Playing Under the Piano by Hugh Bonneville

Author:Hugh Bonneville [Bonneville, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2022-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

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When you’re on holiday thousands of miles away from home and you wake up on the morning of Christmas Eve to see on your mobile two missed calls from your brother you know something’s wrong. To be honest, I thought he was going to tell me something had happened to Dad, the scatty and vulnerable one. Mum was always the rock. I had last seen my parents a couple of weeks before. I was hosting a concert at the Albert Hall and had popped out front to see them during the interval. She was frail, her breathing awkward, as it had been for some years now, but there she was, smiling, typically sweet and encouraging. The bell sounded for the second half. That last kiss bye bye, as it proved to be, traces of make-up powder from her cheek transferring to mine, a faint scent…frozen, now, in time. Held for ever. A respiratory infection took her in less than a day. The winter of 2014.

It’s horrible, being so far away and waiting for a plane to get you home so you can mourn with the rest of the family. Then, once you are all together, everything is lists and practicalities and the general bureaucracy of death that seems designed to keep you so busy that there’s no time for grieving. The grief comes later, in peculiar waves that eddy and pool and confuse. There was a sound Mum made when trying to relieve a tickle in her throat, a sound I’ve never heard from another human. I can only describe it as the oesophageal version of an animal rubbing its back against a tree to relieve an itch. A sort of internal scratching and squawking; akin to the ancient mating call of some exotic bird, perhaps. In the months after her death, remembering this sound that only she could make would one moment cause me to laugh out loud and then, the next time I recalled it, drown me in a bucket of sobs. Bringing to mind that unique sound now I feel emotions rising from deep inside, but at the same time I smile. The ripples still ebb and flow but somehow simultaneously.

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