Musical Beds (2 page)

And people were looking at her, too. They could see her, pale and shaking. They knew he hadn’t told her about this.

How dare he put me in this position?

Milan watched Lord Davenport amble off, then tossed his hair and grinned broadly.

“So good to be back,” he said. “Look at your faces!”

He laughed, a kind of manic, jagged sound that owed little to genuine mirth.

“What’s going on?” The question came from Leonard, but articulated what every member of the group was thinking.

He hasn’t even looked at me yet. He hasn’t even looked at Evgeny’s old spot. Everybody else has. But he hasn’t.

“What’s going on? What do you think? They ask me back. I say no. They make me an offer I can’t refuse. I say yes.”

He shrugged and tapped his baton on the music stand.

“So now, hey, let’s play some music.”

A rumble of dissent arose from the two-thirds of the orchestra who hadn’t been members of Milan’s inner circle, but Milan spoke over it.

“If you love this orchestra, you will do this. It don’t matter what you think of me. You think of the orchestra. You do what is best for the orchestra. Right?”

The mutterings died down.

“We start with some Vaughan Williams.
Fantasia on a Theme
by Thomas Tallis
. I’m sorry, brass, woodwind, percussion—you sit this one out. Maybe go to the canteen for half an hour, yes? I see you here later for
Mars
from
The Planets
, okay?”

The musicians didn’t need telling twice. Desperate to huddle up for some gossip, they grabbed their bags and headed for the doors.

He still hadn’t looked at Lydia. Leonard handed out the scores while Milan fielded more questions from the cellists. The trustees had gone into a tailspin of anxiety when Milan had resigned. They had offered him money, but the only thing he’d wanted was the conductor role. It had taken two days of negotiation for them to crumble. Lydia was pretty sure they had offered him the post in the face of everybody’s better judgement.

“Sorry about your mother,” a viola player said.

Milan looked down for a moment.

“Thanks,” he said. “So. The music. I know this piece needs a secondary string section, but we will get some extra players when the time is nearer. For now I will ask the back row of each section to be our secondary section, right? And also we need a string quartet. So I want Camilla on cello, Brendan on viola, and, for violins, Leonard and Lydia.”

He had to look at her now. He had spoken her name. Her heart was a shrivelled, smouldering mess and her hands wouldn’t keep still—surely he had to look?

He raised his eyes, so very briefly, in her direction.

She tried to hold them but they slid away. There had been nothing in the look, just pure flatness.

“So,” he resumed, “we won’t yet have the depth of sound we need, but we must imagine it is there.” He spoke at length about his vision for the piece, never again looking over at Lydia. As his explanation continued, Lydia came to realise that this wasn’t the Milan they had known. The glitter and flourish was forced, where it had been so effortless before. He didn’t look at any of them properly—the eyes that had bored into souls now just lurked inside heavy lids, opaque and distant.

Her shock and anger at his sudden reappearance melted into compassion and love. Of course he was depressed. Given what he had been through, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was close to breakdown. After all, she knew he handled guilt badly—and now he had so much more of it to contend with. Most likely, it was only the music keeping him sane.

She took her bow and wrapped her fist around it tightly, willing herself to stop shaking, looking only at the music score and nowhere else.

By the time everyone had positioned their instruments and poised their bows, she was halfway to composure. Halfway was going to have to be near enough.

She turned her head the same way as everyone else’s, towards Milan. He looked over them, at some fixed point on the wall behind, holding his hands ready to signal the opening note.

Lydia worked hard at concentrating only on the notes in front of her and Milan’s hands, but the sweeping majesty of the music had its inevitable effect on her. She tried to quash the emotion, but the strange distance of Milan’s expression disturbed her too much. Her memory defeated her, calling to mind the image of him on Charles Bridge in Prague, when they had talked of a future together.

As the chords swelled and the melody soared, Lydia clung to her self-control with every fibre of her body. A lump grew and hardened in her throat while her head ached with longing and loss. As for her heart, it was too full to bear.

Quietly, she put down her instrument and walked out of the hall.

Nobody said anything. The music continued all the way to the doors. Milan hadn’t even noticed her leave.

Exiting the building, she broke into a run. It was absurd when she thought about it, because nobody was likely to be chasing her, but her legs wouldn’t stop, propelling her onwards as if possessing a will of their own.

That will seemed to be driving her back to the park, where she could stop, double over and breathe in huge lungfuls of blossom-scented air, while curious tourists and small children wove around her.

Once her heart had stopped pounding in her ears, she went to sit down on a bench. On the lake, ducks and swans glided around, just the way they always did. For them, everything was normal. For the ice-cream eaters and the playground toddlers, the elderly promenaders and the slacking government officials, everything was normal. For her, everything was wrong.

Look what he had made of her—the kind of person who would walk out of a rehearsal to avoid an embarrassingly public tearful scene. That wasn’t Lydia, the diligent, focused girl she’d thought she knew. That was some drama queen.

Worst of all, she had left her violin in there, so she would have to go back at some point. Couldn't she just leave it until tomorrow? Going back was unthinkable. Milan should understand. How had he expected her to react? Had he even thought about her reaction at all? Or was she just some piece of debris from the past, to be swept away and forgotten about? It certainly seemed so, from his manner in the rehearsal hall.

A fresh breeze whipped up, chasing the fallen blossom along the pathways and over the grass. Darkening cloud cover promised showers. The park strollers upped their pace, producing umbrellas from Harrods shopping bags.

The weather made Lydia’s decision for her.

She would go home and deal with it all tomorrow.

Chapter Two

The tiny Shepherd’s Bush basement flat she had taken on in January had turned fairly swiftly into a seldom-used bolthole. Once she had fallen under Milan’s spell, most of her London nights had been spent in his Barbican apartment. Then there had been the tour…

So the place lacked the homely feel she had originally planned for it. The weekends she had assumed she might spend in markets, looking for treasures and trinkets to brighten up the living room, had been spent instead in Milan’s bed. Consequently, the flat had a transient, student atmosphere to it, with just a sofa, television, computer and ‘rehearsal corner’—a piano squeezed into the tightest space with a metronome on top, plus a music stand.

She made herself a hot chocolate with lots of cream, dragged the quilt off her bed and lay on her sofa beneath it, watching stupid programmes about buying property abroad until the rain eased and dusk began to fall.

“It’s a sick day, that’s all,” she said to herself. “I’m not feeling too good. Nobody can prove I’m lying.”

Then she started to cry in earnest, until her exhaustion granted her the small mercy of sleep.

She was awoken by her doorbell, the jangle cutting through an actor on TV urging her to claim compensation for her accident. She reached for the remote control and turned off the volume, listening for a repeat of the bell, in case she had dreamt it.

Again, it shrilled through the flat. Lydia hated her bell—so demanding and alarming. She needed to get one of those mellow, dual-toned ones.

Maybe it was Vanessa. Vanessa, bringing her violin back. Yeah. It would be her. They could get that bottle of wine out of the fridge and talk about the shock of the day.

Or maybe it was just a charity collector, or a person seeking election, or a drunk staggering off the high street and falling down the area steps. That had happened before.

Or maybe it’s Milan
.

Stupid thought, stupid hope. Immediately she cursed herself for allowing it into her brain. Now she was bound to be disappointed and her welcome, if it was Vanessa, would be lukewarm.

Whoever was at the door knocked, knuckles rapping impatiently. Vanessa wouldn’t do that.

She put the chain on and opened it the two inches it would allow.

She had to look up at the visitor.

“Oh!”

She unchained the door and opened it wide.

“It’s you.”

Milan held out her instrument case.

“You forgot your violin.”

Now he was here, she had no idea how to act. Should she be furious, welcoming, excited, sad, happy? What? She was a little of all of them.

“So I can come in?”

“Oh. Yes. Come in.”

She stepped back, allowing him over the threshold. He stamped his feet on the doormat and peered around the living room, into which the doorway led directly.

“My God, you live here?”

He put down the violin case and a plastic bag containing, it seemed, a great many bottles, and began to take off his jacket.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said tightly.

For the first time, he looked at her directly.

“You are no beggar,” he said, lowering his voice.

What was that supposed to mean?

“I feel like one. And the first thing I’m begging for is something—anything—in the way of an explanation.”

“Ah, you are angry with me.” He handed her his jacket.

She stared down at it, feeling like a servant. This wasn’t the way she wanted to feel. She needed righteous indignation, and lots of it. Otherwise it would be too easy to forgive him.

“How do you expect me to feel?” She slung the jacket over the top of her coat, hoping it wouldn’t cause everything to fall off the single peg. “Did you even consider me? Or don’t I matter anymore?”

She flinched at his hand at her elbow, but he held on to it, standing behind her like a barrier between her and her sanity. If he was going to touch her, she couldn’t do this. She needed her resolve. Where was it?

“Lydia, there was no time. And I did call your father’s house. You had gone.”

“Oh! Did you?”

She twisted her neck to face him.

He drew her over to the sofa and sat her down, reaching inside the plastic bag for one of the bottles.

“You have glasses?”

“In the kitchen. Hang on.”

She filled cheap supermarket glasses with a rather expensive brand of red wine, then they sat down beside each other.

“Only two days ago, we made the deal,” said Milan. His body angled towards hers, one elbow resting on the back of the sofa.

She felt nervous, like it was a first date or a job interview. There seemed to be the potential for some kind of failure.

“Then I called your father’s house, but he tells me you have gone to London, just that day.”

“I do have a mobile phone, you know.”

“I couldn’t reach it.”

“Oh!” She put her hand to her mouth, remembering that it had been out of charge for the best part of two days. Thinking she would never hear from him again, she had grown neglectful, where once she had been obsessed with keeping the battery topped up. “Shit! I’m sorry.”

There, it had happened. Already, she was apologising to him and feeling like a fool. How did he do this to her, every time?

“I thought you are not speaking to me.”

He looked dejected, his hair flopping into his eyes.

She put a finger up to brush it aside. Her fingertips touched his skin and her whole body shivered. The wine sloshed in its glass.

He took it from her and put it on the table, keeping a hold on her hand.

“You are speaking to me?”

“Of course. I’ve missed you so much―”

“Shh. Show me.”

His forehead connected with hers, then so did his lips, fever-hot and fervent. Kissing him was like sinking back into an exquisite dream of happiness, one that she had never expected to relive. Whatever had happened, whoever was at fault, there would never be anybody who could make her feel this way.

Holding on to him for dear life, she allowed the hope to grow inside her, the hope that everything could be as it had been on the Charles Bridge, when they’d faced their future together over the River Vltava. The greatest moment of her life, which had plunged so rapidly to the worst—could it be back within reach?

She lifted her top to allow him access, then let him lay her down on the threadbare sofa cushions, the pair of them still joined at the lips while he knelt above her, reacquainting himself with her body. She breathed in his familiar scent, although there was an extra element behind it, something a little bitter that she didn’t recognise. But it didn’t matter. His mouth was on hers, his tongue inside, his hands fluttering busily up and down her body, his knees wedging her in position, and she was hanging off his neck, wanting to crush him against her and keep him there. No more escapes, no more parting.

He lifted his lips from hers for a moment.

“You missed me? I missed you.”

“Of course I did, you idiot. I love you. You know that.”

He ran his thumb across her brow, his eyes no longer flat and lifeless but brimming with intensity.

“It can be good again, yes?”

“If you let it be.”

He nodded. “Then I think you must show me your bedroom.”

She showed him the bedroom, and she showed him much more. She bared her body to him, feeling like a virgin on her wedding night, that curious mix of coyness and excitement and a kind of pain at the pit of her stomach from feeling too much.