The Courage Consort (9 page)

'Hello! Courage Consort? Carlo Pignatelli.'

He was Italian, but worked for a Luxembourg newspaper, and he'd been sent to cover the Benelux Contemporary Music Festival. He had already seen publicity material on the Consort, and knew exactly what he wanted.

Dagmar was nursing a glass of apricot juice alone in the front room while the English members of the group hung around the oven trying to make toast. Pignatelli made a beeline for the German girl, who was wearing black tights and a white cotton blouse.

'You're Dagmar Belotte, right?' He sounded alarmingly as if he'd learned English from watching subtitled cockney soap operas; in truth, he'd just returned to the bosom of the European press after ten alcoholic years in London.

'That's right,' said Dagmar, putting her drink down on the floor. She was going to need both hands for this one, she could tell.

'You're into mountaineering, right?' said Pignatelli, as if getting a few final facts straight after a gruellingly thorough interview.

'That's right,' said Dagmar.

'You wouldn't have any of your gear with you, would you?'

'What for?'

'A picture.'

'A picture of what?'

'A picture of you in mountaineering gear. Ropes.' He indicated with his hairy hands where the ropes would hang on her, fortunately using his own chest rather than hers to demonstrate. 'Axe.' He mimed a small act of violence against an invisible cliff face.

'There are no mountains here,' said Dagmar evenly.

The photographer was willing to compromise. Quickly sizing up the feel of the château's interior, his eyes lingering for microseconds on the rack of antique recorders, he said, 'Play the flute?'

'No.'

'Mind holding one?'

Dagmar was speechless for a moment, which he took as assent. Surprisingly fleet on his feet, he bounded over to the recorders and selected the biggest. Handing it over to her, he leered encouragingly, then drew his camera from its holster with a practised one-handed motion. Dagmar folded her arms across her breasts, clasping the recorder in one fist like a police baton.

'Could you put it in your mouth maybe?' suggested the photographer.

'Forget it,' said Dagmar, tossing the instrument onto a nearby cushion.

'Is there a grand piano?' rejoined the photographer, quick as a flash. She surely wouldn't object to leaning in and fingering a few strings, canopied by the lid.

'No, it's a…' The word Dagmar was looking for refused to translate itself from German. She considered saying 'erect' but decided against it. 'Not grand,' she said, her big eyes narrowing to slits.

Undaunted, the photographer peered outside to gauge the weather. Mercifully, a loud noise started up from somewhere inside the house, a disconsolate human cry that could not be ignored.

'Excuse me,' muttered Dagmar as she strode off to find her baby.

The photographer turned his attention immediately to Catherine.

'Is it true,' he said, picking up Dagmar's half-finished tumbler of juice, 'a soprano can shatter glass?'

***

T
HAT NIGHT, WHEN
the singing was over, the château was even hotter than the night before. Catherine found herself alone in the front room with Julian, everyone else having gone to bed.

Julian was on his hands and knees in front of a bookcase, peering at the spines. He had finished everything he'd brought with him to Belgium, all the thrillers and exposés, and was now in the market for something else. He read no Dutch, so such tomes as
Het Leven en Werk van Cipriano de Rore (1516—1565)
didn't quite hit the spot, but he was fluent in French and—surprisingly, to Catherine—Latin.

'Really? Latin?' she said, as if he'd just revealed a facility for Urdu or Sinhalese.

'I don't know why you're so surprised,' said Julian, his bottom—ass?—arse?—in the air as he studied the titles. 'We sing Latin texts all the time.'

'Yes, but…' Catherine cast her mind back to the last time she'd sung in Latin, and was surprised at the ease with which she recalled the words of Gabrieli's 'O Magnum Mysterium.' Something was happening to her brain lately, an unblocking of the channels, a cleaning of the contours. 'We use translations. Or I do, anyway. Roger prints out parallel English and Latin texts for me, and that's how I learn what it all means.'

'I don't need Roger to tell me what it all means,' muttered Julian as he pulled an ancient-looking volume out of the bookcase. It slid smoothly into his hands, without the billow of dust Catherine might have expected—but then, Gina had dusted there only a few days ago.

'I think I'll go for a walk,' said Catherine.

'You do that,' said Julian. He was in a peculiar, intense state, as if he'd passed right through frustration into whatever lay beyond. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, he was opening the fragile old book in his lap and bending his head towards its creamy pages, his damp black hair swinging down over his forehead. For Catherine, it was all indefinably unnerving, and her instinct was to get away.

Roger would still be awake, though, in the bed upstairs. Roger, Julian, and the dark forest of Martinekerke: she was stuck between the devil, and the devil, and the deep blue sea.

Catherine set off into the night, with a windcheater loosely draped over her T-shirt, and only a pencil torch to guide her through the dark. She didn't even switch it on, but kept it in the back pocket of her jeans, hoping that her sight would adjust to the starlight, the way the eyes of people like Dagmar evidently did.

Walking across the road, Catherine felt and heard, but could not see, her feet stepping off the smooth tarmac into the leafy perimeter of the forest. She rustled cautiously forward, trusting her body aura to warn her of approaching trees. Overhead, the sky remained black; perhaps the awful humidity meant that it was cloudy.

She removed the torch from her pocket and shone its thin beam onto the ground before her. A small circle of leaves and earth stood out from the darkness like an image on a television screen. It moved as she tilted her wrist, scooting backwards and forwards through the trees, growing paler. After only thirty seconds of use, the batteries of the torch were getting tired already; the feeble power supply just wasn't up to the challenge of a whole forest full of night. She switched it off, and hoped for the best.

You know what you've come here for, don't you?
challenged a voice from inside her. She wasn't alarmed: it was her own voice, intimate and patient, not the terrifying stranger who had once commanded her to swallow poison or slice through the flesh of her wrists. It was just a little harmless internal conversation, between Catherine and herself.

No, tell me: what am I here for?
she asked in return.

You're waiting for the cry,
came the answer.

She walked deeper into the forest, afraid and unrepentant. A breeze whispered through the trees, merciful after the trapped and stagnant heat inside the house. She was just getting a breath of fresh air, that was all. There was no such thing as ghosts: a ghost would always be revealed, in the clear light of day, to have been an owl, or a wolf, or one's own father standing in the door of one's bedroom, or a plastic bag caught on a branch, waving in the wind. The dead stayed dead. The living had to push on, without help or hindrance from the spirit world.

Catherine's eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, and she could see the boughs of the trees around her, and an impression of the ground beneath her feet. Wary of getting herself lost but wanting to stay in the forest longer, she wandered in circles, keeping the distant golden lights of the house in sight. She clapped her palms against trees as she passed them, swinging around like a child on a pole. The roughness of the bark was heavenly on her hands.

After perhaps half an hour she grew conscious of a full bladder—all those glasses of fruit juice!—and squatted in a clearing to pee. Her urine rustled into the leaves, and something unidentifiable scratched softly against her naked bottom.

I hope nothing jumps into me while I'm exposed like this,
she thought, as, in the château, the lights went out.

Next morning, Ben Lamb, waiting for his
havermout,
looked up expectantly as someone entered the kitchen. But it was only Julian, come for his coffee.

'I made a real find last night,' Julian said, as the kettle hissed sluggishly.

'Mm?' said Ben.

'An original edition of Massenet's songs, printed in 1897, including some I'm sure have never seen the light of day, just sitting there on the shelf. Never been looked at!'

'How do you know it's never been looked at?'

'The pages were still uncut. Just think! Totally … virgin.'

'And did you cut them, Julian?'

'You bet I did,' grinned Julian. 'And it was a delicious sensation, I can assure you.' He was peering into the refrigerator as Dagmar, fully dressed and with Axel already in her rucksack, passed by the kitchen.

'Save a few eggs for other people, please,' she called over her shoulder.

Julian contorted his face into a gargoyle sneer, beaming malice in her direction as the front door slammed shut.
'Jawohl, mein Kommandant!'

Ben sighed. The Courage Consort were reaching the limit of their ability to coexist harmoniously, at least in such hothouse conditions. It was only 10:30
A.M.
now, and the temperature was already stifling; not the best conditions for negotiating the treacherous vocal labyrinths laid out for them by Mr. Fugazza. According to an imported
Times
Dagmar had brought back from Martinekerke yesterday, rain was pelting down all over London and the Home Counties: when would the clouds break here?

Roger walked into the kitchen, a veteran of yet another telephone call.

'Wim Waafels, the video artist, is coming here this afternoon,' he said, looking glum.

'Some problem?' enquired Ben.

Roger ran his fingers through his hair, large patches of sweat already darkening the underarms of his shirt, as he searched for a way to summarise his misgivings.

'Let's just say I don't imagine Dagmar is going to like him very much,' he said at last.

'Oooh,' camped Julian, 'fancy that! A soulmate for me. You never know your luck in a big forest.'

Roger shambled over to the stove, tired of holding his little family together, day after day. He poured himself a cup of tea from the kettle that had boiled, unnoticed.

'Has anyone seen our soprano?' he said, trying to keep his voice light.

Ben shook his head. Julian stared directly into Roger's face and saw there a look he had a special facility for recognising: the look of a man who is wondering where his wife slept last night.

'She went walkabout,' said Julian. 'After the witching hour.'

Roger sipped at his tea, not a happy man.

Then, a few minutes later, the front door clattered open and footsteps sounded in the hallway. Julian's jaw hardened in anticipation of another German invasion.

Instead, Catherine walked into the kitchen. She walked slowly, dreamily, in no hurry to focus on the men. Her hair was a bird's nest of tangles, her skin was flushed, her eyes half closed. Tiny leaves and fragments of twig clung to the calves of her leggings.

'Are you all right, Kate?' said Roger.

Catherine blinked, acknowledging his existence by degrees.

'Yes, yes, of course,' she responded airily. 'I've been out walking, that's all.'

She padded over to the stove, patting her husband's shoulder as she passed because the poor thing looked so miserable.

'Would anyone like some porridge?' she said, finding Ben's face exactly where she expected it to be and contemplating it with a smile.

***

T
HOUGH THERE WERE
two hours to kill before Wim Waafels was due to arrive, the Consort did not sing. By unspoken mutual agreement, they were giving
Partitum Mutante
a rest while the weather did its worst. Ben sat by the window, nursing a headache and indigestion; the others mooched around the house, fiddling with the musical instruments, books, and ornaments. Julian played Beethoven's 'Für Elise' on the piano, over and over, always getting stuck in the same spot; Catherine squatted at the spinning wheel, touching its various parts tentatively, trying to decide if it was meant to be functional or was just for show. Roger sat at the computer, browsing through the score of Paco Barrios's
2K+5,
reminding himself that there would be life after
Partitum Mutante.

By the time Mr. Waafels ought to be arriving, the British members of the Courage Consort had—again by unspoken mutual consent—pulled together, resolved to be philosophical in the face of whatever the visit might bring. Only Dagmar was exempt from the prevailing mood. She sensed something in Roger's manner which made her suspect that the overextended strings of her tolerance were about to be twanged.

'You've talked to this man, have you?' she queried warily.

'On the phone, yes,' said Roger.

'Is he a nutcase?'

'No, no…' Roger reassured her breezily. 'He sounds quite … focused, really.'

'So he is OK?'

'He … he has a very thick Dutch accent. Much thicker than Jan van Hoeidonck's, for example. He's very young, I gather.
Your
age, perhaps. Not an old fuddy-duddy like us, heh heh heh.'

Dagmar's eyes narrowed in contempt. She'd always had a lot of respect for Roger Courage, but right now he was reminding her of the directors at the Dresden Staatsoper.

A vehicle could be heard approaching the Château de Luth, though it was half a mile away yet, invisible.

'That'll be him now,' said Roger, smoothly making his escape from Dagmar to take up a position at the window. But when the vehicle came into view, it proved to be not a van or a car, but a motorcycle, roaring through the stillness of Mar-tinekerke forest in a haze of benzine, its rider in grey leather, studded gloves, and a silver helmet, like a medieval soldier come looking for Thierry la Fronde and his band of merry men.

Once they invited him in, Wim Waafels proved to be, physically at least, a slightly more impressive specimen than Pino Fugazza; he could hardly fail to be. Then again, as he was taking off his helmet and leather jacket in the château's front room, he did cause several members of the Courage Consort to meditate privately on the infinite scope of human unattractiveness.