‘Let’s see now… Musetta’s Waltz Song,’ she muttered as she paged through the well-worn score, which had originally been Giacomo’s and was now hers. She put the score on the piano’s music stand and turned the pages slowly towards Act Two, enjoying the memories she encountered along the way and humming the melody of the Waltz Song softly as she did so. In her mind’s eye she saw herself sitting in front of a different keyboard, the score still balanced on the music stand, but now held in place by the well-tanned, olive-skinned hands of a man.
A melodious, deeply placed voice drifted into her ears. It was tinged with the faintest hint of its foreign origin.
‘…and this is one of the most beautiful parts of the opera,’ he said softly, his voice full of affection for the dots printed on the staves of the page. ‘Please … play…’
As she played, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that he had closed his eyes and was following the curve of the music in the air with his hands. When she reached the end of the Waltz Song, she stopped, letting the last sounds from the piano linger in the large room.
‘That is really beautiful,’ she said, turning on the piano stool to look at him.
For a moment he did not reply, but continued to sit on his chair with his eyes closed, his hands in the air in front of him, as if inviting an invisible cast of singers and orchestra to pause in their music-making and savour the genius of Puccini’s melodic creativity. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at her. It was the familiar, warm, gentle smile she had always found so exhilarating – so alluring – right from the first time she had seen it.
‘It also sounds just a little sad, as if someone has lost something that means a great deal to them, perhaps? I don’t know.’ She had no idea what the words meant and there was no English translation included in the Ricordi edition score in front of her. ‘What is Musetta singing about? Is it sad?’
‘They are all poor. Musetta is pretty and coquettish and moves from man to man in search of a better life – you know the sort of situation which poverty drives people in to.’
Penelope Strachan was not at all sure that she did understand what he meant, but smiled and nodded anyway.
‘She used to be with another of the Bohemians, Marcello, but she abandoned him in favour of the much richer and older Alcindoro. So yes, in a way it is about loss, but not Musetta’s loss; it is rather Marcello who has lost something, for which he still desperately yearns.’
‘And yet the music is so beautiful,’ she said, turning back to look at the pages of the score in front of her.
‘And that is the true genius of Maestro Puccini; he paints bare human emotion in the subtlest of musical colours. This whole scene is a complicated dialogue between the principal characters. Each is voicing their own opinion of Musetta, of Marcello and the rest. Even Mimi and Rodolfo comment on the situation. And it is all held together by the music.’
‘Oh … how clever,’ Penelope replied feebly. She was finding it increasingly more and more difficult to follow the complex situation, and the seemingly endless flow of Italian names wasn’t helping. She wondered how anyone ever remembered them all.
‘This scene has a happy ending … for the moment,’ continued Professor Capezzani-Batelli, looking at the score as if he were standing on the stage in the middle of the scene. ‘Musetta sends her elderly lover away to buy her a new pair of shoes and then throws herself back into Marcello’s eagerly waiting arms. Sadly, the happiness they then feel will not be shared by the two central characters.’
‘Oh … dear, so it is a little sad, then.’
‘We Italians all have the embers of sadness smouldering deep within us,’ he continued. That was something which Penelope Strachan, with her limited experience of the jagged web of life, did not fully appreciate. ‘We have so much, but always desire something more. Sometimes we find it and manage to keep it; sometimes we find it and then lose it … have it taken away from us.’
He fell silent for a few seconds, a distant look clouding the handsome, chiselled features of his face. She was suddenly curious as to what it was he might have had taken away from him, but couldn’t find a polite way in which to ask such an indiscreet question. The resulting silence engulfed the room.
‘That is what happens in the reality of life and that is what will happen to Mimi and Rodolfo. Maestro Puccini was better able than most to express these complex emotions through his music. Perhaps that was because his own life was often something akin to a plot from one of his own operas,’ he said, his mood suddenly lightening and the smile once again creasing his face. ‘You have a very accurate saying in English, which says everything that needs to be said about the maestro. He was very much a “Jack the Lad” and had a reputation for enjoying life to the full … in all of its many aspects.’
She had heard the expression before, when her parents had been discussing her father’s cousin, Richard. She had walked into the sitting room one Saturday evening for the usual pre-dinner sherry and had been in time to hear her father’s muttered opinion of his cousin.
‘Richard is a disgrace to the good name of the family. His Jack the Lad attitude to everything is going to end in tears. One girl too many and the resulting pregnancy will –’
When her presence had been suddenly noted, the subject had been abruptly dropped, but it was plainly obvious that her father was rather angry.
Now, in the comfort of Professor Capezzani-Batelli’s studio, she cleared her throat and turned back a few pages to where the music staves were headed ‘Mimi’ and ‘Rodolfo’.
‘Who are Mimi and Rodolfo?’ she asked softly, turning to look at him once again.
He turned and for the first time that day, looked her straight in the face. ‘They are the two lovers. They love each other for who they are, not for any material benefit that one might possibly obtain by loving the other. They find everything they ever wanted in each other and are then forced by fate to give it all up again.’
The look of distant loss once again flicked across his face. For a split second, she thought that she saw the light of something go out in his eyes, as if he was involuntarily remembering the pain of having something of inestimable value taken away from him.
‘Listen to this,’ he said, getting up from his chair and sitting next to her on the double piano stool. He turned to the last few pages of the opera then reached across her and started to play. ‘This music is so powerful … it rends the human spirit in two with its pathos and loss.’ He played a few more bars. ‘And here, finally, what they have found together is taken from them.’ He continued playing to the end of the opera. ‘At the end the maestro suggests some of the musical material from the first act of the opera, when the lovers meet for the first time. So, as in life, the opera goes in a full circle – we find and then we lose.’
‘Oh dear, did Mimi go away, then?’ asked Penelope, unable to read the Italian, but noticing that the musical stave marked ‘Mimi’ had stopped before the final pages of the score.
‘Yes, in a manner of speaking she does go away…’ he replied, the emotion in his voice threatening to overwhelm him. ‘She dies.’
The silence returned once again to engulf the room. She turned from the score to look at the professor.
‘Mimi is ill from the very beginning … even when the lovers first meet. It is as if fate is playing a cruel game with their emotions.’
‘Oh … I see,’ she said, taken a little aback by the revelation.
‘I hope I have not upset you,’ he said, reacting immediately to the colour of her tone, ‘but that is life. This kind of opera plot is called verismo, which means “realistic”. There are no gods and goddesses to the rescue at the eleventh hour … no cavalry to rescue you from the Indians, as happens in those American western films. There is just the bleak, ugly reality of the hand of fate that life sometimes deals out to us.’
She turned her head back to the score, but said nothing. He had become very emotional during his description. Perhaps he really was affect
ed by the tragedy of the plot. She had heard people say that the Italians were far more passionate about things that the English took for granted. And yet it occurred to her that there must be something really deep-seated in this man, which provoked such feelings of deep emotion – feelings of loss. Her curiosity now came into play and she once again toyed with the idea of asking him, but was foiled by her inability to phrase so delicate a question in such a manner as to make the asking of it not sound blatantly impertinent. After all, this man – as handsome and charming as he was – was almost old enough to be her father. Her fingers caressed the keys once again as she started the Waltz Song from the beginning. She had a photographic memory and an excellent ear, both attributes affording her the extraordinary gift of being able to look at a piece of music once and then forever have it cemented in her memory.
‘Is all of Puccini’s music like this?’ she asked, turning her head to look at him again. ‘I should very much like the opportunity of getting to know it better.’
‘And so you shall, Miss Strachan. Please do not think me presumptuous in any way, but would you care to accompany me to the opera? Covent Garden has a production of La Bohème, this very opera, opening at the end of next month. My position here at the Royal Academy affords me easier access to the performances than most. I would be honoured if you would accept.’
For an instant, Penelope Strachan’s pulse raced all over her body and she felt as if her head was about to spin right off her shoulders. She wanted to shout out, Yes, of course I will, but her upbringing restrained her from such a common course of action.
‘Er … well, yes. That would be very pleasant, but I really think that I … that is to say…’ She suddenly felt very stupid and childish, as the words refused to come out the way she wanted them to. She felt herself going quite red – not so much from embarrassment as from anger with herself for her lack of control.
‘Please do not concern yourself with any thoughts of impropriety. I ask you as one musician to another.’ He paused, smiling that smile at her once again. ‘And there is no Mrs Professor, if that is what concerns you.’ His smile deepened as he raised his eyebrows in anticipation of her reply. How handsome he looked, with his white teeth and blue-grey eyes.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, reaching up to the piano’s music stand, misjudging the distance completely and sending the score tumbling down onto the keys with a loud discord. ‘Oh … how very clumsy of me!’ she blurted out, wishing that she could disappear straight down into the academy’s basement. ‘I am so sorry… I’ll pick it… Oh, no, I’ve torn the cover… I really am most…’
‘My dear Miss Strachan, it is only a book. A little piece of brown tape and some water and it will be as good as new again. Please do not concern yourself over it.’
In the confusion of her retrieving the score from her lap, where it had finally landed, he had reached out to help her. They both had hold of the score by its long sides, their fingers touching, and she felt the sparks of attraction fly between them.
‘Thank you, Professor, I would love to accompany you to the opera, but please understand that I must ask my parents’ permission first.’
‘But naturally you must,’ he beamed. ‘That is only right and proper.’
She smiled at him and then started to play the Waltz Song again. He sat next to her, playing the same music an octave lower. The room filled with the sonorous melody and harmonies, which engulfed them.
As she played, she became increasingly aware that the richness of the doubled parts gradually decreased, until she was once again seated in front of her own piano, her fingers, released from their arthritis by the music, moving with consummate ease over the keys as they caressed the composer’s genius.
‘Himself is here,’ snapped a gruff voice, ‘so shall I be after puttin’ her in the kitchen on alert to make more for dinner?’
The Contessa turned towards the source of the question, without stopping her playing. ‘Luigi’s come to visit?’ she asked. ‘Where is he?’
‘Gone to do what only himself can do,’ replied Elizabeth as she stomped past the piano and started to close the shutters on the two large windows. ‘Himself will join yourself when himself’s finished … and washed his hands,’ she added, admonishingly. She still thought of Luigi di Capezzani-Batelli as the little boy she had helped to rear all those years ago, back in the time when Mister Giaco (that was what she had insisted on calling the Count, for she had never managed to get her tongue around any more of his name than that) had still been with them.
‘He’s probably come to tell me about his screen,’ said the Contessa as she swung effortlessly into a passage from Cimarosa’s comic masterpiece, Il Matrimonio Segreto. That extract, together with the Humperdinck and the Mozart, were the items on the programme that called for a screen.
Having closed the shutters, Elizabeth was crossing back to the door when the full meaning of the Contessa’s last remark – at least, as the maid interpreted it – sank in. She stopped in her tracks and fixed her beady eyes full on the Contessa. She had still not been told what it was that was wrong with her mistress, what it was that had created the need for this cream – which did not smell – in the first place. The music swelled, so she thought better of bringing up the subject again. When herself is that involved in her playing, ’tis a waste of time asking her anything at all.
As she reached the door, she caught sight of Luigi crossing the lobby towards her.
‘Himself’s here,’ she called over her shoulder as she marched past him.
24
Round about the same time that Elizabeth was pouring boiling water into the teapot and onto the worktop around it, an old, but well-maintained Fiat slowed to a halt at the order of a red traffic light at the top end of Via Matteo Civitali – the road which led to Lido di Camaiore. The two occupants never went as far as the beachfront delights of the Lido; that was a dream their finances would ensure remained just that – a dream.
‘The girls have made plans for us on Friday evening, so you’ll have to look after the kids,’ said the woman in the passenger seat. She spoke in a clipped, aggressive way, as if issuing orders to an underling. She sat twisted in her seat, facing out of the car window, and she had addressed her remarks to the driver without even looking at him.
‘But you know that I have my concert with the Contessa on Friday night,’ replied Tito Viale as he fought desperately to avoid being drawn into the spiral of hopelessness, which was all too painfully familiar to him. The light still glared at him, as red as his frustrated, impotent anger – as red as a bloodstain.
‘So what do you expect me to do about that? I’m going out with the girls, so you’ll have to sort the kids out. That sounds quite straightforward to me. Besides, all the time you spend with your singing hasn’t done you any good; you’re still tied to your office desk with no hope of a singing career, so why bother?’ She spoke spitefully, looking down at her expensively manicured hands, admiring the new shade of nail varnish as she did so. ‘I don’t know how you keep your self-respect, expecting me to exist on the pittance you bring home each month. And you call yourself a man?’ She raised her glance and studied a large hoarding advertising cheap Ryanair flights around the world. Her eyes narrowed as she changed the angle of her attack. ‘And I haven’t been able to afford a holiday in years,’ she added with a heavy sigh.
‘But that is unfair; you know I give you everything,’ replied Tito in a feeble attempt to stand up for himself. ‘There is nothing else to give.’
‘And I’m supposed to be comforted by that, am I?’ she snapped, turning her head and glaring at him with a look that barely disguised the loathing she felt for him. To her, he was the reason she never had enough money; he was the reason keeping up with the rest of the girls was always such an embarrassing problem; he was the reason she was cemented into the level of society from which she so covetously desired to graduate. She hated him for all of that.
‘But … I made an excuse to get
off work early so I could come and collect you … just as you asked,’ he answered feebly, looking at the back of her head. She was gazing longingly at the hoarding once again. ‘And I do more than my fair share with the children and around the house…’ He faltered, wondering if he had already said too much. ‘And my singing is only once ev –’
‘And that is once too much!’ she snorted, without even turning to look at him.
Tito Viale, who was kind-hearted and gentle by nature, was no match for the corrosive vitriol which bubbled up from his wife in an unstoppable flow. Rather than being drawn into an argument, which is what Letizia would have liked, he gripped the steering wheel firmly and, gathering some inner strength from his newly acquired sense of purpose, stated quietly and firmly, ‘I shall be singing with COGOL on Friday night. It is a long-standing arrangement. If you feel you have to go out as well, then we will have to organize a baby-sitter for our children. I will ask our neighbour.’ Inwardly, Tito was shaking and he knew if he continued his voice would break and he would retreat back into his shell. Before any reaction could erupt from his wife, he became aware of the chorus of blaring car horns behind him: the traffic light had changed to green and the expectation was that he should move forward. Despite his continuing insecurities, something deep down – something that he was not yet ready to fully accept – had started to formulate. As he released the handbrake to start driving away, it occurred to him that maybe the road ahead is starting to clear. He also wondered if Letizia had actually heard him!
25
Riccardo Fossi lay on his bed in the darkness, thinking back over the previous few hours of the evening. His muscular, tanned form was covered only by the lightness of a fine silk sheet. At the beginning of the evening he had hoped to see Renata, but his plans, which had caused him to be aroused on more than one occasion that afternoon, had disintegrated into disappointment when she had phoned and told him that slipping away from home that evening would be impossible.
Errant Angels Page 18