Playing Out by Paul Magrs (free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT) 📗

‘Do you know, there’s nothing as seductive as a man who can play a clarinet well.’

I said, ‘I’ve got an uncle who plays clarinet. He’s a dentist.’

‘I fell in love with a clarinet player when he was playing. He seduced me utterly and he wasn’t even aware of my presence. My existence, even. I watched him all night. Black hair slicked down with wax so it looked painted on an egg. Serious expression. Lovely evening dress. And strong, strong hands with veins that worked, magic fingers that ran up and down his slender instrument.

‘I was at the concert with my first husband. We’d been having a rough patch. Our last rough patch. He was buying me back with trips out—concerts, meals, theatres. For this concert I was sitting there with a whole heap of arum lilies. I’d been feeling a bit daft with them. They’re not the sort of thing you can carry discreetly at a swish function. I’d even thought about going to the ladies’ in the interval to get shut. Imagine going to the loo and finding arum lilies sprouting out!

‘But I forgot all about them when the clarinet man came out and started to play. They lay limp on my lap and my chest rose and fell in time with him pursing his lips to blow. I think my husband just thought I was enjoying his company. He was like that.’

You were laughing harder now, I noticed. Chelsea had a cherry up each of her boyfriend’s nostrils and whipped cream shaped into a beard for him. Everyone was a bit tiddly so they were laughing. So was he and trying to lick it off. Everyone was glad Chelsea had decided to see a nice policeman. He was obviously good-natured. We were pleased—although we wouldn’t dare say so—because she had packed in a long-running do with a patient of hers. He had vanished.

‘When the concert ended, my clarinet man had to play the last few notes. He was the star of the show. I forget what the piece was. Usually I never know when a piece ends. How do people tell? On the radio it always takes me by surprise. The audiences sound very well informed. I’d be scared I’d jump up too early, clapping and making a show of myself. But this time there was no doubt. My man had put the most exquisite finishing touches on the whole extravaganza and, all at once, we all jumped to our feet to applaud and applaud.

‘And suddenly I knew exactly what I was to do with my arum lilies. It came to me in a flash. I’d seen the type of thing on the telly with ballerinas and opera singers. I hoisted up my armful of flowers, pushed past my husband and along the aisle. Everyone still clapping, some of them watching me with eyebrows raised as I pelted down the steps towards the orchestra pit.

‘It obviously wasn’t the done thing. But I didn’t care. The last thing I saw was my clarinet man, taking in the applause with a modest grin. He bowed, rose up, and looked stunned to see me heading his way. I must have been shocking, I suppose. But when I put my mind to it I can be impetuous.

‘I slipped. I flew down half the aisle’s steps. Arum lilies everywhere, pattering down on musicians’ heads.

‘I hit the pit with a sickening crash.

‘Silence. And then pandemonium. Everyone came running, my husband among them. In my daze I could hear him shouting, even above all the noise. But it was my lovely clarinetist who reached down for me first, setting his shining instrument aside. I had broken both my legs in numerous places. The agony was considerable.’

She fell quiet for a moment and watched this sink in.

What do you say? You want to ask if that’s why she has a cane now, but you can’t. And meanwhile she rested both plump hands on her stick, looked away and smugly inspected the rest of the party before going on.

‘I was in plaster for months and months. Right up to my navel and I’m still not right. You wouldn’t believe the itches. And how clammy you get when it isn’t even warm out. Have you ever been in plaster?’

I was thinking that she couldn’t possibly have been in up to her navel. I mean, how did she…? How could she manage to…? Yet people get their whole bodies put in plaster sometimes. They must have to work something out. It’s not as if you can suspend all bodily functions until you’re on the mend. The body doesn’t work like that, surely. Anyway, no, I told her, I’d never broken anything.

‘Then you’re very lucky. Although for me it was a blessing in disguise. My first visitor, after my husband—who just about said in as many words that it was all my own stupid fault—was the clarinetist. I lay back in traction, amazed. I could hardly say a word to him. He was charming, charming. The perfect bedside manner. He was under obligation, he said, to visit me on the orchestra’s behalf and it was a pleasure, he added, a personal pleasure, to check up on the wellbeing of my legs. And he brought me some arum lilies. I was in heaven.

‘After that he came every week. Until they went on tour and then it was every month and he would phone up from whichever concert hall he was appearing at. Sometimes, if he had his instrument with him, he would tootle a few notes down the line at me.’

She sighed.

‘Eventually I was allowed to go home. I knew something was up when my husband never showed up on the Monday morning with the car. I stood in the foyer by the hospital flower shop and realised that he wasn’t going to come at all. In a flash I saw that my husband had taken the opportunity to leave me. Well, I didn’t mind really. The spark had