Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Thirty-two

One of Anita’s children had upended a chocolate milkshake on her computer screen, Marisa was informed by text one May morning, and therefore there was no therapy that day. She decided to take a book out onto the balcony instead which probably was therapy even if it wasn’t the type she’d been deliberately encouraged to take that week, which was leaving the house, going to a shop and buying something.

But she’d received another wonderful care package from her nonna – she decided to send back, by return, the best she could do, which was to copy out, painstakingly, her grandmother’s favourite Bible verses in her most beautiful writing. Her nonna had always loved her penmanship, and it was no hardship on a sunny afternoon to inscribe the words, even more beautiful in Italian than they were in English.

Perciocchè io son persuaso, che nè morte, nè vita, nè angeli, nè principati, nè podestà, nè cose presenti, nè cose future; nè altezza, nè profondità, nè alcuna altra creatura, non potrà separarci dall’amor di Dio, ch’è in Cristo Gesù, nostro Signore.

I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor lords, nor leaders, nor the present, nor the future, nor the heights, the depths and no other creature can separate you from the love of God, from Jesus Christ our Lord.

They were pretty verses, whatever you believed; and comforting too, the concept of a huge blanket of love that could never let you down.

She sat in the May sunshine, copying the lettering upside down – her work was always tidier and straighter when she thought in lines rather than the actual meaning of the words – and as the warmth shone on her shoulders, felt oddly content.

Alexei’s four o’clock came in: she was as used now to the timings as she was to the ticking of a clock. It was a young skinny nervous lad – she’d glimpsed him – with acne and a constant look of worry on his face which belied what a terrific player he was. You couldn’t tell by looking at people, was the one thing Marisa had learned. Very confident people would stride up with expensive-looking ‘special’ sheet-music bags, but then stumble and falter their way through everything. This young lad had . . . well. She didn’t know enough about music to know what it was. But when he played, she liked to listen.

He was working on something she wouldn’t have known, but it was a tuneful piece of music that seemed to work like a clock; one bit would start in one hand, then the next would click in somewhere else on the piano, then it would go back to the other side, but slightly changed, like the time had ticked over into somewhere else. She didn’t know the first thing about classical music but . . . she liked it. It was energising and fun.

Alexei, however, was much sterner with him than she heard him with other pupils, and he was certainly never remotely impatient with the children.

Here, though, even though it sounded fine to her – lovely, in fact, a pleasant accompaniment as she carefully scrolled, ‘nè cose presenti, nè cose future’ – nor the present, nor the future – in her black ink pen onto a piece of good paper she’d ordered. Her nonna framed them and put them up around her house, interspersed with the many, many photographs going back to the mists of time. Alexei stopped the music every few seconds, it seemed, to rap out a short command or a correction.

She supposed (correctly) that it was because the young lad was good, seriously good, and this was how he had to improve, but she wished he’d just let him play. She heard the bear growl ‘faster’, and the piece sped up, but badly, something went terribly wrong somewhere, the fingers fumbled and the whole thing came to a crashing halt.

There was a silence from next door. Marisa found herself tilting her head to hear what was going to happen now.

‘Now, what was that?’ said Alexei finally. ‘We are in a competition here?’

‘No,’ came a humbled voice.

‘No. Am I scary person?’

There was a slight pause at this as if it were possible the answer might be yes.

‘I am big person. But am I scary person?’

Yes, thought Marisa.

‘Uh, no?’

‘NO!’ roared Alexei cheerfully. ‘SO! You are not scary! And I am not scary! And there is nobody else here! So! Why are you scared?’

There was silence. Marisa felt slightly guilty but didn’t lean back or dare even start lettering again, in case she alerted them to her presence.

‘You must play like no one listens, like no one cares! If you play fast it must sound like you play slow, that you do not care.’

‘But I do care.’

‘Aha! And that is why my only job as teacher is for gettink you out of your own way!’

It was such a complicated syntax from the Russian it took Marisa – and, clearly, the boy next door – a moment or so to work out what he meant.

Getting you out of your own way. It struck Marisa forcibly. What would that be like? If she could get out of her own way?

‘Now,’ went on Alexei, ‘I want you to play. But this time you do not think nor of the notes nor of the music nor of me . . .’

Marisa half smiled, looking at her work. Nor of the heights, nor of the depths, nor of the present, nor of the future . . .

‘Think of . . . what you had for lunch three days ago!’

‘What?’

‘Play and at the end I want to know. What you haff for lunch three days ago.’

‘But . . .’

‘Do it!’

Tentatively, the boy started to play.

And, almost delighting in her own ability to tell the difference, Marisa nearly clapped her hands. Stripped of thinking about what he was playing, the boy’s fingers obeyed the part of his brain automatically while, presumably, the front bit responsible for harbouring nerves and anxiety and the world around vanished; kept busy wondering whether it had eaten a ham and cheese toasted sandwich or a pasta salad on Tuesday and whether Tuesday had been wet so it would have been a hot sandwich, or sunny in which case if would have been something lighter . . .

The difference was astonishing: the halting sense was gone and instead of it being one hand of the clock and now another, the entire piece danced together as if there was no gap between the low notes and the high notes, that they were all part of the same shimmering continuum, imbued, now, with joy and optimism.

She very nearly clapped again at the end, transfixed by the final rippling sound of the closing notes, but next door there was only silence.

‘You see,’ growled Alexei finally.

‘That’s . . .’ The young man sounded quite jolted. ‘Hang on, does this mean I have to think about lunch whenever I play?’

‘It means,’ said Mr Alexei, ‘you have to be gettink out of your own way.’

‘Thank you,’ said the boy.

There was another pause.

‘Uh. It was tomato soup.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Okay, thank you.’