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When she was sixteen Andreas had advised it was time for her to get a really good violin. He’d suggested an Irish violin maker called Conor Fly
* * *
Incense burned and two ginger cats were asleep in an open violin case on the window seat of Conor Fly
“It is all about the wood. Baltic spruce and Bosnian maple. The great Cremonese violin makers got their maple from the Acer pseudoplatanus,” the blue-eyed luthier said. He was young, not even thirty. He was wearing a wooly cap with ear flaps, and from him came the scent of the sea and his sandy-colored hair was long and tied back. Rose watched wood dust drift from his fingers when he lifted his hand to point to the samples on the plastered wall. She looked to her mother, expecting a response, her mother knowing about plants and trees and such things, but Iris only nodded, eyes down, smiling faintly.
“The higher up the trees grow, the better; generally, the air is purer,” Conor continued, a little nervous, Rose thought. “Wood is highly absorbent.”
“Is it?” Rose said. She knew it was, but she’d felt Conor’s eyes on her cheek and she needed to say something to break his stare. She turned to look around the studio and then out toward the sea. A dozen white heads of snowdrops bowed in their terra-cotta pots on the windowsill outside.
“Yeah, it is. Things penetrate the wood. Acid rain, things, you know.… Like when it dries out, toxins may remain”—Rose turned back to him—“in the wood, I mean. But it gives it … character.” His eyes held hers. “You know?”
“Yes,” she said.
For a moment it had seemed as if there was only Rose and Conor and the violins in the room until Luke smiled and said, “Character is important.”
Iris straightened the stencils on the worktable.
“Used to be that natural materials used in violin making were unpolluted,” Conor said. “They did stuff like cutting the trees down with the waning moon to make the best tonewood. So”—he waved his hand toward the display—“if you pick the cuts here, then I’ll adjust them (and here he looked at Luke) to the character of whatever wood you choose.” He bowed theatrically to Rose. She couldn’t stop herself smiling. Something inside her stirred.
Iris, who’d watched the exchange unfurling between them, turned to Luke. “Maybe … we should just buy a really good used violin?” Her thoughts might have well been audible: waning moons, blue eyes, blond hair in a ponytail, and he makes violins?
“Up to you.” The violin maker turned back to his worktable. The tune had finished on the player. “It makes a difference, of course, if the wood was grown in sunshine or in shadow.”
* * *
Two months later the violin with a bright, rich sound was hand delivered by Conor on a radiant early March morning when Rose was studying. She wasn’t expecting him. He hadn’t let the Bowens know he was finished.
“I read about you in The Ba
“I guess.” Rose didn’t know what to say because his arrival as well as his enthusiasm had caught her unawares. “I have to pass my Leaving Cert, though.” She motioned to the French grammar book and practice tests open on the table.
“Sure, of course. But no bother. It’s a couple months away, right?” He opened the violin case as if presenting an offering. “Will you play it, ma chérie?”
She shot him a look. Fu
He gazed at her one long moment, gauging the possibilities, working out the chances, and when at last it looked like he’d made up his mind, he blurted, “You’re really beautiful.”
Rose glanced away and fingered the open face of the violin, tracing the inside of the f holes ending in a swirl. Then she looked to him and said, “No, I’m not,” and turned away.
Iris and Luke weren’t home, they’d told Rose they had business in Limerick that afternoon. Rose didn’t know if she wanted Conor Fly
“So, maybe you’d let me know how my violin stands up to the rigors of that academy, once you get there, I mean. Tell them there’s an Irish fiddler by the name of Fly
“All right, so, I’m off. Taking Gerty to Doughmore Beach.”
Rose cast her eyes downward.
“Gerty’s my van,” he said quickly.
“Oh.” She smiled and laughed. “I thought you had—”
“A dog in the van? No, the cats wouldn’t like that.” He paused. “I’m a surfer.” He put his hands in his pockets and waited in case Rose had changed her mind and wanted him to stay, but she only looked away out the window down across the garden.
They’d exchanged numbers and he’d wished her luck on her exams and in doing so placed his hand gently on her back. He moved closer so that his body was against hers. It was just a moment. And as quick as the flick of a downward bow he bent and kissed her.
“For good luck!” he said. Then he was out the door, through the gap in the hedge in her mother’s garden.
Rose followed after a moment but it was a moment too late. She saw the back of an old red van heading toward the sea.
When he’d gone, she looked at his cards: Conor Fly