Valley of Decision (29 page)

He went in through the shop, and upstairs the Stiles parents grew expansive, offering coffee, newly baked buns, excited talk. Mary was not to be seen.

‘Are you in all day?' he asked.

‘Yes. Why?' Eva.

‘So I can give you a ring when to expect us back.'

George Stiles rubbed his chin.

‘She won't be stopping the night, then?' he asked.

‘Not from what she said yesterday.'

‘She could change her mind.' Eva seemed to believe it.

‘Has she said anything to you?'

‘No. She's rested. Only got up just before dinner. And she slept most of the time.'

‘That's what she needed,' George said. ‘Whatever it is that's happened, it's knocked the stuffing out of her.'

They heard Mary outside; she made sure of that, even rattling the doorknob. She presented herself to them, incredibly neat, in a military-styled raincoat, sheer black tights, smart shoes. Though pale still, she looked composed, the dark hair tidy as a helmet; she could not surely have had it cut since yesterday. She carried a large, shiny handbag.

‘Your chauffeur's here,' George said, too loudly.

‘Will you take a few saffron buns for your tea?' Eva asked David.

The parents talked, ordered, delayed.

‘I've never seen you in that suit before,' Eva said. ‘Turn round. I like it.'

‘I've had it at least two years.'

‘I've had my best for fifteen.' George, affable.

‘And it looks like it,' his wife answered.

The buns were packed while George expatiated on his wife's cooking. Now nothing stood in the way of their departure. Mary kissed her parents and the four trooped downstairs and outside the shop door to where he had parked.

‘Enjoy yourselves,' Stiles shouted.

‘Have you got some money?' Eva demanded.

‘What do I want money for?' Mary raised a smile.

‘You never know.'

David helped Mary with her seatbelt.

She said little for the first part of the journey, as he described the thunderstorm which had passed Derby by. Mary stared straight ahead, politely putting in a word to show she was listening. Smartly gloved hands were clasped on the handbag in her lap. Conversation was hard work, but he did his best. As he drove slowly through the town, the streets empty, she did not look about her.

‘Is there anything you'd like to do?' He ought to have asked before.

‘Such as?'

‘Well, drive somewhere. To Newstead, to one of the parks for a walk?'

‘Is that what you want?'

‘I'm at your service.'

‘No, thanks. It doesn't look too promising.' Perhaps his facetious answer had riled her.

When he halted at the traffic lights where he turned off in the mornings for his school, she asked, ‘Are you on first period tomorrow?'

‘Yes. Why?'

‘Nothing. I just wondered.'

He did not fall to silence, but commented on his timetable which was exactly as it was when she left.

At his front door, he stepped back to allow her to enter.

‘You go first,' she ordered.

In the hall, he asked if he should take her coat. She slid it from her arms, and hung it herself, familiarly, on the pegs at the bottom of the stairs. Her dress, loosely falling, was of a striking claret red.

‘I admire that,' he said. It sounded false, and she did not answer. This time, on his invitation, she led the way to the sitting room, where she headed for the chair he usually occupied. She made no obvious examination of the place.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?' he asked.

‘Sit down, David,' she spoke without power. ‘I don't want anything just now. Sit down.'

After an awkward interval, three minutes perhaps, seemingly unending, she became straighter.

‘It hasn't changed much,' she began. ‘Have you kept the garden tidy?'

He presented his account as she fidgeted in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, gripping or slapping the chair arms. David, watching, felt as uncomfortable as she.

‘I'm glad you're back,' he said. ‘It's good.'

She nodded, as if to acknowledge that she had heard.

‘That you agreed to come over.'

Now she rose, walked to the window, looked out over yard or garden, motionless. With her back to him, she began to speak.

‘I acted abominably in not writing to you.' It sounded prepared, without spontaneity.

‘Let's forget it.'

‘I can't. Neither can you. Nor should you.'

She did not face him; he made another effort in fear.

‘Tell me about it.' No answer. ‘About the opera.'

Mary began, but hesitatingly, in shards of sentences, to describe her arrival, her sense of disorientation, the first rehearsals. Soon she lost the flatness of voice, became animated, chose lively but succinct anecdotes, though still she did not leave the framing window. Her account was by no means detailed, but now it lacked a sense of guilt, acquired value on its own account, had interest.

She worked over the first days, the differences to her when it was decided she would sing Semele, how they had immediately changed her room. She touched on the cheerful, laconic kindness of an American girl called Kate Pastry from San Diego, her own realization that Red Gage, the unostentatious director, was a nationally pre-eminent, revered figure.

David questioned her; it seemed unarguably necessary for her to talk to him about Gage. By intervening constantly he dragged her back to the man, made him emerge.

Gage had softly said what he wanted, equally quietly made it clear when what they provided for him was not what he demanded, and why, and would insist then on their compliance. He never raised his voice, but his arguments were irresistible. He convinced them that the change of pace he deprecated or the misplacement of a prop or rostrum would, minute in itself, weaken the fundamental strength of his master plan. The conductor, Ulrich Fenster, a gifted musician, was as much dominated by Gage as the newest chorus contralto or ASM.

Only by assiduous questioning thrown into her back did David learn that Mary at first had not understood Gage's predominance. Certainly he was an intellectual, certainly he gave the impression that for every hour they had spent on the opera he had given a day, but this hardly seemed a reason for the breathless drive that compelled the most egotistic into subservient silence. Only when, to her surprise, he showed a personal interest in her, he sat with her through a grand social evening and accompanied her back to her room, did people blurt out the stories of his success, in Italy, Australia, Japan, his influence, the dazzling performances he would mount at the Met, the Scala. Mary had mocked, ‘What's he doing with a twopenny ha'penny university production then?'

They'd look slyly at her as if she were catching them out, or acted overly stupid, and then report his dictum: ‘You learn more of stage drama from
Semele
than from
The Ring
or
Otello
, because in Handel it's implicit only.'

She acquired a nasal timbre as she quoted.

Gage had taken three weeks out of his high life to produce them, because he was interested, they said, in art, not in Gage. The world could wait for him. This unshowy extremist had earned, and he was not yet forty, the respect of the international circuit, could subdue divas, hand out patronage, recognize and promote the talented, and here he walked amongst them, a god on earth, blowing his nose, making a pass at this English singer, bringing in every New York critic to marvel at his first night.

The plaudits of the journalists were so lavish that it seemed momentarily certain that
Semele
could be sent unchanged out on a world circuit, but the total effect was lost inside a fortnight. Once the company went on tour, Gage had disappeared to his next engagement, the scenery did not travel well, began to disintegrate, there was illness in the cast, Fenster handed over to a deputy, the orchestra began to break up, arrangements were seen to be uncertain; even the funds ran out, in spite of rescue attempts. The university people in New York were great, fought to keep the company together, but they had their own concerns and too much effort and money had been spent earlier and a crack-up was inevitable. The girl's voice broke as she talked; from the stiff back David could learn nothing, but he heard her tragedy plainly.

He could understand why she would not move from the window. She had taken a stance there, in the first place, out of nervousness and once in situ found herself able to talk to him, express her failure. David wanted her back, in the chair, comfortably, but was afraid to make the proposal. His hesitation seemed ludicrous once she had begun to talk easily about the opera, once she had caught his interest without playing too blatantly on emotions, but now, as she spoke her disappointment, the faceless narration was only too proper. It kept him at a distance so that she was capable of confession.

Yet he hated the gap. When he knew all, they would still not have touched physically; the constraint between them would be greater because of what she said, her manner of saying it.

‘Aren't you getting tired, standing there?'

‘No, I'm all right.'

He had been surprised at his own quietude. It had appeared to him as she progressed with her narration that his professional interest had cooled his emotions. That could not be true; any next sentence might club him down, shred his carapace of disinterest. He asked his questions to keep her talking, that was important, but he could not, by thought at least, prise her away from that rectangle of light.

‘Where was Gage, then?' he asked.

‘He'd gone off to the West Coast.'

‘Did he keep in touch with you?'

‘No.'

‘Not at all?'

‘No.'

She had steadied her tone. He paused again, uncertain of the form his inquisition must assume, unwilling to dam the trickle finally.

‘Was that the sort of man he was?'

For a second he thought she'd turn round, but she did not. Her obstinacy seemed ludicrous; he ought to walk across and spin her. He did not.

Without much difficulty she repeated the information she had already given. Gage was intense, but ungaudy, sombre. When he talked his voice, rarely raised, rapid, carried immense weight; he knew his mind, a wide universe. His reputation was enormous, but he refused to be diverted by publicity. He hardly slept. He crept round in his sneakers, black trousers, sweatshirt, small linen or velvet jacket, and altered every preconception. An iconoclast, he revered each facet of tradition. Once he had made his decision, his certainty was so substantial that he saw no need to shout it from the housetops. Mary spoke of his patience, his galvanic effect, his huge conviction.

‘And you were his mistress?'

The hiatus stretched, stretched; David's breath came short.

‘We had sex,' she said, ‘three times over three weeks. It didn't seem important to him. Or so it seems now.'

‘When?' David snapped at her.

Again she described the brilliance of the first few performances. The low, shame-shocked voice sketched again preparations, parties, the enthusiasm of pundits, the intoxication of the professors, and her precious place in the centre of animation; stimulated beyond measure, delighted in herself, a cynosure, the scintillating stranger, she had known that the world bowed to her, envied her, was hers for picking.

Mary was no fool, David knew. She had experience of performance and achievement; her head would not have been turned without reason. These bits and pieces of sentences made him understand, even participate in, the bright solidity of success.

‘And we fell into bed together.'

‘You were not drunk?'

‘Not with alcohol.' She filled her lungs. ‘And he was strange. I don't think he liked women much, but he was taken out of himself. It was hard to tell. He wasn't on the same planet that I was.'

‘But it was more than once?'

‘Three times.'

‘And then?' David could barely breathe.

‘He switched off. I don't think he was particularly attached to women, but for a few days he did just consider marrying an English girl, pregnant by somebody else. But then he went on to his next thing.' The sentences seemed translated from a foreign idiom.

Zeus had become himself again, in divinity, in these sentences torn from her.

‘And you?'

Now she turned round, came across the room, stood momentarily by the chair she had vacated, her right hand reaching down, touching nothing, and then sat. She lifted a blotched face.

‘I wanted to marry him.'

David shuffled back, away from her, stationed himself behind the end of the table, crushed.

‘He was overwhelming. He was a genius.' She seemed to plead for David's agreement. ‘Perhaps the fact that I was having such a success turned my head.' Her fingers reached for reason in the air. ‘Perhaps, I've gone over this afterwards, over and over, I thought he would put me in the way of a career. That wasn't deliberate at the time. I'm sure of that. It was just that he was so different. Remarkable. Powerful.'

‘And physically?' He dragged the question up from his bitterness.

‘Not very tall. Strong-looking. With this nice, curly hair.' She looked up, suddenly, eyes open blue. ‘He wasn't as attractive as you really. I don't think so. Not in appearance.'

‘But?'

She stared at him in dislike.

‘And he just went away?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you know he was going?'

‘It was always understood that once we were established, he'd dash off for his jamboree, he called it, in San Francisco. But he went before I, before . . . I thought he'd . . .'

‘He left you no note, no explanation?'

‘No.'

‘You expected to hear from him? When he arrived?'

‘I hoped so. Yes.'