Strange Music (17 page)

‘No.'

Her abruptness shook him. ‘You're very positive. I've met quite a few survivors since 'forty-five. It's amazing how normal they seem in casual contact, but there must be deep scars from such an unimaginably awful experience.'

Her laughter shocked him.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘It's just that when Felix gets agitated, he opens a tin of baked beans. Or in summer he'll eat raw peas.' She explained the significance. ‘And when I pointed it out to him, he saw the funny side, too. So now he does it consciously – he
uses
it as a sort of signal:
if you go on nagging, I'll open a tin of beans
sort of thing.'

‘And Angela? I know about her work at the
BBC
. She learned her trade as a recording engineer for the
SS
, I gather?'

Faith turned to look at him. He was staring into the fire as if the dance of the flames were far more important than all this chit-chat. The flickering light bronzed his skin and sharpened every detail. It shocked her to realize – quite suddenly – that she was actually falling in love with him. This was the start of something more than a blissful affair with a man who was handsome, charming, not short of a shilling or two, and powerful in ways that could be of use to her. Much more.

She had never been one to want, much less to seek, a man who could stand in a protective role toward her. She had felt herself on that old slippery slope when she first met Felix, that afternoon at the
V&A
. He was so . . .
European
. He knew Picasso, Derain, Sartre and de Beauvoir, and André Breton . . . oh, so many people who were already part of European legend. And Thomas Mann. They were his friends. The Curator of Prints had almost venerated him. It had been what Willard called ‘a close call' but, by bringing him into
her
world, taking charge of his career as far as he'd let her, and joining him in bed, she had put that danger behind them. Hadn't she?

Not really. Even as the comforting gloss occurred to her, she remembered how the sight of Angela had brought him to a halt as he crossed the dining room at Schmidts – and how he had lingered behind that doorway, watching her, unaware that she, Faith, could see him reflected in one of the windowpanes. She had known then, far better than Felix himself, where his heart now lay.

‘No. She learned her trade at
UFA
,' she said, ‘where her father was some sort of recording engineer genius.'

She knew he was fishing for information –
and
that he'd never say why – but, curiously, it did not annoy her. This . . . what could one call it? This
penchant
for secrecy became him. He would be less interesting – in a way, less of a man – if he were otherwise. At any moment in her life up until this weekend she would have said she'd never be able to love a man fully unless she knew all about him. She wouldn't have felt
safe
enough to let herself fall in love. But now that seemed absurd, as if to say that love would begin when all the exciting bits were over. How could she have been so stupid?

‘If you do go to America . . .' he said.

‘Oh!' She laughed. ‘D'you know – I was just about to start a train of thought that began:
if I do go to America
. . . Go on.'

He grinned. ‘Far be it from me to interrupt.'

She drew a deep breath and stopped smiling. ‘I want to say this before I have even the smallest sip of sherry inside me. Or a
G&T
, actually . . . pink.'

He turned and asked the receptionist for two pink gins and a brace of tonic splits.

‘When I go to America,' she said, ‘though actually it's just New York, I'll be counting every minute – every second – until I can be with you again. There!'

‘Oh, Faith!' He closed his eyes, pressing the lids down tight until a hefty pair of crow's feet spread across his temples.

She blinked, several times, rapidly – and was surprised to feel small tears slithering down her cheeks. ‘Steady the Buffs!' she said, embarrassed. ‘This is verging on the Continental. We ought to have done this in Paris.'

‘Ha! D'you think I didn't want to?' He glanced at her. ‘Didn't you?'

‘No . . .' She spoke as if it now surprised her. ‘For me it happened . . .' But she couldn't pin it down to an actual occasion. The epiphany that overtook her a few moments ago had merely been a conscious realization of something that had actually happened . . . when? ‘Perhaps it did happen then,' she admitted. ‘When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly – that moment when she first spreads her wings in the sun to dry – does she suddenly realize she's actually been a butterfly for quite a few hours already?'

Sunday, 21 May 1950

There was a hesitant knock at the cottage door and then came Marianne's voice: ‘Felix? Angela? Is everything all right?'

She entered the kitchen just as Felix called back: ‘Come in!'

She halted in the doorway. ‘What have you done?'

‘Stubbed my firkin toe. What's it look like?'

‘It looks like you're running hot water over it, which certainly won't help. D'you want me to have a look?'

He plucked his foot from the sink and turned off the tap – rather than expose himself, for he was still in his old-fashioned nightshirt. ‘It's all right. It's fine.'

Angela appeared at that moment, also in her nightdress. ‘What happened? I never heard such a racket.'

‘He stubbed his firkin toe.'

‘I stubbed my toe.'

‘I was on my way to lunge Jubilee. I thought the roof had fallen in or something.'

Angela's expression hardened. ‘Stubbed his toe? Well . . . don't expect much sympathy from
me
. We'll be stacking the furniture vertically if we go on much longer.'

Marianne looked around the kitchen and had to agree. ‘Two welsh dressers, one almost bare, must be a great temptation.'

‘But it's beautiful!' Felix hobbled painfully across the kitchen, skirting the table, a free-standing butcher's block, and a Victorian wine rack, while ducking under a four-row laundry hoist from which hung two socks and several hundred dried and drying herbs. ‘Just feel that!' He ran his hand over the wood. ‘There's a century of tender loving care in that surface.'

‘Ha!' Angela barked. ‘There are thousands of years of tender loving care in all these lovely antiques, but it didn't stop them breaking your toes. I hope you
have
broken your toes. I don't know what else will bring this madness to a halt.' She appealed to Marianne. ‘It's a one-man campaign to save
everything
the Victorians ever made in wood . . .'

‘Not everything.' He started speaking over her. ‘We've seen hundreds of pieces I'd gladly burn myself. Or give to Chris to desecrate. But these are all hand carved. These are made by
sculptors
– even if they're not named as that.'

‘. . . from the furnace.'

‘Look at the petals on this rose. That one there. It was carved with a single
wrrusssh
of a hollow chisel. Grinling Gibbons couldn't have done it better.'

‘Then we should buy that old tithe barn and store them there' – she jerked a thumb toward the back window – ‘if it's
that
important.'

Marianne's ears pricked up at that. She said, ‘May I make a modest suggestion?'

‘You can make a pot of coffee.' Angela threaded her way to the dresser – the one that was laden with collectible earthenware and porcelain.

‘That barn out the back . . .' Marianne said when they were finally seated, their hands clutched for warmth round tall, steaming mugs. ‘Is it for sale?'

Angela's eyes narrowed. ‘Are you thinking of buying it?'

She shook her head. ‘I didn't know it might be available. The thing is – don't tell this to Willard, and don't let Sally know you know, not yet, anyway – but the thing is, she and I are thinking of going into partnership. I'm tired of being what Willard calls his troubleshooter . . . and she's—'

‘His
what
?
'

‘Troubleshooter.'

‘Ha! Americans! Who else would think that the way to get out of trouble is to start shooting! Go on.'

‘Well . . .' Marianne was now transfixed between two strands of thought; the more powerful won. ‘Believe me, I never want to be involved with the design of another public lavatory as long as I live! Willard has these giant office blocks to finish so he's long ago forgotten about the Festival of Britain. He comes to the odd site meeting but that's all. The rest is all on my plate now. Anyway! I want to go freelance and Sally doesn't think she's being fully stretched in
their
partnership, so we're exploring – no more than that, just exploring – the possibilities of setting up in a practice together.'

‘Exciting!' Angela's eyes sparkled.

‘And that's the danger. It
is
exciting. But is it practical? No – is it practic
able
?'

‘Do-able,' Felix suggested.

‘Yes – do-able. So nothing's decided yet. One of the questions is where would we work? Another is we want to start off with a commission that would create a stir. And the conversion of a listed sixteenth-century tithe barn with medieval traces – grade two-starred – would surely do that if we got it right.'

The other two exchanged a thoughtful glance. ‘Conversion to what?' Felix asked.

Marianne stared at him as if she thought he must be joking. ‘A place to live in, of course. A dwelling. A home. Somewhere for all this . . . er . . . these antiques, where you wouldn't have to bathe your toes in
cold
water every morning.'

‘For us,' Angela began, ‘bathing in ice-cold water every morning . . .'

‘I know what it means, pet,' Marianne cut in. ‘To you and to him. But it's the only proper treatment for bruised toes. That's all.'

‘A dwelling,' Felix said thoughtfully.

Marianne looked at Angela. ‘Isn't that what you hinted at?'

She nodded. ‘But the minute I said it, I thought of Faith. This new man in her life – Alex – seems a lot more serious than any of her previous . . . ah . . .' She cleared her throat tendentiously and grinned at Felix. ‘Anyway, I thought what if we could suggest to Faith that
she
buy it – or she and Alex together then—'

‘So it
is
for sale?' Marianne pressed the point.

‘Officially? I don't know. I just asked John Gordon what the gravel company was hoping to do with it – he was moaning in the usual way about having to repair the roof with genuine seventeenth-century tiles – and he said he didn't know what
they
were hoping but
he
was hoping to get them to sell it off. They're never going to get permission to demolish the Dower House, not now it's been listed grade-two star as well. So he wants to sell off both properties, with a clause to prevent us from lodging any objections to gravel extraction out in the parkland. But Faith and Alex could live there and still be part of the community, and we'd get two more rooms for' – she waved all around them – ‘
this
!'

‘What sort of conversion would you propose over there?' Felix asked quietly.

Angela drew breath to speak and then, catching his eye, fell silent.

‘Lord! The very possibility has only just arisen. But, in very general terms, for them, Faith and Alex, it would be living space and a garage . . . and for
you,
living space and a studio. For them, something fairly conventional but of superb quality. For you' – she licked her lower lip, slowly, teasing them – ‘something
astounding
! Think it over, anyway. I must go and lunge Jubilee.'

At the door, over their protests, Marianne added, ‘Ta muchly for the coffee.'

Sometime later, on her way back from lungeing Faith's horse, Marianne called in again at the cottage. ‘I simply must tell you this,' she said. ‘Something that happened at the Festival site yesterday. Willard came down for a site conference . . . this is the sort of thing that drives him absolutely
mad
about the English. He came down to sort out some problems with one of our public lavatory contracts, which is right next door to one of the cafés. And the café is being decorated by a Cornish painter called John Tunnard.'

And she went on to explain that Tunnard had to get a union card before he could start work, and then he couldn't start because he needed to melt the special plastic paints he was using and the power point was loose, and the whole site almost went on strike when he tried to screw it in firmly, and it took the electrician a day to come, and he said it was too close to a water pipe so send for the plumber, and the plumber took another day and when he came he said it was a cold-water pipe and he was only a
hot
-water plumber so the cold-water plumber took another day, and so a whole week went by before he could begin – all for the want of three turns of a screwdriver. ‘And best of all,' she concluded, ‘they thought they were doing him a
favour
! Allowing him to skive for a week. They've got this government by the balls!'

As she turned to go, Felix said, ‘That old Tithe Barn.'

She spun round eagerly. ‘Yes?'

‘We both went out and had a quick look at it. What would one be able to do with a place like that?'

Angela added, ‘It's all doors on one side and all windows on the other.'

‘Yes. The windows were added in the nineteenth century, at a guess. The ones in the nearer end wall even later – possibly in the First World War. Mrs Tawney says the Red Cross used it for dressing wounds of the walking wounded, when the Dower House was a convalescent home for officers. Anyway, when a house gets listed, it has to be listed exactly as it is. If there's a corrugated-iron patch in the roof, that's part of the listing and you have to apply for consent to replace it with proper tiles. Hence poor old John Gordon's frustration.'