Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  I had already got a place on a PGCE course, so I could become a class music teacher. The final orchestral concert of the academic year was held at the end of the Easter term, so everyone could revise over the summer. I was playing the cello concerto. Luckily, my new look was fairly refined by this point. I had slimmed down, settled on a shade of blonde for my hair that looked so good everyone soon forgot it hadn’t always been that colour (in those days, it was Clairol Industrial Blonde. Now it is done at a salon), and my wardrobe was cheap, but full of classics. While the others in my music class were wearing droopy skirts or patchwork trousers and oversized white cotton shirts, I sported wide-legged black trousers and tight sweaters. All my clothes were from Warehouse and Top Shop, but I chose them carefully. My friends stomped around in Doc Martens; I clicked down pavements in high-heeled boots. I was the only person I knew who owned an iron. People thought I was naturally stylish, but I wasn’t: it was my disguise. I was a new Evie. The old one had been as badly dressed as everyone else - in fact, she had favoured those faded black skirts which had a little bit of embroidery and tassels around the hem. The Evie who had got pregnant had had a tangle of mousy hair which she rarely remembered to brush, but just scraped back into a ponytail every morning. The new one spent so much time on her appearance that she got up at seven o’clock for a nine-thirty lecture, and spent an hour in the bathroom. New Evie dedicated herself to her cello and her degree. She was polished and friendly, but she never gave anything away. She held herself back, and strangely found herself more popular than she had ever been before. For the first time in my life I heard people talking about me with a degree of awe. I would be amazed to overhear snatches of conversation about myself.

  ‘We’re having a party tonight,’ I heard one of my classmates tell another, in the cafeteria. ‘Evie’s coming.’

  ‘Is she?’ said the other. ‘Fantastic!’

  It is strange, my transformation. Not only did I change myself physically, but after Elizabeth, I started practising the cello with a devotion and hunger that was entirely new. My teacher had always told me, and Mum, that I was talented, but I had infuriated her by barely remembering to practise from one week to the next. Suddenly, it was all I wanted to do. I wanted to be brilliant at something, and the cello was it. It is almost as if I knew that those two things - makeover and music - would give me a unique career.

  Mum and Phil were pleased by my transformation. They thought it was a sign that I was growing up, putting ‘it’ behind me, and finding my feet as an adult. In fact, I was putting on a huge act, and nobody ever realised it. Nobody noticed that I was colder and harder than I had been before, because no one in my life except my family had known me before. The only person who came close was Kate. Kate had met me at my lowest ebb, without ever knowing what I was low about. She was taken aback when we met up in Bristol in the university holidays and, each time, I was more of a little adult than the last. As we sat in the cheap pubs near Mum and Phil’s house, she occasionally tried to ask me why.

  ‘Your hair looks great,’ she would say, uncertainly, as we drank cider and tore bags of crisps down the middle to share. I knew at once that she wanted to ask me what I was up to, but didn’t know how to phrase it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I’d say with a grin, tossing it back in a manner that I had practised endlessly in the bathroom mirror.

  ‘You must spend loads of time on your make-up?’

  ‘Not really. It doesn’t take five minutes - a little bit of foundation, a quick dab of mascara, smudge of eyeliner, bit of lipstick.’

  ‘Mmm. Is everyone like that in London?’

  I saw my escape clause. I was uncomfortable talking about my transformation, because Kate was the only person I was still in touch with from my olden days. I would sometimes wonder if I should sacrifice that friendship to make reinvention complete, but happily I could never bring myself to do it.

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. Kate was studying English at Exeter, and was still a devotee of floaty skirts and clumpy boots. As the years passed, however, she caught me up, and now we like exactly the same clothes. We’re the same size, too. We swap, sometimes. It makes me feel good, to have a friend to share clothes with. I am well aware of the fact that she is the only friend I have.

  By the time the Easter of the third year came round, Jack and I were engaged. I was deliriously happy - nobody would have wanted to marry the old Evie - and proud that I had created a future for myself. Jack was going to marry me, to take care of me, to pledge himself to me for the rest of my life. All the girls at Goldsmiths fancied Jack, and all the boys fancied me, but he had pursued me single-mindedly from the day we first met, in the first term of our first year. As a couple, we were glamorous and fêted. I took cello lessons at the Royal Academy, and Jack used an easel and a palette, and let his hair flop into his face.

  Thus I was walking on air at the Easter concert. For the first half, which consisted of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, I had worn a black skirt and white blouse like all the other girls in the orchestra. In the interval I changed into the dress that Mum had bought me for my concerto. It was sleeveless and fitted, just a sheath that clung to my body. It was made from crimson velvet, and came down below my knees. When I stood up, it looked like the world’s most impractical cello-playing dress. Thanks to the slit up the back, however, I could just about manage it. I wore it with sheer stockings, a gorgeous pair of high red shoes, and no underwear whatsoever. My hair, after much consideration, was newly coloured, blow dried into a glimmering bob and I wore lipstick the exact same colour as the dress. If I hadn’t made an effort that night, I might be a cello teacher in Kingston-upon-Thames by now, trying to persuade my pupils to practise their scales, and entering people for exams they didn’t want to take.

  She waited for me after the concert. I thought she was somebody’s mother wanting to congratulate me, so I paused with a polite, dismissive smile already on my lips.

  ‘Evie Silverman?’ she said. She was small and friendly, wearing a businesslike blue suit and a white blouse. Her hair was dark brown, short and practical, and she was about forty-five.

  ‘Yes!’ I replied warmly, unleashing my smile.

  She put out her hand. ‘My name’s Barbara Hall. I’m with ABC Music’s classical division. Could you spare me a few moments?’

  Barbara had come to the concert because her goddaughter played the flute in our orchestra. She explained that ABC were looking for a Nigel Kennedy, for a classical musician who would have what she called ‘crossover appeal’. She said she loved my look as well as my talent, and invited me to come to her office and meet some people. For a while I thought she was joking, but I went along with it, and went home that night with her card in my pocket and an appointment for two thirty the following afternoon.

  Things moved quickly. I was sized up, evaluated, recommended an agent. He negotiated a contract, and by the time I graduated, I was signed up. I recorded some favourite tunes from the repertoire, nice, easy themes from adverts and love songs that everyone would know, and the publicity department organised a blitz when it came out. I went on Richard and Judy, back in the days when they broadcast in the mornings, from Liverpool. I was interviewed on what felt like every local radio station in the country, and spoke to local papers in Bristol and London. I was even mentioned in magazines like Marie Claire - magazines I actually read. Magazines that I fervently hoped Louise still read.

  Jack was as excited as I was, to begin with. He found my success inspirational, and assumed that if his fiancée could do it, then he could too. The idea of success lost all its unattainability to him. It began to seem normal, or even inevitable. He started touting his paintings around, with a new ambition. He walked around London, took his portfolio on buses between Jay Jopling and Maureen Paley, confident that it was just a matter of time before a dealer took him on. He started going back to college to hound his tutors for their contacts. They were, by all accounts, a little taken aback by his late-onset determination to become a Young B
ritish Artist.

  Even Jack knew, secretly, that he was chasing the wrong dream. I was as desperate for him to succeed as he was. My new career was frightening, and I wanted my life partner to experience the same rush, to discover what sudden recognition felt like, to appreciate how vulnerable and dependent it makes you, and how you can keep the vulnerability under control by developing a hard exterior.

  He tried for a year. After university we moved into a little house together, in Bow, for six hundred pounds a month. We had a big bedroom, which doubled up as my music room, and a smaller one which was Jack’s studio. He stretched canvases, set them on easels, mixed his oils, then stared at them. Sometimes he painted abstracts, other times still lives or, occasionally, portraits of me or of our friends. His figurative work was very good - he had a distinct style, and people liked it - but he wasn’t content to be a conventional painter. He had to be at the cutting edge, and so he pressed ahead with abstract work.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he would say, when we convened downstairs for coffee, or for wine at the end of the day. ‘Abstract canvases have been done to death. After Robert Ryman’s white paintings, where can you go? Everything I do is derivative. Even if I think of a new idea myself, it turns out that someone’s been there before.’ He looked at me, pleading for an answer. I always offered the same advice. It was never what he wanted to hear.

  ‘You’re fantastic at people,’ I’d tell him. ‘Set yourself up as a portrait painter. We know enough potential clients to get you started, and the more you do it, the more work you’ll get. You can do it at the upper end of the market. You can make fantastic money, and work on whatever else you want to do in your spare time. You could do one of me for my next CD, maybe.’

  He would shake his head. ‘No, Evie, I want to be something special. Not just another jobbing painter. I might as well set up as an interior decorator.’

  He frustrated me, and he frustrated himself. A year later, after we were married, he applied for a job as an IT technician for an insurance company. The post came with training, and he talked his way into it, despite his fine art degree. At first he was doing it to save up enough money to devote himself to his art for a year. Then we stopped talking about his painting. That was when our relationship stopped being idyllic, and crashed down to earth. Jack resented me for being successful, and I resented him for giving in and taking the most boring job in the world. I knew he had only done it to spite himself, but he grew into his new role, and before long he had become an IT consultant. I heard him, once, saying to one of his colleagues, ‘You know what, mate, I used to be an artist!’

  ‘You stupid twat,’ said the man, laughing at him. Jack joined in.

  ‘I know,’ he chuckled.

  I hated him for that.

  The new, improved Evie Silverman, by contrast, went from strength to strength. When I was eighteen, I had decided not to be a musician, and had applied to universities rather than music colleges. Yet I found myself doing it anyway. I was paranoid about my ability. Lots of people in the classical music world hated me, and still do, in the same way they hated Nigel Kennedy or anyone else who has been promoted on image rather than ability. I started getting up earlier and earlier in the mornings, so I could practise for an hour before having a shower, styling my hair, dressing and doing my make-up, and still be ready to start the day at nine. Usually, starting the day simply meant going straight back to the cello. As far as I was concerned, I was less talented than I had any right to be, and so I needed to put in the hours to avoid being found out. Jack resented this. He hated waking at six to find me slinking out from under the duvet and creeping downstairs with my cello. He reasoned that he was out from eight till six thirty anyway, so I had plenty of time to practise without letting it intrude on our few hours together. I knew he was right, but I woke up every morning catching my breath in panic about the fact that I was being promoted as a great talent, when I was actually just adequate. I knew that, unless I was obsessive about it, I would be finished almost before I had started.

  My talent has not expanded in the intervening years, yet I have, recently, let my diligence slip. If it comes apart, I have nothing to fall back on. I wouldn’t mind letting it go if my career was coming to a natural end, but it isn’t. By all accounts, I am selling well over here. Ron is right: my advert is on all the time. This is the worst moment for me to fall apart. Whatever else is happening, I can’t be unmasked as a crap musician. I know it will happen, but it mustn’t happen yet.

  So I sit in my father’s study, and work on my technique. Slowly my dexterity comes back. I move on to pieces. My next engagement, the Lincoln Center concert, the scariest thing yet, is in three weeks’ time. Much depends upon it. I will be playing with a stunning orchestra, and, as so often happens, I will be playing the Elgar. Everyone wants to hear it, but what they really want is Jacqueline du Pré’s interpretation. Often, I do my best to give it to them. I am a musical tart. I play to the lowest common denominator. I am popular with readers of the Daily Mail, and less so with anyone who knows anything about classical music.

  When I feel more confident, I begin to tackle the Elgar. Every time I’m not happy with something, I stop and iron it out. I am more patient than I have been for years. By the time I reach the end of the first movement, and am reasonably happy with what I have achieved, I discover that it is nearly two o’clock. I have been playing for six hours. I smile at myself in the mirror. Six hours, and very few ugly thoughts. Evie Silverman isn’t washed up yet, after all.

  I run downstairs, hungry, thirsty, and happier than I have been for a long time. Sonia comes out of the sitting room, and meets me in the hall.

  ‘Hello there!’ she says, laughing. ‘What a treat! Evie, I have had the most wonderful morning, grading papers to the sounds of your angelic playing. People pay good money for this!’

  I smile back. It feels strange to be genuine, for once. ‘I didn’t disturb you too much?’

  ‘Oh, not at all! I wish you’d live with us for ever. My pupils will be pleased with their grades tomorrow, I’m in such a good humour.’

  ‘Thanks, Sonia. I lost track of the time completely.’

  ‘Wonderful, just wonderful. Let’s get you some lunch, shall we?’

  I feel comfortable and safe with Sonia. I know for certain that she is on my side, so I do everything I can to cultivate her friendship. We sit outside, in their small garden, and I tilt my head back to catch the spring sun on my face. Sonia has made us huge sandwiches, with mozzarella, tomatoes, arugula and sweet peppers. It turns out that she made them at half past twelve, and has been waiting for me to emerge before she tackled hers. I am rarely fed. I desperately want my stepmother to adore and protect me for ever, but I cannot tell her that. She thinks I am sane.

  ‘This is gorgeous,’ I tell her, taking a huge bite from my sandwich and feeling the mayonnaise running down my chin.

  ‘Glad you like it,’ she says. ‘Now, Lincoln Center. I’m afraid you will have one or two supporters there. That’s all right, isn’t it? Every time Howard or I tell a friend about it, they immediately get themselves a ticket. Plus my school and our AA friends have both made block bookings. I’d be surprised if there were any tickets left. But the last thing we want to do is to embarrass you. I’ve been telling my pupils about my talented, beautiful stepdaughter until they beg me to get back to the lesson.’

  I laugh. ‘Please, Sonia. Please fill the hall with people who are going to clap. I’m scared shitless.’

  ‘What do you plan to wear?’

  I lean back and smile slightly. ‘Now, that is the best question you could possibly have asked. I haven’t got anything glamorous enough with me. Will you come shopping?’

  ‘Will this afternoon do? I’m not in school today and I’ve finished my papers. Let’s do it. What’s your budget?’

  I shrug. ‘For something like this, there is no budget. Whatever makes me look good. I’ve got money in the bank. I don’t mind going wild if that’s what it’s going to ta
ke.’

  ‘Fifth Avenue. We’ll start there and head on up to the Upper East. This is a treat. Colour? Design?’

  I stretch my legs out and finish my sandwich. ‘It has to be a dress, obviously, and with a long skirt that will fit round a cello. And yet I’d prefer it if it didn’t look like an item from Barbie’s wardrobe. I have racks of Barbie dresses at home. You wouldn’t believe some of them. Frills and flounces seem to be de rigueur in my profession.’

  Sonia wags her finger at me. ‘Barbie is so out. Sleek and slinky, perhaps?’

  I nod. ‘Classic. No satin. No Barbie. No bridesmaids.’

  ‘You got it.’

  Four hours later, we are riding home on the F train, with tired feet, caffeine vertigo, and the satisfaction of a job well done. A bag containing my dress is reverently draped across my knee. The dress is long and plain. It reaches the floor, and is cut classically in a way that makes me look both skinny and curvy. As a result of American portions, I am definitely leaning more towards the curvy end of this scale at the moment, and vow to eat nothing but fruit and vegetables, and to drink nothing but juice and water, for the next three weeks. The dress is a deep purple that is almost black, and has a matching pair of shoes that I will practise walking in until the concert. It makes me look serious, and yet, the shop assistant and Sonia promised, also sexy. It has no overtones of weddings or plastic dolls.

  ‘Honey,’ says Sonia, as we walk home, up the hill, past the small but pretty houses. ‘You are going to be gorgeous. Please don’t worry about your concert. And you will stay with us as long as you like?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. People say to me, “Oh my God, do you not have issues with your stepdaughter living with you?” and I tell them, “Actually, no.” And since you’re beautiful and talented and successful I’m not quite sure why I don’t! You just know that you’re welcome.’