Starburst (32 page)

“Hah, you are not prepared to admit it, are you? I think you are very fortunate to have such a perfect balance in you. For me, playing a violin is not just a physical process. I cannot rely on my hands alone. I must use every bit of my soul to understand the emotions that a composer has written into a piece, and sometimes I must make my violin take me to a…a different level of maturity and understanding to achieve the balance between the emotional and the physical. And when I do achieve it, it is the most beautiful feeling. It is like…how do you say it?…an ‘out-of-body’ experience?”

Jamie scratched at the back of his head. “Yeah, I can understand that, but I don’t think you can compare it with playing rugby. If I walked out onto a pitch and was confronted by fifteen socking great lads who knew I had ‘the heart of a romantic,’ I’d be subjected to an ‘out-of-body’ experience within the first five minutes of the game!”

Angélique shook her head. “Now I am beginning to see a great similarity between you and your father. You are as incorrigible as he.”

“Maybe.” Jamie laughed. “By the way, talking about your violin, I heard you playing it this afternoon.” He pointed to her strapped hand. “How’s it getting on?”

“It is feeling much better. Look”—she leaned back on the sofa and delved into the pocket of her jeans—“I still have the squash ball.” She began squeezing it in her hand. “I used it all the way out here in the car.”

“That’s good, but you should be trying to increase the pressure a bit more.” He wrapped his hand around hers and gently closed his fist until he could feel the ball flatten against the palm of her hand. “Is that okay?”

“I don’t feel any pain,” Angélique replied.

He opened up her hand and inspected each of her fingers. “Bruising’s almost gone and so has the swelling.” He scowled seriously at her. “It is my considered opinion, mademoiselle, that you will very shortly be resuming your career as a concert violinist.”

Angélique grinned at him. “It would never have been possible,
monsieur,
without your wonderfully inventive cure. How can I ever repay you?”

“Don’t worry, I shall be sending you an enormous bill which should keep me in squash balls for years.”

“In that case, I had better start to play my violin as soon as possible.”

Their faces had been edging closer together during this interchange, so when the door of the sitting room burst open they sprang apart and began to act with unnatural nonchalance.

“Oh, sorry,” Jamie’s father said, glancing from one to the other. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important.”

“No,” Jamie replied, leaning back on his hands on the stool, and fixing his father with a challenging stare, daring him to say anything about what he had just witnessed. Rory answered the look with an understanding raising of his eyebrows, a thinly disguised smirk and an almost imperceptible wink at his son.

“Well, in that case,” he said with a brief, subservient bow of his head, “if you would care to follow me, I shall show you to the kitchen where your evening meal awaits you.”

T
.K. lay in bed with a contented grin on his face, staring up at the fixed shaft of orange light that shone through the gap in the curtains and cast its funnelled shape onto the bedroom ceiling. All was quiet except for Leonard’s fast, shallow breathing in the bed next to his. He could not believe a room could be so quiet. Back in Pilton Mains, there was always constant movement and the banging of doors outside in the stark, echoing corridor, or raised voices coming through the paper-thin wall that divided his room from the next apartment, or the whine of a police car somewhere on the estate. He moved his feet back and forth over the smooth, clean undersheet, feeling the weighty warmth of the duvet moulding itself around his body. He slowly pressed three fingers, one after the other, into the soft, springy mattress, counting out under his breath as he went. Three days. What was that in hours? He imagined the multiplication sum in his head. Three times four is twelve, carry one; three times two is six, plus one is seven. Seventy-two hours. In seventy-two hours, everything in his life had changed. Out of nowhere, out of a hopeless situation when all that faced him was a lengthy spell in the slammer, he had, by some extraordinary turn of fate, got the break he so longed for. And here he was now, not huddled beneath a torn cardboard packing case at the back of a city centre department store, but experiencing, in this warm, quiet room, a level of comfort he had never before dreamed could have existed. And across from him was the decent old bloke who had given him that break, who treated him…like he was worth something.

“Leonard, are ye awake?” he whispered.

He heard the cameraman catch his breath before letting out a long, sleepy groan. “Did you say something, T.K.?”

“Aye, ah asked if ye wis awake.”

Leonard turned laboriously over in his bed. “Well, I am now. What is it?”

“I wis just thinkin’ aboot whit we did today.”

“Yes?”

“Will we get the chance tae see the stuff we shot?”

“Not until it’s finished. Once it’s gone through the film laboratory, it’ll go straight to the cutting room in London.”

“That’s the master copy and the black-and-white cutting copy, is it no’?”

“Good for you,” Leonard said sleepily. “You were obviously listening.” T.K. grinned smugly to himself and linked his hands behind his head on the pillow. “Dae ye no’ get worried that nothing’s goin’ tae come out on the film? I mean, it’s no’ like video, is it, when ye can see whit ye’ve shot the moment ye’ve dunnit.”

“No matter how long one is in the business, T.K., one constantly worries. Sleeping is enough of a problem without…”

T.K. listened for Leonard to finish the sentence. “Without what?”

Leonard let out a long breath. “Never mind.” T.K. swiveled his head on his hands and looked over at the darkened shape of the old cameraman. “Leonard?”

“Yes, T.K.,” Leonard replied with drowsy impatience.

“Are ye all right?”

“Sorry?”

“It’s just that ah saw ye kept hauding on to yer side a’ day. Have ye got a pain there or somethin’?”

“Just old age, T.K. Just old age.”

“Aye, but ye’re fit, Leonard, aren’t ye? Ye’re as fit as onyone wha’s twenty years younger than ye. Ye’re fitter than ma dad and he’s only fifty-twa, but that’s no’ surprisin’ ’cos he does bugger all except sit in his chair watching TV and he gets through aboot fifty fags a day.”

“Goodnight, T.K.” T.K. stretched out his legs and once more smiled contentedly to himself. “Goodnight, Leonard. See you in the morning.”

Leonard flickered his eyes open and glanced at the luminous hands of his alarm clock. “I do believe, young man, that we’ve just had that pleasure.”

T
he quad bike ascended the hill at speed, kicking up loose stones as it went and brushing before it the tall fescue grass that grew in the centre of the deep-rutted track. Unused to rising from her bed at such an early hour, Angélique stifled a yawn as she sat astride the small pillion seat behind Jamie, her arms tightly encircling his waist. The sun ribbed the high-clouded sky in pinky red, promising warmth for the day, but as it had yet to appear above the top of the hill, she shielded her face from the freshening wind by pressing her cheek against Jamie’s back. The high-revving engine of the quad cut out any possibility of conversation, but Angélique was happy to watch the view down onto the low ground unfold before her and feel the comforting warmth of Jamie’s body radiate into hers through his sleeveless fleece body warmer.

They came out into the sun at the head of a long deep gully that frothed with clear fast water tumbling down the hillside. Jamie left the track and drove alongside a wire fence that followed the contours of the top of the hill, dipping and rising until it fell away from sight over the horizon. When they came to a wide metal gate swung between new pine strainer posts, Jamie turned the quad to face out over the view and cut the engine. In the resultant silence Angélique could hear the sound of sheep bleating beyond the fence and the throaty cackle of a pheasant somewhere down in the bracken that lined the bottom of the gully.

“What d’you think of that?” Jamie said, sweeping his gaze around the view.

Keeping her arms around his waist, Angélique rested her chin against his shoulder. She took in a deep inhalation of air, the sweet smell of the damp vegetation on the moor mingling with the faint aroma of shaving cream on the side of Jamie’s face. Without moving, she focused her eyes on the mass of blond hair, pushed back behind his ear and curling down to his shirt collar, and she wanted, there and then, to reach up and push it to one side so that she could press her mouth against his warm downy neck. “That is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen,” she replied eventually to his question, without averting her gaze.

“That’s the North Berwick Law over there,” Jamie said, pointing to a conical-shaped rock that jutted out of the sea beyond the coastline.

“What would that be?”

Jamie looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. “Do you really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, it’s a carboniferous volcanic plug, composed of phonolytic trachyte and formed over three hundred and thirty-five million years ago.”

“How very fascinating.”

Jamie laughed. “Not at all. It’s about the only thing I remember from my geography lessons at school. Local interest and all that.”

“There are some extinct volcanoes where I come from, too. Les Monts Dôme, les Monts Dores, and les Monts de Cantal.”

Jamie shot a quizzical frown at her. “Where on earth are they?”

“In the Massif Central. Your geography is obviously not so good if you did not know Clermont Ferrand lies in the heart of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in Europe.”

“Right,” Jamie said with a nod. “In that case, the good old North Berwick Law is just a bit of a bump to you.”

“But it is a very nice bump, as far as bumps go.”

“Well, thank you for saying so. And I guess this view will be pretty unspectacular to you as well.”

“I think it is…different.”

Jamie let out a long tedious sigh. “I’m beginning to wonder why the hell I bothered bringing you up here in the first place.”

Angélique laughed and tightened her grip around his stomach. “I would not have missed it for all the world.”

Jamie gave her hands a light slap. “Come on, let’s go check these sheep out.” Swinging a leg over the handlebars, he took a beaten-up duffle bag from the wooden box strapped to the front pannier rack on the quad.

“What do you have in that?” Angélique asked as she clambered off the bike.

“Well, besides the usual veterinary stuff, there’s a Thermos flask filled to the brim with undrinkable coffee and a couple of tepid bacon rolls.”

“Ah, breakfast on the moor. That is a wonderful idea.”

“Actually, it was the old man’s. I think he’s taken a bit of a shine to you ever since he found out it was you who was playing the violin on the one classical CD that he owns.”

“He is then surely a man of impeccable taste,” Angélique remarked airily.

“On that account, I think you should leave off judgement until you’ve tried his coffee,” Jamie replied doubtfully.

Three quarters of an hour later they sat in the warmth of the morning sun with their backs against a large smooth-sided boulder, looking out over a small loch that was surrounded by grazing sheep and onto which wild duck noisily landed and took off as frequently as planes at Heathrow Airport. Pouring out two cups of coffee from the Thermos, Jamie handed one to Angélique and waited for her to take her first mouthful.

“What’s your verdict, then?”

“It’s”—she swilled the liquid round in her mouth and then licked her lips—“quite disgusting, actually.”

“There you are, I told you it would be,” he said laughing, taking the bacon rolls from their foil wrappers and passing one over to her. “Not really Parisian café quality, is it?”

Angélique smiled at him. “No, it is not,” she answered quietly.

Jamie took a bite of his roll. “You miss Paris, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. I miss it very much.”

“Will you head back there after all this is over?”

She took a small piece from the side of her roll and began rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think so. I have commitments to fulfill.”

“Where?”

“All over the world.”

“D’you reckon you’ll be able to do them by yourself?”

Angélique sighed. “For now, I don’t think I have any other choice.”

“What about getting a new manager?”

She threw away the rolled ball of dough and turned her head away from him. “I actually don’t know how to start to find one…one that I will be able to trust.”

“Yeah, under the circumstances I can understand that,” Jamie said, taking a mouthful of coffee. “Dessuin’s really succeeded in messing up your life, hasn’t he?”

Angélique turned and looked at him with glistening eyes. “I have been with Albert Dessuin since I was thirteen years old. I suppose I revered him for all that time. It is very difficult when someone like that shatters all your illusions.”

Jamie could only nod his head in reply. He knew he didn’t have the experience or understanding of life to come out with anything that wasn’t going to sound crass or light-hearted, but he did wish he could have the pleasure of meeting Dessuin alone down some secluded alleyway one dark night.

He felt a hand settle on his knee. “And what about you, Jamie?” Angélique asked, a brave smile on her face. “Are you going to stay in Edinburgh?”

“No, I’m heading down to London in September to start a job.”

“That will be good fun for you. I would very much like to live in London.” She paused, toying once more with her now-cold bacon roll. “Maybe we could meet up if I have a concert there?”

“Of course. I’d like that.”

“I would too.” She threw away what was left in her cup and handed him the bacon roll. “You have this. I’m not very hungry.” She lay down, resting her head on his lap and tucking herself up into a ball. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“What? Eating your fingered bacon roll?”

She hit him playfully on the leg. “You know what I mean.”

A flight of ducks whistled over their heads and Jamie munched on the roll as he watched them coast down onto the loch, breaking the dark water in parallel wakes.

“You know, last night was the best fun I have had for a very long time,” Angélique said. “Being with you and your parents, I sensed what it would be like to be part of a close and contented family, and I have not experienced that very much. When I was a little girl in Clermont Ferrand, there was always something wrong in my house. Either my father was in a very bad mood because he had drunk too much, or he and my brothers were arguing over some industrial problem at the factory; and then, of course, my mother was
always
complaining about how she did not have enough money to feed everyone. So that’s why last night shall become a very special memory for me.” She paused before letting out a long, sad sigh. “
En fait,
I really don’t want it to end.”

Jamie looked down at the side of her face, seeing one curved eyelash flick open and shut and her short dark hair lying windblown against her cheek. “What don’t you want to end?” he asked, putting the last of the roll into his mouth.

She turned her body and looked up at him. “Any of it. Being up here alone with you. Being so far away from all the travelling from one country to another.” She smiled wistfully at him. “When one does not know any other way of life, it is easy to accept. But now, with all this happening, I don’t know if I will ever be able to return to the normal things again. I feel…very lost, Jamie.”

Jamie took hold of her bandaged hand and rubbed a finger against the strapping. “Listen, you’ll do okay,” he said, smiling down at her. “You’ve got a lot of healing to do, not just this hand here but…well, in yourself as well. When all that’s happened, you’ll be crying out to get yourself back in there and you’ll find yourself playing your violin better than ever before.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you’ll be a free spirit, because your life will no longer be ruled by that creep Dessuin, and I know you have the courage and the talent to go it alone.”

Pulling her hand free from Jamie’s grip, Angélique reached up and pressed a finger to his chin. “There goes that heart of yours saying all the right things again.” She pushed herself upright and shuffled her bottom over so that she sat between his legs. Leaning back against his chest, she pulled his arms around her. “I think that I will have to tell all your rugby-playing friends about it this afternoon.”

Jamie pushed his fingers deep into her side, making her let out a short scream and squirm her body to the side. “If you do that, it’ll be the end of our friendship.”

“I don’t think so,” Angélique said, rubbing her hand against the soft blond hairs on his muscled arm as she looked out across the sunlit moor.

“For Chrissakes, lads, what the hell are you doing?” the coach of the Dunbar First XV yelled as he stood at half-time in the middle of the crouched semicircle of sweating bodies, every one of them heaving with effort. “This lot’s a division below us and you’re letting them walk all over you!” He slapped a hand frustratedly against his forehead and let out a long breath to steady his anger. “Right, Billy,” he said, addressing a giant of a man whose muddy face was covered with congealed blood from a gash above his left eye. “Their game plan seems to be based on kicking for touch, so I want you to contest every line-out. Get up in the air, spoil their tactics. If you have to, use an arm to keep the other jumper down, but keep it subtle-like. I don’t want you sin-binned.” He pointed at a player who leaned forward, his hands on his knees, revealing a neck that was as thick as a bullock’s. “Callum, you’re letting that tight-head prop control the scrum. You’ve got to get on top of him, otherwise there’s no way we can get good ball to the threequarters, is that clear?” The player raised his shaved head and nodded. “And you, Jamie,” the coach continued, staring fixedly at his stand-off half, who was tipping the contents of a water bottle down his throat, “I know you’re used to playing in dizzier ranks than this motley crew, but their backs are lying flat, so I want you to break the gainline by running every ball, is that understood?” Jamie nodded, wiping a dirt-streaked arm across his mouth. “Right, just go out there, you lot, and start working as a team. I want this deficit turned round in the first fifteen minutes of the second half, otherwise you won’t have a hope in hell against the team next week.”

As the coach stomped off the field, the semicircle broke up and the players dejectedly sloped off to their positions to wait the few minutes until the referee restarted the game.

“There’s someone over there trying to attract your attention, Jamie,” the inside centre said as he stretched a leg up behind him to keep his muscles from seizing up.

Jamie turned and looked over to the touchline where Angélique was waving at him. He lifted a hand to acknowledge her, but it only made her beckon more frantically.

“You’d better go,” the inside centre said with a teasing smile. “I don’t think she can wait until after the game.”

Jamie raised a finger at him as he ran over to the touchline.

“Yeah? What is it?” he asked Angélique.

“You are playing very well,” she said, a broad grin on her face.

Jamie pulled a hand across his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. “We’re losing, Angélique.”

“I know, but
you
are playing very well.” She gazed over to where the opposing team were thumping one another on the back in congratulations of a job well done so far. “How fast is your left wing?” she asked.

Jamie turned and looked across at the player on the far side of the pitch. “Andy? He’s fast. Beats me by about two seconds over a hundred metres.” He turned back to her. “Why do you ask?”

“Their threequarter line is lying very flat.”

Jamie eyed her with amusement. “That’s what the coach has just said.”

“Well, I was just thinking that if Michalak was playing in your position and he had a very fast player like Dominici on his left wing and he saw a gap behind the threequarter line of the opposition, he would put the ball there for Dominici to chase.”

Jamie smiled at her. “You do know about this game, don’t you?”

“I have told you that before.”

“Well, I’m afraid your idea doesn’t match our coach’s. He wants us to run every ball.”

Angélique shrugged. “In that case, you will lose the match.”

Jamie crossed his arms. “I’m glad you’re so confident. Anything else you want to say?”