The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (39 page)

Henry glances round at the faces on either side, and sees only placid enjoyment. It strikes him that he alone comprehends the bitter tragedy that is unfolding on stage. This the greatness of opera, the emotions generated by the music broad enough for each listener to appropriate in his own way. The singers’ lines, half heard, half understood, snatched from inadequate sur-titles, become passwords to our own secret hopes and fears.

Give me back my loved one or in mercy let me die.

The loved one is Laura. The loved one is myself in love. Give me back a time when I was overwhelmed by love. A time when every woman made me tremble. Give me back the Laura who loved me. Somehow, without knowing it, I have left the room of life. I am on the other side of the pane of glass. I tap on the glass but no one hears.

The lights come up for the long interval. The audience emits a collective sigh and rises and stretches. Ninety minutes of good food and good wine lie ahead. No London nonsense of gobbling at six or starving till ten. The eager shuffle to the dinner table begins.

‘What was the radiator about?’

‘There was something very odd going on with the costumes.’

‘You should have seen Roddy’s face when they dressed Cherubino up as a girl. He went all pink.’

‘She is a girl, for heaven’s sake! She’s an Italian mezzo-soprano.’

‘My God, those seats are bum killers!’

‘I think the idea is the costumes are being created as the opera goes along. Did you see how the coats in Act Two had the tailor’s stitches still in them?’

‘Yes, but why? I mean, it’s so distracting.’

‘I loved the gardener.’

‘Everyone always loves the gardener.’

‘Look, it’s not rained after all!’

‘Did you see Ted Heath? He was right below us in the stalls.’

‘I could murder a glass of red.’

‘Maybe we should move the picnic out onto the grass.’

‘Are you completely mad? The table’s laid on the terrace. We’re all starving.’

Roddy turns and says to Henry with an air of sleepy surprise, ‘Perky little thing, that Cherubino.’

The first floor terrace is already crowded, picnic tables and chairs squeezed into every space. Some hardy souls have even settled on rugs spread over the brick floor. A bright buzz of voices rises from the bar below.

‘This is a ’95 Pommard. Should be tasty.’

‘We’re starting with smoked salmon. Shouldn’t we be drinking white?’

‘There’s more champagne if you want.’

Henry drinks red wine and tries to enter the spirit of the occasion. Just fancy dress really, the trick is to enjoy it. Beautiful people, beautiful music, the green hills of Sussex. Of course it’s all absurd, but who am I to sneer?

Like nausea, like car-sickness, the sensation of misery returns.

‘The Contessa has the most heavenly voice.’

‘Roddy, you’re dribbling.’

‘Laura, I want to know if Nick’s still gorgeous. Does he still do it for you?’

‘Oh, Diana. That was all twenty years ago.’

‘You remember the Ardmores? You do, Mummy. That dull little man who talked to you about burglar alarms. Well, it turns out he’s been poking the nanny.’

‘John, you can start cutting up the beef now.’

‘Isn’t that Billy Holland? My God, he looks terrible.’

‘You know Celia left him.’

‘That was ages ago. Surely someone’s tidied him up by now.’

‘Henry, do something with the starter plates, will you?’

The table’s unstable, it shudders every time anyone moves, it’s far too small for six. Plastic plates, plastic glasses, all part of the uncomfortable picnic experience. At least we don’t have to sit on the ground as we used to, now we can perch on little dark-green folding chairs instead, official items from the Glyndebourne shop. These are all social signifiers, the flags of our tribe, and why not? Football fans wear their club colours.

We are the spectators and we are the spectacle.

For Christ’s sake cheer up and enjoy it.

‘Now come on, Henry. Tell us some dirt. Is Aidan Massey a genuine fuck-bunny?’

‘A fuck-bunny?’

‘Is he up for it with anyone and everyone? That’s what I hear. Serena says she had sex with him standing up in a loo in the BA lounge at Heathrow.’

‘He must have stood on the loo seat.’

‘Henry!’ Diana treasures the flash of malice. ‘I shall repeat that.’

So much effort. Clothes bought, jewels uncased, hair sculpted, wines selected, food cooked, furniture hauled across gardens and up stairs, money paid out, time wasted, passion spent. So much effort. A thousand over-dressed men and women holding above their heads a giant mirror-glass sphere in which they see themselves magnified, distorted, swollen-headed. Why not let it fall, smash, shiver to tiny crystals?

But who am I kidding? It’s not Glyndebourne, it’s me.

Came to see you but you’re not here. If you come to see me I’ll be there.

The sensation of misery returns. Somewhere along the way I took a wrong turning. This is not the life I meant to live.

‘Tell them about Scott, John.’

John Kinross passing round slices of cold pink fillet of beef. Help yourself to the salsa verde, the new potatoes, the French beans. Don’t rock the table.

‘Ah, the noble Scott. My personal trainer. An individual of sterling virtue.’

‘He gives John exercises for his back.’

‘Scott never touches alcohol, never watches television, never eats meat, never shops at Tesco. He makes me feel like a spoiled child, which I expect I am. Anyway, to redeem myself in his eyes I told him I’d made a small contribution to charity—’

‘Not so small.’

‘Inspired by Bob Geldof.’

‘Listen to this. This is priceless.’

‘Well, Scott positively choked. It turns out he despises Bob Geldof. It seems Geldof provides an escape valve for our guilt.’

‘John gave £10,000.’

‘To be fair, I didn’t tell Scott the sum.’

Henry listens without comment. Is that admirable, to give £10,000 to charity when you’re sitting on millions? Diana told Laura that Roddy earned close to a million last year. How can this be? And yet this is today’s aristocracy, these are the patrons of the arts, this year’s production of
Figaro
made possible by the generosity of Citibank, Salomon Smith Barney, Prudential, EFG Private Bank. They sit round me on folding chairs drinking from polycarbonate glasses, the men whose wives and children don’t understand what they do, but we all understand what they get, because what they get makes what we get look stupid, and we feel stupid, and we are stupid, but here we are feeding on the leftovers. Mozart a prestige buy along with the Pommard, the wild salmon, the fillet of beef, the private schools, the flat in town, the house in the country.

Face it, I’m going to have to talk to Laura’s father, which means I have to talk to Laura first. Five thousand would cover present needs. God knows John never grudges the money but it embarrasses him, he gets it over with as quickly as possible.

Oh, you know. Money.

‘Did you make this, Mummy?’

‘Of course I did, darling. The redcurrants may be too tart. That’s why I made the crème Chantilly.’

Fuck money. Don’t let it poison me. That’s not what this is all about. I’m not jealous of John, or Roddy, or Nick for that matter. Wouldn’t have their lives if you paid me. But I have my own life and I’ve taken payment for that.

There’s a gap between who I want to be and who I am. Christina got it wrong. I’m not the real thing. Roddy is the real thing. He knows what he wants, and is willing to pay the price to get it. Even Aidan Massey is the real thing. He wants something enough to bully and cheat for it. He’s a fuck-bunny who has sex in toilets.

Every woman makes me tremble.

You too, Laura.

And me? I do nothing. I’m on the wrong side of the glass.

‘So when will your programme be out, Henry?’

‘Some time in the autumn. October, most likely.’

‘October! It’s amazing how long it takes to make one television programme. So what will you work on after that?’

‘Nothing definite yet. Various possibilities.’

‘That must be so frustrating. Never knowing when the next job will come up. I know if it was me I’d be wetting myself.’

‘You get used to it.’

Thanks to Daddy’s money. Or not. Without it this life I lead would evaporate. Maybe that would be better. A terraced house in Lewes, Carrie at the primary down the road, Jack at the comprehensive. It’s not as if we’d be badly off, just careful with the money, given that I can’t be sure how long I’ll ever be between contracts. We’re not exactly talking noble poverty, the writer who gives his life for his art. The fix went in long ago. If I’ve sold myself to television, why not to my father-in-law too? Whose virtue would I be protecting if I dashed that cup from my lips?

‘Isn’t it wonderful, Mummy? Henry has a programme coming out at last.’

‘Actually I think I’ll take a walk round the gardens.’

‘Don’t you want any coffee?’

‘No. Wonderful picnic, Anthea. As ever.’

‘Wait, Henry. Others may want to stretch their legs too.’

‘I’ll be by the lake.’

Get out. Tread between the half-eaten dishes of asparagus and poached trout, down the concrete stairs to the bar, out past the Elizabethan mansion onto the double border where the giant alliums brush my face. Down the steps onto the wide lawn that runs to the ha-ha beyond which sheep graze, parodying the rain-defiant picnickers on their rug-islands, most of whom have now reached the stage of after-dinner mints.

Henry is in a dangerous state. He has become separated from the world he inhabits. It’s been coming for days, he has fended it off with pressure of work, but now in this oasis of absurdity it has him surrounded. The misery is closing in.

He passes the champagne tent and joins the path round the lake. Here, under cover of trees, he can walk unobserved. At the far end of the lake, by the ornamental bench, he starts to cry.

Give me back my loved one or in mercy let me die.

What right has the music to be so true and the story so false? Fuck Mozart. Why this misery? That letter was written twenty years ago. It’s not as if Laura’s leaving me. I have all a reasonable man could desire. If I’m fucked up then so is everyone else here. I’m not going down alone. I’m taking you all with me.

Misery morphs into anger. Break something – but what? Kick over the picnics, scatter the opera-goers, stampede them into the lake. Lob grenades onto the double borders, spray the lawns with machine-gun fire. Slaughter in the Urn Garden, blood on the croquet lawn, screams that scare the sheep and shock the green hills.

He returns down the lake path erasing the tears from his cheeks, appalled by his own lack of originality. Got to do better than that, buddy. Not the old shoot-the-rich scene, so 1960s, so Lindsay Anderson. We’re all the rich now. Not for us the catharsis of machine-gun fire. Postpone the revolution, there is no golden tomorrow. Only today with its dove-grey sky and a chill in the air.

So here I am in the belly of the joke and the joke is we have it all and we’re still not happy. Unhappiness is sin. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

This can’t go on.

Henry makes his way back across the peopled lawns, and the world he sees no longer makes any sense. The screen on which his life is reflected has broken into bright hurting fragments. A man and a woman are walking towards him. They flicker and dance. Why do they wave their arms? The woman is beautiful, the man is sad. It was ever thus.

Laura? He sees her without recognition, she’s wearing garments that are unfamiliar to him, so he responds as he did on the very first day they met. She is unknown and she is beautiful.

‘Here you are, Henry.’

The man by her side is Billy Holland.

‘Hello, Billy.’

Billy nods. He seems distracted.

‘Try to be a bit more sociable,’ says Laura. ‘Don’t spoil it for everyone else.’

She doesn’t ask why he went away alone. Because she knows? Because she doesn’t want to know? She puts her arm through his and they walk back together, the three of them.

‘My father,’ Billy tells him, ‘turns out to have had some sort of a girlfriend. Laura has traced her. She’s still living in the village.’

‘Aged ninety,’ says Laura.

‘I’m thinking of going to see her. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do or not.’ He seems to be asking Henry’s permission. ‘There was so much I never knew about my father.’

The first bell goes. All over the lawns ladies in dresses that make it hard for them to walk fast are hurrying to the loos.

Henry says, ‘We never do know about other people. Only about ourselves. And not much even then.’

In the dark of the opera house Henry feels as if he is absent from his own body. A wave of well-fed applause greets the return of the conductor, applause for the orchestra, for the singers, for the kindness of the gods: a collective sense of entitlement that Henry can no longer share. The third act proceeds. Infidelities are promised, betrayals are planned, traps are set, secrets revealed. Then out of this flurry of pretty nonsense there rises up once more a moment of pure musical truth. Alone on stage the Contessa sings an aria of fragile haunting beauty.
Dove sono i bei momenti
. ‘Where are they now, the happy moments?’