Frozen Music (54 page)

It happened so fast. George swung the shotgun round, pressed it into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out. Dora's scream turned mute as blood and brain matter and splinters of bone splattered her face and neck, and the top of her yellow jumper. Linus caught George in his arms as he slumped backwards. The gun fell to the ground. Wendy screamed for the ambulance crew. The front doorstep of Rookery Cottage coloured red.

The world stopped as the mind and matter of George Wilson flowed out on to the steps of his home.

Then it turned again. Linus was covered with George's blood. I wanted to take him in my arms, but I couldn't. Dora sat on the ground, rocking back and forth, a medic trying to get her to her feet. When finally she stood up she stumbled and fell back against him. He steadied her and helped her with the short walk down the drive to the waiting ambulance. She didn't look back once.

Wendy was discussing what she should maybe have done with two other officers. Barry Jones was sick in a shrub. The television crew had been cleared.

Linus stood a few feet away, looking at me. His eyes were huge and splashes of red stained his white face. Never had I seen a face that colour, plaster-white. I put out my hand towards him. He took it and fell into my arms, sobbing. A doctor, just arrived, offered to help, but I waved him away. I don't know how long we stood there, Linus and I, but my arms were numb by the time we moved, walking slowly back to my car.

Linus spent the night with me. He lay on his front, one arm thrown above his head, one leg curled up, the foot of the other sticking out from under the duvet. He had fallen asleep in my arms and then, when I was sure I wouldn't wake him, I had wriggled free and got out of bed. I stood there watching him, my perfect love, with me at last. And I felt nothing.

I walked out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen where I had left my laptop. Then I wrote my piece. By midnight I had faxed it to the paper; it would be in time for the later editions.

Charlie was on the phone again at seven the following morning.
He wanted me to do a feature. ‘Recap on the events of the last year. Reintroduce the main players, that kind of thing.'

I told him no.

‘What was that you said?'

‘I said no, I won't do it. And once the inquest is over I'm going away for a couple of weeks.'

‘You can't. We need you here.'

‘Yes I can. Ask the union.'

A week later Linus and I were at the airport, waiting for our flight to Gothenburg. I bought the paper from the news-stand. On page four was printed the result of the inquest on George Wilson's death. Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.

Linus didn't make any comment. He had barely spoken since the day George died. Actually, it was OK with me, him being silent. After all, what was there to say? I played out an imaginary conversation in my mind:

LINUS: I drove that man to his death.

ESTHER: Well, don't you worry about that, Linus dear, these things happen. Anyway, who am I to speak? I betrayed them by my incompetence just as I betrayed you with my misguided ideals.

No, better to say nothing.

After that first night he had moved his few things across from the hotel – Posy didn't mind – and had stayed with me. We had slept every night in each other's arms but we hadn't made love. In the morning we had risen, two strangers, to another silent day.

‘What's going on with you and this guy?' Posy had asked me one afternoon when we were alone in the kitchen. ‘I thought you were meant to be in the throes of this great love.'

‘We are,' I had said tiredly.

In Gothenburg Olivia met us at the airport. This time the place was almost empty. The few people waiting were dressed in anoraks and
large coats; it was already winter there. Olivia hugged us both. ‘My poor children,' she said. ‘My poor, poor children.'

She drove us all the way out to the island. She asked after Audrey, and I said that she was well and not unduly put out by what had happened. Olivia, in turn, told us that Ulla was making excellent progress and that she was expected to be discharged any time. ‘We've arranged for her to go away to a retreat up north. It's run by a marvellous woman, a nun. We're taking her up there. We felt it would be a good thing. Show her we had put it all behind us. It was a wicked, irresponsible thing she did, but we're convinced she's speaking the truth when she says she never meant any real harm. As long as she takes her medication she should be absolutely fine.'

I was glad to hear it. Or at least I knew that I would have been glad to hear it if only I could feel something, anything.

Olivia crossed over with us; she had decided to stay the night, before returning to town the next morning. It was hard to believe that only two months had passed since I'd left. The quayside was empty but for an old couple, waiting. The sea was slate-grey and calm, and the few boats left in the water rocked gently in the wake of the ferry.

At Villa Rosengård none of the blooms remained on Astrid's roses. ‘I thought I'd put you in Ivar's room,' Olivia said as she unlocked the front door. ‘You'll be cosier there than on your own in the cottage.'

That night, like every night since George had shot his brains out, Linus joined me in bed. As always, when I felt his warm skin against mine, a flash of excitement shot down my belly. But before anything could happen the feeling died, as it did every night, and we were left with a melancholy tenderness, lying in each other's arms, united by our common terrors. That night he cried. He hadn't cried since it happened. I suppose it was the relief of being home that did it, that released all those tears. I held him close, whispering to him as if he were a child, telling him that he was handsome and brave and clever and kind. I told him I loved him. Eventually he fell asleep, still sobbing.

Most days we rose early, except for the first morning when we slept until gone eleven. Linus did a lot of work in the garden and I took my
time shopping, preparing lunch. We ate together. On one day it was so mild we could sit outside on the deck. I noticed that the lawn was turning yellow. In the afternoon we took a walk round the island. Some days we walked from the east side to the west and sometimes from the west side round to the east. Some days we met other walkers, stood aside or passed with a polite nod, on others there was only us. Linus seemed happier on these walks. He even talked a little. But he never spoke of George and Dora or the opera house. To anyone observing we might have seemed like a prematurely middle-aged couple, happy enough in each other's company, but curiously alone. It happens, I believe, when people have been together a long time and the spark has gone and they've forgotten exactly what it was they had so loved in each other once upon a time. But of course it wasn't like that with us. There were times when the love between us was tangible. You could just put your hand in the air and feel it burn. But we stayed at a distance, kept apart by the contempt we feared we'd see in the other's eyes if we looked closely.

This particular day we were making our way from the west around to the east, and had got about halfway, when he stopped me, putting his hands on my shoulders and turning me round to face him.

‘Esther, what's wrong?' Before I had a chance to answer, he continued, ‘I don't mean just with you, but with us?'

I looked away out across the slate-grey water, then into his eyes that were the colour of the sea in winter. ‘I don't know.' I shook my head. Then I smiled a weary smile. ‘It's not exactly how I had pictured it, my first grand love affair.'

He smiled back, his eyes serious as he studied my face. ‘No, I don't expect it is.'

‘I had sort of imagined that if you loved someone, really loved them the way I love you, then you'd want to be with them. But I don't think we can be together.'

He lifted his hand to my cheek, touching it with the tips of his fingers. ‘No, no, I don't think we can.'

I left the island the next morning on the seven o'clock ferry.

It's two years to the day since I left Linus asleep in the blue house. In those two years I've done a lot of travelling. It took some persuading, and some gentle emotional blackmail, to get the paper to allow me to write the features that I now wished to write. Once the readers began to respond, Chloe of course wanted to know why it had taken me such an age to find my ‘niche'. My niche was foreign reporting of the in-depth kind. I was a roving Jonah, trawling the globe for the inhumane, the worst, the most sad. Where I found it the misery was such that I could do no further harm, but, and it was a big but, there was always the possibility that I might do some good. It was what kept me going. And there were times when I felt a small bud of satisfaction form inside me. Times when, because of what I had seen and written about, money was raised that made a difference somewhere where people were suffering. Occasions when pressure was put on politicians and some broken victim of tortured imprisonment was allowed to remain in our country.

I learnt, too, that it wasn't through what was perfect that greatness was shown, but rather that it was the inconstancies, the randomness of life, which most brought our humanity to the fore.

I had just returned to England from Brazil. This time I'd been away almost three months. I was pleased with the work I'd done on the children of the sewers and the priest who tried to save them.

I still wrote, occasionally, for the women's pages; I needed to prove to myself that I wasn't a prig. And anyway, I had never quite lost my belief in the uplifting power of the right lipstick.

Linus was often on my mind; mostly when I woke in the morning, or when I went to bed at night. Sometimes I thought of him when I was saddened by what I saw and then again when I was happy. But as
the weeks and months passed by I thought of him less and I had trouble remembering his face, but not his laugh. The startling imperfection that had made the whole so endearing to me echoed around the rooms of my mind when I least expected it.

The last I heard he had taken up again with Pernilla.

I never spoke of him. The final time I did I had said it all. Curiously, maybe, it was in Audrey of all people that I had confided two years before, when I returned home.

‘But darling, I don't understand.' Audrey had patted the side of her bed for me to sit down. ‘You say you love him and he loves you. So what are you doing back here without him?'

‘I suppose that sometimes love isn't enough.'

‘You mean you don't love each other enough?'

I had looked at her, shaking my head. ‘No. I mean that sometimes loving someone, however much, isn't enough. I never would have thought it. It's almost funny, isn't it,' I added, not feeling in the least like laughing. ‘All those years dying to know what love was, what it felt like. It never occurred to me that I might find it only to have to leave it behind.'

‘But Esther, why do you have to? I don't understand.'

I had sighed and lain back across the bed, my head resting somewhere along Audrey's legs. ‘We're never alone. George walks between us and he tucks himself up next to us in bed at night. I look at Linus and I see George's blood on his face. God only knows what he sees when he looks at me. It's as if while we're together we can never be free of it. We love each other, but we can't find peace in each other's presence. I am the salt in his wounds and he is the salt in mine. You can't live like that.'

‘No,' she had said. ‘I do see that.' I felt her hand on my forehead. It felt cool. I closed my eyes. ‘I'm here, if that's any help. I always am.'

I remember opening my eyes and looking up at her. ‘You are, aren't you. I don't think I've appreciated that enough.'

‘You do now, that's sufficient. It takes time for children to appreciate their parents.'

I sat up. ‘Maybe we could go shopping together sometimes. Or go to see a show, or just out to dinner.'

There was a pause, then Audrey said, ‘Now don't let's get carried away. You know I don't go out.'

I looked at her and smiled. ‘At last you're being utterly consistent. It's what I always wanted.'

My mother smiled back. ‘Good, darling. I'm pleased you're pleased. Now, if you don't mind.' She grabbed the television remote. ‘I'm going to watch my programme.'

That had been that, everything the same and yet so utterly different. Does that make sense? I don't know.

But it made sense for him to be back with her, with Pernilla. The reflection he saw in her eyes was easier to live with than the one he'd see in mine.

He had written a couple of times. A few months after we parted it was to tell me of his decision to continue the work on the opera house, now officially named the People's Opera.

The most persuasive argument for going through with it
[he wrote]
came from Stuart Lloyd. Dora had stated that she never wanted to return to the cottage after what had happened. George had killed himself, the dreadful damage was done. We had wanted to build the opera house because we believed it was a right and good thing to do. Whom would we help but our own consciences if we scrapped the project? What earthly good would it do? Much better, then, to build and to make the building the best and most beautiful in our power. Anything else would be a meaningless gesture.

So much for the official argument
[he had gone on to say],
the truth of the mind, not the heart. But really I went ahead with the project because I wanted more than anything to build that house. I went ahead because the Opera would be the fulfilment of all my dreams and would make my life worthwhile. I'm being as honest with you as I can although I know it might drive us even further apart
.

I wrote back saying ‘Good Luck!' But that was a long time ago. And now the building of the opera house was complete. Tonight was the opening, with a performance of
Madam Butterfly
in front of a huge invited audience. As Stuart Lloyd had promised, it really was
the people's opera. The usual dignitaries had been invited, of course, but mostly the guests were what politicians loved to call Ordinary People. There were even buses laid on, from all over the country, that's how ordinary those people were.