The Maestro's Mistress

by Angela Dracup

  As she played the Elgar Concerto in the great Viennese hall she understood the anger and despair of her childhood with the rare clarity that can come with great emotional tension. And with that understanding her spirit lightened. A burden was lifted.

  No Daddy, she thought, not Freddie’s gift but my own. Me - Tara.

  And then she was playing not for her father not for any of her teachers, not even for Saul. She was playing simply for the people who were here now with her in this hall. For the reticent English composer who had conceived the music. And for herself.

  After the final chord, as Otto lowered his baton, the orchestra exploded into spontaneous applause. The noise of their delighted enthusiasm clattered around her, rattling through her nerves, drawing her out of her reverie, propelling her on the journey back to the real world.

  Otto saw that his soloist was only slowly swimming up from that private place into which an artist can submerge themselves when playing. He turned her gently to face the audience. He took her hand, pressing it firmly. He took her in his arms, hugged and kissed, clapped his hands together as his arms linked behind her neck. The audience roared.

  It seemed to Tara that history was recording a new beginning for her.

  There were two telephone messages at the desk in her hotel. She read them when she finally got in at two in the morning.

  The one from Roland said crisply, ‘Tonight the foundations of a glittering career have been laid.’

  And from Saul – just one word. ‘So?’

  She slipped into bed, elation having turned to exhaustion. The music still crashed in her head. But tonight there was no Saul to enfold her with his body and his will and soothe it away.

  On the flight back to London late the next morning Tara read the newspaper criticisms of her performance. Several British journalists had attended the concert, it being a rather special event when a great Vienna orchestra played on their home territory. Reports had been phoned through to London to make the morning editions and copies had just arrived at the airport as Tara checked in.

  The comments on her performance were unanimously positive and some went further than that. ‘Strong, muscular playing from the young British soloist,’ said The Guardian. And the stern critic in The Times went so far as to describe her interpretation as ‘poetic – bringing a glow of fresh colour to an Edwardian masterpiece.’

  Tara relaxed in her seat and closed her eyes, letting the praise trickle over her in a warm stream. It told her that she was a player of worth and stature. And she had proved it out there in the big wide world on her own. No Daddy looking over her shoulder and chivvying her on, no Saul acting as her beloved guardian and patron. She was a player of individuality and quality. Finally she believed it. Because now she could see the reason behind her previous stubborn denial of her abilities – the long shadow cast by her talented dead brother from whose loss her father had never recovered.

  She saw it so clearly now; how her father had unconsciously compared her with the dead Freddie. Maybe nothing had been said directly, she could not remember. But she had sensed it with a child’s keen intuition: she could still call up the feelings of despair and inadequacy even now.

  And she could also feel again her anger as a teenager when she had finally abandoned the task of attempting to give her father something that was not in her power to give. The only thing she had been able to do was rebel – stamp on her musical talent and bury it in a dark hole. Open up a brittle, jagged gap between herself and her much loved father.

  She could see now that it was no coincidence that the re-emergence of her longing to be a brilliant player had begun to flower after his death.

  Then Saul had come into her life and become the guardian of all her hopes: emotional, sexual, musical. With cool clear-minded impartiality he had nurtured the green shoots of her reawakened ambitions. Without him it would not have been possible to reach the pinnacle she was perched on this morning.

  But there was someone else besides her father and Saul who had played a crucial part in all this. Someone she had treated with dismissive disdain - railed at, abused. Her mother. Tara looked back again into her childhood and saw her mother there as a shadowy presence, a warm anchor of stability and calm, acting as a foil to her father’s obsessive ambition.

  Whilst her father had been a ruthless driving force her mother had offered the very gentlest encouragement. She had always been there when the young Tara needed a shoulder to cry on. And she had never compared her to the dead Freddie.

  Tara gave a sharp gasp as the jig-saw pieces of her childhood slotted into a coherent picture. It was her mother who had been her greatest ally. Her mother who had borne the brunt and taken the flak. The rage and frustration Tara had felt for her father she had vented on her patient mother.

  After her teenage rebellion the relationship with her father had become a curious mixture of the warmly loving and the reverentially distant. Tara had learned never to get into fights with him. The anger that swelled inside her; dark, incomprehensible and terrifying, must be held down at all costs. Far too dangerous to uncork.

  There had been just one crucial final engagement between them – a battle between a man with only months to live and a girl struggling to get a grasp on her own ambitions.

  He had been cool and reasonable. She had been a ball of rage, yelling until she tasted blood in her throat. She had let him know without a doubt that the last thing in the world she was ever going to do was practise on her bloody violin. It could be broken up and used for bonfire fuel for all she cared.

  Rachel had intervened – staunching wounds, getting lacerated herself, carrying all the future blame.

  Tara thought of her mother in Saul’s big country house at this moment, caring for little Alessandra, taking her through the initial hours of her first birthday. It would have been impossible to entrust Alessandra to anyone but Rachel.

  Recalling some of her more brutal retorts to her mother over the years Tara gave a grimace. She determined to make a new start. She and Rachel would talk over the past together, explore it at leisure and draw close to each other. The triumph of the Vienna concert would be a gift Tara could offer her mother to mark the beginning of a new closeness between them.

  She looked out of the window and saw the English Channel gleaming grey and pearl-like below. Tara thought longingly of her home in Oxfordshire. She longed to see her mother. She ached for Alessandra. She burned with heat at the prospect of being united with Saul.

  As for her career – well, she would find a way. And Saul would help her.

  ‘So?’ he had said. She knew exactly what that cryptic communication conveyed. It was an enigmatic message combining the highest of praise with a dose of stern caution. She was at last beginning to understand how his mind worked.

  OK, things would not be easy. But now all things seemed possible. Tara sensed that she was not quite the same person who had flown out to Vienna the day previously. She was enriched, strengthened, emboldened. The world was out there to be grasped. The future was suddenly not only shining, but controllable.

  CHAPTER 22

  Georgiana’s interest was caught by the stark beauty of the little country church, a black shape against a lowering, sulky August sky. She slowed her speed, her glance taking in the squat steeple and the grotesquely comical weathered gargoyles guarding the guttering.

  Just outside the churchyard several busy figures were unloading their cars, emerging pink-faced and panting, their arms filled with flowers and ribbons and silver horse-shoes. The figures hurried down the mossy path, disappeared into the dark doorway of the church.

  A wedding!

  Georgiana’s foot pressed firmly on the brake. She stepped with the grace of a dancer from the car, and walked to the arched stone entrance, her eyes trying to pierce the gloom of the inside of the church. Something about it fascinated her and drew her in.

  The women busy in the nave and at the chancel steps glanced at her, wondering if she was a guest misguided
ly turning up hours too early. Georgiana smiled in reassurance, pointing to an empty pew indicating her wish to do nothing more than partake of the consolations and tranquillity to be had in a church.

  They smiled back, nodding with relief and continued to grapple with vast swathes of tiger lilies, apricot roses and huge daisy-like chrysanthemums which were already shedding peppery yellow dust.

  Georgiana knelt, her hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. She was not a religious woman. She did not attend church except for the big three life events – christenings, marriage and death. Nevertheless she appreciated the hallowed atmosphere of a church. It comforted her to hope for the possibility of a life after death.

  She hated to think about death, and even more about ageing; the sagging of the face and the awful collapse of the body. It was this horror which had kept her from visiting her mother in California during the ordeal of Saul’s rejection. Georgiana had not lied when she told Dr Denton that her mother was still a beauty. She was indeed lovely – if one looked only at the right side of her face. A stroke two years previously had made a malevolent alteration on the left side which Georgiana found both horrifying and depressing.

  Nevertheless she and her mother spoke regularly on the telephone. Her mother had been justly appalled at Saul’s actions, but had reassured her daughter that he was bound to come to his senses. Sooner or later she would get him back, and all the status that went with him.

  Georgina raised herself into a sitting position, touching her face with tentative fingers and finding the contours still smooth and perfect. She looked down the nave to the chancel steps. A white shaft of sun glinted on the brass stair rods. She blinked, checking that the glimmer was real, not one of the iridescent displays that were like hot grit beneath her eyelids, reverberating needles of fire at the base of her armpits. Carefully she traced the source of the spear of light to the arched window behind the pulpit. She smiled and breathed deeply. There was nothing to fear.

  The women were now looping swags of delphinium and cow parsley around the lectern. Country folk obviously. But the effect was rather charming, she had to admit. She regretted she would not be able to stay on for the wedding ceremony, cast her eye over the bridal procession.

  She and Saul had been married in a country church. It had been decorated with twenty dozen white roses. And at a time when it was fashionable for brides to look like lace-festooned balloons with skirt hems frothing around their calves, she Georgiana, had worn a sculpted floor length sheath in heavy satin and carried a single orchid. She had set a lasting trend.

  Saul had been the perfect escort, a recipient entirely worthy of her loveliness. He had looked so aristocratic in his grey morning dress; a trophy of male beauty, lofty bearing and breathtaking talent.

  Still in his twenties he was already both a virtuoso pianist and a budding conductor, his engagement diary filling up in line with his wallet.

  He had been a solitary and evocatively romantic figure. Saul had been a solitary orphan brought up by his unmarried uncle – a renowned cardiac surgeon. At the wedding he had wanted only one friend – his music agent.

  This solitariness of Saul, this mystery of his roots had all been part of his god-like fascination. She had always thought of him as having in some way invented himself, shaping his life from a blank sheet. She had often wondered if he had aristocratic blood flowing in his veins, thinking it not at all unlikely.

  And now he had created a real flesh and blood family, started a dynasty all of his own. The idea filled Georgiana with a rapturous, incandescent glow.

  She bowed her head in a final prayer, asking whatever God might inhabit this church to give her a blessing.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tara picked up her car at the airport and made her way through the complex jumble of London’s outer circular roads. Once on the motorway she pressed her foot firmly on the accelerator and allowed the Jaguar’s five litre engine to show her what it could do.

  Xavier had taught her to drive fast and had recently provided her with a wonderful piece of engineering for the purpose. The surge of speed pressed her spine against the seat and brought a smile of pleasure to her lips. She hoped she was not slaughtering too many flies with her side windows.

  She glowed with well being. The persistent nausea of the early weeks of her pregnancy seemed at last to have vanished. She felt alert and fit, sharpened up with a new sense of her own worth and fresh purpose.

  She promised herself that in the coming months she would practise for at least five hours a day come what may. Obviously she would need to put any ideas of playing in public on hold until after the baby was born, but there would be no need to hold back after that.

  All of which meant she must start making plans in order to be fully prepared. She decided that now was time to go ahead and find a kind and affectionate nanny to care for Alessandra for some part of the day in order that she would have the mental and physical freedom to play for as long as she felt was necessary.

  Alessandra was steadily emerging from babyhood, reaching a developmental point where it was becoming possible to talk and reason with her on simple issues. Tara began to frame the words of explanation and reassurance in her head, confident that she could set things out to her small daughter in a way that would not make her upset.

  She imagined Saul’s eyebrows lifting ironically at the news, the mocking ‘I told you so’ expression in his eyes.

  The car leapt forward seeming to sense the driver’s urgency, her surge of longing to reach home and translate thoughts into action.

  As she turned into the drive her heart lurched in consternation as she registered the presence of a police car parked outside the front door. She groaned, her mind leaping over the last twenty minutes when she had been averaging over a hundred miles per hour on the motorway.

  But as she entered the house she knew immediately that something deeply serious and threatening was wrong. She could almost touch it in the atmosphere: a dense silence, an air of stillness, a heavy quality about the air, thick with dark expectancy.

  Her mother came down the hallway to greet her. Her face was deathly white, her eyes hunted and fearful. She raised her arms, reaching out to Tara, and then instantly let them fall again so they hung slack by her side.

  ‘Oh, Tara!’

  Mother and daughter confronted each other in a silent moment of panic and horror.

  ‘What?’ Tara breathed.

  ‘Alessandra,’ Rachel said. Her eyes glittered with fever and panic. ‘Alessandra,’ she repeated. ‘Oh my God, Tara. She’s disappeared. Been taken.’

  Tara eyes widened with shock. ‘Taken?’ She stared at Rachel unable to believe what she had heard.

  ‘She didn’t sleep much last night. She was restless and she fell asleep this morning whilst I was playing with her in the garden. I settled her in her pram.’ Rachel paused, needing to gather strength before she could continue.

  Tara tried to concentrate on her mother’s words. Their meaning slithered away from her before she could grasp it.

  ‘I only went inside for a moment. The phone rang; I thought it might be you. It was a wrong number. When I got back she had gone.’

  Tara stiffened. Her face felt frozen.

  ‘Dear God in heaven, Tara, I’ll never forgive myself,’ Rachel said bitterly.

  Tara shook her head. ‘No. Don’t say that. I’ve often left her in the garden for a minute or two.’ It was true but Tara knew that she blamed Rachel nevertheless, that if anything happened to Alessandra she would never be able to forgive her.

  ‘Does Saul know?’ Tara asked softly.

  ‘Yes. He phoned from the airport an hour ago, just after it happened. He’ll be back as soon as he can.’

  ‘How did he take it?’ Tara’s eyes widened with fresh anxiety.

  ‘How can you ever know with him?’ Rachel responded, turning her face away.

  ‘This is all my fault,’ Tara burst out. ‘I should never have gone to Vienna. Never have left her.’


  Rachel sighed. ‘You need to talk to the police, Tara.’ She led the way into the drawing room. A man and a woman were standing silent and musing in front of the Picasso. They turned when Tara entered.

  She stared at them – strangers in her and Xavier’s house. She found herself hating them because of what had happened to bring them here. Because they had not suffered the crushing grief and terror of having their child taken.

  Taking deep breaths she controlled her savage feelings, reminding herself that there was only one human being on earth to blame for all this misery: the wicked, death-deserving creature who had snatched her baby.

  When she spoke to the police officers it was with impeccable politeness, admirable calm. She was a performer. She knew how to dissemble, how to cloak her nerves. There were endless questions to respond to. Tara listened carefully and answered as best she could.

  The officers were gentle but they had a host of issues to address. Who were the people who had access to the house and garden? Who might know the routine of the household, times when the baby might be left alone for a few moments? Was there anyone Tara could think of who might have some reason to take the child?

  They came back to that last point on more than one occasion. Tara tried to think. Her mind kept crying out, ‘Alessandra! Oh God, please, please! Over and over, her mind racing in panic like a hunted animal.

  She forced her brain to make connections. But she could think of no one she knew who would be so cruel and heartless to take a young child from its home. She looked up at the cool, law-enforcing professionals. ‘What do we do now?’ she whispered, her eyes wounded and pleading.

  They explained to her that press, radio and TV news conferences were already being set up. They judged it would be helpful if she and Saul would agree to appear on a TV news bulletin and make an appeal to the abductor to give the child back. It would be an ordeal, they agreed – painful and distressing, but a ploy which had worked in previous cases.