The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion

Author:Graeme Simsion [Simsion, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2016-07-21T22:00:00+00:00

22

My mother was, as always, pleased to see me. The feeling was not entirely reciprocated.

The modern (and when I say modern, I mean post-1900) approach to counselling is based on listening and occasional interpretations and suggestions, allowing the patient, over an extended period, to gain an understanding of his problems and to devise ways of dealing with them. My mother came from an older tradition of personal observations and advice, repeated until the patient conceded defeat. In my mother’s case, the beating over the head was combined with razor-sharp insight.

‘You never did get over that married woman in Australia, did you?’

‘Potatoes are good. How do you get them so brown?’

‘Kylie. That was her name, wasn’t it?’

The misunderstanding was the result of a flippant remark back in 1990. Kylie was then the archetypal Australian name, and I had never bothered to correct my mother. Her lectures were easier to take with Angelina’s name left out of them.

She didn’t wait for confirmation. ‘She’s done you a lot of harm. She should have been ashamed of herself, carrying on with a young man. An innocent traveller.’

‘Mum, I was twenty-six. I was older than she was.’

‘She was married. When my mother married my father, she knew he was off to the war, and let me tell you those American servicemen would have been all over her. She was a very attractive woman when she was young. You’ve seen the photos?’

‘No,’ I lied.

‘Of course you have.’

‘Don’t know, Mum—it’s been a long time.’

My mother went to get the photos. Whenever she needed an exemplar of marriage, she cited her parents. She and Dad had not done so well. Dad had an ego the size of a baby grand. He was a natty dresser, a lover of music of all kinds and a womaniser. He knew everyone in the Manchester music scene—the Bee Gees, the Hollies, the Smiths in their early days—and had a million stories. I would wager he went to the Judas concert at the Free Trade Hall, whatever he told my mother.

Even as a teenager I knew he was playing around. He drank, too, another habit I inherited. I managed to avoid the smoking that gave him lung cancer, but my mother can take the credit for that. My father was only a peripheral part of my life by the time he checked out.

I had three definitive moments with him, all tied to the piano. It was hard to imagine how a definitive moment with my dad could be tied to anything else.

When I was a kid, learning the instrument the old, hard, classical way, he came up while I was practising.

‘Not much fun, is it?’ he said.

‘You’re the one making me do it.’

‘Tell me a song you like. “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”?’

‘Dad! I’m seven.’

‘It’s a good tune at any age. But you choose.’

‘The cherry cola song.’ It was playing constantly on the radio at the time.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t know it.’

‘Yes, you do.’ I hummed a few bars.

‘You want to learn “Lola”? It’s a lot harder than “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”.

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