Ladies From Hell (25 page)

Jack said gently, “There was nothing you could do, you know. It was the way he wanted. And he’d signed the forms.”

She looked up. They were passing the gigantic frontages of Queens Gate Terrace; tenements now to their garrets, stucco peeling, dilapidated as the rest. She closed her eyes, felt the car swing, accelerate, swing again and stop.

The driver opened her door. She got out, feeling the pavement heave a little, like getting off a ship. She gripped the railing and the car moved away; she thought Jack tipped the driver, but didn’t see. She found the downstairs key, turned to see the Korean standing worried on the cracked flags and nearly laughed at a wild thought that crossed her mind, that if she ordered him to take her to bed and love her he might obey from politeness. She said, “It’s all right, Jack. I’m all right now.”

The little flat seemed nearly unfamiliar. She carried jeans and a sweater to the loo to change. It seemed she might put away with her other clothes the cream walls, the whispering gramophone. Jack had put the kettle on; she got out a packet of Earl Grey tea, she had sealed it against a special occasion, she supposed this qualified. She watched as he drank, sipping the delicate, the Oriental flavour. He curved his hands round the cup, making the drinking a little ceremony of his own. Later, the china washed in the diminutive sink, he said, “What are you going to do?”

She said, “What about?”

He said, “Tomorrow.”

She said, “Go on with it, I suppose.” Her mind, dulled, shied
away from the problems the question posed.

He looked away, ill at ease for the first time. He said, “Under the circumstances … It wouldn’t be expected, after all.”

She stared at him. She thought, ‘Not you, too,’ and of course he understood the thought. He said, “I didn’t mean …”

She said, “It’s all right. I know what you meant.” She rose to stand arms folded, staring out across rooftops. The sun was westering now; somewhere in the golden haze, closed away behind terraces and trees, the Royal Albert Hall was still the biggest jelly mould in Europe. It was due for renaming, or so the press had rumoured; the Tchaikovsky Hall seemed likely now Shostakovich was out of favour again, though Balakirev was a strong contender.

He still looked undecided; and she turned back to him. She said, “After all, nothing’s been banned. I couldn’t sing if it was banned.”

He made a little gesture, of resignation. He said, “That’s true.” He half-glanced at her, and to the window; and she nearly smiled. There were such things as unofficial bans; equally, there were unofficial curfews. She said, “You’d best get on, Jack. It’s getting late.”

He rose; and there was the pain again. He said, “Are you …”

“I’m fine. Honestly. I shall be all right.”

He said, “I did think, maybe … what he did …” He stopped; but she had already finished the thought.
To help me. One last thing. A Workers’ Funeral
.

He said unhappily, “I’d best go anyway. I’m not being much use.”

She kissed him, lightly. It seemed to confuse him. She said, “I couldn’t have managed without you. You know that.”

He smiled, a little wanly. He said, “I’ll pick you up.”

She shook her head. She said, “I’ll be all right.
Go on
, Jack. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She watched him walk away, from the high window
of the flat; a small figure, almost doll-like, shoulders hunched and hands in pockets. He looked back briefly, once; then he was gone, and the great white street was empty.

She lay on the bed, limply, hands at her sides. His absence filled the room already. She thought, ‘I couldn’t ask more. More than he could give.’ She knew, and he had known, that she would be safer alone. This was a London where the common man walked free; as long as he was white, and a card-carrying Member.

She moved her head till she could see the room. Elderly lino, a rug that had seen better days; big old wardrobe, dress on a hanger, kitchen alcove with its twin-ring burner, Ascot over the sink. The alcove was partly screened by a plastic curtain on a rail, patterns of weed and crudely-drawn fish. She loathed the material, but it was all she had been able to find. At least the flatlet had a private loo and shower; she’d done well for herself, really.

Paul’s picture stood on the dressing table. It was a good one of him, her favourite, the face quirky, nearly grinning. She remembered how seeing it there had angered him; afterwards when he visited she had hidden it in a drawer. She tried to understand what she had felt for him. She thought, ‘Other people can have a Father in God.’ The thought led on to the old man she had burned. Like refuse really. But the body was refuse, when the spirit had fled. So Church and State agreed.

By the dresser a polythene sack held all she had brought from her father’s flat. Old photographs, herself as a child, her mother in a garden with roses and a pond. And records she had once owned, the first she had bought, unplayable now; some school-books, the army things, an out of date diary with housekeeping details in her father’s hand. Lastly a scrapbook she had been startled to find, cheap and brown-paged, the Tower Scrapbook it called itself, a drawing on the cover of the Tower of London in black and red, dotted and splashed so it looked as if the building was sprinkled with blood. Inside, badly-gummed press clippings, some from years back; recitals she had forgotten, others that were still fresh in her mind. Made her public debut
at, singing for the first time in, the up-and-coming Stella Welles, triumph for new young team. Confirmed her position as, vivacity with fullness of tone, Korean Young Soo Kim, will be remembered, will perform. Congratulations, Stella Welles. In Memoriam, Stella Welles.

She looked up with a start. She must have dozed; for it had seemed she was standing in the wings of an enormous stage. She heard the orchestra, rattle and rising whisper of the curtain, stepped forward smiling; then had come the shock, the terrible realization that no bar of the music was familiar, that she had somehow omitted to learn or even read her part. Her heart had seemed to stop; and the lurch had woken her.

The room was shadowy now, the western sky darkening to dusk. She let her eyes drift half-closed again. She was remembering her father’s glee when the first massive aid had started to arrive; and Paul Eulenstein’s rage, as he stamped white-faced from rehearsal.
‘Now they will have their New Britain! Let them eat it! Let them sleep it! Let them breathe it!’
Then the slam of the dressing room door, the sudden silence; and little sounds, tinkles and scrapes, as the orchestra began to pack itself away. She had quarrelled with old Michael that night and again the following week; perhaps it was from that the bitterness had flowed, how futile it all seemed now. She remembered scurrying home breathless, half across London, after that first interview with Paul. They’re taking me she had said,
They’re taking me;
and Michael had swung her round laughing, his noisy chit of a girl, and later marched her out to candlelight and good food and
Beaujolais Nouveau
, the old campaigner, twinkling at the waitresses, cheeky and suave. Yet so soon it seemed he was an old man in a tiny room, the room too cold, could it all have been her fault, could it have been anybody’s, hunched over the radios, filling in his cards, nodding surly at the cupboard for her to make him tea; and later when the hobby was denied him there was the tranny blaring its perpetual Rock, not to be turned down. Though Rock was silenced now, with many other things.

Her record player stood on a table beside the bed; she reached to it, clicked the main switch for the comfort of the little green and red beacons. They were like cue lights, illuminating
a tiny stage. She wondered why she had not seen before that music itself could be a little death, a death repeated daily, the proud fierce masks of makeup washed down sinks, Queen of the Night banished with Tytania’s train. It was a lesson clear enough to be learned, in a hundred hotel bedrooms with telly and pizza and
vin du pays
. From that she thought of the great stage a mile away behind its shuttered doors and wondered if Pamina still danced in blackness, if something of her could be said to remain; and Philodel the Airy Shape, and all the rest. It seemed strange now, ever to call a memory happy; for memories by definition were surely ghosts. What had Paul said? She remembered him at a Master Class; Paul at seventy, looking forty-five in high-necked white jumper, elegant slacks. ‘
The memory is like a room. The room has walls, and on them are many hooks. But there is no floor. So if we throw things inside they will fall through and be lost. We must place what we need carefully; to be ready for use, when we shall want it again
.’ She wished she could reach into herself, into the room, and detach memories; let them float away, one by one, into a peaceful void.

She had summoned, unwitting, a grimy tower set amongst brilliant trees; to drive it away she thought again of Jack, nonexistent because not here. Jack stamping out the Passacaglia and Fugue, Jack prodding at the manuals of a Neupert saying I think this one double declutches, Jack fooling about in practice, starting her in a malicious key; and when she turned to him, aggrieved, grinning at her over the piano and saying, “You can never trust these bloody Orientals.” She was crying again, though it didn’t matter with nobody there to see.

She had undressed; now she stood barefooted before a very tall music stool. The stool was tall, she realized, because she was a child. She opened the funny plush-topped lid, propped it with its thin brass stay. The music sheets were yellow and shiny and old-fashioned, the notes like mice and little scurrying birds, trapped behind the long bars of a zoo. She buried her nose in the sheets. Music to her already had a scent of its own, dusty and sharp together; like lavender, the polish her mother used in the chilly little room. The floorboards of the room shone,
the piano that stood there loomed bear-brown and friendly. Its keys intrigued her with their alternations of white and black, even, odd, even; she would press the pedals down, legs at fullest stretch, listen to hear the struck notes die a thousand miles away. She played wild
etudes
, at the age of five; and Michael would come grumbling or her mother, she would be borne out struggling and the high door firmly closed.

The years seemed crowded in on her. She was nine, taking lessons from Miss Watson, waiting her turn in the front room of the big old house, the room that smelled of cooking and cream paint; fourteen, dreaming her days away in a hot, clattering school; seventeen and in love, Debussy the only Fact in the world. Then twenty, standing in the big grey room she knew so well, the room with the piano and the bare board floor, the tall windows that looked out on to traffic. Paul was playing, Paul whom she had not seen for most of a season; frowning up at her, narrowing his eyes while she sang and let the pride come, conscious of new control, knowing she had worked and studied hard. Till finally he raised his hands for quiet. He waited, seeming lost in thought, before he spoke; then he said, “What is the voice?” She began to speak, hesitantly, of larynx, pharynx and breath supply; and the hands fell with a crash, he raged at her, “
I teach singing, not surgery!
” Then as she recoiled, shocked, “The voice is a flute. A lovely flute, here, in the throat. The rest is nothing, nothing, nothing. And this tremolo, this sempiternal shake …
Gehen Sie, verschwinden Sie … Raus
!” So she ran from him, humiliated and furious, knowing as she had known before that the years were wasted, the hoping and failing, hoping and failing would be endless because his demands were monstrous. She lay sleepless that night too, squeezing bitter tears; because the end of all struggle was death, the spirit failing and the voice. She was one, it seemed, with the lost and lonely of three hundred years; the crippled Delius, the blinded, patient Handel, Beethoven raging and suppurating, Mozart sketching his own dancing Requiem. She saw the face of Music clear at last; and Music watched
back, with maggots for its eyes.

She was nearly laughing, because it was all so long ago. And Paul’s rages never lasted, least of all with her. She remembered a story once current, of him flinging down his baton and storming from rehearsal, but muttering ‘Ten minutes’ to the last desk of violins. She remembered too a little public concert, when would it have been, a fortnight later, three weeks of bitter application, of abasement; and Paul sitting with the audience, impassive, leaning back, his long legs neatly crossed. His voice was silent; but his eyes were on her face and his hands moved, making a gentle downward shape.
‘You are young,’
they said,
‘you are a flute. Gently, gently, it will come. Remember, you are a flute.’

So four years passed; and all he had said at the end of them was, “Good. Now go and sing with the broadcasting people.” So she had applied, to the State Radio Chorus, and a place had been found, perhaps the way was smoothed; and she thought she was forgotten till he had sent for her. To walk into the remembered room was strange; but nothing was changed, the sunlight lay in patches on the floor, the traffic roared while he sat as ever, gravely, at the elderly piano. He raised his hands, lowered them, opened his mouth as if to speak, changed his mind and for the first time she could remember, grinned at her. He said, “You are looking well, Stella, how is your Old German?” and she stared back blankly, she knew his programme, she understood what he proposed but could not believe. So she came to sit in a great Hall, orchestra and chorus ranged up in their tiers and the music falling from them,
O Fortuna
and the
Ecce Gratum
, the Abbot and the Roasted Swan, nobody, he had said, writes tunes quite like a Municher. She remembered the curious detachment that had gripped her as she waited for her part, not apprehension but a strangeness of awareness, a part of her mind automatic and cool while with the rest she wondered that men should come together to put metal tubes to their mouths and saw at cords, beat on the skins of animals tightly stretched; while she and the others waited to vibrate membranes a half inch long, in turn and
to command. All, she saw, had led to this, to her sitting in a bright red dress, Blanziflor and Helena; the songbooks and the music stool, the scurrying notes, records bought with shillings scraped and saved, the red glass lilies in Miss Watson’s porch. Then she was caught away, locked within herself while the power flowed like the woman touching Jesus, through and beyond the tall man on the podium,
Dulcissime
, I give my all to you. And it was over, unbelievably, the thunder was applause, the lamps brightening like coloured eyes, Paul bringing the orchestra to its feet and the streamers falling in their drifts across the stage, bouquets crackling and huge. Then as now she seemed hyper-sensitized so that the tears stung as she bowed and laughed, so many flowers killed for her. And later, in wondering quiet, roses from Paul and the card she still kept tucked away, the
beau geste
, Porpora’s words, he’d told them to her once,
Go, I can teach you nothing more
. While the lights cooled in their lines, almost she heard the wiry snaps as the banks of switches were thrown, in the Hall where mysteriously shrubs and flowers bloomed, the Garden of Remembrance, a living, a growing Memorial, the plaque will be discreet; famous for our azaleas, I myself prefer the yellow azalea, the original wild azalea of Japan, the car too hot, Park for West Chapel, Miss Welles you would be well advised.