The Upright Piano Player

The Upright Piano Player

by David Abbott
The Upright Piano Player

The Upright Piano Player

by David Abbott

eBook

$8.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

An adroit first novel of exceptional grace and emotional power by a legendary British ad executive.

“David Abbott’s The Upright Piano Player is a wise and moving debut, an accomplished novel of quiet depths and resonant shadows.” —John Burnham Schwartz, author of The Commoner and Reservation Road


Henry Cage seems to have it all: a successful career, money, a beautiful home, and a reputation for being a just and principled man. But public virtues can conceal private failings, and as Henry faces retirement, his well-ordered life begins to unravel. His ex-wife is ill, his relationship with his son is strained to the point of estrangement, and on the eve of the new millennium he is the victim of a random violent act which soon escalates into a prolonged harassment.
 
As his ex-wife's illness becomes grave, it is apparent that there is little time to redress the mistakes of the past. But the man stalking Henry remains at large. Who is doing this? And why? David Abbott brilliantly pulls this thread of tension ever tighter until the surprising and emotionally impactful conclusion. The Upright Piano Player is a wise and acutely observed novel about the myriad ways in which life tests us—no matter how carefully we have constructed our own little fortresses.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780385534437
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 06/07/2011
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

DAVID ABBOTT worked for forty years in the advertising industry as a copywriter and creative director. He was a founding partner of Abbott Mead Vickers, Britain’s largest advertising agency. This is his first novel, and he is at work on his second.

Read an Excerpt

1

London | November 1999

By the time he finally left, the adulation was beginning to pall. There had been a month of farewells. Lunches every day, three dinners a week--all preceded or concluded with speeches and presentations. His clients had given him a gold pen; the staff, an antique watch, older than himself, but unlike himself, still burnished and bright. There had been photographs from his partners by names he revered: Doisneau, Bravo, Lartigue, all framed in oak, their certificates of authenticity housed modestly in brown manila envelopes. He was familiar with this trick of the rich, restraint adding to the value of the gifts, the generosity of the givers.

There were books, too, first editions of novels he loved--Black Mischief  by Evelyn Waugh, published by Chapman and Hall in 1928 for 7/6, and now worth £400. They had found him a fine copy of Iris Murdoch’s The Nice and the Good and presented it, he realized, with more than a touch of irony. There was a quince tree for his garden in London (to be lifted and planted at his command) and more than a hundred leaving cards and letters, many of great tenderness.

At the presentations he looked into his lap as clients and colleagues chronicled his thirty years in the company. Occasionally, he glanced up to acknowledge a common memory or to share in the enjoyment of his own edgy wit recalled from earlier days. On the Wednesday of his final week, the company had hosted the official goodbye in the ballroom of the hotel across the square. At 5:00, the staff meandered across the road, latecomers dodging the traffic in their haste to secure a good seat. It was the end of an era, they had been saying in the corridors. Even the graduate trainees, who had joined the company just seven days earlier and had never actually met him, were caught up in the conflicting emotions of the day: sadness at his going, gratitude for all that he had done, but also excitement at the prospect of change.

His three partners were eloquent, each generous with his praise. As he walked to the lectern to give his reply he was aware that everyone was standing. There was applause, a sea-roar in his ears, and he stood waiting for it to stop, smiling into the dark space above the heads of the audience.

In the pub later, the video team said it had been the longest ovation they had ever filmed. “Not that there was much to film, Henry standing there for five minutes and the rest just clapping their heads off. And that was before he’d even said anything.”

He had worked hard on his speech. He knew they expected it to be the speech of a lifetime--quite literally the distillation of thirty years at the company, a list of do’s and don’ts, a formula to keep things as they were--though in their hearts they must have known that was not possible, perhaps not even desirable. He knew it, too, and no longer wanted to make the speech of a leader. In the old days he would inspire them, lift their spirits, and send them back to their desks with renewed energy and enthusiasm. Now he simply wanted to say goodbye and slip away. Somehow he had found the right words and if the audience missed the old fire they had responded to the gentle sincerity of his farewell.



On the Friday, the last day of a long week, Henry cleared his office. A tidy man on the surface, only he knew what chaos existed in the cupboards so exquisitely fronted with beech veneers and brushed aluminum. He threw out almost everything: letters, cards, documents, and photographs. Crates had been sent up to take the books that lined one wall of his office. His books had been a daily comfort, confirming that even in commerce there was room for contemplation. Now he realized he no longer wanted them. He scribbled a note that they were to be given away. He left his awards, certificates, and business degrees on the wall. He wondered if they would end up in the archives or the bin. It was all the same to him.

It was past 9:00 when he took the lift down to the basement. Even at that time on a Friday evening, the building was usually busy. In the meeting rooms, people would be working on presentations for the week to come. Often, they would be there all night--the conference tables littered with charts and the debris of takeaway meals. When the cleaners came in at daybreak, they would sniff the air in reception, gauging the scale of the job ahead.

As the lift passed the fourth floor, Henry knew that Dan Priestly would still be at his desk--not working, but waiting. His evening routine was well established. First, the Times crossword and then television until it was time for the last train home to a wife he no longer loved. (A year later, in the divorce court, she would claim in all innocence that it had been the company’s work ethic that had destroyed their marriage.)

There were many reasons for staying late and Henry was not surprised when the lift stopped at the second floor. A girl got in, someone he did not know. She was flustered to find him there. In the confusion he saw that she was tall with dark, cropped hair. She was wearing a long black coat.

“Ground?” he said. Before he could push the button the doors closed, leaving his finger in midair.

She smiled.

“I’m Maude, one of the new graduates. I was really moved by your speech on Wednesday. I’m sorry we won’t have overlapped for longer.”

He said that he was sorry, too, and could think of nothing to add. He stood looking at his shoes until the lift doors opened on the ground floor. She got out. He felt he had let her down by failing to offer a suitable benediction. Well, he had no more wisdom left.



In the underground car park, his Mercedes stood alone, its black paintwork dulled by a light film of dust. For ten years he had grumbled about the fallout from the cheap ceiling tiles, but nothing had been done. Now it did not matter. He drove up the ramp, only mildly irritated.

In the car, sensors picked up the first drops of rain on the windscreen and the wipers swept across the glass.

He is back again in California driving with Nessa and Tom to San Francisco. It is 1977. Tom is five and needs to pee. They are on the Seventeen-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach and there is no place to stop.

“You’ll just have to hang on, Tom.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Just think of something else. It always works.”

And then he pushes the windscreen washers so that two arcs of water rise and splash gently on the glass. He does it again and again.

“Just think about something else,” he repeats. They are all laughing. In the front seat, Nessa grips his arm. “Stop it,” she says, but her eyes are shining.

Reluctant to go home, on a whim, he drove to a small mews near Grosvenor Square. He parked in the shadows and turned off the lights. The rain was getting heavier. He looked across at the modest building where it had all began. Management consultants had been less fashionable in 1970 and the investment in 1200 square feet of office space had seemed adventurous. He saw that an architect now occupied the first floor offices above the row of lock-up garages. Today, the garages probably raised as much income as the rooms above, but it had not always been so. He had been lucky in that building, winning his first major clients there.

He had always been fascinated by business, but he had never believed in making it more complicated than it was. He was suspicious of textbook managers--the graduates from business schools, who, fed on a curriculum of turbulent case histories, storm out into the real world with an appetite for mayhem. He used to complain that they had been educated at drama school not business school. The people who had inspired Henry had been hands-on leaders who ran their companies the way they ran their lives. He admired patience and conviction and had found these qualities not in corporate time-servers, but in entrepreneurs, people who had put their houses and futures on the line to follow a dream. He had learned from them that, at its best, management was intuitive, honest, and simple. He believed in common sense.

It was a belief that had brought his company early success. It had been one of the first in its sector to go public and had grown to become a group of twelve allied businesses encompassing everything from advertising to contract publishing. The original consultancy, however, had always been positioned at the center of this wider universe--the place where the knowledge burned brightest.

Clients came to Henry for constructive, conservative advice: the rebuilding of assets, the freshening of known and traditional strengths, the protection and growth of brands. They went to others for step-change thinking, for remodeling on a giant scale with all the consequent upheavals. Such grandiose meddling had suited neither Henry’s skills nor his temperament. He thought most change overrated.

He slid further down into the seat as a car turned in to the mews. It stopped at a pub celebrated for its steaks. Three men were dropped off, bulky in their business suits and eager to get in out of the rain. Their voices carried.

“We’ll be out by midnight.”

“We may even be standing.”

There was laughter and the car departed.

Thank God, his days of corporate entertaining were over. He had never been a comfortable host and after the Basil Hume evening he had given up trying.

The cardinal had been invited to speak at a black-tie dinner in a London hotel. Henry had reserved a table and taken a group of his clients. It was an all-male dining club with a simple code: total indiscretion inside the room, total discretion outside. The opportunity to let their hair down had lured many illustrious speakers to the club’s evenings--even prime ministers--and it gave the members what Henry had come to see was their greatest thrill: the belief that they were in the know, right at the heart of things.

When Cardinal Hume rose to speak that evening, the room already grayed by the fog of a hundred cigars, no one anticipated that he was about to give the most audacious speech in the club’s history, more outrageous than anything they had heard from Thatcher, or Heath, or Murdoch.

Hume had said very little. What he did say he said with his usual modesty. Perhaps he was on his feet for ten minutes. He told them to be good people and to do good things. He reminded them that they were leaders and that they had a responsibility to fashion the tone and conduct of their companies. He had spoken with grace and good humor, yet he had not tried to entertain them. He had sat down to restrained applause. The clients at Henry’s table were barely polite. Naive was the general verdict.

“If I want a sermon I go to church, not to Claridges.”

There was general agreement at the table, guests tapping their wineglasses with their coffee spoons to underline their approval of this sentiment. Henry said nothing. He had found himself moved by the cardinal’s speech and admired its courage. He had resigned from the club a week later, pleading pressure of business. A meaningless gesture, since his partners went on taking the firm’s clients to the dinners and Henry’s absence went unnoticed.



Two young women came out of the pub arm in arm, their high heels barely coping with the slick cobbles as, bent double, they hurried to get out of the rain. Reaching the darkened car they stopped for breath or support--he wasn’t sure which--their breasts flattened against the windows, their arms flung over the roof. They were celebrating an escape.

“Well, I don’t have to put my tongue down his throat, just to say hello.”

He lowered the passenger window and the car was suddenly full of curves and the smell of wet wool.

“What the fuck?”

They were startled, but when they saw him in the driver’s seat they ran off laughing.

He started the car and drove home, saddened by the empty seat beside him.

He lived just off the Fulham Road in a two-story, double-fronted house that the local estate agent had sold him as “a country cottage in London.” The house was larger than it looked, and in one of the three reception rooms there had been space to tuck his piano against the wall. He had taken lessons until the age of fifteen when hormones had directed his energies elsewhere. But on the death of his parents, he had claimed the piano and it had gone with him from flat to flat and house to house. It was the only remnant he had of his childhood, its tone a song line to his past. He played it late at night--hushed, tentative jazz--the chords barely reaching the walls.

His friends thought his house somewhat modest, considering his success, but Henry and Nessa had bought it for the gardens.

In the front they had planted four standard holly trees, each in a square bed of lavender edged with box. In the beds below the windows, catmint and ladies mantle were ground cover for Queen of the Night tulips in the spring and Japanese anemones in the autumn. The whole front of the house hosted a magnificent Rosa banksiae “Lutea”--small round buds appearing in late April, bright green and tipped with the yellow of the rose to come.

In the back garden, a formal pond took center stage in a lawn framed by a mossy brick path. Behind this lawn, up two gentle steps and concealed for the most part by yew hedging, was a raised parterre and a small pavilion. Enclosing everything were walls of London brick topped with lengths of trellis that buckled under the weight of ramblers. In summer, the serenity of the center seemed always under threat from the chaos of the edge.

There were no lights on in the house when he arrived. He turned off the alarm and went into the kitchen. The morning’s post was on the table, most of it junk. He sat down to open the rest, too tired to take off his overcoat. He had won £50 on his Premium Bonds. There was a brochure from a wine merchant, several bills, and a letter erroneously addressed to Sir Henry Cage. He studied the envelope. The address had been typed on a computer, the label perfect--a secretary’s mistake rather than a cynical ploy, he thought.

Having read the letter, he was not so sure. It was from someone he had met only once and instantly disliked. It appeared the man was now the chairman of an appeal fund for a government-backed business school. They had been awarded £30 million by the Lottery for a new building and needed to match that with a similar sum from the private sector. The letter said they were looking for fifteen key individuals who had an interest in business. In return for their £2 million they could have a scholarship or one of the lecture halls named after them. It was a crass letter, so inept that perhaps a title had been dangled, after all. He would not reply. He put the bills and the check aside and scooped up the rest for the bin. As he did so, he saw that he had missed one letter, a blue airmail envelope, the handwriting unmistakably Nessa's. He left it unopened on the table. He had not heard from her in five years. One more night would not make any difference.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"How quickly a carefully constructed life can unravel! ... Abbott has peered over the edge to write this gripping novel, a reminder of how little control we have over our lives."
Los Angeles Times

"Stirring ... Abbott has created a memorable book, and readers will ache along with the principal characters."
San Francisco Chronicle

"Gracefully constructed and wholly consuming."
Associated Press

"[A]n elegant debut filled with anguish and yearning ... Abbott takes these broken relationships and slowly works over their frayed ends with a delicate touch, sometimes mending them and other times hitting exposed nerves ... It's a very careful novel in its structure and revelations, but Abbott impresses most in his easy balance of the disparate plot elements ... and overarching themes of reconnection and regret."
Publishers Weekly

"A powerful and well-written portrayal of loss and grieving. Highly recommended."
Library Journal

David Abbott's The Upright Piano Player is a wise and moving debut, an accomplished novel of quiet depths and resonant shadows.”
—John Burnham Schwartz, author of The Commoner and Reservation Road

“A beautifully constructed debut.”
The Guardian

“Elegant, rich and gratifying.”
The Independent

“The menace simmering beneath the surface of its prose is compelling.”
Daily Mail

Reading Group Guide

The questions and topics for discussion that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of a drama that brilliantly captures the roles choice and chance play in our lives.

1. The Upright Piano Player begins with an event that occurs several years after the main part of the novel. Why do you think the author chose to start with this scene?  How does the manner in which Abbott leads up to the accident and Henry’s role in it intensify the reader’s feelings? Why does he juxtapose the present day with descriptions of the hours before the accident occurred (pp. 11-14)?  Why does he describe the accident in such graphic and horrific detail?

2. What does Tom’s behavior at the funeral reveal about the impact of the tragedy on him as both a father and a son?  Why does Jane’s phone call (p. 9) have such a profound affect on Henry? Are the phases of grief Henry experiences unique to him or do they on some level reflect common reactions to a loss?

3. What does the description of Henry’s reaction to the presentations marking his departure from the firm convey about the disparity between how he thinks of himself and the way others perceive him (pp. 17-19)?  To what extent does Henry define himself by his ethical principles and professional role? Is the image Henry projects unusual for a man of his age, position, and outward success?

4. As the novel unfolds, the focus shifts among several characters: Tom, Nessa, Jack, Colin, and Maude. Do Henry’s perceptions of and interactions with them support or diverge from the way they are seen in the vignettes devoted to them?

5. In introducing Tom and his family, Abbott writes, “His parents’ divorce had almost destroyed him.  Now [Beth], the bookshop, and Hal were slowly putting him back together again” (p. 29). In what ways do his memories of his parents’ marriage and his life as a child shape Tom’s interactions with his own family? Discuss the implications of the statement, “Memory makes him lenient. One day (but not yet) he will tell Henry that he has a grandson” (p. 31).

6. After his warm reunion with Tom and Beth and his extraordinary and immediate bond with Hal, Henry wonders, “So why...was there no elation?” (p. 114).  What prevents Henry from celebrating and enjoying this new phase in his life?

7. Does the life Nessa has made for herself in Florida, including her relationship with Jack, fit in with the picture of her created by Henry and Tom? What does her way of dealing with her terminal illness say about her?

8. What insights does the story of the Cages’ separation (p. 56-58) and Nessa’s explanation of her affair (p. 89) offer into their marriage? Does their first meeting after many years (p. 120-30), as well as Nessa’s e-mail to Tom and Jane (p. 134), reinforce your impression or provide a new perspective on the characters and their relationship? What accounts for their close attachment despite the years and distance that have separated them?   

9. Compare and contrast Jack and Henry. To what extent can they be seen as complete opposites? What aspects of Jack’s personality bother Henry and why?  Does Jack understand more about the tie between Nessa and Henry than they are willing or able to acknowledge themselves?

10. Why are Maude and Henry attracted to one another? What needs do they fulfill for each other? Would Henry concur with Maude’s musings about their affair (p. 132, p. 160)?

11. Trace the progression of Colin Bateman’s harassment of Henry. Are there steps Henry could have taken to prevent the escalation of his taunts and threats or does the situation lie entirely in Colin’s hands? What motivates Colin’s behavior? Does Abbott paint Colin as a thoroughly evil person, or are there moments when his humanity comes through? Does their ultimate confrontation and Henry’s reaction represent a change in Henry’s personality?

12. When Nessa and Henry go out together,  “[Henry] knew that he had the power to make her happy.... Even now, at the fifty-fifth minute of the eleventh hour, he held back. Why? It was stupid and cruel” (p. 148). In what ways have missed opportunities or foolish choices shaped Henry’s life professionally, socially, and emotionally? What repercussions has this had not only on Henry, but also on Nessa, Tom, and Hal?

13. Do you think Henry would have been a different man if he and Nessa had remained together? If he had kept in touch with Tom and his family after the divorce?  How do you think the rest of his life will turn out?

14. Despite the serious matters at the heart of the novel (Hal’s accident, the family’s long estrangement, Nessa’s illness), the tone is often light. Which passages or incidents in The Upright Piano Player made you smile or laugh?

15. What is the significance of the title? Discuss the different ways it can be interpreted.

16. Consider the novel’s epigraphs from Nietzsche and E.E. Cummings, as well as Jack’s blunt response to Henry’s feelings of guilt and culpability. To what extent are the consequences of our choices and actions inescapable? What role does randomness or fate play in our lives? Does the novel provide answers to these questions?

Interviews

Author Q & A
The Upright Piano Player
By David Abbott

1. After a successful career in advertising of nearly 40 years, why did you decide to write this book?

I was a copywriter for over forty years and it kept me ludicrously busy. I know some would-be novelists sit at the kitchen table and write throughout the night, grabbing only a few hours sleep before they go off to their day jobs, but I couldn't do that, because I was already sitting at that table writing ads into the small hours. The truth is, I wanted to be a good copywriter and I didn't think I could be, if I did it only to pay the rent while my heart was really engaged with fiction. So, I waited until I retired. I had always felt that one day I would try to write something else – a novel, short stories, a screenplay, lyrics, jokes – I wasn't sure which. But first I wanted a rest from deadlines, so I didn't plunge straight into writing. I made a garden, converted a house, read a lot of books, and watched the world go by from pavement cafes in favorite cities – no writing as such, but I did start to keep a notebook. And in 1999, on the eve of the new Millennium, my wife and I actually made the homeward journey that Henry Cage makes in the book. Of course, I wasn't attacked, but that journey recorded in my notebook was the genesis of "The Upright Piano Player."

2. Why did you name the book The Upright Piano Player?

The title came late. Whenever I needed a break from the slog of the main narrative, I would amuse myself by filling pages of an exercise book with prospective titles. On one of these jags I wrote the word ‘Upright' – to describe Henry. It seemed made for him with its association with goodness and virtue but it is a word that also carries a nuance of "stiff" and "unbending" which is not inappropriate either. It took me a long time to make the "Upright" connection between Henry and his piano, but when I did I whooped with joy. The elation lasted a day. "Just what everyone will expect from an advertising writer" – I said to myself – "a pun, the very lowest form of wit." When I first showed the manuscript to a publisher it had another title, but I couldn't forget "The Upright Piano Player" and I soon restored it to its rightful place. Pun or not, I love it.

3. Which of the characters do you identify with the most in the novel?

I know you expect me to say Henry, and it's true I gave him some of my bookish and artistic enthusiasms and much of my geography, but the fact is I identify with all the characters in the book. How could I not? Some play bigger roles than others, but they all have some of me in them.

4. Which character was most fun to write?

It's a toss-up between Colin and Jack. Because Colin is by nature unpredictable he often took me by surprise. I had no plans for him to kill the dog when he went into the yard to puncture the tires, but he would, wouldn't he? That kind of playback is exciting for a writer (says he grandly on his first book). I enjoyed writing about Jack, too. In many ways he is the reverse of Henry; socially at ease where Henry is a loner. I like Jack's humanity and straight talking. He reminds me of several American men I know. I'm happy he was at Nessa's bedside when she died.

5. Why did you decide to begin the book with an event in Henry's life that chronologically takes place after the rest of the book? Did you ever think about positioning the beginning of the book at the end?

I did this partly because it was the harder thing to do and made the book different, but mostly because I couldn't bear it to be at the end. I put myself in the position of the readers of the book. They have just read a story of a lonely man finding a way to reunite with his family after a 5-year estrangement. He has had a run of bad luck (or bad decisions) but he is feeling his way to reconciliation. In the process, he discovers a grandson and loses a wife, but he has made his peace and reorganizes his life to work and spend time with his son and his family. To then hit the reader with the catastrophe of the grandson's death seemed to me too manipulative. I feared they would feel cheated. Several people, including a couple of publishers, did suggest that I put the accident in its chronological place at the end of the book, but I couldn't. For me, the overarching tragedy at the beginning adds depth and poignancy to the story. Many readers have told me that on finishing the book they go back to Part One and read it again, hoping it isn't true. I know how they feel.

6. What is your favorite moment in Henry's life? What is your least favorite?

I like Henry most when he is nice to Nessa and dislike him most when he isn't.

7. Controlling your life's path versus falling into a premeditated destiny seems to be an underlying theme throughout the book. What do you think about destiny and especially the way each of the characters transcend this theme?

I married an Irish girl when I was twenty-three and not wanting to be left out of any part of her life, I always went to Mass with her. Five years later I took instruction and became a Catholic myself, but to be honest I had been interested in fate and consequence long before then. Do we get what we deserve in life? Or is life just a series of random accidents? The two epigrams at the start of the book illustrate the two opposing viewpoints and so, too, in the book, do Henry and Jack. At one point, Henry blames a recent misfortune on his ‘various failings' and Jack responds "It was wrong time, wrong place – that's all, Henry. There's no big finger pointing down from the sky." As an author I remain neutral and leave the reader to blame Henry a little, a lot, or not at all. As a man, I can't believe that people get what they deserve – bombs still fall on the innocent, disease still strikes down the kindly and the good and there is still feast and famine. But on the other hand, I kind of believe you get time off for good behavior.

8. What is next for you?

I am on the lower foothills of the next novel. It's too soon to tell you what it's about, but I'm nervous and excited about where the story is heading.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews