The weather was suddenly unmistakably autumnal. A cutting east wind went right through Anna’s flimsy evening dress, making her shiver as Kit guided her through the waiting crowd towards the round temple-like structure of the Sheldonian. Her black shawl embroidered with silver thread looked perfect with her understated black dress, but a coat would have been kinder to her kidneys, she thought.
Despite having grown up in Oxford Anna could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d actually been inside the Sheldonian Theatre where the memorial Huw had organized to celebrate Laurie Swanson’s life and work was to be held.
The last time she’d been this close to its doors it had been in morning sunshine with Jake. ‘Christopher Wren built this?’ he’d said. ‘The same guy who built St Paul’s Cathedral? He had quite a thing for verdigris domes, didn’t he!’ In the middle of their discussion of theatres in the round (Jake had been to the reconstructed Globe Theatre in Southwark and been blown away), Anna had turned round and surprised a group of Korean visitors in high-end travel-wear, listening with apparent fascination to her tour-guide spiel.
Tonight this same space was lit by the electric lights streaming from the windows on all three storeys of the Sheldonian as it steadily filled with excited fans and paparazzi.
It had rained earlier, leaving a watery sheen on the ancient pavement. The tremendous outpouring of light from inside the theatre picked up and intensified this slight shimmer, making it seem as if the guests were walking along some kind of celestial pathway, while the fans and members of the press, hungry for a glimpse of Gisela Van Holden or other luminaries of the music world, looked on from the sidelines.
At last Anna and Kit were able to join the slow procession of guests making their way into the theatre. Self-consciously aware of Kit’s arm linked through hers, she whispered, ‘I feel like a bloody character from Jane Austen.’
‘Which character am I, then?’ he asked at once, and Anna hissed:
‘I didn’t say I knew which bloody character!’
Inside the doors Sara and Huw were greeting guests as they arrived. Sara was nodding and smiling, playing the part of the loyal wife with a glittering intensity that suggested she’d taken something to help her through the evening. She looked even thinner than she’d been at the launch, and the cosmetic concealer she’d used didn’t adequately conceal the dark lines under her eyes. It was weirdly fascinating seeing Sara perform her part, knowing what Anna now knew.
When it was their turn to file past the Trahernes, Anna saw Sara’s social smile falter, then, blanking Kit, she shot Anna a look so hostile that it registered almost as a physical slap.
‘What did I do?’ she whispered to Kit when they were out of earshot.
‘I told you, she’s a bitch,’ he whispered back. ‘Just ignore her. Come on, let’s find our seats.’
As Anna had explained to Jake, the Sheldonian Theatre was originally designed as a venue for graduation and other academic ceremonies. Graduations had previously been held in a local church, but by the mid 1600s these ceremonies had become increasingly raucous affairs so the then Vice Chancellor had proposed the theatre as a secular alternative.
Looking up at the glowing ceiling frescos with their flying angels and cherubs, Anna decided that the word ‘secular’ had been interpreted a little differently in those days. The Sheldonian, with its encircling galleries, emanated a timeless solemnity, giving her the shivery feeling she had occasionally felt in lovely Italian churches.
Anna was secretly impressed to find that she and Kit were sitting in the VIP area directly opposite the raised stage where Gisela Van Holden was going to perform. Behind the stage the members of the orchestra had already taken their seats. Anna felt the familiar tingle of excitement as they began to tune their instruments.
Kit discreetly pointed out some well-known stars of the Royal Opera House and someone from Milan’s La Scala. Then an elderly woman behind them recognized Kit, leaning over to talk to him in a drawl so upper class that it was almost a self-parody. How many different Oxfords there were, Anna thought, invisibly contained inside each other like Russian dolls; but this was the first time she’d found herself entering this particular rarefied city within a city.
Kit gave Anna an apologetic glance as the elderly lady continued to hold him captive. ‘Friend of my mother’s,’ he whispered.
The theatre was steadily filling. Anna glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Isadora. Eventually, she spotted her several seats away, talking to a man with snow-white hair and an immense silvery beard. Isadora was wearing something black with flowing sleeves. Anna could see her garnet earrings swinging as she gestured. Anna tentatively raised a hand in greeting, but Isadora didn’t see. Instead of completing her wave, Anna reached up to touch the new pendant at her throat. Its metal had felt chilly against her skin when Kit first fastened it around her neck, but her body heat had gradually warmed it.
He’d produced the small box when he came to pick her up. ‘I’ve bought you something,’ he’d said, and Anna’s heart had given an unpleasant flutter. Anna disliked all surprises, but she had a particular dislike of surprise presents, especially when the giver was waiting for her delighted reaction.
‘What is it?’ she’d said suspiciously.
‘A mouse trap,’ he’d teased at once. ‘No, of course it isn’t,’ he’d added quickly. ‘All the jewellers had sold out of mouse traps, so I got you something nice instead. Well, I hope it’s nice.’
Kit had seemed uncharacteristically anxious as she opened the box. He’d watched her unfold the layers of white tissue paper, then smiled with relief as she’d exclaimed over the exquisite little silver bee suspended from its chain.
‘I saw it and immediately thought of your magical childhood among your grandmother’s beehives, and I couldn’t resist,’ he’d told her.
It was one of the loveliest and certainly one of the silliest things anyone had ever given her, and she was more touched than she knew how to say. She knew that Kit was an experienced flirt. But he made her feel so … She searched for the right words to express the sensations she experienced whenever she was with Kit Tulliver; cherished, she thought. He made her feel feminine and desirable. It was a deeply seductive feeling.
Kit turned back to Anna and caught her fingering the little bee. He smiled. ‘You really like it? You’re not just being polite?’
‘I love it,’ she told him, ‘but you shouldn’t buy me presents.’
‘Nonsense!’ Kit lightly touched one of her diamond ear studs. ‘These are beautiful. You were wearing those the first time I saw you.’
‘They were my grandmother’s.’ Despite the chaotic circumstances of their first meeting, Kit had noticed every little thing about her, Anna thought, even her earrings. She felt her cheeks colour, but was distracted by the sight of Isadora waving wildly from her seat.
Moments later, Anna spotted another familiar face in the crowd. It took her another moment to identify Laurie’s Macmillan nurse, Paulette, under her spectacular hat. She had done Laurie proud, dressing in the kind of splendour that Anna suspected she normally reserved for church. She seemed to have come alone and looked a little lost and nervous.
Though there was no obvious signal that Anna could see, she felt an expectant stillness descend on the audience. ‘They’re starting,’ Kit murmured.
Huw walked out on to the platform, a slight, fair-haired figure wearing formal black tie, and made a short speech in his beautiful resonant voice. Thanking everyone for coming, he explained that this was to be a joyous yet at the same time solemn celebration of the life of Laurie Swanson, the world-famous composer who was also Huw’s much-loved friend from his boyhood. He described how they had first met at the Dragon School where Laurie had been a boarder from the age of eight years old and how he had seemed isolated and forlorn. Huw knew that Laurie’s father worked in the Far East and so Laurie only saw his parents in the long summer holidays. A kindly teacher had taken him home for Christmas, but for other holidays he had to stay on in the boarding house with the few other children who had nowhere else to go.
‘Like most seven year olds I had little life experience but extremely sound instincts. I instinctively felt that Laurie was not loved, or even liked, by his parents, and this distressed me more than words could say. However, my father, the poet Owen Traherne, saw that I was upset about something, and he sat me down and made me tell him what was wrong. After I’d told him of Laurie’s situation, my father suggested he should come and stay with us for half term. This visit turned out to be the first of many. In his own family, Laurie had always been an outsider, but with us his particular brand of sensitivity and intelligence was not only recognized but also actively enjoyed and encouraged. Laurie quickly became an honorary member of the Trahernes, staying over at weekends and included on family holidays. I like to think that my family played a part in Laurie’s eventual, though tragically all too brief, flowering as one of this country’s most talented composers in recent years.’
Clearly emotional, Huw seemed to breathe deeply to compose himself before he went on. ‘As some of you know, we have the honour to have Gisela Van Holden with us this evening to play for us. Since she literally has a car waiting outside to take her to the airport, I don’t intend to hold up proceedings with my boyhood anecdotes. Ladies and gentlemen, Gisela Van Holden!’ Holding out his hand, Huw smilingly invited her on to the stage.
Carrying her cello, her long blonde hair pulled back from her face, Gisela Van Holden was even more beautiful than her photographs. Like Huw she was visibly emotional as she explained regretfully that she had to be on a plane to Buenos Aires in four and a half hours. She apologized for dashing in and out, but said she had needed to be here to celebrate the life of a shy, almost reclusive man who nevertheless had had the divine fire of genius in his soul and whose music she had loved and revered for many years. ‘The piece I am going to play is the first one of Laurie Swanson’s compositions I ever heard. It is called “The Lost Shapes of Water”.’
To Anna’s shame, she hadn’t yet listened to any of Laurie’s compositions, afraid that it would be the kind of dissonant postmodern music that her grandfather disparagingly referred to as ‘post-tune’. She had liked Laurie so much that it would seem like a betrayal if she disliked his work. But his cello piece had a haunting recurring melody which pierced her to the heart. The audience listened with rapt attention, and when Gisela Van Holden finally lifted her bow, tenderly stilling the strings of her cello, there was a moment of absolute silence before the thunderous applause.
After Gisela Van Holden had taken her bow and run off stage to her waiting car, a succession of composers, conductors and musicians came on stage to sing or play or talk about Laurie and his work. One of the street children he had taught in Brazil, now a professional violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, described how Laurie, and the music project Laurie had actively championed, had saved him from a life of deprivation in the favela.
Listening to so many impassioned accolades, Anna felt a growing awe. She hadn’t realized how far-reaching the impact of Laurie’s life and work had been. How terrible then, she thought, that Laurie’s love for Owen had eventually led him to deny his music to the world.
Towards the end of the concert, Huw came back to the platform to tell the audience about the song they were about to hear and which he said was especially dear to his heart. ‘I chose this piece to end the concert, firstly because I love Laurie’s exquisite setting, but also because the words are from a poem that my father wrote when he was just starting out as a young idealistic poet and, I suppose, just starting to come to terms with the loss and suffering that life inevitably brings to our door. It’s called “The Tree of Sorrows”.’
Anna felt her breath catch. She heard herself ask Laurie, ‘What’s your favourite poem by Owen Traherne?’ and his unhesitating answer, ‘“The Tree of Sorrows”.’
A statuesque young black soprano came on stage. She waited composedly for the sweeping opening chords of Laurie’s music, drew a breath that made her bosom swell like a songbird’s and began to sing. Her voice, like the music, was exquisitely beautiful, and Anna thought she recognized, here and there, broken phrases from Purcell’s ‘Dido’s Lament’. But Owen Traherne’s words left a bitter taste. The final verse described a man stealthily leaving the warmth of his sweetheart’s bed not to meet with another lover, as you might expect, but to stand transfixed by the flickering shadows cast by an ominous tree. ‘Only one tortured shadow is mine, and so I choose it again and again as the feverish world turns and turns.’
Laurie himself had expressed surprise at the poem’s inclusion in the anthology of love poems, she remembered, commenting drily that it wasn’t ‘the kind people read at weddings’. Damn right, she thought. Despite its sorrows, Laurie’s life had been about love: his love of Owen (however undeserving, Anna thought), his love of music, his love of dogs and the natural world. Though he had made what Anna considered unwise choices, there was nothing doomed about Laurie Swanson. He had chosen love and he had paid a price, but even in the last days of his illness, she didn’t think Laurie had ever seen himself as a victim of fate. So why, out of all Owen Traherne’s work, had this darkly fatalistic poem been his favourite?
Anna’s face must have reflected her confusion because Kit whispered, ‘Are you OK?’
She nodded, but he took her hand and held it for a moment, and his simple gesture of comfort brought her close to tears.
The soprano left the stage to enthusiastic applause, and Huw returned to bring things to a close. He told them smilingly of a fund that had been set up for promising young musicians at the Royal Academy of Music in London and which would be known as the Laurie Swanson Memorial Scholarship Fund. ‘Please give generously,’ he urged, ‘so we can ensure that Laurie’s legacy goes on.’
‘I’ll meet you by the door,’ Anna told Kit as the audience began to leave their seats. He looked puzzled, and she explained, ‘I’ve seen someone I need to talk to.’
Anna had spent years of her life second-guessing herself, wishing she’d reached out to people, but rarely following it through. She didn’t want to be that Anna any more. She pushed her way through the crowd and found five-foot nothing Paulette clinging on to her hat and in imminent danger of being crushed. ‘Hi, Paulette,’ Anna said breathlessly. ‘I hoped I’d catch you!’
Paulette’s face broke into a beaming smile. ‘You came to see Mr Swanson that night. How is your beautiful dog?’
‘Still beautiful,’ Anna said. ‘I was so sorry to hear about Laurie.’
‘Oh, darling, I was so shocked. I didn’t see it coming at all.’ Paulette’s voice became more emphatically Jamaican.
Caught up in the throng of people trying to leave the theatre, she and Paulette kept being pushed into each other’s personal space. At one point the diminutive but top-heavy Paulette was forced up against Anna. ‘Sorry about my boobs, darling!’ she said with a laugh. ‘My husband says the Almighty designed the lions and the tigers. He designed the moon and the sun – and then he made Paulette, the Munchkin! That poor, poor man,’ she added, her smile fading, and after a moment’s confusion, Anna realized she’d returned to Laurie. ‘Maybe it all suddenly got on top of him, darling?’ Paulette said sadly. ‘Liver cancer is not a nice way to die. Maybe he just couldn’t take any more pain and loneliness and needed to go back to his everlasting home?’
What a relief to be Paulette for a few hours, Anna thought, and believe, even temporarily, in an everlasting home. A moment later she saw Paulette’s eyes light up.
‘God bless that lovely man! You know he came to see Mr Swanson?’ she told Anna. ‘I do my best not to eavesdrop, but I could tell from his tone, you know, that he was trying to make everything right between them. He was so sweet.’
Anna glanced over her shoulder and saw Kit gallantly shepherding the alarming old lady through the press of people. She was about to agree warmly that he was a lovely man when Paulette gave an enthusiastic wave to someone over by the doors. ‘That’s my poor husband looking for me. He can’t stand crowds. I’d better go.’ She gave Anna a quick hug, then valiantly set off towards her husband.
Anna found that she was smiling. Paulette’s mention of Kit’s visit to Laurie had touched her to the heart. How good of him to try to make peace between Laurie and Huw before it was too late. It was already too late, in fact, but Kit couldn’t have known that. Even if he had gone years earlier, it would still have been too late. To resume his relationship with Huw after so many years of estrangement, Laurie would have had to lie to Huw by omission, to fake friendship, in other words, or he’d have had to disclose the secret of his long love affair with Huw’s father, which he could never do.
Kit saw Anna looking around for him and smiled. ‘Stay there!’ he mouthed, gesturing towards his elderly companion. ‘I’ll come back for you.’
So Anna stayed. The crowd was thinning now, and all at once Isadora was coming towards her, enormous earrings swinging. ‘Anna, how lovely you look! Wasn’t that a glorious concert?’
‘It was,’ Anna agreed. ‘I found that last song a bit depressing though.’
‘Not a cheery note to end on,’ Isadora agreed. ‘But Jewish folk tales are notoriously gloomy.’
‘Is that where it comes from, a folk tale?’
Isadora nodded. ‘An old Hassidic teaching story.’
‘Have you read it?’ Anna felt a childlike impatience to know what it said. Somewhere in the darkness of this story there had to be a kernel of light and hope, surely, or Laurie couldn’t have loved it so much?
‘I have, but years ago,’ Isadora said, just as her distinguished looking companion caught her up. ‘You can probably find it online,’ she called to Anna as he bore her away, no doubt for an intimate dinner for two.
‘Finally!’ Kit said, arriving at her side. ‘That was worse than a rugger scrum! Poor old Lady Bracknell was nearly knocked off her feet.’
Anna felt her eyes widen. ‘Lady Bracknell, seriously?’
‘No, but she might as well be!’ he said, laughing. ‘My parents always said that if Oscar Wilde had met her first he’d have put her in The Importance of Being Earnest instead of Augusta Bracknell.’ His expression became sober. ‘Huw just asked me if you and I could join him and Sara for a late supper. It means putting up with Sara, unfortunately, but I know it would mean a lot to Huw.’
‘Of course I’ll come.’ Anna was hungry apart from anything else, but more than that she was intrigued by Sara Traherne and this was an opportunity to study her at close quarters.
An hour later Anna was sitting opposite a stony-faced Sara as Huw and Kit swapped anecdotes. Sara had virtually ignored Anna since they’d arrived at Gee’s, the iconic North Oxford restaurant that exactly resembled a beautiful glasshouse. While everyone else tucked in to their food, Sara just picked at hers but drank steadily throughout the meal.
Anna guessed it was partly to compensate for his wife’s hostile silence that Huw had embarked on his mildly scurrilous stories about his undergraduate days. Several involved Kit. After the third or fourth of these, Sara set down her glass with a theatrical thunk. ‘If I have to hear one more tedious anecdote about your golden fucking youth …’ Leaving her threat unfinished, she seized an almost empty bottle of red wine, tipped the dregs into her glass and knocked them back.
Between courses, Anna left the table to go to the ladies’ cloakroom. When she came out of her cubicle she saw Sara standing in front of the mirror reapplying her lipstick, something which seemed to be taking all her concentration.
Quickly washing and drying her hands, Anna went to join Sara at the mirror. Huw’s wife immediately fixed her with an aggressive female stare that took Anna right back to her short-lived teenage clubbing phase. It gave her the exact same sinking feeling she’d felt then.
Keeping her eyes blearily on Anna, Sara seemed to be struggling to articulate some enormous grievance. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out!’ she exploded at last. ‘Well, did you?’
‘Find out?’ Anna felt a flicker of real fear. Sara was very drunk now, and Kit had several times described her as unhinged.
‘You’ve been poking about in my private business, you interfering judgemental bitch.’ Taking an unsteady step towards her, Sara pushed her face right into Anna’s, her alcohol-laden breath making Anna’s nostrils flare. ‘You have no idea what you’re dealing with. None!’ She frowned, as if she’d lost her thread, then her expression cleared and she jabbed her finger into Anna’s chest. ‘So let me give you some free advice.’ She swayed on her feet. ‘Don’t play with fire! Unless you – you enjoy being burned! Now fuck off and leave me in peace!’ She hastily disappeared into a cubicle.
Humiliated and shaken, Anna had to return to the table where Kit and Huw were still reminiscing. Huw’s tiredness had apparently dropped away as he relived happier times with his friend.
‘Huw’s been telling me all these wonderful stories about Laurie,’ Kit said as she sat down beside him. ‘I knew he was a musical genius, but it turns out he was a bit of a Doctor Dolittle too. You know, talked to the animals!’
‘I’m sorry I missed it,’ Anna said.
‘Tell her the one you just told me,’ Kit said to Huw. ‘You’re going to love it, Anna.’
Still reeling from Sara’s assault, Anna did her best to be a responsive audience as Huw repeated his story.
‘As you know, Laurie often spent school holidays with my family. We had a cottage we went to in Norfolk, surrounded by open fields. Often when we were out walking, we’d see hares. Dad had a dog in those days, a springer spaniel, and it loved to chase them, but of course it didn’t have a prayer of catching a full-grown hare. Then one day this spaniel – her name was Jess – found a young hare in the lane. It must have been hit by a car. My dad insisted we had to leave it. If you’ve read his poetry you’ll know he was very big on nature taking its grim and bloody course,’ he added with a laugh. ‘But Laurie wouldn’t have it. He had this way of going completely white in the face when he felt passionate about something. “I’m taking it back to the cottage,” he told my father. “So it knows that some humans can be kind.” Well, we could all see that Laurie was absolutely set on saving this hare. So my dad gave one of those weary adult sighs, and Laurie carried this limp little body back to the cottage. Laurie and I made it a nest out of a box and an old blanket and put it in our room. And it just lay there, panting with distress, and I heard my mother telling my dad, “You should have left it in the hedge. It’s going to die in the night, Owen. Imagine how broken-hearted that little boy is going to be then.”’ Huw stopped to take a quick swallow of his wine.
Anna seemed to be the only person who had noticed that Sara still hadn’t come back from the cloakroom. Maybe she’d passed out? Or she could have slipped out of the restaurant when no one was looking and hailed a taxi to take her back to Dritan?
‘Anyway, bedtime came,’ Huw said, resuming his story. ‘And this part of my story is a little embarrassing, Anna, because it involves a night light. Even at eight or nine years old I was too afraid of the dark to sleep without one. So you have to picture two little boys sleeping in their beds, with a night light flickering on a chest of drawers and this young hare lying apparently close to death on its piece of blanket. And then something, a small movement, woke me, just in time to see the hare sit up in its box and pull down one of its long ears to wash it. Then it went lolloping over to Laurie’s bed and jumped up on to his stomach.’
‘Can you believe that, Anna?’ Kit said.
She smilingly shook her head.
‘I saw Laurie’s eyes fly open,’ Huw went on. ‘I don’t think either of us dared to breathe. Then, very slowly and gently, Laurie sat up, and the hare climbed right up on to his chest and began to sniff all around his face with absolutely no fear. And Laurie whispered, “It knows. It knows I saved it.” And I actually believe it did.’
It was a charming story, but Anna had found it almost unbearable to hear Huw talking about his old friend with such affection. She knew the truth, the unpalatable truth, about Laurie and Huw’s father, and as she smiled back at Huw she felt like Judas.
Sara returned looking extremely white. Huw said they were both bushed and should probably head home to bed. Though Gee’s was only a couple of streets from Anna’s flat, Kit insisted on driving her to her door. Sitting beside him in the car, nervously fingering Kit’s silver bee, she felt a creeping despair. She’d been invited for a civilized dinner at one of Oxford’s most desirable restaurants and ended up being threatened in the toilets.
Tansy was right. She and Anna must give off some unsavoury pheromone. No matter how hard they tried to break with their pasts, people could sniff them out. Sara had smelled Anna’s brokenness, she’d smelled her hurt and shame, and like a jackal she’d attacked.
‘You seem a bit subdued, love,’ Kit said as he pulled up outside her house. ‘Did Sara say something? I was concerned when I saw her following you into the loo. She has a tongue like a viper when she’s been drinking.’
‘She didn’t say anything,’ she lied. ‘She just asked what shade of lipstick I was wearing.’
‘That’s good.’ Kit gently tilted her chin, so that he was looking directly into her eyes. His expression was so tender that it made her ache. ‘I’d hate for her to have hurt you.’
She’d told Kit she didn’t know which Jane Austen character she felt like as she swept into the Sheldonian on his arm. But that had been another lie. For a brief unguarded moment she had been Elizabeth, arm in arm with her Darcy. Only, Anna bet that nobody had ever followed Elizabeth Bennett into the women’s toilets and called her an interfering, judgemental bitch.
‘Thank you so much for supper and bringing me home,’ she managed. Before Kit could move to kiss her, she quickly got out of his car and fled inside.