Fearful Symmetry (17 page)

‘This is a surprise,’ Sara said. ‘Isn’t it, Andrew?’

‘Certainly is,’ Andrew said tightly. ‘Must be urgent.’

Herve hardly bothered to acknowledge him. ‘Sara, I stay here.’ He strode in and sat down squarely on one of the Windsor chairs, the suitcase at his feet. ‘I am most upset, yes. That flat, I cannot stay there. And you say nothing, Sara. I am not happy.’

Andrew intervened. ‘Herve, you look as if you’ve had a bit of a shock. Why don’t you come in, sit down and tell us all about it?’ He exchanged the merest glance of amusement with Sara who, desperate with mirthless tension, nearly burst out laughing. Or crying.

The irony was lost on Herve. ‘I
do
sit down. See?’ He had had a shock. He had met Mrs Maupesson on his way out to buy himself something for lunch. She had shared the news of the explosion in the Circus. Mrs Maupesson had commiserated with him about the basement. Then she had gone on to explain about Miss Bevan, in graphic detail. How could he stay there now? Every time he thought about it, he couldn’t work for worrying. He was the link! Camden Crescent, now the Circus; next, himself! He was Hungarian, could he just remind them. He had enemies, jealous people, to say nothing of politics. And what shocked Herve was not just the fact of his being expected to live in the flat above where a woman had recently met a violent death, but Sara’s failure to inform him about it. How could she treat him like this?

‘Herve,’ she began, looking at Andrew, ‘pointless, unpredictable things happen. They happen. You’ll drive yourself mad, thinking up ludicrous theories.’ Andrew was now making faces at her over Herve’s shoulder. ‘Won’t he?’ She felt suddenly like laughing, pointlessly. It was so unfunny.

‘That’s right. The letter-bomb had nothing to do with you. You weren’t even here then,’ Andrew said, coughing.

‘Ha! You think that is the point? I tell you, Sara, you don’t understand this world. My world.’ Herve reached into his suitcase and pulled out a copy of
New Music Review,
the contemporary music glossy which Sara and Andrew had long ago agreed they found unreadable. He banged a page with the back of his hand. ‘See! There—look there. This is what I suffer!’

Sara read aloud: ‘ “An angry protest nearly prevented the French première of Herve Petrescu’s opus 53 ‘Terpsichore’s Nipple’ for spectrally tuned grand piano, four trombones, four pre-recorded string quartets and soprano. Members of the Lyon Orchestre de l’Avenir du Peuple and the audience were showered with leaflets denouncing Petrescu as a ‘subnormal intellect’, accusing the European music world of being ‘awash with pseudo-intellectual social climbers’ and identified a cabal of conspirators controlling new music. Petrescu was unperturbed and conducted the performance as planned. It was confirmed by a spokesman for the orchestra that a subsequent performance scheduled for June had been cancelled.” My God, Herve. This really happened, did it? There are some idiots about, aren’t there?’

‘And here! Look here!’ He had delved back into the case and was thrusting a back issue of the
New York Times
into her hands, open at the music reviews section.

‘ “We are told that doctors sometimes find it impossible to ascertain whether certain patients are in a persistent vegetative state, or clinically dead. I have hit upon a surefire diagnosis. Subject these poor unfortunates to Herve Petrescu’s opera. Those who do not vomit violently within the first five minutes must be dead: time to switch off the machines. And death, while undeniably final, at least takes them beyond the reach of such rubbish.” Hmm, not very favourable. Still, only a review. Just a bad review.’

Sara did not dare look at Andrew. ‘Come on, you know as well as I do that a bad review is just a bad review. It doesn’t mean someone’s trying to kill you.’

‘Ho, you think I am paranoid? Well, maybe I am, a little. But this does not mean I am wrong, this does not mean I do not have enemies. And you put me in this flat which you know is dangerous!’

‘Herve, I thought I was doing you a favour finding you anywhere at all. It’s a beautiful flat. And if you won’t stay there and you don’t like hotels, what am I supposed to do? Where are you to go?’

Herve in his offended surprise merely looked down at his suitcase and back at Sara. He was not used to the matter of his comfort being regarded as a mere housing problem, and he did not like this new tone in Sara’s voice. Sara was about to follow up with confirmation that he most certainly could not stay at Medlar Cottage when Andrew took charge.

‘I do quite understand. It’s not a pleasant thought, particularly upsetting for a creative artist.’

Herve looked at Andrew, considering. With a slight bow of the head in his direction, he murmured with the generosity of the prepared-to-be-appeased.

‘But there’s no link, I can assure you. We may be a provincial police force but actually, you know, that’s one of our strengths. We can do things without being noticed, if I can put it that way, and questions relating to your . . . stature, I could say, well, they’re being looked into. And at the highest level.’ He fixed Herve with a grown-up stare. ‘I can’t say more, you understand. This conversation never happened.’

Sara watched silently from behind Herve’s chair, relishing the performance, adoring Andrew’s nerve. She had seen this side of him before, his callous, brilliant handling of a weaker mind. Also known as lying through the teeth. God, but he was convincing.

Herve moistened his lips. ‘You mean—?’

Andrew interrupted him, as if Herve’s next words could place them all in the gravest danger. ‘I think you know what I mean. Of course I am speaking off the record. But please do be reassured. The flat is
quite
safe.’

Herve turned first to Sara with a look that put her in her proper place and then back to Andrew. His face relaxed into an expression of comfortable self-importance. Sara wondered how she had ever found it attractive, let alone mesmerising.

‘Yes, your word I can take,’ he said.

‘Did you come by taxi? I’m going back into town, so I’ll take you. I just came out to talk to Sara about the Circus incident. It’s all very much as we first thought, though we’re talking to people who saw Adele most recently, just to get the full picture.’ He took a step towards Herve and picked up his suitcase. Without irony, and ignoring Sara’s incredulous face, he gestured towards the door. ‘Maestro?’

With a last glare at Sara, the maestro swept obediently from the room.

In the hall Andrew turned to Sara and the look in his dark brown eyes almost scorched her. ‘There are some areas we’ve barely touched on,’ he said thoughtfully, tapping his lip. ‘I’ll contact you again, if I may.’

‘You may’ was all she could say.

CHAPTER
21

P
OPPY TOOK CHARGE.
Someone had to. When Helene had been persuaded to get into the bath she had run for her, she slipped into the sour bedroom, pulled apart the curtains, drew up the sash window and allowed in the first air and daylight for over two weeks. She whipped round the bedside tables with a duster, removed dirty mugs, glasses and empty bottles. She closed the albums of photographs of Adele and placed them in a neat pile out of obvious sight. She placed a vase of flowers (expensive, out-of-season irises and freesias, not funeral flowers like lilies or chrysanthemums) on the chest of drawers. A few shifts at the nursing home had stripped Poppy of any conscience about entering the territory of other people’s bedding and clothing, so she dragged the covers off the bed and replaced them with fresh linen and a clean bedspread. Then she took from Helene’s wardrobe a dark blue ensemble of skirt and long cardigan, and placed matching tights and shoes on the bed along with a set of what they referred to in the nursing home as undies. Next to them she put a pair of silver earrings, Helene’s watch and a long silver chain with a chunky cross on the end.

Really, she thought, looking round at the prepared room while mild lapping noises, but no singing, came from the bathroom down the landing, it was like giving a massage only without actually touching the person. It was the same kind of care. By arranging for the washing, soothing, scenting and dressing of Helene’s body, and at least visual order for her tired eyes in the shape of a tidy, beflowered bedroom, she was the dispenser of balm of a sort. She drew a small, narrow-necked bottle from her pocket and, uncorking it, scattered a few drops over the bedspread. Lavender, to promote peaceful thoughts. Poppy smiled with satisfaction.

An hour later, dressed in her somber navy blue and pale jewellery, Helene appeared in the drawing room. In the dull light of a cloudy October afternoon she appeared diminished. She had lost weight and strength after too long on halves of sandwiches and cups of tea. Sleeping only the heavy sleep of a woman who has quieted herself with too much wine, the stained pillow of her face was downturned and pouchy. Her hair needed more than the shampoo she had given it to remove a look of matted, finger-dragged neglect. Deeper down, grief seemed to have robbed her of oxygen. She no longer seemed three inches taller than her height, with her arched eyebrows, lips, jaw and cheekbones arranged to assist the diaphragm in the sonic takeoff of the Voice. She was empty of air, energy and the will to fly.

Poppy bounced up from the sofa and went to her. Valerie, Phil and Cosmo began an ad lib chorus of murmurs of pity and admiration, to whose accompaniment Helene, led by Poppy, made her way slowly across the carpet. She sank into her wing armchair, saving for Poppy, who seemed to require it, a special look which spoke of gratitude for her help and slight shame that she needed it.

Helene looked round the room as if seeing it again after a long absence. She knew the others were watching and was conscious that her stage life had robbed her of the ability to behave without being aware of the audience. She did not know how
not
to open her eyes wider than strictly necessary, projecting further than the stalls, or how not to move her head in slow wonderment for the benefit of the dress circle. Without these people present, there would be no point in her casting from side to side wan nods and half-smiles of recognition and little looks to this doltish girl who appeared to believe she had acquired some rights in this house. But without resting her features for a moment Helene wondered if now it was their very presence that really was the point.

‘Now,’ said Poppy.

Cosmo coughed.

‘Cosmo and I have been talking. There are things we both feel we want to express, like, it’s obviously a really difficult time. Just incredibly painful. I mean, really, really bad, especially for you, Helene.’

Helene closed her eyes, blotting out the stricken faces, and with a slight nod expressed concurrence.

‘And Helene, well done you, for making it today. We all think that’s brilliant, don’t we?’

Failing to notice, quite, that they had suddenly become group therapy, everyone raised a voice in a yeah or a yah or an absolutely.

Poppy raised a hand. ‘I mean, obviously, people can think whatever, but Cosmo and I thought that what Adele would want would be for the project to continue. Carry on and do the show, like a sort of tribute.’ She looked slowly round and was nodding seriously as she added, ‘Cosmo and I have been talking, and what we thought was Adele was like, well, here’s someone that’s not just really talented, but a really great person as well. Her own person. We honestly think she’d have wanted that.’

More murmurs rose. In the atmosphere of approval, Poppy repeated much of what she had said, concluding again, ‘I honestly think she’d have wanted that.’

Helene took a breath and leaned forward, indicating that she was ready to speak. She paused. She looked almost kindly at them: hopeless Phil, narrow Valerie, weak Cosmo and dull Poppy. There was no point in any of them. The point, once, had been her own voice. Then all that had changed and Adele had become the point. How could they imagine it could be any other way? Yet she would go on. Over the past fourteen days, alone in her bedroom apart from venturing out to the sedated torture of the funeral, she had debated this with herself. She had actually had the top off the paracetamol bottle at one point. But the old trouper had won. She would go on even though for the moment she could see no point.

So instead, in a wavering voice she said, ‘Thank you, so much, all of you.’ It wasn’t their fault. They had not been born for music, any of them, as she had been. What could they know of disappointment of the kind when a career collides with the needs of a disturbed child? And which of them had ever felt loss like this, as if every bone had been extracted from your body, leaving you in a meaningless heap? And what could they possibly have to say about hope, when none existed? Or about the exhausting battle, only beginning, that she would fight, just to carry on, growing old in its absence?

‘I had hopes for Adele,’ she began, but her voice and face collapsed and melted together, her grief liquefying away into wordlessness. She took the hanky that Poppy handed her, and hid her eyes. After a minute or two she blew her nose and looked up, with a sigh. No, they could none of them know anything. But already she had decided, or rather recognised, that she had to go on, because the audience was waiting. As long as there were people ready to react she would continue to act. She would go on with the show, envious of these others whose own pointlessness was hidden from them. She would be in every way splendid to these ever-diminishing, admiring others and pointless only to herself.

‘Adele and I shared the healing power of music. In her own way, Adele had gifts. Those gifts were not wasted. The world was a better place because Adele was in it.’ More murmurs arose, and for the first time since Adele’s death Helene felt, with a flicker of warmth, that there were things that could be said about her daughter that would be both comforting and true.

‘Where’s Jim?’ she asked.

Poppy spoke with slow, rehearsed calm. ‘Well, Cosmo and I were thinking about Jim ourselves. Naturally he’s particularly upset, what with it happening in the workshop, but it would be the most terrible pity if—’

‘But Jim wasn’t even there. They said that, didn’t they, the cooker wasn’t actually faulty. Adele left the gas on the day before.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t come today. He didn’t want to upset you.’

Helene stared into space for a moment and then sighed again. ‘He should realise,’ she said wearily, ‘that no one’s to blame, unless I am, for thinking it was safe for her to work anywhere on her own.’ Tears flooded her eyes. ‘What’s the point anyway? Having someone to blame won’t bring her back.’

Poppy looked down, nodding. It was only decent to conceal her relief. The opera could be rejigged to compensate for Adele’s loss, but to try to carry on without the baritone would have been well nigh impossible. Thank God Helene was putting up no objection to Jim’s reinstatement.

Cosmo took this as his cue to speak up. He too was suddenly authoritative on the subject of what Adele would have really wanted. By the time he had finished it had become almost impossible to object to the project’s going ahead without seeming to dispute that Adele had been a really great person. But Valerie tried.

‘Look, I hear what you’re all saying. But shouldn’t it wait? I mean, do we really feel like it? Wouldn’t it be a bit, well . . .
frivolous
, singing about Beau Nash? And what about Adele’s part?’

Evidently Poppy had had ideas about that too. With a look from her, Cosmo moistened his red lips and began again. ‘Well, we’ve had a bit of a rethink there actually. What’s emerging is, ah, the
darker
side of Nash. Tragic, even. I mean, Poppy’s been helping me see that seen from a slightly different perspective, Nash was actually a victim of his times. You know, the son of a bottle-maker getting to Oxford, unable to join the kind of society he is then exposed to. Being excluded. Not being valued or recognised for what he is. Feeling inadequate for not being a gentleman, yet resenting the people from whom he craves acceptance. You know.’

There was silence, indicating that they did not.

Poppy broke in eagerly, ‘And it’s a story of such triumph! Because he ends up not just being able to belong in society, but actually dictating terms! We’ll have to do that part of the story
real
justice.’ She spoke as if it had been agreed that the opera was going ahead.

‘So important that the audience really feels the tension there, don’t you think?’ Poppy asserted rather than asked the question. ‘It’s going to be very exciting, to hear that tension in the music. Once Cosmo gets an idea, he really runs with it. Don’t you, darling? And so you see, Valerie, Adele’s part would be less central. Juliana Papjoy, Nash’s mistress, would be more a cameo role. Perhaps you could do it.’

An enormous sigh escaped from Helene, whose attention seemed to be wandering off and returning to the community opera.

‘You could, dear,’ she told Valerie, ‘with help.’ Her concurrence put the seal on it. Valerie preened slightly in the faith Helene had expressed in her and in the prospect of a big part which would make Andrew sit up and take notice.

Poppy lowered her voice. ‘And the community needs this project. I’ve been trying to get people involved, like we agreed before . . . before everything happened. I’ve got smashing news there, everybody. The Iford Cubs are still really keen. I spoke to them and they’re still on for three performances in the week before Christmas. We could still do it. The library are happy for us to use them for publicity, and I’ve nearly firmed it up with the Podium to do our performances there.’

‘The
Podium
? The shopping mall? What, you mean, with all the escalators going and . . . and
people
everywhere?’ It was not quite what Valerie had had in mind.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Poppy’s eyes were shining. ‘Taking it right to the community. Opera,
people’s
opera, right in the centre of their everyday, ordinary lives.’

The silence this time was dubious.

She went on, ‘I’ll fill you in when I’ve firmed it all up. The main thing for now is just to rally round Helene. Right now, she, like, needs us. You don’t mind me saying, Helene? We’re mainly here for Helene’s sake, Cosmo and me. We wouldn’t dream of pulling out now and just leaving, it would be so terrible for her. She needs people around.’

Helene roused herself. ‘What a marvellous support you all are,’ she said, in something more of her old voice. ‘Now, I’m sure we all need a cuppa, don’t we? I wonder, Phil, could you? Yes, thank you, dear, you’re a great help. You know where everything is. Before we start the rehearsal.’

Before the white face of Phil had withdrawn from the circle, Helene smiled and arranged her new facial expression. She gazed over them all towards the far horizons, somewhere through the window and beyond the Circus, with the lingering look of the diva as the curtain comes down after the big ensemble at the end of Act Two. It was a look designed to send the punters off to their interval drinks with the image, still burning on their retinae, of the human spirit triumphing over adversity.