Hearing Helen Page 3

  She paused again for effect.

  “Because of the large amounts of money awarded as prizes (previously the competition was only for grade elevens and twelves), it has now been opened to all high schools in Port Elizabeth. At first, I thought ‘No’ when the other teachers suggested this, but then a little voice in my head said, ‘Let them all participate’. ”

  My fingers twitched slightly, like they wanted to dance an arpeggio up the keyboard. I imagined Mom and Dad arriving home to see a large truck filled with professional-looking guys in overalls pulling out of the driveway.

  “Who are these people?” Mom would ask.

  “Oh, just the painters,” I’d say airily, waving my hand over the chipped walls, now magically transformed into a sheet of white. “I paid them to do a bit of touching up while you were out. Now that I’ve won the Academy’s competition, money is no longer an issue.”

  Mom would flash her Mia Farrow smile at me and pat her hair, trimmed and shaped, instead of hanging lifelessly round her face, and Dad would run his hand up and down the wall, speechlessly thrilled.

  Hank would be skulking indoors, forgotten. Maybe he would have heard the painters leave and Mom and Dad arriving. Unable to share in my moment of glory, he would just peep round the edge of the curtain in envy, looking on as an outsider as I bathed in their admiration. It was a delicious thought.

  One of the girls, Eve, rose slightly in her desk and put up her hand, waving it agitatedly like a New York businesswoman trying to flag down a taxi.

  “But how can we have a chance against the matrics?” she asked.

  Madame Pandora focused the eyebrow on her. “My sweet child, there will be different categories: one for grade eights to tens, and another for the final two years.”

  “Oh,” said the sweet child and subsided. “Then I can take part.”

  Kean half turned in his desk and mimicked Eve’s words silently­, clasping his hands together and raising his eyes to heaven so that even Eve couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She stuck out her tongue at him good-naturedly, and he gave her a wink that made my knees go weak.

  Kean himself was quite a good pianist, but he didn’t have lessons with Madame Pandora. Someone had once told me he actually went to a private teacher. A guy whose father could afford to pay that kind of money probably didn’t need to win a competition like this.

  If Kean’s dad didn’t waste so much of his money on the succession of Minis who filled his life, maybe he could have afforded to send his son to a better school as well.

  Madame Pandora frowned. “Not everyone can necessarily take part,” she said in response to Eve as Kean lounged back in his desk. “It is of great importance, and here I want you all to listen – yes, you too, lazy child,” she shot at Kean, poking her finger at him so he looked startled and sat up. “And you, and you, and you.”

  She proceeded to point out everyone who studied music, even those like Kean whom she didn’t teach. I liked to imagine that, in some mysterious way, she just knew by looking at the class who was musical, although probably Mrs Smith had told her. “Do not just presume that you can take part,” she proceeded­. “This is a prestigious award. Most prestigious.”

  I wasn’t sure that everyone knew what prestigious meant, especially the way Madame pronounced it, “presti-gee-us”, but the “gee” sounded impressive, like in “gee whiz”. So those of us who’d been pointed out opened our eyes a little wider in attention, hoping she wouldn’t poke her finger at us again.

  “If you wish to participate,” she concluded impressively, “you need to tell me. I shall consider and weigh up my opinions, and then give you my response. That is all.”

  Madame Pandora prepared to go and hauled up her enormous black bag off the floor, its diamond clasp glittering. “Any last questions?” she asked, her eyes panning the class like a sailor scanning the sea.

  “Oh, Madame,” said Kean, simpering after glancing round to make sure everyone was on his side, “how exciting.” Joe was choking in his efforts not to laugh. “May I take part?”

  Madame Pandora gave him an enigmatic half smile. “You may not,” she announced and walked out.

  I saw Madame Pandora again a few days later for my lesson. I was practising scales and hoping she wouldn’t go on for too long because my parents were working late and I had to make supper. Mom had actually meant to ask Hank, but I was sick of yet another supper time with everyone praising him for finding time to cook, so I got in first and said I’d do it.

  “And thumb under. One two three, under. Like a train in a tunnel, under your hand. And count. And shoes back on.”

  I sighed and slipped my feet, which I’d tucked under the piano stool, back into my school shoes. I hated the squeaky sound that the soles made when I pressed the pedals, and I knew if I waited until I started my pieces where I needed pedal, there was more chance she’d notice. Some people can’t stand the sound of chalk scraping down the board; I could listen all day to creaking chalk, but squeaky pedals were torture.

  One two three four, one two three four. The piano was slight­ly out of tune, and I winced whenever I hit middle C, which twanged metallically.

  “Hm, better,” Madame Pandora said, ignoring the twangs. “Yes. Your pieces. Let us see how you have progressed.”

  I had chosen a Russian piece called “Winter”, because it had sounded so beautiful when Madame Pandora played it to me, full of clashing chords and agonised melodies. “It reminded­ me of the crashing waves against the pier in Humewood that used to transfix me so.” I fiddled with my book long enough to squeeze my shoes off again and drag the piano stool really close to hide my feet. I began, counting under my breath.

  “Stop there,” she commanded, a minute later. “Yes, you have your notes now, and your rhythm is satisfactory. Good.”

  I thought I’d take my opportunity.

  “The scholarship you told us about sounds exciting,” I said, to see how she’d react.

  “No, child,” she said firmly. “You are not ready to compete for it.”

  “And the competition? How does one get permission to take part in that?” I ventured.

  “No, child,” she said again.

  “But Madame …”

  “Put on your shoes and listen to me,” she interrupted, raising her finger. I reluctantly pulled on my shoes again. This woman noticed everything. She tugged off all her rings, placing them in a little heap on top of the piano, then gestured me off the piano stool and sat down.

  “You are playing nicely,” she said, “like this.” She played a few bars, perfectly in time and methodically. “Now, listen to me.”

  She paused for a moment, her eyes closed and her fingers poised over the keyboards. Then she dropped her wrist and began playing, her fingers sensing each note, anticipating each sound before they caressed the keys. Even the twanging of the middle C seemed to fade. After she had finished, the melody still seemed to hover in the air between us, weaving itself silently around the room.

  “Did you hear that?” she said suddenly. “That was ‘Winter’. The weeping of those caught in the cold, the sighs, the frost that creeps over the window panes and round the corners and right into the bones.” She nodded to herself and stood up. “What is that? What is that, Helen?”

  I shrugged.

  Madame Pandora banged the music book with the back of her hand for emphasis.

  “It is the heart,” she said. “You are not ready yet.”

  I thought about Madame’s words later as I trudged off to the shops to get ingredients for tonight. I had better develop the heart pretty soon, or I’d be spending my entire high-school career­ at the grotty dump that was Sperare High.

  I walked listlessly around Checkers, my trolley protesting at every corner and revolving three of its wheels backwards like a stubborn donkey. I was too tired to fight, even with a trolley, so I just went in the direction it seemed to want to go, although it squeaked with every step I took. There were ready-cooked carrots and whole beans st
eaming behind the glass counter but I forced myself to go to the raw vegetable racks.

  “Just think,” I told myself, picking up a knobbly sweet potato, which would have to be peeled and washed and would mess dirt all over the kitchen counter, “if you could take part in the competition and win, you could go straight to the pre-made meals counter and order what you liked without looking at the price.”

  If only. I tapped an arpeggio on the sweet potato, thinking furiously. Surely, there had to be a way. Whatever it cost, I had to find a way.

  *

  Five

  JUNE, KEAN AND I got our “child” the next day, one of ten rather pasty-faced educational dolls donated to the school by the marketing department of an up-and-coming contraception company that had emblazoned its logo on each baby’s foot.

  Our baby, who came with a fake nappy and a fake milk bottle, was bald, with a smug smile and a faint moustache-like smudge above her lip that “made her look like Dr Phil”, Kean suggested.

  “What girl’s name sounds like Phil?” June asked, jiggling the baby on her lap to make it stop crying because we couldn’t find the button to switch off her voice. Kean rejected my suggestion of Phillippa, and June didn’t like his idea of Philadelphia, so she became Felicity.

  “I’ll take her home first,” June offered.

  “Great,” I hastily agreed. It was bad enough having Hank playing scales when I wanted to sleep without being woken up every hour by a wailing doll resembling a middle-aged psychol­ogist.

  The next day June walked to school with me to talk about our plans for going to the library. Her eyes were bleary and Felicity was in her arms, screaming blue murder.

  “She never seems to stop,” June said wearily, rocking the doll until the noise died down.

  Despite the lack of sleep, June still looked as neat as a pin. She always arrived punctually at school, tidy and breakfasted, whereas I’d be in such a rush that I wouldn’t have time to eat, and I’d have to keep hidng the rumbles of my growling tummy.

  About ten minutes from school, we heard someone calling her name in the distance. I glanced up, swallowed hard and stared down at my shoes.

  “Hi, girls, may I join you?” asked Kean, a bit breathlessly, as he jogged up. His hair was bouncing as he ran; I bet he could earn good money doing that for a shampoo advert.

  June nodded shyly, and my heart sank. I couldn’t help thinking how good he and June looked together. She stepped back, expecting Kean to acknowledge me. Of course, she had no reason to be jealous, so she could afford to be generous. I hated the fact that she could do that. I would never have done the same for her, I couldn’t help thinking, but I took full advantage of the opening she’d offered me.

  “Hey, Kean.” My mouth and brain felt like they were out of sync, and I hoped what I was jabbering made sense. “We were chatting about the info we need to get from the library for our project.” I continued before he could answer. “I have a list of names of books and articles that the school librarian suggested to me that aren’t available at school. We want to look for them in the city library next week when we’re going there to google for more info.”

  Last night I’d shoved the list into my bag, which I’d tried to sow back together with a buckling needle but then gave up and jammed in heavy-duty staples instead.

  I tried to dig out the list and the bag almost slipped out of my grasp. Kean grabbed it for me, our arms bumping. That, of course, made me lose my grip entirely, and it fell into his arms. Lucky bag! You know life sucks when you are jealous of your satchel.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, realising that he could see the staples holding my bag together and wishing I could snatch it away from him. I waited for the comment to fall, but June was watching and Kean was always aware of his audience. He looked at her, like he was trying to read her mind, then closed up my bag for me and passed it back, his eyes still on her.

  “Thanks, Kean,” I said, extracting the library list carefully from a side pocket. “My bag’s a bit heavy. I guess that’s why it slipped.”

  Normally, if he’d actually helped me with something, he would have bowed mockingly with a confident arrogance that made my mouth dry, but today he just smiled awkwardly.

  “Plea­sure, Helen.” He didn’t bother to take the list from me, or even look at it, but it was the first time he’d used my name like it meant something more than a careless joke.

  Crazy daydreams of Kean and me flitted through my mind as I walked silently beside the two. I imagined him sitting next to me at the piano, like Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, playing “Chopsticks” together. Only with us, it wouldn’t be funny but really romantic, our arms lightly brushing as we played. And when he leaned over, his eyes glistening with an untameable desire to hold me in his arms, he’d whisper hoarsely …

  “Is your bag too heavy, June?”

  That wasn’t right. I frowned, blinking as I heard Kean repeat his question to her. I could see she was torn between truth and desire. Marilyn Monroe and “Chopsticks” dissolved into nothingness.

  “A little. But it’s okay,” she replied, embarrassed, although her face said the opposite.

  “No, it’s not,” he insisted. “Give it to me. I’ll carry it for you.”

  Leave it, Kean, I thought. Didn’t you hear her say she was fine? She couldn’t have more than three books in there. She could lift them with one hand tied behind her back. But he was already slinging her bag over his shoulder while talking all the time. I noticed he didn’t offer to carry the baby. I trailed behind, accompanied only by my rumbling tummy.

  As we got to school, the bell rang and Kean passed back June’s bag with a flash of teeth in her direction. She didn’t say anything, but I could see from the way that she held her bag, rather than putting it on her back, where the stupid thing was supposed to go, that she was wishing it were Kean. Well, her chances of getting her wish were a lot better than mine. My stomach gave a particularly loud rumble, which snapped her out of her daze and made her smile.

  “I’ve got a spare sandwich, if you like?” she offered, holding it out to me. Even her slender nails were neat, not dirty like mine would be if they were that length. I could see from the shine on them that she painted those perfect ovals with clear varnish.

  “Thanks,” I said, embarrassed at my willingness to accept it. Eating June’s lunch was starting to become a pattern, I thought wryly. I unwrapped the carefully folded wax paper and chewed, depressed. Great. June got the gorgeous guy with the Colgate smile, and I got the extra salami sandwich.

  As Mrs Smith would say, such is life. Though not today – her sole focus was on our project. When she passed my desk, I whipped out my list of reading materials that we were going to use.

  “Nice start,” she nodded. She never gave excessive praise, but when she said something was good, you always felt that she meant it from the heart. Even Kean finally noticed the list and stuck up his thumb in approval.

  “Okay, moving on to today’s work …” Mrs Smith started handing out questions on pregnancy, really gross stuff like how expectant mothers get nausea, then stretch marks and varicose veins. She really knew how to make motherhood sound appealing.

  She walked around the class, her heels tapping across the wooden floor as we worked, like a general inspecting the troops. Every now and then, somebody’s doll would set up a siren wail and be hastily taken outside or bottle fed until it shut up. I guessed by the end of the lesson that even Mrs Smith would have a headache.

  “This place is like a day care,” I heard her mutter.

  Surreptitiously, I kept glancing in Kean’s direction out of the corner of my eye.

  He gave me a thumbs-up … I kept repeating to myself, smiling like an idiot at the back of his blazer. I could see he wasn’t doing any work. I wished I was able to mess around as much as he did and still get such good marks. He had switched on his cool new phone during class, which was strictly forbidden, and was showing it off to Joe, who was pretending not to be
impressed. Maybe, if Kean was my boyfriend, he’d let me use his phone.

  Mrs Smith pursed her lips and the tapping heels fell silent at his desk. Kean glanced up guiltily into her face. She didn’t make a big scene or anything, just held out her hand for the phone. I could see he wanted to refuse, but he didn’t dare, though he pulled a zap sign behind her back as she placed it in her drawer.

  “You can fetch it from me after school,” was all she said, and then changed the subject. “I’m coming round to have a look at your answers, so be ready.”

  She bent over June’s work, and I saw her green pen flitting over the page, leaving behind a column of neat ticks. June usually got everything right; if she didn’t, she re-wrote and re-wrote until it was correct. I wanted to roll my eyes, but that wouldn’t go down well with Kean, who was watching her as usual, so instead I smiled sweetly at her. Could any one person seriously be so perfect?

  Mrs Smith moved on to Kean, who winked at the class and held up his book. “I lost my pen, so I wrote in pencil. It’s very faint.”

  Mrs Smith has a strict rule against writing in pencil, and if we had to do drawings they always needed to be in a dark pencil. Now I realised why. The rest of the class could clearly see the blank page, but Mrs Smith was staring at it uncertainly, the muscle in her jaw contracting nervously.

  She glanced at Kean and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. In front of the whole class, most of us shoving our hands over our mouths to stop the giggles, she lifted the book so that it was two centimetres from her straining eyes.

  That was too much for me, and I banged my hand on the desk, my laughter bursting out like water from a broken dam wall. That set off the rest of the class, who roared. Even June was smiling slightly, although no sound came from her lips and she looked uncomfortable. I glanced up at Mrs Smith and saw that the hands holding the book were shaking. I paused at that, but then Kean caught my eye, smiling directly at me, and I forced another laugh.