The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  Alastair Fletcher was staring at Daphne, trying to size her up. He said tersely, ‘He’s Anthony, all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ant said, slowly, but it sounded unconvincing, as though he were lying. She held out a hand, and he took it and shook it. It was cool, soft, heavy and almost limp in his, as though she could barely be bothered to expend the effort on him.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Anthony. I say, where is she? Don’t tell me she’s done a runner again.’

  At that moment, Dinah appeared on the porch, smiling in mid-conversation at something someone had said, half turning back to the house, and then she saw Daphne and stopped short, two crystal glasses in her hand, green stems glinting in the lamplight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. Ant looked at her, surprised; he’d never heard that tone in her voice before.

  ‘Evening, darling!’ Daphne called, gaily. ‘Gosh, well, I’ve come to see the great treasure-hunter in semi-retirement, if that’s all right.’ She held up a half-empty bottle of gin. ‘Bought some Booth’s Dry with me. Thought it’d be jolly to catch up. It’s awfully boring in town at the moment. Everyone’s either orf fighting, or evacuated, or run away like cowards, or they’re bloody dead.’ Her languid gaze took in the burning oil lamps, the cake stand empty but for crumbs, the glasses knocked over to the side. ‘I obviously made the right decision, coming here, even though the trains were terrible, darling, I had to take four of them and it took all day, that’s why I’m so late. You’ve grown your hair. I liked it short, I must say.’ She looked around and laughed. ‘I say. I can stay, can’t I?’

  ‘Oh.’ Dinah put down the glasses. ‘Well – of course you can, Daphne dear. It’s not awfully convenient but—’

  ‘I had to beg a lift off an extremely suspicious chap at the station,’ said Daphne as though Dinah hadn’t spoken. ‘Looked at me as though I was a Hun.’ She glanced around the porch, bird-like eyes taking everything in. ‘Anyway, darling, I wanted to talk to you about Ishtar.’

  ‘Ishtar?’ Dinah said, frowning.

  ‘Do listen, Dinah. You understand what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dinah, nodding furiously. ‘Absolutely I do. But come inside, dear, I’ll show you your room . . .’

  Conversation between the other guests had melted away and there was silence. Daphne looked around – she was always in control, he was to realise that later. ‘Hello.’ She raised a hand to the assembled group. ‘I like your brooch,’ she said to Mrs Goudge, who’d reappeared from inside.

  ‘This is my dear friend, Daphne Hamilton, assistant curator of Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum,’ said Dinah, needlessly loudly. ‘Daphne, do come in, darling.’

  They walked inside, the stranger’s hand on the small of Dinah’s back, guiding her across the threshold of her own house, leaving Anthony alone on the porch.

  ‘Who is that, pray tell?’ came a voice at his elbow and he looked around to see Julia Fletcher doing balletic arm movements next to him.

  ‘She’s my aunt’s friend,’ he said. ‘From London.’

  He leaned over and stared round past the house down to the lane, looking at the scuffed lettering of Dinah’s birthday message in the sandy dirt by the dusk light. It was almost all gone. From inside the house he heard lowered voices, and then a soft laugh. He hesitated, not sure why he did so, and then followed them inside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  London, 2014

  One week after her niece’s reappearance Cord went back to the Royal Academy of Music, for the first time in years. Her old singing teacher, Professor Mazzi, who’d stuck by her and was one of the few who believed her voice might one day return, had invited her to take part in a panel discussion on singing careers post degree. Cord would have done anything to get out of it.

  The old broken-backed book held her captive. Autumn was in the air and every evening, despite herself, she would carefully open a page at random, and start reading Mads’s difficult, tight handwriting for the second, fourth, eighth time. She was only vaguely ever at peace when she was reading it, yet she dreaded opening the pages each time, fearing the pain it would cause to read it all again, and from the point of view of one she had loved, and hurt, so very much.

  She could not undo what had happened and she could not tell anyone what she knew. That autumn she began to dream again, to wonder, to see patterns emerging down the years, and it was terrifying, opening it all up again, because for so long she’d survived simply by closing her mind to the whole business of her parents, Ben, Mads, Hamish, her voice, the Bosky, the person she had once been. She was intelligent enough to have not repressed it utterly, but she had cut most of her past life – the part that makes us who we are – out of her present life for years. Now she could not seem to stop the two mixing together.

  The dreams were strange, sometimes horrific, dreams where she was back there again, where she saw the old witch on the beach who looked like Daddy’s aunt, where wild flowers grew up around the house and smothered it, where she conjured up ghoulish sights: her brother and her mother kissing, a shelf of water engulfing the house and the wild flowers and the beach huts, washing it all away . . . Night after night she came home and reread Mads’s words, read again the diaries of a terrified little girl and the warmth she had found with Cord’s family. And Cord began to understand. But she couldn’t go back in time and change what had happened.

  The news was all about the appearance of a terrifying group called Isis, taking over vast swathes of Syria and Northern Iraq seemingly with no opposition. There were pictures on TV bulletins of men driving into Mosul, hacking at the stones of ancient Assyrian cities nearby like Nimrud and Nineveh, winged lions they said were idolatrous, statues of kings who had lived thousands of years before Mohammed whom they said were infidels. Cord felt protective over her little angel, who she liked to imagine had been rescued from just such an Assyrian city, and had cleared a space for her on the cluttered mantelpiece. Now the angel stared down at Cord as she ate breakfast or shuffled ineffectively through papers looking for music or articles she had lain aside, or lay on the old sofa rereading the diaries late into the night. She liked the owl’s baleful stare which reminded her of Professor Mazzi, in fact. Most of all she liked the way the small square sat neatly amongst her rubbish, as though it belonged there. Just sometimes Cord found herself wondering if the angel was actually watching her, waiting for Cord to do something, trying to tell her something. And then she’d tell herself she really was going mad. I’m not going to see Mumma. I’m not going back there. Nothing’s changed, she’d tell herself, but for the first time this withdrawal and isolation felt not like a necessary position she’d had to take to save herself, save them all, but like an excuse.

  The other two members of the panel were a mousy shy young counter-tenor and a baritone who – with tours, albums, appearances on chat shows – had done very well for himself though, Cord privately thought, more with bombast than with actual talent.

  The questions ranged from the technical – how to warm up the voice when singing chamber music in a large venue – to the optimistic – when should I get a manager? – and she was pleased to be asked as many questions as the baritone, whose slightly bumptious, self-referential manner and commercial success had not particularly endeared him to the audience of serious young students arrayed in front of them. She loved their confidence. They knew they were good, the best – they wouldn’t have got to the Royal Academy of Music if they weren’t. Cord regretted many things but didn’t actually mind growing old, having grey hairs, twinges in her knee, or a lack of knowledge about pop culture because she had always been old before her time in any case. But here, in the warm wooden hall surrounded by portraits of former principals and successful old students, she felt a sudden primal, blazing envy for these young people and their unsullied careers, what was there for the taking if they so chose. What she wouldn’t give, not for their unlined skin but for the chance to go back and do it again. To choose differently . . .
to still have her voice. To open her mouth and to have back the glorious, peerless sound that once came out . . . The afternoon sun shone in shafts through the tall windows like search-lights, and she blinked, suddenly overwhelmed.

  My darling friend it’s so wonderful to see her again . . . I can live the rest of the year having had the sunshine of her company for a few weeks. In fact she asks me about me and wants to know all these things but I just want to hear her talk, or hear her sing . . .

  ‘Time for one more question,’ said Professor Mazzi, who was chairing the event. He pushed his glasses up his nose irritably. ‘Yes—’ He pointed to an eager girl with enormous round wire glasses and a large forehead, in the second row. ‘You. Oh.’ His voice changed, took on a tone of resignation. ‘Soo-Jin. What question do you have for the panel?’

  ‘My question is for Miss Wilde,’ said Soo-Jin, leaning forward. ‘Thank you very much for coming today, Miss Wilde.’

  She paused, and Cord, thinking that was the question, laughed awkwardly.

  ‘Well, it’s my pleasure, although I’m not sure that’s actually a—’

  Soo-Jin interrupted her. With devastating clarity she said, ‘I wanted to ask you what happened when you ruined your voice?’

  There was a quick in-draw of breath from someone and then a heavy silence.

  ‘Sorry, could you be more specific?’ said Cord, softly. She could feel the counter-tenor next to her stiffening and even the baritone stopped checking his phone and looked up. Professor Mazzi looked more owl-like than ever, but said nothing.

  ‘Your voice used to be perfect. We had an English Song class last month and they showed us a clip of you singing Dido when you were twenty-two and it was very inspirational.’

  Imagine being Cord and knowing what you want to do, having your life all mapped out already.

  Soo-Jin was still talking. Cord blinked again, trying to recall herself to the present.

  ‘But I heard you at a performance of the St Matthew Passion in June. Your voice doesn’t sound like that any more. It was very bad, really. You cracked on the high note and you couldn’t make the end of the run and—’

  ‘Soo-Jin, that’s enough.’ Professor Mazzi was glaring at Soo-Jin who sat, calm and mildly curious, her arms folded. ‘I do apologise. Cordelia, you don’t have to answer the question.’

  There was an awkward silence. The roar of traffic outside seemed to grow louder, like a swarm of approaching bees, and Cord wanted to press her hands to her ears. Not this, not this now, not as well as everything else. She kept nodding, idiotically, trying to buy time . . .

  ‘Anyone else want to ask something instead?’ said the baritone suddenly, for which Cord was grateful.

  But, before she could stop herself, she’d raised her hand, and greatly to her own surprise heard herself say, ‘It’s fine. Really. Listen, Soo-Jin. Do you know what the epithelium is?’ Soo-Jin shook her head. ‘No? Well, you should learn it. It’s the membrane that covers the vocal cords. I had a lesion on it, eight years ago. I had it removed and during the operation the epithelium was torn. It can happen, it’s a very delicate procedure. Now if I was a teacher, or an accountant, or anyone with a normal job it wouldn’t have mattered. My speaking voice would have sounded the same. But it tore and afterwards I discovered—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence and so she swallowed. ‘It had badly damaged my singing voice. That’s what happened.’

  There was a silence, broken only by the shuffling of feet on the varnished wooden floor. People looked down, not meeting her eye. As though she were polluted, contaminated.

  Soo-Jin, however, nodded. ‘OK. Thanks.’ She added, ‘That really sucks, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Do you know what caused the lesion in the first place?’

  Cord swallowed again. ‘I – I noticed it one day.’

  ‘How come?’

  I loved Cord more than any of them. When I was scared at night she used to get into bed with me and hug me and our toes would touch.

  She looked down at her wet palms, smearing the wooden table, her shaking hands, and folded them in her lap. ‘I shouted at someone. It was a bad day.’ She looked up but they stared blankly back at her, embarrassed. ‘I had the nodes on the cords already but they weren’t that big. Nevertheless, I’d seen a specialist, and I was considering the operation. They weren’t sure I needed it, that the risk was too great. But I was very upset and I—’ She broke off, unable to go on.

  ‘So you’re saying we mustn’t shout at people, that’s correct?’

  Someone gave a nervous titter. Cord hunched her shoulders almost up to her ears.

  ‘I had a row with my dad.’ She felt her throat swell, and tears came to her eyes. ‘I found out something and I was devastated and I lost control. Anyway, the reason doesn’t matter – to you. But that’s what happened.’

  She felt lighter, suddenly. She had said all this out loud.

  ‘What bad luck,’ the baritone said quietly in her ear and he patted her arm. ‘You poor sod.’

  Bad luck. She had never been able to see it other than as utterly bound up in her own fortunes, some retribution, some part of the myth of her family. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was just that: bad luck? She had damaged her voice, she had had an operation, the operation hadn’t worked, and it was bad luck. Nothing more.

  She smiled at Soo-Jin, who was writing furiously in a notebook, and let her shoulders drop. How strange, she found herself thinking. They asked me and I told them the truth. And it’s OK.

  Cord’s always been so full of purpose. I find that very comforting, someone who always knows what to do. She always has.

  She didn’t want to get on the tube: it was a beautiful day. Cord lingered in the hall after the panel was over, not wanting to get caught up with the dispersing students. Eventually she was just leaving, the heavy door she remembered so well swinging hard behind her, when she heard a voice calling her. She kept her head down and carried on walking up to York Gate and into the park, over the bridge underneath which the sludgy green water mooched lazily along and the trees were still, the sky a piercing autumnal blue.

  Suddenly a moped screeched to a halt just in front of her and Professor Mazzi, removing his helmet, said crossly, ‘I nearly got killed crossing the road. What a way to die. Cordelia, don’t you listen? I was calling your name. So many times.’

  ‘I thought you were a student wanting to ask difficult questions.’ Cord took his helmet, smiling. ‘I’m so sorry, Professor. How can I help you?’

  ‘By listening, as before, as I used to beg you to, when you were a young girl and so sure of yourself that you never listened, even then, always with your opinions,’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘“Here, and there, I sing like this, I walk like this.”’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘Maybe we sit down here, if you have a minute?’ He gestured to a bench past the bridge and flicked out the moped’s kickstand.

  ‘Oh – OK.’ Cord looked at her watch.

  ‘What?’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘You are busy? You have somewhere to go, a new concert, an interview? No. You are going home to wallow in the mire as the poem says.’

  ‘I’m teaching a class later,’ Cord lied.

  ‘Don’t tell untruths to me. Now, listen, please. I am a patron of Goldsmith’s Choral Union. They have commissioned a new work for next summer from Alfred Gatek; you know him? He is a brilliant young composer.’ Cord nodded. ‘They are performing it at the Royal Festival Hall. It will be a grand event. The piece is called Nineveh.’

  ‘Nineveh?’

  ‘Yes, you have heard about it?’

  ‘No . . .’ Cord shook her head. ‘My great-great-aunt – oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I have suggested you as the mezzo. I said I would ask you about it.’

  ‘Me? No,’ said Cord. She put her hand on the professor’s arm. ‘Professor Mazzi, you’re very kind, but my voice—’ She gave a bittersweet smile. ‘That girl in the class, she was right. My voice is ruined.’
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  ‘This is it, you see, you are wrong. You recovered badly from the operation.’

  ‘No—’ Cord shook her head. ‘It was torn, Professor Mazzi, they couldn’t fix it. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember, of course I remember, I remember that one of my best – no, my best student – I remember that her voice was ruined,’ said Professor Mazzi, furiously. ‘Stupido. È molto incredible – Chiedere questa domanda. Allora, una donna che . . . Incredible . . .? Certo, certo . . . Bah.’

  He thumped the bench angrily. ‘All right then,’ said Cord, mildly. She just wanted to get away, really, to be back at home, reading the diary again.

  ‘You don’t have any interest in this, what I say? You don’t care! You are single-minded. You make up your decision and – è finito.’ He sliced both hands through the air. ‘Like that poor boy you broke your heart over.’

  ‘I didn’t break my heart over him, Professor Mazzi,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘We split up. He went abroad . . . It was for the best.’

  ‘No, no, cara mia.’ The professor stared at her. ‘I remember it differently, then.’

  She closed her eyes briefly, turned away. But he went on.

  ‘I always took such an interest in you. From the moment I see you and I see – aha, this girl is Sir Anthony Wilde’s daughter. So she is born with this gift of her father, perhaps. I saw him in Macbeth when I come to live in Londra, in nineteen seventy-seven, and such art. Such mastery of art. And then I meet you and it is the same. The dedication, the control of the voice, it was perfection.’

  Cord waggled her jaw from side to side.

  ‘You don’t want to hear this, you pretend to not listen. But I remember. There was the concert at the end of the year and Sir Bryan Linton, he pick you for the solo recital. And as we are waiting backstage, you remember what you said to me?’

  Cord shook her head.

  ‘You said, “Should I be nervous? Because I am not. I want to sing to them.” Do you understand? It was the most important performance, everyone out there who could shape your career and you knew . . .’ He pointed his finger at her. ‘You knew how good you were, carissima.’