Out Of The Winter Gardens

by David Rees

  “Why not?”

  “He goes berserk if anybody touches it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something to do with the tuning, I guess.” What on earth difference could it possibly make to the tuning, I asked myself, just plucking a few strings? This Adrian seemed to be unpleasant and bad-tempered; I was not much looking forward to meeting him. “We’ll go downstairs and have a drink,” Dad said. “Then I must put my not so powerful intellect to the job of rustling up something to eat.” He laughed. “One of those rare occasions I have to; Adrian has no time between the rehearsal and the performance to come home.”

  I felt rather relieved at this piece of news. “Am I supposed to wear a tie and a jacket for the concert?” “No, no. Whatever you want. Do you like omelettes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Omelettes are about the limit of my abilities.”

  He evidently didn’t feel happy in the kitchen with me hovering about while he melted butter in the frying pan, cracked eggs into a bowl, and put asparagus tips (one of my favourites) in a saucepan, so I took my beer into the garden and sat by the pond, staring at the goldfish. What a strange day it was; but it could not, whatever the particular circumstances of Dad’s life might have been, have turned out other than strange. I liked him, I was surprised to discover; I could even be fond of him. As with any son to his father? Perhaps not that, exactly. Was the hurt and rejection and anger of my childhood still simmering away, ready to spew out like some volcano deciding to erupt? Probably not, but I couldn’t be certain. Some answers to some obvious questions would help, such as why he’d invited me, why now, and why did Mum agree to it; and some answers to questions I didn’t know how to put—why did the marriage break down, why did it result in no communication at all for so long, and why did he live with a rather neurotic man he didn’t seem to get on with very well? I wanted to say, too, how is it possible to have a son and not think about him for thirteen years? But he’d already answered that, in part, without my having to inquire: the kids, he said, who were the main characters in his books, when they weren’t himself as a boy, were me.

  “How is that?” I asked. “You don’t know me. You didn’t even know what I looked like till today.” “True.” He smiled. “So I had to make it all up.” “Then they aren’t me.”

  “They’re what I hoped you were. Hope you are. Sometimes what I feared might happen to you.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion for a moment that the me of the books might be of more interest to him than the real me; that perhaps the marriage ended because Mum decided she and I were less important to him than his writing. There was no easy way of solving that one; however, time would tell—even if none of the questions was put and none of the answers given, this fortnight would give me something of that smudge my English teacher had talked about. And I could read all the novels, or as many as I could get through.

  But why bother? I was already hooked, I suppose. As I said, I liked him. He was so different from Mum. There was something dull and predictable about life at Tralee; the two women dancing the Lambeth Walk was the limit of the unusual. Here, anything might happen.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Dad called. A cheese and mushroom omelette, chips and asparagus. “I’m afraid it’s nothing special,” he said, “but I hope it’s O.K.”

  It was fine, and I said so, which pleased him. There is a vulnerable side to my father, I thought; he needs to be protected. I don’t know' why this idea should have entered my head—there was no reason I could fathom for such an intuition. Protection from what? Or whom?

  The concert hall, I learned from the notes in my programme, was called the Winter Gardens because in Victorian times that was exactly what it had been—a huge glass-house containing all sorts of exotic plants that could not be grown out of doors in the winter. People paid money to come in and look at the flowers, drink tea and listen to a little café orchestra playing music in the background. It was not a commercial success, however, and when it went bankrupt the Wessex Philharmonic Symphony bought it, replaced all the glass with brick, and turned it into a proper concert hall. The effect was somewhat hideous—the Winter Gardens looked like an ancient and dilapidated cinema.

  I had never been to a symphony concert before. There was hardly much opportunity for that sort of thing in Alresford, and, besides, Mum and my aunt would rather perform their Irish ballads than listen to Beethoven. Dad looked surprised when I told him that, for me, this evening was a first experience; “In that case, Mahler’s tenth is going to be a baptism of fire,’’ he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s very long and some of it’s very slow.”

  There were only two works on the programme, the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, then the symphony. There was no interval. “How long?” I asked. “An hour and a quarter, maybe an hour and a half.”

  “I know the overture. It takes less than ten minutes.”

  “It’s just something to warm us up.”

  I didn’t really need to be warmed up; it was a hot evening and the Winter Gardens was stuffy and airless. I sat back and prepared myself for acute boredom. The orchestra tuning their instruments, however, was quite interesting, despite the horrible noise they made. I didn’t even know the names of some of the objects they were blowing and scraping. “What’s that?” I asked. “And that? And that?”

  “A double bassoon,” Dad said, smiling. “A celesta— a bit like a tiny piano. What else? Oh, that’s a bass clarinet.”

  Adrian was one of the last players to arrive. He went quickly to his seat, pulled the harp towards himself till it rested on his shoulder, then plucked a few strings and made a shower of notes down the scale, not unlike the jet of water I’d created on the harp in his study, though rather more harmonious than my effort. He seemed satisfied with the sound, for he stopped, pushed the harp into an upright position, and turned his head to survey the audience. We were in the fourth row, and he was obviously looking for us, for when he saw Dad he winked. Dad smiled back and nodded his head slightly. Adrian then returned to the serious business of twanging the harp, making sure it was properly in key I suppose, and ignored us for the rest of the evening.

  I’d expected a man of Dad’s age—forty-five—but Adrian appeared to be much younger; and Dad confirmed this when I asked. “He’ll be twenty-six next month,” he said. I found this oddly disconcerting; I don’t know why. I had assumed people’s friends were usually as old as they were themselves. Mine were, give or take a year or two, and nearly all Mum’s and Aunt Bridie’s friends and acquaintances were middle-aged housewives with kids at school. It gave them something to talk about, I imagined. “Nic does this or Michael said that,” were standard topics of conversation my mother and my aunt had with Mrs Eggins next door or Mrs Williams and Mrs Blenkinsop down the road, who usually replied with “Susan’s doing so-and-so and Chris has just been to such-and-such.” Bor-ing! But what on earth did a man of twenty-six and a man of forty-five, who shared a house together, find to talk about?

  Long, curly, almost golden hair; tall and handsome. His face—he wasn’t close to us of course, but not so far away that I couldn’t make out some of the details—was triangular, with high cheek-bones. He was fit and bronzed, like Dad. I couldn’t see his eyes clearly; they were hidden under a forehead that seemed to jut out too far. I didn’t like that. But, I thought, if he was my age, he’d be the sort of kid boys at school envied or loathed, because all the girls would go bananas about him.

  “Does he have a girlfriend?’’ I asked, as the applause for the conductor died down.

  Dad looked puzzled. “No,” he said. “Didn’t Nora . . . ? Ssssh! The music’s about to begin.”

  The orchestra launched into the busy, bubbling overture to The Magic Flute, which finished all too soon, I thought. I enjoyed it. It didn’t require a harp at any point; Adrian sat with his arms folded throughout, a somewhat severe expression on his face.

  More applause. “Now for Symphony Nu
mber Ten in F Sharp Major,” Dad said. “I’m looking forward to this. Never heard a live performance of it. It’s a most unusual key, F sharp. Very difficult.”

  “Ssssh,” I said.

  3. Fights and friendships

  I certainly wasn’t bored: my reactions were more positive. I hated it. Almost every moment from beginning to end, I hated it! It stank of death and yearning for death. I don’t know if music can be about things you can define like that, indeed if it can be about anything at all, but that’s what it said to me. There were parts of it with tunes that were beautiful and excruciating at the same time, like a man looking at a glorious sunset which was always fading, or gazing at a vision of something for ever beyond his ability to possess—the harp had a lot of work to do here; as the violins soared slowly and inexorably upwards, singing of dying and joys lost in the past, it provided a kind of anchor to the song floating far above. I kept thinking of someone in bed, towards the end of a fatal illness, constantly recalling the happy days that are no more. At other moments the music was like stabs of pain, as if the composer were lacerating himself with a knife and masochistically enjoying what he was doing; and at one point, after a long, slow, very quiet passage that faded away to nothing at all, there came a noise from the orchestra so loud that I almost jumped out of my seat—a succession of chords so violent and harsh that I had a mental picture of a cathedral organ gone crazy, creating sounds that disintegrated the architecture into a sea of stone and dust.

  My father said very little as we left the Winter Gardens, and I was glad; it was difficult enough to adjust, after that, to normal life outside—people talking and laughing as they came out of pubs; cars and buses changing gear; a wind off the sea whispering in the pines—let alone have a sensible discussion about music. But in the car, on the way home, he said “I suppose you didn’t like it.”

  “No.”

  “It was torture?”

  “Awful. Unbearable. Hideous!”

  “Hideous? I used to hate it too, when I first heard it. But it grows on you with time. I . . . let’s say . . . admire it. But I don’t think I could listen to it every night of the week.”

  “I never want to hear it again.”

  Dad laughed. “Adrian loves it; he always has done. He says it’s like casting out devils. It makes him feel better.”

  “He must be a very strange man.”

  “Well. . . you can make your own mind up about that. But I’m sorry the programme wasn’t more suitable. . . It just so happened to be what was on the menu this evening.”

  “That’s O.K. It was an interesting experience.”

  I felt tired. It had been a day of so many new emotions, impressions and events that, when we reached home, I wanted to go straight to my room and sleep, but Dad said “Hang on a moment; Adrian will be back soon and I think you should meet him. In any case. . . we ought to talk.” In the long silence that ensued he poured himself a large gin and tonic and lit a cigarette. “Adrian and I are . . . have . . .”

  “I’d guessed that,” I answered. Which was more or less true. A curious sensation—my heart sinking, almost literally I thought: I could follow its progress down through my stomach, my left leg and out of my body via the foot and the big toe.

  “I asked Nora to tell you, but she obviously didn’t. I thought she said she would . . . but our phone conversation was a bit . . . difficult. Mike . . . don’t hate me for it.”

  I looked up from the floor where I’d been watching what I imagined was the progress of my heart across the carpet, and stared him straight in the eye. “I don’t hate you at all,” I said. My heart was suddenly back where it normally was, though thumping rather more loudly and quickly than usual.

  He drank some gin. “That’s why the marriage ended. Why I had to leave . . . her. And you.”

  “For Adrian?”

  “No, not for Adrian!” He smiled. “Lord! He would have been only thirteen at the time! For . . . the principle of the thing, I suppose. Look, do you want a drink? After this and Mahler’s tenth you deserve one.”

  “A vodka?” Mum occasionally let me have beer or wine with our Sunday dinner; I’d never tried vodka. “What do you mean,” I asked, as he poured it, “the principle of the thing?”

  “That. . . I preferred men. That it wasn’t a problem your mother and I could talk through and resolve. That it was better for both of us . . .to part. I didn’t know anything of this when we got married. Some vague idea, perhaps, but I thought it would go away. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  “Not really.”

  He sighed. “You must have heard about homosexuality.”

  “Of course. I reckon . . . I’m very much looking forward to sex. When I’m ready. With girls.” I was surprised at what I’d just said. Not that it wasn’t true, but this man, even if he was my father, was until today a complete stranger. One only mentioned things like that to friends at school, not to one’s parents! Imagine saying that to Mum! She’d have hysterics.

  “Girls,” he said, smiling. “In the plural, I see.”

  Why not? The vodka, I decided, was going to my head. “I’ve never met a homosexual. We laugh and joke about them at school, but . . .”

  “Now you have met one.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve had quite a day, Mike.”

  “You can say that again! Dad . . . you’re my dad” I burst into tears, and accidentally knocked my drink over. It dripped down the table and on to the carpet. He jumped to his feet and came towards me, but I ran out of the room, up the stairs, and, throwing off my clothes, I fell into bed.

  I woke from a delicious dream about a girl I’d noticed on the beach yesterday. It faded, like the bitter-sweet paragraphs of Mahler’s symphony, as I remembered last night’s conversation. I had a profound feeling of relief—at any rate, I said to myself, the pleasure I got from the dream proves that homosexuality isn’t something you inherit. Nor is it contagious, like a disease. But Dad does that with men? With Adrian? Ugh! What could have happened to make him want to? It was like . . . it was like . . . the inexplicable ugliness of that boy. The stone on the railway line. Oh, years and years in the past when I was a child that seemed, not just earlier this week! Alresford, I said, had nothing for teenagers, nothing to help you grow up, but now I wanted to be a child once more, like Nic with his simple delight in trains, a child with questions to ask of adults who would give reassuring answers, not find myself in this. . . this muddle, this turmoil! Yet hadn’t I said to Dad—quite truthfully—that there was something about growing up I was looking forward to very much?

  I’d go back down to the beach, I decided, and see if the girl I’d dreamed about was there today.

  I met Adrian over breakfast. Even though he had been some distance from us last night, the impression I’d got of his appearance was correct. The eyes—piercingly blue—were partly hidden by the low, protruding forehead. It was as if someone were watching you from a cave.

  “So what did you think of the Mahler?” he asked.

  “I didn’t like it.”

  He turned at once on Dad. “There! What did I tell you, Peter? I said it would be beyond him, didn’t I! You should have done something else yesterday evening.”

  “No need to make a fuss about it!”

  “I’m not making a fuss about it!” In fact, he seemed to be angrier with every word he spoke. “I just wish you’d have more sense, that’s all.”

  “Well, all right.” Dad was now getting rather cross. “No point in arguing over it.”

  “You never admit to making a single mistake! It always ends up with ‘no point in arguing over it’.”

  “Why are you trying to provoke a quarrel for no reason at all? I wish you could learn to control yourself a bit better.”

  I appeared to have been forgotten about. They were glaring at each other as if I wasn’t in the room.

  “Control myself!” Adrian exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re being insensi
tive and childish. Why? There happens to be someone else here, Adrian! My son!”

  “Oh, your son! Don't think you can start using him as a weapon against me!”

  “Excuse me,” my father said, and abruptly left the room.

  Adrian sighed, then sat down at the table. He helped himself to toast and marmalade, and I went on eating cornflakes. While he ate he read the newspaper. There was no sense of stillness about anything he did. He seemed to suffer from an excess of nervous energy, waggling and twitching his nose, and when his hands weren’t occupied he was rubbing at his fingers or picking at his feet. I was surprised to see that his nails were bitten down to the quick; wouldn’t a harpist need to use his nails? He brushed his hair back from his forehead several times, and scowled. If I lived with him, I said to myself, I’d be a screaming wreck in ten minutes.

  “Life with your father isn’t exactly a bed of roses,” he said. “Still, it won’t be for much longer.”

  I said nothing. I didn’t want to speak; this man was so totally repellent. What on earth was the matter with him? He didn’t want me around, that was for sure—but why should he be so resentful and jealous? It won’t be for much longer. . . I assumed he meant I was only in the house for a fortnight, but it was oddly phrased. For much longer implied that I’d already been here for some time. Was he suggesting, perhaps, that he wouldn’t be here much longer?

  I finished my cornflakes and left. He was still reading the newspaper: he didn’t look up or say anything.

  My father was typing, so I knocked on the door. “Come in, come in,” he said. “There’s never any need to knock.”

  “Can I go down to the beach?” I asked.

  “Of course. Any time you want. Just come and go as you please. Are you O.K.?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry about that. . . over breakfast. Adrian is rather highly strung . . . I daresay the performance last night took it out of him.”