Saul indulged her shamelessly in games of gratification. She never knew when he was going to reach for her. Any room in the house could be a chosen scene for a swift divesting of her clothes, some sensual stroking, massaging, kissing, rubbing. Sometimes these encounters were breathlessly risky with the staff present in the house, quite likely to disturb them at any moment.
He undressed her with his eyes across the tables of smart restaurants. He slithered his hands over her erotically during other conductors’ concerts. And then he would reach for her in the car whilst driving at crazy speeds.
She thought she must be experiencing more heady orgasms than the rest of the world’s women put together. But he refused to play mutually masturbatory games. One morning, waking early she had looked longingly at his beautiful stern face and then burrowed down the bed and wrapped her lips around him, rousing him into rapid, gratifyingly throbbing life.
‘He had pulled her head away. ‘No.’
‘Why? Darling, let me pleasure you. Like you do me – so very beautifully.’
‘No.’ He had slid from the sheets, his taut body a rod of determination. She had heard the rush of the shower. He must always be in control: he must have the power and the upper hand. Thinking of it made her ache for him.
Then he had come back to bed and brought her to a thundering climax in one minute flat. She had wanted to throw herself at his feet and kiss them.
His self control was truly awesome. He could go without food for days if he decided to fast. Cut out the drink completely if he chose. But it was his sexual control, given his capacity for passion, that was truly mind chilling. This ability to hold himself back drove her to the brink of desperation and also excited her deepest admiration.
The ache was constant.
‘Come and see the kitchen,’ she said to Rachel, taking her through and filling the kettle. ‘We’re quite safe,’ she chuckled. ‘The army of staff are all off duty just at the moment.’
Rachel sat down at the oak refectory table. A spear of late winter sunshine picked up some new auburn glints in her hair.
‘You’ve had new highlights put in,’ Tara said noticing.
Tara heard a note of faint indignation in her voice, as though she disapproved of her mother’s wanting to look attractive. She frowned, recalling her vicious verbal attack on her mother at the funeral, and all her previous words of scorn and aggression. All that seemed like another life. She used to be such a rotten little bitch sometimes. Poor Mum.
‘Does Donald like it?’
‘I think so.’
‘He wouldn’t mind if you dyed it green?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Has he moved in yet?’
‘Yes.’
Tara smiled. ‘Me knocked up by Saul Xavier and you shacked up with Donald Giovanni. Randiness must be in the blood.’
Rachel looked down at her hands. Her resolute light-heartedness suddenly evaporated. She didn’t quite know how to interpret Tara’s constant jokiness, fearing it was a ploy to keep her at a distance.
It simply didn’t feel right; Tara being here in this huge, serious house. A solitary little figure, cut off from her own generation. Obviously pregnant now. And not married.
It was no joke.
There were other, more public worries. Rachel was well aware of the talk going around amongst Richard’s former colleagues at the Tudor Philharmonic. Especially amongst the men. And face it, orchestras were still male-dominated tribes. The Maestro’s done all right for himself there, got himself as juicy a bit of tender young meat as he’ll have tasted in a long time. Nice work if you can get it eh?
Rachel heard the jests in her head, could visualize the sly winks and pursed lips. She winced internally.
Most certainly not a joke.
‘Do you like him?’ Rachel asked. ‘Do you like Saul?’
There was a fractional pause. ‘Yes. I do.’
‘But not in the way you liked Bruno?’
There was a wistful smile.
‘Bruno was always so nice. He used to drive me crazy he was so kind and patient.’
Rachel felt like weeping. For Bruno, for Tara. For all lost young love.
Tara stared at her mother suspiciously. ‘I’m perfectly aware that you don’t like Saul. It’s always cringingly obvious.’
‘I don’t know him well enough to offer an opinion,’ Rachel said carefully.
‘Balls! And it was you started all this.’
‘Balls ditto!’
‘Inviting him back to the house after the funeral. He left me his card, offering to help me with my playing. That’s what kicked everything off.’
‘Leaving his calling card!’ Rachel commented with a smile of irony. ‘I thought that was something tom cats did.’
Tara took a long breath. ‘And then you were so encouraging for me to go with him to that ghastly geriatric violinist’s master class.’
‘Are you playing much now?’ Rachel asked, willing herself to call a truce and keep calm.
‘I get in four hours of practice most days. And then I sit in on most of Saul’s rehearsals and there’s a lot to learn from those.’
Rachel tried not to allow her smile to register too much motherly pleasure. Tara was so ambivalent about her playing that if she suspected she was pleasing her mother by picking up the threads of her musical endeavours she might decide to pack it in again.
‘Saul’s always inviting musicians round,’ Tara went on. ‘We play chamber music. I’ve been playing trios and quartets with some of the most famous names you can think of.’
‘Really.’
‘Yes. It’s fantastic.’ She looked at Rachel. ‘You’ll be pleased about that.’
Rachel saw the flash of childish anxiety in Tara’s big green eyes. You’re pleased with me aren’t you, Mummy?
What a mixture Tara was. Touchy and brittle one minute, soft and pleading the next. Rachel wondered how Saul managed with her. But of course it would all be so different for him. For one thing he was not her parent.
‘I know it’s not the same as playing in my own right,’ Tara said, voicing Rachel’s thoughts exactly. ‘But after the baby I’m going to think seriously about developing a career as a violinist. Saul has already introduced me to his agent.’
Rachel reflected on the benefits to be gained when one shares a bed with the famous and influential. She felt pain to realize that Tara had long ago left her and Richard behind. Now she belonged to Saul. Body, soul, ambition – everything.
Tara walked with Rachel to her car. Before stepping in Rachel reached out for her daughter and pulled her close. She longed to cradle her in the easy yet fierce embrace with which she used to comfort the infant Tara when she had had a fall, or yelled herself into exhaustion after an explosion of toddler rage.
She felt the slight stiffening in Tara’s body as she hugged her. Tara offered her cheek for a kiss and then drew away. Rachel arranged her face in a cheery smile. She started the engine. The gates at the end of the drive swung open as Tara operated the remote control. Rachel tooted. Tara waved.
On the opposite side of the road a woman with long blonde hair sat motionless in a parked blue Mercedes and gazed steadily at the house.
CHAPTER 15
Looking back on the night of the all Brahms concert; the night of Richard Silk’s sudden death from which everything else seemed to have sprung, Saul realized that his sensation of emptiness as he had stood on the podium had been nothing more than a simple longing for the love of a true mate and the gift of a child.
It had certainly taken a long time to find that out, in truth he was amazed at his own obtuseness. For years he had deluded himself with a number of other ideas – a wish to promote a shining new talent, a need to dominate and control a magnificent orchestra. And to provide himself with an heir, someone to carry his torch when he was gone. Those things had been real, been true. But it was not until he knew Tara, not until she told him she was carrying his child that everything fell into
place.
And now he was almost obsessed with the notion of his lover and his child. He loved his Tara. He adored her. He wanted to make her vitally and endlessly happy – and he knew that he had the vision and the means to achieve that. The idea of the child held him in a grip of fevered anticipation that governed his thoughts and feelings in a way he had not experienced before. He longed for the day when he would see the child in reality, hold it supported in his arms and feel the breath of its life against his skin.
In the meantime he was indulging his darling Tara in a barrage of adoration – and music.
It had delighted him to discover that Tara was a true lover of music. She was not just a sensitive and competent player who used music as a vehicle for her talent. She studied scores with intense concentration in a bid to penetrate to the warm beating heart of a piece, trying to imagine what the composer had felt when creating it. She untangled skeins of feeling, sensed and strove to express every flickering change of mood that had passed the composer’s mind as they wrote. Both her intellect and her emotions were fully engaged.
Saul had spent a good deal of thought in the planning and engineering of regular gatherings of musical artists who would stimulate Tara’s interest and augment her confidence. These were lively occasions, filled with laughter and musical gossip, accompanied by a variety of excellent cold suppers prepared by Mrs Lockwood. The champagne would be plentiful.
And then the music would start. Violins, oboes, clarinets would be taken from their cases. There would be lively discussions on the pieces these gifted players might favour with their skills. It was all tremendous fun – and yet ferociously serious.
Saul would sometimes participate, playing supporting piano parts, offering dry observations, pinpricks of jesting criticism. But usually he chose to remain in the background, a silent assessing figure, revelling in the pleasure he was offering his young lover through the chance to play the violin which had once been her father’s in the company of some of the most talented instrumentalists in the world.
And after the parties came to an end and the house was still and silent, he would request her to take up her violin once more – just for him.
‘So – are you good enough yet?’ Saul asked her as they stood together at the front door in the early hours of a dewy morning, supervising the departure of their guests. A procession of cars weaved down the driveway, their red tail lights gleaming against a sky already tinged with the apricot gleam of dawn.
‘Good enough?’ She looked up at him.
‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked evenly. ‘At your father’s funeral how you got in a terrible rage with Rachel, shouting about not being “good enough”. I’ve often wondered what you meant. Because, you know, you are becoming a rather good player.’
‘Am I? Truly?’
‘I always suspected that dear Monica would have to eat her words.’
Not being good enough, Tara thought. That old recurring theme which had pulled her down, killed motivation. What had it meant, what had lain behind it? She frowned, her thoughts active. A spark of insight flashed across the surface of her mind. She grasped at it, but it was instantly gone.
‘I was always raging about something or other when I was a kid,’ she said. ‘Poor Mummy and Daddy.’
‘Yes, your poor mother,’ he agreed. ‘You were an enfant truly terrible,’ he informed her.
‘Ouch! Well now I’m grown up. OK?’
He smiled. ‘Would you like to play for me? A little nightcap?’
‘I feel too nervous.’
‘How so?’
‘Because you said I was good. I might not live up to it. Did you really mean it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Soloist quality?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Ugh. Down to earth with a bump.’
‘Wait until this bump is out in the open,’ he said, glancing at the growing swell of her body. ‘And then we’ll see what the possibilities are.’
She stretched up and kissed him hard on the mouth. ‘Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for not flattering me into thinking I’m something I’m not.’
He was immensely touched. ‘There will be a great future for you in music, I’m sure of it. Just be patient.’ But maybe not as a solo violinist, he thought privately. Maybe musical journalism, criticism. She had a good ear and a sharp witty tongue.
She poured him a whisky. They sat together on the sofa. She slid her hand into his. ‘What would you say if you thought we were going to have two babies?’ she said in matter of fact tones. Inside she was tensing. There was always that tingle of apprehension about Saul’s reactions to significant news. A glitter of sparkling anxiety.
He turned his head slowly.
She nodded, confirming her statement, parting her lips. His hand slowly tightened on hers. A smile stole onto his face. The thought of pleasing him like this made her insides warm and liquid with desire.
‘Say something,’ she demanded.
‘Are there increased risks?’
‘Yes.’
‘For you? For the babies?’
‘A little. For me, for all of us. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘I shall worry,’ he said quietly. ‘Until the three of you are safe.
She heard the rasp of his breathing. She took his hand and placed it on her belly, over the two tiny beating hearts. She shared none of his fears. She had not yet thought of herself, or any part of her biology, as mortal.
In bed later she lay in his arms. At peace and entirely contented. ‘Saul,’ she said, suddenly remembering, ‘is your wife an elegant gazelle with long blonde hair?’
His body froze. ‘That’s a fair description. Why?’
‘I think I saw her the other day when I was driving out through the gates.’
In fact Tara had seen the Mercedes most days in recent weeks. Always in the late afternoon when Xavier was never at home. Always parked just out of sight of the house. But Tara could see it clearly from the window in the roof space.
‘What was she doing?’ he asked, his voice tight.
‘Just driving past slowly, looking in. I’m sure I’d have done the same in her shoes.’
‘Is it a problem?’
‘No. You could invite her here, you know. I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Unthinkable. And she would mind very much.’
Tara had the impression there was nothing more to be said on the matter. She sighed, turned over and was almost instantly asleep.
Looking back later she supposed she had been very naïve.
The next day, Xavier telephoned Dr Denton and expressed concern about Georgiana’s condition. Dr Denton was courteous and sympathetic. He was not, however, prepared to be bullied by a man clearly used to having all his own way. He answered each question, careful to maintain a proper professional reticence. He made it plain to the icily furious husband that there was to be no discussion on the revelations offered by his wife in the therapy sessions. Such information was entirely private between a patient and her therapist, as Mr Xavier would, of course, appreciate.
Dr Denton declared himself generally pleased with Mrs Xavier’s progress. It was quite natural that a woman should want to take a drive past one of her former homes, from which she had been virtually barred.
Xavier felt nothing but contempt for the man’s bland reasonableness. He listened for a while, then softly replaced the receiver, cutting the doctor off in mid sentence.
Soon afterwards Xavier telephoned Georgiana, intending to speak very kindly and gently, whilst spelling things out to leave her in no doubt. But there was no reply from the number. Neither was she with Alicia, who reassured him that Georgiana was fine and coping surprisingly well with the separation.
In the afternoon Tara saw the blue Mercedes draw up opposite the gates just after four-thirty. She watched it for ten minutes or so. Her natural warmth and sympathy were aroused. She put her own feelings on one side and tried to step inside the mind of a rejected wife.<
br />
Suddenly passive reflections were not enough. She must act, do something positive. Aware that Xavier would probably have restrained her by force, had he been here to guess at her intentions, she slipped out of the front door and started the long walk down the drive.
She was nervous. Her heart drummed in jagged rhythm. It was the courage of youth which spurred her on, a belief in her capacity to heal rifts and make the world a better place. She walked out through the gates, crossed the road and bent down to the driver’s window.
The woman turned her face up. Her eyes were brilliant and startling. The sky-blue irises contrasted sharply with the whites – as smooth and unblemished as the flesh beneath the shell of a newly boiled egg.
She is simply beautiful thought Tara experiencing a bolt of shock. And those thick dark lashes, so dramatic against the magnolia pale skin and the swing of blonde hair.
‘I am Georgiana,’ the woman announced.
‘Yes, I guessed. I’m Tara.’
There was a long silence.
Tara licked around her lips. Her mind darted and bucked like an alarmed animal. I’m sorry I’ve stolen your husband, Georgiana. I’m so sorry. But I’d do it all over again if the choice were there.
Oh God!
‘Would you like to come in?’ she said to Georgiana. ‘Mrs Lockwood is just making some tea.’
Georgiana gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.
Tara guessed it would be no more than a moment before Georgiana would simply activate the engine and drive away. She guessed that was what she would have done, given the same choice.
It was with some astonishment that she watched Georgiana Xavier open the door of the car and swing two beautiful long and slender legs over the sill.
In the July of that year, only days after Rachel and Donald were married, Tara gave birth to twins. The little boy, Saul Richard, died at the age of thirty-six hours.
PART TWO - A YEAR LATER
CHAPTER 16
The Violin Concerto of Edward Elgar is one of the greatest and best loved works in the repertoire; a mighty piece lasting almost an hour, full of technical subtleties and complex emotions.
The Maestro's Mistress Page 13