Tallis' Third Tune

by Ellen L. Ekstrom

  “I meet with the attorneys tomorrow and I need to make an account. I don’t think Grandma Ellie took care of the receipts the day she went into the hospital.”

  “Is that us?” I exclaimed, looking at a framed photograph above the register.

  He turned and looked behind him, smiled. “February of 1970, right before I came here to spend Easter Vacation with Grandma Ellie.”

  “Is that when you bought the musical globe and the silver rose?”

  “She gave them to me. I told her all about you. We went for tea and she wanted to know what made me happy in my life, so I told her.”

  Quinn now sorted change and pound notes, taking a ledger from a drawer below the register and made entries. While he did this, I explored the shop, this place I almost knew from his descriptions and anecdotes. Porcelain dolls dressed in period costume stood on shelves beside music boxes and sachet pillows, bundles of dried flowers and strands of beads, packages of handmade notepaper and snow globes. Boxes of toy knights made of pewter and lead were lined up beside painted wooden castles with working drawbridges. Metal cars painted in bright colors took their place beside cricket bats and balls. Books had places of honor in the windows with tea sets and souvenir items displaying the white rose of York.

  “I understand why you love this place,” I commented, running my hand over the cashmere scarves folded neatly on a counter, taking stoppers out of the perfume bottles and sniffing the natural floral scents. “It’s welcoming, comforting.”

  “That was Grandma Ellie,” he said, finishing his work at the register and putting the money and ledger in a large envelope that he placed with my things. “When she found the silver rose, she put it in the window and it wasn’t there a day before she gave it to me and said, ‘This belongs to your Alice.’ I wonder if you still have it.”

  I unbuttoned the top buttons of my cardigan and pulled the rose out. Quinn held it in his hand for a moment and then laid it against my camisole, keeping a finger on the silver petals a little longer.

  “I know what this means,” he whispered. “At least, I hope I do. Now maybe you’ll tell me what I don’t want to hear?”

  Nodding, I drew a breath, summoning courage and said, “He wants to marry me, Quinn. He pushed for a wedding in August – this August. Dennis and Harry say it’s a bad idea.”

  He looked stunned. Quinn was ready to say something and then shook his head as if to dispel the thought. A lump was starting in my throat and as much as I wanted to run away, I stayed.

  “I was pregnant and he insisted we get married, do the right thing, then I lost the baby, and so…”

  “You don’t sound happy about it,” Quinn said after a time.

  “I was at first, but I’m having second thoughts.”

  Another first!

  “Is that the reason you’re in England? Running away?”

  “No, I’m here to lecture in medieval studies at York St. John’s for the summer term – part of my contract with Brown University. I’m joining the faculty there in September.”

  “Really.”

  I glanced up and saw his skeptical glance.

  “Really.”

  The perfume bottles with their Victorian labels and illustrations held my interest longer than they ought to have and I picked up the freesia and studied it carefully, as if it would have an instruction to make the uncomfortable moment disappear.

  “Here,” Quinn said, taking the bottle from me. He reached over the counter and placed it in a bag with lavender stripes and Eloise Radcliffe’s label, and handed the bag to me. “I want you to have it – Grandma Ellie would want you to have it. It’s your scent.”

  “We’re not talking about perfumes, Quinn.”

  “I know. C’mon, Woman – make me supper.”

  It was out in the open.

  Strangely, he seemed to take it in stride. The old Quinn had surfaced and kept me company that evening. We talked about everything, laughed, and shared memories, but we avoided that elephant sleeping in the parlor until Quinn offered an evening stroll along the city walls.

  “When in August?” he said all of sudden.

  “The twenty-sixth.”

  “Well,” he sighed, taking my hand as we climbed the stairs from Bootham Bar, “You’re not married yet.”

  “Is that an offer of infidelity, Maestro?” I jested – but I really wasn’t joking.

  “No; I think that would make us both miserable. It’s an offer of friendship for life, for those times when you have no one to turn to. Or when the loneliness gets unbearable, because, Faery Princess, I get a feeling that despite everything, despite your wealthy archeologist with a building, you’re lonely,” Quinn said, and then after a time, “I know I am. Friends are a precious commodity.”

  The pain was unbearable, but I smiled and said, “I thought after all of your travel, your fame, that by now you’d be married.”

  “Who’d want me?” he laughed sadly.

  I would!

  “What do you mean?” I demanded gently. “I mean, look at you. You were gorgeous nine years ago, but now…”

  “There was only one girl I ever loved.”

  “Your cello Petula – I still can’t believe you named your cello,” I teased.

  “Before I loved you, I loved Petula Clark – and if you tell anyone I’ll have to kill you.”

  “We’re not having this conversation,” I laughed.

  Happily, he joined in and raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. “She does have the curves of my cello, a bit thinner, though, and my mother would call her scrawny even; she’s got mellow sounds, but she isn’t predictable, or static. She’s got a heart and a soul. A sense of humor. She’s smart, beautiful, with a smile that takes your breath away and eyes that are so incredible. And she’s still all that.”

  “Well, I know what happened to her. What happened to you?”

  “I was stupid. I was given choices; no, I was forced into ultimatums…”

  “Why didn’t you fight?” I asked, my voice tremulous and wondering, hoping for an answer.

  “I wish I could tell you why,” Quinn said. “It comes around to ultimatums.”

  “I heard the argument, Quinn.”

  “Pardon?”

  “When you told your parents we wanted to marry. I heard the argument you had with your parents – it was hard not to.”

  “I thought…”

  “And I waited at the library,” I added quietly and unemotionally. “When you didn’t show up I assumed you didn’t want me – and when we got together later, we never talked about it. I guessed it was too painful a subject to broach. An old wound that didn’t need opening.”

  “I wanted to tell you what was going on – it’s still too hard to talk about. And it was painful enough without making you feel any worse,” he said.

  “You might have said something – it would have explained a lot. I don’t know what I could have done, but at least knowing…”

  “And you’re a bride-to-be, a month away from her wedding, in a foreign country with a former lover. I’ve got a soulless, heartless bitch for a girlfriend.”

  “Sounds like a bad Jane Austen novel,” I quipped.

  “Sounds like life. I can break it off and risk a seventy percent cut in my salary, or my job, but I think you love your archeologist.”

  “In a way,” I began. “But I love you – always have, always will.”

  “Alice.”

  “Say the word, Quinn.”

  He stopped and leaned against the ramparts facing the city. “Not yet,” Quinn muttered to himself. “It’s not time, and I’ve only got a week.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d heard him right, and when I joined him at the ramparts clouds began forming as if a late spring storm was coming in. The shadow became the shade under an oak tree in the village, where I sat in a park on the high street across the street from the church.

  “I don’t suppose you’d hazard a game of Risk with me?”

  I looked up and saw
Anne Boleyn smiling down. She had the game in her arms and she now pushed it towards me.

  “Risk takes a while, a couple of hours,” I said, opening the box and setting up the board.

  “You and I both know we have all the time in the world – ah! Here comes King Richard and Queen Eleanor.”

  “Join us?” I invited.

  “I’m not very good at these games,” Richard the Third confessed.

  “One of England’s best strategists and defender of the Commons not good at a board game?” Eleanor scoffed.

  “Pardon me for saying so, but look what happened to him,” I interjected.

  “A challenge is a challenge, Alice.”

  The playing pieces sorted and distributed, the cards dealt, Eleanor handed me the dice and I rolled, starting the game. I moved several armies from the European continent to the French coast, facing the English Channel. Eleanor guffawed in a most unladylike and unregal manner.

  “That is exactly what I was going to do!” she laughed.

  “It figures,” Richard sighed.

  “Roll the dice,” I commanded.

  We rolled. Richard the Third came up with a three and a seven; I rolled two sixes.

  “It isn’t the first time I’ve lost England,” he grumbled.

  “Alice needs to conquer England, Your Grace,” Anne Boleyn said as she studied the playing board map and moved armies. “That is where her heart lies and love resides. Your Grace! Roll the dice.”

  Richard glared at Anne and tossed the dice so that one of them fell into the grass.

  “Game over!” I declared, and getting up, walked across the street to the church.

  Today no one sat at the organ and played Tallis, but the Proprietress was laying out fair linen and Hildegarde von Bingen was changing the flowers.

  “What are you doing here, Alice?” Hildegarde asked kindly. “Shouldn’t you be on the way to New York for your wedding anniversary celebration?”

  “I have a question,” I said, approaching them. Only Hildegarde stopped what she was doing to pay attention. The Proprietress fussed with the fair linen, making a great to-do of getting the hems even along the sides of the altar. “When I was in York, I heard Quinn say ‘Not yet. It’s not time. I’ve only got a week.’ I don’t remember him saying that in 1978. I don’t remember it all – and as soon as I arrive somewhere, it seems that I do remember what it’s all about, what I’m supposed to say and do, and it’s all like the first time around. But not what Quinn said. Why is it different?”

  “Why do you think, silly girl?” the Proprietress demanded.

  “I don’t know what to think!”

  “Dear me, she still is clueless!” sighed the Proprietress at Hildegarde. “Well, that can be remedied. Hildegarde, if you would?”

  “Looks like you’re going to New York for a concert – whether you want to or not.”

  Hildegarde held out a perfect white rose from her arrangement.

  I looked over at the Proprietress who now snapped and turned the fair linen, ignoring me. “Isn’t there something I don’t have to change? Something painful I don’t have to relive?” I pleaded.

  “It’s random, Alice,” the Proprietress said, now turning her attention on purificators and chalices, lining them up on the credence table. “If it comes up, you don’t really have a choice – you just have to make the best of it and hope that what you say and do will make a change for good or ill.”

  “I’m sorry, but game over,” I stated.

  “No reset button, Alice,” Hildegarde said, pushing the rose towards me.

  “You’re going to New York – deal with it!” the Proprietress hissed, snapping her fingers.

  “You can go to Hell!” I muttered as I grabbed the rose.

  “How do you know we’re not already there?” asked Hildegarde as I did a magnificent storm-out.

  Slamming the church door felt good; it certainly gave me a sense of power and control – something I’d not experienced in a while – when I found myself at Lincoln Center in New York, walking out of the elevator on Donovan’s arm as we followed a group of concert goers to the luxury boxes.

  “You look particularly beautiful tonight,” Donovan murmured as we strolled towards a bar that had not yet been discovered.

  “Thank you. I feel like a celebrity – dressing up, limousine service, on a handsome man’s arm. You should have warned me about the paparazzi!” I said happily, though I was trembling, worried that Quinn would come around the corner or someone would know about our past together and blurt it out in front of Donovan, who knew about the friend who broke my heart, but didn’t know that the friend was the conductor of the Royal Philharmonic!

  “Happy first anniversary,” Donovan whispered, planting a kiss on my brow. “I confess I didn’t know this was going to be such a media event – something about the conductor. He’s supposed to be the new wunderkind and prodigy in the world of classical music. My mother would know.” He winked at me and then offered a smile to the pretty bartender who asked his pleasure. “Let's see, two Perriers, with lemon.”

  With drinks in hand, we continued on our way to the boxes and I smiled demurely as a local news celebrity blocked our path when he recognized Donovan and wanted his thoughts on the concert we were about to enjoy.

  “It’s our wedding anniversary and so we’d just like to enjoy the concert,” Donovan said, turning on all the charm as television cameras burned brightly on us. The crew moved on and I planted a kiss on Donovan’s cheek as the usher greeted us and pulled back the velvet curtain so that we could enter our box. “What was that for?” Donovan chuckled, unused to my public display of affection.

  “For mentioning that it was our anniversary – do you know how many women in the United States are envious of me right now? To have a husband that didn’t need a brow-beating to remember – and to announce it on national TV?”

  “Eight weeks.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My other gift to you is eight weeks of sobriety.”

  Away from the sight of others we kissed passionately and his arm stayed around me as we found our seats, front row, stage right. We were the only occupants, as this was my mother-in-law’s box and these were her season tickets for the concert series.

  I nestled up against him as he flipped through the program. “This might interest you,” Donovan was saying. “Here.” He leaned close so that I could see what he was pointing at. My heart leapt into my throat. A photograph of Quinn was all that I saw. “Tarquin Radcliffe was born in England and raised in Berkeley, California – spends most of his time at his home in the hills of Marin County when the Orchestra isn’t touring, and he went to Oxford. What musician goes to Oxford? Don’t they go to the Conservatory or the Royal Academy? Anyway, it’s the Berkeley connection I knew would interest you, but I guess Berkeley High was so large you wouldn’t have run into him.”

  “Quite a bit, actually. He’s the friend,” I said matter-of-factly, taking a sip of my Perrier and wishing my hands would stop trembling.

  “The friend…oh. Oh!”

  The house lights dimmed and after a moment, the concertmaster tuned the orchestra, each instrument answering the request.

  There was silence and he appeared.

  Dressed in an impeccable tuxedo and the silver cummerbund Dennis had made, he was dashing and more than one woman in the boxes on either side of us made racy comments about how handsome he was. I tried not to smile; I fought tears. I would not allow Donovan to see how affected I was. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that he watched me carefully, as if taking mental notes to be stored away for a quarrel later or to be used as an excuse to open that bottle of scotch I knew he so desperately needed.

  I even managed to contain myself when, after Greensleeves, Lark Ascending and Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, the Orchestra performed the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

  It was the surprise finale that made me lose my composure.

  Quinn turned towards the audience and in
the glare of a spotlight said, “I’ve invited a friend to join us this evening – Jordan Gregson.”

  The audience erupted in applause and squeals. Jordan Gregson was a heartthrob tenor whose crossover work from classical to pop on the charts gave him several Grammys the year before. When he came out on the stage and shook hands with Quinn, I thought several women below us in the orchestra seats were going to faint; one lady shouted, “I LOVE YOU!” which brought laughter and applause. It took a moment for the house to settle and as soon as that happened, Quinn stepped off the podium and handed his baton to the concertmaster. This brought whispers and murmurs of speculation. One stagehand brought Quinn’s cello and another brought a chair and placed it stage right to where Jordan sat at the piano, almost directly in front of our box. Quinn set himself to play, and then, under the glare of a spotlight, smiled wistfully at the audience.

  “You may recognize this song – it’s a special one, for a special friend from home.”

  Donovan shot me a look and then threw an arm around me, squeezed my trembling hands.

  Jordan began on the piano – measures from Nino Rota’s music from Romeo & Juliet, which Quinn picked up on the cello, and after an introduction that gave me chills, Jordan sang A Time for Us in Italian – Un Giorno Per Noi, accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with a passionate and breathtaking solo by Quinn at the chorus.

  He closed his eyes and his concentration on perfecting every note, like that day in the school auditorium, altered his features slightly so that there was a sadness, a hardness to them – but beautiful all the same. His hair fell across his brow and moved with every stroke of the bow. On and on, with every note more perfect than the last, he played the scales and arpeggios, the runs, until the audience began cheering and applauding when he finished, and Jordan and Quinn both smiled as Jordan picked up the tune for the last verse. Clearly they were not expecting this response!

  Nor had Donovan expected mine.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Donovan asked, noting that I was the only person in the house not on their feet for the curtain calls and cheering.