Time Will Tell (29 page)

Tallahassee, Florida, April 12
^th
2015

Andrew hears Emma's arrival before he sees her. At first he thinks that the hesitant applause is the patter of thick raindrops on foliage, the herald of another intense tropical downpour, but plastic glasses and plates of oozing finger foods are guiltily abandoned, an incongruous reaction to something so familiar, and the sound focuses and crescendos to greet the international conductor and singers of Beyond Compère. They have entered through the wide double-doors of The Modesty Room, the usual venue for post-concert receptions like this, and they acknowledge the whispers and nods of those nervously trying to be noticed by the honoured guests.

Emma Mitchell and her singers look out of place here in the Floridian setting, their clothes redolently English against the backdrop of white wood, pastel shades and louver-windows. It's a long-standing joke on campus that the room had been appropriately named, that rather than commemorating Rose Modesty, the charity-inclined wife of the local property developer whose flamboyant appearance belied her husband's parsimony, it more accurately described an exercise of cut-rate educational charity in the form of knock-off surplus from golf-course condos. Andrew had initially shared the opinion when, some years previously, he himself had been welcomed to the Music Faculty in this very same space, and had been disappointed that the university did not echo the educational traditions of the Ivy League. Those older American institutions, modelled on Oxbridge colleges, favoured manicured lawns and fussily tended gardens, soft stone that spoke in quiet tones of tradition, an idiom suggestive of history, more appropriate décor than that of the mail-order design of The Modesty Room. But over the years, as climate and age have tempered his aspirations, Andrew has come to enjoy the appropriateness of the mise-en-scène to an air-conditioned lifestyle that protects them from the eighty-degree heat, and now he deems naive his youthful preference for dense curtaining, dark wood and oil paintings whose encrusted patina celebrate time itself.

Beneath the ceiling fans, the staff and students mingle with sponsors of the concert series – older men wearing sports-jacket-and-tie combos, their wives in long dresses and diamanté in deference to the seriousness of the concert they have just attended. Emma looks much as she did then, Andrew thinks, perhaps less animated, her hair worn long rather than the short bob he remembers, assured and seemingly confident amidst the enthusiastic assault of concertgoers. Tonight's performance has been impressively polished, not surprising given that the group has been together for the better part of twenty years, and, when the head of the department had disingenuously delivered, as if
ad lib,
a line he had prepared just for the occasion – that Beyond Compère really were beyond compare – Andrew had readily agreed without mentioning that he had seen the group once before, many years ago in France.

He isn't sure if Emma will recognise or even remember him, and knows that, if they speak, she is bound to ask him about the motet. Yet, even after all these years, he isn't entirely sure how he will respond. He wonders, not for the first time, if he might leave and thus spare them both the embarrassment. It is, after all, only his professional responsibilities that have forced him here in the first place; as a senior member of the music faculty it's politic to attend all the events in their short concert series whether or not the music is of interest, and, though he has left the fifteenth century behind, he understands that, because of his former life as an early-music specialist, his absence might wrongly be read as a snub. It had not been his idea to invite Beyond Compère to Tallahassee but the brainchild of one of his younger, more ambitious, tenure-tracked colleagues who, even now, is steering Emma proprietorially around the room, nodding to colleagues as he goes.

Andrew watches as one of his students approaches Emma. There's something gauche about the enquiry, an air of presumption that suggests the student believes himself interesting enough to warrant her attention, combined with a nervy impatience at her response. Whatever it is that Emma's saying, it's not enough. The student is a singer himself who has recently submitted an excellent essay to Andrew marred only slightly by his tendency to elevate personal opinion to the level of fact. The essay's faults notwithstanding, it had prompted Andrew to ask the student if he was considering graduate studies? Yes, came the confident reply, but in England, where he could sing. Doubtless the student's earnest conversation with Emma is designed to elicit advice and garner likely contacts, an ardent exercise in social networking disguised as flattering enquiry, an approach which Andrew can tell isn't going particularly well. Emma is clicking a fingernail against her empty plastic glass and her eyes flick impatiently over the post-concert buffet. Someone less intense than the student would pick up on the signs and graciously invite her not to be detained. Andrew smiles at the scene, remembering his own restless desire for advancement which must have been so obvious to Emma even then. Clearly the student isn't doing much to help his own cause, and Andrew knows he can both moderate the young man's edgy aspiration and testify to the student's more genuine abilities. Thus it's out of altruism, and to spare Emma from any more social awkwardness, that he finally decides to intervene and re-introduce himself.

He pauses at the punch bowl to pour fresh glasses, both a pretext for his interruption and to deny her a reason for abandoning the conversation too quickly. As he approaches her, he realises that the student has already left.

‘Not very exciting, I'm afraid,' Andrew says, indicating the brittle raw vegetables, carved cubes of cheese, and lemon curd pastries. From the guilty look on Emma's face he can tell she has been thinking the same thing.

‘And the punch has no alcohol in it and tastes weird,' he adds. ‘Your glass was empty.'

He hands her the fresh glass and Emma smiles, a smaller, more relaxed and genuine expression than the exaggerated, formal stage smile she'd been wearing all evening.

‘That's very kind of you. Thank you.'

‘My pleasure. I'm sorry we can't offer you something more appropriate at the end of the concert – beer and wine – but it's like many campuses: dry, by order of the university charter. I expect you get that a lot in America. Cheers.'

‘Cheers.'

Rather than the clear tink of glass there's a disappointing tap of plastic, an ironic confirmation of the lustreless hospitality. Neither acknowledges it at first but, when they taste the pink punch, a strange blend of unidentifiable tropical fruits overlaid with a sweet soapiness, they catch each other's eye and simultaneously register its synthetic awfulness. Emma tries to restrain her laugh, which only makes it worse, and she has to dribble the liquid back into the glass rather than choke. Fortunately Andrew has swallowed his but, in keeping with the secrecy of their shared disdain, he tries to stifle his amusement and snorts instead. They both look around them quickly to see if their adolescent ill grace has been noticed by anyone, then laugh again out of relief.

‘It's worse than I thought,' says Andrew. ‘I really shouldn't have brought you an extra glass of it. Sorry.'

‘Don't worry. We haven't been introduced. I'm Emma Mitchell.' She holds out a slim hand.

‘Andrew. Andrew Eiger.'

‘Andrew … Andrew Eiger!'

She remembers him and he's grateful that he won't have to spend the next five minutes trying unsuccessfully to revive faded memories.

‘Of course. Andrew Eiger. I'm so sorry. I should have recognised you. ‘Ninety-seven: Ockeghem year. The concert in St Gatien. The conference in Tours. How silly of me. You look well.'

‘You too.'

He had thought so earlier, viewing her from across the room, but now he discerns the effects of age: the face slightly fuller, facial lines, perhaps a few extra pounds around the waist – but she still manifests a sense of contained energy possessed by some short people, the suggestion that a lot has been put into a small space. Andrew knows he hasn't changed much and that, in some ways, he looks younger. He's always had a boyish face, and over the years it's become leaner, his haircut no longer so obviously of his parents' generation. He still looks like his fifteen-year-old photo on the music faculty website and the only recent change is a smattering of grey hairs at the temples which, he is assured, makes him look distinguished.

‘So…' Emma raises her eyebrows. ‘What have you been up to? I didn't even know you'd moved to Florida. Should I thank you for organising the concert?'

‘No, no. That was my colleague whom you were talking to earlier. I moved here about ten years ago, from Ohio, and got tenure about eight years ago, so they can't sack me. I'm fairly settled. Now.'

He feels no embarrassment as once he might have done. He has deliberately hinted that his personal life has had its complications, an invitation for Emma to enquire further if she chooses. He notes a slight softening around her eyes, which makes him wonder if her understanding derives from similar experience.

‘How about you? Everything going well?'

‘Oh, yes, things are going fine,' she says brightly, a programmed response. Then, slightly less upbeat, ‘On the road again which is “The Touring Life” as we call it.'

He isn't clear to whom the ‘we' refers. The group presumably, but is she referencing her partner? Andrew can't remember his name and, from his reading of the concert programme, he'd guessed that Emma's boyfriend is now her ex.

‘You sound like you've had enough of touring?'

Emma looks up quickly and, to hide her sudden movement, takes a sip from her glass. ‘God, that really is awful.' She puts the glass on the table and pushes it away. For a moment Andrew wonders if her outburst is directed at the drink or if she's affronted by his assumption of familiarity. Whatever happened all those years ago, they really only spent twelve hours together – almost a one-night stand, he thinks suddenly – not enough time to warrant such intimate interrogation only five minutes after meeting again.

‘Sorry,' she continues, as if she might have read his mind. ‘The touring life? It's tough: on to Memphis tomorrow, New York the next day. A lot of travel and, yes, it's tiring.'

Andrew nods sympathetically. There was no defence in her answer and revealing her immediate plans accords with his feeling that, despite the debacle of the Ockeghem motet, the past is nonetheless meaningful to them both.

He can understand the disappointments of travel. Even from the little of it that he observed, it wasn't a lifestyle he envied. Once he had seen it as glamorous, an index of success and recognition, but he's come to realise that soon it would become a wearing and repetitive necessity, a false promise like that of glossy advertisements.

Emma leans closer towards him, an intimacy that surprises him but which nevertheless feels appropriate. ‘I'm actually giving it up. This is our last American tour. My singers know and my agent, but it's not official, so don't tell anyone.'

‘Of course not. Gosh. Giving it up. To do what?'

‘To direct. Theatre. Sondheim in the first instance. A production of
Follies
, which I love. Not just the music and the lyrics, but the themes – age, memory, missed opportunity, desire.'

It's one of the few musicals he knows, recommended by a student who insisted that it was the equal of opera, and he admires its subtle examination of nostalgia and the self-deceiving nature of reminiscence.

‘Over the years I've consistently turned down some pretty good offers simply because I was enjoying what I was doing,' Emma is saying, ‘but it feels like the right time now. The travel's not all it was – too much airport security, too much hanging around – and we're old hat now. And old. Time to stand aside and let the young ones have their chance. It's the way of things.'

When he had met the group back in 1997, it was they who had been the up-and-coming group, the ones to whom everyone, including him, wanted to hitch their wagon, and he senses that behind her resignation lies a regret with which she has still to come to terms.

‘How about you?' she asks. ‘Still working on Ockeghem? Have you written anything I might have missed?'

‘Well, funnily enough, rather like you, I gave him up,' Andrew admits. ‘Shortly after we met, in fact. I left behind fifteenth-century music and turned to other things.'

His decision had perhaps been precipitate, certainly an emotional reaction to the destruction of the motet and the failure of his marriage, but he has had no regrets in turning his back on late-medieval music. Even then he was aware that he was not by inclination an historian, and that his interest was in the abstract qualities of Ockeghem's music, something which was echoed much more clearly and deliberately in the twentieth century. The music of Paul Hindemith is his new area of specialisation, coupled with more radical and recent mathematical approaches to music analysis. As one colleague had commented in an arcane witticism that perfectly summed up the esotericism of his chosen pursuits, Andrew had ‘swapped isorhythms for algorithms'. For an instant Andrew contemplates trying out the line on Emma, who undoubtedly would know isorhythm as a term from medieval music, but he chooses not to risk alienating her by referring to a mathematical procedure of which she is happily ignorant. He smiles at the way he's avoided the social awkwardness. The old Andrew would not have been so self-aware; he would have blundered onward trying to demonstrate just how funny the joke was.

‘I wrote to you, back then, after the … the mess up with the motet,' says Emma. ‘I wrote to apologise. I didn't get a reply. Not that I deserved one.'

Andrew smiles. There it is. Finally it's out in the open.

‘No. You deserved a reply and I'm sorry I didn't get back to you. I'm the one who should apologise. My life was a bit of a disaster then. My wife left me and, well, I had a lot on my mind, and the fate of the motet wasn't that important suddenly.'