Jane Copland

Piano Lessons and Other Stories

Tom graisseux et stupide is on the inside cover of a uni­versity library Roget!s Thesaurus. I know a Tom. Tom Sherwood. is indeed greasy and stupid, I am to add own opinions about our Tom but I am distracted as we past metallic water under a steely The across the water hasn't changed, despite the that, a long ago, kept me awake at night. Not the town, the western motorway from Atatu Road towards further down, and harbour traverses Rangitoto car window. My father, from Otago, said once the Sky Tower so that they can see the Ranfurly mother added the Bledisloe but after Wellington, but displaced, sure where we are I

Seven fifty-five in south, I am contemplating "Funny sort of " mother. I ..A.A. ...........

rest. Bloody hilarious, it Mum? Ha ha ha. cities have always bothered my parents. Their common re­

spectability is by boundlessness of Auckland: the can never know

from us

never known by Fifteen city, we are still on metropolitan freeway and

a sea urban sprawl: corrugated iron rooves and painted city fences separating the A's from Bls, one nameless family

The grassy at side of the motorway is all dis­tances us from vacuum of suburbia.

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The trees have commenced shedding their leaves in the gardens that back onto the motorised river. We tear past at 130 kilometers an hour, but I see the odd swing-and-slide set, an avery, a trampoline. Under an increasingly angry sky and from the constraints of the overly airconditioned car, the houses look cold and tacky. I wonder what they look like from the front, the side humanity is meant to see. I am nine­teen and on a forced family vacation with my parents. I cannot wait to return to university and independence in another town where my parents are not present.

"I hope the wind doesn't get up," my mother continues inanely. "Get up what?" I ask. I deserve a "don't be smart", but I don't get it.

She is always far more worried that David and I don't abbreviate place names on the way down country. Auckie, Taga, Rotovegas, Toke and closer to home, Feathers have always annoyed her more than our teenage "would ofs" and "I seens."

When I was fourteen I was forcibly removed from Wellington by my parents. My new town was really just Worcester Street. Worcester Street ran the length of town from the river behind the high school to the affluent suburb of Tourelle. Along the way, there were three pubs: the Swimtank just down the road from us, the Terrier in the shopping centre and the Yorker at the shops in Tourelle. The Terrier was the domain of smoky old men who played the pokies on Saturday nights, necks strained at football coverage from Athletic Park. No one under forty was ever seen inside on the pub's greying scarlet carpet, apart from the dotty, awful barmaids and the place's seedy young owner. The Yorker, on the other hand, was really a restaurant with a firm, clean servery and glass-topped tables. I knew of no other small town main drag that boasted three pubs.

Worcester Street's shopping area was nothing to crow about. Worcester Fashions was classy enough, but didn't appeal to people of my age, and the Sportsgirl shop had closed three months after I ar­rived. With the mandatory bank, drug store and coffee shop, the

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three-hundred metres no11:AT<:>O.,

McDonald's and the supermarket at the was good There was else: only suburban

from weather-board, state-built to weather-board more

to drive them, as the town1s

slouched behind

of used-car were

were one!s that a suped up boom-box with an the town's serene oonst

was on its oonsting past on its way

my brother's it upon himself to the river at and sort taking a reluctant

with him. How two of them they were twenty or thirty little rats from their to

jerks was beyond but the two of brushing off as if animals and wrung their necks. It make much

Friday were still accompanied by the sound and would That was

a in a Thorndon Pool}

would be covered by a latex cap, a number Sharpie-ed on the side as a memento from some ancient race around Worser Bay or in the nause­ating harbour. David had been swimming for weeks, but had still failed the twelve-minute test to become a latexed flea.

Pete had offered to get me a drink earlier in the night and I was disappointed when he returned with a Lion Red instead of something green, maybe, in a bottle, with vodka in it. He was having a fling with Patience. She was stroppy, a bit greasy and filling out around the bum; I wondered what Pete saw in her.

"Funny little poppet, your Patience," David had said earlier that night. He and Pete were alike in some ways, both of them very good with the Calvin Klein scowl. Pete had been mooching around me all night, bottom lip protruding so much you could have skied off it. I thought only girls had pouts like that.

"I don't understand you," Pete said, fingering his bottle of beer. "Huh?" I asked. Pete made a face. "I don't mean you." he said. "I mean him." "Why?" David asked. "You must be pissed," said Pete. I thought he meant drunk, and it

took me a while to realise he meant 'angry.' Welly-speak can throw one.

"It's okay," David said. "I'll find something else to do." "You mean you'll take up another sport?" Pete asked. "Like what?" I began picturing my brother playing other sports. Basketball.

Football. Underwater-bloody-hockey. "Canoe polo," came out of my mouth. "You can't lose in a sport

that no one plays." "People in Hawke's Bay play that," David said. "That," I replied. "Was my point."

But the weekend had been wet. My bum was wet on the grass. The wind was biting and Australia had lost the rugby. We had gone to the

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game in gold skirts. On the way home, there were smug people every­where. David grew tired of the smirks and smart remarks.

"Australia," a guy at a bus stop on Lambton Quay had sighed as we'd passed, dejected, heading for the cable car. "Bug enough butch of a country. Puty they can't pliy footie."

"New Zealand," David had snapped back. "Isn't New Zealand the land of saucers?"

"Huh?" the local yob had replied. "Well," David shrugged. "We've got all the cups." Then we'd taken off because New Zealanders don't like smart­

mouthed Aussies. "Her hairstyle is awful," I said to David after Pete had slouched off

towards Pat.ience. "You get the impression that if that ponytail wasn't so tight her face would collapse."

David was wrong about Patience. She was odd, yes, but a funny little poppet, she was not. On arrival in Wellington, I wondered imme­diately if I had made a ghastly mistake in boarding with her, mainly because she had come out of the kitchen and looked down her long, shiny nose at me, saying:

"Oh, so this is David's prodigal sister."

I remember the morning after Pete and Patience had decided that each other was a good idea. At the previous evening's Robbie Williams gig, a gyrating Kylie Minogue had convinced Pete to go slouching up to mangy old Patience, and she hadn't been able to resist, Pete's power-pylon shaped glory enough of a distraction to make her forget his shoe-sized IQ. I slumped into Patience's kitchen at eleven in the morning.

"I've hooked up with Pete," Patience announced. I could feel my eyes bulge at this. She smiled. "He is rather a score, isn't he?"

Part of me felt pissed off, even though I had no designs on Pete whatsoever. He bored me, but when reduced to the lowest common

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denominator, my problem was that Patience was so utterly unattrac­tive that it irked me she could get laid and I couldn't. Or didn't. David had been at the gig with us, but I hadn't seen him since we had been standing at the gates in the light of yesterday afternoon.

"David's gone back up home already?" I asked. Patience nodded. Eyeing the toaster, I knew that today should be for study. The Robbie gig had been my goal for the past six weeks, and now it was over, I was left in exactly the same place as I had been the morning before but with less to live for. Brilliant.

"So he's taken the van?" I said. "Yeah," she nodded, opening the newspaper. "How's Pete getting back?" She shrugged and glanced behind her at the doorway as though he

might appear and answer. "We haven't really talked about that," she said with a devilish grin

that only made me nauseous. The idea of going to bed with her was sickening. The 'we' amused me, too.

"We?" I asked. "Are you gOing, too?" "Ha! Don't sound so hopeful!" she exclaimed. "And no, I won't be.

So he might be here for a while instead." At that pOint I heard a door close and someone cough, and I won­

dered just what I was going to say to Pete when he appeared. What were you thinking? Just how much of David's gin did you drink, you moron?

"Hi," he said, slinking into the room and straight to the fridge. "Morning," Patience chirped. She, at least, must have enjoyed the

encounter. The shiny, waxed ponytail was dropped later that day. As much as

stringy, wild dreadlocks and extensive eye makeup work for pop stars and models, they didn't for our Patience. Maybe Pete fancied girls who looked like they had raked glue through their hair and slept in a chim­ney.

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One Patience was undeniably good however, was playing the piano. On Wednesday evenings she in Hutt, and having nothing to do, I went with We were almost at teacher's house, walking through of wooden lows my cell phone Pete called, but usually was David. I grew tired him ringing me when had nothing to say, and I was pleased to find that this call was not from him, but one of my ex-boyfriends, Liam, who had lived in Wellington a while now as welL

"Hiya,I! he said, a version of you" which I ratherL\"'.LL\"'Y.

liked. "Hi," I said. "Wassupr "Having a party tonight," he "Where are your I glanced at Patience, who was mouthing, "Who is I shook my

head. Hutt."

"Whyr "Patience ... um... " I!Oh, She's not is

" was a silence.

"Well, you could bring her. n

111 don't think she'd come,l! Patience was demanding to now. "Who itr

II 1 said into Halliday," 1 told "He's having a party

Her plunged underneath

come." either.

"I'm going to was half an hour away in Kilbirnie.

"It's okay," she whined. We had stopped walking but she began again, shuffling off grumpily.

"Yeah, we'll come," I said to Liam. "And you're bringing Patience?" he asked. "Yes, she wants to come," I half-lied. The truth was she didn't want

not to. "Well ... " Liam said. "What's the matter?" I demanded. "She does stupid things," he said. "Last time she was here she drank

too much and her parents rang, blaming me." "What?" I asked. "It was when she was still living at home. She got totally trashed

and ended up taking off her pants," Liam explained. "Her mother rang me and bit off my head because her parents had some important busi­ness friends around and Patience threw up on the stairs."

I heard him snort with laughter and couldn't help myself either. Patience was glaring at me as though she could hear what Liam was saying.

"Anyway," he continued, "her mother said I was a bastard and should be strung up. Christ, everyone there was over eighteen and it was her alcohol. That family are mad."

"I'll..." I began, just stopping myself from saying "I'll look after her." "It'll be okay."

"Is she there now?" Liam asked. "Yeah," I confirmed. "Don't let her drink," he said, as though I was her keeper. "I won't," I promised. "All right," he sighed. "See you tonight." "Sure," 1 said, grinning at Patience. "Later," he shot, and rang off. In the quiet, flat calm of suburban Lower Hutt, Patience was pre­

paring to spin out in one of her Wellington school girl tantrums. The quiet bungalows watched on, net curtains hiding disapproving locals

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and knick-knacks. Patience's pink cardie would blended in if hadn't been with and blue sequins and matched with ripped, gratified jeans.

"What did say?" she I to trying be nonchalant.

"He was just worried about mother, II I said. "He was mad about what happened... last time."

"Screw eloquently. "He's a " II

"You don't to go!" I assured "Whatever/' Patience muttered as she turned right a cracked,

well-worn driveway. "I am coming/I! she asserted before rang the doorbelL

"Fine," I said under breath as the piano opened the

I was getting increasingly bored with circumstance and was all but a whisker away leaving Patience's and forever.

At of gives me something to work constant political scandal and of

life. Sitting in car as we drive down country, I am taken idea me in our car on Auckland's motorway during August holidays, two weeks I be back in Wellington

the school. passes as we drive me closer.

home, garage full of junk, my parks familiar safety Worcester

That somebody stole Nissan outside our house, it to bottom the Rimutakas and up. My

out the morning to see wreck, the paint burnt the license-plate. from the my found remains of a tail melted black at one but still relatively fully formed at the other. shape is neat isosceles, billowing like the spin­

2S

naker of a yacht. It looks rather odd up there with the delicately painted porcelain plates, the large silver candlesticks and the small bust of Beethoven. When the sun shines in the dining room window, it glows a hot orange and you know what it's seen; and although safely at home, you can still feel the fire.

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