Songs without Words (13 page)

“But I might have said it,” Hilda quipped, “if I had thought of it.”

Hilda sipped her tea. A small, wry smile played across her face before she turned her attention back to Harper and the present. “That biographer was tenacious. She was young and full of ambition. She chased me around the world that summer. What was her name?”

“Lillian Fields.”

“Ah, yes, Lillian. Oh, she was so obnoxious! That was the summer Catherine and I were on our trip to Egypt.”

“Catherine Gardiner?”

“Yes. You know her, do you? She lives out there somewhere near you, near San Francisco.”

“I know of her, of course. I’ve never met her.”

“Catherine is one of the few people who still writes old-fashioned letters on lovely stationery. Every couple of months, I get such a letter from her. Which is something, you know, because she’s still a young woman and has adapted to computers and e-mail and who the hell knows what else. She writes a beautiful letter. I keep them all. I think Catherine is well aware that someday some biographer will publish them in a book. She writes them as carefully as she does her poems, I’ve no doubt. The language of a poet is so selfconscious. Well, that’s what we were just talking about, wasn’t it?” Harper nodded enthusiastically as Hilda let out a short laugh and her face lit up.

“Can you imagine if they’d had computers a hundred years earlier and we had stories like ‘The Purloined E-mail’ and the collected e-mails of Edna St. Vincent Millay, complete with smiley faces?”

Harper laughed too. “No, I can’t imagine.”

“It was Lillian, you know, who broke us up, right there in the desert at the foot of the pyramids.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. That time anyway. We broke up so many times. It wasn’t on purpose. Just circumstances. Let me tell you this story. It’s a good one.”

The two women chatted about Hilda’s books and her adventures until, it seemed, Hilda had worn herself out. In the end, Harper felt that Hilda had enjoyed her visit. She couldn’t have been happier with it herself. She had been granted an audience with a true sage.

Eventually, Hilda smiled tiredly at her and said, “So, let me sign your books, and then you can be on your way.”

With an unsteady hand, Hilda wrote in blue ink on the flyleaf of the Lillian Fields biography. “To Harper. May you find the song your soul wants to sing.”

Chapter 10

JUNE 19

“O my love is like a red, red rose,” Harper sang, accompanying herself on the piano, “that’s newly sprung in June; O my love is like the melody that’s sweetly played in tune. As fair art thou, my bonny lass, so deep in love am I; and I will love thee still, my dear, till all the seas gang dry.”

“That’s a lovely song,” Joyce remarked.

“Harper,” Roxie complained, tucking her long legs under herself, “isn’t that supposed to be a love song? You played it so slowly and mournfully, it sounded like a dirge!”

“It’s supposed to sound like bagpipes. They’re always sort of mournful. You know, castle wall in the Highland mist and all that.”

“Maybe, but we’re not playing a funeral. This is supposed to be fun. Where’s the humor? Where are the drinking songs, for God’s sake?”

“All right, all right,” Harper said. “How about this one? ‘It’s all for me grog,’” she began. Joyce and Roxie joined in right away. The song was a favorite they’d used before.

“Oh,” they sang, swaying side to side, Roxie holding up her wineglass, “it’s all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog. It’s all for me beer and tobacco. For I spent all me tin with the lassies drinking gin. Far across the western ocean I must wander.”

“Yes!” Roxie said. “We’ll do that one for sure.”

“Let’s do a round,” Harper said. “We already know ‘Heigh ho, nobody home.’ How about that?”

“Heigh-ho, nobody home,” sang Roxie. Harper and Joyce came in one and two lines later with “meat, nor drink, nor money have I none” and “Still I will be merry,” stretching “merry” out for several notes.

They managed to sing the round about six times before losing their rhythm. Roxie poured herself another glass of chardonnay. She seemed to be enjoying herself. Harper was glad to see that. Perhaps the worst period of mourning her husband was over, although she had never actually observed Roxie mourning, other than at the funeral. There, her tears had been silent but continuous. Her sons, smartly dressed in suits, had been seated on either side of her, appropriately somber, clutching her hands. Later, at their house, Roxie had seemed solemn but not distraught. In every conversation they had had since that day, the only sorrow she had voiced was over her sons having lost their father. She expressed no self-pity, and Harper admired that.

“Do you really think we should do that one?” Joyce asked, sliding to the edge of the couch to reach for a cracker and a slice of cheese.

“I had my heart set on a round,” Harper said.

“Are there any others?” Roxie asked.

“Row, row, row your boat,” Joyce suggested.

“That’s really not appropriate,” Roxie said. “We need something from the period.”

“Well, there’s this one,” Harper said, paging through her book of old English folk songs. “‘Why doth not my goose.’”

“Oh, I don’t know that one,” Joyce said, clearly intrigued. “Let’s try it.”

“‘Why doth not my goose,’” Harper read, “‘sing as well as thy goose when I paid for my goose twice as much as thine?’ That’s four lines. I’ll go first, then Joyce, then Roxie will come in on the third line. Ready?”

They tried it, going around about three times before Joyce burst into laughter and rolled back on the sofa. Roxie started snickering too, breaking off in the middle of her line.

“Why doth not my goose,” Harper finished by herself, “sing as well as thy goose when I paid for my goose twice as much as thine?”

“Because thy goose is cooked!” announced Roxie, sending Joyce into convulsions of laughter.

“What the hell is a goose doing singing anyway?” Roxie asked, and Joyce started snorting, doubled up and unable to breathe.

“So, I guess you don’t like this one?” Harper asked.

“Au contraire!” Roxie said. “I love it. I want to do it. What about you, Joyce?”

Joyce sat up, holding her stomach, tears on her cheeks. “Me too. Let’s do it.”

“Okay, then,” Harper said. “I think that makes four songs. Probably enough. So we have our program.”

“Before we call it a night,” Roxie said, “play us something with a little more heft. I love to hear you play, Harper. It always sounds so effortless. It’s like music is your native tongue.”

“Thank you,” Harper said. “Okay, then, some serious music it is. Here’s one I’ve just learned recently.”

Harper played as Roxie sat back in her chair with her eyes closed. Joyce sat at attention, watching Harper’s hands on the keyboard. The piece was short and over in a few minutes. Harper put the cover over the keys and pushed herself back from the piano.

“God, Harper,” Roxie said, opening her eyes, “you practically gave me an orgasm.”

Harper laughed. “You’re a woman who knows how to appreciate music.” She stood and slid the bench into its nook.

“That was nice, Harper,” Joyce said. “What was it?”

Harper looked inquiringly at Roxie.

“I don’t think I know that piece,” Roxie said. “It sounds like one of Felix Mendelssohn’s
Songs Without Words
. But there are so many of those, I don’t know them all.”

“Very good,” Harper said. “You’re close. It
was
Mendelssohn and it was one of the
Songs Without Words
. But it was not Felix.”

“What?” Joyce asked. “Is this a riddle?”

“Fanny Mendelssohn!” Roxie blurted.

“Fanny Mendelssohn!” Joyce exclaimed, before slumping and saying, “Never heard of her.”

“Exactly,” Harper said. “Not many people have.”

“So what made you dig that up?” Roxie asked.

“Somebody reminded me of her recently. Got me curious. I’ve been listening to her work. In many ways, it’s almost indistinguishable from her brother’s. Makes you wonder who influenced whom. She was the elder of them, after all. Some people think she invented the form for these piano pieces, although he, of course, has traditionally been given credit.”

“That’s like what we always say about if Shakespeare had a sister,” noted Joyce. “But Mendelssohn actually had one?”

“It’s the usual story. She was a woman, so she couldn’t become a professional musician, or, at least, she was told that she couldn’t. In fact, some of her work was originally published under her brother’s name, just to get it published.”

“In a way,” Roxie said thoughtfully, “all of her works were songs without words, weren’t they?”

“You mean because her voice was unheard?” Harper asked.

Roxie nodded. The three of them were silent for a moment in what seemed to Harper a tribute to Fanny Mendelssohn.

“By the way, Harper,” Roxie said, “will you be able to come play for my classes again this year?”

“Sure. I always enjoy that.”

“So do they. Much better to listen to you play the cello than to me droning on about diatonic triads. That thing you do where you make animal sounds, do that again, okay? That’s so funny.”

Harper, remembering how Roxie’s sophomore class had cracked up at her chicken and howling cat, smiled. “Maybe this time I can figure out how to get a goose in there.”

Joyce started giggling again. “Oh, Harper!”

“Before I forget, girls,” Harper said, “I’ve got the most fantastic costume for the faire this year. Let me show you my new doublet.”

She ran to the music room closet and pulled down a royal blue velvet doublet with gold thread and gold buttons.
This is going to look wonderful over a white linen shirt
, she thought. Both Roxie and Joyce enthusiastically agreed when she held the garment up for them to admire.

“So you’re going as a boy again,” Joyce noted.

“Yes. My breeches and hose and everything else, I’ll reuse. I just need to get a matching hat to go with this.”

“I’m going as a man this year too,” Roxie said.

“Really?” Joyce said. “So I’m the only girl in this troupe?”

“Apparently,” Roxie said, snorting loudly.

“I need to get home,” Joyce announced. “Can you e-mail these songs to me? I’ll try to memorize them before the faire. I’ll have to get a new bodice because I dumped wine all over myself last year. Had to throw that one out.”

Harper walked Joyce to the door, where they hugged goodbye. She returned to Roxie, who was draining the last of the chardonnay into her glass.

“Do you like the program?” Harper asked.

“It’s wonderful. Should be a lot of fun.”

“You’re in no hurry to get home tonight?”

“No. The boys are with Dave’s mother this weekend. House is empty.”

“Why don’t you stay here then?” Harper offered. “You probably shouldn’t drive home anyway.”