‘Are you thinking about the piano?’ he asks nervously from where he sits at the end of our bed, tentatively placing his hand on the blanket where I lie. I jerk away from him.
‘Stop speaking.’ I turn over and look at the houses being demolished across the way.
Before we got together, I thought Albert was a film fanatic. He would come to the cinema at twelve then stay until eight watching the two shows and news three times over. I thought I was invisible in the darkness, anonymous. I was unaware that my face, lit by the amber tulip shaped piano lamp, was being studied like a road map to a cherished place. As I accompanied the silent films on the Steinway he followed the subtle twist of my mouth, the deepening of my brow and the flickering of my eyes and understood the emotional shape of the film. He said I was better than the hack actors, most of whom still acted like they were on stage, without any notion of the finesse that close-up shots demand. I laughed at him, called him soft and decided to marry him.
Another day without music; Albert has left for work. I look over to the small window by the bookcase, to check the yellow blind is down still. I demand that it remains closed as from that window I can see the cinema billboard. Behind the blind the faces of the speaking actors are frozen in laughter. What is that rattling noise? Has Albert left a window open to torture me. Something is tapping or thudding now, like a bird throwing itself against the glass again and again. Why can it not see and stop? With great difficulty I push back the cover and try to stand. My legs have forgotten how to move after days out of use, but somehow, I will myself forward. What beast could be pounding on my window?
I have not looked out for months, but I know the poster on the billboard opposite is for King Kong because Albert told me there were queues from Hope Street to Green Road for this film last week. He knows I used to look forward to premieres. I would try to predict the story line from the posters and trailers and would compose lines in my head on the way to work, singing them out to the passers-by. Buster Keaton was my favourite. We worked well together me and old Pole Face. Those huge tragic eyes, always wide open with disbelief, dragging his world nonchalantly and inadvertently into slapstick chaos. I can’t believe I’ll never work with him again. He’s lost out too over this whole speaking mania. Where will they all go? Gloria Swanson, Harold Lloyd, Louis Brooks? Valentino’s lucky he never had to see this. We’re all lost souls now. I wonder how they were informed of the end of their contracts. I doubt they were dropped as casually as me. There was no sympathy, no gratitude for my skill and loyalty. He called me into his office, leafing through a Universal Studios magazine as he spoke. He was ‘happy’ to tell me they could pay me a week’s wage, but I would not be required to work anymore. Chin up girl, he says, as if I was going to cry in his office. As if I would grant him the privilege of pitying me. Never. I looked at him steely eyed and told him he was an arrogant, small-minded toad who gives all his female staff nightmares by pawing over them with his fat, sweaty, spammy hands and halitosis breath.
No, I didn’t say that, but I wish I had.
I thanked him, collected my sheet music and waited until I got out of the building before I cried.
The tapping is getting louder. I will face my horror. My steps are slow and pure as if I walk on snow. I pull back the yellow blind. A man is behind the glass. He must have climbed a ladder to reach our fourth floor flat. He is waving at me, smiling, so soothingly familiar. He looks triumphant and fine in his vest top and short trousers, not adequate clothing for a Welsh winter. I push open the window and the winter gusts rush in and charge at my bones.
Thanking me, Buster Keaton crawls through the window and pulls it closed. He makes a little bow and offers a smile, then surveys the room with great interest. Not knowing what else to do I show him my elegantly manicured and half varnished nails. I take a twisted pride in my tuneless claws. Since piano playing always forced me to keep them short, they mark the amount of time I’ve gone without touching a keyboard. He shakes his head morosely. We’re both thinking the same thing.
Fearful that I will cause him to dwell on his flopped career I attempt to change the subject by making us both an Ovaltine. We sit on the step by the front door warming our hands on the steaming mugs. I always used to sit there at midday to enjoy the long silent triangle of sun that warms the bare floor. I look down at his big booted feet and he looks at my tiny bare feet. We both giggle. It’s a relief not to have to talk, just to be understood. His skin has a slightly sepia tone to it and his body casts no shadow. He places his bowler hat on my head, then carries me to my bed.
The bells ring five. Knowing Albert will be home soon I reluctantly suggest that Buster leave. My film hero refuses, he nobly states that he will never abandon me. Instead, he hides in the broom cupboard. I sink back into bed and turn to the window. The demolition ball swings into the building opposite and the groaning walls collapse like defeated boxers.
Albert comes in stooping. He always seems apologetic about his height. He looks nervous tonight and smells of sulphur. He comes over to the bed and feels my head.
‘You’ve got a temperature Claira my sweet love. Let me make you some paracetamol to bring down the fever. Please let me call a doctor.’
‘What’s a doctor going to do? Turn back time? Get back my work? Employ the military piano to kill them all?’
I wonder if Albert has noticed the two mugs in the sink when he leaves for work in the morning.
The church bells are ringing and my fingers have pins and needles. I tap out a tune on the stiff wool bed cover. I’m worried about what they’ve done with my beloved old piano. I shudder to think of the clumsy oafs trying to move it. Then I laugh at the delicious possibility of the piano’s revenge. The vain talking actress and the manager will be standing at the bottom of the marble stairs. She turns momentarily to adjust her feathered hat and it falls into her line of vision, the usurped Steinway grand piano, its lid open like a screaming mouth, spitting out white and black teeth, thundering down the polished steps. There is an operatic moment when the manager and the actress sound like they are singing falsetto, piercing through the deep roar of the piano. A split second later the loquacious actress, the money grabbing manager and the piano embrace each other in a silent mesh of string and flesh, keys and bones, splintered wood and ripped stocking.
How I would love a compose a symphony for this. The symphony of the homicidal piano. Kamikaze pianoforte. It would end with eight bars of usherettes sweeping up the remains of piano and people. Swish swish swish sigh swish swish swish sigh swish swish swish sigh… and then a final ping as one of the piano harp strings break.
Buster discovers my gramophone record collection, and we spend the day dancing together to old hits. It’s better than radio because it doesn’t lash out at me with announcements about the new speaking film stars. Whilst waltzing we make an unspoken pact that we will never mention our sad fate. We tear at the wallpaper and write letters to each other, stories, poems, narration for silent films that we act out. The room is transformed into a slapstick chaos as Buster performs for me. I accompany him with whatever comes to hand, blowing on empty bottles, a xylophone made of singing glasses of water, drumming on the bed frame. We chat in mime about Buster’s old vaudeville days, touring theatres with his family. He tells me about the escapades of his work colleague Harry Houdini.
When the evening draws in and Albert is due back from work we are both irritated. Neither of us wants to stop. Albert has become like a villain that hinders all that is good and fun in the world. Still in clowning mode, I hide behind the door to surprise Albert. He stands looking at the empty room with a puzzled expression on his face. I leap out like a tiger. The poor thing looks like a startled goose. I burst into fits of laughter. I hear Buster sniggering in the cupboard. Albert is not amused. Spoilsport! Killjoy! Baa Humbug!
Albert says he’s concerned about me. It’s been 6 months since they asked me to leave the picture house and I’ve hardly been out of the flat. Don’t I think it would be good for me to just go for a walk from time to time, see my friends. Do I not care about the outside world? I’d probably be able to get some work if I talked to people.
His nagging annoys me and Buster. I know Buster is rolling his eyes and sighing in the cupboard. I crawl back into bed and let Albert make his dinner in silence.
The next day Buster tells me that its Albert’s fault that we’re out of work. ‘He’s the scientist. They made developments in film that put us out of work.’
‘Don’t be silly. He’s only a pharmacist.’
But once Buster gets something in his head you can’t get through to him. ‘Get rid of him. I’ll look after you.’
‘But things are not so simple, Buster. It’s not like the movies with the Goodies and the Baddies.’
Before I can stop him, Buster takes some scissors to Albert’s Sunday bests, then smashes all the glass in the flat. He declares his love for me and kisses me passionately. Buster has swept me into the melodrama of one of his films. I can hear the piano glissando-ing. I imagine the ragtime plinking panic. All eyes are on me and Buster.
Albert wouldn’t like this film.
When Albert finds his cut up clothes and smashed glass, he doesn’t say anything. He just picks up the clothes and sweeps up the glass. Swish swish swish sigh. Swish swish swish sigh. He pulls back the covers and finds my feet bloody from standing on splintered glass. He washes my soles and gently daps them with antiseptic. I’m disappointed, I was expecting drama.
In the night I hear Albert’s muffling sobs. The unfamiliar sound makes me tremble and ache. I have a sudden instinctive urge to comfort him but check myself.
I can’t.
I know Buster is watching from the cupboard.
Albert slips out of bed in the morning, quietly so not to wake me, presses the cover by my curled body to the mattress to stop the cold air from creeping in. His bare feet pad across to the kitchen, the hair on his legs looked golden in the creamy morning light. He thinks I’m sleeping but I watch him silently as he lifts the pan slowly, carries it to the tap. Fills it with water. Then he dresses stoically in his ill-fitting work clothes. The sleeves are too short, his trousers too long and his tie too tight. He silently drinks his coffee and eats some bread, chewing slowly, his adam’s apple protruding. His face has grown grey and lined. I close my eyes as he creeps over to the bed to pull out his shoes from underneath. He stands for a moment looking at me, then kisses me lightly on the forehead, before he puts on his heavy coat and heads to the door.
I get out of bed and move a chair to the window. All that remains of the house across the way is one wall. It was a five-storey building and each floor has vestiges of different coloured and patterned wallpaper. I try to guess what the people are like from the paper. I never got to know them. I’m not very good at communicating with strangers. I can just not think about them. Albert does, he has a very sympathetic and open manner. Old ladies in bread shops tell their life stories to him. I wonder what he tells them about me and my sickness.
Buster is up and restless. I’m not in the mood for his antics and he wants attention. He tries to impress me with his one-armed press-ups, sit-ups and handstands, looking over at me with a face like an eight-year-old showing off to his parents. Eventually he comes over to the window where I sit and scowls at me.
‘Have you fallen for baa humbug the chemist boy?’
‘No’
‘You have, haven’t you. One little sniffle from sulphur boy and you go running. He’s a loser. Not like me. You and me can go places.’
‘I just don’t feel like playing Buster.’
‘Why don’t you go and get a job in the post office or coal mine. Forget the music and films. You’re a fake anyway. You can’t play the piano. Mediocre. Bodger.’
‘I didn’t claim to be anything more.’
‘You thought you were something special, but you’re not. Go back to the humdrum.’
‘Stop it.’
‘Sick of me, are you? You want me to go. Throw me out then. Go on. Like the rest of them. Sack me. Tear up the contract. Chuck me out on the street. I don’t need you.’
Buster slams the door of the broom cupboard and refuses to come out. He’s found a bottle of old spirits that Albert’s uncle gave us when we got married. I hear him glugging it down and punching at the walls of the cupboard. I hide the kerosene and the knives under the bed.
Albert has his familiar slightly fearful look when he comes home as if he doesn’t know what to expect from me. He looks at me searchingly as he takes off his rain clothes.
Then he speaks softly as if nothing has happened.
‘Why don’t we go for a walk in the Mumbles? Let’s go up Worm’s head peninsula and get stranded again when the tide comes in. Remember, Claira, when we did that? Just you, me, a few sandwiches and a bottle of stout. It was great then, Claira.’
When I don’t respond he looks down and sighs.
‘Is it me Claira? Have I done something wrong?’
We went walking by the sea, when we first met. Scrambled out across the rocks. Hurriedly telling each other our family legends, our childhood transgressions, tales of eccentric relatives, disappointments, cravings and past lovers. As if we had a measured amount of time to show the other who we were. And every memory and heartbreak had to be laid down, evaluated, deemed wonderful and added to the treasure chest.
My hand creeps towards my husband who sits on the bed, staring out at nothingness. He seems worlds away and I worry that I’ve lost him.
In the morning I catch my face in the mirror and remember I haven’t bathed for days. The jug of warm water gushes over my face, over my chest and down my ribs. I rub my weak legs back to life, scrub at my neglected hands, look for my nail file. When I return to the room the cupboard door is ajar. I open the window to look for him. Just a couple of construction workers. A pile of shattered bricks in a skip. Albert lies watching me.
My long hair is wet and the cold air pricks at my damp head. I hold my hair up around my face and look in the mirror.
‘It would suit you short.’ says Albert.
‘Like that girl who we saw playing the piano in the Rose café last summer?’
‘Yes, she sang some sweet songs.’
‘She was great with the crowds, had everyone jolly and singing along.’
‘We could go back.’
I start to hum one of her songs.
Outside the chink and gravel of the first layer of a wall being laid.