The Concert Pianist (25 page)

He gazed up at the long length of the poplar's trunk, to the net of leaves and to the burning blue above.

Chapter Seventeen

The consultant had been slow and careful, leading in gently, placing the results before him as evidence to be made use of. His face was alert to the impact of words, his forehead lined with sensitive concern. He spread his hands across the papers on his desk as if conjuring prognosis from an array of sources. There were results, and there were inferences, a joining-together of the elements in a picture. As he spoke and Philip listened he somehow managed to convey the normality of a life-threatening illness, describing it in terms of wear and tear, as though Philip's body were the inside of a used car and the consultant a mechanic who knew what he could and could not do.

He was full of restless energy. It was a beautiful summer's day outside and he wanted to be in Hyde Park walking across the grass.

‘Look on the angiogram here. These vessels are tumour-specific. Obstruct them and you starve the growth.'

He touched the translucent sheet with a forefinger. The vessels were like a mesh of steel wool around darkness.

‘By surgery?'

‘And subsequent therapy.'

He inhaled sharply. One had to be grown-up about these things. ‘So keyhole's out?'

‘Given the shape and distribution of tissue, yes. We'll need to open you up and have a proper look-see.'

He nodded slowly. It was all very intelligible.

‘Is the operation hazardous?'

‘Twenty years ago these sorts of interventions were impossible. Nowadays more is known about the vascular structure of the organ. It's relatively routine.'

There
was bedside reassurance here. The dark mystery of the body, its secret deeds and processes, science illumined with daylight clarity. The situation was drastic but Philip had allies. Dr Lewis was a veteran in the wars against cancer, wise to the wiles of his adversary. He had the knife, chemicals, radiology, scanning superiority. His team could frazzle tumours, napalm metastases, smoke out rogue cells. He was a doughty fighter and a shrewd tactician. Of course there were outcomes other than victory in this sort of conflict. Against that particular foe one might not survive valorous battle. Doctors were warriors of a sort, but threshold guardians, too. Cancer treatment hovered ambiguously between steps towards cure and strategies in a process of dying.

‘How long do I have to wait?'

The consultant coughed. ‘Two to four weeks.'

He had a call into Ursula. This development would make things easier to explain.

‘Recuperation?'

‘The incision can be sore for a week or so. You'll need to take it easy for a bit.'

He felt the G-force of violently accelerated mortality.

‘Then chemotherapy?'

He nodded. ‘Then chemo.'

Philip patted his leg. The oncology wing of a London hospital was not a club he wanted to join. The in-patients belonged no longer to themselves but to endgames of sickness and the curriculum of terminal care.

‘What are my chances?'

The consultant seemed to acknowledge this was a necessary question. ‘We'll know more after the operation.'

He was impatient now. He wanted to be doing something else. ‘How little time might I have?'

‘Mr Morahan, I think you should be positive.'

‘I'm a concert pianist. I make commitments years in advance.'

‘Make your commitments!'

‘I need a timeframe.'

‘I can't imagine a prognosis worse than six to nine months on any set of facts. The more likely scenario is two to five years. As I say, my hope would be for a full recovery.'

He let the information travel through him. ‘Thank you.'

Out
in the corridor he took the up lift instead of the down lift and got wedged behind a trolley and two paramedics. Up on the fifth floor sunlight rushed in through the plate-glass window and dazzled him. He stood aside as a pair of surgeons walked by. He pressed the lift button and waited impatiently as more staff sped the other way. A nurse with succouring body-curves under crisp uniform held a bag of plasma to her chest as she reversed through a door.

Back on the ground floor he found himself trailing past a shopping mall of coffee machines and sandwich vendors and confectionery stalls. Patients from a ward at the end of the corridor were shuffling past with expressions of institutional self-pity. For a moment he had no sense of the time of day. He stared at his watch, unable to concentrate. This was his predicament: a succession of acute and unfamiliar mental states that he would need to ignore. One had to press on and stick to the plan. Action would help him metabolise thoroughly bad news, which anyway he had expected.

He crossed the lobby and went through automatic doors into the city air, past the cabs on the concourse that led to Praed Street. Light cut across the upper floors of neighbouring buildings, throwing huge diagonals of shadow over the hospital wing. Pigeons hopped on the pavement, a black porter stood over a drunk, who had fallen on the entrance steps.

He felt momentarily bodiless. He kept going, senses greeted by construction noise, the colours of advertising placards, the acridity of exhaust. He decided to walk down Edgware Road, past the Arab banks and Lebanese restaurants, the Halal stores and casino fronts. In the park he strolled around, gazing at the ruff of trees that collared Park Lane between Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner and at the hotels and embassies rising above the tree-line, crenellating the sky unevenly.

He would collect some sheet music from Boosey & Hawkes and go down to HMV. He wanted to see what Serebriakov recordings they had. He remembered to switch on his mobile. Ursula might call at any moment. It was a long time since he had felt the urge, let alone the capacity, to be charming. John would be more difficult. His agent could dissimulate forgiveness and fellow-feeling if pushed, which he would be. Unfortunately for poor old John he
must
do a lot more than hug and brush away a tear. He must think the unthinkable and get on with it.

He was dizzy now. The walking made him feel light-headed. Serious illness was so preoccupying. One had to sidestep back into the routine feel of things. Too easily with this kind of news everyday reality lost its immediacy. Plans and interests went flaccid. One felt poorly, persecuted, weak-willed. The solar plexus cracked up. Not for him. None of that nonsense for him.

Fifty-two years of memory, of experience, of living personal history and mental culture, the streaming individual mind was supported, it turned out, only by the frailest wisps of bodily health.

Striking back across the park he recalled Peter's line about heaven, and the likely absence thereof. How to have your heaven in this life was the issue. Without the lure of a hereafter all that Protestant work-ethic propaganda went out the window. Unhappiness, loneliness, angst. Leave all that to the grave and beyond.

Heaven was now or never, he had said.

Chapter Eighteen

The new offices were a mess: unallocated computer screens, BT handsets, half-emptied cartons, technicians on their knees pulling cables, props from the last office shoved against partition walls (potted plants, chrome chairs). The central floor space was an open-plan zone for secretaries. Hogging the window-light on either side were cubicle offices for the agents. Philip sat in reception on a low-slung sofa gazing at a sea of music journals someone had atmospherically flung on the table. Beside him on the floor sat a box of client photographs destined for the lavatory wall. Clipboarded posters were stacked behind the reception desk (promotional stuff that John had collected down the ages), some a little out of date by now: Arturo Moroni in his LSO days, shirt studs glittering, toupee going strong; Yono Hasaki modelling chiselled fingers against a black backdrop; Therese Stimmerman lost in a halo of adoring soft focus, as though she had already died and gone to heaven, which in fact, now Philip came to think of it, she had.

Or hell.

The receptionist wore jeans and a fluffy polo-neck sweater and was somewhat thrown by the switchboard, jabbing this button and then that to retrieve a lost caller.

In his briefcase he had a present for Ursula and champagne for John. Neither had returned his calls and it was not difficult to see why. The place was in chaos. He was apprehensive but he had to impose.

The receptionist managed her station with some glamour. He heard her speaking discreetly into the phone.

‘I'm pretty sure he's busy,' she said afterwards, sympathetically.

‘Please try again.'

Philip
had spotted John crossing the office and entering his cubicle. His door was still ajar.

The agency was expanding: new personnel, new computers and offices. Sampson was on the Haymarket at last, his career flourishing. How little difference the fate of an individual musician made to organisations like this! Old clients faded, new ones burst forth. John took strength from the virile talents of people half his age.

She tried again. Whilst she was speaking he could see John's door closing from the inside.

‘Sorry! He's a bit tied up at the minute. D'you want to make an appointment?'

‘Is Ursula free?'

The girl was pained. ‘She's got a meeting, too.'

‘I can wait for a bit.'

‘We're all at sixes and sevens.'

He glimpsed familiar faces in the open-plan area: Phyllis, who ran accounts, Bob Collier the bookings manager, John's assistant Serena. He had known these people for years.

‘OK. Thanks.'

He rose, as if to leave, but instead walked out of the lobby into the open-plan zone, heading for John's room.

‘Can I help?' somebody said.

He pretended not to hear and made his way across the space swiftly.

‘Hi, Philip,' said Serena, calling from her desk, a note of alarm in her voice.

‘I've come to see John.'

‘I think he's . . .'

‘Right here.'

Philip got his hand to the door handle and twisted it sharply. ‘Excuse me,' he said, as the door swung wide, revealing John on a chair and a girl on the sofa.

‘What!' John jumped to his feet heading Philip off. ‘We're in a meeting. Francesca!'

‘Can . . .'

‘No you can't!'

The girl started.

‘Stay,' said John, palm out flat.

‘I have to see you.'

‘
I'm not available. Make a time.'

‘Shall I come back?' she asked. She wore a pink blouse and a check skirt.

‘Sorry to interrupt,' said Philip.

‘What the hell!'

‘It can't wait.'

John went to the door, opened it wide. ‘My work's equally important and it can't wait either.'

His heart was beating unpleasantly hard. He had to go through with this; it was one of the things he had to go through with. ‘I don't blame you for being angry.'

‘I don't care whether you blame me.'

‘This is an emergency.'

‘Take your emergency to some other agent. Far as I'm concerned you're not a client.' He leaned across to hit the buzzer on his telephone console.

‘Francesca!'

‘I know you're busy.'

‘Get out!'

Philip laughed. ‘What I'm about to tell you will make you feel a whole lot better.'

‘Am I going to have to chuck you out of here!'

‘I'm dying, John. I haven't much longer. I need your help.'

John's frown deepened. He squinted at Philip, tongue running around his underlip. He gasped, indignation arrested, put a forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose.

Philip glanced at the girl, who was now rising from the sofa.

John caught the exchange of looks. He waved a hand.

She smiled painfully, took her notebook and slipped quickly from the room.

John sniffed as though suddenly congested.

‘Liver cancer,' said Philip.

His agent stared at him with pained care. His handsome face was thickly creased. He had the abject look of someone who senses he has made a fool of himself and is almost too staggered to dissimulate the shock and embarrassment. He wavered for a moment and then shut the door.

‘Take a seat.'

Philip crossed to the sofa. He noted John's orderly desk, the
intrays
and pencil pots, the blue mouse-pad by keyboard and screen. A framed photo of his wife and children leaned against the wall.

He turned before he sat. ‘That's why I cancelled.'

John nodded. He was still breathing hard, mastering the shock of it. He moved across to the chair and sat heavily, massaging his eye-sockets. He looked suddenly drained, the latent tiredness of recent weeks brought to the surface.

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I was waiting for results.'

John shook his head in immediate sorrow. He had no emotional resilience.

‘D'you mind if we call in Ursula?' asked Philip.

John sniffed, pulled a tissue from his pocket. There was an extension on the side table. He took up the receiver. ‘Ursula. Come in, please. I know. It's Philip. He's here, yup. Just tell Ben . . . tell him to wait.'

Philip reached into his briefcase and pulled out the champagne. ‘For you.'

John was pained by the label. ‘What have I done to deserve this?'

There was a knock on the door. Francesca tucked her head in. ‘Hiya!'

She looked vaguely surprised to see Philip on the sofa.

‘Do the honours, will you.' John handed her the bottle. ‘Three glasses. If you can't find glasses, tea mugs will do.'

‘OK, yah.'

The two men stared at each other for a moment.

‘What's going to happen, Philip?'

‘Operation. Chemotherapy.'

John nodded. ‘Then?'

‘Then, after a while, I peg it.'

The agent flinched. He felt the news openly, immediately. ‘Is there no hope?'