There is a pause before the ringing starts and in the silence she imagines the phone like a beam of light from a torch, searching up into the sky and across the land, whatever land they’re currently stopped in.
A woman answers the phone on the fourth ring. ‘Good morning, Hillview Care, Kasia speaking.’
‘Hello Kasia, it’s Jean Petersfield here. Is Dad available and able to chat?’
‘Of course! It’s a good day today, Miss Petersfield. I think he’ll be thrilled to hear from you.’
‘Fantastic. Just cut me off if he’s getting tired or agitated, I honestly won’t mind.’
‘I’ll go and get him now.’
Jean hears the phone clunk as Kasia takes it off the hook. She hears the rustle of her trousers and the squeak of her trainers on the scrubbed linoleum tiles as she walks along the corridor to her father’s room, snatches of conversation and music and TVs. A faint voice saying ‘Bertie, it’s for you’ and the music in the room at the other end of the line – an aria fromDon Giovanni, if she’s not mistaken – cuts off mid note. A fumble, a crackle of static, a heavy breath and a cough, then:
‘Albert Petersfield speaking.’
‘Hello Daddy, it’s Jeanie. How are you?’
‘Jeanie girlie! What a treat to hear your voice!’
A warmth spreads through her despite the autumnal chill. He sounds well. Lucid, content, confident.
‘It’s lovely to hear you too, Dad. How are you doing?’
‘Is it cold? You sound like you’re somewhere cold. Are you wrapped up warm?’
‘It is a little cold here but I’m fine.’
A pause. Jean tries to think of something to say. She usually describes where they’re stopped but today she worries that it’s a bit too close to the bone – ha ha – to tell him that today the Grub pulled up in a graveyard and she’s sitting atop someone’s grave. Her father is eighty-nine. There aren’t too many more phone calls left.
But he cuts in before she can say anything. ‘Tell me, have you lit a candle for your mother and your grandmother?’
Of course, it’s All Souls’. ‘Not yet, Dad. I will later, after the show.’ She can stare into the flame and think about her mother and then she can light another candle for all the other dead things in her life: her dreams, her ambition, her financial stability, her chances at romance.
‘Percy Montgomery used to gather all those inclined in his office and say a few words on days like this – a big C Catholic, was Percy, always said he’d have gone into the seminary if not the theatre which never made a blind bit of sense to me but Aleko and I used to go along to hear his fine tenor singing psalms – and tell me, how is Aleko, is he keeping well?’
‘He’s well. The same as always really.’
‘Good, good. Listen, I was telling Kasia the other day – no, not Kasia, the other one, the one who sings those lovely tunes from Nigeria, her name’s gone now but anyway, I was telling her about the show and she was asking what was my favourite part and I said well it has to be that bit right at the end before the wedding, you know the part that goes like…’
He starts to hum the melody of the White Suitor’s solo, the same melody he sings on the phone every time she rings. She understands why it’s this tune that has slipped between his decaying synapses and stuck there. It’s got an eerie tone that slips between melancholy and euphoria, and the way the cello calls across the rest of the orchestra with that plaintive voice, never to be answered, it makes you think of all the things you haven’t done or said.
Her father breaks off mid phrase to say, ‘And tell me, the lad who dances the White Suitor, is he any good?’
‘He’s great, Dad, really good.’ She told him the same thing when he asked her the same question last week.
‘I was listening to a programme on Debussy the other day – I listen with Freddy down the way, his legs don’t work anymore but he can still hold his violin – and I told him how Aleko and I used to – and how is Al, how is he keeping?’
‘He’s fine, Dad, you know how it is here. One day is much like the next.’
Time goes in spirals aboard the Grub. You think you’re living the same day over and over again but then you lookout of your cabin window one morning and you’ve grey hairs frizzing at your temples and mysterious aches in your knees.
‘And are you looking after your reeds properly? My daughter is a musician, you know, just like her mother and I. I can get her to tell you what she does to keep her reeds dry and supple, if you like. She plays the oboe too, although she was a gifted pianist. Could have been a soloist! That’s what I tell Freddy down the way. I don’t think she liked the spotlight. A team player is my Jeanie, she likes the swell and roar of the orchestra and honestly who could blame her, I was a sucker for it myself.’
Jean sighs. His lucidity turns within a conversation now. Talking to him used to be like listening to a medley of greatest hits from the musicals – nothing was complete but each subject merged into the next in a way that made sense. Now his confusion is becoming a discordant jumble, staccato bits of different scores jumping in mid-phrase. Soon the melodies will begin to drop off, one instrument at a time. The silences will grow longer, stickier, the jangle of tunes harder to distinguish. She both dreads it and longs for his decline to be over.
‘That sounds lovely.’
‘It is! Oh it is. Proudest moment of my life, at her graduation performance when she played the solo in – ah, that’s why I was talking about Debussy to Freddy, that’s what I wanted to tell him – Hannah, darling, did you remember to book the piano tuner?’
