Valley of Decision (24 page)

‘We ought to go out for dinner,' Stiles said. ‘Now and again.'

‘You don't want it, and I don't. All I need is to get my shoes off and my slippers on and rest my hipbones. Any road, when we'd had our bit of a snack I said to Dad, it came to me suddenly, “I'm going to have a bath,” we'd got the immersion on, “and while I do I want you to ring her up.”' Mrs Stiles stopped again. ‘You should have seen his face. And heard the excuses. Wasn't it too late? “It's early afternoon there,” I said. What should he say? I'd do it a lot better than he would. “George,” I said, “just ask her what she thinks she's doing, and if she's not there leave a message for her to ring us. She'll know if it's you ringing it's serious.”'

George Stiles wriggled.

‘So I went off and George tried. It was Saturday afternoon. I hadn't thought of that. But in the end he got through to somebody who said he'd leave her a message.'

‘They're back, are they?' David asked.

‘I know no more than you do.'

‘And you've heard nothing.'

‘No, we have not. But at least we tried.'

‘Who answered?' David asked, sorry for his father-in-law.

‘Some man.' George sat straight. ‘You can't tell from the way these Americans talk whether he's a professor or the caretaker. Eva should have done it. She'd have nailed him down. I was bemused what with the dialling and waiting.'

‘Don't you dial straight through?'

‘Yes. But there's a bit of a gap. And then I thought nobody was ever going to answer the thing once it started ringing their end. But I hung on. And then this man picked it up, in time, but he didn't say who he was. I explained who I was, and who she was. He seemed to get it, told me he'd leave the message. He didn't say whether the opera was there or not.' Stiles looked apologetically towards his wife.

‘Thanks anyway,' David nodded, frowning.

‘We don't know where she is, or what she's doing,' Mrs Stiles began angrily. ‘It's like searching in a fog.' She continued in this vein, easing herself, alarming the men. Her spleen brought her no relief, nettled them. As if she felt bound to instruct them she recited what she knew of Mary's stay in America, looking now and again to David for additions or corrections that were not forthcoming. The men satisfied themselves with a silence as gloomy as the room.

At the conclusion of the performance, she went outside to the lavatory, and noisily returning pressed David to a cup of tea, a piece of cake baked that morning.

‘You'll need it,' she said, ‘if you're playing. I know what it's like. A mug of urn rubbish and two arrowroots.' She laughed vividly as David capitulated. He ate his way slowly through a slab of delicious fruit cake he did not want, and then fought off her attempts to cut him a second slice.

He rose as the clock struck four.

‘I don't like to think of you there all on your own,' Eva said. ‘I don't know how you've put up with it, all these weeks. You must have more patience than I have.'

‘Not very hard,' Stiles said, back of hand.

‘Listen to that. Swearing like a navvy this morning he was just because he dropped a bag of nails.' She laughed again, mirthlessly, hard and high.

‘I didn't use any words you didn't know.'

‘And I wouldn't be too sure about that.'

They were uncomfortable, this pair, distressed on his behalf, niggling at each other. She cut and wrapped him a slab of cake as he left.

‘We'll be in touch,' Eva shouted, too loudly, on the pavement. One or two interested Sunday pedestrians dawdled past. ‘We'll let you know if we hear anything. And ring us up if you're short of company.'

‘You do that,' Stiles said, ‘and don't forget.'

David shook hands with George, kissed Eva, who for a second in profile reminded him of Mary, a caricature perhaps, but her mother. The two fussed excitedly out here as if they'd done their duty; he guessed they'd be glad to be rid of him. In person he blighted their Sunday afternoon's peace, but once he'd disappeared he'd be an interesting topic of conversation. As he drove away the parents waved, making something of it, seeing him out of their lives, regretful, not unthankful for the entertainment. He dismissed his speculations, centred interest on Shostakovich.

He had not been in his house twenty minutes before the phone rang.

‘I'm glad I've got you.' Frederick Payne. ‘I've been trying since three. Can you pick Walter Wilkinson up about quarter to six tonight? His car's kaput again.' He gave the address. ‘I'll see he gets back, but I'm supposed to go out to value a fiddle; I'll only just make it. If I hadn't caught you this time, I'd have had to cancel it.'

‘You're busy on Sundays?'

‘Somebody's always asking me to do something. I s'll be glad to go this afternoon, though. It'll take my mind off Shostakovich.'

‘We shan't have much time on that.'

‘Play it straight through. Hear what it sounds like in their hall. Glad I caught you. I thought you said you'd be home later.' He described the route. ‘I'll tell Walt to be ready.'

Wilkinson opened the front door to David.

‘Come on in,' he said. ‘While I get my coat on.'

In front of a gas fire Wilkinson's wife sat with a small girl on her knee. The child, perhaps two or three years old, had been bathed, so that her golden, fine hair was still damp, with darker flat stripes on the soft halo. She wore a long nightgown and stared at the visitor with large eyes.

‘Lorna, this is David Blackwall. You've heard me speak about him.'

Mrs Wilkinson smiled. She looked no older than Mary, in jeans and a white blouse. She lowered the book of stories in greeting.

‘Read it, Mummy,' the child whispered.

‘In a minute, chick.'

‘What is it?' David asked. ‘A fairy tale?'

The girl quite violently buried her face in her mother's breast.

‘That's Emma,' Wilkinson said.

‘Hello, Emma.'

The child did not move, sat still enough to conceal breathing.

‘She's shy,' Mrs Wilkinson said.

‘Till you get to know her.' Proud father.

Mrs Wilkinson put an arm tighter about her daughter. She seemed an untidy young woman, fair hair loose, in shabby jeans, but smiling, much at home, showing large, even teeth. Her hands were red though the skin of her arms was pale, gold-furred.

‘It's early upstairs tonight,' she said. ‘We've been to Nana's. My dad had to bring us home. Walt's car broke down.'

‘Is this the usual bedtime?' David asked.

‘As long as she's in by seven.'

‘And this is number two,' Wilkinson stood by the table on which lay a carrycot. David looked in. A very small bald baby slept under a ribboned quilt. ‘That's Sarah Amelia.'

‘How old is she?' David asked the mother.

‘Seven weeks tomorrow.'

He noticed that Lorna's blouse was discoloured, splashed at both breasts. Emma had resumed her upright pose. Wilkinson had left the room. On the wall above the gas fire incongruously shone mounted crossed swords over a heraldic shield.

‘They keep you busy, I expect,' David said.

‘Between the three of them.'

‘Yes.'

‘He'll be calling out for a handkerchief in minute.' She smiled, easily, painlessly; she would know the answer.

‘Read it, Mummy.' This time the child's voice had a small, forceful clarity.'

‘When Daddy's gone. In a minute.'

‘Do you get broken nights?'

‘Yes. But we can't grumble. She's not too bad.'

Lorna Wilkinson crossed her legs, lifting her daughter. She leaned back, unembarrassed, seemingly very young. One could meet a dozen such in the cloakroom of any disco. She wore uneven mauve eyeshadow and her short fingernails were plum-dark red; her shoes had ridiculously crippling high heels.

‘She's a good baby. They both are. Weren't you, chick?' She hugged Emma to her. Wilkinson returned in dark raincoat. ‘You've found the hankie I put out for you?'

‘Yes, thanks. We'll be off now. I shouldn't be late. We'll have it over for half past nine. You go to bed, if you want.'

He bent to kiss his daughter, wife, and then dipped into the cot.

‘Right.' He rattled the ‘r' for David, an adult. ‘Bye-bye.'

In the car he complained about his banger, but without ferocity, as if his family had softened him. After a minute he jerked inside his seatbelt.

‘Lorna's not keen on our turning professional,' Wilkinson said.

‘What about you?'

‘Starting kids on the fiddle bores me stiff. But travelling round wouldn't suit, either. That's if we made it. Still, you can't have everything.'

‘What will you do?'

‘I don't know. Wait. I'm putting it off until Bob Knight comes. I mean, if I stay the Education Committee's quite likely to cut down on peripatetic music teaching. They regard that as expendable. I'm in two minds. It'd be different if I were a bachelor.'

‘Is your wife a musician?'

‘Not professionally. She sang in the Harmonic and the Bach. She worked at the Central Library.'

Wilkinson sucked his cheeks in sombre reverie.

A caretaker led them into a hall where Payne and Barton were already occupied in discussion.

‘Big place.' Wilkinson cocked a suspicious eye after greetings.

‘And only a small audience,' Payne answered.

‘The students have been invited,' Barton told them. ‘Not that many will come.'

‘Will you try the light?' The caretaker wore a suit. ‘I stepped the bulb up, and put another by in case that one blows.' Payne fiddled for the switch.

‘Can you raise it a couple of inches?' the leader asked. More time wasted.

‘We'll try the Mozart for volume,' Payne said. ‘Bit of the first movement, and anything else you want, and then we'll do the whole shebang of Shostakovich.' They removed their coats in no hurry, prepared to play.

‘Have we got a room somewhere?' Payne quizzed the caretaker, and tiptoed round, unwilling to sit.

‘Just through the door there. Not very spacious, but you won't have far to walk. Cloakroom just across the passage. Shall I show you?'

‘Are you in a hurry? To go?'

‘No. I might just as well sit here and listen to you.'

He took his seat in the middle of the front row, where he swelled his chest, crossing his arms, proprietorially.

They began the Mozart, confidently, stopping at the first double bar.

‘Beautiful sound,' Payne said.

‘And we can hear one another.'

‘Let's do it again, so we aren't caught out.'

They completed the movement this time enjoying themselves.

‘I'd like the Adagio,' Barton said. ‘Or some of it.'

‘How's the time?'

‘Twenty-five past six.' David.

‘Right. I want us out of here at half seven or soon after.'

They smiled, satisfied with the big sound of their Mozart.

‘Now then. Shostakovich. As if this were the real thing. Blind on straight through. We'll pick up the bits and pieces when we've done that.'

They played cautiously at first, then, caught up, strongly, as if amazed at their progress. The concert performance two hours later touched, snarled, hung sobbing amongst the wide spaces, the empty seats, with a hundred or so spectators jolted, goaded, arm-broken into sympathy by the plangency of sound. True, the four told one another there were still too many mistakes, weak joints, awkwardnesses, but their fear furbished their skill and the composer's shattered art shouted his apprehension, his sorrow, his clawing for stars. Only when the Trent Quartet had finished their concert did they grasp quite what they had done; talent and terror had united.

‘Some bloody good playing,' Payne congratulated them as they cased their instruments.

‘We got somewhere near it.' Barton.

‘How about it, David?' Wilkinson asked, as if the few minutes inside his home justified the intimacy of questioning.

‘It was good,' David answered. ‘And puzzling. As if we didn't quite make out what we were doing so well.'

‘That's exactly right.' Barton, bemused.

A handful of the audience broke in on them garrulously. A bottle of champagne was opened for their benefit, but the effect was spoilt when they had to drink from teacups. The recipient of the concert, a stout man with untidy hair and insecure spectacles, thanked them but vaguely as if he had difficulty in recalling what they had done for him. His wife boomed out her pleasure. The principal of the place, grey hair smoothed down over his square white face, a trio of subordinates at his shoulder even on Sunday, arranged words into three banal sentences. A balding man, with a red, lively, Jewish face, touched Barton's arm.

‘Great, Cyril,' he said, ‘great. Thanks.'

‘Shostakovich must have been a poor, lost sod.'

‘You showed us how much. It was superb. I've never heard that better played, on record or off. You'd fathomed it.'

‘Who was that?' David, who'd been close by, asked when the man darted away.

‘Joe Horowitz. A mathematician. Family all killed in Auschwitz. They didn't know how he stayed alive. He'd be three or so at the time.' The age of Emma Wilkinson. ‘Some English professor adopted him. I don't think he's got over whatever it was he saw.' Cyril watched the congratulatory antics with a guarded expression. ‘It doesn't seem right that Shostakovich is battered about and all the result is a retiring present for some stuffed shirt.'

‘“Butchered to make a Roman holiday.”'

Cyril's expression cleared, and he laughed out loud, committing himself with gusto. ‘That's good,' he said. ‘It really is.'

David guessed that Barton had worried himself that his colleague might be unable to bear Shostakovich's collateral grief, and was relieved to find himself wrong. Pleased with his knockabout psychologizing he offered to take Wilkinson back.