Prelude

by William Coles

  PRELUDE

  PRELUDE

  William Coles

  First published in Great Britain by Legend Press Ltd

  Copyright © William Coles 2007

  First published in the United States by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  All rights reserved.

  All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and

  place names, other than those well-established such as town and

  cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Coles, William.

  Prelude / William Coles.

  p. cm.

  Previous title: The Well-tempered clavier.

  ISBN 978-1-56947-574-4

  1. Eton College—Fiction. 2. Teacher-student relationships— Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6103.O44266C66 2009

  823’.92—dc22

  2008051377

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Margot, my wife

  Contents

  BOOK 1

  PRELUDE 17

  PRELUDE 1

  PRELUDE 2

  PRELUDE 22

  PRELUDE 18

  PRELUDE 3

  PRELUDE 9

  BOOK 2

  PRELUDE 3

  PRELUDE 5

  PRELUDE 15

  PRELUDE 17

  PRELUDE 19

  PRELUDE 2

  PRELUDE 1

  BOOK 1

  PRELUDE 17

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK 1

  PRELUDE 17,

  A-flat Major

  I AM NOT given to emotion.

  But even now, twenty-five years on, the sound of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier makes the hairs bristle at the nape of my neck. My stomach spasms, my heart jolts, and in an instant I am back there, back in a small music room with lime-green walls and a scuffed upright Steinway.

  The Well-Tempered Clavier comprises ninety-six preludes and fugues that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the clavier, or piano as it is now called.

  I know each one. And once, when I was in my musical prime, I could play a number of them too.

  There is one prelude, however, that I only play on the glory days, on the anniversaries. And that is when I start to choke up.

  I used to be able to play this prelude from memory, note perfect, every finger knowing exactly where and when they had to be on the keyboard. But those were in the palmy days when I was prepared to devote two hours to practising a single bar of music.

  Today all I have left are the relics of my indifferent musical talent. I can only manage five bars before my fingers clunk onto the wrong notes. Everything ends in discord.

  Though if I were note perfect, it would make no difference. For even years back I could never finish the prelude without crying.

  It’s the Prelude 17, in A-flat Major.

  When I write it like that, it sounds so stark.

  But you should hear it. Hear all ninety seconds of it. Even first time round, right off the gun, you’d think it quite charming. Delightful. Second time it’s even better.

  The purists might claim Bach wrote many better preludes. But then memory is everything, is it not? And when I hear this prelude, I dream of a woman who was, is, and will always remain, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

  When I think of her, she is never static, like in a photo. For as I remember her she is always laughing, really laughing, mouth open, with the most perfect white teeth.

  First I recall her mouth and then her hair, a dark mane that cascaded over her shoulders in a glistening wave of silk; and her lips, always kissable red, erotic moist; and her flashing walnut eyes; and her fingers, long sensual fingers with exquisite buffed nails, tailor-made for the piano.

  I’ve had other loves since—extraordinary passions. Though their stories are for another time.

  This woman was my first great love.

  And her name? Her name was India.

  I know that what she did was wrong, that it is immoral for a teacher to seduce her seventeen-year-old pupil. But at the time that was not how I saw it. I thought I’d been given the greatest gift of my life.

  My memories though run in sequence. And always, after remembering the magic of India, I recall myself twenty-five years ago.

  These days everything has mellowed into easy come, easy go.

  But then I was all things and everything: exuberant and truculent, moody and energetic, sporty and slothful, gangly and assured, witty and graceless, sensitive and obtuse, and charming and callow in equal measure.

  I was also an emotional iceberg, while at the same time being riddled with the most insane jealousy.

  I was, like another ignorant, self-obsessed lover before me, a man who loved not wisely but too well. But, unlike Othello, I was only seventeen at the time.

  And why am I going back there? Why do I feel the need to relive all these old memories and put them to paper?

  Something happened last month, and since then I have found that when my mind is idling I start to reminisce. The more I delve, the more it all comes back to me—about the love, about The Well-Tempered Clavier, and, above all, about the folly of a schoolboy who, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.

  THE YEAR WAS 1982 and the school was Eton College, a seething cauldron of pubescent boys and humming testosterone. It was everything you’ve heard about it and more. But all you need to know for now is that there were some 1,238 boys dressed up in their black tailcoats, black waistcoats, tight starched collars, stained black pin-stripes and scuffed black lace-ups, and with not a girl in sight.

  The school does not have a walled campus but sprawls over the town, and has done so since 1440. By rights it should be busy, abuzz with the everyday activities that you see in parishes all over Britain. But Eton is like some vast schoolboy prison camp where every trace of blooming girlhood has been excised off the face of the earth. Without exaggeration, a boy could go weeks at a time without seeing a single female under the age of fifty.

  This being the case, the arrival of any young woman into Eton’s rarefied male stratosphere was inevitably going to cause a great pulse of interest; akin to a howitzer being fired into the middle of a piranha pond.

  And, as I have already alluded, India was not just any young woman.

  That April morning in 1982 when she walked out from the School Hall into the blazing sunshine, it was as if a pristine white peacock had strutted out into a monstrous horde of soiled black crows.

  I was seventeen, with still another year to go before my A-levels. Another rank and file Etonian destined for a spectacularly mediocre school career.

  I have forgotten so many things over the years. But of that particular day I can recall everything to the last detail.

  It is a glorious cloudless Friday, the second day of the summer term, with the sun burning high in the sky, leaving my stiff collar wet and a slim trickle of sweat slipping down my back. For once, I am immaculate. My shoes still gleam with first-day-of-term polish, my waistcoat, tailcoat and trousers are fresh from the cleaners, and my hair still hums with the scent of barber’s gel.

  It’s just after 11 a.m. and I am in the midst of a pulsating mass of Etonians. We stand on the pavement outside the School Hall beside an ornate streetlight, known as the Burning Bush.

  There are more than one-hundred boys, nattering and chattering, a black wave of twitching adolescence. It’s Chambers, the only time in the day when you can be guaranteed to find a master—useful for chits that need signing and work that needs handing in.

  Inside the School Hall, the scores of gowned masters—or beaks—are small-talking and sipping tea.
When they are done, they exit the hall to face the black-and-white sea of schoolboys.

  The tourists, who roll past in their air-conditioned coaches, watch in amazement.

  A few of my friends are about, and, like a large well-ordered penguin colony, we all know where we stand in the pecking order.

  At the top end of the Eton spectrum is our house captain, the Honourable Charles Savage-Leng, second son of one of Scotland’s oldest peerages. He goes by the name of Savage and has the olive looks of a Greek God. He is tall, even for an Etonian, at six-foot-four and his dark hair curls back over his ears. As a prefect, or popper, he wears a wing collar and bowtie, and a resplendent red silk waistcoat with gold buttons.

  Right at the bottom of the Eton muckheap are the fags, or F-tits, the thirteen-year-olds in F-block, scurrying around in their over-sized tailcoats.

  And I am squarely in the middle of Eton’s panoply of different ranks. Not a member of Pop, nor of Sixth Form Select, nor a member of the Eight, the Eleven, the Association, the Field, The Mixed Wall, or the Monarch. No—I have done nothing of note that might earn me a bowtie and a fancier uniform.

  Beside me is Jeremy Raikes, as unkempt as ever, with a thick hedge of black hair that would have had the school barber salivating. We joined the school on the same day in 1979, and are destined to leave on the same day in 1983.

  There is only one thing to talk about.

  The whole school is talking about it.

  The whole country is talking about it.

  And for the space of two months it dominated our lives: The Falklands.

  Those two words access such a raft of different memories for me. The pictures of the Coventry as she died in the sea, heeling over like a stricken beast; the evocative names, Goose Green, Bluff Cove, Tumbledown, Port Stanley, the Malvinas; my first introduction to the Super Etendard jet, the Mirage III and the AM.39 Exocet missile; and a Lieutenant-Colonel, an Old Etonian, shot in the back of the neck and awarded a posthumous VC.

  On April 2, Argentina had invaded those tiny inhospitable islands in the South Atlantic, and within three weeks the Falklands had become Britain’s one universal topic of conversation.

  I had been devouring the news for many reasons. My father was ex-army and every meal at home had been spent tuned in to Radio Four or the World Service to pick up every morsel of news as and when it happened. But my father and I were viewing the Falklands from polar extremes. He was facing a long and leisurely retirement and would have given his eyeteeth to be there in the thick of the action. Conversely, I was due to become a soldier and . . . I didn’t know what to think about an actual war.

  “With all your dad’s contacts, you’ve probably seen the plan of campaign,” Jeremy says.

  “Of course.” I look at his smeared glasses, thick and crusty with grime. “Steam into South Georgia, mop up there and head for the Falklands. Two months, that’s all it’ll take.”

  “Two months? Fat chance.”

  “The Argentinian army is made up of conscripts. Every one of the soldiers is a conscript.”

  “Whereupon?”

  “They’re like us, aren’t they? Got no option but to be out there. We’re packed off to Eton; they’re packed off to the Malvinas. Their hearts aren’t in it.”

  “Interesting. Very slightly interesting.” Jeremy pushes his glittering glasses back up the bridge of his thin nose. “Stretching it a little with the conscripts?”

  “It’s a perfect analogy.” I warm to my theme. “We both have to wear a very dull uniform. There’s not a woman to be seen. We quickly learn to keep our heads down. And all of us are just obeying orders, though none of us really knows why.”

  “Though the conscripts probably get better food than us.”

  “Without doubt.”

  He fishes around in his stained waistcoat pocket and wordlessly passes me a grimy Polo. “Bet you wish you were out there.”

  “Don’t know,” I reply. “Never really thought about putting my life on the line.”

  He pops three Polos into his mouth, chewing them one after the next. “I thought the army was the family trade.”

  “Cascading through the generations. Thank you for reminding me.”

  I scratch the back of my chafed neck, trying to distil a month’s worth of ambivalence into one sentence. For the truth was that, since the start of the Falklands War, I had never stopped thinking about the army, and I was not a jot closer to coming to any conclusion. “There’s one thing I dread more than being killed on the battlefield.”

  “Something worse than death?” Jeremy raises his eyebrows. “Coming back here as a teacher?”

  “That would be bad.” The Polo snaps against my tongue. “Would I have the guts to kill someone? Would I be able to shoot them in cold blood?”

  “Look them in the eye and pull the trigger?”

  “Too bloody right.” I squint up at the sun, looking for answers. But there are never any answers to war. And in a way, war is almost akin to a love affair, for when they’re finished all you’re left with is questions. Even years on, you’re still asking yourself if you did the right thing, still wondering if you made the right choice. And invariably, because the grass is always greener, you come to the conclusion that you did not; that when it came to the critical point, you fluffed it.

  Jeremy touches my arm. “Enough of that. Here he comes.”

  We shoulder our way through to our housemaster, Francis Frederickson. For eight months of the year, Frankie was our Victorian father, our spiritual counsellor, our affable mentor, our judge, jury and part-time executioner. He probably knew more about me than my own parents; although that may have been more of a reflection on my parents than Frankie.

  “Morning boys,” he says as we give him a couple of book chits for signing. He has the look of a jaded police sergeant; his thinning hair greased back straight over his head and gleaming in the sun, his shoe-laces frayed at the ends, his grey suit already crumpled, and his white bowtie just an inch off-centre. “Any news from the front?”

  “Nothing since this morning,” Jeremy replies.

  “South Georgia, eh? Until a week ago, I’d always thought that was in the Deep South.” Frankie signs the chits with a flourish. “Almost makes me wish I’d signed up for a full fifteen years.”

  “The Eton Rifles must be a pretty good second though, Sir?” Jeremy says.

  “Might have made Lieutenant-Colonel by now.”

  “Brigadier at the least.”

  Frankie laughs. “Quite so.”

  “But it’s got to be more fun ordering us around, isn’t it Sir?” Jeremy continues.

  “It might be,” Frankie says. “If you ever obeyed any of my orders.”

  He chortles to himself as he tucks his pen away.

  Then, as if by osmosis, a frisson ripples through the boys. Not a word is said, but we are aware of an alien presence.

  A slight nudge at my elbow from Jeremy and, from looking at Frankie, I find that my gaze is drawn to the huge doors of the School Hall. The collective sigh is just audible.

  I turn, I look, and I stare transfixed. All thoughts of Frankie, the Falklands, are erased from my mind.

  A woman, a young woman in her early-twenties, has glided out of the hall. She stands for a moment on the steps, basking in the sunlight, smiling for the sheer joy of having the sun on her face, and all the while oblivious to the extraordinary reaction she is generating.

  Even then, her teeth seem whiter than any teeth that I have ever seen before; lightly-tanned skin that sets off her scarlet lipstick to perfection and that wave of brown hair. She wears a creamy cotton skirt, white shirt and a cream jacket, and carries a small leather attaché case. A total vision of loveliness in a pool of murk.

  It’s like a physical blow to the stomach. She’s winded me. She is the most perfect woman I have ever seen. Of all the fantasy girls that I had raked over in the glossy magazines and lusted after on screen, there is not a single one that could hold a candle to the woman standing
in front of me.

  I am devouring her with my eyes, searing every detail and every nuance into my memory banks so that, even if I never see her again, I will always be able to recall that one sublime moment.

  She stands on the School Hall steps for just one second, two, and briefly surveys the scrum of schoolboys at her feet. With one click of her fingers she could have had us do anything she pleased.

  However, she seemed to have this innocence; a lack of awareness of the effect she was having on the boys before her; a Queen Bee that imagines herself one of the drones.

  She flicks her head back, hair streaming behind her, and flits down and disappears into a morass of blackness. I watch her path through the parting tailcoats.

  I stare and I stare, wanting to snatch up every moment of this awesome being. When I’m finally quite certain she has gone, I turn back and become aware that other boys are starting to talk again.

  Frankie raises an elliptical eyebrow. It means everything and nothing. Jeremy slips his arm through mine and we slope off. I am in a daze, unmasted and unmanned. But there is one sour spot in a moment of unalloyed joy.

  Savage makes a point of coming over to us.

  “Have a pound in my room by lock-up, the pair of you.”

  “Are you fining us, Savage?” Jeremy says.

  “Make it two pounds each.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Having a stiffy in public,” Savage says. “School rules expressly forbid out-of-house erections.” He guffaws, the F-tits scattering as he strides through them.

  I can think of nothing to say. Savage’s remarks seem so unsavoury, like a blunt scratch on a perfect record.

  For at that time, the thought of sex together with this woman had not occurred to me. She was so unattainable that the very concept of sex had not registered on the horizon.

  “Jerk,” Jeremy says, steering me through the boys. “What a total jerk.”

  We have a couple more lessons, or divisions, before lunch— humdrum English and even more humdrum Economics—but not a word sinks in. My mind is on holiday, time and again running over the memory of that woman on the step, her smile and hair toss before she melts into the blackwash of tailcoats.