I shook my head, about to protest when he went on, ‘Oh, and I’ve had Barry Jones on the phone, offering his help again. Apparently he’s got a new TV show coming: The Smallest Room in the House.’
‘I don’t think that’s the miracle we need.’ I was struck by a new thought, a little hopeful thought. ‘Oh, Charlie, that thing, you know the Barry Jones scandal, it might even have been a blessing in disguise, do you think? Strengthened his marriage, given his career a new impetus?’ I made my voice light and unconcerned, but I knew my eyes were fixed on him, hopeful.
‘Nah.’ Charlie got up from the desk and brushed down his trousers although they looked perfectly fluff-free to me. ‘No, he’s still miles away from where he was before all of that stuff. I doubt if he’ll ever get back to the top. Anyway, the Wilson thing is your call, just make it good. I want a great exit from this one.’
‘It’s bloody typical,’ I complained to Posy that evening, over supper. It was her turn to cook and she had made couscous with spring onions and sundried tomatoes. ‘I spend my life searching for absolutes, pining for certainties. I strive to prove to myself that something in this life is steadfast and sure – even if it’s only me. And then… when I do, that very proof is what wrecks things for me.’
I stabbed the couscous with my fork. ‘Not that Linus was about to leap into my arms anyway. And now bloody Charlie wants me to be some kind of peeping Tom at the Wilsons’ wake for the benefit of our concerned readership. I tell you, those two old things have come to rely on the publicity. They like being in the limelight. But once they’re out, they’ll lose that too. I tell you…’
Posy helped herself to some more couscous. ‘I thought you had realised at last that you’d have to relax your principles a little. You are a journalist, after all.’ She looked pleased with herself when she said that. People always did look pleased with themselves when they had a go at journalists. They, together with psychiatrists and lawyers, formed the unholy trinity of our society and I had considered becoming all three.
‘But seriously,’ Posy said. ‘Relax a little or you’ll go mad – again.’
I sighed. ‘I know, I know, principles, like spots and braces on your teeth, are adolescent afflictions; you’re meant to grow out of them. But surely there’s got to be a limit to how much we’re prepared to buckle and bend to squeeze ourselves into the life we think we want.’ A tear escaped from my eyes, landing on a sundried tomato on my plate. ‘Or maybe not. Linus feels I’ve betrayed him. He thinks I’m like his mother. And George and Dora will feel betrayed, too, whatever I do.’ I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘So I can look back with satisfaction at yet another successful period in my life.’
‘I thought he adored his mother,’ Posy said. ‘I thought this opera house was partly about her. His Taj Mahal, you said once.’
‘He does love her, but he hates her too. You can do that with mothers.’ I tried to eat my food, but it seemed to grow in my mouth until I was unable to swallow and I pushed the plate away. Then I was struck by a frightening thought. ‘Do you think God is a four-year-old? Could that be the answer to all these imponderables of existence?’
‘Isn’t it enough that He’s a He?’
I nodded. She had a point there.
I was getting ready for bed when the phone rang. It was Linus. My heart thumped against my ribcage as I took the receiver from Posy. ‘Yes.’ My voice came out a squeak. ‘Yes,’ I tried again, an octave deeper.
‘It’s me, Linus. I’m coming over next week to meet with Stuart Lloyd. I thought we might have dinner one night.’
‘You got my letter?’ My voice sounded small, as if it didn’t want to be found.
‘Yes, I did. I’m sorry not to have written back, but I’ve been snowed under with the project and anyway, I’m a lousy correspondent.’
‘You must be thrilled it’s definitely going ahead?’
‘I can’t tell you how much.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did the other day. You don’t owe me anything. I’d like us to be friends. Especially now I’ve got what I want.’ There was another pause. ‘That was a joke, kind of.’
We decided on dinner Monday evening, then he hung up before I’d even had a chance to ask how everybody was.
‘I can’t tell you how much this thing means to me.’ Linus stood with Stuart Lloyd before a computer image of the People’s Glyndebourne.
Stuart Lloyd nodded. ‘You and me both.’ He turned to Linus, a huge grin on his face. ‘It’s going to be fantastic. I knew you were the man for the job the moment I saw those preliminary designs. The person to turn my dream into reality.’ He looked sideways at Linus, an embarrassed little smile on his face. ‘But enough of this sentimentality. Still, I tell you there was a time when I thought we’d lost. With the launch of the travel agents being imminent I simply couldn’t afford all that negative publicity, but people have moved on. These days people’s outrage lasts about as long as their breakfast cereal. In a couple of weeks it will all be forgotten. There’s always a new story, a new outrage. Right now this thing about the woman who had her baby’s sex changed at a private clinic in Switzerland seems to take up a lot of space.’ As Linus looked blank, he explained: ‘Her husband had four sons already from a previous marriage so when she gave birth to yet another boy she had him operated on. There’s been quite a fuss about it, as you can imagine.’
‘Still, it’s a pity we couldn’t have done it without robbing the Wilsons of their home,’ Linus said. ‘This project is everything I’ve dreamt of. The “Now I Can Die Happy” thing of my life. But it turns out to be built, literally, on someone else’s misery.’
‘You know that journalist, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
Stuart Lloyd shook his head. ‘Look here, Linus. Do you want to see your opera house built?’
Linus sighed. ‘Yes, more than anything.’
‘Well, there you are. I mean, look, we’d all like to get our own way and be smelling of roses while we go about it. But life isn’t like that. Most actions are compromised, whether by self-interest or by it buggering up someone somewhere along the line. Nothing comes clean, everything is tainted. That’s just life, take it or leave it.’
Linus thought of Astrid. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘All of it.’
‘Good. And by the way, with or without you, I’d still build. The difference is that your design is a great one and the others weren’t, which is worth thinking about; long after we’re all gone and our petty squabbles are over that building will contribute to the cultural well-being of the nation. So, Linus, there’s no place here for faint hearts.’
‘Quite,’ Linus said, feeling curiously light, as if he hadn’t got a heart in the first place. It felt good. Peaceful. ‘Where do you want me to sign?’
Stuart Lloyd looked puzzled. ‘Sign?’
‘Soul, devil…’
‘Ah. I see what you mean. A fax will do. We’ve even got faxes in hell these days.’
Thirty-three
‘So here we are,’ I said stupidly, as the waiter at Lincoln’s seated us at a table for two right by a trolley laden with shellfish, some dead; the lobsters, some alive; the oysters, but whatever their status they were lying in state on the same bed of ice. Lincoln’s was famous for its seafood. Linus and I had arrived at the door of the restaurant at the same time, punctuality being one thing we had in common. I tried to think of something else, but my mind was as still as my heart was furious. I looked across the table at Linus, my eyes drinking from his, my lips trying to catch his breath as he leant across to light my cigarette. When I could bear it no more I looked around me instead.
Linus appeared to have a fondness, shared by many of his countrymen, for what they thought of as English Style. Lincoln’s was a restaurant so ancient in tradition you half expected to pay the bill in shillings and pounds.
‘Bertil told me about this place,’ Linus said. ‘He used to eat at Lincoln’s whenever he was in London. The first t
ime was in nineteen forty-nine, would you believe it?’
I looked around at the other diners, men mostly, plump and florid; a gathering of elderly Billy Bunters. I nodded towards one of them, sitting on his own at a tiny table in a corner below a still-life painting of dead game, silently tucking into a large plate of oysters, his napkin pulled up under his chin. ‘Do you think he stayed on, since forty-nine, I mean?’
We ordered: crab salad for both of us to start with, then grilled Dover sole for Linus and scallops for me. Linus relayed his conversation with Stuart Lloyd. ‘I felt a little like Faust must have done when he signed away his soul.’ He gave me a wry little smile across the restaurant table.
I put my hand on his, just for a second. ‘I’m glad for you, I really am. And I am your… friend, but no one needs friends with feet of clay. You’re the architect, you know better than anyone what happens to constructions built on clay.’ As I spoke I hoped I was right in thinking that sooner or later they cracked.
‘Actually,’ Linus said, ‘they sometimes last for a surprisingly long time.’
Did he have to make things even more awkward? ‘Well, as I said, you’re the architect.’ Then our first course arrived.
‘How’s your mother?’ Linus asked.
‘Audrey?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Fine. So how is everyone your end? I spoke to Olivia last week and she sounded OK, not great, but OK.’
‘That’s just it, they’re both OK, but only just. I’m afraid I gave Bertil a very hard time after I’d read the diary. And I did resent half the world knowing its contents before I did.’ I blushed and looked away. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said quickly. ‘I know you were in a difficult position. Anyway, Bertil is fine now, physically, but emotionally?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. We all went out to the island last weekend, Olivia and Bertil, Kerstin and Gerald and me and Ivar. It was as if nothing had happened, that’s how it seemed to begin with, anyway. We just closed over the wound and went on as before, but of course things have changed irrevocably. For Bertil and Olivia; all those years of thinking we were all one big happy family while all the time we were actually nurturing this particular serpent at its very bosom.’
I found it hard to picture Ulla nursing at anyone’s bosom, but I let that pass. ‘I still find the whole thing a bit unreal,’ I said instead. ‘It’s modern manners to view the dark in life, not as a tragic but integral part of living, but more like a breach of contract, of our rights. I can see the scenes at the pearly gates, all those people lining up for compensation.’
Linus smiled at me and put his hand over mine. I had left it there, lying nonchalantly on the white table cloth, waiting for just such a gesture from him, and as I felt the warmth of his skin against mine little starbursts of excitement shot through my stomach and up to my chest. We sat like that, facing each other over the restaurant table, the one candle and the four glasses, the plates and the crumbs and the large red wine stain next to my glass. The moment seemed an eternity, but it was still too short. Then he retrieved his hand, leaving mine in mourning. ‘I really wish I could make you understand.’
I gazed into his eyes. ‘Mmm,’ I said. He looked nonplussed. What had he said? Was my response adequate? I checked my face mentally; had it forgotten to put its knickers on? Was it baring all?
Linus looked sad as he lifted his glass to his lips. I too felt sad. It seemed that doom and gloom was what we did best. But what the hell? Anything that we had in common was fine with me.
‘How’s Pernilla?’ I had to enquire rather in the way you’d feel the need to ask the doctor if it was six days or six months he’d said you had left to live.
‘She’s fine.’ What was that in his voice? A distinct lack of interest, that’s what it was if I was not mistaken. Dear God, don’t let me be mistaken. ‘I haven’t really seen her since the summer. You know how it is. We’re both busy. She’s in Stockholm. I’m, well, I’m all over the place.’ He shrugged.
Had I mentioned doom and gloom? Absolutely not. I was the girl with a song in her heart and fireworks going off in the pit of her stomach. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Esther Insincerity Fisher replied.
‘It’s nothing to be sorry about.’
I glittered. I twinkled. Just let them ask me to be the Good Tooth Fairy now.
The waiter appeared soundlessly and poured us some more wine. When he left us Linus spoke, and all of a sudden his voice was intense and his jaw was set tight as if he had a problem keeping it under control. ‘Have you any idea what it feels like, knowing that your own mother ended her life in such misery, such absolute despair and loneliness, and that you were too young, too dumb to do a thing to help her?’
I sobered up, like a fairy who’s had all her sparkly bits washed off. ‘Please, Linus, don’t do this to yourself. You can’t think like that. No six-year-old would have the kind of wisdom and maturity to help in such circumstances, you know that. Just think of Ivar. Bright as he is, what could he do in a similar situation?’
He relaxed a little. ‘I know. It’s a totally illogical feeling, but I feel it nevertheless. That and this… this anger. With her, too.’ He looked at me with unhappy eyes. His mother’s eyes? They certainly weren’t a bit like Bertil’s cool pale-blue ones.
‘How could she choose to die, to leave me like that, for ever, with no road back? Why couldn’t I make her stay? I was her son. Wasn’t I enough? Did I mean so little? What’s wrong with me, Esther, that I’m never enough?’
‘That’s not how it is. That’s not how it is at all.’ I looked into his eyes, willing him to see all the love in mine. But I couldn’t give him a satisfactory answer. All the tender feelings in the world were jostling for space in my mind. I ached with love and pity for him, but I sat there silent. Like a dog that had been sent off to its basket one too many times, my emotions refused to come out to play. All I could do was be practical while my heart wept all the tears my eyes couldn’t manage. ‘But you read the diary,’ I said at last. ‘It was because she loved you so much that she couldn’t bear to live without you.’
Linus shook his head. ‘She didn’t have the courage for battle. She kept writing, over and over, how much she loved me, but when it came down to it the love wasn’t enough to make her fight on. But she must have known that things would change once I got older. No, the truth I have to face is that I wasn’t enough. And why should I have been?’
‘I think you’ve got that wrong,’ I said. I put my hand out towards him and he laughed. The silly, high-pitched laugh made the other diners turn round in their seats to see where the offending sound came from. Normally, while dying quietly of embarrassment, I would have made sure that everyone knew that the noise did not come from me. But not now, not with him. Instead, I just sat there, looking at him as pleased as a mother whose first-born had just burped. God, how I must I love that man!
‘So how is Ulla?’ I asked when it was quiet again.
‘Oh she’s fine, busy knitting straitjackets, getting treatment. There’s no question of her going to prison. I’ve been to see her in hospital. She is a bit mad, there’s no doubt about it. At the same time I can understand where she’s coming from. She’s had so little in her life. No lover, or husband, or children. She cared genuinely for my mother, but she lost her. I hadn’t realised, I hadn’t bothered to realise how hard things were for her. She was always just there, my silly old not-quite-aunt Ulla. Every family has one. And they have their uses. They unite the rest of the relatives by their sheer awfulness. They make us feel blessed in comparison, superior. And we feel good about “having her”. But those short weeks every summer were her life and now even those were going to be taken away from her. She felt absolutely powerless.’
‘Like the Wilsons. Now do you see what I’ve been on about?’ I didn’t mean to say it and as soon as the words escaped my mouth I wanted to shove them back in like spat-out crumbs. But it was too late, they were there, in the air between us, doing their damnedest.
Lin
us sat back in his chair. When he looked at me it was with a stranger’s eyes, all warmth and intimacy gone. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’ He signalled the waiter for the bill. Then he turned back to me. ‘I really don’t need this. Not now and not from you.’ He signed the credit-card slip, drained his glass and stood up. ‘Shall we go?’
My mind said yes and gave the order to my legs. They refused. Come on, guys, my mind pleaded. We’re talking dignity here. My legs replied, Fuck dignity and remained under the table. Linus looked at me, eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t want to go,’ I said rather quietly.
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to go,’ I said, a little bit louder now.
‘What do you mean, you don’t want to go?’ All around us the other diners abandoned their own conversations for the promise of a public spectacle.
‘What do you think I mean?’ I whispered.
‘Will you speak up, I can’t hear a word.’
‘What the hell do you think I mean?’ I yelled.
‘Will you stop screaming,’ Linus snapped. ‘I’ll be waiting outside.’
‘Don’t bother,’ I called after him. Then I turned round and glared at as many people as I could. It was embarrassing to sit there, but it was better than running after him. Who did he think he was? Men! Bastards! I should have known! They’re all the same: vain, touchy, controlling, unable to take criticism. Bastards!
After five minutes or so Linus strode back into the restaurant. ‘Are you coming or not? I’ve got an early appointment tomorrow morning so I’m not going to hang around waiting for you all night.’
‘I’m very happy here, thank you. You go off and get your beauty sleep. It must be hard work wrecking people’s lives.’
Frozen Music Page 39
