The Long Room (20 page)

The shortest day of the year, the longest night, but uphill from now on. These were good days, the days between the winter solstice and the eve of Christmas; all the lights on in the house and every single item ticked off on her list bar those she really could not do more than two days in advance. Her cards were sent, her presents wrapped, her cupboards full and the turkey sleeping the sleep of the just in the boot of Stephen’s car. In her mind she ran through the last-minute list again: peel chestnuts, peel potatoes, peel parsnips, do sprouts, giblet stock and Stephen’s stocking. Not many surprises in there, she was sorry to say! A tangerine and chocolate coins, because they were what he always had when he was a little boy. In those days she’d have put in a Dinky car and a Ladybird book –
Piggly Plays Truant!
– a bright rubber ball or a bag of marbles. Beautiful those marbles were, positively jewel-like, but costing next to nothing, except for the extra-large. And Britains animals! Stephen had adored those animals and played with them
for years. You could get farm animals and zoo ones; he was always very stern about keeping them apart, lest the lion ate the lamb. Calves and polar bears and piglets – pink and black – and rhinos. Those were the days, oh dear! Now it was a bar of soap and a pair of socks. Mind you, this year’s socks were really rather superior, patterned in a sort of Fair Isle, like the jumper.

Odd how Christmas involves a lot of peel. Chestnuts are the worst; you always get that inner skin beneath your thumbnails and it hurts. Just one of those things, like losing the end of the Sellotape, those minor irritations, small thorns in the flesh, which you need in life as a Christmas cake needs salt to give the sweetness savour.

Coralie got up and went to the living room to put Mr Fisher’s present next to Stephen’s under the decorated tree. The tree was looking a bit the worse for wear, it had to be admitted, rather threadbare, but what could you expect, when it had done such service down the years? Yet even so, it was brave enough, and gay enough, under its load of lights and tinsel. There! What else did she have to do tonight? Nothing. Put her feet up, heat some soup, watch
The Bridge on the River Kwai
. Snow was falling hard again; she drew her curtains closed.

The snow caught Stephen by surprise. Who would have thought it could snow again, so soon after last week’s storms? It must have been falling for a while, silently, stealthily; it was already deep on roofs and pavements. Standing at a window of the long room, about to close the blind, he watched the thick flakes drifting down like dying birds, or shreds of cloud, and thought of the white sky he had seen earlier in the day. A skin of sky holding back the snow.
Vol de nuit
. To escape on the
wings of the night, to soar above the long room and the Institute, to start again from the beginning, in a new place, a new story – if only it were possible. Behind him Louise was calling the group together. ‘Two things, chaps,’ she said. ‘One, don’t forget the party! As if you could! I vote we do our pressies just before. And two, have I got everybody’s leave sheet? Harriet, you’re taking Thursday off, aren’t you? Christophine? Good! Stephen, did you give me yours?’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing yet,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m afraid that last-minute requests for leave will probably not be granted. With Department Four still running around like headless chickens and something very odd afoot in Department Six, we’ll almost certainly have to have some holiday cover. That reminds me Stevie, could you manage an hour or so of overtime this evening? Martin’s off sick for the rest of the week and Ana’s tearing her hair out next door.’

‘I’m frightfully sorry but I have to leave on time today. I’m meeting somebody at six.’

‘Never mind, I’ll see if Solly can do it. I thought you might be busy,’ Louise said, without irony or rancour. ‘I’d do it myself but for the rehearsal, which of course I cannot miss.’

Stephen nodded sympathetically. He was used to Louise’s habit of assuming that he and everyone else knew all about her outside life, the people in it and its small events. Charlotte clearly did. ‘Will there be tickets on the door?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, I got those tickets for Cockney Rebel! Yes, I know, petal, not your cup of tea! Actually, Steve you might like …?

‘As a matter of fact I’m going to a concert tonight,’ he interrupted. ‘Brahms piano sonatas.’

‘All right, all right, Mr Clever-clogs! I bet you’re going in white tie and tails with your Oxford friends?’

‘I adore Brahms,’ Louise began to say but Stephen did not wait.

‘I must pack up’, he said, ‘or I’ll be late.’

‘Don’t forget your umbrella,’ Charlotte said.

He didn’t have an umbrella. Snowflakes fell upon his hair and combed their chilly little feelers through it, shivering his scalp. He stood irresolute on the street outside the Institute and felt the coldness of the pavement through the thin soles of his shoes. Where should he go now? He couldn’t have stayed on at work, for fear of being found out by Rollo Buckingham. He wasn’t dressed for this weather. This December was turning out to be so strangely cold; what if the sun had spurned the world for ever, condemning it to endless winter? If he were to stay here any longer, would he be frozen to the spot? Suddenly he felt as if he really could not move at all. But he must. People were coming out of the Institute; he would be observed. Should he just go home? Another cheerless night, alone? Or might he find a refuge in the quiet of the staircase outside Helen’s flat, where an element of her will linger still? I need to know that she is near me, he said to the darkness; tell me where to go.

And of course it was entirely obvious: the Wigmore Hall. He didn’t expect Alberic to be there; the man was probably some sort of fantasist. But there was no reason why he could not buy himself a ticket and attend the concert. What better bridge to Helen than an evening of the music that she loved? And in the strange dominion where their souls connect, she might hear that music too.

He had time to kill. The invitingly lit doorway of the Fox and Grapes across the road promised instant shelter from the snow if he dared defy Security again. Why not? It was warm in there. He would tuck himself away in the corner furthest from the bar and hide behind the paper.

He was on his second whisky and halfway through the crossword when he heard the voice of Rollo Buckingham ordering two pints of IPA. The pub was busier than it had been on Monday and a small crowd was standing near the bar, forming a screen for those who were, like Stephen, sitting down. He opened his newspaper to its full extent and peered cautiously round it. Buckingham, in his beautiful coat, was paying for the drinks. There was no reason why he should look in Stephen’s direction now but until he left the pub he was a barrier between Stephen and the exit. If Stephen were to get to the Wigmore Hall by seven, he would need to set off soon. He watched as Rollo, taller than anyone else in the room, shouldered his way to the opposite end and then he saw with a sinking sense of inevitability that the other pint was for Greenwood. The two men stood close together, near the door, talking intently. At this distance Stephen was unable to hear what they were saying. He felt like a rabbit in a snare, trapped unless it chews its own paw off. He also felt affronted. Security’s instructions were explicit: this pub was out of bounds. How arrogant it was of the two men to behave as if the rules did not apply to them.

It was almost half past six. He gulped the last of his drink and considered his next step. He could stay here, with his empty glass, and hope that Buckingham would not need the gents’. If he did, he would have to push straight past him. But if Stephen did not make a move quite soon, he would miss
the concert. Perhaps that was the better choice? Alternatively, he could turn his collar up and sidle out, hoping that Rollo would not notice. If he were seen, would Rollo acknowledge or ignore him? Then it occurred to him that Rollo might be working. He could be in this forbidden place for operational reasons, in which case he would definitely not acknowledge Stephen, although he might report him to Security tomorrow. But why would he be with
PHOENIX
? Was he using
PHOENIX
as a decoy? Or tricking
PHOENIX
into thinking he was still a trusted colleague? Or detaining
PHOENIX
for a while in order to give Technical the clear run of his flat or their shared office at the Institute? Perhaps there were investigators at this very moment searching through his drawers for illicit material or hidden codes, as Stephen himself had done. If he stayed here, unseen, and watched the men, he might learn more about this enigmatic case.

Each time someone entered or left the pub, the door banged loudly and cold air whistled in. It was that blast of air which announced the arrival of Sub-director Six a few minutes later. He did not come right in but stayed by the door, holding it open, summoning Rollo and Greenwood with a crooked forefinger. Immediately they put their glasses down on the nearest table and followed their leader out.

How tiresome this evening was turning out to be. Stephen considered tracking the three men but on balance decided against it. Twenty to seven. Did he have still have time to get to Oxford Street? Yes, if the concert did not begin until half past and he took the Tube, he probably did.

He went to Bond Street, fairly confident that he knew the way from there. On the way he tried to remember if he had
ever been to a concert of classical music before. When he was at school perhaps? Music did not exist for Stephen as a child, except as hymns, theme-tunes and advertising jingles. Had he ever heard his mother sing? Did she sing when she was by herself? Helen had opened his heart to the possibilities of music. Was it Chopin, Alberic had said, or was it Brahms or Liszt? Helen plays a piece of Brahms – an intermezzo – and when he first her heard playing it, he had been entranced. He did not know its name then but as chance would have it the piece was on one of his new records; someday he will ask her to play it just for him. There will be a long room, bare but for a white sofa and a grand piano, French windows open to the night, and the curtains billowing, and she will rise and move to the piano, her lovely fingers on the keys, a drift of jasmine on the air.

It came as a surprise and an interruption to his thoughts to find Alberic waiting impatiently beneath the glass portico of the Wigmore Hall.

‘Ah, there you are at long bloody last, my friend! I had given you up for lost and was on the point of going in when I said to myself: just give him two more minutes! And it’s a good thing that I did!’

‘I’m sorry. Did you say 7.15? Delays on the Jubilee Line; the snow …’

‘Of course, of course! It is ghastly weather! Cats and dogs! No, as it is snow not rain we should better say polar bears and penguins. Come, let us take our seats, the performance is about to start. I already bought a programme.’

Stephen followed the hurrying Alberic into the small, warm and very red concert hall. They found their seats in the middle of a row towards the back. Lights shone on a glittering cupola
above the stage and Stephen’s impression was of an ecclesiastical space until he saw that the figure he had taken for the risen Christ was some other form of deity in a monstrance of gold rays, attended by maidens bare but for their hair or wings. Even so, there was an air of worship.

Alberic held the programme up for Stephen to read:
Franz Schubert – Winterreise D. 911
.

‘But you said Brahms,’ he whispered.

‘So I got it wrong,’ Alberic whispered back. ‘But this is better, no? More suitable for the season. Ssh!’

Stephen, silenced, settled in his seat as a man and a woman in evening dress walked onto the stage. He had no foreknowledge of what he was to hear; he didn’t know the significance of the title.

The woman took her place at the piano. She paused there for a moment, staying very still. The man stood, also without moving, his head bowed; their stillness like a fine mesh falling invisibly upon the audience and drawing it together, tensed and reverent and hushed. Into that stillness dropped the first slow, quiet notes of the piano and the man straightened his shoulders, breathed in deeply, and sang.

He sang without a break for an hour or more, an hour in which Stephen lost all consciousness of time. He was transfixed. Never in his life before had he been so affected by something he could not translate nor put in words. He did not know the meaning of the words the man was singing but he understood them. He understood the singer’s sadness, his loneliness, his sense of alienation. He knew this was a journey of a kind and that its end was madness. At times the piano part seemed almost to console, twining with the voice like a companion on
his way, but at others it kept its distance. It was unbelievable how desolate this music was. As it neared its end Stephen’s eyes were full of tears and he could not stop them falling. Slow, haunted chords. One last despairing question, one final, quiet, inconclusive note. The loud applause that followed it was as rude an awakening as a drench of icy water, shocking Stephen back into the present. He wanted it to stop. How could he make so sudden a transition from the reverie he had been in to the conviviality of the cheering people round him? He became abruptly aware again of Alberic, but he could not trust himself to speak.

On stage the pianist and the tenor – that same man who had sung so truthfully of death – were also smiling, bowing and behaving as if the world were a welcoming and happy place. The singer stretched his hands out to the audience and it answered him with even louder clapping.

Alberic turned to Stephen. ‘The best thing about the piece is that it’s short. My favourite kind of gig. Have you heard it before? It’s good, no? Winter journey. It makes me think of the retreat from Moscow. Napoleon’s troops wore sackcloth on their feet instead of boots, trodding on deep snow. Here, you can keep the programme. It has the lyrics in it. Do you know the German? Have you eaten yet?’

Stephen, still in a daze, considered this last question. Had he eaten yet? Yet? Since when? Perhaps not since that piece of toast at breakfast. He did remember that he had not had time for lunch. Had he forgotten to be hungry? ‘Er, no,’ he said.