Lights in a Western Sky

by Roger Curtis

  ‘Wait. I’ll climb back up to you.’

  Then – just like now – I was flustered and clumsy.

  ‘You’ve torn it, you silly boy.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘Mother will be livid.’

  I do not think the playing in the chapel had ever left my mind. And as the sound intensified it evoked an episode that was not unfamiliar. Even Beethoven would have flinched at the violence of the struck chord, and the expletives that followed.

  ‘Eugene, what have you done?’

  My sister was more rational. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘Melanie. You’ll go to your room and remain there till dinner. As for you, Eugene… come here.’

  As my cries faded in my memory into a concoction of like episodes and Beethoven, the branch we had been staring at regained its uncompromised girth.

  Melanie said, ‘Look, I can almost reach it.’

  ‘Shall we then?’

  ‘Mm, not sure. But we could come back one day in old clothes.’

  I wanted badly to tell her that my punishment at the hands of my mother had been no more than the blow; that being locked in the attic until the following morning had let me dwell undisturbed on the images of her body as I attempted to free her. The piece of torn cotton remains to this day between the leaves of my wallet – where it will stay. And the branch? Well, if one looks closely there is still a scar where I carved away the offending twig with my penknife. And I have that too.

  I will not dwell on the years that followed. Melanie went to St Paul’s Girls’ School as a day pupil, and I to a far less meritorious boarding school near Taunton called Hatchett’s. After delivering me there, Berenice never came again. But Melanie did whenever she’d saved up enough pocket money. When holidays came our first thoughts were always to escape to the Gardens. Hours at a time we would have together, for Berenice never varied her practise routine. We knew the Gardens like we knew each other’s face: every path and shrubbery, almost every tree. And hours of dreaming of foreign lands, hidden in the lush vegetation of the greenhouses.

  Our path led us between the great temperate glasshouse and the pond that, until the previous week, had hosted a skating rink. We ignored them. Our destination was that nearby little temple of sweltering heat where even in mid-winter huge water lily pads float in their tank above giant golden carp, and festoons of flowers fall to the surface from the roof. There was no doubt about our meeting of minds. The memories came flooding back.

  ‘Look, Eugene!’

  ‘Oh!’

  I could not believe there was still a notice telling us that a single lily pad could support the weight of a child.

  ‘Help me up. I’m smaller than you. This one, near the edge.’

  ‘One, two, three… hup.’

  ‘I’m on.’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘Look at me, Eugene. I’m floating.’

  ‘Get off, quick. Someone’s coming.’

  ‘It’s moving away. Hold it, Eugene.’

  There was tremendous splash, answered immediately by a voice from the door. ‘Hey, you kids. What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Run!’

  We ambled on, two black figures against the white snow. There was no plan, but this was no aimless wandering. Like marbles rumbling in a bowl our destination was precisely determined. So at last we found ourselves looking up at the great pagoda – that relic of pre-empire, inert and seemingly impregnable in its red and green livery, that neither of us had dared mention.

  In those days the door at its base had never been open but that had not deterred us, with a builders’ ladder nearby. On the third tier there was a panel that could be prized out. We went there several times, that last summer holiday, when I was back from boarding school and Berenice was on one of her tours. It happened the day she was coming back, and I suppose that might have precipitated it. I mean the knowledge that the opportunity might not come again. But we were too naïve to realise that our presence would not go unnoticed. The clattering of footsteps on the stairs below brought about a rapid semblance of decency. We recognised the red and perspiring face of one of the gardeners.

  ‘My God, what have you two been up to? How old are you? Right, get your coats on.’ Suddenly his eyes gleamed. ‘I’ve seen you two before, haven’t I?’

  I don’t know what I would have done in his position. Nothing, I think. But he’d caught us once before picking flowers. He took us to the head gardener and a policeman escorted us home. Berenice had just returned and her bags were still unopened beside the piano. She could not recognise compassion – or did not choose to.

  ‘… I’m just reporting what the gardener thought he might have seen, Madam. It could, of course, have been his supposition…’

  But she would not accept the lifeline that had been offered.

  ‘Is it true what the gardener said, Eugene?’

  ‘He didn’t see anything…’

  ‘See or not, is… it… true?’

  ‘We only…’

  ‘Only? Only? You have violated my daughter. You’ve contaminated her with… your filth… your father’s… The violence dissolved into groans of distress.

  Later, as I lay on my bed, Berenice thundered at the piano. That evening Melanie was taken to an aunt at Acton. I can still hear her screaming at the door. I nearly broke the window off its hinges trying to crane out, but I saw only the car departing.

  I don’t know why it was me that stayed in the house. Aunt Isabel would not have me, I suspect. But in the days that followed it was like I was being held under scrutiny. There were even fleeting kindnesses, as if Berenice were eliminating the possibility of some redeeming feature in my character before making a final judgement.

  ‘Do you know how to make tea, Eugene?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. I can make it.’

  ‘When you bring it we can talk for a bit, before I begin on the Shostakovitch. Eugene, it’s high time we talked. Perhaps if we’d done so sooner this wretched incident might never have happened.’

  ‘I’ll… make your tea, Mother.’

  How sharp is the knife-edge on which fateful decisions rest. How small an action need be to have monstrous consequences. I put the teacup on the piano.

  ‘You see, Eugene, there were… difficulties in my life to which you were… through no fault of your own… well, a party. When I have found it difficult to treat you as a son…’

  It was then that she saw I had placed the cup on the polished black surface. Even I could not have anticipated the violence of the response, except that it ended, as it always did, with the instruction to get out of her sight.

  A few days later Melanie and I were back at school. I wrote but nothing ever came back. From time to time I saw her at events where it was deemed appropriate for we children to be present, but always in a crowd, and mostly at opposite ends of a room. The last time was soon after she’d met Piers. Berenice had just completed her cycle of the Beethoven sonatas and the recording company had honoured her with a small reception and obviously not known better than to invite me. They were too engaged to see me approach.

  I heard Melanie say, ‘… so Piers will be staging Madame Butterfly. He’s wondering who to cast as Pinkerton.’

  ‘Yes, it’s proving quite a challenge.’

  It was the first time I had seen Piers. It was difficult to account for the vehemence of Berenice’s response.

  ‘Then I suggest the lowest the gutter can provide.’

  Melanie’s eyes widened. ‘Mother?’

  ‘Oh, I see, Berenice,’ Piers exclaimed, giving her undeserved credence. ‘Your theory is that a performance might be enhanced if the artist has experience of the events…’

  ‘Take no notice of her, Piers. She’s winding you up. She has this th
ing about… male roles…’

  It was then that they saw me. Melanie seemed pleased.

  ‘Eugene, what a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise for me too,’ Berenice said. ‘I thought you were still in the States.’

  ‘An invitation went to my London address. I happened to be in town.’

  ‘Then I must have a word with the office. Their administration is appalling. You know, Piers, that on my last CD they spelt my name Bernice.’

  ‘That is atrocious. By the way, Berenice, is this person who I think he is? You must introduce us.’

  ‘Melanie, you do it.’

  ‘Piers, this is my brother Eugene.’

  ‘Of course! I should have recognised him instantly.’

  Melanie looked concerned. ‘Why?’

  ‘The hair! The black sheep of the family. Isn’t that what you called him once, Berenice?’

  ‘Mother?’

  And so it went on. I made my excuses and left. There were stairs to the exit at the other end of the room. By the time I reached them Berenice had been enticed to the piano and had begun to play. As I looked down I saw Melanie detach from the group and look around. Foolishly – and wrongly – I abandoned the thought that she might actually be looking for me.

  On one of my earlier visits from the States I had plucked up courage to see her. But she and Piers were holidaying in France, and no one seemed to know where. Rashly I had confronted Berenice instead.

  ‘Mother, I’ve come to ask you something. Something that as your son I have a right to know.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Why this coldness persists. As I’ve got older I’ve come to realise that the crime you accused me of doesn’t justify… this alienation. If my sister can’t forgive me…’

  ‘No she can’t forgive you. She’ll never forgive you. You’ve ruined her life.’

  ‘But when I meet her I get no sense of that.’

  ‘You don’t know half what she’s told me. People don’t change, Eugene. If it’s in your character, it remains.’

  ‘Mother, you’re living in a bygone age.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk about it. My head is simply throbbing and I’ve got a recital tomorrow. Just please recognise that where Melanie’s concerned you’re wasting your time. Perhaps time will heal it… but I doubt it. Come later in the week if you want to talk about matters of a more… domestic kind.’

  So I’d continued to believe Melanie resented me for the harm I’d done to her – the reason I’d always kept apart. But as we stared up at the pagoda I saw her face, flecked with snow. There was that wry smile again and I knew to my horror that all along I’d been wrong.

  ‘It was the third tier, wasn’t it, where…’ I stammered.

  ‘It was the best, Eugene. The first and the best.’

  ‘Then I wish I’d known.’

  ‘Come on, it’s time for some tea.’

  ‘They won’t be open in this weather.’

  ‘It said four-thirty on the board. We can just make it.’

  We paid for our teas and carried our trays to a table by the window, in the failing light brighter than the rest because of the snow on the bushes outside.

  I said, ‘I suppose losing a husband made Berenice what she was. Don’t you think?’

  ‘After our… father left us she had no interest in men.’

  ‘No interest? She had a grudge against all of them. And from her perspective I suppose I’d turned into one.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, I think we should go back.’

  ‘You’ve not finished your tea.’

  ‘I… don’t want any more.’

  ‘But we’ve…’

  ‘It’s maybe for the best.’

  ‘What are you trying to say? Are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ Melanie put her hands to her cheeks in a gesture of wretchedness. ‘I have to go. You stay. I’ll leave the key under the pot by the door. You can post it through the letterbox. The blue-rinse brigade has got others to get in.’

  She got up from her seat, upsetting her cup as she reached for her coat, and rushed for the door. I found her outside, crying into her handkerchief.

  ‘Mel, you’d better tell me. It’s something you found, isn’t it? When you were looking through her papers.’

  ‘Partly that.’

  ‘Come back into the warm. Come on.’

  I grasped her hand, half-dragging her back inside. She mopped at the pool of spilt tea in an effort to fend off the moment of telling me.

  ‘Oh, this is difficult. She wrote, you see, just before she died. She must have known she hadn’t much time. What she said I didn’t believe. I didn’t want to believe it. I thought it was the vindictiveness of a malicious and lying woman.’ She paused. ‘She said the evidence was in the desk.’

  ‘Is that what I saw you trying to hide?’

  ‘Yes. I was so confident it didn’t exist I even let you watch me look. But it was there.’

  ‘So what was it you found?’

  I had to strain forward to hear her reply. ‘Your adoption papers,’ she whispered. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. I’ve got them here. Look, you’d… better take them. We’re not brother and sister, Eugene.’

  ‘Then what are we for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Beyond what I’ve told you, I don’t know.’

  ‘And now, assuming it’s true?’

  ‘We can stay friends, can’t we?’

  I believed I’d lost her. The one beacon in my pointless, barren, stricken world. My longing, day after day, to be reunited with her, all come to nothing. As for Berenice, with my dream of her demise fulfilled, she’d still managed to play her trump card.

  ‘Come on,’ Melanie said, ‘I’ll need to drive you to the station before the snow gets too deep. And before Piers gets here.’

  ‘You go on ahead. I’ll stay here for a few minutes. I’ll catch you up.’

  I watched my beautiful ex-sister in her long black coat – no Hepburn or Garbo could have held a candle to her – stepping, as I imagined, out of my life. I thought of drowning myself in the lily pond, or hurling myself from the top of the pagoda. But I knew I couldn’t do that to her.

  Outside the Gardens I followed the pavement where it led, and found myself in Richmond. I happened upon the library and in a quiet corner looked at the papers she had given me, turning them over and over to be sure.

  I arrived back at the house two hours after she’d left me in the cafeteria. I thought she’d gone already and looked for the key under the pot. It wasn’t there. Then the door opened.

  ‘I waited for you to come.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Thoughts passing through my mind, I suppose.’

  ‘No Piers?’

  ‘He… rang to say he’s still rehearsing. I thought I’d make some tea.’

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, tea. To bring you back to reality.’

  While Melanie went upstairs I stayed to put my coat on the hall stand. Funny how things choose their time to happen. The tag at the collar broke and I bent to pick the coat up. There on the floor behind the stand, pretty much obscured from view, was a framed picture, face to the wall, covered in dust. I remembered it that way since my childhood, but had never given it much thought. Now I was curious and turned it round.

  It was a not very good painting of a man seated at a piano, hands raised from the keyboard, as if about to receive applause. A crony of my mother, no doubt. A tear, imperfectly repaired with adhesive tape, snaked its way across the canvass. I turned it back against the wall and went upstairs. Back in the salon I tried the keys of the piano, bring
ing Melanie from the kitchen.

  ‘I didn’t know you played.’

  ‘I don’t, but I always wanted to learn. She would never let me even touch the keyboard, whereas you…’

  ‘Had lessons and got nowhere. Well you can still learn. In fact you can have the piano, as it’s mine now.’

  ‘Still miserable recompense.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  They were the stalling words of someone relieved enough to tease, though I could see no change in her expression.

  ‘While you were away I went through her papers again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought there were issues we needed to resolve.’

  ‘Like who I am, as if I care?’

  ‘You will care. You know she kept all her correspondence. You want us to look?’

  Two hours later there was still no sign of Piers and dozens of Berenice’s letters lay strewn across the floor.

  Suddenly Melanie said, ‘I think I might have found something. Look at this. Read it.’

  The letter had been typed, probably, as I later realised, to obscure any admittance of emotion. I read: My Dear Berenice. I have written this so that it will be waiting you when you arrive in London with little Eugene. I fervently hope you will be able to read it well before your first concert as these words will not be welcome. To come to the point, I will not be honouring my agreement to follow you to London after my last recital here in Budapest. Such is the power of love over fidelity. I have done my best to shield you from my affair with Clementine, but can no longer spare you distress. I will leave the public arena for a while, and it is best that neither you nor anyone else will be able to find me. What, then, about little Eugene? Though I have tried hard to persuade her, Clementine will not countenance looking after my son and sadly I have capitulated. I will send you all his papers, and a substantial sum of money has already been paid into our account with Coutt’s, which will continue in your name only. I am also shipping the Bechstein that has been in our flat here. So you see I do have a conscience. We have had good moments together, Berenice, in spite of your intransigence and temper, but they are best put behind us. Cherish my son if you can – after all, the public has come to think of him as yours – and who knows, he may have his father’s musical talent. Be brave, Berenice. Affectionately, Anton Kessler.