Valley of Decision (21 page)

On Easter Saturday morning as he sat at coffee, having arranged cheap bunches of daffodils in the lounge, he was disturbed at the front door by a young man with music under his arm.

‘David Blackwall?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are you free to play with us tonight?'

‘You?' The man seemed afflicted with St Vitus' Dance.

‘The London String Players.'

‘Where did you get my name?'

‘James Talbot.'

He invited the man, Barry Przeslawski, inside, poured coffee, listened. David had intended to go to the concert that evening; the London Players, an ad hoc professional group, were sometimes very good and their programme, Purcell, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Barber, Tchaikovsky and Britten would, he had thought, occupy him gainfully through a dead hour or two.

Przeslawski, the first cello, said that one of his group, a girl, had come up overnight to visit friends and had fallen at breakfast and now had her wrist in plaster. ‘We might get away with playing one short, but Jim Talbot suggested you to Malcolm King, he's staying with them, and he dispatched me round here pronto.' Talbot had apparently rung earlier, but without answer. ‘Will you do it for us?'

David agreed; Przeslawski lifted music from the settee beside him to the table, in triumph.

‘Can I use your phone to let Malc know?' He dialled from a slip of paper, delivered David's agreement, rushed back, announced the rehearsal at two, said Heather would have conscientiously marked her copies if he'd like to look through them. They had had, it appeared, only one full rehearsal in London for this concert, but King could draw blood from stones, and they all had done these things often enough. Przeslawski gulped down his coffee, refused more, said he was grateful, leaped with flying arms and legs from the settee, grumbling he had hoped for a lie-in at his mother's in West Bridgford. He banged out, but before he left the front steps said, ‘You've got an Amati, haven't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Not thinking of selling it, are you?'

‘No.'

‘Don't blame you. Anyway, I couldn't afford to buy it.'

David enjoyed the rehearsal; it stimulated him to become one with these gifted young people, to learn from them. The evening's performance in the new concert hall was only adequately attended; he saw some of his sixth form, one of his colleagues from his place at the back desk of the cellos. King, the conductor, who would be fortyish, had this slightly old-fashioned, battered, contemporary face, a Mick Jagger, Julian Lloyd-Webber, a Martin Amis, and was good. A string man himself, he knew every part, and with short left-hand jabs, under finger extended, ruled entries while the right with baton swept the orchestra on. They played the Purcell G minor Chacony to open, then the Tchaikovsky Suite and ended the first part with an eloquent, plangently emotional reading of Richard Strauss's
Metamorphosen
for twenty-three solo strings, which arched, and reached, shouted, demanded, wept, compelled. King stood proud and Strauss's lament stretched their bow arms, fired vibrato, bounced the weaving sounds, the cliffs of grief heavily down from the ceiling. David had never felt so engaged; he had no time for show, even for emotion; he had to match his colleagues in attack, in rhythm, in sustained declamation, to make his instrument the conduit of Strauss's command. As King brought them to their feet for applause, David sweated.

In the orchestra room Przeslawski nodded approval at him, before David took a seat out of the way, in a corner, by the bull-fiddle cases. Anna Talbot looked round the door, made straight for him though greeting one or two on her way, found herself a chair, began congratulations. He had swilled hands and face and felt calmer, equal to the formality of his white cuffs. As Anna chattered her praise, he watched two of the violins carefully sharing out the contents of a thermos into plastic beakers. He felt at ease for the first time for weeks, and with a contentment which he had earned, and he leaned back to concentrate on Anna. One or two looked enviously at him.

‘How's Mary?' she was asking.

‘Well, as far as I know.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Harvard, I think.'

James apparently had spent a year at Harvard, she said, after he'd finished at Oxford. He thought it marvellous. He hadn't been too keen on returning home.

‘Mary's not coming back,' he said dully. Exhilaration deserted him; the decision to confide in her had left him drained, but he had spoken, clearly, on cue.

‘You mean she's staying in America for good?'

‘Yes.'

‘She wants you to go over there to live?'

Exactly like Wilson she had not envisaged Mary's rejection of him. In their limited view Mary was his, belonged to him, whatever vagaries her artistic progress dictated.

‘No.' He spoke so strongly that he seemed to himself to shout, but no one turned or took notice.

‘What do you mean then, David?' Anna was trying to wrinkle her forehead into bewilderment.

‘She says she's not coming back.'

‘Ever?'

He shrugged.

‘Did she write and tell you this?'

‘No. She wrote to her parents.'

‘And you've not heard from her?'

‘Not for nearly two months.'

‘Oh, hell.' He could smell her perfume; see her beautifully tamed hair, her smoothness of face, lipstick, the flash of rings on her hands. Her mouth was slightly, attractively open; she breathed quickly, girding herself to say the right thing. She could manage nothing, sagged back into her chair, rallied. ‘Oh, God, David. I'm so sorry. I'd no idea. It must have been awful for you.'

He looked around him. People moved about, or talked as the two bent forward in this corner whispering.

‘You say she hasn't written?'

‘No.'

‘Not at all?'

‘Not after the first few weeks.'

‘That doesn't seem like her.' Anna struggled to speak. ‘I kept thinking I ought to send her a line, but I hadn't got the address, and I never got round to phoning you for it. You know what I'm like. Don't do it if you can put it off.'

‘She has fallen for the producer.' He spoke every banal word with sour clarity, and Anna drew back from him, silenced. She examined her fingernails or the backs of her hands.

‘Up in three minutes,' the manager shouted from the door. ‘Thank you.'

David and Anna faced one another, but their eyes did not meet.

‘I shall have to go,' she said, making the effort. ‘I'm so sorry, David.' She waited, fruitlessly. ‘I'll be in touch.' She whirled towards the door, but one of the violinists detained her. David heard her laugh, loudly, socially. He lifted his cello from its case, and with the rest made his way outside. There was a temporary hold-up in the small foyer; from one platform entrance the manager jovially advised them to go easy because the audience was still drinking. King suddenly appeared, minus frock coat, shouting thanks. ‘Great,' he said, ‘great.' David stood there, in the mini-queue, noticing nothing, seeing nobody, his head heavy, not with pain but with vacancy, as if the ache had been removed but not the discomfort.

‘Come on, come on,' the man next to him muttered to himself. David raised eyebrows. ‘It'll be past midnight before I'm home.' The colleague grinned. ‘Even if I drive like the clappers.'

They filed in eventually and David tuned, settled himself, checked his music, all by habit. He noticed nothing but the given A; when he looked out to the hall he had difficulty in focusing on or remembering the as yet restless audience. The buzz of undiminished conversation tangled with the unconstructed chaos in his brain. The partner, tapping the score, spoke.

‘Sorry.' David had not caught the meaning.

‘They're in no hurry.'

‘No.' It did him good to speak the word.

‘They never are. Nice instrument you have there.'

‘Yes. An Amati.'

The young man, still prodding in front of him with his bow, slowly swivelled his head round the hall, in contemptuous surprise at what he saw.

‘Could be anywhere,' he said.

‘How's that?' David made himself speak.

‘Same faces, same clothes, same noise, same smell.'

The audience transformed one noise to another to applaud the leader, and then King glided on to bow from the hips. He looked across his players, as if baffled by some last-minute question, opened his score, lifted the baton and as one they cut throbbingly deep into the first chord of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro. Playing at this intensity with such confreres left David no time for himself. Within minutes he was wholly occupied in the music, and by the end of the concert uplifted by the audience's enthusiasm. He could throw his shoulders back, but as soon as he reached his car fatigue numbed him. At home he sat downstairs catnapping over a television film, disregarding the whisky bottle at his elbow. On Sunday he woke at eleven, read the papers in bed without much interest in their spies, literary confrontations and inside reports on imminent elections or waste of public money. He shaved and dressed with care to lunch with his parents.

His mother had done him proud: marrowbone soup, roast beef, gooseberry fool, blue Stilton. Both David and his father refused second helpings of each course, making martyrs of themselves. The son carried the dishes out while his father loaded the washing-up machine, but Joan refused to allow either near the coffee mill or percolator. David, awkward, would not accept either brandy or port.

They had questioned him whether he had heard anything from Mary or from the Stileses, seemed unsurprised by his answer. Now his father coughed, and asked, ‘Have you written to her?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘I'm waiting for her to get in touch with me.'

‘We think you should write first.'

‘I know you do.'

‘But don't you see any sense in it?'

David waited, searching. Though he was certain that his mother had put Horace up to this catechism, he would give him, if he could, a fair answer.

‘It's not so much a matter of seeing sense,' he began slowly, ‘it's that I can't bring myself anywhere near doing it, emotionally.'

That quieted his father.

‘We liked Mary very much,' Horace asserted, but without much conviction.

‘I know.'

‘And if anything could be done, I'm not saying it could, we'd like you to do it.'

‘If you think writing letters is so effective, why don't you write to her yourself?'

‘First,' his father cleared his throat, ‘a letter from us is nothing like the same thing as one from you.' David marked that one up to the old man. ‘Secondly, we have, or rather, your mother has. I added a postscript.'

‘When was that?'

‘In the week.'

‘Tuesday evening, posted Wednesday,' Joan amplified.

‘To New York or Harvard?'

‘New York. We had no other address.'

‘And what did you say?'

Joan looked at her husband, who signalled for her to reply.

‘It wasn't all soft soap, David,' his mother began. ‘I put it bluntly. Your father and I had gone over this all Tuesday evening, over and over, point by point, and then I wrote it. I said how shocked and shaken you were, and how sorry we were. I also made it clear that we didn't think much of her roundabout way of letting you know, and that whatever happened out there, she owed you an explanation. That was about the length and breadth of it. Your dad wanted me to photocopy it to show you, but that didn't seem proper. I don't know why.'

‘It was a very good letter, absolutely straight, and yet friendly.'

‘It's no use getting on the high moral horse. She knows as well as I do that she's in the wrong.'

‘Thanks,' David said. It sounded grudging enough, even to him.

‘We don't say it will do any good,' Father interrupted.

‘She may have taken legal advice, and been told not to write to me. That might commit her in some way. I don't know anything about American law. Or English for that matter.'

They exchanged a few more sentences before Horace nodded off.

‘Serena Morley tells me you were in the London Players' concert last night. She phoned. I wish you'd have rung me: we'd have gone. We did think of it, anyway, but your father's been overdoing it again. His blood pressure's high.'

‘I thought he was winding down?'

‘It worries him. He doesn't like giving up responsibility.' She lowered her voice; her husband stirred, groaned, in his chair. ‘We shall have to go on a cruise. There's nothing else for it. And it's the last thing I want.'

‘I can hear every word,' Horace said from the depth of his chair, suddenly, not opening his eyes.

‘That's why I'm saying them,' she answered, unperturbed.

David explained about the last-minute call to play before he too fell asleep. His rest was uneasy, lit by bad dreams, so that he woke after ten minutes with a crick in his neck. Horace dozed on, but Joan had left the room. David massaged his muscles, crept out.

He found his mother in the kitchen, baking.

‘I'll have to go,' he said.

‘I thought you'd both be out like lights all afternoon. I was making party buns and oatcakes for tea.'

‘You should sit down.'

‘I'm like you,' Joan answered. ‘Fidgety. Will you write to her, David?'

‘I don't know why you're making such a thing about it. She's made her mind up, and that's that. Any moaning on my part will only . . .' Speech tailed off.

‘You won't moan. When your father and I were talking this over last Tuesday, he suddenly said, “Give me a bit of coggage, Joan, and I'll have a go.” “What's coggage?” I asked him, and apparently it's the word the soldiers used in India for paper. And he put down what he thought I should say. I've never known him do anything like that before. It was good, really, his memorandum. “You write the letter,” I told him, but he wouldn't. But it surprised me. He must have been upset. That's why I want you to write. Will you?'