“Did you not see modelling as creative, then?” There was no edge to Cass’s tone: she had already warmed to Cindy, who took the question seriously, holding it in her mind for a moment or two, before answering, with a glance at Ivor, “Oh no. I hated it, really. Hated the whole lifestyle. The superficiality of it. The photographers pretending not to leer at us as we changed. It didn’t suit me at all.”
Ivor, sitting across from Cindy—was that really him at Cass’s table, leaning back in his chair, seeming so relaxed, so at ease, every inch the happy, healthy, teetotal family man?—smiled at his wife, and said, “No, it didn’t, darling. You’re so much happier now. As, of course, am I.”
After coffee, Cindy had taken the children out into the garden, and left the two of them alone.
“Smoke?” Cass reached for the tin she’d brought down from her bedside table earlier, in anticipation of nerves, but Ivor shook his head.
“I forgot,” she said. “You don’t do that either, now, do you?”
He said nothing, and she filled the moment with the business of rolling herself a cigarette: the swift motion of her hands, laying out the papers, drawing a pinch of tobacco from the tin. “Thank you for this,” he said, when she had drawn in her first, sweet drag. “For lunch. For having us.”
“You’re welcome. It’s good to see you happy.” She spoke without malice—she was surprised, in fact, at how calm she felt, how calm she had been from the moment she’d opened the door, and found him there—but he frowned, and cleared his throat.
“Cassie. There are things I’d like to . . .” He trailed off, and she looked at Ivor across the table—at the luminous whiteness of his shirt; at his hair, cut short now, but still dark, only faintly threaded with grey; at the tiny scar still visible beside his right eye, and the fretwork of fine lines stamped across his face like a map she no longer had the ability to read.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t say anything at all.”
He had held her gaze, and, after a few moments, nodded his assent. And then they had sat in silence, the silence that was, for her now, familiar, comforting: the element in which she swam. A silence that was not charged, not tense, but companionable—easy, even—until India came running in from the garden for her father, drawing Travis behind her, and breaking its spell.
Now, there are voices coming from the garden once again: not India’s high-pitched American twang but an English bass and a Scottish baritone, performing a low, disembodied duet.
“We’re thinking of the Union Chapel,” she hears Alan say. “Somewhere small, you know—intimate. Somewhere with atmosphere.”
“Yes—that’d be perfect,” Callum replies. “I saw Kathryn Williams there a few years back. Bloody amazing. Maybe we could get them on the same bill?”
She watches their two figures approach, silhouetted through the glass against the sharp late-afternoon light. She waits for Alan to knock: two quick successive raps on the glass. Then she gets up from the sofa, goes over to the door. There they are, the two men, manager and producer. The white-haired elder statesman, with his comfortably protruding belly and billy-goat beard, still improbably boyish. The young pretender, slim and dark-haired, his legs encased in skintight black jeans.
“All right, Cass?” Alan says, as she leans forward to kiss him on each cheek, then does the same with Callum. “How’s it going?”
“All right, I think,” she says. “I’m facing the demons.”
The two men regard her, each of them aware, in his own particular way, of what this might mean.
Alan places a hand on her arm. “Come, now, Cass. There isn’t a demon brave enough to stand up to you.”
She smiles. “Oh, Alan, you’d be surprised.” She covers Alan’s hand with hers, gently removes it. “How are the caterers getting on?”
“Fine, as far as I can see. Kim’s running around like a bunny on speed. And I hope you’re hungry. There’s enough smoked salmon blinis in there to feed an army.”
“An army marching on blinis? Now that I’d like to see.” They laugh, and there, in the softening cast of Alan’s face, she sees it: relief. She has not gone to pieces; her exploration of the past has not drawn her irretrievably back into that darkness, that void. Irritation flares in her, and then, just as quickly, dissolves: for how, after all that has happened—all that she has put him through—can she blame Alan for watching her so carefully?
To Callum, then, she says, “Have you got the masters there?”
“Sure do.” He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, withdraws a small block of grey metal. An external hard drive, she knows now, though she will never lose her belief that it was strange—unnatural, surely—that all that work, all those hours and days and weeks, could be contained on such a nondescript-looking object.
“Are you ready?” he says.
She draws a breath. “As I’ll ever be.”
Callum leads the way to the control room, turning on lights, settling himself in the larger of the two leather chairs that are set in front of the mixing-desk, the console, the glass hatch that divides the control room from the live room. Her studio has, over the last few months, become Callum’s domain, really, as much as hers: he is at home here, switching on the computers, bringing the blank screens to flickering life.
He had, from the first day of the recording sessions for the new songs, assumed this control gently, discreetly, almost without her noticing. Callum seemed to have sensed, implicitly, how nervous she was, and calibrated the atmosphere accordingly: he’d run the recordings with a politeness and lightness of touch that had only served to emphasise his natural air of authority. The musicians had all respected him—even Kit, whom Cass had drawn—reluctantly, at first—out of his comfortable retirement. Kit, who had always, before, maintained protracted disagreements with their producers as a point of honour.
“He’s all right, that Callum,” Kit had said over the dinner they’d shared at the end of that first day, accepting a second glass of his own excellent cognac. (He has reframed himself, in the decade or so since his third divorce, as something of a bon vivant, with a collection of vintage hats, shares in a French vineyard, and a penchant for Cuban cigars.) “Seems to know his way around the desk, Cass. I think we’re in safe hands.”
She had been impressed, too, by how instinctively Callum—and Gav, his engineer—had seemed to understand the sound world in which she wanted the recordings to live: to prepare its palette, shade its particular colours. Her voice was deeper now, and she wanted the arrangements to match that: to carry a certain late-night, torch-song quality, full-bodied and languorous. The drumming would be jazzy, subtle, understated; a cajón—or bongos, maybe—weaving in around the kit. Acoustic guitar on “When Morning Comes”; an accordion, perhaps, on “Gethsemane.”
Callum had listened carefully, nodded, taken notes; disagreed with her where necessary. The musicians he had brought in had all, without exception, been a pleasure to work with. She had particularly warmed to Martha—a twenty-five-year-old multi-instrumentalist in leggings and biker boots who had, with her sheet of dark hair and self-deprecating sense of humour, reminded Cass a great deal of Kate—Kate as she had been, anyway, all those years ago in Savernake Road.
The sessions had, in short, probably been the easiest and least fraught of Cass’s career. Had they been otherwise, she suspects that she would have lost her confidence entirely, and retreated, a naked creature ducking its head back inside its shell.
And for that, looking at Callum now, fiddling with the computer, biting his lower lip with his teeth as he always does when he is concentrating, she feels a fresh rush of gratitude.
“Thank you, Callum,” she says. “Thank you for making all this happen.”
He turns, smiles. “You’re welcome.”
He returns his attention to the desk, the screens. And there, after a moment of pregnant, crackling silence, they come
: the opening bars of “Gethsemane,” slow and measured; the swoop of the accordion, and the gossamer layers of Hammond organ, piano, guitar.
It is a different kind of listening, this: a meditation, of sorts. A quiet, internal observation of the present moment, of the woman she is now, not the many women she has been, and the past she has sought for so many years to forget—and of which, perhaps, she is beginning to understand that there is no longer any need to be afraid.
Later, when the men have gone back up to the house to prepare for the party—“I’ll be along in an hour or so,” she’d said as they’d closed the door behind them—Cass sits alone in the green room, picks up the phone, and dials Larry’s number once more.
Again, no answer: that long foreign tone ringing out, unheeded. She tries his mobile and it goes straight to voicemail. This time, she leaves a message.
Larry, it’s Cass. I’ve called you a few times today. Ring me back, won’t you? I don’t know if you got my email, but I . . . I miss you. I really do. I just want to . . .
A long, pregnant pause.
Thank you for the card. It means a lot. You were right, you know. It’s not as hard as I thought, the listening. You’re right about so many things, aren’t you? I know that now. I—
The long beep of the mailbox, cutting her off in mid-flow.
She had called Larry’s mobile for the first time from her hotel room in Washington.
He’d handed her a card as she’d climbed into the taxi outside the gallery: creamy-white paper—thick, expensive—his name printed in an elegant, seriffed font. Below it, two numbers: a Chicago landline and a mobile phone.
“I’m in Washington until Tuesday,” he’d said as he closed the door, and the cab drew itself back into the flow of traffic. “Call the cell if . . . Well, you’ve got my numbers there.”
She’d placed his card in her wallet, and there it had remained all day, through the label’s lunch reception; through the bath she’d taken in the afternoon, her head spinning, unaccustomed to the effort of socialising; through the light dinner she’d eaten with Alan and Kim in the hotel restaurant. She’d retired to her room just after eight, citing exhaustion—their flight home was at ten the following morning, so they’d reconvene early for breakfast. And there, in her twelfth-floor suite, she’d poured herself another glass of Merlot, reached for her wallet, drawn out the card, and found herself dialling Larry’s cell.
The arrangement had been made briskly, without ceremony: he was out to dinner with friends in Georgetown, and would come as soon as was polite. The moment she’d replaced the receiver, she’d doubted herself: a great wave of fear had consumed her, and she’d dialled his number again, intending to tell him that she’d changed her mind. But he’d switched off his phone, and at the sound of Larry’s voice—careful, measured, Midwestern—on his voicemail message, she’d grown flustered, put the phone down once more.
Then she’d finished her glass of wine, poured herself another, and looked out at the dwindling colours of evening—the layers of sky and cloud and the lurid embers of the sun, and the lights coming on across the city. Her reflection was fractured and ghostly in the glass: an old woman, long past middle age, jowled and pouched, her beauty—such as it had been—long gone. You’re ridiculous, she’d told herself. Hideous. A joke. He’ll take one look at you and run.
And then, just as she was finishing her second glass of wine, the telephone had rung. The concierge, informing her politely that she had a guest in reception. Mr. Larry Alderson. Would she like him to send Mr. Alderson up?
The seemingly endless pause between her answer and Larry’s knock at the door. Her fear swallowing all rational thought. She’d regarded herself again, sternly, appraisingly, in the ornate mirror above the dressing-table. Her face was flushed from the wine, the nerves; she’d hardly known the woman looking back at her. She’d powdered her cheeks and nose. She’d reapplied her lipstick with a shaking, uncertain hand. She’d told herself, Calm down. Do you want him to think you’re as silly as a teenager?
And then: the tap on the door. Crossing the pale beige carpet in her stockinged feet.
Larry Alderson standing there against the gilded wallpaper, wearing his black leather jacket, smiling a smile that—yes, it was true, she couldn’t deny it—brought her own answering surge of desire, so long buried, so overwhelming, now, moving up from the very core of her to the flaming colours of her face.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you called,” he said.
She nodded, swallowed, didn’t lift her eyes from his.
“Come in,” she said, and he did.
TRACK ELEVEN
“In This Garden”
By Cass Wheeler
From the album Huntress
They were young when they were married
Two kids of slender means
He was working for the council
She was painting all the scenes
And the house that they moved into
Was dark and old and cramped
Too hot to breathe in summer
And in winter, cold and damp
But outside, there was a garden
They planted beds of flowers
And she took his hand and told him
“This garden here
This garden here
This garden here is ours.”
It’s years since they were married
Those kids of slender means
He still works for the council
She painted on their dreams
And the house that they still lived in
No longer dark and cramped
In summer open windows
And the warm light of a lamp
Outside, there was a garden
They lay in beds of flowers
And she took his hand and told him
“This garden here
This garden here
This garden here is ours.”
* * *
RELEASED 10 January 1977
RECORDED October 1976 at Rothermere, Surrey
GENRE Folk rock / soft rock / pop
LABEL Phoenix Records
WRITER(S) Cass Wheeler
PRODUCER(S) Eli Glass
ENGINEER(S) Mike Edwards / Sean O’Malley
They were married on a Saturday in August 1976, in Surrey, in the gardens of the house they had recently acquired.
Its name, inscribed by the original owners on the twin stone pillars that flanked its tall wrought-iron gates, was Rothermere.
It was a large, comfortable, two-storey house, constructed in the nineteen twenties on the edge of a copse of tall, broad-leaved oaks and thickly needled conifers. The trees lent a measure of privacy, but also, in Cass’s view, made the place feel rather dark and hemmed in. It was Ivor who had fallen in love with it, Ivor who had toured it the first time, alone (Cass had been unable to postpone an interview with the Sunday Times), and come home to Muswell Hill absolutely assured that this was the house they should buy.
“It’s a palace, Cass,” he’d told her. “Beams in the kitchen—you’ll love them—and a barn we can use for the studio. A bloody lake in the garden. Honestly, it’s perfect.”
She had looked round it herself, of course—requested a second viewing from the agent. She’d asked her uncle John to come, too, to cast his professional eye; Lily had travelled with him from Atterley, and Cass had driven up with Ivor in the MG. Under the summer sunshine, the house had seemed grand, well proportioned: everything was clean and freshly painted, and John had been confident in the solidity of its construction.
“But do you love it, Cass?” Lily had asked her, quietly, when they were alone for a moment in the kitchen. Cass had smiled at her aunt and said, “I like it, Lily. It’s a beautiful house. And it’s what Ivor wants.”
Had she sensed, then—in the unconscionable conviction that had u
nfurled itself inside her as the agent had showed them from room to room (unconscionable, really, because the house was beautiful, even if that screen of trees did block much of the light from the upstairs rooms)—that this was not a place in which she and Ivor would be happy? It was impossible to know for sure; impossible to think back to that moment without the treacherous clarity of hindsight.
On their wedding day, Kim and her squadron of builders, caterers, and florists worked wonders with the house and garden. A marquee occupied the front lawn, its interior festooned with bolts of silk, and its round tables set with huge, sweet-smelling vases of old English roses, reddish hydrangea leaves, and frothy, milk-white cascades of lily of the valley.
A full-sized festival stage was erected beside it, complete with dance floor, and Kim arranged for a flotilla of glass swans to be launched, as night fell, onto the lake, each one carrying a flickering candle between the feathers of its sculpted back.
Cass was dressed by Cornelia, of course, in a gown of ivory silk with a wide sash and delicate lace-capped sleeves. The dress was modelled on a design from the thirties, and made by Cornelia’s own hand: she wouldn’t trust even her best Hackney Road seamstresses, she said, with such a task.
The week before the wedding, Cornelia had come to Rothermere for the final fitting.
“Dearest Cassandra,” she had said, as Cass stood in her new dressing-room—a sizeable, thickly carpeted room off the master bedroom, one of its walls hung entirely with floor-to-ceiling mirrors—“I’m so proud of you, do you know that? I’m proud of all my girls, of course—but you most of all.”
Cass had embraced Cornelia—her old boss, now the most unlikely and dearest of friends—and thought how peculiar it was, how uncanny, that she should feel more for this woman than she did for her own mother.
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