Some day she will leave him too, as others have left him. In the blink of an eye, before he even realizes his daughter is ready to leave the nest, she''ll be gone--as sure as buds become leaves and sounds become notes. Life has this much logic, thinks Enman Greene. He shifts in his scuffed wooden seat, one of a few mismatched chairs in the otherwise empty space. You would expect, given its fancy new digs, the conservatory would be better furnished, he thinks. Piano scales spill through the waiting room''s walls, the bleats of a trumpet, some honking clarinet. Couldn''t they make this grand, echoey house a bit more comfortable for pupils and parents? At least the light is good, spring sunshine pours in through lofty leaded windows. More random notes rise and fall, a broken chord.
It''s Penny''s playing he''s listening to. He hopes his dear girl''s maturing will follow the pattern of a nicely timed melody, though he knows it will have its share of discord, like everybody''s. It''s how life goes, he thinks, adjusting his cane. Tapping it like a walking stick, as if it''s an accessory not an aide. Though some people like to believe life goes according to plan, it''s foolish to think it will, and foolish to baby your loved ones. There will be something seriously out of whack if Penny doesn''t leave. If she finds a man, Enman thinks, may the marriage fare better than his. Though it''s jarring to think of Pen married.
She''s not even a teenager yet. Imagine that baby face becoming a woman''s. He can''t, not really. Yet it is happening, Pen''s growing up. His recognizing it is no epiphany. The odd thing is that until today, her twelfth birthday, he barely entertained the notion. The notion itself is a slap upside the head, as his neighbours in Barrein used to say. They also said, Enman, you crazy-arsed fool, what paradise have you been living in? If everything then had been paradise, he thinks, I would hate to see hell.
The sudden blast of a trumpet shakes dust from the chandelier. How are these students supposed to hear their mistakes over the din? From behind her little window the receptionist points to the clock. Other parents don''t wait like this. Twenty minutes left. Does he seem on edge? He should have tucked the money for Penny''s lesson into her hand, waited in the car as he did before the conservatory''s move from more temporary quarters downtown. But he wanted to see its new surroundings, this turreted, supposedly refurbished pile as grand, once, as the house his wife, his dead wife, grew up in, not that he had ever been inside it. With the Second World War eleven years in the past, the conservatory, like the rest of Halifax, wants to be on the up and up. It''s scrambling to catch up with the rest of the world.
God forbid another war will come and set the province back a further fifty years. But here''s progress: when he was Pen''s age he''d have killed to take lessons in the city. The most his mother had managed for him was some accordion lessons in the room behind the village store. The accordion itself had wound up in a snowbank, heaved there by his father. The conservatory is the last place Enman imagined being, let alone as a parent waiting for his child. It seems only yesterday Pen was toddling around, peanut butter fingers grabbing his fiddle when he finally worked up the nerve to haul it out. Pen had that knack for getting into things he thought were out of her reach. It was especially acute before the sad, saddest, part of their past got put behind them.
Now, squealing violin joins the racket. The noise dips, swells, dips, swells. Like ocean waves, money markets, a panic attack. At least he''s not the panicky type, Enman thinks--luckily, given the scrapes he''s found himself in. One thing he is certain of: he''s never made an instrument shriek like this. A symphony of the harbour''s horns, groaners, and bell buoys would sound more musical. Yet the receptionist doesn''t flinch. Stifling a laugh, Enman clenches.
A stiffness moves from his jaw to his shins, to his war wounds, nerve damage. He reaches for his handkerchief, then inside his sportsjacket for the thin little envelope. Finding it safe there, he adjusts his tie, though it''s Saturday. It''s not every day your daughter turns twelve. Today is the day he has chosen to tell Pen about her mother. "Steady on, man, think harmony," his old bachelor buddy Hubley used to say. Once he got over some of the guilt he lugged around, Enman had lived for music--other people''s music, not his own--as well as for Penny. The same friend would strum a beat-up Les Paul guitar, hoping to entice Enman into accompanying him on violin.
They even performed together a couple of times back in Barrein before Una, his wife, disappeared. But he quit playing even before moving to town. There''s no one here to play with anyway, and practicing is problematic with neighbours so close, living cheek by jowl. In Barrein there was space. Penny''s rendition of the G major scale drifts in as if breaking through fog. Through the door behind which she disappeared, someone coaxes, "Pretend you''re holding an orange. You think Hanon was invented for someone else, Penelope?" The Hanon exercises, devised in 1873, says the dung-coloured book untouched atop Pen''s rented Willis. This is 1956, Enman wants to shout, can''t you people jazz things up a little? Next, he hears Pen stump through an arpeggio, childish fingers forced into a fruit-hold.
"Penelope, dear, this helps the attack." Since when was playing a military maneuver? No wonder Pen hates practicing. Don''t most kids? Yet he insists to her that music is a joy to carry you through sorrow. And playing it keeps idle hands busy, a distraction and a safeguard against less wholesome activities. She''s only been taking lessons for nine months. "Music soothes the savage beast," Hubley used to say. Enman never bothered correcting him. "''Breast'', you mean.
" Though playing violin hasn''t always been the balm or the distraction Enman needed, he sometimes wonders whether, if Una had had more of an ear for it, music might have eased what ailed her. As for Penny, he doubts that nagging is worthwhile. But how do you teach a child that few gains are made without some degree of pain? "If life was all cherries, you''d wind up with wicked gas," his mother used to say. Then, abruptly, Pen''s playing stops. "Jesus turns our sorrow into dancing," his ma also said, quoting her priest, then chuckling, "Not quite." Seconds later, Penny bursts through the doorway, clutching her books. Her body is like a foal''s, he thinks, all elbows and knees, shins bluish below the pedal pushers she had to wear though there are still patches of snow on the ground. Her scowl reluctantly shifts to a grin.
He pats her shoulder. "Give it a few more weeks. Don''t give up. Your birthday gift might help change your tune." "I''m starving." Her eyes flash an adolescent''s impatience. "Are we going to lunch, like you said?" Her plastic barettes refuse to stay put; her straight, fair hair frames cheeks of baby fat. Just yesterday he found her rubbing red stuff on them, lipstick, probably, that Hannah got somewhere cheap.
Hannah, who keeps house for them, no doubt encouraged her. It''s what Hannah does, however she can, being the closest Pen comes to having a sister. Not that either he or Pen can afford to be choosey, he realizes. It''s hard for Penny, not having a mother. If they had stayed in Barrein somebody might have filled in, the woman next door or the one down the hill, either would have helped. He tries his best to look after her. Though not long ago, when prompted by Hannah, Pen asked, "How come you never got married?" "But I did. You know that.
" "Again, I mean." She paused. "Why not to Win Goodrow?" "Your mother was much better looking." On the way to the car Penny flutters and flaps her books in the air. They''re filled with composers he has never heard of. Their covers are as stiff and glossy as when he purchased them at Phinney''s, the music notation book with its leaves of blank staves barely opened. In the pure April sunshine Pen''s eyes have the liquid sheen Una''s did, their irises the same cool transparency. Her hair, nothing at all like her mom''s, has his ma''s ever-so-faint reddish tinge, so he often tells himself.
"Still up for Camille''s? Fish ''n'' chips still the plan?" Hannah will be beside herself with excitement, waiting at home with the cake and presents. Someone needed to be there for the deliverymen. If he''d scheduled things differently, if he hadn''t planned to speak privately to Pen, Hannah might have come along, except she hates fish. "You could just get chips," Penny advised, ever thoughtful. "I still hates the smell." Acting grown-up, Pen acquiesced: "Suit yourself, Han.".