Autumn

by Vina Jackson

  I could not help but admire her craft, even if I’d been hoping she would be a failure.

  ‘It felt good,’ she concluded, as she stuffed her multi-

  coloured scarves, abundantly annotated script pages and the violin case back into the deep canvas bag. The cheap instrument had remained on the table throughout, just a visual prop for her to focus on and no more.

  Antony was unreceptive, detached.

  Alissa appeared unconcerned by his lack of immediate response. Holding her trenchcoat in one hand and the bag in the other, she turned and made for the stairs.

  ‘It was fun,’ she said. And impertinently, looking me straight in the eyes as if she knew the reality behind Dominik’s first novel, deftly raised the tight skirt above the half moon of arse and revealed the fact that she hadn’t again been wearing panties throughout the audition, something I had somehow guessed already but was now granted proof of. Her perfect globes swinging gently above her hips, she giggled all the way up the stairs. The whole kink was becoming something of a cliché; I smiled.

  As the door to Denmark Street closed behind her, Antony remarked, ‘I think she’ll be OK.’

  Actually, I had thought she was pretty good. And as much as it pained me to admit it, the way that she moved and dressed, tempting and provocative with obviously not a damn given to modesty or convention had caused a pang of arousal to stir inside me, as well as a begrudging respect for her attitude and talent.

  Technically, she was right for the part. Hadn’t put a foot wrong.

  But despite all that, for me, there was something missing. And I was unable to put my finger on it.

  The truth.

  But that was too intangible to explain. And perhaps impossible for anyone to interpret on the stage. Probably I was the only person in the world who would notice that missing element, as I was the only person who was aware of the reality that lay behind Dominik’s story.

  I was acutely jealous of Alissa, now, as well as turned on by her. Had it not been for decorum or the agreed parameters of a theatrical audition, I knew she would have performed in the nude, her way of telling me she knew I was the one who had played the violin nude on the bandstand on those occasions, but that her body was more spectacular than mine in so many respects.

  Antony interrupted my thoughts.

  ‘I’ll ask her to try out with some of the other actors I have in mind next week, and if all goes well, she’s in,’ he said.

  I nodded. Did I have any other choice? It was his project after all and I was just by necessity the musical director.

  It was another basement, albeit a much larger and better-lit one, sometimes used as a performance space below a sprawling pub in Maida Vale. What was it about theatre (or Antony?) that held such an attraction to basements?

  We’d been encamped there for a whole week now, rehearsing the show.

  The casting had finally come to a halt. Following the choice of Alissa for one of the principal parts, Antony had recruited the rest of the troupe. Some actors he had worked with before while a handful of others were new to him, but within a few days around the long rectangular wood table that had been installed down there, they all fitted seamlessly together like a well-drilled ensemble, pieces of a puzzle intricately coming together, playing off each other with grace and instinct. I felt somewhat superfluous: at this stage, all we were doing was systematically going through the lines over and over again as we sat around the table, getting the tone, the rhythm, the words right, with Antony listening to the full text live for the first time and making minor adjustments as we went along, dictated by the dynamics between the actors, the lulls in the flow. It was a slow and somewhat boring process for me, although I could see how necessary breaths of life were being added to the play with every successive reading. I knew I wasn’t a good spectator. My music was not required at this early stage, Antony had informed me. Not until the text was smoothed out and ready and I would then be called on to add an ultimate dimension to it.

  A hand on my shoulder. Gentle. Solicitous. I opened my eyes.

  ‘Did you fall asleep?’ it was Mark, our set designer.

  ‘No. I was just listening.’

  I was keeping my eyes closed in a concerted effort to absorb the words, visualise the unfolding play, the words in my head and already conjuring up the music I would superimpose on them, layer upon layer, almost hearing the ghost echo of warring melodies that would bring the whole enterprise to life, like a match struck in total darkness.

  ‘It’s all a bit repetitive at this stage,’ he added. ‘But necessary. You have to build the foundations before you erect the walls … The rules of theatre are the same.’

  ‘I know.’

  The reading continued. But I had lost my concentration.

  I pretexted an errand and left early. Antony wanted to complete another pass over the closing act which was still bothering him.

  I did not go to his apartment, but returned home to Clapham and my own bed.

  I slept fitfully.

  My dreams were a maze of entwined limbs, bodies, men, women, forest vines, beds of ochre sand, verdigris vistas that stretched to a distant sky. I felt hot, haunted. Drowning in unknown rivers, buried between cities of indiscribable terror.

  Unspeakable premonitions rising from the deep, like a call to arms, to deathly sex. In my mind, I screamed, I groaned like an animal, I came, gushing flows of emotions racing through my crucified limbs. But dreams are just dreams. I awoke breathless to find it was barely midnight.

  I was staring mindlessly at the ceiling and conjuring random shadows into actual shapes of countries or faces when my cell phone rang.

  ‘Summer?’

  ‘Hmmm …’ It was Antony.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You don’t sound it.’

  I lied. ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There’s been a development. Shortly after you left the rehearsal I had a call from Samuel Morris. A change in his plans. He’s going to be in London the day after tomorrow and would like for us to have a read-through …’

  Morris was a well-known theatrical impresario with whom Antony had collaborated on earlier projects. We were planning to present the project to him in a couple of weeks in the hope he would substantially invest in it.

  ‘But we’re not ready yet, are we?’

  ‘He has to return to America the following week, so it’ll be our only chance,’ Antony explained. ‘Text-wise, the guys are pretty much there, but it means you’ll have to improvise more than you’d hoped, maybe.’ I still hadn’t had the opportunity to accompany a complete run-through of the play, only isolated sections back at Antony’s penthouse, and never with the actual actors present.

  I drew a breath.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘It’ll be OK.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Everyone looked nervous. They all sat around the large rectangular table, uncreasing their pages or toying with their coffee mugs. I’d been given the chair at the top of the table where, until now, Antony had presided. I’d chosen the Bailly for the occasion. It felt like an appropriate choice. I wore one of my black dresses. Antony was all in black and still hadn’t shaven.

  Samuel Morris arrived. He was a rotund man with a mahogany tan that owed more to a sunbed than anything natural. His eyes retreated singularly into his skull, giving him the appearance of a bird of a prey. His suit was immaculately cut in Prince De Galles material that screamed Burberry at a thousand paces. He was accompanied by two almost identical twins, sleek younger executives with all the bland personality of polished stones.

  He greeted Antony effusively with a fierce embrace and a kiss on each cheek before seeking out his chair at the opposite end of the table to mine. His acolytes stationed themselves on each side of him, standin
g, impassive.

  Antony made the introductions. Presenting each of the actors in turn, with an indication of their résumé, then the members of the technical crew who had joined us and, finally, me.

  Morris bowed in my direction.

  ‘Ah, the famous Miss Zahova,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ He grinned. ‘Quite an honour for you to agree to become involved in such an intimate manner with the show …’ I was unable to discern whether he was being ironic.

  He paused.

  Wally, our electrics and lighting genius, had gerrymandered an improvised set-up which focused the lights in turn on the principal actors, which he controlled from his laptop at the back of the room, and kept a permanent spotlight on my end of the table, where I would be playing.

  ‘Shall we?’ Morris suggested.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Antony said and nodded to Wally.

  The basement was plunged into darkness, leaving just me in the light. I rose from the chair and carefully pushed it aside with my foot.

  Even though it was a play and not an opera, Antony had agreed we should open in a state of total darkness with a brief snatch of music derived from Mendelssohn’s ‘Fingal’s Cave’. To set the mood.

  I brought the violin to my chin and raised my bow.

  I closed my eyes. Blanked out the basement room.

  Played.

  Although I was in control of the music, it was as if I had also become the instrument, lost myself in its heart, reversed its supposed curse and was now inhabiting it and drawing out sounds whose crystal tones were diamond perfect. I was transported elsewhere, floating like Icarus towards an unseen sun, seeking to be consumed by the melody and the deep, poignant echoes of melancholy rising through Northern waves assaulting the granite walls of the raging seas lapping the legendary caves Mendelssohn had wished to paint in broad musical strokes.

  My body temperature dropped.

  Antony, Morris, Alissa and all the others present at the reading became ghosts at the feast, perceived through a haze of uncertainty, impersonal spectators, remote filaments of flesh, melting into the sounds and colours of the clouds that sprang from my fingers.

  I was the music.

  Andante.

  The thread of the melody thinned, evolved into a deep-seated sentiment of peace, petered out, disappeared into silence as my improvisation came to its logical conclusion.

  I drew my breath.

  I still felt miles away, transported by a wave of magic to that secret place where emotions, art and reality were one and the same.

  A voice.

  One of the male actors. The opening words of the play. His deep, warm tone acting as a Greek chorus of sorts, introducing the enchanted violin. Then another, the faltering voice of the ancient craftsman polishing the wood, shaping the elements that would form the violin, caressing the hardness of its emerging body. Then a young girl’s voice, his assistant handing over the materials to him as and when he required them, his tools, passing aimless comments as she did so on the state of the world and the sheer poverty of her love life. He ignores her. His hands move again and again across the wood, embracing it as one would a woman’s body. He is a widower, and in his mind, images of the wife he lost a decade ago and the entrancing remembered softness of her flesh. His apprentice passes him a pot of glue, the signal to bring the two halves of the violin’s body together, make it whole for the first time.

  This is my cue to intervene again, accompany, punctuate, lullaby the birthing of the instrument.

  I draw a breath.

  Delicately lift my finger from the violin’s neck while the bow draws out a sigh.

  I play. And play.

  I no longer know where the violin ends and my limbs begin. If I were to abandon the instrument and drop it to the ground I feel as if it would not even make a difference and I have the power to touch myself in the right places, my lips, my nipples, my cunt and still draw out similar if not more enchanted sounds. The voices surround me. The actors, Alissa somewhat off-key, no longer in sync with the torrent of music bursting from me, a jarring note. I ignore her, it.

  The story unfolds, in turns slow and frantic, tender and anxious.

  I play.

  I have left Aram Khachaturian’s sinuous melodies far behind me and am now improvising in total abandon, my notes mounting a magic carpet that flies from one sky to another, dragging the story and the voices in its wake, a fantastic journey into pathos and exotica.

  I feel myself sweating.

  I am uneasy on my feet.

  I soldier on. Now feverish. But detached. In full control of the world of sounds I have wittingly unleashed.

  The vast sea I am skimming over is finally becalmed, a landscape after the battle. The final monologue talks of flowers, of destiny, of the business of living. I take my foot off the pedal, drag my steps through the musical jungle I have created, take my bearings, the melody winds down, pizzicato, adagio, zero, and as the final word wings its way across the basement and the reading comes to an end, so does my music, in perfect synchronicity.

  The silence is deafening.

  My whole body was shaking.

  I opened my eyes.

  Looked down at the table.

  Everyone was staring at me.

  The silence continued.

  It wasn’t a concert or a recital. I had no need to take a bow, I knew.

  Finally, Samuel Morris broke the spell, brought his hands together and began clapping. But it was, I felt, a tepid response, more like an obligation he was fulfilling. The actors all kept on glaring at me. What was it? Hadn’t they liked the music?

  I was still climbing down from my high, slow to react, both mentally and physically exhausted and wondering already whether I was even fit enough to repeat such a performance on a daily basis when the play opened.

  Morris rose, his assistants moving in unison to flank him, and called out to Antony.

  ‘Can we have a word, Antony? Upstairs?’

  Antony followed him, leaving the rest of us sitting at the basement reading table short of words, like uncomfortable morning after a one-night stand protagonists, unable to raise the right words to say, shuffling with copies of the script, fingering the empty coffee cups or biscuit plates. I tucked the Bailly away in its case.

  ‘I thought it all went well,’ Alissa finally said. Then, looking at me, ‘and you were just spectacular, Summer. Amazing!’

  There was something insincere about the compliment.

  Antony returned ten minutes later, thanked us all for an excellent job and dismissed the group. He would be in touch in a few days, he said.

  Alissa was reluctant to leave us, but Antony’s body was ramrod stiff and he had turned his back to her. It was clear that he only wanted just him and me to stay behind.

  The door to the street closed and we were left alone.

  ‘So?’ I eagerly asked him.

  Antony came to the point with no hesitation.

  ‘He won’t invest.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ I protested.

  ‘And I think I understand why,’ he continued.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You were too good,’ Antony said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You were spectacular, Summer. Truly. You were like a woman possessed. That music was awesome, it really was.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, he felt, and I must agree with him, that it unbalances the whole thing. Either it’s a play or it’s just you out there creating this incredible music. Somehow, there’s a gulf between the two …’

  I had never been accused of being too good.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ Antony replied. ‘It’s back to square one as far as the money goes, then.’

  We caught a mini cab back to Antony�
�s apartment, since neither of us was in the mood to face the crowds on the tube. I was surprised that he was even willing to tolerate company at all.

  ‘Do you want me to leave? Return to Clapham?’ I asked him softly as a black vehicle with a private car sticker in the window pulled up to the kerb, in answer to his earlier call. ‘It’s no problem,’ I continued, talking quickly to mask my discomfort. ‘I have some errands and things to do …’

  He turned and kissed me, hard, on the mouth, then grabbed my free hand and pulled me after him into the back seat of the taxi.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you to stay.’

  A mix of expressions flitted across his face, one after the other. Sadness. Anger. Lust. He looked exactly how I felt right before I picked up my violin and played like a mad woman, or went running or cycling twice as fast as I normally did.

  I realised as I slid into the back seat and my shoulders touched the leather covers that I had left my jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the basement where the read-through had taken place. My emotions had been so mixed up and fraught as we left that I hadn’t even noticed the cold.

  Before I had a chance to ask the driver to stop so that I could run back in and pick it up, Antony had placed his palms on my knees and pulled my legs apart. My black dress was loose and long, and draped all the way to my feet, only prevented from trailing on the ground as I walked by the strappy, six inch heels that I wore. I had stupidly believed that dressing like this would add a touch of glamour that might appeal to the backers. Now I wished I’d worn flats, dressed down, drawn less attention to myself.

  He slid one hand beneath the hem and wrapped his fingers around my ankle, then released me and snaked his arm all the way up to the top of my thigh.

  Antony’s fingers ventured towards the tenuous material of my G-string, a flimsy black thing I’d once picked up at Victoria’s Secret on Broadway in Manhattan when I was still living there. He reached the elastic, slipped under it. I had dressed in a hurry and hadn’t been able to find a pair of knickers that didn’t show beneath the thin velvet of my dress. I could feel the heat emanating from my cunt in response to his movements. He was gripping the inside of my leg as though it were a lifeline, kneading my flesh with the pads of his fingers. Hard enough to leave bruises, I suspected, although such treatment didn’t bother me. Quite the reverse. I was aware of my nature. The tighter he held me, the wetter I became.