CHAPTER THREE

ISABEL DID NOT SEE Jamie that evening. There was an unspoken understanding between them that he would be in charge of Charlie’s bath and they would both then share the hour or so of play that came before bedtime. Then she and Jamie would have dinner together, going over the day’s events, discussing Charlie and his doings and achievements, which were as wondrous to both of them as such things always are to parents. That evening, though, Jamie was involved in a rehearsal for a concert that he was to play in the following night at the Queen’s Hall, and that was where she was to see him next.

On the evening of the concert, she found him in the Queen’s Hall bar, sitting at a table by himself, nursing a large glass of orange juice and paging through an opera magazine. He rose to greet her, and they exchanged a kiss on the cheek. His hand, though, touched the side of her neck gently, a gesture that she found strangely intimate. It was all so new, even if it had been going on for more than two years now; so precious—so unlikely, too, but it had happened.

She sat down beside him. They were early—the concert was not due to start until half past seven, forty minutes away. In the background, in the green room that gave directly off the bar, they heard one of the singers warming up.

“Listen to this,” he said. “There’s a bit here about a performance of Lohengrin. Leo Slezak, the Czech tenor, was due to get onto a swan and sail off the stage. Unfortunately one of the stagehands sent the mechanical swan off before he had time to get onto it. So Slezak turned to the audience and sang, in German, When does the next swan leave?”

They both burst out laughing. “I can understand the view that Wagner’s inherently ridiculous,” Isabel said. “Even when the swans run on time.”

Jamie nodded. “But there are plenty of operas that one can’t really take seriously. I’ve always had difficulty with Pagliacci. Everybody seems to die onstage. I know it’s tragic, but somehow one would have thought that at least one or two of the principal singers would be left standing.”

He slipped the magazine into the small music case he had with him and turned to Isabel. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t—”

She interrupted him. “I’m the one who should say sorry. I dragged you there.”

“It’s not that I dislike these dinner parties,” Jamie continued. “It’s just that the people at that one…” He shrugged. “The chemistry wasn’t there. You know how sometimes things just zip along. I didn’t feel it.”

“I know,” said Isabel. “I could tell.” He had obviously not enjoyed himself, which had slightly surprised her, as she thought everybody else had.

He smiled. “Anyway, let’s not talk about it. This concert…” He trailed off.

Isabel knew there were occasions when Jamie did not look forward to a performance, and the shrug that he gave revealed that this was one.

“What is wrong with it? It looks interesting enough.”

He drew an imaginary line on the table, a casual, invisible doodle that she assumed divided the evening’s offering into two. “Some of the pieces are interesting. The others…well…” He reached for the programme that Isabel had bought in the lobby. “Here. This new piece. Melisma for the Return of Persephone. It’s rubbish. I just don’t like it. This is only the second time it’s been played, which surprises me. Once would have been enough. Or too much.”

Isabel was surprised by this comment. Musicians could backbite, but Jamie, she thought, was not like that; he was usually gentle. Something had irritated him profoundly for him to say this. “Somebody must like it,” she said mildly. “It must have some merit, otherwise…”

Jamie shook his head. “You’ve got a touching faith in the way these things work, Isabel,” he said. “Merit doesn’t come into it.”

He was in an odd mood, she decided. “All right,” she said. “But don’t let it worry you. And I’ll try not to catch your eye during the performance.”

He had glanced at his watch, and she decided that it would be better to leave him by himself. She rose to her feet, explaining that she was going to go to her seat in the hall, where she would read the programme notes. He said yes, that was a good idea; he would see her afterwards and they would go back to the house together. Had she brought her car? She had, and had parked it conveniently behind the hall, outside the small, secondhand bookshop that specialised in science fiction. A bassoon was not an easy instrument to carry, and on the occasions when Jamie played the contrabassoon, difficulties of transport could become acute. The contrabassoon had eighteen feet of wood and metal tubing, and required a case that was almost six feet in length. Some contrabassoonists, Jamie had pointed out, were considerably smaller than their instruments—though this was not the case with him.

“Maybe they’re compensating for being so small,” he had once suggested. “A tiny tuba player must feel much bigger than he really is.”

Isabel thought this was possible; she had noticed small men in immense cars and sometimes there did appear to be a connection. Yet one had to be careful with observations of this type; it was very easy to be uncharitable, and then to regret it, as she had been, and done, once, when on holiday in Spain with John Liamor and they had been talking about ostentatious cars and inadequate drivers. They had been sitting in a pavement café, and at that moment an immense Mercedes-Benz had entered the plaza and had drawn to a halt near them. And Isabel had said: “Yes, now look at him. He’s making up for something.” John Liamor had said, “Yes, obviously.”

Then the driver had got out of the car and raised himself with difficulty onto his two artificial legs.

         

THE PIECE that aroused Jamie’s disdain came immediately before the interval. Before the concert began, Isabel had the opportunity to read the programme notes and the composer’s biography. “Although not yet thirty, the American composer Nick Smart has attracted considerable attention for his bold and original compositions for both voice and chamber ensemble. In Melisma for the Return of Persephone, this talented young composer, currently spending a year as composer in residence at the University of Edinburgh, applies a technique of Gregorian chant to explore the vowels of Persephone’s name. Mr. Smart will be conducting his piece this evening.”

Isabel smiled to herself. Jamie did not like pretentiousness; and that, she thought, was why he had taken against Melisma. She could understand that: the greatest beauty, she felt, was to be found in simplicity. Ornamentation had its place, but that place was a small one. And what, she wondered, had Persephone to do with it? It was unfortunate that Hades had seized Persephone and taken her into the underworld; Demeter was rightly distracted, as anyone would be in the circumstances, but…The concert was about to begin. She snatched a last glance at the small photograph of Nick Smart, printed alongside his biography. A young man smiling at the camera, captured against a background of a college building, it seemed, somewhere old, in the new way that buildings are old in the United States, and…She peered at the photograph; the lights were dimming in the hall. Yes, he looked remarkably like Jamie. It was uncanny.

There were four short pieces before Melisma began. Jamie played in the first two, and then slipped back onto the stage shortly before the outgoing conductor welcomed Nick Smart to the podium. Isabel watched as a lithe figure, clad in the crumpled black linen suit favoured by composers, ascended the steps at the front and shook hands with the man who now passed him his baton. So that was Nick Smart; although Isabel was in the third row from the front and therefore able to see the stage quite well, it was difficult to make out very much about the composer from behind. But even then, she thought that had Nick Smart been sitting at the bassoon rather than Jamie, she would not have known the difference.

Melisma began. Isabel closed her eyes and tried to follow the direction of the music, but it soon defeated her. The possibility of resolution was raised from time to time, but then quickly dashed as an unexpected chord intruded. Miasma, thought Isabel; this is a miasma. Miasma for the Confusion of Persephone. Jamie would appreciate that, she thought.

She looked in Jamie’s direction. It seemed that there was little for the contrabassoon to do in the early stages of the piece, but, towards the end, when the prospect of Persephone’s release drew closer, there were rumbling bassoon sounds on the lower notes of the register, signifying, Isabel imagined, the depths of Hades from which the unfortunate girl would shortly be released. She suppressed a smile. Hell, she thought, was more likely to be a place of white noise, the noise favoured by torturers, than a place of contrabassoon pedal notes. Or would Hell be an endless loop of boy bands or rap? Either would be torture.

Of course, the abolition of Hell meant that such thoughts were now the merest fantasy. Isabel was agnostic as to what, if anything, lay in store for us after this life; that there was a world of spirit seemed to her to be a possibility that we should not exclude. Consciousness was an elusive entity about which we knew very little, other than that it came into existence when certain conditions were present—a sufficient mass of brain cells operating in a particular way. But could we really say much more than that about where it was located and whether it could survive in other conditions? The fact that a plant grew in one place did not mean that it could not grow in another. And if something lay behind this consciousness, orchestrated it and the conditions that produced it, then why should we not call this something God?

She closed her eyes. The key in which the music was now being played suggested that Persephone was out of the underworld and that flowers and grain were returning. She opened them. A few energetic bars more and the music suddenly came to an abrupt, unresolved end. No resolution. That is so counterintuitive, thought Isabel. And if a composer does not resolve a piece then the applause should be similarly incomplete. One hand would be aimed at the other, but would stop short of actual contact: unresolved clapping.

Yet the applause was enthusiastic—thunderously so. Isabel looked about her at the faces of her fellow concertgoers; many were smiling enthusiastically. Of course, one had to be careful about reading too much into that; people could smile with relief at the end of an unsatisfactory piece, and even applause could be provoked by sheer joy at being released from something one does not like. But this audience, she thought, meant it.

She did not go into the bar at the interval, as she knew that Jamie liked to socialise with his fellow musicians and she would leave him to do that. So she went the other way, to the front of the hall, and stood outside for a few minutes, enjoying the evening air. Others were doing the same, and she recognised some of them. There was a man she saw in Cat’s delicatessen from time to time; there was a couple with their emaciated, earnest-looking teenagers; there was the young woman who worked in the fund-raising office of the university; and a few others. Isabel listened. Everybody, it seemed, was talking about Melisma for the Return of Persephone. “Really remarkable,” said the man from the delicatessen to the woman standing at his side. “I’ve heard something by him before. He’s going places, I think.”

“Yes,” said the woman. “Very…” She left the word hanging.

Very unfinished, thought Isabel.

The woman finished her sentence. “Very beautiful.”

Oh, really! thought Isabel.

The verdict from others was much the same. Oh well, thought Isabel. Perhaps I’m not sufficiently used to the language he’s using. Music is not an international language, she thought, no matter how frequently that claim is made; some words of that language may be the same, but not all, and one needs to know the rules to understand what is being said. Perhaps I just don’t understand the conventions by which Nick Smart is communicating with his audience.

She returned to her seat. The second half of the concert was very straightforward. Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G and some German Dances from Schubert. At the end of the programme, she waited for a few minutes in her seat until the rush subsided, then made her way through to the bar at the back. She saw Jamie standing at the end, his back to her, talking to a man and a woman. She went over to join him, negotiating her way through the press of people around the bar.

She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. “I see what you mean,” she whispered, “about poor Persephone. Ghastly…”

Nick Smart turned round and stared at her.

In her state of shock, it took a few moments for Isabel to work out what had happened. Jamie was there, but standing opposite the composer, whom she had taken for him.

Isabel thought quickly. “Ghastly fate,” she said hurriedly. “And poor Demeter: What parent could fail to sympathise with her!”

“I’m sorry,” said Nick Smart. “I thought at first that you didn’t like it.”

Isabel laughed. She looked desperately at Jamie, who was smirking. “Heavens no. I thought it very arresting. Remarkable.” The man outside had used that adjective and she reached for it now.

“Yes,” said Jamie, coming to her rescue. “Remarkable.” He paused. “Nick, this is Isabel.”

Nick Smart took Isabel’s hand and shook it. She thought: Anybody could have done that. He looks very like Jamie; so much so, they could be brothers.

The young woman, whom Isabel recognised as one of the violinists and who had been standing next to Jamie, looked at her watch and muttered, “Sorry. Must go. Glasgow train.”

Jamie said, “Fine. I’ll see you next time, whenever that is. Next month, I think.”

Isabel, her poise now recovered, turned to Nick Smart. “I see that you’re composer in residence at the university, Mr. Smart. Do you have to teach?”

Nick Smart turned to her, but only briefly. When he replied, it was as if he were uttering an aside. “A bit. Not much.” He turned back to face Jamie. Isabel noticed that as he did so, he smiled. American teeth, she thought, knocked into shape by expensive orthodontics, but slightly worrying in their regularity.

“So do you play a lot for Scottish Opera?” asked Nick.

“Yes,” said Jamie. “I stand in. Quite a lot.”

“I’ve been working on an opera,” said Nick. “On and off.”

“What’s it about?” asked Isabel.

It was possible, she thought, that Nick did not hear her question; either that, or he ignored it.

“The difficulty with a full-length opera is that there’s just so much music,” said Nick, addressing Jamie. “It’s pretty difficult.”

“So I gather,” said Jamie.

Isabel looked to see if Jamie had noticed her question being ignored, but he did not. She glanced at Nick Smart, at the black linen suit. She noticed an expensive watch on his left wrist and a discreet signet ring. There was an air of expensive grooming about him. But there was something else there, and she could not quite fathom it. Smugness? Narcissism? One thing was clear: he was not the slightest bit interested in talking to her; that had been apparent right at the beginning.

“Jamie,” she began. “It’s getting a bit late. I think…”

Nick moved his head slightly to glance at her; no more than that. Then he turned back to look at Jamie. A smile played about the edge of his mouth, a look of enquiry.

Jamie muttered something and took Isabel aside. “Would you mind?” he asked. “Nick has asked me to have a drink with him. Would you mind if I stayed?”

She thought: I do mind. I mind a great deal. But she said, “No, that’s all right. Will you be in later?”

He leaned forward and kissed her on the brow. “Of course.”

Nick Smart was watching, bemused. His eyes moved away. He touched his watch with his right hand, a delicate gesture, as a conservator might remove dust from a painting, with a silk cloth.