Starburst (4 page)

W
hen the telephone rang, Lewis Jones made no immediate attempt to answer it. At this time of the year, it was almost certain to be some theatre company or comedy act leaving it to the last to book into the Fringe rather than anything to do with marketing. There were other people in the office whose jobs it was to handle such calls. However, when it continued on, he stopped reading through the gruesome forty-word description of Nick Cardean’s forthcoming act, “Four Weddings, Four Funerals and Four Acid Baths Somewhere-in-Between,” got to his feet and looked over the partition that gave him a little privacy in the cluttered, open-plan space. There were eight others working in the Festival Fringe office at that time and each was engaged in a telephone call. So, with a resigned shrug, Lewis sat down again and picked up the receiver.

“Good morning, Fringe office.”

The man on the other end of the line spoke with a distinct Yorkshire twang, his words flowing out at a speed only matched in extreme by their inaudibility.

“All right, let’s just go through one thing at a time,” Lewis interjected as the man avalanched him with information. “What was the name of the artist again?”

The noise in the office was only a low hum of voices, but nevertheless Lewis had to push a finger into his uncovered ear to be able to hear what the man was saying.

“Soit’s Rene Brownlow, is it?…No, I don’t need to know what kind of act it…oh, it’s comedy, is it?…Yes, I’m sure she’s very funny—look, could you just hang on a mo’ and I’ll see if I can find her name on the database.”

Someone in the office had nicked Lewis’s mouse mat, so he had to slew the mouse halfway across the slippery surface of his desk before he got the arrow on the icon at the top of his computer screen. He typed in the name, thumped on a key and the name appeared.

“Right, I’ve got Rene Brownlow, care of Andersons Westbourne Social Club, Hartlepool. That’s the one, is it?…okay then…Well, it looks like you’ve paid the registration fee of twelve pounds, but nothing else.”

That set the man off like a train on a downhill stretch, his explanation gradually picking up speed until it was both unstoppable and incomprehensible. Lewis, however, managed to ascertain from it all that a venue had been booked in West Richmond Street (cheap, he thought to himself, but a comedian’s graveyard down there), that money was coming from different sources and that it had all been very complicated to coordinate.

“I can understand all that,” Lewis cut in loudly, hoping that volume might scare the man silent, “but in the monthly bulletins we sent out to you, it does say that to secure your place and get your name in the programme you have to pay three hundred quid before the end of April—and now it’s two weeks into May.”

The man stuttered out some lightning-fast excuses, and then careered off sideways into a non sequitur about someone being “very hard done by” and “life dealing her a cruel blow.”

“Could you just hold it a moment?” Lewis asked, holding up a hand, a pointless and ineffectual action when trying to halt such a barrage of unseen verbosity. Hearing the man still speaking when he pressed the “hold” button, Lewis got to his feet and once more peered over the partition. Everyone was still engaged in telephone calls, so he plumped on interrupting Gail at the next desk, waving a hand semaphore-like to try to attract her attention. She never saw it.

“Gail, give us a help here, will you?” he whispered loudly to her.

Gail swung round in her chair to face Lewis. She asked her caller to hold the line before clamping her hand over the mouthpiece. “What is it?”

“I’ve got some fellow from Hartlepool here who hasn’t paid up the three hundred pounds yet.”

“Has he got a venue?” Gail asked.

“Seems so.”

“And has he got the money?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, just tell him to get it here by tomorrow latest, along with his act description. We won’t be finalizing the programme for another two weeks.”

Lewis gave Gail a solid thumbs-up, sat down at his desk and put the receiver to his ear. “Hullo? Right, the story is this. If you get a cheque and an act description to us by tomorrow, then you’ll be all right…yes, better to do ‘next day delivery’…Not at all, glad to be of help…no, I’m not Indian, I’m Welsh…that’s all right, don’t give it another thought…goodbye.”

Standing at the bar in Andersons Westbourne Social Club, known in all parts of Hartlepool as Andy’s, Stan Morris replaced the receiver on the payphone and shoveled the remainder of the change off the dog-eared telephone directory into his cupped hand. He let it cascade with a jangle into his trouser pocket, and then turned to smile at the four men that eyed him expectantly.

“Well?” the smallest of them asked, his face wrinkled up to stop his bottle glasses from falling off the end of his snub nose. “What did she say?”

“It was an
’e,
” Stan replied importantly, clearing a path for himself through the eager band by holding the palms of his hands together like an old-fashioned diver. Everyone fell into step behind him as he headed back to the table in the corner of the sparsely furnished bar, where seven pints of beer in varying stages of consumption and a scattered set of dominoes awaited them. Wooden chairs were shifted back noisily on the linoleum floor as they resumed their seats. “I thought ’e was Indian,” said Stan, taking a sip from his glass, then carefully wiping his mouth with a folded handkerchief he kept stored in the breast pocket of his tweed jacket, “but ’e was Welsh.”

“Bugger ’is nationality,” exclaimed the little man with the glasses, taking a pinch of Golden Virginia tobacco from a greasy leather pouch and dexterously rolling himself a twig of a cigarette, “what did ’e say about Rene?”

Stan shot a haughty look at the man. “I was merely telling ye that, Skittle, as a point of interest.” A universal groan went round the table. “All right, the man said we were still in time as long as we got a cheque in the post tonight and sent it ‘next day delivery.’”

A murmur of relief greeted the news.

“For a moment, I thought ye’d blown it,” said Derek Marsham, whose long face, sunken cheekbones and down-turned mouth gave the impression that he suffered constant and immeasurable unhappiness.

“I beg your pardon, Derek,” Stan retorted. “What d’ye mean by that?”

“Well, ye prattle on so, ye do. It was a bloody wonder the man understood one word of what ye were saying to ’im.”

Stan puffed out his cheeks and pulled himself upright in his chair. “I’ll have ye know, Derek my friend, that at one time I was an accomplished after-dinner speaker. Sought after the length and breadth of Yorkshire, I was, and never before ’as the allegation been made that—”

“Come on, lads, this is getting us no place.” The voice abruptly stopped Stan’s protest, and four faces turned to look at the man sporting the short denim jacket with the turned-up collar. Even though Terry Crosland, in his mid-fifties, would have been younger than his companions by at least ten years, his long dark sideburns and Teddy-boy quiff seemed to put him in a distant and bygone era, while the others, who kept what was left of their hair barber-short and garbed themselves in cloth caps, mufflers and belted raincoats, were timelessly fashioned as their fathers and grandfathers would have been before them.

Stan Morris composed himself once more, but not before he had given Derek a sharp look of contempt. “I quite agree with ye, Terry. Well spoken, that man.”

Terry rubbed his hands nervously on the legs of his jeans. “What I think we should be discussing is…okay, so we’ve got the money together, but don’t you think it’s time we told Rene what we’ve been planning?” The suggestion brought about a rumble of agreement. “Also, there’s another three months before the festival, so ’ow’s about we put the motion before the committee that we keep raising the money for ’er, because we can’t send ’er off up to Edinburgh flat broke.”

Norman Brown cleared his throat and leaned forward to enter the circle of discussion for the first time. “That’s a good point,” he said, clutching a hand to his arm to stop the shake of developing Parkinson’s. “Our Maisie lives up Clavering way and ’er kids go to the same primary school as the Brownlow kids, and she says that the Brownlows took out a mortgage on one of those newbuilds just before Gary Brownlow lost ’is job with Daiwong Electrics, so they’re just about skint…”

Norman tailed off, silenced by the hardened stare on Stan Morris’s face. “Thank ye, Norman,” he said, a condescending smile twitching his cheeks momentarily. “I think we know that, otherwise we wouldn’t be bothering to do all this for Rene.”

“Oh,” said Norman Brown quietly and shrank back out of the circle.

“I don’t mind going up to see Rene and telling ’er what’s been planned.” It was Terry who spoke, just after he had shot a wink at disheartened Norman to give his fragile confidence a bit of a boost. “I ’ave to ’ead up toward Clavering any road this evening to do a paint job, so it won’t be that much out me way.”

Stan Morris, who sensed that his commanding action in dealing with Norman’s stupidity had brought proceedings back under his control, knocked a fist on the table. “I think that’s a very good idea. Much better to break the news to ’er in the comfort of ’er own home, rather than when she’s all caught up pulling pints behind the bar ’ere. Everybody in agreement that Terry should take this on?”

The assembled company nodded their approval.

“Right, then,” Stan sang out, taking a ballpoint pen and a notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. “So what we ’ave to do now is come up with a forty-word description of Rene’s act.”

Skittle squinted at Stan through his glasses, a quizzical expression on his face. “’Ow the ’ell can we do that when we don’t know what she’s going to be saying?”

“We have to use our imagination then, don’t we, Skittle,” Stan replied in a schoolmasterly voice. He flicked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve all heard ’er up there on that stage every Thursday night for the past six months, so we have a fair inkling of what ’er act’s going to be about.” He creased open his notebook with the side of his hand. “Right, then, I’ll start the creative ball rolling. What about ‘ ’Ilarious comedienne from ’Artlepool?”

“That’s only four words,” droned sombre Derek Marsham.

Raising a long-suffering eyebrow, Stan threw the pen down on the table and crossed his arms. “Ooh, I can tell this is going to be a long afternoon.”

I
n the small sub-office of
The Sunday Times
in Edinburgh, Harry Wills opened the top drawer of his desk, took out a stick of Nicorette chewing gum, unwrapped it with one hand and popped it in his mouth. At the same time, with the receiver jammed in against chin and shoulder, he continued to write his own form of shorthand on the spiraled notepad, sometimes interspersing the text with longhand words for which, in his thirty-odd years in journalism, he had never worked out abbreviations.

He clicked the top of the ballpoint pen and dropped it on the desk. “Thank you, Monsieur Dessuin, for your time. I think that’s all I need to ask. You said you were going to be at the Tower Hotel until tomorrow, is that right?…just in case there’s anything else I need to know…good…well, thank you again…goodbye.”

Harry thumped the receiver down on its cradle in frustration and then briefly read through his spidery jottings before lobbing the notebook onto the desk and, with an angry groan, leaning his considerable bulk back in the old wooden armchair with force enough to make it creak violently in protest. There wasn’t a story there at all. Not that it really surprised him that much. He had been trying to get a personal interview with Angélique Pascal for two years now, ever since she had become the “great new discovery” after winning the coveted Prix du Concours Long-Tibaud at the Conservatoire in Paris, but never had he been able to get farther than speaking to her manager and mentor, Albert Dessuin. He laughed quietly to himself and shook his head resignedly. Well, at least he knew he wasn’t alone in his failure. It was a well-known fact amongst all his journalistic colleagues that Dessuin kept the young French violinist under such a tight rein that her existence could at best be described as reclusive.

Heaving himself out of the chair, Harry walked over to the window and gazed down onto the sun-striped lawns of Princes Street Gardens. This year, he thought to himself, right here in Edinburgh. With Pascal being located in the city for more than a week when she performed at the festival, there would never be a better chance to get that interview.

On the fifteenth floor of the Tower Hotel in London, Albert Dessuin also stood gazing out of the window, his picture-postcard view being no less spectacular than that of Harry Wills in the northern capital city. Small cutters and sightseeing barges plied the murky waters of the river Thames, appearing and disappearing under the majestic span of Tower Bridge. His mind, however, was not focused on the view. He stood with an elbow resting in one hand, the other playing with the collar of his cashmere polo-necked sweater. His thin lips were pursed and his eyes twitched rhythmically behind the gold-framed spectacles that were seated firmly on his long, thin nose. He was listening intently to the strains of the violin that drifted in through the closed door of the adjoining room, as it played through the first movement of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D Minor. With every downbeat, he jerked his head, making the high cockscomb of jet-black hair pulse as if powered by an electrical current. Then, in an instant, he threw up his hands, simultaneously clicking his fingers, and with a puff of disdain strode over to the door and pulled it forcefully open.

“Angélique, what are you doing?”

The girl stopped playing instantly. She turned to look at him, her large brown eyes beneath the straight fringe of short dark hair eyeing him with uncertainty. She dropped the violin from her shoulder and began twisting the bow back and forth in her fingers.

“What do you mean?” she asked hesitantly.

“I can tell from through here in my room that you are not concentrating. You are missing so many beats.”

The girl’s full mouth broadened into a wide smile. “I know. I was looking out of the window. It is so beautiful out there with the sun glinting on the river. Have you seen all the boats?”

“Yes, I have,” replied Dessuin with little enthusiasm.

“Oh, Albert, I love London. It is such a wonderful place. I am going to come to live here one day.”

“Pfoo! Why would you want to live here?” Dessuin snapped. “Paris is so much more superior. It has better shops, better restaurants, nicer people.” He moved across the room to the girl and dismissed the idea with a light backhanded brush to her shoulder. “You are mad to even think about it.”

A sparkle of excitement glinted in her eyes. “Maybe one has to do mad things at some time or other.”

“Of course, but not at
this
time. You are twenty-one years old and you are very fortunate that together we are being able to cut out an excellent career for you, and that is what you should be concentrating on right now”—he put a hand under her violin and guided it back under her chin—“starting with you getting those downbeats right.”

Angélique lifted her bow to the strings and with a gentle dip to her head, closed her eyes and began to play. After the opening three bars, she stopped abruptly.

“I heard you talking on the telephone. Who was it?”

Dessuin shrugged his shoulders. “Some
journaliste
from Scotland. Now keep playing.”

Angélique bit at the side of her mouth and tapped her bow on the strings of the violin. “Why don’t you allow me to talk to the press? I’m quite capable of doing so.”

Dessuin narrowed his eyes at the girl before fixing her with an insincere smile. He draped an arm around the shoulders of his protégée. “Of course you are, but it is so much better for you to do what you are best at, and I will do likewise.” It may have been his imagination, but as he planted a protective kiss on the side of her head, he felt pressure on his hand as if she were drawing herself away from him.

“Your mother has been on the telephone,” she said quietly.

Dessuin dropped his arm from her shoulder. “When was this?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Because you were away from your room at the time.”

Dessuin nodded slowly. “And what did she say?”

Angélique played a merry trill on her violin. “She thinks she is suffering from flu again,” she said lightly. “She wants you to call her.”

Dessuin turned and strutted over to the door of his bedroom. He opened it, and then turned to glare angrily at Angélique. “You know, my mother has been very good to you. You should have more respect for her and not be so mean about her
fragilité.
” His rebuke was met with a blank stare from the young violinist. “I think you are a very cold person sometimes, Angélique. I am going to call her now, and then I am going out to get some fresh air.”

“Oh, can I come too, Albert?” Angélique asked breathlessly. She hurriedly placed the violin and bow down on her bed and moved towards him. “I know I should not have been so
flippant
about your mother. I am sorry. Please, when you speak to her, tell her I was asking after her.”

Dessuin huffily flicked his head to the side. “I suppose you could come, but are you sure you are ready for the concert tonight?”

“Albert, you know I can play Sibelius with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Five minutes ago, it sounded to me that you were.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Most certainly I do, and if you play it like that tonight, you will make yourself a laughing stock.”

Dessuin could tell from the look on Angélique’s face that he had succeeded in casting doubt in her mind. He decided to push her a little further. “And what about Mozart? Your reputation would be shot down in flames if you screwed up in Vienna.”

The enthusiasm that Angélique had displayed visibly drained from her being. “Maybe I should stay and do a bit more practice.”

He smiled at her. “A good idea. Anyway, it’s cold outside. We don’t want
you
getting a chill like my mother, now, do we?”

Angélique stood watching as Dessuin closed the door behind him, then turned and picked up the violin from the bed. She closed her arms around it, holding it hard to her chest, feeling its shape press against her small firm breasts. It was her comforter, her friend these days, almost her only friend. Since leaving the Conservatoire two years ago, she had hardly seen any of her old friends, and certainly she had not had the time to make any new ones. The routine had been constant. One hotel room after another, one concert hall after another. Of course, she understood what Albert was always telling her, that she had been blessed with a supreme gift of music and that it was her duty to share that gift with all the people of the world who did not possess it. But the pressure was becoming intense. She wanted a break from it all. She wanted to go out once more to the cinemas and to the bars in Paris with her friends from the Conservatoire, and she wanted to go home to Clermont Ferrand to visit her family and spend time with dear Madame Lafitte. Oh, how she missed that wonderful woman!

Without relinquishing her hold on the violin, Angélique sat down on the edge of the bed and blew out a long breath to steady the wave of nausea that flooded up from her stomach. She knew only too well, however, that the cause of this was not the onset of such an illness from which the dreaded Madame Dessuin constantly claimed she was suffering. This was worse, and had begun to take place more frequently over the past two months. It was brought on by the unthinkable realization that she, Angélique Pascal, was beginning to feel bored of playing this wonderful instrument. How could she ever entertain such an idea when there were those who clamored at the box offices of the great concert halls to hear her play? How could she tell such a thing to Albert Dessuin, the man who had nurtured her through her days at the Conservatoire de Paris and who had given up everything to become her manager and counselor? And what would she ever be able to say to Madame Lafitte?

Angélique kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, pulling her legs up so that her ankles rested against the curve of her narrow-hipped bottom. As she nestled her head deep into the pillow, a tear slowly trickled down her cheek and was immediately absorbed by the white linen pillowcase.

“Hullo?” The voice on the telephone sounded weak and quavering.

“Hullo, maman. It’s Albert.”

“Oh, Albert,
mon cher,
why have you not called me before now? Where have you been?” A pathetic cough followed.

“I am sorry, maman. I did not know you
had
called until a moment ago.”

“Do you mean the girl never gave you the message?” Suddenly there seemed to be strength in the voice.

Dessuin rested an elbow on the dark-stained desk and rubbed the palm of his hand against his forehead. For eight years, Angélique had been living with him and his mother in their capacious apartment in the
quinzième
district of Paris, and still she could hardly bring herself to call her son’s young protégée by name. “I have been away from my room, maman, and Angélique has been practicing for the concert tonight. It was not her fault.”

“I am not feeling at all well, Albert.” The voice changed for the worse once more.

“So I understand. Have you called the doctor?”

“Pah! The doctor knows nothing. Anyway, he is too busy even to visit a sick old woman.”

“In that case, you must send Simone round to the
pharmacie
for some paracetamol.”

“Albert, it is Tuesday. Simone only comes for two hours on a Tuesday. She has left already.” Another feeble cough sounded down the line. “When are you coming home, Albert?”

“I cannot be back in Paris before Friday, maman.”

“Ah,
mon Dieu,
Friday! I may very well be on my deathbed by then, if I have not gone before.”

“Maman, that is ridiculous,” Dessuin said irritably. “You are as strong as an ox.”

“How would you know how I am feeling?” Again the strength in the voice returned. “You have never considered how I am feeling. If that had been so, you would never have left your teaching job at the Conservatoire to fly around the world with that girl.”

“Maman, I have talked to you countless times about this.”

“You were never able to make the grade, were you, Albert? You are only doing this because you see in her the talent that you lacked. Don’t forget that if it had not been for my contacts, you would never have got that job at the Conservatoire.”

“That is most unfair, maman.”

“Pah! What age are you now? Thirty-seven years old? And you are going to be content to follow this girl around the world like a lapdog for the rest of your life?”

Dessuin did not reply, but leaned back in his chair and wound the telephone cord tightly around his fingers. He let out a short silent laugh. “Isn’t it strange how you always seem to sound so much better when you get angry?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Albert,” the suffering in the voice had returned, “I am sorry to say such things to you. It must be the fever. I do feel quite delirious.”

“Well, I suggest you take yourself to bed with a cup of hot lemon and a shot of cognac, and if you are feeling no better by Friday, I will take you to see the doctor.”

“You are a good boy, Albert. I know that.
Mon seul fils, et je t’aime beau-coup.
”

“
Et je t’aime aussi, maman.
I must go now. I have things to do. I will call you tonight.”

Dessuin replaced the receiver and sat for a moment focused on the letter-heading of the Tower Hotel, stacked neatly with its matching envelopes in the leather stand at the back of the desk. He then leaned slowly forward and clenched his hair with both hands, squeezing tighter and tighter until the pain brought tears to his eyes. Why was it so much part of her very nature to belittle those who were closest to her? She had acted exactly the same with his father as well, so much so that the man had often been driven to vent all his pent-up emotions in an irrational rage that had left neither Albert nor his mother physically untouched. He had too vivid memories of his puny young arms braced against his bedroom door, jarring like shock absorbers against the power of his father’s shoulder as he tried to gain entry, desperately reaching out a foot to hook round a chair so that he could jam it under the handle. And when his father would eventually calm down and Albert could hear him muttering to himself as he stolidly descended the stairs, Albert would then lay himself down carefully on his bed, fold his aching arms across his chest and feel the comforting coolness of the linen pillowcase against his throbbing, bruised face.