Frozen Music (47 page)

I reached in my bag for a tissue and then, instead of blowing my nose, I took out my pen and wrote his name on the pale-pink paper.
Linus. Linus I Love You
, and the ink bled into the tissue, blurring the lines of the words. But at last they were out, those words that had lain like a weight at the base of my heart, making it heavy.

What a fool love had made of me, because when I stumbled over an empty bottle of pear juice, discarded at the edge of the path, I picked it up. I unscrewed the top and then, having rolled the tissue
into a cigar shape, I pushed it down the neck of the bottle and replaced the top. I turned to the sea and as I raised my arm I called out his name to the wind and the gulls, and hurled my message into the water.

‘Goodbye Gerald and Kerstin, goodbye Bertil.' I stood with Olivia on the departing ferry, Audrey was seated in a collapsible wheelchair lent to us by the hospital. Once we reached the airport she would be transferred into one belonging to the airline and Olivia would return this one to the hospital. I tried to concentrate on practical things, like wheelchairs, to take my mind off the pain of leaving. The last passengers walked aboard and the barriers went down. The bell rang and we were off. The sun glittered on the soft waves, a seagull circled squawking overhead. Up ahead I glimpsed the blue gable of Villa Rosengård. I lifted my face to the sun.

‘Be careful,' Olivia said. ‘Looking straight into the sun like that. You'll blind yourself. See, your eyes are watering already.'

On the quayside Bertil, Gerald and Kerstin gave one last wave before turning round and walking back up the hill.

I lifted my face to the sun once more; it was too good an excuse for my tears to pass up.

Ivar was splashing around in the small rock pool by the bathing steps. ‘Look Pappa! Look at me, I'm swimming underwater.'

Linus looked as the head and the feet of Ivar disappeared below the surface, leaving his bottom in its blue bathing trunks sticking up in the air like the tail of a duck. ‘Very good, Ivar,' he called back.

Ivar surfaced and announced that he was diving for treasures. Some minutes later he scrambled up from the pool, a bottle in his hand. ‘Look at this. It's a message. A message in a bottle.' He climbed up the rocks until he stood in front of Linus, water dripping from his slicked-back hair. ‘Here. Do you think it's a treasure map? I bet it's a treasure map.' He handed the bottle to Linus who took it, turning it round in his hand.

‘It looks more like an old tissue to me. Go and chuck it in the bin
will you, there's a good boy.' He lay back on the warm rock and closed his eyes against the glare of the sun.

But Ivar was curious. It might look like a boring old pink tissue, but maybe that's just what the pirates wanted you to think. Out of sight of his father he unscrewed the top and fished out the tissue.

Lives are shattered, your heart breaks and yet you can wake up in your own bed as if nothing at all had changed. ‘Tap tap tap.' Posy knocked on my bedroom door. ‘I've made you some breakfast.'

‘Did you miss me while I was away?' I asked her as we faced each other across the kitchen table.

Posy thought about it. ‘Sort of,' she said finally.

‘But you're glad to have me back?' I seemed to have this need to be loved nowadays, to belong somewhere.

Posy was studying me, her pretty head a little to one side. ‘Mm.'

I must have looked downcast because she tried to explain. ‘Of course I'm really glad you're back. Of course I've missed you. It's been restful, that's all.' This might have been a fair reply, but not the one I had hoped for. She told me her brother had asked after me. ‘Have you missed Angus very much?'

I told her as tactfully as I could that no, I had not.

‘He still cares about you a great deal.'

‘Look,' I said. ‘He's a nice man. But I have this thing against deserters.'

Posy looked shocked. ‘That's a bit harsh, don't you think?'

I sighed and looked down at my hands. Then I looked up again, not straight at Posy, but just to the side of her. ‘I'm in love with someone else. I mean really in love. Gut-wrenchingly, knee-weakeningly, star-gazingly, moon-madly in love.' Now I looked at her.

She was about to laugh. But something in my expression must have stopped her. ‘You mean it, don't you,' she said. ‘You're serious? Who is it?'

‘Linus.'

‘The architect. Crikey! And what about him? Is he in love with you?'

It took me some time to force the word from my lips, this bad, wrong word. ‘No.'

‘Ah!' Posy said. ‘Now that would explain why you didn't miss Angus.'

After breakfast I went to see Audrey. There were still a couple of weeks to go before I started work. It was just as well; for the moment my mother needed a lot of organising. Still, as she herself had said with characteristic disregard for normal human decency, ‘Such a stroke of luck that Janet's mother died while we were away, because now Janet can live in.'

‘You know,' she said now, as I sat down on the chair by her bed. ‘You're far too worried about what people might think. I told Janet that we would have been in a right pickle had her mother not died this summer and she saw my point completely.'

‘She knows you,' I said. ‘That's why she wasn't surprised.'

My mother looked pleased, as if she was glad I agreed with her for once. ‘Now,' she said. ‘Before you start lecturing me, I know I have to do my exercises.'

‘You're staying in bed? I mean, you haven't decided to rejoin life after everything that's happened?'

Audrey looked at me, her baby-blue eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘Why ever should I want to, especially after everything that's happened?' I had to admit that she had a point.

‘Come and sit here, Esther.' Audrey patted the side of the bed. I moved over from the chair. ‘Don't look so suspicious.' My mother gave a little laugh. I laughed back, every bit as insincerely, as she took my hand in hers. I looked embarrassed. Audrey and I had managed thirty-four years with just a bare minimum of physical contact between us. Why should we change now?

‘When I was a little girl,' Audrey began, ‘I used to love to visit my Aunt Leouora. I never saw her in any pose other than reclining on the
chaise longue
in her sitting-room. She had a dear little house in Bloomsbury. I went back there some years ago, but it had been turned
into some sort of take-away place. They had something large and brown and unspeakable turning round and round on a spit, and the smell was dreadful. Someone told me it was a donor kebab. Awful name, makes me think of kidneys, as in donor organs. Anyway, I digress.

‘I can remember to this day seeing her there so peaceful, a tray with coffee and a box of chocolates on the small table by her side, a novel in her hand. And don't think that Leouora was a dull woman, or that her life lacked excitement. This was no escape. She loved life. She was better read than any man or woman I have met since. She spoke four languages fluently and read Latin as well as any priest. She embroidered. She listened to all the new plays on the wireless. The only thing she missed was her music. Her teacher said she would never succeed while she insisted on singing in a reclining position. Otherwise, her life was fuller than most. She wasted no time dawdling about, or sitting in traffic jams, not that there were many in those days, but you know what I mean. So, while other girls my age talked of marrying dashing men, soldiers maybe, who would whisk them away to exotic places, or having masses of babies (Gillian Barton wanted her own hunter and Shirley James, bless her, dreamt of becoming a missionary) I told them I wanted to lie on a
chaise longue
and read. I don't think they ever took me seriously.' Audrey fell silent.

‘You're saying that you have, at last, fulfilled a lifetime's ambition?'

‘I suppose I am,' Audrey said, removing her hand from mine and reaching out, instead, for a doughnut. I left her sitting there, contented.

Good to have you back
.

Now Chloe didn't really say that. It was me imagining, as I faced her in her office two weeks later. What she actually said was, ‘So?' Then she looked hard at me, studying me for signs of madness I expect. She should meet Ulla, I thought. But I wasn't thinking this unkindly. I missed them all, even her. Linus I missed with never-diminishing intensity. No, that wasn't true. Sometimes I dreamt of him and then I didn't miss him because we were together. But it was a short respite because waking up was parting from him all over again.

I realised that Chloe was speaking to me and as I looked at her I
noticed that her skin had a new tautness; pig-pink it stretched across her cheekbones with no visible lines or wrinkles. ‘You're saying you really are back to your old self?'

I nodded. I didn't tell her that I had also moved
forward
to a
new
self. I didn't want to confuse her just as we were about to sign my new contract of employment.

‘As you know, you can't step into your old job, Charlie's there now.'

‘Charlie from Sport?'

Chloe nodded. The sun broke through a cloud and shone straight in through the fifth-floor window, hitting her profile. She rose from her chair and went across, shielding her face as she drew the blind. ‘But we still want you to work on some specific features the way you have been doing as a freelancer, as well as taking over from Alison on “
Chronicle
Woman”.' She sat down again.

‘I thought I was going back to features full-time.'

‘Sorry.' Chloe shrugged. ‘I wouldn't complain if I were you. “Woman” is being expanded to three pages and we're aiming to make it far more hard-hitting. Out with the “Ten Ways to Catch a Man for Christmas” and in with “Ten Ways to Beat the Ageing Process the Natural Way”. Investigative stuff. “Where to go for HRT”. “The Truth about Long-Lasting Lipstick”. That kind of thing. Look upon it as a challenge.'

‘And you think I'm the right person for the job?'

‘You'd better be. And there's that People's Glyndebourne thing. It looks like it's on the cards again – Terra Nova have launched their chain of travel agents very successfully, so I suppose they feel they can take a bit of adverse publicity for now. Charlie agrees with me that as you started the reporting you might as well wrap it up.'

‘They're going ahead, are they? Wow. I'll have to think about that one.'

‘What's there to think about?'

I looked at her. If I told her love, she'd collapse with laughter. ‘It's laser,' I said instead. ‘That's what you've had done, you've laser-treated your face. That's why your skin's so smooth and pink, and why you can't face the sun.'

‘You noticed.' Chloe looked pleased. ‘I did it as part of our series on
cosmetic surgery, but I'm thrilled with the result. I'm recommending it to everyone.' She got up too. ‘I'll walk out with you, I'm off to the City for our “Why Smart Women Are City Women” series.'

As we stepped out into the sunshine, the New Vampire at my side pulled her straw hat down lower and pushed her silk scarf closer round her neck. We walked off in opposite directions.

I sat on the tiny lawn at the back of the house pulling the petals off a daisy: integrity, no integrity, integrity, no integrity, integrity, no integrity, integrity… Bugger!

When Chloe told me that Stuart Lloyd had announced his intention to restart the opera house project I had thought about one thing, and one alone:
Linus! Linus will be coming over, a lot
.

After lunch I had gone back to see Charlie, the Charlie who had taken over my old job on features.

‘So,' Charlie had said. ‘It looks like we'll be doing a follow-up on the Wilsons.'

‘Ah.'

‘“Just as the clouds lifted above their heads the Sword of Damocles descends once more on brave George and Dora Wilson”. You know the kind of thing.'

‘You mean we should try to stop the building of the opera house again?'

Charlie took on a look of Patience Barely Endured. ‘We are continuing our campaign of justice for the Wilsons, yes. Oh, and did you know?' He had called me back from the doorway. ‘Barry Jones, you know the guy; used to be someone in television…' I winced at the ‘used to be' bit. ‘Apparently he lives near the Wilsons and he called up to say he'd like to back our campaign in any way we'd want. He's attempting a comeback and I think it might well happen for him. He's been to a sex addiction clinic (that's for learning not to need sex, not how to do it).' I thanked Charlie for that explanation. ‘And', Charlie had continued, ‘he's on the wagon. His family is right behind him, and he and his wife are renewing their marriage vows in a moving ceremony near their country cottage, so I think all the pieces
are in place for him. See if you can get him “Having tea with his good neighbours Dora and George in their farmhouse kitchen”-type thing. Get on it right away.'

I pulled up another daisy from the uncut lawn. ‘Integrity, no integrity, integrity…'

Back inside I read John Donne:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee
.

I read it again, out loud, to Posy. I thought that no more beautiful words had been written or worthy sentiments expressed. ‘What is one woman's unrequited love for a man compared with that?' I asked her. ‘And the clod, or clods in question right now are the poor Wilsons. Could I just stand idly by and watch them being washed away on a tide of progress?' Before she had a chance to reply I answered myself. ‘Yes, yes I could, but I won't. Maybe there have to be victims for progress to be made, but if I know nothing else I do know that I don't want to be part of a society where the victims have no voice. I'm the attorney for the defence.' I looked at up at her. ‘That's an important job, isn't it?'