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| Farewell. |
Long ago and far away, our middle child decided he wanted to learn the piano. He was about seven at the time, and one of his favourite schoolteachers, Mrs. Jay, offered lessons. We thought about it. There was space for a small piano in our square front room in Hove, in East Sussex, with its bay window overlooking a garden whose centerpiece was an enormous and brilliant fuchsia hedge. The room possessed a door that could be closed. Perfect. Now to find an affordable, available instrument.
One day soon afterward, wandering along nearby Portland Road, I spotted a piano of exactly the right size and constructed of a pretty dark polished wood. It sat on the pavement next to other items all apparently for sale, outside a narrow frontage labelled 'Furniture Removals'. I scribbled down the phone number. Poor orphaned piano. Over the keyboard an inscription in gold lettering read "Berry and Co., London, 1954."
That night I discussed it with husband. "Let's see how much they want," he proposed. The hour was late, but being full of zeal I thought that at least I could leave a message on the office answering machine to indicate my interest before the hordes descended. I dialed.
"Hello?" queried a sleepy voice. Eek. I checked the time: half-past midnight.
"I'm sorry," I stuttered, glad to have an American accent. In cases where I did something stupid like this, it generally got blamed on my nationality rather than myself. "I thought this was an office number. I'll ring back in the morning."
"Nah, love, you're all right. What is it I can do for you?" The erstwhile sleeper struggled to sound awake. I thought I might as well make it worth his while to have been roused.
"It's that piano on the pavement in Portland Road. I saw it earlier today and thought I might want it. How much are you asking?"
"Would you be wanting delivery, too?" the man asked.
"Yes, I guess so." The thing was small but definitely too big for our Renault people-mover.
It's..." I almost heard wheels spinning in his sleepy head. "Seventy-five quid, with the delivering."
"Seventy-five pounds?" I thought I must have misheard. Pianos should cost more than that.
"Well, well, let's see. Where do you live?" I named our road, Amesbury Crescent, and he said, "Why, that's no distance. We can do that for seventy."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
"Will it be going to the ground floor or higher?"
"Ground floor."
"In that case, I can bring it down to sixty-five."
"Wonderful."
"Front or back?"
"Front."
"Sixty, then. Any stairs?"
"No, just a doorstep."
"We can do that for fifty-five all in, if you're paying cash. When do you want it?"
We settled a time and I disconnected before the man started offering me money rather than vice versa.
Hindsight is so wonderful. I ought to have known by then the way the world works: everything comes at a price. This piano would, one day, make us pay.
But back then, in England, I woke in the morning thrilled by the prospect of a piano in the house, and hoping the man remembered our deal and not believe it to have been a dream, or perhaps a nightmare. Sure enough, that afternoon, two men in a van arrived and heaved the piano up our narrow walk, over the small hurdle of the doorstep, and deposited it in the front room with its bay window and view of the fuchsia. We placed it away from the party wall so as to minimize the noise percolating to our lovely semi-detached neighbors. (Also we did not want to clash with their son's saxophone playing, which came through the wall the other direction.) I handed over the dosh.
Younger son enjoyed his lessons with Mrs. Jay very much and did not require all that much nagging to put in practice time. A couple of years later, his little sister joined him as a pupil of Mrs. Jay. Even the eldest child, who played violin, got some benefit: he used the rack of the piano to hold his sheet music.
When we moved to Toronto in 2010, the piano (and the cat, and almost everything else not nailed down) crossed the Atlantic with us (though not, unfortunately, Mrs. Jay). The piano fit well into our front room in Harbord Street; the cat liked to perch on top of it; both served as comforting reminders of 'home' over the long months and years of adjustment. We found a teacher for the kids and a tuner for the instrument, who admired the piano's body, shook his head a little over the state of its insides, told us one or two keys could not be made true, and warned that it might survive only a few more tunings. Look for another piano, he advised. A year later the University's Faculty Club decided to replace its upright piano with a baby grand, and for $150--the cost of transporting it--their old one became ours. But we could not bring ourselves to part with Berry & Co., so now we had two pianos side by side in our front room. The children might play duets, I thought. (They did. Once.)
Two years later, booted out of our rental home, we and our possessions--two pianos, two cats, a dog, and multiple van-loads of other items--moved 700 meters away to Brunswick Avenue. The instruments did not fit side by side in this house's smaller front room, so one got relegated to a different space that we foolishly began calling the music room. No more duets.
The 'extra' piano occupied space that was better suited to a large, comfy sofa. When we finally acquired one (thanks, Maggie and Kyle!) we knew the Berry and Co. piano needed to leave. We tried to give it away. No go. We managed to shove it out the front door as far as the porch, but the stretch of six steps down to street level defeated us. And so the piano sat there, covered by an olive-drab tarp, for two years, an ugly hulk occupying a chunk of our scarce outdoor space. "Why do you keep your barbecue at the front of the house?" visitors asked sometime. Vainly we wished someone would steal it. The cost of hauling it away seemed prohibitive. It languished. So did we.
Then something happened. I'm not sure what. The approach of a second pandemic summer, maybe. We had spent much of summer 2020 on our front porch, working, eating, having safely-distant chats with passing neighbors. This summer of 2021 held promise of moving on and yet here the tarp-clad piano loomed, blocking us in. It did not match up.
So I found a company called 'Just Junk' and they appeared the next day, two agreeable young men who gave us a discount on their fees because the piano was already outside. "I'm impressed you got it this far," said the driver. We were humble and grateful. Nonetheless, the cost was eye-watering. "It's not easy disposing of a piano," the man said. Tell me about it.
They worked quickly, efficiently, and irrevocably. Thunk, thunk, thunk, and into the back of their specially-equipped van.
The cost to be rid of it, accounting for passage of time and change of currency, amounted to about four times what it had to acquire it. I wish I could find the removal man in Portland Road, Hove, and let him know.
Farewell, O piano. The end of an era. We do still have the other one, unplayed, shoved into a corner of that ill-named music room, which now also holds a small convertible sofa and a mini-trampoline and the wi-fi router, which perches atop the piano. The cats now prefer the couch.
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| Thunk. |
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| Just Junk. |
