They’re all trying to be clever. This is how we’re supposed to do creative writing: exquisite descriptions. Shadows of ideas travelling like clouds over the steps of St Paul’s cathedral or memories in a whiff of a ghost’s whisper through the stained glass of the Dean’s Altar.
I can write like this and better. The smokescreen of words that dance and expose pretty nothings to the delectation of the reader. It is a nothing because it has no real feelings though. We try hard to impress the teacher and move a set up, but most of the time our words sound hollow, without real fear or love or humility, only pretence smelling of Thesaurus. I can see through the nothingness. I can see through the ghostly words. I can knock them empty with a single blow of my music.
I’m going to practise my music now. The pods in the choir school are stuffy, but there I’m alone, unless Mum comes to help. I love it when she comes, and I hate it. She smells of outside ambulance sirens and rain and caramel peanuts on Millennium Bridge. Her hand is so soft. She can barely read music, but her ear is good. She brings me Percy Pigs and dry mango.
I love playing music for her, and I love to be on my own in the pod to daydream. I don’t daydream like some guys – you know what I mean. Just started writing film music or something like that.
She loves my playing, but she’s sometimes a pain in the…. “Again”, she says. “And again”… Scales…
There is a girl, but I can’t tell Mum yet. I have a date with her at the weekend, when they allow us, Year 8, to go out on our own. In front of Marks & Spencer at the entrance of Paternoster Square.
I will invite my girl to my birthday, we’ll have caterpillar cake. She likes butterflies, so she must like caterpillars too.
This was a joke. Not bad, hey – just came up with it. Hope she likes it.
I compose for her. Sarah.
But that’ll be all after tomorrow.
I can’t tell Mum. Even less Dad.
There we are. Frensham Pond, my scholarship piece. Don’t know about the piano but will stay with my clarinet forever.
Actually, maybe it’s the piano. Yes, defo the piano. I skipped homework and hid in the music room where the baby grand is.
When I touch the keys, there’s cool water caressing my spine through the ivory. I keep my finger in, phrase the dynamics. It doesn’t talk to me, the piano, it enters through my taste buds. Sometimes I think it is marshmallow – when the crotchets tingle under my fingertips like the roasted marshmallow melts bit by bit on my tongue. Sometimes it’s like blueberries. My favourite fruit. It goes deep in my stomach, it squeezes and lets the juice run like a quiet, sad spring in my veins. The legatos, the pianos, the long notes that I love elongating still – they say I may be a good jazz pianist. I just think of my home, away from the boarding house, when we were happy and Dad was the other half of Mum.
Mum dances a lot in the kitchen. Still does, even if she lives alone with my brother while I board. They laugh and I am all the way here, expected to find the heart to sing every day, Matins and Evensong. She says it’s not like that, she says they are tired and sad during the week, alone and working on homework and food, and bed.
I see them only dancing and laughing, like when we made that snowman because Phil my brother was still a baby and ill and we wanted to make him smile. He did smile. He got better.
Mum and Phil are here with me almost every night, but all I can see is when they are not here at the cathedral with me, when they are home. I need home. My piano. But I also like to sing.
Sarah plays the piano and the violin. She goes home every day. I’m meeting her tomorrow! But I’m not playing her my music. Not yet. Maybe when she comes for my birthday.
Finally, today became yesterday and tomorrow is today! It’s cold, but I’m not taking my coat to Marks and Spencer. Then we’ll go to Starbucks.
I know I’m early, but I couldn’t wait in the boarding house. I had to tell Mr Mannick, he’s nice and I know he won’t tell anyone. Like he hasn’t told anyone about Dad. He’s the best.
He gave me a sweet and said good luck.
It’s 15 minutes now that she’s been late. I’m jumping in one place as the April afternoon is not quite as I expected. I look at my mobile. Nothing.
I know it’s a Saturday and she’s with her family, so it can’t be easy to escape. The cathedral bells are peeling – someone’s practising for the Sunday services. Or for Easter, not long now. I have a solo – the Gloria in Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
Feels like my voice is not the same as before. It even hurts when I sing. It moves octaves, it frightens me, but sometimes it can go so high…
It hurts a bit like it hurts inside me now. She’s half an hour late and still there’s no trace.
I’ll wait a bit more. Oh, what’s this. She’s messaged, she is lovely and so nice and must have had weekend stuff.
“Is your Dad gay?”
What?
Who told her? If only she was here, I could explain…. I learned how to explain about Dad…
What do I reply? I’m not replying.
I can’t be crying. Nobody can see. I’m walking, no I’m running back to the boarding house.
The rain is soaking slowly my limbs and messes with my tears. I can’t do anything at all about anything. I didn’t take my coat. I’m cold. Where am I going? The grey cathedral looms up even colder and quieter now; where are the bells? Why are they silent? Why is everyone so quiet?
Slowly now. I buzz the entry button. Mr Mannick opens and kneels in front of me. He’s just looking in my face not asking anything and then ruffles my wet hair. He sends me to the boarding house to change my wet clothes. He comes to find me and doesn’t say anything. He takes me to the others who are having hot chocolate. Do they know? They don’t seem to know or to notice anything. They’re pushing me to the ping pong table. The ultimate chorister game, after the X-Box. What do I care.
My throat’s dry. I haven’t spoken for a few hours. Not a word.
Then suddenly Mum and Dad appear. They hug me and Mr Mannick leaves with a quiet smile.
Mum’s looking into my eyes, it looks like she’s cried. Her tears are mixed with rain like mine. I always thought, when I was little, that Mum and I were the same person. That’s why when she was breastfeeding Phil I thought I was breastfeeding him too.
Dad’s wearing again his flashy silver jacket and his stupid earring. He is so…
I want to go home to Phil and to Mum and to what Dad used to be. But he is no longer at home, is he.
Phil and Mum.
I want a caterpillar cake for my 13th birthday. Only the Hungry Caterpillar cake, no other.
15 July 2020
Dora Court 