METRONOME

She reminds me of a girl I knew when I was fifteen. Have I told you about her?

My first ‘date’. An assignation after school – or rather, an agreement, an understanding that I would walk her home. I did. To her grandmother’s where she boarded, coming from deep country where her parents ran a petrol station, the only one for 150 kilometres in any direction. I fancied she smelt of petrol and perfume – she didn’t. She played a piano accordion and dressed as if she were from the realms of a Bartók peasant fantasy. Her clothes were so crisp, even her school uniform. I sat in her grandmother’s lounge room watching a metronome clicking back and forth without reason. It was doing that when we arrived. The girl – my girlfriend – went to her room to get changed, which made me feel anxious and slightly ridiculous, sitting there with my schoolbag in my lap, hunched over, looking at the Axminster carpet and wondering if the garlic I could smell was coming from the old woman dressed entirely in black, sitting in a lounge chair under a frilly shaded floor lamp. The metronome was going so slowly. Click … … .… click … … .… click … … .… click.

Under the gaze of Grandmother, who said nothing but watched us with a frightening intensity, my girlfriend (even thinking it, never mind saying it, didn’t seem right), played jigs on her accordion. She was pretty good, actually, though the slow, dirge-like beat of the metronome added an uncomfortable warp to the situation. If I hadn’t been so anxious, so worried that something more might be expected of me, something sexually ‘adequate’ – even under the old woman’s gaze – something revealing of my potency which I could barely imagine would be up to the task, the warp would have overwhelmed me, and I would have gone over to the metronome, and either adjusted the pace, or shut it off.

But I didn’t. Ra ra ra wheeze, went the accordion, and my girlfriend said, Come on, clap your hands. This was extravagant and disconcerting, for so many reasons and in so many ways. At school she was quiet, got okay marks, and not one of the cool girls. She was far from hot, but not unpleasant to look at. I mean, I was a bit of a weedy specimen and the other boys would consider it a score – out of my league, though no others to my knowledge had paid her any attention. I wasn’t going to say anything about my new… girlfriend… in a hurry. I risked looking at her jigging about: what my mother would have termed ‘well-covered’, with large breasts (did I think of them as ‘tits’ then? it’s hard to be honest with oneself in a less sexist age of telling) and a pageboy haircut. I am pretty sure she was blonde, but maybe her hair was a mousy brown. That detail has been lost to time.

The recital stopped, and the grandmother said to my girlfriend, Give the boy some tea and biscuits. Once I was on my own again with the grandmother, she said, My granddaughter is a nice girl. She will marry a nice boy. And that was it. Tea and biscuits arrived on a silver – pewter? … tin? – tray; I spilt my tea into the saucer and hesitated before pouring the hot liquid back into the cup, and drinking it. I put the saucer and cup back on the tray, nibbled a biscuit with care, catching a crumb in my hand. The biscuit goo stuck in my throat, and I wished I’d saved some tea, but I managed to say, Thanks, I’d better be getting home. I stumbled out the front door onto the porch and said, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.

Our second date wasn’t until a few weeks later – my girlfriend had gone off on music camp, or church camp, or some kind of camp, and I needed the recovery time anyway. I didn’t say a word of it to my mates. Maybe ‘colleagues’ would be a better word for the other kids at school; they seemed to like me only if I helped them with their schoolwork. And she seemed to have kept our interaction to herself as well. That was a good sign. That was grounds for a relationship, as far as I was concerned. I’ve always valued my privacy, and maybe it shows how much I value our interaction, how much I care for you, that I am sharing this story … this experience, what with you being a musician and all. Yes, yes, I knew you’d understand about the metronome. It was so annoying! Almost haunting.

Anyway, our … the … second date. Again, it took place straight after school. Midweek. I summoned up the courage to ask her if I could walk her home. I was very old-values then, very chivalrous in my fumbling ignorance. No, I’m not putting myself down, just ’fessing up. It’s taken me decades to come to grips with this. I was a much more concise person then, and less inclined to wander off the track. Well, I took her bag – yes, truly – and slung it over one shoulder with my own bag hanging off my other shoulder. I remember labouring with the load, but it felt good to be distracted. She talked about the camp, though I don’t remember what she said about it, other than that she’d had a good time. I do remember having a moment of nerves over whether or not she’d met some guy there, but I am pretty sure no guy was mentioned. Or maybe that’s something I’m reading back into the situation – the kind of anxiety I’d have now. No, I never doubt you, even when you’re on tour for months on end. If you tell me you’ve been true, I believe you. I know you’d always tell me if you went off the rails.

So we walked and walked. Grandma’s house was such a long way from school. My girlfriend kept bumping into me and I’d stagger under the bags. Sure you don’t want me to take the bag? she asked delicately. No, no, I can manage. She put her hand in mine, and my heart jumped, and her bag skipped off my shoulder and crunched into our wrists, hands. I hoisted it back up and held the strap. I mean, I felt really nervous. I started to feel as if I’d rather be any place but there. Yes, yes, Little Red Riding Hood was actually the wolf in disguise. Pathetic, isn’t it. Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?

We weren’t far from Grandma’s house when I heard the metronome. Click … … .… click … … .… click … … … click. I guess I didn’t really hear it, we were still a block away, but I could hear its ghost. And then I could hear the ra ra ra of the accordion and I could smell Grandma’s garlic. There was a vacant block near the house which we cut across to reach the front porch. My girlfriend stepped in front of me and said, Put the bags down. I did, and stared at her. We were exactly the same height. And she was short. My growth spurt hadn’t come yet. Her eyes were green.

She said, Quickly, kiss me. I stared at her and then followed my stomach to the dirt and dropped down into a sitting position, crossing my legs. What’s wrong? she asked. I said nothing. Nothing at all. I just sat there, silent. She crouched down to look me in the eye, and in turning my face down, I accidentally glimpsed up her skirt and saw her blue knickers. I could hear my heart in my ears, and could feel it in my chest, beating as fast as it would after running the hundred metres; in my ears it went click … … … click … … … click … … … click. You know, you know.

Nothing else happened. She just took her bag, and went up to the porch and inside, without looking back. I sat there until dark. I looked up at the window occasionally, and fancy I saw Grandma once, the corner of the dark curtain up, but who knows. I did hear the accordion, though. No ra ra ra, but a slow, sombre playing that sounded like a wounded animal. That’s a fact, and it’s what dressed the silence that hung between us for the next few years of school. There were no betrayals. Just nothing. I have no idea what became of her, what she does now; if she’s married with children or still plays the accordion. And no, I won’t tell you her name. You’re just too quick with the googling. No, I don’t trust you with this, sorry.