The Piano

I wrote this for an OU assignment in October 2008.

The Piano

My sister Caroline and I always spent Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa’s house. I remember one Christmas, I was probably eight or nine years old and Caroline would have been five or six, we were making Christmas decorations from sour tasting gummed strips of coloured paper. Both Caroline and I were busy at this task, I was sat on my Papa’s knee and Caroline curled up against his legs. In the warm glow of the electric fire we industriously produced decorations with which we would trim our attic bedroom, later that night. We gorged ourselves on the sweet smells of oranges mixed with freshly baked biscuits and pine-needles heated by coloured fairy lights. We felt warm and safe and loved, snuggled up with our beloved Papa.

Nana sat, her unfinished embroidery upon her lap, relaxed in a large russet armchair at the opposite end of the room. She seemed completely at ease as she closed herself off from the noise and excited chatter of the room.


I put my festive work to one side with a loud rustle and left the room. The hallway was dim and quiet. Six doors ran off from the long hall, the door to the warm living room I had just left, the kitchen door to my left, the front door ahead and three doors to my right. I turned right and walked with springy steps across the soft hall carpet. To my left now the bathroom, to my right Nana and Papa’s bedroom and ahead, the music room. Checking behind me I slowly pushed the music room door. It made a soft groan of protest at being wakened from its inertia, but relented and opened. The frosty air of the room enveloped me and goose pimples rose on my flesh to meet it.

There, in front of me, was Nana’s piano. It was a beautifully polished, mahogany, upright piano; a piano which I was unable to play but of which, nevertheless, I was in complete awe. The piano towered over me, intimidating in its dark, polished bulk. It exhaled the sweet promise of music and the stale must of age. I touched its glossy side with a quivering finger tip, it felt hard yet silken. A thrill of excitement shook me, it darted through my veins and nerve endings, from my outstretched finger, along my arm and across my narrow shoulders until my neck prickled and my ears felt aflame. The untouchable, unplayable piano seduced me with its cool indifference. I felt if only I could play it my life would be perfect. I quietly opened the hinged piano seat with its scratchy and faded beige tapestry covering. Inside were dozens of music books and sheets with a multitude of dots leaping and dipping across the pages. I felt like a musical note rising and crashing across the waves of sound. I felt the soft yet deep melody of the hauntingly beautiful piano echo through my trembling body. In an instant I felt saddened and exhausted by my inability either to create the music or to touch my Nana’s soul, which I suddenly felt certain was trapped somewhere within this perfect piano, so cold and hard and beautiful were they both.

I placed the sheet music back inside the seat and quietly closed it once more. I was so spellbound by the silent, dark piano that I felt unable to return to the comforting warmth of the living room. I loved its mystery and desperately wanted to caress its yielding keys but I had never learnt and I didn’t feel able to break the silence with my discordant notes. The silent piano watched me, its closed mouth, full of cream and black teeth, seemed to wear a self-satisfied smile. The metronome above held its bony finger aloft in warning. Serene on the surface though the piano seemed, it was full of secrets within. Maybe they were secrets which should not be revealed to me, not tonight anyway.


I returned reluctantly to the warm glow of the living room. My Papa was now asleep and my sister sat, smiling, in his lap, in the amber light. As I gathered up my half finished decorations I sat on the carpet next to Papa’s slender legs and I looked across the room at Nana. She was clicking rhythmically, weaving together white threads into a complicated looking embroidery sample, her face hard in concentration, her back straight and tall. I sighed, perhaps in resignation. This woman was as hidden to me as the mysterious notes in the piano stool. I was fascinated by both yet understood neither. I felt inferior to their polished beauties and reflective depths.