Frozen Music (55 page)

I had refused to cover the occasion for the paper, but knew I could use my pass to get in. I needed to be there. I wanted to see Linus's building, of course, but more than that it seemed important, too, that we were there, if not together, at least in the same place, that place, at the conclusion.

And I wished him well. But I told myself that the love had melted into an easy stream of affection capable of no great waves. It was a comfort.

I had seen photographs of the opera house as the work progressed. The papers had been full of reports lately, for good and for bad. The good being the mentions of the many awards already given:
For beauty and innovation of design: The People's Opera, Kent
.

For bringing together design and location in an outstanding manner: The People's Opera, Kent.

For acoustics
:
The People's Opera, Kent
.

Then there was the headline which read, THE OPERA HOUSE WITH BLOOD ON ITS STEPS.

I arrived early and, as it was a fine evening, parked my car at the lower car park and walked up towards the lake. I was wearing a Pernilla dress: a short pink shift embroidered with tiny silver and pink beads, although when I bought it I hadn't thought of it that way, and I wore a floaty white wrap round my shoulders.

It was only half past six, but the moon and the sun were out together. I walked up the road in my silver sandals, turning now and then as a car with another early guest drove past. Two stopped and offered me a lift. I told them I was happy walking. I rounded the corner where the gate to Rookery Cottage had been and that's when I first saw the opera house. It stood, slightly raised on the hillock above the lake; a square of white stone with the crescent-shaped foyer all in glass reaching into the water, connecting with the old manor house via a series of covered bridges. It was beautiful, of that I was in no doubt.

Linus Stendal stood alone on one of the three small bridges which connected the restaurant on the tiny island in the lake to the main part of his building.

The day before he had stood in that same place, and he had seen his building free, at last, from its cage of scaffolding and netting. And at that moment, for the first time in his life, he felt complete. ‘That's it,' he had said out loud. ‘I've done it. Now I can rest.' It had been an instant of true happiness. He was a lucky man. Many people went through life without ever having that moment.

And then it was gone. All those doubts and fears, all that guilt which he had repressed for so long, rose, as in revolution and squeezed the happiness from him until he was left standing there, empty before his creation.

He had returned to his car and driven back to London, drowning his thoughts in music, telling himself that he was tired, that was all. Tomorrow everything would seem different.

But it wasn't, much. He gazed at the building before him. It was a triumph. He knew that. But try as he might, he could not recapture that feeling of yesterday, the one he had waited for all his life. He scrabbled around among his memories, brought each of them out and inspected them for shards of happiness: the day he was told he'd got the commission, when he first saw the model of the design, the praise when it was shown, the awards. But although he felt a great sense of relief at the project having been completed, and a real sense of achievement, the joy eluded him. Then again, why was he complaining? No one ever said you were put on this earth to be happy.

He looked at his watch. It was ten to seven, time to go inside. And the date, well it was the same as that day, two years ago, when Esther had left him asleep in his room at Villa Rosengård. He had woken up to find her gone and had wanted to die. But he wasn't like his mother. He would never do to Ivar, or the others, what she had done. Instead, he had picked up the fragments of his existence and tried as best he could to unite them into something resembling a life.

And one day he had awoken and realised that for a while now he hadn't had to work so hard at it. He found himself laughing, not
because he knew it was a laughing moment but because he genuinely felt like it. And his work with the opera house was not only absorbing and fulfilling in itself, it also led to other work, commissions interesting and challenging. Not quite like this one, but that was all right too, he wasn't expecting that, not yet.

Pernilla had moved back to Gothenburg and they had started seeing each other again. At first it had been good. ‘A healing experience,' as she put it. But he couldn't make it last. He just couldn't love her. Not the way he could have loved Esther. He'd rather have nothing than some pale imitation. So, lovewise, that's exactly what he was left with: nothing. But that too was all right. And he had the other, different kinds of loves. He had his son. Ivar was nine years old now. Tall and thin, not plump the way Linus had been at that age. He had stopped wanting to grow up to be a woman and spent most of his time playing sport: football in the summer, ice hockey in winter. He was pretty good too. So, Linus thought, as he wandered back across the bridge, it was all mostly quite all right.

But as he reached the side entrance to the crescent foyer and faced the first guests, the trays of food and glasses of champagne, as he spotted Stuart Lloyd at the far end, he dived outside again, using one of the small fire exits that brought you straight out. He told himself that all he needed was some air.

Below him to the left, just where the road curved, was the place where Rookery Cottage had once stood. He looked away, he always did, but then he forced himself to look again, centre, right and left; he could not allow himself the luxury of not seeing. He walked on down, smoking a cigarette. The sky was dark now, but the moon and the stars and the headlights of the cars lit up the evening so that he could see where he was going.

In the distance, about halfway up the road, he saw the lone figure of a woman coming towards him. She was quite small and she was wearing a dress that reflected the light. Her hair was dark. He walked a little faster and crossed over to the same side as her. By now he was all but running. Then he stopped and waited.

I wished now that I had brought a coat, or a cardigan at least, because it had grown cold all of a sudden. No matter. It was time to go inside anyway, to join the party. I quickened my steps and then I saw him, this man, crossing the road towards me. A car passed close to him and at the moment his face caught the headlights I recognised him. I stopped walking and raised my arm in a wave.

‘Linus,' I called. ‘Linus, it's me, Esther.' I started walking again, as fast as I decently could. When we were but a few inches apart we both stopped, abruptly, as if we were covered in thorns and could reach no further.

‘Hi,' I said. I never was that good at chit-chat.

‘Hi,' he said. He used to be better.

‘Nice place you've got here.'

‘Oh, it's just a little something I dreamt up. I'm glad you like it.'

Enough, I thought, of taking it lightly. ‘I love it, Linus. It's a truly wonderful building and I haven't even been inside to see all that miracle of light you told me about.'

‘The inside will knock you out, so to speak.'

‘You must be happy with what you've done here. Tell me you are.' I watched his face in the comings and goings of headlights. It was hard to read his expression.

‘Of course I'm happy with it. It's good and I know that. It's just…' He shrugged. ‘Well, you know how it is.'

‘You did what you wanted to do,' I said to him. ‘You built your opera house and it's beautiful. It's a great thing you've done here. But now you want it all pure and untainted as well. But you can't. Life isn't like that.'

He laughed. Not the high-pitched giggle of a laugh that I remembered, but softly, quite normally, in fact. ‘That's pretty well what Stuart Lloyd said to me once.' He remained where he was, about ten inches away, but he reached out and put his hands on my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of his touch through the thin shawl.

‘I had my moment last night,' he said. ‘I stood there, looking at the building, and I knew that I had created something beautiful. We can do that sometimes, make a whole of far greater value than the sum of
our own pitiful parts. I felt I'd done just that.' There was a smile in his voice. ‘You see, I'm not afflicted with modesty.'

I smiled back. ‘You know, Dora is doing all right,' I said.

‘I had heard.'

‘I've visited her a few times. It took her a while, obviously, to get used to the new place. But now she quite likes it. Apparently the neighbours treat her like a bit of a star. She likes that too. Of course, she misses her brother horribly, but all in all she could be worse.'

‘Dead like George, you mean?' Linus said.

I smiled. ‘No, I think it's a little better than that.' Then I lowered my voice because I didn't really want to hear what I was saying myself, ‘But in a strange kind of way, although I'm glad she's all right, it almost makes what happened to George worse. Anyway,' I shivered, ‘shall we go inside? I'm a little cold.'

Although I didn't know it as I spoke, that was just the best thing I could have said, because all of a sudden, Linus came alive before me. I felt his fingers grip my shoulders as he pulled me towards him, taking me in his arms. I heard him mumble my name, his breath hot against my hair.

I pulled back a little, looking up into his face. It was pale in the moonlight, but now I saw only his beloved eyes, his adored lips; George was gone.

‘I love you,' I said. ‘It's pretty well the only thing that matters to me. And I want you to trust me, please. You can trust me.'

‘Will you stay with me this time?'

I lifted my hand to his face, caressing his cheek with the tips of my fingers, running them down to the corner of his mouth. I smiled at him and felt him smile back. ‘I'll never leave you again, I promise.'

I heard him sigh, a contented little sigh. ‘I believe you. You're not a quitter.'

We walked together up the road towards the opera house as the floodlights on the lake were switched on. They shone into the glass crescent, blinding us to the people inside, merging them into the light.

I would like to thank my agent, Jo Frank, and everyone at A. P. Watt and my editor, Rosie Cheetham, and everyone at Orion for the wonderful job they've done for me and for this novel.

My warmest thanks also to Tina and Bjorn Sahlqvist for their invaluable help and advice regarding matters of architecture. Speaking to them has been an inspiration.

I would also like to thank Jeremy Cobbold and Harriet Cobbold, Anne Hjörne and Elizabeth Buchan and Tony Mott for their advice and support. And finally, a special thank you to Lars Hjörne for his endless patience in listening, and for advising me with such wisdom and ingenuity, and to Lena Hjörne for putting up so graciously with my constant interruptions to her life.

MARIKA COBBOLD
was born in Sweden and is the author of six other novels:
Guppies for Tea
, selected for the WH Smith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the
Sunday Express
Book of the Year Award;
A Rival Creation
;
The Purveyor of Enchantment; Shooting Butterflies; Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers
and, most recently,
Drowning Rose
. Marika Cobbold lives in London.

Guppies for Tea

A Rival Creation

The Purveyor of Enchantment

Shooting Butterflies

Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

Drowning Rose

A RIVAL CREATION

Tonight I will speak to you about The Failure. The yearning in man to do more than just survive is the making of both the greatness and the tragedy of being human.

Once upon a more prosperous time, Liberty Turner was a published writer, bursting with creativity. Now, aged 39, divorced and pulverised by relentless rejections, Liberty is forced to face the truth that she has long been hiding from: that, despite all her bright-eyed ambition, she no longer has the talent to be a writer. That she is, in fact, a failure.

With nothing but time on her hands, Liberty tries to put her life back together and begins to involve herself more in the lives of her friends and neighbours in her village. But Tollymead is far from the middle-class idyll it appears to be, and everyone seems to have problems to solve and secrets to hide. When the handsome Oscar Brooke arrives in the village, Liberty prays that happiness might just be within her reach…

‘Undoubtedly one of the funniest novels you'll read this summer'
DAILY MAIL

‘Hugely entertaining… all human life is here'
DAILY EXPRESS

‘Charming, funny and finely observed'
WOMAN AND HOME

A life lived in fear is a life half lived

Clementine Hope, thirty-something and newly divorced, lives in a small Hampshire town, teaching music and working on a collection of fairy tales left to her by her Great Aunt Elvira. But mostly she worries. She worries about the rising crime rate. She worries about disease and illness, about offending God and, in the rare moments when she is at peace with Him, about upsetting the man in the carpet shop. When her sister Ophelia asks her if there's anything she is
not
frightened of,
Clementine has to think for a while before replying, ‘Doris Day.'

But when she falls in love with Nathaniel Scott, the son of her next-door neighbour, her neuroses threaten to destroy her hard-won happiness. Determined to take control of her life, Clementine resolves to transform herself from victim to heroine, slay her personal dragon of fears and phobias, and rescue her very own Prince Charming.