So the daughter need have no undue fears about the ravages of the ageing process, Dr Denton thought. ‘You seem to have a great affection for your mother,’ he suggested.
Georgiana gave a long low murmur of assent. ‘Yes, oh yes. And for my father, of course. He was a wonderful man.’
‘He’s dead now?’
‘Two years ago. Poor Daddy. He used to call me his own lovely darling.’
‘And what did he call your mother?’
‘His own precious darling. They were so very loving to each other – and to me. They used to say I was their world.’
Dr Denton leaned forward slightly, clasping his manicured hands loosely together. He considered how to frame the next question which he hoped would stimulate Georgiana to make a start on the intimate biography of her past.
He was an excellent listener: concerned, sincere and calmly accepting of anything he was told, however shocking.
‘So that was your family? Your parents and you. Anyone else?
‘Just the three of us. The perfect family.’ Georgiana allowed her mind to drift away into the idyllic lost world of her childhood. As she began to translate her thoughts and images into words for the handsome, personable Dr Denton she felt a warm glow of well-being suffuse her body. Suddenly there was licence to be a cherished little girl all over again.
Dr Denton listened to the flat, faintly metallic voice with growing pleasure. Georgiana Xavier was beginning to have an appeal for him which none of his other women clients had evoked.
And now at last she was opening up. Another few sessions like this and he would have enough information to begin to frame a hypothesis as to the true nature of her troubles.
Dr Denton saw Georgiana as an innocent, partially blind creature confronting a sheet of darkened glass, seeing only her own reflection, her own feelings. In time he would clear the glass for her, wipe away the darkness and enable her to see clearly into the outer world beyond the inner turmoil.
The prospect of exercising such tender and healing power was utterly seductive.
CHAPTER 7
Xavier waited a week and then he telephoned Tara’s home number. Taking into account the tantalising message he had scribbled for her on his personal calling card he was intrigued and rather impressed that she had not been on the line to him before.
He recognized her voice immediately, was struck afresh by its curious blend of grating assertiveness and husky seduction.
She, in turn, knew immediately that it was him. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed.
‘You did not go back to college?’ he enquired pleasantly.
‘No. Packed it in.’
‘It was not for you?’
‘No.’
‘That is because you are a musician.’
Her answering silence was bold and deliberate.
‘I’ve been making some enquiries,’ he continued. ‘From your former teacher for a start.’
‘What!’
He took pleasure in imagining her shocked and indignant expression. ‘I have something important to tell you, Tara. My old friend Monica Heilfrich is here in London giving some master classes and I want you to take part.’
‘Me? Play for the great Heilfrich. Is that a joke?’
‘I’ll take you along myself.’
‘Is that supposed to make things better? Do you think you’re any less terrifying than her?’
Xavier was delighted with all this unashamed frankness. For years he had been surrounded with fawning sycophants and had become heartily sick of their evasive style of speech. He could almost hear their minds squirming as they painstakingly weighed every word for fear of offending him.
‘So how often have you been playing your father’s instrument since last week?’ he asked Tara, conjuring up a detailed image of her in his head, the shaggy elfin haircut, the wayward fringe flopping over those wonderful glinting green eyes. And her figure – so small, yet so rounded, so firmly fleshed.
‘Around three to four hours a day.’ This was a lie; she had been playing for seven at least.
A faint smile of triumph played over Xavier’s lips. ‘I’m very glad to hear it. Now – listen to me! This is no joke. I’ve been talking to Monica and she is most interested to hear you play. She’s invited you to join her little group next week. Tuesday, I think. She starts at two in the afternoon. So I’ll pick you up at eleven, we’ll have a little light lunch together and then I’ll drop you off at her place.’
Tara breathed in deeply. ‘No.’
‘Tara! This is an opportunity not to be missed.’ He wondered whether to exert a little extra pressure in the form of dropping in a reference to her father, but decided against it.
‘Oh, I’ll come to the master class. But I’ll get there under my own steam, thanks all the same,’ she added.
‘I see. Very well.’ His voice was chilling.
‘Will you be there?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be scared out of my wits. I’ll probably play like a donkey.’
The line clicked off abruptly, leaving Xavier high and dry. Dropping the phone back on the handset, he smiled with devilish speculation. Of course the young sprite might be absolutely useless and he would have a little egg on his face, for which Monica would tease him without mercy.
He doubted however that Tara’s lack of musical skill would be a problem. Her teacher had spoken of Tara’s interesting potential in her childhood and early teens and, even if the wayward nymph had not been motivated and practising for a while, that was unlikely to have vanished. True talent was never lost – ruling out brain damage or physical injuries.
No doubt Tara would present plenty of problems outside the musical sphere, but he rather looked forward to dealing with those. And what could be more tantalizing and exciting than playing God in the conception, gestation and eventual birth of a coruscating new talent?
‘Saul Xavier seems to have taken it into his head to be my Svengali,’ Tara told her mother drily when she returned home from work that evening.
As Rachel listened to the full story a spark of hope leapt up inside her at the prospect of the re-awakening of Tara’s buried musical aspirations. Concern about Tara had almost stifled the grief of Richard’s death. Rachel saw that her daughter was desperately adrift, stumbling around in some private wilderness, searching wildly for the odd signpost to re-direct her onto a path of purpose.
Rachel wondered where she and Richard had gone wrong with this bright, iron-willed offspring who had been so full of shining hope and promise as a child. She supposed that for a time they had been preoccupied with the intensity of their sorrow after Freddie’s death and maybe that had had some harmful effect on the young Tara. But they had tried really hard not to let their private torment affect their relationship with their remaining child. Indeed when Tara had become their only child she had been even more precious than before.
And Richard had always been so encouraging about her musical potential: her singing and her violin playing. He had spent hours tutoring her himself in addition to the expert teaching she had received at one of the country’s leading music school for which she had gained a scholarship at the age of eight. He had even composed short pieces for her to play in her practice sessions so as to provide extra interest.
And after all that, at seventeen, when her talent seemed on the point of breaking from the bud into full blossom, she had suddenly turned her back on it. She had gone wild sampling all the temptations of the stereotypical teenage culture: booze, boys, all-night parties. And pop music blasting from her radio, making the house throb with sound, and Richard wince with horror.
Her violin lay untouched in its case and her voice was directed into yelling at her parents rather than developing musically.
Scraping into London University to do philosophy had been a last resort rather than a choice, affording no more than temporary parental relief. Clearly that had never been right for her. And now she had thrown that in as well, with no apparent plans
to do anything else. Her waitressing job had also gone – her boss did not take kindly to employees taking time off, even for family bereavement.
Rachel supposed Tara would be reduced to signing on for unemployment benefit. Her heart wept for her chid.
There seemed only Bruno at present who represented some stability.
‘Aren’t you pleased Mum?’ Tara demanded. ‘For me to be playing again?’
‘Of course I’m pleased.’
‘Daddy would have been, wouldn’t he?’
Rachel sighed. ‘You must do this for yourself, not for Daddy.’ She looked at Tara and saw the confusion and conflict in her face. Anger too. There was this constant undercurrent of anger. Rachel couldn’t understand it. Why?
Later in the evening as they watched the late night news on TV, Tara said suddenly, ‘I think I was crazy to agree to go to this master class. Do you really think I should?’
Her mother frowned. ‘Yes. Yes, I think you should go. What’s to be lost?’
‘My self respect?’
‘Xavier’s faith in you?’ Rachel wondered.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m surprised you’re admitting to caring about that!’
‘So am I,’ Tara agreed with feeling.
Monica Heilfrich held her master classes in the pink and gold drawing room of her Belgravia flat. She maintained that the intimate, home-like atmosphere helped her students to relax.
Tara was the last to arrive, her bus having been delayed in the snarl of London’s traffic. She found two other nervous and hopeful violinists present, a boy who looked about fourteen and a young woman of her own age. But there was no sign of Xavier.
Monica welcomed her as though she were a long lost relative, overwhelming Tara with a huge hug and two kisses, continental style, which made her instantly uneasy. In fact the moment she walked into the womb-like room with its plump brocade sofas and heavy silk curtains Tara wanted to escape.
Monica, sixtyish, Junoesque and flamboyantly arrayed in a flowing pink caftan, served coffee and tiny continental biscuits, whilst in the background her stereo system played a 1959 recording of the Brahms violin concerto.
‘Is that you playing?’ Tara asked, listening intently.
‘Naturally. Can you guess the orchestra, the conductor?’ Monica enquired with a teasing glance.
Tara frowned. ‘A mid European orchestra. Not the Vienna Phil, you can’t mistake their elegant mellow sound. This is a real deep throat sound, a bit on the stern side. So maybe a German orchestra?’
Monica’s eyes sharpened. ‘Go on,’ she said.
‘The Berlin Philharmonic,’ Tara decided. ‘My father used to say that if angels had sterling silver harps the skies would be filled with a sound exactly like the Berlin Phil’s string section.’
‘What a marvellous thought! Now, what about the conductor?’
Tara considered. There was not enough to go on from what she had heard. It was perfectly possible to detect certain conductor’s styles from an orchestra’s playing. Her father had demonstrated that to her years ago, both from his unending fund of stories about conductors and their idiosyncratic styles and also his vast collection of recordings which he used to invite the young Tara to enjoy with him. But from this snatch of music, mainly designed as a show case for Monica’s playing, you just had to guess.
‘Herbert von Karajan was the boss at the Berlin Phil in the late fifties,’ Tara observed. ‘I’ll go for him as the most likely.’
Monica handed her the CD sleeve to check for herself. Her hypothesizing had been entirely correct. ‘I’m impressed,’ Monica said, raising her eyebrows.
The other assembled instrumentalist glanced at Tara with respect. But there was a touch of envious rivalry in their eyes which made her wish she’d kept her mouth shut.
Monica gave them an A on the piano and invited them to tune their instruments. Tara took her father’s precious violin from its case and settled it under her jawbone. Suddenly the essence of its previous owner overwhelmed her. For a few seconds she felt her father as a living presence in the room and then just as suddenly the image died and she found her eyes brimming with tears.
‘A little ice breaker,’ Monica decreed, taking up her own instrument and plucking the strings provocatively before launching into the opening theme of the Mendelssohn concerto. ‘Every aspiring violinist has a go with this one,’ she told her admiring audience. ‘It is simply too tempting not to have a little try. Such a sinuous, tantalizing melody.’ She wiggled her ample shoulders to illustrate her comment. She then beckoned to the boy, inviting him to continue where she had left off.
He stood up, a pale oriental beanpole with a curtain of silky black hair.
As he started to play the door opened softly and Xavier walked in. Settling himself silently in a far corner of the room, he gave a brief wave of his hand to indicate that the proceedings should continue without interruption.
Tara listened in fascination to the boy’s playing. His talent was huge, his technical skill awesome, and his ability to wring emotion from the music equally stunning. She was consumed with admiration. But despite the intensity of her concentration on the boy’s phenomenal ability she found herself unable to ignore the still, silent presence of Xavier. Her eyes flickered constantly across to his, desperate not to miss any clue as to the nature of the maestro’s response to what he was hearing.
Xavier, however, was giving nothing away. His face was perfectly still and blank and remained so throughout the next thirty minutes, during which Monica tutored, tortured and teased the gauche intense boy, drawing from him ever more evidence of a massive music potential.
Tara found herself growing increasingly apprehensive at the prospect of being placed under the merciless spotlight of Monica’s tuition. It was not so much her conviction that her own skill in no way measured up to what she had heard so far, but more an intense reluctance to be shown up as mediocre in Xavier’s eyes.
Her nerves began to sing with tension. When Monica eventually called on her to take up her violin her hands were trembling so much she feared she would not even be able to pull the bow across the strings.
Monica listened to her playing for a few seconds before stopping her abruptly. ‘That’s good. Quite nice. But there is too much tension. Relax, my dear. Take deep breaths.’ She expanded her own ample chest in demonstration, and Tara had no option but to huff and puff along with her.
She started again, some Bach this time, one of the partitas.
Again Monica stopped her. ‘Still too much tightness, too many nerves. Listen, it happens to all of us, these wretched nerves. I’m nervous.’
‘No, you’re not!’ Tara shot back at her.
Monica laughed. ‘OK, it’s different for me. Of course it is. Why don’t you go and sit down for a few minutes, get your breath back and then we’ll try again.’
Her face hot and crimson, Tara did as she was directed whilst the other young woman was put through her paces. Tara wondered whether to leave now. Very quietly, no fuss, no drama. She knew she had no chance of showing whatever talent she possessed in these surroundings. And certainly not under the hawk-like gaze of Xavier whose silent presence seemed to permeate the room.
In fact Monica did not demand a second performance from her but invited her to join in a final group session where the three instrumentalists played together whilst Monica accompanied them on the piano.
At the close of the session Monica spoke to her three pupils, making a brief appraisal of what she had heard, making it clear she was interested in tutoring the young man further. She told the young woman that she was going to recommend her to her own agent as a prospective client.
She turned last to Tara. ‘Quite nice decisive playing once you got rid of those nerves. Very physical playing in fact,’ she observed carefully. ‘A nice tone as well.’
Tara stiffened. This was definitely a case of damning with faint praise.
‘You must go away, get some good tutoring and practise for a
round a year,’ Monica smiled. ‘Then you could well try for a place in one of the provincial orchestras. They need young players of spirit like you. All in all, I think you will do very well, my dear.’
Tara placed her instrument in its case. Her stomach still churned. Her brain felt numb. She cursed herself for having laid her head on this particular chopping block. She hoped desperately that Xavier would continue to show little interest in her presence. With relief she saw that he was fully engaged in talking with Monica, frowning and nodding his head.
Unobtrusively nodding her farewells Tara moved towards the door and slipped through, gaining an immediate sense of release. Out in the street she breathed deeply, savouring the fresh, sharp air. She debated going to see Bruno, but hesitated thinking it would be unfair to disturb him if he was studying.
A strong purposeful hand grasped her elbow. ‘I’ll take you home, Tara.’
Her heart jumped. Looking up she connected with Xavier’s impassive gaze. In the bright afternoon light she noticed that his eyes were flecked with streaks of deep sapphire. They glinted in the depth of the cool grey irises, suggesting some underlying wildness of personality which contrasted strongly with his remote and rigidly controlled exterior.
Still touchy and defensive after the session with Monica Heilfrich, Tara’s initial instinct was to refuse his offer. But as he steered her firmly towards his car parked just a few yards away she found herself curiously unresisting. She felt drained and weary, in no mood to fight him for her right to grapple with London’s public transport.
He started the engine, a throbbing beast with a roar in its belly and the distinctive whine of precision engineering in its throat. Tara felt her back pressed against the seat as Xavier accelerated. She had never realized before that it was perfectly possible to drive fast in London’s jumble of traffic – as long as you were prepared to ignore the rights and demands of all the other drivers.
‘You are sorry you went along to that little event?’ he enquired conversationally.
‘It was a farce. A disaster,’ she responded with feeling.
The Maestro's Mistress Page 6