La's Orchestra Saves the World (26 page)

La thought: there is nothing that anybody can do. We are powerless. Last time, when evil incarnate threatened us, we could do something—and did. We each did something, even if it was only looking after hens. The world was smaller, more personal then; now there is nothing that any of us can do. This is being decided by machines with blinking lights; by radar screens; by the switches and levers of a world that has ceased to have anything to do with an ordinary person standing in her garden.

On the day after President Kennedy addressed the American people and the full gravity of the Cuban situation came to be understood, La sat down and drew up a list of those members of her orchestra with whom she was still in touch, or whose telephone number she knew. It came to twelve names, including Tim, Feliks and the two sisters from Bury. She telephoned them all that afternoon and evening.

“Do you remember our victory concert?” she said.

Of course they did.

“I want to hold a concert for peace,” she said. “In five days’ time. I know that it’s not much notice, but there isn’t much time, I’m afraid.”

She asked people to contact other members of the orchestra and pass on the message. Everyone she spoke to said they would participate; nobody said that he or she could not come. Leave was taken. It was too important to say no, and they felt that they owed this to La.

She prepared the hall, helped by Mrs. Agg. Lennie put up notices, and the sisters in Bury spoke to the vicar of their parish, who passed the word around his congregation, and around others.

On the morning of the concert, La awoke early and walked in her garden, nursing a cup of tea. She looked up at the sky. If the end were to come, it would be the end of everything—the end of music, the end of her house, of Suffolk, of the birds, of lavender bushes, of England. She stood quite still and put her empty tea-cup down on the stone bench beside the pond she had created the previous year. A small frog launched itself into the water; it would be the end of frogs, and of whales, and of the sea itself.

They gathered in the tin hall. Many people came—so many that, as at the victory concert, there were people standing outside. The atmosphere was grave. They were silent; nobody talked or smiled as they had done in 1945.

La stood at the podium. She had chosen the music carefully, and although they had not had time to rehearse, and although so many were rusty, they played to the best of their ability, and the audience listened with solemnity. Nobody clapped in between the pieces. They were silent.

It could have been a time for gravity, for music in the minor keys of sadness and farewell, for that, in large part, is how people felt when the concert began. It hit them abruptly, and with shocking force: this could so easily be good-bye. They had lived with that knowledge ever since mushroom clouds first started to rise in the sky; they knew that a rash decision, a moment of reckless anger in the mind of a powerful man could bring the world to an end. It was almost impossible to absorb that knowledge, yet people had done so. But that was not really why La had called the concert. She had called it because she believed in the power of music. Absurdly, irrationally, she believed that music could make a difference to the temper of the world. She did not investigate this belief, test it to see whether it made sense; she simply believed it, and so she chose music that expressed order and healing; Bach for order; Mozart for healing. This was the antithesis of the anger and fear that could unleash the missiles; this was music showing the face of love, and forgiveness.

And then, near the end, somebody outside shouted, and the shout came through the door and into the hall. Somebody
had heard, and was spreading the news. Mr. Khrushchev had made a speech on Moscow Radio. They were not going to die.

They stopped. People dropped their instruments. They embraced one another. They cried. Lennie hit his drums enthusiastically in one long, powerful roll that threatened to burst the instruments’ skins. Nobody worried. The loss of drums was nothing to the loss of the world. They laughed.

La walked back to her house. She would return to the hall, where a party had broken out, but she wanted to go back and fetch a coat, for it had turned cold. She was in her kitchen, preparing to return to the hall, when the car came into the drive. It was Feliks.

He got out of the car, and his two small boys were with him. She had seen him in the hall, and they had exchanged a few words, but she had not seen the boys. They looked so like Feliks, she thought; his two sons with those serious expressions that only small boys can have.

“I wanted to see you,” he said.

“And you’ve brought your boys.”

“Yes, these are my boys.”

They sat in the kitchen, where they had sat together so many times all those years ago. The boys played outside, some odd little game that involved the one chasing the other. “They can play like that for hours,” he said. “Boys. So much energy.”

“I don’t suppose they have any idea of the danger we’ve been through,” said La. “Fortunately for them.”

Feliks nodded. “Sometimes we don’t have an idea of the danger we’re in. Did we? During the war? Did we really know how close it came?”

“Perhaps we did. But we couldn’t really lead our lives thinking about it. We had to believe that we were going to be all right.” She paused. “You said something a long time ago. You said something about having to believe or we wouldn’t be able to continue. Do you remember that conversation?”

“No. I remember that we talked about a lot of things. But I don’t remember that.”

“Well you did. And I think that I said something about how we could find courage in unexpected places. Something like that.”

They were silent.

“And now, here we are again.” He looked at her. “Happy or unhappy, as the case may be. Content with the way our lives have worked out. Which is it, La? Which is it for you?”

“Happy,” she said. “Or happy enough. Some parts of my life have been unhappy.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something more. He raised an eyebrow. “And can you tell me? Do you want to?”

Of course, she thought. Of course I do.

“I might have been happier if I had had children.”

He looked away. “Yes, I understand.”

“And if I had been a better musician.” She laughed, and he did, too.

“You still have time to improve,” he said. “You could start your orchestra again.”

She did not think that she could. “There was a special time for that,” she said. “Not now.”

“Maybe not.”

The silence returned. The kitchen door had been pushed open by a small hand, and the boys had returned. The smaller one had fallen and there was mud on the knees of his trousers. La got up and fetched a damp cloth from the sink. “I’ll do that for you,” she said to the boy. “Come over here. I’ll fix you up.”

Felix watched. When she had finished wiping off the mud, the boy took a step backwards. He was shy.

Felix spoke. “La, your orchestra has saved the world—again.”

She made a self-deprecatory gesture. “I don’t know about that,” she said.

“I do,” he said.

She reached out to ruffle the hair of the smaller boy, who had been staring at her with wide eyes. “What are you going to do now?” she asked Feliks. “Go back to Glasgow?”

“Yes. I suppose I should.”

She drew breath. In the face of the end of everything, even if the threat had suddenly passed, one might say what one had always wanted to say. That is what she thought.

“Stay with me,” she said. “You could stay here. I think we would be happy.”

Feliks held her gaze, and she looked into his eyes. Then he glanced at the boys. “But …”

“All of you,” she said.

And she picked up the boys, one after the other, and kissed them.