She sat close to him on the sand, gazing at the sea. The waves surged and rolled forward, tossing themselves on the shore. Her own marriage was dead and Elliot’s marriage was a wreck. He was wrong to let the steam off his misery by attacking Zoe, he was wrong to run her down the way he did. But Zoe was wrong to take for granted a husband who loved her. As for Zoe’s attraction to a man incapable of loving anyone, it defied all reason.
She and Elliot remained together in the dunes, without speaking – there was nothing she could say – until the two specks that were Zoe and Ramsay reappeared in the distance. Without a word they stood in unison and hurried down to the water’s edge. With Adelaide chasing waves they walked along the beach well ahead of the other two, and then up to the house. Nothing was said while Elliot poured them fresh lemonade, and when ten minutes later Zoe and Ramsay arrived, Elliot was so composed he might have spent the past hour with a book.
It was not quite five when they left the coast, firstly George and Ramsay, and thirty minutes later Zoe and Elliot with Nina and the dog in the back seat. She dreaded the drive home; she had seen Elliot’s anger in the past, more significantly she had seen his hurt now, and both, she believed, would translate into a vitriolic attack. But nothing of the sort occurred. Zoe scrolled through the music library in the car, settling on the soundtrack to Rent. She explained to Nina that this musical was one of Elliot’s favourites. By the second track Elliot was tapping the beat on the steering wheel, a short time later he was singing along. Zoe gazed out her side window, so still and silent she might as well not have been there. And from her position in the back seat, Nina looked at them, her sister and brother-in-law, their two bodies cupped by the car seats, two people married for more than twenty years, no warmth between them, hardly any visible connection at all, yet bound together by bonds so strong that not even misery could cut them free.
Chapter 7. New York Snowdome
1.
The year 1989 has become emblematic of fundamental change. Panel by panel the Berlin Wall came down, European communism was drawing its last breath. With its superpower status on the rubbish heap, Russia became a target for nation states hot for recognition, hungry for Western lifestyles and pumped up with long-stifled pride and patriotism. Thousands of kilometres further east, peaceful protesters were mown down in Tiananmen Square. Over in the US the first Bush became president, ushering in a new political family that was more parody than actual dynasty. In Australia, two of the worst bus crashes in the nation’s history occurred on the notorious Pacific Highway two months and a couple of hundred kilometres apart, and the year ended with an earthquake in Newcastle that left thirteen people dead. This was the year the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, the second edition of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary was published, and Nintendo’s first handheld Game Boy entered the market.
In New York City, Nina and Zoe Jameson together with Ramsay Blake were the subjects of change every bit as momentous as the social and political events that exploded about them. In the space of a few weeks, long-held dreams collapsed, hopes disintegrated, futures were rewritten; there were disappointments and cruelties and – surprisingly – a stock of enduring love. In 1989 the world changed, and so too the lives of Ramsay Blake and the two Jameson sisters from Melbourne, Australia.
Nina had arrived in New York in the summer of the previous year. Her MA supervisor, Felix Hovnanian, a specialist in twentieth-century conflict, had been appointed as convenor of a UN working party charged to prepare guidelines for use in suspected cases of genocide. He accepted the job on the condition he could bring his own research assistant. Nina, an efficient combination of top graduate student and highly satisfactory lover, was his choice. With a free trip out of Australia and a working visa in the US, Nina was happy to comply with both briefs.
By the time Zoe joined her in New York fifteen months later, the UN job was nearing its end and from Nina’s perspective the affair was well and truly over – although she thought it best to maintain the status quo until the job was officially finished. And then? There were several options, each with drawbacks. She could find another job in the US with the usual green card hassles; she could start a PhD at Columbia with accompanying scholarship hassles; she could blow her savings and travel, thereby delaying any decisions about the next phase of her life. She was even considering a return to Melbourne; she could rent a place in the inner city and live much as she did here in New York. She’d been surprised at the extent to which she missed her family, Zoe in particular. And Melbourne itself. And the coast and the bush. She missed breathable air and wide open spaces. She missed home.
So when Zoe telephoned to say she was coming to New York – no prior warning, she’d made the decision and would be arriving in a matter of weeks – Nina was thrilled. Zoe had taken extended leave from her teaching job, her intention was to stay several months. But Nina’s joy quickly evaporated when on the very day of Zoe’s arrival, her bags still unpacked and Nina planning to show her the neighbourhood, Zoe shoved the dollars Nina had given her as a welcome-to-New-York gift into her wallet and said she was off to meet Ramsay.
‘Ramsay?’ Nina said. ‘Ramsay here? In New York?’
Zoe was already at the door, her explanation was rushed: Ramsay had arrived a couple of weeks earlier to take up a position as pianist-in-residence at one of the New York music schools. He’d be in Manhattan for several months.
‘With George?’
Zoe shook her head. ‘George needed some sort of orthopaedic surgery. His knees or maybe it was his hips. He’d been on a waiting list for ages, and when he was finally given a date for the operation, he had to accept.’ She shrugged. ‘Bad luck for George, bad timing.’
So that was it. Ramsay had separated Zoe from her teaching, Ramsay had caused her sister to leave Australia for the first time in her life, Ramsay Blake was the reason for Zoe’s shedding her sensible and considered self and flying across the world. Ramsay, not her. And because she was hurt and disappointed, Nina attacked him. What sort of person would bolt to the other side of the world when the man who was in loco parentis as well as minder, manager and friend was undergoing major surgery? What sort of man was Ramsay that he would leave George, seriously restricted in mobility, to cope alone?
Zoe’s defence came easily: the New York residency had been scheduled for more than a year. Everything was locked into place. And besides, George wouldn’t have wanted Ramsay to cancel.
‘But Ramsay himself, wouldn’t he have wanted to be with George? This is major surgery after all. And during the long rehabilitation, no thought of looking after George – as George has looked after him these past many years?’
Zoe continued to defend Ramsay, and Nina, now more angry than hurt, decided on a different approach. ‘What would you do, Zoe, if our father was having major surgery?’
‘I’d stay with him, you know I would. I’d want to help. But it’s different for me.’
‘In what sense different?’
‘I don’t receive invitations to work in New York.’ Her head was cocked to the side, her eyebrows were raised, her hands were thrust forward. Her entire demeanour suggested the answer was self-evident. ‘I’m no genius.’
You’re beautiful and you’re smart, Nina wanted to say, and you have your own musical talent, just how much more of your life do you want to give to this guy? But reason was a bloodless exercise when it concerned Zoe’s feelings for Ramsay so she said nothing. All that she’d planned for the two of them, theatre, bars, concerts, exploring this great city together; all the trips she’d envisaged, to Charleston and New Orleans, across to Chicago and the great lakes, to the desert and the west coast, all they might have done together slipped quietly away. She had no desire to watch her sister in this doomed crusade. As Zoe closed the door behind her, Nina suspected she would be leaving New York a good deal earlier than she had anticipated.
Ramsay’s apartment was only a dozen blocks fr
om Nina’s. Zoe sped down West End Avenue, floating was how it felt, 98th, 97th, 96th, the streets even closer than they appeared on the map. She’d never been in New York before but she knew exactly where she was going, in a sense she’d been heading this way all her life. When she reached Ramsay’s building and the doorman said Mr Blake was expecting her, and when she took the rickety lift to the eleventh floor and stood outside Ramsay’s apartment, she felt the blissful inevitability of her being here, both she and Ramsay far from home, away from work and colleagues, away from George most of all.
Ramsay must have shared her excitement for he opened the door even before she knocked. Ramsay, dressed in his customary white shirt and jeans, a smile filling his face, his hands stretched towards her. Ramsay, with a black curly-haired dog at his side.
‘Well, here I am,’ she said quietly.
He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her and hugged – just a moment before pulling her inside.
‘And here’s my place.’
The apartment was a similar layout to Nina’s and small by Australian standards. A short narrow passageway led from the front door past a kitchenette into a living room; there was an upright piano against one wall. On the opposite side and through an open door was the bedroom with a neatly made bed. There were books on shelves and weavings on the walls, a framed collage of leaves and bark was propped on a TV, ethnic knick-knacks were displayed on flat surfaces, and a rug in reds and browns was cast across the parquet floor. There was a sofa bed – where George would have slept, she assumed – and an armchair plump with cushions. The place was comfortable, bright and warm, very different from the Blake house in Melbourne. It appealed to her, appealed greatly.
‘None of this is mine, of course,’ Ramsay said, waving a hand at the living room. ‘It belongs to one of the horns at the college – she’s on sabbatical somewhere in Europe.’ He bent down and scooped up the dog. ‘I don’t care for her taste in interior design, but she can’t be faulted when it comes to dogs. This is Lotte.’
Zoe knew all about the dog. A couple of months earlier when his New York accommodation was being arranged, Ramsay had been offered the choice of two apartments. As soon as he learned that one came with a dog, the amenities of the places became irrelevant. So wooden when it came to people, Ramsay lavished a vast range of loving emotion on dogs. When they were children, his dog, Schnabel, was his constant companion. And once he started touring it was the separation from his dog that he found most difficult.
Lotte, he said, was made to order. ‘She’s perfect. Musical, with a preference for the classical repertoire, obedient, a favourite with other dogs in Riverside Park. And she couldn’t be more attached to me if we were from the same litter.’
If dogs took over the world, Ramsay would be one of the few humans to feel entirely at home, although a quick glance around the small apartment showed him to be quite at home here. Maybe Ramsay was about to learn he could manage without George.
Zoe nodded at the piano.
‘It’s adequate,’ he said. ‘And I have a lovely middle-aged Steinway at the college.’ He crossed the room and beckoned to her to join him. ‘This building is full of musicians, in fact the entire Upper West Side is awash with us.’ He leaned out the window and raised his voice over the traffic. ‘Music’s every where. The Lincoln Center and Juilliard are in walking distance, so are the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes. Everything I want is right here.’ His hands took in the whole neighbourhood, then he pulled back inside and, uncharacteristically, seized her by the arms. ‘It’s heaven, Zoe. And everyone’s so friendly. I’ve invitations most nights for dinner and music. And I never have to go far,’ his smile broadened, ‘often just a few floors in the elevator. It really is heaven.’
He truly looked as if he had landed in paradise.
‘So you’re managing without George?’ She kept her voice casual. What she really wanted to say was how are you getting on without the man who has choreographed your every move these past dozen years?
Ramsay’s face filled with delight. ‘I was nervous at first, but you predicted that, so I wasn’t surprised. I just went about my business and the nerves disappeared.’
Zoe had deliberately warned him. Ramsay had rarely been thrown on his own resources and never for longer than a few days. She was terrified he would flee New York before she arrived and rush home to George.
‘I was nervous,’ Ramsay now continued. ‘After all, George looks after everything, he looks after me. But I knew you were coming, and you did promise to stay until George arrives.’ He paused, and when he again spoke the words came more slowly. ‘If George arrives. Apparently he’s had a pretty rough time. Some sort of infection. He’s okay now, but you said you could stay until the residency finishes – the full five months.’ Anxiety had now transformed his face. ‘You said five months, if George can’t make the trip. You haven’t changed your mind?’
She shook her head and immediately he relaxed.
At the college he had been welcomed as an honoured guest. His teaching load was light: a weekly master-class with some remarkable young musicians, and office hours on Friday afternoons. He had a practice room with superb acoustics, and access to a performance space for which he was to understand – as did everyone else – he had priority use. If he needed a secretary, there were secretaries; if he needed other musicians to play with he could choose from the best in the country.
‘Everyone’s been so helpful, both here in the apartment building and at the school, so helpful that –’ and he dashed into the bedroom, ‘look what I’ve managed to get for you.’
Ramsay returned with a cello. ‘It’s no Stradivarius, but it’ll do.’
When they were children together in Raleigh Court, Zoe used to imagine playing house with Ramsay, their own place, just the two of them, no adults, no other children. She envisaged it as a miniature castle, with turrets and a conical tower, a moat with a bridge, and a central garden in which lived chimpanzees and macaws (she would have liked a unicorn too but that was stretching her fantasy too far). Inside the castle was a special food room – not a kitchen, a kitchen was her mother’s domain – with shelves of chips and chocolate, a cupboard with a perpetual supply of orange cake and chocolate biscuits, a fridge which never ran out of green lemonade or icy poles, and an oven that always contained hot pies and sausage rolls. Their own place, just the two of them, with a new TV and the latest video-game console, Ramsay’s piano and her cello. There’d be duets every day, and a single bedroom like the one Ramsay shared with Sean, and every night after lights out they’d talk for hours. And here they were exactly as she had always wanted, but better, so much better because they were adults, and in faraway New York. The freedom, the possibilities, the future itself were far more wonderful than ever she could have imagined.
She took the instrument from Ramsay and ran the bow over the strings. She looked up at him. ‘I’m so happy to be here,’ she said.
And he laughed and said he was happy too.
Their time had come, Zoe knew it and she was sure Ramsay knew it too. He opened all the doors of his life to her. He produced the cello so they could play together, and over the next few days he showed her around the college and introduced her to his new friends. Everyone assumed she was Ramsay’s girlfriend because invitations were now extended to her as well. Soon there was dinner and music every night, and while she knew Nina was disappointed to be seeing so little of her, when it all worked out, as she knew it would, her sister would be happy for her.
How often it happens that a lover is given precedence over a sister – or a brother or a close friend. It’s as if you know the sister will withstand all manner of slight, even blatant neglect. Certainly the sister will be there with her sisterly love long after the lover has departed – not that anyone thinks that today’s lover will ever join the ranks of ex-lovers: one always embarks on a new love wearing forever’s rose-coloured glasses. In retrospect, and there was plenty of retrospective replaying of those earl
y weeks in New York, Zoe should have allowed more time for Nina, but the fact was she could not have too much of Ramsay. And he clearly felt the same. There was the cello and the dinner invitations, and then he produced two bicycles so they could ride the boroughs together.
‘A different borough for each month we’re in New York,’ he said. That she was a nervous bike-rider even in the quiet streets of suburban Melbourne was suddenly irrelevant: Ramsay would look after her.
On that first morning of their New York adventure, Ramsay was full of his new life.
‘I love it here, Zoe. The work at the college is light, I eat when I want, I sleep when I want, I practise when I want. And now you’re here as well.’
He sat down at the piano and launched into Liszt’s Grand Galop Chromatique, an exhilarating dash that had always been one of his happy pieces. As Zoe watched him at the tatty upright, his hands speeding over the keys, she knew that wherever he was going he was taking her with him.
When he was finished there was no need for words, rather she took his hands and held them between her own, his skin warm against hers, just a moment before he pulled free.
‘Play with me, Zoe. Let’s play our Beethoven in Manhattan.’
He meant the Fourth Cello Sonata in C, the very first duet they had learned together. Our Beethoven, he had always called it. She placed a chair to the right of the piano where she could see his face and hands, tuned up and with her opening notes guided him in.
Some duets have a gladiatorial rumble but not this Fourth. From the beginning so close in the tiny room, she could hear his breathing but would have felt it anyway. She leaned into the long bowing of the solo opening, the sonata’s key phrase, only a dozen notes but located in the cello’s favourite register, and when she handed the melodic line to the piano, there was Ramsay, eyes closed, face euphoric, feeling exactly what she was feeling. Then the two of them together in the sweetest dialogue, two different voices but echoing each other, handing the melody back and forth in perfect synchronicity, one, two, three minutes and then suddenly – how they thrilled to the drama of the mid-movement change – with a clarion of unison notes and they’re leaping and swooping together, swirling around each other, the connection so strong and intense that the piano – Ramsay – falls to a murmur at exactly the right moment, followed by a change of tempo in unison as if some magical thread joined their thoughts, their very selves. They’re sitting a metre apart yet they might be inside the same skin; every movement of his prods her own muscles, every movement of hers and he adjusts to fit. She feels him, the freedom and happiness, the past and the future, it’s all here in their music.
The Memory Trap Page 12