The Piano Maker

Rosegarden

The Chaperon

Equinox

Scorpio Moon

Clara
(originally published as
Patient Number 7
)

Copyright © 2015 by Kurt Palka

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ISBN
: 978-0-7710-7128-7
ebook
ISBN
: 978-0-7710-7141-6

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v3.1

The Arrival

ON THE LAST STRETCH
through the coastal forest, the trees stood so close together that hardly any light showed between them. In places they overarched the road like a tunnel, tall evergreens and a few hardwoods, bare this time of year. Nearer to the French Shore the trees then thinned, and eventually they opened up to a fantastic vista to her right, with ocean spray like a billowing fog full of rainbows.

The first village she came to was called Bonne Marie. Halfway through it a dog saw the car, and it barked and came running alongside. She slowed and swerved to avoid it, and not far away a man looked up from the boat hull he was scraping. He called to the dog and immediately it obeyed and stopped. In the mirror she saw it standing in the road, lifting its nose.

For a moment she thought the dog might be Jack, and she stepped on the brake and stared into the mirror, but then she drove on. How could it be Jack? Of course it was
not. Even if it had half an ear missing and looked like a northern breed.

She drove past weathered boulders and enormous stone slabs like the remains of an ancient dolmen right by the roadside. Then came more villages: Sainte Emilie, Gaillard, La Roche. Past houses with painted shutters; past some kind of mill or press driven by a donkey. She saw a smithy where a massive brown horse stood with one hind leg on a rest while the farrier worked his file around the hoof. She saw fishing boats on cradles and nets hanging on racks. Here and there someone raised an arm and waved as she drove by.

She saw a few churches, but only small wooden ones, and she kept looking out for the stone tower of Saint Homais. Madame Cabayé in Montreal had suggested the French Shore and especially the town of Saint Homais. She said she’d grown up there and loved it: the people, the fine church, the views. It was still mostly French, she said, but not exclusively any more. A town just big enough and friendly enough for someone to try and make a new home.

“They might never have seen it in the newspaper,” Madame Cabayé had said. She’d not looked at her while saying it. And a moment later, still not looking at her, she’d added, “Or if they did, it’ll be long forgotten. I can give you a few names.”

Ocean spray misted the windshield, and the road was slippery in places. But she felt safe in the car. It was comfortable and well made, her one remaining luxury in these lean times: an Austin Burnham Saloon with a rosewood
dash and red leather seats. It had good American whitewall tires and chrome spoke wheels. Four years ago she’d paid cash for it because she’d felt flush then and confident that the money would keep coming. All those buying trips with Nathan. The horse and rider in the Persian bog alone could have paid for seven or eight cars like this.

A November day, cold and clean; the sun’s arc shallow, the bright dazzle on the Bay of Fundy broken only by the long, thin ridge of the Digby Neck. It was almost eleven o’clock when she caught the first glint of the tall steeple in the distance, the sun on the silvered slate roof.

She parked on the carriage lot and then walked the town, the cobbled streets and dirt lanes with frozen horseshoe prints and cart tracks in them. She stopped frequently to admire the old houses of dressed stone and wood, some of the timbered gables with dates carved into them two hundred years ago. She saw the hotel that Madame Cabayé had mentioned, a wide building on the main square. A sky-blue sundial with black Roman numerals on the front over the painted name:
HÔTEL YAMOUSSOUKE
.

When she came to the church, she paused at the doorway in the west front and looked at the details in the arch, the gargoyles in the gutter corners. She stepped inside. From the row of windows along one wall, sunlight fell in coloured shafts on wooden pews, and between the windows hung paintings of the stations of the cross. The
pictures were dark, nearly as dark as the frames that contained them.

Straight ahead, placed slightly off-centre on the crossing, there stood a piano, and even from that distance she could tell that it was a Molnar grand. She walked up to it, and as she did so she began to wonder at this strange grouping of events: first Madame Cabayé pointing her to Saint Homais, then the dog that looked like Jack, and now a Molnar waiting for her in this stone place.

The piano’s fallboard was up, and so was the lid. She stepped close and looked for the master stamp on the transom. There it was: green ink, faded but still readable. The letters
B.R
. in a small oval ring.

Morris the sexton saw her from the shadows by the side altar, and within the hour he was telling people that there was something unusual about her. He had watched her walking towards the piano, he said, not a young woman any more but still nice-looking in her city coat and hat. She studied the piano, and then she undid a few buttons on her coat and sat down on the bench with her fingers poised above the keys but not touching them, and for a long moment she looked as though a spell had come over her. She looked stricken and years older suddenly, and it was when she stood up and closed the keyboard and walked away that he saw she had a limp.

He said it had not been noticeable before, but now there
was no doubt about it. There was a darkness to her suddenly. Like a great sadness.

She learned all this later from Mildred Yamoussouke, because Mildred had been in the kitchen at the hotel when Morris told the story to a maid. He’d come to pick up the priest’s lunch, and Mildred reached out quickly and closed the door.

“You keep your voice down, Morris,” she said. “She’s in our dinin’ room right now.”

“She’s from Quebec,” he whispered. “It’s on the licence plate.”

“Hush now,” said Mildred. “Be quiet and get on your way before Father’s food gets cold.”

In the afternoon Morris saw her again in the church. She stood looking at the notice board, and when he came up and asked if he could help with something, she pointed at the slip of paper where Father William was asking for an experienced piano player to help with the church music while the organ was out of service.

“Is he the priest?” she said.

“Yes, he is.”

“Do you think I could speak with him?”

“I don’t see why not. He’s in the vestry now. I can show you the way.”

Morris liked her smile when she nodded and said thank you. He led the way down the nave, across the sanctuary
and around the altar to the back rooms, and when she was in there with the door closed he listened to them talking for a while, the Father asking questions and she answering.

Eventually Morris returned to his chores, and not long thereafter he saw Father William showing her to the piano. She was carrying her coat and hat, and she put them down in a front pew. She wore her hair up. It was mostly black but there was some grey in it. She gave the piano bench a few turns of the crank to adjust the height and then she sat down. The Father took a pew further back.

Morris was on a stepladder by the north windows. He’d been repairing some of the leading, and when she began to play he turned off the soldering lamp and set it on the ledge and listened.

He thought she was playing very well, and then from the way the Father sat back and relaxed Morris could tell that she had just passed the test.