by Patrick Gale
For those days of celebration and hectic preparation had indeed seemed a deliverance, not only from the task he and Thomas had set themselves, or from the lingering fear that his prostituting himself at the studios represented an irreversible downward step, but also from dread.
He had begun living as one under a curse, his dead sister’s hand heavy on his shoulder, her condemning shadow thick across the empty page before him. He was haunted by her image, fancying time and again that he saw her amid the familiar faces around him, sitting in the third row of violas, quietly spooning soup into her fat face in a corner of the commissariat, watching him, soberly dressed amid a flurry of suggestively spangled chorines. And now it was as if the curse had lifted; he had served out a terrible penance and, with the careful wording of a dedicatory page in her loving memory, consigned her to oblivious rest.
Job was not what the university singers had expected. Used to Sullivan and Donizetti, they had planned to be adventurous, but not this adventurous. They were game in their attempt, polite as missionaries facing the nightmarishly inedible. The counter-tenor was excellent as Lucifer, as was the baritone singing Job – even though he was much too young and had a controlled perfection of tone that smacked more of English church polyphony than Old Testament rage. Job’s daughters, however, were tall and hearty as county tennis champions. They sang flat whenever Edward persuaded them to drop their winsome smiles and, in lieu of the decadent luxury he had envisaged, the society’s costume mistress decked them out in matching outfits of a drab curtain material which could never have been attractive, even when new. The orchestral players were hopelessly lax about turning up for rehearsals, thinking rowing practice or an essay crisis sufficient excuse. Occasionally they seemed to understand Edward’s meaning and produced an approximation of the sound he had sought, but in the performance they were hopelessly ragged, and Lucifer’s triumphant bergamask was no more threatening than an amateur marching band.
On the evening of the performance, the chill in the chapel affected the audience’s concentration as badly as it did the singers’ tuning and the applause was more grateful than heartfelt. Edward and Thomas were not summoned for a last curtain call, since the first one was barely over before audience members had started re-tying scarves and stamping life back into numbed feet. Fulsome praise from the chaplain stung like the harshest criticism since he alone saw fit to offer it, and the celebratory dinner laid on at Thomas’s house soon degenerated into a bibulous, self-pitying wake. Sally knew better than to enthuse.
‘It deserved better,’ she pronounced carefully. ‘Nothing could succeed in that cold, and those stupid rugger players shouting outside in that quiet bit didn’t help much.’
‘Ghastly,’ Thomas had said. ‘The most humiliating experience of my life. Never again. Never.’
His words fell on Edward’s ears like an unanswerable accusation. They did not speak for days afterwards and when he eventually wrote to Edward, enclosing a belated, not unkind review of the piece from the Rexbridge Chronicle, it was without apology. The cantata’s corpse lay unburied between them, unregarded, undiscussed. The strain of this estrangement told on Edward’s nerves for, after weeks of respite, he found the memory of his sister returning to haunt the periphery of his conscious and sleeping thoughts, like a resurgent stain on a newly whitewashed wall. He had the ill-fated score bound and placed it on a high shelf before throwing himself into the overdue task of composing music for a new spy thriller, set on board a transcontinental express.
His cantata’s failure was all the more galling for his continuing success as a screen composer. Jerry Liebermann – who naturally had not found time to attend the performance, but had sent a telegram and asked keenly after the work’s reception – felt that his protégé had learnt a painful lesson and had now rid his system of any ambition to become a ‘proper’ composer. He commiserated indignantly, but his relief was plain.
Myra Toye made overt the depressing truth that Jerry had left unspoken.
‘Heard about your lousy première, Teddy,’ she said wryly. ‘I suppose this means you’re stuck with us after all.’
This jibe hurt him in a way she had never intended. More than anyone, more than Thomas, more, he guiltily accepted, than Sally, she had always seemed to be the one who understood the dreadful artistic compromise he was making. He had felt she had faith in him. Now he saw that he had laid too deep an interpretation on their sketchy exchanges, that she had been remembering to mention Job as she remembered to mention a cameraman’s prize roses. Even had it not been mere politeness, a show of interest, she too had now given him up for lost.
Eventually, relations with Thomas approached their former, comfortable level. Edward had been sure that his gift of these tickets to see a revival of Peter Grimes was meant only in generosity.
‘Sally hasn’t been getting out nearly enough and I think it’s frustrating her hugely,’ Thomas had said. ‘A night on the town will do her good. Do you think you could find a babysitter who can stay the night?’
Now that his nose was being so thoroughly rubbed in another young man’s genius, however, Edward was not so confident of Thomas’s kindness.
‘Home?’ yelled the chorus, as Grimes dragged his new apprentice out into the storm with him, ‘Do you call that home?’ The orchestral tempest brought the first act to a sudden blaring close and the audience to a frenzy of applause and cheering. Edward’s hands remained on his knees. He stared at them. They might have been made of lead. As the chatter swelled around him, he stood, badly in need of an interval drink.
‘Say what you like,’ a skinny redhead behind him protested to his companion. ‘I had goosebumps. My hair was on end. Thrilling. Say what you like.’
Sally remained in her seat, studying the cast list. Realising he was waiting for her, she shut the programme and slipped it into her handbag. Her eyes were shining. Tactful though she might try to be later, she couldn’t hide the music’s immediate effect on her.
‘Well?’ she asked, playing for time. ‘What did you think?’
To his astonishment, Edward found himself on the brink of tears. There was a pricking in his eyes and his lips felt full and heavy. He shrugged, hardly daring to open, his mouth.
‘I –’ he began. ‘What about you?’
‘Wonderful. You know what a coward I am. I mean, coming up to London and going out to dinner and everything’s lovely but, well, frankly, I was dreading the opera and –’ She broke off, laughing at herself. ‘It’s such a surprise. It’s like some incredible film!’ She squeezed his arm tenderly. ‘Thank you.’
‘Why thank me?’ he heard his tone freeze over. It seemed to be beyond his control.
‘Well, I …’ She faltered. Surprised at him. Embarrassed. ‘I suppose it’s dear old Thomas we should thank but it’s made nicer having you here to share it with.’
‘You don’t think I’d have bought us tickets for this?’
‘Well wouldn’t you?’
‘I’d have taken you to Mozart. Così or Figaro. Something – something purer for you to start with.’
‘Don’t be so bloody patronising,’ she laughed. ‘I told you. I’m loving it. What’s wrong with you suddenly?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Honestly, Edward, there’s no point making comparisons with Job. Even an ignoramus like me can see the aims are totally different.’
‘Who said anything about making comparisons. I’m not comparing. Are you?’
‘I do believe you’re jealous!’ she said. ‘Poor darling. I hadn’t thought. How awful!’ And then she made the mistake of laughing at him.
He did not slap her particularly hard, but there were some steps ahead of them and he caught her off balance so that she tumbled backwards. A woman in a red dress darted forward to catch Sally’s shoulders and her male companion seized Edward firmly by the arm, holding him back and exclaiming something indignantly chivalrous. Edward stopped struggling and, feeling him relax, the man let him go. The crowd which had gathe
red briefly around the ugly little scene passed on, murmuring disapproval, but Edward only had eyes for Sally.
‘Christ! I’m sorry,’ he said.
She stared at him for a moment then gave a little snort and stood, saying, ‘So am I. Let’s get out of here. People are staring.’
She let them skip the last two acts so that he could buy her dinner early. She thawed with the second glass of wine and chatted lovingly about Miriam, the things she would like to do to The Roundel once they had the money and what Dr Pertwee had said in her latest letter. He admired the brightness of her eyes in the candlelight and drank in the warmth of her forgiveness, but as she slept in the car beside him on the way home, he kept remembering the look of horrified surprise she had thrown him in the second before his slapping hand had made contact with her cheek. It was a look in which he could read just how fast he was falling. And how far.
23
Edward had warned Sally that the party to celebrate the completion of Desire would be nothing very glamorous – drinks, canapés, a few speeches, a few famous names – but she had seemed quite excited on receiving Jerry Liebermann’s personal invitation, immobile as she had become in the social mire of young motherhood. On the evening however, she suddenly cried off. Their usual babysitter, a sensible girl from a neighbouring farm, had already arrived but Miriam was found to have developed a temperature and Sally was scared of leaving her.
As he drove to the studios alone, Edward worked himself up into a rage. Miriam was forever having slight temperatures. In his opinion babies’ colds and minor fevers were necessary to the development of their immune systems, and he saw no reason to make such a fuss. He had bought Sally a new dress for the party, picked out the previous week and, when he said it seemed a shame to have gone to so much expense, her brisk dismissal of his present wounded him.
‘It’s just a dress,’ she said. ‘I can dress up for you any time. We don’t need to go out for me to do that.’
He knew he was being unreasonable, that of course the baby must come first, but he could not help feeling that Miriam had been coming first for rather too long now and was in danger of assuming a permanent supremacy.
Sally had, it struck him, made no great effort to lose the weight pregnancy had forced her to gain and, now that she was no longer working, she spent less and less effort on her appearance. At pains to see that Miriam never left the house looking anything less than a diminutive princess, she sometimes neglected to brush her own hair or teeth in the morning. She slouched about the house in her gardening slacks and seemd to have developed an objection to putting anything on her face but soap and water, so that she often looked drawn and tired. His view of her appearance was not helped by the inevitable comparisons he drew with the women about the studio – even Gowns By Sylvia, who was built like a shot-putter, was always turned out to her best advantage.
Sally had already put on the new dress when she slipped across the landing to take a last look at Miriam. Her whole manner seemed to rebel against its understated elegance, and remembering this as he drove, Edward reflected vindictively that it was sometimes a pity she was not more her mother’s daughter.
Once at the party, his anger was initially overlaid with excitement at the praise Jerry Liebermann and his colleagues lavished on the Desire score, topped up with more anger that she was not there to hear it. He drank several strong drinks in quick succession, then stood glowering from the sidelines as dancing began. Still sufficiently sensitive to know that his mood could be doing nothing to enhance the gathering, he took another drink and pushed out through the commissariat doors and on to the terrace. Cooler air sobered him slightly and he was wondering whether he should telephone Sally to apologise for having left with so perfunctory and bad-tempered a farewell, when the star of Desire came out too. Looking like a vestal virgin, with complicated hair and tasteful white and silver drapery, Myra Toye slipped a cigarette between her lips then swore with deadly clarity as her lighter failed to produce a flame. She saw him and walked over.
‘Teddy!’ she said. ‘How nice. Light this for me, would you?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t smoke any more.’
‘Course you don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘Half a lung or something ghastly, isn’t it? Liebermann told me.’ A couple walking back inside stopped and the man struck a match for her and left her the box. Expertly fabricating delight, she asked a few quick questions about his family, ignoring the fact that the girl on his arm was plainly not his wife, then released them both with a smile.
‘Doesn’t bother you or anything, does it?’ she asked Edward, exhaling a small cumulus about them.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really.’
‘Walk with me, would you. I was feeling stifled in there.’
They walked along the terrace’s length to where its brief elegance gave way to a grim series of avenues between the high scenery docks.
‘Sir Julius is very nice,’ he said.
She only snorted in reply. By way of a public announcement that her liaison with Jerry Liebermann was now categorically over, she had arrived on the arm of her new fiancé who, to Liebermann’s interest, had mooted the possibility of investing in a film or two.
‘He’s not as thick as he looks,’ she said at last. ‘He can talk ancient Greek.’ She sighed. ‘Somehow I’d thought he’d be easier to manage though.’ When Edward had last seen him, the young man had been hobnobbing with her friends from the make-up and hair departments – Myra’s Boys as they were known.
‘Who is?’ he asked moodily, thinking of Sally and her recalcitrance. Myra seemed to read his mind.
‘You too?’ She turned in surprise. ‘I meant to ask you, darling. How’s the bouncing baby? D-Day was months ago wasn’t it?’
On any other evening he would have acted like the matchbox man and fawned in gratitude for her unnecessary interest in the mundane details of his life, but tonight a madness stole over him.
‘You don’t have to do all that stuff on my account, you know,’ he said.
For a second she froze at the breach in protocol, then she relaxed, her voice dropping down an octave, discarding its customary brightness en route.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ she said and continued walking.
‘But the baby’s fine,’ he said. ‘A girl. Miriam. Sally was meant to come tonight but the baby had a temperature.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I see. So what’s it like, then, marriage?’
‘I thought this was going to be your second time around.’
‘My first time didn’t count. I was so young my mother all but sold me to him. Now the prospect scares the hell out of me.’
‘It’s odd,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise two people could live so close and know each other so little. Sometimes I might not be Sally’s husband at all.’
It was a lie. He knew it for a lie and yet it nicely expressed the bitter bravado he was feeling. Myra’s perfume reminded him of that distant night when she had kissed him in the lift. It excited him like a bold caress. He made an effort to control himself, aware how drunk he was and how risky it was to be talking like this. He drummed up a polite enquiry about where she and her fiancé would be setting up home, but she stopped him with a kind of sneer.
‘Drop it. Just drop it. You don’t have to do all that stuff either.’
‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘And kiss me,’ she added.
‘What?’
‘No one can see us. Come on. Kiss me.’
If he had excused himself right then, pleaded drunkenness, pleaded anything, he might have escaped with only her transitory disdain, but he kissed her and knew from the way the blood surged into his groin at the feel of her fingernails on his backside that only she had the power now to stop what she had set in motion. She led him by the hands into the shadows then through a great opening into a scenery dock. Stumbling in the semi-darkness, he followed her through a Grecian temple to a mock-up of a lorry cab. She made him climb into the driver
’s seat then she slid up beside him.
‘Put your hands on the wheel,’ she said, unbuttoning his fly, ‘and keep them there. Sammy was hours fixing this hair.’
Painfully swollen, his penis was doubled up inside his underwear. Eyes growing accustomed to the gloom, he watched in disbelief as she slid cool fingers around it and set it free. She kissed him once more, probing so deeply with her little tongue that he feared he might come in her hand, then she bent down into his lap and took him in her mouth. He sat rigid in the driver’s seat, peering out through the windscreen, petrified lest someone – Max Hirsch, Jerry Liebermann, anybody – appear before him with something similar on their minds. The assurance with which Myra led him to the cab told him it was a well-established trysting place.
Fighting the urge to grasp her head in his palms to bring the sweet torture to an end, he came with no warning. He felt the climax purely in his penis and testicles, much the way he did whenever Sally and he had made love first thing in the morning when he was tense with the need to urinate and too embarrassed to tell her. Myra swallowed everything he pumped into her. She buttoned him away again then sat up and made him hold burning matches in the air while she repaired her lipstick. Then she lit herself another cigarette. The flare of the matches flattered her preposterous glamour, not a hair displaced.
‘Er. Thank you,’ he mumbled.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I gave you for nothing what that stoat Liebermann thought was his for the asking. Toye’s Law: Those who ask don’t get.’ Then she slipped down from the cab ably as a Land Girl, leaving him to follow after a discreet interval.
He sat on feeling light-headed. He knew he should also feel guilt, but the encounter had been too impersonal for that. He felt no closer to Myra now than if she had stumbled against him in the lunch queue or brushed past him in the sound studio corridor. Keeping all his clothes on, not even touching her after the preliminary kisses and surrendering himself entirely to her control: it was as though she had answered a passing need in them both for a transgression that left no traces. Her perfume lingered in the air around him but there was none of that feral muskiness that had seemed to cling to him after their encounter in the lift. Perhaps that smell had not been hers at all but Jerry Liebermann’s. More appalled at that possibility than by what he had just done, he rejoined the party.