Prosperity Drive by Mary Morrissy Page B

petered out too, though she managed to get as far as Grade 5 before, three years later, she simply gave up. It wasn’t that she lost interest; it was Mrs Bradley who changed. Towards the end, Mrs Bradley – stout, whiskered, irritable – seemed content to let her play on, faults and all. Once she would have stood over Ruth; drumming time on the lid of the upright, stopping Ruth so often that in an hour-long lesson she would never get through a piece from beginning to end. But latterly she had taken to sitting by the window looking out dreamily over the roofs of the city. She seemed sunk in a kind of trance so that Ruth would have to cough loudly when she had finished to attract her attention. Ruth could read the signs, indifference as a prelude to rejection.
    Meanwhile all around them music flourished – the brash din of the college orchestra, the smooth and fluid bow of some bright young violinist, the urgent arpeggios of a soprano yearning towards cadence.
    ‘Well,’ Ruth says, gathering together her papers. ‘I hope I haven’t put you off completely.’ She’s taking bets with herself that Miss Furlong and Mrs Longworth will not be back next week. It’s better this way, to weed out the faint-hearted at the start before they can do any harm.
    The students heave themselves out of their miniature traps, and file out. The drinker at the back is the last to leave. Perry is his name. Robert Anthony Perry. The furnishing of a full name gives him away, its titular pretension, its striving self-importance. Anthony is probably his Confirmation name. He pauses at the desk smiling in a gamey way; an old reflex, Ruth imagines, drawing on some ancient source of shabby charm. After-class approaches like this are usually a form of special pleading, a false frankness. Between you and me, the hanger-on is saying, I’m different, not part of the common herd. I’m worthy of your individual attention.
    ‘So what does it mean, then?’ He gestures towards the motto on the blackboard.
    Ruth has forgotten about it; usually she asks the class to guess at the end, to lighten things up a bit, but something has distracted her with this group.
    ‘Oh that,’ she says distractedly, hoping to put Mr Perry off. Jean Fleming saves her. She bounces back into the classroom having left her gloves behind.
    ‘Oh, by the way, I meant to ask,’ Jean says on her way out. ‘Are you the same Miss Denieffe who used to teach at St Ignatius’s? My niece went there and spoke so highly of you.’
    Jean Fleming is lying. With merciless adolescent judgement, Marie used to call Miss Denieffe a total bitch. Jean’s sister Molly, hushing her daughter, would concede that Miss Denieffe had a reputation for standing no nonsense; she could face down a class of unruly boys with the set of her shoulders and the fix of her stare.
    ‘You should see her, Jean,’ she used to say, ‘she’s tiny , five foot nothing, mop-top ginger hair like Shirley Temple, or one of those other child stars.’
    She was a great loss to the school when she went, Molly said. Played the piano for all the school operettas and would gladly do Beatles numbers and ragtime during the intervals at concerts and open days though she wasn’t even the music teacher. No one was surprised, though, when she moved into Adult Ed; she was always a bit of a crusader, Molly said.
    ‘Yes,’ Ruth says, ‘that’s me.’
    ‘Still tickling the ivories, then?’ Jean asks brightly.
    Ruth is suddenly furious. Furious about the years of practice, the tantalising promise of perfection, all that cruel vocational energy expended. For what? For this – tickling the ivories . Mr Perry is still standing there. He shuffles his feet conspicuously.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Jean says, ‘I interrupted you.’
    ‘No,’ he says, switching his gelid attention to Jean, ‘I was just asking Miss Denieffe about this.’ He points again at the blackboard.
    ‘Yes, what does that mean? I was wondering too, but to tell