Highly Strung (15 page)

They made their way to the table, joining Vanessa.

“I believe the Czechs love music every bit as much as the Austrians,” said Mary-Ann optimistically. “We should have a full house for tomorrow’s concert.”

“Let’s hope our resident Czech is in a good mood,” remarked Vanessa pointedly. They all looked over at Milan, who wasn’t looking as full of the joys of spring as Mary-Ann.

Lydia inhaled sharply as Evgeny kicked back his chair and stormed out of the breakfast room.

“What is it with those two?” wondered Mary-Ann. “They seem to have a volatile relationship. I didn’t think Milan was gay.”

“He’s bisexual,” said Vanessa, her tone flat.

“Really?” Mary-Ann was all ears, leaning forward and speaking in a loud whisper. “So he and Evgeny…?”

“On and off,” said Vanessa. “Milan’s a busy man, if you know what I mean.”

“You don’t seem to like him much.”

“That’s because I used to like him a bit
too
much.”

“Oh, God, really? I don’t want to pry…”

“It’s okay. I’m over it. I was infatuated for a while, and he’s very good at playing on that kind of adoration. Until it gets too serious—then he gets bored and moves on. It’s just Milan. As long as you don’t want anything from him, you can have a good time with him.”

Lydia buttered her toast over and over, not daring to catch Vanessa’s eye. She didn’t want Mary-Ann knowing about her relationship with Milan, not now. Somehow she didn’t feel she could bear the other woman’s disappointment.

“A bit of a playboy, then?”

“Kinda. Isn’t he, Lyd?”

Lydia looked up sharply and shook her head, shrugging at the same time.

“I guess. He’s dated lots of semi-famous women, hasn’t he?”

“You know he has.”

“I don’t really care about that.” Lydia felt moved to defend him, although she risked exposure by Vanessa. “He’s been good to me. As the leader of the orchestra, I mean.”

Vanessa snorted.

“He encourages new talent. He cares about good musicianship—really cares. I know he’s a pain in the arse sometimes, but I like him.”

“Whatever,” said Vanessa, standing up and drinking the dregs of her orange juice. “I’m going to pack. See you on the coach.”

On the way up to her room, Lydia bumped into Evgeny, who was storming across the lobby with his suitcase.

“Evgeny! You’re a bit early… Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he snapped, wheeling his luggage across to the bar.

“It’s a bit early for…”

But he was in there already, and Lydia looked through the smoked glass partition to see him being served a shot of vodka on the rocks.

Shaking her head, she pressed the lift button.

Trouble ahead
.

The central European plain was bathed in spring sunshine as the tour coach bowled through Austria with its cargo of talent.

Lydia, next to Mary-Ann and in front of Milan, found that she couldn’t relax or really listen to her companion’s chatter about the sights and delights of Prague. Across the gangway from Milan, Evgeny snored drunkenly, contributing to the slightly hysterical high spirits of the orchestra members. There was an air of dread expectancy. Something was going to happen.

They crossed the border into the Czech Republic, and Lydia heard Milan say, loudly and pointedly, “
Ma vlást
,” as soon as the coach wheels rolled over Bohemian tarmac. She pretended to engross herself in her book, but she couldn’t help listening to Milan’s running commentary to the violinist beside him on the subjects of Czech history and politics. Although she was still a little annoyed with him over his treatment of Evgeny at the sex party, the passion and knowledge with which he spoke drew her back into his alluring orbit, glossing over the cracks their Austrian adventure had put in place.

Lush green countryside eventually gave way to the industrial outskirts of the city. A stretch of modern glass offices turned into vast swathes of Soviet-style housing blocks, tatty and graffiti-covered. Lydia found herself wondering if Milan had grown up in one of these, though it seemed unlikely. She had always pictured him in an elegant town house, practicing the violin in a gabled bedroom so that the music spilled out into the picturesque cobbled street below. But perhaps the reality was different—she couldn’t know, as he’d never spoken of his earlier life.

Her heart leapt as the coach crossed the Vltava river, and she couldn’t help looking behind her to see Milan’s face. He had stopped talking for a moment, and now stared through the window as if looking for something that wasn’t there. The tune they were due to play at tomorrow’s concert flowed into Lydia’s mind, accompanying the rest of the journey along the river bank and into the heart of the city. She ate up the surroundings with her eyes, hoping that the trams and the crumbling old buildings along the side of the road, which housed bars and casinos, might give her some key to Milan’s psyche. Faded grandeur soon became beauty and elegance; then they were at the hotel, alighting from the coach in the shadows of the castle and cathedral at the top of the hill.

“Meet me at that bar on the corner in half an hour. I’ll take you on a tour,” muttered Milan as they piled into the hotel reception area.

Lydia hugged herself happily. She had been looking forward to this for such a long time.

“I suppose you’re off with Milan this afternoon,” said Vanessa sourly, hanging her concert dress in the wardrobe of their shared room.

“I suppose I am.”

“Well, have fun. Maybe he’ll be different in his home town. Maybe he’ll give you some clue about who he is.”

Lydia bit her lip and confessed to having the same idea.

Vanessa gazed at her for a long moment.

“If he doesn’t, what then?”

“Then perhaps I’ll have to accept that you’re right. That this is meaningless and can’t last. But I’m giving him this chance, Vanessa. I have to.”

“I know.”

Lydia’s good spirits faded a little when she arrived at the corner bar to find Evgeny installed at one of the pavement tables.

She sat down opposite him and ordered a coffee.

“You’re waiting for Milan?”

“Of course.” Evgeny, slightly soberer than he had been for the journey, was nonetheless still a little red-eyed and rumpled.

“So you’re friends again, then?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed.” But she was, and there was no way of disguising it.

“Nobody gets Milan all to themselves, Lydia, you know that.”

“But do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were so jealous at the party. Why, if you know all about Milan’s philandering, faithless ways?”

Evgeny squinted into his espresso and grimaced.

“Just one of those days,” he said unconvincingly. “Everyone gets them.”

A jingle sounded and a tram rumbled past, the noise competing with the clang of bells from a nearby church.

“It’s beautiful here,” said Lydia, changing the subject. “Have you been before?”

“Not with Milan.”

“It’s like stepping back in time. Everything’s so perfectly preserved.”

“We care about our heritage in Eastern Europe,” said Evgeny, somewhat aggressively. “History and culture is for everyone, not just the wealthy, like in England.”

“It isn’t like that in England,” protested Lydia, though she wasn’t quite sure Evgeny was entirely wrong in his statement.

The argument was pre-empted by Milan’s arrival. He sauntered across the tram lines with the insouciant air of a true native.

He called something in Czech to the waiter, who laughed and scurried inside the cafe to do whatever Milan had asked.

“My home,” he said, sinking into a chair with an air of beatific joy. “What do you think of it?”

“I was just telling Evgeny how beautiful it is. How unspoilt. It’s much less
urban
than a lot of cities, isn’t it? Less polluted, cleaner.”

“We Czechs take care of our pretty things,” said Milan, echoing Evgeny’s earlier words. He smiled seductively. “You know that, Lydia.”

“When it suits you,” muttered Evgeny.

Milan chose to ignore the barb, welcoming the waiter back and chatting to him unintelligibly for a good ten minutes. Evgeny used the free time to glower while Lydia sipped delicately at her coffee, watching trams and tourists pass by in an unending stream.

But the waiter had work to do, and Milan’s clear enjoyment of being able to speak his mother tongue at last was cut short. Lydia was vaguely disappointed. Hearing Milan speak his language, with its curious combination of hard and soft, had been rather arousing. Still, she supposed she would have plenty more opportunities to hear it over the course of the next few days.

“Can you teach us some Czech?” she asked, once his attention was refocused on his companions.

“It’s not an easy language,” he said. “There are eight cases, you know.”

“
Eight?
”

He nodded, grinning.

“Okay, maybe just ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’, then. You can usually go pretty far with those two.”

“‘Hello’ is ‘
ahoj’
. Say it after me.
Ahoj
.”

Lydia giggled. “Ahoy there, sailor,” she said.

“No, the emphasis is different,” said Milan severely. “I won’t teach you if you can’t take it seriously.”

“Sorry. What about ‘thank you’?”

He said something that sounded like ‘day kooay’ and she repeated it faithfully.

“Good. Anything else?”

“‘I love you.’”

“Thank you,” he said, a little coldly.

“No, what’s Czech for it?”

Lydia burned to hear him say the words in his own language, spoken to her. She felt silly and a little embarrassed at how much it meant to her.

“You are going to say this to someone?”

“Maybe.” She blushed.

Evgeny smirked, enjoying the potential for humiliation she had exposed herself to.

Lydia lowered her eyes. Milan was not going to play.

But then he swooped forward and took her hand, a melodramatic gesture that forced her to meet his gaze. He raised her fingers to his chest and placed them at his heart, covering them with his palm. His eyes held hers until she trembled and a flood of something like nausea filled her from head to toe.

“
Miluji tĕ
,” he said.

If only you meant it. I’d give anything, everything, to have you mean it.

She let out an uneven sigh, momentarily overwhelmed.

“Say it,” he said. “Repeat it to me.
Miluji tĕ
.”

She felt almost angry. How dare he play with her like this? But she mouthed the sounds—’meelweecha’—and he squeezed her fingers in response.

The air between them shimmered, the moment stretching like elastic.

The elastic snapped.

“Milan Kaspar?”

Behind Milan, a small group of young people hastened towards their table, fumbling in backpacks for notepads and pens.

Their leader began questioning Milan in rapid Czech, gesticulating and almost bouncing with excitement while his friends clasped hands to their faces and poured loving looks on their countryman.

“He is quite famous here,” said Evgeny laconically, as Milan signed a succession of music scores.

“So I see. Did they get
The Next Big String
over here?”

“I suppose. But he is famous anyway. Czech people love their music.”

The fans wound up the conversation and drifted away, looking over their shoulders at Milan every so often.

“Students at the Conservatoire,” he explained airily, though his cheeks were pink with pleasure at being recognised. “It’s near here.”

“I suppose you went there,” said Lydia.

Milan looked away.

“No. No, I didn’t.”

He turned back.

“Are you ready to climb a hill? I’m going to show you the castle and the cathedral. Come on.”

Clicking his fingers, he rose to his feet, showering coins on the tablecloth before taking Lydia’s arm, leaving Evgeny to trail behind.

They walked up a long, steep, cobbled street. Lydia, enchanted by all the tiny shops selling hand-painted wooden marionettes and Czech jewellery, pictured Milan as a boy climbing this selfsame street on his way to visit the castle.

“How long is it since you were here?”

“Maybe two years. Another concert.”

“Oh! Don’t you come back more often? Don’t you have family here?”

“No.”

He didn’t seem to want to say more. Lydia lapsed into silence, letting her mouth rest while her eyes did all the work. At the top of the street, they passed into a storybook world of winding steps and charming little cafes under striped awnings, then they reached the summit of the hill and the fairytale continued along the street to the castle. Behind it, the twin spires of St Vitus’ Cathedral spiked the sky while a spacious piazza in front played host to throngs of people of all nationalities, on walking tours.

“It’s so lovely,” said Lydia.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Milan, and launched into a lengthy lecture on the history of Prague in general and the castle in particular. The lecture took them all the way around the castle, through the rooms where affairs of old Bohemian state were settled, past the window where the Defenestration of Prague precipitated the Thirty Years War and onwards to the cathedral steps.

“I like how the cathedral is dedicated to St Vitus,” remarked Lydia, eyeing the stained glass windows with awe. “I don’t know much about him, though, apart from that he has a dance. Which is really a disease.”

“He is our patron saint,” said Milan. “The dance came before the disease. Medieval people used to dance in front of his statue on his saint’s day.”

“But they don’t do it any more? You haven’t done it?”

“Religion wasn’t allowed when I was a boy. But I have played here, as a teenager. They used it as a concert hall.”

“Gosh, yes, I suppose you grew up under Communist rule. I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

“You don’t have to,” said Milan curtly. “Be glad.”

“Were you religious?”

“My mother was.”

Milan’s mother. What would such a woman be like? Lydia wondered. The ‘was’ led her to suspect his mother might be dead, but the look on Milan’s face discouraged her from asking. They walked down the aisles, looking at the statuary and the ecclesiastical treasures.