Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall Read Online Free PDF Page A

the towns one by one, verse by verse, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Oklahoma, driving down a long road the way my mother never could. If only we could leave things behind like that—I guess that’s what my mother would have thought. If only sadness could be like that.
    We came to the end and Mr. Gardner said: “Okay, let’s go straight to the next one. ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily.’”
    This being my first time playing with Mr. Gardner, I had to feel my way around everything, but we managed okay. After what he’d told me about this song, I kept looking up at that window, but there was nothing from Mrs. Gardner, no movement, no sound, nothing. Then we’d finished, and the quiet and the dark settled around us. Somewhere nearby, I could hear a neighbour pushing open shutters, maybe to hear better. But nothing from Mrs. Gardner’s window.
    We did “One for My Baby” very slow, virtually no beat at all, then everything was silent again. We went on looking up at the window, then at last, maybe after a full minute, we heard it. You could only just make it out, but there was no mistaking it. Mrs. Gardner was up there sobbing.
    “We did it, Mr. Gardner!” I whispered. “We did it. We got her by the heart.”
    But Mr. Gardner didn’t seem pleased. He shook his head tiredly, sat down and gestured to Vittorio. “Take us round the other side. It’s time I went in.”
    As we started to move again, I thought he was avoiding looking at me, almost like he was ashamed of what we’d just done, and I began thinking maybe this whole plan had been some kind of malicious joke. For all I knew, these songs all held horrible meanings for Mrs. Gardner. So I put my guitar away and sat there, maybe a bit sullen, and that’s how we travelled for a while.
    Then we came out to a much wider canal, and immediately a water-taxi coming the other way rushed past us, making waves under the gondola. But we were nearly up to the front of Mr. Gardner’s palazzo, and as Vittorio let us drift towards the quay, I said:
    “Mr. Gardner, you’ve been an important part of my growing up. And tonight’s been a very special night for me. If we just said goodbye now and I never saw you again, I know for the rest of my life I’ll always be wondering. So Mr. Gardner, please tell me. Just now, was Mrs. Gardner crying because she was happy or because she was upset?”
    I thought he wasn’t going to answer. In the dim light, his figure was just this hunched-up shape at the front of the boat. But as Vittorio was tying the rope, he said quietly:
    “I guess she was pleased to hear me sing that way. But sure, she was upset. We’re both of us upset. Twenty-seven years is a long time and after this trip we’re separating. This is our last trip together.”
    “I’m really sorry to hear that, Mr. Gardner,” I said gently. “I guess a lot of marriages come to an end, even after twenty-seven years. But at least you’re able to part like this. A holiday in Venice. Singing from a gondola. There can’t be many couples who split up and stay so civilised.”
    “But why wouldn’t we be civilised? We still love each other. That’s why she’s crying up there. Because she still loves me as much as I still love her.”
    Vittorio had stepped up onto the quay, but Mr. Gardner and I kept sitting in the darkness. I was waiting for him to say more, and sure enough, after a moment, he went on:
    “Like I told you, the first time I laid eyes on Lindy I fell in love with her. But did she love me back then? I doubt if the question ever crossed her mind. I was a star, that’s all that mattered to her. I was what she’d dreamt of, what she’d planned to win for herself back in that little diner. Whether she loved me or not didn’t come into it. But twenty-seven years of marriage can do funny things. Plenty of couples, they start off loving each other, then get tired of each other, end up hating each other. Sometimes though it goes the other way. It took a few years, but bit by