Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan
Chapter Eighty
Marisa sat in the comfortable armchair next to the warm light on the table, fingers poised over the manuscript paper. She was using her old workbook as something to lean on. She had finished filling it in – for now. But she had kept it.
On top was the paper with the five lines, the staves, printed across it.
‘I’m really not sure . . .’ she was saying.
‘No. Is easy. Just listen to me. Every Grumpy Boy Does Fighting. Those are the line notes. Just count, EFGABCDEF. Easy!’
‘How is anything that doesn’t start on A easy? And I thought you said music started with C.’
‘Is detail,’ said Alexei, waving his hand. And he brought his fingers down to play, slowly, and with infinite patience, so she could write it down. She was going back to work part time, opening a satellite office in Mount Polbearne to deal with the ever-rising birthrate. Nazreen was delighted. So she needed to practise her calligraphy. But she was still part of the bakery, of course.
He played a gentle soft tune that Marisa thought was beautiful. She had a secret theory that he was only a bad composer when he was filled with unhappy and angry thoughts and that when he was happy he might be rather a good one, but it sounded egotistical to say it, so she hadn’t mentioned it yet.
‘Is for you,’ he said. And made her write For Marisa on the page.
Reuben had been as good as his word, and had immediately sent over the huge piano. It didn’t remotely fit in the chalet, of course.
It did, however, fit if you knocked both chalets together.
The day the wall came down, Alexei and Marisa were on separate sides. Brick by brick came out – ‘This is a right cowboy job,’ observed the builder. ‘No wonder there was no noise insulation.’ – and as soon as the wall was gone, both of them covered in brick dust, she had leapt through the gap and straight into his arms.
She was addicted to him, completely. His calm, quiet control. The absolute mastery of his fingers, of rhythm; his intense connection and extraordinary physicality. She had never known anything like it. He uncovered in her a completely new ability to make the most extraordinary amount of noise.
She was profoundly grateful they had no neighbours.
That night he sat her down with his own laptop.
‘There is someone I want you to meet,’ he said. ‘She speak no English, I will translate for you.’
‘Okay,’ she said, happy as ever on his big lap. She leaned over.
On the screen, a tiny, dark-eyed woman in a headscarf was peering confusedly into a camera.
‘Alexei? Alexei?’
There followed a long outpouring of Russian.
‘What’s she saying?’ said Marisa. ‘What is it?’
‘Oh,’ said Alexei. ‘She wants to know if you are from good family. What I am eating. But. Mostly. She is very disappointed in my hair.’