The Concert Pianist (15 page)

The demise of their relationship was a terrible thing. Her hints
were
so gentle at first, so painfully reasonable. If, as he said, his love was complete, how could he deny her the fulfilment of that love? How could marriage and children be anything but a natural extension of their fondness for each other? He would listen and nod, feeling her view with care, even tenderness, whilst his heart twisted. Her reasonable questions exerted suffocating pressure. She was probing into an area that he did not control or understand. After such exchanges, an abyss opened between them - harrowing for Philip. He needed so much to feel close to her.

His special pleadings about the life of a pianist wore thin. Nothing could be more important than a central relationship. Laura herself pointed out that an art form that depended so much on the humanity of its practitioners could hardly prescribe that its practitioners sacrifice something essential to that humanity. When he tried to explain his need for freedom, for separateness, she told him he was already enmeshed with her, that the need was a delusion. When he tried to describe the missing element or uncertainty, she said that he had no model of Miss Right, no archetype on to which any girlfriend could superimpose. He had never known his mother and his adoptive mother was quite different. He had, instead, to value the reality.

They coasted along, hoping in a way that the relationship would simply subsist. Then the deadlines began, the signs of a terminal toughness. Philip had to face the well-meaning enquiries of her father - the dear old man meekly hoping to clear things up for Laura's sake, and putting his foot in it with both of them. He was shamed by the old boy's love for his daughter and fondness for him. His hopes for Laura's future happiness and his own peace of mind as an ageing father rested on the match and Philip felt acutely sorry for the family heartache their separation would cause. He suffered the kind remonstrations of old friends. Peter and Clarissa were devoted to Laura. John Sampson heaped praises on her. She had the double thumbs-up from Julius Robarts, his American colleague. ‘Great PR for you, my friend. It's like your aura's had a makeover.'

All he could do was feel guilty and selfish and incompetent, whilst recognising it was up to her to get rid of him. Whatever she said, he would not make the break. The onus was on her to get so pissed off that she left him, and this he probably exploited, knowing she would never give up.

He
was wrong about that. Laura had shockwaves of rancour in store. It depressed him to see this final backlash and he believed it when she said he had ruined her life. He was her undoing, the curse of a man who cannot commit and who comes at an age when a woman has few remaining chances. Without him her prospects were more hopeless than ever. He had cheated her of vital years, a happy future, the chance of a family.

She foresaw this in the doomed last months of their years together and the injustice of it drove her to an extremity of contempt for him. He took the punishment like a man, feeling that, if she had suffered from his emotional incapacity, he should be made to suffer for it, too. In the end, of course, his pity had limits. One could not be forced to marry. Her haranguing and beseeching became tedious.

The break was sudden. One morning in his house she gathered her possessions into a carrier bag and left without a word. He stood by the sash window in the living room, looking down at the street as she came out of the building, and watched her hail a cab without a backward glance.

Thereafter she wrote him a letter that poisoned his sleep for weeks. It was a declaration of the most desperate love and it paralysed him completely. Everything good about Laura breathed in the lines of this letter. Even her handwriting moved him: so feminine, so genteel, so lovably old-fashioned. Her phrases were full of life and intelligence. In language she conveyed the beauty of a woman's ardour. Her appeal washed away all the rancour between them so that he could see again the calibre of feeling he had attracted. All her qualities shone in this letter and for days he struggled with the conviction that, if he did not take up the challenge and offer to marry her, he would be letting something of inestimable value slip through his fingers - a fine woman's love. He expected her to call as the days passed, but Laura knew better. This was her parting shot. The situation now had a bitter clarity and it was up to him to respond. If he could bear to live without her love, she had done the right thing. She had wanted him to know exactly what he was throwing away: a part of himself. For six or eight weeks the world was a bleak place for Philip. He had the certainty of a wrong turn, but was powerless to do anything. He decided to suffer and survive. He despised himself, of course.

Two
years later they met by chance in Harrods. Both were Christmas shopping and it seemed the civilised thing to have tea upstairs. That went well enough and a couple of weeks later he invited her to a gallery preview, which she attended. Now forty-two, Laura was an archivist working for Channel 4. There was no hint of a boyfriend and yet she seemed to have moved on, and somehow or other they found a groove that did not insult the strength of their previous bond. There followed sundry meetings, strangely autumnal in character. She had not quite forgiven him, nor fallen out of love with him, but habits had changed, and the same dignity that compelled her to leave him allowed her to enjoy his company without expecting too much. She took him as she found him and kept herself in rein. Perhaps it pleased her to sense he still needed her. On one of these occasions Camilla's name came up. Laura had discovered a friend in common with Philip's old flame. That friend had told Laura about the abortion, and Laura now passed this on to Philip. At the time, he was so surprised he hardly noticed how she slipped it into conversation. It was the kind of news that came from nowhere but was impossible to forget.

Chapter Eleven

He stood in her front room.

She had a plumber in the flat, so was out in the kitchen. She gave him a whisky the moment he arrived.

He had spent many evenings in this little drawing room with its Victorian fireplace and stripped-pine floorboards. He recognised all her things, moved but not replenished: the heirloom Bechstein against the wall, lid closed; the alcoves of bookshelves showing the same faded spines; the tired chaise in the bay, dried flowers in the hearth, boudoir throws on old armchairs, even the fat candle on the mantelpiece with its hint of convent solace. A dead fly lay on its back on the windowsill. The room was faded and smaller than he remembered. It was a cosy enough place six years ago. She should have moved on by now.

He remained standing because he needed to stay on his toes. He was apprehensive and absolutely ready to cave in, and guilty in advance because he had come to be mothered. He needed to be dosed with sympathy and Laura was the only person he could turn to. Beneath the need, however, was something else. He was more shaken up than he realised and wondered in dread what either of them could take from an encounter in this state. When she came into the room, eyes wide with concern, she seemed already to understand that something serious had happened, and that this was something she might have predicted and even known about: a moment of reckoning that flowed from everything that had failed to happen in his life.

She took his hand with the care of a nurse, gazed into his eyes.

He was distressed by her touch. It brought emotion to the surface. His eyes prickled and he let out a deep sigh.

‘
Sit down then.'

‘OK.'

‘Let's have a cigarette.'

He subsided into the armchair, like Frankenstein sitting down, a palm on either knee.

‘I've left mine . . .'

‘I've got some in a drawer.'

She was soon sitting near him, leaning across the arm of the chaise, watching him smoke. He sipped his whisky and puffed gratefully and thought what a blessing it was when you were miserable to let someone look you in the eye, as though the main thing, first off, was to let the bad feeling be registered. Her dark eyes were so subtly knowing.

He waited for something to occur to him, a way in. He had no idea where to begin.

‘I heard about the concert,' she said.

‘Oh.'

‘Sounds awful, Philip.'

He nodded in agreement. That was one of many awful things, and now they were all mixed up.

‘I've just cancelled the series.'

She did not react.

‘Think I've sacked John.'

‘Did you row?'

‘Yes.'

He could see that she was unsettled by this. Whatever he might tell her, the consequences of a rift would seem worse than the cause.

‘Gosh,' she said softly.

‘I can't trust him any more.'

He looked at his whisky. He hated more than anything the idea of going back to hospital: long corridors, waiting rooms, grave faces.

‘How are you?' he said quickly.

‘Fine.' She smiled.

‘It's nice to be here.'

‘Lucky I was in. I've hardly been back recently. It's all very musty and dusty.'

He frowned. ‘Oh. Right.'

There was a pause. He drew himself up in his chair, and then the realisation dawned. His head cleared suddenly. ‘Have you . . .?'

Laura
looked at him in a certain way, to prepare him. Her face was tranquil, the outer effect of unfamiliar happiness.

He swallowed.

She smiled again, ironically bunching her cheeks and then releasing them.

His heart was sinking, an unprecedented feeling.

He glanced away for a moment, as if to fortify himself. He could not rise above an abrupt sense of loss, a landslide of the spirit: and yet this was inevitable.

‘Somebody from work?'

‘Someone new.'

‘Rodney!'

She laughed. ‘Course not!'

‘Colin?'

‘Don't be ridiculous. He's married.'

‘Colin's married?'

She half-smiled and shrugged. ‘One bachelor less in the world. True love, actually.'

‘You?' He was tense with emotion. ‘Or Colin?'

She looked away, drawing on her cigarette. ‘Maybe both of us.'

Philip averted his eyes. His ash hung long and crooked. He felt as though he would never get out of the chair.

‘Nobody you know,' she said, after a while.

He nodded.

‘Think I'll have another drink.' She rose and then leaned across, bringing him the smell of her scent. ‘Another?'

He heard her talking to the plumber along the corridor. She was chirpy and light-hearted, her voice ringing, and when she came back into the room, a glass in either hand, he could see her expression changing back a gear, as if to protect him from the sight of her happiness. He noticed her hips as she came towards him. She had developed a way of walking, an unaccustomed ease of movement that asserted a right to her new sense of attractiveness. It suited her.

He was now less sure where to start. His preoccupations seemed endless. His life's orderly scheme had been abandoned and yet he had no idea how to live without order. As she took up position near by, softly settling on the chaise, he was struck by the sensation of
her
being so easily close to him whilst belonging to another man. He savoured the surprise unpleasantness of this emotion, noticing a strange jealousy in the mix. He was becoming the master of retrospective regret.

Her words of comfort could not mean the same now.

‘What did John say?'

He shook his head.

‘He's very fond of you.'

‘I need to know.' His throat was dry. ‘Why did you tell me about the abortion?'

Her face changed colour. She put her glass on the table.

‘Why did I have to know that?'

‘Why?'

He rubbed an eye.

She shook her head.

‘What good would it do me?' He could not bear to look at her.

‘Sorry. I couldn't keep it to myself.'

‘I confronted Camilla.'

‘You what!'

‘I went to see her.'

‘God!'

‘She has two lovely children.'

Laura was ashen-faced.

‘She didn't deny it. She made her reasons absolutely clear and that was that.'

Laura digested the remark without reacting. She was concentrating hard, measuring what might and might not be said.

‘You knew I'd be devastated.'

‘I didn't.'

‘Bull's eye, Laura.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!'

‘Why else, then?'

She was suddenly crestfallen, as though he had shamed her. ‘I thought if I knew, you should.'

‘I see. You imparted this information to make me realise how profoundly I was rejected by Camilla?'

The accusation seemed so unfair. ‘Camilla's been married for ages, Philip. She was a lost cause years before I came on the scene.'

‘
Yes, but you thought I hadn't accepted that. So I needed to hear about the abortion to make it crystal clear.'

She looked at him with painful honesty. ‘I was never jealous of Camilla.'

He got up from his chair, walked across the room. ‘You wanted me to know how much you suffered when I refused to have a family. Payback time. I can understand that.'

‘Think what you like.'

‘You wanted this information to have an effect.'

She frowned, overwhelmed suddenly. ‘Why not? It's your information. Your life!'

He turned to meet her head-on.

‘It should have an “effect”,' she told him.

‘I needed to suffer in order to rise to your proud level of emotional maturity. Is that it?'

‘Blame me all you like. It's not true. Have you tried to understand why this revelation is so upsetting?'

‘I'm sure you can tell me.'

She looked away. ‘Philip, I've said enough.'

‘About our relationship, sure. You needed me to be something that suited you, and when I failed to be that thing, you had no interest in the very thing I was.'