about it. But like dreams, Jhoti had her own timing, and could not be summoned up at will.
‘Is it as bad as all that?’ asked Dr Silbermann, her friend in the basement below.
Marvinder went down with her violin almost every day after school. Down to a dim, dusty netherworld, smelling of glue and varnish. It was a planet made entirely of paper. Sheets of music, newspapers, clippings, and magazines covered every possible surface. They spread out, layer upon layer across the floor, or were piled into strange organic-like structures which always seemed about to topple over. There were books rising precariously in tall higgledy-piggledy towers, balanced along the mantelpiece like the distant skyline of some foreign city. The few bits of furniture that he owned – a bed, table, a chest of drawers, a couple of buried armchairs and his old grand piano, seemed only to be there to provide a surface for more books and music.
If anyone came to call, he would sweep a pile of papers to the floor revealing a battered armchair with its stuffing hanging out. Here, in a flurry of dust, his visitor would sit down.
Marvinder never saw him eat. His small gas cooker was always covered in tins of varnish and glue, and his sink never seemed free from jam jars stuffed with brushes, soaking in methylated spirits.
Above the sink hung a row of glistening violins in all shades of yellows and reds and golden browns, drying, after they had been freshly varnished and restored by him. He called them his children, and Marvinder knew that they were all he had left to love, since his own children had perished in the Nazi concentration camps.
But each day when she called, he would study her face, and know her mood and, today, he saw it was solemn and thoughtful. He looked kindly into her eyes and tweaked her chin. ‘So? Has Chicken Licken heard that the sky’s falling down?’ he chuckled.
Marvinder laughed then nearly cried. She hastily took out her violin and began tuning it. When she had recovered herself a bit, she said, ‘Do you think I’ll be ready for my exam next summer?’
But what she was really saying inside herself was, ‘My pa is thinking of taking me back to India to get me married. I don’t want to get married. Mrs O’Grady says he won’t make me. She said they’d all be against it. But if Pa says I must . . . I’ll have to . . .’
‘Of course you’ll be ready. Why, you’d be ready next month if it were necessary,’ Dr Silbermann replied reassuringly. ‘You’re not worrying about it, are you?’
‘No, not really!’
‘You’re getting on like a house on fire,’ smiled Dr Silbermann. ‘By the time you’ve played in the festival and given the Chadwicks a recital, you’ll be truly good and ready.’
‘I was married at your age,’ murmured Jhoti, from inside her daughter’s head. ‘We all have to in the end.’
‘Why?’ asked Marvinder silently.
‘Because you do. That’s what life is about.’ Her mother sighed. ‘It’s our duty.’
‘Were you happy?’
‘Happy? Ah . . .’ Her mother faded.
Dr Silbermann sat down at the piano and began to play the introduction of ‘La Paloma’. The sun streamed through the low bay window, creating a cosmos of molecules, where millions of specks of dust floated like planets, and the old Doctor of Music himself seemed to disintegrate in the shafts of light.
The notes from the piano rocked like a boat. Marvinder made her entry, her bow lightly bobbing across the strings, short and long, breathing out the phrases like a human voice singing.
‘I always think of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, when I hear this piece. I had never seen the sea before I went to Barcelona,’ Dr Silbermann said dreamily, as they came to the end.
‘Where’s Barcelona?’ asked Marvinder.
‘It’s in Spain, where the sun always shines. I went there once as a young man before the war. I gave a recital in a concert hall just off the main square. It was wonderful. We were so young and so hopeful. We thought music was the universal language. That all we had to do was play, and everyone would understand. We believed that music was the answer to all the ills of the world and that Barcelona was the most beautiful city in the universe. We were foolish. We thought that Beauty was Truth and Truth was Beauty.’ He sighed at the memory. ‘Perhaps one day, you’ll go to Spain.’
‘And give a recital?’ asked Marvinder.
‘Why not?’ Dr Silbermann smiled brightly. Then, as he turned back to the keyboard, he played a soft chord and murmured again, ‘Why not?’
When, later on upstairs over tea, Marvinder talked about going to Spain to give a concert, Michael and Patrick roared with laughter, and Mr O’Grady frowned disapprovingly.
‘What’s so funny?’ Marvinder protested, blushing uncomfortably. ‘Dr Silbermann says I might. He should know.’
‘Dr Silbermann’s soft in the head. It’s the war what done it, and him losing all his family like that. Poor sod. I’m not blaming him, but you shouldn’t go getting any fancy ideas, my girl,’ said Mrs O’Grady.
‘I think you should stop her going down there,’ declared Mr O’Grady. ‘It’s bad for her.’
‘Yeah, Dad’s right,’ agreed Michael. ‘All this caterwauling she does. Where’s it going to get her?’
Marvinder was outraged. The blood rushed angrily to her cheeks. Caterwauling? No one had ever referred to her violin-playing like that before.
‘Hey!’ Patrick teased her raucously. ‘No need to go to Spain and upset the bulls, Marvinder. You’d get an appreciative audience down in the churchyard with all them cats.’
‘Or how about the pub on a Saturday night? But none of that classical stuff, mind. You’d have to learn some Irish airs,’ yelled Michael gleefully. ‘I’ll teach you “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”,’ and he broke into the song with great panache.
‘Fancy playing in the pub, Marvi?’ yelled Patrick, slapping his brother on the back with the enjoyment of ganging up on Marvinder. ‘Play us some jigs we can dance to!’
Marvinder got to her feet, with outraged tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I hate you, Patrick O’Grady, and you too, Michael,’ she shouted.
‘Hey, hey! Settle down, all of you,’ bellowed Mrs O’Grady above the hubbub. ‘Stop that silly nonsense, boys. Come on, Marvinder. They were only teasing. You know what boys are. You play like an angel. We all know that. Sit down, there’s a good girl.’
Marvinder subsided back into her place, rubbing her nose along her sleeve and hiccuping with emotion. Kathleen leaned into her and patted her gently.
‘Take no notice, Marvi. You know they’re just stupid. All boys are stupid.’
‘Who are you going to marry when you grow up?’ Marvinder whispered in the darkness as, that night, she and Kathleen lay side by side in the bed they had to share.
Kathleen giggled softly. ‘How should I know?’
‘Don’t
