We creep towards our target on our hands and knees. The carpet itches our bare shins. Dropped at Mrs Collins’ piano lessons straight after school in our gingham check dresses, we are not practically attired for a commando mission. This doesn’t deter us. All-foured behind two different chairs, my younger sister and I egg each other on with our eyes. The target, a clear provocation to sweet-toothed children, is a cut-crystal bowl of fruit drops. It cannot be allowed to go unpilfered.
Beyond the fruit drops, Mrs Collins sits next to Sue at the grand piano. The piano’s propped lid blocks her view of the seats where we are supposed to be sitting, politely waiting our turn, aka bored to literal death. These thieving missions, which we undertake weekly, keep us occupied with their frisson of danger and the potential for a sugary reward.
Mrs Collins is busy with our stepsister’s lesson, and she’s very old, but not blind. There is one piece of open pale blue carpet where we risk being exposed on our route to the ‘occasional’ table. (Why is it ‘occasional’? It is always there.) We must await the perfect moment to cross it.
Aha! Sue has messed up her arpeggios, and Mrs Collins turns her birdlike face towards her pupil. This is our chance. Onto our stomachs, eyes on the target. We slither forward, suppressing giggles. We have done this dozens of times, and it never stops being exciting.
We are very good at it.
Until we are caught.
My mother was a talented pianist; a junior exhibitioner at the Royal College of Music (second instrument, the cello). She and my father had met in the school Madrigal Group; both could sing well. He became a physicist, but at home, he was a flautist. When I was young, they would often play pieces together, inviting other musical friends to join them, like our next-door-but-one neighbour, who was a wealthy GP.
The harpsichord my father had been halfway through building for Mum when she left him for that wealthy GP remained half-built. But when she divorced him and married her new beau, she got a whole Music Room. The Music Room was dominated by a Bechstein grand piano. She had played the organs of grand churches, and soon there was a harmonium (a reed organ) which had stops (something I rather wished she had), and pedals for the bellows. Her guitar was there too, though the times when she’d played ‘My Clementine,’ or ‘On Top of Spaghetti’ for us kids were long gone. My stepfather had his flute, several recorders, and later, for some unknown reason, a banjo.
Mum was determined that we would all be musical. From the age of 4 to our 13th birthdays, we were obliged to have piano lessons. We were not allowed to touch the Bechstein, so against one wall of the Music Room was “the children’s” piano, an upright. We each had a secondary instrument, too. That room housed, over the years, Peter’s violin, my cornet and tenor horn, my other brother’s trumpet (we were in Colchester Silver Band together), and the accordion our sister played at international festivals. Peter’s electric guitar, beloved by him but disapproved of, was kept in the bedroom he shared with his twin. After his death, and in his honour, I took up the guitar too. I was never allowed the tenor sax I longed for, and resisted the pressure to substitute my sax-drive with a clarinet.
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