Music From Standing Waves (3 page)

I swam back to the boat, where Rachel was
cowering in her Little Miss Naughty towel. I took off the canvas
shoes I wore on the coral. They made a squelching sound as I peeled
them off my feet.

“Can we go?” I asked. “I have a violin
lesson.”

“Soon,” said Justin’s dad. He disappeared
into the cockpit. Rachel and I flopped onto the deck and I pushed
my hat back over my sticky hair.

“What’s with the weird hat?” asked
Rachel.

“I don’t want to get freckles,” I said
abruptly. “If that’s okay with you.”

“You’ve got freckles already.”

I huffed.

“I shaved my legs,” Rachel announced,
admiring the shiny calves poking out the bottom of her towel.
“Don’t they look good?”

I shrugged irritably. They looked like the
same round, blotchy legs she had always had.

“What’s wrong?”

I pouted. “I want to go. I have violin.”

“You always have violin.”

I raced into Andrew’s house, my wet ponytail
dangling down my neck and my bathers clinging to the back of my
shorts.

“Sorry I’m late,” I huffed. “I had to go on
this dumb boat trip and they took forever looking at the coral and
then we had to go find some stupid island, then they wouldn’t
listen when I said I had violin…”

“Nice hat,” said Andrew. I ripped it off my
head and threw it on the floor. I clicked open my violin case in
silence.

“Guess what?” Andrew was perched on the edge
of the piano seat and was tossing his pencil in the air. “Me and
Hayley are having a baby.”

“Hey, cool!” I spun around. “When?”

“December.” He pounded a few random chords on
the piano.

“Can I baby-sit?” I asked hopefully.

“Um, I guess.”

“I’m very responsible,” I said. “Just ask my
dad. I pick up all the pegs off the ground in the caravan park
every day for my pocket money. Besides, by December, I’ll be nearly
thirteen.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Thirteen? You’re
growing up, Abs.”

I grinned. “Yep. So can I baby-sit?”

He leaned back against the piano. “Where are
you going to high school?”

“Acacia High,” I told him. “Where else would
I go?”

“I don’t know.” He leapt up and tapped his
pencil on the edge of my music stand. “Show me some scales.”

“Why did you ask that?” I pushed, as I tucked
my violin under my chin.

Andrew shook his head. “It’s not important.
Let’s hear B flat major.”

“Andrew and Hayley are having a baby,” I
announced at dinner that night.

“Jesus Christ,” Nick snorted.

“How irresponsible,” said Mum, slopping a
puddle of tuna casserole onto my plate. “Those two are far too
young to even consider raising a child. I bet it was an
accident.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Mum told me to eat my casserole.

“Jesus Christ,” Nick said again. He had been
in Hayley’s class at school. I decided he was just pissed because
she hadn’t married him.

I picked out the peas with my fork. “I don’t
like tuna.”

“I don’t care.”

“How was the boat trip, Ab?” asked Dad.

I shrugged. “It was okay. Justin’s dad showed
me where Vanuatu was.”

“Vanuatu,” Dad repeated. “We talked about
going there, didn’t we, Sarah?”

My eyes lit up. “Can we go?”

“Why would you want to go to Vanuatu?” Mum
scoffed. “Everything you’d find there, you’ve got right here. Money
doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”

I wriggled in my damp bathers. The sand in
the lining was making me itch. I could hear kids from the caravan
park playing on my mini trampoline again. It had been left out in
the rain and now the springs squeaked every time someone jumped on
it.

“Da-ad, go tell them to leave my stuff
alone.”

“Take that annoying whine out of your voice,
Abigail,” snapped Mum. “They’re not doing any harm.”

I huffed loudly and squashed my tuna between
the prongs of my fork. I wondered if kids had to eat casserole in
Vanuatu.

Rachel walked me home from school.

“Anyone interesting staying at your place?”
she asked hopefully. I picked up a stick and ran it along a picket
fence. It rattled like carriages across a train track.

“No-one interesting ever stays at our place,”
I said. “Anyway, what kind of interesting?”

Rachel smoothed her wiry blonde fringe. “You
know, hot guys.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t look
really.”

“Have you ever kissed a guy?” asked
Rachel.

“No. Have you?”

“What do you think?” Rachel was always
alluding to wild love affairs from her mysterious life down south.
She called herself a city girl, even though she hated the city.
“Everyone’s so mean there,” she said once. “And you have to wear
shoes on the beach in case you stand on a needle.”

“Who puts needles on the beach?” I snorted.
“That’s just dumb.”

“Druggies. My dad says they’re the scum of
the earth.”

“There’s no needles on our beach,” I
said.

Rachel was full of disgust for the city;
though I found out later it had more to do with the grade six
bullies than any needles that might have been on the beach.

“You have to queue for, like, ten minutes
just to get served at the supermarket. And you can never find a car
park. And you know that Opera House? Yeah well it’s not even that
big…”

When she had arrived in Acacia Beach a year
earlier, with her heart frame glasses and Madonna pencil case, our
teacher had sat her in the empty desk beside me.

“She’ll show you the ropes,” Miss Lucas said.
“She’s Acacia Beach born and bred, aren’t you, Abby?”

You don’t have to freakin advertise it, I had
thought.

I tossed the stick onto the road. “Look at
the haunted house. Doesn’t it look scary?”

The old mansion across the road from my house
was covered in chipped grey weatherboards. Its broken windows
peered over the street like eyes. The fading light glowed through
the cracked glass and the front of the house was bathed in a dark
purple shadow. I shivered.

“It is kind of creepy,” Rachel admitted.

Justin called the house ‘Psycho George’s’ and
told me some guy had gone crazy in there; slaughtering his wife in
the bathtub before hanging himself and proceeding to haunt the
place for all eternity. Despite the fact that there was zero
evidence to back up his story, the house intrigued the hell out of
me. I lived in a constant mix of fear and excitement that Psycho
George might one day show himself.

Rachel nudged me. “Hey, isn’t that your
violin teacher?”

I peered across the road to see Andrew
standing on our front step. When I got to the door, he was already
inside. I let myself into the house quietly, pushing my messy brown
hair out of my eyes. Through the closed lounge door I could hear
Andrew’s voice.

“Your daughter’s a very promising musician,
Mrs Austin. I’m sure you know that.”

I pressed my ear against the keyhole.

“Her talent deserves much better training
than I’m able to give her.”

Rachel burst in breathlessly. “What’s going
on?”

“Shh!” I leant back against the door.

“Well what are you suggesting?” asked Mum. “I
thought you were the only music teacher in Acacia Beach.”

“I am,” said Andrew. “And I’m not a
specialist violinist. I think Abby should audition for a high
school in the city. One with a proper music program.”

My heart began to hammer against my ribs.

“Are you serious?” Sarah’s voice was cold and
critical.

“Yes,” said Andrew. “Abby’s a brilliant
violinist for her age. And I’m sure she’s told you how much she
wants to be a performer.”

“Oh please. She’s twelve years old. She
doesn’t have a clue what she wants.”

Andrew hesitated. “Still, Abby’s very
talented. She deserves to have a great teacher. There are a lot of
fantastic music schools all around Australia. Brisbane, Melbourne,
Sydney… If money is an issue most schools have scholarships-”

“Money isn’t the issue!” Mum interrupted.
“Her age is the issue! She’s just a little girl! She’s not going
anywhere!”

“Please think about it. For Abby’s sake.”

“For Abby’s sake?” Mum repeated. “How dare
you suggest I be doing this for any other reason!” The floorboards
creaked as Sarah herded Andrew towards the door. I snatched
Rachel’s arm and leapt across the hallway into my brother’s
bedroom. I pulled the door shut.

“Oh my God!” Rachel’s blue eyes were bulging.
“Can you believe that guy?”

I peered through the keyhole. The hallway was
empty. I could hear muffled voices on the veranda. Rachel pressed
her head against the window.

“He’s going,” she reported, a pink circle
forming on her forehead. She flopped onto her stomach across the
bed. “I can’t believe he tried to make you go to the city!” she
exclaimed, swinging her legs.

I forced a smile. “I know…”

“You know your violin teacher’s really hot,”
said Rachel.

“Gross! He’s my teacher!”

“Yeah well he’s not my teacher. I’d do
him.”

I glared at her. “You’re sick. He’s way too
old for you. And he’s married. And what exactly would you
do
to him anyway?”

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know. Just stuff I
guess.”

Nick and his friends from the farm decided to
go camping in Byron Bay for a week. Sarah said she hated to imagine
how much four boys would smell after a week in a tent. Dad said
he’d bet they’d drink the pubs dry.

“Can I come?” I begged. “I won’t get in the
way. And I’ll pay for myself.”

Nick laughed and stomped on his cigarette.
“With what, your peg money?”

I folded my arms. “I saved ninety-seven
dollars!”

He slapped my back patronisingly, the way I
did to our little brother Tim. “I’ll bring you back some sand.”

I sulked off into my bedroom as Nick and his
friends roared down the highway. My violin lay across my bed and I
swung it eagerly under my chin, Nick’s road trip fading into
insignificance. Andrew had given me a Sevcík study to play and I
had shrunk in terror at the amount of notes on the page. But I was
beginning to make sense of the piece, bowing through the
semiquavers slowly at first, then faster.

My fingers began to sting as they grated
against the strings. Sarah poked her head into my bedroom.

“I think we’ve had enough of that for one
night, thank you.”

“But-”

“Abigail-” She was wearing the old
flannelette shirt she worked in when things in the park needed
fixing. “Our guests didn’t pay to listen to you all night.” Her
heavy footsteps disappeared into the kitchen. “Those curtains in
twenty-nine C are in hideous condition, David,” she was saying to
Dad in a muffled drone.

I glanced at my red fingertips and then back
at the music. Just ten more minutes, I decided, so I could get the
triplets right. I began to bow gently to make sure my parents
couldn’t hear, then allowed myself to drift into the music, my
playing growing louder and louder. I became suddenly aware of my
mother talking again.

“I’ve had just about enough of that damn
violin. I’ve a good mind to take her out of lessons.”

I opened the door and poked my head into the
passage, gnawing at my thumbnail.

“Oh Sarah, be reasonable. You know how much
she loves it. I’ll just have a chat to her and ask her to keep the
practising down a bit.”

“That’s not the point. It’s taking over her
entire life. What about her schoolwork? And that teacher of hers… I
don’t trust him. He’s filling her head with all sorts of
ideas.”

I heard Dad chuckle and imagined Sarah’s
cheeks flushing with rage.

“Her school work’s fine,” he said. “You know
that. And Andrew was only doing what he thought was best for her.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe she does have a lot of talent.”

“He wants her to go away!”

Dad gave a slight laugh. “To study more! You
make it sound like he’s sending her to work on the railroads or
something!”

“So you support him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m taking her out of lessons.” Sarah’s
voice was stony. I was about to rush into the kitchen when Dad
replied:

“No you’re not. You’re being completely
irrational. It’s not fair to Abby.”

“No,” Mum retorted. “What’s not fair is that
her teacher is letting her believe this ridiculous obsession can
actually lead somewhere!”

“Who says it can’t?”

Sarah huffed loudly.

I was glad when Dad stood up to Mum. It
didn’t happen very often because Dad didn’t like fighting in the
house. Peace and quiet, that was his thing. That was why he had
finally settled in Acacia Beach after roaming around Queensland for
a year after his mother had died. Peace and quiet.

When I was little, he used to take me into
the deep water on a surfboard he had bought from a garage sale. I
would cling to the sides of the board as the water level rose
slowly above Dad’s knees, then his waist, all the way to his chest.
When the tide was out, we could go so far away from shore that the
people on the beach looked like Lego men under pinwheel umbrellas.
I would lie with my eyes closed and listen to the hollow tapping of
water against the bottom of the board. Dad pushed me in wide
circles around his body.

“Peace and quiet, ‘eh possum,” he would say.
“Nothing like it in the world.”

Dad met Sarah-Marie at the supermarket when
he was twenty-eight and she was thirty. “I was about to buy a bag
of apricots,” he told me once, “when your mum pointed out you could
buy them in a can for half the price. She’s a thinker, isn’t
she…”

This was my parents’ relationship. Not a
marriage of convenience, but one of practicality, of tinned
apricots and ticking biological clocks. There was nothing to
suggest they didn’t love each other, but also little evidence for
it. I rarely saw them touch and when they spoke it was usually
about the park or one of us. Wedding vows sealed with a handshake.
Children delivered by stork. Ending up with such dull parents felt
like the world’s biggest injustice. They were instant coffee,
butterless toast, while I overflowed with desperation. Andrew had
shown me a way out. I would do anything to take it.