The Concert Pianist (30 page)

‘I went to the cottage,' he said at last.

She shook her head.

‘Those friends of mine. I told you about them.'

‘The ones that died?'

‘I went back to the house.'

‘When?'

‘The other day.'

She was listening now. ‘Why did you go?'

He gazed at her for a long time.

‘They crossed over and I felt that I was about to follow them.'

She stared at him.

‘Didn't look nice.' He shook his head. It was hard to know where to start. ‘A fire does its business. I suppose you could say the house, what was left of it, bore the scars of their fate like a memorial. Odd. I was trying to see where they'd gone, and getting as close as I could to the exit point. They took a part of me with them, you see. That little heaven of theirs - I was a shareholder. I knew what it was all about. Very rarely in life you find these glades and pastures, miniature Arcadias, where everything special comes together, as well as it can. A fleeting perfection of earthly happiness that makes you very uneasy. Because as soon as one sees and feels it, you know how precious and vulnerable it is. Those idylls can't last. But we were all inside this very happy world thinking, dammit, life can be this good, and when it is you bloody well deserve it.'

He ran his fingers around the stem of the wine glass.

‘After the fire, I knew I'd never reconstruct that type of happiness again. They weren't my family literally, but they were the nearest I'd come. Actually, I adopted them quite tenaciously. When Katie was born I remember holding her, aged one hour, thinking: Right, she's mine. Bachelor appropriation. I'm going to love this little girl.' He smiled sadly. ‘Loving is not an easy business for some people. I was very grateful for being let in on a family and allowed to nurture my
own
affection for them, within limits, my way, safely, without being chastised for inadequacy or selfishness, or emotional incompetence.'

He let out a long breath. He was covered in goosebumps. Ursula was curled against the cushions, quite still.

‘Because they all died, it seemed easier to think of it as a mad singularity, something to blank out. How on earth do you cope with these shit-eating disasters? Do you fight, or submit? One has to hack on and the mind has strategies for hauling through pain. But every plan has a loophole. Every good day implies a bad day. Things will never be the same and what you can't see through the smoke and debris is that meaning has been sucked out of your life and no amount of brave determination not to be shafted by this fucking awful accident makes a shred of difference to the underlying reality - that life is tragic, and to develop the sinew and scar tissue and hide to cope with that fact takes years.'

He waved it off, smiling suddenly, as if trying to counteract his own vehemence. These declarations were actually quite good for the spirit.

‘I had a good look around. Eventually enough was enough. I went up the hill for a walk. I had forgotten how beautiful it was round there. Wonderful views and colours. All just the same, identical. The birds and the trees and the flowers, just carrying on, year after year. I made it to the top of the hill and took in the view, the breeze in my hair, aware of so many familiar details - all those constants in the scenery looking good this time of year, and it came to me.'

She looked at him.

His eyes were suddenly bright.

‘I'd say it was a high-pitched note, like tinnitus, but pleasant. Light breaking through cloud almost. Right up high. An angelic highness. Like the pinnacle of the most massive chord. I even thought the key was C major, and it came all the way down to the ground. A sonic pyramid, but clear, like glass. There are chords in Bruckner and Sibelius like this, composed of extremes, sky-earth chords, but this was new. Made up of high pitches, violin harmonics, and deep vibrations. An aural hallucination, or maybe I just put it there, like a composer sites a chord in his head. It followed me back across the field.'

He
raised his eyebrows. ‘All this music, you see, it comes from somewhere else.'

It was warming to think she would understand and he smiled faintly to be able to put it so simply.

‘After that, you see . . .'

She nodded slowly.

He looked at her carefully.

‘After that?'

‘I have to play again.'

Chapter Twenty-one

The walls of the lobby were ribbed with red panels. Two girls stood behind a spotlit desk smiling as he approached. They wore sequinned evening dresses cut high on the collar and slitted at the bust. The chesty welcome was tempered by the presence of shaven-headed bouncers, a pair, big as eunuchs.

‘Good evening to you.'

It was long past his bedtime. He was not feeling lively.

Behind the girls were framed erotic cartoons penned by some nightlifer beloved of the management.

‘I'm joining Mr Vadim Kuryagin.'

He wore jacket and tie. Why was it necessary to dress up for a strip joint?

The girls looked at him strangely.

He heard voices from the end of the lobby: a fat man in a suit and two streaky blondes.

‘May I see if he's inside?'

‘Firty-five pound.'

‘I might not stay.'

One of the bouncers moved.

Philip reached for his wallet.

He followed the red carpet and came to a pair of swing doors. A diminutive bunny girl took his ticket.

As he crossed the portal, space opened out and sound welcomed him. He was looking across a room with patches of brilliant light and zones of darkness. There were heads and figures in shady recesses, circles of disco flooring, bright bodies on dance platforms. The faces of punters sitting round tables were doused in rose light.
He
went forward and a pillar slid away to expose a group of men on stools encircling a dais on which a naked girl gyrated, hand-overhanding the dance pole as though it were the audience's representative member. Her legs stretched long and tense on stiletto heels. She charitably bent over, smiling upside down. Someone reached up to park a tenner between her teeth, sponsoring further flurries of booty duty and hip flicking.

The spotlights were penetrating. He could smell perfume, disinfectant, cigar smoke, the hint of vomit.

Trays of drinks sailed by, champagne buckets were parked by cluttered tables, and now he was escorted by an Italian-style maitre d' in a well-cut suit, spreading looks of genial welcome over all and sundry, as if this were a family restaurant in suburban Naples.

He looked through the glow of low-hanging lanterns, trying to see the others. There were enclaves of ‘businessmen', tinselly lady consorts, female limbs in cubicles beyond. Around one table a stag-night group sprawled, fairly blotto and dishevelled, team spirit flagging under the onslaught of drink and music and the writhings of two entwined stroboscopic females, pole-wrapped like a pair of flickering anacondas on a nearby dais. He passed a Middle Eastern roué and his face-lifted lady friend, who confronted the goings-on with wide-eyed ornamental amazement.

He'd been told on a tip-off.

First he phoned Marguerite, then her brother-in-law, whose flat in Piccadilly Vadim was supposed to be using, but somebody else sent him on a trail via two more telephone numbers. Eventually he got through to Nigel Winterbottom (of all people) - a Royal Academy pianist with good manners and a jolly-hockey-sticks delivery seemingly at odds with his preference for Bartok. A few years ago Philip had given him a lesson.

‘Yah. I'm seeing him this evening. Will you be there?'

‘Don't think so. Where are you going?'

‘Peaches and Banana.'

‘Peaches and Bananas?'

‘Banana, singular. Somebody called Fouad is taking us.'

‘Fouad?'

‘Oh, one of Vadim's new chums.'

My replacement, thought Philip. ‘Not a restaurant?'

‘
Not a restaurant, no.' Nigel laughed brightly.

‘Are you meeting beforehand?'

‘I'm rehearsing till ten. Vadim's coming back from Liverpool, and the general plan was to go to Fouad's about eleven o'clock.'

‘Take a pack of condoms.'

‘Well . . . I . . . you know, usual thing with Vadim. You want to see the guy, you have to join the roller-coaster. Will you come and rescue me?'

‘I might. But don't tell him. It'll be a surprise.'

‘Right you are.'

He had no idea what to expect tonight. Vadim's behaviour was off the rails these days. He was curious to see the limits of his protege's intransigence. How much direct human appeal could he resist? At what point would some vestige of fellow-feeling break surface? His great hope was that Vadim wanted nothing more than to humiliate him in reprisal for his criticisms.

Suddenly, he saw them, right at the end. They were sitting in a semicircle around a table, Nigel, Fouad, four girls - dappled light falling on hands and faces. Vadim looked at him twice, double-taking as he approached. His face was a picture of red-handed surprise, masked quickly.

‘Hello, Vadim,' said Philip, taking his place on a stool without further ado.

Fouad reached over to shake hands on the basis that any friend of Vadim's was a friend of his and welcome at the table. Nigel maintained the pretence of surprise with honourable conviction, offering a half-frozen smile that did full justice to the situation in which they now found themselves. He was wearing blazer and tie, slacks and loafers, and was at a grinning loss to be discovered in this den next to a dancer in schoolgirl uniform with blotched lipstick, hair slides, and a power-mounted Wonderbra.

‘Very good to see you,' he said sincerely.

Fouad introduced Kasia and Mandy, their distinguished lady guests, Kasia wearing a nurse's outfit, Mandy in bunny garb. Vadim was talking to a cockney girl called Shiva, not Asian, who had the benefit of his full attention.

Philip rather felt he had gained the upper hand by materialising out of the strobe-flicker and smoke haze like a spectral Com
mendatore.
He was dry-mouthed and headachy. The lights were confusing, the music draining. He was not well, but he was focused.

The maitre d' approached to cement this new grouping and to exchange words with Fouad, who leant towards him in quiet conferral on the price of more champagne. Fouad was wreathed in smiles. His lined skin was nicely tanned, his eyelashes still long for a man of his age: mid-fifties. He seemed to be relishing the fulfilment of certain exchange rates between wealth and pleasure, which included the joy of hospitality (because he was obviously paying for everybody), and a certain sense of radiant amusement that his favoured-patron status at the club could make things not too fast, not too rushed, as though lap-dancing clubs were like Michelin restaurants where it was better if you could afford to pace yourself and fondle the details.

Nigel's Adam's apple worked hard as Mandy placed a hand on his thigh.

Philip felt quickly intoxicated by the first sip of champagne. He looked from one face to the next.

‘Talk to our lady friends,' explained Fouad. ‘A little later they dance. That way more personal. Philip, please sit here. By Vadim.'

Philip complied, shifting from his stool on to the semicircular banquette, whilst Fouad stood, hoiking his trousers and looking around the club. Vadim showed no intention of speaking to him. Philip inhaled deeply, fending off the background din of the club. He took another sip from his glass. He glanced at Kasia in her nurse outfit, and then thought of his operation.

‘Shiva, this is love, not business,' Vadim was saying. ‘You're so beautiful a million pounds would not be enough.'

Shiva's hair was drawn tightly back. She had catty eyes, rouged cheeks, good shoulders. She swayed to the beat of imagined music. ‘I'll take a billion.'

‘A billion lire is possible.'

She waved at Nigel across the table. ‘You look nice.'

Vadim frowned.

Nigel nodded and tipped his spectacles. ‘Hello, there.'

‘What's your fantasy, then?'

His colour brightened. ‘Ha ha.' He glanced at the others. ‘I've gone all shy.'

‘
Can I dance for you?'

Vadim shook his head.

‘Gosh . . . What d'you charge?'

Fouad stayed Nigel with a hand. ‘You pay nothing.'

Nigel perked up. ‘That's frightfully kind.'

‘Go and sit in that chair,' said Shiva.

‘Golly!'

Nigel moved over to one of a pair of chairs set apart from the table, next to a partition where he could enjoy the coming spectacle in relative privacy.

Shiva stood by the table wriggling off her leopardskin top. She was suddenly bare except for a strapless bra and a thong.

‘God!' said Vadim, bathing his face in his hands.

Shiva walked over to Nigel, and bent forward like a crane hinged at the tops of the thighs, placing her palms on the arms of his chair, and rolling her shoulders before springing through a twirl that gave him a first view of her rippling caramel column of a body.

‘Talk amongst yourselves,' he said, screening the side of his face with a hand.

They watched for a few moments until Fouad drew closer to Philip, leaning confidentially forward as though about to impart something of profound importance that it was essential for Philip to grasp, because in a sense they were all in this together, and certain fundamentals had to be shared between men of the world.

‘Shiva,' he said, emotion in his eyes, ‘has the most beautiful bottom in the history of . . .'

His host was momentarily lost for words.

Philip stared at him. ‘You're from Saudi, Fouad?'

‘From Lebanon. But I am English. I have British passport. But Philip, listen. I have been to many clubs. New York, Sidney, Bangkok. The best brothels in the world. Honestly. Listen. I have spent' - he rubbed his fingers together - ‘thousands and thousands of dollars all over the world, but I have never seen anything like this Shiva. She is goddess. The bottom is' - he shrugged - ‘from Allah. Divine. Can I have a Coca-Cola?' he said to a passing waitress. ‘If I were a rich man I would pay for all the women in England to have a bottom like this, because I love this country, but you know some
times
I think people don't know how to enjoy themselves. Here they know. Listen, this is a good club! But still' - he spread his palms, pouted wisely - ‘Shiva could change the whole country. Don't smile. It's serious. People watch too much television. Eat too much bad food. You need to come this place to wake up.'