Play On

The keys rattled in the door behind her, locking her into the outside world. The air was warm and humid as she stepped over the rusty bike that lay in her path, another failure of the government’s money-spending policies. The street was nearly empty. It had rained heavily the night before and the drains were crowded with litter, cigarette butts and face masks, a certain ironic contrast. One to save, one to kill. The street she lived on was a pretty street, lined with trees and gentrified houses, although it had started falling into disrepair these last few years. The shop on the corner had closed and its permanently shuttered windows were blind to the world, scrawled with anti-government graffiti. It was autumn and the leaves were starting to fall. There were 12 trees on the street visible from her window. She counted them during The Lockdown, four on her side of the street, eight on the other.

It was still strange being outside, the air felt somehow hollow, the people felt too close, too many, too there. Her neighbour waved at her from the other side of the road, their eyes crinkling into a smile. Their dog was sniffing around the base of a tree. She waved back.

She pushed open the door to the auditorium, smelling the sweet wood polish, and dusty velvet seats. It was dark inside but she could hear him at the piano. He always arrived before her, no matter how early she left home. Her feet echoed around the cavernous room as she climbed the steps, opened up her violin case. His fingers strolled over his scales as she spread rosin onto her bow and hoisted her violin beneath her chin. She watched as his hands came to a stop and he turned around.

‘Ready?’

Her violin soared in the empty space. Just the two of them. Their music was made for an audience but somehow they managed to fill the space. The fire escape, propped open to let a breeze into the stuffy auditorium, creaked in the wind. A storm was brewing again.

She looked at him. Not exactly looked, she couldn’t take him in all at once. She had glimpses, snapshots. A whole was overwhelming. She looked at his shoulders rising and falling with the music. At his neck. At his hands and they danced across the keys. Her own hands were stubby, her fingernails trimmed to the skin to play her violin. She looked at the back of his shirt collar, she looked at his hair, how it curled. She looked at his shoes, his ankles crossed beneath the piano chair.

The hours passed as they glided their way across their repertoire. She noticed her every error, but they somehow wordlessly corrected it, went back, tried that bar again.

‘Should we get a coffee?’ He said, closing the lid of the piano.

She had been closing her violin case, zipping it up. She stopped and looked at him, made eye contact, then looked away. Eyes were too much like the whole. She looked at his feet.

‘I’d like that.’

The wind had picked up when they stepped outside, locking the theatre door behind them, locking them outside. The walked the designated metre apart, her violin case rattling against her leg between them. He talked about their music, about the strange weather. A car passed them, blowing dead leave sin their direction. He joked that the government would soon be giving the people cash in exchange for their cars.

‘It’s the people's responsibility to end the climate catastrophe.’ He said, mimicking the prime minister’s posh voice. Thunder clouds were darkening the sky as they approached a cafe. A handful of people were sued outside. Government slogans were pasted onto the windows.

‘Only one person allowed in at a time.’ He said. She looked at his shirt pocket. He got out his wallet. ‘I’ll go in and get something - what do you want?’

She asked him for a coffee, oat milk. His eyes crinkled. ‘Coming right up.’ He said, disappearing inside the shop.

She leant against the wall, posted with flyers. She got out her phone. It was nearly 5pm. She opened Instagram, saw the deluges of her friends perfectly contorted bodies, saw the news flooding in, some of it false, much of it covered up, all of it horrible. She felt like she could barely remember a time when there wasn’t news of famine, war, dictators, ecological crisis, and of course, the virus. She had eight unread messages. She turned it off, slipping it back into her pocket.

He came out of the shop holding two coffee cups, reusable ones of course, which they would have to return within three days. He smelt of the tangy sanitiser on the door. He handed it to her, his eyes crinkling above his mask.

‘Thanks Finn,’ She said, putting her violin down, and taking it off him. ‘How much do I owe you? She took out her phone again. ‘I’ll transfer it over now.’

‘No worries.’ He said between sips. ‘My treat.’

She smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

They walked through the park, drinking their coffee. The air was thick and humid, and the clouds hung low and purple, glowering over the city. She asked him about his dog. He got out his phone and leant over, showing her a photo of the dog. Her violin case rattled between them, the metre divided by half. She looked at him. In parts. His ear, two piercings, two little hoops. His chin, a little moon-shaped scar on his neck, his fingers as he scrolled through the photos of his dog playing with a frisbee. A freckle just below his thumb.

The wind picked up, blowing the leaves around them in little eddies. 

‘I like storms.’

‘Me too.’ She paused. ‘I love falling asleep to the sound of the rain. The louder the wind the happier I am.’

‘I love going out when its pouring and getting soaked through, just for the sake of it.’

‘To feel something tangible.’

“To feel alive! To exist to hold onto these crazy threads of life our world keeps chucking at us.’

‘We’re the cats.’

‘Cats?’

‘You know, cats with a ball of yarn. We are the cats playing with the ball of yarn life is throwing at us, hoping to catch something worthwhile, something substantial.’

‘Something real.’

‘Yeah.’

She’d been looking him in the eyes. She looked away, down at his feet. His boots were scuffed.

‘Practise feels real.’

‘Huh?’

‘Practise, music practise I mean, with you. That feels real.’

‘Oh.’

‘It feels like the only bloody real thing right now.’

Her violin case knocked at her knees. He tipped the dregs of his coffee onto the grass and put his cup into his bag. Shoulders, arms, ribs, the pattern of his jumper.

‘Hey.’ He said. He’d caught her looking at him. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘You’re right.’ She breathed heavily, her mask expanding. She was glad it hide the tinges of blush spreading over her face.

‘I’m always right.’ He joked. ‘About what?’ Collar, chin, mouth, nose, mouth, mouth, eyes.

‘Practise is the only place I feel real.’

‘That's what music does eh? The life of the fucking soul.’

‘Its, its…’

But he got there first.

‘But that’s not what I meant, you know. I meant, with you.’

He took off his mask. ‘Fuck this.’ He said with a shy smile at her. She didn’t move away, but she didn’t take hers off either. ‘I meant practice is the only time I feel real, that I exist, not because of the piano, I mean sure it helps to remind me that I can never be the next great concert pianist.’

‘Because there are no concerts?’ She offered.

‘True, but no. I mean, piano makes me feel real because it something I can fail in, but also excel in, if that makes sense. It shifts, it changes, it isn’t all bad, but it's not all good either. And I guess that reminds me that I still exist, that the world isn’t some crazy simulation.’ He sighed, scuffing his feet on the floor. She looked down at them too.

‘But look.’ He continued. ‘It’s being with you, it’s hearing your violin playing, it’s the sound of your breathing, it’s the warmth you fill a room with, it’s the crinkle of your eyes when you’re smiling but I can’t see it. Man, that drives me insane not being able to see your smile.’

She was smiling then.

‘You know that Shakespeare quote, where he goes, I can’t remember exactly - is it Twelfth Night or Midsummer Night’s Dream? I dunno, I get confused. Where he goes “if music be the food of love play on”.’

He said this in a deep resonating Shakespearean actor voice and she laughed.

‘Yes, yes, I know the quote.’

Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. So beautiful, a deep, everlasting, brown. And those eyelashes!

‘Well, anyway.’ He continued, embarrassed. ‘I never want you to stop playing. I want it to go on and on and on until my fingers bleed. I want the world to disappear and all that’s left at the end of the universe is me and you and music.’

Eyes, nose, cheek, mouth, lips, lips…

‘I can never look at all of you because if I do I might never look away.’ She blurted out. ‘Oh god, that’s embarrassing.’ She’d taken off her mask and he could see the blush all over her face.

He reached out to her, took her free hand. Those fingers that she knew so well, that thumb, that softly stroked.

‘It was kinda embarrassing. But I liked it. It’s probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me Aesha.’

‘That's a bit pathetic.’ She said. She took his hand and closed the distance between them. Hand, cheek, neck, hair, hand, mouth, lips, lips, lips, lips. The rain started falling, thick heavy drops. It fell into his eyelashes and she brushed them away.

‘I love the rain.’ She said.

‘Me too.’

‘It’s Twelfth Night, by the way, it’s what Orsino says at the start of play, thinking that music could be a cure to his love.’

‘I dunno about that.’ He said softly. ‘Hasn’t done wonders for me.’

‘Me either.’

Lips, lips, lips, tongue, teeth. Lips.

The rain fell heavily over the city, and thunder rolled through the grey clouds. The dead dry leaves and the hot tarmac soon filled with water, the lonely cars and rusting bikes soon sparkled in the evening light. Finn and Aesha, on their little lifeboat awash in the world, floated, between them hummed the music they made together and the air crackled with lightning. They laughed, and ducked undercover, their clothes soaked through. She almost forgot her violin and rushed back out into the rain to grab it. She stood there. Looked up at the sky. It glowered down at her. She smiled through the warm rain that washed over her face. The world wasn’t made to be seen in parts. It was a mess, but it was a glorious mess. A glorious mess with music and love and coffee and Shakespeare.

Finn called out to her.

‘Come out of the rain!’

She laughed and cried out into the air.

‘I exist!’

***

I’ve spent ages thinking about what storytelling, and contemporary storytelling, should look like in the wake of COVID-19, and all I could decide upon is the fact we can’t ignore it. So I wrote this. A simple love story, set a few months into the future. Its a start. It’s not perfect. But it’s a start and that’s all we can really do. Start as we mean to go on. Continue and change. Adapt and reflect. Learn and teach.

Let me know your thoughts on how writing will and can change in response to a global pandemic.