Eighty Days Red

by Vina Jackson

  ‘So, it’s goodbye to classical music, is it?’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ she protested, anxious he not get the wrong impression and somehow disapprove of her actions. ‘Just a sabbatical, you know. I was getting a little stale and thought going on the road with Chris’s group might do me good.’

  ‘Groucho Nights is Chris?’

  ‘Yes. They changed the name. Felt Brother & Cousin was a bit too folkish and they needed a change of direction …’ Her words tailed off as she realised this was not the way she wanted the conversation to go.

  ‘You look great,’ Dominik said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. You?’

  ‘I just hope I’m not interrupting your rehearsals?’

  ‘It’s OK. We were just about to complete the soundcheck. It was time for a break. But I have to go back in soon. The technicians need me for the lighting run-through.’

  ‘Oh … Time for a coffee, at least?’

  ‘I can spare half an hour, I suppose. I’m not doing a whole set with the band. Just the second half. A lot of the songs are a bit too loud for the violin. They already had them down pat long before I came along. As they say, I’m just a featured guest. Whatever that means.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’

  ‘I think there’s a bar area somewhere in the building. We should find it.’

  They went in search of caffeine.

  Again a wall of silence rose between them as they slowly sipped their insipid dispensing machine coffees in the deserted cafeteria.

  This time it was Summer who rebooted the conversation.

  ‘New York … I’m sorry about New York.’

  ‘So am I,’ Dominik reluctantly replied.

  ‘I shouldn’t have agreed to go; I know it now. But it happened. I don’t want to justify myself, Dominik.’

  ‘Yes, shit happens. I shouldn’t have been there too.’

  ‘But you were.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I was in shock for a few days. But by the time I came to the loft on Spring Street, you were gone. Back to London …’

  ‘I waited a bit, then thought that was the best thing to do.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘So, how is New York?’ he asked. ‘I read an article in a magazine that you were now with Simón. Makes sense. So much in common. Musically …’

  ‘I’ve left New York,’ Summer remarked, looking him straight in the eyes. ‘I came back to London just a few weeks ago.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I needed a change of scenery. Met up with Chris and his guys again and we decided we’d play together for a while. Today’s gig is just an unofficial warm-up for a short European tour. New cities, new music. A bit of an experiment.’

  ‘What did Simón have to say about it?’ Dominik enquired.

  ‘He’s not involved. We split.’

  There was a moment’s silence, as Dominik registered the news.

  Noting his impassive response, Summer felt obliged to keep the conversation going. ‘I recently got involved with someone else, though. Another of those things. I wasn’t looking for anything, for anyone, we just met and things clicked, so to speak. Viggo Franck. The singer and guitarist. You’ve probably heard of him?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you,’ Summer continued. ‘Are you with anyone right now?’

  He knew he shouldn’t have said so, but he said it anyway. He was still processing the implications of Viggo Franck, and the devil inside seemed to be in control of his tongue.

  ‘Lauralynn lives with me. You remember her, don’t you?’

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Summer remarked, forcing a smile. ‘I really like her.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. Then added sarcastically, ‘I’m glad you approve.’

  She ignored his barb.

  They were both now holding empty plastic coffee cups. Neither of them wanted to make another trip to the dispensing machine.

  ‘So where does this European tour begin?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Paris. In two weeks.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’

  ‘Yes, but Chris and I are still not fully satisfied with the sound we’re achieving. There’s something missing. We can’t quite put a finger on it. Viggo says we need more oomph.’

  ‘He’s now your musical adviser?’

  ‘He’s taken Chris and the group under his wing. Got them signed to his record label, too. Oh, you know Fran?’

  ‘Your sister, yes. You often mentioned her.’

  ‘She’s also come to London. We now live together. We’re staying at Chris’s place in Camden Town while I look for something more permanent of my own. It’s working out quite well, so far.’

  ‘Amazing,’ he conceded with a visible lack of enthusiasm, uninterested by the gossipy way the meeting was unfolding.

  ‘Still playing the Bailly?’ he asked.

  A shadow passed across her face.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s been stolen.’

  ‘Fuck! When, where?’

  ‘Since I’ve been back in London. Just disappeared from a heavily guarded changing room at another gig. I was gutted. I’m so sorry. I know it meant a lot to you too …’

  Dominik sighed. It wasn’t just the news of the instrument’s disappearance but hearing her make a concession to their previous life.

  This time, he couldn’t control what he said on the spur of the moment, but it came from the heart.

  ‘You meant a lot to me, too, Summer …’

  Their eyes locked.

  Unable to sustain his gaze, she was the one to blink first.

  ‘I know …’ No louder than a whisper.

  ‘It’s good to see you, though. So often I’ve wanted to get in touch, but could never summon the mental strength to do so.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘But I’m pleased everything is going so well for you. Apart from the Bailly, of course. It must have come as a terrible shock.’

  ‘It was awful.’

  ‘I can imagine. I since found out a lot of curious stories about the Bailly. Did you know it’s also called the Angelique?’

  ‘No. How come?’

  ‘A lot of superstition and urban legends, no doubt. I came across the information researching another book …’ As he said this, Dominik realised the Paris novel had not yet been mentioned in their halting conversation.

  ‘I liked your novel, Dominik. I really did.’ Summer said.

  ‘You didn’t mind …’

  ‘You using me as a model for the character? Not at all. It was a lovely thought. Not that I would have done all the things Elena does in your story, though.’

  Dominik smiled, a wave of relief racing through him.

  Ella, the drummer for Groucho Nights, walked in to the cafeteria, interrupting them.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Sum. I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re needed downstairs – the techies say they can’t finalise the lighting prompts without you being in position.’

  ‘In the spotlight, eh?’ Dominik remarked.

  Summer rose from the rickety table.

  ‘We must stay in touch,’ she said. ‘I know we both now have different lives. New partners, lovers. But surely we can be friends. Again?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Dominik said.

  She was already walking away when she turned round and said, ‘And maybe you can help me find the violin. What was its name?’

  ‘The Angelique.’

  ‘You say there are all these stories about it. Maybe they’d give us a clue to its whereabouts?’

  ‘If I can help, I will. In any way I can.’

  ‘I have some suspicions. But it’s rather delicate, you see. I can’t really explain now. Listen – phone me, my number is still the same. We can talk about it.’

  Her red hair faded as she stepped down the stairs, her round, denim-clad arse swaying in perfect harmony, her scent still lingering in the air. Dominik took a
deep breath and tried to calm his beating heart.

  ‘Ciao,’ he whispered under his breath, although he knew she could no longer hear him. And it wasn’t a goodbye; it felt like a hello all over again.

  7 Of Violins and Cameras

  Losing the Bailly was like parting with half of my soul.

  For a few days I felt as if I would never be able to play the same music again. It wasn’t just the unique sound I had been able to coax out of its strings with so much ease

  but all the associations the instrument had with my immediate past in London and New York.

  Viggo said he was furious about its loss, blaming himself for not having arranged heavier security at the Academy – where we assumed the instrument had been stolen, sometime between our arrival when I had stupidly left the violin in the Green Room along with the rest of the band’s gear and when we left the venue for Viggo’s party.

  I felt terribly guilty for leaving it, and blamed myself for my carelessness. But in the dark stretches of the night, in the hours when shadows haunted my mind as well as my bedroom, I couldn’t help but wonder what Viggo kept behind that one locked door in the basement, the only secured room in the house.

  It seemed like a crazy proposition. The man had enough money to buy a hundred Baillys. He could have wallpapered the house with them if he had wanted to. I couldn’t imagine why he would want my violin above all others, even if it had an unusual history, as Dominik had suggested.

  Nonetheless, the thought lurked in the far reaches of my mind and it may have been one of the reasons why I fell into a semi-relationship of sorts with the rock star, and Luba, his seductive and ethereal companion.

  It wasn’t as strange as you might think, having a relationship with two people at once. We spent most of our time in, rather than out, because I was terrified of being photographed with the three of us together and appearing in the tabloids as part of a ménage à trois.

  Viggo had a bit of a break between working in the studio with his band on their next album and going on the road again, and Luba didn’t appear to have any regular employment of sorts, aside from working as an improvised PA to Viggo. She was like a less prim version of Pepper Potts in the Iron Man films, always on hand to fulfil his whims. They had a relationship that I could never quite put my finger on.

  She was remarkably self-assured and appeared to have no sign of jealousy, and surprisingly, neither did I. Viggo’s bed was enormous, so that solved the first problem that would usually arise, of fitting more people in comfortably. The house was huge, so we each had plenty of space if we grew tired of one of the others, or if any two particularly wanted privacy.

  The set-up suited Viggo’s temperament particularly well. Where I thought many men might baulk at the prospect of keeping two women entertained, he seemed to have an almost endless desire to make the two of us orgasm repeatedly, and a peculiar stamina for both fucking and wielding sex toys. Luba was more like a child at a candy store; she treated me like a new toy to be explored and discovered, possibly to be discarded at some future time when the next shiny thing would appear. And I was just enjoying being almost constantly physically sated.

  Almost constantly, because there was still a small part of me that longed for Dominik. He’d arrived out of the blue before our show in Brighton. I’d played it cool, but after he left, I’d had to take a break for fifteen minutes before I could rejoin the rehearsal because my hands had been shaking too much to pick up my bow. He was seeing someone else, Lauralynn, the tall blonde who I had once double-dommed with at her flat in West London. Lauralynn and I had both worn strap-on dildos, and had sex with a submissive man on her bed. Both of us fully dressed, and him naked. I had found the experience educational, though not exactly arousing.

  I’d told Dominik about Viggo without thinking, even though I didn’t think of the three of us as anything more than passing fun, really. If he could move on, then so could I.

  But that didn’t stop me from thinking about him. That peculiar smell he had, just plain soap, without any cologne. His sometimes infuriatingly polite and old-fashioned turns of phrase. His accent, at times hard to place – hints of a childhood abroad that he never really talked about – other times, utterly British, just on the right side of posh. His straight-backed posture and broad shoulders from years of athletics training which had given him a firmness he hadn’t lost, despite never appearing to make efforts to maintain his fitness. The strong line of his jaw and sensuous mouth. The softness of his skin. His cock, which I had always thought to be perfect. So straight, evenly coloured and large.

  Most of all, I missed his wicked imagination and that way he had of always keeping me guessing, so that I never knew what he had up his sleeve next. It had made our relationship, for all its flaws, seem so alive. Dominik challenged me. He made me do things that I didn’t think I could, or would. He made me feel present, somehow managed to meld my mind to my body in a way that only playing music had before, so that with him I was aware of his every word and every touch.

  He seemed to understand me also, in a way that other men I had dated hadn’t. Simón wanted to, I knew that, and perhaps he did, but we had different paths and plans for the future that could never mix successfully. Viggo probably came closest, but although he was good-natured, he lacked empathy. He sometimes stared at me in the way that you might look at a goldfish in a bowl, and I wondered whether he really thought of me as a person, or just the way that Luba did, as a new toy, a new pretty thing to add to his collection, to play with for a time.

  That morning, I’d made a date to see Fran. With her working nights, and me now spending most of my time at Viggo’s, we hadn’t seen much of each other.

  We met at Verde & Co., a tiny cafe in Spitalfields market that made the best coffee in the area, and certainly on a par with the few others that I thought were the best in London, though those titles were fiercely debated by the other Kiwis and Aussies I knew, who seemed to forget that Italians came up with espresso long before we invented flat whites.

  She was already there when I arrived, perched on one of the cafe’s wooden stools, admiring the glass jars of marmalade stacked up with the light shining through from behind so the mixture inside glowed in warm shades of red, orange and yellow, depending on the particular variety of fruit within.

  All sorts of products lined every surface of the tiny shop, speciality Italian pastas, dried into shapes that seemed unusual to eyes accustomed to the more ordinary supermarket varieties, wicker baskets filled with cherries, peaches, or whatever happened to be in season, a silver dish with sugar cubes and a pair of tongs to pick them up with, and of course the glass case filled with the most beautiful-looking sweets, Pierre Marcolini chocolates of every shape and flavour laid out in a way that promised each mouthful would be more luscious than the last.

  It had been one of my favourite hang-outs when I last lived in London, and I’d always taken pleasure from looking at the chocolates through the glass, but never actually buying one; enjoying the thrill from a pleasure imagined and denied but always at arm’s length. I liked the feeling of desire, even if it was never realised.

  ‘Nice place,’ Fran said. She’d seen me coming and already ordered and paid for the coffees at the counter.

  ‘Thanks for the drink,’ I said, ‘but stop buying things for me, you’re on a tenner an hour and I’m loaded.’

  ‘I knew you would say that,’ she said, plucking up one cube of sugar after another and dropping it into the small cup, reminding me of Dominik’s habit of sweetening his drinks to the extreme. Every tiny thing reminded me of him these days.

  ‘Since when did you take sugar?’

  ‘Since I saw it in these pretty cubes. This is posh sugar. It doesn’t come like this in Te Aroha.’

  ‘But it still tastes the same. How are you, anyway?’

  ‘Same as I was last fortnight. The bar is good fun. Hard work but it’s a good way to meet people.’

  ‘Are you still looking for a place to live?’
>
  ‘Not really. I quite like staying with Chris … and he’d only have to replace me, if you’re not coming back. Are you coming back? How’s life with the rock star? Chris tells me you’re dating the dancer as well? How the fuck does that work?’

  ‘Dating is probably too strong a word for it. I’m hardly going to bring them both back home for Christmas.’

  ‘Can you imagine that? The parents would be so proud.’ She giggled.

  ‘People do it … triads aren’t that uncommon.’

  ‘They are where we’re from.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. People in small towns just try harder to hide things.’

  The waitress returned with a large slice of lemon cake which Fran had ordered earlier and slipped it between us.

  ‘That looks tasty,’ I said, distracted from my train of thought by the cake’s arrival. ‘You’re not worried about the Heathrow injection then?’ Weight gain was a common problem for travellers arriving in the UK, tempted by the colder weather to abandon their previously held hobbies of outdoor exercise in favour of pints and pub meals.

  Fran scoffed at me.

  ‘Eat the damn cake,’ she said, pushing the teaspoon over to my side, ‘and tell me more about the rock life. I want to hear everything. Haven’t you ever noticed I live my life vicariously through you? Throw me a bone here.’

  ‘Vicariously through me? Aren’t you sleeping with Dagur, the drummer?’

  ‘Sadly, no. We did end up in bed together but we were both comatose by then after all the cocktails. Woke up next to him with all my clothes on.’

  ‘And you didn’t ask for his number?’

  ‘He asked for mine. But I’m not into rock musicians.’

  ‘Oh, really? Not even Chris?’ I teased her.

  ‘Well, I’m not into most of them.’

  She was blushing.

  I ignored the sound of my phone as it began to buzz loudly, and Fran seized the opportunity for a change of subject by taking it out of my pocket and handing it to me.

  ‘It’s an international call, they’re always important. Answer it.’

  It was a New York number, which meant either Simón or Susan, most likely the latter as Simón was still in Venezuela last time I heard, and Susan would be on the warpath now as I still hadn’t replied to her emails to explain my whereabouts.