by Patrick Gale
‘Dido? I think we’d adopt her like a shot.’
‘Eliza. If your…Julia wasn’t around, muddying the waters, would you have her back?’
‘I don’t know.’ He laughed, unsettled at such direct questioning from a stranger. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Of course you have. She’s still your wife. If you’re so sure you don’t want her back, why haven’t you divorced her and set her free to start her life again?’
‘I’d divorce her if she asked me. But she hasn’t. So it would seem a bit…’
‘She’d have you, you know. If there weren’t Julie.’
‘Julia.’
‘Yes. She’d have you. She’d come back with the girl if you asked her.’
‘I’m not so sure…’
She shrugged with surprising brutality. ‘Well. You should know. You’re her husband.’
A tanned woman in a mauve sundress came up the garden path and rang the doorbell.
‘Keep very still,’ Mrs Barnicoat hissed, ‘and she’ll go away.’
Mrs Barnicoat was hidden in shadow but Giles was sitting in a pool of sunlight and could easily be seen. He froze and, sure enough, after lifting the letter box rather rudely to peer into the empty hall, the woman turned on her heel and retreated through the little jungle. When she heard the gate clang to again, Mrs Barnicoat relaxed but offered no explanation.
‘Got a card from her this morning, little imp,’ she said instead and fetched him down a postcard of Land’s End. He saw Dido’s spidery scrawl on the back. ‘You can read it if you like.’
Dear Great Auntie Kitty, he read, (Sorry!!) Your caravan is wicked especially the little shower and the pigs next door. We got the bikes pumped up and have ridden all the way to here. (See other side) But I think it looks more exciting on the map, don’t you? How’s my house? Hope you get good neighbours and no more cats. Love and ice cream, Dido xx
Eliza’s smaller, neater hand had inked in Eliza, too in the small space Dido had left.
‘Sweet,’ he said and handed it back. ‘She’s very polite sometimes. Quite formal compared to other kids. I worry she’s a bit solemn.’
‘She’s got a lot to think about.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Have you known the family long?’
‘Always,’ she said with finality. ‘Annie Hosken was like a sister to me. I took a mother’s interest in the girls.’
‘So you knew Hannah?’
‘Of course.’ But he saw the same buttoning up of the face, the same blanking out of the eyes he had seen when he had questioned the mother, so he stifled his curiosity. ‘She was an amazing kid in her way,’ Mrs Barnicoat volunteered. ‘And Dido was a kind of blessing, whatever people might say.’
‘Sad, really,’ he said after a moment or two, ‘that Dido never really knew her grandmother well. Was Eliza…? I know they hadn’t been close these last few years but was she very cut up by the death?’
Mrs Barnicoat thought about this. ‘I didn’t see her cry,’ she said, ‘to be honest with you. Her eyes were dry at the graveside and I always think that’s a bad sign.’
‘You think she didn’t love her?’
‘No,’ she said impatiently. ‘But she needs to let it out. That’s what funerals and wearing black is for. Grief gone bad is a poisonous thing and I’d worry for that child. That’s why I told her to take a holiday. She can grieve more easily in a place with no associations. Is your mother still alive, Giles?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Very much so. But my father died when I was a boy. She took that very badly. I used to wish he’d left her for someone or somewhere else, the way Eliza’s father did. I think that would have been easier…’
‘She grieved hard, then?’
‘She was…angry. Angry and very frightened to be on her own with only me to shield her. So she drank for courage and the drink made her angry.’
And then, perhaps because she was not just a stranger but a great fat cartoon of a woman; he told her everything. And each piece of the tale, how his mother drank, how she raged, how she took him into her bed for company then used his frightened hands to feed her hungry loneliness, how day after day her bright manners and lickety-spit smartness denied the pitiful disorder of the night before: each piece was like another piece of horror he could leave behind in this ridiculous, bird-infested house.
He cried a little as he talked to her, blew his nose on tissues she pushed across the table to him and when he was all talked out, even to the point of telling her about taking pictures of Dido as she slept and how dirty it made him feel, he felt light-bodied as well as light-headed, as though the secrets had been an actual load. He would never see her again, he sensed. Must never, if he were not to pollute himself with his own dark discharge.
‘Dido is the one good, honest thing in my life,’ he told her, sniffing so heavily she instinctively patted the tissues towards him. He helped himself, blowing loudly, and felt better. ‘If I could only make things right with her and be the father to her I always…I think it would help everything else fall into place. Julia. Eliza. Everything.’
‘Now there’s a rare thing,’ she said. ‘A man who knows his mission and isn’t just stumbling about looking for one!’
She fetched him a map and showed him how to find her caravan. Bloated from cake, he declined her offer of a late lunch.
Since he was already two-thirds of the way there, he drove on past Hayle and Penzance and out towards St Just. After a few false passes, he found the caravan, but it was locked and deserted. He dozed in the stifling car, waited longer than he should, hoping perhaps they were merely out on a walk or bike ride. Then he panicked and drove back along the county’s spine to Trenellion at a fool’s pace.
It was an informal music festival whose attraction for many was as much the socialising over picnics before the concerts as the music which followed. In the fields around the church where cars were parked, people were folding away rugs and hurrying in as he arrived. Julia would be angry that he had not been there to socialise with her and Jemima.
He had been to the festival just once, as a soloist in a St John Passion. Musically it was fine; a little rough-edged at times but then at least half the performers were amateurs and their commitment and emotional involvement had been extraordinary. Socially it was another matter. Everyone had seemed to know everyone else and he had been a late replacement for someone more popular. Slightly too aware of his professional status, he had misread the cues for him to muck in and realised too late he was striking people as standoffish and snobbish. He left having resolved never to come again, only to have the festival pre-empt him by never again inviting him.
He was not too late to slip in and listen to the first half of the concert hidden in the porch or even in the ringing chamber, which had the best acoustic in the church. But then he saw a couple from the chorus whom he disliked and realised that in either hiding place he would still be running the risk of meeting people he knew and, worse, of meeting people he knew who then failed to recognise him.
Suddenly it was all too much. He lost his nerve and he slid low in his seat until the parking field was empty. Then he sent Julia an apologetic text message saying he must have caught whatever bug had afflicted her yesterday and had retreated to the hotel feeling queasy. Party 4 2 tonite he told her. We can play together tomorrow. Later. Gxxx.
32
The churchyard and the fields used as car parks were busy with concert-goers as Julia made her way to the old vicarage that now served as rehearsal space and dressing rooms. She had some good luck flowers for Jemima. In town she was spoilt for choice when buying agency tributes. At Trenellion choice was reduced to packets of fudge, Cornish fairings and a robust assortment of undistinguished flower bunches prepacked in spangly cellophane.
As she had feared, Jemima had not been overjoyed to see her. Although there were plenty of professionals among the performers, including conductor and soloists, part of the pleasure they took in the festival was the chan
ce to make music while temporarily released from the pressures of contracts, union regulations and reviews, rehearsing and performing alongside people for whom music was purely an unpaid pleasure. The music business being relatively tiny, everyone knew how well (or not) everyone else’s career was going. In the festival’s unwritten constitution, the pulling of rank was outlawed and the only hierarchy that mattered was along festival lines; how long one had been coming, how well one knew the locals, how many generations of one’s family were involved in some capacity. For two precious weeks, a trumpeter could be valued more for his surfing prowess and ability to mend the festival dishwasher than for playing with the Welsh National Opera.
Learning from Giles’ bitter experience, Julia understood this as Selina had not. To have one’s agent or even their proxy show up at a dress rehearsal here smacked of pulling rank.
Julia had undone the damage as best she could in several ways. She had dressed down with as much care as she might have dressed up. She had made no protest when a restaurant lunch for a client and her conductor turned into a pub lunch for the client, her conductor and five twenty-something music students. And she had joined them on the beach at Polteath afterwards for a choir-versus-orchestra rounders match.
Jemima had come down to the beach too – no diva-ish afternoon withdrawal for her – and watched the match from a vast, towel-draped rock with a covey of remarkably similarly bronzed, bare-shouldered old things. It was impossible to sit for long among a group so very like a clutch of matriarchs at a dance so Julia felt challenged to join the fray.
She had kicked off her shoes, the better to run on the sand, when a coltish girl with hair in plaits thrust the bat into her hand and shouted, ‘Your turn! You’re honorary orchestra!’
Quite suddenly she had found herself on holiday. When the match was over, choir beating orchestra by having more children in fielding positions, she was cajoled into somebody’s baggy wetsuit and given a surfing lesson by somebody’s non-musical but festival-loving brother. She declined the offer of high tea at the festival farmhouse but enjoyed a death defying lift back to Porth Keverne with a jeepful of gay tenors from the Hallé chorus.
Stepping into the shower to wash off the salt and sand she caught a glimpse of her reflection, a radiant, surprised stranger.
The back door of the vicarage was wide open. Julia wandered in and followed the sound of a viola tuning up, along the slate-floored corridor that linked back door to front. Jemima was warming up in the sitting room. Julia was about to let herself in when Jemima burst into one of her calling cards, a transposition of a gigue from one of the Bach partitas. She froze, listening.
Through a closed door it was hard to believe the player was in her seventies. It made her think, as she often did, of the unfairness that let instrumentalists continue to astound, even to improve on their ability, at ages by which most singers had no voice left to float on their years of acquired technique. It was something she had never dared discuss with Giles; what he would do when…It was impossible to imagine him without an audience but she supposed, like the loss of youth, it was something every singer must plan for and deal with.
A man in evening dress came downstairs, fruitily humming, and she felt she must interrupt or be thought an eavesdropper.
‘Come,’ Jemima called, hearing her knock, then continued playing a phrase from the Walton concerto. She played on, her back to the door, as Julia came in, repeating the phrase several times with slight changes in emphasis as though scouring it for any last crumbs of meaning.
The big window she faced looked out over a woody sprawl of old shrub roses, some vast old pines and a barley field that rolled down to the distant Atlantic. She was in bare feet and a black petticoat, the muscles in her shoulders and bowing arm undressed by fat.
‘Wish I could play like this,’ she said, breaking off to fine-tune a string. ‘So much more comfortable. And ideally the audience should all be lying down with their heads in each others’ laps. You brought flowers. You ninny.’
‘Sorry. Boss-woman’s orders. Just be glad she didn’t send you one of her fruit baskets.’
‘It arrived this afternoon while we were out.’
‘Oh God. Sorry.’
‘She must be feeling very guilty. Nice frock.’
Julia looked down at herself. All Giles had remembered of the festival dress code was long floral which wasn’t really her, so she had opted for a dark purple cotton dress with an embroidered hem, the nearest she did to pretty and, defying the risks of mud, plum coloured slippers with tiny gold stars on them.
‘Is it okay? Walking up from the hotel I saw everything from jeans to black tie.’
‘Fuck, yes. And you see some of them in ancient velvet and others in Guernseys and shorts. It’s a fashion nightmare.’
‘What are you wearing?’
Jemima flicked her head towards a striking black silk affair with a black lace jacket. ‘My Ida Handel number,’ she said. She set down her viola and relieved Julia of the flowers.
‘Very sweet of you,’ she said. ‘You’ve caught the sun.’
‘Have I?’
‘Suits you.’
‘I should leave you in peace. I just wanted to check you had all you need and say good luck.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I can’t believe it’s your last concerto.’
‘Oh, Christ. Believe me, girly, I can! Standing up in front of all those students in the band I feel like Methuselah’s aunt. Still. It’s nice to finish here rather than in London; this is where I started.’
‘You’re joking. At the festival?’
Jemima nodded. ‘Aged fourteen. Back desk of the second fiddles. Elijah.’ She paused. ‘So. When’s it due?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The baby.’
‘Oh. Er. I’m not expecting.’
‘Sorry. My mistake. I normally have a sort of sense for these things and you had that self-cherishing look. Sorry.’ Jemima picked up her viola again. ‘Everyone goes to the pub afterwards, if you’re interested.’
‘Okay. I’d er…I’d better go and find Giles.’
Disconcerted, Julia left the vicarage and slipped across to the church where Jemima had kindly reserved them a couple of seats. There was no sign of Giles yet. She glanced at her watch then began to read the eccentric notes in the programme.
‘Excuse me. Sorry.’ A woman with a very small boy in her arms was leaning past her to a man further along the pew. ‘Colin, could you?’
He took the toddler off her.
‘Just for the first piece,’ she said. ‘Crisis with the tea urn.’
‘But –’ he began to protest.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s sleepy. He’ll be fine.’ Then she hurried off.
He sat down beside Julia again. The toddler sat side-saddle on his lap, leaning heavily into his chest, sucking its thumb and staring solemnly at Julia.
Abashed, Julia made an effort to go back to reading her programme but felt the dark-haired child’s eyes boring into her and was compelled to look back at it and offer an appeasing smile. There was no smile in return. Its look was gravely judgemental.
‘It’s okay,’ the father said with gentle irony. ‘He’s sleepy. He’ll be fine. Actually he will. He eats like a little hog then falls fast asleep and not even barking dogs will wake him.’ He stroked the boy’s hair and the toddler gave a small whine of passing irritation then rearranged himself into his father’s chest like a settling dog. ‘What’s before the Walton?’
She made a show of looking back at the programme, knowing the answer perfectly well but made shy by something in his face.
‘More Walton,’ she told him. ‘Variations on a Theme by Britten.’
‘Is that quiet?’
‘Fairly. I think. I don’t really know.’
‘Oh good. I’m always a bit out of my depth here.’
‘Are you a regular?’
‘My sister’s involved. My mother has a cottage in Trelill.’
&n
bsp; ‘Oh. Nice.’
‘Hmm. But she has a way of buying more tickets than she needs then making us feel guilty if we don’t use them.’
‘Sorry.’ She broke off to slip her mobile out of her pocket. There was a text message from Giles. ‘Damn,’ she muttered.
‘Bad news?’
‘I’ve been stood up,’ she sighed. ‘Boyfriend with bellyache.’
‘Sounds like a song by The Smiths. About as welcome as Toddler with the Trots.’
‘Does he?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘For once, no.’ They both looked down at the child, who had fallen heavily asleep.
‘He looks so comfortable,’ she said, feeling a spasm of something like broodiness.
‘Master Thomas is always comfortable.’
‘Are you Cornish Thomases?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You must be Cornish too. Anyone else would assume we were Welsh.’
‘My mother was a Rodda,’ she admitted. ‘But my dad came from St Helens. I grew up in Illogan.’
He held out the hand that wasn’t holding his son in place.
‘Colin,’ he said as she shook. ‘Colin Thomas.’
‘Julie,’ she told him. ‘Julie Dixon.’
She couldn’t tell what madness prompted her to give him her real name and to confess her origins. Perhaps it was because he was a safe repository, a concert-going Cornish dad was as unlikely to meet any of her acquaintance as a hairdresser or train passenger, other people to whom she had occasionally felt compelled to reveal herself.
The lie she lived was not a very large one, after all, more a matter of allowing people to jump to certain conclusions uncorrected than of actively telling lies. But like any untruth, it chafed a little more with each repetition and she occasionally felt the need to put it aside and remind herself of the reality that lay beneath it.
He smiled then remembered to let go of her hand.
‘What?’ she asked as there was shushing while the orchestra tuned.
