Song Of Time (13 page)

Mum had another of her trips to India planned soon after. Instead of devoting her charitable efforts towards WRFI, she now supported an orphanage near her village. Sometimes, she’d talk to me about the place as if I knew it, and I’d promise that, yes, next spring, next autumn, or when I’ve got in the RCM, I’d go there with her, although neither of us quite believed that I would.

“I feel so bad about leaving you again, Roushana,” she muttered as she stuffed a few bras and knickers and winds of sari cloth into the small, worn bag which was all she took with her.

“It’s perfectly alright.”

“Of course, if you felt you could afford to slip a few days off—”

“Mum.”

“Yes. Silly idea. I’m sorry.” She came over and hugged me. “You’ll take care, won’t you?” Her bracelets jangled, her eyes were so close to mine that they merged and she smelled of mints and patchouli. I never thought that she wouldn’t see me again.

“Mum, it’s me who should be saying that to you.”

“But nevertheless…”

Then we heard the toot of the airport taxi.

I’d been up-front with Caspian about what I planned for us to do on our first night alone in my house in Moseley. I’d even bought a bottle of wine from the shop at the end of the road, and he’d promised he’d bring the necessary prophylactics, although the patches felt odd against my skin, and neither of us were drinkers. We stared at the wine bottle and the two untouched glasses as they lay before us like some weird still life on the front room’s low table. The evening passed slowly. Having agreed we’d make love, it seemed pointless merely to kiss. I called up some music, but for once I barely listened. I’d already allowed Caspian to massage my groin and kiss my breasts, and the sensations had been vaguely delicious. I’d become conscious, as well, of the bulge which came and went in his crotch; it was there again as we finally headed upstairs in the twilight.

You really want to do this
, he murmured, his lips against my neck, as we began to undress ourselves in my bedroom. Faint moonlight trickled across his chest, his belly, then, as I wriggled from my knickers, it shone across his surprisingly-angled, tumescent prick.

I hadn’t made a bad choice in Caspian; he entered me slowly and broke my hitherto undiscussed virginity with a series of polite thrusts. Soon, he was finished, and I was left with seeping wetness, and an urgent need to shower, which politeness made me postpone. We made love— fucked—whatever it was that we were doing—twice more that night, although still in what felt like a distracted sort of way. I didn’t come, and as I lay in the early morning gazing at the small reddenings on Caspian’s back, I decided that sex was certainly one of life’s comforts, but that it would never take the place of music.

Sharing my bed with another presence, I slept oddly, drifting in some half-state until I finally awoke with a start. I’d been dreaming something about bodies darkened and twisted. Then a cold, dry chuckle rattled close to my ear, and I found myself beached alone in my bed in white morning light. I could hear Caspian moving about downstairs in the kitchen. There were banging cupboards and clatters of crockery. I could even smell coffee. I stretched and smiled. Yes, I understood now why people compared sex to food, with its all warmth and mess and physicality. Like food, as well, the sense of it lasted a while and then, once again, you were hungry. The sound of a newscaster’s voice wafted up from the hall.Then Caspian’s footsteps were on the stairs.

“Where did you say your mum was staying…?” He asked as he stood in the doorway. Disappointingly, he hadn’t brought up the coffee.

“I told you.” I sat up. “She isn’t—”

“It’s all over the news, Roushana. A nuclear war’s started. They’ve dropped a bomb on Ahmedabad.”

ALL NIGHT, I’VE BEEN HALF-AWAKE, HALF-DREAMING. The memories which I’ve been circling, seeking, perhaps avoiding, have suddenly come washing over me—they’re inescapable. Even now, surfacing into the frail sunlight of another late summer’s morning, I can hear voices and the bang of cupboards coming from downstairs. And I can smell coffee.

How do I see death? There’s no insight, no sense of profundity. Animals—all the other animals with the possible exception of elephants, whales and dolphins—have it easy. They never see it coming. But do
we
? Of course, we should. After all, it’s just science, time, physics. Pluck a string, it vibrates. If someone is born, they will die—I have long known these things—but dates, times, specifics, are new to me. It was odd, how the doctor talked of seasons. This summer, yes—the summer would probably be fine. Autumn as well, although autumns now are so quick and sharp you hardly notice them passing—but winter was a shake of the head.

A blank wall looms, and I have no real idea what lies beyond. Of course, there have been acquaintances who’ve passed on: sponsors and business types you have to deal with if you wish to perform, and the empty spaces in booked-out concerts which are occupied by presences you barely see. Then there was my old agent Adur Foster, who told me as we sat outside a café in London that a cancer which the implants in his body had been fighting for years had suddenly won its war. Sure, he had a few months left, but to be honest he didn’t want to waste it dealing with all the bullshit he’d had to put up with for so many years on behalf of what was—let’s face it Roushana—an arrogant and ungrateful clientele. So Adur was doing what any sensible person did, and getting properly set up for his last, living journey. We parted on promises that he’d be back in touch just as soon, as he put it, as he got this whole bloody thing sorted. He said he might even decide to continue as my representative, although I never heard from him again.

And there was Daisy Kornbluth, whom I first knew through her husband Jorge, that fine cellist. Daisy ended up living alone in Cornwall, and we would sometimes go for walks, or cook each other meals, or simply meet up at our houses to grouse about the world. But, although we enjoyed our shared complaining, Daisy was sad in some deeper way I never felt able to reach, nor she to explain. Then, one day as we took a beer in the snug of the Duke of Prussia, she told me she’d decided that enough was enough. No, no, she was fine, fine, yes, absolutely. It was just time for a change. I went to her passing ceremony a month or so after, and wondered if I was the only one who thought Daisy’s presence at what was effectively her own funeral seemed a little strange. Still, as we sat in the shade of a swing chair outside her house and watched the members of her unfashionably large family milling across the lawns, we both laughingly agreed that there was something to be said for hearing your own eulogy, and getting the chance to correct the mistakes.

“So,” I asked, “what’s it been like?”

She blinked at me oddly.

“The preparations, I mean.”

“Oh…It’s hard work. Surprising.”

“And you really feel you’re ready for this?”

I felt her hand grip mine. “The truth is, Roushana, I’ve come to realize that part of me has been dead for a long time already.” A smile, as thin and cold as her hand, played across her face. “That’s the thing I felt before, but could never explain.”

“And what’s it like? Do you know now…?”

She looked at me. But, again, it was in a less than Daisy-like way.

“I mean, you must have a better idea by now.”

“I really don’t think I do, Roushana. It’s like one of those journeys to a place you’ve heard of and always felt you knew. But the closer you get, the more you realise you don’t know it at all. But I’ll keep in touch, I promise.” Her dry hand clenched mine more strongly, almost to the point of pain.

And she did send me flowers—a massive plume of varicoloured roses—a few days after she’d passed, accompanied by a thank-you note written in what was still recognisably her own spidery hand. We even spoke once or twice through the kitchen screen, and it almost felt like I was talking to the real, living, Daisy as she told me of the incredible things she’d witnessed, and just how happy she now was. But the real Daisy had never been happy in the way this new Daisy was. There were more flowers—that Christmas, a poinsettia—and more hand-written notes and messages urging me to keep in touch, all of which I ignored until, finally (for even the dead can take a hint) they stopped…

I turn over and stare at the empty, undented pillow, wondering about Caspian, and Mum, and Ahmedabad. Then I’m walking the shore, and it’s yesterday, and there’s something on the strand. Dead seal, bleached driftwood, pure imaginings? Like the sea itself, the image disintegrates and drags me down in a shuddering rush. Once again, I’m falling, sinking—

The bedroom door opens and a figure enters the room with a jangle of crockery. Pillows are moved. Someone I almost recognise leans over me. “Hope you don’t mind me waking you.” Fanned by wings of light, a face looms above me.

“I was awake anyway.”

“You’re not the sort of person to lie in, Roushana…”

I shake my head in a sort of agreement. Adam’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, and he’s got on yesterday’s smile, although his hair is damp, and there’s a piney smell of soap to go with that of the fresh coffee.

“You’ve showered?”

“I hope you don’t mind.” He balances the tray on my knees.

“No. You should make yourself at home.” As well as the coffee, he’s found me jam and croissants, and all of it’s laid on Morryn’s best crockery. “This is…”

“Sorry. I know—an imposition.”

“No, no…” I have to bite back tears. “It’s the loveliest thing anyone’s done for me in ages.”

“He was a great man, wasn’t he?”

Adam’s been looking around Morryn, although I can’t exactly accuse him of prying. There’s so much
stuff
crammed everywhere. The awards and commendations. My children Edward and Maria posed in still or moving images, and all the things they made when they were young— crumpled projects in dusty paper, cracked clay or fading scraps of virtuality. Clusters of photographs of Mum and Dad in plain flat colour. And those postcards from India or Cornwall and the stranger, more recent missives which sometimes come from my grandchildren. All the posters for recitals I once gave, some still brightly alive. But above all, it seems, he’s been looking at Claude.

“You recognised my husband’s name?” I ask. We’re standing outside on the mossy patio above the slope of garden which spreads towards the sea. The edge of the storm which brought him here has retreated, and it’s another warm, bright, breezy day.

“I
think
I did. I realised I knew who you were as well, Roushana Maitland—I mean. You’re both equally famous…”

I nod. I can’t tell if he’s just being polite.

“Roushana Maitland and Claude Vaudin. It’s like…”

“Barenboim and du Pré?” I suggest.

“Yes,” he agrees. “That’s far better!”

“Who were you going to say?”

“Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.” He laughs at the thought. “I know, I know, it’s stupid…” We walk slowly down amongst the paths and rockeries. “These things—they just come to me. It’s like wandering a library, taking down books at random. I have no idea what I’m going to find next. But the stuff here in this house. You and your husband. That makes any kind of sense.”

“Well, at least it’s
somebody’s
life.”

“But it’s not mine, is it?”

We wander on across the lawns, stopping when we reach the low wall which defines Morryn’s boundaries. Beyond lies the bite into the land which the sea has made in Bezant Bay, the waymark, a monolith of crystal, gleams up on Gribbin Head, as it looks down towards Fowey on its far side. Step too far that way, and it would register Adam’s presence. He’s far safer staying with me here in Morryn, at least until we get things sorted. I know time’s precious, and that I need to return to what happened in Ahmedabad and beyond, but I find it easier to stand here breathing this sea air and telling Adam where I was born, and where I grew up (he’s heard of Birmingham, of course, but only vaguely). Telling him, as well, about Leo.
It’s down to you now Sis.
I even use that phrase, although he shows no surprise, registers no understanding; merely the same sadness I saw yesterday evening when he gazed in at the world from that kitchen screen.Then I tell him how I came to love Cornwall, and this, its characteristic sound, which—far more than the cry of these gulls and the rumble of those waves—is the near-endless hiss of the wind through hedges, over roofs and walls, around bent branches, across wavering grass. Listen: it’s there now, although so subtly that you’d barely notice—like a breath, a heartbeat…

He smiles, and nods far more affirmatively.

Back in the house, and unaided by the kitchen implements, he makes us both more coffee—mine sweet and black, the way he now knows he prefers it—then he settles again on the stool before the screen in the kitchen and starts paging through whatever it is that he’d been looking at, whilst I, in what already feels like an act of mutual habit, head into the music room to practise. I imagine the days ahead, the times we will spend, and all the small ordinary things like this which we will do together. Morryn will turn to a changed rhythm, with dust stirring, rooms filling. Life, that most precious of all things, will go on…

It’s an odd, lovely, feeling, to have someone other than yourself to consider. Even as I run though some Scott Joplin transcriptions, it takes me back to the hectic days of caring for the kids here in Morryn. Then further, to the days when Mum took care of me. Her arms, her smell, her laugh, touch me, and the feeling of her presence is so close that I put down my violin in mid-phrase and slump down at my desk. The music room pulses, fades, as my fingers scurry through the detritus on my desk with a sudden need. And there it is, blurring and redoubling—almost too small to be found, too light to be held, and far too brittle and cheap to have lasted through the years. But it has. It’s
here
. A torn-off scrap of cheap paper, coloured a weary pink, stamped with the number 219.

LIGHTS GO OUT. CLOUDS DISSOLVE. Cars stop in the roads. In the first white flash which broke over Ahmedabad at seven minutes past noon local time, and at Lahore and Jaipur, then at Hyderabad and Karachi in the beginnings of India’s retaliatory strike, millions were already dead, their shadows seared into the walls. Then comes a wall of heat and wind. Roofs fly up as the sky tears apart. Buildings flatten. Flesh is seared from bone. Then, long before the beginning mushroom cloud begins to rise above the dissolving city, comes the fire.