‘Sure, and you can uncover your eyes too. I’m perfectly respectable, you know. You mustn’t be so uptight, Livvy.’
‘Right, yes. Sorry.’
I dropped my hand and he dropped his towel.
‘Lance!’ My hand shot to my eyes again.
‘Sorry, I dropped it,’ he laughed.
‘Oooh, God!’
Seething now, I turned and raced back to the house to find Claudia, lying on the sofa reading a teenage magazine.
‘Darling, it’s half-past seven,’ I panted, checking my hair in the mirror, ‘and I must go. Lance will be up in two ticks followed by Nanette, OK?’
‘Fine. Can I watch The Simpsons?’
‘No you can’t watch The Simpsons. Do some flipping homework for a change why don’t you!’
She looked up from her mag. ‘Mum, you’re nervous.’
‘What?’
‘I can tell when you’re nervous, you always get stroppy. Take a deep breath and think –’ she turned back to her magazine and read – ‘“I can do this. I can trap this man. I’m gorgeous.”’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I snatched the comic from her hands, reached into the bookcase, flung Anne of Green Gables at her and stormed out. All of which was not particularly conducive to feeling calm, confident, and collected as I beetled across the cobbles in shoes that, frankly, could have come out of Nanette’s wardrobe. I hadn’t worn anything like these mules, or the peacock-blue pedal pushers I’d squeezed into, since I was about twenty, but I had a feeling the place might be teeming with trendy arty types and I didn’t want to look frumpy. I wondered, as I ran along, tucking back my hair, if I looked too frivolous, though, and tried desperately to look serious and intelligent. Oh, and musical. I hummed a little tune. Abba. Hopeless, Olivia, just shut up. As I ran up the steps to the front door and teetered on the top one to ring the bell, it occurred to me to wonder if mother would be in. I did hope not. I wasn’t convinced she’d be conducive to the artistic atmosphere within, unless, of course, it was in some dismal, gothic novel, sort of way.
Two seconds later, well-heeled heels came drumming down the hall, and the door was thrown back to reveal – not mother, but Sebastian. Such was my relief, I beamed.
‘Hi!’
His face, which I realised had been on the point of holding back some reserve, relaxed at my smile.
He grinned. ‘Hi, come in.’
He stood aside to let me into a huge, smoky-blue hallway, covered in prints and drawings, with a vast iron and stone staircase which swept up and up, curling finally to an enormous round glass lantern in the roof, storeys high.
‘Gosh!’ I stared. ‘I had no idea these houses were so big!’
‘Deceptive, aren’t they?’ he agreed, following my gaze. ‘That’s what I liked about it when I saw it. Very understated on the outside and full of surprises within.’
He turned back to me, and I suddenly realised that I was exactly the reverse. Very overstated on the outside in these ridiculous peacock-blue trousers, and no surprises at all within. Why hadn’t I worn something grey and subtle to match the chaste good taste of this house, instead of something more at home in Nanette’s all white shag pile? Sebastian himself was wearing ancient cords – the badge of the intelligentsia – and a blue Boden shirt. I did notice, though, that he’d clearly just washed his hair because it was still a bit damp at the edges. We stood there smiling at each other.
‘I just wanted –’
‘Olivia, I –’
We laughed. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, scraping back short dark waves, ‘you go first.’
I felt my meagre supply of words dwindling but ploughed on regardless. ‘Well, I – I just wanted to say how sorry I was. You know, about all that ghastly business with Claudia and then gate-crashing your party last night when I should have known better. I’ve – well, I’ve been a total imbecile and I’m sorry.’
He smiled. ‘Forget it. God, I meant to say forget it in the note – did I not say that? Come on, let’s go through and sit in the garden. It’s too stuffy in here.’ He guided me through the house. ‘Anyway, apart from anything else, you apologised quite enough last night, explained yourself perfectly, and very eloquently too, definitely had the crowd on your side. I got a bit nervous at one point, thought I was going to be lynched, and it made me realise that had I been in your shoes, I might well have thought I was the mad flasher-mac man, too.’
‘Really?’ I gazed about as I found myself on an elegant terrace, spilling over with urns of ivy and dusty white geraniums. I sat down on the French café chair he held out. Clearly it was just the two of us and I felt hugely relieved.
‘Really,’ he confirmed, as he sat beside me, a tiny iron table between us. ‘I’d forgotten about that tigress instinct mothers have, but looking back I seem to remember mine was just the same. When I was about eight, she once saw me talking to a strange man in our road and came tearing up, demanding to know if he’d offered me sweeties or anything. As the poor man opened his mouth to speak she beat him about the head with her handbag. She wasn’t to know he was my housemaster, I suppose.’
‘Oh God!’ I giggled and took the beautifully chilled glass of Pouilly Fumé he offered me. ‘Is she here now?’ I glanced nervously around.
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
He put down his glass, sat back and regarded me curiously. ‘You know, the first time I met you, Olivia, you showed an inordinate amount of interest in my mother. She lives in Dorset, with my father. Why on earth would she be here?’
‘In Dorset! Oh! So – so who’s that – that woman then?’ I jerked my head back housewards. ‘With the hair,’ I scraped mine back to demonstrate, ‘and the teeth.’ I stuck mine out rattily.
‘Maureen? She’s my girlfriend.’
I dropped my hair. Stared. ‘You’re kidding!’
He laughed. ‘Of course. She’s my housekeeper.’
‘Oh!’
‘Because I live on my own and I’m fairly hopeless on the domestic front, she cleans and puts food in front of me now and again. She’s got a flat in the basement. Why on earth did you think she was my mother?’
‘Because Nanette said –’ I stopped, flushing, as I remembered what Nanette had said. She clearly hadn’t a clue, but wanting to appear informed, had creatively filled in the gaps on the strength of very limited information.
He folded his arms, mouth twitching slightly. ‘Yes, what exactly did Nanette say? I’m keen to learn, if only to discover why, at that godawful dinner party of hers, you addressed me so slowly and distinctly and in words of only one syllable. At first I thought it might be because you were brain-dead, but then when you miraculously recovered your powers of speech to address the rest of the party, it occurred to me that you might imagine I was, am I right?’
I flushed and picked at an imaginary speck of dust on my trousers. ‘Oh God, Sebastian, this is all so horribly embarrassing,’ I mumbled. ‘You see – well, the thing is, Nanette told me you were a bit … unhinged.’
‘Unhinged.’ He mulled the word over, nodding soberly. ‘Right. Why so, exactly?’
‘Oh, such silly reasons, too stupid to even –’
‘No no,’ he interrupted, ‘I insist on being enlightened. It might happen again you see, and I need to know how to curb my derangement in public. Do I twitch maniacally? Inadvertently sing at table, suck my thumb and twiddle with my hair during pudding?’
I giggled. ‘Well, OK she said –’ I gazed at my trousers – ‘she said you stood in front of your window all day long waving your arms about like a windmill.’ I glanced up. ‘Oh, and she also said you ran around the streets in your pyjamas.’
‘A la Wee Willie Winkie?’
I grinned. ‘I suppose, but listen, Nanette’s hopeless; she gets everything wrong and –’
‘No, not, not at all. As a matter of fact, our Nanette is very observant, and I fear I might well have to plead guilty on both of those counts, but would you first like to hear my defen
ce, before you actually send for the men in white coats?’
‘Oh, heavens no,’ I said hastily, ‘please don’t bother. I mean we all have our foibles, Sebastian, and to be honest I’ve got some very odd habits so –’
‘The arm waving,’ he interrupted, ‘is perfectly legit, and stems from me conducting as I compose in my head. Before it gets to the piano, and before it makes it on to paper. Does that make sense?’
‘Perfectly,’ I beamed.
‘But the pyjamas …’ He scratched his head. ‘I can only assume it was that time I ran into her in Waitrose when I was probably wearing some comfortable old stripy trousers I picked up in a market in Afghanistan. I tend to work in them – oh, and a crumpled old T-shirt that probably looked – to our manicured Nanette – like I’d slept in it. And of course I always look appalling when I’m working and haven’t had a haircut for months. Mad, probably. Will that do? Or do you need further and better particulars?’
‘No no,’ I laughed, ‘that will do.’ His brown eyes were merry and far from steely now as they met mine over the white wine. He had one of those thin, intelligent, Jeremy Irons type faces that leant naturally to the serious, but when animated, was very attractive.
‘And the teacher bit?’ I blurted quickly, realising I was staring shamelessly. ‘Nanette had some crazy idea that you were let loose on small boys on your day release from the institution.’ I laughed, then stopped abruptly. ‘Oh – hang on, in fact you told me that too, I remember, at dinner!’
He nodded. ‘Well, it’s absolutely true, although teaching’s probably overstating it somewhat. But I do go to the High School about once a month to talk to the boys.’
‘Oh, right. What about?’
‘Table tennis.’
I blinked.
‘Music, Olivia,’ he said patiently. ‘Composition and theory, that sort of thing.’
‘Oh! Of course!’ I laughed nervously, but flushed dramatically. God, you moron, Olivia, you must stop sounding so inane. And why are you sitting here like some fearless, probing breakfast TV reporter, getting this world-famous musician to explain why he’s yet to be locked up and have the key thrown away? Who d’you think you are, Judy Finnigan? Oprah Winfrey, even? I shut up for a moment, and gazed instead at his immaculate walled garden, the one I’d zigzagged across, Apache style, just a few days ago. It was very well designed, in a tasteful, white-flowers-and-greenery sort of way, and since I so often feel that gardens reflect their owners, I wondered if this was the man. Controlled, precise, safe. For some reason, I felt it might not be. One thing was for sure, though, he certainly wasn’t a gusher. He chose his words with care, whilst I tended to choose mine with reckless abandon. I tried to think of something intelligent to say.
‘I loved your music last night,’ I lied.
He smiled. ‘Thank you. Was it your sort of thing? I mean, is that what you like to listen to, as a rule?’
I hesitated, sensing a sure-fire way to ingratiate myself, but could I then bluff my way, musically speaking, for an entire evening? I licked my lips.
‘Um, listen, Sebastian, could I possibly retract that last remark? Only, the thing is, it was a bit of a fib. I was so preoccupied last night I didn’t actually listen to a note.’
His eyes widened. ‘Oh. Right.’
‘I mean I’m quite sure it would have been my thing,’ I hastened on, ‘I’m sure I’d have loved it, but the reason I wasn’t listening was because my husband turned up with his girlfriend, and I had trouble concentrating on anything other than taking a pot shot at the pair of them.’
‘Dear me,’ he stammered, scratching his head. ‘Yes, that must have been very – difficult.’ He reached for the bottle and looked awkward.
Ah, well done, Olivia. You’re embarrassing the socks off him now, airing all your dirty linen in public. But something told me to plough on. Something told me that in order to establish any sort of channel here, any sort of rapport, all small talk had to be banned, even if it meant making a monumental fool of myself in the process. The refined good taste of our surroundings somehow made it all the harder.
‘He left me a few months ago, you know.’
‘Yes, I had heard. Nanette, you know …’ He hastily refilled his glass, eyes lowered.
‘Went off with a teacher at Claudia’s school. Of course, that was pretty hard to take, pretty gut-wrenching, but I guess I’m more or less used to it now.’ I nodded bravely. ‘I guess I’m getting over it.’ God, I sounded like I was in therapy now, spilling the beans to some New York analyst – and when had I ever said ‘I guess’? Twice!
He smiled, put the bottle down. ‘From my experience, Olivia, it takes a lot longer than a few months to get over something like that.’
‘Your experience?’ I pounced. Ah, now we were getting somewhere.
‘Oh, very limited,’ he said hastily. ‘We weren’t married, like you are, and no children, so …’ He shrugged dismissively.
‘But it was serious?’
He paused. ‘Very.’ There was another long pause, but I kept quiet, knowing that was the only way. That he’d go on only if he wanted to.
‘We met about five years ago. Quite late to fall in love, I suppose – I mean, properly, for the first time. I’d got to the ripe old age of thirty-two thinking it would never happen.’
I did some quick mental arithmetic and filled up his glass shamelessly, even though it was practically brimming over, keen to hear more. He cradled it and narrowed his eyes, gazing pensively over his green enclosure. Leaves dipped and danced against the high brick walls in the long evening shadows. He turned, looked directly at me.
‘It was doomed, right from the start, actually. Madness when I think about it now. We were both too set in our ways, too long in the tooth perhaps, and too attached to our customs, our countries –’
‘Our countries?’
‘Lara’s Russian. She plays in the Russian National Orchestra and we met when one of my symphonies was being performed over there. I went across to oversee rehearsals; she was a first violinist.’
‘Oh!’
Gosh, how romantic could you get? My mind flew to a rehearsal room somewhere, and in the front row of the orchestra, a beautiful violinist, one arm cradling her instrument, the other bowing beautifully, revealing slim arms, a perfect figure, long blonde hair – I was sure – eyes, full of passion for the music, meeting the dark eyes of the handsome composer over the music stands, as she made his dream, his masterpiece come to life. And Lara! It had to be Lara, didn’t it, Zhivago’s lost love, calling to her desperately as he crawled through the snow – ‘Lara! Lara! Lara!’ No doubt she looked just like Julie Christie too. I sighed.
‘How romantic. Didn’t you try to make it work?’
‘Oh, sure. I spent two years in Russia and she spent a couple over here, but I hated the place and couldn’t compose there. Musically speaking I dried up completely, and England had pretty much the same effect on Lara. She missed her family, friends, her language – that’s what she missed the most, actually, not being able to chatter away, ever, in her own tongue. It’s not like being French or German and living over here, because there are plenty of other French and Germans too, but not many Russians, and Lara got very lonely. Felt terribly isolated. She stopped playing, stopped going to the orchestra even.’
‘Gosh, how sad! So she went back?’
‘Fourteen months ago. Precisely. Which is why I say to you, Olivia, don’t expect the scars to fade so quickly. I’ve been at this lark much longer than you have and mine are still there.’
‘I know,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I was being flippant when I said I was used to it. Of course I’m not. It’s like getting used to having your arm chopped off. I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again.’ I took a big shaky breath. ‘I miss him so much.’ I stared into my lap. Oh God, was I really doing this? I couldn’t believe I was. I concentrated hard on a chipped paving stone.
‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I know how you feel. And some day
s are better than others, aren’t they? Some days you can kid yourself you’re all right, that you’re actually staggering from the depths towards dry land, and then just as you reach the beach, a bloody great tidal wave crashes over your head and drags you back in again.’
‘That’s it,’ I wobbled, ‘that’s exactly how it is. It’s like I’ll never reach that bloody beach.’ To my horror and eternal shame, a great tear ran down my nose and plopped into my lap. I brushed it away furiously, not sure if he saw, but if he did, to his credit, he tactfully pretended not. There was a silence for a while.
‘Right,’ he said suddenly, standing up, ‘enough of all that. Goodbye to all that, in fact. Come on, let’s get cracking.’ He rubbed his hands together briskly, smiling down at me.
I blinked, nervously. ‘Cracking?’
‘Oh,’ he scratched his head sheepishly, ‘sorry, I do that. Think of things without saying them and then go one step further and carry them out.’ He grinned. ‘Comes from living alone, I think. No, I just thought – well, since you missed out on so much music last night, I’d play you something wonderful tonight. Bach is my big passion at the moment, but I’m open to Schubert on a beautiful evening like this, or perhaps you’d prefer something – I don’t know – more joyous? Scarlatti, perhaps?’
‘Oh!’ I smiled. ‘Well, that would be great, but couldn’t we listen to something of yours?’
‘Of mine?’
‘Yes, since that’s what I missed last night. Has that Abbey thing been recorded yet?’
He grinned. ‘That “Abbey thing” hasn’t, as yet. It’ll have to be something else, but then again they’re all pretty similar.’ He turned and went inside through the French windows, crossing the drawing room to the CD player. ‘I churn out the same old rubbish, as a rule.’
‘What rot,’ I said warmly, picking up my glass and following him in. ‘Everyone says how marvellous you are!’
‘Ah, yes, everyone,’ he said scanning his CDs, his back to me. ‘Everyone who’s desperate to embrace modern music, determined not to seem backward-thinking, keen to be progressive and avant-garde. It’s rather like the art world – critics rave about the latest Damien Hirst or whatever, but do they really like it or are they just terrified of not seeming hip?’
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