Valley of Decision (22 page)

‘I'll think about it.'

She closed the oven door on two trays of buns.

‘Then I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with that.'

His mother leaned towards him to be kissed; he was not sure that she was not mocking him. Outside there was a clatter. His father entered.

‘That's where you are. Conspiring. I like to be the first to wake up.'

David left them almost at once though he could see their disappointment.

On the way home he stopped by a golf course, watching the players. The sandy place seemed crowded, mainly with men who had dressed for the game in tartan caps or rainproof trousers. Once he and Mary had stopped here as they returned from a visit to his parents, and she had been scathing.

‘People ought to have better things to occupy themselves with.' Sometimes she came out with these unexpected denunciations as if from some source of puritanical savagery inside herself.

‘Exercise,' he had said.

‘Those stressful, competitive games do more harm than good. I wouldn't mind if they were youngsters, but the majority are middle-aged men.'

‘If they didn't come out here,' he countered, ‘they'd be fast asleep in their armchairs.'

‘That's what I'm saying. They don't know how to act sensibly.' She looked solemn. ‘We shall be dead soon enough without wasting time chasing golf balls.' She had shifted in her seat. ‘And don't you start about horsehair on wire.'

‘I'd better drive home,' he had said.

‘Why do I feel so angry?' she asked almost pathetically.

‘Because many more people would sooner be Nicklaus than Heifetz.'

‘It's awful, and the television encourages it. That's what's wrong with our civilization.'

‘I suppose God would consider other matters more important. Whether these people were living moral lives, were good husbands or fathers or neighbours.'

‘Sometimes I could slosh you.'

Mary had worked herself out of the spasm of anger, and by the time they had reached home had been laughing. As he sat now, watching two men trampling in the rough, he was uncertain whether these small irritations had been early, unconscious indications of her unhappiness. He decided against it. Mary now and again, like her mother, needed arguments, diatribes. For the rest, she was serene, busy, competent and competitive in her own field, even expectant. But her professional career had vanished with marriage, and to a serious musician, amateur recitals, even Falconer's
Dido
, were no replacement for a life dedicated to practice, achievement, public acknowledgement. That itself might well have palled, but she had not had long enough at it to know. Every artist is supported by anticipation of success as powerfully as by experience of it.

Red Gage, whatever his sexual or social attraction, offered her chances to make good as a musician. He would provide opportunities; he had valuable contacts. David could not bring himself to accuse Mary of deliberately thinking in this way, but it seemed almost moral, or justifiable for a gifted performer to choose thus. For every Elizabeth Falconer there were ten thousand decent wives-and-mothers.

He shook his head clear of these sophistries, which were self-induced, facets of an intelligence running wild, and he thought of his father asking for his piece of ‘coggage'. Their minds had been employed as his in sifting the problem, but in love. He had felt the strength of their affection, for both, because his mother had turned to chocolate buns and letters to America and his father had left his afternoon nap to comfort him, to do the little they were capable of. Emotion surged, drenched him. He had never appreciated those decent people, not stepped aside once from his own devices to offer them an hour's peace of mind. As he sat, in a short line of cars, overlooking flowering gorse and crooked silver birches, his tears dribbled, and his mouth, rigidly stretched, emitted childish, soft cries. He made no attempt to check himself, but fiddled for his handkerchief to cover his face should any passing unoccupied pedestrian stare in.

The bout expired within seconds. He wiped his eyes clear of tears, feeling no relief. Already he condemned self-pity. His handkerchief was stiff, freshly ironed; he blew his nose vigorously. There was some gross fault in himself. He pocketed his handkerchief and drove off.

He would write to Mary, he decided, to please his mother and father.

THE HOUSE STRUCK
cold, damp. Though he had washed the dishes, the unshaken cloth still covered the breakfast table. He turned on the heating, searched through a muddle of old letters to find that he had one airmail form. That evening the Trent Quartet were rehearsing from seven o'clock since Wilkinson had been away with his family and would not be back for the morning meeting. In the hour or two at his disposal he would write. He tore scrap paper from an exercise book for a first draft.

My dear Mary,

I write today because I've heard nothing from you. Your mother and father gave me a résumé of your letter to them. They did not show it to me, and as far as I could make out you did not give them any explanation except to say that you had fallen in love with your producer. Perhaps that is explanation enough. You can well imagine the effect on me; I was shattered. During the time of your long silence, I had imagined for myself all the bad reasons why you did not write, but that had not protected me from the blow when it landed. I don't want to make a performance of it here, because I can see whether I say little or much I shall seem feeble, but I can tell you that I felt as if life wasn't worth going on with. It's easy enough for someone to write that, but in this case it's the truth. I've done my best to make myself not give up, to keep busy.

When your parents told me, I expected some word from you, that, at least, you would let me know what you thought or felt. Instead the same cruel silence. I don't know why this is. I don't understand it at all. But the one or two people I've spoken to about your decision have said the same thing: ‘It's not like Mary.'

I don't really know what to write because I don't know where or even who I am. It's as if all the rules I've worked by have been kicked away. Though I feel bitter, I hope you are happy in what you are doing. If you decide to return, I'm still here. [How was he to finish? With love? Yours? He wrote his name clearly, even on the rough copy.] David.

He looked it through, reading it with care, counting the alterations. There were sixteen. It did not say what he wanted, nor was it impressive. He walked into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, for this two hundred odd words with long blank pauses had taken an hour to write. Did his letter make it clear to her that she had acted meanly? He had not managed that, he thought, but the thing, ugh, said roughly all that was to be said. ‘I am devastated; you owe me an explanation; I will take you back.' The last sentence of his letter was unclear, but again it reflected his own difficulties, ambivalence. He made the tea, sat sipping it scalding hot, both dull and desperate. He rose, washed out his fountain pen, filled it and copied the letter on to the airmail form, addressing it in block capitals. Snatching up his jacket he rushed along the street to the postbox, so that the message would be on its way by 7.30 tomorrow, Monday morning. On the slower walk back, he felt slightly relieved that the matter had been taken out of his hands, but indoors he had no inclination or energy to spend time on preparation for the evening's rehearsal.

Realizing that he had sat wasting half an hour, his mind a chaos of unfocused, unpleasant shifts, he rang his mother to tell her he had written the letter.

‘I'm glad,' Joan answered. ‘What did you say?'

‘I've kept a copy.' He read it to her.

‘That's good,' she said unenthusiastically. ‘It's pretty much the same as we wrote.' She hummed to herself, perhaps preventing an interruption. ‘Will you read those last two sentences again?' He complied. ‘That means you'll have her back, if she wants it?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It's not exactly clear.'

‘No.' He spoke sharply. ‘I'm not clear myself.'

‘You don't mean it?'

‘I don't expect her to come back. She's made up her mind. She'll be adamant.'

‘David,' his mother spoke after a long gap, ‘are you sure there was nothing wrong between you?'

‘I'm not sure of anything now, I can tell you. But I hadn't noticed. Perhaps that's a judgement on me. Now I think back to it, and in view of what's happened, it's quite likely she was worried and frustrated when she thought she could have been travelling about the country from one engagement to another. But I'll say this for her, she didn't make a big thing of it. Of course, there was
Dido
; that meant going over to Falconer's and meeting Falconer's coach once or twice, and then she practised with you.' He blew his breath out histrionically. ‘But as soon as she got to the States and among other professionals, it may have churned it all up again. I don't know. Did you ever feel deprived?'

‘Often enough.'

‘And didn't you want to get on with your career?'

‘Yes.' He guessed his mother was smiling. ‘I had depressions and fearful headaches.'

‘But you didn't do anything about it?'

‘No. I remember one offer I had from James Selkirk. He wanted me, or he and his agent did, to join him to play four hands, two pianos.'

‘You turned it down?'

‘Yes.'

‘And he asked someone else?'

‘I don't know. He made his own way as a solo pianist.'

‘I've never heard of him. Where is he now?'

‘He's professor or principal of some academy in Canada. I'm not sure.'

‘And were you torn?'

‘What do you think?'

‘And what did Dad say? Or didn't he know anything about it?'

‘He said,' each word fell separately, pearly clear, ‘that I must make the decision and that he was willing to support me whichever way I chose.'

‘Did he mean it?' David said sourly.

‘As far as I know, yes. In fact, I'm certain he did.'

‘But you didn't take him up on it?'

‘No. Your father was very busy. He'd begun to expand the firm when he came out of the army and at that time he was making really large changes. He terrified his father, who was a good old-fashioned businessman, very very cautious. Your grandfather wasn't old, he'd be middle fifties at this time, but he was just aghast at what was happening. He could see every penny he'd made being lost. And he fought your father. “Horace is a gambler,” he told me. “He's no sense of proportion.” But Daddy didn't give in, and his father lived long enough to see himself very rich.'

‘And so?'

‘He needed me. I didn't understand it very clearly, I admit. He was out a great deal at all hours, and I was left on my own. I didn't like it. I felt I came a poor second to his work. It made me angry. I thought he was selfish. I used to knock hell out of my piano. And I made him buy me a big concert Steinway in addition to the Bechstein.'

‘But don't you ever regret . . .?'

‘I did. Times without number. And it made me awkward and ill tempered. But then you arrived and by the time you were ready for school it was too late.'

‘Does it worry you now?'

‘No. I'm fifty. I'm also pretty certain that I wouldn't have made it. One doesn't know, because luck plays a part, and I can name one or two people who weren't as good as I was who have done quite nicely, thank you. One other matter. Your father was a genius in his line, we tend to forget that, and he needed me at home with his apple pie or hot-water bottles. There you are.'

‘Interesting,' he said in his dry, history-lesson voice. The use of the word ‘genius' intrigued him. She had used it before of Gage.

‘Just one thing before this phone bill ruins you.' Her tone darkened. ‘What about the child?'

‘What about it?'

‘You didn't mention it in your letter.'

‘I take it she has got rid of it.'

‘I see.'

They did not speak for some little time, until David made his excuse and rang off. He found himself shivering, but took himself out to rehearsal.

Next day in school, as he crossed the yard from the music room to spend a busy free period, he felt a lightening of his spirits. He did not understand this, and it was not until the working day had finished and he sat over a cup of instant coffee in the common room half listening to two colleagues complaining about their mortgages that he realized why he was optimistic. The fact presented itself to him with a small jolt of pleasure that since he had now written to his wife he could expect an answer. He instructed himself warily that this was by no means certain and that the reply, if it came, might well be unacceptably disagreeable, but his brain or his body seemed immune to reason. He added his mite of contradictory information to the discussion, immediately staunching his colleagues' flow. When he had finished his coffee, he went out smiling.

He remembered an episode earlier this academic year.

It must have been in October, and during one of his few lessons with the sixth form specialists, he dealt with economic history, they had questioned him about inflation, during the Tudor period, then earlier, to throw light on what was happening now. He encouraged these digressions, feeling that Dick Wilson made narrow medievalists of his pupils, lively, learned even, but not prepared to venture out beyond what the facts told. One could deduce, certainly, but within strict limits; Wilson had been heard to declare that his subject was history not prophecy or crystal-gazing.

David had argued with his students but had been more positive than his knowledge allowed, and when he came back to check found that one or two of his salient facts were wrong. Immediately he made a close note of corrections to be offered, and prepared a recantation.