Fearful Symmetry (24 page)

Poppy was out in the lane, unnecessarily directing cars in through the gates of the village hall. Inside, the rectangular hall with its shallow stage at one end and its floor marked out for badminton was washed in fluorescent overhead lights. It was like walking into an over-lit crowd scene: dozens of dark-clad, uniformed boys in clusters, swinging, skidding on the floor and play-thumping together, Cosmo next to the piano in conversation with two stout uniformed women, clearly the
Uberfrauen
of the Scout troupe, and a half dozen or so other adults, mainly women in glasses. Jim, looking uncomfortable and on the edge, was there, not far from Helene, who was chatting and gesticulating to Herve. Bloody Herve was looking loftily down at her, and Sara was standing a little behind him, deliberately staying out of the conversation.
Sara
. How could Sara be here? She had seen him and now she was walking towards the three of them, concealing, as he was, the excitement that others must not see.

‘Phil! Hello, Valerie!’ she beamed. ‘You’re wanted over there, I think. Cosmo’s trying to explain about the solo parts to the Scout lady. I think he’ll want you two as well.’

As they moved away she turned and looked up at him and the smile evaporated. ‘You took your sweet time. I’ve been trying to reach you.’

Andrew smiled over her head. ‘Complaints, complaints. Is that all you do?’

Sara smiled back, more at his ear lobe than at him. ‘I’ve got to talk to you about the case. And I’ve been here eight whole minutes already and I’m nearly dead with the tedium. Herve made me bring him and I couldn’t refuse.’ She hesitated. ‘And I’ve been missing you.’

‘I’ve missed you, too,’ Andrew almost whispered, hoping he was managing to make her understand there was much, much more to it than that. But they were interrupted by the arrival of Poppy, who had come in from car-park duty glowing with the combination of cold and organisational zeal. Andrew and Sara moved themselves to the edge of the hall, as far from the piano as they dared, while Poppy clapped her hands and boomed that as they were already running late, could they make a start please, people? It was ten past seven.

At four minutes to nine Sara looked at her watch again and swallowed another yawn. Andrew was sitting with his back to her playing his cello, obediently sawing out notes under Cosmo’s flailing conductorship from the keyboard. She had already exhausted the imaginative possibilities of staring at his broad shoulders and tapering back, picturing the beautiful flexing of the muscles under his clothes as he played. But unless by force of her will she could somehow make him put down the cello, stand up and stride towards her stark naked, there wasn’t much future in it.

Poppy had a clipboard and a pencil behind her ear, so she was happy. The little boys had been marshalled on stage and pushed about first as Bath urchins, singing a very creditable medley of authentic-sounding street cries. After their squash and biscuits, at eight fourteen by Sara’s watch, they had acquitted themselves a little less convincingly as invalids being brought by their attendants to the hot springs, marked out by a circle of rope on the stage floor. In the general collapse of their concentration a fair amount of chucking-in and drowning had gone on, after which they had been rounded up for a talking-to and a quiet game by Judy and Maureen, their now heavily sweating leaders. Now, in a mood of exhausted sobriety, they were stumbling back up on stage to be taken through the Assembly Rooms scene, in which they were to pretend to be squires in boots. Sara vowed to herself that, no matter how hard Herve might plead, she would not be present next week to witness the mayhem when they were joined by the Brownies (aka maids and ladies) and taught how to do a gavotte.

Valerie was up there now surrounded by her pygmy squires, nervously wetting her lips in preparation for her big number, with Jim by her side. Cosmo was thumping out the introductory music while Poppy bawled at the Scouts that they were meant to mingle
quietly
on stage until the singing started. Helene, who would not sing herself so soon after Adele’s death, and had had her own part written out completely, was sitting with Herve. She was watching Valerie with the rapt attention of an Olympic coach. Indeed, had she been watching a nine-year-old gymnastic prodigy insinuate herself into early spinal injury for the good of national morale she could not have given Valerie more complete concentration, so much so that she failed to notice, as had everyone else, that the ostensible star of the scene, Beau Nash, was nowhere in sight. After Valerie’s thin opening phrases:

Oh Beau, don’t treat me so,

Your Juliana’s going bananas

’Cos you hurt her so!

the depopulated ensemble slid into a mystified silence as it became obvious that Phil was not there. And they only had the hall until a quarter past nine.

Cosmo popped up from behind the piano, looking cross.

‘Phil! Where’s Phil?’ Poppy at once began slapping on her clipboard and calling ‘people’ to order, insisting that someone else could sing his part for now. Helene jumped to her feet and was joined by Herve, who had been following the score carefully and seemed annoyed at the interruption. Valerie turned round to scold the restive boys. Andrew was shaking his head and folding up his music, clearly having decided in his quiet way that he had had enough. Sara watched him, not wanting to accept that he would soon be driving home with Valerie. She wandered out of the hall.

It was too mild for frost, and outside the air hung still like horses’ breath, grassy, warmish. Far away on the right past the village hall stood Iford Manor, aloof from the rest of the village which straggled off to the left beyond the cricket ground on the other side of the lane. Sara could just see the outside lights of the manor illuminating the prosperous gabled elevation of the house, but there was nothing to suggest that the sumptuous Italian garden which stretched up to the top of the hillside behind it, now asleep in the dark, was there at all. The garden was shut for the winter. It seemed unlikely that Phil would have wandered off towards the publess village of mainly private drives and single-storey houses. It had the sort of This Is a Homewatch Area air of privacy about it which would make innocent wandering feel like snooping. Looking up, Sara set off along the lane towards the manor, wondering if Phil had ventured into the closed and out-of-season garden.

Coming towards the manor from the village side, Sara could not see the walled vegetable garden or Britannia on the bridge beyond it. Street lamps were fewer here and the lane was narrow. Passing by fields on either side, she was aware of the sensation of livestock, sheep probably, nothing more than an inkling of life close by, rather than the sound or sight of animals. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark she became aware of heavy shapes in the fields. No cars passed. She stopped, and the lane seemed to vibrate with the sudden silence of her no longer sounding footsteps. Then from the far side of the lane the soft sighing of the slow river came to her, rising and mingling in the air all around, the sound directionless yet seeming somehow to sing a departing note. Then, through the sounds of water other sounds were reaching her, possibly from further away, a snuffling, a slight moaning. She had the impression that a shape was stirring, somewhere up in the field on her right. Sara moved on, walking on the grass verge now. She reached the corner of the garden’s boundary wall, which at this point was broad and flat and less than four feet high. Just here a thick stand of holly bushes behind it, which created a far more effective barrier than the wall itself, was hideously lit by the last of the orange street lamps. Sara negotiated the thick growth at the base of the wall, climbed up on it and began to walk along it, leaving the lane and heading into the darkness of the hillside, the garden on her left and the field on her right. About ten feet along the wall, between two of the holly bushes, a space had been cleared, apparently for a new compost heap. A smooth mound of leaves or grass cuttings was accumulating. Sara jumped down and landed on soft leaf mould, skirted easily around the pile and came out on to the edge of the garden and stood quite still. What she had half heard above the shifting of the river was unmistakable now and not far away: the sound of human weeping.

Sara followed the sound past the cloisters, across the east lawn and into the rose garden, where she stopped. The rose bushes on either side of the path slouched shoulder-high, offering out the last few blooms which hung from their bones like encumbrances, late, uncomely children on the hips of mothers spent by parasitic, blousy offspring. Long before she reached him she could see that Phil was sitting on a bench, doubled over and sobbing. She took a seat beside him, not certain if he did not know or simply did not care that she was there, even less certain of what she could or should do. Gently, she rested an arm over his shoulder and waited. After several minutes Phil’s crying subsided. Slowly, he lifted his head and lowered his hands from his face. Sara withdrew her arm. He sat quite still, his throat occasionally convulsing in a pained hiccuping, and stared into the beds of roses whose petals shone thinly white or yellow. In the unperfumed late damp they glamed with the scentless sterility of all flowers which bloom out of their time.

‘Phil,’ she said eventually. ‘Poor Phil. Please let me help. What’s the matter? Is it Adele?’

Phil responded with a thin wail and a new outbreak of crying. Trying not to feel exasperated (but it would be so much easier if he would say
something
) Sara took this to be a yes. As he rocked to and fro Sara, without thinking, reached across and took him in her arms. She did not know anything for sure about his circumstances except that he was a student—and Andrew had said he was a loner—but he struck her suddenly as unbearably vulnerable. He was soft-bellied, unarmoured by anyone’s concern for him. Indeed, Phil seemed utterly unclothed in love from anyone at all, and perhaps his grief had something to do with his being newly aware of it.

‘Adele . . .’ Sara had not planned what to say. ‘Adele was lovely. And you miss her terribly. I can see.’

‘Yes,’ gulped Phil. ‘She was lovely. My love. I love Adele, she was my girl.’

‘I wish I could help, Phil.’

‘I help her with things. We love each other. We could be together, I could look after her. Really helped her with everything, not hurt her. I would looked after her, for ever, I would not used her. With life, everything. I teach her everything. I want teach her
everything
. For love, not using. We could got married, she could even be mother. I won’t
spoil
her, I love her.’

Of course. Phil’s gentle presence, always close to Adele, watching her, helping her in her little routines without comment. It had seemed that he stuck to Adele only because she, almost mute, was less demanding company than the others. It must have been nice for Phil to speak better English than someone else for a change. But his bland calm had been something closer to adoration. Who was to say that because he and Adele said little to each other that they were not communicating? Phil clearly believed that they had understood each other on some other level. He was looking at Sara now, the black eyes shining not just with tears but with something like eagerness. His confusion over English tenses seemed for a moment to have obscured the fact that his generous, loving hopes for a life with Adele were now consigned to the past, the awful, aching might-have-been.

‘Oh, Phil, I’m so sorry. I’m sure you would have taken great care of her. I mean, you
did
. You did take care of her, Phil. You couldn’t have prevented what happened.’

Phil stared at her wildly. ‘No! No! Someone
could
. Someone should. Adele should not be wasted like that! It make me so angry. Oh, you don’t understand, nobody understand!’

‘Phil, what do you mean, Adele wasted? What do you mean? Do you know something? What is it, Phil?’

But Phil’s grief took hold of him once more and with a tighter grip. He almost fell forward onto the path, moaning, ‘I lost her, I lost her. All just wasted. She shouldn’t been wasted.’

‘Of course it’s a waste, Phil. A waste of a life. Look, I don’t know what else to say. Please don’t torture yourself. Slowly, the pain will get less. It will.’

Several minutes later Sara was able to lead him, listless and exhausted, back through the unlit garden and down to the lane. Andrew was walking in the dark towards them.

‘Nearly everyone’s gone home,’ he called. ‘Are you all right, Phil? Valerie’s waiting in the car.’ Phil looked up, pulled away from Sara and ran off past Andrew in the direction of the hall.

‘Don’t go after him,’ Sara said, before the astonished Andrew could speak. ‘He’s upset about Adele.’ Cars were now turning out of the village hall in both direction and they walked back together in the glare of passing headlights. As they reached the gates Sara said, ‘Andrew, I want to talk to you. About the case. When can I see you?’

Andrew gave a sarcastic groan and looked at her, it seemed almost coldly. ‘When can you see me? Really? Oh, of course, about the case. Suddenly you want to talk about the case. Well, there’s plenty I want to talk about too, and
none
of it’s about the case.’ He had already found his car keys and was walking away.

‘Andrew, don’t. Come to the cottage. Come and play some music, at least.’

He stopped and turned. ‘Saturday afternoon,’ was all he said before turning back and quickening his pace towards his car.

CHAPTER
28

W
AY TOO
“
MAGIC
of the opera” for me.’

‘But
The Magic Flute
is magic. The whole story’s meant to be magic, it’s a fairy tale.’

‘That doesn’t mean you’ve got to have whizzbang stage effects in every scene. I thought it was meant to be a parable of freemasonry, full of symbols.’

‘Oh, I see, you want whizzbangs with funny handshakes.’

‘No, I want
implied
magic, not pantomime puffs of pink smoke and purple explosions every time the baddy comes on. I thought at one point you were going to hiss the Queen of the Night.’

‘I was not. But you nearly called out “she’s be-hind you!” to Papageno. Admit it.’

‘Jeez, Sara, if you can really buy all that firecracker stuff, you must have the sophistication of a four-year-old at the circus.’

‘Aha! I win. Your argument has just been reduced to the level of personal insult. Can I have some more of that?’

James cast his eyes to the heavens and poured wine into Sara’s glass in a mock huff. Sara smiled peacefully and lifted it towards him.

‘Anyway, we agree about this place. I love it here, don’t you? Great to see you,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am you rang this morning. I haven’t been to the opera for ages. But I thought you weren’t going to be back in London till after you’d done the New European Composers series?’

‘I wasn’t,’ James said. ‘I can’t really spare the time. I’m going back to Brussels first thing tomorrow. But I did want to see this production of the
Flute
and it finishes tomorrow. I only got tickets because they’ve asked me to be on the board next year.’

‘Lucky old me, then,’ Sara said. ‘Opera and dinner, out of the blue. I love doing things on the spur of the moment. It’s lovely to get on that train out of Bath sometimes.’

James looked at her sadly. He had rung her early that morning with the accurate suspicion that his beautiful friend was embattled and lonely.

‘Tell me how you are,’ he said gently.

‘Shan’t.’ Sara smiled. ‘Can’t. Really, I can’t. I don’t know where I am with any of Herve’s stuff. I’m drowning. And so many other complications, you don’t know the half. You don’t
want
to know.’

‘I do.’

‘You don’t, believe me,’ Sara said, shaking her head, ‘and I don’t want to talk about it.’ She simply could not go into it, the mixture of dread and excitement at the thought of seeing Andrew the next day. ‘This is the first time I’ve felt properly away from the place for weeks. I want to hear about you and the perils of new composers.’

‘Ha! Don’t get me started . . . Well’—James drew breath for a long speech—‘when they asked me to do the thing, it was a direct challenge. You know I’ve done a lot of reviews of new music in the past year or so?’

Sara nodded, with a wry face. James had been unsparing and all over the place: in at least two broadsheets and most of the specialist music magazines.

‘That reminds me, have you had anything submitted by someone called Cosmo Lamb? I don’t think he’s had much performed.’

‘Cosmo Lamb? Cosmo Lamb . . . no, nothing’s been submitted by any Cosmo Lamb. Name’s very slightly familiar, but no, I’m probably mixing it up with a recipe. The sort of thing you’d get here: cosmopolitan lamb, with tamarind, soy sauce, swede and anchovies. He any good?’

‘Don’t ask. It’s just he’s doing this thing in Bath, a community opera. Just one of the things I don’t want to talk about. Sorry I interrupted.’

James groaned. ‘A com-
mewn
-nity opera. Jesus. Anyway, well, I’ve done all this reviewing but I’d no idea I was becoming such a monster of the media. I’ve just said what I think on the whole, and apparently now I’m either impossibly hard to please, or the great debunker and ego-deflater of half a generation of living composers. Anyway, I was asked to judge this year’s European New Composers Awards because this year it’s for piano works. There was a piece in the July
New Music Review
about it, about me being asked to do it. Did you see it?’

Sara shook her head. ‘I was away most of July. I only get it now and then anyway.’

‘Well, they did this big feature, starting with the line: “Would
you
ask Brian Sewell to judge the Turner Prize?” I was furious. Comparing me to Brian Sewell! Have you seen how the man dresses?’

Sara laughed and looked for a moment happy, which was James’s sole purpose in telling her.

‘So, I get to choose the pieces and then do a couple of concerts of the winners. Most of the stuff’s pretty unconvincing, some of it’s dire. A
little
, I like. So I’m on Planet Contemporary Music Nightmare, I tell you, until the end of next month.’

Sara drank thoughtfully. Sadness had come over her face again.

‘Good. I’ll be glad of the company.’ She sighed.