Asturias (4 page)

He was putting together a “special project”, and Chrissie Tieu had recommended me. Would I be interested in auditioning …?

Is the pope Catholic?

If I'd known all of what was to come, I might have thought twice.

No … I wouldn't.

6

THE BEST TEACHER …

14 September 1989

The boy looks up from his playing. Something is different.

Ardillo sits on the bed, as he has always done. But this time the music does not move him. He stares at the boy and watches his swift fingers as they move across the strings.

A small, sad smile plays around the corners of a mouth that has, it seems, had little use for smiles.

The music runs down, and in the silence that follows, the boy finally understands.

“You're leaving, aren't you?” He is not yet eleven, and small for his age, and the large guitar dwarfs him as he sits.

Ardillo looks away and says nothing.

“Why? Have I done something wrong? I've tried as hard as …” The words dry up, as the boy fights the sudden emptiness that threatens to turn into a show of unaccustomed tears.

This time Ardillo rises.

His touch is cold, as always.

“It was always to be this way.” The boy is shaking his head, though he knows it to be the truth. “It is over.
Terminado.
You have no more need of me. And I
—”

“And you have no more need of me.”

The boy throws the guitar onto the bed, giving in, finally, to the tears.

“Alejandro …” The name is a plea. It goes unheeded. “Alex … It never was that way. But time
—”

“I know nothing! And I
want
to know … all that you know. All that you can teach me.”

“I have taught you all I can,
chiquitito.
I have taught you the only important thing. To love. Music …” Slowly he moves across to the bed, gazing down as he speaks. “It lives in the heart, not in the fingers. And love is the best teacher. The only teacher. I knew that once, long ago, but then I forgot. You gave me the chance to remember.”

Ardillo reaches out to touch the strings of the old guitar, as he has done in vain so many times. The boy looks away, angry, lost in thoughts of his own.

And it is then that he hears them. Six notes, clear and distinct. From lowest to highest, hanging on the silence like a prayer.

Slowly he turns his gaze; fearful, knowing what he will find, yet needing to confirm his fear.

Ardillo is gone.

Slowly the notes resonate to silence …

ALEX'S STORY

When I was five years old, Ardillo Jesus Moreno, my grandfather's dead brother, taught me to play the guitar.

When I was ten, he taught me the meaning of loss.

I remember sitting there, looking at the empty bed, and knowing I would never see him again. At that moment I hated him. For leaving me. For taking away the gift he had given. There was an empty space in my life that I knew could never be filled.

I must have sat there for over an hour, just staring. The room was getting dark, and it was cold, but I couldn't bring myself to move. Then the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall began to chime. Six notes. Six o'clock.

Six notes
…

Slowly I stood up. I switched on the light and walked across to the bed. The guitar lay where I had thrown it, shining in the room's dull light.

I made no move to touch it. I was listening. The room was silent. I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Those six notes, plucked slowly, one string at a time.

In all the time since he had first come into my life, he had never been able to touch those strings. To me, he had been as real as anyone, even if his touch had always been a little cold. But he had never been able to sound a note.

Until that final moment …

Suddenly I understood. My hand reached out, and I ran my fingers over the strings.

“And love is the best teacher …”

At ten years old, I finally realised what a part of me had always known.

I picked up the guitar and began to play. A sad piece in a minor key. But I remember I was smiling.

I never spoke to anyone about Ardillo and what he had given me. There were never any words to explain it, and I knew what they would think. Maybe Abuelito might have understood, but I was ten years old, not a baby any more, and I didn't want him thinking … whatever it is that normal people think about those who claim they can talk to the dead.

Then, as the years went by, I began questioning the truth of what I remembered.

I was just a kid, filled from my earliest recollections with my grandfather's stories. Of the war, of Ardillo, of the music and the terrible loss. Maybe it was all nothing more than a combination of the forbidden room, the stories, and that photograph standing on the dressing table. My grandfather 's brother, never aging, staring out at the world from behind the glass of the photo frame.

Could I have imagined his smile, his clothes, his soft voice? I almost convinced myself I had.

But I didn't imagine the music.

If it was all imagination, who had taught me to play? Could I have taught myself? Was that what prodigies did?

I had no answers, so I stopped asking the questions. And I accepted the gift — wherever it had come from.

“Late that night,” my grandfather says, “when it is dark and the candles are burning down, they come for us. Francisco is —”

“Tell me about Ardillo.” For once, I interrupt the litany, break the rhythm of the story.

Abuelito looks at me. As if he suddenly doesn't recognise me.

“Ardillo?”

I nod. “Tell me about him. About the music. What kind of a brother he was.”

“Ardillo was …” he begins, then falters. The ritual is broken and he looks confused. Then he brushes a hand through his sparse hair and sits back in his chair. “He was
hermano mayor,
my big brother. And his hands were touched by the angels. That was what our mother said. And if you had heard him play you would agree …”

7

THE CHOICE OF THE HEART

12 July 1935
Madrid

JUANA

In the shade of the tree Ardillo senses her watching him, but he does not look up. Instead, he stops playing in mid-bar, pauses for just a moment, then begins a different piece. A
tarantella.
Designed to impress.

Last week, the first time he saw her, he had Francisco make enquiries. Her father owns the
cantina,
where he eats the evening meal most nights with Manuel and Francisco, but her family is not from Madrid. Not originally.

With the Depression and the rumblings of discontent, and after the suppression of the miners' riots, Domingo La Falla left Asturias with his wife and four children and headed for the security of the capital.

Juana is the eldest. Her sister and two brothers are too young to be of much use
—
or so her father claims, though he seems to push them all pretty hard. He is a humourless man. Not cruel, but lacking the imagination to see the spirit he is squeezing out of them.

All except Juana.

She will never be like the others, nor like her mother. Not for her the endless round of tables and meals and drunken labourers, slopping their wine and talking futile politics in loud whispers. Juana is different.

And for that, he is beginning to love her.

He stops playing and looks up at her. She holds his gaze and a slow smile spreads over her features.

“
Don't stop.” The smile is in her voice, as well, and she brushes her dark hair away from her face. “These days there is too much talk and not enough music.”

He studies her face, looking up at her. The moment is frozen between them. An understanding reached, a future sealed.

A dog crawls on its belly into the shade of the tree, and somewhere in the distance the thunder rumbles like a premonition of something more than rain
…

ALEX'S STORY

“When the blood-stained dwarf makes his move, and the war begins, we leave Madrid.” Abuelito uses the hate-name they used six decades before, and it takes me a moment to work out who he is talking about.
The dwarf …
Franco,
El Caudillo,
the
Generalisimo,
the leader of the Nationalists. A tiny, bug-eyed man, who made up in bloody ruthlessness what he lacked in height.

I wait while the old man takes a drag on his foul-smelling cigarette, coughs a little, then continues. “Most people, they move to the city. To be safe. But Ardillo, he says we go back to Consuegra. ‘Nowhere is safe,' he says. ‘But home is … home.'

“Juana, your
abuelita,
she comes too. Her mother, she cries. Her father, he curses — Juana, Ardillo, me even. Says her place is at home. But Juana, she is too strong. ‘Madrid is not home to me,' she says. ‘Asturias is home, and Asturias is lost. Without a fight. Better for the heart to choose a new home than for fear.' ”

There is pride in my grandfather's voice as he remembers. He is speaking of the woman who was his wife for thirty-five years.

But then
I
remember.

When Juana, my grandmother, left Madrid, it was to be with Ardillo, not his younger brother. I recall the picture standing on the dressing-table in his room upstairs. Five smiling faces — Ardillo, Manuel, Francisco, Juana. And …

“Tell me about Conchita.”

I whisper the request, and watch his face close over. For a moment I think he will refuse, but then the tension goes out of him. He stubs his cigarette deliberately in the ashtray and watches the last wisp of smoke curl away into the atmosphere.

“Conchita …” He allows her name to hang in the air like the smoke. Then he stares out beyond the glass of the window, before he continues.

19 August 1936
Consuegra

CONCHITA

She closes the oven door with her heel, as she turns to place the steaming loaf on the table behind her. It is then that she realises she is not alone.

For a moment, shock freezes her throat. He is just a silhouette in the doorway, with the morning sun streaming in behind him, but she knows him.

Suddenly the loaf is falling to the floor and skittering across the stones, as she flings herself into his arms.

“Manuel!” The word is smothered by the crush of his lips. His arms are strong around her, and she is breathing in the smell of him. And the emptiness of the last months is filled.

Slowly their lips part and she steps back to look at him.

“We came back,” he says, and smiles.

“I missed you,” she replies.

And with their words, the world begins to move again
…

8

THE FACE

ALEX'S STORY

Chrissie was a musical soul-mate from day one, then with Tim we had the basics of a band.

For someone who only two years before had played nothing but classical piano, Tim was just amazing.

In my case it had been different. Spanish music was never “classical” — at least not until this century. It was always the music of the people, so I didn't have such a hard time getting Abuelito and my dad to accept all the different styles I liked to play. As long as I didn't forget the old stuff completely, they were cool with it. With Tim it was different.

His people were a lot like Claire's. You know — old money, the right connections. Main difference was they'd stayed together, and Tim didn't have to use the overseas operator to get in touch with them whenever he had something to tell them. But Tim … well, he'd never learned to say no to them. When he showed potential in the compulsory music lessons they'd paid for, they ploughed in more and put him through the best training a bottomless bank account could buy.

Trouble was, it wasn't as bottomless as they'd thought. The share-market crash of eighty-seven just about wiped them out, and the long recession did the rest. They weren't out on the streets or anything, but they couldn't afford things like they used to. Tim stayed at the Con, but only by working as an accompanist to soloists.

Like Chrissie, for example.

That was how they met, and I think she was the best thing that could have happened to him. She loosened him up. Showed him how the other ninety-nine percent lived. She was part den-mother, part big sister, and I guess part lover—even if they never kissed, except to say goodnight.

And she taught him how to rock. To the horror of his parents, and the delight of Max Parnell.

So there we were: Chrissie, Tim and me. Three musical schizophrenics. A rhythm-section without a drummer, a band without a lead-singer. We could all hold a tune — enough to sing the harmony line and the back-up, at least. But out front?

Say what you like, the lead-singer is the image, and the image is what sells — even if the music is rock-solid. How far would the Stones have got if Jagger had taken up … interior decorating?

And even the right image needs rhythm. With Chrissie we had half our “engine-room”, but she couldn't drive us on her own.

I know, everyone tells drummer jokes. “How many drummers does it take to change a light-globe?” — that sort of thing. But they really are a necessary evil.

So we waited.

Of course, while we were waiting we could jam like there was no tomorrow. But given our histories, a twelve-bar blues was just as likely to degenerate into a Bach fugue, if someone felt the urge. The two are really a lot more similar than most people realise.

But we were just marking time. The search was on, but it was making slow progress. In a band, everyone is important, and Max wanted it to be perfect. He even gave us the veto. If two of us gave any try-out the thumbs down, they were out. No questions asked.

“You guys are going to be together for a long time,” he said once. “No good if you can't get on. I've seen it kill a good band.”

He was right, of course, and none of what happened later was really his fault. I know he always had our best interests at least partly in mind.

I couldn't help wondering, though.

Who had had the veto on the three of us?

TASHA'S STORY

I'd never planned to be lead-singer in a band. When I was a kid, I'd done my share of the usual things — you know, stage-school, dancing lessons, gymnastics, even a “junior miss” modelling course for a few months. But so did half the kids in my grade. I played basketball, too, but I never had any intention of trying out for the Sydney Flames. They were just things to do. They weren't vocational training.

What I was actually doing was working in a fashion boutique in the arcade. And planning to do a course in fashion designing, which I'd probably never have got around to.

But I guess you know the story. Max made a big thing of it in the early publicity. How I went along with one of my friends to an audition and ended up getting the gig. I always thought it sounded a bit too much like one of Max's stories, except that it happened to be true.

It was my first time at a studio and I'd borrowed one of the dresses from the shop, so I wouldn't look out of place among the “celebs”. I guess that shows how naive I was.
No
one dresses up for a studio session. Not unless they're filming it for a video-clip. Believe me, once you've been through a couple of marathon sessions, the last thing you're worried about is whether you're wearing the right designer gear.

But I didn't know all that, and Penny, my friend, hadn't bothered to tell me.

So there I was in this body-hugging red mini, wide shoulders, V-neck, the whole bit, while everyone else was sitting around in jeans and T-shirts — not all of them particularly clean. So much for glamour!

A couple of heads turned when we walked into the control booth, but they were more interested in what was going on in the studio. Penny was one of seven or eight they were trying out, and I don't think they were exactly impressed with any of them. I sat on a padded bench at the back of the booth and tried to blend in with the wallpaper — which is pretty hard to do when you're wearing a dress
that
particular shade of red.

Still, I got to watch them without them really noticing me, and in the end, I think they forgot I was there altogether. So I was probably the only one who noticed what was going on.

There was only one person there, apart from me, who wasn't wearing jeans, and that was Max. He wore a suit, with, of all things, a Bugs Bunny tie. It caught my attention — the tie I mean — because I didn't have him pegged as the Bugs Bunny type. Geometric patterns, or maybe a plain colour — red, even. But then, I never did understand power-dressing; that wasn't my end of the market. Of course, I didn't know his name at the time; they were too busy for introductions.

It was obvious that he was in charge though. He sat next to the engineer and made suggestions, none of which was ever questioned. But that wasn't what caught my attention.

Every now and then he'd look across to three kids about my age. They were sitting in the front corner, by the edge of the long glass window that looked out into the studio proper, watching the try-outs, and whispering among themselves. And every time he'd look across, they'd give him a sign. Not a word was exchanged, but they'd shake a head, or give a slight shrug, and that appeared to be the death sentence. He'd let the poor hopeful in the studio go on for a while longer, but it was pretty obvious that he'd lost interest as soon as the jury of three gave its verdict.

I got to know those three later, of course, but at the time they just looked like three kids, not much older than I was, and I wondered how they could have so much power.

Actually, the two boys were both less than a year older than me. I was about to turn seventeen, and neither of them had reached eighteen yet. Chrissie, though, she was the surprise. She was the one I thought might be younger than I was, and she turned out to be almost six years older.

But I was talking about the audition.

It was pretty obvious that Penny was out of her league. She'd been doing stage stuff since she was four or five — that was where I'd met her — but wanting isn't enough. Not nearly enough. She had a good voice, she moved well, she was even pretty, but somehow all the parts didn't quite add up to the sort of quality that makes “image”.

It's a tough business — I've found that out — and very few get the nod. Penny wasn't one of them. The jury gave its verdict, and it was over for her a long time before she realised it. I think I was the only one in the booth who knew, though. The signals were pretty subtle.

Penny was the last hopeful, and when she came back into the booth I stood up to meet her. I knew the deal. They wouldn't say anything to her right then; they hadn't said anything to the others. It would just be a case of “don't call us, we'll call you”, then a polite letter some time in the next week or so. The classic let-down.

And I wasn't going to say anything. I guess I'm a coward, but she'd tried so hard, and it just wasn't the moment.

Then something happened.

I'm not sure exactly why, but Max Parnell turned and looked at me. Maybe it was the dress, I don't know. Anyway, he looked straight at me and smiled.

I was ready to hate him. After all, I was feeling pretty bad for Penny, for the disappointment she was going to feel when the letter came. But I couldn't. Hate him, I mean. He didn't look like a cold monster at all.

“And what was your name?”

It took a moment to realise that he was talking to me. For a moment I hesitated.

“Tasha … Natassia … Kuznetsoff.” The name was always a killer. Natassia I could live with; Tasha or Tash … Nats even. But there was nothing you could do with Kuznetsoff. Unless you count what the kids in Primary managed — but kids that age are pretty inventive. It's the kind of name that sticks to you like chewing gum on a hot day. It doesn't matter how you pick at it, it's always there, embarrassing you, waiting for someone to notice.

But Max Parnell just nodded, absorbing the fact of my name without comment.

“Do you sing?”

“A little,” I stammered, while part of me whispered,
Don't be an idiot, you'll only make a fool of yourself.

Then I heard Penny speaking. “She's got a great voice. She's been singing since she was five.”

Suddenly I understood.

Penny wasn't nearly as naive as I was. She'd known the score from the moment she'd walked back into the booth — maybe even before that. It didn't stop me feeling guilty later, when I was offered the job she'd wanted so badly, but it did mean that I didn't have to lose a friend over it.

She was out of the race and she knew it, so there wasn't any harm in trying to help me win it.

The rest is pretty much the way Max told it in the publicity stories. The others had auditioned to backing tapes, which they'd been given in advance to practise with, but I didn't know any of the songs, so Alex, Tim and Chrissie took me into the studio and worked out a quick arrangement of a couple of songs I did know.

And we did it.

Looking back, I think that maybe the surprise factor worked to my advantage. I had no time to get nervous, everyone was willing to give me a little leeway because I was unprepared, and I had the guys in the studio with me, so there was a bit of feedback that the others hadn't had.

Whatever the reason, they brought out the best in me. I'd never sung in a studio before, and I just took to it.

“Like a pig to mud,” Alex said afterwards. He said it in Spanish first,
“Como un chancho a barro”,
then translated it. I found out later it was one of his grandfather's favourite expressions.

I guess it was the way they joked with me that told me I stood a chance, well before I stepped back into the booth. Max's expression more or less confirmed it, even though they didn't officially tell me until a couple of days later.

Penny didn't speak until we were in the cab on the way home. I thought she was upset, the way she stared out the window. Maybe she was, just a little. I knew how hard she'd worked for her shot at the “big-time”, and I think we both realised that it had just come — and gone.

Penny was never much good at school, but she was one of the most talented people I'd ever met. She had a way with design that left most of the stuff I sold every day for dead. But her first love was singing, and I knew how much it must have been killing her, putting on a brave front for my benefit.

But then she turned to me, and the only expression I could read was a smile.

She touched my hand. Just a light touch. “Remember me when you're rich and famous.”

I didn't want to get my hopes up. And I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I wasn't sure how to reply.

“Who knows what they'll decide —” I began, but Penny cut me off.

“Helloo?” She put on her best Beverley Hills Brat accent. “Earth to Natassia! Was I the only one paying attention back there?” I noticed the cab-driver looking at us in the rear-vision mirror. So did Penny. She stared at him until he looked away, then she continued, “They
loved
you, Tash. Shit, even
I
loved you, and you were the opposition.”

“I didn't mean to —”

“Oh, shut up, you idiot!” It was obvious I wasn't going to get to finish a sentence. “There was no way they were going to pick me. Not even if you sang like Peewee Herman. I'm not stupid, my dear. Thing is, though … How come I never knew you could sing like that? I mean, I've known you most of our lives and you never …” She shrugged.

I shrugged back. “Beats me! I never did it before.”

It was true. Even as a kid at the stage-school they always stuck me in the back row. Away from the microphone. I guess I didn't do the Shirley Temple thing well enough. But something had happened back in that studio, something I couldn't explain. Maybe it was the way the others played, or the way it all sounded in the headphones. I don't know. All I do know is that at sixteen I suddenly knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life — or at least for a good part of it.

“Friends?” This time she took hold of my hand.

“Always,” I replied.

And at the time, I really meant it.