Virginia

Slowly, fell into the Beethoven, tried to remember which particular sonata.... Virginia had played it endlessly for some exam.
Evening, finally cooling, she would loose herself in a world which excluded myself. Decided that it must be the "Appassionata". How, with her cold disposition, did she always manage to play with such intense feeling? Children not about, only their debris. The swing, piles of sand embedded with toys, heaps of broken "Mount Gambier" stone, the uncleared residue of the disaster that was our house.
Looked across into the drive of the other house. My mother-in-law's car gone. No doubt she had been shoved out with the kids. Not keen on her driving. She drove, as most women, with complete abandon. Her large, floppy hat obscuring anything to the rear and she had this maddening habit of giving hand signals inside the car, cigarette always hanging from the end of her thin rouged lips.
A pause, visualised Virginia in the long glass room, wiping her glasses, turning the page, oblivious to everything, completely consumed by the music.
Why had she been so insistent with me, that day on North Terrace? ... I had met her, we had strolled along as usual, she did not mind the bit about my carrying her half-hundred weight of music and instruments, which was far as she would go towards femininity. Invariably wearing slacks, which were frowned on ... her hair, she simply cut off with a pair of large scissors.

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I had just been "paid off" from the "Mulcra" with what I thought was rather a great deal of money ... thirty pounds clear for ten days work. Virginia's mother had been very quick to point out that her brother was chairman of the "Adelaide Steamship Company", the "Mulcra" being one of his fleet. This, as everything else, went straight over the top of my head. My mind working at a more basic level. I had bought myself a brilliant check shirt, some jeans and sandals by way of coming ashore. Virginia deciding that she did not approve of the shirt, and said so. I felt, suddenly, very self-conscious, after she had given me that short, sharp look of disapproval, which I was to come to know so well.

We strolled along. She talked continually about music and "The Prof", whoever he may have been. For my part, only my father's insistence that I knew a few basic things about music, my greatest height being "The Blue Danube". When I had been through this little number in front of Virginia, she had simply left the room ... I never played again ...

We had still been on North Terrace when, suddenly, changing the tempo, she said, rather slowly "I think we will get married." I did not offer much by way of comment on this ... accepting what she said by very little more than a nod of the head. Never gave it any thought, no realisation of what I was letting myself into, that my muted acquiescence had placed me on the long, sliding, slope to nowhere.

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