The Maestro's Mistress

by Angela Dracup

  ‘Oh well, hardly. Not yet.’ Bruno gave a diffident smile.

  ‘You wait,’ Xavier commented.

  Bruno watched with interest as Xavier drew a girl forward: a beautiful leggy colt with a great mane of blonde hair and glinting green eyes exactly like those of her mother. The girl’s gaze was frank and penetrating, disturbingly adult.

  ‘This is Alessandra,’ Xavier said. ‘Our daughter.’

  Bruno took the girl’s hand. He was sickeningly nervous. He hoped the girl did not register revolting clamminess.

  ‘Hi,’ she said with a cheery smile. ‘Congratulations.’ She looked towards the stage, simply adorned with a black rostrum and a backdrop of draped gold curtains. ‘I hope they get on with it,’ she announced, looking impatient. ‘And then we can all go home and get stuck into supper. I’m already famished.’

  ‘These young sprouting shoots, always thinking of their stomachs,’ Tara commented to Caroline. ‘Do you have any children?’

  Caroline’s face glowed as though an inward switch had been thrown. ‘Twin boys. Marcus and Rupert. They’re six now. Too young to bring along tonight. Young children need their sleep, don’t they?’

  Tara felt a brief moment of envy. Caroline seemed such a calm, steady person. A good woman. A woman who would never have got herself up the spout and run off with a sexy married maestro before she had even grown up properly.

  She glanced at Saul and was pierced with a dagger of desire as she recalled her own youthful impulsiveness and folly.

  The ceremony progressed on oiled wheels. Both Tara and Bruno were outright winners in their respective categories. Speeches were given, praises sung, acknowledgements made.

  When it came to his turn, a quaking Bruno was surprised to hear his carefully prepared words proceed from his mouth without any major hesitations.

  Tara’s speech was short and to the point: a crisp and witty few remarks which had the audience chuckling appreciatively.

  Bruno watched her with interest, this gracious, wand-like version of the curvy girl he used to toss over his shoulder. Her dress shimmered softly as she moved and her long dark hair cascaded freely over her shoulders. It was easy to understand how he had been captivated all those years ago.

  He looked across to Caroline and let his eyes travel with love over that dear, familiar, loyal face. How right she was for him, how good things had been for them as a couple. He thought of the two sleeping boys at home and reached out to press Caroline’s hand warmly. She turned to him and smiled.

  Still retaining her hand Bruno looked from Xavier to Alessandra and then back again. His brows contracted; the seed of an idea planted itself. A notion, a wild fancy. Surely not, he said to himself. And yet – what if? He instructed his memory to call up certain details of his past.

  Tara was closing her speech with a mention of Maestro Xavier. As she spoke his name, she paused meaningfully, and the spotlight operator had little choice but to train the lights on the dark saturnine figure in the audience. He got to his feet and took a brief bow.

  Bruno watched Tara descend from the stage. Applause clattered around her like gunfire. He watched her as though in a daze, his mind still struggling to bring past events into sharp focus. But eventually he was forced to abandon his search as his attention was claimed by the here and now.

  As he and Caroline prepared to leave the auditorium a procession of faces moved across his line of vision. Through a haze of unreality he heard talk of a new recording contract, a proposed TV film charting the formation of the Renaissance Choristers, the possibility of tours in the United States and Japan. Someone called Grant wanted to represent him.

  Bruno found himself bemused. He mouthed suitable words of response, indicating a need to consider at length. He was, after all, a man who had always trodden a path of caution and anonymity.

  It was something of a relief when Xavier cut through the insistent throng and came to his rescue with an invitation for him and Caroline to come and join in the celebrations at his London house.

  Alessandra stood in the kitchen of her father’s London pied-a-terre, looking at the posters she had pinned to the wall a couple of years ago - all of them concerning horses. Her passion for all things equine simply grew stronger as time went on.

  She unpinned the large coloured diagram entitled ‘Points of the Horse’ and laid it on the table. Frowning in concentration she traced the connections of the cannon bone down to the fetlock joint in the right foreleg. What a complex, cunningly constructed animal a horse was.

  Bruno came through the doorway, crossed to the sink and filled his glass from the cold tap. He looked at the absorbed girl. ‘You’re a keen rider I take it?’ he said. She gave a slight start, automatically framing a defensive retort. She paused long enough to appreciate the complete absence of any patronizing adult superiority or lurking criticism in Bruno’s open face.

  She relaxed. ‘Yes, very keen.’

  ‘I know next to nothing about horses,’ he told her. ‘Not even enough to risk having a stab at asking you a sensible question without putting my foot in it.’

  ‘Have a try.’

  ‘OK, let’s see. Are we talking about show jumping, or maybe cross country events?’ His eyes twinkled behind the Franz Schubert glasses.

  Alessandra shook her head. ‘We’re talking about dressage. Have you heard of that?’

  Bruno nodded.

  ‘Dressage riding is a tremendous discipline,’ she explained. ‘For the horse and the rider. You have to put in hours of work, day after day – just to get to the point of knowing if you’ll ever be a tiny bit better than a load of rubbish.’

  ‘Sounds like the music treadmill,’ Bruno said.

  Alessandra glanced sharply at him, her smile snapping off. She looked again at him – and her smile slowly returned.

  He came to stand beside her, swivelling the diagram so that he could see it better. ‘Whoever designed the horse had a great deal of optimism,’ he commented. ‘All that bulk balanced on such fragile delicate legs.’

  Alessandra gazed thoughtfully at the diagram. ‘That’s true but you see if you think of the weight distribution over the four limbs…’ She began to explain further.

  The two heads bent together in contemplation.

  In the big drawing room the swirling clumps of guests were having a splendid time with the aid of copious supplies of champagne and the intoxicating presence of their host, Saul Xavier, who was generously entertaining them with some thunderous Liszt.

  Rachel, circulating dutifully, heard the general chorus of praise for the great maestro.

  What a marvellous man, so delighted with Tara’s success, so far above petty jealousies, she heard more than one guest opine.

  Don’t you bloody believe it, she retorted to herself privately. He’s controlled everything very nicely from the word go. And now he’ll control the scale of Tara’s success. Rachel’s feelings about Saul Xavier were still uneasy and ambivalent. She wished he was more accessible, more relaxed. Easier. But then he wouldn’t be the Xavier who held Tara in thrall. And Rachel knew that Tara was still helplessly in love, as though in the grip of some illness.

  Bruno and Alessandra came through the door side by side and rejoined the main company. They sought out Caroline and Tara who were talking together, standing against the curved end of the piano.

  ‘Are you a pianist, Alessandra?’ Caroline asked, watching the girl’s expression as she registered her father’s interpretation of Mozart’s Rondo in A Minor.

  Bruno also was observing Alessandra, fascinated by mixture of feelings battling it out on her young face as she was confronted with her father’s brilliance. This was late Mozart Xavier was tackling, a piece some musicologists described as the most perfect Rondo ever written. It was a challenge to play. It required not only excellent technical skill, but also an exquisite delicacy of touch and clarity common to all of that composer’s music. He had reached bar 32 where a singing, tumbling melody of exquisite tenderness demanded a sk
ilful interplay of both hands.

  Bruno noticed that Xavier was not using the sustaining pedal at all. And yet the lyricism of the piece was entirely intact. There was no trace of starkness, nothing jarring, everything flowing. Xavier’s left hand, which had moments ago been mountain climbing with Liszt now danced over the keys with a butterfly touch.

  Follow that, thought Bruno ruefully.

  Caroline was watching Alessandra, waiting with interest to hear her reply to the question she had just posed.

  ‘No,’ Alessandra said shortly.

  Tara longed to intervene. She stopped herself.

  ‘Oh!’ Caroline could not conceal her surprise.

  ‘I have lessons,’ Alessandra admitted. Her eyes took on a wicked glint. ‘Each week my teacher says: “Now then Alessandra, I’m looking forward to hearing the results of your practising. Yet another triumph of hope over experience.”’

  Bruno hooted. ‘Well if you abandon the piano you could always get yourself a reputation doing impressions.’

  ‘I do sing a bit,’ Alessandra told him, astonishing Tara who had never heard her daughter confess this to anyone before. ‘That’s your thing, isn’t it Bruno?’

  ‘I simply direct. I don’t make any sound myself,’ Bruno told her, his face mockingly grave.

  ‘Oh, like Daddy when he’s bullying orchestras,’ Alessandra said with a show of gritty scorn. But when she looked across to her father at the piano there was pleading and aching and need in her face.

  Tara resisted the impulse to reach out and hug her daughter. Things had not been easy in the last few weeks. After they had returned from Austria Alessandra had tried so hard to build a bridge to her father. She had spent hours with him in the projection room acting as his willing slave and dogsbody. But he had barely seemed to notice her, appearing completely absorbed in the editing of the films.

  Increasingly it seemed as though he had little interest in anything else when he was not actively engaged in conducting work. Tara sensed he was in the grip of some conflict, some fathomless personal despair. Being Xavier he put on a good front, hiding whatever was troubling him. As ever there were never any displays of violent emotion; nor did he resort to moodiness. He was unfailingly courteous and outwardly loving. And yet Tara knew that Alessandra, like herself, had a chilling sense of his moving away from them, slipping into a private world of music over which he wielded total power.

  Tara judged it was only a matter of time before Alessandra blew up and stormed out on him. Maybe packed her bags and went off to live with Rachel and Donald. And why not? How could she be expected at her age to put up with what amounted to constant rejection? Let alone try to understand it.

  Tara felt a hand on her arm. It was Roland. ‘I need to have a word with you. Not tonight, but very soon,’ he said softly. ‘There must be no more missed opportunities.’

  ‘OK – fine. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.’ She reached up and gave him a light kiss, chuckling at his sternly raised eyebrows.

  Roland turned to Bruno. ‘And I hope you will call me too.’ He laid his hand briefly on Bruno’s shoulder, as if in blessing.

  Bruno is made now, Tara thought with pleasure and affection. Once Roland touched you everything you did turned to gold.

  Her head was beginning to buzz with dizzy sensation from the excitement and stress of the evening and too many glasses of champagne. She thought of the new career which would inevitably unfold for her, of Alessandra’s desperate needs, of Saul’s frightening alienation. How was she going to cope with all of this in the cold grey light of morning?

  The Mozart was drawing to a close. Roland stole up to the piano and leaned over Saul. The two men quietly left the room together. Thank God, Tara thought. If anyone can pull Saul round, Roland can.

  Bruno wandered to the piano and started tinkering. He noticed Alessandra watching him. He smiled. She moved to stand beside him, drawn by his gentle and reassuring manner.

  Some of her music lay open on the stand. Bruno flicked through the sheets and then played a few cheeky bars of The Harmonious Blacksmith.

  Alessandra bridled. I do sometimes think of other things besides horses.

  ‘Sorry.’ Bruno grimaced apologetically. He picked up the song sheet of Schubert’s Rose among the Heather.

  ‘Will you turn the pages?’ he asked Alessandra. ‘I expect you do that for your father.’

  ‘Daddy never needs sheet music. His memory is phenomenal,’ Alessandra said.

  ‘Mine is abysmal,’ Bruno lied cheerily. He played the opening bars and grunted out the words in his deep baritone voice.

  ‘Dreadful!’ Alessandra exclaimed. She looked swiftly around, automatically checking the whereabouts of her father. Realizing he was safely off the scene she felt herself able to relax. Amidst the hubbub of laughter and conversation she began to sing.

  Tara heard the sound of her daughter’s voice through the background noise and felt her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Bruno will be inviting her to audition for his choir,’ Caroline said, tilting her head as she listened. ‘He’s always on the lookout for young female singers. I tell him I shall get terribly jealous.’

  Tara was certain jealousy was the last thing Caroline was feeling with regard to Bruno. Her conviction in the security of her wifely status glowed around her like a halo.

  Saul came back into the room. As always his presence brought about a subtle change in the atmosphere. Alessandra sensed his presence even before she saw him. Her singing faltered. She was suddenly attacked with a fit of coughing and had to disappear to get some water.

  Bruno got up from the piano and returned to stand by his wife, throwing an affectionate arm around her shoulder. Tara, strung up with tension and fatigue considered how pleasant and comforting it would be to lay her head on Bruno’s fatherly, well-cushioned shoulder and blurt out all her problems. Just as she used to when they were first year students.

  She drained her glass and laughed at herself. Too much fizz could make one very soppy and sentimental. She stretched out her hand and placed it in Saul’s, needing to make physical contact with him. The strong dry pressure from his fingers instantly reassured – pushed away every other need.

  ‘What a lovely daughter you have,’ Caroline said to him. ‘You are so lucky, we didn’t manage a girl.’

  ‘We are indeed lucky,’ Xavier said quietly.

  ‘She’s already taller than me,’ Tara commented. ‘My authority diminishes with each passing day.’

  ‘She has very striking colouring,’ Caroline continued. ‘Such wonderful blonde hair – so unusual with those green eyes. Bruno used to have blond hair, didn’t you darling? Right up to being a teenager. And look at him now; just a few mousy brown tufts.’

  Tara felt a slight alteration in the pressure of Saul’s hand. She looked up at him and saw a blood vessel flickering in his jaw. Her mouth went dry.

  Excusing herself she went into the small office next to the kitchen where Mrs Lockwood did her menu and shopping planning and made up her accounts. Her cheeks and forehead burned with heat. Throwing open the window she sought the coolness of the night air. It was the past that seemed to rush in.

  Alessandra crept up behind her. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Mummy.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Tara asked concerned.

  ‘I just got a frog in my throat. It’s nearly gone now.’ She produced one or two throat-clearing coughs.

  ‘Good.’ Tara put her arm around Alessandra and kissed her tenderly.

  ‘Isn’t Bruno sweet?’ Alessandra exclaimed suddenly.

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Like a big cuddly teddy bear. Has he any children?’

  ‘Twin boys, six years old.’

  ‘They could do with a daughter to control Caroline’s dire fashion sense. That dress! If she went out in a wind she’d take off like Mary Poppins. Well, I’ll be off.’ She was all brittle cheeriness. ‘Is Daddy OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘He w
as great tonight, wasn’t he?’ He looked so proud when you went up for the award. Really pleased. Honestly, he did.’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  Tara stood at the window, unable to make herself go back to the party. She tried to clear herself of all feeling, to empty and purify herself. She wondered how long it would be before Bruno decided to confront her. Tomorrow, next week? Never?’

  He was already in the room. He closed the door behind him.

  ‘Tara,’ he said, as though it were an endearment.

  She was silent.

  ‘Alessandra is a wonderful girl.’ His voice was thick with pent up feeling.

  ‘Yes.’

  A long pause. Tara closed her eyes. Saliva poured into her mouth.

  ‘Is Alessandra mine?’ he asked softly. ‘Is she my child?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you be sure?’

  ‘No, I just know.’ The words were simple and brutal.

  She heard his breathing, jerky and harsh.

  ‘Don’t imagine things Bruno. Don’t hope.’

  ‘She could be mine – it’s possible.’ He was suddenly strong – fiercely determined. ‘It is possible, isn’t it?’

  Tara let her head sink into her hands. ‘Alessandra belongs to Saul,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Bruno repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ Tara admitted flatly. ‘It’s possible.’ She had always known it was possible. She had also never had a shred of doubt that it was Saul who had made her pregnant. She wondered if Bruno would demand a DNA test to be done to try to determine paternity. Oh hell!

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about dates and so on?’ Bruno asked.

  Tara closed her eyes. ‘Alessandra is Saul’s child. She is his legacy,’ she cried out in protest. ‘For God’s sake Bruno, look at her. Listen to her, it’s obvious.’

  Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get away from Bruno and his earnest, considerate ponderings. Pushing past him she stumbled to the door.

  Saul stood behind it. Silent. Knowing.