‘You know,’ my mother would say, ‘your dad once told Eric Clapton to bugger off—’scuse the French, but that’s what he said—so he could get on with earning a living. There’s a lesson there.’
My dad may or may not have said ‘Bugger off’ to God, but I would be prepared to bet that his response to the young woman with the big brown eyes would have been the same as mine, even without the pressure of a bar full of people waiting for something to happen.
‘What key?’
She was not bad, and the crowd loved her. I mean, they loved her. She was in tune and giving it all she had, but it was a sexy song and she was more Olivia Newton-John than Debbie Harry—or Patti Smith, for that matter.
Who was I to judge? She got a standing ovation and calls for more. After one five-minute performance she owned the place, and I was a part of it. I had no idea what was going on.
‘Would you like to do something else?’ I asked.
‘“Daydream Believer”?’ She laughed. ‘That’s your accent, isn’t it? Davy Jones.’
She had a good ear. And a commendable familiarity with popular music from before her time.
‘What number is this, Jim?’ I said, mimicking Davy Jones.
That smile again: ‘Seven A.’ A very commendable familiarity.
‘Do you know “Both Sides Now”?’ she said.
‘Never heard of it.’
I played the intro. This was not going to be as stimulating as having her standing three feet away hoarsely asking someone to touch her now. But the Joni Mitchell song was probably closer to what her singing teacher would have recommended, and she did it nicely.
She had looked at clouds and love and had begun looking at life when a short, sharp guy in a blue pinstripe suit with red braces and gelled hair came up on her other side and stood there, radiating impatience. He was about thirty-five and studiedly good-looking in a Michael Douglas sort of way. Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
I did an extra reprise of the final chorus, which he responded to with a glare and pursed lips in case his folded arms were not sending the message. As soon as she had sung the last line, he dropped a coin in the tip jar. I wound the song up and thought that would be the end of it. Gordon Gekko began to walk away, but my singer stayed where she was, right beside me.
‘Do you know “Angel of the Morning”?’ she said.
I hit an A chord and raised my eyebrows to see that she was happy with the key, which I guessed would test her upper range. She responded by singing the first line a cappella.
I automatically brought my heel down to begin counting the beat. If you tap your toe, the rhythm stays in your foot; tap your heel and you feel it through your body. I felt more than that. She put her hand on my shoulder and pressed gently in time with me. It was an extraordinarily intimate gesture, given that we were not just in front of, but surrounded by, an audience: I don’t care if anyone’s watching—let’s do this, just you and me, and thank you for being here and on my side.
The loud cough and dirty look from her minder said: Play another chord and I’ll break your arms.
I played an E. I was in a bar in Melbourne, not the South Side of Chicago, and the pretty guy in a suit was no Leroy Brown.
He looked at me. My singer looked at me. They looked at each other. Then they walked towards the door. She still had a faint black mark on her cheek.
I should have just let them go. They were customers, and had done nothing to provoke me beyond the insulting tip.
It was, in part, a reaction to him pushing her around, and to her acquiescing, only a few minutes after having the courage to take on a challenging song in front of a bar crowd.
It had also been a bad day at work. I’d been dubbed Seagull, after a joke that consultants fly in, do a lot of flapping and squawking, shit all over everybody and fly out. I had probably earned it, trying too hard to make an impression that justified being paid three times what the permanent employees were getting. I was technically up to the task, but still green at the consulting game.
And there was the tip. Gordon Gekko had no way of knowing about my well-paid day job. I may have been channelling my late father when I gave him a Lennon–McCartney send-off.
‘You’re Going to Lose that Girl’.
They both turned around. It was too dark to read their expressions. I had to finish the song, to maintain the pretence that the choice was coincidental. It took me further than I had intended. They were both stopped in the doorway, listening as I sang about making a point of taking her away from him, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the end it was me who lost the girl.
Hi, said the computer screen.
Miao, said Elvis, rubbing against my leg.
Mum, said my phone, switched to silent.
One thing at a time.
‘I’ve got the results,’ said my mother. ‘I’m afraid it’s bad news.’
I knew her better than to respond with anything more than a neutral ‘It’s late in the day to be getting results.’ It was after 10 p.m.
‘I’ve had them for hours. I didn’t want to spoil your dinner.’
‘Oh.’
‘They couldn’t find anything. So we still don’t know what it is.’
An outpouring of relief that my mother did not have cancer would only have prompted a homily on misplaced optimism, likely illustrated with a story from my childhood that I had chosen to forget.
Hi was still looking at me. A link to my past and a chance for a reality check. Nothing more than that. She was ten thousand miles away. One little drink couldn’t hurt.
I filled the cat’s water bowl and walked back to the computer. Claire had gone to bed.
Reply to Sender.
Hi. As my finger hovered over the mouse, I saw her again, standing by the piano, tear track down her cheek, trying to hide her nerves. Enlisting me as her ally: ‘I just love your accent.’
Backspace.
Ay up lass, I typed.
Send.
2
As I was emptying the tip jar, having played through to closing time, Shanksy walked by with his bucket and mop.
‘You know who that was, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Who do you mean?’
I was kidding, of course. It had been a quiet night for young women with beautiful brown eyes walking into the bar and singing take me now.
‘Sergeant Carey from Mornington Police. Angelina Brown.’
My singer did not look like a cop. Why would I recognise a police officer from out of town anyway? And was it Carey or Brown?
Shanksy cleared up the confusion, which was due to my recent arrival in the country that had given the world Neighbours and Home and Away. Carey was in fact Kerrie: only on television are police sergeants referred to by their first names. Ms Brown was an actress, which explained the special reception.
‘Who was the boyfriend?’ I asked.
‘No idea. I’ve never seen her in here before. Not a bad set.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You liked the Beatles song?’
He laughed. ‘“You’re Going to Lose that Girl”. Sailing close to the wind, mate. Lucky everyone else was thinking the same thing.’
Except everyone else knew who she was and that she was out of my league. I must have been the only person in the bar who had felt it might be the beginning of something. There is a particular magic when people play and sing together, and it had been there at the piano, along with the tease about my accent and the moment with the mascara. But my ungracious parting shot would have blown any chance I might have had.
Perhaps there was an element of self-sabotage. My move to Australia had been prompted by more than the promise of money and sunshine. There had been a relationship—my first serious relationship—back in the UK. After eighteen months together, nine of them sharing a flat and a cat, Joanna wanted to have children and I was not ready. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready. I couldn’t put a date on it. It had ended with me catching a plane to the other sid
e of the world. Now I wanted to work myself out before I let anyone else down.
Even if I had been looking for a new partner, I would not have chosen a well-known actress who should have been free to sing a couple of songs without being stalked by the pianist. In any case, she apparently had a boyfriend. For all those reasons, I didn’t do anything about it.
Angelina did. A fortnight later, she walked into the bar, alone. It was 6 p.m. and the place was empty. Normally I would not have been there so early, but I had asked one of the admin staff from work out for dinner, my first date in Australia. Angelina was indirectly responsible. She had awoken something, even if it was just my mother’s mantra of getting on with it.
The obvious way to begin my date with Tina was with some special attention at my bar. We had come straight from the office, so I was in suit and tie, with my hair cut and beard trimmed for the occasion.
The absence of other customers detracted a little from the effect I was aiming for, but we took a table near the bar and had just ordered drinks when Angelina walked in.
She was showing none of the self-confidence that had fuelled ‘Because the Night’; rather, the uncertainty that had undermined its credibility. She looked younger than I remembered her. She caught my eye, saw Tina and turned to leave. Then, one table away from the door, she sat down.
It took a few moments before I allowed myself to believe that she might have come to see me, and a few more to realise that this was exactly what her actions had signalled, right down to deciding that she didn’t want to confirm my suspicions by walking out.
When Shanksy walked over to take her order, Tina said, ‘Isn’t that Angelina Brown?’
Normally I would have responded by showing off my recently acquired knowledge: ‘From Mornington Police. She plays Sergeant Kerrie, doesn’t she?’ Instead I said, ‘Who?’
‘She’s an actress in a soapie. I watched it once or twice, you know, just to see what it was about. She plays the smart one, not the hot one, but seeing her here in person she’s quite attractive. You think so?’
I took the opportunity to look at her again.
‘She’s okay,’ I said. I thought she was most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
‘She’s always solving the crime or counselling people, and she seems really together, but she’s actually having an affair with a pathologist. She’s not married but he is, and he’s a slimeball, and everyone wants her to get a grip and go with the detective sergeant who really likes her but who’s too shy to say anything…Anyway, like I said, I don’t really watch it.’
At least Tina was giving me time to think. Why had Angelina left it so long? What about the boyfriend? How was I going to connect with her before she walked out of my life again?
I could hardly ask Tina to make herself scarce so I could pursue another woman. Even putting aside basic decency, it would have been career suicide to insult the woman who ran the office football-tipping competition and was thus connected with everyone in the department. I could have claimed to have met Angelina before—friend of a friend—or, God forbid, told the simple truth that she had sung at the piano one night, but I had effectively stated that I did not know her. There was no practical way I could give Shanksy a message to deliver in front of Tina.
Behind the bar, he poured Angelina an orange juice. She was not going to stick around. Somehow I had to get a message to her. And in that thought lay the answer. It was a clunky answer, but it would have to do.
I intercepted Shanksy on his way to Angelina’s table.
‘Tina, this is Shanksy. Tell her what I do here.’
‘He’s the piano player. When he feels like it.’
‘No way,’ said Tina.
I signalled to Shanksy to refill her glass and walked to the piano, now having an excuse to play to the empty house.
I was struggling to think of the words to the Bee Gees’ ‘I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You’. The preacher tortured me?
I was at the piano, about to regale a beautiful woman with a fudged impression of the brothers Gibb, when inspiration of sorts arrived.
‘You Are So Beautiful’.
It was more of a 1 a.m. last-drinks-stagger-off-into-the-night closer, but the sentiment was on the mark.
I was underway before I had time to consider the rest of the song. It was not a total screw-up, like singing ‘Go Away Little Girl’, but the lyrics needed Joe Cocker’s voice to offset the schmaltziness.
I did my best. I tried to keep looking towards Tina rather than Angelina, singing about a woman being everything I’d hoped for, the joy and happiness she brought me, a gift from heaven, and then I realised that Angelina might think I was singing it for my date. So, as I growled the last drawn-out to me, feeling a complete idiot, I turned to Angelina and gave her what I hoped was a meaningful look.
She was laughing.
I went back to my table and could tell something was wrong. Surely one look had not given me away? I had focused on Tina for most of the song.
That turned out to be the problem—and the solution.
‘Adam, that was lovely,’ she said, ‘but…wow. Just a bit heavy. I mean, we don’t really know each other yet. I’m just getting over a relationship, and I’m more about—you know—having a good time.’
Being taken to an empty bar and serenaded with a full-on love song at 6 p.m. was probably an unnerving start to a first date with the new guy in the office.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘me too.’
‘I wish that were true,’ said Tina, ‘but it’s obvious you’re looking for something more. Would you be really upset if we just called it a night now? I can get the tram, and then it’s like nothing happened.’
I began to stand, but Tina stopped me.
‘It’s okay. We can finish our drinks. You seem like a really sensitive person. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. After the way you are at work. No offence.’
While Tina finished her drink, Angelina walked to the bar, settled her account and disappeared down the stairs.
Shanksy waited until I had paid—‘Playing one song for your girlfriend doesn’t get you two free drinks’—and allowed me to get halfway to the door before calling me back.
‘Almost forgot. Your girlfriend left you this.’
He gave me an envelope, with ‘English Piano Player’ written on the front. In another pen, Angelina had added ‘and friend’. She had probably just been planning to drop it in, not expecting I would be there so early in the evening.
It was a photocopied invitation to a farewell party for Jenny and Bryce, strangers to me. They were ‘off to England’, probably to live in Earl’s Court, work in a bar and save for a hitchhiking trip around Europe. Or, more likely, to get some up-to-date experience in database design so there would be no need for overpaid imports like me.
The party was accordingly themed Bring a Brit. It was hardly insulting—even a little more respectful and euphonious than the Bring a Pom that my workmates would no doubt have written—but I had allowed my imagination to run to something more personal.
3
The following Friday, I fetched up just after 10 p.m. at a double-storey house in the eastern suburbs. It was a big party, maybe seventy guests, mostly in jeans, although more stylishly dressed than I would have expected of twenty-somethings. Actors and crew, perhaps: cooler than the IT crowd.
Angelina was standing in the living room with a group of women of about her own age. She was wearing a bright burgundy jacket with a short skirt, a beret and quite a bit of make-up: striking, but distinctly different from her look in the bar when she delivered the invitation, which in turn was different from that first night singing. The perfume was the same.
She opened a gap for me, touched me on the arm and smiled a silent welcome. I took the opportunity to check her left hand: no ring.
They were deep into a conversation about tactics for defending a drink-driving charge, and Angelina managed to convey without words that she was pleased that I had come and if I could p
ut up with her friends’ rudeness in not pausing to let her introduce me, she would do so in due course. Although she might like to contribute to the discussion first. And, in the meantime, don’t go away.
I smiled. I wasn’t going anywhere.
The conversation was lighthearted, but it was apparent that the young woman on the verge of losing her driver’s licence was struggling to appreciate the more outrageous suggestions, most of which were coming from a Jayne Mansfield look-alike with an irritatingly childish voice.
Angelina offered the first serious suggestion. ‘How long does your probationary licence have left to run?’
‘Why?’
‘Because they go by the date of the court case, not the date you got booked.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Pretty sure. If you’re on a full licence on the day you go to court, you’ll only get a suspension. If you’re nice to the magistrate.’
‘Nice to the magistrate’ set Jayne Mansfield off again, and left me to conclude that Angelina must have some experience with the law—in the negative sense. The wild, law-breaking actress.
She had still not managed to introduce me when a familiar figure materialised. He was wearing black slacks, a black rollneck sweater and polished shoes. He looked older than most of the other guests.
He gave me a quick appraisal, raised his eyebrows, but did not acknowledge me directly.
‘Richard!’ said Jayne Mansfield to the man formerly known as Gordon Gekko. ‘Miranda got booked at 0.08. There’s some way she can get off, right?’
‘Pass. I leave my work at the office.’ He smirked. ‘Like Angelina. She only does sex at work.’
Okay. It seemed they were a couple. He was apparently a lawyer. And unquestionably a first-class arsehole.
Jayne Mansfield responded with a giggle that went on longer than it needed to. I looked directly at Richard, and his expression made it clear that his joke was meant to contain a barb.
Angelina stood there, taking it. I was familiar with the dynamic and not just from the night she had sung at the bar. My father had a coruscating wit that would have left Richard in the shade. As a child I had spent too much time listening to him use it on my mother.