Valley of Decision

by Stanley Middleton

  ‘This is a subject I’m supposed to be teaching. And worse, I was convinced that what I told them was correct. I misled myself.’

  ‘Yes. But you’ll get it right next time. I can see you’re a bit cross with yourself, and you’ll be more careful in future, but you’re taking it to heart as if you’ve ruined their careers or murdered their mothers.’

  ‘You don’t seem to see how . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She spoke sympathetically. ‘You’ve dropped a little clanger. It’s not the end of the world. Good God. When I think of some of the musical mayhem I’ve committed.’

  ‘You knew as soon as you’d made your mistakes. I didn’t. I thought I’d offered a logical case.’

  ‘David. David.’

  By the next day his gloom began to lift, so that he could barely recall his agitation. When he took the history sixth again, they accepted his self-castigation, began to argue from the new facts, seemed in no way put out, took it all in their easy stride. He walked out of the period much relieved, whistling Mozart. Over the evening meal he reported the outcome to Mary, who, serving lamb casserole, brought out a bottle of red wine.

  ‘We’ll drink to scholarship,’ she said expansively.

  ‘Don’t know why I made such a fuss.’ He felt ashamed.

  It was a week or two later that she confessed how frightened she had been.

  ‘I thought I kept these things to myself,’ he answered.

  ‘We know otherwise now.’

  ‘I really am sorry.’

  He saw that these two days had disturbed her, perhaps because his own depression had been so powerful, and yet he could have sworn he’d done his best to make civil conversation, to help with the chores, to cover the shocked sense of inadequacy that tore him.

  ‘Let’s put it down to artistic temperament,’ she had said drily, dismissive, but he wondered now if the small episode had in some way altered her perspective on him, revealed that she had not married the steady helpmeet she had counted on.

  The headmaster called him across the games field.

  ‘How are things with you, then?’ Reeve asked. The upper school, released for the last hour to watch athletic sports, milled round, scarfed against unseasonable cold. David, thanking him, murmured reassurance. ‘And how’s your wife? When is she due home?’

  David shuddered, uncertain whether to confess. There would be no advantage; Reeve did not ask out of interest. The man vaguely recollected some fact, important or not, about a colleague, and made that the subject of his inquiries. He could as easily be asking about the purchase of a video machine or a set of golf clubs. David braced himself. The world would have to know, and before long; he’d make a start here.

  ‘She’s talking about not coming back,’ he said. Reeve looked vague, as though the start of house relays had distracted him from the sentence.

  ‘So Dick Wilson tells me.’

  That jolted painfully. These two human shadows, interested only in their own small corner of unreality, had taken in information about him, remembered it, discussed it. David decided on silence.

  ‘What will you do, then?’

  ‘There’s nothing much I can do, is there?’

  Coated spectators, tracksuited competitors passed both ways.

  ‘I don’t suppose there is,’ the headmaster whispered. ‘I don’t suppose there is.’ Reeve stroked his chin; his fingers looked red, bitten by the cold. ‘My wife was asking. Yes.’ A member of the maths department hovered three yards away for a word. ‘Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming too.’ He waved the mathematician away. ‘How can we account for an occurrence of this nature? It’s not as if you had,’ he fumbled for a word, ‘deserved it. Of course, we don’t know the devices and desires of the hearts of others. We never can. I’m sorry, sorry.’ The head began to walk away, from David, from the maths man, from the races, from the human race. He turned again. ‘Perhaps you’d like to call on my wife. She’s a . . . woman.’ The adjective had been snatched away by the wind. Reeve hitched at his collar and set a spanking pace across the field.

  A week ahead David arranged to call on Mary’s parents.

  The Trent Quartet were to play that Sunday evening at a semi-private concert at the local polytechnic. One of the vice-principals was retiring and his wife had chosen to mark the occasion thus. She was a woman who knew her mind and had demanded a modern work. She felt that she had made enough concessions to the musicians by agreeing to this date, a Sunday, though in fact the friends she wished to invite seemed away at all other times. Barton, who had conducted the negotiations because he taught a few hours a week there, said he came away with the impression that the place was run by absentee administrators. Payne, unsure about its readiness, reluctantly agreed to play the Shostakovich 8. He could find no time for extra rehearsals, but they met as usual that Sunday morning and were to make a runthrough in the hall at six for the eight o’clock concert.

  David, after an unsatisfactory morning when even Barton showed edginess, lunched with his mother, father again away, and had then driven over to Derby. A sharp walk would have done more good, but he felt a necessity to talk to the Stileses. They had heard nothing, phone calls had established that, but the sense of obligation, to them, to himself, had been strong.

  He warred inside himself.

  The disintegration of harmony at the rehearsal still marginally disturbed him. He himself had carefully prepared the piece, could play the notes without difficulty, but knew that the four together lacked cohesion.

  ‘We’ve four separate ways of playing this,’ Barton had grumbled.

  ‘You fixed the bloody concert up,’ Wilkinson answered, ‘before we’re ready.’

  ‘It’s the only possible date before Easter. I thought we’d be able to rehearse more often than we have.’

  ‘Some of us have families and homes.’ Wilkinson, who was mainly culpable.

  ‘We’re thinking of turning pro,’ Fred Payne said, not pacifically, ‘and here we are performing in public not half prepared. It won’t do us any good.’

  ‘Nobody’ll notice,’ Wilkinson muttered. ‘Not in this damned thing.’

  ‘Once you think like that, you’re lost.’ Barton, very quiet, senatorial.

  ‘Look who’s talking.’

  They pressed on, hating the composer, each other, themselves.

  David stayed behind for a word with Cyril Barton, after the other two had rushed off.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I feel depressed,’ David answered. ‘We’ve never been in such disarray before.’

  ‘They tell me,’ Barton began, ‘that when the Borodin first played this to Shostakovich, he covered his face and wept. If he heard us, he’d sob his socks off.’

  David looked up in surprise at the tone. Barton was not dispirited.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Cyril Barton continued, ‘when we meet at six for a runthrough. It’ll come together. We can play the notes; we’re over that hurdle. If we’re going to be any good, it’ll gel.’

  He smiled at his slack language, the face thoughtful, rapt.

  David, encouraged suddenly, explained in a brief sentence or two about Mary.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Barton replied, placing a hand on his friend’s sleeve. ‘I didn’t know anything about it. It must be hell. Our troubles are small beer compared to yours.’ He plucked his sentences, divided each from each, out of the air into which he stared. ‘I’m a bachelor. I never got married; I won’t say I didn’t think about it, but sex wasn’t important. I’m not the other way inclined, like Fred. I’m not quite a eunuch, either. When I hear something like this, that you’ve just told me, I guess I’m lucky. And I begin to ask myself: “What use is Haydn and Shostakovich to this poor chap?” I can’t answer it. I didn’t suspect anything; you’ve worked like a Trojan with us. I don’t know; I don’t know.’ He shook a bewildered head; his eyes were wet, and the intelligence seemed drained out of his face, as if after a fearful and unexpected physical attack.
‘At times like this, I wish there was something that I could do, or even say. But there isn’t.’

  ‘Thanks, Cyril.’

  ‘I feel angry. And that’s not like me. I want to go and hit her.’

  ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It might be my fault.’

  ‘You should know that.’

  Cyril Barton had given the wrong answer, though he’d no idea. This decent man spoke his decent, limited heart.

  ‘Would you like to stay and have some lunch with me? I’ve got plenty.’

  David explained that he had arranged to go to his mother’s and then to Derby.

  ‘Yes. You don’t expect to learn anything extra there, do you?’ Barton put the question with extreme diffidence, edging it out word by word as if afraid to trespass on David’s grief.

  ‘No. I spoke to them on the phone yesterday. They’d heard no more.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve put up with it.’ He hutched away, trying to end the conversation.

  ‘I’ve worked hard. That’s the value of Haydn and Shostakovich.’

  ‘When my mother died, she lived here with me, this was her house, it paralysed me. I hadn’t the strength to play or teach or do any shopping, even. She was old, and I’d had to look after her. But she died without warning. I went in with a cup of tea as I did usually, and she’d gone in the night. It was easy; must have been. That’s the way to die. But I hadn’t expected it. I just broke up. I’m a quiet, sensible middle-of-the-road man. Fred says that’s why I swapped from violin to viola. But I was like a child who couldn’t check his tears. It didn’t matter who was there or where I was. I just broke down. And yet you . . .’

  Barton had turned his face away from David to the wall.

  ‘Thanks, Cyril.’

  David swayed, battered, unstable as his companion. Two men, on the edge of tears, blocked the neat passage of bay-windowed, terraced house, 1905.

  ‘See you at six, then,’ David said, recovering.

  ‘I wish I could tell you it would be all right. It isn’t any use, is it?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose so.’

  ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? And happening to a man like you.’

  David looked into the open, rucked face of somebody who apparently believed that with a certain standard of education you disqualified yourself from vicissitude. He wanted to make a gesture towards Cyril; moved, he stood still.

  His mother provided lunch, allowed him to help with manual dish washing so that talk could be extended for a quarter of an hour, then shoved him off towards Derby.

  ‘I’ve heard nothing from them,’ she said. ‘Not that I expected anything.’

  ‘Family failing.’

  ‘I don’t make them out, David.’

  ‘She wears the trousers.’

  ‘Mr Stiles doesn’t say much, certainly.’

  ‘He does as he’s told because his wife’s good at organizing, but he has his little reservations. He’s a bit crafty.’

  ‘Do you think he’s upset by what’s happened?’

  ‘Yes. Because it’s disturbed Eva and that means trouble for him. Otherwise, I don’t think Mary can do any wrong where he’s concerned.’

  ‘Was he against her marrying you?’

  ‘Not at all. But when she changes her mind, his changes with her.’

  As he drove towards Derby he felt pleased that he could propound such views without doing violence to himself. Their truth was doubtful, but his mother was comforted to find him capable of laying down the law.

  The Stileses hovered, ready for him, for anything.

  Their lounge, upstairs over the shop, faced north and this afternoon seemed unusually dark under the piling clouds. The couple bustled offering hospitality, tea, coffee, sherry, a full biscuit tin, the electric light. They inquired after his health; he answered, at the same time refusing sustenance; the gas fire hissed to overwarm solemn furniture. Both parents-in-law had dressed for the occasion; the line of father’s white shirt shone below the navy blue sleeves. He wore gold cufflinks.

  David explained that he could not stay long, that he had to go home, collect his instrument and concert gear to be at the Poly for rehearsal at six. Eva Stiles asked intelligent questions about the programme, seemed interested in what he said about the difficulties of performing Shostakovich. Without embarrassment she recalled Mary’s learning Alban Berg songs during one holiday from the college. Father constantly hitched his trousers to prevent bagging at the knees.

  In the end, after a silence, Mrs Stiles sat a little straighter as if to announce that real business was at hand.

  ‘After you rang yesterday dinnertime,’ she began, and stopped. ‘We were very busy. Rushed off our feet, and the two lads we have in on Saturdays are no more use than ornament. But after I talked to you, it worried me all afternoon. It bothers me, I can tell you, most of the time, but I thought, there you were, ringing up, coming over the next day, and we’d heard not a thing. I mean we’d written, twice, and you, and your mother, and we’d tried to get in touch by phone and not a peep from her in reply, and it didn’t seem good enough. It smarted with me all afternoon. I said as much to Dad, on the one occasion we had two minutes spare, but we were busy. When we closed at six, we didn’t clear up as we usually do on week nights, I said we’d do it this morning, we plonked ourselves down in the dining room for a bit of a meal, we don’t want much except a pot of tea, you’re not hungry after a day like that . . .’

  ‘We ought to go out for dinner,’ Stiles said. ‘Now and again.’

  ‘You don’t want it, and I don’t. All I need is to get my shoes off and my slippers on and rest my hipbones. Any road, when we’d had our bit of a snack I said to Dad, it came to me suddenly, “I’m going to have a bath,” we’d got the immersion on, “and while I do I want you to ring her up.”’ Mrs Stiles stopped again. ‘You should have seen his face. And heard the excuses. Wasn’t it too late? “It’s early afternoon there,” I said. What should he say? I’d do it a lot better than he would. “George,” I said, “just ask her what she thinks she’s doing, and if she’s not there leave a message for her to ring us. She’ll know if it’s you ringing it’s serious.”’

  George Stiles wriggled.

  ‘So I went off and George tried. It was Saturday afternoon. I hadn’t thought of that. But in the end he got through to somebody who said he’d leave her a message.’

  ‘They’re back, are they?’ David asked.

  ‘I know no more than you do.’

  ‘And you’ve heard nothing.’

  ‘No, we have not. But at least we tried.’

  ‘Who answered?’ David asked, sorry for his father-in-law.

  ‘Some man.’ George sat straight. ‘You can’t tell from the way these Americans talk whether he’s a professor or the caretaker. Eva should have done it. She’d have nailed him down. I was bemused what with the dialling and waiting.’

  ‘Don’t you dial straight through?’

  ‘Yes. But there’s a bit of a gap. And then I thought nobody was ever going to answer the thing once it started ringing their end. But I hung on. And then this man picked it up, in time, but he didn’t say who he was. I explained who I was, and who she was. He seemed to get it, told me he’d leave the message. He didn’t say whether the opera was there or not.’ Stiles looked apologetically towards his wife.

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ David nodded, frowning.

  ‘We don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing,’ Mrs Stiles began angrily. ‘It’s like searching in a fog.’ She continued in this vein, easing herself, alarming the men. Her spleen brought her no relief, nettled them. As if she felt bound to instruct them she recited what she knew of Mary’s stay in America, looking now and again to David for additions or corrections that were not forthcoming. The men satisfied themselves with a silence as gloomy as the room.

  At the conclusion of the performance, she went outside to the lavatory, and noisily returning pressed David to a
cup of tea, a piece of cake baked that morning.

  ‘You’ll need it,’ she said, ‘if you’re playing. I know what it’s like. A mug of urn rubbish and two arrowroots.’ She laughed vividly as David capitulated. He ate his way slowly through a slab of delicious fruit cake he did not want, and then fought off her attempts to cut him a second slice.

  He rose as the clock struck four.

  ‘I don’t like to think of you there all on your own,’ Eva said. ‘I don’t know how you’ve put up with it, all these weeks. You must have more patience than I have.’

  ‘Not very hard,’ Stiles said, back of hand.

  ‘Listen to that. Swearing like a navvy this morning he was just because he dropped a bag of nails.’ She laughed again, mirthlessly, hard and high.

  ‘I didn’t use any words you didn’t know.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

  They were uncomfortable, this pair, distressed on his behalf, niggling at each other. She cut and wrapped him a slab of cake as he left.

  ‘We’ll be in touch,’ Eva shouted, too loudly, on the pavement. One or two interested Sunday pedestrians dawdled past. ‘We’ll let you know if we hear anything. And ring us up if you’re short of company.’

  ‘You do that,’ Stiles said, ‘and don’t forget.’

  David shook hands with George, kissed Eva, who for a second in profile reminded him of Mary, a caricature perhaps, but her mother. The two fussed excitedly out here as if they’d done their duty; he guessed they’d be glad to be rid of him. In person he blighted their Sunday afternoon’s peace, but once he’d disappeared he’d be an interesting topic of conversation. As he drove away the parents waved, making something of it, seeing him out of their lives, regretful, not unthankful for the entertainment. He dismissed his speculations, centred interest on Shostakovich.

  He had not been in his house twenty minutes before the phone rang.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve got you.’ Frederick Payne. ‘I’ve been trying since three. Can you pick Walter Wilkinson up about quarter to six tonight? His car’s kaput again.’ He gave the address. ‘I’ll see he gets back, but I’m supposed to go out to value a fiddle; I’ll only just make it. If I hadn’t caught you this time, I’d have had to cancel it.’