by Patrick Gale
As he hung up, his mother put on the most appalling display, at once crying and enraged.
‘You are not to go back there!’ she insisted.
‘But I need to carry on with my lessons or my technique will slip.’
Standing so close reminded them both he had been growing in the last six months and was now taller than her by an inch or more. Since taking up with Jesus, she had stopped wearing scent along with lipstick. She smelled of effort – women’s sweat had a different tang to it than men’s – and of some mentholated embrocation one of her new friends liked to rub into her neck because they were both convinced she still had whiplash damage there.
‘There are other teachers,’ she said, taking a step back.
‘This is Weston,’ he reminded her, ‘not Budapest. If there are, they won’t be as good as Carla. I need a pupil of Jean’s. Anyone else will teach me all wrong.’
‘Don’t be precious.’ She had raised her voice.
‘Music is precious. That’s the whole point. You have to be fussy. You don’t know anything.’ He realized he was raising his voice back at her, shouting nearly. They had never done this but he found he couldn’t stop.
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ She started to work up to one of her choking attacks. ‘I’m not well.’
‘We gathered. Anyway, it won’t be for long. I’m going back to Jean at Easter and I want her to take me on full time.’
‘What about school?’
‘Only till I’m sixteen. Then she can teach me everything I need.’
‘Stop this! Stop this at once!’ his father shouted at them. They were both so startled they stopped and looked over at where he stood, leaning woozily in a doorway. He never shouted, especially these days.
‘Oh darling.’ Her tone was so false it made Eustace queasy, like Dream Topping. ‘Have you taken too many again? Valium aren’t sweets.’
‘I’m aware of that. He goes back to her for lessons and that’s that. We agreed.’
‘But—’
‘We agreed. Or have you forgotten?’
She never gave in to him, especially since Jesus and brain damage had fortified her against all criticism, but on this occasion something in his expression made her crumble.
He returned to Grandpa’s room, she lumbered back downstairs to whichever ladies were visiting and Eustace shut himself away, tuned up and took out his Beethoven sonatas to look at Opus 5 Number 2.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The following Friday Eustace caught the train to Bristol after school, guilty that he had enjoyed airily telling Suzanne and Sasha that he couldn’t go to see Jaws again with them and Vernon as he was staying the night with friends in Clifton. His father had roused himself sufficiently to help him open a bank account in which to sink Granny’s legacy and had gently shown him how to write a cheque to Carla for his lesson and how to go into a branch and write one to Cash when he needed spending money.
He had spending money in his pocket now as well as the chequebook in his duffel bag. It felt very grown-up to stop in the little corner shop in Clifton when he climbed down off the bus to buy chocolates to take with him.
‘Never arrive empty-handed,’ his mother always said. ‘People will always say Oh, you shouldn’t have but they never mean it.’
That there had been some major changes in the household was apparent the moment he walked in. The basement door was never locked when Carla was teaching, so that she wasn’t bothered by having to interrupt a lesson to open it. This had always struck him as foolhardy in a city where there were likely to be robbers around but Carla said the noise and frequent comings and goings would confuse any onlooker as to how many people lived there. This time, as he pushed open the door, glimpsing a lesson still in progress, he immediately saw new things, or things in new places. Furniture, pictures, everything had shifted and the usual smell of oranges and cinnamon had gone. Though still dramatic and full of interesting objects and Louis’ big canvases propped here and there like so many pieces of theatre scenery, the house seemed to have lost the quality that so seduced him when he first set foot in it. Or maybe he was just older and more experienced. He had seen other houses. Ancrum. Vernon’s house. Maybe this one needed a good clean.
In Carla’s last lesson of the day, her student was playing a piece he had learnt with her early on – La Cinquantaine by Gabriel-Marie – and not very well in tune. This had never happened to him before. Cello lessons had always seemed to exist for him in a self-indulgent bubble setting him apart from the rest of life, in particular from school. But of course they were lessons and, as with any lessons, a teacher, however good, was bound to repeat themselves with each pupil, bound, at least, to cover some of the same ground. It was no different from Latin teachers always using Caesar’s Gallic Wars or maths ones, trigonometry tables or slide rules. But still, he felt a small convulsion at what felt like betrayal.
And there was none of the usual smell of Friday-night cooking. It was something of a ritual with Ebrahim to cook supper or at least to bake something, to unwind after a day’s rehearsing. And Fridays when he didn’t have a concert were always cause for making an extra effort.
Eustace rounded the first-floor corner into the kitchen. Nothing was cooking. There was no Ebrahim. Louis had a newspaper spread out on the table and was cradling a bottle of beer as he read. Offering chocolates in a house where supper seemed unlikely to happen felt odd, but Eustace held them out anyway.
‘I brought these,’ he said.
Louis looked up, smiled his big bear smile.
‘Hey! Man-Cub,’ he said and surprised Eustace with a big hug. He smelled of man and turps and the funny cigarettes he smoked, which Eustace suspected were cannabis but didn’t like to ask. ‘You’re growing at long last,’ he said. ‘Soon going to have to stop doing this,’ and he ruffled Eustace’s hair, which made him feel about eight but in a good way. ‘How tall’s your daddy?’
‘Six-two, I think.’
‘Huh. Soon lose your puppy fat. How’s your mum?’
‘OK. Weird. She nearly died, and made friends with Jesus when she didn’t.’ It felt so good to talk lightly at last of something so ghastly.
‘Never a good idea. How is your dad coping?’
‘Um . . . Could I sit?’
‘Oh. Sure. Here.’
As Eustace took a seat at the table, Louis fetched him a beer.
‘Wait. Shit. How old are you?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Drink it very slowly. Do you want lemonade in it?’
‘What’s that like?’
‘Less nice.’
‘Then no thanks.’
Louis sat again. His bulk was comforting in the same way Rowena the deerhound’s had been. The cello downstairs stopped for a bit then started again, now with Carla unmistakably playing as well. A simple Bartók duet, another piece he used to play with her.
‘So how’s the new school? Is it rough?’
‘Actually I quite like it. It’s just a bit big and noisy but . . . I’ve got a new name. Stash.’
‘Stash?’ Louis wrinkled his nose. ‘Can I keep calling you Eustace?’
‘Of course. Where’s Ebrahim?’
Louis took a swig of his beer. He sighed, turned a page of his paper, although he wasn’t reading it now.
‘Ebrahim left me,’ he said.
‘Oh. I’m . . . I’m sorry. I thought you two were . . .’
Louis smiled wryly. ‘So did I. He met someone else and he’s joined them in New York. All his things went off in a huge crate today. He even sold his piano.’
‘No!’
‘He gave Carla a second-hand upright to replace it. She’s here full-time now, of course, which is lovely. But, I dunno.’ He shrugged and said, ‘Het is heftig . We’d been together since, well, for fifteen years. The house is full of gaps. You try not to think things matter. They’re things. They can be replaced. All of them. But then things have a way of standing in for people. He would go on long concert tours
but I coped because all his things told me he was coming back. But . . . your bed is still where it was, Man-Cub. And all my dirty books you like to read.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Eustace, it’s fine. Curiosity is good. You must take down and read whatever books interest you.’ Louis smiled sadly, reached out to ruffle Eustace’s hair again. ‘Sorry. Bit pissed. I said I’d make pasta.’
‘I can help.’
‘Uitstekend! ’
They both stood, Louis a little unsteadily, and Eustace put a large pan of water on to boil.
‘Let me teach you something,’ Louis said, his big hands reaching into a basket for an onion and into a cupboard for a tin of tomatoes. ‘Fetch me butter from the fridge, would you?’
‘Sure.’
‘So . . . Every student’s mother tells them to start tomato sauce by frying onion and garlic. But the best tomato sauce, the only tomato sauce you will ever make after tasting this, involves no frying at all and no garlic. Open that can and tip it into a pan.’
Eustace obeyed.
‘Now peel the onion. That’s it. Top and tail and peel and slice in half just once across the waist. Now put the whole thing into the tomatoes. Yes. I know. Weird. But that’s what you do. Now a really big slice of butter. About three or four ounces. Bigger. That’s it. In it goes.’
‘Really?’
‘Trust me. Now, on to simmer, really low. That’s it. And a lid on it. Now we measure out our pasta then we can sit down again. You do nothing for about forty minutes then boil your pasta, fish out the onion chunks and throw those away and . . . perfect, creamy tomato sauce. You will never forget, especially once you’ve tasted it.’
They heard the last pupil of the day leaving with her mother and soon afterwards Carla joined them. She greeted Eustace warmly and cannily bound him to her afresh with a dismissive comment on how the pupil would not be coming much longer as she did not seem to be able to hear when a note was sharp or flat and how she was beginning to think it was not a defect that could be remedied by instruction.
‘It’s like teaching driving to someone with no understanding of speed or the difference between forwards and back. I mean tuning is so fundamental . God, I need a drink. Thanks, Louis.’
Over supper, which was indeed revelatory in its simple deliciousness, she quizzed him in detail about the course, in particular the other cellists and whether they, too, wanted to be taken on by Jean at sixteen.
‘The hard truth is that, though she’s an idealist, and wants everyone to have their lives transformed by Haydn, she is also brutally realistic about excellence. And she will only ever have space and energy to teach a handful of full time students. Between now and the Easter course we have to improve you as much as we possibly can. You’ve no school exams, have you?’
He shook his head.
‘Good. So what are your two weakest points as a cellist?’
‘Carla . . .’ Louis began but she raised a hand to emphasize that the question was important.
Eustace thought carefully. ‘Agility,’ he said. ‘My left hand is OK in fast passages but my right lets me down and my string crossing gets inaccurate and can’t always keep up.’
She nodded and he gained the impression she already knew this but, Jean-fashion, needed to hear that he knew it as well.
‘And the other weak point?’
Here she smiled slightly to show that she knew she was being a bit intense but also that they both understood why.
‘Finding high notes first time,’ he said.
‘You know we all cheat,’ she said. ‘The greatest cellists probably still have little pencil marks or even scratches on their fingerboards to help them find some of those notes without hesitating. But yes. We can work on that. It’s a confidence thing and a muscle-memory thing, and both can be built. Talking of which, did you make this sauce?’
‘Louis showed me.’
‘Memorize this recipe,’ she said, ‘and you will never lack friends.’
And so saying, she brought fruit and cheese to the table and diverted the conversation into easier areas, asking him about friends at school while she and Louis contributed their own tales of secondary-school friendships. Each in turn spoke of a great love from their teens. Louis’ had been another boy at his school who had brutally dropped him and taken up with a girl the moment his father found out and threatened to move him to a different school. Carla hesitated a moment, glancing at Eustace before her confession.
‘Are you old enough for this?’
‘He’s fourteen,’ Louis said. ‘Plenty old enough.’
And so she confessed how she had been crazily in love with her best girlfriend at Ancrum but far too innocent and young for her age to realize their feelings could find a physical expression.
Her words petered out.
‘What?’ Eustace asked.
‘Fourteen is far too young,’ she said, ‘and it’s past my bedtime and probably past yours. Night both,’ and she kissed them both a little drunkenly and went up to bed.
Eustace could not believe he had been so naïve. ‘So . . . So does Carla prefer women?’ he asked.
Louis smiled. ‘Prefer implies that it’s a choice. It is very rarely a choice with any of us.’
‘Is she OK? She seemed a bit sad.’
‘Well . . . We both miss Ebrahim. Three in the household worked well for us. Carla and I are both naturally rather intense and his mischief kept us on our toes. And with him gone, it’s depressing how often we feel like a straight couple with a dead sex life. It is SO past your bedtime, Man-Cub!’
‘Yes, yes, but . . .’
Louis sighed, measuring his words like precious pigments as he cut them both a thin slice of cheese. His eyes, which so often looked almost black because they were so deep set, caught the light from the table lamp and flashed green. He rubbed a hand through his short hair.
‘She would kill me for telling you even this much because, well, she’s your teacher but . . . She has recently lost someone too. Like I lost Ebrahim.’
‘Another woman?’
He nodded. ‘She was more in love than I’ve ever seen her. They both were. It seemed so absolutely the real thing. They were going to set up home together, keep cats, grow vegetables, the full menu and all four courses. Then something happened and the . . .’ Eustace sensed he was about to say a very rude word but pulled back from it at the last moment. ‘The other woman changed her mind and cut her off, just like my friend Lars did at school. No explanation. No contact. There is nothing more brutal because it gives you no closure. At least Ebrahim looked me in the eye and explained, so I could see it was beyond persuasion or argument. If ever, Eustace or Stash or whatever we call you now, I prefer Eustace, God I’m drunk. If EVER you love someone and they decide they love someone else, NEVER try to argue them back in love with you. It will only make them love you less. Now come on. Bedtime.’
He led Eustace back down to his usual little bedroom in the basement, found him a bath towel, put a new bulb in the bedside lamp so that the room, which also had Ebrahim-gaps, looked cosier. He started looking at the books on the shelves before he left.
‘Don’t read Genet yet,’ he said. ‘It’ll only worry and depress you and adolescence is bad enough. Frankly you’ll learn more from the trashy stuff. And the comics. Borrow whatever you like, OK? Just bear in mind it’s trash, it’s fantasy and being gay doesn’t mean you have to drop everything and move to New York or San Francisco. And you can prefer string quartets to Donna Summer. Just, you know, be yourself. I’m going out for a bit but you know where everything is. Night, Man-Cub.’
He closed the door behind him but Eustace stepped over to open it again as the lack of a window in there disturbed him. He saw Louis heading up the steps from the area to the pavement, light from a streetlamp glinting off the studs on the leather biker jacket he was now wearing.
He was so busy wondering where Louis could be going at an hour when everyone else was in bed and then so rapidly drawn int
o poring over a book of cartoon strips from some gay magazine in America, that it was only at three in the morning, when someone bumping into a dustbin woke him and he found he had fallen asleep with the light on and his cheek pressed into some outrageously exciting pictures by someone called Tom of Finland, that he realized Louis had recognized and greeted his secret self without Eustace having made any declaration.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Through that winter and into the early spring, Eustace’s life settled into a fragile stability. He found various ways to make school and home bearable. At school he did well at maths once again and slipped steadily and without panic to the middle of the class in other subjects. He learnt that nobody much minded in such a competitively sporty school if he skipped football and rugby sessions, beyond awarding him a D in his report; as a hopeless player he could only prove a liability and as a cellist he could not afford wrist or finger injuries such as Tyler or Jez so often displayed.
As for home, his parents now seemed barely to interact. It was tacitly accepted that his father was afflicted with depression, if not actively suffering a nervous breakdown, for which the family GP continued to prescribe Valium. As a result of this, his father now spent most of his days in bed or, if dressed, then asleep in a chair. Pursuing her now ceaseless round of early morning Communion, Christian socializing, prayer groups, bible study and evensong – for which friends would drive her to Bristol Cathedral – his mother left him to the care of the humourless cook and whichever shiny-eyed volunteers might visit his room. Eustace found it easy enough to avoid them both in the name of homework, of which there was actually very little compared to what had been set at St Chad’s, and cello practice, which they both understood was a duty without end. The schoolwork and cello practice were genuine; he felt entirely justified in pursuing them. They very rarely ate a meal together. In fact the nearest he now came to family mealtimes were his Friday evenings at Carla and Louis’ kitchen table, where he felt he could be himself, uncensored and genuinely interested in whatever the two adults had to tell him.