The Maestro's Mistress (9 page)

And after all that, at seventeen,
when her talent seemed on the point of breaking from the bud into full blossom,
she had suddenly turned her back on it. She had gone wild sampling all the
temptations of the stereotypical teenage culture: booze, boys, all-night
parties. And pop music blasting from her radio, making the house throb with
sound, and Richard wince with horror.

Her violin lay untouched in its
case and her voice was directed into yelling at her parents rather than
developing musically.

Scraping into London University
to do philosophy had been a last resort rather than a choice, affording no more
than temporary parental relief. Clearly that had never been right for her. And
now she had thrown that in as well, with no apparent plans to do anything else.
Her waitressing job had also gone – her boss did not take kindly to employees
taking time off, even for family bereavement.

Rachel supposed Tara would be
reduced to signing on for unemployment benefit. Her heart wept for her chid.

There seemed only Bruno at
present who represented some stability.

‘Aren’t you pleased Mum?’ Tara
demanded. ‘For me to be playing again?’

‘Of course I’m pleased.’

‘Daddy would have been, wouldn’t
he?’

Rachel sighed. ‘You must do this
for yourself, not for Daddy.’ She looked at Tara and saw the confusion and
conflict in her face. Anger too. There was this constant undercurrent of anger.
Rachel couldn’t understand it. Why?

Later in the evening as they
watched the late night news on TV, Tara said suddenly, ‘I think I was crazy to
agree to go to this master class. Do you really think I should?’

Her mother frowned. ‘Yes. Yes, I
think you should go. What’s to be lost?’

‘My self respect?’

‘Xavier’s faith in you?’ Rachel
wondered.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m surprised you’re admitting
to caring about that!’

‘So am I,’ Tara agreed with
feeling.

Monica Heilfrich held her master
classes in the pink and gold drawing room of her Belgravia flat. She maintained
that the intimate, home-like atmosphere helped her students to relax.

Tara was the last to arrive, her
bus having been delayed in the snarl of London’s traffic. She found two other
nervous and hopeful violinists present, a boy who looked about fourteen and a
young woman of her own age. But there was no sign of Xavier.

Monica welcomed her as though she
were a long lost relative, overwhelming Tara with a huge hug and two kisses,
continental style, which made her instantly uneasy. In fact the moment she
walked into the womb-like room with its plump brocade sofas and heavy silk
curtains Tara wanted to escape.

Monica, sixtyish, Junoesque and
flamboyantly arrayed in a flowing pink caftan, served coffee and tiny
continental biscuits, whilst in the background her stereo system played a 1959
recording of the Brahms violin concerto.

‘Is that you playing?’ Tara
asked, listening intently.

‘Naturally. Can you guess the
orchestra, the conductor?’ Monica enquired with a teasing glance.

Tara frowned. ‘A mid European
orchestra. Not the Vienna Phil, you can’t mistake their elegant mellow sound.
This is a real deep throat sound, a bit on the stern side. So maybe a German
orchestra?’

Monica’s eyes sharpened. ‘Go on,’
she said.

‘The Berlin Philharmonic,’ Tara
decided. ‘My father used to say that if angels had sterling silver harps the
skies would be filled with a sound exactly like the Berlin Phil’s string
section.’

‘What a marvellous thought! Now,
what about the conductor?’

Tara considered. There was not
enough to go on from what she had heard. It was perfectly possible to detect
certain conductor’s styles from an orchestra’s playing. Her father had
demonstrated that to her years ago, both from his unending fund of stories
about conductors and their idiosyncratic styles and also his vast collection of
recordings which he used to invite the young Tara to enjoy with him. But from
this snatch of music, mainly designed as a show case for Monica’s playing, you
just had to guess.

‘Herbert von Karajan was the boss
at the Berlin Phil in the late fifties,’ Tara observed. ‘I’ll go for him as the
most likely.’

Monica handed her the CD sleeve
to check for herself. Her hypothesizing had been entirely correct. ‘I’m
impressed,’ Monica said, raising her eyebrows.

The other assembled
instrumentalist glanced at Tara with respect. But there was a touch of envious
rivalry in their eyes which made her wish she’d kept her mouth shut.

Monica gave them an A on the
piano and invited them to tune their instruments. Tara took her father’s
precious violin from its case and settled it under her jawbone. Suddenly the
essence of its previous owner overwhelmed her. For a few seconds she felt her
father as a living presence in the room and then just as suddenly the image
died and she found her eyes brimming with tears.

‘A little ice breaker,’ Monica
decreed, taking up her own instrument and plucking the strings provocatively
before launching into the opening theme of the Mendelssohn concerto. ‘Every
aspiring violinist has a go with this one,’ she told her admiring audience. ‘It
is simply too tempting not to have a little try. Such a sinuous, tantalizing
melody.’ She wiggled her ample shoulders to illustrate her comment. She then
beckoned to the boy, inviting him to continue where she had left off.

He stood up, a pale oriental beanpole
with a curtain of silky black hair.

As he started to play the door
opened softly and Xavier walked in. Settling himself silently in a far corner
of the room, he gave a brief wave of his hand to indicate that the proceedings
should continue without interruption.

Tara listened in fascination to
the boy’s playing. His talent was huge, his technical skill awesome, and his
ability to wring emotion from the music equally stunning. She was consumed with
admiration. But despite the intensity of her concentration on the boy’s
phenomenal ability she found herself unable to ignore the still, silent
presence of Xavier. Her eyes flickered constantly across to his, desperate not
to miss any clue as to the nature of the maestro’s response to what he was
hearing.

Xavier, however, was giving
nothing away. His face was perfectly still and blank and remained so throughout
the next thirty minutes, during which Monica tutored, tortured and teased the
gauche intense boy, drawing from him ever more evidence of a massive music potential.

Tara found herself growing
increasingly apprehensive at the prospect of being placed under the merciless
spotlight of Monica’s tuition. It was not so much her conviction that her own
skill in no way measured up to what she had heard so far, but more an intense
reluctance to be shown up as mediocre in Xavier’s eyes.

Her nerves began to sing with
tension. When Monica eventually called on her to take up her violin her hands
were trembling so much she feared she would not even be able to pull the bow
across the strings.

Monica listened to her playing
for a few seconds before stopping her abruptly. ‘That’s good. Quite nice. But
there is too much tension. Relax, my dear. Take deep breaths.’ She expanded her
own ample chest in demonstration, and Tara had no option but to huff and puff
along with her.

She started again, some Bach this
time, one of the partitas.

Again Monica stopped her. ‘Still
too much tightness, too many nerves. Listen, it happens to all of us, these
wretched nerves.
I’m
nervous.’

‘No, you’re not!’ Tara shot back
at her.

Monica laughed. ‘OK, it’s
different for me. Of course it is. Why don’t you go and sit down for a few
minutes, get your breath back and then we’ll try again.’

Her face hot and crimson, Tara
did as she was directed whilst the other young woman was put through her paces.
Tara wondered whether to leave now. Very quietly, no fuss, no drama. She knew
she had no chance of showing whatever talent she possessed in these
surroundings. And certainly not under the hawk-like gaze of Xavier whose silent
presence seemed to permeate the room.

In fact Monica did not demand a
second performance from her but invited her to join in a final group session
where the three instrumentalists played together whilst Monica accompanied them
on the piano.

At the close of the session
Monica spoke to her three pupils, making a brief appraisal of what she had
heard, making it clear she was interested in tutoring the young man further.
She told the young woman that she was going to recommend her to her own agent
as a prospective client.

She turned last to Tara. ‘Quite
nice decisive playing once you got rid of those nerves. Very
physical
playing in fact,’ she observed carefully. ‘A nice tone as well.’

Tara stiffened. This was
definitely a case of damning with faint praise.

‘You must go away, get some good
tutoring and practise for around a year,’ Monica smiled. ‘Then you could well
try for a place in one of the provincial orchestras. They need young players of
spirit like you. All in all, I think you will do very well, my dear.’

Tara placed her instrument in its
case. Her stomach still churned. Her brain felt numb. She cursed herself for
having laid her head on this particular chopping block. She hoped desperately
that Xavier would continue to show little interest in her presence. With relief
she saw that he was fully engaged in talking with Monica, frowning and nodding
his head.

Unobtrusively nodding her
farewells Tara moved towards the door and slipped through, gaining an immediate
sense of release. Out in the street she breathed deeply, savouring the fresh,
sharp air. She debated going to see Bruno, but hesitated thinking it would be
unfair to disturb him if he was studying.

A strong purposeful hand grasped
her elbow. ‘I’ll take you home, Tara.’

Her heart jumped. Looking up she
connected with Xavier’s impassive gaze. In the bright afternoon light she
noticed that his eyes were flecked with streaks of deep sapphire. They glinted
in the depth of the cool grey irises, suggesting some underlying wildness of
personality which contrasted strongly with his remote and rigidly controlled
exterior.

Still touchy and defensive after
the session with Monica Heilfrich, Tara’s initial instinct was to refuse his
offer. But as he steered her firmly towards his car parked just a few yards
away she found herself curiously unresisting. She felt drained and weary, in no
mood to fight him for her right to grapple with London’s public transport.

He started the engine, a
throbbing beast with a roar in its belly and the distinctive whine of precision
engineering in its throat. Tara felt her back pressed against the seat as
Xavier accelerated. She had never realized before that it was perfectly
possible to drive fast in London’s jumble of traffic – as long as you were
prepared to ignore the rights and demands of all the other drivers.

‘You are sorry you went along to
that little event?’ he enquired conversationally.

‘It was a farce. A disaster,’ she
responded with feeling.

‘To be told you could make it
into a civic orchestra – that is a disaster?’

Tara turned her head to examine
his expression. As she might have foreseen it gave nothing away. ‘As a matter
of fact, yes.’

He nodded – said nothing.

‘Would you have been pleased at
nineteen to have been told you might make it to the rear section of the violins
in a second-rate orchestra –
if
you practised?’

‘I was never a violinist.’

‘Hah! Sliding out of the
question.’ She turned to stare out of the window. She felt wretched and bleak.
The master class had not only unnerved her but had dug deep into the rawness of
her grief. It was as though her father had been there with her during those
fateful minutes and she had been powerless to prevent herself letting him down.

‘What were you hoping for? To be
told you had a future as a soloist?’ Xavier asked.

‘Probably.’ She felt a fresh stab
of pain as the flame of ambitious optimism that had glowed throughout the years
of her childhood was finally snuffed out. ‘Yes, I used to hope for that. That
is what
he
wanted for me.’

‘And were his hopes realistic?’

‘You’ve just heard me play. You
should know,’ she responded aggressively.

‘I did not hear you as a child. A
great deal could have happened since then.’

Tara did not reply. She did not
want to talk about it; her childhood potential, the anxiety to match up to her
father’s hopes. She wanted to cry again because she had lost him forever. She
wondered how long it would be before she stopped feeling like this.

They were out of the city now, on
the carriageway leading to the west-bound motorway. She glanced at Xavier. ‘Why
aren’t we going straight home?’

‘I enjoy driving. And you’re not
busy are you?’

She shrugged. She glanced at the
rev counter. The rpms were up at 400. The car was doing ninety and still
accelerating.