Short Fiction
BY COLIN HAYWARD
At first, Margaret had assumed she was dreaming the sound. After so many sleepless nights huddled on her own side of the bed, the left side, she was not about to push her way up into full consciousness and confront the emptiness beside her.  And the music?  So familiar and yet... 
"It's one of Beethoven's string quartets," he had told her.
"What is?" she had asked, startled by such forwardness. 
He sounded like a Yank though, that would explain it, the
familiarity.  But when she turned she noted 'Canada'
shoulder flashes on the khaki uniform above the sergeant's
stripes.
"What they're playing," he said, a smile in the voice.
"Oh," She looked over at the four musicians seated on the
middle of the platform on four dining room chairs.  God
knows where they had found dining room chairs in Victoria
Station.  A few soldiers stopped and listened to them for
a minute or two but most of the crowd eddied around them
looking for loved ones or crowding onto the two troop trains
loading on either side of her.  She noticed that the
musicians were playing with fingerless woolen gloves, the kind
she was used to seeing on bus conductors.  With the noise
of the crowd, the hissing of the steam engines and the shouts
of command, she wondered why they bothered.  At times you
could scarcely hear them above all the din.
"'ere, love.  What about some of that tea and a jam
butty," one of the other soldiers said, holding out a tin mug
to get her attention.
She poured tea for him and his mate and looked around for the
Canadian.  He was still there, standing to one side of her
tea wagon bobbing his head slightly in time to the
music. 
"It's nice," she said and handed him a mug.
"It is," he said.  "One of the Rasumovsky Quartets. 
Number two, I think."
She liked the sound of his voice. "How do you know so much
about music?" she asked.
"I used to play," he told her.  "Before the war."
"What did you play?" she asked as she served three soldiers
with Midlands accents.
"Viola," he said, "like that one there."
Following where he was pointing, she noted that the viola was
slightly bigger than the violins two of the other men were
playing. 
"Do you still play?" she asked, more to keep the conversation
going than anything else.
He smiled and held up his left hand.  The two middle
fingers were missing. "Not any more," he said.
"I'm sorry." She was always doing that, saying something
stupid.  She could feel herself blushing. 
"Don't be.  I wasn't that good anyway.  Now this
guy knows what he's doing.  Listen to that arpeggio. 
That's really good phrasing."
Margaret did not look at him.  Instead, she busied
herself with doling out the tea and jam sandwiches.
One of the trains began to pull away and for a few moments
the music was obscured by the shouted goodbyes of the women on
the platform, the yells of countless soldiers hanging out of
the windows and the huffing of the steam engine as it heaved
the train into motion.  The cries of the crowd reached a
crescendo and then died away as the separation between loved
ones became insurmountable.  In those few moments, the
music soared above the diminuendo of farewells to echo off the
grimy glass cavern of the station.  Abruptly the music
ended.  For a moment, the musicians sat perfectly still
and then someone beside her began to applaud.  It was the
tall Canadian.  Margaret and the others joined in. The
musicians rose and took a small bow. Then, as they began
carefully packing up their instruments, the crowd dispersed.
Margaret felt almost faint and did not know why except it
had something to do with the music.  "I never knew music
could be like that," she confessed to the Canadian.
"Wonderful, isn't it?" he said.  "Funny when you think
about it, though.  All these people clapping for
Beethoven, a Jerry.  Still, I suppose if the only good
German is a dead one, old Ludwig qualifies on both counts."
Margaret smiled, not quite sure how to take this tall man with a shock of dark hair that needed cutting.  Eight months later, the Canadian, Jack Cummings, had proposed to her.  Two years after that she had sailed to Canada on the Franconia, a war bride.
The sudden silence after the Presto final movement of the
Second Rasumovsky Quartet awakened her.  No longer able to
incorporate the music into her waking dream, Margaret opened
her eyes and, hardly able to breathe, waited in the
darkness.  The faint susurration of tires on wet pavement,
a rustle of turning pages, then the stately opening chords of
the Quartet in C major began their andante procession up the
stairs.  Margaret closed her eyes again and saw the first
violinist give the slightest of nods to begin the music that
eventually swelled to fill that sun filled Spanish
courtyard.  Balboa Park in San Diego but she could not
remember the name of the restaurant. 
"It was my Dad's idea," Katherine had told everyone who
would listen.  "Everybody else has a rock band at their
wedding but I get a string quartet." 
"It'll bless the union," Jack had countered and, giving
Margaret a hug, added, "It's how your mother and I met. 
If you're marriage holds up as well as ours, you'll be doing
all right."
Margaret felt the same proud smile spread across her face as
she remembered Jack stepping onto the patio dance floor and
leading his daughter into a tentative waltz.  She had
turned to Katherine's American husband, Tom, and whispered,
"You two be happy."
"We will, Mrs. Cummings.  You can count on that," he
had assured her.
It was a promise Tom had kept as far as she could tell. Jack
had been right. Their union had been blessed. Two children,
grown now, the boy, Alex, had become a percussionist with the
Cleveland Symphony. Alice was more delicate.  Margaret had
loved the way she would hang on Jack's every word when she was
small.
The deep pulsing of a cello being plucked signaled the slower second movement.  Time to get up and face the music, Margaret decided.
Throwing an old satin robe over her nightgown, Margaret
descended the stairs slowly and carefully because of her
arthritic hip. The quartet had arranged themselves in one
corner of the living room opposite her favorite chair. 
The viola player nodded to her as she reached the bottom of the
stairs and indicated with his eyes that she should sit. 
Feeling suddenly awkward as if she should have taken the time
to put on makeup and to do something with her hair,
Margaret did his silent bidding.  The only
illumination, besides the moonlight through the window, was
from the tiny lights on the music stands.  She noticed the
musicians were perched on dining room chairs, her own dining
room chairs.
Margaret was about to ask why they were  playing in her
living room in the middle of the night but, once again, the
viola player caught her eye and gently shook his head. 
Content for the moment not to question, she stretched back in
the chair and let the music wash over her.  Suddenly she
started. Of course, it was her birthday, her 75th 
birthday.  She had forgotten. Not surprising really. Her
first birthday since Jack's death. Not much to
celebrate...until now. One of the grandchildren, or perhaps
Tom, must have set this up to surprise her.
With her eyes closed she listened to the end of the C major
Quartet.  She opened her eyes to a slight shuffling of
papers and watched the musicians changing the music on their
stands.  The viola player, tall and broad shouldered like
Jack, looked up and flashed her an impish grin.
 The musicians launched into the deceptively low key
opening bars to the Great Fugue Quartet.  But soon the
music swelled into a tumbling fugue like the release of spring
water. 
"The greatest of them all," Jack had called the Great Fugue,
"A tribute to Bach is my guess. And the complexity, especially
the viola part...."
"I'm glad you like it, Jack," Margaret had said, smiling
hard and trying to ignore how thin and pale he had
become.  That day on her way to the hospital, she had
bought him a CD of the Beethoven string quartets to play on his
Discman.
"Beethoven was a viola player himself. Shows." He had run
out of breath, began to cough. Margaret helped to prop him up
while he struggled to breathe. When his shallow breathing
became regular again, she lowered him on to the pillow where he
lay exhausted.
"Like a little oxygen?" she asked softly. Weakly, he shook
his head.  Stubborn as always.  "Why not try and have
a little sleep then."  His hand shuffled towards hers and
she held it while he slept.  The hand with two phantom
fingers.
Another bouquet of flowers from Katherine and Tom, she
noted.  Margaret leaned over and looked at the card: 'Get
well soon, Dad,' Katherine's neat public school teacher's
script, 'Tom and I are going to try to make it up to Canada
next month. I have the summer off and Tom thinks he can get the
last two weeks of July. We will bring Alice, of course, but I'm
afraid Alex is in London, touring with his orchestra until
September.  Hope to see you soon. Love, Katherine and
Tom'.
Too late, Margaret was sure. On the way in today, she had
managed to pin down his doctor.  "A matter of days, if not
hours," he had said. "I hope I'm wrong. Sorry, Mrs. Cummings.
Not much we can do now except see that he's comfortable."
Just over half an hour later, Jack opened his eyes and asked
for a drink of water  "Feel a little better," he whispered
as he handed back the glass.  Then with a slight chuckle,
"You know this morphine is wonderful stuff... relieves the pain
even better than my music."
"Just don't get hooked," she said.  "Wouldn't do to
have a junkie in the family."
He was silent for a few minutes, gathering his strength,
Margaret felt. She smiled at him helplessly, all the time
wanting to weep and hoping not to, not now, not yet.
"I... I was dreaming about when we met...on the platform....
they were playing one of the Rasumovsky Quartets....and there
you were... God, I'd never seen anyone so beautiful.... I....
You know.... I'm not one for.... for saying how I feel..."
"I know how you feel, Jack love," Margaret said
gently.  She knew that right now she could not let him put
it into words, knew that the composure she was working so hard
to keep from cracking would finally fall to pieces.
"Of course you do," he rasped.  "Wouldn't have put up
with me all these years otherwise."
"Oh, we've been pretty lucky, I think," she said. "All
things considered."
He was silent again for a time. Finally summoning a new
reserve of strength, he said, "You know those kings and princes
had one thing right...."
"What, Jack?"
"I mean it's great we can hear the music of Beethoven
anywhere, any time....," He fingered his Discman,  "but if
you were Prince Galitzin you could commission a quartet from
Beethoven and have your own musicians play it...."
"Like at Katherine's wedding."
"Yes.  remember....remember when I waltzed with
her.  I can't tell you how I felt."
"I can still see the two of you.  You were so handsome,
Jack."
"You see. Live music.  If I get another, you know,
another remission and can come home next month... we'll have
Katherine and Tom up and..."  He began to cough again.
 "Just lie back for a while, Jack," Margaret had
said.  "I'll get the nurse."
"No, no... run off her feet, girl....  Be OK. in a
couple of minutes." 
"Try sleeping a little.  I'll be here," she told him.
Eventually he overcame the coughing fit. Urgently he drew
her closer.  "Live music.  One last time, you'll see,
old girl," he said, squeezing her hand with a strength that
surprised her.
There had been no remission.  Three days later Jack had
died.  His last words to her had been "Don't leave me,
girl." And she had not but sometime about this time of night he
had left her.
Almost eight months ago now.  Eight months and
sometimes she still found herself talking to him from another
room.
The last strains of Beethoven's Great Fugue died away and for
several moments all was silent. Then hardly able to breathe,
Margaret gently clapped. Solemnly the musicians rose and joined
in. Somewhere to her left she might have heard the tall
Canadian leading the applause.
Without a word the four musicians left. On the seat of the
chair occupied by the viola player, the faint amber gleam of a
brass. Margaret rose and recognized Jack's old door key.
She crossed to the window and watched as the musicians
stowed their instruments into a dark van and climbed in. 
The last to get in was the driver, the viola player.  In
the dim light from the cabin, he looked a lot like Jack when
she had first met him, tall, hair a little too long, lopsided
grin.  He saw her standing in the living room window and
waved to her with his left hand.
Margaret counted five fingers.  "Thanks, Jack," she whispered to the empty house, "Thanks for all the years... and for remembering."
Last Quartet is a short story by Colin Hayward, a theatre production professor at Cambrian College. He is also an actor and a writer. Hayward recently published a collection of short stories titled Other Times, Other Places, Twenty Stories. The book is published by Sudbury's Your Scrivener Press and is available at Books and Beans, Village International, Black Cat Too and Chapters in-store and online. Other Times, Other Places has been shortlisted for the Nothern "Lit" Award for Adult Fiction, which is presented by Ontario Library System, North.
