Errant Angels (16 page)

23

‘I'm after tellin' yourself what 'twas himself said – no more, no less,' said Elizabeth in her off-hand yet totally devoted way.

‘And exactly what was it he said?' asked the Contessa as she propped her bicycle against the wall of the entrance vestibule of her apartment in the
Piazza Anfiteatro
. Carlo remained perched in the wicker basket over the front tyre, looking like a white, curly-haired marble figurehead. He looked at the Contessa in full expectation of being picked up and gently returned to
terra firma
.

‘Come on,' she said as she lifted him out of the basket, ‘time for tea, I think.'

The Contessa had been busy with her extensive rounds, which had included a piano-playing break at the hospice, and now she was thirsty and tired.

‘Tea? Nonsense! Himself said nothing about tea!' snorted Elizabeth from her position at the head of the short flight of stairs that led up to a pair of imposing double doors. This was the formal entrance to the spacious apartment and Elizabeth McGraunch, in anticipation of her employer's return, stood filling the open left-hand door as if she owned the place. In a hypothetical manner of speaking, she probably did.

‘Is he coming for tea, then?' asked the Contessa as she started to climb the steps. Carlo's leash had been unclipped and the dog was up the steps and through Elizabeth's bow legs in a flash. This was an action which happened on an
almost daily basis, but which always managed to destabilize the aged domestic. She grabbed hold of the closed half of the door to steady herself.

You hound from hell!
she thought, swaying back into as vertical a posture as her curved spine would allow her to adopt, but she said nothing, having learned several Carlos ago that such comments were very unwise, even allowing for the Contessa's extremely tolerant nature. ‘If yourself'll just be listening for a change, yourself'll know that himself phoned and tells Elzeebit something about a
cream
that doesn't smell. Himself has found it at the hospital and will have it delivered to the
Insingtote
for your hooley.'

Elizabeth always referred to Luigi as ‘himself', even to his face.

‘What cream?' asked the Contessa as Elizabeth swayed backwards to allow her through the door, before closing it resolutely behind her. In the confines of the entrance vestibule the loud bang sounded like a howitzer being fired.

‘How should I be knowing? And it doesn't smell, so it doesn't,' mumbled Elizabeth as she dutifully followed the Contessa across the marbled entrance hall. The two women progressed further up the stairs to the first-floor rooms. ‘I'm just a'tellin' yourself the message … not
interpring
…
intersper
… I'm not after explaining what 'tis himself meant.'

They climbed the stairs in silence for a few seconds.

‘Yourself's not having something she shouldn't be havin'?' asked Elizabeth, her eyes fixed firmly on the back of the Contessa's head in her own peculiarly concerned way.

‘Screen!' said the Contessa triumphantly, suddenly stopping as she did so. ‘Luigi's found me a screen for the concert. Oh, the dear boy!'

Elizabeth was taken completely by surprise by the sudden halt in their progress and nearly careered into her employer. She was obliged to steady herself against the balustrade. ‘That's what himself said,' she muttered. The
sudden, unexpected stop had caused her curved spine to extend to its fullest extent, but her mouth was still only just level with the Contessa's shoulder. ‘And it doesn't smell,' she repeated. ‘So, is yourself ill?'

Elizabeth was nothing if not forthright at the best of times. She also had a habit of locking herself into a verbal loop, which the Contessa had discovered over the years was best treated by simply changing the subject.

‘Tea, I think, please,' her mistress said, resuming her upwards progress.

‘Would that be before or after I finish me ironin'?' mumbled Elizabeth as they reached the top of the stairs.

‘There 'tis, yourself's tea,' said the maid as she put the tray on the folded cloth, which covered the piano lid, ‘and now Elzeebit will be back to the ironin', which won't do itself, so 'twon't,' she added closing the door loudly behind her.

From the comfort of his cushion, Carlo growled softly. Seated at the keyboard, the Contessa did not look up from the piles of operatic scores that surrounded her.

‘Thank you, Elizabeth,' she said, ignoring the comment about the ironing. Long years of interaction had taught her that her resident Irish terrier's bark was far worse than her bite and that her pronouncements were merely un-barbed, muttered statements of fact. Across from the keyboard and piles of scores, where the tray of tea had been placed, a strong column of steam could be seen escaping from the spout of the teapot. It was bisected by an early evening sunbeam, reflected off a window across the arena and it highlighted the cloud of dust motes the tray had disturbed from the fringed throw covering the bottom half of the grand piano. They swirled about happily in the glow of the sunbeam, like a densely packed corps of graceful ballerinas. The Contessa sighed. Perhaps the opportunity for even the simplest dusting and polishing had now passed; she had
long ago begun to think that the time for reminding Elizabeth to do so certainly had. As she shuffled the scores, she wondered why the singers in COGOL – her silver-voiced angels – had not been affected by the dust, which obviously lingered in plentiful supply.

I think I'll let that cool a little
, she decided as she sorted her pile of scores, many of which would be needed for the concert. Luigi had offered to find her a suitably discrete bookcase in which to store them in some sort of order, but his kindness was always met with a postponing reply. The Contessa felt securely happy surrounded by the tools of her trade and had no desire to change things. She stopped at a rather battered score of Puccini's
La Bohème
, the cover of which had a long tear down it. The once-white, thick paper exposed by the tear had turned a deep sand colour over the years. Now, it almost matched the shade of the brown paper tape that had been used on the inside of the cover to repair it.

Poor Elizabeth; she's a bit like this book … rather torn and quite faded
, thought the Contessa as she gently fingered the tear.
Still … we have to carry on
.

It never occurred to her that she was also in a state of ever-noticeable decline as the years progressed, but it had never been in her nature to notice or even admit to such a thing. She had always been an active person. When she was younger, there were those who remarked that she was hyperactive, and she saw no reason why things should change now, simply because of the intervention of the passing of time.

‘Let's see now… Musetta's Waltz Song,' she muttered as she paged through the well-worn score, which had originally been Giacomo's and was now hers. She put the score on the piano's music stand and turned the pages slowly towards Act Two, enjoying the memories she encountered along the way and humming the melody of the Waltz
Song softly as she did so. In her mind's eye she saw herself sitting in front of a different keyboard, the score still balanced on the music stand, but now held in place by the well-tanned, olive-skinned hands of a man.

A melodious, deeply placed voice drifted into her ears. It was tinged with the faintest hint of its foreign origin.

‘…and this is one of the most beautiful parts of the opera,' he said softly, his voice full of affection for the dots printed on the staves of the page. ‘Please … play…'

As she played, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that he had closed his eyes and was following the curve of the music in the air with his hands. When she reached the end of the Waltz Song, she stopped, letting the last sounds from the piano linger in the large room.

‘That is really beautiful,' she said, turning on the piano stool to look at him.

For a moment he did not reply, but continued to sit on his chair with his eyes closed, his hands in the air in front of him, as if inviting an invisible cast of singers and orchestra to pause in their music-making and savour the genius of Puccini's melodic creativity. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at her. It was the familiar, warm, gentle smile she had always found so exhilarating – so alluring – right from the first time she had seen it.

‘It also sounds just a little sad, as if someone has lost something that means a great deal to them, perhaps? I don't know.' She had no idea what the words meant and there was no English translation included in the Ricordi edition score in front of her. ‘What is Musetta singing about?
Is
it sad?'

‘They are all poor. Musetta is pretty and coquettish and moves from man to man in search of a better life – you know the sort of situation which poverty drives people in to.'

Penelope Strachan was not at all sure that she did understand
what he meant, but smiled and nodded anyway.

‘She used to be with another of the Bohemians, Marcello, but she abandoned him in favour of the much richer and older Alcindoro. So yes, in a way it is about loss, but not Musetta's loss; it is rather Marcello who has lost something, for which he still desperately yearns.'

‘And yet the music is so beautiful,' she said, turning back to look at the pages of the score in front of her.

‘And that is the true genius of
Maestro
Puccini; he paints bare human emotion in the subtlest of musical colours. This whole scene is a complicated dialogue between the principal characters. Each is voicing their own opinion of Musetta, of Marcello and the rest. Even Mimi and Rodolfo comment on the situation. And it is all held together by the music.'

‘Oh … how clever,' Penelope replied feebly. She was finding it increasingly more and more difficult to follow the complex situation, and the seemingly endless flow of Italian names wasn't helping. She wondered how anyone ever remembered them all.

‘This scene has a happy ending … for the moment,' continued Professor Capezzani-Batelli, looking at the score as if he were standing on the stage in the middle of the scene. ‘Musetta sends her elderly lover away to buy her a new pair of shoes and then throws herself back into Marcello's eagerly waiting arms. Sadly, the happiness they then feel will not be shared by the two central characters.'

‘Oh … dear, so it is a little sad, then.'

‘We Italians all have the embers of sadness smouldering deep within us,' he continued. That was something which Penelope Strachan, with her limited experience of the jagged web of life, did not fully appreciate. ‘We have so much, but always desire something more. Sometimes we find it and manage to keep it; sometimes we find it and then lose it … have it taken away from us.'

He fell silent for a few seconds, a distant look clouding the handsome, chiselled features of his face. She was suddenly curious as to what it was he might have had taken away from him, but couldn't find a polite way in which to ask such an indiscreet question. The resulting silence engulfed the room.

‘That is what happens in the reality of life and that is what will happen to Mimi and Rodolfo.
Maestro
Puccini was better able than most to express these complex emotions through his music. Perhaps that was because his own life was often something akin to a plot from one of his own operas,' he said, his mood suddenly lightening and the smile once again creasing his face. ‘You have a very accurate saying in English, which says everything that needs to be said about the
maestro.
He was very much a “Jack the Lad” and had a reputation for enjoying life to the full … in all of its many aspects.'

She had heard the expression before, when her parents had been discussing her father's cousin, Richard. She had walked into the sitting room one Saturday evening for the usual pre-dinner sherry and had been in time to hear her father's muttered opinion of his cousin.

‘Richard is a disgrace to the good name of the family. His Jack the Lad attitude to everything is going to end in tears. One girl too many and the resulting pregnancy will –'

When her presence had been suddenly noted, the subject had been abruptly dropped, but it was plainly obvious that her father was rather angry.

Now, in the comfort of Professor Capezzani-Batelli's studio, she cleared her throat and turned back a few pages to where the music staves were headed ‘Mimi' and ‘Rodolfo'.

‘Who are Mimi and Rodolfo?' she asked softly, turning to look at him once again.

He turned and for the first time that day, looked her straight in the face. ‘They are the two lovers. They love each
other for who they are, not for any material benefit that one might possibly obtain by loving the other. They find everything they ever wanted in each other and are then forced by fate to give it all up again.'

The look of distant loss once again flicked across his face. For a split second, she thought that she saw the light of something go out in his eyes, as if he was involuntarily remembering the pain of having something of inestimable value taken away from him.

‘Listen to this,' he said, getting up from his chair and sitting next to her on the double piano stool. He turned to the last few pages of the opera then reached across her and started to play. ‘This music is so powerful … it rends the human spirit in two with its pathos and loss.' He played a few more bars. ‘And here, finally, what they have found together is taken from them.' He continued playing to the end of the opera. ‘At the end the
maestro
suggests some of the musical material from the first act of the opera, when the lovers meet for the first time. So, as in life, the opera goes in a full circle – we find and then we lose.'

‘Oh dear, did Mimi go away, then?' asked Penelope, unable to read the Italian, but noticing that the musical stave marked ‘Mimi' had stopped before the final pages of the score.