Читать книгу Facing the Music - Andrea Goldsmith - Страница 6

For most of his sixty-seven years, Duncan Bayle had known only the benevolent side of life. A devoted and ambitious mother, the early departure of a good-for-nothing father, and the death in infancy of his only rival, a sister, had nurtured his gift, transforming a talent that might have remained forever cramped and ordinary into something glorious. And while this had taken considerable time – his first major piece for orchestra had not appeared until he was well into his thirties, and Heritage Cycle, the work that had launched him internationally, took a further nine years – a slow start had not proved a hindrance.

The robust attentions of his mother had protected him throughout childhood and beyond. Marie Bayle had juggled the competing evils of early exploitation and musical oblivion to arrive at what she considered to be intelligent compromise: a regimen of private study interspersed with the occasional performance. She had permitted him friends of a quiet, admiring sort who knew what it was to be special; she gave detailed directives to his teachers and kept a stiff-necked watch over their work. People were quick to criticise, growing boys needed their independence, they said, particularly in the absence of any male influence. But Marie Bayle ignored them, she would do whatever was required to protect her son from the travesties of life, specifically, those mean-spirited and passionless people who could permanently disable a sensitive, young mind. It came as no surprise then that Duncan Bayle attained manhood in the belief that life was easy, the world was kind, and he was located at its centre.

Following Marie Bayle’s premature death from a cerebral haemorrhage, Duncan’s sweet existence was threatened, and if not for Juliet Leonard, a primary school teacher and longtime neighbour, he might have collapsed under the demands of modern life. But fortunately, Juliet stepped in. Each day after school, she would shop and clean and cook for him, do his mail and make his phone calls, and then withdraw next door to her elderly parents and disabled brother. After six weary months and Duncan silent about the future, Juliet suggested they should marry. Duncan saw merit in the arrangement, and soon after, Juliet Leonard became Juliet Bayle and moved next door.

Like Marie Bayle, Juliet worked to ensure that nothing impeded the full expression of Duncan’s genius. And she was prepared to wait. She would go to her job each morning in the full knowledge that when she returned Duncan would be a little closer to realising his destiny. So finely-tuned were her ambitions for him, she was able to find progress even on those days Duncan was prepared to dismiss as a waste. With each new piece, his destiny, hers too, became more focused, and it was exquisite. She regarded his gentle, unfurling life rather like the mysterious growth of an exotic fruit, which, after years of slow maturation, suddenly blooms with a staggering magnificence. First to appear had been Pacifica, splendid at the time, but in retrospect something of a phantom blooming, and then the brilliant Heritage Cycle, after which there had been such abundance, such diversity, that even his early critics had been forced to revise their opinions.

There is a scent to success and it is wondrously powerful; it works like a pheromone on others, while acting as a catalyst for new work. In time, the successful person tends to accommodate to success – which matters not in the least as long as the work continues. Success had been as much a part of Duncan Bayle as was his attractiveness, and both were qualities he had long taken for granted. But about a decade ago, and a year or two after his daughter left home, Duncan Bayle’s music began to falter. At first he had been little bothered, it was only when the problems persisted that he started to worry. He tried different work schedules but to no avail; he went on holiday, but the ideas collapsed on his return; he took more pupils but they sucked his energy. No matter what he did, the spluttering rhythms and wheezing melodies continued; he was left to watch his perfect world grow pale, and he did not like it at all.

Each day, following breakfast and a short walk, he entered the music room to work. This had been the pattern of a lifetime and the only way of producing his music. ‘How do you manage it?’ people would ask, expecting to learn the alchemy of creativity, ‘every day, by yourself, the same room, the same four walls, how do you do it?’ Only rarely would he answer with the truth: that he loved the routine and the long hours alone. Even the fallow periods were relatively free of pain as experience had taught him they would eventually pass. And so they had until now – the most stubbornly unproductive period ever, made worse because the music was there, breathless behind the silence.

It was to be his greatest work, his Fourth Symphony and an evocation of the twentieth century. He was wanting to portray nothing less than the very essence of mankind, had known the work would take two to three years, perhaps even longer given his other commitments, but after more than a decade, all he had was a heap of unruly manuscript and time snapping at his heels. He knew he was not the only artist to view the century’s close as a convenient ticket to posterity; already there was a jostling for positions, with the flashy front-runners waving their advantage and those trailing behind hinting at surprises. As for Duncan Bayle, he was unusually quiet, so much dithering and fretting and still no closer to finishing his symphony. As the music grew more sluggish and the months passed into menacing years, it was his daughter he blamed, it was Anna who had hobbled his art.

‘She’s never thought of anyone but herself,’ he would say to Juliet at the end of yet another grim day in the music room, and Juliet, whom he knew to be as concerned as he, was quick to agree. Although such agreement as hers was of little value, for if she really understood about Anna she would have demanded her return long ago. As it was, Juliet had done nothing, leaving Anna’s absence to stretch into twelve gaping years.

Now, as he sat at his desk, Anna not the symphony on his mind, he was beset by his daughter’s double betrayal, for it was not simply the fact of her absence that was so upsetting, it was also the circumstances of her departure. She had left without explanation, without cause as far as he could see, and apart from an occasional phone call, behaved as if he and Juliet did not exist. Anna would return, of that he was sure, it was a matter of maturity and she had always been wild, but in the meantime he was worried and distracted and who could blame him for being unable to work?

Although such reasoning as this made the long, parched days no easier. He was a composer, an artist, and without his work he was lost. He rose from his desk and walked to the piano, stood a moment his hand on its surface, then on through the French doors and out to the verandah. Leaning against one of the columns, he looked back to the music room, deceptively safe and defiantly familiar, a homey, low-security prison rather than the cosy sanctuary of former times. The piano stood in the centre of the room, the lid shut most of the time these days. One wall had been fitted with shelving for his books and music, another displayed his favorite butterflies, a third was covered in photographs which, from the verandah, were reduced to glaring, metallic rectangles. But he knew them, every one, documenting as they did his composer’s life: the infant with his mother, the prodigy at the piano, the prodigy with his teachers, the prodigy receiving prizes; a stretch of time to the wedding photographs, another stretch to middle age and then a rush of pictures: the composer with soloists, the composer with conductors, the composer with the leaders of the world’s music, the composer at the piano, at his desk, with his daughter, the composer intense, worldly and at ease. He sighed, his life spread across a wall, silent pictures in black uniform frames and perhaps no more to add. He shifted his gaze, some prospects were too awful to contemplate, and looked to his desk, still neat, always neat, with two piles of paper, one of notes, the other of manuscript, and although it was impossible to see from out here, he knew about the frayed and yellowed edges, knew too, the bitter smell of paper ageing in stacks. And in front of the desk the two chairs, his, a large, expensive, leather model bought by Juliet years ago, and adjacent to it a smaller one, Anna’s chair. It used to be that he would enter this room and know a sense of well-being, but now there was only dread, and memories to feed the malignancy of failure.

He turned away and walked to the gate, a large man with a slight stoop who had always imagined himself as smaller than he was, consequently, he never allowed enough space when he moved among people and was forever knocking into them. While in others this behaviour might have been judged as careless, even rude, in Duncan’s case it was seen as endearing, an instance of the absent-minded genius of commonplace belief. Indeed, in almost every respect, he was the sort of man people wanted to like. He was considered to have presence; it was not simply his size, nor that he was pleasant-looking in a bearish sort of way; there was, as well, his manner of speaking, a wine-dark baritone stripped of any geographical influence, and his ability to make every listener feel as if he had deliberately selected them for his attention. Women, in particular, liked him and he responded to their appreciation with grace and willingness, a common characteristic among those who know they are held in high esteem. Juliet Bayle had always found him attractive and would still, even after all these years, feel a jolt should he touch her. But attractive or not, his genius had always been her first concern, and genius, so she believed, had to be sequestered from worldly intrusions; years ago, therefore, when Anna was still a toddler, she had decided not to bother him about sex. Duncan, however, knew differently, the body and the genius needed each other, sex primed him, tuned him up, and he made sure there was plenty of it. Each of his partners, misguided as was his own wife in the belief that genius was above the grunt and sweat of bodily pleasure, assumed she was the exception in an otherwise celibate life. He might have confessed to the truth if any of these women inquired, but they never did. His current partners, both of them former pupils, never asked anything, just wanted to make him happy, and were very good at it too. But these days even sex failed to revive him, nothing seemed to help. And it infuriated him, because Anna would return, in her own time of course, unaware and unashamed of the havoc she had caused, and if he had lost several productive years, she would insist it was not her fault. He could already hear her, ‘It’s not my fault, Duncan, you’re the famous composer, not me; it’s up to you how and when you work.’

She had been no older than fourteen when first she called him Duncan, and he had welcomed it. It occurred around the time she had lost interest in the cello, a mysterious loss of affection given she had chosen the cello at so young an age. But whatever her motivation he had been pleased. She was demonstrating a real aptitude for composition, and concentration on any one instrument, no matter how brilliantly played, could only be restrictive. Although he was curious, had asked about the cello, why she had given it up. He remembered her response clearly, the slow lifting of her head, the black eyes staring. ‘Duncan,’ she said finally, ‘why bother asking, you always wanted it to happen.’ It was said so sadly, but in the use of his first name and the fact she knew he had never been happy about the cello, he thought it a mature response.

It was not, as later events would prove; her behaviour which had long been erratic became much worse. But at the time he had been pleased; it had allowed him to shift their relationship from a father-daughter dynamic, which given the singular focus of his artist’s life had never been easy, to one defined by their shared love of music. Not that theirs had ever been a typical father-daughter interaction. Their best times had always been spent together in the music room, and while he had made an attempt at the usual fatherly tasks, the reading before bedtime, attendance at family picnics, parent-teacher nights, he had found none of these particularly enjoyable, and neither, he decided, had she. It may have been different if she had not been so musical, but she was, from the very beginning. ‘A prodigy for a prodigy,’ people used to say. ‘Like father like daughter.’

First it had been the piano, a skinny toddler perched on telephone books stretching to the keys, then the cello, and finally, much to his pleasure, composition. From early childhood she had wanted to help him, would prefer this above all else, and even when she became so difficult, she would still return to her old self while working with him – except at the very end when it appeared she had discarded music altogether, along with the common civilities of life. He had felt her absence then as a personal attack. She knew he had grown accustomed to her presence while he worked and would have heard his labouring, yet she let him sweat and groan alone.

And then she was gone.

He stood by the climbing rose and snapped off the bright hips, aware of the muscles dragging on his bones. Only sixty-seven years old, yet his body had grown heavy and claustrophobic, and there was a dull sagging in his legs, and his fingers as they pinched the hard round knobs felt swollen. Some mornings he could hardly grasp the pencil, and anyway had nothing to write. There was a movement too, in front of his eyes, an under-water, wave-like movement that made him nauseous. A few weeks before, he’d had his eyes checked, but there was nothing wrong, just failure staring him in the eye.

People were saying he was finished, and yet it could not be over already. He had thought to keep going forever, had so much music still to write, but could not dredge it up.

How had it come to this? Dredging it up? Gouging, scratching and wringing the music out of him. He had known difficulties before; the Heritage Cycle had given him a savage time, although he had been rewarded in the end, for it was Heritage that had released his pent-up creativity and ushered in those wonderful years when the music had poured out of him, and he would listen in amazement to what he had produced. This is how it had been, and would have continued if Anna had not run off, with nothing by way of explanation except a scrappy note saying she was leaving Melbourne, had taken her cello, would be in touch but not for a while.

How ironic that his first response had been relief, but then, in the year or two before she left, her behaviour had become so abominable, no parent would have put up with it. And besides, he had been convinced she would be back, a week or two, perhaps a month, and she would return, released from whatever had been driving her and ready to settle down. But the weeks had passed and the months, and it became clear she had no intention of coming home. Duncan had known his work placed restrictions on her, but also knew she had received unparalleled benefits. She had enjoyed the best music in the world, had known, even played with the world’s best performers, had met luminaries of all sorts – painters, writers, actors, a steady stream of them passing through the Bayle household. It had been an enviable upbringing for an artistic child. Although perhaps it had been too much, perhaps this had been behind her deplorable behaviour, the tantrums, the bad company, staying out all night, alcohol, drugs, under-age driving, a parade of misdemeanours that had increased as she grew older.

‘Come and help me,’ Duncan would say in the months before she left, come and help as she always had done, and if she bothered to answer at all it was to tell him he could do his own work. ‘You’re the famous composer,’ she would say, ‘don’t ask me.’ In earlier days when she was difficult, Juliet would offer excuses: Anna was going through a stage, or Anna was having a difficult adolescence, or it was hard being the child of a famous man; try to ignore the behaviour, she would say. So he did, and so he continued for as long as Anna helped him, such joyful hours so close to his daughter, precious moments that more than made up for her derelict moods.

He loved his daughter, had tolerated behaviour that by any standards had been unacceptable, would always love his child, but now could take no more. Throughout his life he had known admiration and praise and more than a little adoration, it was absurd to think he could change now. And should not have to, would not have to, if not for Anna.

‘I want her home,’ he had said to Juliet nearly two years ago. ‘She’s your daughter, tell her to come home.’

Juliet had said she would write, but had not sounded optimistic.

‘Anna’s no longer a child, Duncan, and you can’t be telling a thirty-year-old how to live her life.’

‘When it’s your own daughter, you can.’

Nearly two years ago and Anna still not home. In the end, and without telling Juliet, Duncan had written himself. It was the cancer scare that had decided him, he simply could not wait until she was ready to return, for then it might be too late. He had a lump, in his bowel of all places, and much more frightening than the attenuated disappointments of the past few years. He had lived with the lump for a weekend; discovered on a Friday during a disgusting procedure and not removed until the following Monday. Throughout the long weekend he had railed at the surgeon who would put his leisure ahead of Duncan’s health, and Anna who was somehow implicated in his misfortune. By the time the results came through, it was as if he’d had cancer, had fought it, and was currently in remission; that the results were negative was immaterial. He had lain on the couch, a rug over his legs and written to his daughter. He wrote of his failing health, his recent surgery, his love for her. He wrote about duty to family and the sacrifices demanded by art. He wrote the truth, and if he made no apologies it was because he believed none were needed. His daughter had left home twelve years before with no explanation either then or since. Indeed, for the first month there had been no contact of any kind; then had arrived a series of postcards – Thailand, India, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, England. ‘At least she’s in familiar territory now,’ said Juliet, whose sister, Sandra, lived near London.

Anna had stayed in England, as far as they knew, for the past twelve years. The postcards had ceased soon after her arrival and were replaced by an occasional telephone call. Not her phone, she was quick to explain, being on the move she had no need of one; and there was no point in giving them her address either, if they wanted to contact her they could do so through her friend, Lewis. ‘But only write if it’s really important.’

A telephone call once or twice a year, and for the past couple of years nothing.

‘She was always a difficult child,’ Juliet confided to her sister, who wondered why Anna never came to visit. ‘You mustn’t take it to heart. It was never easy being Duncan’s daughter; it would have been far better if she’d had no musical leanings at all. She’s had to find her own way.’

And to Duncan, ‘She’s had to find her own way. Don’t be so hard on her. It’d be far worse if she’d never left home like some people we know.’ And they discussed, as they had many times before, Duncan’s nephew, well into his thirties with no plans to leave his parents, no desire to make his own life. ‘Now, we wouldn’t want that, would we?’

And Duncan would agree, although in truth he wanted just that: Anna close by while he worked, the sweet, obliging Anna whose whole world had been her father and his music, the loving child out of whom had grown the intractable, venomous adolescent.

Juliet Bayle watches her husband leave the music room and enter the garden, continues to watch as he stands by the roses picking off the dead bits and tossing them on to the road, watches as she has on so many occasions when his music has been out of reach. Although this has been the worst period ever, the long days dragging, and months dissolving into years, and all the while his silence deepening and she growing evermore desperate.

He shuffles his feet through the gravel and shoves a hand deep into a pocket. It must be cold out there with no sun and a pre-winter blustering, and Juliet leaves her chair to fetch him a coat. Then stops. All too soon his problems become her problems, his frustrations her frustrations; she no longer knows how to help, or rather has nothing new to offer. In the old days, cups of coffee and reassuring words would smooth the creases of a bad day, but now he is more likely to turn on her and accuse her of fussing. She presses her palms against her eyes, sees superimposed on the inky clouds small golden explosions that expand with a violence until they fill her field of vision; she sighs and sits down again, he may be cold but she has no strength for his attacks today. She is sleeping badly, her energy is wasting in the grey hours and, worst of all, the voice upon which she relies to maintain her optimism is growing fainter, or perhaps is simply being drowned out by other noise. She makes a note to ring the doctor for some sleeping pills – not her customary solution when life is difficult, but these are extreme times with Duncan stumbling from silence to silence and needing her more than ever.

‘How do you do it?’ her sister had asked years ago when she and her husband were visiting from England. ‘I mean Duncan. How do you manage to live with someone so – ‘ she paused for the right word, ‘so sensitive?’

Juliet had laughed, for Duncan had been on his best behaviour throughout the visit. Nothing to do with Sandra and Don, rather he had been working hard, his second violin concerto had been well received, and Anna’s usual squalid behaviour had inexplicably declined which meant she spent more time with her father. Juliet had taken a moment to consider, then had talked about the sensibilities of the artist, how in order to work creatively a certain vision was required, a sensitivity to the world. ‘Artists need to be aware of nuance,’ she said, ‘of the subtle details that other people take for granted. After all, if they saw only what the rest of us saw, floated along in the same vague, unseeing way, there would be no artists.’

‘But don’t you find it a strain, always having to be on the alert? Always so attentive?’

Again Juliet had considered her response, for living with Duncan could be a strain. He might well be sensitive to nuance, but at the same time his artist’s temperament made him vulnerable to the push and shove of ordinary life. When they ran out of milk, he was not the one to go to the shop; when the plumber came to repair the guttering, Duncan must not even know there had been a leak; when money was short, as it had been early in their marriage, to tell him would only send shivers through his work. Juliet had long believed that while the creative person makes demands, there is ample compensation, and both factors, the demands and the rewards, form in the heart of creativity. She had made her choice years ago: she wanted the advantages of living with an artist and was prepared to respond to the demands, indeed, regarded this as her contribution to the creative process. Sandra, who had always pursued her own interests, was not one to appreciate the sacrifices required for art. When finally Juliet answered, she was unequivocal. ‘Of course it’s not a strain living with Duncan. Far from it, I’m richer and my world is richer because of him.’

Which was true. Without Duncan, Juliet’s life would have been a bland, textureless monochrome; even as a child, she knew that left to her own resources, hers was a trajectory to mediocrity. Although now, looking back, Juliet was able to detect in the child inchoate murmurings of what would become the talent of her adult years: a talent to serve. And Duncan Bayle had turned out to be an ideal target for her ministrations. Theirs had been a union of almost biological perfection; she shaped the private world while he carved the public, she attended to his earthly needs leaving him free for the creative ones. Few great talents mature in isolation, and while it might have become a truism to refer to the woman behind the great man, Juliet was convinced that in all but rare cases, there is a wife or a mother or a girlfriend or a daughter acting as a scrim between the great man and the outside world. Duncan needed her, and if he had been a different sort of person would have shown his gratitude. That he did not, Juliet had long ago decided, was part of his charm; few people are so secure in their success that they can take their support for granted.

Although not at the moment, not secure at all. He is still standing in the garden, his face slack, his large frame slumped and haggard. This is what it means to be shrivelled up by failure, Juliet thinks, and turns away. Soon he will return to the music room, not to his music – his patterns of silence are now as familiar to her as his patterns of work – but to his butterfly collection, the only aspect of their lives to have progressed in the past few years. Meetings with musicians have been replaced by meetings with lepidopterists, new music has been overshadowed by new specimens, and it is not a fair exchange. Besides, of all Duncan’s interests, the silent, dead beauties spread-eagled in their display cases have never appealed to her. Anna had hated them, although not at first, not when she was young and would sit quietly while Duncan described the various families; it was only later she came to despise what she called ‘their stilted deadness’ and her father’s fascination with them. Later still, she said he treated his butterflies just as he did people, collected them in order to possess them – possess, she emphasised, not appreciate. Just as he did with people. It was vintage Anna, always so good with words and taking such delight in making them suffer.

Juliet closes her eyes and leans back in the chair, feels her spine grate against the wooden slats. Always a slim woman, her bones now jut through a skin grown sullen and limp; her face, however, has been largely spared and people would still call her handsome. Never a beauty, she has long possessed a certain style, a sharp-faced ballerina, long-legged water-bird sort of style, which she has always valued, providing as it did a certain distinction within the blighted air of her first family and a presence within the notoriety of the second. Her hair is straight, cut very short and dyed. It turned a sudden stormy grey in her twenties, and although she disliked it, had left it alone – part of her Calvinist heritage, she supposed, not to tamper with God’s work. But a few years later, with Anna a baby and the other first-time mothers at the infant welfare centre a good ten years younger, Juliet had her hair returned to the dark brown of her youth and preference and has continued to do so in the years since. Good years, in the main, and rewarding years as Duncan rose in the musical world.

She leaves her chair and paces the room. His best work is still in front of him, of that she is sure, all that is needed is a return to the stable work habits of his productive years, and with all other avenues exhausted, that means Anna must come home. It is a reluctant admission, because, in truth, Juliet does not want her daughter back, was pleased when she left, had looked forward to a future, just the two of them as it had been in the beginning, Duncan’s work on the same gleaming orbit and time for relaxation as well. At first it seemed all would be well. They had travelled to Europe, a little work but mainly leisure, and back home he had put the finishing touches to a quartet he had been working on when Anna had left. It was only when he turned to his new Fourth Symphony that the trouble began, and even then not immediately, for Duncan had known slow starts before. But when a slow start stretches into a decade of silence then it becomes something else. People no longer referred to a creative block, they simply said he was past it.

Juliet returns to her table but does not sit down. Through the window she watches Duncan as he walks to the letter-box. She is not the only one to show the wear and tear of these difficult years; it is not that he looks older or has gained or lost weight, rather he carries himself differently, as if clinging to shadows with the grime of an unsatisfactory journey clogging his pores. This is a man who has known better days and would never know them again unless his work picked up. She turns away. She has tried everything and things are getting worse, if it took Anna’s return, then, for Duncan’s sake, so be it.

The decision now made and Duncan soon wanting his coffee, she goes into the music room to fetch his cup. She lingers in the doorway and feels herself relax. It is strange how this room can still affect her; it is a place that appears always new, despite having known it since childhood. From the very first time Duncan invited her to hear his music, this room – the piano, the desk, the shelves, the very air – has formed the scaffolding of her hopes. As a girl, she longed to be part of his world, find for herself a niche within his spangled sphere. In her own family, everything revolved around poor damaged Robbie, but in the Bayle household, Duncan led the way, and he was going places. After the first visit, she returned again and again, would sit in the music room while he worked, listening, watching, steeped in bliss – she, ordinary Juliet Leonard, and not at all musical, the girl from next door whose life would be a stubbornly pitiful affair if not for Duncan Bayle.

He liked her there, he said. ‘You’re so calm, you seem to absorb the music. It helps me.’ And it helped her. She would escape her own dreary family, the weak father, the mother who had succumbed to the guilt of her late-life child, and Robbie who thundered through the house from early morning to late at night, would escape to Duncan and another world.

Best of all, she liked it when he played his own music. She would sit in the chair that would become Anna’s chair, immersed in a thrilling and tender pleasure. She had no language to describe it, either then or since. Sensations come closer – sun on skin after the chill of a house, a dollop of icecream on a burning throat, a hand stroking her back, bare feet in cool sand. And he was mesmerising to watch, his large body curved over the keyboard, eyes closed by the music, heavy hair swaying from side to side, fingers curling and rolling and chasing one another over the keys. From the very first time she knew she had found a place previously unknown, a soothing, kindly place where she wanted to stay forever. And from the beginning, she knew there was something about his music that seemed to enter her and attach to what she recognised as the best part of herself. With Duncan she became other than who she was.

‘You’re not exactly my muse,’ he would say, ‘more my rock.’

And so had remained. Throughout the courtship, throughout the marriage, the first ten years just the two of them, and then Anna’s arrival. Juliet would nurse the baby in the music room, suckle her on music was how she thought of it, and when Anna proved so musical, Juliet knew she had played her part. She was proud of her two musicians, her husband the composer and her daughter the cellist; would sit with Duncan in the music room and know he needed her, and attend Anna’s concerts and know she was needed there too.

And then it all changed. Of course she continued to provide for them, she worked, she cooked and cleaned, but while she admired her two musicians publicly, alone she would grind on her loss. When Anna became so impossible, here at last was good reason to dislike her daughter, and when finally she disappeared, Juliet prayed she would stay away.

With Anna gone, Juliet returned to the music room, but what once had helped him had become an intrusion, what once had soothed him was now an irritation; in the end she left him to work alone and increased her support in other ways. Long ago she had made her choice and had never wavered, not during the bad times with Anna, not during these past twelve years, and, she reminded herself, not now.

She returns to her desk, dials the doctor’s surgery and leaves a message with the nurse about the sleeping pills, then takes a sheet of notepaper from the drawer. She is sure the silence would lift if only he were to put aside his Fourth Symphony and work on something else. It has become a spectre, a threatening, choking presence, and as much as it clings to him so he clings to it. When she suggested recently that the symphony was an ineffectual, even destructive lifeline, he countered with a savage denial: she did not understand, the Fourth was to be his signature piece, it would represent a life dedicated to music; to let it go would be to reduce his life to ash. Juliet said he was being melodramatic, but he simply shook his head and returned to the scarred and tattered pages of manuscript.

It had always been his method to work on at least two pieces simultaneously, each fed the other, each became larger under the influence of the other. Such had been the case when he began the Fourth; there had been a collection of tone poems for the piano, not his best work, but melodic pieces that were proving quite popular. He then had started a piece for flute and voice, something Anna had wanted him to do for years, which was when her absence started to grate.

Juliet sighs, Anna must return. She would write to her, and this time, instead of the lukewarm requests of earlier letters, would leave no doubt of the seriousness of the situation. Life with Anna had been torture, but, as much as Juliet has tried, life without her was little better. And she has tried, but it is Anna’s return he wants.

She looks up as he comes into the room, his face is blanched with the cold and he is coughing. She stands up, takes the letters from him and gives his arms a brisk rub.

‘That feel better?’ she asks.

He nods, smiles faintly.

‘I’ll bring you a jacket with your coffee. Where would you like it?’

‘In the music room of course, where else?’

She takes the letters into the kitchen to read while waiting for the kettle to boil.

Duncan looks up from his butterflies. More than a half an hour has passed and still no coffee. No jacket either, although with the room so warm he no longer needs one. He calls, and calls again, and when there is no answer goes into the kitchen. Juliet is seated at the table, her head resting on her hands, the mail spread before her. The kettle has boiled dry and there is a smell of burning.

‘What on earth are you doing, Juliet?’

She starts, looks up, grabs the kettle from the stove.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asks, and when she does not answer, asks again. ‘Is something wrong?’

She holds out a letter. ‘Anna’s coming home.’