Viola

VIOLA

She has been lying in the labour ward for a full day, but still baby refuses to move.

‘Wretched child is determined to spite me ‘she mutters under her breath.

For the umpteenth time the nurse peeps round the curtain:

‘Doctor is here, he is going to induce you to hurry it up, we need this bed for the next patient’ spoken with a grimace.

‘Good evening’ His greeting is abrupt.

Grace is holding up his carefully planned schedule. In two tics he sets up the drip and both leave without a word to the reluctant mother.

*

Footsteps arrive in the passage.

‘Am I going to see my son at last?’ The male voice spits irritation.

She wants to tell him to bugger off, but the drip is turned to maximum.

Her body contorts in the grip of such a cruel contraction, she can only manage a hideous howl.

Now there is dead silence in the passage. The nurse hisses in her ear ‘shut up now you’ve brought the whole hospital to a standstill with your hysteria.’

Her feet stomp away and poor Grace is left to scream all alone.

*

It’s 4 am and the first wisps of baby hair emerge

‘Just one more push’ the nurse declares with a relieved sigh, and the whole child slides out tiny fanny and all.

‘A girl’ splutters Grace her lips curling in disdain. Father doesn’t even bother to get up and leave the house just to look at a useless girl.

*

The useless girl has been taken to the nursery. Grace is lying back on her pillow sulking. Nine months have been spent playing the game of marriage forced on her by old-fashioned parents.

Oh, how had she allowed herself to be seduced by the most glamorous man in the bar that Friday.

*

A group of girls had just come in the bar door. A man had his eye on the one with the low cut short little black number and cascading blonde locks. The others were hugging and congratulating her. Out of the low purple light and purring music he appeared at the bar offering drinks all round, his eyes glittering in tune with his expensive lurex suit. At once his arm shot round Grace’s waist.

‘Have you had a proposal is that why you are to be congratulated?’ They all giggled.

‘She has been chosen for a spot in the youth orchestra’ explained one of the other girls.

‘Then it’s to be champagne’ gushed glittering Gordon Glamsby. By now Grace was on such a high she swallowed hers in one gulp and Gordon kept them coming. After that it wasn’t too hard to get her into his hotel suite behind the glittering curtains of his ostentatious four poster.

*

‘Pregnant’ declared the home pregnancy test. The next day the doctor confirmed it.

‘What will the neighbours say?’ shrieked her mother.

‘Don’t expect me to pay for an abortion’ growled Father.

‘Gordon Glamsby is an excellent catch; you will marry immediately ‘

Her father was a man of gigantic influence. Glittery Gordon Glamsby didn’t dare refuse.

*

Gordon agreed that the useless girl be called Viola after the instrument Grace excelled in. He didn’t care anyway. Grace on the other hand was determined that her unwanted daughter would fulfil her thwarted ambition. Her daughter would spend her whole youth practising, so the expensive instrument would not be wasted. Viola would be her revenge for her forced marriage and inability to fulfil her own dream.

*

The subway steps are steep and the rail is broken. Ten-year-old Viola struggles to keep her balance holding onto her brief case and the viola. At the same time. Grace has insisted that she take the train to school alone. By the time she reaches the platform the train is already pulling out of the station.

‘No choice but to wait for the next bloody train,’

Alone on the station she has no idea when the next train is due. She paces up and down aching with fury over the scene with her mother in the car on the way to the station.

‘Since I was three years old you have bullied me with your ghastly obsession that I have to have a place in the youth orchestra even though you bloody well know I’ll never make it.’

‘Because every time you are supposed to be practising, I find you in your room playing a recording of the piece you are supposed to be practising ,while you are giggling on Instagram.’

‘Because I’m tired of telling you I’m not interested in the orchestra, I just want to be on the beach with my friends’

‘You’ll do what I say, now into the car with you before you miss the train.’

*

Now she has missed the train, so bleeding what!

She notices a bench further down the platform. Tired of pacing she makes for it. Viola and her viola plonk down. At precisely the same time a young man plonks beside her.

‘What’s this?’ he picks up the viola ‘its quite heavy.’

Blinking cheek, although he can have it for all she cares.

‘It’s a viola’ she snatches it back and opens the case ‘there’. Edging closer, he puts his arm around her shoulder. She does not resist, rather she smiles at him, in the far distance she has spotted what looks like a moving worm.

She is growing out of her school dress, its now far too short. She shifts so that it slides further up her thighs. He abandons his fiddling with the strings and fiddles with his hand between her thighs instead. She closes her eyes still smiling.

‘I play with your strings now and you smile. You’ll smile more when I bring out my own instrument’ His eyes close, his mouth drools and his breath feels like a gale on her face.

She opens her eyes and sees the train snaking into the station. She feigns louder cries of pleasure. The train slithers in with hardly a sound. He is completely absorbed in his furtive activity. As his eager fingers slip inside her panties, she leaps through a door someone else has opened to get out of the train.

The hated object lies abandoned to its fate on the bench.

Good Riddance!