“So you are happy to play? What will you choose?”
It dawns on me slowly that I have somehow agreed to play my cello live on Italian television. I feel faint. The sweaty pricking in the palms of my hands is as familiar as a tattoo. I keep my mouth closed to stop my heart from bursting out of it.
We go out into the square outside the building. The front of the hall is a columned portico with wide steps running up to it. The steps are wide enough to take a chair, a cellist, and an instrument. The crew buzz about with lights and angles, holding little meters up against my face and the cello’s spotted front.
Nadia and Mr. Williams have joined me in the square. They both think it’s perfect that I should play, right here and now. I’m not as certain.
“What have you got to lose?” asks Nadia. “This lot aren’t going to let you get away without. You’ll make a bigger fool of yourself if you fuck off right now.” She gestures to the cameraman and the man who originally started talking about the idea.
“Thanks for your support,” I say, and the makeup woman steps in between us and cocks her head at me like a sparrow. She wipes a little something under my left eye.
“And you look good.” Nadia changes tack.
“You look ruddy marvelous,” says Mr. Williams. “Absolutely glowing.”
“What are you going to play?” Nadia asks, and I realize with horror that—in my panic—I haven’t given it a moment’s thought.
“La Follia” is my favorite piece in all the world, Corelli’s version, the one that David and I saw that terrible night in Paris. It seems like a lifetime ago now, but I still know the slides and the stops, the swoops and the segues as well as I know my own hands.
The cameraman moves me, three or four times after I’ve sat down, to get the angle of the light just right. I look down at my legs; I’m wearing jeans and suede ballet flats for my television debut. My feet are dusty from the streets and the market.
The little square around the building is typical of the town. There are houses on two sides and the third, opposite the hall itself, is a gateway; an arched bridge wide enough for a car to go under. The building above it is derelict and pigeons peek from the broken windows.
In the center of the square is a green and leafy patch of ground. There is a bench among the shrubs and an old man sits on it, his flat cap keeping the sun off his head, his shirt unbuttoned almost to his waist. He pays no attention whatsoever to the kerfuffle in front of the exhibition hall. A thin road runs around all four sides of the tiny garden.
I have had to borrow a bow from someone inside the exhibition. I bounce it against the strings a few times, making sure I understand its weight, getting used to the feel of the grip against my fingers.
There is a sizable crowd around the steps now and I look around for an exit, a route out past the people. Nadia stands in the only space I could leave through, reminding me to stay.
“Nadia, have you got any water?” My lips are dry, my tongue thick against my teeth.
She passes me her bottle and I sip, trying not to smudge the lipstick that the makeup lady has carefully applied. “You can do it, Grace,” Nadia whispers.
Someone is waving at me from the edge of the crowd. It is Marion, grinning madly. Beside her, Shota raises both his arms, giving me a double thumbs-up. He looks like a boy again.
“Are you ready?” Renato asks, and I nod. It is now or never.
I squint my eyes against the sun and it occurs to me, at that second, that Nikolai Durnov might see this broadcast. Nikolai might watch this and know that he didn’t defeat me. I will play for the other girls, the ones who weren’t as lucky.
* * *
I put the bow to the strings, my fingers in position for the first singing C of “La Follia.”
It is wrong. This is not my song anymore. This is not the tune this cello deserves. The madness is all behind us.
I curl down and strike out the first wild notes of the “Libertango.” Nadia whoops as she realizes what I’m playing and I look up at Mr. Williams’s face, full of joy. This is our tune, our team song.
I close my eyes and play like I have never played before. As I reach the very end of the fingerboard, my fingers pulsing with the pressure to stay on the strings, the friction of the sliding note buzzing in my arm, I look up and out at the people who are watching. I forget the cameras, I forget the pressure.
This is what I was born for.
I skim across the faces as they listen, see how much people are enjoying the music. My heart is flying.
I look from one side of the line to the other, right across the tiny gardens.
There, standing underneath the archway on the other side of the square, unmistakable and as beautiful as ever, is David.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My bow slows down across the strings; it is as gradual as it is involuntary.
I am struggling, through a net strung across my mind, to remember the next phrase. David is wearing a cream-colored suit. I cannot find the strength to put enough pressure on the strings. His hair is slightly wild, which suits him. I can hear the music pouring away. His face is soft; there is sorrow in it. I almost miss a note; instead I play it weakly and at quarter speed. He smiles at me, a half smile, tentative. I hold my bow in position, perpendicular to the string but no sound comes. His palms are open, his arms extended slightly towards me at his sides. I stop playing altogether. A pigeon flies from one of the windows above the archway and David looks up. The flapping of the pigeon’s wings is the only sound in the square.
My mouth forms a silent shape. It is his name.
My heart pounds in my ears.
It takes a second to realize that there is another noise, that music is flying into the air beside me. I notice David take his eyes from me and look to my left. I turn my head to follow his gaze.
Nadia is standing beside me like a warrior. In her left hand is a violin, her chin juts out in defiance over the instrument. In her right arm, like a sword, is a bow. She is playing the “Libertango” without me, above me, instead of me.
She is playing it for me.
I take a deep breath, press my bow back onto the strings. As I count myself back in, identify the refrain that Nadia is playing and where it comes in the piece, she and I lock eyes. When I strike the note, tear through it like paper with my bowing arm, we are one.
Nadia has started from where I left off—close to the end of the tango—and we go straight into a second run.
I look up at David. His arms are slack now. He has put his sunglasses on and his expression is difficult to read. Part of me wants to shout, Please don’t go! I could never face Nadia again if I did, but I don’t know if that will stop me.
Another line of melody joins Nadia. Mr. Williams, stooped over like the old man he is, has somehow found a violin. He is playing the steady rhythmic line he played in my dining room, back in another world. I don’t know where his violin came from but I smile at him and he raises his head to nod back at me.
The three of us are looking at David.
In front of me, Shota is undoing his viola case. Beside him, Marion is signaling to other people. They are all quietly turning fine tuners, tightening bows.
The sound is awesome. There are about fifteen people standing a few feet below our stage on the steps, curling music into the warm afternoon.
“Again,” Nadia shouts to me as we approach the final eight. I smile and nod vigorously.
We play it again, but faster.
People are whooping and shouting, clapping and stamping.
This is what the “Libertango” was written for.
For defiance.
For the hot air, the vivid sun.
For lost lovers returning.
* * *
The TV crew are absolutely delighted with what they have. Our raggle-taggle band included some of the world’s finest strings players, people who regularly play Carnegie Hall or the Vienna Musikverein. Mr. Williams is beside himself to have played with Sho
ta Kinoshita, one of his favorite viola players of all time.
It takes a few minutes to get my bearings, to work my way out of the crowd and through the well-wishers. When I look across to the other side of the square, David has gone. For a while, even the idea of him melts away into the city. Other makers want to show me their instruments. People want to know why I chose a cello front with such a large knot on it. There are questions and introductions and meetings.
“I’m going back to my digs for a sit-down, Grace,” says Mr. Williams. His eyes are shining but he looks tired. “I shall have a nap and be right as ninepence for the concert.”
I’d forgotten about the concert. More important, I’ve forgotten that I shall be sitting on the winners’ rostrum, collecting my award in jeans and dirty suede flats unless I find something more appropriate to wear.
“Nadia.” I pull on her shirtsleeve. “I have about an hour in which to find an outfit for tonight.”
“And shoes,” she says, looking at my feet and raising her eyebrows.
“Will you help me?”
“Definitely. I’m your girl.”
We say our goodbyes, explaining that we’ll be at the concert tonight, that we’ll be at the after-party and happy to chat.
Shota is leaning with one arm on his viola case, the other arm around Marion’s shoulders. “I like your friends,” he says. “Neat little trio. I take it you’ve played that before.”
“We have,” I say. “Nadia, this is Shota Kinoshita and this is his wife, Marion.”
Nadia blushes a little; she has seen Shota in concert and is a fan.
“You’re an amazing player,” Shota says to Nadia. “You’ve really got something.” He hands her his card. “Drop me a line, would you? I’d really like to stay in touch.”
I nudge Nadia with my elbow, grin at her.
“She reminds me of you at that age,” says Shota. He points at me. “That’s how good she is.”
Later Nadia tells me she was dying to add, “I’m so much better than her,” but felt the situation deserved more gravitas.
“What an opportunity, though,” I say to her as we shuffle through rails of clothing, all impossibly small, even for me. I wonder if David thought I looked different; I have not been at all careful about food since I last saw him. I have enjoyed every single thing that has passed my lips.
There is no word from David. I have checked my phone a few times. I am cool about it because he knows where I am. He knows which hotel we booked and he knows that the concert—and the awards ceremony—is tonight. I wonder if he knows that I won.
“Anyway,” says Nadia, pulling a long blue dress from the rack and holding it out in front of her. “I can’t go off and be a musician until I’ve finished my symphony.”
“Or gone back to school.”
“What if I don’t go back to school? What if I go straight to work? Learn on the job?” She holds the dress out towards me.
“Ask Shota about that. We’ll see them later. Make the most of his experience and his advice.” I touch the fabric of the dress. It is the blue of a duck’s egg, delicate but strong. “Do you think? It’s a bit pale.”
“It’s beautiful,” says Nadia. “I’ll ask him, but he has to understand my commitment to the symphony.”
She says this with calmness, with a played-down determination. When she talks about this project I have no doubt that she will see it through to its very end. I wonder what made her do it, what made her stop her frenetic teenaged life and let this thing take hold in the way it has. I wonder if she even knows.
In the changing room, I zip the dress up at the side. I would never have picked this color or probably even this style. I favor things that are short and bold. This is long, grown-up, and absolutely perfect. There is no need to hitch it down at the sides or tug the straps to stop them falling off my shoulders. It is beautifully tailored. When I look in the mirror, I see my mother. I am now the age she was when I was born and, in this dress, I look just like her. And then I realize why: this is the modern—sophisticated—version of the dress my mum bought to watch me play in Nikolai’s showcase, the dress she never got to wear. It is the exact same shade of blue. It’s like a message from her and I know I will buy it, whatever it costs.
“What do you think?” I open the curtain and show Nadia what the dress looks like on.
She gasps. “It’s like something from Hollywood. Fuck the violin makers; you could go to the Oscars in that.”
“Shh,” I say to her and tell her to stop swearing.
“No one here speaks fucking English. Or hadn’t you noticed?” She raises her penciled-in eyebrows, challenges me to continue. “Hurry up and buy it. We’ve got to get shoes and I’m starving.”
I hadn’t even thought about food. In the changing room, I sit on the small stool—back in my jeans—and get my phone out to text Mr. Williams about supper. We need to eat before the concert.
There is one message; it is from David.
you were amazing.
I lock the phone and put it back in my bag. I don’t delete the message and I feel like I am betraying my friends for that. “Come on, I still need shoes,” I say, but it is not what I’m thinking about and I feel like a liar.
The shoes are as easy to find as the dress was, as if I am being helped by fortune and the fates.
* * *
We have left late to eat and I have arranged to meet Mr. Williams at the little bar near our hotel. They do pizzas and pasta. We can eat properly after the concert.
When we get there, he is already in his seat outside the restaurant. He leans casually back in the chair, his legs crossed and his beige suit barely crumpled. He looks fantastic; his cream Panama hat leaves just the sideburns of his white hair sticking out. He takes it off when he sees us and jumps to his feet.
I have a box with my dress in; it is wrapped with ribbon and the box alone looks like it’s worth every penny I spent on the dress. I put it beside my chair with the shoe box.
“What a day,” he says. “I slept like a baby. Too much excitement.” He winks at me. “It was wonderful.”
“If he turns up again, he’s not sleeping in my bed.” Nadia doesn’t look up from the menu as she says it. We all know exactly who she means.
“He can share with me,” says Mr. Williams, and grins.
“Your bed, as you call it,” I say to Nadia, “is actually my bed.” We stop talking for a moment to order drinks and food. The heels on my new shoes are small, but I still avoid alcohol so I won’t trip on the stage later on. “I know the beast and, actually, I’m pretty sure he will have gone again.”
“Really?” asks Mr. Williams. “Paris to northern Italy just to see you from afar.”
I nod and shrug. “I wouldn’t put it past him. And he won’t have been able to get a hotel room anywhere nearby.”
“That’s true. The closest I found was Milan,” Mr. Williams says.
“So let’s not worry about it,” I say with a nonchalance I don’t feel.
“Especially when we could worry about what a cock you’re going to make of yourself tripping over the hem of your dress tonight.” Nadia takes a huge glug of the orange juice the waiter has brought and looks very pleased with herself. “I’m only kidding; I’ve never seen anyone I actually know look so amazing.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” says Mr. Williams. “I’m so utterly proud of you.”
“Thank you for making me do it,” I say, and I nearly cry but manage to hold it together. I’m sure tonight will be an entirely different matter.
* * *
I don’t look like me once I’m dressed. I look like a sophisticated and able woman. The way the dress hangs makes me look like someone with a figure I would envy and a bank balance I would covet. I don’t look like me, but I do look like the woman I would rather be when I have to stand up in front of all those people in an hour’s time. I definitely look like the person I want to be in the Strad magazine and all the promo pictures I’ll splash all over
my website to take full advantage of this prize.
I shout through the closed bathroom door, “Nad?”
“Yes?” she answers from the bedroom.
“Are you ready to go?”
“Yep.”
“Do you want to go down to the foyer, then, and wait with Mr. W.?”
I can hear her wandering about in the room. “Are you going to make a grand entrance?”
“Exactly that. And I don’t want you to see me first.”
“I’m out of here,” she calls back, and the room door slams.
When I come out, I sit quietly on the bed for a few moments. This room is lovely, the floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a tiled terrace and the sunlight floods in. I treasure the silence.
It is lovely to be still.
I check my phone one last time before I leave it on the bedside table. There is nothing more from David, although emails from dealers are queuing up; all asking to meet me before I leave Cremona.
I need to avoid the dealers until later, even though they will be teeming around the city. I already know from a glance at the emails that the value of the stock in my shop has shot up—however arbitrarily—overnight. It will have even paid for the dress.
In the corridor outside our room, I practice walking like someone who would wear this dress. I see my knees through the fabric and try to concentrate on making my gait slightly less enthusiastic.
I choose the stairs over the lift, thinking it’ll be good practice for getting up onto the stage. The stairs open onto the reception area, the lifts are farther over by the bar, near Nadia and Mr. Williams.
“Ah, Ms. Atherton.” The receptionist calls me over. “A gentleman left this for you.”
My lips flick an involuntary twitch of a smile. David’s style is so classic. I know without having to ask that it will be from him. When I see my name spelled out in his black fountain pen, in his looped and cursive handwriting, it is no surprise.
Goodbye, Paris Page 22
