Valley of Decision (7 page)

Mary herself, swamped with congratulation, surrounded by admirers, had lost the supple beauty she commanded on stage, had replaced it by a stiller, more composed version. She shook hands, said the right thing, charmed but stood away. For the first time she convinced her husband that her success in America was assured, that she had the social strengths to complement the musical. This sudden confidence warmed him, stiffened him, made it clear that he had done right in encouraging her to go. And yet in this paradigm he barely recognized the wife he had married.

‘Are you tired?' he asked. ‘Do you want to go home?' He had finally got near enough to speak.

‘No, not yet.'

She enjoyed every second of her triumph, grew larger with it, picturesque.

‘Well, what do you think of that, then?' Horace Blackwall had taken his son aside.

‘She sang beautifully. She really did. She's a different woman from what she was three months ago.'

‘Oh? How?'

‘Her voice has come on since she started practising
Dido
. I didn't think it possible. The change is extraordinary.'

‘You said “a different woman”.'

‘That's right. It, musical enlargement, can't help altering the personality.'

‘So if she becomes a big star . . .?'

‘I don't think that's possible. She'll never have Liz Falconer's tremendous vocal equipment. Or, at least, I don't think so. She'll improve, but not in that . . .'

‘You're not sure, are you?' Horace snapped his false teeth together.

‘Tolerably.'

‘Tolerably.' Horace mocked his intonation. ‘Are you frightened she will?'

‘Not frightened, no.' He answered the fool according to his folly. ‘I hardly consider that. I don't like the idea of her leaving me.'

‘I see.'

His father patted his shoulder in comfort, an awkward, dry movement, though David, once he was able to dissociate it from the dark-coated stick figure, saw it for what it was, and felt warmed.

‘Joan played absolutely beautifully,' he said in return.

‘Yes.' Horace brushed his chin. ‘She could have made her way as a professional.'

‘Did she want to?'

‘I don't know. She played a great deal after we were married, in good amateur circles. At least until you were born. Even then she kept her practice up.'

‘Do you think . . .?'

‘Go on.' Horace rebuked his son's hesitation. Truth bettered tact in his view.

‘Has she regretted it?'

‘I'd think so. Sometimes. She doesn't say much. She's a remarkable woman, your mother. There'll be days when she's sorry she didn't take her chance. Just as she might have envied those with stable family lives and comfort if she'd been flitting about the world. Nobody's ever satisfied.'

‘And has Mary's trip opened it up again?' David pursued.

‘It hasn't crossed my mind, but then I'm a selfish devil, as well you know.'

Joan Blackwall crossed towards them.

‘Now, then, you two.' She smiled, lifted out of herself by the occasion, younger than her years. ‘What are you so serious about?'

‘David's wondering if you ever regret not having a professional career in music.'

A stab of anger reddened the son's face. Joan pursed her lips, lifted her eyes to a large Victorian painting of
The Eve of the Flood
. The sky stretched blood-streaked as an illustration in a textbook of anatomy over a diminutive ark and Noah's dwarfed family. She seemed faintly amused.

‘You played marvellously well tonight,' David said.

‘We've done quite a bit together these last few weeks. It helps.'

‘You have the hands,' he answered.

‘Thanks.' Now she touched him, but more lightly than her husband, more prosaically, as if she were about to straighten his jacket. ‘I enjoyed it. She really has come on. I have to open up to keep with her.' She had returned to her scrutiny of Linnell's liverish clouds. ‘She was superb.' An ecstatic whisper now changed to mundane power. ‘This other thing. Because Mary's going to America, you think . . .? You think . . .?' Another trailing away as if sense could not be exactly conveyed or attempted.

‘He wonders,' Horace's voice croaked, ‘if it's made you regret you never took your chance.'

She considered that, much at ease.

‘No. Not really. A professional life's awful. You know that, David. All the air travel and hotel rooms and being pleasant to the world. And that's when you're outstandingly good. Otherwise you're sitting at home fretting yourself to death that no engagements are coming your way. No. I did the best thing by letting your father make the money.'

Her son looked over to where a group of men surrounded his wife, whose face seemed alight.

‘But you played like an angel,' David said.

‘There'll be five or six hundred people in this country who'd do it as well given the practice I had. Oh, I did it respectably, I grant you. But I'm in no way unique.'

‘I married an honest woman,' Horace said.

‘Is that good?'

‘I do think he's beginning to learn,' Joan gibed.

‘But what?' Horace.

They all laughed, insecurely, but joined the social round, chattered until the early hours, imagining they enjoyed themselves.

THE DAY BEFORE
Mary left for America David met Anna Talbot in the street. He was returning from school, on foot, because his wife had borrowed the car.

‘Hello. You're in a hurry,' she greeted him.

‘It's cold, dawdling about. Besides, I want my tea.'

‘Husbands.' She grimaced. ‘When's Mary due to go? Can't be too long now?'

He was surprised, again, that friends, who had been told often enough, still could not remember this date. To them its interest was peripheral. It was like reading of the death of an acquaintance in the newspaper: what stopped the heart for one was for another an item of casual conversation.

Now he told Anna.

‘God,' she said. ‘You shouldn't be hanging about the streets talking to me. Are you going down with her?'

‘Yes.'

‘The school's given you the day off, have they? Good for them.'

That tore his breath for him when he remembered how he'd had to ask Kenneth Reeve, the head, for the time off.

Reeve had frowned, tapped his desk, picked up a packet of cigarettes and put it down.

‘Well. I can't, er, can't, er . . .' The man sat locked in some trance, will-less, aphasic.

‘It's Wednesday,' David said. ‘I can easily organize my absence from games. In the morning I've two sixth forms and a string group. I'll set work. They'll get on.'

‘Yes. I'm sure.'

‘So?' One felt always that one pushed this distinguished and silver-haired figurehead into a position he hated to occupy.

‘You see, it's an inconvenient time of the year. January. There are always people absent with colds and flu. Classes, junior classes, have to be minded.'

‘I can't have it, you mean?' Anger, reddening cheeks.

‘I can't give it to you. The governing body would have to countenance the decision, and they have been known to be awkward. No. Take the day off. Make what arrangements you will about your commitments here, I think I can trust you, and then have, oh, a convenient bronchial catarrh.'

‘Thank you.'

‘You did not hear me say anything.' Reeve fiddled again with the golden cigarette packet, twisting it in his fingers with extraordinary dexterity. ‘What was it your wife was going to sing? Opera?' The headmaster frowned again, willing recalcitrant fact from his memory, acting it out like a schoolboy on the front desk pleasing his masters with assumed puzzlement.

David offered a few sentences of explanation to which Reeve gave the appearance of listening keenly, as if to catch the speaker out. Though there was probably nothing in the attitude, David knew that he would leave the room feeling not only that he had been judged and found wanting but that he owed the headmaster a favour. None of the staff liked Reeve, but then the man did not look for warmth from his subordinates.

When he left the room as quickly as politeness allowed, for the headmaster did not encourage social conversation, David Blackwall felt himself smirched, diminished.

Now Anna Talbot walked alongside him.

‘I'll go this way,' she said cheerfully. ‘I've got a call to make.' Her step was sprightly. ‘Has Mary got everything ready?'

‘I think so. She's good at that sort of . . .'

‘Living out of a suitcase?'

‘Packing, I meant. But, yes. They flitted about in Germany.'

‘It must be exciting,' Anna said, gushing.

He did not know, guessing that his wife would have been at least momentarily delighted by a cancellation or postponement. Her anxieties had caused her to be more silent than usual, and only from her gestures or glances could he determine how she felt, and there he might merely be interpreting his own reactions.

‘Where's she going first?' The woman needed no answers.

‘New York State. The music department there has offered rehearsal facilities, and their first performances are there.'

‘When?'

‘In three weeks' time. Handel's
Semele
.'

‘I've never seen it performed.'

‘She was a woman with ideas above her station. Thought she could equal the goddesses.'

‘And could she?'

‘No.'

‘Will Mary sing the title role, then?'

‘Nobody knows. They audition and rehearse at the same time.'

‘Won't that cause trouble?'

She continued with her catechism without slackening her pace. Conductor, parts, orchestra, itinerary, everything except payment.

‘I'll tell you what,' she said as they stopped at the crossroad where he was to turn off. ‘I wish it was me.' She comically blew out her lips. ‘But it isn't. Always the same. Give her my regards.'

‘Just come in.'

‘No. No time. No inclination. I'll comfort the grass widower if he needs it.'

She laughed, touched his hand, strode away, her boots flashing in the electric lamps, reflecting from the puddles. Anna would have forgotten him before she'd covered a hundred yards.

Mary and the evening meal waited for him. The delicious smell of cooking spiced the house. As she served a meat pie she told him that there was another ready which he could take from the refrigerator on Thursday, that there was a fruit cake, scones, buns, a sponge.

‘I don't want you starving,' she said.

Sourly he thought he'd see the fancy buns with their layer of icing, when she, a lively, bodied presence serving him now, had disappeared. On Thursday he'd be seated at this table with the second meat pie and no wife.

‘You ought to do something,' he said as they were eating, ‘to mark your departure.'

‘Such as what?'

‘Put your fingerprints on that wall.' He indicated the white stretch above the fireplace. ‘To remind me.' There were three photographs of her already on the mantelpiece.

‘You don't mean it, do you?'

‘I don't know.' His body ached. ‘Have you sung today?'

‘Not a note.' She laughed, too loudly for comfort. ‘Last day as a housewife. The parents want us to go there for an hour.'

‘What do you think?'

‘Suits me. Are you ready and willing?'

‘Oh, yes.'

They ate, washed the dishes together and he spruced himself up. They stood together, passed each other, but failed to touch, perhaps out of fear. It was raining but comparatively mild as they drove out.

In the car they were silent until he made an effort.

‘You won't see this again for a bit?' he said.

They were passing a piece of suburbia, closed shops with unlighted windows, a road of black glass, small trees in the pavement between the crooks of concrete lamp standards. Not much traffic obstructed them. Buses ran almost empty.

Horace and Joan Blackwall received them in one of the small back rooms downstairs. In the brightness a chintzy three-piece suite seemed cheerfully to clog the room; a signed Lowry print dotted its shadowless factories, men, dogs, above the gas fire. The other walls were bare, but looped with faint shadows from a pair of standard lamps, shades matching the furniture.

‘Thought we'd come in here, and save money,' Horace said. He'd already inquired about Mary's preparations for the journey, and now offered drinks. Mary asked for a small sherry, David and his mother orange juice. ‘Abstemious. I like to see it.' Horace looked to his wife for encouragement, did not receive it.

They settled to glum talk of the weather, and Horace outlined his holiday plans. He and Joan were considering a short Caribbean cruise.

‘How will you find time?' David asked, not pleasantly.

‘If things turn out as I hope I shall have plenty of that commodity.' Horace put his finger ends together.

‘You're going to retire?' Mary.

‘I've heard that before,' David said.

His father did not argue with him; his mother received the remark, it seemed, with approval.

‘You and I are sticking our necks out,' Mary told her father-in-law, bringing the unspeakable into the open. ‘How will you put up with him at home all day?'

‘As your old man,' said Horace, ‘will put up with you away.'

‘Mine's only for three months; six at most if this Falconer scheme comes off.'

‘You hope for more than that,' Horace countered. ‘At least, I hope you do. It's no use going away on some bit of a jaunt. You might just as well stay back here.'

‘Is that so, David?' his mother asked very quietly.

His right leg across his left was kicking.

‘Yes.' The word flew out like blocking phlegm. ‘Yes, that's about it. She must try for a career.'