by Adam Thorpe
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Milly had said. ‘She just loves to hear the music wafting over the lake. It might be her last year.’
‘You call it music? It’s just a way for English Heritage to fill the marquees with fat business cats.’
‘People love it,’ Milly said. ‘They love a good tune. It’s always seething.’
‘There are good tunes in Satie and Sibelius and Mahler and Janáek and Schumann and Britten and Bartók. Off the top of my head. Why do we have to endure crap, Mill?’
There’d been no choice but to opt for the Classic FM Live Opera Gala, which consisted of the usual suspects: Verdi’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’, Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma’ and Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. It did not surprise Jack one bit that local residents complained about the noise.
He led Marjorie to her deckchair close to the water and warned her about the fireworks.
‘I love fireworks,’ she said.
‘She is fireworks,’ Milly’s father cried, to Jack’s embarrassment. In fact, everyone was shouting, he realised. Braying, was the word, as they opened their cool boxes and popped their tarry New World wine.
‘I certainly used to be, didn’t I?’
‘You did! My God, you did!’
‘Our hamper’s being admired by the proles,’ Milly whispered into Jack’s ear, only half ironically.
She lifted the lid and pulled out the champagne, chilled from the fridge but already too warm, and Jack opened it, spraying his groin by mistake. It was always the same menu: expired English delicacies out of a picnic in some forgotten Edwardian novel, complete with gingham napkins and a soft plaid blanket. The game pie had shot in it, as usual, which his father-in-law only warned him about too late, after it had crunched against a back filling. The garden gooseberries had somehow got squashed yet again. The music was rousingly painful, the Open Bowl disgorging its sounds over the lake and lawns like a cartoon mouth with its tonsils wobbling, although Jack had discreetly inserted his custom-made, moulded ear protectors. Everyone else was happy, very happy.
Last year Jack had gone back at midnight to search for his jacket, which he’d left hanging on a tree, and was amazed to see the lawns covered in a sea of bottles, paper napkins and plastic cups. With the concert still ringing in his ears, it was (at least symbolically, because his parents were very neat) like everything he had left behind in Hayes: now it was catching up with him again, and instead of meeting it halfway, like certain other composers, he was retreating into a corner where a tiny number of people spoke among themselves.
‘They are bashing it out, aren’t they?’ shouted Milly’s mother.
‘I think it’s damn marvellous,’ shouted Milly’s father.
‘I didn’t say it wasn’t!’
Milly’s mother had ridden to hounds until right up to her operation. Now, of course, hunting was banned, or supposedly so: no one would take a blind bit of notice, he’d been told. Jack had watched the red-coated riders set off from the Hall and found it surprisingly beautiful and stirring, although he had never ridden a horse in his life. But when the hunters had come back with a great clatter for a cup of tea, he had found them both vain and dull. One of them, a local farmer, believed that the movement against hunting was led by ‘Jews’ and ‘darkies’.
‘He was just talking for effect,’ Milly informed Jack, afterwards. ‘He’s really very sweet. He was terribly hit by foot-and-mouth.’
‘Didn’t show.’
The fireworks flashed, thumped and fizzed after the strains of the Wagner had died. It had started to rain very slightly. Jack had a childish admiration for fireworks, although a Catherine wheel had spun off its nail when he was four and singed his hair.
‘Victory for the people,’ he murmured, watching a green, intense light bloom into fiery explosions that turned a deep blue, dying in long weeping streaks like a psychotic’s willow.
As they were packing up, Howard Davenport appeared, dressed all in black with a pink nosegay. Howard adored the Kenwood concerts, even though he was a cultural snob. Jack wondered whether it was another gay fixture, like screenings of Lawrence of Arabia or royal outings by the Queen.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ Howard beamed.
‘I’m surprised to see myself here, too,’ said Jack.
‘Isn’t it gorgeously, outrageously naff?’
‘Simply tons of people,’ Milly said, folding up the plaid blanket. ‘This is damp, Mummy.’
‘Why are you in black?’ Marjorie querulously demanded.
‘Shows up the grease less,’ Howard replied. He showed the big round helmet in his bag.
Jack introduced his in-laws properly and they set off back to the house together along the wooded paths; although Howard had another pressing engagement, his motorbike was parked in Tanza Road.
‘I’m madly in love again,’ he said to Jack, opening his arms wide.
‘Who’s the lucky gal?’ Milly’s father asked, having drunk too much champagne.
‘Marcus,’ Howard replied. ‘He’s twenty-six and is writing a biography of Cecil Stephenson.’
Milly’s father said, ‘I don’t mind a damn, actually, as long as you keep it to yourself.’
He stumbled slightly on a tree root and Marjorie held his arm and tutted and urged him on, holding up her long dress with her other hand.
‘I’ve known plenty of poofs in my day,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about us.’
‘I’ll try not to, Lady du Crane,’ said Howard.
Jack winced. Howard loved titles. No one admitted they had never heard of Cecil Stephenson. Jack steered him off love by asking him about his work.
‘The quartet’s drowning in work. Off to Japan next week.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Exhausting, but one can’t exactly skive from a quartet. I’m teaching, too, you know.’
‘I thought you hated teaching.’
‘Very few of us are wedded to a living and breathing cash machine.’
‘Thanks, Howard,’ said Milly.
‘Does he mean you, poppet?’ asked Milly’s father.
‘No, Daddy,’ said Milly. ‘He means a hole in the wall.’
Jack was annoyed that his in-laws were listening in, it didn’t seem right. Marjorie was wheezing and they slowed down for her on the main path, to her surprise.
‘You are slow, you lot,’ she cried into the darkness.
‘By the way,’ said Howard, as they were parting in front of the house. ‘I’ve got a prodigy.’
‘Is it painful?’ asked Jack, who was too tired to make better repartee.
‘Astonishing. He’s five years old.’
‘Violin?’
‘Viola, would you believe. Learns piano, too. But viola’s his first love. His mother’s broke, some sort of refugee, but sacrifices everything for her son. Aren’t I lucky?’
‘Poor little mite, ending up with you as a teacher.’
‘Just what I say. She came to one of my concerts and then found me on the web. She’s a hotel cleaner and rents this grotty little cupboard with cockroaches on the North Circular. I charge half price.’
The others had already disappeared into the house. The rain was pleasant, clearing the night air. Jack could smell the Heath’s vegetation on the other side of the road, sweet and luxuriant.
‘The thing is,’ said Howard, ‘you were a prodigy, weren’t you? And rather poor.’
‘We weren’t exactly poor, Howard.’
‘Working class, then.’
‘We lived on a brand-new housing estate with a garden front and back in Hayes. Dad worked in the EMI factory. Electronics. Skilled job. If we were working class, no one told me.’
‘Were you otherwise completely normal?’
‘Look at me. Aren’t I normal?’
‘Too normal.’
‘Exactly.’
‘This little fellow, he’s called Jaan. From, hang on, Estonia. I always want to say Eritrea.’
‘I spent three
weeks in Estonia,’ said Jack, ‘a few years ago.’
‘Did you? So you did.’
‘I liked it very much.’
‘In three months he’s done what I did in three years, almost. And I started at ten. I’ve never met a kid that young who specifically prefers the viola to the violin.’
‘Great. Don’t spoil him.’
‘He’s endowed. I like that word, endowed. His mother used it. Her English is terribly good but not, thank God, perfect. It is incredible, when you see the real thing. Did I tell you Marcus is writing a biography of Cecil Stephenson?’
‘You did.’
Afterwards, Jack wondered why Howard had told him about the boy. Deep down, Howard lacked self-confidence. He was almost frightened of what he was taking on with the boy, it challenged his stoical cynicism.
The conversation had made Jack think back to Estonia. He’d rather not have thought about it, not right now, because deep down he believed that what had happened to him out there was in some way responsible for Milly not being able to have children. And Milly not being able to have children was in some way connected to his own inability to concentrate on his work, to produce not much more, in the last six years, than five-finger exercises. He tacitly ignored the obvious and more dreadful reason, which was to do with a banal and silly accident.
On top of the hot blast of the Kenwood concert, it was enough to make him fairly morose over the nightcap in the sitting room. Unfortunately, their neighbour had joined them. He was a recent divorcee-to-be called Edward Cochrane, a financial consultant in his late forties who seemed to have a rebound crush on Milly. He had been to a Kenwood concert earlier in the season: Jools Holland playing R & B.
‘Do cheer up, ducks,’ Milly said.
‘I’ll bet you hated the music, Jack,’ said her mother.
This was the first time anyone had mentioned the concert.
‘You could be right there, Marjorie.’
‘At least it communicates,’ said Edward Cochrane. ‘Witness all those happy faces.’
‘A car horn communicates, Edward.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Alas, I do.’
Milly suggested they hit the sack.
‘It’s just one big corporate hospitality package,’ said Jack. ‘It stinks.’
‘Just because they don’t play your works,’ Edward simpered.
‘Oh fuck off.’
‘Jack, stop it,’ said Milly.
‘We don’t mind,’ said Marjorie. Milly’s father mumbled in his sleep as if in approval. He’d dropped off on the wicker chair and was straining it noisily with his lolling weight. ‘God, you should hear the staff sometimes.’
Edward, whose powder-blue summer blazer was, as usual, powdered in turn with dandruff, scratched his thinning hair. ‘I really ought to leg it. I’m up at six tomorrow. Off to Glasgow.’
‘Howard seemed on good form,’ said Milly.
‘He’s got a prodigy,’ said Jack, leaning his elbows on his knees. ‘Five years old.’
‘Is this the Howard whom we met?’ said Marjorie, yawning. ‘The poof?’ Her fingers looked suddenly old and brittle under the lamp at her side.
‘From Estonia,’ added Jack. ‘He’s called Jaan.’
‘The man seemed terribly English,’ said Marjorie.
‘I mean the boy. The boy’s from Estonia.’
‘Terrifically go-ahead,’ said Edward.
‘The boy?’
‘Estonia,’ Edward laughed.
‘Jack used to be terribly keen on Arvo Pärt,’ Milly explained.
‘I still am.’
‘Not quite so much,’ said Milly, who knew every nuance of her husband’s creative development up to a certain level. It often surprised him.
‘They’re pretty dynamic,’ Edward went on. ‘The most successful of all the Baltic States.’ He sipped his cognac. He had heavy eye bags that came and went. ‘The whole bloody country’s one big dot-com.’
‘I’ll bet it is,’ said Marjorie, as if the fact was suspect.
‘I’ve been there,’ said Jack, looking at Edward with undisguised distaste.
‘So have I,’ said Edward, unexpectedly. He smiled and winked, waiting for the effect. ‘Bloody finest stag night ever in the history of the world.’
‘You got drunk,’ Jack stated, wanting to throw him out of the house.
‘We got very … very … very drunk,’ Edward said, leaning forward in emphasis, his public-school drawl coming to the fore. ‘I’m afraid to say we were a little bit under the influence, yes. A little bit Brahms and Liszt, yes.’
‘What’s Liszt got to do with it?’ asked Marjorie.
‘Rhyming slang, Mummy.’
‘Listing to starboard,’ Edward chortled, making the easy chair tip.
‘I’ll bet Johnny Foreigner appreciated it,’ Jack said, drily.
‘I’ll have you know, Jack, that the Estonians make an absolute killing out of us going over there and getting utterly rat-arsed. Hard cash. Hard euros.’ Edward’s expression had turned oddly aggressive, his eyes glittering nastily.
‘Tough way to make a living,’ Jack said, turning his head away from his neighbour. He was amazed at his own internal rage. It affected the tenor of his voice. One was supposed to feel sorry for Edward Cochrane – but Jack couldn’t blame Lilian (the wife) one bit for scarpering, taking the kids with her.
‘By the way,’ said Marjorie, ‘who was your bearded friend’s lover writing a book about?’
‘Cecil Stephenson,’ said Jack.
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ said Jack.
‘Many tougher ways that I can think of,’ Edward said, curling his upper lip.
‘Tougher but with a bit of dignity to them,’ Jack rejoined, scowling at him.
‘Beddy-byes,’ said Milly, brightly, standing up. ‘Come on, Daddy.’
‘Just when it was getting interesting,’ said Edward, who was watching Milly carefully as she leaned over her father. Her dress was fashionably low cut, and her breasts were clear almost to the nipple from Jack’s and Edward’s angle.
‘Come on, Daddy-o.’
‘He’s hopeless, isn’t he?’ laughed Marjorie, white with age and exhaustion.
The Venezualan girl, Marita, came in at 1 a.m., while they were heading for bed. She brought with her a strong smell of cigarettes and perfume and drink. She slept in what would have been the au pair’s room on the top floor, if they’d had kids. Jack had his study under the eaves, with a view over the Heath, and Marita’s music would sometimes tremble his floorboards even though it was never very loud. Marita, despite her Latin bonhomie and sweetness and perfect teeth, could irritate Jack. Her English was reasonably fluent, but very hard to understand. Her role was not quite defined, or was too diffuse: she was a cleaner, a house-sitter, an occasional teacher of Spanish to Milly, and sometimes cooked excellent meals. She waited on table when they had more than six or seven guests. She was, finally (although only in Jack’s head), a nanny to the ghosts of the children they could not have, and to the ghost of the child they had lost, lost like a cricket ball in the long grass right at the end of the innings.
It had happened like this.
Twenty-nine weeks after Jack had returned from Estonia (they no longer calculated in months), Milly was magnificently pregnant. She carried it well.
So well that they had managed to move from Richmond to Hampstead, a feat eased by the prospect of looking out on trees and fields. There’d been one house for sale by the Heath, on Willow Road, absurdly expensive, which they had spotted quite by chance while visiting friends up there. Jack and Milly had constructed for themselves a future that owed more to Kate Greenaway illustrations than gritty reality. Milly had spent an entire morning sitting on the grass verge by the side of the road, checking out the weight of traffic, the noise. It was, she said, surprisingly light. The birds were louder.
‘As long as they watch the road, our kids can go
straight out on to the Heath and run about and play,’ she said. ‘It’ll be as good as the country.’
‘What about nasty blokes in raincoats?’
‘Oh, Jack. You always see the negative side.’
‘There was that case last week, Mill. In Richmond Park.’
‘I could be squashed by a bus tomorrow, sweets.’
The Richmond house sold like a shot for a bloated price they could hardly believe, but there was a paper delay and they moved in eleven weeks before she was due. The place had been owned by a very old and frail spinster with twelve cats, who told them she had been patted on the head by Sir Edward Elgar in Netherhall Gardens in 1919. She assumed from the look and from the ‘feel’ of them that they would leave everything intact, which is why she was relinquishing her childhood home to them and to no one else for such a reasonable price (it was, in fact, horribly overvalued).
‘I don’t blame you,’ Milly had said, dazzling the old dear with her smile. ‘It’s absolutely adorable.’
‘You won’t touch a thing, will you? It’s my life, you see. My whole life.’
She moved out and the Middletons moved in and the builders got going within a fortnight. Jack and Milly had decided to gut the place from top to toe: it was seamed with dirt and neglect and overrun by mice, with a lingering sharpness of cats. No carpet had been changed since the Great War. There was rot in some of the beams and the kitchen ceiling had collapsed in a shower of laths and plaster when a hefty builder had jumped off his stepladder in the room above. The wallpaper was stained with damp and (in the main bedroom) with mysterious, sepiared splashes. Jack found a cat’s skeleton in the attic, lying in a perfect little mound of its own decay. Milly was not yet actually a director of Greenleaves Designs but she had all the contacts necessary to make the house as environmentally responsible and low toxic as was possible in London, although the projected composting toilets proved impracticable. To Jack’s dismay, no baths were to be installed, and the showers were the type that piddled compared to the fierce jets in the Richmond house.
When the really heavy work got going, and the house was a pillar of dust, they took a fortnight’s holiday in Umbria. After that, it was a matter of living in whichever half of the house was not being worked on, sealed off as best they could from the noise and the dirt. Marjorie du Crane thought they were mad. Jack thought he would go mad. Milly fretted about the effect of the vibrations on the baby: she was sure the hammer-drilling would be sending ripples through the womb fluid. It was a trying time.