Midnight in St. Petersburg (23 page)

Horace became aware that he was no longer tapping his toe.

‘From the top!' he heard Yasha cry, again, very cheerfully, and as Inna began the gentle teasing of the introductory notes he also became aware of Madame Leman slipping into the yellow room and coming to stand beside him. He turned to her. Her eyes were all lit up with relief and excitement. ‘Isn't she playing well now?' her eyebrows signalled.

With automatic graciousness – graciousness that would, at least, help keep at bay the misery in the pit of his stomach – Horace bowed deep to his hostess. He opened his arms. Madame Leman smiled, bowed her head and stepped forward. Between the armchairs, bumping into occasional tables, the pair of them started to waltz.

Horace heard Inna laugh. For a moment, he hoped she might turn and meet his eye with that same pink-cheeked, back-from-the-dead pleasure with which she'd been looking at Yasha.

‘Faster!' Yasha cried, and instead she turned towards her cousin with a graceful curve of the neck. ‘Come on, Inna, make them run!'

It was only several minutes later, when she reached for the music to turn a page, and the paper slipped between her fingers, fluttering to the floor, that the music stopped. Yasha paused with his violin still up; his bow raised above the strings and his eyebrow lifted in that strain of comic enquiry that, to Horace's stricken eyes, signified possession. Inna retrieved the manuscript, smiling back at Yasha as if to signal that yes, as soon as she could get it back on the stand, of course they'd go on … But Madame Leman laughed breathlessly and stepped back from Horace's arms. ‘You sound lovely, children, but, heavens above, that was energetic!' she said.

‘Thank you,' Horace said to his partner, making sure he kept the smile on his face as he bowed.

And, as they all disengaged, Horace realized that Leman and Auer must also have come unnoticed into the room while they'd been dancing, because there was more laughter – male, this time – from the doorway.

‘Very charming,
Kinder
,' Auer said. He twinkled at Horace. ‘As you said, dear man,' he added, ‘Your protégée does indeed make a beautiful sound.'

For a moment, Horace allowed himself to hope that, even if Inna hadn't yet performed solo, hearing her duet with Yasha had, in itself, been enough to persuade Auer to take her.

But it took only that moment for Horace to realize he was deluding himself. The truth was that Auer had heard enough – perhaps even that comically bad first attempt at the duet, with Yasha on top – and
wasn't
taking her. For, politely but with finality, the maestro had turned to his hostess. ‘Do carry on … I just wanted to make my farewells to Madame.'

Horace broke through the genteel consternation that followed: the Lemans, hovering anxiously; the oh-but-what-about-the-champagne? and not-even-a-little-coffee? questions.

‘I'll come down with you,' he said smoothly, ‘and find you a cab on Hay Market.'

Horace kept the conversation going through the disconsolate handing over of hats and buttoning up of coats. The Lemans hadn't understood, one way or the other, what the decision was. Inna might not understand either. It was all-important, Horace thought, to be elegant about this; to observe the niceties; to only ask Auer his frank opinion once he'd got right out of earshot of the family.

It was only once both foreign gentlemen were outside in raw night air that hit the lungs like a stab, looking round for a cab, that Horace re-opened the topic of Inna's talent. He murmured persuasively, ‘One day I'd love you to hear her properly; today, of course, there was her cousin as well; but I was delighted that you heard, even in this evening's informal setting, the astonishing sound she makes.'

Auer sounded very polite indeed, as he replied, ‘Mm, yes, and Strauss, a delightful composer; a very pretty girl, too,' though that didn't sound, to Horace's ears, quite like a compliment, or an answer.

And then a cab appeared, and the two men ran after it, and began haggling over prices with the drunk coachman. It was only after all that was agreed and Horace had settled the other man inside that he returned to the question of Inna. He ventured, ‘I was wondering whether perhaps, one day, when you're next holding auditions at the Conservatoire, you might agree to put Mademoiselle Feldman on your list?'

Auer smiled, but he shook his head. It seemed to Horace that there was pity in that smile.

‘Charming and talented though Mademoiselle undoubtedly is, dear fellow,' he said in his Mitteleuropean growl as the coachman applied the whip to his beasts, ‘she and her partner are clearly in love. I make it a rule not to take young girls in love for my pupils. Whatever would be the point?'

*   *   *

Sometimes the most important thing is not to lose face. By the time he reached the yellow room, Horace had more or less decided how to save Inna's.

Inna seemed at least partly aware that the hope and potential of the evening had fizzled out, he thought as he entered the room. She was sitting in an armchair and had folded her arms around her instrument as if it were a baby. She was looking, not wounded, especially, or hurt, just distant.

To Horace's relief, at least she wasn't looking at Yasha, who was sitting quietly in the armchair beside hers. Horace let his own eyes slide past the young man, concentrating on his desire to spare Inna the crushing blow of a rejection based on Auer's mistaken impression. (It had just been the way two people are when they're playing, he told himself, again. And look, Inna was paying her cousin no attention at all, now it was over.)

‘Well?' Madame Leman said.

‘There are auditions, twice a year, for the Conservatoire,' Horace stammered, and then, plunging into the lie direct, with a brave smile, ‘He said, “Why not try?”'

Slowly the Lemans nodded, trying not to look deflated. They knew that for Auer to have mentioned the regular auditions meant he hadn't been overwhelmed, but hadn't closed the door altogether. What they didn't know was that Auer hadn't even said this.

Horace glanced over at Inna. She understood, too, he could see, though she was trying not to show disappointment. Quietly, he watched the dance of fleeting expressions on her face. His heart was full, feeling her imagined distress. Now an eyebrow went up a fraction; now he caught the ghost of a smile. Horace had never loved her with such breathless tenderness as in this defenceless moment.

He ignored the tall dark shape behind her. Unlike everyone else, Yasha was not even trying to take the disappointment lightly, but was frowning. Scowling, more like. Well, Horace thought irritably, the boy had never had any pretensions to finesse, had he?

‘Well!' Madame Leman said, rather too cheerfully. ‘Let's not let the champagne go to waste, anyway. We'll drink to Inna's success at the auditions when they come round, at least!'

Horace was beginning to feel he'd made a mistake by bringing in Auer, and stirring up feelings he'd have done better to leave untouched. So he was more grateful still when Lidiya Leman first handed him a fizzing glass and then, putting an arm round him and smiling very wide, began making a speech of thanks.

‘I know Inna will feel this more than the rest of us, so perhaps I'm speaking out of turn,' she began, loudly and with far too much emphasis. Horace sensed the reproach to Inna in her words, but Inna just nodded with that vague, unsettling half-smile. ‘But we are so very
grateful
to you, all of us, dear Horace, for your
tremendous
generosity of spirit, and above all for your
great
kindness to Inna, for all the
wonderful
opportunities that, out of
sheer goodness of heart
, you've been making available to her…'

Horace, bobbing and grinning and keeping his eyes fixed on the smiling Lemans, was nevertheless horribly aware, as he might be of a throbbing toe inside a polished shoe, of Yasha looking thunderous at these words.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yasha put an apparently casual hand forward and touch Inna's arm, as if to cut her off from Madame Leman's flow of thanks.

Then, to his relief, something seemed to change. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Inna move very slightly away, out of her cousin's reach. She, at least, didn't intend to be rude. Instead, she turned towards Horace.

‘Madame Leman's quite right,' she said, though her face was still empty of all but the vaguest of feeling; her voice too. ‘I have so much to thank you for, Horace. I don't know where to begin.'

‘The jewel alone!' Madame Leman enthused, with a level of excitement that, after Inna's words, struck Horace as embarrassingly false. ‘Your good-luck gift – that little violin! Why, I was looking more closely at it, after you'd gone, and the
quality
of the workmanship – those little strings, and the bridge, and the F-holes, all so tiny, yet so perfect. It absolutely takes your breath away!'

Leman nodded. ‘Yes indeed,' he said. ‘It's a very beautiful thing.'

Horace bowed his head, feeling that, even if Madame Leman was trying far too hard, this evening's events were beginning to go at least a little his way, at last.

With exaggerated curiosity, Madame Leman added, playfully, ‘Inna, dear, can't we take another look?'

Obediently, Inna put a finger to her neck and pulled the fine chain up from under the blouse's high collar. She held out the tiny violin in one hand, while still holding the real violin in the other, and both parent Lemans came close and began exclaiming over the jewel.

Madame Leman began an arch question. ‘So where, Horace dear, are you planning to take Inna…?'

At the same time, Inna opened her mouth. ‘Yes,' Inna said quietly, and she did, finally, meet Horace's gaze now, and gave him a small but definite smile. ‘I think it's lovely, too.'

‘… next?' finished Madame Leman, looking flirtatiously at Horace.

Horace relaxed, but only for a moment. Because suddenly, Yasha, looking and sounding like an aggrieved child, had pushed past the Lemans and was standing in front of Inna.

‘You wore it!' Yasha hissed.

Her eyes opened wide. She shook her head. The gesture clearly meant: Stop, stop. ‘Yasha,' she said quietly. ‘Please.' But she dropped the silver violin, which came to rest, winking as she breathed, against her pin-tucked chest.

Appalled, Horace watched both the Lemans' faces turn down, their shoulders hunching defensively about their ears. He'd never seen them so embarrassed.

‘Of course I wore it,' Inna was saying in a placating tone that was only just above a whisper. ‘Heavens, Yasha, why wouldn't I? It's the loveliest thing … and after all the help Horace has been so kind as to give…'

‘We've all been helping!' Yasha persisted. ‘Haven't we? Haven't I?' He grabbed her by the shoulders, staring straight at her, as if he were imitating a jealous lover from a comic opera. ‘But it's all, “Horace, Horace, Horace”, tonight, all “Where are you taking her next?” What about
my
help?'

Horace saw Inna close her eyes. He liked the way she kept her emotions small in public – something her tempestuous relative could usefully learn, he thought – but, for a moment, she looked openly exasperated, or worse.

For a long moment, Horace saw Yasha look hungrily at her face, and observe her closed eyes and the weary anger in her expression.

Then the boy was off, flinging out of the apartment, at a run.

Motionless, they listened to the crashing and snatchings of his retreat.

Inna's eyes remained shut.

‘Well, really!' Madame Leman said – wholly inadequately, Horace thought – long after silence had fallen. Her embarrassment was turning to indignation. Her cheeks were pink.

‘Mmm, an absolute symphony of slamming doors,' Leman said, raising a mocking eyebrow and beginning to grin. ‘He's surpassed himself tonight, our Yasha. God knows where he can fling off to at this time of night, though. He'll be back soon enough.'

Still with her eyes shut, Inna said, ‘He was going to see a man called Yermansky, I think.'

Leman shrugged that off. ‘Well,' he added merrily, ‘all the more champagne for the rest of us, at any rate.'

But Inna shook her head. ‘Will you excuse me?' she said, politely but distantly. ‘I'm very tired.' In the doorway, she stopped and said, still in that small, remote voice, ‘Thank you again, Horace, so much.' But she didn't look up.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was December before Horace took Inna out again. She was still recovering from her long bout of influenza, which had been so severe that, at one stage, it had seemed she might not recover.

He'd chosen the opera, thinking that the opulent blue-and-gold cylinder of the auditorium, the swaying ladies in their silks, the bowing cavaliers in their medals, and, in general, the ritual flavour of the solemn pleasure, would be so far from the life Inna usually led in St. Petersburg that they would cause her no pain.

The performance that night happened to be
Eugene Onegin
. For a while, at work, as he stared through his magnifying glass at the lid he was painting, Horace allowed himself to worry about whether Inna might miserably compare herself to its heroine, poor Tatyana, who as a helpless young provincial falls in love with the dandy Onegin, and, after an agonizing baring of her heart in the moonlight, is rejected.

It had cut Horace to the quick to realize how exactly the timing of Inna's illness coincided with her young man making off into the night to manufacture bombs in the provinces, or wherever he'd gone; but it hadn't surprised him, exactly. Not after that last evening, performing for Auer. Auer had been right, he knew, however hard he had tried to convince himself the maestro had misunderstood the situation. Horace could still remember the pain he'd felt, watching the way they were looking at each other as the music drew to a close, when he'd begun to realize that she was in love. But he could also tell, without needing to be told, how humiliated Inna must then have felt that her cousin had just upped and gone, without a word. What he didn't know was whether there was now any reason for
him
to think there might yet be hope.