Fearful Symmetry (8 page)

‘Well, yes, if you say so. It’s just—I don’t know—I’d like to help somehow.’

Andrew shook his head again. ‘You can’t.’

He began a series of slow arpeggios. His cello was not a great instrument, but he managed to draw out the deepest, most chocolatey tone of which it was capable. Playing softly, he turned his head and spoke again, rather sadly.

‘Just help me get through this damn opera without going mad or killing someone. They’re pitiful, all of them. Oh, I don’t mean I don’t like them. They’re nice people, all of them. Adele really is sweet. And Jim’s all right, full of good intentions. And nobody could object to Phil. They’ve all got such faith in Helene, and she’s got this ridiculous faith in Cosmo, although from what Valerie says he’s been sponging off Helene for weeks now and still hasn’t written a note.’

‘Play me something. How about some Brahms?’

Andrew stopped. He had memorised the second sonata for her. In her absence, closing his eyes and playing Brahms was the closest he could get to seeing her, hearing her voice. He did not want to ruffle the air around them with an allegro vivace, so he began with the slow pizzicato notes of the second movement, the languorous Adagio Affettuoso. Sara seemed to understand that the mood should not be broken. At the end of the pizzicato he paused, his face sad with concentration, before drawing his bow gently down the strings and sending up a sound so warm that it seemed to rise and wrap itself around them. Over the music, he spoke slowly.

‘Honestly, Sara, I do try not to be cynical about it. But it’s farcical, all of it. Not just the music, but Valerie’s little plan to bring us together. It won’t work. It’s just not going to happen and it’s my fault. Nothing’s changed, you see. I love you.’

For a few seconds Sara could not speak, for the sudden relief that was exploding inside her. Andrew was still playing and she was still cradling her cello between her knees. She rose, first to unencumber herself and then to pull his cello away from him so that they could reach each other. The telephone rang.

‘That could be her,’ Andrew said hopelessly. ‘Checking up. She’ll have got home by now and noticed that my cello’s gone.’

‘I’ll say you’ve just arrived,’ Sara said rather desperately, shocking herself by the ease with which she could connive to keep Andrew here for at least another hour. ‘Start playing something, she’ll hear it.’

They looked at each other, knowing that the duping of Valerie was beginning in earnest. They would be naked together within half a minute of Sara’s getting off the phone. ‘Answer it,’ Andrew said firmly, starting to play scales as Sara picked up the receiver.

‘Herve! Herve, how wonderful to hear you! You’re still in New York?’ Sara turned to Andrew and grimaced. Andrew raised his eyebrows and to Sara’s horror stopped mid-scale and launched into ‘Resurrections des Autres’. She shook her head and shooshed him silently. He ignored her.

‘No, no, the line’s perfect. Still arriving on Sunday? Yes, the sixth. Wonderful, I’m so looking forward! Oh, yes, I’d take a chauffeured car from Heathrow if I were you. Yes, I see. Uh-huh, the flat’s all arranged. Why, Herve, don’t you trust me? I faxed you the address and direc—Oh, good, you got them. What?’

Sara turned again to Andrew and gestured frantically for him to stop. He played louder, impassive except for raising one eyebrow at her.

‘Yes! It is “Resurrections”! No, no, of course it’s not me. I’m speaking to you. It’s er . . . ah . . . um, er, it’s just a recording.’

At that, Andrew made a deliberately loud and crass mistake, went back several bars and sawed laboriously, repeating the error over and over. Sara whirled round with a look of utter fury on her face. Andrew looked up mildly, amused at her powerlessness.

‘Oh, no, only an amateur,’ she said. ‘Work in progress. Yes, very poor indeed, really quite ghastly,’ she added triumphantly.

To this Herve clearly had much to say. As she listened, Andrew began to ham up the music, adding ridiculous pluckings, trills and eighteenth-century grace notes. Now and then he would add a line of his own, so that from time to time snatches of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, ‘Ode to Joy’ and ‘In an English Country Garden’ shoved their way ludicrously through Herve’s atonal undergrowth. Andrew was enjoying himself hugely.

‘No, Herve, please, there’s no question of an
unauthorised
recording,’ Sara was pleading. ‘Well, yes, of course I understand the royalties issue.
And
the composer’s own high standards; look, there’s lots to discuss when you get here. Yes, yes, promise. No, you’ll love the flat. Yes, I got your list of requirements. What? No, don’t worry. Yes, you too. Right,
ciao
for now.’

She replaced the receiver and without drawing breath turned on Andrew. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? What the
hell,
Andrew? Just what the fuck was all that about?’

Andrew seemed surprised by her rage. ‘Me? What am I playing at? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not playing at. I’m not toadying up to some guy who I’ve just agreed writes crap music. It was only a bit of fun, anyway. Is he so bloody precious he can’t take a joke? Why, suddenly, can’t you?’

‘Joke? A
joke
? Is that what it was? Look, I’ve got to work with this man. As a
professional,
Andrew. And he happens to be a very important composer. Oh, I see. Perhaps that’s it. Jealousy. Is that your problem? How
dare
you behave in that childish way!’

‘I’m not childish.’ Andrew was entirely calm. ‘Or jealous. I’m appalled. I’m appalled at the way you can go along with it, pretending that you think he’s so wonderful. You should listen to yourself. I couldn’t believe all that “lovey-dovey wonderful” crap coming from you. Why are you even working with him, if you don’t rate his stuff? Where’s your famous honesty?’

‘How
dare
you.’ Sara felt now every bit as cornered by Andrew’s questioning as she did by Herve’s demands and the necessity to see the work with him through to its end. She was obliged to do it, whether or not the music held any conviction for her, and how would it help if she made her feelings known to Herve? She was dealing with an ego bigger and even more fragile than her own and she had to look after it, even if only to make sure of a première of which she would not be actually ashamed. Couldn’t Andrew understand that? He was betraying her. He had claimed to love her, and yet the first time she looked to him for understanding of her predicament he attacked her, quite unfairly. She could attack, too.

She mustered the worst thing she could think of to say to him. ‘You’re an amateur. You obviously don’t understand the situation. It’s to do with professionalism, Andrew. But I’m not going to try to explain it to you.’

She swung on her heels and left the room. In the kitchen, she breathed deeply until she began to feel the return of her calm. Right, let that sink in for a minute or two, she thought. He’ll see my point. She pictured him pacing the music room in remorse, considering. She opened a bottle of red wine, debating whether they should drink it now to seal the peace or later, after they’d made love.

But the silence following her words stretched out, lengthened and settled, and was broken only five minutes later by Andrew’s angry slam of the front door.

CHAPTER
10

P
OPPY KNEW BETTER
now than to press the freezing soles of her feet against Cosmo’s thighs. She had tried it once and been told in the morning that he’d thought he was being attacked by two damp old fish. Not that he had reacted at the time, except to turn over in a sleepy huff and shuffle even further away from her side of the bed. So now, after walking back from the nursing home in the chilly early morning and entering the sleeping house quietly, she went to the bathroom and ran a basin of hot water instead of collapsing straight into bed beside him. Hopping uncomfortably, with her thigh muscles straining at the effort of keeping one leg raised and one foot in the basin, she would wash her feet, rubbing at the soles and toes to restore sensation and lathering them in Waitrose’s oatmeal soap (four for the price of three) to remove the salt tang that so offended Cosmo.

It was only a little thing, really, the feet, which probably were a little whiffy after a night shift in shoes with manmade uppers. She shouldn’t feel hurt. Cosmo needed his sleep. Creativity was very exhausting and when this project was over and he could relax a little he would realise what a support she was being. He would then see how uniquely aware she was of his needs and he would be happy to see how quietly indispensable she had become to him. She wouldn’t jeopardise things now by insisting on recognition of her efforts, she thought sensibly, for all the research, for volunteering to do the costumes, for getting on with the community liaison. She would never remind him again that leaving London to come to Bath with him had meant giving up her diploma course on complementary therapies. Possibly Cosmo had not really understood how important it had been to her to find something she was really good at. Not his fault. He was so focused himself, or was usually. Prague was obviously still having its aftereffects. Obviously, all the new ideas from Herve Petrescu were taking time to bed down.

Cosmo could not be expected to know what it had been like for her after college, going after job after job, eventually the most menial assistant stage manager ones, and getting nowhere. He hadn’t even known her then. College had not been fun. First she had been thrown off the performers’ course but, as her mother had pointed out, she could hardly be surprised at that since she had in the first place only scraped on with some vestige of an idea of becoming a character actress. If she couldn’t find herself some confidence from somewhere, they had said, she had better transfer to stage management. That turned out to be an area in which she had also failed to shine because she simply had no appetite for it. Or rather, she went about it with every bone in her body aching with jealousy towards the pretty girls who got to go onstage, which prevented her from ever really involving herself. She hoovered from lectures to practicals and finally to idiotic projects, sucking in envy which then swelled up and filled her like a dirty bag in need of emptying. After three years she had mustered neither the heart to cooperate nor the imagination to care and, unaware of how completely she failed to conceal it, continued to show up hopefully at interviews in her one good jacket, with her mediocre degree in her handbag and her bitterness all over her face.

Repeated failure did nothing for a person’s confidence, and she found that the less she had, the more she needed. When she had been five years out of college with her stage management degree and had only worked occasionally, Poppy began to wonder where she was going to find enough confidence just to carry on. Her parents had talked brightly at first about her being off their hands at last; gradually it dawned on Poppy that she bored them. How long, her mother asked with diminishing good nature, was Poppy planning to wait before she surprised them with some success at something? They could hardly be blamed, as the years went by, for giving so much more attention (and time, and energy, and money, and approval, and love, Poppy added silently) to Poppy’s sister, who had produced a grandchild. It was her own fault, probably. But it began to matter that she could see no end to living in rented places in the bad, inconvenient parts of London, no end to the cheap food, the expensive, wearying bus journeys, the filthy tube. Worst of all was when she could see no end to being single, a kind of an emotional amputee—maimed and incomplete, and yet carting round with her everywhere, like an aching phantom limb, her longing to have someone to laugh it all off with.

Mincing quietly on fragrant tiptoe from the bathroom she folded herself in under the duvet beside Cosmo and tried to breathe silently. At least now,
basically,
she did have someone to laugh it all off with, so giving up the course was an easy sacrifice. So she would not insist on gratitude for the bit of money she was earning for them, or on affectionate tolerance for her tired old feet. Or on sex, for the time being.

Creative people should not exhaust themselves sexually when they needed to channel their energies into their creations. Cosmo needed her understanding as well as a little bit of handling. And with her to handle him, or help manage his career, Cosmo had a future which she intended to help him enjoy. She had sensed it almost the first time they had met at an unlikely dinner party given by Gemma. After college she had watched Gemma saunter into a job in stage effects at the Coliseum that she herself would have loved. Gemma had a perfectly tolerable partner who was a trombone teacher, and their two salaries had secured a very decent place in Tufnell Park which Poppy also would have loved. Gemma got Poppy round to dinner now and then in order to complain at length about all three: job, partner and house, but this particular party had yielded fruit. Gemma’s Jeff was doing a new trombone piece written by Cosmo, who was employed as a project worker on a six-week community education project in Tower Hamlets, so what could be more natural than that he should be at dinner, too? She and Cosmo had got on ‘terribly well’ and swapped numbers. It was not that she had found him straightforwardly attractive but, as Gemma had remarked sniggeringly to Jeff later, Poppy was so desperate by now that she would probably give a second look, if not the benefit of the doubt, to anyone with testicles and a pulse.

Then there had been nearly six months of seeing each other in the courtship style of arty and impoverished Londoners: going out sometimes to films, never the theatre, and restaurants with ethnic food, never European, cooking each other one-pot suppers to which the other brought plonk and cheese and, eventually, staying the night instead of forking out for taxis home. It was one of the happiest periods of Poppy’s life. There was still the bad accommodation, the tiresome travelling by public transport and the filthy food, but, sitting on the bus, Poppy knew herself for the first time in her life not to be entirely alone, and the knowledge made her brave. She got herself into the complementary therapies course, negotiating the application procedures and the waiving of fees for ‘the unwaged’ with a sudden burst of courage. Her courage grew when she became almost the star student, soaking in everything about reflexology, acupuncture, cranial massage, aromatherapy and a clutch of other arcane practices with which she became acquainted. She had exceptionally good hands, the tutor told her.

Just as Poppy was beginning to feel confident enough to tackle Cosmo about their relationship being all a bit studenty and it being high time they got serious about a permanent base and some joint planning—concepts that privately she boiled down in her brain to their true essence: a mortgage and marriage—Cosmo succeeded in getting a grant to study with some famous composer in Prague. Or it might have been a loan; it was all a little hazy. They corresponded. Cosmo wrote of his rough rooms in Prague, the beer, his studies with the ‘maestro’; Poppy wrote back with chirpy accounts of her triumphs on the course, later with outlines of plans for ‘our’ future.

As the months rolled by, she began to add the word ‘international’ to ‘composer’ when describing Cosmo to other people. She read a biography of Alma Gropius and began to see that Cosmo needed her to promote his work. Simply not enough people had had a chance to find out how good he was, and in his absence she set about putting that right, sending a few manuscripts around London to likely venues, reviewers and performers. She began to appreciate what a tough, cutthroat and unfair business it could be, and fancied that she could become Cosmo’s shield. Of course things would not necessarily go swimmingly either every time or straight away, but with her determination and his talent, they would get there. She cleared out his bedsit and brought his stuff over to hers, and told him about it in a letter afterwards.

When he came back from Prague he had not minded. He had seemed rather frayed and displaced, and genuinely vague about things like his belongings and his address—in truth, also about her—so it was a relief that within a week of his return he had landed the project in Bath. She tingled at the memory of coming back one day to find him actually packing, having kept even the possibility of going to Bath together as a surprise. She was touched that he had not mentioned it, keeping it a secret so that she would not be disappointed if he had failed to get the commission. At her insistence they had gone to a good restaurant to celebrate and, a little drunk, toasted themselves: Cosmo and Poppy vs the universe. They were in it together. If Cosmo were to go down, so would she, hypothetically. But Cosmo was on his way up. Bath was only the beginning.

After Bath, she could see it going either of two ways. If Cosmo carried on writing the kind of stuff he was doing now they would, in a couple of years, be living somewhere at least picturesque if not chic, a university or cathedral town at the very least. Their house would be large and charmingly shabby. Cosmo would have enough work from commissions and a bit of university teaching to keep them fairly comfortably, as well as lots of little bits of broadcasting, reviewing and guest lecturing to help build his name. She would have a battered Volvo and organise everything from the vegetable garden to the fridge magnets. Their two children, which she planned to have almost at once and close together, would be tousle-headed and precocious and called (for she would have a boy and a girl) Jasper and Juniper. The names would indicate to the world the sort of original and intellectually confident family they would be. Life would be so hectic and enjoyable that the weight would just drop off her. Her children would have all the clarinets, gerbils, clay, tree houses and spaniels she could dredge up for them. Their little brains would be stimulated until their ears bled.

Alternatively, Cosmo could make a few concessions. She might be able to get him to see that it would not kill him to write something accessible, perhaps something for the West End. If he did a few of those then other doors would open, film music maybe. In that eventuality their house would have to be not merely large but charming minus the shabbiness, and cleaned by others. To her children’s agendas she would add skiing lessons, drama coaching, ponies; to her own, private tuition in garden design and interior decor. Her and the children’s day clothes would come from Agnès b and in the kitchen she would be organic but wasteful. She would be raucous when the mood took her and bohemian enough to snarl at the staff if she felt like it because she was the one with the cheque book. There would be a third baby—Tarquin or Lupin—and a Norland nanny. She would have a studio built in which she would do nothing at all, complaining laconically to whoever their current friends were about the amount of time Cosmo had to spend in LA. Poppy would often go up to London in order to treat Gemma to lunch in places that Gemma could not afford and would prefix ‘Gemma’ with ‘poor’ all the way from the marinaded olives to the espresso.

But either future would do. Poppy hugged herself in bed and thought of people saying,
Oh yes, Cosmo’s brilliant, but it’s Poppy who keeps him together
. The world might prevent her from becoming a success in her own right, but she did not intend to be stopped from associating herself with the success of her husband, even to the extent of being credited with some of the responsibility for it. Never again would she hang back in the wings while people she hated pranced out past her onto the stage.

Her side of the bed was still chilly, so she warmed herself with the thought that Jasper and Juniper would never have to work as hard, or even know how much she was doing for them in advance of their births. Not for them the humiliating round of failure in a world that overlooked them. Sometimes it almost frightened her how passionately she wanted her children to grow up with an assumption that she had never been able to make: that when they ventured out grown-up and strong in her love, the world, should they have any use for what it offered, would be waiting at their feet.

Cosmo stirred and flopped over onto his back with his mouth open. It was almost daylight and Poppy could see a little trapeze of saliva between his top and bottom lips swinging to and fro in the breeze floating from his mouth. She lifted the duvet and peeped down to be gratified by the sight she was expecting. Yes. Cosmo was wearing them again, the expensive boxer shorts she had bought for him in Gieves & Hawkes’s summer sale, less than half price because the pattern was slightly Christmassy. They were a ludicrous price for underwear, and a little on the tight side for Cosmo, but they were a symbol, a portent. Cosmo was going places where you could have any number of boxers just because you fancied the pattern, Christmassy or not. Yes! A dozen of those! Charge them to my account and have them sent! And she wouldn’t have to wash them, or anything else, on the quiet in a nursing home washing machine, in the middle of the night, just to save on launderette costs. Bath was only the beginning. Thanks to her, Cosmo was on his way up. And she was going, too, soon to be joined by Jasper and Juniper and then, if she continued to handle their father in the right way, by their dear little brother or sister.

H
ERVE PAUSED
on the pavement shivering, wondering if he had a chill coming on, if he had picked up something on the plane. He became so absorbed in considering this that he almost omitted to notice that he was now at the edge of the Royal Crescent in Bath, one of the most famous streets in the world. It was also one of the few famous streets of the world that he had not walked along before. The main reason for coming here at eight o’clock in the morning was to see the celebrated architecture with an empty foreground, free of writhing humanity, and now he had forgotten to notice it.