Strange Music (13 page)

She did more. She refreshed her lipstick and powder, dabbed fresh perfume behind her earlobes, and – not as an afterthought – slipped in her dutch cap. It had been a long time.

‘D'you happen to know the Stutchberrys?' he asked as they set off. He had donned a British warm, a bowler, and fine pigskin gloves.

How odd, she thought, to escape to Paris only to find myself reunited with my old tribe! ‘I was at school with Gwen,' she told him.

‘Ah, yes,' he murmured. ‘Gwen.'

The night had turned cool – more like winter than spring. Paris in capricious mood. The lights hanging among the trees and the music that drifted out from the cafés and bars suggested that the pavements should be more populated than they were.

‘Are you here on business?' she asked.

‘Ha! I was about to ask the same of you. I've just finished a five-year secondment with All India Radio and now I'm on my way back to a spot of leave before resuming my place with dear old Auntie.'

‘The
BBC
?' He had been interesting enough before, but this . . .

‘You've heard of us!' he exclaimed.

She laughed. ‘Just about. I hope you have nothing to do with television because I could bore for Gloucestershire on the shortcomings and disappointments of
that
branch – or limb, I suppose – of “dear old Auntie.”'

‘Alas, I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum – Bush House – the Overseas Service. Now that we're letting go of our empire, bit by bit, our overseas broadcasts are considered evermore vital. But bore away if you like – you won't bore
me
– and I'm sure to bump into someone I can pass it on to.'

There was an odd note of eagerness in his voice – at odds, that is, with the rather laconic tone he had adopted earlier.

So she let him have both barrels – a twice-round-the-square recital of everything she and Eric had compiled together. At first he tried to answer her criticisms but his responses grew increasingly half-hearted and eventually petered out altogether.

‘Now I
am
boring you,' she said. ‘You just can't wait for it to be over so that we can drop into that bar on the corner and dance to that divine accordion.'

‘Oh, what a dilemma! I do, of course, long for that – now that you mention it – but I can't deny I'm eager to hear
all
you have to say. I started answering back at first because I thought you were just firing off piecemeal objections. But I soon realized that they are part of a whole – a coherent whole . . . a philosophy of television. And that
is
interesting. Very! Why don't you apply for a post there?'

‘Oh, they'd just hate me!'

‘Of course they would, but that's no reason to shrink from it. But forgive me – you're probably already in some highly satisfying and rewarding profession?'

‘Publishing.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Yes . . . but not in the glamorous, three-hour-luncheons-with-T. S. Eliot end of the trade. We're in “integrated illustrated non-fiction,” where careers and lives hang on the success of a single volume.'

‘It sounds like a natural kindergarten for a life in television. They don't give too many chances there.'

The suggestion that there was a place where the knives were sharper and the claws longer than in ‘her end' of the publishing trade stirred something visceral in her. ‘Exactly what will you be doing at Bush House?' she asked. ‘Actually, you can tell me while we dance.'

The accordionist and his violinist companion were about to take a break but when two hundred new francs appeared as if by magic between Findlater's finger and thumb, they took up their instruments again and began a rumba. They played with that peculiar upbeat melancholy that only French musicians seem able to achieve with any conviction – the sort of music that fills each moment with a ready-made nostalgia, telling you that these pleasures will not last, that the dawn will break cold, and the water carts will soak the streets, and the dogs of Paris, a breed unique, will commandeer all public spaces and hold them until the humans come out, all bleary eyed, and take over.

‘Bush House?' she reminded him as they took to the floor.

As she expected, he danced with a delightful ease – with more than mere ease, in fact: with a grace and a firmness that was a joy to follow. He turned the little eight-by-eight dance floor into a ballroom.

‘I'm at the sort of level now,' he said, ‘where more than half my job will be whatever I decide it will be – which is only natural, because I will probably know more about the Far East – not just India – than anyone else there.'

‘Really?'

‘Are you surprised? As I said, I've been five years in India, during which I travelled to most other countries in the region.'

‘Oh, yes, I'm not doubting
you
but I'd have thought the place was crawling with secret service people, some of whom would be pretty genned up about . . . well,
every
part of the world.'

He stiffened and his next few steps were ungainly. Then, in a light, inconsequential sort of tone, he asked, ‘What on earth makes you think that?'

‘Schmidt's is just round the corner from where I work. I meet a lot of folk from Broadcasting House there. They say it's riddled with bods from the Secret Service. And anyway, it would be a very incompetent sort of government that let a powerful broadcaster like Auntie run the show completely unsupervised – home or abroad. Don't you think?'

He seemed to lose interest then. ‘I've been thinking about your offer of a mount and an outing with the West Herts . . .'

‘And?'

‘And the more I think about it, and the more I discover about you, the more attractive it becomes. How do I get there – to where the horse is stabled? I will have the loan of my brother's car for a few weeks.'

So she told him about the Dower House, and then she had to tell him about the Dower House community.

They danced and sipped iced Pernod until shortly before two, when the café closed. During those hours she learned that he had lost his wife (to cancer) the previous year, leaving a year-old daughter – now almost two – who was presently with his parents in Bournemouth. Her name was Jasmine. For his part, he learned that she was still single, and highly attached to her career.

As they rose to leave, she realized she had never felt so sober after drinking so much; there was something about Findlater . . . his manner . . . his air of power kept under perfect control . . . which compelled her to retain that grip on each fleeting moment which alcohol usually relaxes.

They walked back arm-in-arm to the hotel. ‘Can you recommend a good hostelry near this Dower House of yours?' he asked. ‘I thought, since I have the car, we might drive down to the Cotswolds on Sunday, take luncheon at Castle Combe, and go for a stroll. D'you know the little stream there – the By Brook? It's very pretty.' After a pause he added, ‘I might have some word for you then about careers and openings in television.'

‘Oh!' She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I was just being a bar-room expert. I've never thought of leaving publishing.'

Why am I lying like this? she wondered.

‘Of course you haven't,' he said. ‘But there's a rung on every career ladder where you'll hurt yourself if you crash to the ground – and that's the rung where you start to look at nearby ladders and ask, “Could I make it from here?” And I'm guessing you're already standing on that rung of your present ladder.'

‘Well . . . Alex? Alexander? . . .'

‘Alex. Anything but Al!'

‘Well, Alex, there's certainly a spare bed for you at the Dower House. And I'm flattered that you should think my gripes about television add up to a philosophy, so of course I'll take anything you tell me about it very seriously, indeed. Oh – and I adore Castle Combe.'

‘Well . . . Faith . . .' They were outside her bedroom door by now. ‘I have every reason – more reasons than I can count – to look forward to this coming weekend.'

He kissed her hand lightly but the glint in his eye made it clear this was a surrogate for one that could wait.

Lying in bed, in the time for waking dreams, she felt so glad the night had not descended toward the ending she would originally have welcomed – which was when she remembered to remove the dutch cap.

Saturday, 22 April 1950

There was no frost. A fitful north-east wind blew a dampness over the country, threatening rain that never quite fell.

‘There'll be scent enough today,' Faith said as she and Alex set off for the meet at Dormer Green. She was on Jubilee, of course, and he, as promised, was riding Sally's Copenhagen, who was champing at the bit and frothing with excitement. ‘We'll have to put some manners on this lad,' he said, ‘or he'll overrun the hounds.'

It was a big field, more than forty riders, all as certain as Faith that the scent would burn today. Their excited babble and their laughter carried far – the cacophony that ruined many a good hunt. Her spirits sank.

Stirrup cups downed, the cap for Alex paid, the master – Sir George Fenby, a City banker – lifted the hounds and set off in the direction of Queen Hoo.

‘D'you know a ride where we could put this fellow over a couple of jumps?' Alex asked. ‘I doubt I could hold him if we find early.'

She led him at a good trot through the country lanes, by Bramfield and Tattle Hill, through Thieves Lane to Hertingfordbury. There they turned west, into the grounds of Panshanger, which stretched up the Maran valley for a couple of miles. It was unkempt park and pheasant covert and partridge manor all the way.

‘Ready?' she called. ‘Hold tight.'

He increased his grip.

‘Now!'

The two horses had been waiting for it. They went at once from walk to gallop. Faith felt the blood begin to race. She knew the ground well, of course, and led the way unhesitatingly through a maze of rides, some broad and straight, some narrow and zigzag. The clouds had passed and now a brilliant sun shone through the trees. The dry leaves crackled underhoof. And from somewhere came drifting the lazy smell of woodsmoke. All the fears and stresses of London and her delicate mission in Paris deserted her on that gallop. Here and there the way opened into glades, in one of which the woodsmen had left the trunk of a once-mighty beech.

To his astonishment Alex saw Jubilee fly at it as if to clear it in one bound – which was impossible, surely. Then he began to feel anxious, for he could sense that Copenhagen was getting set to make the same impossible leap. In fact, he was on the point of reining in when he saw that Faith had come to rest on the top of the trunk; she stood there, poised like a trick rider in a circus.

Very well
,
he thought, determined not to be outclassed by her.
On you go!
And he touched Copenhagen forward as soon as she had jumped down the other side.

He leaned over the crupper, ready for the jump, but at the last minute his courage failed. The height of the trunk, which had before seemed merely daunting, now looked terrifying. No horse could do it, not even this great-muscled giant. But they were both committed and had to go forward. For a moment he thought it shared his doubts; he did his best to gather it but there was a hint of a fumble as it doubled its hind legs under for the leap.

‘Haaaa!' he yelled at the top of his voice, which frightened it into the supreme effort that carried it up, soaring and stretching, reaching beyond any achievement it knew of, until, by a hair's breadth, it gained the crest of the fallen trunk. It did not need the tug of his rein to stop; every ounce of its ability had gone into that puissance leap. There was no momentum left to be checked. Their coming to rest seemed both magic and effortless.

‘Heigh!' He gave a cry of relief – not to say delight – and turned to Faith . . . only to see that she was as pale as the bleached wood on which he was now perched.

‘Magnificent!' She merely breathed the word, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘But mad!'

‘Why?' He laughed. ‘
You
did it.'

‘Would you just look behind you.'

He obeyed. ‘Oh!'

A ridge, perhaps the foundations of an ancient wall, crossed the glade at an angle to the trunk, running beneath it. Faith had made her impressive leap from the top of it, but he had made his from fully three feet lower. ‘That was stupid,' he said, feeling slightly hollow at the thought of what he had done. ‘But I say – what a hunter!' He patted Copenhagen's mane.

‘No one's going to believe me,' she said, looking around. ‘Did anyone see?'

‘I hope not! But at least this chap has quietened down. Shall we rejoin the hunt? I think we're safe enough now.'

It went badly. Sir George, the master, was his own huntsman that day; they found him drawing a covert in such a slipshod way he was more likely to send the fox to earth for the rest of the day than to put him up. He asked them to hold up the southern edge of the covert and scare the fox away westwards if he broke.

They made their way cautiously along its downhill fringes. There was a rider standing ten yards out in the fallow.

‘You'll head him if he breaks here,' she shouted.

He looked at her scornfully. ‘They won't
find
in that!' he said.

But just at that moment came a hound's opening challenge, quickly taken up by two others. The rider spurred for the edge of the covert, immediately in front of Faith, arriving there only just before the fox broke. There was a great deal of crashing behind.

The stranger gave the fox no chance to get well away. As soon as it entered the fallow he began an excited scream of ‘View halloa, halloa!' and flapped his arms.

‘No!' Faith and Alex shouted in unison, but he paid no heed. She could have shot him.

Of course, the fox turned at once and went back into the covert, about ten yards from the point where he broke. All the activity around his earth, and the fact that there were a mere three hounds, had combined to make him think the open country might be safer today; now they'd given him proof that it wasn't. He'd go to earth and stay there till dark.