The Age of Discretion

by Virginia Duigan

  ‘Enhancing the daily round. But thanks for the inquiry.’

  ‘Jules, do you think there might be any chance of wangling a couple more tickets? On top of the usual?’

  ‘Hm. Hard ask. Hen’s teeth come to mind. Why, who else do you want to bring? There are two intervals, remember. Too much for Judith.’

  ‘Much too much for Judith. And Joy doesn’t care for opera. She says it would be all right if it didn’t have so much singing in it.’

  ‘It was Debussy who said that, Viv.’

  ‘Well, Joy and Debussy are of one mind. No, I was thinking of Eliza, that’s Geoff’s new, possible – probable, I suppose – girlfriend. And Martin, my new lover.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t had a chance to tell you. What with you going to ground, and everything.’

  ‘Well, I never. Is it the Reverend or the TV director?’

  ‘Neither of the above.’

  ‘Good grief, Viv, you’re out of control. I’ll see what I can do. They won’t be all together, mind.’

  ‘No worries. Anything to keep Geoff at arm’s length from Adrian.’

  ‘Honestly, if Geoff doesn’t get more of a grip he might do lasting damage.’

  ‘Fortunately Daisy says Adrian doesn’t give a rat’s arse what Geoff thinks. Which helps.’

  ‘It’s the twenty-first century. Geoff needs to get himself re-birthed into it. Now, what’s all this about your lover?’

  ‘Well, let me see,’ Viv says. ‘You could say he floats my boat.’

  ‘You could say he floats your boat for starters, Viv …’

  At the Sunday quilting circle Viv and Joy are planning a dinner. Joy has expressed a wish – more of a demand – to give Martin the once-over. It will have to be postponed until the week after the première, however, because Joy has a deadline over a new picture book. Yasmin is doing the pictures, as usual.

  ‘It’s about twin foxes,’ Joy says shortly, in answer to Viv’s query.

  ‘And?’

  ‘A boy and a girl.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘The boy wants to wear his sister’s tutu to school and she wants to wear his britches,’ Joy says, rapidly and rather defensively, and adds that she has plans to involve other animals. If it goes well it might become a new series. The publisher (Viv’s old employer) thinks it’s very timely and up-to-the-minute.

  Viv looks over at Mr Jackson, who is quietly working away on his own. She is prompted to suggest they schedule the dinner for one of his nights off. ‘Then the boys could give each other the once-over too.’

  ‘You reckon they’d get on?’ Joy asks. Her face, Viv thinks, is inscrutable.

  ‘I’m sure they would.’

  Joy says she’ll think about it.

  Viv is discussing the première with Daisy. ‘We’ll make sure Dad’s not sitting next to Adrian.’ A disgusted noise comes down the phone. ‘He is working on reinventing himself, you know.’

  ‘Never gonna happen.’

  ‘I suppose you think it’s not fair on Adrian.’ This is disingenuous.

  ‘Oh, he’s not the problem. Adrian thinks it’s a riot when Dad behaves like a toxic dinosaur. Whereas I think it’s totally fucking unacceptable.’

  ‘I thought perhaps Dad could bring Eliza.’

  ‘Eliza? The trophy girlfriend? Or whatever it is he thinks he’s snatched from the cradle?’

  ‘Actually, she’s quite nice. And quite a good influence. It might be easier all round if she was there. You see, darling, I’d rather like to introduce you to my new man, and—’

  ‘Your new man? From the agency?’

  ‘Mm. Well, sort of. He owns it.’

  ‘He owns it? Blimey. That’s very lateral of you, Mum. Is it legit? What’s his name?’

  ‘Of course it’s legit.’ And even if it wasn’t … ‘He’s called Martin Glover.’ A rush of lust. Apart from Jules, Viv thinks it may be the first time she has pronounced his name to anyone since the significant escalation of their relations.

  ‘That’s – wow. That’s great, Mum.’ Saucer-eyed, she guesses. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Oh, he’s …’ Viv hasn’t had to describe Martin before. Daisy wouldn’t give him a second glance. ‘Well, he’s very bright, with a terrific sense of humour. Quirky. He’s rather like you, in that he’s got in inbuilt bullshit detector. He’s very kind and considerate. Attuned, if you know what I mean. Witty, nice to be with – great fun to be with, actually.’ She hesitates. ‘And he’s very sexy … at least, I think—’

  ‘All right, Mum, you can stop now. Didn’t you say you weren’t looking for romance?’

  ‘Yes, well, I thought I wasn’t.’

  A pause. ‘You really like him, don’t you?’

  ‘You are coming to the première?’ Viv asks Geoff at breakfast. Coffee, toast and newspapers are spread across the table.

  ‘I’m invited, am I?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, you know you are. As long as you promise to be civil. It’s only family. Just without Mum.’

  ‘But with Adrian.’

  ‘Adrian is family,’ she says, ‘for the immediate future.’

  And depending on a smorgasbord of imponderables, quite possibly for the future, period. Geoff goes through some facial contortions but, it is pleasing to see, refrains from groaning.

  ‘Would you like to bring Lize? I think Jules could organise an extra ticket. And I’m sure Daisy would be fine with it.’ She doesn’t say she has already cleared both these propositions.

  Geoff looks up. ‘That’s not such a bad idea, hon. Anything to dilute the alien slime.’

  Viv feels obliged to overlook this, in view of her immediate objective. ‘I thought I might do my bit there, as well. I expect you’ve guessed I’ve been seeing someone lately.’ The someone prompts a warm feeling. My lover.

  Other than tilting his head to the side, Geoff doesn’t display any particular reaction. ‘I thought you probably had. You’ve been out a fair bit, haven’t you? All night, more than once.’

  ‘Would you like to meet him?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll bring him too, then. The more the merrier.’

  Daisy had wanted to know when Viv was planning to introduce Judith to Martin because she wished to be on hand to observe it. ‘She’ll be creaming her jeans, Mum. Or whatever is the senior female equivalent.’ Which had given them both cause to smile.

  The mother–daughter moment took place yesterday. Viv reflects on its specificity as she drinks her coffee. ‘There’s another thing, Geoff, that I’ve been wanting to run past you.’ He grunts. ‘I was wondering if it wouldn’t make more sense for us to start sleeping in separate bedrooms.’

  A pause, while Geoff spreads marmalade thickly on a slice of toast, then munches it. They take a long look at each other. It’s not divorce, but it is a point of no return. Each is regretful; each is relieved.

  He says, ‘I suppose it does make sense, hon. I could move into the spare room.’

  ‘Then we wouldn’t keep waking each other up. You know, when we come in late at night, and so forth.’

  ‘Or late in the morning,’ a companionable grin, ‘in your case.’

  ‘His name’s Martin Glover.’ A renewed rush of lust. Something has just occurred to her. Something she finds remarkable. If you take off the G …

  ‘Retired, is he? What did he do?’

  ‘No, he’s not retired at all. Why would you think that? He runs a dating agency.’ She monitors Geoff’s expression. It conveys surprise, and bemusement.

  30

  THE PREMIÈRE

  For a sense of occasion, nothing beats one of the grand opera houses of the world. Viv and Geoff have converged on Covent Garden from different directions: Viv and Martin from Parsons Green, Geoff and Eliza from West Hampstead. They meet in the Champagne Bar. They haven’t had to shell out for their exceptionally expensive seats, and a degree of splurging is in order. It will be a reliable icebreaker. Not that there tur
ns out to be too much ice to break.

  There is some covert humour between Geoff and Viv as their companions are introduced. And traces of other feelings. A slight bias towards smug in Viv’s case (justifiable, she believes) as her husband and lover monitor one another while ostensibly talking about the World Cup, a subject neither knows much about. But overall, a tricky situation is navigated with aplomb.

  A second tranche of introductions will happen in the first interval. Max Jeffs has sent word he’ll see them at curtain up. Viv is not surprised; she knows how Max is before one of Julia’s performances.

  Daisy and Adrian are running late (deliberately, Viv guesses). They will sit away from the others and further back from the stage; Jules said her power to acquire an extra brace of freebies could only go so far. Let the gilded couple (a phrase not repeated to Geoff) eat cake with the groundlings, she joked to Daisy’s mother. The opera world knows it is several years since Julia Jefferies last performed at the Garden. Everything is ramped up when Jules sings here, her friends tell each other. There is a heightened buzz of anticipation in the spectacular red and gold auditorium.

  Julia has always maintained that those who claim they are not afraid before going on stage are lying through their expertly whitened teeth. Some people won’t talk for three days before a performance. Others take homeopathic remedies for a week to calm the nerves. Julia, however, believes in allowing the nerves free rein. Without them, she says, and without your unfettered adrenaline colonising the joint, you’d risk boring everyone into an early grave.

  For Viv, and for Geoff too, the occasion carries an additional tension. The tenterhooks you’re on when you are close to a singer, Viv tells Martin (who is observing this for himself) are bad enough. For Max, they’re almost unbearable. Viv has found she already trusts Martin sufficiently to confide such a thing.

  Viv and Geoff have a nodding acquaintance with Julia’s agent, Malcolm Foster. One of Julia’s only chosen confidants, Viv recalls with a remnant twinge, until events forced her hand. He is seated on Geoff’s other side. Viv has placed herself between Martin and Max. She is very aware of both men, in quite different ways. This is the first time she has sat next to Martin in any opera theatre. But she has been at Max’s side many times at Julia’s premières.

  It has never failed to touch her, how Max lives through every note of his sister’s performances. He is always the same: uptight and monosyllabic before the curtain rises, scarcely moving a muscle through the entire opera. He remains in his seat at intervals and only relaxes as the curtain falls.

  Tonight she grasps what she had understood only imperfectly, and in part. She can see no change in his manner towards her, apart from a certain flicker in the eyes. But she has more insight now into his reticence, honed over the years. Since Julia made the big-time, Viv and Geoff have known the privilege of premium seats and the advantage of being close to the stage. To be near the conductor as he mounts the podium and is applauded by the audience – Raymond Bayliss is a luminary and receives an ovation. To see the expressions on the singers’ faces.

  The set also receives applause as the curtain rises on a Moscow park. Idyllic, sunlit, crowded with pleasure-seekers. Children, army officers and citizens in their spring finery, playing and gossiping. Everyone enjoying a brief burst of April warmth before a storm.

  All eyes, on stage as well as in the audience, are on the entrance of Julia Jefferies. She is unrecognisable as the Old Countess, on the arm of her granddaughter Lisa, played by twenty-seven-year-old Bridie Waterstreet, making her much-anticipated debut.

  Over the years, whenever Viv has watched Julia perform she has felt as if she were watching a stranger. This time is no exception. But tonight her usual thoughts (this character is someone else, I don’t know her, the whole thing is a magical illusion) are compounded. The illusion has been turned on its head.

  Tonight, on stage, Julia seems to have grown taller. She has turned into an imperious old lady in an ermine cloak and an iron-grey wig slashed with a stripe of white. Forbidding, sinister and – more disturbingly – physically decrepit. She has intimidated the audience without singing a single note. How does she do it? The story unfolding in front of their eyes is enthralling, but Viv is finding it unusually hard to concentrate.

  The first-act curtain follows a magnificent ball, and the arrival of the Empress Catherine the Great against a backdrop of fireworks. Max stands to let the others out, but doesn’t acknowledge them or leave his seat. Julia’s big scene is up next.

  Viv has been impatient to introduce Martin to her daughter. And Daisy makes no bones about stage-managing it. She dispatches Adrian to get drinks, and sends Eliza to give him a hand. She concentrates, insofar as it is possible in the crush, on her mother and on charming her mother’s new man, while giving him the surreptitious once-over. She is at her best (cascading hair, long dress with an Elizabethan neckline), agreeable to everyone except her father, whom she largely ignores.

  Adrian has dressed in the manner of the period, sporting a cravat and a green velvet smoking jacket. He spends time chatting up Eliza (at Daisy’s instigation, Viv suspects) with a scurrilous account of what Catherine the Great got up to with her lapdogs. This relegates Geoff to the sidelines, and stokes the simmering fire. Viv observes Adrian’s eyes flicking between her and Martin, Geoff and Eliza. Apart from the lewd lapdog stories, she guesses he knows very little about late eighteenth-century Russia.

  Martin, however, turns out to know rather a lot since he was, Viv has discovered, a history teacher in a previous incarnation. He is absorbing the intricacies of the present situation with the comedic sensibility that, it has been rewarding to find, is a dominant trait. It also happens, she thinks, to be Adrian’s. Allied in his case to a predilection for hellraising.

  Daisy turns to her father as they leave the bar. ‘You’ve morphed into quite a libertarian, haven’t you, Dad? Adrian’s in stitches. He really admires you. He thinks you and Mum are daringly bohemian for your age.’

  Viv misses Geoff’s expression. If Adrian knew Julia’s backstory he would be even more admiring. She contrives a soothing word to her husband as they return to their seats.

  Like Julia when she first set eyes on it, Viv was unprepared for the impact of the portrait dominating the second-act set of the Countess’s bedchamber. Apart from the scarlet gown and the white stripe in the hair, it could almost be the girl on Julia’s piano, photographed on her fifteenth birthday.

  Max makes an involuntary movement. He may have known it was coming, but he couldn’t have foreseen the effect. The young girl, frozen in beauty, confronting the corrupt and decayed old woman she would become. Viv finds the juxtaposition troubling. It impacts every nuance of the unfolding scene. She has no difficulty concentrating now.

  As the Old Countess dredges from her memory poignant verses from her youth, as she revolves before the misty shapes of remembered friends dancing, the entire audience is as motionless as Max. The filmy peignoir slips from her shoulders, revealing the lines of a sinuous nightgown.

  Raymond Bayliss controls the orchestral sound, shaping and moulding it until it is almost a secondary component of Julia’s voice. And when the final spectral note of Je crains de lui parler la nuit shivers on the air and almost imperceptibly dies away, Viv brushes away a tear. Beside her, Max shades his eyes with a hand.

  Herman emerges from the shadows. In their encounter, the Countess exudes another form of decay. A ruined sensuality, intimate and mesmerising. The audience have become voyeurs. They are half-reluctant yet riveted observers of the creepy power game unfolding before their eyes. The seductive approach of the old woman, in a black nightdress which reveals the outline of her body. The spidery hand as it moves on Herman’s thigh. His revulsion.

  It has never struck Viv with such force: how brave Julia is. How fearless as a performer. And fearless too, in life.

  In the second interval Eliza complains she’s too wrung out to talk. Is that a promise, Lize? Geoff asks, with a placatory w
ink. A loud group of Adrian’s friends has descended on him and Daisy. The others can’t locate the drinks he ordered in advance, until Daisy finds them under the name of Lord Frensham, his father.

  ‘Not entitled to it, uses it when it suits him,’ Geoff mutters to Viv, who is distracted. She has just noticed that Daisy is drinking water.

  The opera ends with a third hologram. The impoverished, obsessive Herman has lost Lisa to suicide, he has provoked the death of her grandmother and been visited by the Countess’s ghost – but he believes he is about to make his fortune.

  He has bet on the first two cards, and won. He sings a drinking song to the assembled gamblers, a crowd of well-born officers.

  What is life? It’s a game.

  Good and evil are only dreams,

  work and honour old wives’ tales.

  What is true? Death alone.

  The vain sea of life provides one refuge for us all.

  Today, it’s you! Tomorrow, I!

  As he calls out the ace, the image of a great card rises from the table and hovers in the air. Herman sees before him an implacable countenance: the face he last saw in her coffin. The features of the Old Countess are superimposed not upon the ace he was expecting, but upon the queen of spades. One eye winks at him. Her revenge is complete. He shoots himself in the heart.

  The curtain drops. A hush, then a thunderous roar of applause. Max is on his feet and the others follow. He looks completely done in. Viv feels the same. She touches his arm. ‘She was sensational. They’re ecstatic.’

  They have said much the same thing to each other on many occasions over the years. Even when an audience has been less than ecstatic about a production, Max and Viv have made up for it. The post-mortems of Julia herself, on the other hand, were always ruthlessly objective.

  Julia hasn’t had to do anything in the third act, other than hang about for her hologram appearance. If I hadn’t had to make like a crone on a playing card, she will say later, I’d be as fresh as a daisy for the curtain calls. This time there’s no doubt about the audience response. Roses rain onto the stage like brightly coloured hail. The decibel rating of the cheering is off the scale.