The Maestro's Mistress

by Angela Dracup

  ‘Mummy, you’ve got to stop doing this. You’re driving yourself into the ground. Look at you, your clothes would be tight on a twig.’

  Tara reached out and enclosed her daughter’s waist. ‘This is his monument.’

  Alessandra rattled Tara’s shoulder. ‘Just leave it for a while. You can come back to it later. It’s grim being down in the dungeon for days on end.’ She took up a ribbon of film and slid it through her fingers, her expression puzzled and bitter. ‘I wish Roland Grant would come and take the whole lot away,’ she said, tossing the celluloid to one side.

  Tara flicked switches. The film stopped rolling. The images on the screen faded to a blank. She was well aware of the obsessive nature of her compulsion to do this editing work for Saul. Carrying on from where he had left off. She was more and more convinced that he had been on his way from London to the projection room here in the Oxford house on the night he had vanished from her life.

  She had to finish the project. She was learning so much from it. And his face was there all the time. His spirit. She had to go on, even though it felt as though it were killing her.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Alessandra. ‘Let’s go out for a walk. Or were you going to exercise Tosca?’ Alessandra had wanted to bring the horse back to her family home since her father’s crash and disappearance.

  ‘Done it already. Let’s go for a drive, blast the village with loud pop music!’

  Tara tried to relax behind the wheel. She kept her pace steady. The notion of speed no longer thrilled her. ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ she asked Alessandra cautiously.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well I want to give you a lovely present. So, would you like another horse to bring on? We can still keep Tosca.’

  ‘No. Not now. I can’t take any more changes.’

  ‘How about taking friends to a disco? A film?’

  ‘Can I have something at home? Some friends in. A few spritzers and lager for the boys?’

  ‘Oh heavens!’ Tara thought about it. Oh, if only Xavier were here. She laughed. ‘Sure, of course you can.’

  The birthday loomed large for both of them. Only days away. Alessandra was really growing up.

  Tara recalled the days of August fifteen years ago, waiting for her babies to arrive. Her heart leaked a drop of blood.

  The insistent thump of African-style drums throbbed through the house. When it wasn’t drums it was Irish wailing that made Tara think of green bogs and slaughtered innocents.

  ‘It must be torture for you, having to put up with all this modern music,’ Mrs Lockwood said to her sympathetically.

  Tara laughed. ‘There is some so-called “serious” contemporary music that has the edge for awfulness even on this.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ said Mrs Lockwood, unconvinced. She had finished her work now, prepared and set out a magnificent supper for a dozen or so ravenous young people intent on growing a few inches in the next few months. She was reaching for her anorak, shrugging into it.

  She cocked her head, listening again to the sounds from the party. ‘They seem a nice bunch of kids,’ she said. ‘I just hope they take care with Mr Xavier’s sound equipment. It must be worth a fortune.’

  ‘I’ve told Alessandra that if there’s any damage to the sound system or his piano, heads will roll. Actually she’s pretty protective about his stuff. I don’t anticipate any real trouble.’

  Mrs Lockwood nodded approval. ‘Well, good-night, Tara.’ She picked up her bag. She turned. ‘I hope…I hope…Oh!’ She couldn’t say the words. She made a sudden lurch forward, hugged Tara fiercely then disappeared through the back door.

  Tara went through into the dining room, surveying the magnificent feast of Italian, Chinese and Indian cuisine and the huge, horse-shoe shaped birthday cake with its fifteen candles captured in icing-sugar stirrup holders.

  Returning to the dining kitchen she sat down at the table. Empty and weary. Frighteningly alone. She felt that she had lost a part of herself, that there was a gaping hole inside her. She looked at the calendar. Almost nine weeks now. Hope was slipping away, the occasional glimmers of optimism appearing less and less frequently. Panic constricted her chest.

  She let her head sink back, turned to look outwards to the garden at the back of the house. Pale green light leaked from the rain-soaked leaves. It had poured down earlier on and now the garden was rinsed and glistening.

  It was seven in the evening. The sun was still out, but frail, not yet sure of its power against the clouds. A shadow moved into position on to the path which lead to the entrance porch. A long shadow. Dark. Perfectly still.

  The skin under Tara’s hair crawled with sensation. She sat, numb and unfeeling like a stone.

  The shadow shifted. He came softly through the door. He was thinner than before, his face pale, his skin luminous, almost translucent in the evening light.

  Tara’s hands soared up to her face, covering her eyes, blotting out the power of the beloved image.

  He made no sound, no move. He was watching her. Just watching.

  Tara got up. The unimaginable was happening. She moved to stand close to him. She reached out her hand and touched his breast bone. He was real: flesh, blood, bone.

  Her chest heaved. Blood thundered in her head. Red waves beating. Joy, fury, rage.

  ‘You bastard,’ she whispered. She struck him across the cheek with the back of her hand. She raised the other hand. He stood quite motionless whilst she rid herself of all her fury and anger and hurt.

  She was only a small woman, but she was strong and her emotions fuelled her. In time he moved to the table, sat down, sank his head against the wood and covered himself in protection with his arms.

  ‘Aah!’ Tara leaned over him, slid her hands over his beloved form, pressed kisses into the skin of his neck, into his hair, his ears.

  With the sudden slippery lash of a python she gripped him in a final burst of rage. ‘God, I’d like to kill you.’

  His hands moved behind his head, reached up and pulled her down to him. ‘I had hoped you might forgive me,’ he said.

  She leaned into him. Saul! Her Saul. Found, returned. Safe. Oh joy, joy!’

  He sat up. She looked at him, soaked a cloth in cold water and dabbed at the livid marks of violence on his face. Their eyes came to rest on each other, granite-grey against green. The fear of meeting was immediately banished into a living, pulsing reunion.

  He sat quietly whilst she bathed his cheeks and swept back the hair from his forehead to seek out further damage.

  He started to speak, to begin his explanations.

  Tara stopped him. She threw out her hands, framing a globe shape as though cradling his head. ‘No, don’t speak. Just BE.’ She wrung out the cloth in the sink and carefully hung it over the tap to dry as Rachel always did. Her legs felt soupy and disobedient. She sat down and pulled her chair close to him. She took his hand in hers. She breathed deeply.

  Time passed, unheeded, uncharted. Wordless.

  The African drums continued relentlessly. Saul’s eyes glimmered, his gaze swivelling to hers. They smiled with the conspiracy of those who had intuitive access to each other’s thoughts.

  A door in the hallway opened and closed, the music surging through in a huge burst and then receding. Alessandra erupted into the kitchen, her face flushed. ‘I just wanted to tell Mrs Lockwood she’s performed miracles with…’ Her gesticulating arms dropped down by her side. She stood rigid. Light flared from her eyes. There was disbelief in her face and then the most intense concentration as the truth inserted itself into her mind, which had told itself not to hope.

  Saul got slowly to his feet.

  ‘Daddy,’ Alessandra said. ‘My lovely daddy.’ Her voice shook.

  Tara watched as the two of them merged together, heads touching, arms tightly wound about. Her vision blurred, a swimming image, a glimpse of perfect harmony. ‘Happy birthday,’ she heard him murmur.

  The music swelled, deafening now as a st
raggle of young people filtered into the hallway, sniffing out the whereabouts of food like hungry dogs and peering through the kitchen door. Eyes glanced curiously around, then looked away in confusion.

  Tara smiled and walked through into the hallway, closing the kitchen door behind her. She led the way into the dining room. ‘This way to the fatted calf,’ she told the famished guests.

  He had been briefly stunned. Dazed. Instinct had propelled him out of the car onto the road. Porsches under attack were like tanks, he said, wounded but not vanquished. He had crawled across two moving lanes on the motorway to the hard shoulder. A miraculous survival.

  He had watched the car flare into a great sheet of fire; spitting and growling in its death throes. He had stumbled into the dry scrub at the hem of the motorway, found his way into a meadow and slept against a gate.

  When consciousness returned he had found himself in a world where things appeared askew and tilted. He had forced his stiff limbs to move. Had walked for hours, eventually reaching a motorway service station. He had bought food, a razor, a fresh shirt.

  Tara placed her hand over his lips. ‘No more now. You’re here with us; that’s enough.’ That’s everything.

  They were in bed. They had sneaked off, hand in hand, tip-toeing up the stairs. Furtive fugitives from the serious business of teenagers braying at the trough.

  They had needed the simple bond of sex, to be glued together once more.

  Tara lay in his arms, her body liquid and satisfied, recklessly uncaring about everything except his presence.

  Reasons, motives, explanations. They filtered through slowly, dribbling out unevenly, stopping then starting again.

  At breakfast the next day Alessandra had watched him with steady eyes. Assessing and joyous, no longer afraid.

  Tara sat down between them.

  ‘Where did you go to, Daddy?’ Alessandra asked suddenly.

  His glance moved from one of them to the other. ‘I walked through fields for days and days. Slept up against walls or in barns. A tramp.’

  ‘You must have been concussed. You were ill!’ Tara exclaimed.

  ‘That is likely. But as you both know I was already in some disarray before the accident.’

  Tara bit down hard on her lip, could not bear either to speak or look at either of her two loved ones.

  ‘I eventually ended up in a smart anonymous hotel near Henley. A place for business conferences – an internet connection in every room, piped Vivaldi through the speaker system. No one recognized me.’

  ‘Were you wearing a bag over your head?’ Alessandra asked.

  He smiled. ‘I lay low, wore a baseball cap I found abandoned in the bar.’

  ‘No!’ Alessandra opened her mouth wide in grinning disbelief.

  ‘The hotel used to be a private house,’ he said evenly. ‘My uncle’s house, where I spent my childhood.’

  Tara reached out a hand to him. ‘Oh, Saul!’

  His eyes hardened. ‘There is no need for pity. I was not desperately unhappy there. I had the perfectly standard life of the child of a minor aristocrat. I was looked after by nannies, I was given an expensive boarding education. And my uncle was a devotee of music; it was all around, all of the time. Live performances in the drawing room, recordings on the record player and then the Hi Fi system.’

  Alessandra shifted in her chair.

  Her father turned to her, his smile gritty and ironic. ‘I can tell when I’m boring people. The pouring out of human frailty isn’t the most exciting topic.’

  Alessandra began to protest. He cut in: ‘Look it’s enough that we all still love each other. You don’t have to stay and listen to this stuff. Go and feed that great snorting horse. I’ll come and join you in a minute.’

  Alessandra got up. She kissed her father on the forehead. She looked at the pink and grey bruises on his cheekbone and shook her head. Passing Tara she murmured, ‘Nobel Peace Prize withdrawn.’

  Tara smiled briefly. She was watching Saul intently.

  ‘This is something I want to say just to you, Tara. I went to that place because there was something I needed to remind myself of. It was there that I learned to be totally reliant on myself, to be fiercely self-sufficient, utterly contained.’

  ‘How old were you when you learned that?’

  ‘About six. I’d already started on music lessons. My uncle was not a loving man you see, but he was an excellent musician. He didn’t offer warmth, but he did offer the gift of music. I grabbed on to music as my emotional lifeline.’

  Tara closed her eyes. She studied her fingers, flexing them, recalling her own childish isolation after Freddie died. And she had had the benefit of loving parents. ‘You were so alone,’ she told him. I suppose that’s why you married so young.’

  ‘Georgiana was the perfect wife for a man who needed a beautiful mate. A mate who wouldn’t penetrate that fragile inner part of him that needed to be closed and secret.’

  Tara nodded, understanding at least some of what he was telling her.

  His eyes glinted. ‘You were dangerous, Tara. You pierced the container I’d sealed inside me. You made me vulnerable, exposed me to neediness again.’

  ‘And, oh God, you were sometimes so angry with me,’ she cried.

  ‘Yes. Because I love you so fiercely, so hopelessly.’

  She put her arms around him and rocked him as one would a child. ‘And when you heard Bruno trying to claim that Alessandra was his. What then?’

  ‘Internal hell broke loose.’

  ‘You didn’t believe it,’ she challenged him, her eyes blazing.

  ‘Of course not. I know Alessandra is mine. But seeing you with that nice, open young man, thinking of what you had shared together. And thinking of what a pleasant easy time you could have had with him —’

  Tara cut in, savage and insistent. ‘I didn’t want an easy time. I wanted to be engulfed and bewitched. To be with you in the rapids, steering my precarious little craft, negotiating the rocky shoal, never knowing from one minute to the next how deep it was underneath – infinite or just a few dangerous inches. Oh God - how I loved you!’ She held him tight. ‘And how I still do, God help me!’ She let out a sigh. ‘My darling, it was right that you came back. If only because Alessandra is your very own flesh and blood. And no one can take that from you, whatever happens.’

  He raised his head. His face was chilling and austere. ‘Alessandra must have her own life. She doesn’t belong to me – to either of us. She is her own person. It is you who are my flesh and blood. You and me – sex, flesh, birth, blood. Man and wife. One flesh.’

  She groaned as he gripped her upper arms in fingers of steel and pressed his lips over hers. ‘I am not your wife, Saul,’ she murmured.

  ‘Oh yes. In spirit you are my wife. And you will be soon in reality. If Georgiana won’t finalize the divorce I think I shall kill her.’

  Through the intensity of her emotions an impish smile broke out on Tara’s face. Saul looked at her outraged.

  She told him the news; that Georgiana wanted to marry again. Some doctor or other. That she was sporting a handsome ruby on her wedding finger.

  He considered for a few moments and then offered no comment. Tara did not press him. She had always known there was a part of him which must be left secret and untouched. But there was more than enough that he had given in return.

  They walked out into the garden making for the stable block Saul had had built for Tosca the year before. Soon the world would crowd in: the press, Roland Grant, the rebuilding of an established, dazzling career, the construction of an embryonic one and new furrows to plough. But just now she had him to herself.

  She pulled his arm around her. He held her very close.

  Alessandra was invited to a friend’s house. Saul said he would drive her there in Tara’s Jaguar.

  Tara went out with them and wagged a warning finger at him. ‘No rally driving in my car!’ She looked pointedly at Alessandra as she said so. ‘Precious cargo,’ she m
outhed at him, her eyes then travelling meaningfully over his own person.

  On his return to the house Tara heard him go down to the basement. She followed on, hesitant and apprehensive. She knew there would always be that anxiety with Saul and because of it she would always be drawn to him, held irresistibly.

  He had the recording system up and running. Three differing images glowed on the screens. ‘You have done all this,’ he said, fingering the container of completed and edited film, whilst staring at the three faces of the tortured Maestro Xavier conducting.

  ‘I did it because I thought you were dead,’ she told him with an upsurge of new anger.

  ‘You did all this for me. Even though you knew it was the sick work of a man intent on destroying everything he loved. You and Alessandra. My art. Your generosity makes me feel humble, Tara.’

  He swung round on his stool. They looked at each other. Tara turned away. The power of his feeling overwhelmed her.

  ‘Do you remember at your father’s funeral that you said you wanted to roar and howl?’ he asked her.

  ‘You told me to weep a flood, told me it would prevent years of painful leaking later. I’ve always remembered that.’

  ‘It was something I heard from a famous psychiatrist I met when I was on tour in Austria years ago. It stuck in my mind.’ He looked down, his long arms hanging slack.

  ‘Saul?’ Tara called to him, bringing him softly back to the here and now.

  ‘When I was walking in those fields the days just after the accident, that’s what I was doing. Sobbing and howling. It just happened. I would force myself to stop. And then it would start again.’

  She gathered up his hands and held them protectively in her own. ‘What were you sobbing for? The little lonely boy in the big house doing his piano practice?’

  ‘My uncle didn’t want me there. I was there on sufferance.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He gave a harsh, gritty laugh. ‘My aristocratic forbears, with their international pedigree, were not quite as they seemed. My paternal grandfather was a Spanish wine grower who had a home in both northern Spain and southern England. My father was Oxford educated and well connected, and my mother was indeed Grecian and beautiful. It was just that she was the household’s parlour maid who my very young father made pregnant whilst on a visit to my uncle’s house. She died of a haemorrhage just hours after producing me. My father then got a commission in the army, went off on active service to Korea and was killed.