Starburst (21 page)

S
till dressed in the black cocktail dress she had worn for the concert, Angélique Pascal lay huddled on the bed in her hotel bedroom, staring at the distorted image of her violin case on the cream Regency-style chair that sat against the wall. The side of her face felt wet and sticky, due to the tears of frustration and fatigue that had been shed on her pillow, but she had neither the energy nor the inclination to make any move.

She had never before had such a row with Albert Dessuin. She had played her heart out at that evening’s concert, and had consequently felt unusually buoyant in spirit during the reception afterwards, dissipating the smog of exhaustion that had enveloped her over the past month. But it had only lasted until the moment she had returned, or had
been
returned, to her hotel bedroom by Albert, who had caused an embarrassing scene at the crowded reception by extricating her from the room like a naughty schoolchild who was being marched off to see the headmaster. All she had said was she wanted to go out that night for a couple of drinks with Tess and her husband, and that was when Dessuin had lost his temper. In the privacy of her room, he had set about berating her for the sloppiness of her performance and the way she had acted both onstage in the concert hall and at the reception. And then, displaying an almost disturbing irrationality, he had literally
ordered
her to start practicing part of the Szymanowski Violin Concerto, a piece not scheduled to be performed until the concert in Singapore in ten days’ time. It was at that point she had retaliated. She did not lose her temper, she did not scream, she just told him in a quiet, controlled voice that she’d had enough. When Edinburgh was finished, she wanted to take a complete break.

“What do you mean by that?” Dessuin had blurted out at her, his eyes narrowed in anger.

“Albert, you must understand that I cannot go on like this, playing night after night. It is becoming too…automatic, impersonal, for me, and it affects the way I feel about the music. You are probably right to criticize me, although tonight I made a great effort to play well, but it does not make me happy, Albert, to have to
make
that effort and not have it come naturally to me. I need a rest. I want time to go back to France to visit some of my friends, and also to return to see Madame Lafitte. I know that seeing her would help me get my perspective back and help me regain my enthusiasm for music.”

“
Pah,
that ancient old crow could give you
nothing
now.”

“Albert, you have no right to call Madame Lafitte such—”

“
Tais-toi et écoute-moi.
You will not go back to Paris, nor to Clermont Ferrand. You will continue to play until I tell you to stop. It is as simple as that.”

“But there is absolutely no way—”

“Exactly, there is no way you can back out of your obligations at this stage. Can you not imagine what the press would say about you? It would spell the end of your playing career.”

“Could we not just say that I am sick?”

“But you are not sick, are you? And I am not going to be party to such subterfuge. No, the tour continues, and let that put an end to all this
merde.
Now, once you have changed out of that dress, which I have to tell you makes you look like a tart, please get on with your practicing.”

Angélique let out a short, quiet laugh and shook her head slowly. “Oh, Albert, sometimes you are so like your mother.”

“How
dare
you say such a thing!” Dessuin screamed at her, raising his hand as if to strike her backhanded across the face. Falling back onto the bed to avoid the blow, Angélique crawled away from him, pushing herself against the headboard, and stared at him with horrified astonishment. He dropped the threatening hand to his side, turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, slamming shut the door that connected their bedrooms. And then, in the ensuing silence, Angélique had keeled over on the bed, exhausted and frightened.

Sitting up, she glanced across at the radio alarm clock on her bedside table. It was a quarter past midnight. Two hours had passed since Dessuin had left the room. She shuffled her bottom over to the edge of the bed and pushed herself to her feet. Intending to have a shower, she slipped out of her dress as she walked across to the bathroom, her nakedness spared only by a black lace thong.

She turned with a start at the sound of the connecting door being thrown open, and her immediate reaction was to cover her breasts with her hands and push her legs together in an attempt to hide what the thong did little to cover.

“Albert, what the
hell
are you doing?” she said to Dessuin, who stood framed in the doorway, one hand against the doorpost to steady himself. In the other, he clutched a bottle of J&B whisky by the neck. “I am naked, so please get out of here
now.
”

Dessuin gave a short, scornful laugh. “Oh, look at you, Miss Modesty,” he said in a slow, slurring voice, “trying to cover yourself up as if you have something to hide from me.”

Angélique turned to get into the bathroom, but drunk as he was, Dessuin still made it across the room, blocking her path before she was able to seek refuge. She backed away into the centre of the room, shaking with uncertainty and fear.

“Come on, Angélique.” He laughed derisively. “Why bother acting so cold with me? You would have no doubt loved to have given one of those young men who clustered around you tonight the chance to see you as I am now seeing you.”

Angélique squatted down on her haunches, cupping her hands to her face and covering her breasts as best she could with her elbows. “Albert,” she sobbed quietly, “please leave me alone.”

“Leave you alone?” he whined. “Why should I leave you alone?” He came and leaned over her, and she could smell the alcohol surrounding him like a poisonous cloud. “I
own
you—and so you will never get rid of me.”

Angélique took her hands from her face and stared up at him, her eyes now afire with disillusionment and hatred. “My God, you are a screwed-up
bastard,
Albert Dessuin. I am beginning to realize it now. You are nothing more than a worthless, drunken
cochon!
”

The force of the blow was so great that it knocked Angélique onto her side and rolled her across the floor. She lay with her head spinning, trying to orientate herself, trying to work out how she could avoid the next blow. She began to pull herself into a fetal position to protect herself when he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. Angélique let out a cry of pain as he dug his fingernails into her arm, dragging her across to the desk so that he could rid himself of the bottle of whisky. Then, with both hands free, he picked her bodily off the ground and threw her spreadeagled onto the bed.

“Right, Mademoiselle Pascal, world-famous musician, if you choose to call me that name, I will show you exactly what a
cochon
excels at!”

He clumsily unbuttoned his trousers and pushed them to the floor, but as he pulled his legs up to step out of them, the cuffs caught on his shoes, and in his inebriated state he lost his balance and fell heavily to the ground. Angélique, seeing her moment to escape, jumped off the bed and grabbed her dress from the floor. As she ran towards the door, a hand grasped at her ankle and she fell forward onto the desk, splaying out her hands for support and knocking over the whisky bottle in the process. It toppled from the desk and hit heavily against a metal wastepaper basket, shattering its neck and spraying whisky liberally over the wall and onto the carpet. Putting his near-spent energy into one final heave, Dessuin brought Angélique crashing to the ground, but even in his drunken stupor, the ensuing scream cut through to his inner senses and he immediately released his grip on her ankle.

Dessuin crawled over to the wall and leaned his back against it, and with lolling head fixed his drunken gaze on Angélique. All thoughts of protecting her modesty now long gone, Angélique sat on the floor with her legs apart, staring at her hand and at the blood that flowed down her arm from the wound.

“Oh,
mon Dieu,
what have you done? What have you
done?
” she cried out, her desolate sobs shaking every part of her body. “You have just ruined my
life!
”

“Oh, Angélique,” Dessuin said, his voice slurring heavier than before. “I’m so sorry,
ma chérie,
I did not mean…” He tried to make a move towards her, but the violent struggle and the amount of alcohol that was now coursing through his body took its toll and he toppled over unconscious.

Never taking her eyes off her hand, Angélique got slowly to her feet and stepped over Dessuin’s prostrate form. She went into the bathroom and turned on the cold tap in the basin, wincing with pain as she held her palm upturned under the gushing stream. She held her hand up to the light to see if there was any glass still embedded in the wound. The gash was long and deep, but as far as she could tell, it was clean. Taking a white hand towel from the rack, she bound it tight out around her hand and then, for the first time, viewed her shivering, naked form in the large mirror above the sink. Oh, Angélique, what has just happened in there? Everything has changed, everything has gone in the past few minutes. What are you to do now? You cannot stay here, not with this man who has betrayed your trust and put an end to your wonderful dream. But maybe you provoked it. Maybe everyone would believe it was your fault. He would certainly do everything to manipulate the story for it to appear so.

You have no alternative but to leave now, leave everything behind you. But where do you go? Where do you seek refuge when you are completely alone, knowing nobody in a vast foreign city?

She peered round the door of the bathroom and looked down at Dessuin. He lay gently snoring with his mouth open, his glasses pressed awkwardly into the side of his face. She noticed two small patches of blood on the carpet beside the desk and decided there and then to cover her tracks, removing as much evidence as she could of the struggle.

Moving guardedly around Dessuin’s prostrate form, Angélique wiped away the blood from the carpet and soaked up the whisky with the help of half a roll of lavatory paper before flushing it away. She then took the whisky bottle and its broken neck through to Dessuin’s bedroom and put it in his wastepaper basket. Returning to her room, she picked up her dress from the floor and stepped into it. Taking a linen jacket from the wardrobe, she pulled it awkwardly around her shoulders and kicked her feet into a pair of flats. She glanced over at the small card that lay next to the telephone on the bedside table, and then walked across the room and picked up the receiver. She started to dial the number on the card, but then halted and put down the receiver. It was impossible for her to call Tess. She was too involved, and if she were to see her in this state, then questions would be asked and the story would be on the front pages of every international newspaper within days. And that was something Angélique knew she could never allow to happen.

She moved over to the door, and then turned to take one last fleeting look at those things that were now useless to her—Albert Dessuin, her former tutor and manager, and the black violin case that sat on the cream Regency-style chair against the wall.

For a moment, Angélique eyed the room key that lay on the desk, but then decided she would not take it. She would never have any need to return here again. She closed the door behind her and hurried along the corridor. She pressed the button for the lift, and as she waited for it to make its journey from the ground floor, her face crumpled and tears streamed unguarded down her cheeks, in the full realization of all that she was leaving behind and the terrifying uncertainty of what she would face in her future and much-changed life.

D
uring the three hectic weeks of the Edinburgh festival, the city itself rarely succumbs to rest. At every hour of the day and night, each street corner, each darkened lane on both sides of the bridges becomes a venue for some aspiring musician, actor, comedian or entertainer, attracting an ever-shifting audience from the vast crowds that throng the streets and creating an inescapable cacophony of sound that drowns out even the constant drone of traffic. In the small hours of the morning, an ambling pedestrian on Princes Street, which would be as crowded as on the last Saturday before Christmas, might find himself first striding out in proud military style to the stirring skirl of the bagpipes before gliding rhythmically past a string quartet playing a Strauss waltz; and then stagger away in laughter from the comedian whose act had been conducted from the confines of a council wheelie bin. He might then be reduced to tears of compassion by a couple of teenage actors, using a long fold-away table as their only prop, performing the death scene from Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
with as much passion and fervour as one might ever witness in the velveted splendour of the Old Vic.

And intensifying this atmosphere of revelry and bonhomie are the blazing lights that shine out from every misty-windowed restaurant, crammed public house, queued-up café and buzzing street stall, each staying open until the hour when city licensing laws stipulate their closure or when the last of their customers see fit to adjourn to their smart hotels and homely boarding houses, sparse lodgings and shared bedrooms.

It was against such a backdrop that Jamie Stratton, having spent the whole evening reviewing a plethora of Fringe shows at the Pleasance, made his way back to the London Street flat. A distant bell rang out two o’clock as the sound of the never-ending street theatre faded away behind him. As he walked briskly down Broughton Street, he heard the frenetic finale of an Irish jig band floating out through the open doors of his local pub, and his initial thought was to cross the road to squeeze in one final pint before closing time. But then he noticed that the lights of The Grainstore coffee shop were still ablaze farther down the road, and knowing that Martha usually closed up at midnight at the latest, his curiosity as to why it should still be open dispelled the need for another drink.

The coffee shop appeared to be completely deserted, with all the chairs upturned on the tables and the floor swept and mopped. And there was no sign of Martha. Suspicion gripped at his stomach as he slowly pushed down on the door handle. It was locked. He retreated back onto the pavement, his mind racing. What if that junkie who stole the camera had returned? Maybe he had waited until Martha was alone and then come in and robbed the place and left her tied up at the back of the shop. Maybe Martha was in real need of his help.

He approached the door once more and beat his fist on the wooden frame. “Martha, are you in there?” he yelled. “Martha? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

He pressed his face to the glass, squinting through The Grainstore logo, and then, with relief, he caught sight of Martha, looking up over the counter from her seated position behind it. Getting to her feet, she placed a thick dog-eared paperback on top of the microwave oven behind her, and then, with a disconsolate frown on her face, came round the counter and approached the door. She unlocked it and opened it only a fraction.

“What do you want, Jamie?”

“God, you had me worried. I thought something had happened to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re usually closed up by now and I saw all the lights on, and I thought, well…”

“You thought what?”

“That you’d been robbed or something.”

Martha laughed mockingly. “Ah, and I suppose you were going to do your ‘Sir Galahad’ bit and rescue me.”

“Well, no, but I was just…” He scratched self-consciously at the back of his head. “Why
are
you open so late, then?”

Taking a quick glance behind her, Martha opened the door and came out onto the doorstep. “Listen, Jamie,” she said in a quiet voice. “Do you really want to be a help to me?”

Jamie shrugged. “Yeah, sure. What d’you want?”

Martha jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “There’s a girl in there who won’t leave. I can’t get rid of her. Every time I think she’s about to finish up, she orders another cup of coffee. And I’m knackered and I want to go home and get to bed.”

Jamie peered through the window of the coffee shop. “I can’t see her.”

“Of course you can’t. She’s sitting at the table behind the drinks cabinet.”

“Oh, right. Well, why don’t you just tell her to leave?”

Martha raised her eyebrows. “Because I think she’s French, or something foreign, anyway, and I don’t know what to say to her.”

“So you want me to tell her to leave—in French.”

“Da-ra!” Martha sang out, flicking open her hands, as if Jamie had just answered the million-dollar question correctly.

Jamie bit at a fingernail as he tried to recall some suitable phrases from his sparse GSCE French vocabulary. “Well, I suppose I could give it a go.”

“You do that,” Martha said, jumping off the doorstep and walking round behind her saviour. She put two hands on his back and pushed him forcefully into the coffee shop. “I’ll go to the loo and get my things while you get rid of her.”

As he approached the counter, Jamie saw for the first time the dark-haired girl who sat at a table in the far corner behind the drinks refrigerator. She seemed oblivious to his arrival, staring out of the window into the darkened alleyway that ran alongside the coffee shop and slowly spinning her empty coffee cup around in its saucer.

Jamie walked across to the girl’s table and leaned his hands on the back of the chair opposite her.
“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle? Êtes-vous française?”

From the moment she turned to face him, Jamie knew there was something very wrong. Her eyes were swimming with tears, and the only colour in her pallid features came from an ugly bruise that spread purple across her right cheekbone. She sat awkwardly, hunched forward, keeping one hand hidden in the folds of something bulky inside her linen jacket.

“Tout est bien, n’est-ce pas?”
Jamie asked.

“Oui,”
the girl replied unconvincingly.

There was something strangely familiar about her, but he could not work out what it was, his thought process being taken up with trying to recall a few more relevant French words.
“L’heure est très tarde, mademoiselle, et mon amie veut fermer le café.”

The girl nodded slowly, smiling apologetically at him. “Yes, of course. I am sorry to have stayed so long.” Her grasp of English far outmatched Jamie’s stuttering attempt at her own native tongue. “I will leave immediately.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you spoke English. I’m sure Martha would have talked to you if she’d known.”

“Please don’t worry,” the girl said, dismissing his remark with a light wave of her exposed hand. “Anyway, I was very distracted myself.” As she pushed herself to her feet, Jamie noticed her screwing up her eyes, as if she had just suffered a sharp stab of pain. “Maybe you would be kind enough to give me some advice before I leave?”

“Of course.”

“Would you know if there is a hotel close to here where I might get a room?”

Jamie began to explain that there was little chance of her finding anywhere to stay, never mentioning the fact that he himself had a spare room in his flat, because, as he spoke, he studied the girl’s face, digging deep into his memory, trying to think where he had seen her before. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, the image on the front page of the newspaper came to him and he clicked his fingers in recognition.

“For heaven’s sakes,” he exclaimed. “You’re Angélique Pascal, aren’t you?”

Jamie witnessed the girl’s eyes widen in alarm the instant the question had been asked. She lowered her head as if to avoid further recognition and walked past him towards the door. “I must leave now, but thank you for your kindness.”

“Hang on a minute,” Jamie said with such force that the young violinist froze in her tracks. He moved quickly to put himself between her and the door. “Listen, it may be none of my business, but why are you looking for a hotel? You, of all people, must have somewhere to stay tonight. You’re one of the star attractions at the festival this year, so you have to be booked into one of the big hotels.” Jamie paused, giving her time to answer, but she continued to stare down at the floor. He took a step towards her, dipping his head to try to see her face. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? What’s gone wrong?”

Angélique Pascal took a step to the side to make for the door. “I must…”

Jamie moved to block her path once more. “I think you’re in quite a bit of pain, aren’t you? What have you done to your hand?”

The violinist shot a frightened look of entrapment at the young man who stood in her way, and then renewed tears welled in her eyes. “I have cut it,” she sobbed. “Very badly, I think.”

Jamie put an arm on her shoulder. “Come on, you’re not in any fit state to leave. Let’s go and sit down again.” He guided her back to the table, and once she had resumed her seat, he pulled round a chair and sat down next to her. “Right,” he said, with hand outstretched, “let me have a look at it.”

Angélique undid her jacket and slowly pulled out her hand wrapped in the blood-stained towel.

At that point, the door of the restroom banged shut and Jamie turned to see Martha staring at him transfixed, her handbag held limply at her side. “What are you doing?” she mouthed at him. “Get rid of her.”

“Martha, just come here for a sec.”

Throwing her eyes heavenward, Martha walked quickly over to the table, desperate to get the coffee shop closed up as fast as possible, and then she saw the girl’s bandaged hand. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she murmured, immediately turning away from the bloody sight.

“Right,” Jamie said gently to the violinist, “just lean your elbow on the table. I’m going to remove the towel really slowly, okay?” He carefully unwrapped the towel and handed it to Martha, who took it as if she were handling a garment newly stripped from a leper. Jamie narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head, and Martha reciprocated with a mouthed expletive.

As Jamie slowly unclenched Angélique’s hand with his fingers, blood immediately dripped from the wound onto the table, and the young violinist let out a faint cry of pain. “Martha, get me some paper towels to wipe this up and also something really clean to cover it with.”

With a deep sigh of impatience, Martha dropped her handbag on the ground and clumped off behind the counter. Meanwhile, Jamie studied the uneven gash that ran across the violinist’s now-swollen palm. “Ow, that looks quite deep. How on earth did you do it?”

“I fell over onto broken glass,” Angélique answered in a faltering voice.

“Where? On the street?”

“No, in my hotel bedroom….” Her voice trailed off almost to silence as she cast a worried glance between Jamie and Martha, who had returned to the table with a large kitchen roll and two clean white tea towels.

Jamie bit at his lip as he studied the violinist’s face. “Well, let’s just take one thing at a time. First, we need to get this cleaned up and then stitched. You’ll probably need a tetanus jag as well.”

“I’m sure it does not need all that,” Angélique said quickly, trying to draw her hand away from Jamie.

“Oh, yes, it does,” Jamie said, exerting enough pressure on her hand to stop her. “I’ve seen hundreds of wounds like this, and they all needed stitches.”

“Are you a doctor?” Angélique snuffled.

Jamie let out a short laugh. “No, I’m a rugby player.” He pointed a finger at the wound on her hand. “There are cuts like this in every game.”

As Jamie began to rebind the wound with one of Martha’s tea towels, Angélique studied the face of the well-built young man who was being so kind, noticing now the small scars of battle that were quite familiar to her. “My brothers used to play rugby as well, for a club in Clermont Ferrand, but they are now both too old.”

“Jamie played rugby for Scotland, didn’t you, Jamie?” Martha stated knowledgeably from a distance, “or that’s what I was led to believe.”

Jamie looked quizzically at Martha, never having realized before the acerbity in her tone. “Only for the under-twenty-one team.”

“C’est vrai?”
Angélique asked, obviously impressed. “You are quite famous, then?”

Jamie laughed. “Not nearly as famous as you.” He rose to his feet. “Right, Martha, we’d better get Angélique to A and E at the Royal Infirmary, and—”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Martha cut in.

Jamie turned fully in his chair, his back to Angélique. “You’ve got a car, Martha, and I don’t.”

“Listen,” Martha said in a whispering voice, “I’ve got to get this place opened up at half past eight tomorrow morning. Can’t you take a taxi?”

“For God’s sakes, just do us a favour and drop us off,” Jamie hissed at her. “We’ll get a taxi back once the girl’s been treated.”

Martha stood looking at Jamie, taken aback by the vehemence of his reply. “All right, then. You don’t have to get on your high horse. You’ll have to give me time to get her table cleared and the till locked up.”

Jamie gave her a short, sharp nod. “Okay, then.”

As he watched Martha sweep away the coffee cup from in front of Angélique, Jamie felt saddened by the shattered illusion he had of Martha, thinking that the next time he set foot in The Grainstore, it would be for coffee and nothing else.

“Listen, Angélique, I’m trying to work things out in my head. Who else knows you’ve cut your hand?”

Angélique shook her head. “Nobody.”

“Right,” Jamie said, rubbing hard at his forehead with his fingers, “this is how I see it. I know for a fact you were playing in a concert in the Usher Hall this evening, and I’m pretty sure you’ve got another one tomorrow. Trouble is I think it’s quite obvious to both of us you won’t be able to play with your hand in that condition.” He paused, catching the look of unease in the violinist’s expression. “So, I suppose we should tell someone you’re going to be out of action.” Angélique dipped her head once more at the suggestion. “What about that man who was in the photograph with you?” Jamie continued. “Is he your manager or something? Do you think we should let him know?”