The Maestro's Mistress (14 page)

She was astonished at the way
emotional stress could translate itself into such obvious physical changes. She
raged at herself for being such a fool as to have fallen into Xavier’s arms so
easily. It was not as if she had even been hankering after him in that way.
Well, not consciously at least. And now all she could do was moon about longing
for him like some lovesick teenager whose brains were lodged somewhere between
her knees and her navel.

She hated herself. She hated him.
She took his letters to the bottom of the garden and set fire to them. The
daily barrage of flowers he sent her she took to adorn deserted graves in the
churchyard nearby. She stopped answering the phone. She made an arrangement to
use the practice rooms of her former school when she wanted to play so that she
was never alone in the house.  She carried on with her job. She was always
cheery and hard working. She got more tips than the rest of the staff put
together.

And she never let her mother
suspect for a minute what had happened. This went on for some weeks after which
she felt completely exhausted.

‘Tara, you’re eating like a
sparrow,’ her mother commented one evening, as they ate supper together. ‘Are
you all right?’

‘I just don’t feel very hungry.
It’s working at the restaurant that does it. Seeing all that food – and then
the smell of it. Ugh! It churns me up.’

‘Is it Bruno?’

‘What?’

‘Are you pining?’

Tara looked genuinely amazed.
Bruno had not figured much in her thoughts at all recently. ‘No.’

Rachel looked at her anxiously.
‘I think you should have a word with the doctor.’

‘Donald Giovanni?’ Tara asked
sarcastically.

‘Tara!’

‘Are you two sleeping together
yet?’

‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Is that OK
with you?’ Two can do sarcasm.

‘Not really.’ Tara felt a
nauseous lump in her stomach. She looked at her mother’s concerned, lovely
face. ‘But then why shouldn’t you? Yes, it is OK.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Will you get married?’

‘Probably.’

‘Let Daddy get cold first.’

Rachel flinched. ‘My God, you can
be so cruel.’

Tara sighed. ‘I don’t want to be.
Really.’

‘You’re not well. Will you go and
see the doctor?’ Please.’

‘All right. But not Donald – too
embarrassing.’

‘There’s Dr Potter on Mondays and
Tuesdays. She’s lovely – grey hair, a perm.’

‘Sounds just the job. Book me
in.’

After supper Tara went to the
bathroom and flushed the toilet to conceal the noises of her vomiting.

Dr Potter was sympathetic and
also very perceptive.

‘You say you have lost nearly
twelve pounds. That’s rather significant for a small person like you.’

‘Yes.’ Tara lay like a rock under
the doctor’s kind yet impersonal hands. It was nine weeks and one day since any
other human being had touched her in an intimate way. Nine weeks since
he
had touched her. Her body felt shrivelled and rejected.

‘Are your periods regular?’ Dr
Potter asked, pressing cool gently probing hands on Tara’s stomach.

Tara tried to work it out.
‘They’ve always been a bit unpredictable. Except when I was on the pill.’

‘Are you on the pill now?’

‘No, I came off a couple of
months ago when I broke up with my boyfriend.’

‘So what’s happened since then?’

‘A few dribbles here and there.’

‘And in the last four weeks?’

‘Nothing.’

Dr Potter slipped on disposable
gloves. ‘I’m going to make an internal examination. Just relax.’

Tara felt fingers slide inside
her. And suddenly an amazing, utterly terrifying idea hit her. Why on earth had
she not thought of that before?

‘Relax,’ the doctor said. ‘Have
you had the opportunity to get pregnant?’ she asked as she straightened up.

Tara recalled the dark animal
pain and pleasure of her love-making with Saul Xavier, the way he had driven
deep inside her and pounded without mercy. ‘Yes. But I thought you were
unlikely to get pregnant just after coming off the pill.’

‘Statistical probabilities always
allow for chance occurrences,’ the doctor commented drily. ‘I’ll do a test.
I’ll need a urine sample.’

Some breathless minutes passed after
which Dr Potter was able to confirm her suspected diagnosis. ‘What do you feel
about this?’ the doctor asked, looking at Tara over her half moon glasses.

Tara was feeling temporarily
numb. ‘Scared witless,’ she said. Now that it was a certainty her thoughts
skittered about wildly. There was the issue of how to tell her mother, whether
to have an abortion. Whether to go ahead and have the baby – cope somehow.

And what to tell Saul  Xavier –
if anything.

Tara looked at the grandmotherly
Dr Potter. This calm mature woman must have had hundreds of interviews like
this one. She seemed so wise and serene. Whereas she, Tara, was nothing more
than a randy little fool who’d got herself in the club, up the spout.

And then amazing words ran
through her head. I am having  Saul  Xavier’s baby. Tara felt a strange thrill
of excitement pierce her self-disgust and terror.

‘It’s a miracle, isn’t it?’ she
said to Dr Potter. ‘I’ve “got caught” or whatever else they call it. It’s an
utter mess. But it’s magic – fantastic!’

Dr Potter smiled. ‘Indeed it is.’

‘Do you want to consider a
termination?’ she asked Tara after a long silence.

‘I don‘t know. I suppose so. No,
I don’t think so.’

‘There’s no rush. You can take a
few days to think it over. It’s early stages yet.’

Tara placed her hands on her
stomach. ‘How far on am I?’

‘Eight to nine weeks is my
estimate.’

‘It’s a real life. A little
person. I couldn’t kill it.’

‘You could consider adoption, of
course. There are so many couples longing to have a baby and so few babies available.’

‘I need to talk it over.’

‘Of course. I’m sure your mother
will be very helpful and sympathetic.’

‘With the baby’s father,’ Tara
said.

‘Yes, naturally.’

Tara looked at Rachel’s worried
face and said, ‘It’s OK Mum. I’m perfectly A1 fit. I just need to eat plenty of
good food and start thinking positively.’

She waited until the next day,
until Rachel was safely at the surgery. She prowled around the telephone, Saul’s
professional card in her hand. The one he had handed to her after the funeral.
The one which had his mobile and private home numbers handwritten on in black
ink, and underneath the message: ‘Don’t waste your potential. Accept a helping
hand.  Unfortunately the mobile number had been mainly obliterated by an
injudicious spill of coffee.

She re-read the message with grim
smile of irony.

Several times she had dialled the
home number and then slammed the receiver down before a connection was even
made. At other times she let the number ring out. On hearing the rhythmic
purring she felt she would be sick. Her fingers clicked off the connection,
annihilated the purrs.

‘Just DO IT!’ she raged at
herself, placing her finger on the dial once more.

A woman’s voice answered. His
wife. Oh no! She willed her voice to be steady, to follow the clear unadorned
little script she had written out. One which would cope with all eventualities,
whoever answered her call.

The person on the line did not
conform to any of the possibilities she had foreseen. Nor was she Saul’s wife
apparently. At the close of their brief and amazing conversation Tara found
herself desperately unnerved, her heart drumming hotly against her ribs.

She obtained the agent’s
telephone number from Directory Enquiries. The secretary who answered sounded
most amused to be asked the whereabouts of Mr Xavier. ‘Oh, we don’t keep a tail
on his movements I’m afraid. And it’s not our policy to give out any private
information.’

Tara’s heart sank. ‘Right,’ she
said wearily. Desperately she made her mind sharpen and focus. ‘I’m a
relative,’ she said.

A disbelieving pause. ‘Look, hang
on!’ The voice relented. There was a shuffling of paper. ‘The Tudor
Philharmonic is giving a concert tonight. He’ll be in rehearsal now most
likely.’

‘At the Festival Hall?’

‘No. The Royal Albert. Hope you
find him.’

Tara made no preparations. She
simply set off. An hour and a half later, her heart having failed her at the
main door to the great hall, she made her way around the side of the building
and eventually found herself in its backstage depths. She remembered the place
well from the countless times she had visited to hear her father rehearse. Even
now, despite her sick apprehension, she still felt a spark of excitement as she
made her way up the long narrow corridor wryly named the “bull run” by keyed-up
players which led to the back of the performing area.

Music poured from the stage;
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the last movement throbbing with zest for life
and sheer unadulterated joy.

Tara felt a smile creep over her
face. The positive thrust of the music gave her the courage to step out of the
gloom of the corridor onto the partially lit stage. She perched on a small
chair close to the drum section. Her eyes leapt over the ranks of the orchestra
and made an instant connection with Xavier. Dressed in black, shirt sleeves
rolled up his muscled forearms, he was utterly absorbed in his task. Completely
composed. Calm and cool. Living the music.

She heard his low voice teasing
and cajoling as he entered into a dry dialogue with the string section.

‘So we have a twenty-bar
crescendo, ladies and gentlemen. In five bars you’re already there. Fortissimo!
What have I done to encourage you into this indecent haste?’

A murmur of laughter. They set
off again. Tara was intensely aware of the personal force of strength flowing
from Saul Xavier into each player. Under those compelling eyes no player would
stand a chance of straying from the magnetism of his will. Whatever it was that
Xavier wanted musically, the players would have no option but to give him.

She recalled the sensation of
being held in a steel band when he had directed her and Bruno’s singing on the
day of her father’s funeral. As she watched him, a dark ripple of thrills shot
through her nerve endings.

At the close of the rehearsal he
was heavily in demand from all sides. Tara sat quietly, waiting, watching. She
was not even sure that he had seen her. In fact after half an hour she was
concerned that he had no idea of her presence and that he might simply walk
away, leaving her to seek him out all over again.

Or maybe he had seen her but
wanted nothing to do with her. She had, after all, rebuffed him very soundly.
And the letters and flowers hadn’t been coming for a week or so now.

A sickening anxiety droned
inside. It occurred to her that she had hardly stopped feeling sick ever since
she met him. Eventually the stage emptied. She began to breathe more deeply.
Xavier was talking with a tubby silver-haired man. They turned their backs to
her and began to walk away into the huge auditorium.

Tara slumped on her seat with despair.
Minutes passed. She felt rooted, unable to move. And then she saw him
returning, making his way to the platform. He vaulted up onto the stage and
moved across to her. He stood very close, almost touching. Looking down. 
Silent. Immobile.

‘This has taken a hell of a lot
of courage,’ she said.

He sat beside her. He took her
hands in his. ‘And the waiting has taken a hell of a lot of restraint.’

She looked at him. Drank him in.
She felt that she was jealous of the air he breathed. That if he asked her to
lie down and die for him she would. These were not the thoughts of a liberated
woman, she told herself.

‘So?’ he said.

‘So.’ She gazed deep into his
eyes, holding nothing of herself back. ‘I’m having your baby.’

Utterly incredible words.

Xavier’s eyes sharpened. Tara
experienced a moment of piercing terror. And then his lips curved into a smile
of pure delight. All the dialogue she had prepared became null and void. The
ins and outs of terminations and adoptions. All unthinkable. But she supposed
those issues would have to be discussed anyway.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she
asked him. Humble now. Placing herself entirely in his hands.

‘Come to me. Be with me. I need
to look after you. Both of you. What else?’

‘Just like that?’ She was
astounded. Unable to think clearly. Of the many responses she had imagined from
him, this was the simple obvious one that had eluded her.

‘Of course. Why not?’

‘Your wife might not be too
keen.’ Dear God, Saul , she thought. This is dangerous. You’re talking about
revolutionizing lives. Yours, mine. Your wife’s.