Musical Beds

by Justine Elyot

  He didn’t even wake when she practised her playing in the ‘rehearsal corner’. The smell of coffee couldn’t rouse him, or the reheated mulligatawny soup she ate for her mid-morning brunch. Was he ever going to wake up?

  The clock warned that rehearsal time was coming soon. Surely he would want to shower, eat, freshen up before that?

  She grabbed one of his feet and stroked the instep. He began to writhe and splutter. For the first time in what seemed an age, she laughed. He opened his eyes reluctantly and squinted at her, propping himself up on one elbow.

  “Fuck, Lydia, what are you trying to do to me?”

  His voice was slow and slurred.

  “Rehearsal starts soon. We have to get ready and get into town in one hour.”

  He let his head fall back down on the armrest.

  “I can’t do it. Not today.”

  “Milan! You’re the conductor! You have to go in.”

  “Tell them I’m sick. Leonard will do it.”

  She stared at him speechlessly then made an angry swipe for the glass that lay on the floor, stalking into the tiny kitchenette with it and banging it on the counter.

  “So that’s what all your plotting and skulduggery was for, was it? So you could get the job of your dreams and then piss it all against the wall? You aren’t going in because you’re hung-over? That’s your idea of commitment?”

  Milan clutched his forehead.

  “Miláčku, you are making my head go crazy. Please stop.”

  “You’re a… Oh, I can’t even get the words out. Suit yourself, then. Ruin your life if that’s what you want. Don’t expect me to help you with that, though.”

  He pulled the duvet over his face.

  Trembling with unexpected rage, Lydia went into the bedroom to breathe deeply and try to calm down. So Milan wanted to pull a sick day. Was that so totally unacceptable? There was something else drawing all this anger up above the surface, something deeper. Everything he had put her through, every tear she had shed, every night she had lain awake checking her phone for messages.

  “Why me?” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.

  Chapter Three

  On the Tube on her way to the rehearsal, Vanessa Barber was asking herself the same question, but in a rather more exhilarated manner.

  She had to be imagining it, didn’t she?

  Gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old men didn’t have any interest in forty-two-year-old divorcees who lived with two cats and a set of kettledrums. Did they?

  She had spent too long of late peering surreptitiously into her compact mirror, counting crows’ feet, but now she did it again. If he saw anything in her, what was it?

  It was true, she thought, with a tiny swell of smugness, that she looked good for her age. She had cleansed, toned and moisturised religiously since her teens, never smoked, drunk little, eaten sensibly, partied moderately—and now she was seeing the dividends of that careful lifestyle. On the other hand, perhaps it was possible to be too careful. Her still-delicate skin and shiny black bob gave her an air of youthful insouciance, but her eyes were guarded. In them could be read her real age—the woman who had experienced love, loss and heartbreak, not the trim, carefree girl you might think you saw from a distance.

  Her divorce, five years before, followed by a disastrous rebound fling with Milan Kaspar, had sent her retreating from the dangerous waters of emotional involvement.

  But Ben Chancellor… He was another proposition altogether. Refreshingly free of older men’s ego issues, he had been open and friendly with Vanessa from the start of their working relationship. And now things seemed to be crossing a boundary…

  “Stop fantasising,” she told herself severely. “He likes flirting, that’s all. And so do you. It’s been a long time since you did any.”

  The train juddered into Victoria Station and she squeezed out with the rest of the throng, looking forward to emerging into the aphrodisiac spring air.

  Ben was messing about with the xylophone when she arrived in the rehearsal hall. The plinky-plonky sound of Fossils from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals struck her eardrums straight away. His friend Martin, a viola player, was accompanying him.

  Ben’s back, crouched over the instrument, was long and narrow, his shoulders flexing as he beat the wooden bars. A curving hank of light brown hair fell over his eyes if he leant too far forward. Vanessa always wanted to brush it aside.

  “It’s Van the Man!” he exclaimed his usual greeting. A tad unflattering if you were oversensitive about that kind of thing, but his vigour and enthusiasm made it endearing to Vanessa.

  “Afternoon, Ben. Hi, Martin. Are we doing The Planets today? Please say we are—it’s the only piece with decent percussion on this programme.”

  “I guess that’s down to Milan the Man,” said Ben.

  “Weird, so weird, the way that’s turned out,” said Martin, in a conspiratorially low tone. “Even his old mates in the strings aren’t exactly thrilled.”

  “I don’t know him, except from TV.” Ben shrugged and twirled the xylophone sticks in his fingers.

  He gave Vanessa a look that made her want to shiver.

  “What do you think of him, Ness?”

  “I don’t count myself among his fans,” she said briskly. “But it’s nothing to do with me. It’s Lydia I worry about. Is she here yet?”

  “Haven’t seen her,” said Martin, looking vaguely towards the violins.

  “Twenty quid says she turns up with him.”

  “Really?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “Are they…?”

  “They certainly were. If she’s got any sense at all, she’ll keep away from him, but…”

  “The heart wants what it wants,” finished Ben, with an even more shiver-inducing look.

  “Shit, here she is now.” Martin stepped back, scanning the back door for signs of Milan. “Looks like you owe us twenty quid, Vanessa. She’s alone.”

  “Oh, they’ll have planned that,” whispered Vanessa, but looking more closely at Lydia’s pale, pinched face, she wondered if she had misjudged her friend.

  She hastened over to intercept Lydia.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Come to the cloakroom if you want to talk―”

  “I don’t. Sorry. I know you’re being kind. Thanks. I have to make an announcement. Ugh.”

  She made a determined path to the conductor’s lectern.

  Vanessa thought she looked very small and lost up there. What was happening? Where was Milan?

  It was a few minutes before people stopped talking enough for Lydia to be heard above them.

  “I have to tell you something. Milan can’t make it to the rehearsal. He’s ill.”

  The way she said ‘ill’ gave Vanessa a very strong feeling that something was badly wrong.

  “Ill?” called out one of the cheekier cellists. “Or did you just keep him up all night?”

  Lydia’s face flushed bright red and she swallowed hard. Vanessa wanted to take her by the hand and drag her off the podium. She looked fit to drop herself, let alone the indisposed Milan.

  “He sends his apologies and hopes he’ll be better by tomorrow. In the meantime, he asked if Leonard could take us through Mars and Uranus.”

  “Did he take you through Uranus last night?” muttered Ben beside her, and Vanessa snorted with laughter despite her sympathies.

  “Naughty!” she whispered.

  “Yes, I am. Very.” He nudged her.

  She nearly melted.

  Lydia almost threw herself off the podium in her haste to escape the focus of attention, leaving the path clear for a very put-out Leonard.

  “This’ll be a mess,” Vanessa remarked to Ben. “He’s had no time to prepare.”

  “Yep, one hot mess,” Ben replied. “But at least we get some percussion action.”

  That’s not the only action I want today…

  “Are you wearing a different perfume?” Ben asked, rubbing
the drumstick round and round the drum in front of Vanessa, in a manner she hoped was suggestive.

  “Yes. I’m surprised you noticed.”

  “Why?”

  “Just…you know… I didn’t think you were in the habit of…sniffing me.” She smirked, avoiding his eyes.

  He moved closer.

  “Actually, I am. You reward a good deep sniff.”

  She had no idea what to say to that. All she could do was stand stock still, quivering slightly, while his nose dropped lower and lower…

  Then Leonard tapped the podium with his baton and they straightened back up, shaking out of their dangerous trance.

  For the next couple of hours, Vanessa tried to dismiss the hazy, sensual hangover Ben had induced in her. The Holst was fun for both of them—she got to give the kettledrums a proper hammering, while Ben went to town on the xylophone and, by the end of the rehearsal, both were panting as if they’d performed a workout.

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “This is what it’s all about.” Ben grinned.

  “Did you have to be so loud?” The new harpist’s enquiry was laden with ennui and disgust.

  “Well, yes. I believe the direction in the score is fortissimo.” Vanessa hadn’t taken to Sarah Latimer, and her response was accordingly frosty.

  “You’ve damaged my eardrums, I’m sure.” She picked up her bag and stalked out.

  Ben and Vanessa looked at each other and made faces, their lips rounded into ‘ooh!’ shapes.

  “Get her,” said Ben, picking up an imaginary handbag and clutching it to his chest. “Silly moo.”

  Vanessa laughed.

  “Do you have to rush off?” Ben asked, so casually that Vanessa sensed at once that her answer was important to him.

  She glanced over at Lydia, who was putting her violin back in its case with a doleful air.

  “I should go and talk to Lydia. Take her out for a coffee or something.”

  But Lydia left the room with Leonard, the pair of them deep in conference, presumably on matters Milan-related.

  “I guess not,” she amended, turning to Ben with a wary smile.

  “Great,” he said. “Something I want to show you.”

  She raised her eyebrows, but his only elaboration was to rub his hands together and tilt his head.

  “Where might this thing be?”

  “Follow me and all will be revealed.”

  Ben strode off ahead, grabbing the scarf he wore, regardless of the warm season, from its peg before leaving the hall.

  Vanessa, trotting along at his heels, had no idea what to expect. Was this thing in the building or outside it, in a private or a public place? Excitement clutched at her heart, squeezing it into a tight ball of anticipation.

  Just before the main doors, Ben took a sharp right, leading her down a staircase that went, as far as she knew, nowhere except to a basement storage area.

  “Why are we going down here?”

  “Patience! Courage, mon brave.”

  “Is that supposed to be a French accent?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because it was nothing like one.”

  Their good-natured teasing ended at the foot of the stairs, in an unlit and dusty corridor.

  “Okay, now I’m wondering…” said Vanessa.

  “Follow me. It’s a bit dark—tread carefully.”

  “Ugh, there aren’t mice down here, are there?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Ben led her down the brick-walled corridor until he reached a door near its end, which he pushed open. He snapped on a light then turned around before she could enter.

  “Close your eyes,” he said.

  “No way! There could be anything in there.”

  “Oh, come on. I’ll cover them if you don’t.”

  He moved up behind her and placed his hands over her eyes. The warmth and size of his hands on her skin made her want to sigh. He smelt of antibacterial soap and mints.

  She made no effort to remove the welcome blinkers, stepping before him into a room so thick with dust that her throat dried out instantly.

  He held his hands in place for a moment or two longer than necessary, the contact caressing and reassuring. Then he removed them.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “I know. What a hoard!”

  The room was packed from floor to ceiling with antique percussion instruments, most of them in perfect condition, if a little neglected.

  Vanessa twisted her neck to look up at Ben, standing behind her.

  “Must be worth a bit of money,” he said. “But look at these cowbells. I reckon they date back to the first performance of Mahler’s Sixth.”

  He put out a hand and rang one of the rusting instruments. Its slightly off-key clangour reverberated around the room.

  “My God, this drum!” Vanessa knelt reverently before a hundred-year-old kettledrum, tracing patterns in the dust that lay on its calfskin drumhead. “What a beautiful thing. Just beautiful.”

  “I stumbled across this room the other day,” said Ben softly. “I thought you’d like it.”

  She looked back at him. It was if the tension rods around the drum’s surface were stretching the air, too. His face was taut and his eyes burned.

  “You were right,” she said. “Thank you for showing me. I want to buy this drum. I wonder if there’s a way. Who can we ask?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ben. “There are timpani sticks over here—every kind you can possibly imagine. Do you want to give it a bash?”

  “Ben! You don’t give an instrument like this a bash! You treat it like the precious thing it is.”

  But she went to select a few from the vast variety of sticks—some wrapped in felt, some in cork, others in leather, even a couple in expensive chamois.

  She bounced them off the drum, gingerly at first, then with a little more confidence.

  “Can you hear that timbre?” she called to Ben, drumming away, swapping sticks every so often. “Just sensational.”

  “Yeah,” he echoed gently. “Sensational.”

  She stopped playing and turned to face him. There was no mistaking the expression on his face. No mistaking it at all.

  She felt absurdly nervous, tapping the head of the drumstick into her palm.

  They seemed to have fallen into an extended game of Who Will Crack and Break the Silence?

  He lost.

  “When I came up for my audition,” he said, “and watched the orchestra in rehearsal, you were playing just like that.”

  “You remember?”

  “I’ll always remember. It was Borodin, Polovtsian Dances. You looked like the spirit of that music, so strong and driven and passionate. I thought, ‘Now that’s a real woman. A woman I can work with.’ I was right.”

  “Work with?” Vanessa could barely whisper the words.

  “Or…you know…” He leant forward. The dust motes in the air between them shimmered. His skin, up this close, was so young and smooth it was almost like wax. How did it feel?

  She put her hand on his cheek.

  “Not just work with. I mean…”

  He gave up the awkward romance talk and shut his eyes, nuzzling his head into her palm as if in ecstasy. Then he opened them, wide and bright, put a hand behind Vanessa’s neck and pulled her straight into a kiss.

  She wondered for a moment if she ought to put up token resistance. Maybe she should pull away, look shocked, splutter ‘Young man!’ But that would mean losing precious seconds of this glorious re-initiation into experiences she had thought never to repeat. A kiss, so simple and yet so devastating. She should have missed kissing more.

  How lovely it felt, the way a simple meeting of lips could unravel your whole body, from head to toe. His arms were that perfect blend of strong and yielding, and his kiss held just a delightful hint of shyness, uncertainty.

  This was not the arrogant, you-know-you-want-me kiss she had grown to expect from Milan, not by a long shot. Thi
s kiss begged, in the tenderest terms, ‘Please want me as much as I want you.’

  She gave him the response he needed, moulding her body against his and letting her tongue dart along his lips, seeking a deeper connection, which he was only too happy to provide.

  Then his shyness evaporated, and they were able to kiss on equal terms.

  Could it be as simple as this? Two people who liked each other and found each other attractive, enjoying a passionate kiss? Had it ever been that simple before?

  He’s too young. The thought flitted treacherously through her mind, but she banished it with her tongue’s determined machinations.

  They sank deeper into sensation, Ben finding an old piano stool to sit on while he held Vanessa on his lap. Now the separate strands of desire were curling and twining, meeting in a solid knot of need, deep in her core. Did she dare?

  She clung on to him, her fingers in his hair, willing him to move his hands away from the safety of her waist and neck.

  But he accidentally kicked over a tambourine and the jingly clatter threw them off course, the kiss breaking in a mild panic.

  “Shit! Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” She smiled so widely she thought her cheekbones might seize up. “It’s okay.”

  “Is it? I haven’t, you know, gone too far, or…?”

  “Not yet. But I hope you will.”

  “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  He bumped his forehead against hers and held her all the tighter.

  “Must admit, I feel pretty similar.”

  “I mean, you, the woman I’ve been so in awe of and so―”

  She put a finger to his lips.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “Instead of the stream-of-consciousness blether, shall we go back to my place? It’s a lot less dusty and I’ve got good coffee.”

  “Ohhh. Van. Ohhh. Really?”

  “Really.”

  Chapter Four

  The Tube ride home was both wonderful and embarrassing. Vanessa felt as if she’d walked through a warp in the space–time continuum and had found her teenage self again. He stood behind her on the down escalator, his arms clasped around her, chin resting on her head. She wanted to smirk and wink at all the grumpy-looking commuters passing her on their way up, flaunting her new status as desired goddess-woman. They had to be jealous of her. Especially the younger women. She had whipped a prime specimen of manhood from under their pert little noses. It was like winning a massive national prize, raising the FA Cup aloft.