To sit still and be able to touch the keys must have appealed to Alice on many levels. At the most practical level, playing the piano was the opposite of chores—it was a private world where there were no brothers, no jobs to do, no prettier sister to be compared to, no surveillance by Mother, or God. I like to imagine Alice sitting up as tall as she could make herself, her back straight and her arms relaxed. Did she dream of having lessons? Of playing for the church choir? She would need to wait until she was old enough to get a job so she could pay for a teacher.
6
‘I BELIEVE YOU LIKE TO PLAY Buyeer, young lady,’ said Mrs Wilcox. A few weeks earlier, on my seventh birthday, my parents had asked if I would like to learn to play a real piano. From my obsessive devotion to the toy version, they had concluded that mine was a love that would not burn fast and die.
Apart from my grandmother, my piano teacher was the oldest woman I had ever seen close up. Mrs Wilcox was tall and thin and walked with a slight stoop. She had a big round face that reminded me of an orange. She spoke with an English accent and looked me straight in the eye. I felt afraid of her, especially after she had suggested at my first lesson that Mum wait outside in the car.
‘Buyeer?’ I said, bewildered. I had never heard of him.
Mrs Wilcox grabbed one of her earlobes and rang it like a bell. ‘By. Ear. Your mother told me you can play on your toy piano what you hear on records and the radio. Not everyone can do that, you know.’
At home, hunched over my instrument while nestled in the golden shag pile, sitting cross-legged in front of the turntable as if it were some high-fidelity altar, I played, paused and replayed individual tracks, picking my way across a few of the melodies Frank sang, such as ‘Night and Day’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ and ‘All of Me’. Away from the record player, I found that I had not only memorised the melodies but the lyrics too. But just because I could remember the words and copy the melody on my toy piano didn’t mean I understood what Frank or Ella was singing about. What was a ‘lush life’? And how could love be ‘for sale’? It didn’t disturb my parents that I listened to lyrics about adult relationships, no matter how coy the phrasing. In a general sense I knew that Frank sang about how men fall in love with women, but my concept of adult love, like my understanding of how his voice was contained in the grooves of the black vinyl disc I repeatedly spun, remained as remote and vague as the future.
No one quite knew for sure where Mr Wilcox was, or indeed if he had ever existed, but for decades Mrs Wilcox had taught piano and flute to Hunters Hill’s schoolchildren from her home about halfway along the suburb’s long, narrow peninsula. Her living room contained a sofa and two upholstered chairs, a cabinet full of books and knick-knacks, and her black upright piano. Through a large window one branch of a pale eucalyptus tree creaked in time to the invisible music of the breeze.
As Mrs Wilcox talked about the importance of listening carefully and sitting up straight and practising every day, I grew impatient. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I understood instinctively that if I remained still and was very polite, I might get to touch the piano in the corner. I couldn’t take my eyes off it: the white keys looked as smooth and delicious as vanilla ice cream. And then there were the shiny surfaces of the black keys, and the piles of books and papers along its top. I had never been so close to a real piano before. The afternoon light skipped across the polished side closest to the window, reflecting the clouds and shadows.
‘Would you like to come and sit at the piano?’ Mrs Wilcox said at last, though it could only have been five or ten minutes.
Despite my eagerness to touch the keys, I approached the instrument with my hands by my sides, as if it were a horse that might flinch and run away. When I hopped up on the black leather piano stool, Mrs Wilcox helped me into what she called the correct playing position. My feet, encased in white socks with frilled edges and black patent Mary Janes, were still a year or so away from touching the floor. I saw my fingers hovering over the white notes as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to do. The position felt slightly uncomfortable—my arms held aloft as they had been in my few dance classes—but somehow I already understood that in time the awkwardness would pass. Mrs Wilcox had the key to all the secrets the notes had to tell me, and one day soon I would know them.
To practise on a piano between lessons, I had to walk from home around the corner and a short way up the steep incline of De Milhau
