The Flautist
by Neil Ayres
As I crossed the bridge on Monday evening, the river’s surface billowed and charged at itself. Other than the vessels moored at its edge and the pluckiest gulls, it was bare. A boy ahead of me leant over the rail and dropped a crisp packet to the water, enjoying the falling of it.
I approached the subway through the autumnal drizzle. Pulled by the tide of memory, thinking of my husband, I did not drop a coin in the tea tin at her feet, but she met my gaze as I passed, and her lips twitched at the mouth of her flute. I smiled and walked higher up the slope to the train station.
She was there again the next day, so I dropped in some change. She winked at me and continued her melody. This time, instead of looking at her eyes, which were ocean green, I studied her mouth, the lips of which clasped the blowhole of her flute with desperation. The rest of her face was relaxed, but those lips looked un-rested.
The rain persisted through the week. On Wednesday she was sitting on the wall at the entrance to the underpass waiting, it transpired, for me. Though no longer bothering her flute, her mouth appeared urgent. I smiled politely and made to walk on but she said: “Hello.” Slim black case now in slim, rain-spittled hand, she hopped off the wall and into my path. “I’ve had rather a successful day.” Her voice is vibrant, almost musical, and it endeared her to me. “Why don’t I let you buy me a drink,” she went on, holding up the coin I had dropped into her tea tin that morning. “Don’t look so concerned,” she said, “There’s a coffee stand at the train station. No doubt you’ve a train to catch.”
So, standing at the kiosk with a hot chocolate for her and a froffee for me, she introduced herself, asked my name, told me where she lived and then let me catch my train. As she skipped off, she spun with her arms wide in the sea of rush-hour commuters. Cantering backwards she called out, “I won’t be around tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to come to my place Friday. We can have dinner.”
That night, after my bath, swathed in my husband’s blue towelling dressing gown, I was surprised to find my thoughts of the flautist spiralling into fantasy. I saw her sitting on the edge of a bed in a hotel room, flute at her mouth and the sounds from it like gentle water lapping a shoreline, whilst I was safely submerged beneath the waves of the bedcovers, naked and flushed.
Then my mother rang. I spoke to her for a while and cried to her for a while longer. After she hung up, I tried to think of the girl with the flute and find that safe place beneath the bedcovers, but I couldn’t. Eventually I switched on the television and fell asleep in front of it, wrapped in the warmth of the dressing gown.
I woke at four in the morning but by the time I was ordinarily washed, dressed and breakfasted, I was only just standing to turn off the television.
I didn’t go to work on the Friday either, but she was facing me when I arrived from the opposite direction to usual. She did not have her flute-case or tea tin with her.
She smiled. “I thought we’d get fish and chips,” she said. “My treat. I’ve finally managed to get myself a job.”
Seeing her—hearing her—my misery ebbed. I boldly strung my arm though hers. We took the bus eastwards and she bought us both cod and chips, smothered in pungent vinegar.
Her bed-sit was Spartan and all of it white. There was no television, no books and no sound system or CDs, just the black flute-case on the white-sheeted double mattress. She took a bottle of lemonade from the fridge and we sat cross-legged on the thick-piled carpet, solemnly eating our takeaway and swigging the fizzy drink straight from the bottle.
After I had finished the crispy chips she had left from the bottom of the bag I said: “My husband died last month.”
She screwed the fish-and-chip paper into a ball and threw it from where she sat, over her shoulder and into the sink of the small kitchen behind her.
I attempted the same with my own wrapper, but it rebounded off the draining board and onto the floor.
“What did he die of?” she asked.
I uncrossed my legs and looked at my knees. “Cancer,” I said, not looking at her but at the bubbles rising up through the lemonade in the half-empty bottle.
At this she chuckled softly “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Cancer doesn’t kill you, being forgotten does.”
I thought I saw her busy lips twinge, and then she leant forward and kissed me.