The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  She lifted up her cheek for him to kiss, which he did, and made to walk away from him, crossing carefully on to the main concourse of the station, only to turn back and find him following her.

  He caught her arm.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone on the station, not at this time of night.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Judy started to laugh. ‘Don’t worry about me. I did live through the bombing, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different. Ticket?’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ve got a return.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Why – pity?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  As they walked down the platform, ostensibly looking for first class carriages, Judy could sense that he was feeling as cast down by the fact that their evening had ended as she was, that he too hated the idea of saying goodbye, hated the knowledge that once they were both back in Bexham, he driving there the following morning, she already back at Owl Cottage, ‘it’ would be over – ‘it’ being that funny thing that happens, that moment of utter, singular joy when it seems impossible that anything would be able to come between two people who for a few hours have been innocently at ease with each other.

  Finding an empty first class carriage Waldo opened the door and handed Judy up to it. She pushed the window down after she had stepped in and he’d shut the door, reaching down for his hand. She wanted to kiss him on the cheek again, but they were on a station, and that would not be her way. She wanted him to kiss her, but that would not be his way. Besides, the guard had blown his whistle for departure and so with a sudden lurch the train began to move forward, throwing Judy into the carriage. She went back to the window.

  ‘Waldo—’

  ‘Safe home, honey! Safe home!’

  He kissed his fingers to her. Seconds later he stopped running after the train and fell back to a walk as the trail of carriages accelerated away. A minute later the dark, swaying noisy object had gathered speed, heading south.

  Alone in her carriage Judy sat back in her seat staring out into the darkness. Tomorrow she would be herself again, but tonight she was someone else, someone whom, if only she was truthful, she would secretly adore to be able to remain. She glanced at her watch, dreading arrival at Churchester in an hour or so, dreading the transformation that would have to take place the moment she set her foot on the platform, the person who would resume her place at the centre of her being as she slipped into her car and drove back to Owl Cottage, and all the familiar problems crept up to settle themselves at her feet, staring up at her with helpless eyes, begging her to allow them to be dependent on her.

  The door of her carriage slid back and Judy turned back from the darkness outside the carriage window to face forward again.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs Tate. I didn’t know you were on the train.’

  Judy started, turning to see who it was.

  ‘Flavia.’

  She stared up at Rusty’s daughter for a moment, not really registering who it was, and then realising that she was back down to earth, she smiled. It was real life again.

  Chapter Nine

  They had so much to catch up on neither of them knew quite where to begin, so the first sequence of their conversation was, for them, almost monosyllabic.

  ‘Hi,’ Max said with difficulty, taking one of Tam’s two heavy bags. ‘How was the flight?’

  ‘High. And long. Boy, that is some long flight. Big head wind.’

  ‘You got an American accent! Hey man. You speak-a American!’

  ‘Like hell I do, man. I just maybe picked up a bit of a hint – I have been away rather a long time, old thing,’ Tam ended on an English note.

  ‘Tell you something else, you’ve grown. What did they give you – some kind of injections?’

  It was such a long time that they could both be excused for being embarrassed. Max now stood looking at his younger friend, someone he had still thought of as a boy until the moment a tall young man in a cowboy shirt with mother of pearl buttons, well washed Levi’s and half-boots strolled through Customs, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, a thick gold chain hanging round his neck. Judging from the confidence that Tam exuded Waldo’s plan to send him to America for a few years, both to forget and to mature, appeared to have been justified.

  ‘So you really are this big a pop star, man?’ Max wondered as they drove away from the noise and bustle of the airport. ‘That is something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nope, not a big pop star, Max, no.’ Tam paused, and still thinking Texan in his head, he refused to hurry towards his next sentence. He tapped a cigarette from the pack of Chesterfields he had taken from his shirt pocket and offered it to Max, who gladly took it, knowing that nothing was much cooler. ‘The group’s pretty successful, but then so are a lot of other groups.’

  ‘Yes, but The Bros. I mean, they’re up there, aren’t they?’ He leaned towards Tam for a light as they paused at some traffic lights. ‘You are looking at someone who is hoping that you’ve brought him a prezzy of your last LP, man.’

  ‘Course I brought it for you, Max,’ Tam stated, sounding more like his old self. ‘Course. And. It’s doing well. Went straight to number eight.’

  ‘You are going to be one rich boy.’

  ‘And you? Acting’s taken off, hasn’t it? You’re a big star, aren’t you?’

  ‘Huge. Hence the big new flash car, and all the girls in the back.’

  ‘Seriously, man. You doing OK?’

  ‘I’m doing all right. Just finished a part in The Avengers. With Diana Rigg.’

  ‘Wow. Did she fall for you?’

  ‘Over me, but give her every due, only if I got in her way. Not for me, alas.’

  ‘Even so. The Avengers – that’s cool, Max – that’s real cool.’

  There was a long reverential silence.

  ‘It’s going out, next month. Will you still be here?’

  ‘Depends on what the boys have planned for Christmas.’

  ‘Meanwhile, you’re going to be on Top of the Pops. Imagine.’ Max turned quickly and grinned at Tam. ‘I mean when you left four years ago, you would never have imagined that you would be coming back to that, would you? I mean for God’s sake, never could you have imagined that, surely?’

  Tam raised his eyebrows, shrugged and then suddenly grinned, the grin Max remembered so well, the boyish, impish grin that lit up his features and told Max that somewhere in there the severely un-cool, Bexham, car-mad Tam was still lurking.

  ‘Course I didn’t, Max,’ he replied, and then his smile vanished. ‘As a matter of fact I never thought – I didn’t think I was coming back at all. You know, after . . . after the—’

  ‘By choice, you mean?’ Max interrupted quickly.

  ‘By – everything, Max. How could I? I imagined the door would be closed for ever. That England, for me, was a no-go area.’

  They drove on for a while in silence, Tam staring at a countryside that had already become unfamiliar to him, a landscape so different from the broad sweep of Texas, a scenery that seemed suddenly makeshift and drab compared with the magnificent country to which he had grown so used. The thought occurred to him that had it not have been for the television booking he would never have bothered to return.

  ‘She’s OK, you know,’ Max said suddenly, breaking the silence as they approached the flyover at the end of the motorway.

  ‘Who is?’ Tam asked, playing for time, trying to sound disinterested.

  ‘You know. Jenny. She’s fine.’

  ‘Oh. Oh good.’ He paused. ‘She’s OK then, is she? Jenny’s OK?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tam.’ Max groaned, shaking his head. ‘You don’t have to pretend with me. I’m your friend, remember? Max, Jenny’s half-brother, we can talk about these things, more than that we should talk about these things. You’re going to have to talk about it some time so you might as well start now. Talk about it with me, who knows you both, understands just a bit. I mean we’re not strangers, are we? After all
this time you know you have to talk about it, and then forget it.’

  ‘How can I forget it?’ Tam asked, with sudden passion. Then, after a pause during which Max said nothing he added, ‘Mum wrote to me about it, all the time. After each operation, she wrote in detail. I couldn’t have forgotten what was happening over here, even if I had wanted to. I think it was Mum’s way of saying you’re not running away from what you’ve done, my son, not if I have anything to do with it. And she was right. I had to keep facing down what I had done, showing off like that – acting the goat. Consequently, I did. You know my mother, she’s one helluva lady.’

  ‘Yes, she is, and so is Jenny. She’s come through the surgery fine, she’s OK as far as that goes, and OK as far as studying the piano goes, but to paraphrase – OK is as OK does. And things are a lot more complicated than that. Jenny is, I mean. She’s bound to be, isn’t she?’

  Tam shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How should I know? I haven’t seen her since the day I ruined her life, for ever.’ He took out another packet of cigarettes and lit one without offering one to Max. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘I don’t know why we’re talking about it, really.’

  They both knew Tam meant he wished he’d never agreed for Max to pick him up from the airport.

  ‘Because I thought we should talk about it. Because actually—’ Max’s voice changed as he lost a bit of bonhomie remembering Jenny after she emerged from her day on the make-up course, how she had seemed to have grown as tall as Harrods now that she realised she could artfully conceal what remained of her scars. ‘Yes. I do. I believe passionately that you should talk about it.’

  Tam was silent, looking down at the floor of the car, then leaning back with a sigh to stare at the headlining.

  ‘I didn’t know how to get there, Max, I’m sorry. I mean, if you really want to know, not a day has gone by since that awful day when I haven’t thought about Jenny and wondered how she was doing. But how can you make it up to a girl when you’ve destroyed her face, put her through agonising operations? However great the time I’ve been having over there, there still isn’t a day that hasn’t gone by when I would have given my own life for it not to have happened to pretty Jenny, of all people.’ He opened his side window and threw his cigarette out into the night. ‘I shall regret what I did for the rest of my life, and it still won’t be enough. Jenny was always – so gentle.’

  ‘She’s not so gentle now, Tam.’ Max turned and grinned at him. ‘And I don’t think she would give a tuppenny damn for your regrets. So we can leave regrets out of it from here on in.’

  ‘Just trying to tell you – you asked, man.’

  ‘Yup, I know, it’s just that I’ve had to live with it, so I have to fit the pieces together. What were you planning on doing tonight?’

  ‘After that flight? Taking a pill and going to sleep for a day, what else?’

  ‘No dice. You have a date.’

  There was little Tam could do to resist Max’s persuasion. To refuse would have looked churlish and mean-minded, and yet the idea of having to go through the experience Max had planned for him filled him with acute anxiety.

  At least one of his pleas was heard, namely not to sit anywhere he might be seen. It seemed that Max had that covered and intended to sit them both right at the back. So, arriving just before the recital was due to begin, and the lights were already dimming, Max and Tam took their seats in the back row of the audience, the taller Max sliding well down in his seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him, so that his easily recognisable head would not be prominent. Tam followed suit, hating every minute of the whole thing, feeling tired out of his skin, and completely out of place. But what could he do? Max was his hero, had been his hero, and Jenny was Max’s half-sister. What could he have done to get out of it?

  A man introduced as the principal made his way out on to the concert platform, to scattered applause.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Students of the London Conservatory of Music – friends. As those of you who attend this place of study are aware, it is the custom during the first term of each academic year to hold a recital during which the four most outstanding students of the previous year, the winners of the medals awarded for excellence on their particular instrument, entertain us with a programme of their choosing. I stress the word entertain, because this is the whole point of this evening – to celebrate the success of those graduating from here and to be entertained by them. Music is made for us for our enlightenment, but above all for our entertainment – and that is something none of us should ever forget, most particularly when we find ourselves taking ourselves too seriously – or, worse, someone else taking us too seriously. So to begin this evening’s recital, Sophie French is going to sing for us – and I shall leave her to tell you her choices.’

  Tam began to sink lower in his seat at the thought of the evening he was going to have to face, which seemed to include the sort of music – man! – about which he knew less than little, such as the Schubert Lieder chosen by the first performer. To his surprise, and against his very best judgement, such was the sweetness of her young voice and the intelligence of her phrasing, he found himself enjoying the German love songs.

  The soprano was followed by a clarinettist who predictably enough played some Mozart, and unpredictably a tune composed and made famous by Duke Ellington’s one-time clarinet player, Barney Bigard. The penultimate performer was a sixteen-year-old female violinist who took everybody’s breath away with a pyrotechnical performance of one of Kreisler’s showstoppers, leading Tam to remark somewhat dolefully that having heard that, he would have to review his conception of himself as a musician.

  As he was chattering away to Max during the generous applause the last performer was announced, and hearing Jenny’s name Tam immediately fell silent, sliding well down in his seat while staring at the young pianist in the deep midnight blue tightly waisted satin dress with pinch pleats above the belt leading to a boat neckline that showed off beautiful shoulders, a slender neck and a head that carried itself with just a hint of defiance.

  ‘That isn’t Jenny,’ he whispered to Max.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Max whispered back straight-faced. ‘It’s Jennifer Tate. Didn’t you see on your programme, mate?’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  Tam frowned with astonishment all the way through Jenny’s first piece, the Invention No. 8 by Bach, and was still frowning as he joined in the applause.

  ‘Well, matey?’ Max grinned at him. ‘Do ye still ha’e your doots?’

  Tam shook his head, still applauding absentmindedly long after everyone else had stopped.

  Jenny followed the Bach with a simple and graciously flowing performance of Mendelssohn’s charming Frühlingslied and, to conclude, astounded the audience with a very powerful and passionate rendering of Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude.

  ‘Workers of the world!’ Max laughed, as he applauded and others cheered. ‘Music to mine ears!’

  ‘Do put a sock in it, Max,’ Tam grumbled. ‘You’re at a concert, not the barricades. And you might have told me she was this good.’

  ‘I didn’t know!’ Max protested, as everyone around him started to leave. ‘I’ve only ever heard her practise! And if you don’t want to bump into my mum and stepfather who were seated in the front row with a clique from Bexham we’d better disappear.’

  The two young men hurried out of the hall and across the road into the nearest pub to have a beer until Max reckoned it was safe to go and try to find Jenny. In vain Tam protested that she was bound to have gone out with her parents, only for Max to contradict him and say he had promised Jenny to come and take her out for a celebration since her parents had to get back home as soon as the concert finished, because there was no one to look after the dogs.

  ‘I should know the form, Tam,’ Max continued. ‘She does lodge with me, old love.’

  ‘I still don’t think it’s a good idea,’ Tam muttered. ‘I don’t think it’s a good ide
a at all. I’m the last person she’s gonna want to see.’

  ‘You’re going to have to face her sometime, Tam.’

  ‘Why?’ Tam shrugged feebly. ‘And why tonight?’

  ‘Why any night?’ Max grinned. ‘Come on – knock back your beer and we’ll go and find her.’

  Tam hung back as long as he could, hoping that sensing his reluctance Max might have a change of heart, or if the worst came to the worst when they went to look for her they would have missed her. For the life of him, even though such a moment had never been far from his thoughts, he had never had the slightest idea of what he would say to Jenny if and when he ever met her again face to face, and now that moment had come he was even further from having any inspired notions.

  But, unfortunately, Max wasn’t in the mood to be sidetracked. Finally confiscating the all but empty beer glass from Tam, he took his friend by the elbow and steered him out of the pub and back towards the large Victorian building opposite, which now that they reapproached it seemed all but deserted. None the less, and in spite of further pessimistic mutters from his companion, Max hurried them both along the well polished corridors, past the recital hall and down a short corridor which led to a green room behind the stage where a small group of students and their friends were still holding court, and from there on to a small labyrinth of dressing rooms.

  Tam looked away from the door on which Max was knocking, as if hoping to make himself invisible. A voice he knew all too well called for them to come on in, at which point Tam found himself firmly rooted to the spot. As he stood there he heard Jenny wondering to Max who it was he had got with him, to which Max told her to wait and see, at the same time leaning over and putting a hand on Tam’s jacket collar to wheel him round and into the dressing room.

  Jenny was still wearing the dark blue dress in which she had played and was standing brushing her long fair hair in front of the mirror when she saw Tam reflected behind her. It was a moment she had imagined, but never fully realised, even in her imagination, most especially as she had never really liked Tam the way her cousin Kim had liked Tam. As soon as she saw his face behind her, in the doorway, her smile vanished, and she stopped brushing her hair.