Saul stepped down from the podium and took her hand. As their eyes connected a great bolt of feeling shot through her body like a huge electric current.
‘You’re not going to get away without an encore,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘How about a Beethoven romance? The one in G?’
She turned back to the audience. Energy surged through every nerve of her body. She could go on playing for ever if they asked her. At the end of the encore the applause still went on and on. Saul led her off the stage. They had to come back. Twice, three times.
‘That’s it!’ he declared, dismissing the orchestra with the single sharp flick of the hand she had seen him use on the night before her father’s death. ‘Enough.’
He propelled her off the stage and out into the dressing room area. ‘We’re going home,’ he said, looking down at her meaningfully. On each side of them, players were streaming into the bar. As a matter of course they would be waiting for her – and Maestro Xavier also.
His eyes held hers and she sensed the urgency of raw sexual desire in his touch. Instantly she was on fire for him. She recalled that the house would be empty. Little Alessandra was staying the night with Rachel. She shivered with anticipation.
‘Escape,’ she whispered to him. ‘Fast!’
In the car he stroked the soft insides of her thighs with teasing fingers, driving her into a frenzy of wanting.
Once in the house the growling explosiveness of his passion overwhelmed her, blotting out the agitated jumble of musical phrases which had been hammering in her brain, roaring through her consciousness. Now there was only Saul, his lips devouring her, his hands running over her skin bringing it into tingling life, firing millions of electrodes.
Tonight it was as though all their previous sex had been merely a long apprenticeship, some wonderful extended overture. And now this was the real thing. The intensity of connection with him made her feel dizzy. Waves of breathless anticipation swept through her nerves.
She found herself trembling violently as she lay sprawled on the bed and watched him loom over her. And for a crazy moment she sensed some previously unknown madness in him.
‘Let yourself go, Tara,’ he whispered. ‘Trust me.’
There had been times before when his lovemaking had left her with an aching body and a heady sensation of exquisite femaleness. But tonight there was something new. Some demonic quality which thrilled and troubled her.
But she would trust him absolutely.
And so she laid aside her fear as took her to high crests of pleasure she had never before dreamed of reaching.
As he drove into her and the wild tempo increased, she snapped back suddenly into the mundane realms of reality, realising that she was unprotected inside, that she had not inserted her diaphragm.
She froze. His thrusts paused and then intensified.
‘Saul’ she gasped, ‘stop. Let me go.’
He pressed kisses on her mouth, silencing her. Tara found herself melting, her resistance subsiding to a soft inaudible plea. ‘I could get pregnant,’ she whispered, but his mouth was covering hers and the words were lost.
When it was over, he gathered her to him and stroked her face with infinite tenderness. His lips pressed gently over hers. ‘I love you completely,’ he said.
And then turned away and was instantly asleep.
CHAPTER 18
Rachel and Alessandra were in the garden when Tara arrived.
Rachel had filled an old baby bath with fine damp sand and Alessandra squatted beside it stirring the contents with a large plastic spoon. Her smooth young face was grave as she concentrated on her task, totally absorbed.
Tara stood watching her, realizing how mysterious children were. What did she really know of Alessandra? She knew her firm healthy body, but her mind was mainly hidden. And just at this moment she looked exactly like her father.
Tara felt an urgent need to be close to her small daughter, at one with her. She knelt down and wrapped her arm around her. Alessandra looked up at her in the way a kitten does when disturbed from its washing ritual. She turned back to her sand and her stirring.
‘She cried for you last night,’ Rachel said. ‘So now she’ll probably ignore you to punish you from going away and leaving her.’
‘Did I used to do that?’ Tara asked.
‘Oh, yes – sometimes.’
Mother and daughter stood together and watched the child in companionable silence.
Rachel felt uneasy. She sensed some disturbing new aura around Tara, a new solemnity, a new adult reticence. She reminded her of someone who has been in an accident, and though not physically injured, now sees the world as a more dangerous place than it had appeared before.
Rachel wondered about the concert and how it had gone. She had no regret about not being there in person, and had been glad of the excuse of having Alessandra to look after. She did not think she could have borne the suspense of hearing Tara perform.
Privately she thought that Saul had placed a tremendous burden on Tara by setting her up to do such a bold and daring thing as appearing as the soloist at the Albert Hall. The musical world abounded with rivalries and jealousies just like the theatre or the world of films. A budding career could easily be snuffed out by a dud performance which had received maximum exposure.
Or people could simply despise and discount a young performer who was seen to be getting a leg up on the ladder of success through their connection with the kind of people who mattered. On the other hand she knew there was plenty of that around, so maybe it wasn’t anything to be concerned about.
She had to admit that Saul had been very good to Tara. He did seem to genuinely love her and have a care for her well being. And he was breathlessly romantic, flying Tara around the world so she could be with him at his endless performing and recording sessions, wining and dining her in exotic locations, taking her on exclusive cruises with his jet-set fans.
But to have in his gift an entrée into the world of music was perhaps the most precious and most dangerous of his indulgences. The idea of such power made Rachel uneasy.
She recalled that it had always been Richard’s dream for his child to play solo at one of the great concert halls; the dream being initially for Freddie and later for Tara. The occasion last night would have thrilled him, but how would he have felt about the way it came about?
‘I wonder what Alessandra will do with her life,’ Tara said suddenly.
‘What do you hope for her?’ Rachel asked.
Tara paused, her face heavy with thought. ‘To know what she wants. To feel the freedom to choose.’
‘Does that mean you didn’t?’ Rachel said quietly.
‘I got all mixed up,’ Tara said, giving a swift impish smile. ‘Then I screwed things up. I don’t want her to be such a fool.’
Oh hell, thought Rachel. She went into the house, made coffee and brought it out into the garden. She and Tara sat in the chintz-covered garden swing and kept a loving and watchful eye on Alessandra who was still absorbed in her sand games.
Tara told Rachel about the concert. She struggled to convey simple delight and enthusiasm, not wanting Rachel to gain any inkling of the drone of anxiety humming ceaselessly within her.
‘The audience reaction was amazing. Unbelievable,’ she said.
‘And Saul’s reaction? What about that?’
‘He brought me back for an encore. So that must speak for itself,’ Tara responded smartly, having anticipated this question and rehearsed the answer. In fact she was stunned with dismay and confusion that Saul had not yet made any direct comment on her performance. Naturally there was always room in any performance to do better. But on the whole she had felt pleased and satisfied with her achievement. Until much later…
She could only conclude that privately Saul had considered her performance so embarrassingly pedestrian that he did not know how to break it to her. Always before he had been both fair and free with his comments; both positive and negative.
An
d then there had been that disturbingly satanic quality to his lovemaking afterwards, a brief moment when she had feared things might tip over into some dark area of human interaction that she did not begin to understand. She snapped her mind away from the idea. She would not think about it. She would not believe it.
Today her body ached and tingled with a dizzy cocktail of pleasure and pain. But she was troubled; subdued and dampened down. She knew that the gears of her relationship with Saul had shifted and changed, that nothing would be the same for them again. And yet she had never felt so desirous of his love and approval.
She looked at her mother and saw a new serenity in her face; a calm, mellow satisfaction with life that had been growing over the last few months. She guessed that her relationship with Donald had given Rachel some totally unexpected happiness, and she felt a rush of warmth towards him for making it come about.
With Saul, of course, one would never feel a sense of calm satisfaction. Saul was exciting, provoking, gloriously dangerous. Tara knew she could never be happy with someone as safe and good as Donald. Saul was not safe. He was tricky and unpredictable. He battered her emotions. But he was as necessary to her as air to breathe. He made her feel alive.
She could not wait to be with him tonight.
Saul telephoned Tara in the early evening. She had not been home for long, was in the middle of bathing Alessandra and had to call him back.
She could hear the slight edge in his voice. He hated to be kept waiting. And he thought her persistence in managing on her own with the baby and refusing to engage a nanny was charming but hopelessly impractical.
‘Darling, I want you to come up to town and have dinner with me and Roland,’ he told her.
Tara’s heart fluttered. A meeting with Saul’s influential agent could only mean one thing.
‘It’s too late to get a baby-sitter for Alessandra,’ she said steadily. ‘Bring him here.’
A pause. Tara imagined his face momentarily taut with annoyance at not having things go exactly as he had planned them. She really would have to start standing up for herself. ‘I’ll do a super little supper,’ she teased. ‘Terribly elegant. As good as the Ritz.’ She really wanted to ask him if Roland had liked her playing but she could hardly bear to hear the answer.
‘Of course you will,’ he said. ‘You do everything superbly.’
Her heart racing Tara searched the refrigerator, praying that Mrs Lockwood had left something suitable to enable her to fulfil her reckless promise. Mercifully there was a whole cooked salmon, assorted salads and a selection of excellent cheeses.
‘Perfect,’ Tara murmured, browsing through Saul’s selection of wine in the stone-shelved larder and selecting two bottles she considered appropriate. It pleased her sometimes to be domesticated. The professional women around Xavier were all rather helpless in that direction and she knew that Georgiana would be struggling to recall the ingredients and procedures necessary to scramble an egg.
By eight, Alessandra was fast asleep, the food all arranged and a new recording of the Mozart Jupiter Symphony with Xavier and the Tudor Philharmonic in the CD deck. Minutes later the Porsche roared up the drive closely followed by a big shiny Bentley. Tara stepped out of the door to watch the drivers alight, curious to see the great Roland Grant in the flesh.
For a man who was the founder and president of the largest classical music management firm in the world he struck Tara as surprisingly unassuming. Unlike Saul, whose eagle features and tall frame marked him out in a crowd as something special, Roland Grant was somewhat grandfatherly in appearance, anonymously dressed in a dark suit and a sober silk tie. His manner was quiet, gentle and charming like someone from another era.
Tara guessed him to be around sixty. He was small, stocky and silver haired. But in common with Xavier he lived and breathed music. From the moment he took her hand in his and squeezed it firmly he talked about it ceaselessly.
Through the pre-supper drinks and the meal itself a procession of famous names rolled off his tongue like butter from a hot knife. He seemed to know everybody and to handle their affairs also.
‘At Grant’s we have a vast warehouse of talent,’ Roland explained to Tara. ‘We are interested in any artist, any fixture no matter how small or big. We supply great opera stars to the international stage of the world and we also supply lesser talents and has-beens to the provincial circuit. Am I giving you an adequate idea of what we do?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Tara said slowly. ‘But where do I come in?’ She glanced swiftly at Saul but his eyes were at their most remote, staring into some unknown distance. He was not going to interfere in this particular dialogue.
‘My telephone has not stopped ringing since you played last night,’ Roland said evenly. ‘Whatever it is you want, you could have it for the taking just at this moment.’
Tara laid her knife down and sat back in her chair. ‘Such as?’
‘Engagements to play with some of the greatest orchestras in the world. The New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Swedish Radio…’
Tara could not fully take in what he was saying. ‘Am I really that good?’ she asked, the familiar disbelief about her musicianship gripping her.
‘Your playing has a quality of individuality. You bring warmth and colour to the platform,’ Roland Grant told her, his clear blue eyes holding hers.
He’s talking about personality, Tara thought. She wanted to be told about quality of technique and musical interpretation. Her eyes appealed to Saul. He stared back at her his eyebrows slightly raised. He was like a harsh tutor watching a hesitant child making valiant thrashing attempts in deep water. You must swim or drown.
‘Do people want me because I’m a great player or because I’m Saul Xavier’s mistress – a juicy celebrity?’ she asked brutally.
Roland looked her hard in the eye, as though to say, does it matter?
Oh yes, it does thought Tara.
She got up and went to the kitchen on the pretext of fetching more wine. As she thrust the corkscrew into the bottle neck she heard Xavier coming up behind her.
‘Tara,’ he murmured, turning her innards to liquid. ‘My sweet nymph.’ He wrapped his arms around her enclosing shoulders, ribs, breasts, heart. Everything. She twisted in his arms and pressed herself against him, sliding her hands over the hard bones of his chest and encircling the firm flesh at the back of his neck.
‘Roland Grant is interested in money,’ she said flatly. ‘Commodities that people will buy. I’m not interested in that. I want to be a musician.’
Saul smiled down at her. ‘My darling, musicians are commodities. Whatever made you think otherwise?’
‘Don’t tease. And don’t be so damn cynical.’
‘You do Roland a disservice,’ he said mildly. ‘His love of music is entirely genuine – as are his proposals.’
‘Cooked up between the two of you?’ she suggested spikily. ‘I would love to have been a fly on the wall when you chewed me over in the privacy of his office.’
‘You would have been extremely pleased with what you heard,’ Xavier said evenly.
She squared up to him. ‘So what did you think of my performance last night? You never said one word – not one.’
‘No, I was afraid I was going to lose you.’ His grey eyes stared down at her with cool challenge.
Her forehead creased in a frown of perplexity. If only he would be direct. If only he would give her a straight opinion. There was no one on whom she would pin more faith.
‘Your playing was impeccable, Tara, he said softly. ‘You demonstrated all the required range, accuracy and precision. Your interpretation was full of spontaneous sensitivity and you created some sweet chemistry with the audience. In short, my sweet one – you were delicious.’
She stared at him, suspicious regarding the last adjective, yet beginning to be convinced.
‘So – shall I lose you?’ he enquired.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Now is your chance to
jump on the concert circuit bandwagon. Is that what you’re going to choose?’
Tremors of apprehension seized her. She felt the quiet menace of Saul’s will licking around her like a python’s tongue.
‘Is that what you want Tara?’ he demanded coolly. ‘Living out of suitcases, flying from one soulless capital to another, playing the same dozen or so concertos time and time again?’
Tara was stunned. ‘Are you trying to stop me?’
‘You must make your choice. We all make our own lives, however close we are to each other.’
His eyes suddenly softened. ‘Darling Tara,’ he said gently, ‘I would never try to stop you from doing what you wanted. I would be a fool if I did. That would be the certain way to lose you.’
‘Is that why you were so…fierce last night?’ she asked. ‘Because you were frightened of losing me?’
He pulled her to him and sighed. ‘Oh my precious one,’ he said, brushing his lips over her neck and her hair.’
Tara felt a lump of emotion in her throat. Slowly she disengaged herself from his arms. ‘I’m a hostess,’ she reminded him with a wry smile. ‘I have my guest to consider.’
But whilst Roland and Saul talked together over brandy and coffee she sat a little apart, her mind ranging over the myriad new possibilities for the future. It struck her that for Saul musical talent was an everyday phenomenon, commonplace. He had worked with countless brilliant singers and instrumentalists, a never-ending stream of them. And newcomers were coming forward all the time, snapping at the heels of the established artists.
Saul had already been through the heady business of flying the world and absorbing acclaim. Success, prestige and wealth had been part of his everyday life for years. For him, the family unit he and Tara had formed here in this provincial English house with little Alessandra was something very special, utterly precious.
And yet, of course, Saul would have no intention of giving up his own career ambitions. Tara saw that it was the old story of the woman making compromises whilst the man had it all: career, worldly success and the satisfaction of family life. And then she thought of the reality of an extended existence in faceless hotels, rarely seeing Alessandra once the child was old enough to go to school and could no longer be carted around like a pet dog.
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