by Hugh Mackay
‘I think I’ll get ready for bed, if you don’t mind. Early start.’
‘That’s fine.’ Freya ran upstairs to the bedchamber and changed into tracksuit pants and a sweater. She might once have been disappointed at Richard’s decision not to join her, but now she was conscious of a response more like relief. At the sound of her taking the leash off the hook on the back of the laundry door, Rondo, asleep on the floor of the convivium, sprang to life and scrambled to the front door, his paws slipping and sliding on the pavers, the tail wagging the dog.
Richard checked his emails, sorted some papers for the morning, brushed his teeth and got into bed. He read for a few minutes, felt drowsy, and rolled onto his side.
When Freya returned, Richard was snoring lightly. She smiled approvingly, undressed, and slipped into bed beside him. She, too, read until drowsiness overwhelmed her.
3
Love at First Sight
People think there’s nothing quite like a string quartet to add class to any occasion – a wedding reception, a conference dinner, a fiftieth birthday bash.
Pity the poor players. It has to be a largish function to warrant hiring us, and that means the noise level will be so high hardly anyone will hear us. We could just as easily be sawing away at fake instruments.
A few enthusiasts will position themselves close to us, nodding and smiling appreciatively, and tapping the fingers of their free hand against the back of the hand holding their drink, in a feeble attempt to simulate applause. Just throw money, we’re tempted to say.
We only do it for the money, obviously. And the exposure. We’re not naive enough to think we’re providing musical uplift or inspiration, let alone education. In fact, even the groupies only seem really responsive when we play their most familiar favourites. The ‘Largo’ from Handel’s Xerxes – that gets an occasional smile of recognition. We have a transcription of Schubert’s Trout piano quintet for four strings. Likewise, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’. And Daniel has done a terrifically lush, quasi-Romantic arrangement of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ that makes people laugh when they eventually get it. Cutting-edge it ain’t. We wouldn’t dare play our normal repertoire at those gigs.
When we received an invitation to play at an end-of-year party for an outfit called Socially Aware Architects, Jean-Pierre thought it must be a hoax. ‘There are no socially aware architects,’ he declared bitterly, having recently been ditched by a beautiful young Australian architect. Daniel thought it sounded funny enough to be real, and Olivia and I were in the mood to accept whatever was on offer. It had been a lean year.
The invitation came via our agent. (Yes! We had just acquired an agent!) Once we’d agreed to do it, the agent set it all up, so we had no clear idea of what to expect. We turned up at the venue – the Museum of Sydney – at six o’clock for a warm-up before the guests started arriving at six-thirty. The acoustic was brilliant when the place was empty.
In they came, looking like a bunch of socially aware dentists, socially aware nuclear physicists, socially aware anythings – or, for that matter, socially unaware anythings.
When Richard came up the stairs, I knew he was the man I would marry. No question. I didn’t even contemplate the possibility that he might already be married. Does that sound melodramatic? Foolish? Inconceivable? Love at first sight – absolutement!
I knew he was an architect, of course, and that appealed to me more than the idea of, say, a corporate lawyer or a hedge fund manager. I knew he must be ‘socially aware’, which sounded positive, whatever it might actually mean. But there he was, bounding up the stairs like a gazelle in a beautifully cut suit, with a lock of thick dark hair falling over his forehead. He was wearing a tie – most of the men weren’t – and I remember thinking how distinguished he looked, how confident, and how incongruous the tie was. It featured a cascade of musical instruments tumbling over a navy background. Not incongruous at all, you might think, given he was the guy who had booked the gig, though I didn’t know that at the time. It looked comical, somehow, in the context of his immaculate presentation. I’d have thought regimental stripes.
I was mesmerised. (There are times when I still am, all these years later.)
He came straight over to us and waited, with that faraway look I now know so well and understand so keenly, until we had finished the piece we were playing. Then he introduced himself as the person who had invited us to play at the event. He was equally charming to each of us, but he asked if he could have a word with me during the break for the formalities.
That’s when he told me he had seen me play at an event three months ago and had been determined to book us for this function. I remember noticing that he said he’d seen me play. I had no doubt that he would ask me to join him for a drink after the event.
But he didn’t.
He called me the next day, though, and told me he was going to Europe over Christmas and New Year and would contact me to ‘arrange something’ when he returned in mid-January.
He courted me as if it were the nineteenth century, except for going to bed together at his house on our second date. He came to every single one of my gigs, and we were married the following September. I was twenty-seven; he was forty-two. My friends said it would never last.
4
Coming Home –
2nd Variation – ‘Tiles, Tables, Taps’
The sight of his travertine-paved convivium gladdened Richard’s heart, as it always did when he returned home.
Freya was sitting at the refectory-style table they had imported from France at vast expense and against Freya’s better judgement. But she had been a good sport about it. She had long ago decided that Richard’s obsession with the house and everything in it was not worth resisting: there were more important things in her life than tiles and tables. Or, indeed, taps: the time Richard seemed willing to devote to the selection of taps – for their own home as well as his professional projects – astonished her.
Freya’s back was to the door, and Richard noticed her shoulders were shaking.
It was a tricky moment for both of them. She had not heard him come in, and so she was caught off-guard: she wished he had not seen her trembling, though it had been involuntary. He, meanwhile, was not in the mood for a deep-and-meaningful, and he knew Freya was in a fragile state. He wasn’t sure he wanted to provoke any soul-searching, not after such a heavy day, but he could hardly ignore a signal like that.
‘You okay, Frey?’ he said as lightly as he could, as he kissed her on the head.
‘I’m fine. Why do you ask?’ Freya immediately wished she’d left it at ‘I’m fine’.
So did Richard. Now he felt an obligation to proceed.
‘I thought I saw a little shiver as I came in. Are you cold? Can I fetch you a sweater?’ Little shiver. Minimise it. ‘Cold’ was the response he was hoping for; that would be the easiest pathway out of this.
‘No, I’m fine. It’s not cold. Well – no colder than it usually is on these tiles. Will we never find a suitable rug?’
Richard now mildly regretted having opted for ‘cold’ – the tile/rug issue had been done to death, in his view – but he could hardly have said, ‘Are you upset about something?’ without the risk of opening the floodgates.
Richard was becoming sensitive to Freya’s reliance on ‘fine’ as a catch-all response. Angelina, his daughter from a previous marriage, had gone through a phase of saying ‘all good’, mindlessly, tonelessly, in response to almost any enquiry, and Richard had found that intensely irritating. Freya’s ‘fine’ was pushing him in the same direction.
He noticed she was working on a score. Then he remembered she had been to a rehearsal of her string quartet this afternoon. With Daniel. That damned Daniel and his new baby. His new bouncing baby boy. His new bouncing baby boy with the cute dimples. His new bouncing baby boy with the IQ of a zillion. Better not to mention the rehearsal. He couldn’t trust himself to be appropriately restrained, nor to affect the appropriate level of interest if yet
another photo of Daniel’s baby was shown to him. The smartphone had its drawbacks.
‘Would you like a drink? Have you eaten?’ Freya asked.
As there was no evidence of food being prepared, Richard could only conclude that Freya had already eaten. With Daniel the cellist, no doubt, but perhaps Olivia the viola player as well. (As if.)
‘Yes. Well, no, not really. I had a late lunch, but I wouldn’t mind something.’
‘There’s lasagne in the fridge. You could warm it up in a few minutes. I’ll do it for you if you like, while you change.’
Freya knew how much Richard liked to be waited on when he came home late. She knew he was tired. He hadn’t acknowledged that she might be tired, too, but that wasn’t unusual. He thought being a musician was not proper work. He wouldn’t express it like that, but Freya knew that was what he really thought. Music, to Richard, was a form of recreation. He enjoyed it. He loved hearing – and watching – Freya play. But she often felt it would have been much the same to Richard if she’d been a professional tennis player, or perhaps a gymnast.
She also knew that Richard was wary of her friendship with Daniel. She’d known Daniel since they were teenagers at high school together and the formation of their own string quartet – its latest iteration known as Continental Drift – had been the fulfilment of a dream they’d nursed since way back then.
‘You haven’t said whether you’d like a drink.’
‘That would be lovely. Thanks.’
‘Red?’
‘Of course.’
When Richard came to the table and she put the lasagne in front of him, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stick it out for long. When they were both eating, it wasn’t so bad. But when Richard was eating and she was listening, the sound was literally unbearable to her. He sucked, he chomped, he swallowed quickly and noisily, and he scraped that wretched fork against his teeth in a way that set her own teeth on edge. And his jaw clicked like a percussive instrument. She’d raised the subject once and Richard was so offended, so defensive, he made it sound as if she were encroaching on his civil liberties. At such times she was conscious of the fifteen-year gap between their ages. At fifty-four, Richard was already showing signs of the combination of calcification and irritability Freya associated with older men, like her late father – though he had been another fifteen years older again when he died.
She bore the noise for as long as she could, then took her score and went to the studio to run over the part she’d been working on. (Yes, Richard, working.)
She stopped playing at ten, summoned Rondo for a walk and asked Richard if he would like to join her. She could see him weighing it up – he felt he should, but he really didn’t want to. Freya was perfectly happy to walk the dog on her own; preferred it, in fact. It was a time of head-clearing for her, and she didn’t like talking when she walked. She preferred fantasising about the lives being lived in the houses she passed, seen through all the lighted windows and unseen behind all the drawn curtains.
She knew Richard would be asleep by the time she returned, and that was fine by her. They both had an early start in the morning.
5
Beauty and Utility
One of the things I always tell my clients is that everything in their home or office – everything in their life – should be either beautiful or useful, or preferably both. I try to live by that rule myself. It applies to architectural finishes, of course, and to furnishings, cars, clothes, luggage, everything. Art is a special case. You might say a painting can be useful in a decorative sense as well as beautiful in its own right, but that’s stretching it a bit. Poetry – definitely. My favourite art form. Beautiful in its way with words, and useful for all those compressed insights; that creative blend of disruption and comfort. (I strive for that same blend in my architecture, in fact.) Music – well, yes, it can certainly be beautiful and it can be useful for relaxation, inspiration, entertainment. I always think of music as the most practical of the arts, somehow.
Creative artists and performers – now there’s a different question. If we value the arts, and no one does so more than I, then the creators and performers are very useful indeed. And some of them are as beautiful as the art they create.
Which brings us to Freya.
I saw her playing with her little group at a function one of our clients held to mark the opening of his new office tower. You can scarcely hear a note anyone is playing at those affairs, but I could see her. Oh, I could see her. Gorgeous. That faint smile. The way she moved as she played. Slim. That soft greyish-blonde hair. The viola player was nice, too, but Freya stood out like a beacon of loveliness.
That was not the occasion for an introduction, but my client supplied the contact details for the group. The Orison Quartet. That’s what they were called back then. Googled it, of course. The name seemed weird. Was weird. An orison is a kind of prayer, I discovered. Well, if you draw a long bow – no pun intended – I suppose you could say music is kind of a spiritual thing. Maybe. Sometimes. For some people. Anyway, I convinced Freya to change the name, but that’s another story. I gather these musical ensembles are always mixing and matching, changing names and partners.
So I went ahead and set up the gig for our rather splendid Socially Aware Architects’ end-of-year caper. It was a very new concept then. Our job is almost done by now – most young architects would probably regard themselves as so socially aware they wouldn’t need to join the group. Which is why they aren’t joining it, presumably. I imagine they are more socially aware than previous generations. It’s an education thing. The environment. Sustainability. Scarce resources. Global warming. All these things throw up their challenges to the socially aware architect, but that should be all architects, of course. People say – it’s a kind of cliché – that architects don’t design buildings for people. Well, who else do we design them for? But that was never the purpose of the group. We weren’t trying to make buildings more people-friendly – that’s a given, surely. No, we were trying to encourage architects to think on a societal scale, but also to pay more attention to our interpersonal relationships – our social networks: clients, planners and so forth. In the beginning, we were pretty avant-garde. Innovative. Pushing the envelope.
Anyway, back to Freya. That was how we met. I engineered it. I didn’t want to scare her off, so I was cautious on the night. Charming enough, I hoped, but not pushy. I had a bit of a history of scaring off women.
I wanted her to see me in a semi-professional context, to get a more well-rounded first impression of me than would be possible over a cup of coffee or a drink. I was making a brief speech to mark the end of the year, in which I referred to our growing numbers and to the very welcome addition of several women to our ranks. I mentioned our mid-year conference in Prague, and summarised the work we had done in trying to influence the curriculum in architecture faculties around the country. I quoted Frank Lloyd Wright, of course: The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines. And I used the old Edwin Lutyens line: There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons. That always goes down well with clients.
Freya never said what she thought of that speech, and I never asked her. I think she was too swept up in the excitement of the evening.
As soon as I saw her playing again, I knew I had not made a mistake. She was beautiful to look at, to listen to and, I had no doubt, to have and to hold.
I gave her a kiss on the cheek – nothing more – and sent her flowers the next day. I had to leave soon after for a Socially Aware Architects’ European study tour that was to include Christmas decorations on commercial buildings, so I called Freya to assure her I wanted to see her on my return. Which I did.
At that stage, marriage hadn’t entered my mind. On the contrary. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, as the young say. I had Angelina to contend with, and the divorce from her mother was painful, acrimonious and damned expensive. I wouldn’t have
stayed with that woman under any circumstances – she was neither beautiful nor useful, as it turned out, though she had a rather brittle prettiness that drew men in. But I admit I did occasionally wonder whether divorce was the best answer. Damned expensive.
My ex-wife jumped into another marriage almost immediately – I could have predicted that – but I was determined not to follow suit. There was something rather agreeable about being an unattached and rather successful architect in my thirties, making good money, stashing it away and getting myself into the real estate market as soon as I could. (Given my background, home ownership has always been a matter of the utmost importance to me.) I had plenty of romantic liaisons during that period of my life, but if a woman started to show signs of hankering after wedding bells, let alone babies, I was out of there. I wouldn’t call it commitment-phobia; I’d simply say I had an understandably cautious mindset. Once bitten, etc. When I turned forty, I remember wondering if I might ever take the plunge again, but, as I say, the life of the single professional person is a rather agreeable one and I could see no reason to change my status. I think of it as my Velvet Jacket period.