Chapter Three

Wherever Polly tuned a piano she attracted an audience.

In private homes, owners of family heirlooms brought her a cup of tea while she worked as cover for their curiosity. She pointed out the sweet spots in their instruments and the quirky notes left behind by other tuners and told them how beautiful their precious old pianos were.

At the Opera House, there were thirty-two pianos and she tuned them in the most trying of circumstances. Sometimes she worked in the bowels of the building wedged between opera sets and road cases packed with cables and theatrical gear. Sometimes she tuned in one of the northern foyers on deep purple carpet with the Harbour glittering beyond a massive expanse of glass while tour groups traipsed past. Frequently she tuned on stage, sharing the space with lighting technicians and stage mechs, working as lights were focused around her pitching her into sudden darkness or bathing everything in blues and reds. In the Concert Hall and its rehearsal rooms, visiting soloists nervously waited the almost two hours it took for her to finesse a concert grand before they played it and declared it perfect.

Her favourite jobs were the prepared pianos she left in the local primary school playground. These were battered old instruments rescued from estate sales, all generally so old that achieving a perfect tune was impossible. Polly created new instruments from them – fun ones with sounds that fed kids’ imagination and curiosity. She added bolts, springs, rubber erasers and cutlery to the strings. She added thumbtacks to the hammers and strips of foil and paper to make things buzz. Children watched her, her arms deep in a brightly painted upright. They pulled faces as she twisted her tuning hammer on the pegs, making notes howl and whine. She tuned entire pianos to unexpected scales, left them that way for a month, then came back and turned the whole thing differently, just to mess with the kids’ heads. Those days were noisy and joyous.

But her most appreciative audience was always at the Nerradja Gardens Aged Care and Assisted Living Village.

“Give us some boogie-woogie, bub, when you’re done?” Old Jimmy Fraser still liked to cut a rug. “Take your time, though. Gotta warm up me knees first.”

“Hush it up, Jimmy. The woman’s working. She needs silence. She’s a master at her craft.”

Polly grinned at the usual group of gawkers who’d gathered their mobility scooters and walking frames in a half circle around the piano.

She was bent over the upper register of a B?sendorfer Model 290 Imperial Grand from the 1920s. It was an exquisite instrument in a gorgeous mahogany with maple wood accents. The music desk and the fallboard were carved in a delicate filigree. The pedal lyre was fashioned in a classical bow shape. The keys were genuine ivory and ebony, mellowed with age, imbued with the touch of time. Far more importantly, the hammers and soundboard were a smooth, cool spruce so perfect for their hundred years that Polly swooned just thinking about them.

It was one of her favourite pianos, but it was a beast to tune.

“It’s alright, Mrs Clarke,” said Polly. “You know I don’t mind.”

“Valerie,” corrected Mrs Clarke, as she did every time.

“I know.” Polly smiled and bent her head to her work.

The Nerradja Gardens Aged Care and Assisted Living Village was a small, secluded place built around an old colonial home. Further from the coast and deeper inland than Jerinja and 613, it nestled among the rolling hills of the plateau and provided a home and place of care to the elderly of the farming community that surrounded Polly’s small village. The faces here were ones that had shaped Polly’s whole life. Mrs Valerie Clarke had been the librarian at Polly’s high school and had seemed ancient even when Polly and Toks had been there. Bruce Willoughby Snr had mesmerised Polly as auctioneer extraordinaire at the Nerradja and Merribee cattle yards since she was a kid. Throat cancer took his voice away ten years ago and the auctions had never been the same. Ninety-year-old Jimmy Fraser from Fraser’s Dairy down on the flats by Thirteen Mile Beach had run his farm until his grandkids sold it out from underneath him. The elders of her entire community were here.

She’d had no need to visit the place until Toks’ mum had taken a fall and busted her hip.

Now she visited almost daily.

Polly tuned the piano once a month. That was definitely overkill, especially for an instrument that was really only played by Draga Tokarycz, but the piano was an excuse and everyone knew it.

The home at Nerradja, as well as the whole plateau, faced every kind of weather. Harsh, hot winds blew from the vast, dry inland until they were pushed back by moist, rolling fogs that billowed over the escarpment from the sea.

“Those are terrible conditions for such a magnificent antique instrument,” Polly told the circle of oldies who gathered to watch her that first time. “All those cycles of humidity and dry, wet and heat. This instrument is a treasure. You know it came from Vienna?”

They raised their eyebrows and hummed with interest. They were from a generation that barely travelled – not like modern Australians who were born with a passport in their pouches. Vienna was a mystical city a million miles away.

“Chopin, Strauss and Mahler all composed on B?sendorfers just like it,” Polly added. “Even the Tsar of Russia had a 290 Imperial Grand.”

“What the bloody hell is one doing here, then?” Jimmy Fraser blurted. “We’re smack in the middle of dairy country here, bub. No Tsars out this way.”

But she could see the pride beginning to glisten in their eyes.

“We owe it to the benefactor who donated it and the house,” Polly said. Their elder.

“Bloody oath,” agreed Jimmy, and after that Polly noticed little changes around the piano. There were always flowers on its lid. Someone crocheted a cushion for the seat. Draga worked her way through Chopin, Strauss and Mahler and the residents nodded sagely. The Tsar of Russia was referenced in respectful whispers with an air of secret knowledge. The oldies watched the weather and had Polly on speed dial.

“It’s been a dreadfully wet week,” Mrs Clarke would say. “I’m worried for the state of the B?sendorfer.”

And everyone saw straight through it.

The old folk longed for the company. Polly Paterson was a scarred and broken wreck, a child of their community who no one knew how to fix. And Mrs Tokarycz was far too sharp, far too healthy and far too lonely to be left languishing in a place like that.

They all needed each other.

Justin wheeled Mrs T into the sitting room while Polly was still bashing out some old time rock and roll for Jimmy Fraser. Draga watched Jimmy’s jiving and Susanna Everett’s more cautious sashaying without expression. She’d been stuck in that wheelchair for three years now. Remedial physiotherapy on her hip had not been successful.

“Will the tuning on the fourth octave B flat hold this time?” Draga asked, sniffily.

Polly pretended not to notice her grumpy mood. “For a while,” Polly called over the music. “The tuning pin on its third string is loose. Needs a wider pin.” She ran a cheeky glissando down the entire piano and slammed the song to its end with three loud chords. “Don’t want to do it in this weather though. Risks splitting the pin board.” The oldies applauded and Jimmy Fraser sat down and pretended not to have heart failure.

Polly gathered up her tools – her tuning hammer, wedges and muting felts – and Justin moved Mrs Tokarycz in to play. She struck the octaves above and below the offending B flat and smiled.

“You’re a miracle worker, Polly dear. That’s been killing me.”

Like her daughter, Draga Tokarycz had perfect pitch.

Bella Ambrose shuffled to the centre of the room in her long pink dressing gown and pink slippers. Her long grey hair had been wound into a messy bun at the back of her neck. Draga hid an eyeroll. This was Bella’s big moment. Every day.

“How is it she can’t remember to eat but she can remember this?” grumbled Draga, but she played what Bella was waiting for anyway. Swan Lake. Seventy nine years ago, young Bella Ambrose had wanted to be a ballerina and the only time she ever truly smiled was when Draga played the Dance of the Cygnets for her. They all watched Bella turn slowly on the spot and wave her arms around.

No one begrudged her her moment.

Justin caught Polly’s arm and pulled her aside while Draga played.

“Valerie Clarke saw the article on Ksenia Tokarycz in the paper,” he muttered under his breath. “Wants to organise a tour bus up to the city to see her and the symphony next month. Quite a few of the residents are really keen. They’re all excited about having a famous maestro ‘in the family’ now.” He sounded surprised. “All this classical music you and Mrs T have infected the place with.”

He grinned when Polly swatted him.

“So?” she asked.

“So. Mrs T is refusing to go. You should talk to her. She listens to you.”

“She really doesn’t.”

“Well, she likes you, at least. The rest of us she just tolerates.”

They watched Draga at the piano, playing the piece with a sensitivity that precious few at the Nerradja Gardens Aged Care and Assisted Living Village had the capacity to appreciate. Her eyes followed Bella as if she was a prima ballerina and she took her lead from the old woman’s movements with grace and compassion.

Music softened everyone, Polly thought. It could reach through memory and dementia and loneliness. Maybe it could reach through sixteen years too.

“I’ll talk to her,” Polly said. “I can totally understand her position, though. I’m not sure I want to see Toks either.”

“Yeah. But you’ve got a good reason.” Justin squeezed her hand. “I gotta go. It’s nearly medication time. I’ll see you tonight and I’ll bring Mrs T home for dinner. Daz is making venison pie.”

Routine swirled back into action in the facility and the excitement of the piano tuning was over. Residents drifted away but Draga stayed. She played Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition – the gentle, lyrical moments, and it sent Polly’s mind back to her childhood.

Draga had been her piano teacher. The best one in the district. The Children’s Bach, some intermediate Mozart sonatinas, the Bela Bartok for students. Standard stuff. It got Polly through her grades and made quite a fine musician of her.

It was only in her final years of high school that she discovered Draga had saved the best music for her daughter.

“Have you heard from her?” Polly couldn’t help herself. She had to ask. Draga didn’t pause in her playing. “Will Toks be coming out to see you?”

“You must be kidding, dear.”

“Will you be going up to Sydney to see her?”

The music stopped. Draga’s hands still rested on the keys but she smiled at Polly over the belly of the piano. There was a cheekiness in her expression that Polly had never seen when they were kids. Now she saw it all the time. She wondered if Toks still smiled like that too.

“What do you think, Pearlie? That girl hasn’t needed her mother in sixteen years. She was glad to run away to Europe, to the glamour and glitz of Vienna and Berlin. There’s nothing here for her.”

Polly tried to be offended for her.

“There’s you.”

Draga chuckled. It sounded far too knowing.

“There’s you,” she echoed, slyly. “But we both know that’s not going to happen, is it?”

The music started again. A few sharp bars from one of Korovinja’s most famous composers. This piece had a martial tone and, for anyone who remembered the war, it brought back all the splendour and righteousness of regime-change. It smacked Polly in the chest, though the slighter slower pace Mrs T took it at, in consideration of her ageing knuckles, softened the impact a little.

Draga had chosen it deliberately. She was far, far too sharp to be cooped up in the Nerradja Gardens Aged Care and Assisted Living Village.

“I guess not,” Polly muttered.

Draga switched to a more delicate piece – still Korovinjan but a hundred years earlier, music never corrupted by the propaganda machine back in those heady days in Severin.

“Did you bring my lilly pilly gin?” Draga asked, changing the subject. That was fair, Polly thought. It would be hurting her too.

Polly transferred two bottles of the stuff from her own bag to the calico carry-all that hung over the handles at the back of Draga’s chair.

“Not there!” Draga hissed, but she didn’t stop playing. “If that Susan-woman sees it, she’ll confiscate it. Nazi nurse. I’ve got mahjong with Elsie and Evelyn Choi this afternoon and they’re both filthy cheats. They think I can’t beat them because they’re Chinese and I’m Korovinjan.” The music got distinctly angrier and her grin turned wicked. “Let’s see how well they play when they’re sloshed on your homemade gin.”

Polly giggled. “Who’s your fourth player?”

Draga thumped the keys.

“Cecil Everington.”

Their eyes met and they both snort-laughed. The music stopped. Polly hid a third bottle in the cushions at Draga’s back. Draga’s warm fingers patted her cheek and – as always – utterly failed to linger on the scars there. Polly loved her for that.

“You’re a good girl, Pearlie. You look after me better than my own.”

This was an old argument.

“So, you’ll move into Jerinja then? Still got your room waiting for you.”

“You know I don’t want to be a burden.”

“Oh, I was thinking of putting you to work. The quinces are on in your orchard. I’ve asked Daz to make up a huge batch of quince paste. You’d be earning your keep.”

Draga snorted and Polly laughed. They both knew nothing would convince her. She’d fallen and hurt her hip at 613 three years ago and from Dubai and Hamburg, her two children had simply decided that Draga Tokarycz would be better off in care. Poor Mrs T hadn’t even made it home from hospital. Polly had a guest room at Jerinja all arranged for her, complete with wheelchair ramps and handrails in the bathroom, but stubbornness was a Tokarycz trait. Draga refused to budge.

“I have two miserable children of my own who should be looking after me,” she said back when it first happened, and every other time they argued about it. “You are like a daughter to me, Pearl, but I am not your burden to bear.”

Which broke Polly’s heart every time she heard it because, ever since the Incident, Draga Tokarycz had become a surrogate mother to her. Mrs T understood trauma. Polly’s own mum had never learned to see past the scars.

Draga closed the lid of the piano.

“That irritating Jimmy Fraser says a storm is coming,” she muttered. “A big one to break this hot spell. You’ll be tuning this old thing again once it does.” She gave the piano a pat that totally belied her dismissive words and tilted her head at Polly. It was a familiar request. Polly wheeled her chair to the library where the mahjong table waited.

“You know you shorten its life every time you do,” Draga went on. “It’s a relic anyway. You and your old pianos. I don’t know why you bother.”

She was being sniffy again. Proud. It was another classic Tokarycz trait.

She was right about the piano, but Polly didn’t care. She caught the twinkle in Mrs T’s eye.

“Same reason I put up with you,” Polly said and laughed at the older woman’s triumphant smirk. God, she was so like Toks. “I’ll see you at dinner, you grumpy old bag.”