‘Honestly, Philip.’ She was half-teasing. ‘I like mature men.’
‘Who said anything about mature?’
She laughed.
‘I’m just a child prodigy with grey hair and wrinkles.’
‘This wasn’t exactly an accident.’
‘You think we’re a pair?’
‘Who knows! I like you.’
‘Well, I like you.’
‘Of course.’
He felt himself glowing with unfamiliar happiness. ‘Well, in that case I’m going to fall in love with you right away.’
She liked the way he just tossed it out.
‘Which would hardly be convenient.’
She touched his face very sympathetically. ‘We can put up with some inconvenience.’
‘You’re indescribably beautiful, Ursula.’
She drew deep breath as he passed his hand across her shoulder. He was cherishing her skin, the soft side of her bosom.
‘The great pianist,’ she exhaled.
The great pianist’s hands were otherwise engaged.
‘By now we should have been in your bed.’
‘This is all so flattering,’ he said.
‘I’m flattered.’
‘You’re flattered?’
‘Well, of course!’
He smiled at her.
‘Of course,’ she said again.
In some respects and at certain times life could be so felicitous. He gazed at her in marvel. He would certainly fall in love with her if things went on like this. There was something in the air: the old romantic feeling, an unfamiliar excitement. None of it was quite deserved or earned or very sensible, and Ursula was both easy and mysterious. Whatever duty of care he owed her, they were launched now, on some basis or other, and it was impossible not to abandon oneself. Intimacy was a forgotten bliss. She flowed into all the empty spaces in a bachelor’s heart. Before that shag he was only half human. Sex stood for so much more than he had remembered.
He felt the shadow of anguish pass over him.
‘Operation next week,’ he said abruptly.
She leaned forward, caught his eye.
‘National Health have come up with the goods.’ He nodded. ‘Surgeon called me this morning.’
She seemed to absorb this.
‘I have to go in on the Thursday. The knives come out on Friday.’
He relaxed back into the cushions.
‘If there’s one thing more nerve-racking than going on stage it must be opening up some poor bastard’s insides and messing with his vital organs. How do these people do it?’
She reached over to stroke the back of his hand. ‘Good to get the job done.’
‘Yeah, good to get the job done.’
‘Is it hurting?’
He shrugged. ‘There are sensations.’
Her silence was supportive. This was territory they had to cover somehow or other.
He stared at the fireplace. He felt at ease with her, which made it easier to be candid.
‘About the concert.’
She stirred, getting herself into a position of readiness. She had not expected this subject.
‘Obviously mission impossible.’
‘Well . .
‘It was the expression of a desire. I’m sorry if you and John have been phoning around, wasting time.’
This pained her.
‘It’s all too late in the day. Nothing’ll be free.’
‘There are private venues,’ she said.
‘Oh sure.’
‘People would come.’
‘I want my audience.’ He looked at her directly.
‘It would be your audience.’
‘My public.’
‘But Philip . .
‘It’s for them I want to play. I owe it to them. They’ve already bought tickets.’
‘Yes, but . .
‘So there can only be one solution.’
She was fraught. This had come from nowhere.
‘Don’t you guys do anything. Leave it to me. I’ll talk to Vadim. He’ll understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘That I’ve got to play and that we can share the concert next Wednesday. There’s no need for him to stand down. He can take the first half, I’ll take the second. We can dedicate the concert to Konstantine Serebriakov. The public will get the pianist they paid to see and his bloody protégé!’ He looked at her firmly.
She smiled uneasily. ‘Sounds fine. But Vadim would have to agree.’
‘To be blunt, he can hardly say no.’
She was a little desperate now.
‘You look worried.’
‘He has said no.’
Philip bit his lip. He could feel the tension rising. He could not bear to be obstructed in this matter.
‘What?’
‘We asked him and he said no.’
‘You asked him?’
‘Philip, it was always the only option!’
He stared at her blankly.
‘That was exactly the suggestion we made. Half and half.’
He was thunderstruck. ‘He said no!’
‘Well, John isn’t going to put that much pressure on him because of all the changes.’
He shook his head and clasped his hands. It never occurred to him that Vadim would deny him his own concert.
‘Did you explain about my . . . condition?’
She shook her head. ‘Have you two had some kind of falling-out?’
‘Well, yes, but even so. Christ!’
‘I don’t know what’s been going on.’
‘I’ll have to deal with it. We’ll have to talk. He’s got to see sense. I’ll just have to bite the bullet. Oh, Vadim!’
She shook her head and blinked. ‘Actually . . .’
Philip glanced up.
‘We did tell him.’
‘You did!’
‘Sorry, Philip.’
‘Ursula!’ He felt a limitless chagrin. ‘I didn’t want you to do that.’
‘I know, and I understand why, and I respect that, but he was completely intransigent and it was our only hope.’
He looked up, horribly pained. He could not bear this news about his health to be in the wrong hands. Once people knew, he would cease to count in some way. Vadim would tell everyone, consigning him to the departure lounge in people’s minds.
‘I can’t believe it.’
She was crestfallen. There was nothing she could say.
He covered his face in his hands and sagged on the sofa. He had so little strength for these upsets, for the vast reserves of emotional opposition they required. Vadim’s cruel reaction called out for patience, understanding, tactical presence of mind. He was inflicting revenge, of course, and refusing to be drawn into Philip’s drama, and was doubtless waiting for some sort of apology or retraction or backing down before he was prepared to consider Philip a human being; and this was so tiresome and stressful because he could not bear the idea of losing the concert. His last concert. This notion was too bleak to be real, but he was prey now to washes of melodramatic despair.
He clenched his brow, secretly mopping away flecks of moisture from the corner of his eye.
She sat there on the edge of the recamier, watching him anxiously.
Philip was ruined inside, the wine and cake doing him no favours. He was almost fluey with emotional exhaustion. She held him by the wrist and ran her fingers over his forearm.
‘God, what a shambles. Ursula, I’m a wreck.’
She saw his eyes were red.
‘Philip.’
He was finished off, bereft with this news. He had pinned so much hope on the concert.
‘Let it go,’ she said.
He gasped, head hanging.
‘Wait till later. After the operation sometime.’
His eyes were streaming, an unexpected release. How funny to be crying in front of her like this. It was copious, drenching. His cheeks were slick. The back of his throat stung, catarrh everywher
e.
‘Sorry about this.’
‘To hell with Vadim. To hell with the bloody concert.’
‘I’m beginning to agree.’
‘It’s too close to your op. You need to wind down. Give yourself a break. You can play to me. I’ll be your audience.’
He grasped her hand.
‘You have nothing to prove.’
‘It’s not about proof,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘It’s not about me, or my playing, or my reputation, or my career, or anything like that.’
‘Philip, you’re going to get better.’
‘It’s not about that, even.’
He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He stared at the gateau. The day was losing light outside, a bank of cloud overhead. They sat in the frail light, their skin cooling. He drew a cushion over his lap. The ache was bad now, an acid heat that flared up and then diffused, and then flared up again. Disease in progress.
Taking on Vadim was going to require more wit and courage than he could summon. He would track him down, nonetheless. He had to prevail.
‘I went to the cottage,’ he said at last.
She shook her head.
‘Those friends of mine. I told you about them.’
‘The ones that died?’
‘I went back to the house.’
‘When?’
‘The other day.’
She was listening now. ‘Why did you go?’
He gazed at her for a long time.
‘They crossed over and I felt that I was about to follow them.’
She stared at him.
‘Didn’t look nice.’ He shook his head. It was hard to know where to start. ‘A fire does its business. I suppose you could say the house, what was left of it, bore the scars of their fate like a memorial. Odd. I was trying to see where they’d gone, and getting as close as I could to the exit point. They took a part of me with them, you see. That little heaven of theirs - I was a shareholder. I knew what it was all about. Very rarely in life you find these glades and pastures, miniature Arcadias, where everything special comes together, as well as it can. A fleeting perfection of earthly happiness that makes you very uneasy. Because as soon as one sees and feels it, you know how precious and vulnerable it is. Those idylls can’t last. But we were all inside this very happy world thinking, dammit, life can be this good, and when it is you bloody well deserve it.’
He ran his fingers around the stem of the wine glass.
‘After the fire, I knew I’d never reconstruct that type of happiness again. They weren’t my family literally, but they were the nearest I’d come. Actually, I adopted them quite tenaciously. When Katie was born I remember holding her, aged one hour, thinking: Right, she’s mine. Bachelor appropriation. I’m going to love this little girl.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Loving is not an easy business for some people. I was very grateful for being let in on a family and allowed to nurture my own affection for them, within limits, my way, safely, without being chastised for inadequacy or selfishness, or emotional incompetence.’
He let out a long breath. He was covered in goosebumps. Ursula was curled against the cushions, quite still.
‘Because they all died, it seemed easier to think of it as a mad singularity, something to blank out. How on earth do you cope with these shit-eating disasters? Do you fight, or submit? One has to hack on and the mind has strategies for hauling through pain. But every plan has a loophole. Every good day implies a bad day. Things will never be the same and what you can’t see through the smoke and debris is that meaning has been sucked out of your life and no amount of brave determination not to be shafted by this fucking awful accident makes a shred of difference to the underlying reality - that life is tragic, and to develop the sinew and scar tissue and hide to cope with that fact takes years.’
He waved it off, smiling suddenly, as if trying to counteract his own vehemence. These declarations were actually quite good for the spirit.
‘I had a good look around. Eventually enough was enough. I went up the hill for a walk. I had forgotten how beautiful it was round there. Wonderful views and colours. All just the same, identical. The birds and the trees and the flowers, just carrying on, year after year. I made it to the top of the hill and took in the view, the breeze in my hair, aware of so many familiar details - all those constants in the scenery looking good this time of year, and it came to me.’
She looked at him.
His eyes were suddenly bright.
‘I’d say it was a high-pitched note, like tinnitus, but pleasant. Light breaking through cloud almost. Right up high. An angelic highness. Like the pinnacle of the most massive chord. I even thought the key was C major, and it came all the way down to the ground. A sonic pyramid, but clear, like glass. There are chords in Bruckner and Sibelius like this, composed of extremes, sky-earth chords, but this was new. Made up of high pitches, violin harmonics, and deep vibrations. An aural hallucination, or maybe I just put it there, like a composer sites a chord in his head. It followed me back across the field.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘All this music, you see, it comes from somewhere else.’
It was warming to think she would understand and he smiled faintly to be able to put it so simply.
‘After that, you see . . .’
She nodded slowly.
He looked at her carefully.
‘After that?’
‘I have to play again.’
Chapter Twenty-one
The walls of the lobby were ribbed with red panels. Two girls stood behind a spotlit desk smiling as he approached. They wore sequinned evening dresses cut high on the collar and slitted at the bust. The chesty welcome was tempered by the presence of shaven-headed bouncers, a pair, big as eunuchs.
‘Good evening to you.’
It was long past his bedtime. He was not feeling lively.
Behind the girls were framed erotic cartoons penned by some nightlifer beloved of the management.
‘I’m joining Mr Vadim Kuryagin.’
He wore jacket and tie. Why was it necessary to dress up for a strip joint?
The girls looked at him strangely.
He heard voices from the end of the lobby: a fat man in a suit and two streaky blondes.
‘May I see if he’s inside?’
‘Firty-five pound.’
‘I might not stay.’
One of the bouncers moved.
Philip reached for his wallet.
He followed the red carpet and came to a pair of swing doors. A diminutive bunny girl took his ticket.
As he crossed the portal, space opened out and sound welcomed him. He was looking across a room with patches of brilliant light and zones of darkness. There were heads and figures in shady recesses, circles of disco flooring, bright bodies on dance platforms. The faces of punters sitting round tables were doused in rose light. He went forward and a pillar slid away to expose a group of men on stools encircling a dais on which a naked girl gyrated, hand-overhanding the dance pole as though it were the audience’s representative member. Her legs stretched long and tense on stiletto heels. She charitably bent over, smiling upside down. Someone reached up to park a tenner between her teeth, sponsoring further flurries of booty duty and hip flicking.
The spotlights were penetrating. He could smell perfume, disinfectant, cigar smoke, the hint of vomit.
Trays of drinks sailed by, champagne buckets were parked by cluttered tables, and now he was escorted by an Italian-style maitre d’ in a well-cut suit, spreading looks of genial welcome over all and sundry, as if this were a family restaurant in suburban Naples.
He looked through the glow of low-hanging lanterns, trying to see the others. There were enclaves of ‘businessmen’, tinselly lady consorts, female limbs in cubicles beyond. Around one table a stag-night group sprawled, fairly blotto and dishevelled, team spirit flagging under the onslaught of drink and music and the writhings of two entwined stroboscopic females, pole-wrapped like a pair
of flickering anacondas on a nearby dais. He passed a Middle Eastern roué and his face-lifted lady friend, who confronted the goings-on with wide-eyed ornamental amazement.
He’d been told on a tip-off.
First he phoned Marguerite, then her brother-in-law, whose flat in Piccadilly Vadim was supposed to be using, but somebody else sent him on a trail via two more telephone numbers. Eventually he got through to Nigel Winterbottom (of all people) - a Royal Academy pianist with good manners and a jolly-hockey-sticks delivery seemingly at odds with his preference for Bartok. A few years ago Philip had given him a lesson.
‘Yah. I’m seeing him this evening. Will you be there?’
‘Don’t think so. Where are you going?’
‘Peaches and Banana.’
‘Peaches and Bananas?’
‘Banana, singular. Somebody called Fouad is taking us.’
‘Fouad?’
‘Oh, one of Vadim’s new chums.’
My replacement, thought Philip. ‘Not a restaurant?’
‘Not a restaurant, no.’ Nigel laughed brightly.
‘Are you meeting beforehand?’
‘I’m rehearsing till ten. Vadim’s coming back from Liverpool, and the general plan was to go to Fouad’s about eleven o’clock.’
‘Take a pack of condoms.’
‘Well . . . I . . . you know, usual thing with Vadim. You want to see the guy, you have to join the roller-coaster. Will you come and rescue me?’
‘I might. But don’t tell him. It’ll be a surprise.’
‘Right you are.’
He had no idea what to expect tonight. Vadim’s behaviour was off the rails these days. He was curious to see the limits of his protege’s intransigence. How much direct human appeal could he resist? At what point would some vestige of fellow-feeling break surface? His great hope was that Vadim wanted nothing more than to humiliate him in reprisal for his criticisms.
Suddenly, he saw them, right at the end. They were sitting in a semicircle around a table, Nigel, Fouad, four girls - dappled light falling on hands and faces. Vadim looked at him twice, double-taking as he approached. His face was a picture of red-handed surprise, masked quickly.
‘Hello, Vadim,’ said Philip, taking his place on a stool without further ado.
Fouad reached over to shake hands on the basis that any friend of Vadim’s was a friend of his and welcome at the table. Nigel maintained the pretence of surprise with honourable conviction, offering a half-frozen smile that did full justice to the situation in which they now found themselves. He was wearing blazer and tie, slacks and loafers, and was at a grinning loss to be discovered in this den next to a dancer in schoolgirl uniform with blotched lipstick, hair slides, and a power-mounted Wonderbra.
The Concert Pianist Page 23