by Angela Huth
‘Silky, Spot, Tabitha, Zeus – Zeus, Firle,’ she shouted, ‘unwind!’ Poodles and man looked up at her. Poodles sheepishly unknotted themselves with some skill. ‘Roger,’ the woman added, ‘really. You’d better go quickly.’
She snapped shut the window. Roger, nodding, tried to wave. But as he raised the hand in which he held the leads, he succeeded in lifting three of the poodles off the ground. The woman snorted her contempt and made for an opposite table. She left behind her a sickly smell of Diorissimo which made Hans sneeze. He had not apparently otherwise noticed her scarlet shadow hanging over him.
Virginia knew how it must have been for them. Nineteen thirty-eight, about. Rosalind the Raver, hit of the gossip columns with her fabulous legs and cupid’s bow mouth, had made her name in bright colours. Sandy, the mild gentleman with startled eyes and a willing nature, met her at the height of her successful season.
It was not long before they made the mutual discovery that each of them possessed what the other one lacked. Rosalind had life and style. Sandy had the money and the name. And somewhere or other something like love came into it.
So one night after dinner at the old Berkeley Hotel, probably, Sandy gave Rosalind a lot of champagne in his flat, where she had seriously gone to see his Matisse, and started fumbling with the fringes of her dress. Quick to take a hint, Rosalind helped him with her zip, then his flies, and they made love on the sofa. Rosalind squealed with delight, said she had never been so far before, and when could they do it again? A sudden shyness came over Sandy when it was over, and he went to the bathroom to wipe the scarlet mouths off his cheeks: but he was full of awe, too, the same feeling he had felt in chapel at school when he sang in the choir. Tears came to his eyes, and he begged Rosalind to name him any present she would like. But Rosalind was speechless, almost fainting from the exertion. He took her home in a taxi and next morning, foolish man, he sent her a poodle puppy.
Virginia smiled to herself. Poor Rosalind and Sandy now. She looked at the menu. Kippers, she thought. Kippers and The Guardian first, while at school they’d be singing He who would valiant be … hymn 515, Songs of Praise. She’d put it up on the board herself last night, and dusted the piano and changed the water in the glass on Miss Percival’s desk, all to alleviate the guilt she felt at having told the dentist lie. The wretched Mrs Wheeler, retired, had been prevailed upon to take Class IV today, while Miss Fly had to go to London to have a bad time with a tooth that had been troubling her for some while. Mrs Wheeler, whose stamina was not her forte, would have to take Class IV on its monthly Nature Ramble. This was not an event Virginia ever looked forward to, what with Louise polluting the countryside with bubble-gum papers because she only liked towns, and Caroline and Lindy having competitions to see how many courting couples they could find in the scrubby Surrey hillsides. (There always were more lovers than dandelions or hips and haws, even on a Wednesday.) Mrs Wheeler wouldn’t be up to it at all, Virginia knew, but she couldn’t bring herself at this moment to care.
The train pulled out of the station. The rhythm of the wheels gathered speed and she felt the warmth of sun on her arm. She was reminded of a journey she had made some twenty years ago, to St Ives, with her parents. They sat opposite her, close but not touching, reading their papers, the well-labelled suitcases and picnic basket neatly on the rack above them. Virginia was watching the sun spread from a narrow wedge to a great sprawling pattern on her arm as the train drew out into the country. Then the peace was shattered by a couple who entered the carriage.
They were obviously just married. The girl wore a navy-blue gaberdine suit that shone, and a pink petal hat on top of a clump of frizzed-up hair. Paper petals stuck to her shoulders like dandruff. Her new husband clung to her wrist – a sweaty cheesy face with a happy nervous smile. His other arm was dragged down by the intolerable weight of their two suitcases, but it was no time to complain and he kept on smiling. Mr Fly came to his rescue. He jumped up and easily raised the suitcases on to the rack. The bridegroom was more than grateful and Mr Fly, noticing the young man’s shaking hands, instantly set about putting him at his ease. Mr Fly’s curiosity about his fellow human beings had always, compared with the rest of his instincts, been above average: it was no hardship to him to ask endless questions which the newly married couple delighted in answering. It was soon established that they were called Sam and Adelaide Barton, and they were on their way to St Ives for their honeymoon. This was a cue for the Flys to remember their honeymoon, in all its dry detail: and a cue for their bitter warning not to touch shellfish. A bad shellfish, it seemed, had turned their honeymoon (Dover in November with Mr Fly’s aunt) into a near tragedy. Though considering the failure it must have been, they remembered it with greedy sentiment.
Virginia barely listened to the talk between Adelaide, Sam and her parents. She let their words fit into the pattern of the wheels until the whole thing became an agreeable pattern of sound in her head. What she remembered feeling violently, though, was envy, even hatred, for Adelaide and Sam. There they were, stupidly happy, their fingers intertwined for eight hours (they ate sardine sandwiches and bits of wedding cake with their free hands), and they had each other for a whole week in Cornwall, and then for the rest of their lives. Filled with childish longing for someone to love herself, she resented their happiness with her whole being. It was a tangible feeling – a dull ache from her breast bone to the pit of her stomach. To comfort herself she tried to imagine their honeymoon: at least, the sexual part of it. Caroline had recently been telling her all she knew about the weird sex life of grown-ups, so Virginia’s mind was vivid with ghoulish pictures. She imagined Sam’s wormish little mouth plonked on Adelaide’s, and his damp fingers kneading her fleshy stomach, and his knees hacking away at her thighs to open them. She hoped it would be dreadful.
‘You look melancholy, this morning, Virginia.’ The professor had been looking up from his notes for some time. ‘I expected you to be all sparkling. I thought engaged people sparkled.’ Virginia tried a sparkling smile for him.
‘I’m not engaged,’ she said, in a formal voice. ‘I’m nothing to do with Charlie any more, nor he with me.’
‘Ah! In that case, there’s no reason why you should be happy.’ He summoned the waiter and ordered cornflakes and kippers for two, without asking Virginia whether that was what she wanted. Then he went on: ‘From a selfish point of view, of course, that means you might be willing to come to some more concerts. I was only regretting the other day that you would not be able to accompany me to Leonard Cohen at the Albert Hall in a couple of weeks time – I had great difficulty in getting the tickets. But perhaps now you will come.’ He made this a statement, not a question.
‘That would be nice.’ Virginia bent low over her cereal to hide the blush she felt creeping over her face. Perhaps it was just the effect of having mentioned Charlie’s name out loud for the first time for two weeks. ‘In a few years’ time,’ she said, ‘I shall be able to think it quite ridiculous, how it ended. For the moment, it’s still rather horrible.’
‘Really?’ The professor didn’t sound very interested.
‘Piccadilly is such a dreadful place to part.’ Curiously for her, she needed to tell someone just something about it. The professor’s apparent lack of interest encouraged her. ‘So over centrally heated, the hotel. You couldn’t breathe properly.’
‘If it’s going to be a bad parting it might as well be in a bad place.’ The professor was snarling over his filleted kipper. He would have liked to have done the filleting himself. ‘My God, I remember once, I was a student in Paris at the time, this girl, Marie, how she chucked me. A great big fat blonde, she was. Huge bottom. All she really wanted out of me was a piece of music dedicated to her. She had a mortality fixation, poor bitch. Anyhow, I lusted after her, there’s no doubt. One Sunday I took her down to Versailles on the train – a whole week’s allowance, that, I may tell you. We walked in the gardens in the snow. Then I bought her some croissant and black cherry j
am – that’s how she got her bottom – and then she tells me. “Hans,” she says, “this must be our last Sunday. I am off with a poet. He has written me sonnets.” Silly cow. “O.K.,” I said, very gruff’ – he smiled at the memory of himself–‘“off you go to your poet but you must pay your own train fare back.” There was a terrible confusion while she scraped about her bag looking for coins. So undignified, I thought. Then she left, waggle, waggle, munch, munch, croissant flakes falling down her breasts, and I sat there all the afternoon not really believing she’d gone. Of course, it was a blessed relief, really. But the café was so pretty, with the untrodden snow outside. That was the pity of it. She should have left me at a station or a street corner. Like that it would have been easier.’
Virginia was scarcely listening. The dull flat suburbs of Rugby were streaming across her eyes.
‘I was the one who left Charlie,’ she was saying, ‘when I discovered he was married.’
The professor cut short any further confessions by laying a hand over one of hers.
‘For God’s sake, Virginia, please, spare me the details.’ His eyes were ready to laugh. Virginia hesitated for a moment, suddenly saw herself as being ridiculous, and laughed at herself for a long time. The professor joined her.
They arrived at Bolton just before lunch. Virginia noticed that the woman in scarlet was met by an identical man to the man in London, except that he wore a bowler hat instead of string gloves, and led bloodhounds instead of poodles. The bloodhounds had to be restrained in their welcome. The man himself barely managed a smile. For some reason these mysterious flashes of the scarlet woman’s life added to the pleasure of Virginia’s day.
A student had been sent to meet the professor. He welcomed him with articulate enthusiasm, and warned him that the lecture was a sell-out. The professor expressed no surprise. He was accustomed to full halls. He puffed a bit, trying to keep up with the student. Virginia felt quite proud of him.
They went to a pub where they met a group of other students, and an older man, German, to whom the professor delivered his score and introduced Virginia.
‘Inigo Schrub, my very oldest friend, no? We were students together, for heaven’s sake. Now he’s risen to high ranks. Inigo is a first violin.’
Inigo laughed, his squat face reddening. He wore very round glasses. Behind them, pale magnified eyes brightened as the professor paid his compliments.
‘Midland orchestra of high repute,’ Hans added, and his friend’s eyes dimmed right down again till they were lustreless circles of grey. But he quickly recovered himself. With an air of confused benevolence he shook Virginia’s hand, bowing his head in the same manner as the professor, and thereby hiding most of his plump smile. Then he turned back to Hans and the two spoke in German. In his own language the professor spoke very fast, eloquently, Virginia felt, though she couldn’t understand a word. Several times both men laughed, guttural, gruff laughs. It was the first time Virginia had ever seen the professor look as if he was thoroughly enjoying himself, and something of his enjoyment spread to her.
She studied the students round her – a long-haired, dishevelled, nice lot, in a uniform of jeans and tee-shirts and anoraks. They were kind to her, sensing her shyness; evidently impressed that she was someone in whom the professor should take an interest. They confirmed to her his popularity in the student world.
‘When it’s known the professor is coming,’ one of them explained, ‘all seats are sold out in an hour. What we have to do now is to put microphones outside the hall so that the overflow can hear.’
Virginia admitted she had never heard the professor speak.
‘Then you’re in for a great afternoon,’ the student warned her. ‘Get him on a platform and he has the entire audience in his hand. And student audiences aren’t that easy to please, as you must know.’
After this kind of build-up Virginia was quite prepared to be disappointed.
When drinks were over they went across to a large hall. An audience of some seven hundred was already seated, waiting. A seat had been reserved for Virginia in the front row. But she declined it and climbed alone the steps to the very back of the hall. There, she had to stand.
The stage seemed very far below. The table, the chair, the tape recorder, toy things.
Cheering started from nowhere – someone had spotted the professor in the wings. He hurried on to the stage, a tiny figure from where Virginia stood, and the cheering crescendoed. The professor seemed oblivious to the noise. His coat and notes had been abandoned, his hair flourished round his head at all angles.
Suddenly, there was silence. The professor came to the very edge of the stage. He held up his hands in a gesture of innocent surprise that he should have been asked to speak, and began.
The official title of his lecture was ‘Mahler: the Man behind the Musician.’ But in two hours, Virginia only remembered him mentioning Mahler twice. In fact, she realised afterwards, she would have found it impossible to summarise what he had said. She remembered the lecture only as a whole: the sweet, stuffy smell of the hall, the occasional whiff of sweat near by her; the consistent warm laughter as the professor twisted phrases into unusual structures to enlighten a commonplace observation; the extraordinary pieces of information he had acquired about the lives of various musicians – gossipy, funny, sad. When he broke off speaking to illustrate a point with a piece of music, he inevitably had trouble with the tape recorder. Each time a student had to come on and help him, and each time he waited till the student left the stage until he himself sat down, back to the audience, to listen. There was a good deal of the actor within him. Plainly he was enjoying himself, and the students loved him.
When it was over they clapped and stamped for ten minutes before leaving the hall. The professor responded with a series of understated bows. By now everyone had forgotten Virginia. Feeling uncommonly shy she made her way to the back of the stage. There she found the professor surrounded by a group of people asking questions. But he spotted her at once. Beckoned her over.
‘Ah! Virginia Fly. You enjoyed it?’ All eyes on Virginia. A path cleared for her to reach the professor. She felt herself blushing. Then, suddenly next to him, protected by his arm, she could smell the warmth of his body. Some flippant comment of praise was required, she felt. But she could think of none. She nodded dumbly.
‘Thank God for that!’ The professor laughed. ‘Come. We must go for to catch our train.’
A gaggle of students went with them to the station and waved them off, urging the professor to return shortly. He made no promises, and now he was off-stage seemed no longer inspired by their enthusiasm.
‘Is it always like that?’ Virginia asked. They were back in the restaurant car, eating hot toasted tea cakes and drinking strong Indian tea.
‘Always.’ The professor had no false modesty. ‘They seem to enjoy it. I can never believe they will go on wanting me back. One day I will dry up. It will all stop. I won’t know how to speak to them any more.’ He yawned. ‘I am always tired when it’s over. I can never sleep the night before – the worry of it, even after all these years. It may all appear very casual, but I have to work very hard at the preparation, you understand.’
Virginia understood. She worked hard in the preparation of classes herself. But up to now she had never been encouraged by anything like the kind of response the professor was used to receiving. In fact, for her, teaching was not a very satisfactory profession. Except in art classes she felt herself to be clumsy at communicating – The thought of classes made her wonder guiltily how the day had gone for her pupils. This morning she had felt no guilt. Strange how it came and went.
She followed the professor down the swaying corridor to the bar. Consciously, she found herself admiring his back view: the shape of his head, the cut – for all its superficial untidiness – of his grey hair, the width of his shoulders. As if aware of her thoughts he stopped, suddenly, and turned.
‘One thing my wife said was that you could always
judge a man by his back view.’ This was the first time he had mentioned his wife to Virginia.
He continued down the corridor. Virginia had to run to catch him up. At the bar, he ordered two glasses of brandy.
‘What we last drank together, if I remember?’
‘I didn’t know you had a wife.’ Virginia was pale.
‘Oh, I haven’t. She’s dead, for God’s sake. Twenty years ago. Air crash. She and the child.’ He moved his glass, which caught a reflection of the rose evening clouds, and slopped the brandy round his measure of sky. ‘She was thin, like you. Quite small, too. Blonde, though. Very quiet. She would have made a good pianist one day, though she was almost too gentle. It hurt her to play fortissimo. I called her – the German for wood anemone.’ He paused, looked directly at Virginia. ‘I would have liked to have seen the child, Gretta, become a musician. She sang quite encouragingly for a child of six. She was blonde, too. The same long plait as Christabel. When they died, of course, I gave it all up too. Music, composing. There was no one else to write for. It wouldn’t have been any good. Anyhow, I didn’t want to, any more. But that’s why I lecture, because of Christabel. She used to say to me in her music lessons – that’s how we met, she was my pupil – “Oh Hans,” she used to say, “you make me laugh so much I cannot play. You should make whole crowds of people laugh.” As far as I could see I wasn’t very amusing, but she would respond to anything I said. But I am going on to you in an indulgent fashion. Strange how people always talk in trains. You must forgive me.’
He stood up from the bar stool, formal again, his voice clipped. Again Virginia followed him down the corridor. They passed through the guard’s van. Virginia touched the wire cage round the piles of mail bags. It was icy cold. She swayed a little. The light in the van was a pale greenish colour, dancing with shadows. The mail bags were piled up like rocks, stiff dull canvas stuff, horrible shapes.