‘What about the child?’ he asked.
Mary glanced up, genuinely puzzled; he recognized the tiny frown.
‘Our child,’ he said.
She pulled the frock round her belly, ball-shaping it.
‘You’re still carrying it?’
‘Yes.’ Without interest, or with incomprehension at the stupidity of his question.
He had looked carefully, but had not noticed the signs of pregnancy. Why in hell hadn’t that cracked, mischievous bitch, Eva, warned him?
‘Do you still feel sick?’
‘So-so.’ She accompanied her words with hand movements.
Sedately she offered him a few sentences about her medical treatment in America, adding that she had visited her mother’s doctor who had already fixed her a hospital place and relaxation classes. She appeared sombrely pleased, answered easily as he extended the interlude with questions.
They fell silent again.
‘Will you consider coming back?’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to you.’
‘Let me be the judge of that.’
She sat as if it were too much trouble to make the effort to reply. There was no distress, only accidie. He changed the topic, and these snap decisions came easily tonight, asking about the opera. This time she looked at him not believing her ears.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘About Semele?’
‘About you and me.’
‘Leave it. Tell me about the opera. It’s three or four months.’
‘I didn’t write to you, or phone, or anything.’
‘No.’
‘I meant to. The longer you put it off . . .’
‘I think I understand that.’
Again silence groaned between them.
‘Semele,’ he persisted, ‘was it good?’
‘Oh, God. What does it matter what it was?’ Anger spurted.
‘You don’t want to come back?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘Will you try it? Give it a run?’ Why had he used the second, explanatory expression? Would a plain question attract an answer he did not want?
‘Why should you take me back?’ Her voice seemed stronger. ‘After the way I behaved?’
‘You mean you committed adultery?’
‘Yes. That wasn’t the important part. I mean, we did, yes. It isn’t any use denying it.’
He managed to look at her, stifling anger, and found she was crying. Her voice had given no inkling of the rolling tears. He stood, walked across, bent by her, taking hand and arm. She ignored the squared handkerchief he held out. He closed his eyes, crouching uncomfortably, on his heel like a collier, waiting.
‘Let me go.’
‘What?’ The rough monosyllable escaped his care.
‘Let go of me.’
‘No, Mary.’
She stood up but he still held on to her. When she dragged herself away, he freed her at once, rose, put his hands into his pockets.
‘Sit down,’ he said, at length, in disappointment.
She brushed with her left hand at the wrist he had been holding as if to rid herself of his presence. He could not have hurt her.
‘Sit down, Mary.’
Immediately she obeyed, and he returned to his chair.
‘You, we, need more time,’ he began. ‘So, if I may, I’ll make a suggestion.’
She paid no attention.
‘You know what I want,’ he continued, ‘so we’ll leave it for now. Then perhaps you would come over to our house, when you’ve settled down, and we’ll discuss it again.’
‘That won’t alter things.’
‘Well, you may say so. I’m not so sure. Shall we leave it at that?’
She had dried her eyes, with a crumpled piece of paper, a habit he remembered. There had always been about her person two or three tissues, never new, tatty but unattractively handy.
‘All right.’
‘Thanks. I’ll call for that cup of coffee now, shall I?’
‘If you like.’
‘We can talk to each other still. That’s something.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Mary replied. ‘I’m in no position to talk about anything.’
He could see a slight eruption on the skin under her lips. Her face was bloodless, without health, blotched. Her neck was thin, and her arms.
‘Do you sleep well?’ he asked.
‘Yes, since I’ve been home.’
‘Have the doctors given you sleeping tablets?’
‘Not with this.’ She pointed at her belly. ‘I won’t have anything. I slept badly in America, especially this last month.’
‘Your mother will look after you.’ He’d no idea why he’d made the statement.
‘She’s too energetic. It makes me tired just to see her.’
They were having conversation, banalities, routine exchanges like the rest of the world.
‘Your father’s delighted to have you back.’
‘I suppose he is.’ Had she not noticed?
‘Come and see me tomorrow.’ He threw the mild command. ‘I’m rehearsing with the quartet in the morning. So, afternoon or evening.’
‘How shall I get there?’
‘I’ll come and fetch you. You suggest a time.’
‘I don’t know.’ Back to the slough.
‘Three thirty, then. That gives you time to stay in bed, have lunch and another nap. I shan’t have much to feed you on. What my dad calls “bread and scrape”.’
‘David, I can’t promise anything.’
‘Yes.’
Perhaps he meant ‘no’, and they sat quietly, trying not to look at each other.
‘How are your parents?’ she asked suddenly.
As he began to explain, their Cornish holiday, his father’s attempts at retirement, Joan’s concerts, he realized that she had initiated the conversation, though she seemed less than animated at his answers. When he’d finished his bright paragraph she said, ‘I don’t think I can come back, David.’
He knew despair.
‘Not tomorrow, you mean?’
‘Yes, if you want me to. But I don’t want to build your hopes up. I can’t promise anything.’
David lacked the strength to answer her; he’d done well, and now the problem bested him. Some little time later he heard her say something about coffee, go to the door, call out to her parents.
The room seemed crowded with hundreds. Mrs Stiles poured into large, delicate cups, fluted edges perfect. The family talked, but incomprehensibly, with a garrulous friendliness in a language he did not understand. He heard Mary.
‘David’s coming to pick me up at three thirty tomorrow.’
‘Where are you off to then?’ Eva, facetious.
‘Station Road.’
‘For good?’ Father, father.
‘We’ll see.’
David did not stay long. Heavy-eyed, he left through the shop. In the side street he leaned on the roof of his car, exhausted. Nobody came past to see him. On Saturday evening at 10.30 this part of Derby kept itself quietly to itself.
He gnawed at his knuckle.
16
DAVID BLACKWALL SLEPT soundly.
He shopped first thing Sunday morning to make sure he could feed his wife and arrived early at Barton’s house for the Trent rehearsal, where he found Frederick Payne in expansive mood. Wilkinson had rung to say that he’d be a few minutes late, on account of a family crisis, but this did not, for once, perturb the leader, who, feet straight out, regaled Barton with gossip.
Payne had met the Talbots, and Anna had spoken to him about Elizabeth Falconer, now away preparing for a summer at Bayreuth and a recording schedule, having just jetted back from Australia.
‘She’s never at home, and, according to Anna, she won’t allow her husband with her while she’s at work.’
‘Oh?’ Barton looked sympathetically towards David.
‘Nobody knows why she married him. She doesn
’t use the title.’
‘Somewhere to settle in old age,’ David suggested.
‘Don’t know, don’t know. She’s a mystery to everybody, herself included. There was that Colonel Tait, Holkham Tait, lives at Rathe Hall, he doted on her. Anna says he lives abroad now. His estate’s in the hands of a manager. He’s a millionaire, quite an elderly chap, but he lives in a bit of a poky place in the South of France, and on her account. Just has lost interest in life.’
‘Why France?’ Barton asked. ‘She’s never up this way.’
‘Connections. Memories. She’s a remarkable woman apart from her singing. You know her, don’t you?’ Payne to David.
‘Not really.’
‘Anna said she taught your wife.’
‘Now and again.’
‘I had one like that at the Academy,’ Barton said. ‘Eight out of ten of his lessons were given by substitutes.’
‘It doesn’t do to give women the power she’s got. I know what you’re going to say, Cyril, that men are just as bad, and women should have the opportunity if they’re good enough. Well, I tell you straight. Women haven’t got the mental equilibrium, the stability to bear the strain.’
Payne posted out his prejudices, good-humouredly, half humorously. David’s mind ranged elsewhere, and Barton argued circumspectly, an eye all the time on Blackwall, in fear that one of Payne’s sallies would hit home. Wilkinson arrived earlier than expected with a tale of a disturbed night, a call for the emergency doctor, the search for antibiotics. He looked cheerful enough, more so than usual, praising his wife’s resolution, quick decision making, sturdy sense.
‘And yet you say women haven’t the stability,’ Barton mocked Payne.
‘What’s he know about bloody women?’ Wilkinson’s eyebrows came angrily together.
‘Brethren, let us play,’ said Barton piously.
The rehearsal satisfied, quieted them all.
As they packed up, Wilkinson boasted, ‘And I’m the only one of you who’s going home to a cooked dinner.’
‘Clever boy,’ said Payne.
‘None of your packets of frozen peas and a dried-up pork chop.’
‘That’s David,’ Payne answered, laughing loudly, braying at nothing.
‘Go on. Clear off, the lot of you,’ Barton shouted, but he detained David, holding his elbow to ask, ‘Everything all right with you?’
‘Thanks, yes.’
He ought, he knew, to have stopped and spent five minutes explaining about Mary’s return to that good man, Cyril Barton, but he dared not. He rushed out of doors, paying painfully for his silence as he clenched his steering wheel. Back home he deliberately looked out frozen peas, frozen chips, made no apple sauce, to accompany inexpensive belly pork. If he did not enjoy the meal, which he ate abstractedly, it seemed the careless, spartan preparation earned a little of his own back on somebody or something.
David was wasting the last few minutes before his departure when Anna Talbot rang. After her cheerful preliminaries, she said, ‘How’s Mary, then?’
‘She’s back.’
‘I know. That’s why I rang. Is she there?’
‘No. She’s staying with her parents in Derby.’
‘Betty Braker, she was in Dido, saw her on Friday. They didn’t speak. In a shop in Derby. She rang to ask me.’
Anna Talbot knew everything, everybody, Tait’s despair, his wife’s desertion. Why had he let it out to her of all people when he knew she couldn’t keep her mouth shut?
‘How does she seem?’ The woman pressed on.
‘Tired. Very tired.’
‘Is she coming back here, to Beechnall, to live with you?’
‘That remains to be seen.’
She did not desist, and he explained that he’d need to finish the conversation as he was about to fetch her. All through his tight-lipped sentences she yessed sympathetically.
‘Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do, David?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘Be sure, now.’
‘I will.’
He put the phone down neatly, but in anger. Curiosity would not kill that cat. He took a last look round his premises; he had rearranged photographs, removed dust and crumbs. Mary was not coming to judge his capabilities as a domestic servant. Constraint weakened muscles.
A thunder shower hindered him as he drove; the windscreen was splashed blind, so that he was forced to draw up in a parking place. The storm blew over within five minutes, but puddles lay deep on the road, were flung about by wheels. The streets of Derby, he noticed on arrival, were quite dry.
He went in through the shop, and upstairs the Stiles parents grew expansive, offering coffee, newly baked buns, excited talk. Mary was not to be seen.
‘Are you in all day?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Why?’ Eva.
‘So I can give you a ring when to expect us back.’
George Stiles rubbed his chin.
‘She won’t be stopping the night, then?’ he asked.
‘Not from what she said yesterday.’
‘She could change her mind.’ Eva seemed to believe it.
‘Has she said anything to you?’
‘No. She’s rested. Only got up just before dinner. And she slept most of the time.’
‘That’s what she needed,’ George said. ‘Whatever it is that’s happened, it’s knocked the stuffing out of her.’
They heard Mary outside; she made sure of that, even rattling the doorknob. She presented herself to them, incredibly neat, in a military-styled raincoat, sheer black tights, smart shoes. Though pale still, she looked composed, the dark hair tidy as a helmet; she could not surely have had it cut since yesterday. She carried a large, shiny handbag.
‘Your chauffeur’s here,’ George said, too loudly.
‘Will you take a few saffron buns for your tea?’ Eva asked David.
The parents talked, ordered, delayed.
‘I’ve never seen you in that suit before,’ Eva said. ‘Turn round. I like it.’
‘I’ve had it at least two years.’
‘I’ve had my best for fifteen.’ George, affable.
‘And it looks like it,’ his wife answered.
The buns were packed while George expatiated on his wife’s cooking. Now nothing stood in the way of their departure. Mary kissed her parents and the four trooped downstairs and outside the shop door to where he had parked.
‘Enjoy yourselves,’ Stiles shouted.
‘Have you got some money?’ Eva demanded.
‘What do I want money for?’ Mary raised a smile.
‘You never know.’
David helped Mary with her seatbelt.
She said little for the first part of the journey, as he described the thunderstorm which had passed Derby by. Mary stared straight ahead, politely putting in a word to show she was listening. Smartly gloved hands were clasped on the handbag in her lap. Conversation was hard work, but he did his best. As he drove slowly through the town, the streets empty, she did not look about her.
‘Is there anything you’d like to do?’ He ought to have asked before.
‘Such as?’
‘Well, drive somewhere. To Newstead, to one of the parks for a walk?’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘I’m at your service.’
‘No, thanks. It doesn’t look too promising.’ Perhaps his facetious answer had riled her.
When he halted at the traffic lights where he turned off in the mornings for his school, she asked, ‘Are you on first period tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing. I just wondered.’
He did not fall to silence, but commented on his timetable which was exactly as it was when she left.
At his front door, he stepped back to allow her to enter.
‘You go first,’ she ordered.
In the hall, he asked if he should take her coat. She slid it from her arms, and hung it herself, familiarly, on the pegs at the bottom of
the stairs. Her dress, loosely falling, was of a striking claret red.
‘I admire that,’ he said. It sounded false, and she did not answer. This time, on his invitation, she led the way to the sitting room, where she headed for the chair he usually occupied. She made no obvious examination of the place.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?’ he asked.
‘Sit down, David,’ she spoke without power. ‘I don’t want anything just now. Sit down.’
After an awkward interval, three minutes perhaps, seemingly unending, she became straighter.
‘It hasn’t changed much,’ she began. ‘Have you kept the garden tidy?’
He presented his account as she fidgeted in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, gripping or slapping the chair arms. David, watching, felt as uncomfortable as she.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he said. ‘It’s good.’
She nodded, as if to acknowledge that she had heard.
‘That you agreed to come over.’
Now she rose, walked to the window, looked out over yard or garden, motionless. With her back to him, she began to speak.
‘I acted abominably in not writing to you.’ It sounded prepared, without spontaneity.
‘Let’s forget it.’
‘I can’t. Neither can you. Nor should you.’
She did not face him; he made another effort in fear.
‘Tell me about it.’ No answer. ‘About the opera.’
Mary began, but hesitatingly, in shards of sentences, to describe her arrival, her sense of disorientation, the first rehearsals. Soon she lost the flatness of voice, became animated, chose lively but succinct anecdotes, though still she did not leave the framing window. Her account was by no means detailed, but now it lacked a sense of guilt, acquired value on its own account, had interest.
She worked over the first days, the differences to her when it was decided she would sing Semele, how they had immediately changed her room. She touched on the cheerful, laconic kindness of an American girl called Kate Pastry from San Diego, her own realization that Red Gage, the unostentatious director, was a nationally pre-eminent, revered figure.
David questioned her; it seemed unarguably necessary for her to talk to him about Gage. By intervening constantly he dragged her back to the man, made him emerge.
Gage had softly said what he wanted, equally quietly made it clear when what they provided for him was not what he demanded, and why, and would insist then on their compliance. He never raised his voice, but his arguments were irresistible. He convinced them that the change of pace he deprecated or the misplacement of a prop or rostrum would, minute in itself, weaken the fundamental strength of his master plan. The conductor, Ulrich Fenster, a gifted musician, was as much dominated by Gage as the newest chorus contralto or ASM.
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