“Larry,” she said quietly. “Please don’t. Not yet. I’m not ready.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but closed it again, and the conversation slipped away.
All through his visit, then, the idea began to form: tentative at first, and then gradually asserting itself, until she knew that she would have to give voice to it. And so, that night in October, after dinner, the night stealing across the room, she had told him.
She would record the new songs here at Home Farm, and release them along with a very particular kind of retrospective. Her life, reflected in the songs she had written; in the songs that she, and only she, could choose.
Larry asked her to Chicago for Christmas, but Cass did not feel up to the flight, or to the meeting with his children and grandchildren that would inevitably ensue.
But he returned again in the new year, stayed a month with her at Home Farm. In February, he flew back across the Atlantic to Vancouver and Connecticut for a fortnight, to see Harper and Maddy; then spent a week in Yorkshire preparing for his show; and from there travelled to London, and by Eurostar to Paris to see Todd and Lisette. Then he came, again, to Kent, where the sessions for the new tracks were almost complete.
He continued to spend his mornings sketching in the art room, and asked if she would mind if he brought in a workbench, materials, something with which he might begin to work on a new series of maquettes. Cass didn’t mind. She liked knowing, even as she sat out in the studio for long hours with Callum, Gav, and the musicians, lost in this new music they were making, that Larry was there, across the lawn, behind the house’s red-brown, wisteria-clad façade.
Larry was working on a new piece, fashioning tiny boxes out of stiff white card. He made one, two, three, and then another, and another, until gradually, his workbench was occupied by a miniature cuboid city, held inside an enormous, open-sided crate.
“Worlds within worlds,” he said. “Memory within memory.”
“Yes,” she said, and put her arm around him. “I see. I understand.”
Soon, too soon, it was March, and still they made no plans for Larry to return to Chicago.
April, then: the new tracks almost ready for mastering; Kim planning the catering for the party.
Simon, the publicist, came to visit (Larry was in London that day, with Diana), and described—quite to her surprise—the interest Cass’s return to music was inspiring. The label were wondering, too, whether she might have any ideas in mind for the cover.
That night, Larry suggested, over dinner, that they photograph his boxes. Black and white: a study of depth and line, and of time and memory; of the many selves, the many closed-off spaces, we all carry inside.
Cass looked at the small city of white-sided cubes, and remembered a biblical passage of which she had not thought in many years. Reverend Francis Wheeler, standing at the pulpit in his neatly pressed robes. Cass at the back of the church, with the Sunday school, staring up at the father whom she had always believed, back then, to be addressing only her.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my father’s house, there are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
“That’s a wonderful idea, Larry,” she said.
Her birthday. Sixty-five years old. Ancient: older, even, than the couple in the Beatles song. And Larry would be seventy at his next birthday—a fact undeniable, for all his youthful vigour, for all his particular allure.
Was it this—the natural jitters of the day, with its unwelcome reminder of her mortality, of the unstoppable quick-march of time—that caused Cass to behave as she did? That and the fears that had been circling ever since she had made the decision to draw herself out from retirement and dive back into the slipstream of her music.
Larry had roused her—on that she was clear; he had shaken her out of her stupor. And perhaps a part of her resented him, a little, for that, even as the far larger part of her loved him with all that she still had left to offer. For there had been comfort in silence. There had been reassurance in not having to produce work—to frame it, present it, offer it for judgement. To live an ordinary life; the life she had once envied Irene, and to whose slow, steady rhythms she had, over the last decade, set the beat of her days.
Or perhaps it was only (this was what Kim, later, would suggest) that she still believed she had no right to happiness in a world in which Anna did not exist; a world in which she and Ivor had failed to keep her safe.
For still, Cass asked herself what sort of mother she had been, what sort of wife, what sort of woman. Selfish, troubled, angry, flawed. A woman unworthy of love. A woman who was surely better off alone. A woman who should not allow this man—this good man, this man who was so generous, so honest, so incapable of dissembling—to make the mistake of offering her his heart, and his future.
And so. She could ignore it no longer. That day.
Her birthday. Fine, sunny, though the wind carried a slight chill.
They spent the day separately—Callum wanted Cass to go over his latest mix of “When Morning Comes”; Larry had a slew of emails to answer—and then, in the evening, ate the dinner Larry had prepared.
A bottle of Dom Pérignon. Coquilles St. Jacques, and a spring-pea risotto, delicately flavoured with lemon and mint. A salad of rocket and parmesan, and then—his showman’s flourish—twin chocolate soufflés, only slightly under-risen.
After coffee, Larry refilled their glasses, and led her through to the living-room.
She sensed, in his expression, in his slow, deliberate movements, what was coming, and she grew dizzy, sick; wanted to hear it—longed for it—and yet feared her own response.
Sitting beside her on the sofa, then, Larry declared his hand. He loved her, and he believed that she loved him. It had come as a great surprise to him, as he knew it had to her. He had known her music for years—had loved it, as so many had. Even so, watching her across the gilded room in Washington in her long navy dress, he had not expected to feel for her as he had. During the hours they had spent together at the gallery, he had sensed her hesitance, her reserve, and guessed its source: he had not, in short, expected her to call. The fact that she had, Larry said, had made him, in that instant, childishly happy, in a way he couldn’t remember having felt since his very earliest days with his first wife; and that feeling had only grown since then, assumed colour and form.
He wasn’t asking her to marry him—they were both too old, he assumed, for all that. And he wasn’t asking her, either, to move to America—he knew it was not what she wanted. But he didn’t wish to relinquish his life there. Maddy and his grandsons were in Connecticut; Harper was in Vancouver; his studio, of course, was in Chicago. He did not wish to put so many miles between himself and the life he had built.
But what he was asking—and at this, Larry seemed so bashful, so nakedly vulnerable, that Cass was forced to look away—was that she agree to share her life with him. That they formalise if only between, and for, themselves—this precious, late-flourishing love that they had found. That they agree to try to spend as much time together as possible (perhaps he could convert her art room more fully into a studio, stay here for a portion of the year; or she could come out to Chicago for a few months at a time), and to enjoy every moment that the future still had to offer them. That she meet his children, his grandsons. That she promise, here and now, to be the partner with whom he would spend the rest of his life, as he would promise to be for her.
Cass kept her eyes closed as he spoke. That dizziness, that roll and whirl, that ugly, snaking hiss of fear. Ivor, white-faced and snarling; blood seeping from her face as she bundled Anna into the car. The dreadful incandescence of her own rage, of their circular, unending rows. Anna withdrawing, step by step, into a place where they might not follow her. All this, Cass had learnt to live with, and yet now the full weight of it re
turned, threatening to squeeze the last gasp of breath from her lungs.
Surely Larry did not know her. Not really. He didn’t know all the ways she had failed; how difficult she was to love. What did she have to offer him but the totality of her mistakes? He deserved better, deserved more. She could not bear to see his opinion of her change, over time, as it must surely do: as this beautiful new thing they had found became tarnished. She could not bear to see Larry look at her as Ivor once had.
“No,” she said aloud. The word landed in the space between them with a thud. “No, Larry. No. I can’t promise you that.”
She saw his hurt, his disappointment. Larry was a soft, tender, large-hearted man, but a man, too, who knew the limits of his own pride; who did not, she knew, always find it easy to forgive. That, she respected. That, she could understand.
“What are you saying, Cass?” Even in his confusion, he reached for her hand; but she drew it away, left him grasping at empty air.
“I can’t promise you anything, Larry. You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am, what I’m capable of. I’ll disappoint you. It’ll go sour, and we’ll end up hating each other. I can’t bear that, Larry. Not again. I just can’t.”
He stood up. His face was reddening, his mouth setting into a firm line. He paced to the fireplace, his back to her, running a hand across his forehead; then, as if reaching a new resolve, he stepped back towards her, and said, “For Christ’s sake, Cass. What are you talking about? Of course I know you. Of course I know what you’ve been through. But do you think you’re the only fucking person who’s ever suffered, who’s ever made a mistake? Jesus Christ, give yourself a break. You’re a fucking legend. A real artist. You’ve given up everything that you’re good at, that makes you happy—that makes so many other people happy—to sit around doing nothing, out of some ridiculous notion that you have to atone for your shitty marriage, and for how your daughter chose to deal with it, or whatever else made her hurt herself. Well, let me tell you this, Cass: people make mistakes. Marriages go wrong. Children get ill and die. It’s bloody tragic, but it happens. So don’t give me that bullshit about disappointing me. Don’t you fucking dare bail out on me now.”
He was almost shouting, his breath coming shallow and fast.
“No,” she said again. “No, Larry. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t argue. He packed his case and called for a taxi. He’d spend the night with Diana in London, he said, and fly home to Chicago in the morning.
Cass lay on the sofa, head buried in her hands, listening to the sounds of his leave-taking; wishing, with so much of herself, that she could ask him to stay—and yet motionless, weighted down.
When Larry came through to the living-room to say goodbye, he was calm once more.
“I guess,” he said, “I had a different idea of where things were going, Cass. I might be an old man, but I can’t say it doesn’t hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He stepped away, went out into the hall. Then, after the briefest of silences, he closed the front door behind him, and was gone.
9 P.M.
Cass is climbing the stairs to her room again, drawn by the silent pull of her mobile phone. There it is, on her dressing-table, where she left it. She enters her passcode, illuminates the screen. No missed calls. No texts. She checks her email, just in case. Nothing.
She was right, it seems: Larry is not a man who finds it easy to forgive. And yet—that postcard he had sent. The Henry Moore. Today, Cass, find a way to forgive her. And then—please—find a way to forgive yourself.
She had emailed him the week after he’d left; had tried, carefully and honestly, to lay out the terms of her apology. To explain herself. To explain that she had allowed her fear, at the last moment, to overcome her. That she missed him. That she would try as hard as she could to make room for him in her life—to trust in the power of what they had found together; in his ability to accept her for who she was, and who she had been.
He had not replied to her email, or her voicemail messages. There had been nothing at all from him, until that card this morning. But that card, surely, was enough to allow her to hope. I’ll call him again tomorrow, she tells herself. I’ll keep trying, and I won’t give up.
She replaces the mobile phone on the table. In the mirror, she repairs her make-up: reapplies her eyeliner, her lipstick, dusts powder across the bridge of her nose.
Her cheeks are flushed: the champagne. The faces watching her as she gave her speech, offering the best account she could for the appearance of this music, these new songs. Afterwards, she had watched her guests, as the songs had poured out from the speakers. Some of them—Kate; Serena; Tasha; Kim—had closed their eyes. Others had nodded in time to the slow rhythm of Javier’s percussion; had looked back at her with a searching gaze as her voice floated out across the room. How she had missed it, that communal experience of listening. How she had thrilled to the applause that had risen, spontaneously, when the last note had died away.
Examining her reflection now, she finds herself thinking of her mother. Cass has never thought they looked much alike. But in that moment, in the half-light of her room, there are traces of Margaret in the composition of her features: the angle of her nose, the slight downward tug of her mouth. Her mother’s restlessness, her complexity, are hers also. And hers that tendency towards self-destruction; though in her mother’s case, she can see that it became a kind of liberation. Throwing off the shackles of an unhappy marriage, of a life that had seemed to promise nothing more than a chain of identical days.
There had been courage, yes, in Margaret’s decision to release herself, in her acknowledgement of her need to strike out for what she wanted, whatever the cost. Margaret had made her peace with that. She had reached out, and taken hold of it, and not allowed herself to be daunted by fear. And in that, Cass thinks, there had been a strength of the sort that she, now, must find.
“Cass? Are you in here? Are you all right?”
Kim, stepping in from the landing in her brightly patterned dress.
“Yes,” Cass says, and turns away from the mirror. “I’m fine.”
Kim, who misses nothing, looks from Cass to the dressing-table, and the phone.
“Still nothing,” Cass says, “other than that card.”
“Listen.” Kim moves across the room towards Cass, her heels leaving small, round stiletto-prints in the carpet’s high pile. “I think you should . . .” She hesitates; her tone shifts. “Come on, Cass. Let’s go back downstairs.”
“No. What is it, Kim? What were you going to say?”
Those dark brown eyes, fixed on Cass’s face for one moment, two, three. But Kim’s voice, when she speaks again, is firm, unyielding. “Nothing. Honestly. Come back downstairs, won’t you? Everyone’s wondering where you are.”
Her friend’s slender frame, shifting back out to the landing. The set of Kim’s narrow, silken back is resolute, and Cass knows she has no choice but to follow. And so she does: drawn back to the light, the sound, the guests all gathered downstairs.
The party is reaching its apex. Its volume has swelled, its soundtrack shifted. Cass’s voice—or the ghostly impression of it—is no longer rising from the speakers, but has been replaced by her antecedents, her contemporaries, and those who have followed in her wake.
The Beatles and the Stones, whom she had loved equally, and Joan Baez, whom Lily had taught her to love. Sandy Denny, with her red wine and her deep, infectious laugh. Tom Arnold, with whom she had stood on the porch in Laurel Canyon, among the whispering trees; and in whose arms she had, so many years later, sought solace.
The Portland sisters, with their sound that is both timeless and absolutely new; and the young singer-songwriter from south London, with her rousing call-and-response choruses. All this music, playing on rotation through the evening, laying its own particular trail of meaning as her gu
ests talk and drink and dance.
In the living-room, she finds Simon, with his glass of iced San Pellegrino, his impish smile.
“Well.” He takes her hand, leans in close to half whisper in her ear. “I don’t think that could have gone any better, Cass. You’re trending on Twitter, and Don’s already promising a five-star review.”
She laughs, looks over, once more, at Don Collins, who is well on his way to full-blown drunkenness, talking intently to Tasha, who, Cass can sense, is preparing an excuse to slip away.
“It’s funny,” she says, “how much friendlier Don is these days. Age, I suppose. Long past the brattish arrogance of youth.”
“He always liked you, I think. He was just staking his reputation on going against the grain. Now there’s nothing left for him to prove, is there?”
She shifts her gaze back to Simon, returns his smile.
“No,” she says. “I suppose there isn’t.”
On and on the music plays, as the party sways to its own unpredictable, juddering rhythm. Guests leave—Pauline and Jeff, who have an early start; Mike and Irene, who have a long drive; all the journalists bar Don, who must catch the London train from Tunbridge Wells. Those who are left behind smooth over these absences, allow their glasses to be refilled, consume the last of the caterers’ excellent canapés.
Serena, rather giddy on champagne, begins to dance, and Kate dances with her: two women, long past the first bloom of youth, swaying their hips with the sexy, sinuous abandon of the twenty-year-olds they once were.
Cass smiles, and talks, and moves from group to group. And through it all, behind every face, in the shadow of every smile, Cass sees her daughter, as she knows she will always see her, always glimpse her from the corner of her eye.
Anna’s long blonde hair, forever falling in front of her eyes; her teenage uniform of under-slips and Doc Marten boots; her ragged, emaciated frame, folded beneath the table in that Berlin restaurant.
Greatest Hits Page 41