The Lute Question

My sister and I always had wildly different approaches to love. Despite the neutrality of our upbringing, I found the role of hopeless romantic a natural fit. In contrast, Kate, ever needing to define herself from her older sister took up the mantle of the romantic sceptic. 

Our mother, a salt-of-the-earth woman who favoured practicality, made one odd exception for frivolity. She religiously enjoyed soap operas. Kate and I would return from school to pragmatic plates of jam sandwiches, baby carrots and soap operas playing in the background. Mum would have one eye on the big-haired heroine embracing her burly-chested lover, and the other on Kate trying to sneak her carrots to the eager dog. I lapped up the grandiose plots, learning them as gospel for how love worked. Quarrels meant kissing, drama and adversity meant true love. 

One afternoon, much like the others, the raven-haired heroine found herself tricked into a romantic picnic by the shiny hero. I was furious with her, days of storyline had passed and she still couldn’t see how they were meant to be together! Even as he declared his lofty love on their picnic, she turned away from him, hand to forehead, fighting her undeniable feelings. 

“Ugh Mum, why is Seraphina not in love with Richardo?” I whined, poking holes in my sandwich. Mum gave me an amused look. “Well, maybe he hasn’t proven himself yet.” 

“He’s boooring.” Kate said, pushing carrots about her plate and clearly missing the point of Richardo’s perfection.

“He’s not!” I insisted, watching the screen where the golden-haired Richardo was trying to offer the bashful Seraphina wildflowers. She hid behind her hands, lamenting he could never understand her. 

“Richardo, these are just honey words. You have not shown me your heart, how can I possibly trust you after all that has happened?” 

“I love you more than life itself! If I cannot convince you with my words, perhaps with my song!” 

With a flourish, Richardo produced a strange-looking guitar and began strumming, a musical version of the hyperbolic professions he was so good at. 

Kate frowned at the strange twanging of the music. 

“What’s that thing he’s holding Mummy?” 

Mum glanced at the telly and laughed. 

“That’s a lute poppet. It’s what poets and romantics use to express themselves back in the day.”

“A flute?” I asked, charmed by the sound.

“A lute.” 

“Oooh,” Kate said, significantly more curious about the scene. Richardo finished his ballard and finally, Seraphina went to him. 

“The lute makes him not boring,” Kate concluded and Mum laughed as she snuck more carrots onto her plate. 

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When I was 10 and Kate a terrifying bundle of will at 6, we were asked to be flower girls for our cousin Lucy’s wedding. We were decorated in demure chiffon frocks and handed baskets of petals. I gingerly ran my small hand through the petals, each one a velvety token I would spend on the aisle of love Lucy would soon walk. We were allowed to sit with Lucy and her bridesmaids as they got ready in the gilded powder room. Lucy was a vision of lace and hairspray and her friends danced around her like periwinkle blossoms, dabbing tears as they exclaimed how beautiful she was and that Alex was a lucky man. Lucy smiled and looked at the ceiling to stop tears from spilling and ruining her magazine-perfect make-up. I was so in awe. She looked like a princess. Kate sat next to me, kicking her heels against the wingback chair, a sullen look on her face.

“Cousin Lucy?” I squeaked up, daring to ask a question to the royal wonder. 

“Yes, sweetheart?” Lucy replied, checking her reflection in the mirror, gently touching the gathered tendrils of her hair. 

“How did you know Alex was your husband?” I was young and hungry for real-life answers, ready for the day I would be grown up enough to fall into the embrace of my one true love. 

Lucy smiled kindly, “Well, he’s not my husband quite yet.” 

“But he will be soon? When you say I do?” I pressed.

“Yes that’s right.” Lucy turned on her dressing table stool in a crunchy shuffle of material. “Well, see, I just knew because Alex is smart and successful. We have a lot of fun together.” 

One of her bridesmaids giggled, “Plus he is not bad to look at.” 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kate’s nose scrunch. 

“But Cousin Lucy,” she began, “Does he play the lute?” 

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As the years progressed, "the Lute Question" became a strange barometer for the validity of a love interest. Throughout my teenage years, I went through crushes like tissues, whereas Kate remained firmly unimpressed with any guy daring enough to even speak to her. At least once a week I would sigh and slump at the kitchen table, lamenting over the latest idiotic teenage boy who was too dumb to realise we were meant to be. It was Adam, no wait it was actually Billy. Forget Billy, it was definitely Tom, who was my epic sweeping love. 

“He’s soooo cute and he is arty.” I would swoon until Kate would huff 

“But does he play the lute?” 

Of course, he didn’t. They never did. 

“No…he plays guitar.” I defensively retorted.

“So? Any idiot can play the guitar.” Kate would counter and that would be the end of it. 

The Lute became much more than a mere characteristic. It was a way of asking several questions at once. The central point being; was he special? 

I grew up and moved to London in my mid-twenties. The dating pool suddenly swelled into an ocean of romantic options. I seemed destined to remain a lovelorn teenager, glossing over character flaws simply because these city fish were so exotic and foreign compared to the country mice of my upbringing. Each new relationship would progress beautifully until my weekly call with my practical little sister.

“So I’ve started seeing someone…” I’d tentatively tell her, dreaming up the right words to convince her it was different this time. She was finishing up university and as far as I knew, she’d had no boyfriends or dates of any kind. It fell to me to guide our chats in the direction of romance. It was all I wanted to talk about and the last thing she wanted to discuss. 

“Oh yeah?” She’d say, voice devoid of any real interest. Merely letting her helpless sister verbally process. 

“Yeh, his name is David and he’s an engineer and very sporty. Makes me laugh a lot.”

“But does he play the lute?” 

Ugh. 

“Well I don’t know yet, it’s only been a couple of dates.” 

“So he doesn’t play the lute?” 

Dammit. 

“He might…” 

“Okay, well doesn’t sound like anything special so just guard yourself.” 

And a whamp whamp sound would play in my head. 

Kate, not one for the vapid soap opera version of love, expressed her high standards in this one sentence. With one question I would be forced to admit that perhaps I could do better. She had rationales where I did not. Her strategy centred around investing very little of herself until she was certain the man in front of her was worthy of her time. I couldn’t understand it. What possibility for True Love was there if you didn’t give anyone a chance? 

So I persisted in my quest, giving chance after underserved chance to men with few skills besides aggroance. The stories always started so well, with honeyed words and grand gestures, all the trademarks of an epic love in the making. Then cheating and lies would come to light. Selfish motives or unkind temperaments would become too awful to ignore. Forget the lute, they only seemed capable of playing games. 

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I entered my thirties with a trail of heartbreaks and disappointments. As cousins, friends and all others around me started meeting spouses and breezing through the search for love, a jaded filter coloured my usual rosey romantic vision. I wearily went on first dates with the predetermined conclusion of disappointment. Kate sensed the change. 

“You don’t seem excited to be going out with him?” She asked with direct concern over the phone, while I half-heartedly got ready for some blind date a colleague had convinced me to go on.

“He has a great job, is very athletic, super well-read and he’s gorgeous! And he’s in the process of buying a house!” She had informed me, singing his praises with such enthusiasm, that in my newfound cynicism, I wondered if she wanted to be the one going on a date with this zenith of a man. As she recited his virtues with suspicious fervour, I simply heard Kate’s voice in my head. 

But does he play the lute? 

Despite my certainty he didn’t, I went on the date. He talked only about himself, stuffed himself so full of seafood linguine that he gave himself acid reflex and then tried to kiss me with fishy sulphuric breath. 

I politely declined. 

I stopped bothering with dates at all, mourning that my early formation of love had been the falsetto pitch of soap opera standards. Now it had been firmly corraded by disappointment and I had little energy to pursue what was now so clearly a fantasy. 

When Kate announced one Christmas that she was engaged, the final brittle crumbs of my heart fell away in a painful collapse of hope. Shocked at what a horrible sister I was, so bitter and angry that she had found what I so desperately wanted without even trying. Still, I smiled and expressed joy for her and her new fiance Luke, whom she had met through mutual friends. I hugged her despite my inner lamenting and teasingly asked, 

“So does he play the lute?” 

Kate rolled her eyes and laughed. “Think that’s the first time you have ever asked me that.” 

“Well this is the first time I have ever heard you were dating someone, let alone engaged,” I replied. It was meant to be teasing, but I failed to keep the sharp edge out of my voice. 

“There has been no one worth talking about before now,” Kate said, unaffected by the hint of accusation. Always so wonderfully immune to anyone’s opinion or unfair judgement. 

“Luke is different.” Something softened in her eyes as she said his name. I had never seen such tenderness from her, an ease that could only be love. My heart broke a little more, remembering what it was to feel that. 

I squeezed her hand. “I’m so happy for you Kats.” 

In the months leading up to the wedding, I desperately tried to be as happy as I told her I was. The family met Luke and we instantly adored him. He seemed to understand Kate better than any of us. I saw my firey, tough sibling visibly relax and let her guard down in his presence. Luke looked at her like she was a dream made real. I noticed the small kindnesses in his treatment of her. Filling her glass without her asking, kissing the top of her head as they watched TV, taking the boring admin jobs of wedding planning and gently teasing her when she was being overcritical of her bridesmaids. Of which I was of course one. He laughed freely and knew exactly who he was, the same way Kate did. I envied them, even as I could not have picked a better man for her if I had created him in a script. Kate was right; he was different. He did so much more than play the lute. 

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The wedding day arrived. Kate was a shining vision, and practical as our mother about the day. Naturally, she didn’t go for any frills, no expensive cheesy wedding cliques. Her concern was getting married, not having a wedding. As she walked down the aisle, Luke’s eye shone with love and they grinned at each other like gleeful children throughout the service. I stood up there with her, in my emerald green bridesmaid’s dress, one that Kate had let me pick because as she put it, “I don’t need you to suffer in some hideous chiffon dress for this to be my day.”. 

I felt tears pricking at my eyes as they exchanged rings. Mum smiled at me from the crowd and I let her think they were tears of joy for my dear sister. But the sting that I had never experienced anything close to this joy, this love and this event was what threatened to spill out of me. 

They said ‘I do’ and Luke raised a triumph fist in the air as the crowd cheered and threw petals over the newlyweds. 

The reception was loud, full of guests who twirled between the dance floor and the bar. I couldn’t bring myself to join them and instead knocked back champagne, hating myself for the self-pity coursing through my chest. As I watched my glowing sister dancing with her husband in a spinning, jiving movement of white silk, I thought back over all the steaming disasters of my checkered romantic history.

 In a sad realisation, I couldn’t count a Luke-type among them. My partners had been dramatic, bold, and full of hubris disguised as confidence. They had been full of heroic words and empty of loving action. I thought about how in those soap operas, it was always the dramatic speeches that won the heroine. But in front of me right now was Love who had won my sister through his actions. 

I’ve gone about it all wrong. 

The ugly realisation beat loudly and I downed another champagne to drown out the thought.

Kate broke away from the dancing and spoke with a man I didn’t recognise at the bar. I groaned inwardly as I saw her heading towards me, pulling the man behind her. I was too buzzed and too weary to deal with being set up. Today of all days. I had precisely zero interest in having another conversation with some guy about what we did for work, where we went to school, and what his golf handicap was. The same tired, uninspired small talk with another disappointment-in-waiting.  

“Sophie this is Jonathan, he works with Luke. “ Kate said matter of factly as they trapped me at the table. 

“Jonathan, this is my older sister, Sophie. She looks like she needs company. Keep her away from the champagne.” 

I raised my brows at her. 

“Don’t give me that, trust me, you two will get on.” With that, Kate marched back to the dance floor and Luke’s waiting arms. 

Jonathan shuffled on his heels, and I gave him a look over. He was slender with a handsome face half hidden in a warm golden beard and sharply dressed in his wedding attire. Irritated with Kate, I figured I was being rude. 

“Nice to meet you, Jonathan. Would you like to sit?” I gestured to the empty seat.

“I would like that very much.” He started, “But give me one second.” 

He retreated to the bar, and I stared after him confused as to whether I was being snubbed or it was some power move. He returned with four glasses of champagne and set two before me before sitting and knocking one back. 

“Don’t know about you, but I’ve never been one to do what my younger siblings tell me.” He said with a grin full of mischief. 

A hollow laugh escaped me. Well. At least that was a more interesting start. But then again, the start was never the problem. I reached for my illegal champagne, even as my disenchanted heart decided to end this thing before it started. Ask the question, and confirm right away that this was a waste of time. He would think me strange, but what did I care? What did I have to lose? 

“So Jonathan,” I took a large sip and smiled sweetly. “Do you play the lute?” 

Jonathan’s eyes widened for a moment. They were quite a beautiful shade of periwinkle blue. Looking down at his polished shoes he laughed softly and rubbed the back of his neck before he answered. 

“Well, really funny you asked that. Actually…I do.”