‘Aren’t you well, Miss Nicole?’
‘Well? I’m sick of what I’m doing. Just for tonight I’m not going to have to say a polite word to anyone, not talk about Ascot or what I’m doing in August, and what plays I’ve seen. Just one night, Henson …’ She was almost pleading.
‘Lord Francis … what will you tell him?’
‘I’ll telephone I’m not well. I’ll leave a message. He won’t ask the details. Tomorrow I’ll send a note and invite him to tea, or we’ll go to a matinee, or something … but just not tonight.’
‘And Lady Gowing … what will she say?’
‘My aunt need never know. She’s out to dinner herself tonight. If I have to, I’ll tell her a polite little lie.’ She suddenly burst out, ‘Even horses get a rest on Sunday!’
Henson was clicking her tongue, but she did not argue any further. She knew the look of stubbornness that had come on Nicole’s face, the look of determination that drove her each morning to the piano with the dark circles of last night’s party still under her eyes. Sometimes she was afraid for Nicole; she feared an explosion, an explosion born of the determination to keep her promise to her aunt and the conflicting determination, the longing to belong to her own self. Henson hoped the explosion would not come, would be headed off. If it came it could be monumental, could alter the life of this girl, of whom she had become so fond, irreparably.
‘This suit, Miss Nicole?’
‘Yes, something simple. I’m going to a Promenade Concert. I expect I’ll have to wait in line like everyone else. I don’t have a ticket. I might not even get in. If I don’t, there’ll be something at the Wigmore Hall … Just to be alone for a few hours, Henson. Not to have to talk …’
The line of promenaders had already moved inside Queen’s Hall when her taxi drew up. All the tickets would be gone, she knew. There might be one left in the stalls. She approached the ticket window when a young man spoke to her. ‘Want to get in? I’ve got a ticket for the promenade section. I can’t use it, and I can’t afford to let it go. It’s a bit over the price …’
She guessed he was one of those who did that nightly ‒ queued early, and then took a chance on re-selling the ticket at the last moment. In a depression many ways were used to make a few shillings. ‘Yes,’ she said, grabbing towards the piece of pasteboard. ‘Whatever you say.’
He had seen her arrive in a taxi, had taken in the expensive simplicity of her clothes, and he named three times the price on the face of the ticket. She paid without a murmur, trying to keep her eyes off his shabby clothes, trying not to see the look that was in his eyes, the look of anger and a kind of contempt. There was very nearly hopelessness in the eyes of that man, and he was too young to be hopeless. She turned away, feeling sick and ashamed. But what was she to do? Uncomfortably she was reminded of Comte Antoine Tourney and his confident, easy prediction of war. Her legs were trembling as she ran up the stairs to the gallery. Why did one always think first of the Russians when one thought of revolution? They hadn’t been the only ones, or the first … Then she found herself among the standing crowd, mostly young people. She felt more at ease here. People who listened to music didn’t join revolutions. But the silence had fallen on the crowd as the lights dimmed, and before she had time to glance at the programme, the opening bars of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture sounded out ‒ the history of a war past, the premonition of war to come. The crowd remained still, but their force was there, the force of any mass of people, potent, but perhaps to be tapped and manipulated by people like Antoine Tourney, the force of thousands, of millions, like that shabby young man outside. In the heat of that packed balcony on a summer’s night, Nicole shivered.
With the overture Nicole had been caught up by music and some of the tension dissipated; she had thrust away the menace of the crowd. The crowd itself shifted and moved on the promenade circle while the conductor took his bows. The piano was brought on stage and the conductor emerged again, leading out the soloist for the Mozart C Major piano concerto. Nicole experienced again the longing she had lived with for years that at some time she might be led out in this way, the ambition that had come to nothing. She found herself pressing forward for a better view, pressing and using her elbows. By ducking under the arm of someone who had momentarily turned away from his position, she managed to gain a position at the rail. She was totally absorbed in the entrance of the soloist, a young woman whom everyone said had a great future before her, particularly as a Mozart exponent. A surge of envy rose in Nicole; she leaned across the balcony, transfixed.
‘I always thought you could use your elbows if you needed to. I didn’t know they’d be such sharp ones.’
In the dimness she turned to look at the man who had spoken. ‘Lloyd Fenton! ‒ what are you doing here?’
‘What, you think all the good things are reserved for Europe? We have something called the Boston Symphony ‒’
‘Sshush!’ someone whispered fiercely beside them. The soloist had finally settled the seat to her liking, had nodded to the conductor, who raised his arms. The first notes of the music fell into the hush. Nicole, who thought she could forget everything under the spell of music like this, was acutely aware of Lloyd Fenton beside her. She had never expected to see him again; she hadn’t wanted to see him. Now it seemed an utterly right and natural thing that he was there, standing beside her.
In the slight pause between the movements, he leaned close to her ear and whispered, ‘You’re too thin, and you’ve grown quite extraordinarily beautiful.’
As the haunting, almost painfully evocative theme of the slow movement was spelled out, developed, receded, returned, Nicole felt a mist of tears across her eyes. Evocative of what? Did it suggest love which she had not known, a lifetime of striving to be some other person than what she was, of yearning for something as yet unknown, perhaps unknowable? What did she know of love, she who had never felt it? In the midst of the rich simplicity of the slow movement, she felt poverty-stricken. She felt it, the yearning, the sense of deprivation, until the second that Lloyd Fenton’s hand closed gently on hers as it grasped the balcony rail. Then the yearning seemed to end; she was comforted, warmed, poor no more.
When the lights came up, while the ovation greeted the soloist and conductor, she turned and looked at him directly, not removing her hand from his light grasp. ‘I’m glad I found you.’
‘Nicky, were you really looking?’
‘Looking for something ‒ someone. I wonder if you’re what I’ve been looking for, or was it the music?’
‘We’ll find out, won’t we? We’ll take time to find out together.’
They talked little during the interval. They walked around, and went to the bar. Lloyd pushed his way in to shout for, and get, two ales. ‘Nothing so grand as champagne, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ve had rather enough champagne lately. And I’ve had rather enough of balls and moonlit gardens lately. I came here just to be quiet. This tastes good.’
‘I’ll take you to a place where the food tastes better. You need some food, and a bit more rest. Is the débutante life really so tough?’
‘It’s not a life, it’s a steeplechase. I feel at the moment I’m just about holding on to the horse. I’ve lost the bridle, and I’m just clinging on to its mane.’
The bell was ringing to summon them back. He took her glass, and they returned to the promenade gallery. This time neither of them tried to push their way forward to the rail. They listened to the Beethoven Seventh leaning against the back wall. It seemed to Nicole that as she stood with her shoulder against Lloyd Fenton’s arm, with her hand resting in his, as she listened to the familiar, beloved themes, the incredible second movement that always before had roused in her a feeling that she wasn’t mature enough to understand what she heard, that the compelling majesty of the repeated crescendo of the theme was beyond her grasp and range, she suddenly experienced the dawn of understanding. In that very short time she seemed to travel a long distance. She took a deep bre
ath and closed her eyes; she seemed, for the moment, to have given up the race, or was so far in front that the runners coming behind did not exist.
Afterwards they went to a Russian restaurant in Soho. ‘Is this deliberate?’ Nicole asked as they got out of the taxi.
‘Deliberate?’ He looked surprised. ‘Why should it? Is there something wrong with it?’
‘I just thought ‒ I thought perhaps you remembered Judy saying something about my mother being Russian.’
‘Does it surprise you I’d forgotten? No, they’re friends here. I felt like a little home life tonight. I expect you go to many much grander places, but the change will do you good. Have you ever eaten Russian food?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, I can’t vouch it is Russian. But it’s different, and good. These White Russians have turned to everything to make a living since they got kicked out. Why not food …?’
They were being greeted exuberantly by the owner. ‘Alexander, this is Miss Rainard. We’re both hungry.’
‘To come to my house hungry is a compliment, Mr Fenton. We shall not disappoint you. First a little vodka, eh? While you look at the menu.’
There was vodka and wine, and food such as Nicole had never tasted before, strange food, strangely delicious. It was a homey sort of restaurant, intimate and not expensive, where people strove to build up a business by serving good food at reasonable prices, and each diner was served as if his presence mattered. Nicole discovered that there was, however, a special relationship between Alexander Orekhov and Lloyd Fenton. ‘He was ill about a year ago. We discovered at St Giles’s that he had a brain tumour. It was in a pretty bad place, just touch and go whether we could operate and get away with it. But he would have died anyhow. I was Wygate’s assistant then ‒ very new to the job. It was left to me to explain to Alexander. He didn’t hesitate a second, just begged us to go ahead. His wife, he said, was seven months pregnant with her first child. He had to be alive to see the child, help to raise it, provide for both of them. I thought all that was a bit odd, but I found that she was his second wife. The first one had come out of Russia with him after the Revolution. They’d worked at anything they could and saved their money to open this place. Then she died, of cancer, he said. He felt as if all the work had been for nothing. And then he met this young girl who had come out of Russia as a baby. She couldn’t remember it at all, but the family were very Orthodox, and they lived as Russians. So Alexander found himself in love again at past fifty, and then with a child on the way. He said he couldn’t die. Just like that.
‘It was one of the finest pieces of work I’ve ever seen Wygate do. A sort of miracle when you saw the size of the tumour and where it was placed. So Alexander was out of the hospital when the baby was born. I went to the christening. I doubt if I’ve ever seen such an occasion. Every White Russian in London must have been there. I wish I could have understood half the things they were saying to each other. The baby was toasted with more vodka and tears than you could believe possible. Alexander worships him ‒ little Alexis ‒ and his mother, Sonya. We try never to get emotionally involved with our patients, not to sentimentalize them or our job. But it was one of the times I’ve been glad I had helped to bring off something like keeping a man alive …’
Nicole was listening to him, and still conscious that she was shovelling food into herself as if she hadn’t eaten food for days. Between mouthfuls she asked, ‘And do you often go to the Proms? ‒ by yourself?’
He shrugged. ‘I go when I can. Usually on the spur of the moment, so usually alone. I went this evening because ‒ oh, damn, I’ve just finished telling you we don’t ever get emotionally involved with patients. But this morning a patient of Wygate’s died. I shouldn’t be telling you this. She died on the operating table. It was almost a routine job ‒ if you can call any neurosurgery routine. But things just didn’t go right. And then just when I thought Wygate had sort of found himself with the whole business, and she might have come through OK, her heart gave out ‒ or some damn thing. It depressed me, because it was unexpected. God knows, I should be used to the unexpected now. I shouldn’t feel bothered when I’ve seen a great surgeon do his best, and fail. But … it made a pretty black day. I went over to Queen’s Hall on the off-chance of getting a ticket. I needed people around me. I fully intended to come here to Alexander’s even if I hadn’t met you. In some way they’re convinced that I not only saved Alexander, which I didn’t, because it was Wygate ‒ but that I somehow saw that Alexis got born without a hitch. So they make me feel like part of the family. It’s a nice feeling …’
‘You have your own family. We talked about them at Fenton Field.’
‘You remember that?’
‘Yes, I remember. I wonder why you don’t go back to them?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m having a love affair with England. I’m not yet bored, or ready to settle down to practise in Boston. I won’t be really in the bosom of the family until I’m prepared to get married and do all the kinds of things they do.’ He gestured to her with his wine glass. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that I don’t admire what I see in those marriages, the way Sam and Peter worked to try to pick up the pieces after the crash. But I know when I go back I’ve got to be good and ready to settle down. It just seems the time isn’t right now.’
She felt that strange envy of him return. His world, which had been shaken by his family’s loss of money, was still remarkably steady. They all knew where they were, and where they belonged. He knew it also. Once again, with a sense of panic, she thought of her own life in these last few months since she had agreed to Iris’s terms and Iris’s strategy which must lead her to a socially successful marriage, or to nothing. She was never going to be led out on to the stage of a concert hall by a famous conductor. And she knew of nothing else that she wanted. She looked at Lloyd, and his eyes on her calmed her once more. ‘What are you frightened of, Nicky?’
‘Just for a moment I was frightened ‒ frightened about not finding my way. Perhaps of ending up never having done anything worthwhile. I’m all right now.’ She nodded to him, ‘Yes, I’m all right now.’
They were given brandy with Alexander’s compliments, and invited to come upstairs to see Alexis. Nicole found another world there. There were tiny rooms on three floors above the restaurant, where the redolent odours of the cooking were ever-present. But it was a world of deep serenity and peace, which was not at all touched by the sounds from the kitchen or the traffic noises in the narrow Soho street outside. They were taken to the room, bathed dimly in the light placed before an icon, where the child lay sleeping. He was golden-haired and sweet-faced like his mother. In a living-room, Alexander’s mother-in-law smilingly offered them tea from a bubbling samovar. She was dressed in black, and in a style of years ago. Nicole sensed that in spirit this woman had never left Russia behind. Like Lloyd Fenton, she knew where she belonged, but she was exiled from that place for ever. Her security lay in the lamps before the icons, and the sleeping child, in the happiness in Alexander’s face as he watched his young wife. They drank tea and talked of inconsequential things. The clatter from the kitchen stopped as the restaurant closed. It was growing late, and Nicole let her eyelids close as she never would have if she had been at one of the usual parties of that summer.
‘I’ll take you home, Nicky,’ Lloyd said.
‘But you will bring her back again,’ Sonya said. ‘Some afternoon, perhaps ‒ when Alexis is awake?’
‘I will make little cakes,’ her mother said. ‘It will be like all the things your family have told you about the time in Russia …’ Lloyd had told them that Nicole’s mother had been Russian; it was inconceivable to them that Nicole knew nothing about how life had been lived there.
‘I’ll see you again, Nicky,’ Lloyd said as the taxi drew into Elgin Square. ‘Remember we said we’d give it a try? I’m often tied up at the hospital, but even doctors get time off. I’d like to spend it with you.’
It seemed so
coolly said, but yet in the context of Lloyd Fenton’s background, it was a declaration of intention. They seemed committed to searching out each other, to trying to discover whether it had been the music they had listened to together, or if indeed the reaction had been a real changing of chemistry within both of them.
He leaned down and kissed her swiftly, with only the lightest embrace. It was like the gentle comfort of his hand on her as they had listened to the Mozart. ‘You’ll go to sleep now,’ he said. ‘Sleep a long time. You need it. I’ll be in touch.’
Henson was waiting. ‘You’re almost as late as you ever are, Miss Nicole,’ she started scoldingly. ‘I thought for once you’d have an early ‒ Why, Miss Nicole, has something happened?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss. None of my business, I’m sure.’
‘I’m so full of food, Henson,’ Nicole said, as she kicked off her shoes. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I ate …’
‘I’m relieved to hear it, Miss. I’ve been beginning to wonder if you’d survive until the end of the season …’
Nicole hardly heard the rest of the talk. She was drowsily relaxed as she prepared for bed; when Henson was gone and the light was out, she thought of that light kiss and an embrace which had hardly existed. Slight things on which to build. But enough.
Henson brought her breakfast at the usual time the next morning. Nicole ate it with more relish than she had shown for weeks, ate all of it. Then she put the tray on the floor beside the bed, and instead of getting up and starting the routine of exercises before she had her bath, she slid down between the sheets again. When Henson came to collect the tray she was deeply asleep. The woman looked at the suddenly vulnerable face, with the faint shadows of fatigue; it was seldom she saw Nicole’s face unguarded. Then Henson reached down and gently drew the blanket about the bare white shoulders, and noiselessly went and drew the curtains to block out the light. She left the room with the quietness of a shadow, and gave instructions that Miss Nicole’s room was not to be entered for cleaning until much later. Everyone was to be as quiet as possible. ‘At last the child’s getting some sleep,’ she told the head parlourmaid.
The Lynmara Legacy Page 18
