Where to Find Me
Page 15
Hundreds of people attended his funeral. He was a famous pianist after all. I don’t remember much about that day. I felt incoherent, as if drunk. Poems and tributes were read. Henry’s old and closest friend, Carlo, broke down as he recited Auden. I couldn’t say anything. Something sharp became lodged inside me, like the tip of an arrow.
I can still feel it sometimes.
*
The family that has moved into Bert’s house is good-looking. Both the parents and the two children. The wife is beautiful. Blond, slender, looks like a Scandinavian model. The husband is very tall. He has a beard and an interesting face, like the children. I see them nearly every morning on my way to the British Library, where I’m doing research on my book.
I like the girl. Skinny, black hair, alert eyes. She looks Mediterranean, like her father, and reminds me of my younger self. Same hair, same eyes. She always says hello. The brother doesn’t. Sullen, angry boy. I never see him speak, but there is a bond between him and his sister. The father always says hello too. He’s friendly. The mother tries to be. But I’m not sure about her.
A man often visits the new family. Dapper, very comme il faut. Sense of humour, generous man, not a great reader. I can tell. I know the type. Henry had friends like him. A delightful and entertaining façade, but often unhappy inside. But perhaps this man isn’t unhappy. Perhaps I’m judging again.
I hear the daughter call after him once:
“Walter!”
Walter.
Mr Patel, the newspaper agent on Ladbroke Grove, has told me who they are. The man is Leon Karalis, the theatre director. He’s well known. Mr Patel doesn’t know anything about the wife. His son finds her beautiful, but Mr Patel doesn’t. “I don’t like blonde ladies,” he says. And the daughter is called Hannah.
The Karalises like visitors. Various men and women come and go. Fashionable types, like them. Though Walter seems to be there the most. Does he live with them? I’ve seen him in the room Bert Moser use to work in. I can see it from my bathroom. The small attic room with the blue basin. I wonder if it’s still there. Bert was our friend. These people are not our friends.
I hear shouting at night. The Karalises fight a lot. Especially the son. “I hate you!” I can hear him shout across the rooftops.
It’s a good thing Henry is not here to witness this. He did not like noise or being disturbed in any way when he practised. And the sound of a teenager screaming across the rooftops would have upset him greatly.
I miss Henry. But it is his piano-playing I miss even more. Now the house is always quiet. I keep the piano there to remind me of him, to break the quiet. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can hear him, his fingers gliding over the keyboard. There he is, head bent towards the piano keys, playing a Beethoven sonata, humming. There he is again with his flop of white hair, his smiling eyes, his hearty laugh, his love, his touch when we held each other, our fingers intertwined.
*
I was walking down Piccadilly the other day, having had a meeting with a woman Henry and I knew, the editor of a small publishing company. We had discussed the idea of my writing a book about Robert Schumann. She had been very receptive, and I was in high spirits as I bade her goodbye.
It was a beautiful spring day, and the street was crowded. A row of French children walked past me, holding hands. As I passed Fortnum & Mason, I heard an Italian man speaking to his wife. I turned round and saw that he was carrying his small daughter on his shoulders. She was laughing, and when I caught her eye she said something to me in Italian. I wish I could have understood what she said. Italian is a language I would like to have learnt. Henry spoke a few words, though his accent was terrible. I didn’t tease him about it, because Henry was not a man who enjoyed being teased. There was a certain earnestness about him, a trait he shared with many of his musician friends. “We live for our music while the world passes us by,” he used to say.
Henry would have been happy to know that my meeting with the editor had gone well. He had always encouraged me to pursue my writing, or anything else for that matter. He believed in me. He might not have known everything about my life, but that wasn’t important; most of us retain a certain element of mystery about our past. Although in Henry’s case his candour excluded the possibility of mystery. As far as I knew, he had never hidden anything from me. Or had he? Perhaps there were elements of him that had escaped me? I wondered, as a couple walked past. The woman was beautiful, and the man had his arm tightly wrapped around her waist. How much did they know about each other? Probably little. They were only starting to find out, and every revelation would further deepen their infatuation for each other. There was a youthful abandon about them, a concept which seemed to belong to a distant part of my life. I was no longer youthful, and abandon had become a dirty word. Behind the couple was an older woman who, from afar, looked vaguely familiar. She must have been my age, in her seventies, with grey hair and a small, heavy frame. She was carrying a bag and looking around her, as if uncertain of her whereabouts. As she came closer, I stopped suddenly in the middle of the pavement. “Hey, watch out!” a man said, nearly bumping into me. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Because it was her. I was nearly sure of it. Claire Betts. Her face bore the traces of the young woman she had once been. I could see those traces in among the wrinkles of her older cheeks. The eyes hadn’t changed. They were still hers, those eyes I had first seen in the heat of that day, forty years before, and kept with me ever since. As she was about to walk past me, I let out a cry and grabbed her arm. I will never know why I did that – grab her arm rather than say her name, or approach her more gently – but that is what I did. My brusque gesture led her to push me away, as if she had just encountered a lunatic. “Keep your hands off me!” she shouted, looking frightened. I tried to say something, to explain myself, but it was too late. She scrambled into a cab and was gone. I stood on the pavement, trembling from head to toe. “Are you OK?” someone asked. I didn’t answer. I slowly regained my composure and managed to hail a cab. The driver tried to make conversation with me, but I was too fraught to answer. I was still trembling when I arrived home. It was as if the image I had preserved of Claire Betts had been sullied, our mutual history obliterated. Or perhaps I was the one who had changed. She hadn’t recognized me, after all. As far as Claire was concerned, I was the crazy woman who had grabbed her arm in the middle of the street. Not the young Frenchwoman who had seen her kiss her husband a last goodbye.
Later on, when I felt better, I decided that for my own sanity I needed to put this incident aside. To forget it had happened. For all I knew, I could have made a mistake. She could have been a woman who looked like Claire Betts, but wasn’t her. Or perhaps it was Claire and I had genuinely frightened her. Whatever the truth was, I didn’t want to know. I wanted to carry on living with the 1946 image I had of Claire Betts. The woman I had sought to comfort, not the one I had frightened away.
With time, the image began to fade, but not the words she had shouted. I could hear them, replaying in my mind: “Keep your hands off me!” – and every time I did, I shuddered.
*
Three years have passed, and the family is still living in Bert Moser’s house. The children have grown. The boy is nearly as tall as his father. A child’s face on a man’s body. The daughter has become very pretty. I often see them in the morning, brother and sister, walking to the Tube station together. Their step is steady, synchronous. It is a comforting sight.
This morning, the girl was alone. I wondered whether her brother was sick. Later on I went to buy some vegetables on the Portobello Road, and there he was, loafing around in Vernon Yard with two hippy-looking men. It was a school day and he shouldn’t have been there. He wasn’t sick at all, but smoking marijuana. I know the smell from my days at the Slade. The hippies looked like vagrants. One of them laughed, and he sounded like an engine revving. Hannah’s brother looked in my direction, but I don’t think he re
cognized me. He was high on drugs. I felt bad for the family. I wonder if they know what their son is up to. He cannot be more than thirteen or fourteen. Too young to be so lost.
About a week later, I met Hannah Karalis. We had tea together. Lovely, intelligent girl. She knocked on my door in the freezing cold. When she stepped into the house she brought in something warm: youth, hope and curiosity. I was struck, once again, by the way she looked and spoke. It reminded me of the young girl I once was, walking in the streets of Paris, circa 1936, when life burned with promise and expectation.
Hannah told me a bit about herself. That she was sixteen and wanted to become a writer. She told me who her parents were, where she went to school. She wanted me to be interested in her parents. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t tell her, but I wasn’t. It was her I was interested in. She mentioned French books, and when I told her I was from Paris, her face glowed. She mentioned that she had read The Lover by Marguerite Duras, which surprised me. She seems too young to read such books, or perhaps I’m just old-fashioned. At one point, she said something about an accident, and I could tell that she was referring to something painful. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell. It was shaping who she would later become. I could almost feel the shaping.
Hannah said she liked Victorians authors. George Eliot, in particular. She was about to tell me why when her father arrived. I like the way she expressed herself and took everything in. There was also a certain shyness to her, despite her volubility. I will invite her again. I would like to see her again. I felt something akin to happiness in her presence. I could have had a daughter like her. Henry and I tried to have children, but it didn’t happen. Hannah asked about that. Children. Or perhaps she didn’t and I think that she did. She looked at my bookshelves and asked if I was a writer. I told her that I was writing a book about Robert Schumann. I’m not sure she knew who he was, so I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t tell her that I have unearthed previously unseen documents about Robert and Clara. That I am writing these words for my son, Maurice. He might want to know some day. Who were his parents? Why did his mother leave him? These words are for him. To know how great and illustrious his pedigree is. The power of Robert’s music lives on and always will. Nothing will live on of Fletcher, except for his son. If Robert were still alive, he’d be appalled by his descendant’s behaviour.
But it isn’t Maurice’s fault that his father was a worthless, filthy scoundrel. It isn’t his fault I abandoned him. But it is my fault that I believed every word that filthy Fletcher uttered.
And for this, I shall never forgive myself.
Every day of my life begins with Maurice. Every night of my life ends with Maurice. Every day I hope for a letter from him. And every night I go to sleep, thinking that it might come tomorrow.
*
I was combing my hair in the bathroom when I saw Walter in Bert Moser’s room. He was standing by the window. There was someone with him. Her. The mother. She wore a white blouse. She was moving towards him with her long hair and her white blouse. Walter turned round and kissed her. A passionate embrace. I saw it all. How she removed her blouse and exposed her breasts. How he cupped them. How they disappeared onto the bed. They had done this before. I could see it clearly. They had done it before and they would do it again.
I can never see Hannah again. I cannot speak to her again. Some may deem it too rash a decision, but I am a rash woman. And I know too much that Hannah doesn’t. I cannot bear the thought. It is too painful. Best that I cut off ties immediately. Because I know what will happen next. There will come a time when Leon will find out. Perhaps not soon, but one day. Someone will make a mistake and Leon will find out. It is generally mistakes that betray the sinner. Not honesty.
Leon will pack up his belongings and leave the house. I do not want to witness it. I do not want to see his belongings stuffed into cardboard boxes. Nor do I want to witness the girl’s pain. I’m no good at comforting people.
I’m no good at pain.
*
She knocked at my door. It was a sunny day. She knocked at my door, and there she was with a cake her mother had baked for me. She was all smiles and youth and gentleness, and I was so distraught I nearly cried for her. For her goodness and the way she held the cake, with expectation and friendship and everything I should have given her but couldn’t.
I think she confused my distress with rudeness. I didn’t mean to be rude. On the contrary. I wanted to say it. I wanted to tell her that her mother was cheating on her father and that her family would soon implode. It was inevitable. Her father would find out, it was only a matter of time. And I liked him. I knew that he wanted to lure me into his house like a mouse into a trap. I knew it when he blasted Henry’s music from his open window, wooing me with his Schubert impromptus. It made me smile, but it didn’t tempt me in, mostly because of the mother. I had never liked her, and now I knew why. She was a narcissist. I could smell a narcissist from miles away. Everything was about her, and that would never change, even after the implosion. Life has taught me a few of its secrets, and human psychology is one of them.
I stood by my door and tried to say the right thing, but nothing was right and everything was wrong, because it didn’t make sense – of course it didn’t. Hannah looked very hurt, very confused: I could see it on her face, in the way her cheeks flushed red; it was all I could do not to hug her. But I remained firm and explained, as gently as I could, that this was about me, not her.
I don’t think she understood. Why would she?
I closed the door between us, holding the cake in between my trembling fingers. I wondered whether I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. I began to feel that same constriction of the throat I had experienced years back in Paris, as if I were choking on splinters. But these were splinters of shame, not sadness. Pointy splinters of shame, sharp as a scalpel.
14
I have sold my house in Oxford Gardens. “Don’t stay here when I’m gone,” Henry had said, as if he knew that he would die before me. “Move back to Chelsea.”
Fortuitously a flat came up for rent, which belonged to a friend of Carlo’s. “She’s looking for a responsible tenant,” he said. I accepted. I wanted to rent, not buy, and I couldn’t stand being in Notting Hill any longer, especially given what had happened. And so I moved. I chose a rainy Sunday morning, during half-term, when I knew that the street would be empty. I had seen the Karalises leave with a few suitcases the previous day; it was unlikely their return would coincide with my departure.
I left my house without saying goodbye. I shut the door behind me and climbed into a taxi. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure what might happen if I did.
*
The flat is in a mansion block on Tedworth Square. My neighbours are different from the ones in Notting Hill. Richer. More tanned. The woman who lives next door has a Jack Russell that barks too much. I should complain, but I don’t. I pass the time reading books, writing a little. People come and visit me, especially Carlo. His wife died of cancer in the ’80s; he tells me he still thinks of her every day.
I miss the girl, Hannah. I miss the conversations we never had. I miss seeing her from my bathroom window. I curse my lack of courage. I should have been braver. But I wasn’t. I didn’t have it in me. I must accept that I didn’t have it in me. I can only do one thing to redeem myself. I will entrust this notebook to her. I might also leave her some of my books. Because from the moment she stumbled into my life, I knew there was something different about her, like an old soul in a young heart.
What I didn’t know was that there would be no further meetings between us; I’m sorry I never got the chance to tell her why. I made the wrong decision. The mistake was entirely mine, and I wish I had done it differently. Sometimes it is hard to know why we act as we do.
Now is my chance to explain, alongside everything else about me, because by the time Hannah reads this, I will be dead.
I know a man who says her mother still lives on the same street. It won’t be difficult to locate her daughter’s whereabouts, the man assured me.
Once, shortly before leaving, I caught a glimpse of her. She was in her bedroom, studying, just as I used to study at her age. I could see her long black hair, the way it parted in the middle, falling below her shoulders. I waved at her after I had drawn the curtains.
Goodbye, Hannah.
Goodbye.
*
A woman I know once asked me if my life had been a happy one. I told her the truth. That it has been fulfilling. I have done everything I ever wanted to do. I have loved and been loved. I have more money than I need. My book on Robert Schumann was published by a small press and garnered good reviews. I have become an expert on the composer’s life, but not my own. Despite good fortune in my later years, that feeling of having left a part of myself behind never went away. The hole of Maurice’s absence was never filled. I’m eighty-three years old, yet I still hope that my son will appear one day.
If he does, I will feel complete and die happy.
Part II
Hannah
1
April 2005
I live in North London now. I bought myself a small house in Green Lanes, overlooking the river. I had stumbled upon it by pure chance, when visiting my old friend Sheila who lived nearby. She had taken me to a local shop to stock up on some vegetables. “The area’s nicknamed Little Cyprus,” she said.
I had never been to that part of London before and was intrigued. As we walked down the street, the shops signs became Greek and Turkish. A cornucopia of gloriously colourful fruit-and-vegetable shops vied for space with restaurants and jewellers: through one window, I saw heated barter taking place over a thick and shiny necklace. In a restaurant, women wearing hairnets were rolling out traditional gözleme crêpes. A bakery was filled from floor to ceiling with cakes and baklavas. A young bride wearing a sparkling wedding dress was having her hair done in one of the many hairdressers lining the street.