Love Is a Thief

by Claire Garber

  ‘So what about you, Peter? What do you think about love?’

  ‘How serious were you about the egg freezing?’ he said, trying to catch popcorn in his mouth. His subject changing was getting tedious.

  ‘Well, I would like to give myself the option of having children later on. But there is a certain amount of genetic testing involved, to see if I am carrying any hereditary diseases or abnormalities. I’m not sure how I feel about that.’ On the stage Juliet was waking, about to find Romeo dead by her side. ‘Did you ever have any tests done to make sure you don’t have the same heart condition as your mum? Sorry, I don’t actually know her exact cause of death. Grandma just said she had a weak heart.’

  Peter didn’t answer and carried on throwing popcorn in his mouth.

  ‘Peter, why did you never get in touch with me after you left England? You wrote to Grandma. And I get it, she’s important to you, and she’s always seen herself as a sort of surrogate mother to you. I just don’t see how hard it would have been to have dropped me a line, or passed a message on through her.’

  ‘O happy dagger! This is thy sheath …’ Juliet was taking her own life on the stage, death preferable to a lifetime without her love. ‘There rust, and let me die.’

  ‘I do want to explain certain things about my past, Kate,’ he said, sounding very much as if he didn’t. ‘I just don’t really know where to start, or where to end, and to be honest I’d rather just forget it ever happened and start afresh from today.’

  ‘So does that mean you’re going to tell me or you’re not? We could go back to speaking about my fertility if you like?’ Men hate talking about ovaries and menstrual cycles.

  ‘OK, then.’ He nodded, shifting in the darkness to face me. ‘My mum didn’t die of a weak heart. She found out my father was having an affair and she killed herself.’

  The stage went dark and the audience started applauding.

  This went on for several painful minutes.

  ‘Peter, that doesn’t make any sense. Your mum always seemed so happy.’

  ‘She was happy,’ he said, flicking pieces of popcorn off the blanket, ‘when she was with my dad. Her universe orbed around him. He was her Sun.’ He poured us both more wine, then lay back on the blanket, pulling me with him. I turned my head to watch him as he spoke. ‘Kate, do you remember when I came to stay with you and Grandma for about three weeks? We were about six. You were still wetting the bed quite a lot.’ He always manages to mention at least one humiliating childhood fact when I see him. ‘Well, I was only supposed to stay for the weekend. My father had been called to an urgent business meeting in Rome and he had to leave straight away. Mum was supposed to pack his things and have everything shipped over. But last minute she decided she wanted to surprise him, so she booked a flight and took everything herself.’

  ‘I wasn’t wetting the bed all the time.’

  ‘Kate, your bed was like a water park,’ he said, patting my hand, ‘and please don’t make this about you.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘When Mum arrived in Rome she found my dad with another woman.’ He turned on his side, resting his head on his hand. ‘Apparently the affair had been going on for a while. It was a serious relationship—’ he struggled over the word ‘—and my father had already planned to leave my mum. Well, there’s no universe without its Sun and the depression engulfed her. She didn’t want to fight it. She didn’t try to. My mum didn’t want a life without my father so that is exactly what she chose.’

  He lay back down on the blanket, staring up at the stars. I reached over and held his hand.

  ‘They say she didn’t suffer, which I suppose is a good thing. It would have been just like falling asleep. Of course, I didn’t know any of this. Dad told me she suffered a weak heart and that it had finally given out on her, which in a way is true. It was only when we were selling the house years later that I found some letters from Mum to Dad, some paperwork regarding the divorce proceedings, and some letters sent to my dad from the other woman.’ He took his hand away from mine.

  ‘And this happened when?’

  ‘I found this out just before your 15th birthday.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to talk about it, Kate. I didn’t want to feel the things I was feeling. I didn’t want to explain them to you. I planned to run away. But your grandma found me packing—’

  ‘How does she do that? Always turning up at the right moment?’

  ‘Or the wrong moment. Anyway, she knew I wouldn’t change my mind about leaving and your grandma is not one to waste her breath, but she wanted me to finish my education, to give myself the best chance to create a good life for myself. She didn’t want me to be beholden to anyone ever again. “Freedom is choice,” she said to me that day, and I wanted both. So I agreed to let her help me if she promised not to tell anyone where I was going. She knew if she broke her promise I would have just run away. It was a horrible position for me to put her in, I know that, but I was only thinking about myself. Within 24 hours I was in a new school in Switzerland.’ He sat up and took a sip of his wine. I was still struggling to put together the pieces of his puzzle. ‘I did want to see you, Kate. I did miss you. But you are so connected to my past. I wouldn’t have been able to see you without thinking about her.’ For the first time since he’d started speaking I felt an actual emotion expressed from Peter Parker, and it was anger. ‘Why would anyone give up everything they had because of love?’ he said, turning to face me. ‘How could anyone be so weak? Punch my dad, yes. Divorce him for everything he’s got, maybe. But lie down and choose to die? Because of love? Who does that? Seriously, Kate, what kind of person does that?’ He shuddered as the temperature in the park started dropping.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your mum, Peter.’

  ‘So am I, Kate, but it was her choice, not mine, and I really really want to leave it in the past. It’s exhausting carrying this around with me all the time. It’s exhausting lying to you—lying on any level is an emotional drain.’

  ‘I can’t imagine living like that, Peter,’ I said, rubbing my arms to keep warm.

  ‘So Kate Winters has never lied to someone close to her?’ he said, taking his jacket off and wrapping me up in it.

  ‘No, Peter, I haven’t. In fact the only time I haven’t been totally forthcoming with the truth was when things were falling apart with Gabriel, and then I think I didn’t tell anyone because I wanted to protect them, not because I was protecting myself.’

  ‘I just want things to go back to how they were when we were kids, Kate. Do you think that’s even possible? Our lives were so simple then.’ I looked into his blue eyes. How could we ever be again who we were when we were children?

  ‘So that’s it, Peter? No more secrets?’

  ‘I promise you, Kate,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘I’m only ever interested in your well-being.’ He leant over and kissed me gently on the cheek. For some strange reason I suddenly felt the urge to kiss him back so, remembering the words of Madame Butterfly, I quickly pecked his cheek, like a little bird looking for worms. Then I felt really silly.

  ‘Kate, I’m sorry but do you mind if I gave the recital a miss? I have a splitting headache and I think I need to rest. I’ll get the car to take you but I’m afraid I need to leave.’ He kissed me on the cheek, this time closer to the edge of my mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he got up, slowly wandering off into the darkness of Central Park.

  the juilliard school

  The auditorium at the Juilliard School was as impressive as any West End theatre. There were plush red seats sprawling up through the stalls to a dress circle. There was an elaborately decorated gold domed ceiling and the stage was enormous, framed by a thick red velvet curtain. The recital was a mixture of music and song and Beatrice was the third artist to play. Huck gave an introduction and spoke as if he were doing vocal scales, going all the way up and then coming all the way back down. It was slightly hypnotic and sleep-inducing.
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  ‘Our aspirations sometimes give way to our obligations,’ Huck began. ‘What we want to do gives way to what we feel we should do. Our expectations for life start out sky high but a rejection, a missed opportunity, a lack of encouragement all have the same effect—we make our dreams a little smaller. Most of us sitting in this room have already begun this process. Someone who came here wanting to be the lead composer for Disney now thinks they’d happily accept a part-time role with Paramount. A violinist aiming for the New York symphony thinks that Boston would do just as good. We are all chipping away at our dreams. And tonight we have a guest who knows this firsthand. She gained a place at Juilliard before the Second World War. But obligation stepped in, a duty to marry, to do the right thing in the eyes of her family and society. Then doubt crept in because what are the chances of her being good enough to be a concert pianist? And just like that she let go of her dream and the ceiling of her ambition was lowered. But she did not give up altogether. Tonight she is going to grab hold of that dream to play here, just as she wanted to over 50 years ago, and for that we are thankful. So the theme of tonight is simply this: to take a break from giving up on our hopes for the future. We must occasionally allow ourselves the opportunity to dream. So without further ado may I introduce you all to Beatrice Van de Broeck, the dreamer who got away. Beatrice Van de Broeck!’

  Huck walked off to the wing. To rapturous applause he led a slow-moving Beatrice onto the stage and towards a grand piano at the centre of it. She sat down and the auditorium fell silent. There was a long uncomfortable wait for her to begin. She placed her hands on the keys. I held my breath. She played a chord. It sounded flat. She stopped and withdrew her hands as if the keys had stung her. I was sitting up in the dress circle but I could see her hands shaking. No one knew what to do. I heard people shuffling in the stalls. Beatrice looked out into the audience and squinted against the bright lights. It was horrific. A ninety-year-old lady sitting alone on a stage, too scared to play a note. I wanted to run down there and sweep her off the stage. I was about to do just that when Huck marched on stage clapping loudly and nodding to the audience to do the same. Everyone joined in, clapping furiously. Then he sat himself down next to Beatrice. He put his arm around her and made her look out to the applauding audience. She shyly turned, blinking furiously, as if the audience were a sun. He squeezed her tightly, whispered something in her ear then played a very loud E sharp. She did the same. He played a chord. She did the same. Before I could say Beethoven they were performing the most amazing duet. At the end of it the audience burst into ear-splitting applause. He made Beatrice take three bows and then she played a solo piece. She might have been 90 but that lady’s got rhythm. At the end of the evening she was asked to ‘jam’ with some of the percussion players and they had the whole audience up and dancing for 15 minutes. She was positively radiating by the end.

  a fact - the most beautiful colour in the world is the flush of pink on Beatrice Van de Broeck’s cheeks the night she performed at the Juilliard School.

  After the recital Beatrice and I waited for the hall to empty then sat together on the beautiful stage taking in the space, the room, the smell, giving Beatrice’s senses a moment to absorb everything she didn’t get to digest all those years ago. We sat silently looking out onto the low-lit auditorium, hundreds of empty seats staring back at us. It was a comfortable silence, where no one is compelled to speak, except me, after a few short minutes …

  ‘Beatrice, how do you think your life would have been different if you had attended Juilliard?’

  She took a moment. Took a deep breath. Mulled it over.

  ‘That is impossible to imagine, Kate. And I am starting to suspect it was not my destiny.’

  ‘What do you mean? You were amazing tonight.’

  ‘Had it been my destiny to be a performer, surely my life would still have contained music, even after I chose not to come here? Or at least it should have had more of a musical emphasis. But it didn’t. I gave up almost immediately; as soon as the decision was made I turned my back on music. I am sure I could have found some way to study to the same level in England. But I didn’t. And the choice to go without was very much mine. I was self-saboteur, active in the end of my music. It’s funny but in over 60 years I have never once looked at it like that. But now I see clearly. The kids are here because they wanted it more than me. They are braver than me. What a silly woman I am to have spent my whole life thinking I was something I’m not.’ Her voice started to break. ‘What a silly silly woman I am.’ She took a small embroidered hanky from her handbag and dabbed her eyes. We sat there, without words, without music. ‘But I played here in the end though, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did, Beatrice. And you played magnificently.’

  ‘It’s time to go home, I think, Kate,’ she said, tapping me affectionately on the knee before standing up and slowly walking off.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say much to Beatrice on the flight home, which was convenient, as she slept the whole way. So I watched her sleep, for hours, in a way that definitely resembled a stalker. What had I just done to this poor old lady? And could Beatrice’s revelation of self-saboteur be applied to us all? Even when we found ourselves in circumstances we hated, had we on some level had a choice, either to accept these circumstances or a choice not to bring about change? Were we frightened of being more powerful? Frightened of the control we had over our own lives? Frightened of taking more responsibility? Or is it that, if we took responsibility, we would only have ourselves to blame if things went wrong?

  As soon as we landed I did something I had never done before and I put in a call to Chad. I wasn’t sure how to write up Beatrice’s visit to New York because what if self-sabotage was the real cause of all this loss?

  ‘We speak about this now, we speak about this for 30 seconds, then we never twatting speak about this again, understood?’ I could imagine him pacing up and down as he spoke. ‘If I am sleeping with someone I already know it’s not going anywhere, right? But I don’t actually want to be the one who ends the relationship. I want them to do it. Responsibility Avoidance, get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look, if someone dumps me then I can be the Passive Recipient, which is a great place to be. I can be like, “What could I do? They ended it. It was their choice.” But if I dump them and then I realise I’ve made a mistake, I’d be like, “Fuck, Chad, you can’t trust your own judgement, you fucked up.” I’d start to doubt myself. I don’t want to doubt myself, Kate. It makes my life more twatting complicated. I’d need a shrink. So, I avoid certain types of responsibility.’

  ‘What if you end up with someone who doesn’t take responsibility either? What if they never end the relationship?’ I was thinking specifically about Federico and his ability to hang on like a barnacle. ‘Do you end up staying together forever?’

  ‘Eventually they all walk away, Kate. It’s a constant of life. No one will ever stay forever.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So let’s get back to this old piano lady.’

  ‘Beatrice.’

  ‘Whatever. What if Beatrice didn’t get married but then didn’t make it as a pianist either? What if she married him and carried on piano in some form or other and realised after a couple of years she really wasn’t that good anyway? She’d have misjudged herself, her talent, she’d have to admit that she was fooling herself about being a concert pianist. And as a result her life might start to feel a bit twatting meaningless. She’d be all like, “Who the fuck am I? Why the fuck am I here? I’m not good at anything. What does it all fucking mean?” You see? We all need to look for meaning, Kate. We all need to define ourselves by something else. Just like you currently define yourself by being all heartbroken and Love-Stolen Dreams. That is your choice. So if you don’t take responsibility in a way you are taking responsibility by pretending not to have much control. Get it?’

  I wasn’t sure.

  ‘No one wants to take responsibility, Kate. We do, up to a point, up to dec
iding what job to have, who to shag, how much debt to put on our credit cards, visiting your nan once a year to make sure she keeps you on her will. But anything outside that, no thanks, missus. Only the Martin Luther Kings of this world want to test themselves and the might of their own power. No one else would want to come up with a revolutionary idea, promise change, promise a better something for fear of not delivering, for fear of it not turning out OK. Millions follow Gandhi, right? No one wants to actually be twatting Gandhi. D’ya get me?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘Kate, Beatrice isn’t the only one. You are also in control of all the shit that is currently out of control in your life, including the fact that I have a certain amount of control over your career development, speaking of which, I expect the copy for this article on my desk by noon tomorrow, and by my desk I mean inbox and copy I mean digital format.’ He hung up.

  Was Chad right? Was Beatrice really responsible for her own undoing? If so, then love hadn’t taken anything from her at all. There were no missed boats or love-stolen dreams. There was just a lack of determination or perhaps a lack of genuine and enduring interest.

  I once read a book called The Artist’s Way. It was a 12-week recovery programme for writers who were struggling to create. In fact the book was designed for anyone whose life suddenly felt a little less shiny. It had lots of simple and quick exercises for people to do to help them feel better. My personal favourite was always the Morning Pages. The Morning Pages are three pages of writing that people do as soon as they wake up in the morning; three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing. There is no wrong way of doing the Morning Pages. You wake up, you grab a pencil, you write three pages. That’s it. You write about anything and everything. They rarely make sense. They are not supposed to be reread. More often than not they are negative, fragmented and repetitive: worries about your job; the way your boyfriend talked over you the night before at dinner; longings; anxieties. Sometimes I have written ‘what am I going to write’ for an entire sheet of A4 before the rest comes out. And it always does. The little bits and pieces that run around your head unmonitored. Writing Morning Pages is like taking a morning shower for your brain, leaving it clean, fresh and ready for the day; a little lighter, brighter and open to all that the universe has to offer.