Laszlo is coming up the stairs and sit up expectantly. He’s smiling, but there’s a funny look on his face like he’s not certain about something.
“There’s been a change of plan, sweetheart.”
Hope flickers out. So it was too good to be true, that this strange man who appeared like a fairy king out of a hillside would help me to learn to play. He’s as handsome as a fairy king, too, with the loveliest greeny-brown eyes and too-long hair; the sort of fairy king who would ride a stag or some fantastical golden creature. I turn away to my cello, running my fingers over the instrument case. He’s going back to those people who’ve asked him to help them with their music. An orchestra, he called it. I had hoped I’d get to meet them but I guess I won’t.
“How would you like to come and live with me?”
He keeps talking, something about a house on the other side of London and a room to play music in but relief and happiness is singing too loudly in my ears. It’s not just lessons he’s going to give me, but a whole world of music, like those people in the orchestra have.
“Will you still teach me how to play? Properly play?”
He looks at me for a long time, as if he’s trying to decide something. I try and look like a person who really, really wants to learn how to play the cello.
“Of course.”
He helps me pack up a few of my things into my school bag and a holdall and we take them downstairs. Dad’s at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. I hesitate, looking into the kitchen. Then I go through and stand in front of him. I don’t know him very well lately. He sleeps a lot, and is sick and in pain a lot. I wonder if Mum would have known how to make him better. I wish I knew.
“Dad, I’m going to learn how to play the cello, like Mum could.”
He seems to sort of nod but he doesn’t look at me, and so I turn and go to Laszlo, who’s standing by the front door with his hand on the top of my cello case and my holdall and his music bag in his other hand.
I leave the front door key on the hall table, and I close the door behind me.
I’ve never ridden in a black cab before and it’s so big in the back that there’s room for a cello case. There’s room for three, even. Laszlo’s on his phone, changing the times of meetings I think, and I watch London slip by with my nose pressed against the glass until he taps me on the shoulder and tells me to put my seatbelt on. The cab goes over the river and past the palace where the Queen lives and I see the gleam of the big golden statue out front. We keep driving past a park and onto streets lined with redbrick houses. There’s another park, a big one, with people walking spotty dogs and skinny dogs and hairy dogs. Hampstead Heath, reads a sign. The road goes up and down and winds about and everything’s so pretty and green. A few minutes later the cab slides to a halt in front of a red brick house. It has a shiny black front door. Laszlo pays the cab driver and takes me inside.
His home is a very beautiful house with shiny surfaces and music things everywhere. There are photographs of musicians on the walls, sheet music in neat stacks, funny old instruments displayed on side tables and in glass cases. I don’t even recognize some of the things but I know they’ve got something to do with music. He shows me all over the house, ending in a music room that he calls a rehearsal studio, a large airy space with a great big shiny black piano on one side.
“Do you feel like playing your cello?” he asks me.
I always feel like playing my cello. I get it out and launch into a piece and he listens, hands clasped behind his back, head bent. It’s funny to be listened to for minutes and minutes at a time. I try a few new things out and some of them don’t work and sound horribly squeaky, but his face doesn’t change. When I finish he asks me if I want to play some more, but holding my bow and my cello a slightly different way. I do, and the things I tried before don’t get squeaky.
After, he goes through his shelves and gathers an armload of books and we go down to the sofas. He gives me the books to look at while he cooks dinner. Some are about reading music and I’m astonished that you’re supposed to read these black squiggles like words, and I start learning how. Other books are stories about famous cello players, and I look at pictures of them with their instruments. Every one of them loves their cello. I can see it in their hands.