Valley of Decision (9 page)

‘I've no idea.'

‘Sixty-seven. She died just as I was retiring.'

‘Was it unexpected?'

‘She'd been bad for a year. More, perhaps. She wasn't the sort to moan.'

Pupils from the field, sportsgear in bags over their shoulders, passed, turning their heads to stare at Blackwall talking to a tramp. The man, perhaps out of deference, did not speak until the road was clear of boys.

‘Are you married?'

David nodded.

‘Make the most of it. We were married forty years, and it's all done now, gone, as if it never had been.'

‘You've memories,' David checked him, ‘surely.'

‘That's thin gruel.'

The man laughed, spittle ugly at the corners of his mouth. David pushed back his sleeve to consult his watch, said he had a bus to catch. No attempt was made to detain him and when he looked back, he noted that the man walked, swinging his arms, smartly up the hill.

Snowflakes landed, melted.

ON THURSDAY MORNING,
the day he'd arranged to visit his parents, Mary's first letters arrived, two long envelopes. As he opened them he checked the dates, a day apart, to make sure he read them in the right order.

She was well. She had been met at the airport, fed and put early into a comfortable bed by a decent well-to-do couple who had some connection with the operatic venture. Next day, the woman, Muriel Winckler, had driven her to the university and left her. There she learned that they had three weeks to prepare
Semele,
the only opera they were doing. The administrator had shown her their schedule and later in the afternoon she had sung to Redvers Gage and Ulrich Fenster, who had talked to her in an interesting way about the songs, and had made some suggestions, said they would hear her again next day when she was less tired. Gage was a dark, taciturn young man, balding with curls, who stared you out, and then smiled.

She had met the rest of the company, who seemed pleasant. One or two had been very nice to her. She was temporarily in a hostel for overseas students, as far as she could make out, not far from the practice hall in the music school. There had never been any idea of producing more than one opera, and that had been known from the beginning. The producer man Gage, who was very lively indeed, seemed in sole charge. She'd let him know further about developments. She still felt tired and dazed, but she missed him. All her love.

The second letter sketched a second audition. Ulrich had listened to her again that morning, for twenty minutes, a couple of songs, again had made one or two suggestions about recitatives and said they'd both hear her again after lunch. In the afternoon, she, Ulrich, Red Gage, a pianist called Eddie and another man, Si Somebody, had piled into a car, dashed elsewhere on the campus into some large assembly hall and there she'd sung again. Gage had asked her to do one or two things, operatic poses, walking across the place diagonally, falling to her knees and then they'd asked her to sing again. She went through ‘Ah me, too late I now repent my pride and impious vanity', while the three men sat at the back, talking loudly, paying no attention to her. When she'd finished they'd continued their discussion, leaving her standing there. She had felt frightened, she said, and angry, and after a bit had walked over to the accompanist, who spoke with an American accent so thick she could barely understand him, to ask what they were on with. He was noncommittal at first, but said in the end that it was all chaos, and always would be, until they could make up their minds. Gage had then come forward and asked if she would mind singing the first part of the song again, right back to the far wall, just standing there, fortissimo. The pianist had asked if he should wheel his piano nearer to her, but had been told it didn't matter.

‘I'm twen'y-five medres away,' he had protested.

‘Play louder, then,' Gage had said, serious in his misunderstanding. ‘I've heard you.' He'd then laughed, blackly, bleakly.

She'd sung and Fenster had waved a hand in thanks or dismissal as he turned to his colleagues again. Gage straddled a chair, grasping the back as if he'd shake it off. The third personage, Simon, had talked in a deep voice. From where she stood she could not make out a word, but noted that on occasion all three yammered away together. She had just found a seat, parked there trembling, when a fourth man joined the group. Almost immediately Gage detached himself, walked easily towards her, wobbling slightly as if his shoes needed heeling, and said, ‘That was beautiful, beautiful. We loved it. But I shall have to ask you to do it again. I'm sorry, honey, but . . .'

She had shrugged, she said, kept mum. Gage instructed Ed who had been quietly improvising jazz. Mary sang again, but not well. The quartet at the far end of the hall rudely chattered. She could have kicked somebody, but immediately the newcomer had walked towards her; it took him an hour.

‘Robert Harnack,' he announced. ‘Superb, Miss Blackwall, superb. We're lucky, and I don't say that often. Not in my nature.' He had shaken her hand, his was large and dry, and nodded, smiling, muttered more congratulatory phrases and stalked off, past the other three without a word.

She, seeing nothing further happened, Gage and colleagues at least were standing, made for Eddie, asked him who Harnack was.

‘Search me,' he had answered. ‘Some professor, I guess.'

Suddenly, this was described in a later letter, she raked over this first day or two in reply to the many questions David scribbled at her, she began to whistle. Ever since childhood she had been competent with a powerful, sweet sound, and she, standing at the back of the upright piano, let herself into Gershwin's ‘Summer time, and the livin' is easy'. She had not finished the first line before Eddie had joined her with the piano, straight into key, rhythmically powerful but quiet, creative, finding his way into variation but supporting in a brilliance of subdued opposition the liquid line of the air above. Mary finished, Ed continued, chirping in the top register of his piano as if to mock the clarity, the lazy insouciance of the solo. He looked at her, pursing his lips, inviting her to another burst, but she turned away. ‘I hadn't come three thousand miles to do music-hall turns,' she'd written.

The whistling, unlike her singing, had silenced the three men at the back. Eddie, registering a comical dismay at her refusal, signed off with a large, splayed, unfinished, sustained arpeggio. Fenster came across; he hurried now, and hauled his glasses off as if they irritated his prominent nose. All American musicians have large conks, she had comforted herself, big beaks. He was smiling with real pleasure, at the
Porgy and Bess
, she imagined.

‘We'd like you to sing the part of Semele for us,' he had said, without preamble. She had not answered. ‘You will, I know.'

Eddie was beaming; she noticed that. Gage and Si had joined Ulrich. Still she said not a word, near weeping. Her silence disconcerted the men; they'd expected an outburst of joy, kissings, hugs, screams perhaps, and this pale beauty, standing with her back now to the piano, defending it, keeping their world at arm's length puzzled them.

‘Sorry we were so long,' Gage said, coming forward, taking both her hands. ‘We knew, but we didn't believe it.'

That made no sense to her.

‘I was touched,' Si said. He looked younger from this distance in spite of baldness, and his voice sounded resonantly deep. ‘As I did not expect.'

A tear forced itself out of the corner of her left eye, trickled, seemed enormous. Si nodded approval.

Then the hand-shaking and kisses began. Gage disappeared.

Fenster, returning to his normal fidgeting, issued instructions. She could have Eddie and a studio the whole of the next day; he'd give her an hour on Saturday afternoon, Sunday was her own unless Red had different ideas, and on Monday they'd start putting it on stage. The first performance would be mounted, here, a fortnight on Saturday.

‘We haven't much time,' Fenster said. ‘Red asks a great deal of us.'

The men led her triumphantly back to the car.

Much of this David learned later, but from the first two sketchy letters he caught something of his wife's apprehension and excitement, and, he suspected, her stubborn habits, her failure to understand exaggeration. She would sing her heart out for her mentors, he knew, but would remain unconvinced that her performance changed the world, even minutely. What these men made of that he'd learn, in time, perhaps he feared only when they had broken her. To him, striding his streets or carpets, rereading the thin sheets, success appeared now more a question of character than musical ability. And Mary lacked pliability. Thus far, and no farther was her motto. Fool's gold shone prettily, and none the worse for that, but lacked market value. Operatic performance, even at a high level, fell short of the dimensions of life. She, he, both knew it; in the world of art nobody did, or nobody admitted it.

He carried the letters to his parents' house in a flush of ambivalence, questioning his motives. The parents read the letters carefully, his father shifting his glasses up and down his nose.

‘Is that the leading part?' Horace asked his wife. He handed the envelope back to his son; his perusal had been slower than Joan's, with his eyes half-narrowed. ‘Well?' Suddenly to his son.

David voiced his doubts; Horace looked towards his wife; Joan did not speak.

‘She's made her mark by the sound of it,' Horace pronounced. ‘Yes. I'm glad.'

‘She'll be bemused,' Joan told them. ‘Won't know what she's about, but she's still able to give a good performance. That's the test. When you're half dead with jetlag or headache or a cold or homesickness you can stand up and sing as if you're on top of the world.'

David enjoyed the evening. His father talked about his American trips, ventured a few generalizations about people. Joan was quieter than usual, left the room to make lemonade for her son.

‘Is Ma all right?' David asked. He was never sure these days what to call his mother.

‘Why?'

‘She's not saying much.'

‘She's living that life with Mary. I'm not joking. I rang up some friends last night in New York, and made inquiries about nipping across to hear Mary sing once she starts. The Feinsteins will put us up.'

‘Does Ma know you've done this?'

‘She suggested it.'

‘And you've got the time?'

‘I'm nearly retired. Or I shall be when I've finished with lawyers and accountants. Even so, I can take a week off now without noticing it.'

‘And you'll fly to America just to hear one performance?'

‘To see Mary. Yes. If I have a bob or two, I might as well spend it.' He picked a boxed set from a cabinet. ‘Your mother brought it in this morning. Been on order. So we shall get to know it.' He displayed the title:
Semele
. ‘She was pretty certain Mary would do well.'

‘More than I was.'

‘She's confidence . . .'

‘There's so much luck . . .'

‘Fortune favours the brave.' Horace's foxy grin neither displeased nor comforted his son. ‘We'll let you know how she is.'

As he left Joan kissed him, she did not always, saying, ‘Write some good long letters, now, David, all about the weather, and the school, and the orchestra. It's important.' He left the house cheered.

For the next week transatlantic silence rankled, and though David warned himself that Mary was busy, tired out, waiting for his first letters, the nondelivery disheartened him each morning.

On the Saturday morning, having waited for the postman, who brought bills and appeals, he did his shopping, called in at the library. The sun shone coldly bright; windows misted; he was in no hurry though the afternoon and evening would be taken up by rehearsal and performance in Newark. He walked home circuitously.

This way he had to pass a factory once owned by a friend of his father's. The office premises on the front were deserted, panes dirty or holed. As a sixth former he had glanced in the place, certain that well-dressed young women, with fashionable bright hairstyles, would mince round with folders, cock their heads to take phone calls, frown fetchingly at typewriters under a brilliancy of bar lights. Now dirt, and darkness, as he peered in, not a stick of furniture, rubble about the floor, electrical fittings all disconnected. The golden letters of the name Thomas Bliss and Son Ltd, which had stretched block length, were dismantled, leaving only black boltmarks in the brick. The main gates, grandly double, bright with carved and polished panels in their heyday, had gone, leaving the walls gashed, molested as if the doors had been wrenched off, elaborate craftmanship firewood from that moment.

He stood staring in through the gap by a board with a roughly chalked legend: Reclaimed Timber for Sale. Apply within. At the other side of the courtyard and loading bays, an enormous earth-shifting machine towered ready to clear debris. Two men lounged, talking; one bonfire sent up a pillar of smoke, another flamed but darkly; there was no activity. The main block of the factory was being demolished, beginning with the left corner where the outside walls had been battered into hillocks of bricks but where the first floor hung tottering, at a crazy angle, still holding its shape, but hirsute with spikes of broken laths or floorboards. Presumably it would sag thus until work began on Monday, unless it collapsed. The yard was littered with lengths of wood, rubble, concrete nuggets; every surface was dulled with dust.

Hooting behind him startled David. A mini, driven by a young woman, darted in.

‘They're getting on with it,' a passer-by opined.

‘What's going to happen?'

‘Flats.'

‘They're going to pull it all down, then?'

‘They are. Every brick. My, some jobs went west when they shut down.'

‘How long ago is that?'