In the rondo finale the battle for ascendancy between piano and orchestra reached a climax so passionate, so earth-shaking, that when Roman’s arms whipped them all into the final desperate chords Elizabeth thought she was going to die. She physically sagged over the piano as the last notes died away and the audience exploded into frenzied applause. Dazedly she raised her head high, trying to orientate herself. Roman’s face was sheened with perspiration as he stepped weakly down from the podium and walked towards her. The audience was on its feet as he did so, shouting, stamping, clapping.…
‘Amazing!’ Roman shouted over the din of the applause. ‘You were wonderful! Incredible!’
His hand gripped hers, his eyes blazing triumphantly with love and pride as he raised her to her feet. Unsteadily, her knees so weak she couldn’t imagine how they were supporting her, Elizabeth walked off-stage with him.
‘It’s a good job the Bowl has no roof!’ Roman was shouting. ‘Otherwise it would have been lifted off!’
They paused for a second off-stage, the applause drumming against their eardrums; and then, their hands tightly gripped together, sweating and trembling, they walked back on again. The orchestra was stamping its feet, the audience shouting hoarsely ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Encore! Encore!’
They took bow after bow, and at last Roman shouted across to her, laughing: ‘It’s no good! We’ll have to play the last movement again!’
It had been the triumph of her career, and it had been the moment when she had known that her destiny and Roman’s destiny were irrevocably linked, as her destiny with Raefe had been.
The streets of Victoria were beginning to hum with life. As she drove towards their hotel she could see a giant placard advertising their forthcoming concert, and on a newspaper-stand she saw the giant headline, ‘RAKOWSKI AND HARLAND TO MARRY! Concert platform greats to tie the knot!’
She smiled to herself, wondering what the next day’s headline would have been if her pilgrimage had had a different outcome. It had been Roman who had suggested they return to Hong Kong. Roman who had realized that there could be no future for them until the past lay at peace. She parked the car outside the hotel, and Lee Yiu Piu hurried to open the heavy glass doors for her. She smiled at him, walking into the opulent foyer, conscious of the buzz of newsmen hurrying towards the flower-filled room where, in a little while, she would marry.
She pressed the button for the lift, unnoticed by them, wondering why it had taken her so long to realize that this was what Raefe would have wanted for her. He would not have wanted her to live alone and he would not have wanted her to grieve for ever. His great gift to her had been in showing her how deeply and passionately she could love. And in loving Roman the love she had felt for Raefe was not diminished; that love, and the richness it bad bequeathed to her, would betters for ever.
She walked down the deeply carpeted corridor to her hotel suite and quietly opened the door. Princess Luisa Isabel was removing her wedding bouquet from its cellophane cover and laying it carefully on the bed. Jung-shui was surveying herself in the full-length mirror, her sleek black hair decorated with a single white rose, her bridesmaid’s dress emphasizing her willowy slenderness and burgeoning fifteen-year-old breasts. Nicholas Raefe was busily trying to pin a carnation to the lapel of his morning suit, his dark hair tumbling untidily in the way it always did, and in a way which never ceased to make her catch her breath. He was ten years old now, and already had the lean whippy look to him that had been so characteristic of Raefe.
It was Roman who saw her enter the room first; Roman who swiftly strode across to her, taking her in his arms. She leaned against him, hugging him tight, and then he gently tilted her face up to his and said, his handsome strong-boned face revealing none of the anxiety he was feeling: ‘Are all your ghosts laid to rest, my darling?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered softly, loving him with all her heart, grateful for his patience and his understanding and his acceptance of the place Raefe held in her life, and always would.
‘Then, let’s get married,’ he said huskily, and as Princess Luisa Isabel handed her her wedding bouquet, and as Jung-shui and Nicholas Raefe announced that they were both ready for the wedding and had been waiting for her for ages, a deep smile of happiness curved her lips and she turned, her arm in the arm of her husband-to-be, walking with him out of the room and along the corridor and down the stairs, to where the newspapermen and photographers were waiting.
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1986 by Transworld
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Margaret Pemberton, 1986
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A Multitude of Sins Page 59
