by Morag Joss
‘I know,’ Edwin said quietly. ‘I do know, and I think I understand. I just think’ – he paused – ‘that the time comes when we have to go on, you know, somehow. I thought perhaps here, it might be possible, not really a performance, only me. But never mind, anything would be lovely. You choose.’
As she hesitated he went on, ‘I do so love those pieces. It’s not, in a way, playing that they require, is it? It’s living. In performance, you have to live them. I always think they are... a little glimpse of eternity. Does that sound stupid?’
Sara shook her head. ‘No, I think you’re right. And that, of course, is the difficulty.’ She looked away. ‘I would like you to hear one. I could try, if you’ll forgive any lapses. It really has been a long time. I haven’t played them since Paris. You heard what happened? I think word got round.’
Edwin smiled and, nodding slowly, looked at her so kindly she thought she would cry. ‘But never mind. Just never mind,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right.’
And so Sara brought the instrument out to the sunny garden and planted herself a way off in the shade of an overgrown lilac bush by the garden wall. Edwin stayed where he was, tucked up in his blanket again, surrounded by his beloved rock roses, and turned his face up to the sun. At first Sara’s playing was so soft that she did not even drown out the noise of distant brakes as a bus trundled down Bathwick Hill, but Edwin did not mind. It reminded him where he actually was, and so only increased the wonder of it, that he at eighty-four, with his lungs played out and the rest of him rotting quietly in a wheelchair in a dusty city garden, should yet be in paradise. He had always supposed that time was meant to stand still at such a moment, and was finding that it wasn’t. It was ticking on, and every second was sweet, finite and precious. For this little while he was feeling the slowing pat-pat-pat of his existence measured out not in daily pain but in the gentle beat of the sun on his tired temples, in the passing of each easy, flower-filled breath and in the wise and wordless cadences of Bach, played by that beautiful girl with the shining hair.
He was smiling as his eyes closed. ‘Yes, we do have to go on, you see, even when it seems impossible,’ he said, as the music drew to its end.
He opened his eyes and called softly across the grass to her as she approached and took her seat beside him. ‘The gift! It does, in the end, all come down to the gift. If you have a gift but cannot give it, then everything’ – he waved his great hands in a vague circle – ‘everything becomes blocked. There is a boulder in your stream. Until you move it, you cannot give, nor can you receive. You understand. The time does come when you find it moves. Of course, you still miss him. Of course. But you will move it, one day.’
Sara turned to him. ‘I don’t know what to say. Except that I wish I’d met you long ago. I’ve known Olivia for a while, and yet this is the first time we’ve met. And it’s been just...so...lovely. May I come again?’
But there was no chance to say any more. Serena was bustling back towards them. It was nebuliser time again and Edwin, more tired even than usual, agreed that it was time to go back in. Suddenly everything was focused on the physical task of getting Edwin, wheelchair, rug, tubing and cylinder back inside. Sara helped, clumsily, following behind Serena who was pushing the lumbering chair, wheeling the oxygen cylinder on its little stand, holding up the tubing to keep it from being trapped under the wheels. The entourage made its way up the slope into the back of the house, in by the French window and across Olivia’s study. This time the curtains were drawn back and the desk held only two or three large heavy books and a telephone. Serena wheeled Edwin from the study out into the kitchen and from there into the hall to the foot of the stairs.
‘Isn’t it clever?’ she said to Sara, stabbing down the wheelchair brake in front of the stairlift. ‘No worries. Three men here for an entire weekend getting it put in and guess who got to clear up? Not that I mind, it makes such a difference, him getting out. Now, let’s get you in the seat.’
The raising of Edwin from the wheelchair and the transfer to the little folding seat installed on its track against the wall was achieved.
‘Quite a nifty little contraption, eh?’ said Edwin triumphantly to Sara. A safety bar like a small aeroplane table was unfolded down in front of him and clicked into place. He pressed the button on the edge of the bar.
‘Now watch this!’ He glided slowly upwards for a few seconds and with another press of the button, stopped, his legs dangling. ‘Ha! Wonderful bloody setup!’
‘You’re a lucky fellow, aren’t you?’ said Serena, folding the mohair blanket. ‘What these things cost!’ She turned to Sara. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. There are three flights, you see. Up here to the drawing room and Miss Passmore’s room, Sue’s old room and the spare above that, and Edwin and my room right at the top. We thought we’d had it when the Terry Trust turned us down, didn’t we? But Miss Passmore got round it somehow. No worries.’ She beamed at Edwin, waiting patiently in the little seat. ‘You’re a very lucky fellow.’
‘Ah, but we don’t worry about the cost, do we?’ Edwin said grandly. He winked down at Sara. ‘The gift. A gift of love, an offering of love. Not that I know anything, of course. Rum setup if you ask me, but I’m not complaining.’
And then, bestowing a royal wave as he ascended, he hooted a little breathlessly, ‘Churchill, that was the fella! Remember Churchill?’
CHAPTER 21
AFTER HER TEA with Edwin, Sara contrived to keep out of town and in the shade. In her pond high up in the garden the waterlilies flowered and the newt family swam with the goldfish around the stems of brilliant yellow water irises. Screened on one side by high bamboo, she set up a huge calico umbrella over the table and chairs at the pond side and tied the hammock between a pear tree and a corkscrew willow. When James arrived he found her almost encamped. Books and old papers had collected under the table along with two sweaters and a pair of gardening shoes. On the table was a tray with two or three plastic mineral-water bottles, several glasses, a brown banana and a citronella candle in a flowerpot.
He came up the garden, hooting a bit of Mozart and then breaking off to call, ‘Ach, where the hell are ye, ye daft witch?’ She hooted back from the hammock. He climbed the path to the pond, rustled past the curtain of bamboo, and then paused to get his breath back and take her in. She certainly looked all right, loose-limbed, brown and dressed in rumpled white cotton and lilac espadrilles. Her hair was piled up under an unglamorous hat, her face was shiny with sun cream and James was pleased to note that she was looking after herself to the extent of bothering with earrings.
‘It’s lovely not going out,’ she said complacently. ‘How are you? How’s Tom? How’s the outside world? How was Brussels? And the seaside?’
‘All fine,’ said James, collapsing languidly into a chair. He sighed expansively. ‘It’s lovely up here, isn’t it? Tempting not to go anywhere at all.’
Sara smiled. ‘I was just thinking, before you came, that it’s because of you I’m here at all. Remember?’
James smiled.
Old friends do not have to relate their remembrances to each other, Sara thought, it is enough just to check occasionally that we still share the same ones.
While waiting for him to arrive, she had allowed her mind to wander back to the time when she and Matteo had first met. Their careers were both taking off and how wonderful they had been together; it had been all mutual support, understanding of the absences, no jealousies. Matteo, made for glamour, had loved the itinerant life of an international conductor, moving between airports, hotel rooms and concert halls. In fact the life was not glamorous at all, yet he had managed to make it seem so. He had thought it amusing that in one two-month period they had only been home together for two days, but had managed twice to meet for a few hours, once at Heathrow and once when in desperation she had flown on from giving a concert in New York to hear him conduct in Chicago. Her plane had been delayed and she had arrived too late for the concert. She had checked in to t
heir hotel, exhausted, at two a.m. He had flown on to San Francisco at seven.
That was the summer two years ago that she, egged on by James, had persuaded Matteo that they should give up the London flat and buy Medlar Cottage. She had found it with James one weekend when she had gone to Bath to discuss a concert series that he was programming for the South Bank. They had gone for a walk in St Catherine’s Valley and it had been extraordinary, to drive only two miles from the poised creamy stone and magnolias of James and Tom’s flat in Camden Crescent and come upon St Catherine, all ancient pastures and hedges. High on the hillside, just across from a wide sloping meadow with six gracious lime trees, stood the long cottage of Bath stone. It was surrounded on all sides by over an acre of wild garden, while the narrow lane which led through the valley to St Catherine’s Court ran below the wall of the front garden just like, Sara said, the hem on its skirt. She had been telling James of her unease with the pace of their life, and the For Sale sign on the drive had convinced her that London was the problem. James had been swift to agree.
Matteo, having stipulated his need for a large studio in which he could study scores and make as much noise as he liked, had been happy enough to go along. He defined a home as the place where you keep your favourite CDs, so that the London flat had been as much home as he needed. He had not observed that for Sara there was something more at stake. The wish to ‘get out of London’, being the only reason they could give each other for the move, became their only mutual ground.
They had moved into Medlar Cottage one September weekend. The cottage had been quickly and cheaply prettified by its previous colour-blind owners. It was just possible to believe, surveying the drifts of dog and cat hair that had collected along the skirting boards and under the radiators, that in their nine years of occupation they had not owned a vacuum cleaner. Woodlice clustered in scores under the orange Formica in the kitchen, while mouse droppings adorned the cupboard tops and larder shelves. While Matteo had had hysterics and flounced off back to Europe and the States on a string of engagements that would make it ‘impossible’ to return before Christmas, Sara had dragooned legions of roofers, plumbers, joiners, builders and decorators. She got a mobile phone so that she could check up on progress when she was travelling. She carried swatches and paint cards everywhere in the way that new grandparents carry baby photographs. Looking back, she was appalled at what a bore she must have been. At the time, she had felt as though she were fighting for the survival of everything. She could not have borne it if Matteo had continued to prefer the penthouse-suite-gym-Jacuzzi-room-service way of life instead of being lured back to the warmth of a proper home. She bought gallons of sludgy paint and acres of handwoven and handprinted fabrics, bought dubious bits of furniture at auctions and had them stripped, limed, waxed, stencilled. She installed wood-burning stoves, restored open fireplaces in the bedrooms and covered the floors in pale, prickly sisal. She went to Jermyn Street for the bathroom taps and towel rails, prowled the reclamation yards of Bath for wall sconces and a Belfast sink. She bought log baskets, kilims, glazed jardinières, and employed a real designer to make the Shaker kitchen. They got to know her well at Mulberry. In three months, she spent nearly two years’ earnings. She had been, in retrospect, a little extreme.
James was trying not to scrutinise her too obviously.‘You do look unbelievably relaxed,’ he said, ‘but I’m here to pluck you from your Arcadian idyll. I’m taking you to lunch. Go and get changed. Put on some proper underwear.’
‘You’re not taking me into town. I’m not going into town,’ she said, stretching. ‘It was mobbed on Tuesday. I’m not going into Bath before the end of August, unless I’ve got a cattle prod. Let’s go over to Fortune Park. We can have a swim as well; they’ll lend you something to swim in.’
In the car he said, ‘Are you all right, Sara?’
She looked out of the window for a time before speaking. ‘Of course. More to the point, are you? What was all that about the alibi, James?’
James looked straight ahead. ‘Oh, something and nothing. Nothing. I’ll tell you sometime. All over now. Thanks for what you did.’ Changing the subject he said, ‘Heard from Robin?’
She squirmed. ‘No. I suppose I should ring him, only it’s a little . . . humiliating. I suppose, really, I’d better apologise.’
‘If I were you,’ James said quietly, ‘I should.’
‘Maybe I will,’ she said lightly, wondering what he had heard and damned if she would ask.
After a few moments’ silence, she tapped her forehead. ‘But you see, I can’t get his death out of my mind. There has to be a resolution, somehow. It was such an outrageous, unnecessary death.’
James gave an understanding murmur.
‘I mean, think of the poor man, his...unquiet spirit. And somebody is responsible. Somebody is walking about with Matthew Sawyer’s blood on his hands. I don’t want to, but I have to . . . just, attend to it, in a way. I need to see it settled – one way or another. It’s hard to consider anything else as very important. Do you see?’
So that’s the lie of the land, thought James. So that’s what we’re talking about. Unwise to try to get her off the subject or broach any other, and at least she seems genuinely relaxed. We’ll just go along. Sara changed the subject for herself.
‘I can’t help hoping that Sue’s off duty today. Sue – you know, Olivia Passmore’s niece. Works at the health club. Blonde. She’s got this waiter boyfriend who keeps upsetting her and I keep hearing all about it, I don’t know why. At least she won’t try to take me running. It’s too hot to run.’
The glass doors which surrounded two sides of the swimming pool had been opened wide onto the garden and most of the health club clientele were outside basting gently in the sun, turning themselves regularly to ensure even cooking. Loungers, little tables and umbrellas dotted the grass. Inside, the pool was deserted and Sue presided sulkily at the bar. James made straight for the water, while Sara was waylaid, obedient to the special freemasonry between women which interpreted Sue’s bravely raised eyebrows and her meek ‘Iced tea, Sara? On the house?’ as a real hope that she would stay a moment. Sue needed a sympathetic ear, which Sara would give, and probably some stout advice, which she would not. It would anyway be a waste of breath to suggest she leave him. A woman like Sue never would. Once condemned, a woman like Sue would simply await demolition, and then, emotionally destroyed, would wonder what she should have done to avoid being reduced to such rubble. It was harder for Sara to admit to herself that she enjoyed hearing about Paul and Sue’s gladiatorial spats, imagining his rages and his silences, during which he would be sure to look sullenly, petulantly magnificent.
Sue was forthcoming with the whole story and interspersed it with frequent self-deprecatory wails about how it was probably all her fault, another speciality of women like Sue.
‘I’ve been having a rotten week. I got a right ticking-off on Tuesday. One of the members complained because she had to wait nearly an hour for her lunch and it was my fault. I told her she should stop chopping and changing her order and it might come quicker. And I had a row with Paul this morning and he lost his temper. I said when were we going to get a flat, and he said he didn’t know, and he didn’t know what was going to happen and not to stick around waiting for him. He said go and get some other guy to give you what you want. You won’t believe what he said to me, Sara. He said he didn’t know how to make me happy! It was my fault. So I said look, I’m sorry. Because he really does love me, you see, I know that. Why else would we even be together? It’s just very stormy. We sort of left it there. And then I said look, let’s have a really nice weekend, do something really nice. I said I’ll be finished tomorrow night at eleven, we could go to Cadillacs. But it was no good. He just gave me that look again, that smile he gives me when he’s doing something and doesn’t want me to ask him about it or complain. Oh, but Bernard’s coming, he says, all reasonable. I told you he was coming this weekend. Well he had, give him his due. So th
ere was nothing I could say because I’d just forgotten.’
She wiped the marble bar top viciously.
‘Who’s Bernard?’
‘Oh, it’s Bern-arr really, he’s French. I said I suppose you’ll be with him all evening then, in one of his pubs. He calls them “perbs”, Bernard does. He likes our Eengleesh perbs.’ Sue paused a moment to allow the huge but elusive power of her wit to be appreciated.
‘It’s nice, this,’ Sara said, looking into her glass of iced tea. ‘Got any more lemon? Sorry, who’s Bernard?’
‘Oh, he’s an antiques dealer. He comes over from Paris every two or three months. There’s something quite creepy about him. He stays at the hotel. Paul’s got a little sideline going with him and so of course it’s handy for Paul; he’s making quite a bit, so of course he doesn’t mind him coming. It’s only me thinks he’s a nuisance because Paul’s always tied up when he’s here, going to the perb, seeing dealers and stuff. It’s probably my own fault – I encouraged it at the start. That was when I thought that Paul was getting some money together for us.’
Sara sighed in sympathy and got up, walked round to Sue’s side of the bar, picked up a saucer with lemon slices on it and returned to her stool. She stirred two slices into her glass.
‘So they’re partners, then? English and French antiques? You sure Bernard’s not smuggling fags or something?’
‘Oh, sorry, I meant to do that. Nah, it’s antiques. Bernard’s been coming awhile now. Paul met him the first or second time he was here. He served him in the restaurant. He was nice to him, helped him translate the menu. Paul’s good like that, when he’s in the right mood. When someone’s eating on their own. He says people on their own tip better. Anyway, this Mr Rameau was the last person in the bar when Paul was finishing, and he called Paul over, just to thank him, and bought him a drink. He just wanted to rabbit away in French to somebody. And he tells Paul why he’s here and it turns out he could do with some help with it, you know, with the language and whatnot. God, I wish I’d seen what was coming. Paul was really pleased about it at the time. So was I.’