The Piano: A short story from The Book Of Hidden Wonders author Polly Crosby

A woman left alone hears ghostly piano notes that appear to summon a husband long-gone. This is The Piano, an exclusive short story by author Polly Crosby.

For you ... this is an exclusive gift from British author Polly Crosby.

THE PIANO is a short story by Polly Crosby, author of new novel sensation The Book Of Hidden Wonders, exclusively shared with readers of the Sunday Book Club. Read Polly’s article on how she came up with the acclaimed book on Sunday, August 16 at the Sunday Book Club.

THE PIANO: A SHORT STORY by POLLY CROSBY

Elizabeth awoke to the sound of a piano.

‘What a cruel joke,’ she said quietly, pressing her ear into the pillow and trying to get back to sleep, but the notes continued, far off in the distance, discordant and beautiful.

She sat up in bed, confused for a moment where she was. It was the same, comforting brass bed she had shared with Gerry up until he died, but the room around it was different, small and bare, and she felt as if she were on a boat, drifting into never before seen waters. As sleep left her, and her eyes got used to the lines of the room, she remembered again, like a cruel joke that keeps coming back to haunt you.

She had moved here only a few days before, packing up the grand old house she had shared with Gerry for fifty years. Elizabeth had always assumed she would live there until she died, but after Gerry went, there was a sadness that followed her as she roamed the endless rooms, as she listened desperately for his voice, knowing she would never hear it again.

It had been the right decision to move, both financially and emotionally, and she knew that the little house she had found would offer exactly what she needed, cosseting her in its comforting arms. There was a garden too, long and thin, full of brambles and ivy that she looked forward to cutting away, making the space her own.

But what had been harder than moving house was getting rid of so many of their possessions. So many pieces of furniture had to go, among them, Gerry’s beloved piano. It would have been pointless to keep it; she hadn’t learnt to play, and besides, what was the use of such a hulking great instrument if it would never again sing with the touch of her dear husband’s fingers?

This story is a prequel to The Book of Hidden Wonders by Polly Crosby.

She sighed and looked at the clock. Three in the morning. Perhaps a cup of camomile tea would help her sleep.

As she pulled the covers back and carefully manoeuvred her feet to the floor, she heard it again: the very highest notes of a piano, tinkling like water.

Gerry? she thought, then shook her head. ‘Silly girl,’ she said to herself. ‘He can’t come back from where he’s gone.’

Downstairs, the kettle boiled, filling the little kitchen with steam. She took her tea and opened the back door. It was a warm summer’s night, the wildness of the garden encroaching upon the house, leaving only a crumbling patch of patio free of foliage. She sat down at the garden table and looked up at the sky. The moon was bright. A single sharp note pierced the silence. For a moment, Elizabeth thought it was the sound of the piano again, but then it began to undulate, melting into the trilling song of a blackbird announcing the dawn chorus. She listened, watching as the sky began to lighten, feeling for the first time a peace within herself.

She spent the morning sharpening the secateurs – something Gerry would normally have done – and regarding the tangled mass of bushes with trepidation. When she had viewed the house before she bought it, the estate agent had told her the garden went on for nearly two hundred feet, but it had been impossible to get further than a few steps into the brambled mass.

She began to snip and slice at the cables and vines, moving slowly forward as the spiky path opened up before her. As she worked, she revelled in the physical effort, hardly feeling the sting of nettles, the snatch of a thorn on her skin. Her mind felt invigorated, cleared of all the sadness that had filled it in the past few weeks, and a ruddy glow began to bloom on her cheeks.

As the sun rose higher, she peeled off her gardening gloves and stood, assessing. The blackbird that had serenaded her earlier was perched on a sapling nearby, watching. And then, she heard it again, the piano, and her heart stuttered in her chest.

It was louder here, the notes impossibly fast. She stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the bushes to the end of the garden, imagining Gerry sitting at his piano on the other side, his familiar hands flashing across the keys.

The music stopped as abruptly as it had started, and Elizabeth sank back down, wiping sweat from her brow. It was too hot for this kind of work; it was making her hear things that weren’t there. She went inside the cool of the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. What was she doing, imagining her dead husband beyond the tangle of brambles? She spent the rest of the day indoors, sheltering from the sun, occasionally glancing out of the window at the garden.

That night, she left the window wide open in the hope she would hear the piano again. The deep, resonant bass notes woke her in the early hours, and she lay there, listening. The music was more urgent this time, brash and staccato, pulsing with an energy that made her foot tap beneath the sheets. It reminded her of the warm, sultry night she had met Gerry all those years ago: the jazz club with its deep bass pounding through her bones, the syrup-sharp taste of crème de cassis on her lips. She remembered the way his hands, so young then, flew across the keys with featherlight touches, and when the music outside her window stopped, she closed her eyes and fell into the deepest sleep she had managed for weeks.

In the morning, she set to work on the garden again, pausing now and then to listen for stray notes beneath the birdsong. Once or twice she thought she heard a soft scatter of chords, as if a hand had playfully caressed the keys, and she changed the direction of the path she was making, trying to follow the sound.

By mid-afternoon, scratched and sunburnt, she had nearly reached the end of the garden. She could make out glimpses of an old brick wall right at the back, and an uneasy thought struck her: what if the music was coming from the other side? She went into the house and poured herself a glass of beer, making a sandwich from thick, white bread and a hunk of stilton. Upstairs, she placed the plate on the windowsill and gazed out over the garden. She had been right: she was indeed near the end, one last mass of brambles rearing up like an unlit bonfire. She looked hard at the brambles, pushing her glasses onto her nose in order to see better. The scrub was dark and dense – was it just the thick branches of ancient bushes, or was there something else in there, skulking at its heart?

Forgetting her lunch, she raced down the stairs, collecting the secateurs again and running to the end of the garden. She began hacking frenziedly at the gnarled thicket. This part of the garden hadn’t been touched in years; the branches covered in lichen. Insects and birds took to the air as she cut her way through, and her foot knocked against something hard. She bent down, digging her fingers into the earth. A crème de cassis bottle slid cleanly out of the ground, a trickle of the dark purple liquid still inside. She unscrewed the cap and put her nose to the neck, the smell taking her back to the night she had first tasted it. She placed it aside and carried on, cutting and pulling, the thorns digging into her palms.

And then, all of a sudden, there it was. A piano.

It was warped and beginning to rot, the open lid slightly askew. But it was just like Gerry’s. A sudden flurry of notes rose from it, as if an invisible hand were running down the scales, and Elizabeth’s heart leapt. And then a mouse appeared, pattering across the keys, and she at last understood: Gerry had never been here, not really.

She watched as the mouse made a quick scurrying exit across the last few keys, the sound shivering into the air, and then Elizabeth put her hand to the piano, the worn wood warm from the sun, the gloss paint peeling.

‘Oh my darling Gerry,’ she said. ‘How I’ve missed your songs.’ Her fingers were on the keys as she spoke. Beneath them, she felt a thrum of energy, deep within the piano, and then her hands began to move as if they had a mind of their own, flitting over the ivories, pressing here and there as if enchanted.

As the notes rose into the air, as her heart swelled with joy and contentment, so the blackbird that had watched her opened its beak, its sharp, clear song joining the beautiful swell of music that poured from the piano beneath Elizabeth’s dancing hands.

The Book of Hidden Wonders by Polly Crosby (HQ Fiction $32.99) is out now.