Read Online Listening in the Dusk by Celia Fremlin - Free Book Online Page B

did Alice, and a minute later she was in his room, picking her way across piles of music and miscellaneous garments towards the piano, whose virtues he was anxious to display.
    “Not a grand — I wish it was — but just listen to the tone! I fixed the new felts myself, the old ones were all rotted away to nothing, and it’s made all the difference. Listen!”
    He played a few bars of some piece with which Alice was unfamiliar, and the tone was indeed superb, though whether it was the new felts or the pianist himself who deserved credit for this, it was hard to say.
    “Lovely,” Alice approved. “You’ve got a smashing career ahead of you, I’d guess. Concert pianist, I presume? Though Hetty did say something about you being a composer as well?”
    He shrugged, grimaced wryly.
    “Pie-in-the-sky, I’m afraid. Or rather two pies, each one further out of reach than the other. Trouble is with me, I want everything. I used to think it was because I was young, and young people do have this idea that nothing is out of reach, you merely need to bash away till you get there. But it’s just the same now, I’m afraid. I’m thirty, you know, and I still wanteverything. Which is crazier, actually, with every passing year, because really I should have got somewhere by now, if I’m ever going to …”
    He paused, waiting with touching confidence for Alice to contradict this melancholy diagnosis; which of course she did, racking her brains for examples of famous musicians who had had their big breakthrough well after the age of thirty.
    “It’s not as if you were trying to be a pop-star,” she pointed out. “I imagine they do have to be practically in their teens still if they’re to hit the big time. But you are a serious musician with a serious career in prospect. Maturity can only be an asset.”
    He demurred, though obviously pleased by this confirmation of his own secret and ineradicable confidence in his own talent: that confidence without which no one ever gets anywhere, and Alice was glad to see that he possessed it.
    “Oh, well,” he said. “Never say die, and I suppose I never do. Meantime, I keep myself busy starving in a garret.”
    “ I’m the one in the garret, actually,” Alice pointed out, “though I’ve no intention of starving there. I bought some sausages today.” And then, impulsively, “Why don’t you share them with me? I’ve got a whole pound, much too much for just me, and I’m going to fry them this evening. At least, I hope I am. If I can work out where I ‘fit in’ as Hetty puts it.”
    “Fit in with the cooking, you mean? Oh, you don’t want to worry about that. We all just muck in really — all except Dorrie that is — Miss Dorinda. She’s into Health, you see, and so we have to leave the kitchen clear for her to do her polyunsaturated this and thats. Or is it saturated? Anyway, it’s what sausages aren’t, I’m sure, so we’ll have to wait till she’s finished and safely back in her room.
    “Look, shall I make some coffee? I’m sorry it’s so bloody cold in here, but Hetty seems to have pinched my fire. To give to you, I daresay. She does that sort of thing: she must have reckoned that your need is greater than mine. But I’ve only got to go down and show her my poor blue fingers and my chattering teeth, and I’ll get it back, and then you’ll be the unlucky one. And so we go on.
    “However. Coffee. Let me move the debris off the armchair, and then you can sit down. Lucky me, I’ve got a gas-ring in here:how about you? No? Well, I might be able to rig you one up if we can find the fittings for it behind all that junk you’ve got up there. A bit of rubber tubing may be all we need. I’ll come up presently, if you like, and see what I can do …”
    No such fittings were revealed, but nevertheless Brian proved himself an invaluable assistant in all sorts of ways. He applied himself enthusiastically to stacking out of sight — more or less — the dauntingly