes of her arrival, Belinda, another old friend of his, turned up with a mass of glorious flowers that must have cost her thirty-five dollars.

‘I don’t want them,’ he said immediately in a low growl.

‘All right,’ she replied, with a smile still on her face, the way she must have always responded to his churlishness for all the years she has known him. More years than Celia, who was thinking that Belinda, with that luxuriant long hair, would be in her mid-forties by now, still slim and sweet-mannered.

‘They’re exquisite, Belinda,’ Celia said, because someone had to say it.

‘Then you must have them,’ the other woman answered, ever gracious.

They chatted, but with James soon taking hold of the conversation as if it was his responsibility. He was that kind of man: if he couldn’t be in control of the discussion he’d rather be right out of it. He was not born to be an audience. If he had been at this moment on the brink of death – and she thought he wasn’t yet ready to draw stumps – he’d have simply closed his eyes and died, rather than have to listen unduly to others.

James – it had been obvious from the parties he gave – was meant to be the maestro. He lived this role and Celia was in sympathy. She looked at him now on his white sheets, the brown stubby fingers that wrought such grace at the piano. Born with a talent that no one else in his family shared, an acute ear for tone, a beautiful touch, a good brain and fine memory, he’d emerged early on as a musician to watch. But his career took a downturn; World War II saw to that, and he’d ended up joining the AIF – he whom you’d think wouldn’t know a rifle from a bayonet – enjoyed playing the piano for the troops whenever a respite from protecting Australian shores had occurred. And he had finally returned to Perth to become a teacher of music and theory, a teaching that encompassed his considerable knowledge of history and all of the arts. His pupils gained a wider lesson than music, as his explanations could range from the dress of seventeenth century France to the politics in nineteenth century America.

On the whole he had preferred teaching girls. He said they were more intelligent and had more integrity.

And here he was now, dependent on a bevy of women around his bed, ex-pupils mainly, who were reluctant to take orders, indeed they seemed to be enjoying each other’s company rather than commiserating with him.

Another woman appeared between the curtains, holding a posy of pansies, someone Celia had never met before. Perhaps she was a neighbour.

‘Now, I know you,’ she said to Belinda, raising a shoulder and stabbing the air sharply with her index finger in the other’s direction. Belinda introduced herself and the woman, head raised in command, then gave Celia the benefit of her attention, questioning with a look.

‘And I’m Celia.’

‘Ah, you’re the mother?’ she asked.

Did this stupid woman think she, Celia, looking rather strained lately it’s true, was about seventy, the mother of Belinda? When Celia thought that she looked about fifty. In the silence that hung around the ward, Celia said no, she wasn’t, then turned to the patient.

‘James, I’m going now.’

‘Yes,’ he said, with such sympathy and understanding in his voice that she loved him again.

‘But come again!’ he said, panicky.

‘I will.’

People said about James, indulgently, that he had mood swings. But to Celia they were not so much swings as a reaching down into compassion for someone, then a soaring interest in something else – it could be any subject – followed by a thought that would strike a sour chord with him, and once more plummet him into bitterness. As she walked away from the hospital, she recalled their recent walk along the coastal streets near his house. A warm day. They were talking about a concert the previous week and he had been very disapproving of the strings section.

A harsh critic. But how he could play the piano. The way his hands hovered over the keys in that knowing way – other men would approach their mistresses in the same familiar manner – made you see that this was love, here was expertise. The instrument might be past it, clapped out like any raddled whore, yet respond to his touch. A nuggety man, his short-fingered broad hands refused to flourish and gesticulate, for, he said, he despised wankers who did that sort of thing. ‘As for those washerwoman elbows!’ he said of a celebrated pianist who had been in town, mimicking the arm gestures, camp and comic.

To see James at the piano was to understand him. Through him, Celia came to be a better listener. She recalled the film about a pianist, which James could now not go to see because his hearing was wearing away, letting him down mightily. The main character, coming upon a piano in a disused house, in hiding and locked inside this place amidst the bombardment of his city, allowed his hands to ghost-play the notes. He worked away soundlessly and in veneration, six inches above the keyboard, his face aglow with every phrase. There was a certainty in his features, as well as what she could only call a sublime serenity, as he followed the score in his mind. Perhaps that’s what we should all try to do for our own good, she thought, keep the music in our head.

She had asked James one day, after hearing a Chopin nocturne: ‘How did he do it, James, find that complexity of chords for the left hand that seduces the listener so convincingly?’ But James shrugged while he thought about it. And after a moment:

‘How was Shakespeare so often able to reach into his mind and express an idea in such phrases?’

But now James was out of hospital and giving Celia the rundown on the doctors and other patients.

‘How is your blood condition?’ she asked.

‘Going well,’ he said, quite animated. ‘The rat poison is doing the trick.’

‘Oh yes? The warfarin? Keep to the prescribed dose!’

They’d had long silences in their friendship, over the years. Not for any serious reason but, as he’d probably point out, they didn’t always have a lot to say to each other. He had a plethora of friends who remained faithful. Some women in the past, unsure of his persuasion but wanting his company in any case, were drawn to him.

Years ago he had an exuberant woman piano player, Vivienne, who came for lessons. ‘She never practises,’ he moaned one evening over an aperitif with Celia, Mickey and Marcia, glum but resigned. Vivienne, it seemed, had burst into his music studio one day, flung her coat onto a chair and fallen into another, legs spread out, toes sticking up in the air (he did the actions).

‘Made it!’ she panted. To him this meant that she’d escaped her house, her kids, and her husband. She then jumped up, when she’d caught her breath, and said to her piano teacher: ‘Kiss me!’ Surprised, he allowed her to clasp him, and they kissed full on the lips, a soft warm kiss but with not much parting of the lips, he made it clear.

‘Just as I thought,’ Vivienne had said. ‘Nothing there.’

‘What the devil did she mean?’ he asked them, incredulous.

‘She meant that there was no possibility of sex between you,’ said Celia.

‘Or, that she was trying it on, but you weren’t willing to respond, or didn’t turn her on,’ offered Mickey.

‘It means, James,’ said Marcia, ‘that she’d become bored and was attracted to you. And you obviously behaved like a gentleman.’

Celia snorted and James happily shouted ‘Hah!’, rubbing his diaphragm. ‘But what I cannot stand is the way she plays that first movement. I hate Mozart being made pretty!’

He was a virile little person and didn’t, it turned out, like pretty in any form. Not even in Swan Lake, and he loved the ballet. Back in his house he was thinking of Swan Lake which he had seen for the first time in London. That was when he discovered his love of watching the movements of dancers – an art he had never learnt himself. London on a music scholarship in the 1930s was a boost he couldn’t believe he’d got. Even with the threat of war over their heads the Brits weren’t going to relinquish the arts. And even when it was all over, six years later, he liked to tell people, the English hadn’t had the creative stuffing knocked out of them.

It was there in Golders Green under his mentor that he’d had to learn his pianoforte technique all over again, oh yes. The placement of each finger, each thumb, had to be considered with the utmost concentration and diligently applied, putting aside his previous practices.

James had thought that this application would finally lead him to concert success but it escaped him. Was it the terror of looking down on those well-groomed heads in the London audience expecting so much of him? Or was it the collywobbles that intermittently assailed him – probably due to the poor food he was eating. In any event success didn’t come his way. Then news from Perth meant that he had to return; a family member was ill.

That’s what he told everyone. But where was the truth in the tumult of feelings that stalked him, he wondered. It wasn’t a loss of nerve – about imminent war or about being ready for the concert stage. It was something else: he wasn’t English and his country was on the other side of the world. He would do what other able-bodied men were doing – sign up if necessary.

And that is just what he did, by God, he had joined the AIF where they had given him training to use a rifle. He was proud to say that he didn’t kill anyone but there was an occasion in New Guinea when he’d inadvertently saved a woman’s life. She was in flight from a man, her husband James guessed. His regiment was camped on the outskirts of the village and one night there was a helluva hubbub going on from the natives. Screaming and shouts filled the air that night. A woman came running straight towards him with a man at her heels flourishing a knife. James was so nervous he picked up his gun and raised it, his pianist’s finger on the trigger. To his horror the weapon fired and hit the dust at the man’s feet. All other noise stopped. The husband dropped the knife and held up his hands as if he were in a Western movie. The woman ran to her man’s side and put her hand to his face protectively. He put one arm around her, eyes still darting with fear. It was then that James lowered the gun and all the heat went out of the scene. The couple walked back towards their village and James took possession of the knife.

‘Christ, you just saved her life I reckon, mate,’ another private said.

James loved to tell this story. He now gave a tiny grunt to himself, thinking about the whole episode. Well, it was a long time ago and he had long since ceased to brood over lost chances in London. Performer or not, all musicians ended up teaching, to some extent. And he had turned out to be good at it.

One morning he woke up late to the automatic clock/radio thingo and blinked, rolled over on his right side and eyed his flash-looking purple box. Some weeks earlier when visiting, Celia had needed to enter his room to look for a bottle of wine, which he kept in what he described as a cool place, under his bed. He grinned, thinking of how she must have spied the purple container, curious as always, before murmuring to him coming back to the kitchen: ‘I’m not going to ask you what’s in that box.’ With both hands he now reached inside his mouth, with eyes closed – a contortion from a horror film – and grasped at his teeth guards, removed them and plonked them on the large old wooden box that served as his bedside table, to later place them into the purple container. He breathed heavily, flopping back against his pillows. It was all a bit of an effort. But it saved his teeth from wearing away completely, which he put down to nocturnal grinding.

The sun was well and truly up. What was he doing today? Ah! Having lunch with Celia, in an outdoor place in the bush, some restaurant she liked but not too ritzy, she said: solid old tables and benches under the trees, that sort of thing, but fresh food and good cheap wine. A stream nearby, or a gully, if it wasn’t dry. That was all worth dressing up for a bit. Thus thinking, he looked over to the wall where he hung his underpants on a nail and plucked them off with an illusionist’s gesture. Special occasion; he’d wear them for lunch.

The Four Last Songs of Strauss were playing, sung by Schwarzkopf in her later years by the sounds, but still terrific, the Spring song, Frühling. Good Lord, cop that orchestra swelling up behind her, the French horns mumbling in the background before they open up like everything else. Would just lie here for a while and see if it was the Berlin Philharmonic or what. He took his time about getting up, then checked the garden and did a bit of watering in case it suffered distress, a spot of reading and then had a shower. His memory wasn’t what it once used to be and to make his life easier he had a rough message he’d printed on a scrap of paper and stuck on the wall by the back door for his attention when he left the house, which read, one command to a line: glasses, teeth, rat poison, hearing aid!

Celia had found a fellow picnic-lover in James. They had walked around quiet spots near bushland by the lake, in those days a long while back, when she, Mickey and Marcia had arrived in Perth and met James. It was the kind of scene that Marcia and Mick, urbanites, hadn’t done, picnics, though they too came to enjoy them. But Celia in particular liked the company of someone like James, one of those men who knew a good deal about flowers and birds. It felt natural that they should resume outdoor pleasures again.

‘What a tranquil place, James. Heaps of parrots, listen to them. Nature’s music!’ Celia looked around, hands on hips.

‘Plenty of lorikeets around here,’ said James. ‘What a racket they make! They shouldn’t be here really – they’re a pest the way they drive out the native birds. Still, I like them, cheeky creatures. Which table? Shall we sit here?’

‘Speaking of rackets, I heard some Shostakovich last night. Don’t ask me what it was – something he composed when he was in a bad way,’ she said, looking at the menu and giving him the wine list to choose from. A long chat about the food choice with the nice young waitress and then the wine was brought. Celia had a sip of her own and stretched. ‘Ooh, what a terrible life. Anyway: luckily the Berlioz made up for the Russian. I heard on the radio this morning, by the way, how Berlioz went to a concert one night and heard a symphony by Beethoven. He was so moved by the music that he wept visibly, and audibly. The gentleman seated next to him was sympathetic and suggested that he, Berlioz, might like to retire. To this the composer replied: ‘‘Do you imagine that I come here to enjoy myself?’’ ’

‘Hah!’ A little rub of his ear lobe between thumb and forefinger; a sign of pleasure.

‘What do you think, James, about enjoying yourself in the concert hall?’

He wriggled around on his seat, thinking, stilled palm flattened on his chest. ‘Oh well, sometimes you can get bored of course when you think about it, but we certainly don’t go just to listen to the tunes and beat time to the music, certainly not to hum along with it, as my father did, so irritatingly. How that annoyed Mother! You can do that with popular music if you like. With someone like Beethoven, you go along to experience what he’s got to offer.’

‘You bring along your expectations, then. Your willingness to be impressed and to compare the work with something else?’

‘All of that. Your emotions and your intellect. Listen with your mind and you’ll notice the structure, hear whether the theme is insistent or shy. You’ll decide whether the composer is making a statement on the pathos or the militancy or the gaiety of society at the time. Or within his own being.’ He stopped at this, a little surprised at himself.

‘But you’d have to know what was happening politically or otherwise in society at the time to get this.’

‘Yes, well, musicians if they’ve been trained properly, and music lovers too, have a good idea of what prompted the work and maybe even what was going on in the composer’s life at the time. But you don’t really have to know all that.’

They finished their meal and meandered their way through the bush, James pointing out the tiny wildflowers, so easily missed by the uninitiated. As they made their way down towards the creek and along the bank the grass licked their bare ankles.

‘I don’t know,’ said Celia, ‘if this is the way to respond or not, but when a piece of music or an interpretation – I find this particularly in opera – affects me physically, sends that shiver down my backbone, then I think: this is a winner, this is genius.’

‘Of course it is. When it gets into your blood you know you’re listening to something that is truly great.’

Then, apropos of nothing he said: ‘What about Marcia? I haven’t heard from her for ages. Have you seen her since you’ve been back?’ Celia said nothing. ‘With Mickey gone I’d have thought you would be seeing her?’ He was looking at her. ‘I told you she wasn’t well.’

She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her yet, but I intend to, soon. There was never any argument; it’s just an awkwardness that came about. Sometimes she’s hard to reach – though as you know, I’m very fond of her.’

James was still looking. ‘Well, just don’t leave it too long. She had surgery about six months ago, as you know, and it was serious.’ At last he looked away. He didn’t like talking about illness. ‘She hasn’t told another soul about it. Not that it’s any of my business.’

Celia stared into the creek, as if she expected it to offer up secrets on the fundamentals of friendship. ‘I don’t know that I’d be altogether welcome, James, that’s all. I know she’ll be polite, but is it still a going concern? I’ve left it too long, perhaps. I think she wrote last. Sometimes when you’ve wanted something for so long and it doesn’t happen, then you retreat, out of deference, perhaps.’

But he was not getting into all this; that was all he had to say on the matter. He was on to something else, looking about him.

‘They’re not looking after the rivers and creeks enough; allowing factories to pour their muck into them. I wouldn’t eat fish caught around here.’ And they gazed at the water.

‘We’ll write a letter about it; see who’s responsible,’ she said.

‘Yes, let’s strike a blow for the environment,’ he looked at her wide-eyed and reinvigorated. ‘One has to keep people on their toes.’ This was when she liked him best.

They slowly made their way back to the city, past the elegant tower that looked like a monument to fallen sons but was in fact an old ventilation stack for the old water and sewerage board. Eventually they reached the market place outside the art gallery where high art – looked like a statue by Henry Moore – nudged against secular entertainment and commerce. A woman giving $12 massage to passers-by. A young woman client had her bare shoulders and back to the public while the masseuse went to town with rapid karate chops on the plump brown flesh.

Bemused onlookers came up against a ten-foot high girl in glorious robes, on stilts, and across the way, in between the fruit and veg and the secondhand books was a large, singing, Polynesian woman in flowing garments, with her own electronic backing for her lament which was about, as it happened, Jesus. James nudged Celia and rolled his eyes. The bonhomie around all this was tangible. And, arresting thought, the booksellers and jewellery vendors weren’t in the slightest concerned that no one was buying. No spruiking or wheedling, this was Australia after all, people could take it or leave it. Was it apathy or didn’t the booksellers need the money?

And there was the strapping girl from the theatre ticket office who’d told Celia she slept these cold nights wedged between her two dogs, a Dobermann and a Kelpie-cross.

Celia took his arm. ‘Let’s head home via the lakes,’ she said, ‘where everything’s going to rack and ruin. Practically no bloody water in the lakes, but it’s still green and there are birds. Any further news of Jeremy?’

‘Jeremy, well, I’ve never been sure what his tragedy is. Why do I say that? I’m afraid we’re losing him altogether.’

They walked along and said nothing for a time. Celia searched for something to ease his sorrow. ‘Yes, he looked pretty good the last time I saw him but clearly he’s not functioning normally, mentally I mean.’

‘They had some good silver and ornaments, his family, but never had quite enough money. Who has? But they spoiled him, I think. They doted on him – he was an only child you know.’

She wanted to ask him other questions: And you, James, have you given up on love? Who do you take your problems to? Her thoughts were sheering off in all directions. But James was saying that he thought Jeremy had the inclinations of a wastrel, throwing away his gifts. She knew that this was his way of showing his wretchedness at the loss of the little boy who had come to him those many years ago, attending with his mother, the immigrant, his solemn eyes looking, his small determined fingers finding the right notes immediately and listening to every word James divulged, then carrying out the instruction to the letter. It takes intelligence to be an artist, and more. All of this Celia had gleaned from former conversations, and for a while the silence of unuttered thoughts stood between them. If she now criticised Jeremy too much James would change tack and rise to an unexpected defence of his old pupil. He was reminiscing now.

‘One time I couldn’t get him to quite see the Russian steppes, or to understand the feeling of the crunch of snow under the feet in those northern countries – something we don’t know here – and he was looking very unhappy with himself, so I went and dug out my Russian fur hat and put it on! A beautiful black astrakhan number, it was – I eventually gave it to him – and he brightened up. I used to show him books of costumes so he’d get the idea of the kind of era and atmosphere we were trying to interpret.’

After a while he continued when she said nothing: ‘He was too obedient, too polite. It’s not healthy for a boy not to rebel even a little. Maybe that’s what made him turn to drugs, where his mind didn’t have a will of its own. He was a boy too easily influenced, for all his brains.’ He stopped, looked away. ‘Perhaps I was the wrong teacher for him.’

Perhaps you loved him too much, she thought, putting all that optimism, that heart and soul into the one basket.

But she listened, knowing how he tried to will his pupils to feel the music as he did. This was not to say he didn’t get bored with them sometimes. Recently Celia had met a man who, it turned out, had gone to James thirty years earlier. He told Celia that James would leave the music room in mid-lesson to feed the cat or brush his teeth.

They parted company finally, at her gate, and he went home to have a rest. Once in his house again, his castle, he put on the wireless.

He enjoyed Celia. Old friends were dying, each one making him feel a little more diminished.

Anyway, here was the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, the insistent sweetness of that first movement. God, unbearably beautiful. And as if that wasn’t enough, presented by his favourite woman on the ABC, here now was a string quartet. In F major. But who was it by? Borodin or Tchaikowsky. The brooding cello hooked him so that he had to sit up a little and listen to it unreservedly, before it went into the second movement, all skittish like a woman, or a flirtatious young man, egging you on. A bit of a pluck from the violas but ultimately no mucking about, we’re on to something here. So saying, it was a frantic ending with those four firm chords to finish. Tchaikowsky, without a doubt.

The woman whose voice he loved was talking to another presenter and they were chuckling about their early days on radio, when they imagined that all they had to do was whip out an LP, put it on the turntable and sit back, getting paid to do this, and enjoy it with the listener. Apparently this was not the case; they now had to get onto the computer, take phone calls and organise their notes – they often didn’t get to hear the music! He must tell Celia next time they meet. Like potential librarians thinking they’d have that job with books in a small dark alley where they could read all day; just raising the head occasionally and smiling, stamping a book or two, and getting back to having a good old read. Not so; it was all screens and CDs, URLs, 128 Mbs and having to back up, check up, tally and research and look at the monitor plus dozens of knobs while they check their emails to answer public enquiries. Almost nothing to do with art.

He’d told her he was having a little problem with his waterworks. (Not you too, she wanted to say.) She was afraid this could be serious when he told her, laughing, that the only way he could urinate successfully was to stamp his feet hard whilst waiting for it to happen.

‘Have to do a bit of a fandango, hah!’ He’d been to the doctor who had examined him and declared all plumbing to be in good working order. James was like that: he had medical problems from time to time but was going to outlive them all. The matter was of no further interest to him, he told her. He was now thinking about the young patient he was visiting in hospital. That is the strange thing about health Celia believed; some people grow very old without much mishap when they’ve not necessarily taken better care of themselves than anybody else.

He looked down on the patient, on the one who had been destined to be the maestro’s amanuensis, in a manner of speaking. Please don’t leave me. Even without the music, even in your moments of madness, I want you to be here. He had always felt younger than Jeremy, who was still only in his early thirties.

Jeremy opened his eyes and unexpectedly told James he was sorry for putting him to so much trouble. And just as James was beginning to arrange his face and words for a suitable reply, at least the boy wasn’t talking the old nonsense, Jeremy went on to say he remembered James’s fits of spleen, malevolent looks, how they cut into him. The sulking at the Christmas party when the tempo wasn’t right. ‘Remember the Christmas party? When Belinda didn’t have the tempo to your satisfaction? You were right. It had to be slower.’ All said with the merciful gaze of someone on high, granting absolution.

James certainly remembered the first Christmas party when he’d had the trio of then new friends there. Twenty guests had sat down to a sumptuous meal on James’s immense back verandah, prepared by Celia and Marcia, with Mickey doing the drinks, saying that there had to be an extra place set for the stranger. What stranger? James asked, with too incredulous an expression.

‘You never know,’ said Mickey. ‘It’s a custom, James.’

‘In my country,’ the woman from Bulgaria said, ‘we set an extra place for Jesus Christ.’

‘In case he pops in for a sherry?’ said James, faking even more astonishment, enjoying himself.

But these years later, the authority of the terribly ill was at large and James listened with head bowed as the young man weakly and conversationally had his say. ‘I always loved you better than I did my parents,’ Jeremy finished. James might not even have been there. But he was, and he swiftly turned his head away.

He couldn’t manage this at all, and told Jeremy that he was not to dwell on past disappointments, his own or his teacher’s.

‘I may have pushed you too much. But you had such a capacity to learn, and to me a great deal hung on it. I didn’t realise you were so …’

‘Vulnerable?’ Jeremy had always been quick with words, even now. But his arms on the sheet were twigs.

James however could not bear much more. He left soon after. Celia was always quoting Pascal to him. Man is no more than a reed, the weakest in nature. But he is a thinking reed. And he wondered who was left feeling the weaker, Jeremy or himself.

He was vulnerable all right, James well knew that. What had provoked the teacher’s ire more than anything during that fateful lesson was Jeremy’s performance of the fast movement in the Rachmaninoff. And the boy hadn’t even been under any drug influence that day – James knew this because he was familiar with the boy’s every tic. And he had told Jeremy about holding that line; beware of the danger of over-involvement, of losing yourself in the piece to the extent that all control was lost. But that day Jeremy had poured himself into the music to the degree that he had lost the pace, made it into a gallop: his fingers flying over the music, getting all the notes out well enough but too excited to be able to pull back when necessary. The boy had ended the piece looking like a rag, high-coloured and shaking, and almost ill. Disastrous.