The Maestro's Mistress (41 page)

‘What?’ Good God, that old
cliché. But then clichés were often born out of life’s truths. ‘And where is
his past?’ Tara wondered. ‘I know he was brought up by his uncle. He never said
much beyond that.’

‘No,’ Georgina agreed. She fussed
with the big ruby ring on the third finger of her left hand. ‘I’ve heard the
uncle was a very cultured man. He lived on his own, never married.’

‘And what about the father?’

‘Georgiana shrugged. ‘I don’t
know. Saul never spoke about him.’

But then Saul is very sparing
with his confidences Tara thought.

‘Poor Saul,’ Georgiana said. ‘No
loving parents, no family.’

Tara looked at her curiously. She
had the impression that Georgiana’s words carried genuine feeling. But then she
had always understood that Georgiana loved Saul in her limited way, so that
Tara  had always felt herself something of a thief in Georgiana’s presence.
‘Why did you come this morning?’ she asked her.

There was a hesitation. ‘I wanted
to tell Saul that the divorce can go through. I want to remarry – my doctor.’

Tara groaned aloud. The terrible
cruel irony of it. And maybe at this moment Georgiana was in no need of a
divorce from Saul.

‘Oh Tara, I’m so very sorry,’
Georgiana said.

After that there was no longer
anything to say. Some futile murmurings were made. Eventually Georgiana got up
to go.

In the hallway a pyjama-clad
Alessandra was leafing through the Sunday press. She looked up. There was
shivery pause.

‘Oh my dear!’ Georgiana
exclaimed. ‘But you’re beautiful.’

Alessandra’s eyes smouldered like
a forest fire.

Tara swiftly shepherded Georgiana
out. ‘Good-bye, I’ll let you know if…’  She turned away and ran back into the
house.

‘Oh, Mummy! Poor, poor Mummy!’
Alessandra cried, grasping at her. ‘That awful woman – coming waltzing in here.
Oh, grotesque.’

‘Truly, I don’t think she meant
any harm.’ Amazing, thought Tara. ‘Listen Alessandra, the press will be
arriving soon. In droves.’

‘Yes, it’s OK. We’ll cope.’
Alessandra threw back her head. ‘We will!’ Suddenly she was strong again. She
padded off into the drawing room.

To her amazement Tara heard the piano
begin to resound with a Schubert impromptu. Very pleasingly executed, bold and
fresh in its interpretation.

CHAPTER
35

Alessandra came down to the
basement to find her mother. She tried to avoid looking at the screen monitors
where the image of her father’s face dominated in triplicate. It was more than
eight weeks since he had disappeared.

‘Mummy, you’ve got to stop doing
this. You’re driving yourself into the ground. Look at you, your clothes would
be tight on a twig.’

Tara reached out and enclosed her
daughter’s waist. ‘This is his monument.’

Alessandra rattled Tara’s
shoulder. ‘Just leave it for a while. You can come back to it later. It’s grim
being down in the dungeon for days on end.’ She took up a ribbon of film and slid
it through her fingers, her expression puzzled and bitter. ‘I wish Roland Grant
would come and take the whole lot away,’ she said, tossing the celluloid to one
side.

Tara flicked switches. The film
stopped rolling. The images on the screen faded to a blank. She was well aware
of the obsessive nature of her compulsion to do this editing work for Saul.
Carrying on from where he had left off.  She was more and more convinced that
he had been on his way from London to the projection room here in the Oxford
house on the night he had vanished from her life.

She had to finish the project.
She was learning so much from it. And his face was there all the time. His
spirit. She had to go on, even though it felt as though it were killing her.

‘Come on,’ she said to
Alessandra. ‘Let’s go out for a walk. Or were you going to exercise Tosca?’
Alessandra had wanted to bring the horse back to her family home since her
father’s crash and disappearance.

‘Done it already. Let’s go for a
drive, blast the village with loud pop music!’

Tara tried to relax behind the
wheel. She kept her pace steady. The notion of speed no longer thrilled her.
‘What do you want for your birthday?’ she asked Alessandra cautiously.

‘Nothing.’

‘Well I want to give you a lovely
present. So, would you like another horse to bring on? We can still keep
Tosca.’

‘No. Not now. I can’t take any
more changes.’

‘How about taking friends to a
disco? A film?’

‘Can I have something at home?
Some friends in. A few spritzers and lager for the boys?’

‘Oh heavens!’  Tara thought about
it. Oh, if only Xavier were here. She laughed. ‘Sure, of course you can.’

The birthday loomed large for
both of them. Only days away. Alessandra was really growing up.

Tara recalled the days of August
fifteen years ago, waiting for her babies to arrive. Her heart leaked a drop of
blood.

The insistent thump of
African-style drums throbbed through the house. When it wasn’t drums it was Irish
wailing that made Tara think of green bogs and slaughtered innocents.

‘It must be torture for you, having
to put up with all this modern music,’ Mrs Lockwood said to her
sympathetically.

Tara laughed. ‘There is some
so-called “serious” contemporary music that has the edge for awfulness even on
this.’

‘Is that a fact?’ said Mrs
Lockwood, unconvinced. She had finished her work now, prepared and set out a
magnificent supper for a dozen or so ravenous young people intent on growing a
few inches in the next few months. She was reaching for her anorak, shrugging
into it.

She cocked her head, listening
again to the sounds from the party. ‘They seem a nice bunch of kids,’ she said.
‘I just hope they take care with Mr Xavier’s sound equipment. It must be worth
a fortune.’

‘I’ve told Alessandra that if
there’s any damage to the sound system or his piano, heads will roll. Actually
she’s pretty protective about his stuff. I don’t anticipate any real trouble.’

Mrs Lockwood nodded approval.
‘Well, good-night, Tara.’ She picked up her bag. She turned. ‘I hope…I
hope…Oh!’ She couldn’t say the words. She made a sudden lurch forward, hugged
Tara fiercely then disappeared through the back door.

Tara went through into the dining
room, surveying the magnificent feast of Italian, Chinese and Indian cuisine
and the huge, horse-shoe shaped birthday cake with its fifteen candles captured
in icing-sugar stirrup holders.

Returning to the dining kitchen
she sat down at the table. Empty and weary. Frighteningly alone. She felt that
she had lost a part of herself, that there was a gaping hole inside her. She
looked at the calendar. Almost nine weeks now. Hope was slipping away, the
occasional glimmers of optimism appearing less and less frequently. Panic
constricted her chest.

She let her head sink back,
turned to look outwards to the garden at the back of the house. Pale green
light leaked from the rain-soaked leaves. It had poured down earlier on and now
the garden was rinsed and glistening.

It was seven in the evening. The
sun was still out, but frail, not yet sure of its power against the clouds. A
shadow moved into position on to the path which lead to the entrance porch. A
long shadow. Dark. Perfectly still.

The skin under Tara’s hair crawled
with sensation. She sat, numb and unfeeling like a stone.

The shadow shifted. He came softly
through the door. He was thinner than before, his face pale, his skin luminous,
almost translucent in the evening light.

Tara’s hands soared up to her
face, covering her eyes, blotting out the power of the beloved image.

He made no sound, no move. He was
watching her. Just watching.

Tara got up. The unimaginable was
happening. She moved to stand close to him. She reached out her hand and
touched his breast bone. He was real: flesh, blood, bone.

Her chest heaved. Blood thundered
in her head. Red waves beating. Joy, fury, rage.

‘You bastard,’ she whispered. She
struck him across the cheek with the back of her hand. She raised the other
hand. He stood quite motionless whilst she rid herself of all her fury and
anger and hurt.

She was only a small woman, but
she was strong and her emotions fuelled her. In time he moved to the table, sat
down, sank his head against the wood and covered himself in protection with his
arms.

‘Aah!’ Tara leaned over him, slid
her hands over his beloved form, pressed kisses into the skin of his neck, into
his hair, his ears.

With the sudden slippery lash of
a python she gripped him in a final burst of rage. ‘God, I’d like to kill you.’

His hands moved behind his head,
reached up and pulled her down to him. ‘I had hoped you might forgive me,’ he
said.

She leaned into him. Saul! Her
Saul. Found, returned. Safe. Oh joy, joy!’

He sat up. She looked at him,
soaked a cloth in cold water and dabbed at the livid marks of violence on his
face. Their eyes came to rest on each other, granite-grey against green. The
fear of meeting was immediately banished into a living, pulsing reunion.

He sat quietly whilst she bathed
his cheeks and swept back the hair from his forehead to seek out further
damage.

He started to speak, to begin his
explanations.

Tara stopped him. She threw out
her hands, framing a globe shape as though cradling his head. ‘No, don’t speak.
Just BE.’ She wrung out the cloth in the sink and carefully hung it over the
tap to dry as Rachel always did. Her legs felt soupy and disobedient. She sat
down and pulled her chair close to him. She took his hand in hers. She breathed
deeply.

Time passed, unheeded, uncharted.
Wordless.

The African drums continued
relentlessly. Saul’s eyes glimmered, his gaze swivelling to hers. They smiled
with the conspiracy of those who had intuitive access to each other’s thoughts.

A door in the hallway opened and
closed, the music surging through in a huge burst and then receding. Alessandra
erupted into the kitchen, her face flushed. ‘I just wanted to tell Mrs Lockwood
she’s performed miracles with…’ Her gesticulating arms dropped down by her
side. She stood rigid. Light flared from her eyes. There was disbelief in her
face and then the most intense concentration as the truth inserted itself into
her mind, which had told itself not to hope.

Saul got slowly to his feet.

‘Daddy,’ Alessandra said. ‘My
lovely daddy.’ Her voice shook.

Tara watched as the two of them
merged together, heads touching, arms tightly wound about. Her vision blurred,
a swimming image, a glimpse of perfect harmony. ‘Happy birthday,’ she heard him
murmur.

The music swelled, deafening now
as a straggle of young people filtered into the hallway, sniffing out the
whereabouts of food like hungry dogs and peering through the kitchen door. Eyes
glanced curiously around, then looked away in confusion.

Tara smiled and walked through
into the hallway, closing the kitchen door behind her. She led the way into the
dining room. ‘This way to the fatted calf,’ she told the famished guests.

He had been briefly stunned.
Dazed. Instinct had propelled him out of the car onto the road. Porsches under
attack were like tanks, he said, wounded but not vanquished. He had crawled
across two moving lanes on the motorway to the hard shoulder. A miraculous
survival.

He had watched the car flare into
a great sheet of fire; spitting and growling in its death throes. He had
stumbled into the dry scrub at the hem of the motorway, found his way into a
meadow and slept against a gate.

When consciousness returned he
had found himself in a world where things appeared askew and tilted. He had
forced his stiff limbs to move. Had walked for hours, eventually reaching a
motorway service station. He had bought food, a razor, a fresh shirt.

Tara placed her hand over his
lips. ‘No more now. You’re here with us; that’s enough.’
That’s everything.

They were in bed. They had
sneaked off, hand in hand, tip-toeing up the stairs. Furtive fugitives from the
serious business of teenagers braying at the trough.

They had needed the simple bond
of sex, to be glued together once more.

Tara lay in his arms, her body
liquid and satisfied, recklessly uncaring about everything except his presence.

Reasons, motives, explanations.
They filtered through slowly, dribbling out unevenly, stopping then starting
again.

At breakfast the next day
Alessandra had watched him with steady eyes. Assessing and joyous, no longer
afraid.

Tara sat down between them.

‘Where did you go to, Daddy?’
Alessandra asked suddenly.