MOVIES : A Prelude to ‘The Piano’ : Jane Campion reveals why Ada doesn’t speak, in this exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming novel of the acclaimed film

The story of Ada and her piano has been told and retold by those in the small New Zealand settlement as well as those that once knew her and her daughter back in Scotland, who told it to their daughters, though it was not only women who spoke of the story; men talked about it in public houses and fine houses, some shuddering, others wondering at the lengths some would go for love or passion. There was something irresistible in the story that made it popular to all. Many liked to feign horror, but could not contain their impatience if the story were stopped, even for prayer. One woman claimed to have heard and learnt the pieces Ada herself played and had concerts of the piano music that could not fit all who wished to attend. Still, those who went were disappointed as the story was not retold along with the music, and some did not believe the music was genuine.

Most of what was told was true in some points; that Ada did not speak, that she had an illegitimate daughter and that she married a Scotsman whom she had never met and who had taken her, along with a small dowry, to the furthest country on the earth. But after these facts which were not all true--Alister Stewart was already in New Zealand while Ada and her daughter traveled out to meet him--almost all the stories fell apart, as most of what could be told or observed by others saw little of the entire events. This account is remarkable for having been spoken to her daughter by Ada as she lay ill and dying in the small pleasant town of Nelson. She was 69 years old and happy, she said.

Ada McGrath of Aberdeen was six years old when her father felt unable to further delay an invitation to stay he had rashly made his two maiden aunts, Patricia and Ethel. They in turn campaigned to make it a rare family reunion, insisting that since they would be traveling such a distance it would be a rare opportunity to also see their unmarried cousin Gillian as well as her brother, wife and boy. Wyston McGrath finally agreed, thinking that they may entertain each other, and had been spending the last three weeks anxiously inventing urgent responsibilities that would take him from the house to the estate for the best part of each day.

Wyston was a bad host and as the appointed day approached his temper grew more difficult. Even small Ada, who had the talent to soothe any mood from him with her songs--sung with a passion odd in a child and a seriousness that beguiled not only Wyston, but all the household--could do nothing for him. On occasions she would stroke and pat his hand with her tiny one, which he had always liked, but today these tender ministrations had no effect as he irritably withdrew his hand to complain about the setting of the table being irksomely formal.

It was at length found that when one of the five candelabras was removed it looked to McGrath’s eyes right. However, the next day he was unsure, and looking from one end of the room to the other, announced that four was a silly number and that since the table was too long for three, it would have to be five.

The first day of the visit passed not well but satisfactorily in that the guests were well occupied looking all about the house, and the gamekeeper had, as instructed, exhausted the party with a long walk about the perimeter of the property. Ada was nervous of the visitors, so did not join them on their exploring, but enjoyed very much to watch them where they could not see her. The incident, as it has come to be known, happened on the third day of the visit at the long dinner table, now strangely bare of any candles. At the last moment McGrath felt the issue best solved by removing them. “Now you see we have no problems with numbers.”

Little Ada was seated between the two maiden aunts on a high chair especially made for her. The dinner was not going well. McGrath did not like the roast, pronouncing it tough and inedible. He insisted on it being sent back, but had not accounted for the fact that there was nothing else to replace it. The guests, whose meals had been taken from beneath them, were disappointed but stunned into agreeably calming comments to their host. It was in the gap between the meal leaving and the dessert arriving that the guests’ and McGrath’s attention was drawn to little Ada, who was quietly emptying the sugar dispenser into a wondrous large mound of white granules, then flattening them on the dark wood and, with a licked first finger, drawing, in the sugar, her name.

The two neighboring aunts cleared their throats and looked towards their brother Wyston who finally dropped his eyes to the artwork in front of his daughter’s place and bellowed out of relief more than anger: “And what is that you are doing?”

“Drawing in the snow, Father,” she said in a small clear voice.

“That is not snow, dear, it is good sugar,” said Aunt Ethel.

“No, Aunt, it is snow. I have made it fall on to the table.”

“Get up from the table and come to me,” ordered her father.

The little girl could not get from her chair without help and said so. This well-known fact infuriated her father to an unexpected degree and he bellowed at her with such force that a great spray of spit misted the air and Aunt Patricia who was nearest him withdrew her hands from the table.

“You child will go to your room and not speak for the rest of the day--as it seems you speak only to contradict your father and your aunts.”

The child’s face burned a fantastic red and a sweat that prickled needles burst across her lip and forehead. Her shame was utter and she held her hands up across her face so that none could look upon it. Her father lifted her down from her chair and with her hands still over her face, and tears now running down her cheeks, she stumbled out of the dining room then on into the hall and up the main stairs to her bedroom. In the safety of her bedroom the little girl threw herself across her small bed and taking a bite-size piece of pillow into her mouth to stifle her cries, prepared to sob, only to her surprise no sobs came. And as the small child sat herself up, a darkness was in her eyes that was at once chilling and threatening. For a very long time the little girl sat, her hands folded tidily in her lap while her eyes, big, black and cold, stared out towards the far wall.

The child stayed like this staring, unmoving, while all about her the room descended slowly into a shadowy darkness, then on into the night.

*

It was two days before it was noticed that the child still had not spoken and to everyone’s amazement would not, even as she was ordered, say “goodbye.”

After a week, when she still had not spoken, her father became concerned and called her into his study. His small, dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter stood gravely in front of him. He looked at her and moved awkwardly in his upright chair. There was something eerily disquieting about those black eyes. The expression was part accusing, part aloof. Her little feet neatly lined themselves up against the line of his Turkish rug.

“Ada,” he said, “I have punished you and now this last week you have punished me.” He looked at her and she looked back at him with a forgiving, unmoving quiet. “In my calculation we are even,” and he added, “don’t you think?” He bent forward so his big-featured face was on her level. “Are we even?”

Ada heard her father’s kind voice and looked into the face she loved so dearly, the face she had called “Beast,” and despite her enormous love for him, and his utter devotion to her, she could not contradict the edict of her own small iron will. She, as firm as a window grille, would not speak.

The Beast settled into a position of equal parts admiration and fury towards the tiny figure of his only daughter. Unwilling to take up arms against the child, he found a sport in making meek threats, the favorite of which he would repeat often; and soon daughter and father became even tighter. He in his mocking, admiring tolerance, she in her tiny child firmness. After another three years and two trips to Edinburgh specialists, it was understood even by the maids who had in private shaken her to force a word that little Ada did not speak. And her father’s speeches became lore in the house. “It is a dark talent and the moment you take it into your head to stop breathing will be your last.”

As Ada grew, so did the mythic glory of her stubborn will and she shouldered it like a prickly but glorious shawl. It was her. As a 12-year-old she was still tiny, neat and perfect--not beautiful but alluring. The boldness of her dark-eyed look could be alarming, and she frightened the more timid maids with “those damn pools.”

The 12-year-old Ada liked to do three things: to read, to make things beautiful, which generally meant to polish, and to play piano. Of the three the piano was her favorite and in this her father indulged her. The piano was an instrument bought as a second wedding anniversary present for his young wife who died three weeks after presenting him with dark-eyed Ada. It was a Broadwood square piano, made of rosewood. The top panels were carved into delicate and intricate floral shapes and underneath was laid a deep red satin. The legs were fluted and curled into fists or, as Ada had it, lion’s paws. The piano sounded best with its top panels put aside so the harp-like strings could ring out freely. Under the strings was a delicate inlay of blond wood and tiny inscriptions that the piano maker had made to guide him in his work. The felts were black and there was a red thin layer of additional felt along one edge. It pleased Ada to watch when McGregor the tuner worked on her instrument, to see how many pieces could be removed--the lid, the top panels and each and every key singularly by slotting them carefully in and out. McGregor complimented the piano and little Ada would blush with pleasure as if the piano itself was her mother and it was she that was complimented on her exquisite shape, design and tone.

“It’s as clear as a voice,” he said and looking at Ada gravely guarding the dismantled pieces, he added, “and just as well, Wee One, just as well, with that closed trap of yours . . . eh . . . what are you holding onto--a mouse? Is it? Come on, open up and you’ll hear it squeak.”

Ada’s face clouded, her eyes darkened and she bent her head as if to aim her eyes more particularly at him. Seeing he was embarrassing the girl, he stopped teasing and worked silently. After Ada had passed each of the panels to the tuner and the tuner had admiringly slotted them together, “ingeniously simple, look at that.” He turned to Ada and took her hand. He looked into her eyes. “Have you a secret, my small one, a big secret, something frightening you saw?” Little Ada felt the glorious solemn seriousness of the moment and her eyes filled with tears as they might if an anthem had been sung, so when she shook her head, the tuner squinted his eyes and let her pull her little hand out of his but remained convinced of his instincts. “There is more to her silence than will ever be spoken,” he told the kitchen maids. “Don’t be a simple fool, it’s only her dark little ways. She’s been nothing but spoilt ever since she were first born.”

*

Before playing her Broadwood the child closed the dining-room door to the kitchen, and that door into the hall. She closed the hall door, the sitting-room door and the door from the sitting room into the large dark paneled parlour that had been her mother’s work room, and there she would sit no less than two hours and some days for four or five hours. She had no formal training, but could pick and play any tune she had heard thereabout.

At 12 a woman dressmaker was called to the house and fitted Ada with her first long skirt, corset and hoop. On the same day her father made the piano a present to her and she as a present played to him her favorite pieces.

To see this tiny figure of a woman climbing on to the stool adjusted with two large books, bow over the instrument, serious and purposeful, filled him with awe and the playing was simple but surprisingly fetching, passionate, musical. It impressed and embarrassed him that she should sway and even effect eye-closing to find her way. Yet he was sensitive enough not to abuse this privilege by ever requesting her to play for guests, maids or any others. But it did serve the purpose of fixing in his mind the idea that she might be given coaching. Someone who could teach her in music and perhaps act as a general tutor.

While McGrath told his education plans to his accountant, his lawyer Mr. Beadsley, McGregor the piano tuner and anyone and everyone at the drinking house, it was four years before Delwar Haussler, a 23-year-old man, was met at Edinburgh Station and from there taken by coach to the McGrath Estate.

His appointment was finished not by McGrath but by Beadsley and the accountant, who took the plan into their own hands and advertised with several minor universities, thinking that it would render a deeper and more humble type of person. There was one reply so the decision was made of itself and Mr. Haussler agreed to begin coaching music and French on a two-month trial basis.

The estate to which the young man arrived was not the same proud, well-kept farm that Ada had been born into. The gate no longer closed as one side had fallen off its hinge, and the drive up to the house was deeply rutted and potted with holes. McGrath, who had been so particular, seemed not to notice the decay; he treated it with the same benevolent tolerance that he accepted his advancing age, feeling it natural that the property, like himself, should run down. And, as with all things he did not like, he had the knack of turning the other way and, childlike, imagining the problem gone. So as the farm’s debts increased, he looked less and less at the accounts until he refused to look at them at all. His accountant, Pike, a wise and kind man with eight children of his own, understood McGrath but sought also to protect McGrath’s small daughter, for it was clear to all who did view the accounts that the estate would be bankrupted in seven years and Pike feared for this child who was said not to speak and could not earn a living. He persuaded McGrath to set up a trust fund for the child’s dowry and education, a pocket of money that could not be attached to the fate of the property. So it was out of this fund that Delwar Haussler was to be paid.

Delwar arrived too late to meet his young pupil and as he sat in the draughty and actually dirty third-story room, the whole romance of his expedition was beginning to wane. For one thing, he did not account for how cold it would be this far north, nor for the cheerlessness of the Scots, whom he had imagined as hearty and friendly.

Delwar’s first language was English and while his father’s family were originally German, neither he nor his father, a Lutheran pastor, had ever been there. He was the third son and had two sisters, one older and one younger. Delwar wanted to be an artist but his understanding of the career was fanciful and successful only in its outward appearance. He wore his hair long with a velvet cap, a purple sash inner vest and a black frock-coat that flapped dramatically in the wind. The coat was made by his sisters and had a peculiarity of cut in that it was very tight across the chest and the collar sat two inches further down on the right side than the left. Delwar was touched by his sisters’ efforts and announced the oddnesses in design as original and distinctive additions. He was well loved by them and they were envious of the Scottish girl who was to be the sole recipient of his attentions.

*

For the first week Delwar did not meet Ada. On the third day it was explained by McGrath that his daughter was very shy and unused to people, but that she had agreed to spend time in the piano room next week. Until then he should entertain himself as he pleased, play her piano and in general settle in.

The first day of the next week Delwar came down into the music room and was surprised to see her already waiting; a tiny, perfectly dressed girl who looked 12 but he knew to be 16. Her expression was serious, almost stern, and her choice of dress was likewise severe yet of very good cloth and style. The white lace at her collar and cuffs was delicate and it touched him that she too was so fragile with her tiny hands and long slim neck. A perfect proud miniature of an adult.

As Delwar moved forward to say “Hello,” she unlatched a slim metal box that hung from a ribbon around her neck and removed a silver pencil attached to the side. Inside the box were small perfectly fitted pieces of cream paper and onto the top sheet she wrote briefly and passed it to Delwar, carefully stepping back to her original position by the table at the far end of the room. On the piece of paper was written, “I can’t speak.”

For two weeks Delwar was unable to persuade Ada to move from the tableside, but he considered it progress that in the second week she left the room and returned carrying a dining chair which she placed inside the table and sat on.

Despite the oddness of the situation he was surprised to find himself chatty and comfortable, so that he played both sides of their conversation in between performances on the piano. All requests to Ada to play were met with deep blushes, bowed heads and, on an early occasion, a walk out of the room. Delwar himself was an average pianist; he had good feeling and was well-measured; he had a wide appreciation but knew by ear only the beginnings of pieces.

In the afternoon Ada would put on her bonnet, top-shoes and cloak and the two would wander together over the estate and sometimes over neighboring farms, bringing back pocketfuls of interesting leaves, seeds, insects and stones. Ada would then arrange these finds into animal shapes on her table. She made a very good squirrel, all put together out of a week’s collectings that was so detailed that it had layer upon layer of tiny twigs for its fur.

On one of these walks Delwar was surprised but pleased that she took his hand. Perhaps if Ada had been of proper adult build for her 16 years, this affectionate gesture may have been confusing, but as it stood, Delwar felt only great satisfaction as if something in the spirit of his small silent companion had seen into his soul and decided him good.