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Overview
Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna—estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male-dominated world. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780393318418 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/17/1998 |
| Pages: | 284 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
She went down the front steps and walked along the street to the main road. At this hour of the morning there was little or no traffic. If there was acar, then it sounded just like that -- a car going past in the wet -- there was no other city noise. It was still dark and the street lights were reflected on the road surface. She tucked her hair back and put her collar up as far as it would go. The raincoat was creased as if it had just been unpacked. She made her way to the bus station on foot carrying a small hold-all.
She was early at the airport stance and walked up and down the concrete pavement. It was lined and felt, through the soles of her shoes, like hard sand close to the water's edge. It was a way of not thinking -- to concentrate on her surroundings. Somewhere a man was whistling -- at least she assumed it was a man. Women rarely whistled.
In the bus she chose a place towards the back and put her knees up against the seat in front of her. The bus was empty and warm. She watched the chrome seat rails vibrate in unison as the engine idled. If she stared at things, then it helped block out stuff. Like Anna. She did not dare think about that. Two people got on. She noticed that her fists were clenched and she consciously relaxed them, turned her hands palm upwards on her lap to see if it would make a difference.
On the motorway they drove towards the January dawn, a sky of yellow light and dark cloud. Then as the bus careered through the rain and spray thrown up by the growing traffic, at seventy miles an hour, she began to cry. It came over her and she just let it happen. She tried to make as little noise as possible but the others on the bus heard her and looked round. It helped her to stop when she saw her distorted face reflected in the window. She had done it before -- used the bathroom mirror in the same way. You just looked so awful, you stopped.
In the airport she bought her tickets with the money Peter and Liz had lent her. She sat in the middle of the concourse trying to think of nothing, trying not to listen to the airport chimes, the flight announcements. People walked around her but she did not look up. She continued to stare at her feet. She was wearing brown court shoes and denim jeans. Somehow talcum powder had got on to her left shoe and dulled the leather. She wondered how it had survived the rain.
At one side of the lounge men were building a staircase, hammering incessantly. Somebody was sawing wood by hand -- better than the scream of a power-saw. She thought the sound nostalgic -- like the hee-haw of a donkey. Somewhere a baby was crying. It was very young -- a week, maybe two. The exhalation of each cry seemed infinitely long. She did not dare to think of babies.
She needed the toilet. Beside the sign for LADIES and GENTS was one for a BABY CHANGING ROOM. If only it was as easy as that. 'Don't particularly like this baby, would you mind changing it?' Afterwards, washing her hands, she looked in the mirror and saw her eyes puffy with crying. An airport was the place for such things. People meeting and people parting. Tears of one sort or another. Some things were too painful. Offspring and what they did to you.
Everybody said she took after her father. The urge to cry came over her again but this time, facing herself in the mirror, she controlled it. She wondered what it would be like to face the mirror in a moment of joy. But this seemed such an impossibility. She took one of her red and grey capsules and washed it down, gulp-swallowing water sipped from the arc of a drinking fountain.
Outside the toilets school parties from France and Germany stood in stiff groups photographing themselves. They talked loudly without removing their Walkmans. Their headsets sizzled and tished. Two policemen went past in shirtsleeves -- one hugging a machine-gun close to his chest.
Her flight was called and she went through Security and then through Special Security for those people travelling to Northern Ireland. The body search the uniformed woman gave her was close to being offensive. Breasts and buttocks flicked by her touch. A Special Branch policeman looked at her ticket.
'The reason for your trip?'
'I'm going home.'
'Business or pleasure?'
'Neither.'
He looked at her, his fingers playing with the ticket.
'For what reason?'
'A funeral.'
'Someone close?'
She nodded. He handed her back her ticket.
'Sorry. On you go.'
As the plane turned, the runway lights formed a squat triangle to the horizon. The window was covered with shuddering droplets of rain. The engine note changed, went up an octave, as they raced for take-off. Being pressed back into her seat as they accelerated was a kind of swooning. At this speed with the engine note almost a scream the rain droplets became minute, with tails streaking across the glass -- like individual sperm.
On holiday her father wore an Arran sweater, full of cable and blackberry stitching, knitted with untreated wool -- he said the untreated nature of the wool repelled the rain. Her mother said it repelled her too. The smell of it was something awful. Like a wet dog.
His voice was one of the greatest things in the world -- just talking. He had a big Adam's apple which bobbed when he spoke. When she was very young she would sit on his knee and reach out a finger to touch it as it moved -- the sound he made, guttural, so deep it resonated with her insides.
When they dropped down through the cloud at Aldergrove she saw how green the land was. And how small the fields. A mosaic of vivid greens and yellows and browns. Home. She wanted to cry again.
The bus into Belfast was stopped at a checkpoint and a policeman in a flak jacket, a young guy with a ginger moustache, walked up the aisle towards her, his head moving in a slow no as he looked from side to side, from seat to opposite seat for bombs. He winked at her, 'Cheer up love, it might never happen.'
But it already had.
On the bus home she watched the familiar landmarks she used as a child pass one by one. Toomebridge, her convent school, the drop into low gear to take the hill out of Magherafelt.
The bus stopped at a crossroads on the outskirts of her home town and a woman got off. Before she walked away, the driver and she had a conversation, shouted over the engine noise. This was the crossroads where the Orangemen held their drumming matches. It was part of her childhood to look up from the kitchen table on still Saturday evenings and hear the rumble of the drums. Her mother would roll her eyes, 'They're at it again.'
It was a scary sound -- like thunder. Like the town was under a canopy of dark noise. One summer's evening she'd been out a walk with her father and they'd come across a drumming match as it was setting up.
'Oi oi, Catherine, would you look at this nonsense.' He held her hand tighter. Land-Rovers and vans had been drawn up on to the grass verges. A party of men was gathering. A couple of drums were being taken from the back of a Land-Rover. The drums were two to three feet deep as well as huge in circumference. They were so big that it took two men to help each drummer struggle into his harness. They hung the drum around his neck and each drummer leaned back as far as he could and supported the drum against his stomach. Then they handed him two long rods. There was a thin drummer and a fat one. Both were hatless and in shirt-sleeves. The fat one had a tanned face which stopped at his hat line. Above that, his skin was white. He rattled the rods against the skin of the drum, testing it. The drum was so big in relation to the man that Catherine thought of a penny-farthing.
'They're made of goat skin,' said her father. 'King Billygoat skin. You could smell the stink of it from Omagh.'
When she'd heard the drums in her home their rhythm had been fudged by distance and the sound had become an indistinct rumble. Now here, close up, it was a different thing altogether. Her father leaned over to her ear as if to shout something above the noise of the drumming, but instead shook his head. When the drums ceased, he whispered to her, 'They're supposed to be able to play different rhythms, different tunes -- Lilliburlero and what have you -- but it all sounds the same to me. A bloody dunderin. On the Twelfth they thump them so hard and so long they bleed their wrists. Against the rim. Sheer bloody bigotry.' Catherine stared at the flailing sticks, felt her eardrums pummelled. 'They practice out here above the town to let the Catholics know they're in charge. This is their way of saying the Prods rule the roost.'
But Catherine was thrilled by the sound, could distinguish the left hand's rhythm from the right. She tried to keep time with her toes inside her shoes. There were slaps and dunts on the off-beats, complex rhythms she couldn't begin to write down -- even now, never mind then. The two sticks working independently. The hands tripping each other up. A ripple bouncing back and interfering with the other ripples which had first started it. The drums were battered so loud she felt the vibrations in her body, was sure the sky and the air about her were pounding to the beat. It didn't exactly make her want to dance, more to sway. But there was an edge as well -- of fear, of tribal war drumming. The gathering of men turned to stare across the road.
'Come on,' said her father. 'You're looking at a crowd whose highest ambition, this year and every year, is to march down streets where they're not wanted. Nothing to do with the betterment of mankind or the raising of the human spirit.' Her father's hand tightened on hers so that it began to hurt. 'It's their right, their heritage. God love a duck. Bowler-hatted dunderheads. Gather-ups. The Orange dis-Order, I call them. And the politicians that lead them are ten times worse, for they should know better. The whole problem, Catherine, is racist. I've heard Protestants saying, "The one side is as bad as the other". It's just not true. It's the Protestant side's bigoted. The Catholics are only reacting to being hated. And it's a polite kind of hatred, too. Around the Twelfth the Prods'll say, "Hello." Any other time of the year they'll say, "Hello, Brendan." And it's not just the guttersnipes. If anything, the bloody lawyers and doctors and businessmen are worse -- men who've been educated.'
In the town itself she was surprised to see a Chinese restaurant and a new grey fortress of a police barracks. She stood, ready to get off at her stop. There was something odd about the street. She bent at the knees, crouched to look out at where she used to live. It was hardly recognisable. Shop-fronts were covered in hardboard, the Orange Hall and other buildings bristled with scaffolding. Some roofs were covered in green tarpaulins, others were protected by lath and sheets of polythene.
'What's happened here?' she asked the bus driver.
'It got blew up. A bomb in October.'
'Was anybody hurt?'
'They gave a warning. The whole place is nothing but a shell.'
She stepped down on to the pavement and felt her knees shake. A place of devastation. The bus pulled away and turned the corner. The sound of its engine was drowned by the hammering, the scouring roar of cement mixers. A lorry with a crane reached round and lifted a pallet off itself. Unburdening itself. How was she going to get through the next couple of days?
She passed Granny Boyd's house, the door boarded up. It had always been open when she was a child. Catherine would skip across the street.
'Who's that?'
'It's me.'
Granny Boyd had a cat. Catherine liked to stroke its head and stare into its yellow eyes until it began to purr. She always bent down so that her face was at the same level as the cat's. Purring was the funniest thing, like a motorbike in the distance.
'Catherine, don't you dare. I've told you about kissing cats.'
'I wasn't going to kiss it. I'm just playing with it.'
When Granny Boyd was upstairs the boards squeaked and the light bowl trembled. There were dead flies in the light bowl. When Granny was out of the room, Catherine would look under all the sofa cushions and chair cushions to see if there was anything there, but there never was.
The pub was on a slight hill. When dogs pissed at the door the dark lines ran diagonally to the gutter. The main double doors were closed with a black-rimmed card pinned to them. An Intimation. What a strange word. Her eyes flinched away from reading what it said on the card. She went in by the side door. Her father's name was handwritten above it -- black on cream. Brendan McKenna -- Licensed to Sell Wines and Spirits.
They had always lived over the pub with its buzz of voices. Bar talk. It had a door of grey glass which had a rim of clear glass to peep through. She hated having to go into the bar -- the way all the men looked up and, seeing a girl, would stop talking. When she was fifteen she had come home one night from the school concert just about closing time. Men were coming out on to the street and could hear her father's voice calling time. She had heard this scene every night from upstairs and been afraid of it -- the loud voices, the shouting, the maleness of it. This was the first time she had ended up in the middle of it. Twenty or thirty men of all ages thronged the pavement. Fuckin this and fuckin that -- before anyone saw her. Two guys were pissing in the shadows and their streams were ribboning out across the pavement. In the dark at first they didn't know who she was. There was some wolf-whistling and growling.
'Hello darlin.'
'Fancy going a dander up the road, love?'
'Show us the colour of your knickers.'
One man shoved another younger lad for a joke and he cannoned into her. Everyone smelled of stale smoke and Guinness.
'I'm sorry,' he said. Catherine ran in the door and up the stairs. She heard somebody say, 'That's Brendan's girl.'
'Aw fuck -- no.'
'Catch yourselves on.'
After that she made sure never to be around at that time. She would wait and be later rather than run that gauntlet again.
The building had started life in the 1900s as a bank with living quarters above for the manager. And the joke in the town was to say, 'I'm just away down to the bank.' Wives would say, 'Why don't you rob it instead of giving that McKenna all our money?' Now as she climbed the stairs she smelt again the leftovers of stale smoke and Guinness.
She stood, trying to regulate her breathing. She opened the door and went on to the landing. Quiet talking was coming from the kitchen. For some reason she knocked.
'Come in.'
Catherine pushed open the door. Women were sitting at the table buttering stacks of bread. She saw her mother among them. In five years her hair had gone grey and she looked too old to be her mother. A changeling. Someone had taken her real mother and substituted this older, uglier version. The air was full of the smell of egg and onion. Her Aunt Mary, who sat with her back to the door, twisted round to see who was coming in. Everyone stopped what they were doing. Her mother set down the buttery knife and got to her feet.
'Catherine,' she said. She opened her arms and stood like that. Her chin went lumpy and she began to cry. Catherine went to her and they held on to each other. Both women were crying.
'I'm sorry -- I'm sorry,' Catherine said over and over again. It was her mother who broke the embrace -- to get at the hanky in her sleeve. She blew her nose loudly. The sound seemed to break the spell and one of the other women said, 'We'd better make ourselves scarce, girls,'
'Stay where y'are,' said Mrs McKenna. 'We'll go into the other room.'
Catherine set down her bag and she and her mother went out on to the landing.
'Where is he?' said Catherine. She hung her raincoat on the hall stand.
'In there.' Her mother nodded to the front bedroom. 'Your old room.'
The door was slightly ajar and it was obvious from the faint light that the curtains had been pulled. Catherine turned away and they both went into the living-room. There was a young woman cleaning. She wore yellow rubber gloves and was tipping ashtrays into a bin.
'Geraldine, can you finish this place later?'
'Surely Mrs McKenna.' Geraldine turned and saw Catherine. Her face brightened, 'Catherine.'
'Geraldine Scully.'
'The very one,' she grinned. Then she stopped grinning. 'I'm awful sorry. About your father.' As she went out of the room she touched Catherine's hand. It left a damp rubber feeling.
The room was littered with empty bottles and glasses.
'Would you look at this place?' said her mother. 'There was some crowd in last night.'
'Did you stay up all night?'
'No -- till about two. The doctor gave me a pill to knock me out. I just went to bed and left Paddy in charge.' They sat down. Catherine cleared her throat.
'Paddy?'
'Paddy Keegan -- our barman. He's been great. Just took over. One of the world's most genuine men. I don't know what I'd have done without him. He put the notice in the papers -- worded it nicely and all -- got Carlin's, the undertakers -- drove the whole way to Cookstown to register the death. Aw, Paddy's been great -- he's away home for a sleep now.'
'When's the funeral?'
'From here tonight at seven. Then in the morning at ten. From the church.'
They both nodded. Her mother massaged her hands. Her fingers were shiny with butter. She said, 'How are you?'
'I'm fine.'
'So you've moved off the island?'
'Yeah.'
'To Glasgow?'
'Yeah. How did you get my number?'
'Paddy spent the whole day on the phone -- contacting everybody. He's a gem.'
Again they both nodded. Outside, a lorry climbed the hill in low gear. The street seemed to be full of a constant hammering.
'What happened?'
'A massive heart attack. He'd had one or two wee warnings but ...'
'Where was he?'
'He said he wasn't feeling great. Yesterday morning. Was it yesterday or the day before? God, I don't know which end of me is up. Anyway, he felt sickish and had a bit of a pain across here.' She touched her chest. Catherine noticed the rings, the gold ring and the engagement ring. 'And he'd been having these pains in his upper arm, of all places. I told him to take his tablets. And off he went, down to open the bar. The next time I saw him he was dead. They'd put him on two tables, rather than leave him on the floor. Malachy McCarthy end Jimmy were the ones who were with him. The early drinking crew.'
Catherine stared at her mother, then got up and went to her and put her arms around her. Her mother laid her grey hair against her daughter's breast. There were no tears now.
'This is getting us nowhere,' said Mrs McKenna rising to her feet.
Catherine said, 'That was terrible about the bomb.'
'I like the way you phoned to check we were all still alive.'
'There's days go by, weeks maybe, when I never see the news. I just didn't know.'
'We missed the worst of it. It went off further up the street. Your father was so angry about it. "It's our own kind doing this to us". That's what he kept saying.'
'The IRA?'
'Who else?'
'It's awful.'
'It's a policy they have now. Blowing the hearts out of all the wee towns.'
The two women stood facing each other.
'You're looking well.'
'I don't feel it,' said Catherine. Her mother's face became concerned.
'Is anything wrong?'
'No -- no ... apart from my father being dead.' Catherine smiled a sad kind of a smile.
'You'd better come in and see him.'
'I don't know whether I can. Whether I want to. I've never seen anyone dead before.'
'Did you not see Granny Boyd?'
'No. You wouldn't let me.'
'Well ...' Her mother began to wipe the butter off her hands with her apron. 'Maybe a cuppa tea, first?'
Catherine nodded. They went back into the kitchen. The women making the sandwiches did not say much -- there was just the sound of knives and an awkwardness in the silence. A fear of saying something out of turn. Geraldine, still wearing the yellow gloves, said, 'Is that you two finished in there?'
'Yes, love. I'm making more tea.'
'Some of us have work to do.'
Geraldine lifted her bucket and walked to the door. She spoke to Catherine and waggled the yellow fingers of her left hand, 'How's the piano playing going?'
'Fine,' Catherine smiled.
Mrs Gallagher said, 'Open another tin of salmon there.' Catherine looked around for the tin opener but another woman beat her to it. 'We'd be far better off giving everybody a couple of quid and sending them down to the Chinaman's for chips with curry sauce.' Everybody smiled.
'What's it like?' asked Catherine.
'Very handy. He's open all hours.'
'He didn't do chips in the beginning -- but it was the only way he could stay in business.'
Another of the women, Mrs Steel, was baking. She had taken a baking tray from the table and had eased fluted paper buns from the hollows with a knife. She spooned a little white icing on each and sprinkled coloured hundreds and thousands on top.
'There you are now. A feast fit for a king.' The carton she was shaking from went silent in her hand. 'Aw, don't tell me.' She shook it over her upturned palm. A last coloured speck fell out. 'Would you look at that. There's only one left. And I've another two trays to do. Imagine having only one hundred and thousand left.' They all laughed.
'Our kids call them prinkles.'
'That's far nicer.'
'The sole survivor,' said Mrs Steel, still staring at the speck on her hand.
'The individual matters,' said Mrs Gallagher. 'I was that hundred and thousand.' Then she turned to Catherine. 'Sorry love. I hope we're not upsetting you with our gabble.'
'No -- no.'
Mrs Gallagher leaned over and whispered, 'We're here to get your mammy through it.'
Her mother, with her back to the company, made tea. Catherine remembered the spoon which always lay on the top of the dry tea leaves -- more a scoop than a spoon. It had a coloured coat of arms on the handle.
Once when they'd nearly run out she'd been sent for a half pound of Nambarrie. She emptied the packet into the tea caddy before taking the spoon out. The next time her mother went to make tea she'd shouted, 'It's like a bloody lucky dip.' She'd put her hand into the dried tea to grope for the spoon. The sound of her mother's hand husking around in the tea caddy -- a hollow scuffing -- had stayed with her.
Mrs McKenna poured the tea and handed the cup to her daughter.
'Milk?'
'No.'
'Sugar?'
'No.'
'Changed times. I mind when you took three. I was always washing the sugar out of the bottom of your cup.'
The sound of a Hoover whined and roared from the living-room. Mrs Gallagher said, 'That Geraldine's a great girl. She can do the work of ten.' All the others nodded.
'I'll get my sleeves rolled up later,' said Catherine.
The room fell silent. Next door the sound of the Hoover went on and on. The smallest woman at the table, a Mrs Curran, the only one buttering brown bread, said, 'Your da had a way with words, Cathy, didn't he? Do you mind the night there was the fight in the bar -- the night Barney Neary was in ...'
Mrs Gallagher looked at Catherine and said, 'Barney Neary's a dwarf from Newtownstewart. Not that height.' She put out her hand at the level of her waist. All the women except Catherine were smiling and chuckling.
Mrs Curran went on, 'And a battle royal started. Bottles and ashtrays were flying all over the place. And Brendan said -- "The only man who hadn't to duck was Barney Neary".'
'I can just hear him saying it.' They were all laughing now.
'"She's an oul model and there's no parts for her". That's what he said about Nan in the Post Office.'
Catherine's mother was smiling. She said, 'He heard all these sayings in the bar.'
'There's manys the one can hear the things but never tell them the way Brendan did.' Mrs Curran looked at Catherine. 'Your father was a character.'
Catherine finished her tea and went to the sink to wash her cup.
'Maybe I should go and see him,' she said. 'Get it over with.'
'You'd never forgive yourself,' said Mrs Gallagher.
Her mother said, 'Who's in with him now?'
'Belle.'
'Do you want me to go in with you?'
'I'll be all right. Stay where you are.'
Catherine went out on to the landing and stopped. Then instead of going to her old bedroom she went into the living-room. Geraldine had her back to the door and was still Hoovering the carpet. Catherine spoke her name, then had to reach out and touch her.
'Geraldine -- do you mind for a minute?'
'What?'
She switched the Hoover off and waited for Catherine to speak again.
'I want to go in and see him.'
'And?'
'I don't want the noise ... you know ...'
'I understand ... love. Is there still tea in the pot?'
Geraldine moved off to the kitchen. Catherine went across the landing and pushed her bedroom door gently. A woman, whispering her rosary, looked up. Seeing Catherine she stood and cascaded her beads from one hand into her other palm. Catherine said, 'Mrs McCarthy.'
'Aw darlin.' Mrs McCarthy awkwardly touched Catherine's hand and slid past her, out of the room. Catherine stepped-over the threshold. Think of something else. Don't look. She'd always slept in this room. The light coming through the drawn curtains was yellow. The window was open about an inch and the curtains moved in the draught. Nylon and slithery. The coffin was on the bed. She kept her eyes away from it. It rested on one of the patchwork quilts Granny Boyd had made. The design of the quilt had an odd name which she could not remember. It was either Grandmother's Flower Garden or The Drunkard's Path. The lid of the coffin was propped upright beside the wardrobe. His name had already been etched on the brass plate. How did they do it so quickly? On the wall -- all her music certificates. It was her father who'd insisted they be framed. When she was young she'd accepted them but later they just embarrassed her. There was a wooden crucifix, the wood of the cross dark, the Christ figure pale. Two candles burned on the bedside table. The room smelt strongly of perfume. She traced it to a bowl of potpourri on the mantelpiece. Were they trying to mask the smell of decay? She must look at him. She stepped nearer and the floorboard at that side of the bed squeaked as it had always done. Outside the hammering and sawing continued. Men shouting to one another. She made herself look directly into the coffin at her father.
'Aw Jesus ...' It was him and it wasn't him. Another changeling. He was robed in a white shroud, his hands joined as if in prayer. His fingers were waxy, yellowish -- interlaced and tied in that position by rosary beads. He looked strange lying on his back like this. Everything seemed exaggerated -- his nostrils were cavernous, his nose looked more hooked, his eyebrows bushier. His lips were blue-black and his skin was darker than she had ever remembered it. With his eyes shut the face had lost all its animation, did not seem like her father. A dead face. The face of a dead man was exactly what it was. She imagined him behind the bar smiling -- throwing back his head and laughing. She would never see that again. Ever. Her father was dead. The last time she'd seen him was at Larne. On her way to Glasgow for her post-grad year he'd driven her to the Stranraer boat and waved her goodbye from the quayside. He was always making fun -- this time he took out a white hanky and waved. Then he operatically dabbed his eyes with it, then, such was his grief, he pretended to wring it out.
In a story she'd read once a madman called Lenz had put out his hand to touch a dead child in the hope of a resurrection. How futile. How disturbed he must have been. And then she was crying. The tears were spilling out of her eyes and running down her cheeks and her nose was bubbling. She heard herself repeating over and over again the word daddy. Her own handkerchief was elsewhere, in her raincoat pocket. She stood until the spasm of crying stopped. When it did she wiped away the tears from her face with her right sleeve, then her left.
Out on the landing she hesitated. She went into the bathroom and reeled off several sheets of pink toilet roll. She blew her nose and looked at herself in the mirror. The paper dropped into the bowl, flattened and went dark. Now that she was in the bathroom she felt the need to go. She snibbed the door and sat down, stared ahead. Facing this way, she noticed a new shower above the bath. Apart from that everything was much the same. The long turquoise stain on the bath enamel was still there. From a previous dripping tap. But somehow it was as if she was seeing it all for the first time.
She heard the cascading noise of the flush and the long slow refilling of the cistern. She did not go back to the kitchen but instead went into the living-room. Geraldine had opened the window and the place smelt better. Catherine moved about, looking -- touching. The black upright piano. The piano stool with the squeaking strut. She lifted the padded seat to look inside. The stool lid had a brass support which sounded like scissors as it opened. It clicked into place to prop open the seat. The topmost piece of sheet music was 'Down by the Sally Gardens'. She opened the lid of the piano. The keys were more yellowed than she remembered. She pressed a three-finger chord, pressed it so gently that the hammers did not engage; Silence.
What People are Saying About This
In every sense a triumph . . . moving throughout and ending triumphantly and joyously in its own special music.
—(Brian Moore)
I was reminded of the way Joyce Cary so brilliantly portrayed a painter's life in The Horses Mouth…What a wonderful writer [MacLaverty] is!
—(Andrea Barrett)
Page after page, something delighted and moved me—marvelous, vivid tours of emotions, intelligence, poetry—every step of the way. Compelling.
—(Dennis McFarland, author of The Music Room)