hot beaches of France. For them, as they collapsed in long-suppressed exhaustion, Cornwall was an escape from Leo, but for me it was a way of getting closer.
Mum and I drove into Fowey one hot afternoon. There was the traditional hunt for a parking space which the automatic machines indulge in to this day and then, as we wandered beside the new harbour workings and explored the shops, I got the impression that she wanted to talk. In my better Cornish mood, I was even prepared to turn off Heifetz to listen. I was still wearing one of Leo’s old tee shirts, but today, amid the boutiques which still then predominated in such places, Mum nudged me towards trying out some more feminine clothes. I held tops and dresses before long mirrors, judging them against the chilly look which might best encapsulate the Sibelius slow movement.
I was taller than my mother now. In the wake of Leo’s death, she had changed and shrunk. With their cross-cultural marriage and commitment to rational education, Mum and Dad had entered adult life imagining that they were part of what all society would eventually become. Now, as the divides widened, that belief had gone. She had a story of a nurse who’d refused to believe that she was Leo’s mother during one of the times when he was in hospital. Even here in Cornwall, lads drinking outside the Duke of Prussia called down at us jeeringly as we walked past the harbour towards the shops. Mum was still an active member of the local WRFI group, but even that was starting to fade. The condition, of its nature, was almost exclusively confined to white people…
“Can you believe they’re saying prayers now at the start of every meeting?” she said to me now as we bore my new designer bags back up to the car park. “Not just any old prayers, either, but exclusively Christian ones. So I just stood up and said I had no desire to participate. The ridiculous thing is, they acted so surprised. You could see them thinking—we thought you were one of us!” Mum gave the nearest thing she now gave to a smile. “Well, I told them I was a committed Hindu. That shut them up…”
Even through the worst of times, and despite the abandoned piano, Mum and Dad had encouraged my attempts to become more than merely good at the violin. But they still imagined that I was working out my grief and anger at losing Leo. Despite the enormous progress I’d made, they were still expecting me to lose interest.
“If you really want to make music a career, Roushana,” Mum said as we drove back towards our cottage along the hawthorn-clawed road, “you need to think about how difficult that will be.”
“Do you think I haven’t ?”
“Of course. But there’s that phrase about putting all your eggs in one basket.”
“Isn’t that just what Leo did?”
Her hands massaged the wheel. Uppermost though my brother was in all our thoughts, it was rare for any of us to mention his name. “Leo was—”
“You think he had talent and I don’t, is that it?”
“Nothing of the sort.” Her mouth twitched. “But you saw how much pressure it put on him. I think, we think, that it was partly why he…Well, why he killed himself. Whatever happens, we don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Music is what’s got me through this, Mum.”
“I understand. And that’s one thing. And no one disputes you’re exceptional now—after all, you won that competition.”
I ground my nails into my palms. I hated those competitions and recitals, which took place in the same dusty halls as Mum’s WRFI meetings. Hated them when I won them, and hated even more when, as the upstart new girl who appeared seemingly from nowhere amid the rumours of her lost, brilliant brother, I lost.
“All I mean, Roushana, is that music’s so uncertain. And you’re good at English and maths—top set and all of that. We don’t want you to throw any of what you can be away. You’ll need a well-rounded education if you’re to succeed at anything. Of
Mum and I drove into Fowey one hot afternoon. There was the traditional hunt for a parking space which the automatic machines indulge in to this day and then, as we wandered beside the new harbour workings and explored the shops, I got the impression that she wanted to talk. In my better Cornish mood, I was even prepared to turn off Heifetz to listen. I was still wearing one of Leo’s old tee shirts, but today, amid the boutiques which still then predominated in such places, Mum nudged me towards trying out some more feminine clothes. I held tops and dresses before long mirrors, judging them against the chilly look which might best encapsulate the Sibelius slow movement.
I was taller than my mother now. In the wake of Leo’s death, she had changed and shrunk. With their cross-cultural marriage and commitment to rational education, Mum and Dad had entered adult life imagining that they were part of what all society would eventually become. Now, as the divides widened, that belief had gone. She had a story of a nurse who’d refused to believe that she was Leo’s mother during one of the times when he was in hospital. Even here in Cornwall, lads drinking outside the Duke of Prussia called down at us jeeringly as we walked past the harbour towards the shops. Mum was still an active member of the local WRFI group, but even that was starting to fade. The condition, of its nature, was almost exclusively confined to white people…
“Can you believe they’re saying prayers now at the start of every meeting?” she said to me now as we bore my new designer bags back up to the car park. “Not just any old prayers, either, but exclusively Christian ones. So I just stood up and said I had no desire to participate. The ridiculous thing is, they acted so surprised. You could see them thinking—we thought you were one of us!” Mum gave the nearest thing she now gave to a smile. “Well, I told them I was a committed Hindu. That shut them up…”
Even through the worst of times, and despite the abandoned piano, Mum and Dad had encouraged my attempts to become more than merely good at the violin. But they still imagined that I was working out my grief and anger at losing Leo. Despite the enormous progress I’d made, they were still expecting me to lose interest.
“If you really want to make music a career, Roushana,” Mum said as we drove back towards our cottage along the hawthorn-clawed road, “you need to think about how difficult that will be.”
“Do you think I haven’t ?”
“Of course. But there’s that phrase about putting all your eggs in one basket.”
“Isn’t that just what Leo did?”
Her hands massaged the wheel. Uppermost though my brother was in all our thoughts, it was rare for any of us to mention his name. “Leo was—”
“You think he had talent and I don’t, is that it?”
“Nothing of the sort.” Her mouth twitched. “But you saw how much pressure it put on him. I think, we think, that it was partly why he…Well, why he killed himself. Whatever happens, we don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Music is what’s got me through this, Mum.”
“I understand. And that’s one thing. And no one disputes you’re exceptional now—after all, you won that competition.”
I ground my nails into my palms. I hated those competitions and recitals, which took place in the same dusty halls as Mum’s WRFI meetings. Hated them when I won them, and hated even more when, as the upstart new girl who appeared seemingly from nowhere amid the rumours of her lost, brilliant brother, I lost.
“All I mean, Roushana, is that music’s so uncertain. And you’re good at English and maths—top set and all of that. We don’t want you to throw any of what you can be away. You’ll need a well-rounded education if you’re to succeed at anything. Of
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