Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Forty-eight

Marisa wasn’t sure how much later it was, but she found she was laughing hysterically. Alexei was trying to tell her a story about something that he and his friends had done with some snow, but he had lost all his English and kept switching to German, punctuated by some fairly loud swearing at himself and had ended up trying to act the entire thing out, to Marisa’s increasingly hysterical guesses.

‘Polar bear!’

‘I am not polar bear! I am elegant . . .’

He tried to mime again.

‘Hedgehog! Fire engine! Dumper truck.’

They were both in hysterics by this time.

Alexei growled as he stumbled over one of the many lamps glowing around the little room which gave it a cosy air, against the pitch black of the view outside, flooded every thirty seconds by the lighthouse. He had also lit a small black cigarillo which smelled of cinnamon and cloves and was constantly leaving it teetering dangerously on large piles of paper.

‘You’re a fire hazard!’

‘You are fire hazard oven is off oven is on oven is off. Ssh. I thinkink.’

‘You must know!’

Marisa stared at him once more. That huge rugby player’s physique of his was not graceful in any way, but she didn’t hate it. There was something very reassuring about an intensely broad pair of shoulders, after all; a broad trunk, like a tree.

‘But! What are you doing?’

He tried to glide across the room and knocked over a huge pile of old records – they weren’t even LPs, Marisa saw looking at them; they were fatter and older. Gramophone records. She picked them up, surprised at how heavy they were.

‘Be careful!’ she scolded. ‘I am not sure sport is for you.’

‘Is for everyone,’ said Alexei, hurt.

‘What is this?’ she said, holding it up. She’d seen albums before but this wasn’t the same thing at all.

His face softened.

‘Eroica,’ he said softly.

‘Pardon?’

He took the plain white cover of the record, looked around and turned a big switch on a cabinet he had against the back wall. It was the oldest record player Marisa had ever seen, older than her nonna’s, which had a 78 setting. But before he did so he set it down sadly.

‘But I forget,’ he said. ‘You do not care for music.’

‘I . . .’

Then she went for the truth.

‘I just don’t know much about music. I don’t know anything about classical music. I quite like . . .’

Suddenly fessing up to how much she liked Polly’s Backstreet Boys albums felt a little pointless to mention now.

‘Well, I like pop music. But I don’t know anything about what you play. It just sounds . . . so complicated and noisy and . . . a bit boring.’

‘Borink,’ said Alexei looking sad.

‘I just . . . I just don’t understand. I never learned an instrument. I don’t . . . I just don’t get it.’

He nodded. ‘I see.’

She hated to see him sad again.

‘You could . . . you could show me,’ she said quietly.

Again that long calculation with the brown eyes and the long eyelashes. Was that him thinking, or was it his circuits translating English? She couldn’t decide what he was like at all, it was the oddest thing. But she found she liked looking at him while he thought about things. It was quiet in the softly lit room for a moment.

‘Huh. Aha,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

She stood up – slightly wobbly – as he refilled their glasses and carried them carefully over to the piano. There were piles of things everywhere but nothing on top of the piano except for two stubby pencils on the sides.

There was one bench, which he sat on, and a chair on the left-hand side, which he indicated for her to sit on. They were close; closer than Marisa would normally think of as comfortable. Or maybe abnormally. It had been so long. She was once again closer to Alexei, she realised, than she had been to another human being in a very long time.

It felt so strange. There was a heat coming off him; she felt the hairs stir on her arm, right next to him. His side was touching her elbow, but he seemed completely oblivious of the physical contact. She could think of nothing else; as if her elbow seared touching him. He was going through a huge pile of sheet music, humming and hawing to himself, while she felt every tiny pressure of him next to her, every movement, a warm human smell of him – the top of the piano, she noticed, was now actually covered in pencil sharpenings, which explained the woody scent that clung to him, as well as the cloves from his little cigarettes. Even the thick wool of his jumper brushed her like an electric shock and he was completely oblivious; buried in the loose papers with the strange little black markings on them, musical notes and lines and curves and odd squiggly characters that indicated who knew what, but made up a language he could read.

She looked down at the piano keyboard in front of her. She’d never sat in front of one before. She must have banged a few notes at a friend’s house. But to actually sit in front of one.

She found she was nervous. It was the proximity, she knew. The two of them so close, the night so quiet. The alcohol had gone straight to her head; she was out of practice with it and felt extremely peculiar. Experimentally, she leaned, just the tiniest way, to the right. Just the tiniest piece of pressure on his body, the tiniest breath of leaning. He didn’t notice. His bulk, his warmth though felt incredibly comforting.

‘Aha!’ he said, still completely oblivious. He pulled something out, with the same odd scribbles on it as everything else.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We shall try this.’

‘What is it?’

‘You will know it,’ he said. ‘If you have ever seen film or watch TV it is everywhere. Some people say aha it is everywhere I hate it now. But! Because something is everywhere that does not mean bad everywhere.’

He placed it with a flourish on the stand. It appeared to be called after a gymnasium.

‘Am I just going to watch?’

‘No! You are going to play with me and feel with me.’

‘I can’t play though! Not at all! Not a note.’

‘Not a note,’ said Alexei. ‘Two notes!’

He looked down at her hand.

‘You haff very small paws. That is my bear joke.’

‘I get that.’

‘I show you?’

‘Uh . . . yeah?’

He lifted her small pale hand in his huge one. It was only when she felt it she got some sense of the sheer size of the man. Her own little fingers completely disappeared in the gap between his thumb and his second finger. The nails were very short and neat and tidy, squared away against the enormous long fingers themselves.

‘You’re hands are huge,’ she said nervously.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Tiny hands have hard job on the piano.’

Marisa frowned. ‘I suppose so.’

It felt nice, her hand in his large one. But before she had a chance to relax into it – and she didn’t feel in the least bit relaxed – he had taken her smallest finger and put it halfway down the bottom half of the piano. Then he opened the music and put it up on the stand.

‘Here are two notes,’ he said. He took her pinky up again and put it down on one. ‘This is D. It lives between two friends, you see?’

He indicated the two black notes surrounding the white one.

‘D feels very safe and comfortable here with his good friends, D flat and D sharp. They are all happy. It is cosy bed. Stay here.’

She depressed the note with her finger and it made a slippery loud plinking noise.

‘Good,’ said Alexei considering. ‘Although it is late. Perhaps he is quiet and a little sleepy and you do not have to hit him so hard.’

She tried again more tentatively and this time produced no sound at all.

‘Well, and also we continue and push maybe a little harder,’ said Alexei, and Marisa was conscious of holding her breath and found her mind wandering unavoidably – it was the vicinity of another living human being, she told herself firmly, and months and months of deprivation; it had absolutely nothing to do with just him. It could have been anyone, so there, how could she possibly be expected to control her own mind wandering?

But she couldn’t help but wonder – couldn’t help it – as he showed her how to play hard and soft, alternately pressing then lifting her finger, that if he had that much control over just one finger, what could the rest of him possibly be like?

She finally found a way to play the note, even as she felt her breath running a little faster than normal.

‘And now, give me your thumb,’ he said, and she held it up willingly, happy to be guided.

‘This is a G,’ he said, placing her thumb a little further up. ‘Poor old G. There are three friends in this group.’ He indicated the cluster of black notes above the white one. ‘Sometimes they are friends, sometimes they are mean, sometimes they make a gang and sometimes they are horrible. G is pure but she gets lost sometimes. She is a good note. Not like B,’ he continued, mysteriously. ‘B, he is absolutely bastards. Ублюдки. So.’

She looked down at her hands.

‘Do not move your hand now. They will stay there. G is first, then D. Thumb then finger. When I say now, you play one and then the other, yes? And hold them down, keep them down, keep your hands on them.’

His voice was gentle and low, his accent less harsh and his brown eyes were boring into her, trying to make sure she’d understood. Feeling intensely engaged, she did so, one after another.

‘Good, good,’ he said, and she couldn’t help it: she felt something inside herself loosen, like a knot falling away.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We begin. I excusink myself in advance as I have to reach down over you when I play. I am sorry.’

Marisa swallowed hard. ‘That’s okay.’

He smiled at her.

‘You start. Slow slow slow. Now.’

Marisa pressed down the bottom note, and he reached down his huge left hand and, just above her, played a jumble of chords, soft and low.

‘Now. The other one.’

Marisa obediently moved to the D, to be rewarded by an answering group of chords just above her hands, as his arm moved right over hers.

‘Now! Again.’

She did it, as she did so realising she was getting into the rhythm naturally, and that, in fact, she did recognise the music. She almost jumped in pleasure as, as well as playing along with her low bottom chord, his right hand started to pick out the melody in the right.

‘I know this!’

‘Ssh! Keep playing . . . now . . . and yes . . . yes . . .’

She did know it, the lovely lazy French melody, familiar from countless films. It sounded beautiful.

‘Okay, you do not play now,’ he whispered in her ear and stretched over her to play even further down the keyboard, trapping her arm under his. She sat there, trembling, until the music circled around and landed back at the beginning and she played the notes, softly and gently, and realised on some distant level that both of them were breathing in and out in time to the melody. The spell cast around the low-lit quiet room and she felt woozy, dreaming in the music as he took the lead, his heavy presence beside her, and almost entirely on top of her when he took the lower part, a complete contrast to the light airiness of the music flowing from his fingertips. Then, finally, after they had repeated the short piece over and over again, he no longer had to tell her when to play, and she found herself right inside the music, ready and waiting for her turn to come again, even if it was only two little notes, over and over: she felt entirely engulfed by him and the music, even closing her eyes the better to let the melody fill her, and his strong body against her, and the thrill of being a part of it and the thrill of being so close to him and the way they were joined, over the piano keyboard.

When the last note started to die away it felt like a terrible loss, the dying ringing in the air, and she missed it already. Alexei moved; shuffled up the stool as if realising suddenly how close they had been, and that made her heart jump as if electrified, the realisation that he had thought . . . well, who knew what he thought, but her brain was so jumbled and overstimulated she found herself too jumping back as if she had touched something hot; stumbling upwards off the seat, her face bright scarlet, and she turned round and just for a second, just for a moment, she thought with a terrible clarity that she was going to kiss him; and worse, he was looking at her too, with those narrow eyes that missed absolutely nothing and she saw he had noticed it too, and noticed her panicked reaction; that he missed nothing, and that made it infinitely worse.

She jumped up.

‘I . . . I . . .’

She was out of breath too. This was ridiculous.

‘Is strong music,’ said Alexei, but Marisa was in flight mode.

Nonna had been right. Turn up on a stranger’s doorstep bearing food, what are they supposed to think? Oh God, that appraising look. She felt like Vanessa showing up with biscuits and . . . oh Lord.

Face aflame she backed away, and he looked startled and worried, as if he’d done something wrong.

‘I’m . . . I’d better go.’

‘You not like the music?’ he asked.

‘Thank you,’ she said very quietly. ‘That was . . . I . . . Yes. Very much. Thank you.’

‘You played beautifully.’

‘I didn’t play at all!’

His face frowned, his brown eyes looking thoughtful.

‘You were lost in the music, no?’

She reluctantly nodded.

‘Is okay. Then. That is playing. That is all there is to playing. The rest is just exercise. The music you have.’

He too had stood up and was backing away rather anxiously, as if they both realised they had got too close; that there was a sudden quiet in the room; mostly embarrassment, some small, tiny, tiny sense, the smallest of—

No, Marisa thought to herself. She was being ridiculous. She had been on her own for so long she was going crazy. The thoughts that were going through her head . . .

She just needed not to look at his hands, not to even be thinking about his hands. His huge, strong, gentle hands, when he had literally spent the entire evening tell her how much he was in love with a ballerina.

‘I have to go,’ she stuttered, realising as she did so that she was completely betraying herself.

He looked suddenly flustered as if he had done something wrong.

‘Yes, is late . . . I walk you home . . .’

‘Uh, I live just there,’ reminded Marisa.

She looked around desperately.

‘I am sorry,’ said Alexei

‘Why? I mean thank you! I mean . . .’

They both stood, far apart.

‘I will get . . .’ She was looking for her bowl but he misunderstood and rushed to open the door for her, as if desperate to show he wasn’t about to trap her there or that he even wanted her there, which made her feel worse than ever.

‘Of course, good night, good night. Thank you for dinner.’

Too flustered to bother about her dish, Marisa turned on her heel and fled. Just as she set foot on the steps to go next door, she turned quickly around to see if he was looking at her, but he wasn’t, his dark eyes trained on the piano, and she turned back feeling ridiculous, and half stumbled down the steps, just as his eyes now turned to her and watched her go.