by David Smith
Totally endearing as he is, Eddie tends to struggle with the concept of deadlines and fixed appointments. With the patience of a saint, I have encouraged him to make entries in the family diary, but they are always somewhat vague and quite often plain wrong. If I were the jealous type, I might be forgiven for wondering if he gives some of his music students a few ‘extra’ bits of tuition in these unexplained gaps in his life. But I’m not and although he is a flirt, I am quite sure he isn’t the type to initiate anything as serious as an affair. In fact, I doubt he is even capable of organising such a thing. I confess I’m not quite as confident that some of the young ladies he teaches (and probably some of the older ones too) wouldn’t be more than happy to lead him astray if they got the chance. I am well aware that he has more than his fair share of female admirers. I guess the simple problem is that he is just too beautiful.
At home he is attentive, just frustratingly unreliable, hardly ever there and too easily distracted. He is certainly not interested in adding to our family, despite the loud and persistent ticking of my biological clock, but I am working on him.
*
I glanced over to the washing line above the sink, where half a dozen pieces of Eddie’s clothing, including his beloved Wolves football strip, were drying. That reminds me of another bugbear: his clothing. His fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired – in the ten years I’ve known him he hasn’t really progressed much from college student grunge. I’ve concluded that this aspect of his character is probably irredeemable and have almost given up attempting to sort him out. He tends to treat any notion of ‘designer’ with disdain and is colour blind to boot, preferring his battered old T-shirt and jeans to the nice clothes I patiently buy for him in the boutique shops in Park Street.
That morning I was sure he had gone out (again) in a moth-eaten tweed jacket he’d bought at the Spot for Value gentlemen’s clothing shop, a bowtie, Levi’s and Converse shoes. All this rather than one of the smart Ben Sherman shirts and chinos I had freshly ironed for the interview he was attending that day. He had been invited to pitch for a games advert soundtrack and with the advice of Jack, he had written what I thought was a really great piece for the brief. But that morning, when it came to the moment of truth, he did not seem to have the confidence or even the motivation to carry through with it.
Despite all of this, I continue to believe in him and hate to see him disheartened by the many inevitable rejections he gets in the entertainment business. That morning, as usual, I read him the riot act and hoped on this occasion he might actually get his act together, but I wasn’t too confident.
‘Surely you are doing something that has never been done before?’ I had suggested encouragingly.
He just shrugged and turned away.
*
At last the phone began to ring; I let it go to voicemail so that I could hear the voice on the loudspeaker. Thankfully it was Eddie calling from the Tennis Club saying he was just leaving.
‘I guess that’s nice of him,’ I said to Penny ironically. At least he’d called to let me know this time, but he had not given any hint to how the interview had gone earlier.
‘OK, well I’m off now then, see you next week,’ said Penny as she cleared her plate.
‘Thanks Penny, it really makes a difference, you know; there’s so little time. Make sure you enjoy yourself before you have kids is my best advice.’
‘Kids will never happen.’
‘We’ll see. Anyway, are you going anywhere nice tonight?’
‘Sort of, just meeting up with a few girlfriends, we’re going to the flicks and then I hope it won’t be too late a night, I could do with catching up with my sleep. See you soon.’
‘Well have an amazing night.’
*
Penny is an attractive, sensible and courteous girl with an endearing hesitation in her speech. She is still in her early twenties. I remember when we first met, Penny had a stutter so debilitating that she could barely hold a conversation, let alone elbow her way into the limelight. She was certainly a smart kid and had a lot to say, but just couldn’t say it. Her father worked for a church charity and left her mother to bring her up alone in England for long periods while he travelled to remote trouble-spots around the globe. Tragically, her mother died of a tropical infection carried back by her husband and after that, because I knew the family, I went out of my way to befriend Penny, spending a lot of time with her and arranging for her to see a speech therapist I knew. That’s when she started helping me out at home.
No one was more surprised than me when this talented girl left the local college and went straight into the police force instead of going on to university. At that time, she was sharing a flat with a girlfriend, but was planning to move into the attic flat of the main house above us following the remarriage of her father. Penny is great with Carrie, but we can’t pay her much for the hours she gives us. So Eddie makes up for the stingy wages with the occasional music lesson free of charge.
Penny paused before closing the door. It appeared that she had been reading my thoughts. ‘Don’t give up on him,’ she said. ‘He’s got a heart of gold really and there’ll be a long queue.’
I smiled, knowing that she was right on both counts. I glanced up at the picture of me surfing on the beach at Croyde on the mantelpiece. It was nearly a decade ago now but I didn’t look so different, except of course for the much less violent shade of red in my hair. The photograph next to it was one of Eddie, manipulating baby, pram and changing gear, like a real involved modern father, not the slightly detached one he had become. He had more stubble then, wisps across his chin, his curly hair even more untidy and his clothes even more grunge. Maybe I had been able to make a difference after all; maybe I was wearing him down a bit. He was worth the effort, a project that still had some way to go to complete, innocent but knowing, my own man-child.
As soon as Penny left, I turned the saucepan down to simmer and cleared a space on the table for our three rush placemats, laying out the brightly-coloured plates and cutlery and lighting a scented candle. I prepared the rest of the rice ready to boil and poured a glass of wine for Eddie and mineral water for myself. I still just have time for a run I thought, taking a large gulp of water to steady my resolve. Thinking of all the reading I still had ahead of me, I could have done with Eddie putting Carrie to bed for once.
I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. My face was still girlish and attractive, but probably no longer quite teenage daydream material. I take care to exercise and am proud that I still have a toned and slim body. In my twenties, I appeared near-naked covered in mud as an extra in the Sweet Things video with Mick Jagger. It was filmed in The Pump Rooms and I got the part by chance as a stand-in – it was absolutely amazing but it took a long time to live down that notoriety with my friends.
*
My ancestor Caroline Alice Elgar, nee Roberts, was a genuine nineteenth century superwoman. She was born into a distinguished family: her mother’s side founded the Sunday school movement; her father’s served in the army in India. She studied geology with the Rev. William Samuel Symonds before girls did such things and went fossil-hunting with him on the banks of the Severn. She played the piano well; spoke fluent German, Italian, French and Spanish – basically an all-round Victorian goddess. Apparently, she had met her own Edward, or Eduard, as she called him, when she took piano accompaniment lessons from him – a spooky coincidence? Like me, she was quite a bit older than he was. Eddie found me a great Look and Learn giclée print on e-bay: ‘One of Edward Elgar’s pupils was the attractive Caroline Alice Roberts’. You can just imagine what went on in those lessons, can’t you?
So anyway, when her mother died, Caroline went abroad for a while before returning to settle down. She got engaged to Edward, the young violin teacher, much to the disapproval of the rest of her family. He was seen as a gold digger, just a poor tradesman’s son. Besides, her family were Anglican and his Catholic, and that mattered a lot in those days. So not onl
y did she marry beneath her class, but she also rebelled in religion through her choice of partner. He described her as his ‘romantic and delicate inspiration’. I’ve adopted that for Eddie. But it sounds as though Alice was no wallflower; she was full of steel, determined and pretty dogged in her own belief in Edward – real girl power. When they married, his music took wing and he began to compose on a much more ambitious scale. Personally, my favourite is the cello concerto, especially the Jacqueline du Pré version and of course the Enigma Variations. I recently copied out one of the poems that Caroline wrote for Edward as a love gift and pasted it on our notice board to encourage my own Eddie:
And the wind, the wind went out to meet with the sun
At the dawn when the night was done,
And he racked the clouds in lofty disdain
As they flocked in his airy train.
And the earth was grey, and grey was the sky,
In the hour when the stars must die;
And the moon had fled with her sad, wan light,
For her kingdom was gone with night.
Then the sun up leapt in might and in power,
And the worlds woke to hail the hour,
And the sea stream’d red from the kiss of his brow,
There was glory and light enow.
To his tawny mane and tangle of flush
Leapt the wind with a blast and a rush;
In his strength unseen, in triumph upborne,
Rode he out to meet with the morn!
Caroline Alice Roberts, The Wind at Dawn
Our daughter, Carice, has the same name as Caroline and Edward Elgar’s daughter. That was Eddie’s silly idea not mine. She has red hair like me too, but hers is naturally curly like a pre-Raphaelite watercolour. Because of her hair, Eddie gave me a spectacular amber bracelet when she was born. We both share the same soft gentle singing voice, he says.
*
At last, around 8pm, I heard Eddie’s key in the door and then his footsteps in the hall. I shut down the lid of the laptop. Whenever Eddie arrived home at night he usually whistled the same four note melody, something from a musical he once took me to, but there was no whistle that night; he clearly wasn’t very happy. I immediately assumed the pitch had gone badly. I waited to see the face of my genius appear through the lace curtain, my red-cross knight, my lionheart.
As soon as he came in through the door, Carrie ran up to give him a big hug but his expression already told me all I needed to know.
‘Hullo, fishface!’ he said to Carrie and then turned to me. He gave me a light kiss and then said it went OK but then added that he thought they were looking for something completely different.
‘We’ll see,’ he said. I took that as a doubtful, but perhaps not a complete write-off, not yet anyway.
‘So where were you that made you so late?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, I was playing a club doubles match with Hugh. There’s a ladies’ tournament on all weekend, so it was the only slot we could get. Sorry I forgot to tell you again.’
I examined his face intently; he seemed genuine, although it was a pretty lame excuse. From the odours emanating from his sports bag, his tennis kit certainly seemed like it could do with a wash and he knew that I could check on him later if I wanted to. At least Hugh, a champion of justice in my mind, would be a reliable witness if I bothered to ask him.
As soon as I had dished out their food, I left Eddie in charge of Carrie (knowing that I would probably regret this later) and quickly pulled on my running gear. I had just enough time while it was still light. I told him I would eat later and asked him to get Carrie ready for bed.
As I climbed the steps up from the basement flat to street level I pinched myself again to feel how incredibly lucky I was to live here. Because of its largely intact character, the eastern side of the square directly opposite our flat is frequently used as an historical film set, most recently to replicate Belgravia for a BBC production of Sherlock Holmes. The film crew were busy packing up for the day with large vehicles blocking the road, so I decided to avoid them and head south down towards the river, one of my regular circuits. As I left the house I shouted ‘Hello’ to Dottie, the lady who often visits the university professor in the corner house. She was emerging from a taxi with her bags. I like her, she is the one who had encouraged me to enter a half-marathon for a children’s charity later in the year. She is one of those practical, Christian women who has unlimited wells of kindness to share with others, self-sacrificing, a sister of Charity, and who unlike me already possesses a certainty and all that is necessary for salvation.
I jogged down past the fire station and then turned left into Dormer Place just before I got to the bridge at the bottom of the hill. From there I ran past the Catholic church and then diagonally across the Pump Room Gardens, over the main river bridge, past the Post Office and then left into Priory Terrace. I continued past the entrance to the elephant wash and on to Mill Road Park. There I turned back north over the river, watching the water cascading over the weir as I crossed it and shortly arrived at the new Aviary building, where I took a breather. I do love what they have done with it, its mix of glass and steel and exotic planting bringing a small taste of the thrill of the jungle into our suburban lives.
It was one of my New Year’s resolutions to get fit and as usual I had overdone it – cycling, jogging and yoga. This was all part of my training for the half-marathon. I was probably in the best condition of my life, maybe not quite Paula Radcliffe, but I could kick ass and take names with the best of them. I had been gathering sponsors and had the target to collect £1000 to help the starving children in Africa. Eddie’s view on that had not impressed me. ‘What’s the point?’ he asked. ‘It’s a drop in the ocean, and we’ve got enough problems back home.’ Although I clearly disagreed, it was not worth a fight with him. In any case it was my business, not his.
I continued on along the riverbank and passed the spot where we had gone swimming together as a family in the mini heat wave of the last bank holiday weekend; secret swimming, wild swimming, bathing in the deep pool made downstream by the weir, where they used to wash the circus elephants all those years ago.
I felt powerful and strong, fully in my stride. I continued into the main part of Jephson Gardens, up to the Corinthian temple that honoured Dr Henry Jephson; past the obelisk to Edward Willes, the Hitchman fountain, the Davis clock tower, the statue of the three elephants and a boy and, most poignant of all, the Czech war memorial dedicated to the seven parachutists who successfully assassinated SS General Reinhard Heydrich after being dropped by the RAF. On these evening runs, these landmarks were no longer just lonely monuments to forgotten history but newly familiar way marks, each with their own story that illuminate the past in remarkable ways and keep me on track.
I continued on past the small lakes and fountain, where the ducks were still making a racket in the late evening air, out of the park and crossed the Parade back into the Pump Room gardens on the other side of the road. I loved being alone in the outdoors where there was hardly anyone around and I was enjoying the feeling of lightness in my legs in the evening air. As I reached the bandstand, I took the opportunity to take my place on the stage and sing (a little out of breath and certainly out of key) at the top of my voice. I remember it was the song about running up a hill to make a deal with God. Different album but as usual Kate had captured just about perfectly how I felt; deal or no deal.
My attention was caught by a poster for an open-air show tied to a lamppost and I paused to catch my breath and read it.
Enter a dreamlike world full of colour, song and rhyme ruled by a crazy, croquet-playing Queen with very little heart and a very short temper!
That could be me, I thought. An Asian businessman approached me, walking very fast. He was talking intently on his mobile, not looking where he was going and nearly knocked me over as he passed too close. All I could hear was ‘Very good, very good.’
‘So, don’t be late, and don’t lose you
r head!’ I shouted after him. It was the phrase I’d just read on the poster. Later on, when I knew better who he was, I would see that this was somewhat prophetic.
I calculated that I just had time for one more circuit before it got dark, so turned and crossed the road again in front of the Spa rooms, retracing my earlier route down the path to the river by the Mill Bridge weir. Normally, I would have continued across the bridge and run back through the old town, but it was past 8.30pm and nearly dusk, which was when they locked the park, and I still hadn’t eaten. Instead, I decided to take the underpass towards the town that ran under the main park promenade. On approaching the tunnel, I saw immediately that there were two men sheltering within. They appeared to be sleeping rough; they’d built a small camp fire and one of them was bending over a few sheets of newspaper.
Despite their harmless appearance I still paused for a second before entering the tunnel. I couldn’t see very much of the detail of their features in the gloom, apart from the brightness of their eyes. I imagined they might be Tamils or from southern India at least. The way they were singing in unison made me think oddly of the funny elephants in a TV wildlife film that Carrie had been watching earlier that week, flapping their ears in perfect synchronisation. I had passed the elephant memorial moments earlier – three bronze beasts and a boy sitting on one of them, connected by crescent shaped concrete benches. Carrie had recently done a project on them; I had helped her to find this piece from a local history website and of course it has taken on a new significance for us now:
