by Angela Huth
‘I don’t know what to say’ William said.
‘How about trying very hard not to lose them this year?’ Grace smiled.
‘I’ll try my hardest. They’re wickedly extravagant, beautiful. Thank you, my Ace.’ He closed the box and put it in the pocket of his corduroy trousers.
Grace began to clear the table. William hurried upstairs to his room, rang his agent.
When discussions of future concerts were over–it was a very long call, Stephen was a ponderous man who liked to embellish the most trivial decision with clusters of unnecessary doubts–William dialled Bonnie’s number, giving himself no time to cogitate on the wisdom of this move. She answered at once.
‘Happy birthday’ she said. How did she know? ‘Grant told me.’
‘Thanks very much.’ William gave a small laugh. ‘As a matter of fact I was ringing you …’ Why was he ringing? ‘Just to make sure you got back all right. Not that safe, these days, unfortunately, young women travelling alone at night.’
Bonnie’s turn to laugh.
‘If anyone attacked me,’ she said, ‘they’d get a surprise. I’m trained in martial arts, self-defence. I could throw you over in a flash.’ William closed his eyes, saw the enchanting picture of himself plucked up by Bonnie’s strong arms. He pictured himself thrown like an unresisting scarf into the air (more Isadora Duncan than martial arts) and then caught against her bosom. ‘I could even manage Grant.’
‘Bet you could.’
The sound of her perky voice enthralled him no less this morning than it had on the station last night–though he didn’t much fancy the idea of her grappling with Grant. What could he say now, to keep her going?
‘The other thing … I forgot to say last night.’ Long pause. Wise or unwise, this subject?
‘Yes?’
‘The matter of your sleeves.’
‘You loved my sleeves, you said.’
‘Yes: yes I did. There’s no doubt concerning my personal appreciation.’
‘You do put things a funny way sometimes.’
‘I’m sorry. I suffer from formality, I know.’ Bonnie’s laughter at his admission made him suddenly feel at ease. Heavens, how he loved talking to her. ‘But the thing is, the three of us men in our severe black and white uniform … I was wondering how appropriate even the merest hint of colour is for our lovely new viola?’ Oh dear, had he been too dashing there? The answer was a long silence. William strained to imagine Bonnie’s expression. Perhaps he should explain himself better. ‘I think what I’m trying to say is this: there should be nothing to detract the audience’s attention from the music. I mean, a single girl among men is going to be the centre of attention anyway. My feeling is she should probably play herself down, sartorially, as much as possible …’
‘William? If you don’t mind my saying so, I think that’s the pottiest theory I’ve ever heard.’ William swallowed. At least she sounded more buoyant than offended. ‘And I can’t possibly go along with it. I’ve five dresses for concerts, all black, all long, all with my special sleeves. In one dress they’re lined with black silk–I wore that at Slough so as not to alarm you my first time with you. Then there’s the green you saw last night, then there’s a sapphire blue, a ruby and a white–that one you’ll approve, I daresay. They cost more than I can afford, those dresses. They’ve done me well and there’s lots of life in them yet. Not for anything in the world am I going to give them up. If you haven’t got beautiful arms you might as well have beautiful sleeves. They’re my trademark. If we play well enough people aren’t going to be distracted by a flash of satin. So I’m sorry if you disapprove, but not for anything would I change my wardrobe for the Elmtree players or any other stuffy old quartet.’
William thought he heard a sigh, the thump of a banged fist.
‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I take your point.’ He despised his own feebleness–though was it feeble to come round to another’s view, well put? ‘But I trust they won’t be the cause of any more demands for a second encore.’
‘They won’t. Last night was nothing to do with my sleeves, honestly’ She was gentle again. ‘The enthusiasm last night was something to do with your playing, in my opinion. You played like someone … well, inspired.’
‘Nonsense. We all played the same.’
‘All inspired, then. Look, I’ve got to go now. Grant’s going to take me to see this flat, before the rehearsal. See you later.’
‘And how do you suppose I wait patiently till three o’clock?’ William asked himself out loud, as he put down the receiver.
Downstairs Grace waited nervously for Lucien. She never liked to start work until he had been and gone. In her heart she knew this was ridiculous, and the cause of her being so behind with her flowers. But to take her place at her work table, adjust lights, fetch clean water, lick sable-haired brushes to a fine arrow point, dip into a small jewel square of colour, while decisions about where to begin shifted like small clouds through her mind … required tranquil concentration. This was not possible if she knew that at any moment she would be interrupted by Lucien in one of his morning rages.
To fill in time as she waited on the morning of William’s birthday, Grace made a rhubarb crumble for supper. There was no concert tonight. They would have Irish stew and his favourite pudding, and watch an episode of Great Expectations on television–the sort of evening that they both most enjoyed, and was all too rare.
Lucien poked his head through the kitchen window at ten thirty, so unusually late that Grace had given up expecting him. He looked exhausted but oddly calm.
‘Not stopping,’ he said. ‘Things to do.’
‘Quick cup of coffee?’
‘No thanks. I’m off home for a kip. I was up all night.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Rattled. All this stuff going on.’ He straightened himself up, rubbed a thin hand over his unshaven cheek. ‘Mind if I ask you a favour? Are you free this afternoon?’
‘There’s nothing much on, I don’t think.’
‘I’ve got to take these two bloody great chows out. Round the park, like. Can’t face it on my own. Just wondered if you’d like to come too?’
Grace smiled. ‘I could do with the exercise. I’ll meet you at the park gates at two thirty, all right?’
‘Great. Thanks. What’s that pie?’
‘Rhubarb crumble. William’s favourite. It’s his birthday’
‘Lucky old William.’
When Lucien had gone Grace realised that too much of the morning had been consumed, now, to get down to work. She would hardly have had time to paint a single bluebell leaf (so hard to achieve the gloss of those leaves, she was finding–she had thrown away many an effort that had come out lifeless) before she would have to heat up the carrot soup for lunch. So she arranged the three birthday cards on the dresser, and began to chop the neck of lamb for tonight’s stew. That job she had planned for the afternoon, when her biorhythms were at such a low ebb creative work was impossible. By agreeing to go with Lucien and his dogs, which she had no desire whatever to do, her small domestic plans were upset. She frowned, annoyed with herself.
On the days William was home for lunch a modicum of communication had become the habit. It was over home-made soup and bread and cheese William informed Grace of forthcoming events in his diary, and she made a note of them on the calendar that hung on the wall. Opinions, or the reporting of events, had no place at lunchtime. These were kept for the few evenings a week they managed dinner together–scraps of talk that shuffled with no very clear pattern, half-sentences that were the understood language of a long marriage.
When William had finished dictating the Quartet’s engagements for the following month, November–always a busy time of year, pre-Christmas–Grace braced herself to mention the only invitation that had come to her.
‘Jack,’ she said. ‘Jack and Laurel. They want to come to a concert then take us out somewhere to eat. Birthday treat.’
‘Good God,’
said William.
‘What about Ealing, next week?’
‘Perfect.’ William laughed. ‘Bartok the whole of the second half. They’ll hate it.’
‘So shall I say yes?’
‘You better say yes, my Ace.’
‘It might never happen. It didn’t last year, you remember.’
‘Nor did it. Great relief, too.’ He looked at his watch, stood up.
‘It’s only one thirty’ said Grace. ‘You’ll be much too early’
‘You know what the boys are like, birthdays. Cake and so on before we start.’ Could she see his impatience to be off? If he arrived early enough he might come upon Grant and Bonnie having lunch after looking at the flat. Break up their little twosome. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I’ve got to change my trousers.’
William was again wearing the new corduroy trousers that had received so damning a reception yesterday. He had no intention of risking further painful comment.
‘Why on earth? I thought yesterday, thank goodness, you’d decided to christen them at last.’
‘Something about them–they’re fine for home, not so comfortable for playing.’
‘I see.’
William took in his wife’s face.
‘So I’ll put them back in the cupboard, let them mature a little longer, my Ace …’ She would be warmed by the way he was able to smile at his own foibles. She would like his mentioning the shared joke of his inability immediately to like new clothes …
It worked. She was smiling.
‘Any plans, this afternoon?’ Usually, he remembered to ask.
‘Nothing much.’
‘I’ll be home about seven, then.’
‘Rhubarb crumble.’
‘Look forward to that. You spoil me. Rhubarb crumble … my goodness.’
William arrived at the barn to find that Rufus was already there with Grant and Bonnie. They were all clustered round the table engaged in preparations to celebrate his birthday. A space had been cleared for a large chocolate cake, imaginatively iced and decorated by Grant, who would have been a chef had he not been a cellist. He had not cooked anything for the players since his turn to give the Christmas party. Then, it had been an enormous buffet of over-decorated suckling pig, spiced vegetables and bombe glacé that must have taken him days of preparation. William’s private opinion was that Grant’s real culinary talent was as a pastry chef, judging from the exquisite cakes he made for each of the player’s birthdays every year. This one was perhaps his best: an elaborate concoction of chocolate, with crystallised sugar violets glowing through a mist of icing sugar.
William made a quick calculation: if Grant had taken so much trouble making the cake this morning, then he couldn’t have had much time to look at the flat with Bonnie. Faintly comforting, that. Rufus was pouring Sambuca into tall thin glasses: this was his contribution to the festivities every year. He took from his pocket a miniature paper bag and tipped four coffee beans into his hand. He was meticulous in his ways, Rufus. It was only lately he had become a little forgetful–times, dates, arrangements (though never a piece of music). This William put down to a recent distraction. Lately, Rufus had become upset to find that the nightingales, that used to sing so regularly in his garden, had left. His anxiety for the decline of nightingales in general greatly increased when he learnt how few were left in England. Between the early seventies and late eighties almost thirty per cent of them had vanished–not quite as alarming as the fifty-two per cent decrease in skylarks over twenty-five years, as he explained to the other sympathetic players, but very worrying to those concerned for the thriving of wildlife. The profits of his charitable fund-raising he decided in future to share between nightingale and skylark, and found himself touched by Bonnie’s suggestion for a Sunday concert, which would include appropriate poetry readings, to raise money. Rufus told them that on free summer evenings he would walk in the woods near his house in the hopes of tracking down just a single nightingale. But he was rarely in luck. He missed their music, he said, more deeply than he could ever have supposed a man might miss the music of a bird.
Bonnie, who had volunteered to read several poems at the bird concert, was presently occupied with the decoration of William’s cake. She was tipping small white candles from a box. It was clear the shortage of candles would have to be counteracted in some ingenious way.
Bonnie gave William one of her most enchanting smiles.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to have one candle for each decade. How many shall I …?’
William shook his head. Rufus pursed his lips, carefully placed a coffee bean on each drink. Bonnie stuck four candles into the icing.
‘Go on,’ said Grant.
Bonnie raised her eyebrows at William. ‘I’ll leave you to guess,’ he said.
Bonnie stuck a fifth candle into the cake. Grant smiled, but restrained himself. Bonnie pushed the candle far down into the chocolate sponge–the half-inch that was left could be taken for any amount of time, long or short, she said. Everyone laughed.
Through the huge window they could see that the sky had darkened. A wind snagged at the few remaining yellow leaves on the two apple trees. It began to rain. Grant lighted the candles and Rufus put a match to the four glasses of Sambuca. The players sat round holding their flaming drinks in the premature dusk, and eating the almost liquid chocolate cake. William remembered that Andrew had always been the one to make some silly sort of toast on his birthday, and a funny speech in praise of William’s general exemplary character. But he didn’t miss Andrew today. Bonnie was here, next to him, face covered in chocolate like a child. Every now and then she licked a finger, and grimaced with each sip of the burning drink.
William could have sat for a long time round the table, listening to the fragments of quiet talk, feeling the spread of warmth in his stomach from the drink, and the shared safety of the semi-dark. But there was work to be done. He put down his glass.
‘Thanks very much, everyone,’ he said.
‘One more glass.’ Rufus held up the bottle.
William put up a hand. ‘No, no. We’re starting with the E minor Razumovsky. How d’you suppose I’d ever get through the thème Russe?’
The others laughed again. They were keen to see how William would do after the Sambuca. He stood, made his way to the stands at the other end of the barn. The others followed. No one put on a light. They shuffled through their scores, tuned their instruments, waited for William’s signal to begin. Then the music swooped into the barn and drowned out the sound of the rain.
It was both windy and cold in the park, though here the rain fell only in spasmodic drops. Grace and Lucien walked side by side along a tarmacked path. Each one held a chow on a lead. They were cumbersome, graceless dogs, waddling their fat-furred behinds, pulling, nosing, snorting, generally distracting from any pleasure the walk might hold.
Which was not much. Lucien was in one of his sullen, taciturn moods. He had not shaved for several days and looked terribly thin, thought Grace. Ill. He was plainly bored stiff by the idea of walking dogs round the cheerless park every afternoon, even at five pounds an hour. Grace could not imagine the job would last long. Certainly she would be reluctant to come again. He was no kind of a companion. The wind puffed out his grubby T-shirt, then it fell back on to his hollow chest.
‘You must be cold,’ said Grace.
‘No.’ He did up a button of his thin denim jacket. They had been round twice and there were still three-quarters of an hour to go. ‘I’ll not be standing much more of this,’ he said after a while. ‘Have you ever seen such horrible dogs? They’re like tugs, aren’t they? Isn’t that right? They’re the tugs, we’re the liners being pulled out of a harbour.’ The very act of speaking seemed to cheer him a little. ‘When I was a kid, Portsmouth, I used to watch those tugs doing their stuff. They’d get those liners out to sea then leave them and come snouting back to help the next one. I’d watch the bloody great ship till I couldn’t see it any more. What alway
s did my head in was not being able to imagine what it was like, on board, I mean. I kind of imagined it was a sort of palace. Chandeliers and chefs and that–I swore I’d get on to one, one day. Staircases -someone told me they had staircases on liners, all carpeted. Is that right?’
‘I imagine so,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve never been on one.’
‘You’ve had a quiet life.’ Lucien stopped to let his chow sniff round a rubbish bin.
‘I have, yes.’ Grace shrugged. ‘Marrying so young. There was no time to do much before. Since then, with William’s commitments, there hasn’t been much opportunity to travel. Anyhow,’ she smiled, ‘the one thing I’m quite sure he would never want is to go on a liner, a cruise.’
Lucien looked at her with haunted eyes. The pupils were unusually large. Grace wished, as she had many times lately, that she had never met him. She wished that he’d never insinuated himself into her life, come to depend upon her in the way he did. Perhaps today, in the park, would be the time to suggest his mornings visits should be cut down …
‘Wish Lobelia had had a quiet life like you,’ he said, ‘instead of racing round with her men and parties and drink and that.’ He gave a nasty laugh. They began their third turn round the dull path. ‘Still, she’s going away again today. So she says, that is. She and the pharmaceutical fucker.’
He hunched his shoulders, returned to his silence. Grace knew it was not the right moment. Her suggestion, however carefully put, could well spark one of his rages. She did not relish the idea of confronting his anger alone here in the park.
It was the longest, bleakest hour, that dog-walk, Grace could remember. Whatever Lucien’s future plans with the dogs, she would not be accompanying him again.
At the end of the rehearsal the Elmtree players rewarded themselves with the rest of William’s birthday cake and mugs of Earl Grey tea. It had been an afternoon out of the ordinary: for William, the combination of Sambuca and the Beethoven had induced a sense of rare deliquescence. But this happy state was impeded by Bonnie’s news that the flat recommended by Grant, just the other side of Aylesbury, was perfect. She would even be allowed to share the small garden. As soon as possible she intended to sell her London flat and move. By the end of the month she should be installed.