by Janet Neel
‘Perry. What’s happening? Is Tristram OK?’
‘Up to a point. He has just been tortured, but has loyally not revealed the whereabouts of his fleeing friend.’
‘Ah.’ McLeish flinched at a basilisk look from his wife and slid into his red plush seat. He considered the stage where Tristram, now propped on one elbow, was expressing his defiance to a large sullen man in a vast sweater bulging over trousers anchored below a substantial tummy. There had been no time at all to read the summary of the plot provided by his wife that morning, and he could not now ask for any more guidance. Not while Tristram was singing anyway, so he relaxed to listen. He was more used to Perry’s high, beautifully placed tenor, but Tristram was a formidable rival. Like Perry, he seemed to be able to turn up the volume to an astonishing level, and like Perry he appeared not to strain at all on any note. But surely it was a more fluent and supple voice; surely Perry could not easily reach those top notes? He looked thoughtfully at Perry’s profile and decided he was right; there was a stiffness about the jaw that said that Perry was not wholeheartedly pleased with his brother’s beautiful, polished performance.
A large lady in a long shapeless skirt topped with an enormous cardigan flung herself at Tristram and an impassioned duet followed, during which they definitely quarrelled; the music told you that even without Tristram’s rejecting gesture. Then Tristram tottered to his feet, apparently much restored by some news brought in by a messenger, and was taken from the stage hurling defiance.
McLeish could bear it no longer. ‘Perry, what is going on?’
‘Napoleon has been victorious at Modena, so Tris feels much, much better.’
‘Perry.’ A joint hiss from mother and sister silenced Perry who made a graceful gesture of apology.
A heavy young man in a boxy blue suit and pony-tail standing at the back of the box, twitched the curtain helpfully. ‘Can’t follow it neither, Chief Super,’ he confided, and McLeish recognised Perry’s bodyguard. Even at an understudy rehearsal on an off-night a bodyguard, or attendant, was needed to keep Perry’s fans at bay. ‘Tell you what though, the big girl’s the heroine. Tosca.’
‘Thanks, Biff.’
There was enough of her to make two heroines, she was nearly old enough to be Tristram’s mother and she could have swept him off his feet any day. But once you got over the first visual shock you ceased to notice the size 22 hips; the soprano voice was magnificent and she was a great actress.
The heavy pressed his attention on her, having incautiously dismissed his underlings, and McLeish sat bolt upright as she seized a knife and stabbed him, leaving him dead. No, no, he thought, critical sense reasserting itself. She’d been holding the knife wrongly, you needed to get right under the ribs to kill and the way she’d been going the point would have bounced off.
The director called a halt and Tristram emerged blinking, still bloodstained, to receive instructions. The large lady was looking tired, as well she might. The heavy, miraculously restored and smiling, revealed himself disconcertingly as a friendly, good-tempered middle-aged bloke.
‘Not bad,’ Perry said in his ear. ‘The big bloke. Tends to go flat in the top of his register, though.’
McLeish, who had heard nothing amiss, accepted this information as gracefully as he could. His wife and her family were all musicians, and had no idea how much detailed knowledge informed their everyday life and conversation. Ordinary, sensible questions about matters musical tended to be met with a slight pause, followed by the preoccupied frown of people asked to explain some routine part of living, like how to walk, or eat, or chew gum. It was intensely excluding; McLeish had found only one fellow sufferer, a colleague married into a large Welsh-speaking family. They went into Welsh all the time, having no idea they were doing it, the man had complained, and when challenged would assure him that nothing more interesting was being discussed than a better way to repair the car. It didn’t help, you just knew, he had said darkly, that the wife was reciting your shortcomings as a lover, father and provider, and her brothers were offering sympathy and suggesting early divorce. McLeish considered his own brother-in-law cautiously. ‘Is that the end?’
‘No.’ Perry uncurled himself from his chair as the lights went up to reveal a scattering of stage hands and representatives of Management dotted about in the stalls. ‘End of Act Two. It’s all they’re going to do tonight, and now they’re allowed off for dinner. Come on, let’s collect the rest of them.’
‘No one has even recognised Perry,’ Francesca said, with interest. ‘Oh, spoke too soon.’
McLeish looked across to where two young women had outflanked the bodyguard and were demanding Perry’s autograph. He was at his charming best, explaining courteously that he had come only to hear his brother sing, attending to their twittering cries of amazement and discovery with a patient smile.
‘Just as well,’ Francesca observed. ‘He’d have been absolutely miserable if no one had approached him.’ She gave her husband an anxious sidelong look and he braced himself for whatever demand was to come. ‘Darling, are you really tired? I mean, can you manage the dinner?’
‘So long as it’s food and it gets served pretty quickly. Where are we eating?’
‘At Café de la Paix. I told you. The place I went to with Tris? It’s very large and stays open very late. They’re just going to cordon off the back and feed all forty of us.’
‘There are forty people in this show?’
‘Including stage crew, chorus and hangers-on like us, easily.’
‘Then we wouldn’t be missed?’ he suggested, hopefully.
‘Well, only by Tristram, who is the reason we are here.’ His wife was finding herself in the usual tug of war between husband and brothers. ‘I mean, you could go home – they know you work very long days. I really couldn’t, it would be mean.’
‘Even though you’re pregnant?’
‘I haven’t told the brothers, or Mum. I mean I know I am, but it’s awfully early – practically the morning after – and they might think I was being optimistic.’
‘Well, I don’t want you going by yourself. I’m OK, provided it doesn’t go on too long.’
Francesca reached up to kiss him, and he hugged her warmly, relieved to have been forgiven for being late.
‘Oh good.’ Perry had shaken off, charmingly, his admirers. ‘Warms my old heart to see it. Make her tell you the rest of the plot, John. It ends in tears.’
‘Tristram ends up dead. So does Tosca.’ Francesca had evidently decided to keep it simple.
‘Well, she’d killed a copper, hadn’t she?’ McLeish pointed out. ‘Can’t imagine why they hadn’t searched her.’
‘John. You weren’t paying attention. She snatched the knife from the supper table over which he had planned to seduce her.’
‘What can he have been thinking of?’ McLeish, suddenly feeling much better, his headache eased, enquired. ‘The Police Complaints Authority would have had him on toast.’
Francesca, always serious-minded, started to explain that the system for entertaining complaints against the police was not strongly developed in nineteenth-century Italy, then realised that her husband and brother were laughing at her.
‘I shouldn’t think there is any point in hurrying,’ Perry said. ‘None of us will get fed anything until the cast get there.’
‘We might get a drink,’ McLeish pointed out.
‘There is that.’
The bodyguard indicated that he preferred to keep Perry out of crowds, even a small docile crowd such as attended understudy rehearsals. McLeish sympathised with him; Biff was an ex-policeman and, like him, professionally averse to unnecessary risk. And it was certainly pleasant to saunter out of a near-empty auditorium into a clear summer night and walk quietly up the street and round the corner. ‘Is this place going to manage to feed us all?’ he asked his wife under cover of Perry’s informed monologue on the problems of recording opera. ‘When you were here last you said you thought there was a certain
amount of tension among the shareholders.’
‘The kitchen will be all right. Or perhaps not, come to think on it. Chef is a shareholder and wasn’t getting what he wanted.’
‘That was why Matthew Sutherland was there?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, self-consciously, and he considered her thoughtfully. Like all good policemen, he was a creature of very highly attuned instincts, and he had feared there had been an emotional entanglement there. This was one of the penalties of being married to a lively, talented, insatiably curious creature like his wife, but he didn’t want any of it going any further. ‘Ah. Now that is interesting.’ Francesca had found a distraction. ‘One of the proprietors – not the beautiful one – the worker bee, Judith Delves, is receiving.’
They were behind Perry, who was deploying just enough personality to get himself recognised, but while two passing waiters were struck dumb, Judith Delves was pleasingly unfazed. She summoned a minion to take Perry and the bodyguard to where the party was, confining herself to the observation that it was particularly nice to see him and she hoped he would have a good meal. Perry turned to collect his sister, and Judith Delves smiled at her. ‘Nice to see you, Mrs McLeish. This is your brother?’
‘One of them,’ Francesca said, just as Tristram arrived through the door in a rush. You would know them anywhere for siblings, McLeish conceded, even though they were less alike than when he had first met the whole talented awkward crew six years ago. The same thought reflected itself in Judith Delves’ expression and like others faced with Wilsons en bloc she could not help staring. But she recovered fast and turned courteously to him.
‘I’m Mrs McLeish’s husband,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘There are two more brothers and they all look like each other.’
‘Four brothers-in-law. Goodness!’ The ring on her finger flashed as she found his name, the pencil just hesitating for a moment as she took in his title. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, sensibly ducking ‘Detective Chief Superintendent’ in the vocative case. ‘Monica will take you through.’
Whatever stresses there may have been among the shareholders were not reflected in either the food or the service, McLeish thought, contentedly, an hour later. They had been fed very promptly – indeed the first course, on which the cast, chorus and stage crew had fallen like starving wolves, was placed before them well before the last stragglers had sat down and drink had flowed, plentifully, from the first moment they arrived. McLeish, replete and comfortable, surveyed the party benignly, half listening to Perry, diagonally opposite him, conversing earnestly with the Russian Tosca. He realised that Judith Delves was hovering and indicated as much to Francesca. His own attention was promptly claimed by Biff who, it turned out, was trying to extract a brother-in-law from possible involvement with one of the South London gangs. This was a problem of immediate interest and he took the man to a quiet spot at the end of a table, armed with a bottle the more readily to get the story.
‘Very nice food,’ Francesca said, warmly, as Judith slid into the chair beside her. ‘Are you worn out?’
‘I am tired but not by this. I was so glad to see you tonight. I had just decided to ring you up at Gladstone and ask if I could come and talk to you. As an Old Girl, as it were.’ She stopped, not out of diffidence but to decide how best to proceed.
‘And what would you have said?’ Francesca prompted.
‘I would have started by explaining our situation here – except that I imagine Matthew Sutherland told you about it?’
‘No. Matt’s very correct. I did notice Brian Rubin having lunch, but only because I read the City pages.’ She hesitated. ‘Does Mr Rubin want to buy you?’
‘Not only that, but we’d actually agreed to sell – well, all the others had. I only have fifteen per cent of the shares, but that wasn’t enough to block a sale if push had come to shove.’
‘And it had?’
‘Yes, but now it’s all changed. My friend Selina, with whom I started this place, has decided she doesn’t want to sell, so that makes thirty per cent against a sale.’
‘Which would block it – the other shareholders can’t get a special resolution through.’
Judith nodded and made a long arm and reached for the wine. ‘I don’t drink normally when I’m working,’ she said, defensively.
‘But you’re done for the evening. We’re almost the last and we’re eating pudding.’
Judith smiled. ‘Not quite. I get to cash up and see the kitchen cleared.’
‘Not Chef?’ Francesca, with her habitual interest in the detail of any commercial enterprise, asked.
‘Chef has gone. Early.’
‘In a huff?’
‘He is always in a huff at the moment.’
Francesca considered what she was being told. ‘So you may not be able to keep him?’
‘That’s one of the problems.’
Francesca opened her mouth and closed it again, remembering the lesson painfully learned, that you got better results by listening than by talking. The noise level at Tristram’s part of the table had risen and people were starting to bang the tables. Francesca looked apologetically at her companion, but the noise rose to a crescendo as Tristram, making graceful gestures of refusal, was dragged to his feet and over to the piano.
‘What I’m worried about is Selina.’ Judith was oblivious of these manoeuvres and Francesca settled herself to concentrate.
‘Your partner? The very dashing blonde. Who changed her mind?’
‘She’s gone away, you see, and no one knows where she is. She said she wanted to think and she took a week’s holiday. And she didn’t tell Richard – her husband – where she was going either. He asked me today did I know where she was. Well, he must have been pretty desperate to do that.’
‘And she hadn’t told you?’
Judith Delves glanced irritably at the preparations round the piano on which the small dark man was playing a series of chords.
‘Not bad,’ Francesca said, professionally, and Judith looked at her, puzzled.
‘Not bad for pitch. Most pianos in public places are way off. Not that it would worry Tristram much; he’s had worse and usually with me playing. Sorry, please go on about Selina.’
‘She told me she would be spending a couple of days with her mother, but carefully didn’t say where she would be for the rest. But she said she’d ring up every day and she hasn’t. I thought, you see, that she was probably doing her thinking with some man.’ She caught Francesca’s look. ‘I’ve known Selina for ever, since nursery school. That’s how she works.’
‘But now you’re worried.’
‘Well, her mother rang up yesterday, looking for Selina. And Richard doesn’t know where she is. And the prospective buyer, Brian Rubin, doesn’t either because he asked Richard.’
‘Judith, what worst precisely do you fear?’
‘I don’t know,’ Judith Delves said, crossly, ‘I’m sorry, I can hear I’m sounding wet. But I’m being driven mad by everyone asking where Selina is, and Brian Rubin ringing up three times a day, and my solicitor wanting to know what to do.’
‘My policeman husband would suggest you report her missing.’
‘He looks nice.’ Judith glanced across the restaurant to where John McLeish was hunched, looking like something carved from granite, patient, silent, waiting while Biff struggled with his story.
‘He’s easy to talk to. Only not just now – he’s doing something, that’s what he looks like when he’s working.’ Francesca hesitated. ‘But Selina could still be with this other man somewhere?’
‘That’s much the most likely answer. But she hasn’t phoned.’
Francesca thought, frowning at her coffee. ‘Or she isn’t calling because she daren’t tell you she’s changing her mind about selling again?’
She saw that she had hit a nerve. ‘Yes,’ Judith said tightlipped after a pause. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
Francesca was hesitating over words of comfort when the huddled group round th
e piano scattered, leaving the pianist with an older woman leaning over to turn the pages, and Tristram, arranged gracefully to one side of the instrument.
He opened his mouth to sing and the restaurant fell slowly silent. It was a golden tenor like Perry’s only higher, and smoother. Well, that was the training. And he had a far better range these days than his brother, and with success was acquiring Perry’s staggering ability to communicate with an audience. He was doing the ‘Il Mio Tesoro’ from Don Giovanni, and doing it superbly; it was right in the fat of his voice, and he sang it absolutely simply, letting the music speak for itself. John McLeish, finalising a complex negotiation about arrangements to interview Biff’s brother-in-law, felt tears at the back of his eyes as Tristram sang of love and deep content. He looked across at Francesca, who was watching her brother, with her own look of love and content, and read her mind. It had been worth the time and resource expended on this wayward star to extract him from the drug culture. The song ended and in true tribute the audience was silent for a minute before applauding. McLeish took the chance to finish with his interviewee and work his way back to his wife. He was deeply disconcerted to find her glaring across the room with a gargoyle face, eyes crossed, cheeks blown out, teeth gritted. Startled, he looked to see Perry moving awkwardly for once, backing away from the piano.
‘Fran! If the wind changed …’
‘Sorry. I needed to stop Perry singing and stealing Tris’s thunder.’
‘Would he have?’ Judith Delves asked.
‘Yes. You must not have siblings, Judith.’
‘No, I don’t, actually. Just Selina.’ The voice changed colour and Francesca patted her hand.
‘You could consult John,’ she suggested, as if her husband were not there and he tried to look obliging and receptive.
‘No,’ Judith Delves said, firmly, ‘I’m sure you’re right, Francesca. She just doesn’t want to talk to me.’
John McLeish let a decent pause elapse to make sure that nothing more was required of him, and decided to take his wife home. She was looking pregnant, pulled down, the eyes enormous beneath the arched eyebrows, so exactly like her brothers. He chivvied her to her feet, allowing a decent five minutes to say goodnight. Standing back from the noisy farewells he noticed that Mrs Wilson was looking very carefully at her only daughter and he made a mental note that his mother-in-law ought to be told as soon as possible that there was indeed another grandchild on the way.