An Episode of Remnants.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this work has content some listeners may find distressing, including themes of war, violence, and grief. This episode contains:

Vomiting

Extreme anxiety

Parental sickness, death of a parent

Allusions to disordered eating – no specifics given

Reference to persistent repeated child abuse by a teacher, including sexual abuse

Suicidal ideation

Reference to a suicide attempt by hanging, no further specifics given, only reference to the ideation itself

Non-detailed descriptions of the experience of psychiatric inpatient care in the early 1930s, including non-consensual tube feeding, restraint, and other methods of care which may now be seen as abusive and inappropriate. These methods are implied, focus is placed on the experience of the patient, and is described in broad strokes.

Internalised homophobia

Depiction of a character with CPTSD, including panic attacks and extreme shame

Implications of homophobia from parental figures

References to structural homophobia and transphobia

Depiction of a nonbinary forced to live closeted due to the above

References to antisemitism, specifically in the lead up to WW2

Allusions to the holocaust (brief; non-detailed)

A character experiencing late-stage bowel cancer symptoms

Transcript

APPRENTICE
It’s a… piano?

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
So. What now?

SIR
Touch it.

APPRENTICE
Um.

HE PRESSES A KEY. IT RINGS OUT.

SIR
Very good.

Simeon studies his grandmother’s hands as they pass across the keys. At first, it seems like magic to him as he stands, his eyes level with her fingers, nose pressed against the polished wood os the side of the piano. With each press of her fingers, the piano vibrates and Simeon feels it trembling through his bones.

It’s only when the song finishes and he is gasping for breath that he realises he has not inhaled or exhaled once since he started watching her play.

‘Your mamme was just the same when she was your age, Simeon. Do you want me to show you what the keys are called?’

Simeon nods. There is a picture of mamme on the wall in the hallway, sitting at this very piano. Simeon has not heard it played before. Mamme is too sick, now, and tatte cannot play. The lid is always shut, has always been shut, until grandmother came to stay to help look after mamme and the new baby.

Simeon spreads his fingers over the keys. They don’t reach as far as grandmother’s do. He can still feel the music reverberating through him. Simeon presses the same key grandmother had pressed first and feels a little thrill run through him when it makes the right sound.

‘Yes, that’s C, and—’

Before she can go on, Simeon presses the next key in the sequence.

His grandmother gasps. ‘Simeon, are you copying me?’

Simeon presses the third key. ‘How you make your fingers go so fast?’ he says, pressing the fourth key.

His grandmother stares at him in disbelief. ‘Simeon. How much of the song can you remember?’

Simeon presses the next few keys, and then he loses his place. ‘Sorry grandma,’ he says, shrinking into himself.

His grandmother shakes her head. ‘No, no, you did so well! So well, Simeon! I need to make some calls, we need to get you into lessons, god, you’re so young. Can you even spell your name?’

‘Starts with ‘suh’,’ says Simeon.

His grandmother laughs, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘Alright. You keep playing, sweet thing, I need to make some calls.’

Simeon settles himself onto the piano stool. He starts at the beginning of the sequence again. His stubby fingers are slow and frustrating. He wishes he could make them go faster.

WHOOSH

‘Oh, please, Simeon. All you need to do is walk three steps to the piano stool and as soon as you’re sat down, you won’t notice the crowd, I promise.’

Simeon shakes his head miserably. He glances over through the gap in he curtains. Even from there he can see the half-illuminated faces of the audience. It feels like someone has a hand around his neck.

‘Your mother would be so excited to see you play for a crowd,’ his tutor, Miss Loftus, tells him. She squeezes Simeon’s shoulder. He can hear the crowd applauding Mabel, who had just played the violin right before him.

He can’t breathe.

‘Okay, okay, look at me,’ says Miss Loftus. She takes Simeon’s hands in hers. He stares at her face. She has pale freckles across the bridge of her nose and thick, gold rimmed glasses which make her hazel eyes twice as big as they should be. ‘Talk to me, Simeon. What’s happening?’

‘I can’t do it,’ he says. The words come out in a big clump, all together. His tongue feels like its made of wool, sucking all the moisture out of the rest of his mouth and flipping his stomach.

‘You absolutely can,’ says Miss Loftus. ‘You’re a brilliant pianist, Simeon. One day thousands of people will pay to watch you play.’

‘Thousands,’ says Simeon, but the word is almost silent on his lips, like he’s forgotten to colour it in.

A look of concern crosses Miss Loftus’s face as she realises what had been intended as comfort had in fact achieved the opposite.

The feelings in Simeon are bubbling now, and they’re very much not just feelings anymore, they’re something hot and liquid in his stomach, and then, in an instant, they’re not in his stomach, they’re on his shoes, and on Miss Loftus.

‘Oh, Simeon,’ she says, softly.

Simeon shakes his head. He’s sick again, this time managing to direct it away from the both of them.

On the stage, someone calls his name.

Simeon’s body feels like it’s gone completely cold and numb. He can’t feel his fingers. He pulls himself away from Miss Loftus and bolts down the narrow hallway that connects backstage to the little yard at the back of the little theatre. He hunkers down against the side of the wall, shaking violently despite the balmy summer weather.

When his father finds him twenty minutes later, his body is stiff, like his joints have all locked together. He can’t even hear the words as his father shouts at him. He can just see his mother, in the wicker wheelchair she came home from the hospital in.

‘It’s okay, Simeon,’ his mother tells him. ‘It’s okay.’

Simeon climbs stiffly into her lap. Her arms are like spindles. Her body is cold and hard under his.

‘I can’t do it,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so sorry.’

His mother kisses his ear. ‘My brilliant boy. You will do it, one day. Even if I am not there to see it. I believe in you.’

Simeon shudders in his mother’s frail grip. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he pleads, uselessly.

His mother grips him as tight as she can manage. ‘I love you always,’ she promises. ‘Even when I’m gone, the love will still be there, I promise.’

Simeon buries his nose into her hair and weeps.

WHOOSH

Simeon has not felt a single feeling in weeks.

He thinks of his mother’s tight grip on his hand as he sat next to her bed. People kept telling him to speak to her. He didn’t know what he should say. ‘I’m learning a new Mozart,’ he said.

‘Is that all you think about?’ his father had hissed.

Simeon barely heard it. He did not bother trying to say anything else to mamme again.

And now she is dead.

And now she is buried.

And now all the photos and the mirrors in the house are covered.

And now we are in mourning.

And now she has been dead for a month.

And now people are asking, when will you go back to school?

Simeon says nothing. He has no words, not for any of it.

He sits at the piano.

He does not play.

WHOOSH

At school, Simeon feels hollow. He sits as still and quiet as he can, and hopes the other boys will simply not notice that he exists. He moves as little as possible, says as little as possible, breathes as little as possible.

‘Matzner,’ says Professor Davidson. ‘Last year you were a whiz at this. Now you hardly let your fingers press the keys, what happened?’

Simeon does not know how to answer. He just shakes his head.

‘The Mozart you were learning—’

The moisture evaporates from Simeon’s body at once. He wavers on his feet, the lights seeming to spin around him.

‘Careful, boy!’ Professor Davidson barks. He gets up, guides Simeon back to a chair. ‘Christ, lad, you’re like a bag of bones. Are you unwell?’

Simeon shakes his head. ‘No, sir.’

Professor Davidson shakes his head. He goes back to his desk, rummages in the drawers for a moment, and returns with a tin of butter biscuits. They’re the pretty kind that comes in their own paper cases, like the ones Simeon’s family send over from Germany.

‘Have as many as you like,’ says Professor Davidson.

Simeon takes a single one. He nibbles at the edge. His mouth waters at the taste of sugar and butter on his tongue and he almost shudders with hunger. He shoves the rest of the biscuit in whole.

‘There you go, lad,’ says Professor Davidson. He pats Simeon on the leg.

‘Thank you,’ says Simeon, quietly.

Professor Davidson smiles. ‘They’re not giving you too much grief, are they? The other boys?’

Simeon shakes his head. He has not yet mastered true invisibility, but he can get close, some of the time. Most days, nobody says a word to him at all.

Professor Davidson squeezes Simeon’s knee. ‘You come to me if they do, won’t you? And there’s always a space for you in here. You know that, don’t you?’

Simeon swallows another biscuit. ‘Thank you, Professor Davidson.’

Professor Davidson smiles. He stands up to his full height again. He pats Simeon’s head, his hand lingering there a moment. ‘Good lad.’

WHOOSH

It’s little things, at first. Professor Davidson presses his leg against Simeon’s as they squish together on the piano stools when Simeon goes to practice on the good piano in the music room. It’s a beautiful thing, a baby grand, the finest piano Simeon has ever played on, and it makes a far more elegant sound than the upright in the corner of his parent’s dining room, beautiful and antique though it was.

Simeon witters about the piano to Professor Davidson, and Professor Davidson doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he encourages more of it, and scolds Simeon for apologising. Simeon witters as he practices, and Professor Davidson presses his leg against his as he plays, and sometimes he slips a butter biscuit past his lips mid-sentence. Simeon always laughs, sometimes sprays piano crumbs over the keys and himself and Professor Davidson, but when he starts apologising for that, he gets scolded, too.

Professor Davidson gets on his hands and knees and cleans up the crumbs and he says its no bother, even as he sweeps his hand into the bow of Simeon’s legs. Simeon shudders, jerks away from him. Professor Davidson scoffs. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘Let me clean you up.’

So Simeon lets him.

And it’s routine then. Simeon plays, and witters, and he pauses now and then to open his mouth to be fed little biscuits. As he eats them, it becomes a challenge for Professor Davidson to make him laugh and spray the crumbs everywhere. First it’s always with jokes, and then it’s tickling, and then one day when Professor Davidson is cleaning Simeon up, and Simeon is still catching his breath from laughing, loose in his bones, Professor Davidson unfastens the button on Simeon’s trousers.

Simeon’s heart is hammering. Professor Davidson pulls his trousers open, slips his hand into Simeon’s underwear.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Simeon. His voice comes out like a mouse’s.

‘Don’t be silly,’ says Professor Davidson. ‘I can help you.’

WHOOSH

Simeon has known for a long time that Harry is in love with him. They don’t talk about it, of course, but Simeon knows. If Harry didn’t love him, he would not let him curl up against him in his bed. He would complain when Simeon cried. He doesn’t, though, He just holds him.

Simeon loathes himself deeply for letting himself be held. It is worse, knowing that Harry loves him. Simeon cannot love Harry back. There is not enough left inside of him for that. Sometimes he has dreams where Professor Davidson reaches right into him and rips out all of his organs. Sometimes he wakes from those dreams shaking and crying, with Harry holding him tight and promising it’ll be alright even though Simeon is shaking with fear and crying like an infant but the thing in his pants is hard as rock and disgusting. It’s all just so disgusting.

For years and years it goes on like this, with Harry holding, and Simeon letting himself be held. He realises he’s let it go on too long when they’re making plans to go to university together, and Harry is daydreaming out loud about a future outside of Eton, far away.

Doesn’t Harry understand?

Simeon can’t ever be far away from Eton. There’s nothing left of him, anymore. He’s a ghost, haunting this place, doesn’t Harry realise? He can’t leave. He can’t go. He’ll crumble into dust. He knows that. And the thought of it, of trying, of– of stepping away? It hurts. It hurts more than anything.

And so Simeon makes a plan. There is so very little of him left, he knows that, but if anyone deserves those little pieces it is Harry. So Simeon will give them to him. He’ll let Harry touch him and he’ll make Harry feel good and then, when it’s gone, that last little bit of him, he’ll make himself the ghost he’s been this whole time. He’ll hang himself in his bedroom and it will be over, it will all be over, and nobody will have to hold him again, because it’ll be done.

WHOOSH

They give him pills to make him sleep so he’ll stop screaming and trying to die.

He is distantly aware of the tube in his nose which they feed him through, and how it scratches the back of his throat.

He remembers, in flashes, writing letters to Harry. He does not know what he said.

Cold baths, shock treatments. His sister comes to visit once a month.

So numb he cannot lift up his own head.

They lift him out of the bath and he catches sight of himself in the mirror. He thinks of his mother, breathing, but already dead, really. They all knew it. Why wouldn’t they just let him be dead?

One morning, he hears the birds singing.

How pretty, he thinks. How pretty and out of tune.

Things get easier, after that.

WHOOSH

Simeon is doing a terrible thing. Every time he meets with Gerald, whenever they kiss, whenever they touch, Simeon is stealing something from him. Gerald is a thing full of joy and hope for the future. When Simeon’s with him, he can almost feel it too, but it’s not fair. It’s not fair to take this from Gerald. Not when Gerald is so kind and thoughtful, and all Simeon can do is lure him like an angler fish.

One day, they’re kissing, and Gerald’s hands wander down to Simeon’s trousers.

That is it, a bridge too far.

It’s gone on this long but it can’t go on any longer.

Simeon will steal from Gerald, but he won’t steal this much.

Gerald is hurt by Simeon’s sudden clamminess after weeks of incrementally mote erotic advances. Guilt spears Simeon. How can he explain what’s happening without revealing the true monstrousness of his own behaviour?

He didn’t mean to become a thief. He can only explain how he became one. So he does. He tells Gerald everything, he tells him about the hospital, about hanging himself, about Harry, about Professor Davidson, even right back to that first moment Professor Davidson had pressed their legs together, and how Simeon should have known what it meant and run. But he didn’t. He stayed. And he let himself get ruined.

‘So you should go,’ Simeon says.

‘Do you want me to?’ asks Gerald. His voice is shaking with an emotion, but Simeon can’t tell which.

‘What I want doesn’t matter.’

Gerald laughs a single, horrible note. There are tears on his cheeks. ‘Simeon,’ he says, like he’s trying very hard to keep his voice calm and even. ‘What you want matters to me.’

Simeon feels cold, all of a sudden. He curls his knees against his chest. There is a mess inside his head, a dozen feelings fighting for dominance. It all feels like noise, like nothing.

‘Sorry, was that a bad thing to say?’ asks Gerald.

Disgust spears Simeon’s guts like a knife. He shakes his head.

‘Why are you so quiet, then?’ asks Gerald.

The words come out of Simeon all jagged and pathetic. ‘Aren’t you disgusted with me?’

The look of confusion on Gerald’s face makes Simeon shrink. ‘Disgusted? Why would I be disgusted?’ asks Gerald.

‘I let all that happen to me,’ says Simeon, like it’s obvious, because it feels like it ought to be.

Gerald’s mouth falls open. It hangs like that for a long while, but he does not say a word.

‘Gerald,’ says Simeon, quietly. ‘Are you okay?’

‘No,’ says Gerald. His voice is shaking. ‘I’m furious.’

The inside of Simeon feels hollowed out and aching. He nods. He can’t feel his face. ‘I understand,’ Simeon.

Gerald’s face contorts with anger.

Simeon wants to disappear. He is breathing too fast, too much. Everything is spinning.

Gerald says more but Simeon can’t hear it. He can’t see, he can’t feel, he can’t breathe. He’s dead, he’s gone, he’s empty. It’s all gone so, so wrong.

‘Simeon, can you hear me?’ Geralds voice slices like a knife through the horror of it.

‘I’m dying,’ says Simeon.

‘I don’t think so, love,’ says Gerald. ‘Hey, listen, alright? I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at anyone who made you think what happened was your fault. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Simeon squeaks. His whole body is shaking. He’s so tense that it hurts.

‘Can I touch you?’ asks Gerald, after a moment.

Simeon considers, then nods.

Gerald touches his finger lightly to the edge of Simeon’s hand, which is knotted hard into his hair. Carefully, Gerald unpicks Simeon’s fingers from his scalp, winds them around his own fingers instead.

‘I’m here,’ Gerald says.

The words tear Simeon to tiny pieces. ‘Oh Gerald,’ he sobs. ‘I love you, I’m so sorry, I love you.’ He says it over and over, sobbing and shaking, barely able to breathe. Again and again, ‘I’m sorry I love you, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.’

Simeon crawls into Geralds lap like the wretched creature he is. Gerald wraps his arms around him and strokes his hair. Gerald whispers in the pauses between Simeon’s words. ‘Don’t be sorry, don’t be sorry for your love, please don’t be sorry.’

When finally Simeon can’t say anything else, Gerald kisses the side of his nose. ‘I love you, Simeon,’ he whispers. He does not say it like he’s sorry. He says it like a promise. It makes Simeon’s bones ache with hope that it’s true, and fear that it couldn’t possibly be.

WHOOSH

The bell rings at Simeon’s sister’s house. Simeon looks up from the book he’d been reading. ‘Who is that, Rebecca?’

‘Oh, just a friend,’ she says with a shrug. She opens the door, leads a young woman into the living room.

‘Oh, hello,’ says the unfamiliar woman. She dips her head, smiling shyly.

‘Simeon, this is my friend Miriam. She teaches children how to play the cello. Miriam, this is my brother, Simeon.’

Miriam smoothes her hands over her arms. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘I’ve heard nothing about you,’ says Simeon, sharply.

Rebecca shoots him a warning look. ‘Maybe you’d like to make Miriam some of your orange tea.’

Simeon’s eye twitches. ‘It’s not mine.’

‘Oh, whatever, would you just make it?’ Rebecca snaps.

Simeon lets out a short, tight breath. When he goes into Rebecca’s kitchen, his hands are shaking.

He sets a tray of three teacups full of it on Rebecca’s coffee table. As Miriam cups one in her hands and inhales deeply, Simeon feels a knife twisting in his guts.

‘I can’t stay long,’ he says. ‘I’m meeting someone.’ He needs to hold Gerald and once, to kiss him, to tell him he’s beautiful.

‘If it’s not your tea, whose is it?’ asks Miriam.

Simeon blinks. ‘Oh. A friend. Someone from school.’

‘You’ll probably have run into him if you’re into the arts and parties on the continent,’ says Rebecca. ‘Harry Standish-Coombes?’

Miriam shakes her head minutely. ‘He’s an artist?’

Simeon barks a joyless laugh. ‘No. Just a friend. Or he was.’

‘Where is it he is now, Simeon?’ asks Rebecca. ‘Valencia? Milan?’

Simeon shrugs. He can feel knives in his guts again. ‘I don’t know. I’ve not written to him in years.’

Miriam is staring at him with focus. ‘Why not?’

Simeon shudders. ‘It’s complicated.’

Rebecca hums. ‘Well, anyway. Simeon plays piano at the Aldwych, now, but he’s had some interest from others, haven’t you, Simeon?’

Simeon stares at Rebecca in disbelief. He can’t believe she’s practically selling him off, right in front of him.

Miriam, for what it is worth, hardly seems to pay attention to Rebecca’s words, or at least not in the way that Rebecca is intending them.

When Simeon finally escapes and returns to his apartment, he finds Gerald wound naked into his sheets, reading a book and eating an apple. ‘You’re later than you said you’d be,’ says Gerald, not looking up.

Simeon cannot find any words to describe his afternoon. He settles for trying to lose himself in Gerald, instead. Gerald, because he is always kind and perfect, is kind and perfect. And suspects nothing.

WHOOSH

Simeon is walking with Miriam in the park. He was supposed to be meeting with Rebecca but this time she didn’t even bother showing up and just sent Miriam instead.

Miriam gives Simeon an apologetic look. They walk two feet apart.

‘I think Rebecca’s hoping you’ll take a fancy to me,’ says Miriam, after a long silence.

‘I know,’ says Simeon. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. ‘There is something you should know, Miriam. You seem a pleasant enough girl and all, but—’

‘How scathing,’ says Miriam, with a little laugh.

Simeon runs a hand over his face. ‘Forgive me, Miriam, I promise you I don’t mean it that way.’

‘What is there to forgive? This is the most alive I’ve ever seen you.’

Simeon drops his hand from his face. He looks at Miriam then, at her open expression, her small, polite smile, her clothes, which although nondescript, still somehow make her stand out as specifically German.

‘I will not take a fancy to you, Miriam. Not now and not ever. I can’t.’

Miriam’s smile dissolves. ‘I don’t understand. Is there someone else?’ she asks.

‘I have a defect, in myself. I can’t love you. It is a scientific impossibility,’ Simeon says. He’s talking too loudly, breathing too fast.

Miriam shakes her head. Her eyes are wide and earnest. ‘I like to dress as a man and go about my business. That’s why my parents sent me away.’

Of everything Miriam could have said, Simeon had not expected it would be this. He can’t speak, it is taking too much concentration for him to keep himself upright and not curled up on the gravel path.

‘I would pretend I was mute. I– things are different, in Berlin, there are safe places where people like me can go—’

‘People like you, what do you mean?’ Simeon spits. ‘Sorry. That came out angrier than I meant it to.’

Miriam shakes her head. His head? Simeon doesn’t know. He’s clenching his fists so tight he’s sure his palms must be bleeding.

‘Some of us are men born as women, some women born as men, and then there are people like me, who are just. Well. I’m just Miriam. I don’t feel like a man or a woman or anything.’

‘And in Berlin that’s acceptable, is it?’ Simeon grinds out. His jaw hurts, he’s holding it so tightly.

‘Not acceptable, exactly. But there are others. There are safe places. And my father, he thought maybe, perhaps, maybe if I left that influence, he’d– and he hopes I’ll find a nice, English husband, and. Simeon, I— I’m sorry. Rebecca doesn’t know. I can’t bring myself to tell her.’

Simeon shakes his head. He takes a few wobbling steps to a nearby bench and as good as collapses into it. ‘Rebecca doesn’t know about me either, not really.’

Miriam stands over Simeon. ‘It’s not another woman, but it is someone else, isn’t it?’ asks Miriam.

Simeon squeezes his eyes shut. He thinks of Gerald, naked as the light of dawn pours through the curtains they had not closed the night before. How the sun seems to sink into his pale skin and make him glow. How his rough hands feel as they run up Simeon’s back. How soft and small he can be, how huge and strong and stable.

‘He’s the love of my life,’ Simeon whispers.

Miriam squeezes her eyes shut. ‘Perhaps we might be able to help each other.’

WHOOSH

Simeon has not felt a thing in weeks.

He has been in bed since Gerald walked away in the park. He gave Simeon no chance to explain. No chance to discuss what their life might look like after this. Nothing. Simeon barely even got to the suggestion before Gerald walked away.

That was it. It was over.

Simeon lies in his bed. He rolls Geralds ring between his finger and thumb, watching it glint in the light.

Rebecca comes around and reads to Simeon sometimes.

Miriam visits, or Myriad, as Simeon has started to call them.

‘I wrote to your friend,’ Myriad tells him. ‘The one with the orange tea.’

‘Why.’

Myriad strokes Simeon’s hair. ‘I thought it would be nice to have another person at the wedding who knows who you really are.’

The words are meant kindly but they feel like knives in Simeon’s soul, slicing him down and down. He’s worked so hard to build himself back from the dead thing he had been when he left school, and now it’s gone. It’s all gone.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ says Myriad.

‘I can’t let you down,’ says Simeon.

Myriad sobs. They lie next to Simeon on his bed, on top of the covers. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Myriad.

Simeon squeezes his eyes shut. ‘I know.’

WHOOSH

It gets better by increments. The night of the wedding, Myriad draws Simeon a bath. They sit on the floor next to it whilst he lies there, filled with wine and anguish. They read to him, Simeon does not hear it, but the sounds are soft and warm. He puts a hand on Myriad’s shoulder.

Mostly, Myriad leaves Simeon to himself. They get on with their life. Simeon hears them teaching children cello in the next room. Each note feels like it is bowed across Simeon’s heart. It makes him ache.

And then one day, Simeon picks up the book Myriad had been reading to him, and he sits in the window and he reads it.

He makes Myriad a cup of orange tea. He drinks his own cupful and thinks of the taste of the tea on Gerald’s lips. He hopes someone else is tracing the edges of Gerald’s mouth. He hopes he’s happy and loved, like he deserves to be, even if Simeon can’t be the one who is doing the loving.

He sits at the piano, he plays a tune. He does not stop when Myriad comes in from their trip to the market. He does not stop when Myriad takes out their cello and play along with him.

And another day, they are walking through the park, and Myriad is telling a story, and Simeon laughs, and it comes out easy.

WHOOSH

Simeon stands in the window, moonlight shining down and kissing baby Rachel’s forehead. She has not yet fully settled into sleep, but she’s close. Each time she blinks, her big dark eyes stay closed a few seconds longer. She seems to like Simeon’s voice, so he speaks to her. Mostly he just talks about objects in the apartment, and Myriad, and about London.

It’s very early in the morning. The city is quiet under the moonlight. Myriad is asleep in the other room; Simeon can hear them softly snoring.

‘Baby Rachel,’ Simeon whispers. ‘I am going to tell you about the love of my life, now.’

He tells her about Gerald, about the day they met at the theatre, about their soft, fumbling first kiss. He tells her how Gerald made it okay for Simeon to be afraid, and as soon as it was allowed, he found he was scared less and less.

He tells her about how Gerald liked to hum along to Simeon’s piano playing, even though he could hardly carry a tune. He tells Rachel how Gerald liked to cook his eggs – fried crisp at the edges with a runny yolk. He tells her how he loved Gerald all the time, but he thinks of him most in the early mornings in the summer, and Gerald’s skin seemed to drink it up and turn almost golden, when a smattering of freckles would bloom across his nose.

He tells her about the sting of Gerald’s rejection, about how he’d longed for his life to end, but he’d made a promise to Myriad, and he would not abandon them. And if he had not lived, he would not have Rachel or her brother. He would not have Myriad. He would not have happy afternoons playing pony for a toddler whilst Rachel squirms in her basinet. He would not have his music, which makes the babies squeal with happiness, makes Myriad dance, and melts the coldest parts inside of Simeon, frozen so long he’d forgotten they could be any other way.

Simeon holds his daughter close to his chest, sitting in the chair by the window. Tears are falling from the end of his nose. They land on the blanket his sleeping daughter is swaddled in.

‘I am so glad we made you,’ he whispers to her. He plants a gentle kiss between her soft, downy eyebrows, strokes her tiny fingers with the pad of his thumb. ‘You and your brother,’ he tells her.

He barely remembers the nights they made them, though. He and Myriad knocked back a bottle of wine each, played a game of chess, and took off a piece of clothing for every piece they lost. They didn’t kiss, he remembers. He remembers there was a lot of laughter. He remembers crying afterwards, not out of sadness or regret, but something else, something stranger.

In his arms, Rachel squirms, and Simeon holds his breath for a moment, hoping she will not wake. She wiggles her head, frowning seriously as though about to attend to some important matter of politics or philosophy. And then she settles into sleep.

Simeon lets out a near-silent shaky laugh. He kisses Rachel’s forehead again. ‘My god I love you. My god, I am so happy to be your dad.’

WHOOSH

Myriad’s sister Eva has come over from Berlin, and she has brought her children. Fortunately, Simeon has been doing well with his performances, has been getting commissioned to write new music for several new plays, so they have bought a large enough house to fit all four of his and Myriad’s children, with space to spare for Eva, and her daughter and son.

Myriad has told Simeon so much about Berlin, but the city Eva speaks of sounds frightening. She worries for her husband, who has stayed behind to manage their shop.

‘You had to leave, though,’ Myriad assures their sister. ‘With Erwin so sickly, and Freida nearly being of age. You made the right decision.’

Erwin is a strange, sickly boy, but Simeon is fiercely fond of him already. He likes to play piano and he has a way with his younger cousins. He can’t speak well, but he has a fantastic laugh, and a knack for making toys dance like they’re coming to life.

Despite the growing fear on the wind, the household is a happy one, despite Myriad not being able to use their proper name around their sister. ‘I don’t want to cause a fuss, not when things are so fraught,’ they tell Simeon, as they lie in their beds on opposite sides of the room.

‘I know,’ says Simeon, ‘but it still makes me sad.’

WHOOSH

Freida is pregnant. She’d been sick three times, acting extremely oddly. When Simeon suggested that being with child might be the cause he was joking, but the look that crossed Myriad’s face was not amusement, but horror.

As soon as Simeon thinks about it for a moment, he’s struck through with horror of his own. It comes on so violently that he’s sick, shaking. He thinks of Professor Davidson, of his rough hands in his hair, choking on him, tears streaming down his cheeks.

‘Darling,’ says Myriad, softly. ‘We don’t know it was anything like that.’

Simeon is shaking, shaking. ‘I will never forgive myself it was.’

‘Simeon,’ Myriad says softly. ‘You will be as good as a father to that girl, like you always are, because you’re a good man.’

Simeon laughs nervously. ‘I am a shaking wreck, Myriad.’

Myriad clenches their fists. ‘If anyone has hurt that girl they’ll have me to answer for.’

They choose a moment to speak to Freida when Eva has gone to the market and the younger children are playing nicely upstairs. At first she denies anything is wrong, but when Myriad assures her that she’s not in trouble, Freida crumbles, weeping.

‘There’s a man I met at the corner shop,’ Freida confesses, tearfully. ‘He’s awfully kind. I think he loves me.’

It turns out that it didn’t matter whether George Peterson loves Freida or not, because he’s already married to someone else.

Freida howls with tears for days and days. Her mother is disgusted with her. How could she do such a thing, Eva asks, when her father is in peril every day, when the threat of war is looming on the horizon, when the last thing any of them need is to worry about another mouth to feed, when the man is not only already married, but he’s not even Jewish.

Simeon creeps into Freida’s room late at night and sits on the floor beside her bed, where she is still awake and crying. ‘Freida,’ he whispers. ‘Long ago, now, I fell in love with a man named Gerald.’

Freida’s sniffling stops. ‘A man?’

‘Yes,’ says Simeon. ‘We could not be together, because things were. Complicated. I know the situation isn’t the same for you as it was for me, Freida. But maybe I understand some part of what you’re feeling now.’

Freida reaches out her hand. Simeon clutches it tight.

WHOOSH

By the time the war comes, both of Eva’s children are gone. Frieda is claimed by childbirth, Erwin succumbing to the sickness that has plagued him all his life.

The house is not a happy one anymore, especially not after George Peterson’s sister takes Freida’s baby to live in the safety of the countryside, and Simeon and Myriad send their old children out of the city, too.

Some days, Simeon finds himself wishing that noose he’d made back at Eton had done its job. He wouldn’t have known the joys of love, but he wouldn’t have had to suffer the pain it causes either.

Each day they wait for news from family in Germany, but on the rare times it comes, it is not good.

It is a dark time. Simeon barely touches the piano at all.

WHOOSH

Simeon struggles down the stairs just before dawn. Their little house is close enough to the sea that he can hear the waves hitting the shore.

Myriad is asleep in the downstairs study. Simeon hasn’t been able to sleep for more than a handful of minutes at a time for some weeks, now, despite the morphine they’ve been giving him for the pain. In part it is the pain itself that’s keeping him awake, but in part its something else, strange and unnameable. His heart racing in his chest. Its like his body is desperate to live these last days as alert as it can.

And it is days, now, he is certain of it.

Rachel was talking yesterday about Rosh Hashanah. That’s two months away. Simeon smiled and nodded as she spoke, but he knows it in his bones. This is the last year that he will live to see. He’ll be in the ground before the new one.

On the little coffee table, the paperwork from yesterday is all spread out. The young lad who had come from the solicitors had sniffled a little, ducking his head as Simeon had recited his and Gerald’s story again. He’d managed not to cry, the poor lad, right up until Simeon placed Gerald’s ring into his palm. He looked at Simeon then, brown eyes ringed with red, and tears spilled over his cheeks. Simeon felt an overwhelming desire to pull the boy into a hug, because despite working as a lawyer’s apprentice, he did seem like just a boy in that moment. He shuddered in Simeon’s arms when they embraced.

‘I promise I’ll find him,’ the apprentice had said.

After he’d gone, Eva and Myriad had been aghast, kvetching about his insistence on prying more details from Simeon than Simeon had at first wanted to give.

‘I’m glad he asked them of me,’ Simeon says. ‘I’m glad he understands what I’m asking of him.’

Eva sniffed. ‘He reminded me of someone,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’

Simeon had to lie down for a while, then.

The cancer has grown so large in his guts, it’s pressing on all of his organs. It’s eating him alive, from the inside out.

Simeon sits down at the dusty old piano in the corner of the living room. He pushes back the lid. He dances his fingers over the keys, but he does not press them down. He can hear the music anyway, feel the memory of it reverberating through his bones.

Through the big window that looks out over the beach, the sun bursts over the horizon. The golden light fills every crack and corner of the room. Simeon closes his eyes, and he thinks of how it would catch in the hair on Gerald’s arms.

Of course, when Simeon pictures him, he’s young, and suddenly, he aches to know Gerald’s face covered in lines, his hair turned grey.

Simeon sighs.

He heaves himself up from the piano stool and settles himself in the armchair in the corner. They’d brought that with them from London, three times re-upholstered since he’d rocked his babies to sleep on it, still as comfortable as it ever had been.

He closes his eyes, and the sunlight glows warm through them, and he knows, at once that it is not days, after all. It’s moments.

But that’s life, isn’t it? Moment after moment. One day you set your child down and never lift them again. One note is the last you’ll ever play on the piano, one kiss the last you’ll ever feel on your lips. It is tempting, he thinks, to wonder what the point of it all is.

But to die, is to have lived. And Simeon is so very glad he lived.

His eyes flutter open. The room is bathed with light. It will be a beautiful day.

WHOOSH

APPRENTICE
Did he go on looking?

SIR
Who?

APPRENTICE
Edward Pocket. Did he go looking for Gerald?

SIR
Yes.

MOVEMENT

APPRENTICE
What are you– oh.

A METAL RING CLATTERS ONTO THE TABLE.

SIR
Take it.

THE APPRENTICE TAKES THE RING.

APPRENTICE
It’s… warm. Like it’s just been taken from someone’s hand. The edges are smooth, and—

WHOOSH

END

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