Rhapsody in June.

            ‘Hey June. It’s nice to see you again! How are you? … No mum today?’

Cassie is trying to peer into the dark hallway as June steps out into the street and closes the door behind her. She stops, squinting and blinking in the sun. She needs her sunglasses but the door is closed, and mum wasn’t there to give them to her. Cassie is watching June’s hands tapping vigorously at the edge of her blue hand-knitted cardigan. June seems uneasy.

            ‘Mum, time for tea!’ June says.

            Cassie smiles and chuckles, her face has a dimple which appears in one of her smooth brown cheeks when she smiles.

‘It will be time for tea when we get back, remember? At lunch time you like to have coffee in the café.”

            ‘Coffee in the café,’ June says, brightening a little. The taps become flaps, and Cassie recognises the cue to start walking, but June doesn’t move.

June carefully examines the peeling paint of the door, the first few notes of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 17 begin to play in her mind. Walking music, thinking music, and she’s torn between the two. Looking at the layers of paint is like looking back through time. She can remember when the door was bright blue, and not the dirty beige it is now; there had been flowers overflowing from tubs and window boxes outside the house. Everything had been brighter when the door had been blue. Mum had been brighter, Mum had slowed, struggling to keep to time, until she stopped, like the clock on the wall in the kitchen when the battery went flat.

The music in June’s head, an orchestra playing, begins to change slightly, percussion missing the beat, discordant notes from an English Horn rattling against the bars which hold them in place, threatening to break loose into chaos.

‘Mum, time for tea!’ June says to the door.

‘It will be time for tea when we get back,’ Cassie replies with her calm, firm voice, the voice which tells June to let it go, it’s time to move on and walk to the café.

June feels better after coffee and lunch, this routine is working at least, the familiarity calms and soothes her. As she walks with Cassie along Fearn Road towards the park the confusing cloud of her anxiety recedes enough for her to take in her surroundings. It’s a lovely day in June, the most brilliant, beautiful month. Mum named me after the best time of the year.

In the park the roses are out, blowsy pink and yellow blossoms sway in the breeze. The lavender is just starting to stick up flower stalks with a promise of summer. June stops to watch a bee buzz through the air before stooping to smell a rose. The scent sends a new melody through her mind, Beethoven’s Romance No.2 in F Major; a string of notes flying joyously free like butterflies floating through her mind. Her fingers tap the air to release the intense music of the flower’s scent into the world.

June leads Cassie to her favourite place, the bench furthest away from the gate. People usually sit nearer the gate, lunch people, busy people, people who don’t stop to see the world. People near the gate are more likely to want to talk, only to be disappointed when they try. Her mouth feels dry at the thought of it, as though it’s full of biscuit crumbs with no tea to wash it down. No-one can make words come out with a mouth full of biscuit crumbs.

June arrives home to Einaudi’s I Giorni. She waits with Cassie for Mum to open the door.

‘Mum, time for tea!’ June says.

‘June, where is Mum?’ Cassie asks, rummaging in her handbag for the spare key. June grabs hold of Cassie’s identity badge to catch her attention.

‘Mum, time for tea!’

‘Yes, it’s time for tea, but Mum hasn’t come to the door so I’m going to go in with you and see if Mum’s alright, is that ok, June?’

Angela is in the kitchen with George. Sometimes they appear in the house, sometimes that’s ok, sometimes it’s not. Coming down from her room June feels wary. Angela’s face is puffy and lumpy like her hair, George’s face looks long, his dark hooded eyes even droopier and wider than usual. June feels her sense of unease growing. There are men in the living room with Cassie, green ambulance men.

            ‘…probably since Tuesday afternoon.’

            ‘June should have daily visits, but we’re so stretched …’

They shouldn’t be there.  Unease becomes panic, the world closing in around her, the tingly feeling in her legs that she should run, the sweat on her forehead and her heart beating fast like she just has; and Angela can always bring on the screams, it’s even easier when June feels panicky-sick and sweaty. She was always able to so easily when they were children, and somehow June always felt like she was at fault, not Angela. Angela never had screams.

She’s wiping her eyes aggressively with a piece of kitchen roll. Her eye make-up is all over her face in smears. Angela wears a lot of make-up; her face smells like plasticine.

‘Your sister,’ George says, because Angela hasn’t noticed her standing there. She’s clutching her phone to her ear.

            ‘Hold music for an undertaker?! I’ve been first in the queue since I rang five minutes ago! It’s not as if the dead people will just up and leave if they stop tending to them for two minutes to answer the bloody phone!… I can’t, George, I just can’t.’

            ‘Here, let me,’ George says, gently taking the phone from her.

            ‘I already hung up.’

            ‘I’ll try a different one … Maybe you could talk to June, try to explain what’s happened?’

            ‘That’s Cassie’s job. Three days George! Dead, there on the sofa, for three days, and it’s like she didn’t even notice, or didn’t care. How am I meant to explain that?’

            ‘I think maybe you’re being a bit harsh there, and it would probably be better if you could calm down before you try talking to her.’

            ‘Calm down? Are you serious? This is shit, utter shit, and I’m left to deal with it. For years mother’s kept her like a pet, trying to keep her calm with music and jigsaw puzzles, even though it’s obviously cost her her health, now she’s dead, and that’s something I should be calm about? Should she move in with us, for me to take over right where mother left off? Until it bloody well kills me too?’ Angela snuffles a gasping sob.

            Stranded in the section of the corridor between the lounge and the kitchen, trapped between the ambulance men and Angela not being ok, June looks at George because Angela’s messy face is making her feel queasy.

            ‘Mum, time for tea!’ June says. She tries to make it sound cheerful, ordinary, like mum says it, but words feel hard, like cold fat pebbles stuck in her mouth.

            ‘No!’ Angela yells, stepping forward. The booming of a timpani and the clashing of cymbals, Holst’s The Planets: Mars – The Bringer of War, straight in at the crescendo.  ‘No tea and no mum. She’s dead you dumb bitch. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back to make you fucking tea!’

            June stares blankly at the wall while her fingers furiously tap out the music in her head, loud, chaotic, and terrifying. Echoing around amid the notes is an angry word,

            ‘Bitch,’ June says, spitting the word back out.

            George’s face is a mixture, like a day of sunshine and dark clouds, and far from his usual calm. He hangs limply near the kitchen sink like the tea towel after drying the dishes.

            ‘How dare you!’ Angela’s voice comes out with the squeal of the frightened piglet at the city farm. Her hand flies out, an angry wasp from a discarded ice-cream wrapper, and stings June’s face.

            The music suddenly stops. For a moment June’s mind is silent, her hands fall still. Then the screams come.

*

            ‘I think you’ll be happy here, June,’ George says.

            ‘June,’ June replies.

            George can’t tell if she’s repeating her name or talking about the month, so he carries on regardless as they walk up the drive from the carpark towards the large stately house.

            ‘I know it’s not Fearn Road Park but, if you ask me, it’s much nicer. There are beautiful grounds here. There are roses, I know you like roses, and benches you can sit on under the trees.’

            “And mum left everything to you for this, so you’d better make the most it.’

‘Angela! Really?’
‘You might as well be trying to persuade a dog it’s going to like it’s new kennel.’

            ‘I’m sure she can understand a lot more than you think, and why do you have to be so angry with her all the time? She’s your sister, not an animal.’

            ‘You didn’t have to grow up with her. Having mum pandering over her every minute, having her staring at you, never knowing what she’s thinking. Mum used to make her go with me to piano lessons just so she could get the shopping done without having her screaming in the aisles in Tesco, and she’d literally just stand there for the whole hour just staring and not saying a word. I couldn’t have friends round, let alone boyfriends.’ Angela’s heels tap an angry beat to her words.

            ‘You had me round.’

            ‘We were already married by then.’

            They stop a short distance from the entrance trying to resolve their feelings and balance themselves before going into the building. June shifts her weight from her heels to her toes and back again, not quite ready to give up the motion of walking. She becomes still as she takes in the tranquillity of the gardens and the music becomes Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves. In-between the drifting melodies images of Mum intrude. Her fingers furiously tap the air to release the huge, uncomfortable feelings.

            George turns so that he is facing Angela.

            ‘We don’t need the money, Christine knew that. The firm is going from strength to strength. Perhaps it would be ok to let her have this? And like you said, what’s the alternative?’

            ‘And if she lives another forty years?’

‘Then we’ll pay, …if we also live that long!’
‘Hmm,’ Angela says, and turns towards the entrance.

            Oakhampton Vale Residential and Nursing home is vast. June trudges from room to room behind Angela and George as the woman in the suit gives them “the tour”. Five rooms in June doesn’t want to see any more rooms, each has a different colour, a different size, a different smell, none are small and cosy like home, with mum’s knitting curled up on the sofa like a sleeping cat. Her mind is getting full, and the music is being squeezed, if there’s no room for the music then the screams come.

            ‘Time for tea,’ June says, because she wants a break, but the meaning has changed, and saying this now makes her feel wobbly inside, like her stomach is filled with the tentacles of a cold wet jellyfish.

‘Yes, we can have tea. Would you like tea, June?’ The suit lady asks.

‘June,’ June says.

‘I mean, June, would you like some tea?’

‘Tea, yes please.’

            ‘There’s one more room I want to show you, then we can go back to the lounge for tea.’

            They enter a grand airy room at the far end of the building. It has a huge bay window with French doors leading out into the rose garden, a polished parquet floor and seats arranged in a semi-circle around a large grand piano.

            ‘June, I know you like music. This is our music room. Students from the local music college often volunteer their time to play for the residents, some of our residents sometimes play too.’

            ‘Don’t touch the piano,’ June says, stopping an arm’s length away from it, wanting to lay her hands on the glossy black paint, to explore the smooth ivory keys with her fingertips.

            ‘You can touch the piano, it’s ok,’ Suit lady says. She lifts the lid and pulls out the stool for June to sit. ‘June, do you play the piano? Your mother was a music teacher?’

            ‘Yes, she was a quite a renowned violinist in her younger days,’ Angela replies taking a seat on one of the chairs and bracing herself for a cacophony of random key bashing which will no doubt bring on a migraine later. ‘We both grew up surrounded by music, but June didn’t learn to play. I had lessons for a few years, Mother had a friend who was a piano teacher, you see, but I didn’t inherit the musical gene.’

            June hits middle C and is so delighted by the sound it causes her to giggle. She hasn’t giggled for years, it’s an unexpected and delightful sensation like a sparkler being lit in her brain with the sparks fizzing brightly all the way to her tummy. She taps the note again to be sure of it, then she carefully tries out every key. Pressing the piano keys feels a lot like tapping her fingers on the edge of her jumper but infinitely more rewarding, because the piano responds every time with a sound.

            One by one people wander in from the adjoining rooms. One of the staff records a video and posts it to TikTok ‘Never touched a piano before!’. Her first tentative audience stop to listen in awe as June performs a perfect and beautiful rendition of Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier: Book 1.

Angela is putting the finishing touches to June’s hair as she sits on the fluffy stool in front of the dressing table in Angela’s bedroom.

            ‘You look so pretty!’ Angela says, applying a final flourish of hairspray before standing back to admire her handiwork.

            ‘Pretty,’ June says echoing Angela’s words and her smile.

            ‘Are you ready to go? The cathedral is big, and it will be dressed up for Christmas, it will look a bit different. Remember, when you’ve had enough hold up your hand and we’ll take you home, ok?’

            ‘Ok,’ June says, standing up and smoothing her hands over the soft satin of her ballgown. The feeling of the silky material brings Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue into her mind. Amid the music a new word forms, one she’s recently learned, ‘Hug?’

            ‘Sure!’ Angela says wrapping her arms warmly around her sister and enveloping her in a cloud of perfume. They stand for a moment cheek to cheek. Angela’s face smells like plasticine, June’s does too.

            ‘You’ll do brilliantly,’ Angela says, releasing her. The taps become flaps and Angela recognises the cue to start walking downstairs, where George is waiting in his best suit to drive them to June’s concert.

May 2024