Romance in A minor: A musical romance (3 page)

"
Some
people are working.
Some
people don't like being marked down on their performance reviews."

Donna rolled her eyes. "No one will care once you’ve heard this news: Justine is getting married."

Several of the girls gasped.

"Really?" Katrina asked, her eyes wide.

Justine's cheeks glowed.

"Congratulations!" Marisol called out, one shoe in her hand. She was just taking off her heels and putting on her flats so that she could go for a walk.

Donna called over the heads of everyone in the office garden, "Did everyone hear that? Justine is getting married."

Calls went up from behind the partitions.

"Congratulations!"

"Congratulations."

"Congratulations. Does that mean you're off the market?" came a British voice, and a bearded face appeared above the partition.

"Andy!" Katrina and Marisol said at the same time. Katrina rolled her eyes.

He grinned and sat back down.

"Oh, you are going to be so happy." Katrina enveloped Justine in a perfume-scented hug.

Marisol said, "Come, let's go to lunch. You must tell us about your plans. Coming, Fiona?"

"Yes, sure."

Fiona was new in the office. She only started last week. She seemed nice enough, but a bit shy. Donna was very good at making people feel at home, making a point of inviting them to come to lunch of after-work drinks. She'd done the same when Justine arrived at the office, feeling lost and bewildered and she knew no one and nothing. After quitting the Conservatorium, she had done a brief course in administration, mostly attended by girls a few years younger than her, but other than that, she felt like she'd moved to a foreign country. Here were all these people who got out of bed before midday and who worried about pencil skirts and high heels.

Justine, Donna, Katrina, Marisol and Fiona took the lift down to the food court at the bottom of the building. Lunchtime was full of talk about wedding dresses and different types of ceremonies.

Was she getting married in the church? Was she going to have a party and reception? Could friends come to the reception? How many guests? How many bridesmaids? What about the dress?

The girls told about experiences with their sisters, their friends and their cousins. None of them were married, but they knew
everything
especially Marisol, who came from a very large Spanish family and had a gazillion sisters and cousins.

In the middle of all that talk, Justine met Fiona's eyes across the table. Fiona hadn't said much.

"Do you have a sister?" Justine asked her.

"Yes, but she's only twelve."

Donna exclaimed, "Twelve?"

People at the next table looked over their shoulders and frowned. Wasn't that just like Donna? Make a lot of noise and embarrass people. She did have a good heart, but if only she didn't blurt everyone's personal stuff out to everyone who was within earshot.

Fiona's cheeks went red. "Yes, she's from my father's second marriage."

Donna sighed. "Oh yes, don't talk to me about wedding and divorced parents."

"Actually, my mother died of cancer when I was little."

That resulted in a deep, embarrassing silence.

"Oh," Donna said and her cheeks had gone beet red. "Oh, I'm sorry."

"There is no need to."

When conversation continued, Justine said in to Fiona a low voice, "Never mind Donna. She means well."

"It's all right."

But she could see the pain in Fiona's face.

Then Fiona asked, "Do you have a sister?"

Justine shook her head. "I don't have any sisters at all, no brothers either. Just me and my parents." That was why she was such a disappointment to her mother, who had wanted her to become a doctor or a lawyer or anything else that would impress her extended Chinese family.

Guess she was a failure, and marrying Tom would improve that impression only a little bit. Her mother would be happy because she could tell her relatives that her daughter had married a banker. Also, Tom impressed her mother with his good looks and flashy car, but Justine didn't think that her father liked Tom very much. Whenever they visited, they were always very cool to each other.

When lunchtime was over they all went back upstairs, chatting in the foyer and the lift, which was full of other people returning from lunch.

To Justine, it was all rather surreal. It was as if this wedding was happening in a different world that didn't involve her. They hadn't even set the date yet. She might have said yes, but it didn't feel real to her.

"By the way, I don't think I've said congratulations to you," Fiona said in a low voice as she walked next to Justine back to their desks.

"Thank you." There was a kind of awkward silence. Fiona was the quiet type, and Justine felt like she ought to say something, but she didn't know what. "I'm sorry for Donna asking about your family. We didn't really need to know that."

They had arrived at Fiona's desk and Fiona sat down, shifting her mouse so that the screen of her computer flickered back to life. "Don't worry about it. It's OK."

"No, I don't think it is, but things get a bit crazy here sometimes. Too much gossip. Everyone just assumes things about you because of the way you look."

She had never felt like that with her music friends. They didn't ask blatant things like why Justine looked Asian while her name was not. Those things just happened in the music world. It was very international.

Fiona smiled. "No, really, don't worry about it. I don't usually fit in very well. I'm used to it."

Justine didn't think she fitted in all that well either. She didn't care for gossip or tv. She didn't care much for clothes.

Fiona could become a soulmate in this office.

She was about to go back to work when she noticed an ad on Fiona's screen, with a picture of a violin. "Hey, what's that?"

She looked closer. It was for the North Sydney Orchestra with a visiting violinist from Europe.

Fiona's cheeks coloured red. "Oh, that's just... I was going to book tickets for that at lunchtime, but there's no time for that now."

"That should be a good concert," Justine said. That was the orchestra where Darren played, wasn't it?

"Yeah. I was going to take my mother. She loves concerts. I don't mind them. Do you know much about classical music?"

Justine hesitated.

Donna said, "Are you kidding? She used to be at the conservatorium before she joined us mere mortals."

Fiona's eyes widened. "Is that true?"

Justine cringed and nodded.

"What did you play?"

"The cello." Justine spoke quietly. Most of the girls thought she was being uppity about music, but she truly couldn't care less about the music the girls liked, and no longer had the money to go to concerts or the contacts to get in for free.

"That's such a wonderful instrument. I love the strings. That's why we're going to this concert. You know I once went to a concert with Hiroshi Hideka? It was wonderful."

Justine bit her lip.

W
hen Justine came home, she stood in the doorway to the spare bedroom. The top of her cello case poked out from a couple of boxes in the corner. Tom's exercise bike stood in the way, but it wasn't heavy and she could easily move it aside.

She carried a chair from the dining table and put it in the unused bit of floor just inside the door.

The case opened with a familiar click. The lid was a bit stiff, but when it opened, that familiar smell wafted up from inside.  Two years of non-use had not made any visible marks on the instrument.

She carefully lifted it out of the case. Her sweaty fingers left moist fingerprints on the wood. She took the spike from the case and screwed it into the bottom of the instrument.

Then the bow. Two hairs had come loose, but she cut them off.

She sat on the chair leaning the instrument against her shoulder. The feeling of it was so familiar, the feel of her fingers on the strings so comforting.

The first note sounded quite dreadful, but after a few, she got back into the feel of it. She played a couple of scales. Whatever happened to her music books?

She leaned the cello against the chair while she found her music in the cupboard. She couldn't find a music stand, so she got a second chair from the kitchen for the books. Most of the pieces were still familiar to her but while her mind could hear the music, her fingers didn't quite produce the sound she wanted.

Oh boy, that was hard.

If she wanted to play in an ensemble, she had better do some serious practice.

Justine played until her fingers ached and until she realised with a shock that Tom would be home soon and she hadn't even started thinking about dinner. She packed away the cello and the music and took the two chairs back into the living room.

She was just making coffee when there was the noise of the front door opening and closing.

"Hello honey."

Tom came into the living room. He carried a bunch of flowers, which he pushed into her hands.

"For me?"

There were pink roses and orange gerberas, some kind of variegated leaf and sprinkles of tiny white flowers. "How pretty. They smell so nice."

Justine put the flowers in a vase and then poured coffee.

"I'm sorry I haven't done anything about dinner yet. I was... busy."

"Oh? Looking at dresses and venues?"

Well, actually...
"Uhm, yeah. Where would you like to have the wedding?"

They talked for a while about the different places, parks and halls that could be hired. Someplace that overlooked the water, they decided, and they'd hold the wedding in spring.

"Some of the places need to be booked a long time in advance."

"Do we need that long?" Tom asked. "It's likely that the posting in Singapore starts in January."

That made Justine feel short of breath. January already. That was not much time.

"Do I... need to resign from my job?"

"I'd think commuting is a bit far." He laughed.

"Yeah." She forced a chuckle. Panic settled on her. Giving up her job. Not that she thought that her job was all that special. In fact, it was very ordinary. It was just that not having a job sounded scary. Her job might not be much, but it was hers, and her colleagues might be
fat-arsed chicks
according to Tom, but they were not too bad. At least they didn't get drunk and shout "Show us your tits" at work parties. That was the type of stuff that tended to happen at the bank parties.

Worse, if she had no job, she would have no money that she could truly call her own. Seeing how Tom worried about money, she would have to ask him about getting money for shopping, let alone money for herself.

"Do you think I'd be able to get a job?" All of a sudden, it was crystal clear to her: having a job was about maintaining a part of her.

"That's not necessary," he said. "You'll be my wife and we can easily live from my income."

"But I'd like to... do something."

"I've heard that the expat clubs are very good for spouses. They play sport and organise day trips. They help in the international school and hold parties."

How perfectly... interesting. He seemed to have forgotten that she didn't like the snobby parents and their entitled sprogs.

"Wouldn't it be possible to find a job?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Maybe, but why should you? What sort of job would you want anyway?"

And that was where the ideas always stopped. Because she had no formal education. She had two years' experience working for an insurance company, dealing with complaints. When he said things like this, she always felt that he implied that she wasn't worth anything. Of course he didn't mean it like that and one day she would tell him how that sounded. That day was not today.

In her mind, she heard Fiona say
You know I once went to a concert with Hiroshi Hideka? It was wonderful
.

She wondered about the people from her year at the conservatorium. Would any of them be married yet? Would they have the money to live her kind of life? That was one of the things that Tom always said.
I rescued you from being poor and penniless
.

But the warm tones of the cello still resonated through her. She had enjoyed playing again so much that she didn't care about money. It was all right to play music for fun. It didn't need to make money, didn't it?

That night, Justine tried to talk about the subject of playing music a few times, but each time, Tom started talking about something else. Music was just so far from the things that he liked that she didn't know how to talk about it. She didn't want to make him feel that what he did for her wasn't appreciated. He'd been very supportive when she was down. She would just like to, you know, get some of her creative life back.

T
he house was an old terrace in between the station and King Street in Newtown. It looked well-used and well-loved, if a bit more run-down than the neighbouring houses, which were all slick newly-renovated terraces with fresh paint and tiled yards with trendy pots with grass, burbling fountains or box bushes, but this yard was a riot of red and yellow poppies, some purple fox-tail flower and Agapanthus. A big Frangipani tree obscured part of the veranda and hung over the neighbours' yard.

Justine opened the gate and waked up the path to the veranda. A white cat meowed and jumped into an open window through which drifted the sound of flute music.

Justine let the cello case slide from her shoulders—how had she forgotten how heavy the thing was?

There was no door bell, but the front door—big and heavy and in need of a coat of paint—had a lion-head knocker which she lifted and dropped on the wood with a sharp
thwack
.

The flute playing stopped. Footsteps approached in the hall and a moment later the door opened.

Darren smiled. "Justine! I'm so glad that you could come."

"Yeah, I..." Seeing the gladness in his smile made her hesitate. He
did
want to see her because he wanted to play music, right? "Nice house."