Love Song

by Charlotte Bingham

  She had to succeed, for herself, but most of all for Hope. Somehow she had it in her mind that if she succeeded in making herself into a star, Hope would come alive again. The last time she had visited her she had told her so too, but unlike Claire, Rose had felt no response, Hope had not squeezed her fingers.

  Of course it might have helped if the professor had not been so kind. To be so kind and so beautiful was too much really. And he went to such trouble to pretend that he was not being kind, too. Coming down to the kitchen in the very early mornings and talking to her when she was ironing, pretending that he had not known that she was there all the time.

  And he would make coffee for them both, and it was just so nice, to have coffee and talk, that Rose always forgot that she was ironing, and at the same time realized that he had come to see her in the basement kitchen for just that reason, so that the tedium of the ironing would zip by and he would take her through speeches, and all sorts of interpretations, because he believed work done in the morning had twice the value of anything done after twelve noon.

  Sometimes he said with a smile, ‘I’m hot-housing you, you know that? I’m making sure that you’re full to the brim before you go before those frustrated people who sit in on drama auditions. You must be so fully developed and confident in your talent that nothing will shake you. You must not care at all what they say or think. You will be you, the actor we both know you are. That’s the best way. As a matter of fact it’s the only way.’

  ‘How shall I thank you?’

  ‘I don’t know, we’ll think of something!’ he would joke before wandering off to his room.

  Although they had never kissed and their hands had only touched as he passed her a pencil, or she passed him his inevitable peppermint tisane, although they had only worked together, and lived on different floors, it was as if they had been lovers, so finely tuned to each other had they become from working on her pieces, from reading plays and listening to music together, from talking. Until finally Rose awoke, late, to the realization that the professor was really always more interested in what she was doing than in who she, Rose, actually was.

  Yet each time she tried to remedy this, balance everything up, ask him questions about himself, try to personalize how they were together, he deflected her in his wry way, sometimes teasing her, often making fun of himself.

  ‘Oh, but please, just, well – at least tell me when your book will be published …’

  ‘People talking about their books are so dull.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yes, of course you do, Dame Rose. But – and this is a big but – you are about to do something exciting, so you will make up for both of us. At the moment.’

  But for someone who did nothing exciting the professor’s telephone rang a great deal, and he had a volume of mail, and large envelopes containing manuscripts would come and go with a flustered middle-aged woman who called punctiliously three afternoons a week, departing with dictation tapes, which made Rose wonder if there was not another side to her professor. Some secret side that she knew nothing of, and of which he did not want her to know.

  Not that it mattered, for in reality she did not want to find out too much about Charles Felbrigg, not just yet. She only wanted to listen to him as he helped her to come to some understanding about so many of the plays she studied for parts, but which, as a whole, sometimes eluded her; most especially The Wild Duck.

  He had only to start to explain, to take a scene in a play apart, and it seemed to Rose that he was not speaking, but that his words pirouetted and spun, danced and waltzed with knowledge, not just of the play they were reading, but of life.

  ‘I don’t want to see life, like this, somehow, I just don’t, not yet anyway,’ she begged him, once or twice.

  And once he had left her she would go back to her magazines, to the well-worn lightweight novels that stacked the shelves of her bedroom, and which had been left by some other lodger who also had not wanted to see life as Charles and the great playwrights saw it. ‘I just want everything to be – well – nice.’

  ‘But it’s not. Life is not nice, you can see that already, you know that.’

  ‘I know, that’s why I want it to be, don’t you see? I just want what we read to be ugly, to be fiction, and real life to be – well – fantastic.’

  ‘It’s both. That is both its glory and its tragedy.’

  ‘You sound like Oscar Wilde.

  ‘Now there is a case in point. A life of tragedy which fashioned the greatest comedy of all time, and written in a week.’

  ‘At Hove. Brunswick Terrace, actually.’

  ‘Thank you, Dame Rose, for that piece of fairly useless information.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. Don’t call me Dame Rose any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ He looked startled by her sudden intensity.

  Rose sighed, and then bit a nail, suddenly confused. ‘I don’t know. It makes me feel like a déjà vu. As if I have already had my career, as if it is all over already. I mean, I read the other day that Laurence Olivier said the worst moment of his life was when he went to the National and there was the theatre named after him – the Olivier. He said when he saw that he realized that he might as well have been dead. You know, no point in going on, once your name is on a theatre, you must feel you’re no longer an actor, but a building. I felt just that, a minute ago, when you called me “Dame Rose” I felt just as he must have done, as if I have already been an actor, played all the great parts, and that it was over already.’

  Charles smiled, and gently removing her chewed finger from her mouth he smiled at her, and when Rose looked up at him she saw that the expression in his eyes was kind, and that he recognized that this was just a form of nerves.

  ‘A little touch of petulance is only to be expected. You will be brilliant at your audition tomorrow.’

  ‘I want so much to be!’

  But she was not. She was terrible, and when she came home, she did not make ‘humma, humma’ noises all the way up the stairs to her room as she would normally have done, and neither did she knock on his door and tell him how it had all gone, but crept up to her room and hid until it was dark, and after it was dark she refrained from putting on a light, or eating, or doing anything. She just lay on her bed, and thought, How could I have been so terrible?

  Josh did not call, and Josh was never around when Melinda was up and doing with his father’s mare, but really, in so many ways Melinda could only feel thankful. She thought she knew, absolutely, how he was feeling and she was feeling the same, and so it seemed to her that they had reached a sort of truce, avoiding each other, not really wanting so much as to catch sight of each other, such was their inability to deal with the awkwardness that their parents had, inadvertently, created for them both.

  It had to be faced. Their friendship, nearly romance, must be, and was, over, so when it turned out that he had touched base only briefly before going off to India with Cyndi, all that Melinda felt was not hurt, but huge relief.

  Claire never asked Mellie about Josh now, thank God. In fact they both found that when they were together they really only talked about future things, and about what they were going to do, and how they were going to do it. Melinda was going to win something simply brilliant on the Grey Goose, and Claire was going to London.

  ‘Going to London?’

  Claire nodded, taking off her specs and putting them on her head and clearing her throat, and standing tall to give herself a feeling of authority, which she sometimes found that she had to do with Mellie, Mellie being the eldest and now seeming almost to be standing in for Hope, as it were, what with one thing and another.

  ‘Well, I must, really, Mellie. I mean there’s nothing for me here, not now I have my pathetic little A level in History of Art.’

  ‘It’s not pathetic, it’s brilliant and you know it. You studied and studied for that exam, and you passed. But I thought you were going to do Open University now?’

  ‘Not much
point, Mellie. Not here. There are so few people and until I’ve passed my driving test like you, what can I do? And now that Letty and James are all snug up at the Mill House, what on earth should I do going on being here? Much as I like farmers they don’t have many paintings or anything, and no-one round here is friendly, not like in London, where Rose says everyone can find someone they can get on with. Big cities aren’t lonely at all, they’re where it’s at, Mellie, really. Particularly if you have my interests. I liked it here at first, but I don’t any more. Not now Aunt Rosabel has died and Dads – Alexander, rather – has gone off with Muffin Hateful, and poor Mums is still not better. The trouble is, really, I thought sitting with her was going to bring her round, but I don’t think so any more, not really, Mellie.’

  Claire stopped, not able to go on with what she might have said, which none of them could bring themselves to say, about turning off the machine, about what to do.

  ‘Jack still believes she’s there, that she’s still with us.’

  ‘So did I – you know that; particularly that once when I thought I felt her squeeze my finger. But let’s face it, it only happened that once, Mellie, it never happened again, so now, well, now – now I think it must have been just my stupid imagination and I really should not have raised all our hopes that way. I felt quite bad about it, really I did. I should never have said, not really.’

  Melinda shook her head. Finishing her elderflower and water she looked at Claire for the first time since she had begun talking to her, really looked at her, in the eyes, as it she was a barrister about to cross-question her in a court, which Claire hoped devoutly she was not going to do, but her tone was suddenly so serious, and the look on her face so solemn, that Claire could not guess at what was coming.

  ‘You should never say that, Claire.’

  For a split second Claire thought it was actually going to be one of those rare moments when Mellie lost her rag. She was really not looking forward to that. But far from it.

  ‘You were quite right to say what you thought you felt. Just because nothing else happened after that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, or it did happen. It just means that you thought you felt, or perhaps did feel, something. And of course you have to go to London. It’s important that you do. Goodness, there’s nothing round here for you, and if I didn’t have the Grey Goose and really love the country, I would be going with you.’

  ‘And leaving Mums?’

  There was a pause, and then Melinda nodded. ‘Yes, Claire, and leaving Mums. Really. There is no point in pretending. I have to be truthful. I would be doing just like you, if I was you. Or Rose. But I’m not. You see, I do love the country, Claire, I really do, every little thing about it gives me pleasure. The dawn, the night sky, the getting up and the going to bed, and all the in-between times, they all make me so happy. But that doesn’t mean that you and Rose have to like it too, and let’s face it – most young people don’t like it, because what they want to do is definitely not going on in the country, is it? It’s going on in cities all over the world, but not in the countryside where things are just growing and being, nothing more, and nothing less. Of course that’s what I like, the feeling of being part of all that growing and the seasons coming and young life in the fields and paddocks, all of it inextricably interlinked, part of something so beautiful, somehow. And when I ride out I can go so quietly on Goosey that nothing moves, everything, all the rabbits and the deer, and all kinds of birds, they all just think that she and I are part of them, and we are, for that hour or so, and it feels as if it is all flowing through me – you know, the way that the water flows over the reed beds to purify them, so it sometimes seems to me that we should be a sort of reed bed to nature, so that whatever happens we are helping, we are making things better. So. That’s why I love the countryside, because that is how I feel.’

  ‘Of course; and because of your love for horses.’ Claire let out a little sigh. She had tried to like horses when she was young. She certainly liked looking at them, but she had never been much of a rider, and now that she was grown up she knew that she never would be. When she watched Mellie riding she knew that it was a real gift, that Mellie just felt marvellous to the horse when she was up, that she did not just have balance, she had everything, gentle hands, intelligence. She knew all this from watching Mellie having lessons with the colonel. She and Goosey learned so quickly that even the colonel – old Stricty-boots – was surprised at just how fast they both were at picking up on what he wanted.

  Claire knew almost nothing about dressage, less about things like ‘bascules’ – which she had only lately discovered was making a rounded shape when a horse jumped – and less again about what should be done to count strides when horse and rider faced the most terrifying-looking jumps across country, but she did know when something looked right.

  Mellie and Goosey looked so right together, just one organism, not separated, just horse and rider as one. And Goosey, as a consequence, took such care of Mellie that not even Claire, who worried about nearly everything, ever worried about her. Which was probably wrong, because, after all, anything could happen, but somehow when Mellie was up Claire felt it was not going to. She inspired confidence.

  ‘You’re a brilliant rider, Mellie.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so, Claire. But I might have a brilliant horse.’

  ‘No, really, I think you’re brilliant. Aunt Rosabel always called you a “natural”. She said you rode like her mother, she often said that. Same way of looking on a horse, she said. She thought a lot of you, Mellie, you know that, more than of us. She thought a lot of you.’

  They both knew that Claire was trying to cheer Mellie up about Claire’s leaving, and that pretty soon she would be confessing to having found a room in London, in a house, nowhere near Rose but much the same sort of set-up, and that she would go on to tell Mellie that she had also found a job, and that there would be all those kinds of conversations that people had when they were pretending that they were interested in something that they did not really want to happen, when they were not saying what they would really like to say, which was, Wish you weren’t leaving me alone and Wish I wasn’t leaving either, but what can I do?

  More than that, they were both saying, This is goodbye, isn’t it? We’re not going to be so much to each other now, other people, other things will come between us. We’ll still be sisters, but it won’t be the same.’

  And of course, in so many ways, Claire was not just saying goodbye to her eldest sister, she was saying goodbye to her mother too.

  ‘I’m going to London, Mums, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be thinking about you all the time, and rooting for you, and I mean really. I have a sort of job interview thing, and I have joined a secretarial agency which means that I can pay my way until I get a good job, and also means that I can send a bit home to Mellie for flowers and things for you. Because just to begin with I won’t be coming back every weekend. Train fares are too expensive, and I haven’t passed my driving test, but as soon as I have the money I shall be coming back to see you, don’t you worry. And I shall buy myself a Mini or something, and I will be simply whizzing down the motorway to see you, and Mellie, and we’ll all be together just like we have been these last days and weeks since James was born. I know you were thrilled when I told you about passing my silly little exam thing, I don’t know why, but I just know you were. Just as I know Mellie will be coming in, and of course Jack never leaves you for more than a few hours. He does love you so, Mums. It is so nice, that, to have a man love you as much as Jack loves you. And now you both have James, that’s quite something, isn’t it? Quite something, Mums.’

  That was enough really, Claire thought, getting up and going to the door, but she came back for one more thing.

  ‘And Mums, I do love you. Just because I’m going doesn’t mean I don’t, you know. And another thing. I’m going to make a great big success of London, for you. Just like you always said, Got to make something of yourself,
Claire, or else what is the point? I didn’t really know what you were on about then, but I do now, and Mums – I’m on my way!’

  The house to which Claire had been directed was a tall London house, perhaps six storeys, she thought, squinting myopically up at it, with the basement, or was it seven? Whatever it was in all, as she rang the doorbell she could not help feeling relieved that she was not going to have to clean it for Mr Crawford Haye, that she was only going for an interview for the post of part-time assistant, because his long-time secretary had fallen ill.

  ‘Come up!’

  The voice on the intercom was immediately boyish, and warm, and yet older, because having said ‘Come up’ he then added, ‘Come up, do, third floor. Lots of stairs, but you’re young, you’ll manage!’

  There were some houses, and Claire had only visited a few, that from the moment you stepped into them embraced you. From the moment you walked in they put their arms around you, and their colours and their paintings, their flowers and their plants, everything, shouted a welcome. Not grand, not standing on ceremony, but somehow perfect. And you knew immediately that you never wanted to leave, that you wanted to stay in or around them, and that to leave them at all, like parting from some enchanting friend, would be to suffer a sense of loss, to be left with the feeling that something had been taken away from you. As if you had been given a present, and then someone had run after you and taken it back, thinking you not deserving of it.

  That was exactly how Claire felt as she climbed the stairs to meet Crawford Haye. So that by the time she reached the third floor and he was waiting for her, smiling, older, tall, and distinguished, she was already in love with him. And she knew it, just from climbing the stairs of his house, from traversing his hall and seeing his paintings, from looking at the carpet on his stairs, and that being so, it followed that she had to impress Mr Haye, because if she had fallen in love with him, she had to get the job.