by Patrick Gale
Vernon sat on the end of the bed while Eustace reverently opened the box. On the cover, Casals’ egglike head had been given a blue filter. He didn’t play the first suite or the third, although he knew Vernon would be more likely to enjoy them, but the challenging fifth. It was in C minor, a key whose darkness suddenly appealed to him. The magnificently sombre C octave with which it began seemed to fill the room, defying levity. The volume was a little high but he didn’t care. He was thirteen. Such things would be expected of him.
They listened in silence for a while, awestruck. At least, Eustace was awestruck. Perhaps Vernon was too, because, when he began to speak, he had to clear his throat, as though tears had built up in there.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think it means anything,’ Eustace told him. ‘There’s no story, or message, or scene painting. It’s just pure music.’
They listened on into the Allemande then Vernon glanced down at his lap pointedly and asked, ‘Do you . . . ?’
The music had taken Eustace by surprise. It wasn’t like the first and third suites, with their heart-on-sleeve joy, their unambiguous dance rhythms. Its high seriousness was a dare. He had left prep school. He was off on his course tomorrow and starting at a comprehensive in the autumn. Everything was about to change for ever.
‘Only if we can kiss first,’ he said.
It was a mad thing to suggest. He had no idea how to kiss other than what he had gathered from films and it was somehow a far more intimate idea, because of its involvement of mouths and faces, than the virile assistance Vernon had in mind. He was startled when Vernon simply said, ‘Sure,’ pulled his face to his and kissed him. They only kissed with lips at first, which was nice though a bit ticklish and Vernon tasted of that day’s lunch, a rather sweaty steak and kidney pudding they were invariably served on Thursdays. But then Vernon pushed him back on to the bed and started kissing him deeply, thrusting his tongue into his mouth.
Eustace wasn’t sure he could breathe then realized he could through his nose. He opened his eyes and saw Vernon’s were tight shut. The weight on top of him felt good. Tentatively he pushed his own tongue into Vernon’s mouth as well, feeling how their tongues slid over each other like fish. He parted his legs, to give Vernon more room and suddenly Vernon was thrusting into him.
The bed squeaked but Casals’ cello was louder. Eustace reached an arm round to hold Vernon, which seemed only natural, but his hand landed on Vernon’s bum, which was much harder than expected, as though Vernon went to PE classes in secret, and all at once Vernon was gasping and swearing and jumping off.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Oh shit. I didn’t mean . . .’ They both looked at where a very obvious wet patch was seeping through the front of his school trousers. Casals now seemed far too loud and inappropriate, like hymns at a party. Eustace rolled on to his feet to turn the record off. Vernon frantically sponged at himself with Eustace’s face flannel from the sink, which didn’t really help.
‘I should probably go,’ he said. ‘Really. Er . . . Enjoy your course.’
And before Eustace had finished putting the Casals record back in its sleeve and into the box, Vernon was thumping off downstairs. From the window Eustace saw his friend walk down the steps outside and not quite get astride his bicycle when Eustace’s mother came back from wherever she had been and leaned against the car door to force him into clumsy conversation. Poor Vernon held the bike protectively between himself and her to hide the stain on his trousers with its saddle.
Eustace thought his mother looked almost flirtatious, as though sensing Vernon’s eagerness to be off and enjoying the power his politeness gave her to force him to linger. But then she released him with a little wave, and lunged back into the car to retrieve a bag of shopping from Dingles in Bristol. And rather than walk smartly up into the house, as she usually did, she just leaned against the car again and stared up at the windows looking, for her, oddly defeated.
Eustace didn’t want her to see him watching so stepped back, discomfited by the glimpse of her less than usual assertive self. He filled the sink with the hottest possible water and rinsed out the flannel Vernon had used, just as he always did now when he used it for the same purpose. The familiarly, oddly seasidey smell reached him in the steam, and made him think briefly of Mr Payton’s startling exhortation during How to Succeed as a Teenager .
‘You are now, most of you, of an age where you can start a life and take a life, become fathers or killers. Though it’s a few years yet before the Law recognizes you as such, in the eyes of Nature, you are young men.’
He was not ready to be a man. All at once the prospect of going to Ancrum for the residential course, which had so excited him, filled him with fear.
Passing down to the bathroom on the floor below, he could hear his mother in the kitchen on the floor below that. He couldn’t make out her words, just her distinctive voice, going on and on with the kind of animation that she reserved for half-truths and talking to Mrs Fowler. She would have one of her headaches, either later on, or the following morning, he could tell. That was probably preferable to her suddenly remembering he was off to Scotland on the train and making a great fuss about luggage and packed lunches and so on.
He locked the bathroom door and, as always, drew the curtains. He tugged down his trousers and pants and made himself look at his lower reflection in the mirror. Then he took down the nail scissors, which had gone slightly rusty in the damp of the bathroom cabinet and, pinching his pubic hair hard between finger and thumb, so that it raised the skin, cut as much of it off as he could. He rinsed it off the sink into the plughole so that it formed a clump he could easily lift up and flush down the lavatory. He looked again in the mirror and was even less satisfied. He wanted to turn back time or at least make it progress no further.
Putting the scissors back in the cabinet, he thought about using his father’s still soapy razor, but decided he was too scared of cutting himself. Then he saw a tube of his mother’s hair removing cream. He opened it and gingerly sniffed it. It smelled fine, if sugary sweet, like most women’s products. He unrolled it enough to read the instructions. Five minutes , he read. He squeezed some out over the scrabble of hair the nail scissors had left behind, smeared it in then quickly rinsed it off his fingers in case it did something odd to his nails. They had recently learnt in biology that hair and nails were made of the same thing.
It began to tingle a little, then quite a lot, then to burn, but he imagined that was to be expected; hair couldn’t simply melt away, after all, and it hurt if you pulled it. He shuffled over to sit on the lavatory, trousers and pants down around his ankles, looked at his watch and forced himself to be brave and cope with the pain for at least another three minutes.
Finally he could bear it no longer and lurched up to rinse the stuff off at the sink, using deliciously cold water. There was a violent stink of sulphur like the time he had cracked a bad egg into a pan. The skin revealed was an angry pink and continued to burn, but it was miraculously hairless. Looking at himself critically one more time in the mirror, trying to see his body as a stranger might, he was not sure it was an improvement, more a drastic alteration.
He dressed himself again after dabbing on some calamine lotion from an old bottle dating from a phase when his mother had briefly worried about sunburn, then retreated back to his room. His mother had stopped talking and was playing Spanish Flea loudly instead.
Supper would be fish pie and boiled carrots because it was Friday.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eustace had never travelled so far from home in his life and certainly not on his own. His mother had lent him a folding, Black Watch tartan suitcase, which she said was lighter than the others. She had stored it with lavender bags in it to prevent it turning musty in the loft and he felt sure it would make his clothes smell like someone’s grandmother so packed it at the very last moment in case.
He had never paid much attention to his clothes before. He wore his
school uniform most of the year but otherwise wore the clothes his mother bought him and which reappeared in his wardrobe washed and ironed. He had black lace-ups for school and Lysander sandals for holidays. His socks were all knee-length and either black or blue, his Y-fronts, all white. His long-sleeved shirts, like his father’s, were all Tattersall checks; their summer equivalents were plain coloured T-shirts. His mother would countenance nothing with a picture or words on it. He had never considered any of this until required to pack the tartan suitcase with seven of everything, plus a jersey in case, because Scotland was colder than Weston.
Then it dawned on him he was not just going on a cello course, nor going for an extended music lesson, but spending a week in a big house full of complete strangers who might judge him for what he wore. He was grateful that his mother had returned from one of her recent trips to Bristol with some new, flared jeans for him and a couple of cheesecloth shirts but decided to save these for later and travel in clothes he had already broken in.
As the journey was to take nearly seven hours, he packed two of his longest books – a collection of horror stories by H.P. Lovecraft, which Vernon had lent him, and E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View . Louis had recommended he read the Forster.
‘You’re the perfect age for it,’ he said in the tone he used in which Eustace could never distinguish kindness from teasing, ‘as it’s all about yearning and escape.’
Come the morning he had assumed he would catch a train from Weston but his mother, not smitten by the expected headache, insisted on driving him to Bristol to catch the train from there.
‘It won’t be complicated changing trains,’ he told her.
‘No,’ she conceded, ‘but you’ve your cello as well as the suitcase with you and it would be a disaster if you missed your connection.’
Although his father always had chores to keep him busy in the morning, he insisted on coming as well. ‘Nonsense. It’ll be fun,’ he said. ‘It’s not every day you go on an adventure like this.’
But actually it wasn’t much fun as his parents’ forced air of holiday jollity and their slightly repetitive questions about the course kept breaking down into little irritated exchanges about his father’s reluctance to overtake lorries.
‘I’m sure they’re going as fast as they can,’ he’d say.
‘If he misses his train, it’ll be all your fault,’ she’d snap back. ‘So, is this woman giving you individual lessons, Eustace, or teaching you all as a group?’
‘I think it’s a bit of both,’ Eustace started to tell her. ‘Mainly it’s ensemble work in little groups but she’ll work with each of us in turn as well.’
Already her attention had drifted back to the road. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You can overtake him now ! Oh really, what on earth is the point?’
As the car was not especially large, the cello case had to lie diagonally across the back seat, over Eustace’s lap and obscuring his view. The boot was full of bags and boxes because his father had decided to combine the errand with a trip to the Cash and Carry afterwards. This meant that his suitcase, riding on top, kept bumping the back of Eustace’s neck and giving off a powerful whiff of lavender bags. He concentrated on keeping his eyes to the front and breathing deeply and slowly in an effort not to become inconveniently carsick.
They arrived on the edge of Bristol for the start of the weekend crush – something catching the train from Weston would have spared him, though he didn’t like to point that out. From cursing and bickering and presenting Eustace with questions, his parents fell into an increasingly tense silence. Then suddenly they were at Temple Meads Station and the squabbling began again as they searched for a parking space. They raced to the platform for the Cornish Scot, which arrived from Cornwall minutes later. The cello had to go in the guard’s van but, as pleased as a child performing a conjuring trick, his father produced a plastic covered bicycle chain and stout padlock and locked the case securely to the guard’s van cage around its neck and upper handle while his mother tied a large label to it which named him as the owner and said Travelling to Berwick-upon-Tweed . Then she insisted on finding him a forward-facing seat and stowing his case on the overhead rack, introducing him to a rather startled woman who looked like a retired schoolmistress, in the hope that she would watch over him. Finally she gave him a hug and a kiss, which was so unlike her it reminded him he had never gone on such a journey without her. His father handed him some spending money for emergencies and a packed lunch Mrs Fowler had made and told him to call them on arrival and reverse the charges. He also made a nervous joke about not talking to strange men. Finally the guard blew his whistle and they both jumped out and closed the door and waved like mad, so that he felt obliged to lift a hand to wave back.
It was a relief to pull away from the platform, which his father had jokily run along to keep him in sight, and to take the Lovecraft stories from his case and settle down in his seat. He caught the eye of the retired schoolmistress, who smiled kindly.
‘Your mother didn’t give me the opportunity to say,’ she said, ‘but I’m only travelling as far as Birmingham New Street. But you’re a big, sensible boy. I’m sure you’ll be just fine after that.’
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘Thank you.’ And he began to read.
Apart from one boy who only had to come from Edinburgh, everybody else seemed to have come up on a train from London. By prior arrangement they had also sat in the same carriage and talked and laughed and shared picnics and stories all the way up. Their train had arrived in Berwick ten minutes before Eustace’s and they were waiting together in a happy, noisy cluster, marked out from everyone else on the platform by their instrument cases. None of them knew Eustace, of course, so there was no sign of recognition until, in a slight panic lest the train head on to Dundee with it on board, he hurried to the guard’s van and unpadlocked his cello. Seeing him climb down with a cello case now, as well as his suitcase, the others cheered and waved.
Then a comfortable woman in a pink tweed coat and horn-rimmed spectacles hurried over saying, ‘Eustace?’ And shook his hand saying, ‘I’m Peg, the Cello Centre administrator. We don’t do surnames at Ancrum.’
She led him across the platform to the group. ‘Everybody, this is Eustace, all the way from Somerset.’
‘Hello!’ everyone shouted. It felt as though he had arrived at a birthday party after the cake had been eaten and the jellies brought out.
‘Do you all know each other already?’ he asked the flame-haired boy beside him.
‘No!’ people shouted but the boy said, ‘Yes. Some of us play together at school. I’m Ralph,’ he added and shook hands with a solemnity that made Eustace suddenly homesick for Vernon.
‘Now,’ Peg said. ‘Home to settle in quickly then out for supper. The minibus is this way.’
Following her, Eustace instinctively stuck beside Ralph, as the only other one who had begun to speak to him. ‘You’re not a cellist, then,’ he said, seeing Ralph had a violin case with him. ‘Sorry. I’m stating the obvious.’
‘Jean has to have a few of us, and a pianist or two, for the ensembles,’ Ralph said gravely. ‘But we still get a lot out of it. It’s musicianship she teaches as much as specific cello technique.’
And, sure enough, Eustace spotted two or three violin or viola cases among the luggage being shouldered all about him. Two people had no instruments at all, only music cases, thus identifying themselves as pianists.
Their instruments and cases were piled into a van by a man Peg introduced as Young Dougie, who must have been at least sixty. Then three of the older boys climbed up front with him and the rest of them boarded the minibus driven by Peg. Eustace decided to sit and see what happened and was quietly pleased that flame-headed Ralph sat beside him. Ralph had kept his violin with him, Eustace noticed, and hugged it on his lap as a mother might a baby with wind.
‘Do you ever let it out of your sight?’ he asked him.
‘Only when I’m asleep,’ Ralph admitted. ‘And,
even then, I quite often reach out if I wake in the night, just to check it’s still there. It was my grandfather’s. It’s the reason I began playing. I’ve just started at the Menuhin School. I’m mainly here because of my little sister, Naomi.’
‘Oi!’ A hand smacked Ralph on the back of the head. ‘I’m only a year younger than you and much more mature.’
Ralph made a scoffing noise but was smiling and Eustace twisted in his seat. A very pretty girl with a savage haircut scowled at him.
‘I cut it myself,’ she told him, seeing him look. ‘My friend has cancer and they can make a wig with it.’
‘But not for her ,’ Ralph said. ‘Our mother was so angry.’
‘Was it very long before?’ Eustace asked her.
‘I could sit on it. I’m Naomi,’ she added. ‘And this is Freya, who is so scared she was sick on the train.’
‘Eustace,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit nervous, too,’ he told Freya, who had a woolly hat on, although it was quite warm, and looked as though she had been crying as well as sick. ‘Are you a cellist as well?’
She shook her head then almost soundlessly said, ‘Violin,’ and gave him a heartbreakingly brief, crumpled-in smile.
Ralph and Naomi had been that Easter, they told him. Just like him, Naomi was taught by a former pupil of Jean’s but they were both students at the Menuhin School. A couple of others, they’d discovered on the train up, were at somewhere called Chet’s and another two were about to start at Wells. More than ever, listening to the casual way they described lives already dedicated to their chosen instruments, Eustace felt the want of his place at Clifton.