by Emily Barr
I am finding the scale so soothing that I play more, concentrating on each note. I play scales fast and slowly. I play them with the accents on the first and fourth notes, and with no accents at all. I play minor and major scales, chromatic scales and arpeggios. For the first time in many months I am at ease with my cello. After the scales I play ‘The Swan’ from memory, and the first movement of the Elgar. Then I turn my attention to less flashy, more worthy pieces. I play groups of notes again and again and again. Then I return to the Elgar. There is a possibility that I might be playing this at a concert in New York in the spring, and the very thought petrifies me.
When, eventually, I descend the stairs to the first floor, and then the ground floor, I am serene. I have worked on parts of my repertoire that have been bothering me for years. The slow movement of the Elgar, for instance. I love it, but I’ve never carried it off very well. It looks simple on the page. A Grade 5 cellist could play the notes. But that is deceptive: it is one of the most demanding pieces there is, and I’ve never given a performance that has been more than adequate. If I do end up playing it in New York in a few months, I have vowed to surprise everyone. I know I’m going to be doing it in Paris in July. I am going to have to be able to give a confident, sustained performance, and at the moment I don’t think I’m capable of it.
Mum, Phil and Guy are in the kitchen. The table is back against the wall, the double doors to the dining room are thrown open, and there are glasses arranged in rows. Bowls of snacks on every surface await the guests. I smell mulled wine.
‘Hi, Guy,’ I say, smiling at one of my parents’ oldest friends. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
He chuckles, and comes forward to kiss me. ‘I knew you were. You play like an angel, my dear.’
I make a face. ‘Thanks. I wish.’
Guy is my mother’s age, and has been single for as long as I can remember. He was married, long ago, but his wife died, pregnant with his first, and only, child. I have never known exactly what happened, because according to my mother he was mad with grief and will not have either of them mentioned any more. Mum has been vague when I’ve asked her.
‘Best not to dig all that up,’ is all she says, and if I try to ask more she looks at me in a way that makes me feel tawdry and tabloid for wondering.
Guy is handsome, in a fifty-something way. His dark hair is slicked back, his skin creased with lines, and he wears well-cut shirts and trousers. He reminds me a little of Al Pacino. From time to time he brings a woman to the Christmas party, but it is never the same one two years running, and normally he comes alone.
‘How’s your love life, Guy?’ I ask him, smiling.
‘In a similar state to yours, from what I hear.’
Phil hands me a glass of steaming mulled wine. I clink glasses with Guy.
‘Mine is great, actually. I’ve been out on the town with boys. It’s wonderful.’
‘Out on the town with boys? I don’t think I’ll try that strategy.’ He gestures expansively. ‘I don’t care, you see, that’s my problem. I can’t be bothered with taking women out on dates. From time to time you meet someone, you decide to give it a go, make the requisite effort, and then it goes wrong and you start again. Or do you? Do you decide you’re happy with your own company and leave it at that? Why embark on a doomed venture, and a costly one at that? A colleague of mine is going through his third divorce at the moment. Surgeons are notoriously bad husbands. He said the other day, that old cliché, “I’m not going to bother getting married again. I’m just going to find a woman I don’t like, and give her a house.” I’ve never wanted to get into all that.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m a doctor. There are always nurses.’
Mum interjects. ‘That is extremely cynical, Guy.’
‘Anna,’ he says, ‘I am fifty-five years old. It’s a different matter entirely for me than it is for Evie. I’m not young, blonde, beautiful and famous with the best part of my life ahead of me. Not by any means. I possess the opposite of all your attributes, my dear. Old, grey, ugly and obscure. You will meet another tall, dark and handsome young man in the blink of an eye. I’ll get by on my own.’
‘I don’t want to meet anyone just yet,’ I say firmly. ‘But Guy, I know you were married and that you were happy. I know that all ended terribly, but it can’t really be the case that there was only one woman in the entire world for you. Don’t you owe it to yourself to find someone to grow old with?’
I look at him warily, hoping I haven’t gone too far.
Guy looks at his drink and smiles distantly, for a moment. Then he pulls himself together. ‘Astonishingly, Evie,’ he says, ‘it seems there really was only one woman for me. So now I am destined to grow old disgracefully on my own. I intend to have as much fun as I can in the process.’
He looks around the room, at Mum, who is listening and taking a tray of vol-au-vents out of the oven at the same time, at Phil, leaning on the edge of the table with his head on one side, and at me, next to him. Through the back window I see Tessa tending her patch of bare garden, and Taylor and one of his friends having a cigarette next to the shed, where they think they can’t be seen.
There is a pause. I watch Mum realising she needs to change the subject, and in a flash she says the first thing that comes into her mind.
‘You remember Evie’s friend Kate, Guy?’ she asks, sliding the canapés on to big white plates. ‘A Bristol girl? She and her husband are coming to stay with us over the new year. And after that they’re off to the States for fertility treatment.’
Guy looks at me with raised eyebrows. ‘Natural methods failed?’
I take a warm mushroom vol-au-vent. There is something deliciously seventies and uncool about it. It is creamy and flaky in my mouth. I take two more.
‘Mmmm,’ I agree, through the pastry. ‘Been trying for ever. They’ve found this guy near New York. Supposed to be the best. Though,’ I add, swallowing a hefty mouthful, ‘Kate and Ian were a bit hazy as to what he can do that all the others can’t.’
Guy puts his head on one side. ‘What’s his name?’ he asks. ‘I might know of him.’
‘You might well. He’s British originally. Ron Thomas.’
Mum freezes for a moment. She gets over it almost instantly, and stirs the mulled wine. Then she looks at Guy.
I look at him too. He has gone quite white. When I turn to Phil, I see that his face is paralysed as well. He is gazing with concern at Guy.
‘What?’ I ask, looking at each of them in turn. ‘Do you know him? What is it?’
Guy recovers himself. ‘Used to,’ he says. ‘Many moons ago. He’s practising in New York now, is he?’
‘New York State,’ I correct. ‘Somewhere out of town, but near enough to bring IVF babies to the rich and infertile of Manhattan.’
‘Ron Thomas and I trained together,’ says Guy, lightly. ‘Haven’t heard anything from him for years. When are they off?’
‘January the fifteenth,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just an initial consultation. And a full medical. If he doesn’t find anything new wrong with them, they’re going to go back a few weeks after that, I think. On the right day of her cycle - she has to have done injections and stuff before they go. That’s when he’s going to take her eggs and Ian’s sperm, and then they have to go back again to have them implanted.’ I immediately feel I have given everyone too much information, but I needed to fill the silence.
‘All right, troops,’ says Mum, with a forced brightness. ‘The guests are due in an hour. I suggest we all have a sandwich before they get here, so we lessen the chances of getting drunk and disgracing ourselves, and then I for one am going to get changed.’
Guy looks relieved. ‘Shall I top up our glasses?’ he asks. I watch him pour himself a glass of port from the table, and knock it back. I almost think his hand is trembling.
Megan and her parents turn up when the party is in full swing. There are about fifty people in the kitchen and dining room. Six of Taylor’s friends appeared early on and disapp
eared upstairs with a bottle of vodka, while Tessa is holding court in a corner of the room with four other precocious pre-teens and several litres of Coca-Cola. I think I was the only adult who noticed her topping a bottle up with gin. Gin and Coke: a combination which only appeals to pre-teens and, perhaps, alcoholics. Mum and Phil’s friends are people like them: the middle classes of Bristol and around. They are cheerful, friendly people, happily cocooned in a world where everyone has a disposable income and everybody reads books and goes to plays and concerts. I am periodically pulled into a conversation by someone I have known since childhood, and asked about my career.
‘We always buy your recordings,’ Mum’s former colleague, Margaret, is telling me earnestly. ‘We bought the Bach suites last year. Even though Nathan insisted we buy the Rostropovich version as well, and to be honest we do listen to that more often. Even though it hasn’t been on TV!’
I despise comments like these. Whenever I meet a musician or a writer or an artist I make a point of telling them that I love their work. I think it’s polite. I admire anyone who gets a recording released, or an exhibition put on. I know how vulnerable it makes you feel, and I consider it my obligation to reassure. I have no idea why normally pleasant people are so often unable to see that ‘I like your work’ is a basic courtesy. There is a particular mindset which forbids a person from enquiring after somebody else’s relatively high-profile career without making a snide qualifying remark. Often I make a point of doing the same thing back.
‘Are you still a financial adviser?’ I snapped at Phil’s friend Martin, this time last year. ‘That’s great. Though I do think that every financial adviser I’ve ever spoken to has been on the make. I mean, you can’t trust a word they say, can you? It’s all about commission. To be honest I’d much rather keep my money under the mattress, just so I could do without some jumped-up little prick trying to line his own pockets.’ It was his fault for launching a conversation with the announcement that his mother, an amateur cellist, had been to see my recital, but that she’d been disappointed with various aspects of my performance, which he went on to list. I knew that the night in question hadn’t been my best performance, but he didn’t need to spell it out at Christmas. He finished, smiling, by recounting, ‘Mum said, though, “Of course, she gets away with it, being blonde.”’I could have punched him, and if Jack hadn’t been by my side to lead me away to safety, I would have done.
Now Margaret is whistling at me through her teeth and arranging her face into an expression which is supposed to denote sympathy, but which actually looks to me like wicked enjoyment.
‘And I hear divorce may be on the cards?’ she says with enormous pleasure. ‘I’m so sorry, Evie.’
Megan taps me on the shoulder while I am smiling falsely and muttering about things just not working out. I turn to her with relief.
‘Meg!’ I cry, and kiss her cheeks. She looks like a china doll, in a white dress with a sticking-out skirt and a pink rose pattern. ‘Margaret, this is Megan, my flatmate in London. Megan, Margaret used to teach with my mother. Who you haven’t even met. Let’s go and find her. Excuse us, Margaret.’ As we walk off I say under my breath, ‘Thank you so much for rescuing me! I hate that woman.’
‘I could tell,’ Megan replies, with a giggle, ‘from your fixed grin. I’ve never seen you smiling like that before.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ I tell her. ‘Did you have a good day? Let’s introduce our parents to each other then mine can look after yours and we can disappear upstairs, away from all these people.’
We perform the introductions, and leave Megan’s rosy-cheeked mother and her ebullient father making small talk with Mum and Phil. I take Meg up to the small sitting room, which is, surprisingly, empty of teenagers, and we sit on the sofa. The sunshine is pouring in through the back window, and I notice Taylor and a couple of his friends in the garden, starting a small fire. As I watch, one boy stamps on a cheap orange lighter and pours the fluid through the cracks on to the flames, which leap up.
‘Had a good few days?’ I ask her.
Megan shrugs, and pulls her legs up under her. ‘Fine. Nice to see the family and the dogs. I got a car for Christmas, which won’t be much use in London, but it’s a nice thought. I can’t even drive. This is Dad’s latest hint that I should learn.’ She looks at me and grins. ‘Mum and Dad are excited that they got to give you a lift, and even more so that they’re invited to your house. They’ve been telling everyone.’
I am almost embarrassed. ‘I’m hardly the Queen. Surely the people of Somerset can’t be that impressed. They must all have smarter houses than this, too.’
‘We’ve had your music on a loop whenever anyone comes to the house so it gives them a conversational opening. It’s mad. I’ve even been a little shy on your behalf at their effusiveness.’
‘I can imagine your dad being effusive, but not so much your mum.’
‘Oh,’ says Megan dismissively, ‘Mum’s a funny one. It takes ages to get to know her.’ She reaches over and taps me on the arm. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘there’s a guy downstairs who’s absolutely gorgeous. Who is he?’
I stare. ‘There’s a gorgeous guy downstairs? How come I didn’t see him?’
‘Not your type, certainly not a Dan Donovan. Mine. You must know who I mean. Exactly the kind of man I go for.’
Thus, five minutes later, I find myself, rather confused, saying, ‘Guy, this is my flatmate, Megan. Megan, this is Guy.’ Guy looks only vaguely interested at the sight of her, not least because she looks so young. And she is. She is almost exactly half his age.
‘Delighted to meet you, Megan,’ he says, but his heart isn’t in it. ‘Can I get you lovely ladies a top-up?’
‘I’ll do it,’ I say firmly, taking both their glasses. ‘I need to talk to Mum anyway.’
Half an hour later, I look over and see that they have obtained new drinks for themselves without my help. They are deep in flirtatious conversation. I find myself hoping, surprisingly fervently, that Megan’s father hasn’t noticed.
chapter seven
Late January
‘Thank Christ I’m out of the house,’ I tell Kate with a sigh, as I sit down opposite her. ‘Or thank heavens, as Megan would say, though I’m not sure why Christ is blasphemous and the heavens aren’t. Anyway, tell me all about it. I want to hear everything.’
Kate is flushed. She has a new confidence. I am trying to remember whether I’ve seen her this positive before. I don’t think I have.
‘It was great,’ she says, her cheeks flushed. ‘I mean, I’ve been through these kind of appointments before, but it was different. It was all so posh, for a start. I can’t believe you got us business-class tickets, and the hotel you booked us in was stunning. We pigged out on the breakfasts. And every other meal, come to that. Thanks so much.’
‘That’s fine. What about Ron Thomas?’
‘Brilliant. His clinic is like a royal palace. It smells of polish and pot-pourri and stuff like that. The carpets are up to your ankles.’
‘Even posher than the Whittington, you mean?’
‘Ron would pass out if he saw the state of the Whittington. I suppose he wouldn’t really, since he trained over here, but he was so cultured. He was really polite and friendly. Like he was our uncle or godfather or something. He says he’s going to take what he needs when we go back, in two weeks, that’s my eggs and Ian’s sperm. So much easier for Ian, naturally. I know from last time that having your eggs extracted is agony, and I’m already on all sorts of hormone injections to make sure everything happens at the right time. In the bum. But who cares? He’s going to implant three, and if nothing comes of that he’s going to do it all over again until it works. He says there’s loads more stuff he can try, and he says the success of IVF largely comes down to the skill of the embryologist. And he’s the best.’
I put down the menu and look at her closely. ‘Is he really or did he say that?’
‘Both. Come on, Evie. We have to trust someone. L
et’s order breakfast.’ She looks round, and a waitress duly appears at our side. Kate nods to me to order.
‘I’ll have the veggie breakfast, please,’ I say with a smile. The waitress is petite and beautiful, with huge brown eyes, like a French actress. They are all like that, here in Notting Hill. ‘And a latte, and a fresh orange juice. Thanks.’
Kate puts her menu down. ‘The fruit salad for me, thanks, and a camomile tea, and I’ll have a fresh orange juice too. Cheers.’
The waitress nods and drifts away cinematically, presumably to return to some opaque contemplation of a doomed love affair. ‘Kate,’ I say sternly. ‘Is this in honour of the hormone treatment? Because I am going to sit here feeling like a fat pig now. Stuffing my face with beans and mushrooms and fried eggs while you nibble delicately on a slice of melon.’
She shrugs. ‘Doctor’s orders, miss. I feel bloated as it is, and I’m supposed to be being healthy.’
We both break off to watch a family arriving. It is ten thirty on Saturday morning, and the place is swarming with children. This, though, is a large family by anyone’s standards. A couple in their mid thirties manage to settle at the table next to us, with a boy of about six, a girl around three, and twin babies in a double buggy that had to be collapsed to fit through the door. I see Kate’s expression.
‘That’ll be you this time next year,’ I tell her. I have said this hundreds of times over the past three years.