The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  June

  Thirty-two visitors.

  •

  “I need to have a rethink,” says William. “I don’t have what it takes for this lark.” Yesterday he was out in a rough sea. Nothing exceptional for every other member of the crew, but too much for William. For an hour he clung to a stanchion, throwing up. At one point he vomited in the wrong direction and splattered himself from face to waist. The others carried on working through the mayhem. Gary, the hard man, ex-army, was ripping up fish while telling tales of the really bad seas he’d been caught in. Waves as high as houses, in total darkness. In the end, William was sent to his bunk. “Disgraced,” he says, though everyone was laughing about it by the time they came back to port. He had the look of someone who had lost half his blood, and it was a full day before he lost the feeling that everything was still moving. “So I’m out,” he tells me. And the drugs are an issue too. “It’s the only way these blokes can do what they do,” he says, “but I don’t want any of that. If I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

  •

  On the website of a newspaper that likes to present itself as the champion of deep-rooted British values, we are invited to admire the body of “reality TV star Michelle” as she “tops up her tan in Marbella.” More: we should study the “perfectly tanned and toned figure” of eighteen-year-old Zoë, who looks “full of body confidence” in her cute pink bikini. Sylvie “flaunts her pert posterior and amazing abs” in her “latest workout snapshots.” A semi-famous actor, a “notorious party animal,” is seen departing from a club with two “leggy blondes,” who have no names; we should envy him, it appears, but we must deplore the semi-famous actress who is looking “the worse for wear” as she clambers into a limo at two in the morning. We should also regret that a certain TV presenter, 35, seems to be struggling to lose weight after the birth of her first child, a full six months ago.

  •

  A birthday present from Francesca—a book about decorated skeletons. “Saw this and thought of you,” she writes. The skeletons reside in various German churches, some of them in resplendent made-to-measure tombs with glass panels for ease of viewing, some behind screens in side chapels, some in storerooms, under piles of surplus seating. When northern Europe was first being menaced by Protestantism, these bones were removed from the Roman catacombs, given saintly names, and dispatched across the Alps to the jeopardised territories, where they were adorned with fabulous costumes and festooned with jewellery. The bedazzled faithful, in adoring the glamorous relics, would thereby be reconnected with the martyrs of the true church; the marvellous skeletons, with amethysts for eyes and ribs wrapped in gold leaf, were harbingers of the glory of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

  •

  Francesca, on her first visit to the museum: we stood together in the mirrored room, each with a candle, and she made the flame dance around the faces of all the little Francescas who stood in ranks around us. She turned slowly, and the assembled Francescas turned slowly in the foggy glass. “My team of ghost girls,” she said.

  •

  I remember the day we met up with Francesca and her boyfriend in Rome; they had arrived the previous day, and we were leaving two days later. Francesca was our guide for the day, a role she occupied with aplomb. We walked down the road from the Campidoglio. Francesca read aloud the inscription on a lintel, first in Latin, then in translation. Nicola, whose house this was, was not unaware that the glory of the world in itself is of no importance. I can see Imogen’s marigold dress. She and Francesca walked ahead, arms linked. The boyfriend, with me, kept glancing at the two women, as though concerned that Francesca might be sharing secrets, or that Imogen might be giving her advice that was contrary to his best interests. At the Bocca della Verità, after Francesca had whispered something to him, he stood before the huge stone face and placed his hand in the mouth, which supposedly would shut like a trap if a lie were to be uttered.

  That evening, having noticed a look transmitted by the boyfriend to a young woman at a neighbouring table, Imogen said to me, as we walked back to the hotel: “This one is going to break her heart.”

  •

  After Imogen’s departure, Emma was inclined to wonder why I had not paused before embarking on an affair that would have been so unlikely to produce a good outcome. For Emma, all decisions should be preceded by careful consideration of outcomes. I was unworldly, in some ways, she told me; my choice of career was evidence enough; a man of my type would have been particularly susceptible to a woman of Imogen’s high voltage. She saw Le Grand Concert de la Nuit but not Chambre 32. Emma was appalled by the idea of Chambre 32. She could never watch it. Why would she? Why would anyone watch such a thing? Imogen, she suggested, was akin to an overpowered sports car that its middle-aged owner regrets buying within the year, after a near-death experience. With Chambre 32 Imogen had gone too far, my sister said; I could only agree.

  •

  Sometimes, on days of acute happiness, Imogen would suddenly stop and look around, her elation having reached such a pitch that it compelled her to halt and take note of everything, to embed in her memory every detail of the locality in which the mood of the day was invested. In Rome, walking towards Santa Maria della Vittoria from San Carlino, she stopped; turning, she surveyed the street—the buildings, the road, the sky; she looked to the left and to the right, slowly, two or three times each way; I had walked on. A passing man, misreading Imogen’s frown of concentration as perplexity, crossed the street to ask if she were lost. His dog was kitted out in a tight satin coat, Italian azure, and adorned with the badge of the national football team. For a couple of minutes the man stayed with Imogen, watching the contortions of a vast cloud of starlings.

  We were in her room, late at night; the pain had risen. She could not recall the man and his dog. She clamped her brow with a hand, trying to press some memory out. “No. Nothing,” she said. “Starlings I remember. Many many starlings.” She could not remember San Carlino. “Describe, please,” she said. “Take me back to Rome.” I remember the tone—like a happy woman, addressing a friendly bus driver.

  •

  In her dark episodes, Imogen’s head was full of remembered phrases. They repeated themselves, dozens of times, and she was powerless against them. Her head felt like “a drum full of dirty clothes,” she told me. One day, the phrase “Why ever would he do such a thing?” asserted itself. No meaning could be attributed to it. It was a memory, she knew, but she could not tell whose voice was speaking.

  I slept on the floor. In the middle of the night I woke up to see her sitting on the bed, staring at the window. Her eyes were haunted. “We would be damned,” she was hearing, over and over again. This time, she knew the source: these were words she had spoken as Beatrice.

  •

  The train came to a standstill between stations, on a raised section of track. Houses backed on to the rail line, and we looked down into an unfurnished ground-floor room. Under a bare light-bulb, a man and a woman were talking, a pace apart, face to face. The dirty glass of the window, struck obliquely by the late sunlight, had a grey cast, which made it seem as though the couple were standing in a deep dusk that was confined to that room. The light-bulb was on. The man had his hands on his hips and the woman’s arms were crossed; they looked like actors in rehearsal, in a scene of disagreement. But then the man moved a hand to the woman’s cheek and left it there; he leaned forward to kiss her. The kiss was gentle and long. I glanced at Imogen; she was smiling and crying. In a fit of impatience, she ground away the tears with the heels of her thumbs. “This is ridiculous,” she apologised.

  •

  When I took refuge in the yellow and silver chamber, only one other person was in that room: a man of my age; his chest was pale and doughy; his limbs disproportionately thin. He lolled in an armchair, splay-legged, recovering from his exertions, it appeared. In one hand he held a purple scarf, which lay over his thigh; his penis had shrunk into its nest. As I came in he nodded to me, then he shu
t his eyes. Subdued and sweet-tempered music was coming from the adjoining hall. “Ah, j’adore l’épouse de monsieur Haydn,” murmured the lolling man; he amused himself immensely. A chaise longue stood in the corner of the room. That was where I sat. I too closed my eyes, to listen. The floor was highly polished parquet. At the sticky sound of skin on varnished wood, I looked towards the door. A woman approached, a large woman; she was wearing a black domino and a belt of small black beads; nothing else. She stood in front of me and smiled; she had a pretty mouth; carmine lipstick; bright and even teeth. Her eyes regarded me as though I were a friend whom she was pleasantly surprised to have encountered here. She stood with her feet almost touching mine. My arms would not have reached around her. Her hips and shoulders were broad, her thighs strong and smooth, her breasts hefty; a fertility figure. She said something that I did not understand, then placed her hands flat on her stomach; her fingers pointed downward, directing my gaze to the naked cleft; a small red stone glittered there, in a fold of glistening skin. Again she spoke; she smiled, with a radiant confidence in her ability to excite desire. Her hands rose to her breasts; the nipples were pierced by tiny silver arrows. I wondered how it would feel to embrace this body, a body unlike any that I had ever touched, but it was an almost theoretical curiosity. She bent down, bringing her face close to mine. “Saisir le jour,” she murmured, as if suggesting a little excursion. A perfume of cherries and champagne came with her breath. I demurred, but with warm thanks. “Ah, English,” she commiserated. As she looked down to my lap, her lips formed a wry pout, as though to say: “Your body is not in agreement with you.” The recuperating man was watching us from the other side of the room. In English he called out, in a voice of some grandeur: “The day will not be seized.” The mighty woman turned to look at him. An amiable exchange ensued. She crossed the room and held out a summoning hand, which he took.

  •

  Waiting for Imogen, I sat in the garden of the maison de maître, by the wall of jasmine. People were leaving now. Behind me, many of the windows were open, but barely a sound came out of the house; now and then a cry. The air was placid and warm. An ordeal had been completed. The scene was a pastoral nocturne. The grass sloped down to a stream, where the silhouettes of willows and chestnuts made areas of deeper darkness against the sky. A pallid statue stood in the gloom. Beyond it, another pale shape emerged, rising from the grass by the trees; a woman—a wide streak of hair divided the figure’s back. A second body arose, not to its full height. Kneeling, the second figure pressed its face into the thighs of the first.

  There was a second bench, a few yards from mine. Suddenly a woman was there. She wore a dress that was long and white and translucent, and silver sandals. Fortyish. From a shoulder, on a slender silver chain, hung a small silver box, kidney-shaped, from which she took a brace of cigarettes. She offered one to me, without speaking, and I, without speaking, declined. In silence we sat in the fragrant and motionless air of the night. Still the two bodies by the trees were conjoined, face to groin. My companion’s gaze paused on them, and paused on the statue with the same indifference, and on the trees, the moon, and the bandages of cloud above it. With closed mouth, she slowly exhaled. She leaned back, to regard the sky directly overhead. Infinite boredom suffused her face. An hour earlier, I had seen her naked in an upstairs room; her ankles and wrists had been shackled to steel bars; a younger woman stood behind her, holding some sort of electrified wand.

  The situation in the grass was changing. The kneeling figure—male, it was now clear—had stood up and was putting on a robe; the woman lay down, and disappeared from view. Leaving the robe untied, the man walked towards the house. Seeming to recognise my companion, he raised a hand, and she reciprocated. He was perhaps a decade older than her, with slicked grey hair. On reaching the bench, he stopped and extended a hand to the woman, as if inviting her to join him for a waltz. Her smile was that of someone who has heard a once-amusing story too often; she stood up, and wished me good evening. The man bowed to me.

  A few minutes later, Imogen came out. From the footfall I knew it was Imogen, without turning to see. She slid her hands onto my shoulders and whispered: “All right?”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  She stood squarely in front of me, to look steadily, then she put her arms around me.

  •

  Might an image, in being written, in being expelled on to a page, be attenuated by this exposure, if not purged completely? Writing as an inoculation? The image: Imogen on the black couch, in the light of a single candle, her arms at her side, motionless; eyes closed; a recumbent tomb-figure. A young man, athletic, came into the room. Looking at me, he gestured towards Imogen, as though inviting me to precede him through a doorway. She turned and held out a hand to me, like a woman who was about to jump; I was invited to annihilate myself with her.

  •

  A call from William, barely audible against the noise. He’s walking to Mousehole, he tells me. He has a hangover to walk off. Two miles there, two miles back, but in this wind a mile feels like twice the distance. “Listen,” he says. What I’m hearing, he tells me, is the bushes beside the road, shrieking. The sea looks like a ploughed-up field with snow on it, he says. Ahead of him a woman is walking with a spaniel, and the dog’s ears are horizontal. “This is what it’s all about. Feel the energy,” he yells. Energy is what drew him to the edge of England. It flows through the earth, down to the southernmost point. That’s why England’s southern pole is William’s destiny. Evidence: he has been offered a job. This is the reason for the call—next week, he becomes a driver, delivering for a supermarket. “Hours are crap, money’s not great, but what the hell, eh? Turning the corner, my man. Onward and upward.”

  •

  The second encounter with William: spotting Imogen from the opposite side of the road, he crossed immediately, jinking through the traffic.

  She greeted him on our behalf. It might have been evident that I was not delighted; Imogen was staying for only a few days, and I felt I had rights to her company. She too, I think, would rather not have had the interruption, but she dissembled perfectly. “Hello, William,” she said.

  “Hello Imogen,” he answered, with bright familiarity, as if this bit of banter were some sort of private joke. “All right if I join you? Just for a minute,” he asked. “Today I can pay,” he added, dredging a palmful of coins from a pocket. “Had a good morning,” he explained. He was carrying a backpack, which he kicked under the chair he had selected, on Imogen’s side of the table. When he sat down, a waft of beer fumes reached me. “All clear,” he said, tapping the scar on his brow.

  Imogen commended the neatness of the stitching.

  “And what about you?” he asked her. “What are you up to?”

  In the previous week she had been doing a voiceover.

  William could not have been more amazed, but immediately the amazement was replaced by reconsideration. “That makes sense,” he told her. “You’ve got a nice voice,” he said. The niceness of the voice, and the nastiness of some other voices, gave him material for a minute or so. I seemed to have become invisible.

  The waitress, the same one as before, came to the table, and William ordered a coffee, as casually as a regular. “Good name, Imogen,” he said, reattaching his attention. “Never met an Imogen before. Great name.” He could not recall a David either. He knew a Dave, but he was a Dave, not a David, which was not the same thing at all, he told us, just as William was not the same as Will or Bill or Billy. William had a theory, a theory that experience had validated: that there is an affinity between people who share a name. In giving a certain name to their child, parents were recognising, albeit unconsciously, the qualities that this name represented. Thus the essence of every John was his John-ness, just as everything labelled gold was gold. Davids were dependable, he complimented me, whereas Daves had a tendency to be dodgy. Obviously the parents of almost every Dave originally called the boy David, but when David chose to become Dave he
was correcting a mistake that the parents had made. This is not quite how the theory was expressed—William’s explication was less succinct. He was interruption-proof.

  A few yards from where we were sitting, a signpost had been knocked out of the perpendicular by a car. Noticing it, William was prompted to recall an interesting fact that the father of a friend, a policeman, had once told him: that it was better to drive into a brick wall than into a tree, because a brick wall will collapse when the car hits it, whereas a tree will spring back, worsening the impact. Years later, William had remembered this advice, and “given the choice of a tree or a wall,” he had driven at the latter; and, just as the policeman had said, the wall folded over the car bonnet, causing only minor damage to the driver. “But I’m a good driver,” he wanted us to know, as if we might be looking for a driver to hire. He liked driving, but couldn’t afford his own wheels at the moment. When he had got himself sorted out, he might get a driving job, he said. He wasn’t stupid, he wanted us to know. He had the brains for a “proper job,” but he was never going to wear a suit and he wasn’t good at being bossed around. Or he might train to be a plumber, because he had the sort of brain you need for that kind of work, and he was good with his hands. But it wasn’t easy to find someone to take you on, so it was likelier that he’d go for the driving option. Once he had taken his father’s BMW, not strictly with permission, and he’d gone for a drive on the motorway at night. He’d done a hundred miles in an hour. It was an out-of-body experience, he told us. He’d been totally in the zone. It was like watching a video of himself demonstrating how to drive safely on a motorway at a steady one hundred miles an hour. The owner of the car wasn’t his real father, he clarified; glancing at me, he became aware that he was in danger of losing his audience. “Another story,” he said, checking his cup. “Now I’ll get out of your way,” he said, standing.