'So let's see if you can name it, hey? Maybe it's not even good music! What do I know?'
He fiddled with his phone. Naturally the cabana had a built-in sound system that was linked to his mobile phone.
'Who says only the cellist can enter this competition?' said Sam. Clementine could hear him imitating Vid's speech cadences without realising he was doing it. It was so embarrassing the way he did that, picking up waiters' accents in restaurants and coming over all Indian or Chinese. 'What about the marketing manager, eh?'
'What about the accountant?' Oliver followed the joke with heavy-handed jolliness.
Erika said nothing. She sat with her forearms perfectly still on the armrests of her chair, staring off into the distance. It was unusual too for Erika to disengage from a conversation like this. Normally she listened to social chitchat as if she'd be sitting for a quiz later.
'You can all enter!' cried Vid. 'Silence.'
He lifted his phone as though it were a conductor's baton and then dropped it in a dramatic swooping motion. Nothing happened.
He swore, jabbing at the screen.
'Give it here.' Tiffany took the phone and pressed some keys. Immediately, the lush opening notes of Faure's 'After a Dream' cascaded through the cabana with perfect clarity.
Clementine straightened. It almost felt like a trick that out of all the pieces of music he could have picked, he'd chosen this one. She knew exactly what he meant when he'd described 'drowning in feeling'. She'd felt it too, when she was fifteen, sitting with her bored parents (her father's head kept snapping forward as he dropped off to sleep) at the Opera House: that extraordinary feeling of submersion, as if she'd been drenched in something exquisite.
'Louder!' cried Vid. 'It needs to be loud.'
Tiffany turned up the volume.
Next to her, Sam automatically adjusted his posture and assumed his stoic, polite, I'm-listening-to-classical-music-and-hoping-it-will-be-over-soon face. Tiffany refilled glasses with no discernible reaction to the music, while Erika continued to stare into the distance and Oliver wrinkled his brow, concentrating. Oliver could possibly name the composer. He was one of those well-educated private school boys who knew a lot about a lot of things, but he couldn't feel the music. Clementine and Vid were the only ones feeling it.
Vid met her eyes, lifted his glass in a secret salute and winked as if to say, Yeah, I know.
chapter twenty-nine
Vid sat at the wrought-iron table on his front veranda with sheets of newspaper laid out, polishing Dakota's school shoes so she would look smart for the Information Morning at Saint Anastasias. He remembered how he used to polish his older daughters' shoes when they were all at school. Three little pairs of black shoes going down in size. Now his daughters all wobbled about on stilettos with pointy heels.
Something was making him feel especially mournful today; he wasn't exactly sure what it was and it made him feel angry. Perhaps it was related to the weather. He had heard an interview on the radio about how the lack of sunshine was having a detrimental psychological effect on the people of Sydney. Serotonin levels were dipping, causing depression rates to rise. An Englishman had rung up and said, 'What a load of rubbish! This is nothing, you Aussies are so soft! Come to England and we'll show you rain.'
Vid didn't think he was so soft that he'd let a little bad weather worry him.
There was the sound of a car in the cul-de-sac and Vid looked up to see Erika from next door driving off down the street in her blue Statesman.
He wondered if Erika had seen Clementine lately.
He dipped the brush in the black polish and swirled it around.
He had told not one single person that he'd seen Clementine perform the other night, as if it were a secret when there was no reason for it to be a secret. Yes, possibly it was a little strange that he'd gone to see her perform, but come on now, why was it so strange? It was a free country. Anyone could go see her perform.
'Isn't that right, Barney?' he said to the dog, which sat at his feet, very upright and alert, as if guarding him from something. 'It's a free country?'
Barney shot him a concerned look and then suddenly trotted off, as if a decision had been reached that nothing could be done with Vid and he might as well go and check in with some other members of the family.
Vid carefully polishe
d the side of the shoe. Women could not polish shoes. They were too impatient and quick. They never did a good job of it.
Could Clementine polish a shoe? He wished he could ask her. He would like to hear her answer. Clementine was still their friend, surely? Why would she not return his calls? He only wanted to say hello, to check in with her. He had even left messages and he didn't like leaving messages. He preferred people to see there was a missed call from him and call straight back. She must have his number programmed into her phone by now, surely? It was hurtful to him. He'd never had anyone not return his calls before. Even his ex-wife returned his calls.
He held the shoe up and examined it, remembering the music. It had been extraordinary. Breathtaking.
It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He was at the Quay. He'd been going to meet a good friend at the Opera Bar, but his friend's elderly mother had got sick and he'd had to cancel at the last minute, so Vid had wandered up into the Opera House where he'd had a very nice, long discussion with a girl at the ticket counter. He'd said he wanted to go to the symphony and it turned out that was no problem, there were plenty of seats available to Thus Spake Zarathustra. Vid had no idea what that meant, but the girl said he would recognise some of the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and she was right, of course he did.
He had not had his hopes up that Clementine would be playing. He knew she wasn't a full-time employee of the orchestra. She filled in for them when they needed her. She was a subbie. He also knew she had an audition coming up for a full-time position that she very much wanted, and he'd confirmed with Erika that the audition hadn't happened yet.