A surfeit of Pianos .

 

Surfeit: n & v. Excess, oppression or satiety resulting, (cause to) take too much of something, cloy.

 

‘I want you to hire a piano,' telephoned the son from peace-keeping in the Sinai. ‘I want you to hire a piano while I'm home on leave.'

‘But we've already got a piano.' I protested.

‘No. It's ratshit,' he said.

I had always wanted a piano. As a child I would pretend to play a table top and eventually I persuaded my parents to pay for music lessons at school, but because we didn't have a piano I never progressed very far. I was supposed to practice at school, but seldom for long, my classmates begging me to stop after a few bars of March Militaire.

At the age of fifty, having earned a little money of my own, I made the decision. My husband did not approve. ‘If you buy a piano, I really will leave home,' he said. I did and he didn't. I chose the piano purely for its magnificent inlaid exterior. The first time I needed to have it tuned, the piano tuner laughed. The pegs had gone oval with age and could not be turned. ‘I hope you didn't pay too much for it,' he said scornfully, after refusing to touch it.

I practised at least for half an hour every day. More at weekends. ‘Do admit.' I said to our eldest son, ‘I have improved.' ‘Yes,' he replied ‘You know those two tunes very well.'

We moved to Canberra and the piano went with us. Miraculously the journey put it back in tune, but not for long. Four years later we moved back to Melbourne and it went out of tune again. The quote for rebuilding it was around $2,000.

To hire a piano for a week would cost $400, I confided to a nearby neighbour in our street. ‘He'd be most welcome to come and play mine,' she said. The house is empty while I'm up at the farm. You've got a key. Let him come and go as he will.'

More discussions from the desert in the Middle East . ‘No, I want to play Mozart by firelight in the back room and drink brandy.'

‘Peace-keeping at any price,' I pondered and arranged for a specialist piano mover to shift the piano from No. 18 Albion Road to No. 52 Albion Road for the fee of $100 – AND back again in ten days.

The morning of the move two strongmen arrived at my door. ‘It's hardly worth putting on the truck,' they decided and taking their piano-moving trolley with them walked up to the end of the road, loaded Piano B on to it and started wheeling it down the street through the commuters. ‘Give us a concert!' cried one bored motorist at the roundabout. And another sang ‘Right' said Fred. Hauling altogether, we wuz getting nowhere, and so we had a cup-a-tea and Fred said ‘Right-ho'.'

So he came and he played and he went. Ten days later the same team came to take the piano back to its own home. Another $100. As it as uphill this time they did load it on the truck,

The years passed and my stiff fingers did not improve. My two tunes and the piano deteriorated, but a young grandson thumped it happily. My neighbour was selling up and moving permanently to her farm. ‘What on earth will I do with the piano?' she asked. ‘I'll buy it.' I said as the inlay was by now the only beautiful thing about Mother's Little Mistake.

My husband is the sort of person you do not confide in. Faced with fait accompli he can cope. But any intelligent discussion beforehand always means wisdom prevails. When one of our dogs died, the three sons wanted a German Shepherd. ‘Too expensive and too expensive to feed, ‘ was the decision. When I was offered one free to a good home and took it (without conferring) he was besotted and we will never contemplate any other breed of dog. So I just do it and he's happy. It's the decision-making that he doesn't like.

So I would not tell him of the purchase of a second piano. I would have it moved down the street yet again from No, 18 to No, 52. (With a bit of luck it would not be the same two piano-movers.) I would have them shift the inlay piano out into our shed and replace it with Piano B and he would never notice the difference. I would arrange for a furniture maker to make a blanket box out of the old piano, placing the beautiful inlaid panel at the front. Simple.

‘P' day came and I wrote a cheque for the neighbour. I wrote a cheque for the movers. They came to me first and shifted Piano A to the shed. They then drove up the street and got Piano B. They trundled it into the house. To avoid marital breakdown it was to go in the same place Piano A had occupied. It didn't. It couldn't. Piano B was larger than Piano A and could not turn the tight corner in the hallway. ‘Shit.' I thought, and by shifting a bookcase had it rapidly relocated in a spare bedroom. The same back room it had resided in before. ‘If I shut the door he won't notice,' I comforted myself. ‘He hardly ever goes in that room.'

That evening he did. ‘I see you've shifted the furniture.' He commented mildly, not noticing the difference in pianos and not visiting the shed.

‘Mmmmm.' Possibly due to all its travels and travail I was able to slip the inlaid panel of Piano A off its wooden pegs and take it to the furniture maker. It was nearing Christmas and I felt a blanket box was the perfect gift for the Sinai son who was back in Australia and had bought a house in Brisbane. The carpenter excelled himself ($300) and one day delivered a thing of beauty to our house. The quote to ship it to Queensland was another $300.

‘Mum,' he rang come Christmas, ‘It's magnificent. Look, there's a real business opportunity here, why don't you buy more old pianos and make more blanket boxes? There's a market out there for this sort of thing. I really think you could go into this in a big way.'

In the meantime my husband had visited the shed and thought he was hallucinating. A surfeit of pianos seemed to haunt our house. ‘What are we going to do with it?' he shuddered, disliking clutter in any shape or form. ‘I'll dismantle it and put it out with the Big Rubbish,' I replied.

German iron-framed pianos are extremely well built. They defy crowbars, circular saws, chain saws and axes. The notice for the Big Rubbish collection came and we only had one day for demolition. On the hottest day of the year a macho neighbour and I took to it with our power tools. We triumphed. We stored the shreds for winter kindling, put the iron frame on the nature strip. As we sat with our feet in the fountain, wrapping ourselves around an ice-cold Light, the piano had the last word.

‘Ping!' it called plaintively out of the pieces in the street.