On Beulah Height (9 page)

"Don't see why I should have to speak like you just to please some posh wankers," she said.

She smiled briefly as she spoke. Her face, with its regular features, dark unblinking eyes, and heavy patina of pale makeup, all framed in shoulder-length ash-blond hair, had a slightly menacing masklike quality till she smiled, when it lit to a remote beauty, like an Arctic landscape touched by a fitful sun. She was five nine or ten, and looked even taller in the black top and Lycra slacks which clung to her slim figure.

Krog's eyes took this in appreciatively, but his mind was still on the music.

"So you will change your program for the opening concert?" he said. "Good. Inger will be pleased too. The transcription for piano has never been one she liked."

"She talks to you, does she?" said Elizabeth. "That must be nice. But chuffed as I'd be to please our Inger, it's too late to change."

"Three days," he said impatiently. "You have the repertoire, and I will help all I can."

"Thanks," she said sincerely. "And I'd really like your help to get them right. But as for changing, I mean it's too late in here."

She touched her breastbone.

He looked exasperated and said, "Why are you so obsessed with singing these songs?"

"Why're you so bothered that I'm singing them?"

He said, "I do not feel that, in the circumstances, they are appropriate."

"Circumstances?" She looked around in mock bewilderment. They were in the elegant high-ceilinged lounge of the Wulfstans' town house. French windows opened onto a long sunlit garden. Faintly audible were the rumbles of organ music under the soaring line of young voices in choir. If they'd stepped outside they could have seen a very little distance to the east the massive towers of the cathedral, whose gargoyled rainspouts seemed to be growing ever longer tongues in this unending drought.

"Didn't think you got circumstances in places like this," said Elizabeth.

"You know what I mean. Walter and Chloe--"

"If Walter wanted to complain, he's had the chance and he's got the voice," she interrupted.

"And Chloe?"

"Oh, aye. Chloe. You still fucking her?"

For a moment shock time-warped him to his early forties.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded, keeping his voice low.

"Come on, Arne. That's one English word no one needs translating. Been going on a long time, hasn't it? Or should I say, off and on? All that traveling around you do. Must be great comfort to her you don't let yourself get out of practice, but. Like singing. You need to keep at your scales."

He had recovered now and said with a reasonable effort at lightness, "You shouldn't believe all the chorus-line gossip you hear, my dear."

"Chorus line? Oh, aye, I could give Chloe enough names to sing The Messiah."

He said softly, "What's the point of this, Elizabeth? What do you want?"

"Want? Can't think of owt I want. But what I don't want is Walter getting hurt. Or Chloe."

"That is very ... filial of you. But you work very hard at that role, don't you? The loving, and beloved, daughter. Though in the end, alas, as with all our roles, the paint and wigs must come off, and we have to face ourselves again."

He spoke with venom but she only grinned and said, "You sound like you got out the wrong side of bed. And you were up bloody early too. Man of your age needs his sleep, Arne."

"How do you know how early I got up? Am I under twenty-four-hour surveillance, then?"

"Woke with the light myself, being a country lass," she said. "Heard your car."

"It could have been someone else's."

"No. You're the only bugger who shifts gears three times between here and the end of the street."

He shrugged and said, "I was restless, the light woke me also. I wanted to go for a walk, but not where I'd be surrounded by houses."

"Oh, aye? See anyone you know?"

He fingered the soft hair of his beard into a point beneath the chin and said, "So early in the day I hardly saw anyone."

She said, "Give us a knock next time, mebbe I'll come with you. Listen, now you're here, couple of things in the Mahler you can help with."

He shook his head wonderingly and said, "You are incredible. I tell you I think you made a mistake to sing these songs on your first recording and that you will be making another to sing them at the concert. You ignore my advice. You make outrageous accusations. And now you want me to help you to do what I do not think you should be doing anyway!"

"This isn't personal, Arne. This is about technique," she said, sounding puzzled he couldn't make the distinction. "I might think you're a bit of a prick, but I've always rated you a good tutor. Mebbe that's what you should have gone in for instead of performing. Now listen, I'm a bit worried about my phrasing here."

She pressed her zapper and the song resumed.

"Oh, yes, they've only gone out walking, Returning now, all laughing and talking. Don't look so pale! The weather's bright. They've only gone to climb up Beulah

Height."

"You hear the problem?" she said, pressing pause again.

"Why did you say up Beulah Height?" he demanded. "That is not a proper translation. The German says auf jenen Hoh'n."

"All right, keep your hair on. Let's say on yonder height, that keeps the scansion," she said impatiently. "Now listen, will you?"

She started to play the song again. This time Krog concentrated all his attention on her voice, so much so that he didn't realize the door had opened till Elizabeth said, "Chloe, what's the matter? What's happened?"

Chloe Wulfstan, heavier now than she'd been fifteen years before, but little changed in feature apart from a not unbecoming pouchiness under the chin, had come into the room and was leaning against the back of a sofa and swaying gently. "I've been listening to the local news," she said. "It's happening again."

Krog went to her and put his arm round her shoulders. At his touch she let go of the sofa and leaned all her weight into his body so that he had to support her with both arms. His eyes met Elizabeth's neutral gaze and he gave a small shrug as if to say, So what am I supposed to do?

"What's happening again?" asked the younger woman in a flat, calm voice. "What have you heard?"

"There's a child gone missing," said Chloe. "A little girl. Up the dale above Danby."

Now the man's gaze met Elizabeth's once more. This time it conveyed as little message as hers.

And around them the rich young voice wound its plaintive line:

"Ahead of us they've gone out walking-But shan't be returning all laughing and talking."

Ellie Pascoe was ready for fame. She had long rehearsed her responses to the media seagulls who come flocking after the trawlers of talent. For the literary journalist doing in-depth articles for the posh papers she had prepared many wise and wonderful observations about life and art and the price of fish and flesh, all couched in periods so elegant, improvement would be impossible and abbreviation a crime.

For the smart-asses of radio and television she had sharpened a quiverful of witty put-downs that would make them sorry they'd ever tried to fuck with Ellie Pascoe!

And for her friends she had woven a robe of ironic modesty which would make them all marvel that someone revealed as so very much different could contrive to remain so very much the same.

She'd even mapped out a History of Eng. Lit. account of her creative development.

"Her first novel, which she steadfastly refused to allow to be published, but whose discovery in her posthumous papers was the literary event of 2040 --no, make that 2060--is the typical autobiographical, egocentric, picaresque work by which genius so often announces its arrival on the world stage. Much of it is ingenuous, even jejune, but already the discerning eye can pick out that insight, observation, and eloquence which are the marks of her maturity.

"Her second novel, which, after much pressure and considerable revision, she allowed to appear at the height of her fame, is the story of a young woman of academic bent who marries a soldier and finds herself trying to survive in a world of action, authority, and male attitudes which is completely foreign to her. The autobiographical elements here are much more under control. She has not merely regurgitated her experience, but first digested it, then used it to produce a fine piece of ... art."

(that metaphor needed a bit of work, she told herself, grinning.)

"But it is in her third novel, which exploded her name to the top of the best-seller lists, that the voice of the mature artist--assured, amused, amusing, passionate, compassionate, compelling, and melismatic--is heard for the first time in all its glory. ..."

After Peter had left that Sunday morning, she lay in the sun for a while, playing the fame game in her mind, but found it quickly palled. If it ever did happen, she guessed it would be very unlike this. Reviewers, interviewers, and program makers might be the poor relatives at the great Banquet of Literature, but one tidbit they were always guaranteed was the Last Word.

So finally her thoughts turned to where she had been trying to avoid turning them--to Peter.

She knew--had known for some time--that something was going on inside him that he wasn't talking about. He wasn't a reticent man. They shared most things. She knew all the facts of the case which had thrown up the devastating truth about his family history. They had talked about them at great length, and the talk had lulled her into a belief that the wounds she knew he had suffered would heal, were already healing, and only needed time for the process to complete. She was sure he had thought so too. But he'd been wrong, and for some reason was not yet able to admit to her the nature of his wrongness.

So far she hadn't pressed. But she would. As wife, as lover, as friend, she was entitled to know. Or, failing those, she could always claim the inalienable right of the Great Novelist to stick her nose into other people's minds.

The thought made her pick up her notebook and pen and start considering the jottings she'd made for her next opus. But looked at with these personal concerns running around inside her head, and this sun beating down on its outside, the jottings seemed a load of crap.

Dissatisfied, she got up and went into the house in search of something that would really stretch her mind, and all that she could come up with was a pile of long-neglected ironing. She switched the radio on and set to work.

It was, she discovered (though she would not have dreamed of admitting it outside the cool depths of the confessional, which, as a devout atheist, she was unlikely ever to plumb anyway), a not unpleasant way of passing a mindless hour or so. From time to time she went outside again to give herself another shot of ultraviolet, followed by another schlurp of iced apple juice, while the local radio station burbled amiably and aimlessly on. She even ironed some bedsheets with great care. Normally her attitude to sheets was that, as one night's use creased them like W. H. Auden's face, what was the point in doing much more than show them a hot iron threateningly? But Rosie, she guessed, would have been sleeping on Jill Purlingstone's smooth and crisp sheets last night, and while the Pascoe house might not be able to compete by way of swimming pools and ponies, in this one respect, on this one occasion, her daughter would not feel deprived.

The radio kept her up to date with reports of the marvelous weather and how the incredible British public were finding intelligent ways of enjoying it. Like starting fires on the moors or sitting in crawling traffic jams on the roads to and from the coast.

Finally, with the ironing finished and the apple juice replaced by a long gin-and-tonic, she sat down with calm of mind, all passion spent, about six o'clock, just in time to hear a report of a major traffic accident on the main coast road.

There was an information number for anxious listeners. She tried it, found it busy, tried the Purlingstones' number, got an answering machine, tried the emergency number again, still busy, slammed down the phone in irritation, and as if in reaction it snarled back at her.

She snatched it up and snapped, "Yes?"

"Hi. It's me," said Pascoe. "You heard about the accident?"

"Yes. Oh, God, what's happened? Is it serious? Where--"

"Hold it!" said Pascoe. "It's okay. I'm just ringing to say I got onto the coordinator soon as I heard the news. No Purlingstones involved, no kids of Rosie's age. So no need to worry."

"Thank God," said Ellie. "Thank God. But there were people hurt. ..."

"Four fatalities, several serious injuries. But don't start feeling guilty about feeling relieved. Keeping things simple is the one way to survive."

"That what you're doing, love?" she asked. "How's it going? No mention of developments on the news."

"That's because there are none. We've got a couple of dog teams out on the fell now and as many men as we've been able to drum up with all this other stuff. You've heard about the fires? God, people. I'm going to join the Lord's Day Observance Society and vote for making it an offense to travel farther than half a mile from home on a Sunday."

Beneath his jocularity she easily detected the depression.

She said, "Those poor people. How're they taking it?"

His memory played a picture of Elsie Dacre's wafery face, of Tony Dacre, who'd finally come down off the hillside, his legs rubbery with grief and hunger and fatigue. He said, "Like something's been switched off. Like the air they breathe is tinged with chlorine. Like they're dead and are just looking for a spot to drop in."

"So what happens now?"

"Keep looking till dark. Start again in the morning. A few other things ongoing."

Nothing he had much hope in or wanted to talk about. She tried to think of something comforting to say and was admitting failure when the doorbell rang and she heard the mail slot rattle and Rosie's voice crying impatiently, "Mummy! Mummy! It's me. We're home again. Mummy!"

"Peter, Rosie's back," she said.

"Thought I could hear those dulcet tones," he said.

"I'd better go before she breaks the door down."