by Morag Joss
Valerie looked over now at Adele standing next to Phil who was quietly talking to her. It wasn’t true what people said about Chinese people looking inscrutable. Phil was from Hong Kong but he had such a kind face. It was unusually patient, she thought, watching him speak, for someone as young as he was, no more than about twenty. Adele was looking somewhere past his shoulders, her face conveying nothing unless, perhaps, there was a sadness there behind the indisputably lovely blue eyes. With a slight movement she tilted her head to its usual angle and the light caught the gleam of the straight fair hair that poured down her slim back. She was beautiful, and Valerie was not sure that that did not make Adele’s narrow life seem even sadder. She would never have a professional singing career—or any other career, come to that—because although the voice was a glorious, superior instrument, and she would know lines of music by heart after one hearing, she would always sing like a mechanical doll. Whatever the song was about, it would be delivered in the same perfect tone, the words having no more significance than as vessels to carry the thrilling, singing liquidity of the gorgeous but meaningless notes.
Helene was back in charge. ‘I am so excited, everyone, that I can introduce to you this evening our real live composer! I heard from this young man less than three weeks ago and I told him right there and then on the telephone that we’d love him to come and do our opera with us. So he came straight down from London with Poppy. He’s got the most marvellous credentials but I won’t embarrass him by telling you all about him—he can do that himself!’
Cosmo looked furtively round the group, blushing unattractively.
‘And the super thing is that we’re to have Poppy, too. Poppy is to be our stage manager and will also oversee all the costumes and props, won’t you, Poppy? Poppy’s got a proper theatre background, haven’t you, dear? Although she’s been working in aromatherapy and massage more recently. And I know this will embarrass them but I’m going to tell you—that we’re getting both Cosmo and Poppy but they’re only accepting Cosmo’s fee, which I think is just so marvellous of them and what it’s all about, sharing and making music and not about money.’
Valerie, glancing over, caught Jim’s eye and exchanged a look with him which said: Helene’s keeping the expenses down. Valerie was grateful for Jim, whom she thought of as a sensible, organised kind of man, probably in his early sixties. He was a little too ex-navy to be exactly Valerie’s type and rather starstruck with Helene, which Valerie found unflattering to herself, but he brought a measure of bearded, modulated calm to the group which, under Helene’s sole direction, was inclined to flutter.
‘And for the duration of the project they’re staying here with me. They’ve been getting to know our lovely city and Cosmo’s been doing all his research. And Poppy’s managed to get a little job as well. And the house is just so alive again! Which is so lovely, I do so love being surrounded by all their creativity.’
In another silent exchange Valerie and Jim agreed that, even for Helene, this was going a little far.
Poppy was now leaning forward with her round bottom firmly embedded in the back of the sofa cushions. She stretched up, straightening her arms and planting her hands on her knees, and looked round. Valerie noted how much Poppy would benefit from a thorough waxing, starting with the upper lip.
In a deep, unsmiling voice she said, ‘We’re totally committed to this project, Cosmo and I. We think it’s just tremendously exciting as a project, and we’ve got tons of ideas. And of course we want to get tons of input from you too. After all, it’s a community opera. And I’ve got lots of ideas about how we can really get the whole community involved. So, if I can kick off with a few logistics, I’m making myself available to the project on a daily basis, but please try to avoid Tuesday and Thursday mornings unless it’s an emergency. You can access me at any other time, whatever, okay?’
She stared round in the silence that followed. What kind of emergency should we be expecting in a community opera? Valerie was wondering.
‘I mean, please don’t think I’m getting all kind of bureaucratic about it, but I’m actually working two nights a week on Mondays and Wednesdays and it’s quite demanding and it might get kind of manic if I don’t just set some boundaries now and I hope everyone understands, okay?’
‘What do you do, Poppy?’ Valerie asked pleasantly. ‘Helene said you were in the theatre. Are you working at the Theatre Royal? Stage managing or something?’
Poppy closed her eyes and raised her thick eyebrows. Then she opened her eyes and looked languidly at Valerie, shaking her head from side to side slowly.
‘No, actually. I was doing a bit in London, prop-making and stuff, just filling in while I was doing my course. But there’s no real work in theatre these days, that’s why I was doing this course. I mean, I’m practically a fully qualified acupuncturist and homeopath. Now we’re in Bath I’m doing two nights a week in a care home for the elderly. The Circus Nursing Home, just along from here.’
‘Right,’ said Valerie, knowing she had just heard a prepared speech and thinking, Aha, so she can’t get a theatre job, and they must need the money. She looked over at Jim, who was stroking his beard, but his raised eyebrows told her that he hadn’t clocked that one.
Cosmo was standing up now. The earlier unsightly blush that had spread over his face had settled back into an uncomfortable mottle over his cheeks. The rest of his skin looked too fine and white, and his lips too fat, red and petulant for a man. He was not even successfully boyish, since his long, downy hair was receding fast from his high pink forehead and looked like a thinning, damp, mohair shawl slipping slowly off the back of his head. His bulging eyes, crustily myopic, together with his narrow sloping shoulders, round belly and short legs, gave him the air of a viable but unpromising foetus, rather startled to find itself on its feet and wearing a jacket and baggy trousers.
‘Right, folks. I’m, ah, Cosmo. As you’ve heard.’
He was looking at the ceiling, resolutely addressing the air.
‘I’m, ah, delighted to be here. Helene suggests kindly that you may want to know a little about me. Well, I’ve been involved in music from, ah, birth, you might say. My father’s a musicologist, now retired, and my mother taught maths. I always say I got the best out of both of them, as I’m the only child! Anyway, usual stuff, degree in music, ah, composing since university, various things, choral, ensembles, piano. Some London performances, including Marthe Francis’s debut recital at the Wigmore, some youth commissions, based in London, went to Prague earlier this year. And the reason I’m now in Bath is thanks to my teacher and mentor Herve Petrescu’—he paused to allow the name to impress them deeply—‘who was the reason I went to Prague. That’s about it.’
He gave an embarrassed, slightly sardonic smile in Poppy’s direction. ‘It was hard to believe at first that the Circus Opera Group of Bath would approach Herve Petrescu in Prague for suggestions for their community opera maestro, but you did, and so there you are. And here I am.’
He gave a little mock bow to a little mock applause, led by the beaming Helene. Then, with an almost right-angled bend of the wrist, he pressed the back of one hand into the small of his back, took two or three steps away from the group and turned on his heel to face them. He raised his other hand, pressed his fingers and thumb together and, frowning at his fingertips as if they held something small, interesting and wriggling, began.
‘My music, you see, depends on a degree of, ah, perceptive prominence so that the least identifiable or neutral processes mainly act on developments related to time, while the, ah, most identifiable or marked processes are perceived as patterns.’
Poppy gazed at him rapturously and nodded encouragement. Cosmo licked his lips.
‘So conceptually, my music, my art, corresponds to crossing a new perceptive threshold, which takes on an almost thematic, ah, function. Only almost.’ He smiled, sensing that his listeners needed that reassurance. ‘But, and this will be clear to everyone, this implies, I feel nec
essitates, a degree of rethinking vis-à-vis the theme, apropos the principle of textual, and contextual, integration.’
Adele, who had been sitting in the window seat with the platter of biscuits on her lap, announced flatly with her mouth full: ‘Fourteen.’
Cosmo looked helplessly at Poppy, who addressed the room earnestly: ‘And that’s why this process of consultation is so crucial. So, right, are there any questions for Cosmo or myself? Or can we take that as all agreed, then?’
Poppy and Cosmo exchanged a look across the silence. Cosmo folded his arms and for the first time looked almost relaxed.
‘Great. Looks like everyone’s happy, then. So, we’re not going down the Jane Austen route, right? And we’re definitely not having the Romans and the, ah, hot springs. Great.’
‘Thirteen,’ came the slightly muffled voice from the window seat.
AS ANDREW came through the door Valerie yelled from the kitchen, ‘Andrew, get in here!’
Christ, how could she know? He entered the kitchen tentatively.
She was bringing a little casserole out of the oven.
‘Just sit down while I tell you. Here, chicken and rice. You must be starving.’ She put the dish on the table, lifted the lid and plunged a fork into the steam. She began to stir the contents round with such speed and ferocity that the fork became a blur. But she was smiling.
‘Gnash. Gnash. It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Come on, eat!’ She clanged the fork against the side of the dish and pushed it over.
Andrew, dumbly suspicious, sat down.
‘Beau Nash. Brilliant theme. Good title, isn’t it, Nash? Or maybe just Beau? Anyway, much better than anything on Jane Austen or the Romans.’
Andrew chewed and nodded, interrupting Valerie only to thank her for getting him some supper. ‘It’s very nice. Thank you. Especially since I had to miss the rehearsal. I’m sorry I was kept late.’
‘Doesn’t matter, eat up. I’ll tell you all about it.’
Andrew had never seen Valerie quite like this. He managed not to groan when she told him that she had suggested that Cosmo write in a large solo cello part, and that Poppy had made a note of it.
‘You’ve got to meet him. And Poppy too, of course. He’s obviously brilliant, obviously going places,’ she said. ‘He’s been studying with someone, not sure of the name, obviously the best, anyway. Harvey something.’
‘Herve. Herve Petrescu,’ Andrew said. ‘Personally I think he’s overrated. But sure, only the best work with the wonderful Herve Petrescu.’ He could not share with Valerie the news he had heard from Sara that evening over the bloody cup of tea, about the new commission and Herve’s imminent ‘residency’ in Bath. Nor could he share the moment when Sara had told him, apparently regretfully, that Petrescu would be taking up most of her time. Nor did he say that his first wild hope, that Sara was regretful because long rehearsals with Herve would prevent her spending most of her time with Andrew, had quickly died, because he had detected in Sara some considerable susceptibility where Herve Petrescu was concerned. And least of all did he mention to his wife the stomach-souring jealousy that he now felt at the very mention of his name.
‘What does he look like, this Cosmo character?’
‘Oh, he’s young, younger than me. Than us, that’s to say. Late twenties, early thirties. Not conventionally good-looking. Brown hair.’
‘And the girlfriend?’ Andrew asked, trying to steer his mind away from the thought of Sara and Petrescu together.
‘Older than him, quite an organiser. Did stage management originally. She was doing a course on aromatherapy and stuff when they came here, now she’s working in a nursing home. But a sweet girl, rather plain. I expect she mothers him, yes, that’s what he’d need. A bit of mothering from an older woman . . .’
Andrew scooped up the last of the rice and managed to maintain his rhythm of placid chewing. Was it because, after his evening with Sara, he was better attuned to hear it, or was it his imagination that was making him think that in Valerie’s voice he was now picking up just the tiniest edge of the same susceptibility?
CHAPTER 8
PLEASE, JAMES, PLEASE. I can’t have him here. I just can’t.’
‘Sara, darling, isn’t it a heaven-sent opportunity, to have him there with you? There’s bags of room, isn’t there? I can picture you both having a lovely creative time of it, a “period of intensive rehearsal”, in your country retreat. And then you get your pinny on and cook a nice little supper and warm his slippers . . . and then after that, I mean after you’ve done the washing up, well . . .’
Speaking from Brussels, the mockery in James’s voice travelled well.
‘Don’t! Yes, I’m sure he’d love it, I know all about his reputation. Yes, all right, there are five bedrooms and an acre of grounds, that’s not the point. It’s so embarrassing. Of course I can’t have him staying here. Please can he stay in your flat? Camden Crescent would suit him perfectly. Puh-lease, James? I mean, you won’t even be there.’
‘And he won’t mind having an address that’s a well-known scene of a recent serious crime? Possibly popular with terrorists? Probably on the open-top tour bus route by now? Yes, we’ve heard. Andrew Poole rang yesterday.’
‘Oh, James, look, you shouldn’t be flippant. That poor woman’s dead. Anyway, Andrew knows who did it. Thinks he knows. What? Oh, because she had a row with someone in a shop. It could have been you or me.’
She could hear James giving a slightly guilty murmur at the other end. Or was Tom giving him a shoulder rub?
‘Look, the point is I can’t have Herve at Medlar Cottage.’
‘You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?’
‘No! No, I haven’t! And you’ve got a nerve! I have not slept with him. And so what if I had, anyway?’
There was a muffled laugh, followed by a sigh.
‘James, tell Tom to stop that at once. James? James, you are the limit. Stop laughing at me. Why are you so chirpy, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be exhausted and stressed-out with that new works for piano thing you’re doing.’
‘Oh, I am, I am,’ James giggled. ‘I can’t think why I was asked to do it, after the things I’ve written recently about contemporary music, but there you are. Never again, though. I know now why they get someone different to do it every year: it’s because nobody would do it twice. I’ve got to do all these programmes, four recitals featuring three new young composers each, but for God’s sake, don’t ask me if they’re any good. I’ve no idea. In the end you might as well pick them out of a hat.’
Sara protested, ‘Oh, come on, you must think they’re good.’
‘No, honestly, darling, what I’ve been through, trying to decide what to play. I got dozens of scores, mostly bollocks, and unreadable. And then you get all the misunderstood little wannabes ringing up, whining about the selection. There’s no pleasing them. You’ve no idea what some of these people would do to get their stuff performed. So, what’s Herve like in bed? You must have slept with him.’
‘I have not slept with him! Look, I just want to borrow your bloody flat. Is that so difficult?’
‘You haven’t? In that case you’re one of the few, from what one hears. Ah, wait, yes. Of course, I see. You’re considering sleeping with him, and having him as a house guest would be awkward in case you do and then it doesn’t work out. That terrible silence at breakfast. Yes, darls, I do see.’
‘James, you are the most smug married bastard I have ever known. You couldn’t be more wrong. I just want my house to myself. I never even actually invited him—he just kind of assumed.’
‘Whoa, whoa! Stop! Plenty! What? No, sorry, babe, that was me talking to Tom. He’s spilling. Trying to get me drunk.’
‘James, let him have Camden Crescent, please. I mean, it’ll mean a bit of rent, won’t it? And if I’ve got him somewhere else all lined up, it’s a fait accompli, it lets me off having him here, don’t you see?’
She could hear his obvious glee, even though he pro
bably had his hand over the receiver, and some more conversation in the background.
‘Are you there? Look, Tom says to say’—James’s voice grew wavery with laughter—‘on balance, we don’t mind taking Herve’s money, he must be making plenty. So, sure you can have the flat for Herve until we get back. It’s fine with us, as long as we get a blow-by-blow of what he’s like. You know, in bed. We think it’s so funny.’ He dissolved into laughter again.
‘Sometimes I hate you two, you big, ugly fairies.’
‘Love you to bits, babe, you are such fun to tease. Big snogs from Tom. Bye!’
PEOPLE WHO live in English cities are actually proud of how little they know about other people around them, Sara thought. She was sitting at the Lambridge traffic lights on her way to James’s flat and looking straight ahead wishing, if not pretending, that all the other cars didn’t exist. Perhaps in cities everywhere it has become a virtue not to notice your neighbours. We didn’t like to ask, people say, having overheard screams and blows from next door for months before the fatal battering. We did wonder, they murmur after the hospice ambulance as it bears away someone in their street who, they’d noticed, had recently lost a lot of weight and all his hair. We never really saw her is the boast of those so careful of their neighbour’s right to privacy that they inadvertently uphold also her right to lie dead for weeks in a lonely house before either the stink or the buzzing eventually proves more compelling than the observation of good manners that forbade, at the point when it might have done some good, any concerned knocking at the door.
But by whatever means death comes, it is never long before prurience dressed in the clothes of shocked concern does come knocking as if, in expiation for neglect of the living, the well-being of the corpse can be enquired after. As soon as it is safe to go and have a good gawp, people do, demonstrating that it never was good manners that kept them away but a violent distaste for being thought nosy. And if nosy is what they are being now, well, it’s not a vice of which they are going to hear themselves accused by the deceased, is it?
