The lights of the great central chandelier went out; darkness ran quickly along the edge of the circle, descended on the stalls. Tuesday. The violins began tentatively to search for something and could not find it, wavered and despaired. Tuesday. A woman sneezed. The light on the conductor’s baton-tip darted like a firefly downwards. Tuesday night. I promised, Anthony thought, that’s tough on her, and the violins caught and held the emotion of regret: for loss, for the pain one gives, for what one forgets. She’s dumb; she may have sat round all day. Wavering, lamenting, the cry of a bird over grey commonland, a poisoned draught, irreparable love, death that ends everything, a woman’s sneeze again; it’s tough on her, stone stairs, ‘no milk today’. She’s dumb. Davidge the name, and death the black sail.
The curtain rose; long robes of poison green and purple picked up the dust from the boards; an elderly woman sang shaking blonde pigtails; the footlights glittered on tin breast-plates; a draught of wine was taken and a boat set sail. It was meaningless. Tuesday. I’ll telephone in the first interval. It makes one feel guilty (returning, false friend, to face King Mark) when they are so dumb, when they fall for one. A kind of innocence; she ought to learn to make herself up properly: the lipstick the wrong shade for that sunburn lotion; she drank the schnaps that day in Gothenburg as if she had never drunk anything stronger than sherry before.
The coloured water in the beaker, the actress with tipped glass, the doped drink, soprano sorceries, this fuss over irreparable love.
It’s not a question of love; only when someone falls for one so easily one likes – oh, hell, what, to let them down gently, to do as one would be done by (the remembered sudden pain of Annette’s disappearance dwarfed the music, the agony in a sound superficial compared with the agony in a sight, the pencilled wall, the soapy stairs). If she were less dumb, if she had not fallen quite so easily to all those damned silly stories, I shouldn’t mind. He looked at Krogh. ‘Mr Krogh.’ He shook him by the elbow and Krogh woke.
‘It’s getting so noisy,’ Anthony whispered, ‘I expect it’s close to the end.’
He was right; great gusts of music billowed the purple velvets; stout Vikings strode singing to the footlights; betrayal; the panting breasts of a weeping soprano; my friend; the falling curtain.
‘Do you mind,’ Anthony asked, ‘if I slip away and telephone?’
‘No, no,’ Krogh said, ‘you can’t do that. People will come and talk to me. They’ll ask me if I like the thing.’
‘Say that you were too tired to listen.’
‘If only things were as easy as that,’ Krogh said, ‘but you don’t understand. This is Art. Great Art.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I read about it somewhere. It’s one of the great love-stories of the world.’
‘No, no,’ Anthony said. ‘You’ve got it wrong. You’re mixing it up with Carmen.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. After all, I was awake, Mr Krogh. Besides, I know the story. This is just about a fellow who sends his friend to bring him back a wife. And there’s a mix-up about a drink which is supposed to give people a letch for each other; the fellow’s friend and the girl drink it and they get a letch for each other. But she’s still got to go back and marry the other fellow. You can’t call that a great love story. It’s all too fantastic. What did they need to put in all that about the drink for? You don’t need to drink anything to fall in love.’
‘You may be right,’ Krogh said.
‘Then can I go and telephone?’
Krogh said with sudden suspicion: ‘Is it the Press? I won’t keep you a day if you get in touch with the Press.’
‘No, no, Mr Krogh,’ Anthony said, ‘this is just a girl.’ He began to explain. ‘We had a date together and I forgot about it.’
‘You mean,’ Krogh said, ‘you were going out together?’
‘Yes. We’d have gone to a movie or to a park. Is there a park here where you can sit about?’
‘And you’d have enjoyed that?’ Krogh asked. He turned in his chair and said in a low voice: ‘You’d take her to the park and – what is it you say?’
‘Neck,’ Anthony said.
‘That’s the word. I remember friends of mine – oh, years ago – in Chicago.’ He said in a tone of joyful surprise: ‘Murphy. O’Connor. Williamson. How odd it is. I thought I’d quite forgotten their names. We were working on a bridge there. That was before I invented the cutter. I don’t think Hall was there. Aronstein. That was another name.’
‘Look here, Mr Krogh,’ Anthony said, ‘do you like this place?’ Everyone had waited for the Prince to stop applauding; now they were streaming out, the women in their jewels, the men in their orders, winking like traffic signals, to the great stairs and the promenade.
‘Of course,’ Krogh said.
‘But it’s dull. What you want after a hard day’s work is a bit of song and dance. Something light. Aren’t there any cabarets here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Krogh said. He added slowly: ‘I’ve always been able to trust your sister. I’ve never kept things from her. After all, you’re her brother.’ He seemed to be working himself up towards a confession of the deepest importance. ‘Yes, it seems dull to me, too. And that statue – but Kate likes it.’
‘Mr Krogh,’ Anthony said, ‘you are coming out with me now. We’re going to go and have a quiet drink somewhere where there’s a bit of music and then I’m going to see you home to bed.’ He added: ‘I can telephone from the restaurant.’
‘It’s impossible,’ Krogh said, ‘people would notice.’
‘They’ll never notice. They are all going out to the promenade.’
‘They’ll see our empty seats when the next act begins. They’ll think I’m ill. You can’t imagine the rumours that might start, Just before a new issue too. And the reporters will be outside.’
‘Then I’ll be the one who’s ill. You are taking me home. No one knows who I am. They’ll think I’m a friend of yours.’
Krogh said: ‘Farrant, if only I could. But you’d never convince them. And there are two more hours of this. Can you act?’
‘Can I act?’ Anthony said. ‘I should just think I can act. You should have seen me in The Private Secretary. The whole school laughed, even the masters. The headmaster’s wife – we called her Fuzzy Wuzzy – gave me a box of chocolates. Of course, I’m a bit rusty now, but I can act all right.’
But no, Krogh said, it wouldn’t do. He was grateful, but Farrant didn’t know the intensity of the Press publicity which surrounded him. There was one little shabby fellow in particular. . . . He said: ‘It’s gone on now for years.’ He said: ‘Of course in a way it’s a tribute – I daresay I should feel lost without it. Go and telephone and come back.’ He opened the programme for the first time and began to read it, page by page, from the large advertisement of Krogh’s, methodically, through to the list of the cast.
Along the promenade a space had been cleared up and down which the Prince walked accompanied by his wife, by an elderly man with a little pointed grey moustache, and an old-young woman, with long hair, an unpowdered face and a spotty complexion, back and forth, back and forth, like animals behind bars watched at feeding-time. There was a surge of whispers when the four backs receded, a scurry of disinterested conversation when they approached.
On the pad in the telephone-box someone had drawn a heart, an awkward lop-sided heart. The man at the exchange for a long while did not understand what Anthony wanted; over and over again Anthony said ‘Hotel York’. Inside the heart was a telephone number, and the artist had begun to draw an arrow. Up and down the promenade the Prince walked, and the women watched the Princess’s dress and the men whispered. The pencilled heart seemed for a moment rather simple, rather touching, until one noticed in the corner of the page a little French rhyme such as one might find in a cracker at Christmas and the whole picture, while Anthony listened and waited, became clever, became pastiche, became a sophisticated joke.
‘Is Miss Davidge in?’ The po
rter at the York could speak English. ‘I am not sure. I will go and find out. Who is that please?’ and Anthony could hear the tiny tap of his footsteps walking away. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten. He thought: What is her name? She told me her name, but he could not remember it. It occurred to him that he could not properly remember even her appearance, only the faults he had found with it, the wrong shade of lipstick, the wrong powder. The idea of her complete anonymity momentarily touched his imagination. He felt responsibility as if an animal had been left in his charge and he had lost it. It will always answer if you call – Yes, but if one has forgotten the name?
‘This is Anthony,’ he said. The voice was familiar; even the hopeless lack of concealment was familiar, the quick slight sigh of excitement, or hope, or possibly relief, which made itself heard across a lake, a bridge, a quay, running recklessly along the wires.
He said: ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Lucia.’ How could he have forgotten the absurd pretentious name? She had confided to him in the corner of a warehouse that she had a brother called Roderick. Her father was responsible. He was a great reader of the obscurer classics, classics which if they had ever lived were by now dead and buried under the dust which gathers on the shelves of public libraries. Round and round Gothenburg he carried his favourite book; he had never for long been parted from it; it was responsible for Roderick – Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads. She could not remember what book had given him the idea of Lucia. Over the smörgåsbord Mr Davidge had offered to lend him Lockhart. ‘Scott’s Lockhart,’ he explained. He had gone on to say that he was a great reader of poetry. He lowered his voice and spoke with awe of Horne and Alexander Smith. ‘I like something I can get my teeth into,’ he had said, ‘not lyrics. Epics.’ His reading had been conditioned, his daughter said with sudden bright malice because he was usurping the conversation, by what he could buy from the sixpenny boxes at the second-hand booksellers. ‘Look at it. Just look at it,’ she said with scorn, pointing at Lockhart where it lay beside the salted herrings, in a black scratched binding with an old circulating library label covering the back.
‘Lucia,’ Anthony said. ‘Of course. I’d know your voice anywhere. Only I thought it might be a family voice, you see. I didn’t want to spill the old heart out to your mother.’
‘I suppose,’ the voice said hopelessly, ‘you forgot.’
‘Of course, I didn’t forget,’ Anthony said. ‘But I’ve just been given a rather important post by Krogh. I haven’t had time to get to a telephone till now. I’ve been rushed off my feet. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve been doing. Listen, do you like tigers?’
‘Tigers?’
‘Toy tigers. I bought you one today. That just shows I didn’t forget you. Can I bring it round to the hotel?’
‘But when?’
‘I could be round by midnight.’
‘Oh, Anthony, I wish you had come. It’s no good now. I’m half-way to bed.’
‘But it’s not ten yet.’
‘We always go to bed at ten at home.’
‘Tomorrow night, if I can get away’ – My God, poor kid, he thought, going to bed at ten; it’s stiff. I’d like to give her a good time. My good turn for the month. He thought with painful gratitude: she thinks I’m swell. She believes what I tell her. It’s dumb of her, but it’s sweet.
‘It’s no good. Mother’s got tickets for something.’
‘The next night. . . .’
‘A friend of father’s . . . Anthony, it’s no good. We’ll be gone next week.’
‘Have lunch with me.’
The small despairing voice worried him. ‘It’s no good, Anthony. You should see father’s list of engagements. The city hall, the museums, lunch here and lunch there. We’re doing the place. How we’re doing it!’
‘Well then,’ Anthony said, ‘you can have breakfast with me.’ He said airily: ‘We’ll take a car to some place. When can you manage it?’
‘Tomorrow?’ the voice failed up the wire with excitement. ‘Here’s mother. I don’t want her to know. She’d put her foot on it. Will you be at the North Bridge at eight?’
‘O.K.,’ Anthony said. He hung up the receiver. Eight was damnably early. It would mean that he had to get up at seven-thirty; it was very cold most mornings at that hour; and he had a sudden cheerless vision of his room: the toothbrush in the glass, the noisy coil of pipes, the window opening on the narrow street and the dustbins, the hot-water tap which ran cold, the pictures still stuck up with soap; he had forgotten to buy any drawing-pins. My good turn for the month. Somebody tapped on the door.
One day something has got to happen. They’ll drive me desperate. He had no idea who ‘they’ might be.
He turned and saw Krogh waiting for him outside the box, and immediately without effort he was smiling, he was full of bonhomie, he was a good fellow. ‘Have I been long?’
‘I’ve come away,’ Krogh said, ‘after all.’ He said with astonishment as if he could hardly believe that it was as easy as all that: ‘They’ve all gone back and here we are.’ He stared up the broad empty staircase. ‘And now what next?’
‘That’s fine,’ Anthony said. ‘Now we just walk out. We won’t bother about our things or your car.’
Krogh smiled. ‘As easy as all that,’ he said, ‘I’ve never thought of it before.’ Side by side they went down the empty stairs. They could hear someone singing, the sound fainter than a voice over the telephone. ‘This is quite an adventure for me, Farrant. It’s a long while since I’ve had an adventure like this.’
‘But as your bodyguard,’ Anthony said, ‘I feel responsible. I haven’t even got a gun.’
‘That was nerves. I don’t need a bodyguard.’
‘You need a drink.’
‘That’s right.’ He slipped his arm through Anthony’s and they came out past the astonished door-keepers into the square. A man ran up carrying something like a picture-frame on a handle, a white light blinded them, made them see everything for a moment distorted in a cruel glare, a wavering retreating world of black and white.
‘A taxi. Quick. Get a taxi,’ Krogh said. Two men came forward and said something to Krogh in Swedish, a taxi drew to the kerb, and Krogh pushed his way to the door. A crowd collected with extraordinary rapidity in the square. Through the windscreen Anthony could see six or seven people hurrying across the bridge. A woman under the Gustavus statue cried: ‘Herr Krogh. Hurrah,’ and everyone began to cheer in a weak questioning way as the taxi drove off. ‘Fools,’ Krogh said. He leant far back where he could not be seen, and the lights of the Grand Hotel slid across the windows. A blast of dance music shook them and receded.
‘Shall we stop here?’ Anthony said.
‘No, no,’ Krogh said, ‘somewhere quieter. We’ll go up to the Hasselbacken opposite Tivoli. I haven’t been there for twenty years.’
‘Is it a good show, Tivoli?’
‘I’ve never been there,’ Krogh said.
‘We’ll go one night,’ Anthony said.
The moon-drenched stonework of the Northern Museum receded below them as they climbed above the lake. The music from Tivoli crept into the cold air which caught, enclosed it, as a block of ice might preserve two human bodies from corruption: a frozen riot, an iced abandon.
‘What could I do in Tivoli?’ Krogh said. ‘You’re a desperate fellow, Farrant. I’m not safe with you. To have left the opera like that. It will be in all the papers tomorrow. You heard them talk to me. They wanted to know if I disapproved of the production, if I felt ill, if I’d had bad news.’
‘Someone’s following us now,’ Anthony said, looking back, watching a wide yellow broom sweep round the curve by Skansen. ‘They’ll catch us for certain in the restaurant. Tell the man to go to Tivoli. It’s the only way; they’ll lose us in the crowd.’ He tapped on the glass himself: ‘Tivoli,’ he said, ‘Tivoli.’
‘No, no,’ Krogh said, ‘we can’t do that. What will the papers say? To have left the opera to go to Tivoli
. They’ll think I’m mad. What will happen to the market?’
‘Forget it,’ Anthony said.
‘Forget the market,’ Krogh said with astonishment; he began to laugh uneasily, guiltily. ‘What a desperate fellow you are,’ he repeated. ‘That scar – were you forgetting the market then?’
‘Ah, that scar,’ Anthony said, ‘that’s a long story. Do you remember the Neptune which sank in the Indian Ocean a few years ago? You wouldn’t have read about it in your papers, of course. There was a panic; the passengers tried to rush the boats; I was helping the first officer keep them out and someone clubbed me.’
Krogh laughed. Anthony said with startled incredulity: ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Not a word,’ Krogh said. The taxi drew up, but Anthony sat back and stared.
‘Why don’t you believe me? What have I said wrong?’ He began to repeat the story softly over to himself – ‘Neptune . . . panic . . . rush for the boats.’
‘Get out,’ Krogh said. ‘Here’s the other taxi.’ He put his hand on Anthony’s arm, when they were past the ticket barrier, and stopped him. ‘I want to see who it is.’
The second taxi drew up behind the first. A man in a thin grey summer suit got out; while he paid the driver he looked this way and that: every movement was slow and timed; thin though the skin of his face was, it sagged and hung in pouches under the chin, below the eyes. ‘It’s Pihlström.’ But the taxi did not drive away. A pair of legs in black tight trousers felt for the step, dangled earthwards in a long disjointed tenuous way, like a leather-jacket’s. ‘Two of them,’ Krogh exclaimed. ‘I’ve never known Pihlström hunt in couples. Why, it’s – how important they must think it is –’ a long-tailed coat, a black tie as thin as a bootlace tied in a bow below the old chin, the white bristles, the high humourless face, ‘it’s – it’s Professor Hammarsten,’ the black soft hat, the steel spectacles, the pale-grey skin.
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