Song for Emilia Read online

  Also by Julia Osborne

  Falling Glass

  In this series

  The Midnight Pianist

  Playing with Keys

  Short stories published in various magazines, literary journals and anthologies, broadcast on ABC Radio National, and adaptations for stage performance

  www.juliamaryosborne.com

  Song for Emilia is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2017 by ETT Imprint

  in association with Paper Horse Design & Publishing

  Copyright © 2017 Julia Osborne All rights reserved.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Osborne, Julia, author

  Song for Emilia / by Julia Osborne

  ISBN 9780648096313 (pbk.)

  ISBN 9780648096306 (ebk.)

  Romance fiction, Pianists—Fiction A823.4

  Set in Adobe Garamond Pro 11.5/15pt by Rosie Sutherland for Paper Horse

  Titles: Wednesday Sutherland — Musical motifs: Julia Osborne www.paperhorsedesign.com.au

  For my mother, Joy Osborne, who would have enjoyed the saga of the midnight pianist.

  With love

  Intro:

  Sandra remembered it clearly – that fantastic summer day in 1962 when Nick arrived in Sydney to enrol at university.

  At the end of the long drive from Curradeen, at last he’d turned the corner into her street, swinging his dusty ute to park at the kerb in front of her house. He slammed shut the ute door, brushed a hand over his hair before clamping on his felt hat and strolling to the front door – ajar on that hot, sticky day.

  As he raised a hand to knock, her heart skipping a beat, Sandra reached the door first. Almost sixteen and feeling brave, she’d said hello and kissed his cheek, delighted to have his quick kiss on her forehead in response. Old friends ...

  She had led him through the house to the back garden where the family sat in the shade of an old tree. Nick Morgan – hers for today, and she knew that it was herself that he’d come to see. Wasn’t it?

  ♫

  Two years later, the first day of her Bachelor of Music degree: as Sandra crossed Macquarie Street and walked past the tall, imperious bronze rider on horseback, she could hardly believe her footsteps were taking her to this building. At the front, four crenellated towers like a castle. This was the Sydney Conservatorium of Music: the castle of her dreams and object of her ambition for so many years.

  The first time Sandra played in concert, she had been overwhelmed, but managed to complete the performance of her composition to the professor’s satisfaction. Tutors encouraged her, ‘Talent, hard work and lots of luck,’ they insisted. And dedication! Sandra knew she had plenty of that. She’d learned to enjoy playing piano in ensembles – composing for the students with their violins and cellos.

  Although her passion for concert performances had fizzled, the fire to compose burned stronger than ever.

  By now, Nick was almost halfway through his degree in architecture at Sydney Uni. How many times have we met in those two years? Working it out, she ruefully calculated, makes a total of four or five times a year, plus an occasional lucky phone call from the university college.

  Hardly a boyfriend. But she was sure Nick didn’t have anyone special. Even though he was five years older, if he was seeing another girl he wouldn’t spend any time at all with her. So what did five years matter?

  One of those lucky telephone days, she’d hear Nick’s voice on the phone with surprised delight:

  ‘G’day, Sandra.’

  ‘G’day,’ she’d reply, trying not to giggle. Holding the receiver close to her ear, she’d hear his breath in the phone as if he considered what to say. Usually a suggestion to meet somewhere: coffee at a café, a stroll through the Domain to the Art Gallery. Or after the pictures, they’d go down to Harry’s Cafe de Wheels in Woolloomooloo for a pie and mushy peas. They’d sit on the edge of the wharf, feet dangling over the water, revelling in the city lights, the slap of waves against the pilings; their freedom.

  Since Sandra had first shown Nick the treasure of Rowe Street’s arty shops and galleries, the wonderful bookshop and Rowe Street Records, they’d sometimes met at the Teapot Café. But the café had closed so now they went to the Galleria Espresso, a popular coffee shop for artists, and more comfortable, they agreed, than the Teapot’s iron chairs. It was always busy, the walls crowded with paintings, many for sale – painted, they supposed, by the art students that came for coffee, or to sit reading for hours. Who said that life was measured out in coffee spoons, she wondered, stirring another lump of sugar into her coffee.

  During uni holidays when Nick went home to Wilga Park, Sandra burned with envy because her best friend Emilia went home for holidays too. They were sure to have struck up a friendship now that Emmy boarded at his grandparents’ home in Melbourne while she studied physiotherapy. Not only would Emilia see Nick in Curradeen, but whenever he visited his grandparents.

  Mr and Mrs Ferrari were very pleased with this arrangement for their daughter, and although they missed her on the little vegetable patch they called a farm, she was able to train, with a safe place to live.

  Emilia knew very well that Sandra had adored Nick since her first year in high school when he was a distant senior, her every step beating time with his name: Nick Nick Nicholas Nick. Was it possible that Emmy could somehow infiltrate the Morgan family, and Nick might begin to care for her, instead of Sandra?

  Perhaps she sent out feelings to Nick that she wasn’t aware of – feelings that suggested, Come this close, and no closer. Perhaps her crush on the piano teacher, Mister L’estrange, had put a spell on her. But Eric L’estrange fell in love with her Aunt Meredith, and Meredith fell in love with him, and Oh, how Sandra had resented it.

  Meredith had always been a shining light in Sandra’s life: her confidante; someone to run to when there was trouble, which was often enough. It was hard to accept that her Saturday morning excursions with Auntie had gradually disappeared.

  At night, lying awake in bed with her arm cradling the pillow, Sandra longed for the touch of Nick’s lips on hers. Couldn’t he tell? What if she tilted up her face, just as he was about to kiss her forehead – would he dare to kiss her on the lips, even accidentally? Maybe he’d flinch with shock, embarrassed. Oh, horrible thought. But why didn’t he ever hold her hand? Such a nice country boy, so well-mannered, her mother had said.

  Drifting into sleep, she imagined Nick striding towards her: his long, lean body, felt hat crammed on his head; the big smile. When he talked about life on Wilga Park, his grey-green eyes had a faraway look, and she pondered how deep his love might be for the family property.

  … All our lives have changed, she thought, wriggling into a more comfortable position. I bet Nick goes to a pub with his uni mates. At the pub he’ll still be the Nick who grew up with Angus – mad as a cut snake, someone called him when they’d got drunk at Morgans’ party. Different to the Nick that I know.

  Now Angus was dead from the night they crashed the ute on the road to Curradeen, and Nick spent several months in a wheelchair. But Nick won the argument with his father to leave Wilga Park, and was following his dream.

  Those final mad, tumultuous weeks had faded away when Emilia arrived for Christmas holidays, bringing a letter from Nick. As Sandra read his few words to say he’d be in Sydney to enrol at university and would visit her, she’d revelled in the idea of seeing him again, conjuring up all the old dreams… her passion for the piano; and the song for Nick that she’d struggled to compose. Shaded with colourful memo
ries of Nick and her visit to Wilga Park, she’d called it Winter’s Day.

  At last, here he was: sitting opposite her in the café, stirring several sugars into his tea, felt hat and jacket slung on the back of his chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, the corners of his mouth tipped in a smile.

  Gathering her courage, Sandra took the score for Winter’s Day from her handbag, laid the pages on the table. ‘I wrote this for you.’ She gave it a little push towards him. ‘I designed the title too.’

  Nick raised his eyebrows quizzically, drew the score closer. For a moment he contemplated the filigreed title, flicked to the second page, then he said quietly, ‘Thank you, Sandra. It’s very nice.’

  Nice, she thought. Is that all he can say? I’ve wanted to write that song for so long. For so long I’ve had it in my head, wanted it to be as perfect as possible to give to Nick, and all he says is—

  ‘It’s really nice,’ Nick repeated. ‘No one ever wrote me a song before.’

  That was an improvement. Pacified, Sandra tried to smile more enthusiastically, pleased that he even half-way liked it. ‘You read music, so you can play it at the college. There must be pianos there?’

  Nick ran a finger along the bars, hummed the first notes. ‘I like how it begins—’

  Sandra nodded. ‘It’s Wilga Park,’ she said. ‘I tried to describe the paddocks in the early morning when you ride Toffee to round up the sheep, and how the sun shines on the frost. See there…’ she pointed to the second page, ‘that repeated staccato phrase is hoof beats—’

  ‘It’s a pretty special present,’ Nick chuckled. ‘From the pretty piano player. You’re a clever girl.’

  She laughed with delight; the old nickname he gave me – he hasn’t forgotten. Nick went on: ‘And I can imagine a day at home just like that. You know, sometimes I miss being there, working with my father – mustering the sheep for shearing, and the lambing, Dad and his precious stud books, the sale yards and his temper if the prices weren’t high enough.’

  He carefully folded the score, slipping it into his pocket. ‘I’m going to order another pot of tea for us,’ he said. ‘I’m dry as a bone.’

  Too soon it was time to leave – they both had study and assignments due. Sandra knew that no matter how long they sat together in a café, wherever they wandered, it always ended the same: Nick would briefly take her hand, then he’d kiss her forehead, right on the spot that had first turned her legs to jelly.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Nick was saying. He patted his pocket. ‘Thanks again for my song.’ And with that swift, endearing kiss, he was striding towards the bus stop.

  ♫

  During the first year of their city life in Randwick, the quest for a job in a florist shop, perhaps even a shop of her own, had been a highlight for Sandra’s mother. Next to Angela’s armchair, the magazine rack was stuffed with gardening books and newspapers – job advertisements circled in red.

  On Saturday mornings, off she would go, Herald classified pages in her handbag, to visit the possibilities. Debates at the dining table about the profitability of a fresh flower business became so repetitive, Sandra and her younger sister Prue would leave the table at the first opportunity.

  However, after twelve months of fruitless excursions, Angela considered shelving the idea. Sandra’s father had originally been supportive, if not exactly enthusiastic. ‘Perhaps it’s a waste of energy,’ Don said consolingly. ‘It seems to me that jobs in a flower-shop are scarce as hens’ teeth.’ A long pause, and he added, ‘It might be best to give up on a shop of your own, dear. It’s not a financial option.’

  Sandra suspected it was a relief for both her parents when Angela finally threw all her newspaper clippings into the backyard incinerator.

  All this time, Don quietly worked at the bank, returning home to wander the garden in the evening, smoking his pipe on the seat beneath the peach tree. More and more, Sandra noticed that her father kept to himself. He ate his dinner almost in silence, or said, ‘Pass me the pepper, please,’ or ‘Another cup of tea, please dear?’

  Later, regarding the family over the top of his newspaper, he would enquire, ‘How was your day?’ not noticing that sometimes no one said much. He’d sit on the couch with Ginger on his lap, the old cat audibly purring, Don’s eyes closed as if he dozed.

  Sandra wondered, was he tired, or was he somehow lonely as the family went in different directions in their spare time. Except her father, who had nothing to do outside the bank and occasionally digging the garden with Angela. Did they spend time with each other, or was it always just passing by: knocking elbows in the kitchen, television each night, a quick kiss goodbye as her father left for work? No old friends for dinner, no afternoon tea parties like at the Curradeen bank.

  Sometimes after she and Prue went to bed, she heard the mumble of their muted conversation and once, her father’s voice, admitting how he missed his regular golf at the Curradeen club and their golfing friends. They shared a bedroom, and now she was old enough to recognize they were not simply parents but grown-ups with their own private lives, quiet and hidden from view – polite on the surface, enigmatic.

  If there was nothing interesting on TV and her piano didn’t beckon, Sandra went to her room to lie on the bed and read. She ploughed through the more than nine hundred pages of Forever Amber, sneaking the novel from Angela’s wardrobe – such a surprise when Auntie gave that book to her mother for Christmas – Angela’s eyebrows had shot up – all that outrageous carrying on in the days of Charles II. Condemned by the church for the many sexual escapades, the story was fascinating and absorbing and shocking, all at once, especially the terrible description of how Amber St Clair saved her lover from the plague: the disgusting oozing flesh, the cries of ‘Bring out your dead.’ Fascinating!

  Feeding on the story, Sandra’s musical compositions developed a sensuous lyricism, a progression of chords that Aunt Meredith declared absolutely luscious. Mister L’estrange initially described her pieces as other-worldly and mysterious, and she liked the description.

  Prue’s library books left scattered in the lounge room were of myths and legends: witchcraft and spells, vanished kings and queens, crimes and medieval torture chambers. Sandra suspected she liked the mystical side of life. She’d sprung Prue quickly hiding a book beneath her mattress, hissing at Sandra, ‘Don’t tell!’

  Sandra snatched the book, holding it away from her sister. ‘Ooh, I like the title, a book of lies – that should suit you. Why is it such a big secret?’

  ‘You know what Mum’s like. Please don’t say anything.’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, of course I won’t.’ She opened the cover, flipping pages. ‘Gosh, it’s an old book... Aleister Crowley, whoever that is. What’s it about?’

  Prue looked perplexed. ‘Magic, I think. I don’t understand most of it.’ She grabbed the book from Sandra. ‘But I’m going to find out, you’ll see.’

  ‘Gee, it’s good to get here,’ Emilia said. ‘That’s the longest trip ever, ’cause men were working on the train line halfway from Curradeen. Nine whole hours! Ooh, my bottom’s sore from sitting—’

  Sandra chipped in with a laugh, ‘Come on, I’ll show you where you’re sleeping,’ She lead the way down the hall. ‘Prue’s given you her room while she stays at a girlfriend’s.’

  She hoisted Emilia’s suitcase onto the bed. A heavy red suitcase with shiny metal clasps – so different from the old brown port Emilia had lugged to school every day. Sandra took in the changes: a different, very pretty, quite grown-up Emilia, with all the characteristics of her dark-haired, dark- eyed Italian parents. Well, she thought, I did once call her Gina Lollobrigida.

  Emilia rolled her eyes as she scanned Prue’s wall of cut-out photos: Buddy Holly, Johnny O’Keefe in his gold jacket, a handsome Ricky Nelson. ‘I like Elvis the Pelvis better than all them ... ’ she remarked. ‘Mamma calls him a bodgie. He’s real dreamy looking, but.’

  It was Prue’s room and Sandra was irked by Emilia’s scornful opinion
of her posters. ‘They won’t keep you awake,’ she said. ‘Let’s get a glass of cordial—’

  ‘I’d rather have tea. Mrs Morgan’s mum always makes us a cup of tea when I get home from college.’ Swinging her foot Emilia hummed Return to Sender.

  Sandra put teapot and cups on the kitchen table. After their hugs and cheerful greetings, words were hard to find. So much time had passed – two years since she’d waved goodbye to her friend on the train back to Curradeen – an Emilia loaded with shopping from her first visit to Sydney.

  As they drank their tea, she began to wonder if it was a mistake to have invited Emilia to stay after New Year. Their lives were so different now, running along different tracks in different cities. Gradually their regular letters had dwindled to one every few weeks. What was there to write about, anyway?

  ‘Lofty’s going to Melbourne uni, did I tell you? He’s doing a B.A. and he wants to teach.’

  ‘He’ll be a good teacher,’ Sandra mused. ‘He was always good in school debates and curious about everything.’

  Emilia put down her cup. ‘I’ve got some more news,’ she said. ‘You know how I said once I want to help people – people like Nick after his car accident when he couldn’t walk and had to keep going to Melbourne for treatment? When I graduate and go back to Curradeen there’ll be a job for me in the new clinic. They said so.’

  This was even worse than Emilia living with Nick’s grandparents in Melbourne. As long as Nick was in Sydney, at least he and Sandra were in the same city. She tried to look interested as Emilia kept on chatting about her plans.

  ‘Mamma and Pa are very happy about it, because I’ll be back home again. Nonna’s getting real old now and my brothers have gone to work at Gillespie’s, so they’re no help.’