A Note of Madness (9 page)

Another shrug.

‘What do you play?’

‘Piano.’

‘You must be very talented.’

He managed a polite smile. Silence.

‘Would you say you were talented, Flynn?’

The question startled him and for a moment his eyes met the doctor’s, caught in surprise. He felt the heat rise to his face. Surely Dr Ludic couldn’t expect him to answer that? But his prolonged silence and unwavering gaze strongly suggested that he did. Searching for an answer just led Flynn to a series of blanks.

‘I suppose other people do,’ he mumbled eventually, looking away.

‘And do you agree with them?’

Flynn thought about it. If I say yes I sound boastful, if I say no I sound as if I’m lying. And the truth? Maybe it’s worth focusing on that. Seconds ticked by, the blood was hot in his cheeks, but Dr Ludic seemed prepared to wait this one out.

‘Sorry,’ Flynn managed at last.

‘It’s OK, some questions are more difficult than others. Take your time.’

He took a sharp breath. But the answer had been there all the time. ‘Not really,’ he mumbled.

Dr Ludic raised his eyebrows. ‘Not really?’ he echoed. ‘What makes you think that?’

Flynn shrugged again and pulled a face in embarrassment. ‘Anyone can play the piano if they practise hard enough,’ he began to explain. ‘I’ve been practising like crazy since I was four. So people think I’m talented. But talent is something solid and permanent, it – it doesn’t vary depending on your mood. I – I can hardly play a thing when the chips are down.’ He stopped and bit down on his tongue. Hearing it said aloud was faintly horrifying. Worse still was finding himself struggling against the urge to cry. He held his breath. Don’t, Flynn, you stupid fool . . .

‘Because you find it difficult to play when you’re feeling down, you think you have no talent?’

He shook his head quickly, frantic with embarrassment, and managed a painful smile. ‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said, all of a sudden inexplicably desperate that he should. ‘I can barely play at all. I don’t
practise because I can’t. I can’t read the notes and I can’t remember the music. It’s all just a con. And the crazy thing is that I haven’t been found out yet.’

‘Bye, thanks, I’m off.’ Flynn turned on his heel from the patient’s bed where Rami stood, white-coated and stethoscoped, clipboard in hand.

‘Wait!’ He heard Rami’s hurried footsteps in the hallway behind him, trying to catch up. Flynn did not slow down and Rami reached him on the stairs, grabbing his shoulder. ‘Hey, hey, hold on. What’s up? What happened? What went wrong?’

Flynn half turned, forcing a smile. ‘Nothing, OK? It was fine, he was fine. Turns out you were right. I’m depressed or whatever. I’ve got to take these pills and go back and see him in a fortnight.’ He thrust the prescription towards him.

Rami looked from the paper to his face. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you upset?’

‘I’m not upset!’

‘OK, then let’s go to lunch.’

‘It’s not even twelve. I’ve got lectures this afternoon.’

‘You can miss lectures for another day. I know this great place round the corner. Come on, I know you never eat lunch because you’re always broke. Let’s go and stuff ourselves.’

Flynn didn’t have the strength to resist and ended up having lunch with Rami, who promptly dived into a medical book, looking up the pills that Flynn had been
prescribed. Flynn felt drained and wrung out. A sense of unreality had set in. He had told that damn psych what the problem was and the psych had started insisting that he was suffering from clinical depression. But he wasn’t ill! He was depressed for a very good reason! Previously, he had not even been able to articulate it properly to himself and then suddenly it was out in the open, but instead of the light bulb going on and everything falling into place, it was this silly diagnosis.

Then again, perhaps the psych had failed to grasp the full significance of what he had said. Thirteen years of practice, for what? For tricking people into believing he was something he was not? Professor Kaiser, Harry, Jennah, his parents, his brother. All brilliantly fooled. And he was supposed to feel fine. Given pills because if he wasn’t feeling fine then there
had
to be something wrong with the chemicals in his brain. How absurd.

FLYNN THOUGHT IT
was possible, it was just possible, that he had somehow, somewhere, sensed a chink in the solid black armour of despair. The urge was to chase after that chink, to rush after it as desperately as he could in order to tear it open so that the chink became a great gaping hole for him to step through, back into the land of the living. But it was such a small chink, so subtle, in fact, that he wondered if he might not have imagined it. Terror flooded through him that if he chased it, or even sought it out in any way, then it would disappear or reveal itself to have been nothing but an illusion and he would be left, encased in this black armour of steel, without hope that any glimmer of escape would ever appear in it again. Sometimes the chink would appear in the form of a moment of instinctive laughter at something on TV. Sometimes it would be nothing more than a brief moment of respite caused by the swaying branches of a tree outside a window. Sometimes it would be a sudden thought – lucid and remarkable by its lack of pain – flitting into his mind. But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish,
such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky – beautiful, unreachable and completely transient.

He decided not to go back and see Dr Ludic again. There was really no point. He wasn’t down any more. He was fine. Everything was back to normal. There was absolutely nothing wrong. When Rami called him to bend his ear about the cancelled appointment, Flynn told him that he was feeling fine, that they had all made a mistake, that he wasn’t suffering from depression after all. On several occasions he was tempted to stop taking the pills, but something – perhaps a small knot of fear that the nightmare might return – prevented him.

Neither he nor Harry mentioned what had happened – it was easier not to. It was easier to blot out his hungover conversation with Harry, Harry’s phone call to Rami, the two of them behaving like concerned parents of a wayward child. It was far, far easier to pretend it had never happened, to go back to what they had been, and so life returned to relative normality.

As usual there was no shortage of work to be handed in; together he and Harry polished their duo for piano and cello and handed it in as a joint Musicianship assignment. Spring continued to blossom and the park began to smell of early summer. Jennah played in a chamber-music recital at St John Smith’s Square. Charles was conspicuous by his absence. The vast oak trees in Hyde Park were heavy with green. Daisies
speckled the long grass. Flynn started running again.
Don Giovanni
was slowly buried under a mounting pile of CDs, to be replaced by Rossini and Puccini. They continued rehearsing the trio. He conducted ‘The Montagues and the Capulets’ at the Royal College’s charity concert. Life was tolerable rather than sweet, but he could manage, he could manage.

Professor Kaiser began to smile again. There was a showcase of young musicians coming up at the Royal Albert Hall next month. ‘I would like you to take part, Flynn,’ he said.

It was at the end of a particularly gruelling two-hour session. Flynn looked down at his hands, splayed over his knees, the fingernails bitten down to the quick. ‘That’s soon.’

‘It is a big event. We have been asked to enter just one student for the keyboard category.’

‘What about André?’

‘We are not talking about André. I am asking you.’

‘But why?’

‘Do you think you could do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

This clearly wasn’t the reaction Professor Kaiser had expected. ‘
Ach,
where is your enthusiasm? This is a huge opportunity! You will have exposure to many important people in the world of music!’

Flynn gave him a look. ‘The Rach Three?’

‘
Jawohl!
Of course!’

‘Next month?’

‘It’s there, it’s there,’ Professor Kaiser insisted. ‘It only needs now a bit of polishing. Keep up the hard work and you will be ready.’

‘That’s huge,’ Harry said when he told him. ‘Rose King did it last year and she started getting concert bookings after that.’

‘Maybe I should say no,’ Flynn suggested.

Harry looked at him in disbelief. ‘Are you joking? This is the opportunity of a lifetime! You can’t just say no. Professor Kaiser would never let you, anyway.’

‘Well, after Rose King I’m bound to be a huge disappointment. And André must have turned it down because he was too busy touring or something.’

‘Don’t be stupid. André would have jumped at the chance. They asked you because your Rach Three is far more exciting than anything André’s playing at the moment.’

Flynn shot him a sceptical look. ‘But it’s only a month away, that’s no time at all.’

‘Other people would kill to play in that concert. Damn it,
I
would kill to play in that concert. Important people will be there. You’ll start making a name for yourself before you’ve even left uni. Jesus, Flynn!’

‘What if I mess it up?’

‘You won’t mess it up.’

‘I could.’

‘But you won’t. You’re far too good. Your Rach
Three sounds fantastic now. Everyone’s talking about it.’

Flynn was touched by Harry’s encouragement but still unconvinced. However, Harry had one thing right – Professor Kaiser wasn’t going to give him much choice.

Thanks to Harry, the news didn’t take long to spread. People he barely knew were coming up to congratulate him in the corridors. Flynn was on edge, unsure as to how genuine their congratulations were. No doubt they would all give an arm and a leg, as Harry put it, to play in the concert. They surely wondered what on earth he had done to deserve it. They must suspect that he wasn’t really good enough.

His lunchtime runs were forced to cease. If Professor Kaiser was in his study then he used the baby grand in the concert hall on the ground floor. Rehearsals would start with the London Philharmonic Orchestra a week on Saturday. The Philharmonic! It was hard to believe.

He was having trouble with the heavy chords in the third movement, and Professor Kaiser continued to reiterate that they needed more weight. Those chords exhausted him. He played the section through for what felt like the hundredth time that day and stopped, hands on knees, gazing blindly at his distorted reflection in the shiny ebony in front of him.

The sound of clapping made him jump. He looked up. Jennah was sitting in the third row, feet up on the seat in front.

‘It’s sounding amazing, Flynn.’

Stupidly, he felt himself flush. ‘Hi.’

She climbed onto the stage and perched on one of the blocks. ‘I haven’t seen you for over a week. Harry told me you no longer believe in lunch breaks.’

‘Harry says strange things.’

Jennah cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yet this is your lunch break and you’re still practising.’

‘I need to.’

‘You also need a break.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Come to the park with me?’

He opened his mouth to say no but then she added, ‘I could do with some company.’

They walked down the empty path in silence. It was grey and overcast today, a chill wind brushing the tops of the trees. Flynn kicked at a pebble, hands buried deep inside his pockets.

‘By the way, congratulations,’ Jennah said.

‘What – oh, thanks.’ He pulled a face and half shrugged. ‘Just means more practice.’

She elbowed him, smiling. ‘No it doesn’t, silly. Means a hell of a lot more than that.’

‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he suggested.

She nodded. A few silent minutes passed. Then, ‘I broke up with Charlie,’ she announced.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why?’

She gave a small shrug, face pinched and serious, chin pressed down over her burgundy scarf. ‘Wasn’t really working out.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘We wanted different things.’

‘Oh. Was it because he wasn’t into music?’

Jennah laughed. ‘No, no – it wasn’t that. He just got too intense. Wanted to spend every single weekend with me and I didn’t feel ready for that.’

‘Why not?’

She gave a wry smile, crinkling up her nose. ‘To be honest, he was beginning to irritate me. And, anyway, I kept feeling guilty all the time.’

‘About what?’

‘About the fact that I didn’t love him.’

Flynn searched for something to say. Why was it that girls were so eager to talk about these things? He wished Harry were here – he would know how to respond. As it was, he felt tongue-tied and more than a little desperate not to get into a conversation about love.

‘Maybe you need to give it more time,’ he suggested weakly.

She shook her head and gave a faint smile. ‘No, it was only getting worse.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Because I’m in love with somebody else.’

He looked at her, incredulous. ‘Harry?’

She burst out laughing. ‘No!’

‘Oh.’ He looked down at the path again, surprised but not exactly disappointed. ‘Oh well. Poor old Charlie
then. Have to say, though, I always thought he was a bit of an idiot.’

Jennah laughed again. ‘Yes, it was never really a match made in heaven.’

He looked across at her. ‘So you’re going out with this new guy?’

‘Oh no.’

‘Why not?’

‘He doesn’t know anything about this. I very much doubt he wants to go out with me.’

They sat down on a damp, earth-smelling bench, and Jennah smiled suddenly. ‘I recognize this spot.’

‘What?’

‘It’s where Harry and I sat when you were doing your midnight run. Don’t you remember? You must have done about twenty laps around us on this path here.’ She glanced at him, as if trying to gauge his reaction. ‘We were worried about you that night,’ she said.

Flynn just looked at her and said nothing.

‘Well, not just that night . . . This year’s turning out to be pretty stressful, isn’t it?’ She wrapped a strand of hair around her little finger.