The Maestro's Mistress (30 page)

‘Wonderful news darling. Well
done.’

‘I’m going to put her out in the
field today. She needs a rest. We’ve got more shows lined up for the weekend.
Granddad’s ace at driving the horse box. And he wants me to teach him how to
pick out Tosca’s feet and tack her up just in case he’s needed. I’ve bought
some new exercise bandages because the old ones are getting grubby and one of
the judges at the shows said I should try her in a martingale so I’m thinking
about that.’

Tara smiled, fighting to get a
word in. It was almost impossible to stem the flow of Alessandra’s conversation
once the subject of Tosca came up. She would chatter happily about the horse
for hours. In fact for Alessandra at present, any topic that did not include
Tosca was of little interest.

Xavier found this obsession with
horses puzzling and more than a little irritating. It annoyed him to see Alessandra
distracted from giving her whole-hearted attention to the more serious business
of schoolwork and singing practice.

Alessandra had shown early promise
as a vocalist, but since her passion for horses and riding had developed so her
interest and motivation regarding singing had declined.

‘Putting her under pressure won’t
make her more keen to sing,’ Tara explained gently as Alessandra stormed off in
tears after one of her father’s sardonic lectures on the merits of music as
compared with the inanity of jumping about on horses. ‘If anything it will make
her worse; more inclined to kick against you.’

Tara knew all too well the retort
which framed itself in Saul’s head in response to that kind of remark.
‘Like
mother like daughter – you also wasted the years of your adolescence.’

The words were never spoken but
were heard by both of them, one more set of spikes in the uneasy collar of
their complex relationship.

‘She does practise for an hour
every single day,’ Tara would point out to him, in Alessandra’s defence.
‘That’s perfectly satisfactory.’ And heroic, she thought, for someone who hated
it.

‘We won’t be back until the end
of next week, darling,’ Tara told Alessandra, bringing their conversation to a
close. ‘Daddy’s been invited to make a special guest appearance at the New York
Met. And I thought I’d go with him.’

‘You always go everywhere with
him,’ Alessandra said in a matter-of-fact voice. There was a short pause. ‘Will
you be back by Sunday?’

‘Early morning I would guess.
Why?’

‘There’s a really super open
jumping class on Sundays at the riding school. Grandma and Granddad said they’d
take me if I was still here.’

‘Don’t worry, you will be.’ Quite
safe from the parental presence, she added to herself.

‘Oh, Mummy, I miss you terribly!’

Like hell you do, thought Tara
with a wry smile. A bit, but not very much if Tosca’s around. And how very
healthy that is.

‘Is Daddy there to talk to me?’
Alessandra asked.

‘He’s busy in a conducting
seminar. He sends his love.’

‘Oh! Right.  Give him mine then.’
There was no mistaking the undertone of relief.

Ah well, thought Tara, it was
understandable. Saul had never been the most relaxed person to chat to on the
phone. She wandered back to the music theatre, reflective and subdued. She
understood what a disappointment it was for Saul that Alessandra had shown so
little spontaneous enthusiasm for music.

He had been so keen to share the
passion of his life with his only child. At weekends the house would be filled
with the sound of live music played by some of the world’s greatest instrumentalists,
and whenever Saul was home there would be great symphonic works blasting from
the multitude of state of the art speakers positioned around the house.

Watching Alessandra grow up Tara
had seen the child’s early devotion to her father gradually transform itself
into an awed and distant respect. It was the intensity of his wish for her to
share his obsession with music which lay at the heart of the problem.
Alessandra had never shown any great interest in either listening to classical
music or playing an instrument despite his encouragement. As a small child she
had loved to sing nursery rhymes, and displayed a good understanding of pitch
and rhythm. But once Saul arranged for coaching lessons with one of his opera
star contacts, her eagerness and confidence had rapidly deteriorated.

Tara had watched with growing
dismay as the little Alessandra grew more and more tense, overwhelmed with the
enormity of her father’s knowledge and skill, shying away from his obsessive
need for her to display genius.

She tried to explain to him how
the child was feeling, but he politely brushed aside her tactful suggestions.
‘One never achieves anything without pain,’ he observed.

Arriving at the door of the
theatre she saw that the rehearsal had drawn to a close and Saul and Gustav
Walter were making their way out of the auditorium, followed by the two student
conductors.

‘We’re going to get some lunch,’
Saul told her. ‘We were coming to find you.’ His raised eyebrows let her know
he had been wondering where she had been.

Tara fell into step with him and
slipped her hand through his arm. ‘I’ve been checking that they are all alive
and kicking back home.’

‘Ah. And?’

‘They’re all fine.’

‘Ah.’ There was a brief pause. ‘I
would have liked to have spoken to Alessandra.’

‘Yes. She was so disappointed you
were busy. I said we’d call her later.’ Tara was aware of the soothing and
cajoling quality in her voice, as though she were a kindly parent humouring a
clever but emotionally delicate child.

And this is what we have come to,
me and Saul, she grieved inwardly, reaching and pressing a kiss on the side of
his neck.

She saw the auburn-haired young
man’s eyes on her, registered the gleam of speculation in his eye. He was a
romantic; he would look at her and the great Maestro Xavier and see a couple
who had intrigued the music world with their wild love affair and had now
settled into mellow devotedness.

She smiled.

After lunch Saul led a seminar of
around twenty conducting students. Gustav Walter had attempted to prevail on
Tara to join the sofa group but she had laughingly declined and retreated to
her preferred corner of the room.

The next hour was spent in a
discussion of the ways to start big orchestral works. Saul sat at the piano to
illustrate certain points he wished to make. He had brought the score of
Mozart’s symphony Number 29 in A-Major to use as an illustration. He employed
his usual tutorial methods of tempting his audience with snippets of
information without ever revealing his own personal convictions. He teased and
taunted them, leading them gently down certain pathways and then suddenly
demolishing all the ideas he had planted with derisive scorn.

‘You didn’t believe all that did
you? No, not for a moment!’ His mildly sarcastic jests were accompanied by
flamboyant runs on the piano.

Tara watched the eager, puzzled,
anxious faces of the students, feeling increasingly sorry for them.

The discussion moved on to the
gulf between the work of current composers and the old masters. Now suddenly he
was serious. He explained that conductors must always be open to the promotion
of new words, however inaccessible they seemed. ‘Remember, if we ignore all the
new composers there will be no representation of modern music in the future.’

There was a round of applause.
This was Saul at his best, clear and sincere with no axe to grind. He invited
questions from the audience and an hour flew by with everyone enjoying
themselves.

Then suddenly he was bored with
it all. ‘So, I think we’ve all had enough,’ he announced abruptly, giving his
floppy dismissive wave. ‘Go away and get on with your lives. There is life
beyond music, you know!’

But possibly not for Saul  Xavier,
thought Tara with a small smile.

Later on after Xavier had
disappeared with Gustav Walter to discuss the next day’s programme, Tara stayed
on in the gracious seminar room, staring out at the glassy-surfaced lake and
beyond to the wall of the mountains.

The auburn-haired student stole
back into the room.

Tara looked around and smiled.
‘Hello.’

He sat beside her, his eyes fixed
on the open score of the Mozart Symphony which rested in her lap.

‘How would you start it?’ he
asked.

‘Why are you asking me that after
all you heard earlier?’ she said, amused.

‘Because Xavier never answered
the question. But I felt sure you would tell me. I’ve watched you conducting on
those training videos you made for music students. I bought every one of them.
You’re great!’

Tara found herself truly moved to
be offered such genuine, heartfelt praise. ‘Thank you. But I’m no authority on
setting off orchestras on Mozart symphonies.’

‘You’ll do for me,’ he said
bluntly. ‘So tell me!’

She stared at him. ‘All right.’
She looked down at the score, then looked up and fixed him with a steady stare.
Raising her hand she gave a minute downbeat and a virtually invisible nod. He
saw that her eyes gave a message too, but it would have been impossible to
describe it in words.

‘Awe inspiring,’ he said.

‘It only takes around three years
to learn, two more to perfect,’ she told him mischievously. His admiration
warmed her. He was not only talented, but charming and gentle – and very young.

And I’m well into my thirties,
Tara thought. Really quite old.

‘Why aren’t you a tutor in these
conducting seminars?’ he demanded. ‘You’d be marvellous.’

She gave him a tolerant smile.
‘I’ve done very little besides making the training videos.’

‘What about conducting the
student orchestras at the music schools? Doesn’t that count? And if you say
“no” then it means you don’t think students are important – and I don’t believe
that of you.’

Tara smiled. ‘I see that I’m
trapped. I had no idea I was going to be fiercely attacked whilst I was sitting
here thinking about Mozart and watching the mountains.’

‘You’re wasting yourself,’ he
told her with exasperation.

‘And you’re trespassing on
delicate areas you know nothing about,’ she warned.

‘I’m sorry.’

A silence. They both stared at
Mozart’s score.

‘Do you aim to be a great Maestro
then?’ she asked playfully.

‘I just want to make music. That
whole Maestro thing, the worship of the charismatic music director who plays no
instrument and makes no noise himself is an anachronism,’ he declared solemnly,
clearly quoting from some text which had impressed him. ‘Those old-style
conductors are tyrants,’ he burst out. ‘They treat orchestras like peasants,
then collect a fee for a concert that adds up to as much as all the players are
paid.’

He pulled himself up and glanced
at her hesitantly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again and the image of Maestro Xavier
rose up between them.

She smiled and shrugged,
recalling her outburst at her father’s funeral.

‘I’m not interested in money and
fame. I just want to dip into the ocean of music and communicate it to others.
I love it so much! Some of the pieces, I could just die for them!’

‘Don’t lose that,’ Tara said.
‘That wonderful joy in the mystery and the sublime enchantment of great music.’

He pressed his hands together.
‘There something else I want to ask you.’

‘Go ahead.’

He bit down on his lip. ‘You were
a violinist, weren’t you?’

‘Yes,’

‘My tutor at music school knew
you. She told me about what happened – the car crash.’

‘Yes?’

‘You never recorded anything, did
you? That’s such a waste.’

Tara understood that this young
musician had stumbled on her story and seized it as though it were a fairy
tale. He had made her into a heroine: a mythical creature to worship. He was
very
young.

‘No. I didn’t ever record my
playing with a record company. But that’s not a tragedy. There are other
violinists to bring the great works to life. Music goes on, a shared delight,
not some individual instrumentalist’s ego trip.’ She smiled at him. ‘And Xavier
was right - there is a life beyond music.’

There was a long thoughtful
silence. She knew that her admirer was struggling to understand why Tara should
have bound herself to the disparaging, lip-curling Xavier. And worse, he knew
exactly what she was thinking.

‘What instrument do you play?’
she asked him.

‘The clarinet. And the piano, of
course.’

‘OK – well I’ll give you a tip
for free! Hold on to your playing. Hold onto it every minute you’re conducting.
Don’t ever stand in front of an orchestra telling them how to play without
remembering how bloody hard it is!’

‘No.’

She smiled. ‘I don’t think I
needed to tell you that. I think you knew already.’