Valley of Decision (2 page)

The first six months of their marriage were spent with only occasional meeting and frequent letters; he arranged his Easter vacation in Hamburg where the company performed
The Turn of the Screw
; this period now seemed a happy chaotic time, with the chatter of pedestrians in a German they could not exactly make out matching their pleasure, their body contacts, their delightful recognition of love. They acted like children, without responsibility except towards each other and in physical discovery. The dark world of houses and factories, of ships and container lorries blossomed, put out a new leaf, a greenness, a promise of fulfilment; sunlight shaped shadows, shifted cameos, warmed naked skin. Sparrows crowded the parks.

‘They sing just like our birds,' he said.

‘What do you expect?' She was pleased with him. ‘German?'

‘Wagner.' He stuck his chin into his collar and mimed a
Heldentenor
in full crow.

‘Virginia Woolf's birds spoke Greek when she was mad.'

‘How d'you know that?'

‘I read it. I've plenty of time for reading.'

‘Is that what the rest of them do?'

‘Some.' Her voice rose, reflecting morning joy, the brightness of sky, the presence of a husband. ‘Some not.' Truth prevailed, happily.

It was, oddly, from his father that he had learned the direction his wife's career was next to take. Horace Blackwall, not much of a talker at breakfast, a heavy-breathing reader of the
Daily Telegraph
, had lowered his paper that morning to announce, clearing the frog from his throat, that he had spoken to Mary and had offered her at any time she decided to leave opera a position in his firm's accounts department. David was surprised; his father, he knew, approved of the girl, courted her even in his dry, moustache-chewing fashion, would be only too glad to have her settled in with the family, but Mary herself said nothing to him.

‘You mean you're holding a post open for her?' He liked to keep his father up to the mark.

‘You could say so.' A shaking of creases out of the newspaper.

‘And when will this start?'

‘I should be asking you that.' His father frowned, clamping his lips, condemning the noncommunicative lives of young people. ‘As far as I could ascertain,' his father loved on occasion such formality of lexis, ‘she has not made up her mind. She is enjoying herself, and,' the copula heavily thumped, ‘she doesn't feel it's too unfair on you yet. But we discussed the possibility.' The
Telegraph
was closed, with a brisk solemnity that still gave time for further comment, but as none was forthcoming, the old man coughed, brushing imaginary crumbs from his waistcoat, and attended by his wife made for bedroom, bathroom, hall closet and garage, all within five minutes, to join the crawl of traffic into town.

His father was shrewd; grandfather and great-uncle had hauled themselves by prodigious labour out of the working class into the ownership of two large furniture shops, a small factory and some scattered property acquired at knock-down prices during two wars. When Horace returned from the army in 1947, the uncle, David Daniel Blackwell, had died a bachelor, leaving his considerable estate between his younger brother and his nephew, Horace. The young captain, twenty-three years old but already confident, had taken the opportunity to expand, terrifying his father first with the extent of his borrowings and equally with the gigantic scale of his profits and holdings. He had twice sold off sections of his businesses to national concerns, and had then expanded elsewhere. When his father died in 1970 accountants had seen to it that the government did not seize too much. Horace George Blackwall was a successful man, and clearly, recessions and government changes notwithstanding, intended to remain so.

There was, however, no ostentation about him. He continued to live in the large, stone villa he had bought in 1954 on his marriage to Joan Blake. He had spent money on improvements, had added to the already considerable grounds by judicious purchase, but had not moved out to the manors, houses, or old vicarages in the villages, the modern ranch styles with swimming pools and treble garages that people of not half his means had acquired. He gave moderately to charity, took no part in local or national politics, held no office in golf clubs, churches or societies, was reticent about his family affairs, sparing of advice, but considerably respected and feared. Those whom he employed were expected to work. He had experienced trouble with the unions, but paid well enough, and had sufficient shrewdness not to be intimidated. He could not be called well liked, but neither he nor his opponents saw much sense in popularity. He had lived in a period when expansion and success had been possible, and he had made the most of it.

By mentioning the possibility of Mary's joining the firm, Horace Blackwall had surprised his son. David, intrigued, slightly annoyed, had questioned his father the same evening and had been told that Mary had a good A-level in mathematics.

‘I didn't know that,' the son confessed.

‘No.' Irony of disbelief. ‘You perhaps didn't need such information about a prospective partner in marriage.' The father slightly adjusted his dentures and, smiling, left David to think about the saw.

One never knew exactly how one stood with the senior Blackwall.

He had been pleased that his son had done well at school, and delighted by his scholarship to Cambridge. His wife had been responsible for his musical upbringing; her family, the Blakes, were accomplished amateurs, but Horace had attended the boy's performances when business commitments allowed, congratulated him, made odd, old-fashioned comments. When David had suggested first a year at the Royal College after university and then a job as a schoolmaster, his father had not demurred, to his son's surprise.

‘I suppose it's not well paid,' David had said, feeling it his duty to ensure his family understood implications.

‘What's the salary?'

David told him. His father touched his bristling moustache as if doing arithmetic.

‘That's more than you'd get if you started with me,' he said.

‘The big differences will come at the other end,' the son argued.

‘Do they, then? Do they?' Glazing of eyes. ‘Yes. Yes. If you get there.'

Horace had no ideas of founding a business dynasty. If David wished to become a schoolmaster, that would do; in time he would be rich compared with his colleagues, but that was no reason for largesse now.

Here the mother had intervened.

‘All they'll be able to afford on David's salary,' she said, ‘is a semi-detached.'

‘What's wrong with that?' Horace went through the motions of opposition.

‘I don't want my son in some poky little place when there's no need.'

‘But if that's all they can afford?'

‘What will people say?'

‘That I'm mean,' Horace said. ‘But I don't mind that. On the other hand, they may think the boy's too independent to accept my charity, and that will be much in his favour.'

‘You talk to him,' she commanded, beautiful still at fifty, proud of her husband, quick to defend his dryness, adored in return.

When Mary's opera company finally found itself in financial trouble and disbanded, thus making up her mind for her, father Blackwall had offered them money for a house. Neither of the young people had made much fuss about acceptance, disappointing him, but had not chosen a house very much grander than they could afford on their joint salaries.

‘It's quite pleasant,' Joan Blackwall had said to her husband.

‘You mean it's not what you would have picked for them.'

‘No. But it means we can buy Mary a grand piano.'

‘You should have bought that first,' Horace, indulgently expansive, ‘and built the house round it.'

‘They could have ours for all the playing it gets.'

‘Ah.' Horace lay back and invited his wife to perform. They moved upstairs, almost formally, as if observing some protocol.

‘Let's have some favourites.' He loved patronage of this sort, knowing how assiduously his wife kept up her practice. The opening of Mozart's
Sonate Facile
, Chopin's E flat Nocturne, the three Brahms Intermezzi, op. 117, and finally, brilliantly, the last movement of Bach's ‘Italian' Concerto. As she played he sat quite still, neither kicking nor shifting on his hams. She closed the lid with her usual comment: ‘Too many wrong notes.'

He nodded, then shook his head, making no great play with denial. They put out the lights in the drawing room and went downstairs again, both satisfied by the recital. On such nights the television was left untouched.

As a boy David had sometimes listened to these performances from his room but had never sat in, though he knew he would be welcome, that his presence would have pleased his parents. Horace Blackwall loved his wife always, but when she played the Bechstein he seemed lifted out of himself. His son never grasped how this happened; his father was no musician, had to be bullied to attend a concert or opera, but regarded these perhaps once-weekly performances as not unlike the twice-yearly Eucharist he attended at St Jude's; these were numinous. They did not make him wish his life otherwise, but were of a different order from a glass of fine claret or even, rare-favoured delicacy, his wife's lardy cake.

The bedroom light was still on, but Mary lay fast asleep, face perfectly in repose. He drew the sheets up to her chin, but she did not stir. The dark hair, blue-back, seemed hardly disarranged by the pillow, and the shape of cheekbones, nose, mouth was utterly satisfying. Tired as he was, he wished she would open her light blue eyes, lifting the long lashes, but he knew that unlikely. He undressed at speed, wound the alarm, set the radio and slipped in beside her. She stirred, and immediately settled back.

The Blackwall men loved their wives.

AT A QUARTER
to eight the next evening the four Blackwalls occupied the table at the end of dinner. Horace issued his orders.

‘David can help his mother carry the dishes out to the machine.'

‘I'll do it,' Mary said.

‘You'll stay with me. Perhaps later you can sing. Your mother thinks you should both be in bed early tonight, so we shall be sending you off at nine thirty.' He consulted his watch and the grandfather clock behind him, then blew out the candles. ‘Don't like these things. Dangerous, and they stink.'

He led Mary to the drawing room where they sat side by side on the second settee.

‘Must have you in good form for tomorrow and Saturday.' He continued in the grum-and-gruff vein he sometimes adopted with his daughter-in-law, telling her how his wife had inveigled him into parting with an immense cheque to pay for tickets for dinner and the Saturday performance at Rathe Hall.

‘Even David said the Purcell was good.'

‘But the food. The grub.' The word was plucked from some earlier vocabulary, perhaps that of the comics or library books he had read in his boyhood. ‘Holkham Tait's no idea.'

‘They're using an outside caterer.'

‘Is that likely to be better? He'll just spread mushrooms in sauce over everything.'

Blackwall senior had little interest in
haute cuisine;
he had a healthy appetite which needed no cosseting, and preferred, as he said often, plain fare, but on these social occasions he enjoyed parading himself to his daughter-in-law as a man of the world.

‘Colonel Tait's a bit of a recluse, isn't he?'

‘Did he show up, then?'

‘We were backstage. I didn't see him. Perhaps he did.'

‘He's old now. Older than me, anyhow. Seventy. And spends a good part of the year abroad. Not that he's poverty-stricken. He farms in a big way. But he's not at everybody's beck and call, I'll give you that. I'm surprised he gave permission for this week's disruption.'

‘Elizabeth Falconer's a persuasive woman.'

Horace Blackwall coughed, checking conversation, saying no more himself as if Mary had broken a taboo. David returned with his mother.

‘Are you two tittle-tattling?' Joan asked.

‘Of course.' Her husband.

‘Colonel Tait's love for Lizzie Falconer,' Mary added, mischievously, not certain that her father-in-law would approve.

‘It's over,' Joan Blackwall said, finding herself a brocaded chair to face her husband.

‘How do you know that?' Horace.

‘He told me so, himself.'

They all laughed, but nervously, as if not disputing the claim.

‘How's she singing?' Horace asked. ‘That's what I want to know about. I've paid good money.'

‘Marvellously.'

‘She's keeping her practice up?'

‘Must be. She's due to go back to it. She'll have to lose a stone or two.'

‘Can't have too much of a good thing.' Horace was pleased to be sitting with his daughter-in-law, pleased with himself, his wife, her cooking, the time of night.

‘Was she a good teacher?' Joan Blackwall asked Mary.

‘I hardly saw her at the RCM. The odd consultation lesson. She was in Bayreuth, or New York, or Sydney. But she was good. She bothered to listen.'

‘She thought you would make it,' David said.

‘She was kind to me. It was her recommendation to Will Broderick that got me into Omnium.'

‘And now you're both retired up here?' Mrs Blackwall said.

‘She won't stay long,' David prophesied. ‘She's not sung out her old engagements, and she's been here three years. She'll be signing up again. Won't leave it there.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Thirty-eight, would you say, Mary? Thereabouts.'

‘And what will her husband do about her setting off again?' Horace.

‘There's a very great deal of money in it,' David said. ‘Cash talks.'

‘He's not short.' Mary.