A Night, A Secret...A Child

None of them seemed disappointed with the acts so far, applauding wildly at the end of each. Nicolas, who appreciated he’d been spoiled by years of seeing top performers all over the world, put aside his super-critic hat and kept his comments on the kind and constructive side. The audience seemed appreciative of his ability to find praise for even the worst performance.

So far he’d endured the hapless Jonathon, who’d dropped more clubs than he caught; a gymnastic-style dance troop of fifth-grade girls whose movements often got out of sync; a poetry reading of ‘The Man From Snow River’, complete with stick horses thundering across the stage in the background; two separate country and western singers with absolutely no originality; a twelve-year-old magician whose magic was straight out of a do-it-yourself manual; an Elvis impersonator, who’d been hilarious, because he was so atrocious. And last but not least, a ten-year-old boy named Cory, playing the spoons.

Actually, he wasn’t half-bad. If no one better came along, Nicolas was going to give Cory first prize.

Only two to go, according to the program. A twelve-year-old hip-hop dancer named Kirsty. And an eleven-year-old girl—her name was Isabella—singing ‘Danny Boy’.

He should have known ‘Danny Boy’ would get in there somewhere.

Kirsty was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. She was darned good. But Isabella was clearly the star act of the night, the audience falling silent the moment she opened her mouth, her voice as pure and as clear as a bell.

Everyone clapped wildly when she finished, Nicolas included. He didn’t have to think too hard over who would win, or who would be runner-up. He’d make that second prize a dead heat between Kirsty, the hip-hop dancer, and Cory, the spoon boy. It would be simple to add a bit of money to the prize pool himself, if need be.

But before any of this could happen, however, there was one event left: Felicity’s special performance.

Nicolas found his heartbeat quickening when she walked back out onto the stage.

Surely he couldn’t be nervous for her.

But he was, nervous as hell.

Nicolas had never been nervous himself before a performance. He used to be excited. He could not wait to get out there, to show what he could do, to blow his audience away with his brilliance.

But then he’d always been super confident when it came to playing the piano. Girls—especially young girls like Felicity—rarely possessed that kind of confidence.

Yet as he watched her cross to the centre of the stage, there was no hesitation in her stride. She stopped there for a moment, faced the audience and bowed, at the same time throwing him a smile that wasn’t just confident. It was super confident.

‘Wait till you hear this,’ Felicity’s principal whispered from where he was sitting beside Nicolas at the judge’s table. ‘Felicity would have won hands down if she’d entered, you know.’

It was a telling remark, coming so soon after Isabella’s almost faultless rendition of ‘Danny Boy’.

Nicolas watched, his mouth drying as Felicity moved over to the piano that had not been used as yet that night, Isabella having sung unaccompanied and the dancers using recorded music.

Another smile came his way after she sat down on the stool and lifted her hands to the keys.

‘I have chosen to play this medley of pieces in honour of our very special guest here tonight,’ she said to the audience. ‘I cannot hope to play them as well as he once did. But I will do my best and hope he forgives my mistakes.’

What mistakes? Nicolas was to think numbly thirty seconds later as Felicity’s fingers flew over the keys. He’d never heard Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ performed any better by one so young. In no time the fast, flashy piece was over, Felicity switching with effortless ease and surprising sensitivity into the haunting adagio from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Lastly, just as everyone in the audience was almost in tears, she launched into Chopin’s very showy polonaise ‘Heroic’, a piece requiring great technical brilliance and showmanship.

Chopin was a favourite choice of composer amongst concert pianists, especially his polonaises. This particular one had been a staple of Nicolas’s list. He watched, totally amazed, as Felicity attacked the wild sweep of notes with the same kind of panache and passion that he’d possessed, which the critics had loved. She never looked up at any sheets of music because there were none there. She was playing from memory as he’d always done.

Nicolas could not believe it. Only twelve and already she could play like this. Why, she could take the world by storm in a few years!