by Angela Huth
The barn itself was also appropriate to Grant’s proportions. Moving across its considerable width, beneath its high vaulted ceiling, he gave the impression of being a man of normal height. William and Rufus and Andrew (no, no longer Andrew, alas) were all dwarfed by the building, as are men in a cathedral. Behind Grant’s back the others kept up a barrage of mild complaint about his poor housekeeping–the cold, the chipped paint, the discomfort, the cracked china and barren fridge. They derided his general lack of appreciation of the barn’s potential, which needed–as they often told him–a woman’s touch. But they also greatly appreciated the space the barn afforded them to rehearse. Without it, their lives would have been far more complicated and its deficiencies, which by now they had grown used to, were of less importance than its advantages.
William let himself in. Grant had cleared a space at the chaotic table to mark a score.
‘See I’m the first,’ said William.
‘Surprise, surprise.’ (William was always the first.) ‘Rufus has just rung from some garage.’
‘What is it this time?’
‘The fan belt. Says it’ll be OK but he’ll be fifteen minutes late.’
‘Ah.’
Rufus’s Morgan was responsible for several late arrivals a week. But such was his devotion to his ailing car that consideration for his fellow players came second to his determination not to swap it for something more reliable. He and his violin (his wife refused ever to travel in the car) set out on every journey knowing there was a high chance of trouble before reaching their destination, but were never deterred. The Morgan was the excitement in Rufus’s life which, he could not deny himself. The others, he was glad to say, had come to understand this, and had learnt to accommodate his erratic timing. They had persuaded Rufus always to allow himself an hour in hand when travelling to a concert, and on icy days to go by train or get a lift from one of the others. This alleviated, minimally, the sense of general anxiety on his behalf. As for rehearsals–if ten o’clock was decided upon it was understood that, depending on the Morgan’s troubles, ten thirty, or even eleven, would be the actual starting time.
William wandered to the far end of the barn where four music stands were placed in a semi-circle round the stove. (The other players guessed that Grant never approached that end of the barn except at rehearsal time. His entire kingdom seemed to centre round the large cluttered table.) An autumn sun through the barn’s tall windows lit up their silvery aluminium frames: they glittered like a small gathering of ghostly trees, thought William. He sat in his usual chair–the chairs, too, were never moved–and took his music from its case. This he arranged lovingly on the stand, bending back the bottom corners, which had been bent a thousand times before, for easy turning. Again, glancing at his knees, he thought how fine were his new trousers.
‘The girl,’ said Grant. Thought she was pretty good, first time out.’
‘Not bad at all.’
‘She’ll shape up quickly’
‘Poor old Andrew. Yorkshire.’
‘She said she knows the Schubert pretty well, but I daresay we ought to run through it before we get on to the rest.’
‘Daresay we better.’
From time to time William reflected on the nature of his cellist -the puzzle being why he was still adamantly a bachelor. William considered Grant eligible in the conventional sense. He was the owner of a barn and a large (if elderly) car. He was talented, hard working, genial, apparently good looking. Why had he never found, in all the girls who pursued him, one with whom the idea of permanency appealed? Sometimes William would worry about his friend’s old age. Grant was in his mid-thirties–surely ripe for settling down, having children? He professed a love of children. ‘One day’ he sometimes said.
Once William had questioned one of Grant’s girlfriends about his ubiquitous appeal. She had been puzzled that William could not see it. ‘He makes me laugh–wonderful mimic, does a brilliant William Handle–and he listens. I mean really listens. Never pretends. He’s rather wise, too.’ William had always been aware of Grant’s talent as a raconteur–he had entertained the other players on many an evening in a hotel bar far from home–although his ‘brilliant Handle’ imitation was news, and William had less evidence than the girl of Grant’s impressive listening. He so often had his head in a thriller when he was not studying a score, or doing The Times crossword (at which he was so good the others had given up competing). But certainly when Bonnie had been enthusing about some exotic Mexican stew, Grant had been listening very hard. Perhaps when it came to his fellow players his sympathetic bending of an ear was not much in evidence simply because, after so many years of habitual short-hand speaking, William, Rufus and Andrew did not furnish him with anything very compelling to listen to.
Rufus came through the door then, smiling. Small triumphs concerning his car always put him in a good mood.
‘Sorry, gentlemen, sorry,’ he said, ‘but what a piece of luck. Fan belt gave up the ghost right beside a repair garage where they actually managed to deal with it straight away. Anyhow, coffee on, Grant? I’m cold.’
‘Help yourself. Kettle’s not long boiled.’
Rufus, on his way to the stove, put half a packet of digestive biscuits on Grant’s table.
‘Contribution,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Grant did not look up from the score to see the object of his gratitude. He knew quite well if it was from Rufus it would be half a packet of something–the other half having been eaten in the car to keep out the cold. From William it would be slabs of chocolate. Andrew used sometimes to bring his wife’s homemade bread and pâté to raise the standard of the average rehearsal lunch–they would miss that. But whatever the offering, Grant was never shamed into producing anything beyond instant coffee for the all-important elevenses.
‘The girl, Bonnie, she was rather good, wasn’t she?’ said Rufus. ‘I’ve been thinking about her. Potential, I thought.’
William, licking his finger to ease the bending of the fragile pages, cast him a look. Rufus was the oldest–just - of the players. Lately he had had trouble with his bones. His back had begun to curve, his shoulders to hunch.
‘She said she’d be here on time. I sent her a map,’ said Grant.
William’s look now swung in Grant’s direction. To have sent her a map meant he must have spoken to her, arranged to fax it to her from some shop–naturally the barn did not run to a fax machine. (A telephone had only been installed, at the others’ insistence, ten years ago.) A picture came to William’s mind: Grant, fax in hand, hurrying down Aylesbury High Street. Normally, Grant never hurried–and indeed perhaps he hadn’t hurried with the fax. Perhaps that was an inaccurate figment of William’s imagination, this unusual morning. All the same, it was a faintly troubling thought.
Ten minutes later the three men were seated in their usual places, mugs of instant coffee on the floor beside them, tuning up. Notes adjusted to perfection, they put their instruments down again. Looked about them.
‘Wonder what we should do,’ said Grant, dully.
‘Plainly your map wasn’t up to scratch.’
Grant ignored this. Over the years it had become an accepted practice to pay no attention to pointless remarks that each one of them made from time to time.
‘Expect she’ll turn up,’ said William. His heels were quietly drumming on the floor. ‘Last thing she said to me was she’d be here on time, punctual by nature, not to worry’ William imparted this information with another stern look at Grant. The cellist should know that he was not the only one to have been talking to Bonnie. They sat in silence, then. Waiting.
Bonnie arrived at five past eleven. She knocked on the door but ran in before Grant had time to open it–trailing a backwash of cold air, cheeks the colour of cranberries, carrying a transparent bag of fudge. William observed that Grant stopped by the table, put a hand on its surface as if to steady himself. William and Rufus rose to their feet, bows and violins dithering in the air. William, co
nfused, looked down at his music. The slight lowering of his head, he realised, Bonnie might take for a kind of minor bow, the sort of thing that would be expected of him in the unlikely event of his being knighted for his contribution to the musical world. The thought further confused him. But Bonnie was too caught up in her apologies to misinterpret William’s almost invisible gesture, or the sudden rush of russet blood to Rufus’s normally pale cheek.
‘So, so sorry,’ she was saying. ‘Everything went wrong. Battery flat, had to get to the station, would have missed the train if I’d stopped to ring you’ - here she looked definitely at Grant - ‘then the taxi got lost getting here … I’m so, so sorry.’
Unaccustomed to such a profusion of apologies, each of the players found himself uneasy. As they struggled for words to assure her she had in no way inconvenienced their morning, they found their eyes following the airborne arcs of her hand in which she clutched the bag of fudge tied with blue ribbon.
‘Peace offering,’ said Bonnie. ‘Please accept. Home-made.’
William saw the sudden jut of Rufus’s jaw–a defensive movement he sometimes made if he felt himself to be outdone. Bonnie’s fudge had put his own contribution in the shade.
‘Thanks very much,’ said Grant. ‘That’ll be nice with our lunch break. So sorry about your car–Rufus often has the same sort of trouble with his. Now, if you don’t mind, I think perhaps we should make a start …’
Grant, as host in his own barn, sometimes acted as if he was leader of the players, too. William understood this, and had never minded. (Once they arrived at a concert hall Grant made up for his homeground bossiness by remaining absolutely silent on all matters except for the worry of his chair.) But today William cursed himself. He should have been quicker, come up with a command as soon as the girl had stopped twirling her wretched fudge in the air. She ought to be in no doubt, right from the start, who was in charge. Should her loyalties become divided, that could be fatal.
‘Hear, hear.’ William’s agreement with Grant was so quiet he doubted Bonnie heard. She came bounding across, light on her feet for one of so rounded a figure. Reaching William, she gave a light tap to his knee, touching the soft pile of the new corduroy. She smiled at him alone.
‘You remind me of my dad,’ she said. ‘The trousers.’
Moments later William managed to give the signal to start playing. They were off: the Schubert, for Bonnie’s sake. He closed his eyes against motes of dust that dithered on a sunbeam. Also, he felt it safer not to be able to see the faint crease of flesh round Bonnie’s wrist, the bounce of her fringe as her head moved and the cushion of her thigh beneath her long wool skirt. Soon, he was lost in the music.
Looking back to that autumn day of the rehearsal in the barn with Bonnie Morse, William remembered only a few things, but they were sharp-edged. He could not recollect, after the Schubert, what they played, only that they had played with more vigour than usual. Then, at the lunch break, the tension that Bonnie had caused earlier seemed to have dissolved. Her willingness to do whatever was suggested to improve a bar, or a passage, had impressed them all. She was plainly a stickler for detail, and her touch had a quality they all recognised. None of them went so far as to give her a word of praise (each one planned to do this privately, later). But if she had not been so impressive the atmosphere, when finally they put down their instruments, would have been very different.
While they ate their packed lunches, Grant turned on the portable radio so that they could indulge in their customary scoffing at the programme that played lunchtime classical choices. They had all sent in dozens of requests, none of which was ever granted, being too esoteric, presumably, for the average lunchtime listener. William remembered Bonnie laughing as the three men sneered at the Strauss waltz that thumped about them.
‘Did you know,’ said William, turning to Bonnie, ‘that the Viennese waltzes release a peculiar chemical in the stomach? We’re all made queasy.’
‘William has his theories,’ explained Grant.
Bonnie confessed that she had once sent in a request and it had been played.
‘Something so horribly popular they would never have turned it down,’ she said. ‘Something that I love, as a matter of fact. But I shan’t ever tell you what it was.’
‘Liebestraum,’ said Grant.
‘The Gold and Silver Waltz,’ said Rufus.
Bonnie shook her head at both of them. William, not wanting to be wrong too, said nothing. Bonnie swung her ankle as she ate an untidy tomato sandwich, enjoying their curiosity. Lunch breaks were never that merry in Andrew’s day, William reflected. Then, the four male players read their papers and did not bother to speak more than necessary.
Most unusual of all, that day, was Grant’s producing a bottle of chilled wine (he normally only ran to this extravagance at Christmas). After a couple of glasses, the wide light of the barn suddenly dimmed–it must have been mid-afternoon. William remembered that very clearly, the way the light gave a seriousness to Bonnie’s tilted chin resting on her viola. Then, there was the confusion of setting off for Northampton. William offered Bonnie a lift in his car. But she had already agreed to go with Grant.
‘Thanks very much all the same, William. Have another piece of fudge, why don’t you?’
When had Grant had the chance to ask her? They had all been together all the time. Except for the moment when Grant had taken the wine from the fridge and Bonnie, joining him at the kitchen end of the barn to be helpful, had reached for glasses from the shelf. Grant must have acted with a speed that William would never have guessed was within his capability. Lust the spur, he thought, angrily shutting his violin case. His own journey to Northampton was more than usually hazardous as he raged against Grant’s perfectly reasonable invitation to Bonnie–after all, he was much closer to her age than either William or Rufus–and her friendly refusal, offered with a careless shrug as if it was not the slightest matter who drove her to Northampton. What was it that had so tilted the day to an angle he did not recognise, and left him in a perturbed state? William could not answer his own questions. When he arrived at the hall he sat in his parked car for a while, trying to calm himself before he faced the others.
Sometimes, when William was out and she was quite sure he would not be back for a long time, Grace would go to the upright piano in the dining room and play. The day of the Northampton concert she was able to get down to her book earlier than usual, because Lucien, having been turned away due to William’s presence downstairs in the morning, did not return. Grace was relieved. He put a kind of pressure on the days that so often made her uneasy. Though when it came to the weighing up she knew she would miss the perverse frisson if he never came again.
So often, since he had first come round to breakfast, Grace pondered on why it was Lucien had become such an important part of her life. Sometimes it occurred to her he represented qualities she would have appreciated in a son–a man with the vigour and charm that Jack had always lacked. Sometimes she thought he was the lover she had never had in her youth: wild, unpredictable, not to be relied on, but the kind of love-object who keeps the adrenalin of hope aflame. Dear William had never been like that: solid, reliable, kindly, he belonged to the school of understated romance in which silent appreciation replaces surprise roses -indeed, surprises of any kind. Then, Lucien was both alarming and fascinating in equal measure–the first man in Grace’s life ever either to fascinate by rough ways, or alarm. He flirted with her in that safe way which those of different generations sometimes adopt–just enough to make her think what might have been in another time, another place. He flattered her, too, which Grace would have scorned had she not detected beneath the flattery a real admiration. And in her restricted, quiet, conventional life, in which her own artistic efforts brought little satisfaction, and earned scant interest from William, Lucien represented a sympathetic soul to whom, Grace liked to think, she was the sort of mother he would have loved, but never had. The unease he caused her was mostly fa
r outweighed by the pleasure. For in his presence (and this was perhaps the most crucial reason for her attachment) Grace experienced the curious feeling that life had speeded up. ‘It’s all happening,’ Lucien would sometimes say, in the stillness of the kitchen. Although absolutely nothing was taking place, Grace believed Lucien was the centre of unimaginable events beyond her experience, which gave her a vicarious thrill. So for all their actual lack of action, his visits were a kind of magic carpet upon which Grace, for an hour or so, could take leave of her own mundane life.
She began to play a Liszt Consolation. Liszt was a composer of whom William–like Brahms and Schumann, he was glad to note -did not approve. ‘All right for lightweight fireworks,’ he would say, ‘a popstar of his age, nothing very serious.’ But Grace loved his music, and played it secretly. Lulled by the Consolation, she moved her stiff fingers into the first watery bars of Un Sospiro. As she played, the smells of the room came powerfully to her: pepper, damp carpet, the leaden smell of old gravy which had infiltrated walls and curtains. Often she wished that, like William, she had a music room of her own.
A sudden awareness of a presence in the room made her break off. She swivelled round on the music stool, whose split leather seat crackled beneath her. It was Lucien. He sat on the polished table swinging his legs. Grinning. Very unusual. Their meetings nearly always began with some burst of rage on his part.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Few minutes.’
‘You’ve never come before in the afternoon.’
‘Like I told you, I can surprise. Do you mind?’
Grace thought for a moment. Her afternoon at the piano was now blasted.
‘No,’ she said.
‘I didn’t know you could play’
‘I can’t, really. Any more. I just stumble through a few old-remembered pieces.’