Valley of Decision (18 page)

‘No.'

‘Don't you think it would be a good idea?'

‘They were never very close. They'd go for weeks without phoning.'

‘I'd try it.'

He left his mother, certain of the worst, whatever that was. She had made no attempt to disguise her unease, to offer spurious comfort. Even so, he wondered if she was hiding information.

He worked grimly at the rehearsal; at least that gave him occupation. The other three seemed not to notice anything out of the ordinary. Barton, in front of the violins, complimented him.

‘If you go on like this,' he said, ‘Knighty will have his work cut out to get his place.'

David nodded dourly.

‘You're good for us,' Barton continued. ‘Keep us on our toes.'

‘How come?'

‘We're not sure about you. You see, you're not just a fiddler. There's knowledge, scholarship behind what you say.'

‘I hadn't noticed it.'

‘You wouldn't. That's the beauty of it. You've acquired the knowledge and there it is for use. Second nature.'

‘And you play as well as we do.' Wilkinson, surprisingly, topping it all.

‘Only by practising, and then just by the skin of my teeth.'

‘You don't get on any other way.' Payne, exaggerating nothing.

His colleagues' praise should have lifted him, for with the exception of Barton they were not men of words. They had talked amongst themselves, obviously, but however just their commendation, it skirted, touched only the outside of his life. By the time he had propped the cello in the back of his car, his mind raced, tumbling, uncontrolled over Mary's silence.

For three days he put off telephoning the Stileses, her parents. He would give her a further chance. He would make sure. He did not want to flash his anxiety around. He, he, he.

On Friday evening he rang New York. A third, unknown secretary answered, was kind, put him through to a Dr Anderson, who listened, said that the company were about to move to Boston after the weekend's performances, said that he had seen Mary, that she looked well. He disclaimed any close connection with the company, but said that the mail sometimes was unreliable; he offered a brief, illustrative anecdote, and then said he'd see if he had Mary's number, and then the switchboard could perhaps put him through. If David would excuse him, he would use another phone. He did so, returned, said that the operator would try, but in the event of a failure he would, he would in any case, write Mary a note to say her husband had telephoned. Back to the switchboard. A phone rang, disturbing the air in Mary's room, in the corridor outside, in some place that had known her presence that day. It rang unanswered. The secretary apologized, did not know what to suggest. All had tried; nobody had skimped on effort; consideration had been foremost, and the result, a blank. It was as if a conspiracy existed to lead him towards his wife and leave him staring at a prepared gap. He asked if she would let Dr Anderson know the result, and thanked her. She said he was welcome, she'd be glad to. He thanked her again.

For some minutes he sat.

He roused himself, looked at the clock, ten past seven, and decided that Mary's parents would have closed the shop and finished their evening meal. He reached for the address book; most entries were in Mary's writing, this rather bold, slapdash hand that seemed unlike her.

‘Hello.' Mr Stiles answered with one word. David announced himself, his father-in-law hesitantly asked him how he was, and said he'd hand the call over to his wife. Mrs Stiles inquired about his health, but was not free with conversation.

‘I thought I'd ring to find out if you'd heard anything lately from Mary.'

‘I see.'

‘Have you?' He spoke rudely.

‘We had a letter just this morning. I was going to ring you, but I thought you had an orchestral rehearsal on Friday nights. Haven't you heard anything from her?'

‘Not for three weeks or more.'

‘That's bad.'

There followed a silence, as if Mrs Stiles had disappeared. For the moment he thought she might have hung up, or been cut off; both would have been unsurprising.

‘Hello,' he rapped. ‘Are you still there?'

‘Yes, David. I'm just thinking.'

He fought his anger down, imagining her standing by the living-room extension. She was tall, though not quite so tall as Mary, and she dressed soberly, blacks, dark blues, greys. She'd be energetically brushing at, touching, straightening her hair with her free hand.

‘What did she say?' He could barely recognize his own voice.

‘We only got it this morning. It wasn't very long. One of these airmail forms.' Again she halted.

‘When was it written?'

‘The seventh. That would be Monday, wouldn't it? Yes, it's Friday today. Monday.'

‘And what did she say?'

‘You've not heard anything from her?'

‘Not for three weeks.' He could fling the phone at the wall.

‘It was a funny letter. She said the opera was good. And then she said that she'd fallen in love with somebody.' She stopped; icy trembling raked his back. He had no strength; nausea snagged in him and his mouth gaped weakly. Why didn't the bloody woman talk? Was she waiting for a question? He heard the rustle of paper. Mrs Stiles had gestured for her husband to bring the letter across, unless it had already been placed by the telephone in readiness and she had now opened it. ‘His name is Redvers Gage, the producer. She doesn't say anything else about him. She says, “I don't know how to break this to David, but I have to tell somebody your side.”'

‘Is this like her?'

The question threw Mrs Stiles; she seemed unprepared.

‘There's something else, David. She's pregnant.' The voice took on a wooden intonation. “I am pregnant. It's David's baby, and must have been conceived just before I left, though I don't know how. Red knows about this. We've talked it through.” Then she says she'll have to write to you in the end, but she doesn't know how. “I keep getting messages from him. He rings up. I've always been out.”' Know, know, damned knowledge.

‘Is that all?'

‘Yes.' Mrs Stiles waited. ‘I'm ever so sorry, David. We've been worrying ourselves about this on and off all day.'

‘Did she ask you to contact me?'

‘No. She just wondered if we'd been in touch with you. And then she tells us this lot.'

‘She'd guess you'd . . .'

‘Well, we talked about it. Today. Since we had it. We didn't know what we should do. Her dad wanted me to ring you up as soon as you got home from school. “It's only fair,” he said. “Why don't you ring him, then?” I said, but he wouldn't. He leaves it to me.' She seemed pleased to lodge her own complaint.

‘There's nothing else? In the letter?'

‘No. Not really. She writes pretty large and she didn't use the back bit.' Mrs Stiles stopped, and at length broke into ensuing silence. ‘I'm ever so sorry, David. I don't understand her, I honestly don't.' Break. ‘Her dad's that upset. We can't make it out.' Comfortless hiatus. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘There's nothing much I can do, is there?'

‘No. We shall write to her. We shall have to. She's our daughter, whatever she's done.' Breathing. ‘Do you, should we mention that we've told you?'

‘I leave that to you.'

‘What will you do, David? Will you write?'

‘I don't know. I'll need to think about it.'

‘Yes. It's such a shock. There isn't any chance of going over, is there, David?'

‘None at all.'

‘Not in the Easter holidays?'

‘No. I've two musical engagements. With the quartet.' Even his leaden distress, this seemed feeble, as if he'd thrown his hand in, given her up already. ‘My parents went to hear her. They came back about a fortnight ago.'

‘Did they say anything?'

‘She wasn't pleased to see them, didn't make them welcome. I can understand why now.'

‘But she never said anything to them?'

‘No.'

Mrs Stiles continued steadily with her cross-examination, as if to keep him on the end of the line were important. She was shrewd; her questions probed; she was not unlike her daughter, and less kind than his mother. She meant to find out what had happened, and why, before she committed herself; he began to fathom a little of Mary's competitiveness.

In the end she confessed again she could not understand her daughter's behaviour.

‘Our Mary goes her own road, and that's always been the case, but throwing over her marriage isn't like her. I mean, it's just as if she decided this other man was what she wanted, and she'd done wrong in choosing you.' The woman had as little idea as her daughter of her cruelty. ‘Now that isn't like her.'

Mrs Stiles ordered her husband to the phone, where he delivered an untidy sentence or two, neither apposite nor well made. One could not guess where his sympathies lay, merely that this development embarrassed him. David had no difficulty in ending the exchange.

He walked away from the telephone frightened and numbed. He had promised to attend an orchestral rehearsal which would have already started, and even as he decided against appearing he rebuked himself. The life he and Mary had been building had gone. Absence, a necessary sacrifice, was declared absolute; what should have deepened the relationship had, within a matter of days, shredded it.

Now that certainty had been established, his grief assumed physical attributes. Slightly sick, he staggered; his limbs pained, lacking strength; his eyes defined badly, wetted themselves; the head lolled above a cricked neck; his hands and feet were cold. He put on the kettle to make a drink; as it shrilled he dragged his mind to the noise. He found he could not sit for any length of time but he leaped away from his chair and his twitching body only to find weakness as he stood. The television set played unnoticed. For some moments he held himself in front of a reproduction of Vermeer's
View of Delft
; his mouth dropped slightly open, and the picture was a dull patch on a dull wall.

He moved and scratched about the living room until past eleven, unaware of anything outside the turmoil in his head. Sometimes it took the form of a cinematograph show, bursts of film loop, untidy, repeated and inconsequential but all reiterating Mary's treachery. He saw their first quarrel, the honeymoon night, her laughter when once he had tripped with a tray of dishes, the decorating of the tree last Christmas, her entry to sing the
Frauenliebe und -leben
, a winter picnic in the car, gin on Boxing Day morning, a flashing series, unconnected except for her presence and all chained down, daubed with his perplexity, their feverish speed at odds with his corporal lethargy. Sometimes sentences, reiterated, interrupted, piling: her mother's, ‘That isn't like her'; her father's, ‘I don't know'; his mother's, ‘We used to talk'; Mary's, ‘Take care of yourself'; but not in their voices, in a mechanical squeak.

David had provided himself with a drink, heated the bathwater, turned on his electric blanket, but he could not say in what order. His life, if the clatter and shift could be so described, was contained somewhere in his skull, behind his eyes, between his temples. He could not sleep, tossed in his bed, blaming himself. He shoved the tousled bedclothes free and walked about the upper rooms, looking out into street or garden, at the black shape of houses where people lived without despair.

On Saturday he completed his errands, carefully prepared a complicated lunch from a cookery book, inscribed, ‘To Mary from Sandra and Syd', and spent the afternoon walking. Showers drenched him twice, but he did not turn back, determined to tire himself out. He had done nearly fifteen miles when he returned about seven o'clock. He practised, not competently, for the next day's rehearsal, took a bath, sat in his dressing gown limiting his grief with whisky. He opened, could not read his library books, but the pangs of his grief were masterable.

It surprised him that he found himself in tears. He had looked up, seen the mantelpiece and its photographs, and his stoicism was ripped away. He sobbed out loud, groaned and, dropping to his knees, swivelled to beat on his chair with fists. He could not check himself, then did not want to, but when he became calmer he stood, lifting the wedding photograph. Bride and groom smiled; he looked much at home under the porch, proud and sure of himself. Her image did not change; she raised her head, looked the world in the eye, her arm securely in his and this not two years ago. She had gained what she wanted. The tears dried on his face. He made his way upstairs and fell asleep almost at once.

On Sunday at rehearsal for minutes on end he lost his trouble. After lunch his mother rang him.

‘Have you heard anything?' She wasted no time.

‘Yes.'

‘Is she all right?'

He gave her a dry, brief account of Mary's letter to Mrs Stiles. He did it grudgingly, but found himself capable.

‘David. Oh, I am sorry,' she said. ‘Come up here for a meal, this evening.'

‘No, thanks.'

‘Look, David, you've got to talk about this to somebody. It's no use bottling it up.'

‘I'm talking to you, now.'

‘The phone is different.' That bait disregarded, she continued. ‘She's pregnant, do you say?'

‘Yes.'

‘By you?'

‘According to the letter.'

‘That might account for her being off-colour?'

‘Yes. Suppose so.'

‘You'd think that would have made a difference, wouldn't you? I don't know what your father's going to say. He's so fond of Mary. We both were. Come round, David.'

‘No, thanks.'

‘I don't like to think of you there all by yourself.'

‘That's something I'll have to get used to,' he said.