The Maestro's Mistress (35 page)

She stamped on, her boots making
a ripe creaking sound in the powdery snow. She clasped her hands behind her,
her gaze on the ground beneath as she pondered. Pictures paraded in the
portrait gallery of her mind: Tara Silk in the glare of the spotlights and
glory, running lightly onto a platform amidst a blaze of lights in order to receive
a glittering trophy. Saul in the shadowy background, applauding - just one
anonymous figure in the midst of an admiring audience. The great  Saul Xavier’s
name written in small letters at the back of the video display sleeve, just one
more name swelling the credits list.

Was that how it would be? In her
own view there was no comparison whatsoever between her talent and that of
Saul. It was simply not an issue. She recognized that she was a good musician. 
Saul, however, was exceptional, unique and truly great. But would others see it
that way?

After an hour’s trampling in the
snow, she was still not sure what her feelings were about Roland’s news. She
made her way slowly back to the chalet, feeling no sense of hurry. Saul and
Alessandra would already have left for the morning’s skiing. There would be no
need for any direct confrontations until she met up with Saul at lunchtime.

She stamped the snow from her
boots at the rear entrance to the chalet, then made her way to the terrace. The
mountains reared up in the background like rows of clenched white knuckles.
Their snowy tips flashed platinum bright in the sunlight and in the basin of
the valley the lake glistened azure blue shot through with gold.

Tara was surprised to see
Alessandra sprawled on chair at the far end of the terrace.  Completely
ignoring the exquisite panorama rolled out before her, Alessandra was engrossed
in the latest issue of
Horse and Pony
magazine. Her long blonde hair
slid forward over her face and from time to time she tossed it back with an
impatient thrust of her head, curiously reminiscent of Tosca.

‘I thought you’d be up on the
slopes with Daddy by this time,’ Tara commented, surprised.

‘So did I.’ Alessandra did not
look up; the equine head tossing continued.

‘So why aren’t you?’

‘He’s got better things to do.’

‘Yes?’ Tara struggled to keep
calm.

‘He’s gone into Salzburg.’
Alessandra’s lips were tight. She flicked over the page of a magazine and
assumed an expression of supreme detachment and disdain.

There was a lengthy silence.

‘Well, do you know why?’

‘Yes.’

Another silence. Dear God in
heaven, was I like this too in my adolescent days Tara wondered, knowing the
answer was sadly, yes. ‘Alessandra! Just tell me – in plain simple language.’

‘Something terribly,
overwhelmingly important has come up.’ Raw bitterness threatened to break
through the studied indifference.

‘Such as?’

‘The opportunity to conduct one
of the
world’s greatest orchestras.
’ The mimicry of her father’s
detached, measured tones were breathtakingly accurate.

‘The Vienna Phil?’

‘Something like that. Or was it
the Berlin lot?’ Alessandra shrugged. ‘I can’t see why he’s so bothered. He’s
had his evil way with both of them millions of times before.’

Tara could feel her daughter’s
anger, frustration and deep hurt throbbing in the air around her.

‘Why do they need Daddy?’ Tara
enquired calmly, playing for time and sticking to practicalities whilst she
considered how to tackle this delicate situation.

‘The reigning baton-waving tyrant
had a stroke in the night. Or was it a nervous breakdown? Something of that
sort: the kind of thing which stops people being able to conduct orchestras.
Daddy heard all about it on the early morning news. He was on the telephone
like a shot, offering to gallop to the rescue.’

‘Blast!’ fumed Tara. ‘I wanted
him to have a proper rest on this holiday.’

Alessandra looked up. Eyes
flashing with fire, glinting with the prickle of tears. ‘Hope springs eternal,’
she mocked.

The two of them dug deep into
their own thoughts for a moment.

‘He wanted me to go with him –
breathe in the hallowed atmosphere, watch him in action. Listen, mark and
learn,’ Alessandra commented.

Tara could imagine.

‘Well, I suppose you have to look
at it from his point of view,’ Alessandra continued. ‘You stood in when he
stormed out of the Dutchman rehearsal. Anything you can do he can do better!’
This experimentation with sarcasm was still quite new, but Alessandra was going
to be frighteningly good at it once she got into her stride.

‘Did you overhear my conversation
with Roland this morning?’ Tara demanded sharply.

‘Yes. I was just coming to find
you when he called. I couldn’t help hanging around to get the gist. Sorry.’

‘Did Daddy hear?’

‘No, and I didn’t breathe a word.
You’ve been nominated for a big award, haven’t you?’

 ‘The Jupiter,’ she said. ‘Did
you and Daddy have a row?’

‘No. He went off to his orchestra
and I stayed here. Perfectly OK arrangement.’ Alessandra rattled the pages of
her magazine.

Tara sank down on a chair beside
her daughter and released a long despairing sigh.

‘And by the way, congratulations Mummy,’
Alessandra said warmly. ‘I’m really proud of you.’

Tara felt her daughter’s long
fingers clasp her own hand and press it warmly. She roused herself.

As she sat up her eyes connected
with the open note-book at Alessandra’s feet. Next to the beautiful sketch of a
horse’s head was a carefully drawn chart – a brief diary representing the
duration of the stay here in Grundlsee. Chunks of it were coloured in red, the
days that had already passed. Alessandra was crossing off the hours and days,
counting the minutes until she could return home.

‘Oh darling!’ Tara picked up the
little book and stared at it in dismay.

‘I only came because he seemed to
want it so much. I could have been at the riding centre’s end of winter show.
And now he’s buggered off to do his own thing.’ Alessandra sniffed, suddenly
child-like and deeply vulnerable. ‘He’s not bothered about spending time with
me at all,’ she exploded.

‘That’s not true,’ Tara
responded, but not with complete conviction.

‘Nothing can compete with the
bloody music and all that buzz he gets from being Ruler of the World in the
concert hall.’

Tara gazed at her shocked, then
suddenly unable to resist bursting into laughter.

Alessandra sprang up and flung
herself into Tara’s opened arms. ‘Mummy, I do love him. But he’s so difficult
and so…far away.’

Tara arranged for Alessandra to
go up onto the slopes with the American family who were staying in a nearby ski
lodge. She swiftly changed out of her walking clothes, brushed her hair, jumped
into the  Range Rover Xavier had hired for her use and roared off into
Salzburg. It was a drive which normally took an hour and a half. But even with
the snow chains, on this particular morning, she made it in just under eighty
minutes.

Driving through the streets to
the Grosse Festspielhaus it struck her with particular force what a curiously
unattractive town Salzburg was. Small, parochial, a shameless prostitute for
the pleasure of tourists, it nestled like a squat grey pebble in the bowl of
the mountains. Songs from
The Sound of Music
, jostling with fragments
from Mozart’s piano concertos, oozed from a line of loudspeakers on the bridge
over the river. And in the cafes close to Mozart’s birthplace one had the
dubious privilege of consuming coffee and cake at a price which would buy a
full meal in Vienna.

Tara recalled that the young
Mozart had hated the town in the 1770s. She guessed he would smile to see his
judgement vindicated if he returned to see it now. Or maybe she was simply
seeing things through jaundiced eyes at this juncture.

She went straight through to the
auditorium of the Festspielhaus and found Saul in the orchestra pit with a handful
of players and some anxious looking administrators. Behind them a vast and
exotic stage set depicting mountains of gold stretched up into the darkness of
the roof arch.

Placing her hand on the long
curled railing which separated the pit from the audience Tara called out Saul’s
name. Just once. Heads turned towards her. She beamed Saul a steely look that
even he could not resist. He left his colleagues and came to stand beside her.
She took his arm and guided him away from the curious band of watchful
spectators who immediately turned back tactfully to their deliberations.

‘Your daughter needs you,’ Tara
told him.

His grey eyes were as hard and
shiny as weapons. ‘And
I
need this.’

Even after all her years with
Saul, Tara still found herself staggered by the diamond–hard purity of his self
will. Or was it self preservation? ‘Letting her down like this will drive her
away from you,’ she said.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Then our
relationship is of little worth if it can be damaged so easily.’

‘For Christ’s sake, she’s fourteen.
She adores you. But you have to bend a little.’

‘She has her own life. And I’m
not “letting her down”. She and I discussed this. She was very firm that I
should step in here if they needed me. She said she was not a baby who needed
her father to be a nursemaid.’

‘God Almighty!  She was
heartbroken!’

‘No.’

‘She was just putting a brave
face on things because she knew you would do what you wanted anyway.’ Tara
could feel herself flailing about in desperation.

Saul shook his head. ‘You are
always so dramatic about things Tara. It does no good.’ He stared down at her,
utterly sure of the rightness of his view. ‘Alessandra and I understand one
another.’

Tara felt her mouth drop open.
The progress of this conversation was entirely unexpected, and totally
baffling.

‘I shall be here rehearsing all
day and then for the performance this evening. After that we shall all be
together again.’

‘But that is not the point,’ she
protested, knowing she had already lost the battle. His face was stripped of all
emotion. Chilling.

‘I have two tickets for tonight’s
performance – premier seats. We are doing
Das Rheingold
, one of the most
thrilling operas in the repertoire. Alessandra will love it.’ He held out the
long embossed tickets. ‘I hope you will both come,’ he said in formal,
courteous tones.

Tara took his offering. She
burned to find some words, make some kind of gesture that would bring her back
into living contact with him. She felt it would give her satisfaction to strike
him – to slam the back of her hand across his aristocratic features and leave
wounding imprints on the flawless olive skin.

Without warning he leaned down
and kissed her mouth very tenderly. An incredible shiver of feeling shot
through every vein in her body.

‘One more thing,’ she said
sharply, reclaiming his attention as he turned back to the small group
anxiously waiting for him.
‘The Flying Dutchman
video recording is
hot-tipped for a Jupiter Music Award. Roland telephoned me this morning.’

He swung back. His features
registered a restrained mixture of speculation and amusement. ‘Well, well. Your
slender shoulders are going to have to brace themselves for heavy burden of
honours that will be heaped upon them. Congratulations, Tara.’ He stared at her
for a long moment, then smiled. ‘So!’ he murmured softly.

Tara was surprised to find
Alessandra in a surprisingly happy frame of mind after her day on the slopes.

The American family had been very
welcoming. The children had been jokey and full of fun and the parents not
awesomely proficient at skiing like her own father. They also had a ranch,
several hundred acres of land and a racing stud back home in Texas. Alessandra
had been told she was welcome to visit whenever she liked. In fact they were
insisting she should go in the summer.

Alessandra settled her mother on
the sofa and poured her a glass of white wine. ‘Don’t look so tragic,’ she
said.

‘Do I look that bad?’ Tara asked.

‘Not really. You just look a bit
zapped. Have you told Daddy about the Jupiter Award nomination yet?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘He was very pleased.’

Alessandra flopped down on the
floor and tickled Tara’s feet. ‘Of course he was. Honestly Mummy, it’s
absolutely fantastic news. I told everyone about it. They were simply knocked
out.’

Tara stroked Alessandra’s hair.
How her mood had changed – lightened and softened. Was it because of her new
friends? Or the result of one day without the watchful challenge of her father.
Was that what had done the trick? A hollow sadness gripped her.

‘You know Mummy it’s the best
thing that could have happened for you. It’s about time you did something for
yourself.’ Having been taciturn and moody for days Alessandra now seemed
unstoppable.