by Patrick Gale
As soon as she was gone, he took his orange juice (he never took coffee within two hours of performing) and climbed the stairs to Dido’s room.
He could not say what he hoped to find there. An angry note or a letter of guarded apology? There was nothing, of course, not even a vengeful mess. This had always been her room, even since she was old enough to move down to one of the larger ones. A maid’s room, with crazily sloping ceilings which would soon be making even Dido duck, it had begun as an ideal nursery, close enough to hear a cry in the night, far enough away for noise not to reach dining table or music room. It was easy, now, to imagine it as a shy teenager’s bolthole, an eyrie dank with neglected laundry and unwashed thoughts.
When Julia oversaw the complete redecoration of the house recently they consulted Dido about what she wanted. She pored for a few minutes over a range of ‘heritage’ paint colours and opted for Uppark Dairy Blue. ‘And I want to be able to put everything away and I want curtains and a lock on the door.’
The result was a sort of nun’s cell; undoubtedly cooler and less childish than anything Julia would have chosen. The clothes she kept here were all tidied away behind doors or in drawers built in under the bed. They had fixed her up with a desk and a computer, although she rarely did homework here, and her books were ranged along a pair of shelves.
There was no clutter. She had even made her bed before leaving and pulled up and smoothed the bedspread. (It was not really a bedspread but a fanciful blue silk robe Giles had worn in a production of Rodelinda.) There were no toys. Dido was not really a toy-loving child. Apart from the contents of the bookshelves, the only childish touch in sight was a poster from Berlin Zoo of a hippopotamus calf swimming and displaying tombstone teeth.
Giles stretched out on the bed, his feet dangling over the edge, and wondered how it must be to be her. This room was precious to him as concrete proof that she was still in his life but he knew it for a brave gesture, knew that most of her days were quite unlike this, spent at school or with friends or in Eliza’s flat.
He could not begin to imagine what Eliza’s flat was like inside but had stood below it often enough gazing up, seeing the sort of desperate, down-at-heel people who came in and out, noting the sheets and towels draped on strings in place of curtains, the broken panes of glass, the junk huddled on cramped balconies. He had guiltily pieced the rest together from what he saw in police dramas on the television and from the poverty that clung to Dido like the smell of damp wool or sour towels when she first arrived after several days with her mother.
Guiltily, not because he felt it was his fault that Eliza was there, the doing and choosing was most definitely all her own, but because he could never stop hoping that staying in this place, with comfort and carpets and culture could not help but change the way Dido viewed her life in that one. He would never stop fantasising that one day she would call a halt to the relentless toing and froing and make a devastating choice in his favour. He had gone so far as to consult a lawyer. He knew there were precedents in his favour, that such things could happen. A mother could be deemed unfit, a step-parent recognised by law as a more suitable guardian. He told no one, least of all Julia, who had such a terrifying ability to take action and make a finality of passing whim. If the wish came true it must be on his own merits, not through lobbying or subterfuge.
The doorbell brought him to his senses. He raced down to the nearest intercom and found it was the cab Julia had ordered for him. Asking them to wait, he hurriedly gathered his music, snatched a bottle of his preferred mineral water (still, unchilled) and left, cursing himself.
Whatever trouble he was having, his voice had to come first. Like any athlete, a singer’s livelihood and reputation depended upon health and a handful of trained, specialised muscles. A hint of rhinitis could affect tuning, a drying effect of coffee or red wine affect his upper register, while milk, cheese or chocolate cake left his larynx feeling clogged and phlegmy which was disastrous for trills. An outright cold or sore throat was a crisis but the effects of mere domestic carelessness could be almost as dire.
The interval between Julia’s leaving and the cab’s arrival should have been spent gently warming his voice. The recording was happening in a church which might be as chilly as its acoustic was moist.
Throat wrapped in a silk scarf he superstitiously always wore to recordings, he sat in the back of the car reading over the books of Dowland much as a film actor must run through the day’s shooting script. Today was nothing very grand; a budget recording of Elizabethan lute songs, but then, Giles was not a grand singer and could not afford not to treat every broadcast or recording, however minor, as though he were singing for Rattle and the Berlin Phil. As he read and changed a few breath marks, Giles buzzed softly, tongue against teeth. Occasionally he forced an artificial yawn. He had been doing this for years and was heedless of the driver’s reaction.
He took minicabs everywhere. He had not owned a car since he was a student. He never saw the point. The money he saved in petrol, insurance, repairs and parking permits more than covered cab fares. Still, it embarrassed him when the subject arose. People always said how sensible he was, think of the money you save and the bother and so on but he saw them looking at him and thinking pathetic. He saw they suspected he did not actually know how to drive or had lost his licence. It was like confessing to having only one ball.
Counter-tenors always had that cross to bear. It was assumed they were gay or eunuchs or not quite manly. After their brief flirtation with principal-boy mezzos in unconvincing breastplates or frock coats, Handel and Glück revivalists had long since gone back to casting men in the high voiced, heroic roles but there were still titters. Even in the most formal opera house. Titters one could hear quite plainly over the orchestra. Present a martial figure, in Roman costume, muscular legs, a little leather jerkin, swirling red cloak, the whole Gladiator thing, and it was sexy. But the moment he opened his mouth to sing as high or higher than a woman there was always some fool who laughed.
After nearly ten years in the business, live performances, especially in opera, still left him sick with fear. There was so much to think about, so much that could go wrong – costumes, props, moves, words, memory, other people – and one was entirely exposed. This was different. He had worked with Douglas, the lutenist, on many occasions and they had rehearsed all the pieces twice the previous week so he was on secure ground. Wearing comfortable clothes, sitting face to face in a deserted Kilburn church, all they had to do was sing and play. Then listen. Then sing and play again. And their only audience was the recording engineer. Giles could focus all his energies on his voice and a perfect understanding with Douglas and forget all the rest.
Compared to opera, lute songs were an intimate, unshowy medium – bedroom music in fact. Sighs in a lover’s ear rather than public declamations. If they were difficult to sing it was precisely because there was little obvious technical difficulty so there was no excuse for the voice not to be smooth perfection or the words tellingly put across.
Giles had never got over the disparity between the voice he heard in his head and the voice picked up by a microphone. To his ears, it invariably sounded thinner and sadder than he expected it would. With some music he had to affect a conviction that wasn’t there. Dowland spoke to him, however. It was one of the enthusiasms, along with Pergolesi, that he had been able to share with Eliza. These songs would never be in demand in the concert hall – they were far too small, far too quiet – but hearing them sung back at him he was fired up afresh with amazement that they were not more celebrated.
He soon gave himself up to the nerdish pleasure of comparing one take with another and of discussing the order in which the pieces – all of them miniatures – might best be placed on the finished disc. Time melted. For all his effort in producing them and alertness to their minutiae, the songs cast their spell on him, a kind of decorously erotic melancholy. His troubled thoughts, his personal preoccupations, were ironed as smooth as he was tryi
ng to iron the phrases of the songs.
When they broke for lunch he found he had forgotten to worry about Dido and when they were finally through he found he was thinking only of the pleasure of a quiet night at home with Julia. No performance, no company, just civilised peace with a civilised woman.
Giles did not love Julia. He had never sighed for her as Dowland sighed or been thrown by her into a jealous rage. But she had become such a part of his existence that he could no more imagine life without her than he dared envisage a future in which he could not sing for a living.
She worked for the agency who managed his career. She was still a junior there when they met, but was briefly assigned to him while Selina, the agency’s head, took compassionate leave for a death. Poor Julia. She thought it was an easy assignment: escort not particularly important counter-tenor to meeting at opera company’s publicity department then sit in on photo shoot to ensure all runs smoothly. Had the agency known his life had fallen apart that week and that an important personality at the opera company was partly to blame, they would never have entrusted him to someone so inexperienced.
She made the mistake of starting a conversation with a bright, safe, ‘So. How are you today?’ and he told the truth. Most of it. He did not whitewash himself.
‘I neglected her,’ he eventually admitted. ‘I was so self-obsessed. A career’s just a career but a marriage…’
‘You have to think of your career,’ she said with unexpected force. ‘It’s your life! You have to be self-obsessed sometimes. We all do. Don’t blame yourself so much.’
She watched him closely all through the photo shoot, craning her neck whenever the photographer or stylist blocked her view, as though only her concern were keeping him from breaking down there and then. The shoot took a long time, most of an afternoon, and when it was through she would not hear of his travelling home alone.
‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through,’ she said as they settled back into another cab and he found himself telling her.
By the time they reached Islington, he had talked himself out of the relatively secure position he had been in when she picked him up and into a vulnerability so thin-skinned that he suddenly couldn’t bear her to leave just then. So when she looked out of the window at his overflowing dustbins and, spinning conversation, said, ‘Pretty house,’ it was easy to ask her in for coffee. And a glass of wine.
She rang the agency to update them and, in the mess by the phone, found a French tax indemnity form he was meant to have signed and posted back. ‘I’ll take it in tomorrow.’
He was going to suggest ordering in a takeaway. He had been living off takeaways since Eliza left and their litter of greasy foil about the place was a satisfying testament to his despondency. But she had a better idea. With the firm insistence of a kind nanny, she sent him upstairs to bathe and change while she rustled up supper. When he began to protest that she had done far too much already she said, ‘Don’t try to assert yourself. You’re in no state right now to do more than maintain just you,’ in a way that comforted as it compelled. Refreshed, he came downstairs to find the kitchen tidied, a store cupboard risotto of pancetta and porcini waiting on the stove and no sign of Julia.
Riding home through scorching rush hour traffic snarls, exhilarated by what felt like a good day’s work, Giles felt a pang at taking Julia for granted. Why should they have a quiet night in like an old married couple simply because he was tired? He should make more of an effort. He should have learnt from the mistakes he made with Eliza.
Before reaching Starcross Road, he rang a newish restaurant he knew had caught her eye to make them a booking. But when he let himself in he found the air full of cooking smells and the table laid for eight. He had forgotten it was Selina’s birthday – Julia’s boss – and they were to entertain her and her girlfriend, a famous Australian film director and his boyfriend and an oboe player the agency had recently signed and her much younger husband.
‘Food’s all under control,’ Julia said as she stepped into the shower. ‘All you have to do is dress. How’d it go today?’
‘Fine,’ he said and slipped downstairs so she wouldn’t hear him cancel the reservation.
So, instead of a quiet night in or a romantic night out, he would spend the evening remembering; not to ask Selina’s girlfriend yet again what an actuary actually did, not to talk about the director’s boyfriend’s notorious piercings, and to draw out the painfully shy oboist.
A further blight on the evening was that instead of the young husband the oboe player brought Villiers Yates. When they had first met, Villiers had been the most intent of all Giles’ student circle on becoming a professional musician. Never one to confess personal disappointment, he now held down a nominal academic position but made his money hunting down musical treasures for an American collector. Villiers was one of those old friends who was not really a friend but would have been far too risky a proposition as an enemy and so was best kept sweet. Wildly gay when they were students, he had reinvented himself as a heterosexual heartbreaker, attracting women in the same way he then wounded them, by being fundamentally uninterested in their welfare. Perhaps the oboist was the latest of his victims. Certainly she was looking more than usually pained when they arrived.
Once, and once only, when they were both very drunk at an Oxford party, he had let Villiers kiss him. If only for this reason he had done his best to drop him since but for the same reason Villiers proved a burr and had befriended first Eliza then Julia as insurance.
Villiers was almost entirely driven by a hunger for compromising knowledge about people. Whether he ever did anything with it was not the point; he simply liked to know things and to remind one occasionally just what he knew. Had he not found an opening as a scout for the billionaire collector he discreetly referred to as Mr Mister, he would have made an excellent spymaster for Walsingham.
‘Of course!’ Giles heard him telling Selina with a glance across at Giles that had a penknife’s twinkle. ‘Giles and I go back longer than anyone cares to remember…’
Irritated, Giles decided to punish him by ignoring his presence entirely. ‘Selina,’ he told his agent, ‘you never look any older. It’s quite sinister. Happy birthday.’ He kissed her and turned his back on Villiers as he drew her aside to give her the present Julia had remembered to buy from them both.
It was a black velvet scarf. Very Selina. While the oboist and director’s boyfriend came over to admire it too, he noted with satisfaction that Villiers had slunk off to pester Julia in the kitchen. He could sit with her for dinner, that way Giles might even get through the whole evening without addressing a word to him. He had the perfect moral excuse: disapproval of Villiers’ meddling in the oboist’s delicate marriage. Like anyone who has ever been dumped, he retained a reserve of righteous indignation easily drawn on. One did not stand by while a child pulled the legs off a spider.
Giles sat at one end of the dining table, Julia at the other. Their eyes met repeatedly, even as her mouth was chatting to Villiers and to Grover, the film director. She had not changed much since he first met her but she had acquired an extra layer, a sort of imposing quality she could pull over herself like an elegant shroud. She was not beautiful but she made a great deal of what she had, did it largely by presenting the world with this shrouded impressiveness. Those it did not repulse, it flattered.
Watching her at work – and to give her credit she was working as hard as he was – he wondered if he had spoiled her, if he should never have taught her how to smooth herself out so. He had found early on in life that if he did nothing, said nothing in particular but merely held up his face like a mirror to whoever was talking to him, people assumed of him whatever made them happiest. They looked at his golden hair, blue eyes, smooth complexion and assumed that he liked them, that he was interested, that he understood them. Woman after woman, some men too, had read love into his silence.
The oboist suddenly looked far less pained, touched the back of his hand a
nd gave it a little squeeze. ‘My God, that’s so true!’ she exclaimed with a toothy smile.
Giles wondered what he had just said and felt lonely behind his face.
7
Her dinner party was going awry and Julia found she was powerless to save it. It was always a bad idea to drink when you were entertaining, at least until all the food was safely served. It was just that people made her so nervous so she drank to calm her nerves then said something stupid which made her more nervous still and so down it spiralled.
It was hard to imagine a more frightening gathering. She could handle Selina or Villiers on their own but in company they were toxic – social sadists both. Selina would flatter her in a way that made her gibber and Villiers always drew a group’s attention to her as though she were cleverly playing a part.
‘Look at you. Miss Perfect Host,’ he would say or, ‘You made this? You, Julia, actually put your hands inside a dead animal and made this?’
This time tomorrow it will all be over she told herself, drawing Grover’s attention to the cheese which had stalled in front of him. Sooner than that. In two hours it will all be over.
This was a bad habit learned in childhood. Rather than face a torment head on she would think herself forwards to the time when it would be over, tune out mentally then find she could not get back in. At school they accused her of being tone deaf. She wasn’t, actually, she simply had a naturally deep singing voice like all the women in her family and would have been quite all right if allowed to slip back a row to sing tenor. The music mistress sang the tenor line at pitch all the time to demonstrate things and nobody thought it odd.
‘Just mime,’ Julia was told crossly.
Mime. Not leave the choir, which would have been bearable, but stay there and mime. She would get through the torment of boys pinching her bum or tweaking her hair or girls around her pointedly leaning over to hear her not singing by tuning out. This time tomorrow the concert will be over. This time next week we’ll be on holiday. Eight years from now I won’t be at school any more. Then she would forget to turn a page or leave her mouth open a fraction too late and the mime would be exposed.