Tranquillity!

(May 2005)

He sat at his desk, eyes closed. The room was large, shaped like a trapezium, and the desk was along one of its parallel walls. Further along the wall ran a cabinet, rich teak, stacked with books, CDs, cassettes, and a music system. A warm, intricately patterned rug covered the floor before the cabinet. The only light came from the table lamp, a shimmering, suffused yellow that swam around the contours of the room and its furniture.

On the desk lay a CD cover, a blue sky in the background, and a magnificent, gleaming black grand piano in front. Bluethner, it said, proclaiming its make in stylised light brown italics just above the gleaming keys, black, white, black, white. As the room resonated with notes from the piano, he could almost feel the keys in the picture move; he saw the pianist’s hand rise with a flourish each time there was a rest, a gap, between notes – the back of the palm curving upward first, then the delicate fingers leaving the keyboard in a languid, graceful movement. Tchaikovsky – Klavierkonzert, said the CD cover. The melody was slow and poignant, the deep bass notes near-spiritual.

So he sat at his desk, eyes closed.

A strident, insistent Tring! ran through the room. The notes from the Klavierkonzert shuddered.

He sighed, switched off the music, and reached for the telephone.