435
I say ‘my study’, but in my mind I still regard it as my father’s. His quiddity dominates the room, his presence patriarchal, the walls carrying his portraits, the bookcases his tomes. The desk I inherited is a wonderful thing, big and weighty and filled with drawers; blots of his ink have stained the wood around the inkwell, from letters he sent that will now be ageing and yellowed and stored in the drawers of other homes, growing dusty. In that desk there is a drawer filled with bills I do not want to look at. It is the fear of failing to leave Rachel with sufficient funds after I have gone that seizes my gut. She might be older than me, but she has lived a healthier existence, and does not need to regularly consult The Oxford Dictionary of Malaises. Another drawer has a small packet of opium in it, but I have made a promise to my wife that I will not touch it: it is for emergencies only. I think of Finn standing by a ship’s rail, surveying the sea as though he has dominion over it. Why does it feel as though he is now the adult and we are the children – abandoned and lost?
The fire blazes in the grate; the windows multiply it in their reflections. I go to the gramophone and toy between Beethoven symphonies. The ninth can make me feel a little frenzied, but I need to be cheered. I lose concentration and find my body overriding my reasoning, acting as 436though it has made the decision by itself, for suddenly the needle is fusing with the groove and the fifth is booming out. Dot-dot-dot-dash. How did Beethoven describe those opening notes? Destiny is knocking. Beethoven himself was nearly poleaxed by destiny when he began to lose his hearing at the age of thirty. He contemplated suicide, but then declared: I want to grab fate by the throat. It most certainly will not get me down. Work became his reason for living. I picture him on the stage in Vienna, back to the audience, at the premiere of the ninth, unable to hear the rapturous applause until his soloist, Caroline Unger, taps him on the shoulder and he turns to face a standing ovation. Perhaps I ought to return to music criticism or even to my composing again, but really … Why act? Why bother?
Rachel is my opposite. Two rooms away, she is painting feverishly, having produced over twenty pieces this year, striving so hard that sometimes I find her standing in front of her canvas, palette loose in her hand, chin on chest, snoring. I regard it now as my profession to love her and support her gift, to compensate for those years when I failed her. Why bother with my own paltry musical compositions when I will never have time to finish them? I have the most wonderful wife in the world, not to mention the fire, and my books, and this glorious music, and the stars that glint through the window and – ah! as though the sky is listening in sympathy – a shooting star.
I lift a paperweight, roll it in my hands, and find a scrap of paper underneath it. On it I have scrawled in a shaky hand: ПОМНИТЬ MANCHESTER. The Russian bewilders me, and Manchester is not a city I have ever visited. 437Another mystery; another appointment I have no doubt missed. I hide it back under the paperweight.
The door creaks open and Flaubert the cat wanders in.
‘What a so-and-so, running away to sea and deserting you,’ I tell the cat. ‘How cruel and ruthless my boy is.’
I wonder if Ginny has left for the night; I would like some warm milk or maybe more of that Grand Kuding tea, which has made me feel blurry around the edges. Might it also take the edge off my pain?
Then Rachel is in the doorway, looking miserable.
‘Da da da daa,’ she mimics the music. Beethoven affects her as alcohol does. He rouses me but he makes her feel peevish. She is better with Mozart and his calming coherence.
‘Change it if you like, my darling.’
Rachel has not heard; I have spoken into the wrong ear. She bends to stroke the cat, groaning as her back protests. I reach for her, and coax her on to my lap. ‘Stroke me,’ I whisper and she laughs and kisses me softly, and we rub noses in an Eskimo kiss. Clutching the arm of the chair, she rises and goes to my desk. I tense up, seeing her remove the small, battered green tin of opium, dreading a lecture.
‘Let’s smoke it,’ she says decisively.
I laugh in delight. ‘My angel.’
Beethoven’s fifth has passed into its second movement, and notes of cellos and violas and basses playing pizzicato infuse the cloud that is thickening around us. We are on a ship, Rachel says, sitting on my lap, swaying gently so that her long hair swishes, and I stroke it softly. I twist a lock around my little finger, and examine the colours: the salt and pepper, the snowy hues, pure and dirty. Da da da 438daa. I used to find this refrain rather contrived, but with age I have realised that it is a true mirroring of life and the tendency of events to rhyme and echo through the years. I pull the lock taut and realise it is the string of a beautiful instrument. With my other hand, I pluck it. ‘You could be a harp,’ I tell Rachel …
When I next open my eyes, I find that we are lying on the rug, and the cat is sitting on the chair, watching us incredulously. My right side is very warm from the fire. I call the cat, ‘Finn,’ and Rachel says, ‘He’s Flaubert,’ and I say, ‘No, from now on, he shall be Finn.’ Rachel curls her head against my shoulder and attempts a purr. ‘I think this is one of the best nights of my life,’ I tell her, and begin trailing kisses over the liver spots on her face.
She reaches up and gently slaps me, then kisses me. I tell her I love her. It’s been an age and in the sweetness of raw ache I wonder why we have left it so long. Then I feel the pain in my back and the agony of my arthritic knees knobbling on the thin rug and remember why. My determination to give her pleasure makes the pain a penance I want to endure, and I carry on, gazing down into her dilated pupils, whispering dirt and love in her ear and … Oh, the sensation of having slipped away, and reaching down to find a humiliating softness. I let out a loud curse. Rachel cuddles up against me – ‘Just hold me,’ she says. I bury my face in her hair.
Some time has passed and Beethoven has been replaced by the music of the wind in the chimney. I realise Rachel is speaking:
‘Perhaps Finn will discover a new species of butterfly.’ 439
‘Or we will find out that we do not come from the apes at all, but from worms,’ I muse.
‘Or that the trees are our common ancestors, and we were once all roots and leaves.’
I murmur agreement, and find myself drifting into sleep, but in a slow, delicious way, as if I am going down in a glass box, floor by floor, and at the junction point between waking and sleeping, where thoughts are colours and reshape to form dreams, a memory slices through: a helicopter, smashing into the church spire, and this is not real. You’re in a book. A sweat prickles over me, and I know that it is Fate, Augustus Fate, who is in the trees and the sky, watching, smirking, ready to strike. I try to fight my stupor to shake Rachel awake, but she is snoring and I hear myself say, ‘Wake up, we need to wake up,’ and the cat is staring at me with wide eyes, as though urging me on, but I am too tired and my mind is not strong enough to battle my body, and I slide into sleep …