Open Writing

Friday the thirteenth dawned, as beautiful as many a winter’s day in Johannesburg. Gold light filtered through the curtains just after seven, and there was birdsong outside the window.
Not being one for superstition, I began the day as usual, doing a load of washing and hanging it out in the crisp sunshine, going to gym, doing a little shopping for groceries. Nothing too taxing.

At twelve, Leon and I drove to Sandton where we regularly attend world-class chamber music concerts at the Theatre on the Square. The programme that Friday was being presented by a wind quintet, all players from the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. We were looking forward to an hour of great music.

After paying for our tickets, we met an old musician friend, Ben, in the foyer. He was with the new ‘lady in his life’, Maureen, a lovely, bubbly person. As we ambled into the theatre to take our seats, we continued chatting, meeting more friends in the auditorium. Once in our seats, I turned around to have a few words with a lovely violinist behind me, then turned back to Ben and Maureen. While we chatted, I decided that my hands uncomfortably dry, fished in my handbag for the little tube of lotion that I keep for emergencies, then took off my wedding ring and carefully balanced it on my right leg. I obviously wasn’t careful enough, the ring rolled off my leg and vanished. Horrified, thinking belatedly of the date and the day and how unlucky it is for some, I scrabbled under my seat, got up and crouched down, looking under and behind all the seats in our row and under and behind the seats in front of me. The ring was nowhere.

My wedding ring is unique, designed and made specifically for me by a master jeweller, from a basic concept of Leon’s.
Leon and I chose the diamond from a selection of hundreds, one sunny Sunday afternoon. Through his connections at work, we were privileged to visit a diamond dealer in the centre of Johannesburg. Security was tight. After going through bullet-proof doors and proving our identity at several bullet-proof windows, we were finally ushered through vacuum-sealed doors that buzzed before opening into a room with high stools set in front of a counter lit from beneath and from above. An Israeli gentleman greeted us, then asked what kind of diamond we wanted.

What a question to ask a woman about to get engaged. “What have you got to show us?” I asked. He laid before us a sparkling array of the most exquisite cut stones. There were heart-shaped, pear-shaped, square-cut, triangular, pink, yellow, and crystal-clear gems.

After about an hour of examining glittering hearts and triangles and baguettes, holding them, gazing at them through a jeweller’s loupe and dreaming of owning one of each kind, we got down to the serious business of finding the perfect stone for me.

Leon’s concept required a conventional, round stone, known as a ‘brilliant’ cut. According to the dealer, it should ‘speak’ to me, held against my skin it would sparkle for me as no other could. My stone is a lovely, clear white diamond, just under point five of a carat in weight.

Leon dealt with the business side of the transaction, while I gloated quietly.

The diamond dealer then recommended a jeweller who, he thought, would be able to create the ring of our dreams.
A week later, we went to see Angelo the jeweller. Angelo was a Greek gentleman, big and hearty and a little overpowering. He immediately told Leon to take a back seat: “You’re only the man,” he said, “your job is to pay. The lady will be wearing the ring – she must be happy with it, to look at it every day on her hand!” Quite right, too, I thought.

And so Angelo and I designed a ring, symbolic of the love that Leon and I have for each other and for music, the central theme in our lives: it had four narrow gold bands, fused at the back, but separated on the face of the ring. In the centre was the diamond, set in a white-gold treble-clef design. This was the ‘engagement’ ring. For the ‘wedding’ ring a white-gold fifth band was added, filling the space between the centre two and creating the musical stave.

The end result is a ring that I adore wearing, I treasure it and gloat over it every time I look at it, a hundred times a day.
Therefore, the shock of it vanishing was, to say the least, traumatic.

Just as I got Leon’s attention and he joined me, grovelling on the floor of the theatre, the musicians appeared on stage. We reluctantly took our seats and tried to sink into the music. Two-thirds of the programme consisted of works I’ve played hundreds of times over the last thirty years, bringing nostalgic memories of wonderful gatherings with friends long-gone.

Many of those occasions were shared with Ben, sitting two seats away from me. It was beautiful music, beautifully played. I listened, trying not to chew my fingers in agitation, appreciating the lovely sounds flowing around me but not able to keep my mind entirely focussed. I kept wondering how far forward and sideways the ring could have bounced, or had it disappeared down an air-vent, never to be seen again?

It was the longest, admittedly lovely, concert I have every sat through – a full hour’s programme of wind quintets by Reicha and Danzi, followed by a sextet, adding the piano into the musical mix, by Gordon Jacob. All I really wanted to do was crawl around on the floor between the seats, magnifying glass in hand if necessary.

It was Friday the Thirteenth, indeed!

“Let’s wait ‘til everyone is out, then we’ll have a good look around,” Leon said. We stood up to return to the foyer where audience and musicians mingle, drinking tea or coffee and munching chocolate biscuits while discussing the performance.

As I began to follow Maureen, Ben on her other side, turned to me, holding out his hand. He dropped my beautiful ring into my hand. “It was just there, next to my foot,” he said. Over the years, Ben’s foot had great significance in our chamber-music sessions, it was one of the indicators of when to start a particular piece. Today, Ben’s foot had come through for me again. I gave him a big hug.

And so, Friday the thirteenth this year brought both bad luck and great good luck to me.

I wondered, does good luck cancel out bad?

The myths surrounding Friday the thirteenth are almost uncountable*. None of them, however, can stop me enjoying any beautiful day, even if it does fall between Thursday the twelfth and Saturday the fourteenth.

Until next time…. ‘here comes Treble!’

© Copyright Reserved
by Isabel Bradley

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For a fascinating discourse on Friday the Thirteenth, go to: http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm