The Children's Bach by Helen Garner

two hundred dollars.’
    â€˜Bullshit,’ said Poppy. ‘Countdown don’t make those clips. They just put them on TV.’
    â€˜I want to get one ear-ring,’ said Arthur.
    â€˜Don’t be silly, Arthur,’ said Dexter.
    â€˜A boy at school’s got one.’
    â€˜Why don’t you get a tat?’ said Elizabeth.
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜A tattoo,’ said Philip. He put down his fork and rolled his shirt sleeve up to his shoulder. It was a very small butterfly. Muscles and green veins rolled under his skin; his forearm was covered with fine black hairs. Arthur was so thrilled he could not speak. He gulped down the rest of his plateful. Athena could not help staring at Philip. Whenever she took her eyes away she felt him looking at her. It seemed they took it in turns.
    â€˜Have you been to America, Philip?’ said Vicki.
    â€˜The sort of singer who lounges across a glass piano,’ said Elizabeth.
    â€˜I like to have tortellini of a Friday,’ said Philip.
    â€˜She was wearing these daggy flares,’ said Elizabeth, ‘with embroidered insets.’
    â€˜I got my hand jammed between two speaker boxes,’ said Philip. ‘My finger burst like a sausage.’
    â€˜You know?’ said Vicki. ‘One of those horror movies where she drives up to this house and gets dismembered?’
    â€˜I got to Reno on the bus at eight o’clock in the morning,’ said Philip. ‘People were stumbling about the streets in full evening dress.’
    â€˜She had all the colour and dynamism of a parsnip,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You could not by any stretch of the imagination drum up feelings of sisterhood for her.’
    â€˜We’ve got a rabbit in a cage,’ said Arthur.
    â€˜I walked in to our first gig,’ said Philip, ‘and they were sticking red cellophane over the lights. I thought, Oh no .’
    â€˜I went through centuries of torture,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’d emerge exhausted from the Crusades and the Black Death only to realise that I still had to drag myself through the entire Spanish Inquisition. I never touched it again.’
    â€˜They only cost twenty-five dollars,’ said Vicki, ‘so I bought two pairs.’
    â€˜Does anyone want more spaghetti?’ said Athena.
    Dexter got up and cranked open a tin of pears.
    â€˜Sing something,’ said Poppy to Elizabeth. ‘Sing ‘‘Breaking Up Is Hard To Do’’.’
    â€˜Oh, not that,’ said Philip.
    â€˜You do the come-ah come-ah,’ said Elizabeth to Philip.
    They sang. Billy flung himself about in Dexter’s arms, loopy, with rolling eyes. Their rhythm was solid, they slid their eyes sideways to meet, and smiled as if to mock each other for their unerring harmonies. Athena saw they were professionals. The piano is such a lonely instrument, she thought: always by yourself with your back to the world. The music, thought Dexter irritably, is American music. He remembered Dr A.E. Floyd’s quavering voice on the radio: ‘Some people pronounce it Pur cell : that’s an Ameddicanism.’ The song ended. ‘Now we ’ll sing,’ said Dexter. He put down Billy, who wandered away; he made Arthur come and stand beside his chair, and they sang ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. Arthur had the long song word-perfect. He stood to attention and threw back his head on the high notes. Vicki watched with a cold eye. ‘I suppose,’ thought Elizabeth, ‘that he is trying to keep something alive.’ It embarrassed her to see the righteous set of Dexter’s mouth between verses: she looked away.
    Drunk on performance, Dexter hardly let a pause fall before he cried, ‘And now I’ll sing ‘‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’’ . . . And pour contempt on awhaw-hawl my pride,’ he bawled. He drew breath and looked around him, smiling, with tear-filled eyes, his