Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall Page 5

  “Look, really Emily, I’m not so bad…”

  “I suppose the passing years have just left you high and dry. You’re like a man on the precipice. One more tiny push and you’ll crack.”

  “Fall, you mean.”

  She’d been fiddling with the kettle, but now turned round to stare at me again. “No, Raymond, don’t talk like that. Not even in fun. I don’t ever want to hear you talking like that.”

  “No, you misunderstand. You said I’d crack, but if I’m on a precipice, then I’d fall, not crack.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” She still didn’t seem to take in what I was saying. “You’re only a husk of the Raymond from those days.”

  I decided it might be best not to respond this time, and for a few moments we waited quietly for the kettle to boil. She prepared a cup for me, though not for herself, and placed it in front of me.

  “I’m so sorry, Ray, but I’ve got to get back to the office now. There are two meetings I absolutely can’t miss. If only I’d known how you’d be, I wouldn’t have deserted you. I’d have made other arrangements. But I haven’t, I’m expected back. Poor Raymond. What will you do here, all by yourself?”

  “I’ll be terrific. Really. In fact, I was thinking. Why don’t I get our dinner ready while you’re gone? You probably won’t believe this, but I’ve become a pretty good cook these days. In fact, we had this buffet just before Christmas…”

  “That’s terribly sweet of you, wanting to help. But I think it’s best you rest just now. After all, an unfamiliar kitchen can be the source of so much stress. Why don’t you just make yourself completely at home, have a herbal bath, listen to some music. I’ll take care of dinner when I come in.”

  “But you don’t want to worry about food after a long day at the office.”

  “No, Ray, you’re just to relax.” She produced a business card and placed it on the table. “This has got my direct line on it, my mobile too. I’ve got to go now, but you can call me any time you want. Now remember, don’t take on anything stressful while I’m gone.”

  FOR SOME TIME NOW I’ve been finding it hard to relax properly in my own apartment. If I’m alone at home, I get increasingly restless, bothered by the idea that I’m missing some crucial encounter out there somewhere. But if I’m left by myself in someone else’s place, I often find a nice sense of peace engulfing me. I love sinking into an unfamiliar sofa with whatever book happens to be lying nearby. And that’s exactly what I did this time, after Emily had left. Or at least, I managed to read a couple of chapters of Mansfield Park before dozing off for twenty minutes or so.

  When I woke up, the afternoon sun was coming into the flat. Getting off the sofa, I began a little nose-around. Perhaps the cleaners had indeed been in during our lunch, or maybe Emily had done the tidying herself; in any case, the large living room was looking pretty immaculate. Tidiness aside, it had been stylishly done up, with modern designer furniture and arty objects-though someone being unkind might have said it was all too obviously for effect. I took a browse through the books, then glanced through the CD collection. It was almost entirely rock or classical, but finally, after some searching, I found tucked away in the shadows a small section devoted to Fred Astaire, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan. It puzzled me that Emily hadn’t replaced more of her treasured vinyl collection with their CD reincarnations, but I didn’t dwell on this, and wandered off into the kitchen.

  I was opening up a few cupboards in search of biscuits or a chocolate bar when I noticed what seemed to be a small notebook on the kitchen table. It had purple cushioned covers, which made it stand out amidst the sleek minimalist surfaces of the kitchen. Emily, in a big hurry just before she’d left, had been emptying and re-filling her bag on the table while I’d been drinking my tea. Obviously she’d left the notebook behind by mistake. But then in almost the next instant another idea came to me: that this purple book was some kind of intimate diary, and Emily had left it there on purpose, fully intending for me to have a peek; that for whatever reason, she’d felt unable to confide more openly, so had resorted to this way of sharing her inner turmoil.

  I stood there for a while, staring at the notebook. Then I reached forward, inserted my forefinger into the pages at the mid-way point and gingerly levered it up. The sight of Emily’s closely packed handwriting inside made me pull my finger out, and I moved away from the table, telling myself I had no business nosing in there, never mind what Emily had intended in an irrational moment.

  I went back into the living room, settled into the sofa and read a few more pages of Mansfield Park. But now I found I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept going back to the purple notebook. What if it hadn’t been an impulsive action at all? What if she’d planned this for days? What if she’d composed something carefully for me to read?

  After another ten minutes, I went back into the kitchen and stared some more at the purple notebook. Then I sat down, where I’d sat before to drink my tea, slid the notebook towards me, and opened it.

  One thing that became quickly apparent was that if Emily confided her innermost thoughts to a diary, then that book was elsewhere. What I had before me was at best a glorified appointments diary; under each day she’d scrawled various memos to herself, some with a distinct aspirational dimension. One entry in bold felt-tip went: “If still not phoned Mathilda, WHY THE HELL NOT??? DO IT!!!”

  Another one ran: “Finish Philip Bloody Roth. Give back to Marion!”

  Then, as I kept turning the pages, I came across: “Raymond coming Monday. Groan, groan.”

  I turned a couple more pages to find: “Ray tomorrow. How to survive?”

  Finally, written that very morning, amidst reminders for various chores: “Buy wine for arrival of Prince of Whiners.”

  Prince of Whiners? It took me some time to accept this really could be referring to me. I tried out all sorts of possibilities-a client? a plumber?-but in the end, given the date and the context, I had to accept there was no other serious candidate. Then suddenly the sheer unfairness of her giving me such a title hit me with unexpected force, and before I knew it, I’d screwed up the offending page in my hand.

  It wasn’t a particularly fierce action: I didn’t even tear the page. I’d simply closed my fist on it in a single motion, and the next second I was in control again, but of course, by then, it was too late. I opened my hand to discover not only the page in question but also the two beneath it had fallen victim to my wrath. I tried to flatten the pages back to their original form, but they simply curled back up again, as though their deepest wish was to be transformed into a ball of rubbish.

  All the same, for quite some time, I carried on performing a kind of panicked ironing motion on the damaged pages. I was just about coming to accept that my efforts were pointless-that nothing I now did could successfully conceal what I’d done-when I became aware of a phone ringing somewhere in the apartment.

  I decided to ignore it, and went on trying to think through the implications of what had just happened. But then the answering machine came on and I could hear Charlie’s voice leaving a message. Perhaps I sensed a lifeline, perhaps I just wanted someone to confide in, but I found myself rushing into the living room and grabbing the phone off the glass coffee table.

  “Oh, you are there.” Charlie sounded slightly cross I’d interrupted his message.

  “Charlie, listen. I’ve just done something rather stupid.”

  “I’m at the airport,” he said. “The flight’s been delayed. I want to call the car service that’s picking me up in Frankfurt, but I didn’t bring their number. So I need you to read it over to me.”

  He began to issue instructions about where I’d find the phone book, but I interrupted him, saying:

  “Look, I’ve just done something stupid. I don’t know what to do.”

  There was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said: “Maybe you’re thinking, Ray. Maybe you’re thinking there’s someone else. That I’m going off now to see her. It occurred to me that might be wha
t you were thinking. After all, it would fit with everything you’ve observed. The way Emily was when I left, all of that. But you’re wrong.”

  “Yes, I take your point. But look, there’s something I have to talk to you about…”

  “Just accept it, Ray. You’re wrong. There’s no other woman. I’m going now to Frankfurt to attend a meeting about changing our agency in Poland. That’s where I’m going right now.”

  “Right, I’ve got you.”

  “There’s never been another woman in any of this. I wouldn’t look at anyone else, at least not in any serious way. That’s the truth. It’s the bloody truth and there’s nothing else to it!”

  He’d started to shout, though possibly this was because of all the noise around him in the departure lounge. Now he went quiet, and I listened hard to work out if he was crying again, but all I heard were airport noises. Suddenly he said:

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, all right, there’s no other woman. But is there another man? Go on, admit it, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Go on, say it!”

  “Actually, no. It’s never occurred to me you might be gay. Even that time after finals when you got really drunk and pretended to…”

  “Shut up, you fool! I meant another man, as in Lover of Emily! Lover of Emily, does this figure bloody exist? That’s what I’m getting at. And the answer, in my judgement, is no, no, no. After all these years, I can read her pretty well. But the trouble is, precisely because I know her so well, I can tell something else too. I can tell she’s started to think about it. That’s right, Ray, she’s looking at other guys. Guys like David bloody Corey!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “David bloody Corey is a smarmy git of a barrister who’s doing well for himself. I know exactly how well, because she tells me how well, in excruciating detail.”

  “You think… they’re seeing each other?”

  “No, I just told you! There’s nothing, not yet! Anyway, David bloody Corey wouldn’t give her the time of day. He’s married to a glamourpuss who works for Condé Nast.”

  “Then you’re okay…”

  “I’m not okay, because there’s also Michael Addison. And Roger Van Den Berg who’s a rising star at Merrill Lynch who gets to go to the World Economic Forum every year…”

  “Look, Charlie, please listen. I’ve got this problem here. Small by most standards, I admit. But a problem all the same. Please just listen.”

  At last I got to tell him what had happened. I recounted everything as honestly as I could, though maybe I went easy on the bit about my thinking Emily had left a confidential message for me.

  “I know it was really stupid,” I said, as I came to the end. “But she’d left it sitting there, right there on the kitchen table.”

  “Yes.” Charlie was now sounding much calmer. “Yes. You’ve rather let yourself in for it there.”

  Then he laughed. Encouraged by this, I laughed too.

  “I suppose I’m over-reacting,” I said. “After all, it’s not like her personal diary or anything. It’s just a memo book…” I trailed off because Charlie had continued to laugh, and there was something a touch hysterical in his laughter. Then he stopped and said flatly:

  “If she finds out, she’ll want to saw your balls off.”

  There was a short pause while I listened to airport noises. Then he went on:

  “About six years ago, I opened that book myself, or that year’s equivalent. Just casually, when I was sitting in the kitchen, and she was doing some cooking. You know, just flicked it open absent-mindedly while I was saying something. She noticed immediately and told me she wasn’t happy about it. In fact, that’s when she told me she would saw my balls off. She was wielding this rolling pin at the time, so I pointed out she couldn’t very well do what she was threatening with a rolling pin. That’s when she said the rolling pin was for afterwards. For what she’d do to them once she’d cut them off.”

  A flight announcement went off in the background.

  “So what do you suggest I do?” I asked.

  “What can you do? Just keep smoothing the pages down. Maybe she won’t notice.”

  “I’ve been trying that and it just doesn’t work. There’s no way she won’t notice…”

  “Look, Ray, I’ve got a lot on my mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that all these men Emily dreams about, they’re not really potential lovers. They’re just figures she thinks are wonderful because she believes they’ve accomplished so much. She doesn’t see their warts. Their sheer… brutality. They’re all out of her league anyway. The point is, and this is what’s so pathetically sad and ironic about all this, the point is, at the bottom of it all, she loves me. She still loves me. I can tell, I can tell.”

  “So, Charlie, you don’t have any advice.”

  “No! I don’t have any fucking advice!” He was shouting full blast again. “You figure it out! You get on your plane and I’ll get on mine. And we’ll see which one crashes!”

  With that, Charlie was gone. I slumped down into the sofa and took a deep breath. I told myself I had to keep things in proportion, but all the while I could feel in my stomach a vaguely nauseous sensation of panic. Various ideas ran through my mind. One solution was simply to flee the apartment, and have no contact with Charlie and Emily for several years, after which I’d send them a cautious, carefully worded letter. Even in my current state, I dismissed this plan as being a touch too desperate. A better plan was that I steadily work through the bottles in their drinks cabinet, so that when Emily arrived home, she’d find me pathetically drunk. Then I could claim to have looked through her diary and attacked the pages in an alcoholic delirium. In fact, in my drunken unreasonableness, I could even adopt the role of the injured party, shouting and pointing, telling her how bitterly hurt I’d been to read those words about me, written by someone whose love and friendship I’d always counted on, the thought of which had helped sustain me through my lousiest moments in strange and lonely countries. But while this plan had points to recommend it from a practical aspect, I could sense something there-something near the bottom of it, something I didn’t care to examine too closely-that I knew would make it an impossibility for me.

  After a time, the phone began to ring and Charlie’s voice came onto the machine again. When I picked it up he sounded considerably calmer than before.

  “I’m at the gate now,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was a little flustered earlier on. Airports always make me that way. Can’t ever settle until I’m sitting right by the gate. Ray, listen, there’s just one thing that occurred to me. Concerning our strategy.”

  “Our strategy?”

  “Yes, our overall strategy. Of course, you’ve realised, this isn’t the time for little tweakings of the truth to show yourself in a better light. Absolutely not the time for the small self-aggrandising white lie. No, no. You’re remembering, aren’t you, why you were given this job in the first place. Ray, I’m depending on you to present yourself to Emily just as you are. So long as you do that, our strategy stays on course.”

  “Well, look, I’m hardly on course here to come over like Emily’s greatest hero…”

  “Yes, you appreciate the situation and I’m grateful. But something’s just occurred to me. There’s just one thing, one little thing in your repertoire that won’t quite do here. You see, Ray, she’s got this idea that you have good musical taste.”

  “Ah…”

  “Just about the only time she ever uses you to belittle me is in this area of musical taste. It’s the one respect in which you aren’t absolutely perfect for your current assignment. So Ray, you’ve got to promise not to talk about this topic.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…”

  “Just do it for me, Ray. It’s not much to ask. Just don’t start going on about that… that croony nostalgia music she likes. And if she brings it up, then you just play it dumb. That’s all I’m asking. Otherwise, you just be your natural self. Ray, I can count on you about th
is, can’t I?”

  “Well, I suppose so. This is all pretty theoretical anyway. I don’t see us chatting about anything this evening.”

  “Good! So that’s settled. Now, let’s move to your little problem. You’ll be glad to hear I’ve been giving it some thought. And I’ve come up with a solution. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “There’s this couple who keep coming round. Angela and Solly. They’re okay, but if they weren’t neighbours we wouldn’t have much to do with them. Anyway they often come round. You know, dropping in without warning, expecting a cup of tea. Now here’s the point. They turn up at various times in the day when they’ve been taking Hendrix out.”

  “Hendrix?”

  “Hendrix is a smelly, uncontrollable, possibly homicidal Labrador. For Angela and Solly, of course, the foul creature’s the child they never had. Or the one they haven’t had yet, they’re probably still young enough for real children. But no, they prefer darling, darling Hendrix. And when they call round, darling Hendrix routinely goes about demolishing the place as determinedly as any disaffected burglar. Down goes the standard lamp. Oh dear, never mind, darling, did you have a fright? You get the picture. Now listen. About a year ago, we had this coffee-table book, cost a fortune, full of arty pictures of young gay men posing in North African casbahs. Emily liked to keep it open at this particular page, she thought it went with the sofa. She’d go mad if you turned over the page. Anyway, about a year ago, Hendrix came in and chewed it all up. That’s right, sank his teeth into all that glossy photography, went on to chew up about twenty pages in all before Mummy could persuade him to desist. You see why I’m telling you this, don’t you?”

  “Yes. That is, I see a hint of an escape route, but…”

  “All right, I’ll spell it out. This is what you tell Emily. The door went, you answered it, this couple are there with Hendrix tugging at the leash. They tell you they’re Angela and Solly, good friends needing their cup of tea. You let them in, Hendrix runs wild, chews up the diary. It’s utterly plausible. What’s the matter? Why aren’t you thanking me? Won’t quite do for you, sir?”