by Morag Joss
‘Sara? I can make it in about an hour.’
‘Good. Andrew?’
‘Yes?’
‘For a lesson?’
‘At least.’
‘At the very least.’
An hour later, the rush of excitement that had started with the telephone call had not subsided, in either of them. Hardly able to conceal his joy at seeing her, Andrew decided to play it for laughs. At seven o’clock he strode theatrically into Sara’s house and dumped his cello case, while she stood aside in the doorway, her eyes shining.
‘Cut that out, Poole,’ she said. ‘Cuts no ice round here.’
Andrew growled, swung round suddenly, grabbed Sara round the middle and swung her easily over his shoulder. Ignoring her shrieks, her not very serious kicks against his chest and her ineffectual fist blows on his broad back, he stalked off with her to the music room.
‘Say sorry.’
‘Never,’ she said, her voice upside-down, her dark hair almost sweeping the ground.
He swung her round twice, very quickly.
‘Say sorry.’
Buckling now under his own laughter as well, he swung her round three times.
‘Say sorry, you overrated old tart.’
‘Oi! Less of the “old”.’
‘Give in?’
She shrieked as he began another turn.
‘Give in?’
‘In a minute. Right now I’m being sick in your back pocket.’
He swung her down and set her on the ground in front of him. Her arms remained round his neck, so while she, still laughing, got her breath back, he drew strands of hair off her face and out of her mouth. He bent to kiss her.
She slipped out of his grasp, saying, ‘Sit there.’
Andrew sprawled himself on the black linen sofa in the middle of the music room and watched Sara, barefoot, as she crossed the pale floorboards to the shelves covering the whole of one wall. She pressed the Play button on the compact disc player and turned. The volume of sound that blasted from the speakers behind her was so huge that Andrew almost dived across to cover her ears and save her from it. Then a ripple of sensation which started at the base of his spine began to spread up his back. The hair on his neck rose. Her eyes were on him. She seemed hardly able to move, but then walked almost unsteadily over to the armchair and unfolded herself across it, opposite him.
‘Messiaen. Turangalîla-symphonie,’ he mouthed. She nodded, a little disappointed. She had been hoping that this would be new to him so that she would be revealing a new delight. Andrew stretched out on the sofa and watched her. The music ripped at the air all around them and they stared at one another as if seeking safety, at the same time luxuriating in the wide-open danger of Messiaen’s vast, harmonic fields.
It was too loud for talking and in any case they had always felt the same kind of response to such music. What was there that could possibly need saying so urgently that it would merit interrupting a sound like this, music that was also in its way speaking, and no less compellingly for doing so without words? Talking could wait. Long ago they had agreed that some music couldn’t be kept in the background. There were pieces, and this was one of them, that reduced all talk to babble. So they listened.
But Andrew began to wonder if she was planning to play him the whole thing, which he calculated at around one and a half hours. He almost wished them back in the old vinyl and cassette days, because then Sara would have to get up to change the record or turn the tape round and he could then stand up, break the atmosphere somehow, make her understand how frantic he was for them to make love. Sara was trying to concentrate on the music but, not knowing how to read Andrew’s face, was instead wondering why he seemed so relaxed. Shouldn’t he be as excited as she was, to be lying here like this, with both of them knowing what would happen next?
Then it dawned on her that she’d blown it. That last time, when she had rejected him, she hadn’t been thinking straight. But what Andrew was doing now was showing her there were no hard feelings, but that as far as he was concerned the offer was closed. For him, the moment had passed. Mixed with her dismay that for her the moment had arrived too late, was the pressing question of what the hell she should do next.
She got up and stopped the music. Silence rang around them. ‘Right, let’s be having you,’ she said brutally. Andrew blinked. ‘What have you been practising? You have been practising, I hope, when I was away?’
They both needed reminding that she was not a cello teacher. She was an international cellist. If he was gently making it clear he wasn’t going to open himself up to rejection a second time, then she was making it clear, less gently, that he would not have to because she was certainly not desperate enough to lose any dignity over him. He was here for a lesson and that was just fine with her. He had wanted her, he had let her know it and she had rejected him. He did not want her anymore, and she did not care.
Andrew rose, brought his cello case from the hall and opened it on the floor. Sara crossed the music room and arranged two upright chairs and music stands at the far end. Andrew carried over his cello and bow, sat down and began to tune up, as she glided over to the shelves which held her library of music. In the large room their silent choreography achieved their joint object, which was to avoid touching or looking at one another. She brought some volumes over from the shelves and placed them on the closed lid of the grand piano. As she leafed through them, Andrew played scales. He felt, even with his back to her, that all his disappointment and longing, mixed now with an unplaced fury that things were going wrong again, must somehow be beaming out at her through the back of his head. With her back turned, the only thing that Sara could have said with honesty was that it was wonderful to hear his cello in that room again. So she said nothing.
She placed four single sheets of music on the stand. Andrew looked at it, sat back sarcastically and breathed histrionically, ‘Oo-err! Don’t think I’ll be up to this!’
Still furious, he screwed his face into a mocking, lugubrious leer and launched into ‘Resurrections des Autres’ by Herve Petrescu. Sara sat in the other chair and watched him, refusing to react. The look on his face now was that of someone with a sore tooth chewing on tinfoil. Why was he playing the fool now, when all she wanted to do was kiss him? She tightened her lips round an escaping smile. The music went on. Sara shifted in her chair and listened hard to Andrew’s playing, trying to forget his mouth. ‘Resurrections’ was an early work which Sara had found to be, on first playing it, almost cheeringly comprehensible. But now Andrew was doing such things to it . . .
He began to concentrate on what he was doing. Sara watched him and listened, feeling mean for giving him this to play when he had quite clearly been working hard in her absence. His playing had always been technically fairly sound; now it was close to assured. The tuning, even in this chromatic, edgy stuff, was faultless. At one time he had tended not to shape his phrases sufficiently; now it seemed that he was bringing out of this music all the potential it held and at the same time showing that potential to be slight. Most of all, he had authority. Andrew’s playing commanded attention, as if a voice running under the music were insisting that you stop and listen. He was a musician. He always had been, but now he played as if he really knew it, bowing with an artist’s delicate strength, the tricky fingering simply an interesting test of agility for his long, powerful left hand. And although the achievement was his (and she was not a cello teacher), Sara felt a surge of pride.
Watching him, it seemed absurd that she had once tried hard to get rid of Andrew. He had contacted her out of the blue soon after she had come to live near Bath three years earlier, and practically invited himself to her house. Then, for weeks, he had bombarded her with requests that she agree to give him lessons. Eventually she assented, his quiet determination having so impressed her, or perhaps worn her down. But had she, at the time, really believed that she was taking him on entirely on the grounds of his talent, or had she even then found his brown eyes mesmeris
ingly sexy? Had she just been sorry that despite his early and prodigious musical talent his unadventurous parents had forced him into a ‘proper’ career in the police? It had never quite been sympathy alone that was aroused by contemplation of his body, his long limbs astride his cello, his broad shoulders. Andrew’s rapid promotion and success in the police force had been gratifying, but his frustrated musical ambition was still in quiet spate in him, like an underground river. His marriage added another clot to the thickening discontent in his life, and Sara was almost sorry about that, too. But after nearly three years in which their lives had been periodically intertwined to the point of confusion, whatever she and Andrew might or might not mean to each other now was not something she cared to analyse today.
As Andrew travelled on through ‘Resurrections des Autres’, Sara could hear that he was exposing the piece for what it was. He played quite artlessly, exploiting every phrase for what he could find in it, but giving the music no extra help with tone, colour or dynamics as she almost unconsciously might have done. Very eloquently, his playing revealed that all that was actually there in the score was a succession of tricksy intervals between the highest and lowest notes on the instrument, adding up to banality in abundance. He reached the end of the piece, rested his bow on one knee and gave a patient sigh. There was silence.
He turned to look at Sara and in a faint, tired voice said, ‘What . . . utter . . .’ Sara looked back at him and together they intoned, ‘balls.’
Sara brought her Stradivari cello, the Christiani of 1700, from its case in the corner. After tuning it she began on the piece herself, seeking earnestly for the music’s rewards, which must surely be in there somewhere.
After a moment, Andrew stopped her, serious-faced. ‘It’s not just us, is it? It really is balls. Quite pleasant, faintly interesting . . . balls.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ she said, sighing, laying down her bow. ‘Poor Herve.’
‘Doesn’t bode too well for the protégé and his community opera. Your pal Cosmo Lamb. Is he any better?’
Sara’s mystified face told him she had never heard of Cosmo Lamb. When Andrew explained she said, ‘Oh, I don’t take any credit for him. Or the blame, if it turns out that way,’ she added quickly. She explained about leaving Helene’s number with Herve in Prague. ‘I thought he might have a student or someone who’d be interested. I’m glad he passed it on. Although he wasn’t slow to call in the favour, I can tell you.’
‘Well, I suppose we’ll see what he’s like. Valerie’s certainly impressed.’ The train of thought depressed him. ‘Christ, a community opera. Why the hell did I ever allow myself to get caught up in it?’
Sara said nothing.
Eventually Andrew answered his own question. ‘It’s Valerie. I shouldn’t have agreed. Then there’s Helene Giraldi and the girl. I mean, it’s not that I’m not sympathetic, but a community opera? Community balls, if you ask me. Not to mention all the rest of them.’
‘Oh, now,’ Sara said. ‘Don’t be snobbish about amateurs. Actually, Helene Giraldi was pretty good once upon a time. It can’t be that bad.’
‘No? Try this. The “community” opera is to be based on the life of Beau Nash. The “community” so far is nowhere in sight, so all the main parts are being sung by five people. “Current thinking” includes three costume changes for the chorus, once we find one, who come on every five minutes either as dishonest servants, pretentious Bath gentry or leprous invalids.’
‘Could be worse,’ Sara said, leaving unanswered the question of how.
‘The chorus,’ Andrew went on, ‘it is anticipated, will consist of Boy Scouts and Brownies, none older than eleven. Beau Nash will be played by Phil.’
Sara raised her eyebrows.
‘Phil is Chinese.’
She bit her lip. ‘I see. And you feel perhaps Bath audiences are not yet quite ready for a Chinese Beau Nash?’
They both stared rather hopelessly at the music on the stand.
‘Andrew, I was at James’s flat yesterday. I met this woman, Imogen Bevan’s executor.’
‘Oh, yes. Red hair. Interviewed her. Nice woman.’ Andrew sighed. ‘Sara, please don’t go on thinking about it. You’re not really supposed to know anything about it, you know. I shouldn’t even discuss it.’
‘I know, but why was she so quick to get round there and sort out her stuff?’
Andrew closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You have such a suspicious mind. Dorothy Price works at a busy school. This is their busiest term. She wants to get on with sorting out the contents before half-term because come October she’ll be flat out writing the school panto and whatnot. She asked us if it was all right for her to go in. I can promise you, Sara, there’s no mystery here. It’s just a routine police matter to track down Brendan Twigg and charge him.’
‘Well, yes, if you say so. It’s just—I don’t know—I’d like to help somehow.’
Andrew shook his head again. ‘You can’t.’
He began a series of slow arpeggios. His cello was not a great instrument, but he managed to draw out the deepest, most chocolatey tone of which it was capable. Playing softly, he turned his head and spoke again, rather sadly.
‘Just help me get through this damn opera without going mad or killing someone. They’re pitiful, all of them. Oh, I don’t mean I don’t like them. They’re nice people, all of them. Adele really is sweet. And Jim’s all right, full of good intentions. And nobody could object to Phil. They’ve all got such faith in Helene, and she’s got this ridiculous faith in Cosmo, although from what Valerie says he’s been sponging off Helene for weeks now and still hasn’t written a note.’
‘Play me something. How about some Brahms?’
Andrew stopped. He had memorised the second sonata for her. In her absence, closing his eyes and playing Brahms was the closest he could get to seeing her, hearing her voice. He did not want to ruffle the air around them with an allegro vivace, so he began with the slow pizzicato notes of the second movement, the languorous Adagio Affettuoso. Sara seemed to understand that the mood should not be broken. At the end of the pizzicato he paused, his face sad with concentration, before drawing his bow gently down the strings and sending up a sound so warm that it seemed to rise and wrap itself around them. Over the music, he spoke slowly.
‘Honestly, Sara, I do try not to be cynical about it. But it’s farcical, all of it. Not just the music, but Valerie’s little plan to bring us together. It won’t work. It’s just not going to happen and it’s my fault. Nothing’s changed, you see. I love you.’
For a few seconds Sara could not speak, for the sudden relief that was exploding inside her. Andrew was still playing and she was still cradling her cello between her knees. She rose, first to unencumber herself and then to pull his cello away from him so that they could reach each other. The telephone rang.
‘That could be her,’ Andrew said hopelessly. ‘Checking up. She’ll have got home by now and noticed that my cello’s gone.’
‘I’ll say you’ve just arrived,’ Sara said rather desperately, shocking herself by the ease with which she could connive to keep Andrew here for at least another hour. ‘Start playing something, she’ll hear it.’
They looked at each other, knowing that the duping of Valerie was beginning in earnest. They would be naked together within half a minute of Sara’s getting off the phone. ‘Answer it,’ Andrew said firmly, starting to play scales as Sara picked up the receiver.
‘Herve! Herve, how wonderful to hear you! You’re still in New York?’ Sara turned to Andrew and grimaced. Andrew raised his eyebrows and to Sara’s horror stopped mid-scale and launched into ‘Resurrections des Autres’. She shook her head and shooshed him silently. He ignored her.
‘No, no, the line’s perfect. Still arriving on Sunday? Yes, the sixth. Wonderful, I’m so looking forward! Oh, yes, I’d take a chauffeured car from Heathrow if I were you. Yes, I see. Uh-huh, the flat’s all arranged. Why, Herve, don’t you trust me? I faxed you the address a
nd direc—Oh, good, you got them. What?’
Sara turned again to Andrew and gestured frantically for him to stop. He played louder, impassive except for raising one eyebrow at her.
‘Yes! It is “Resurrections”! No, no, of course it’s not me. I’m speaking to you. It’s er . . . ah . . . um, er, it’s just a recording.’
At that, Andrew made a deliberately loud and crass mistake, went back several bars and sawed laboriously, repeating the error over and over. Sara whirled round with a look of utter fury on her face. Andrew looked up mildly, amused at her powerlessness.
‘Oh, no, only an amateur,’ she said. ‘Work in progress. Yes, very poor indeed, really quite ghastly,’ she added triumphantly.
To this Herve clearly had much to say. As she listened, Andrew began to ham up the music, adding ridiculous pluckings, trills and eighteenth-century grace notes. Now and then he would add a line of his own, so that from time to time snatches of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, ‘Ode to Joy’ and ‘In an English Country Garden’ shoved their way ludicrously through Herve’s atonal undergrowth. Andrew was enjoying himself hugely.
‘No, Herve, please, there’s no question of an unauthorised recording,’ Sara was pleading. ‘Well, yes, of course I understand the royalties issue. And the composer’s own high standards; look, there’s lots to discuss when you get here. Yes, yes, promise. No, you’ll love the flat. Yes, I got your list of requirements. What? No, don’t worry. Yes, you too. Right, ciao for now.’
She replaced the receiver and without drawing breath turned on Andrew. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? What the hell, Andrew? Just what the fuck was all that about?’
Andrew seemed surprised by her rage. ‘Me? What am I playing at? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not playing at. I’m not toadying up to some guy who I’ve just agreed writes crap music. It was only a bit of fun, anyway. Is he so bloody precious he can’t take a joke? Why, suddenly, can’t you?’
