‘Now come along, gentlemen, if you please,’ urged Lewis Crone, waving his baton. ‘What we want is a little more uplift in the last bar, don’t we? Up, up and away.’ ‘Stuff it, Lew,’ murmured Reginald Breen, second violinist, under his breath.
He dabbed at the sweat on his forehead with a large white handkerchief. It was bloody hot down here in the pit, even in winter. And he was damned if he’d give the last bar a lift. It wasn’t exactly Beethoven the Winterstown Concert Orchestra was struggling to bring some life to, after all. Just wallpaper music to fill the gap where the Fairy blooming Godmother turned the mice into ponies. They hadn’t half had some trouble with the ponies this year, what’s more – doing their business just at the wrong moment, and so on. Reginald sniffed.
‘So once again, gentlemen,’ the mighty Lewis, conductor with airs above his station, was saying. ‘We’ll take it once again, if you please.’
What’s the point, Reginald wondered, being this particular for this kind of show? Not a soul in the audience would notice whether or not there was a wretched uplift in the last bar. Half of them would be under twelve. The other half, pensioners’ outings, were plugged into hearing aids. For them a pantomime was no different from a silent film. He tucked his instrument under his chin, and turned with an exaggerated look of scorn to his friend, Tom, first violin.
‘Better give it the works,’ whispered Tom, ‘or he’ll keep us into the dinner hour.’
‘Righty-ho. Last time. Up, up and away.’ Reginald had perfected his mimicry over the years.
He and Tom lifted their bows in unison. Tom caught the conductor’s agitated eye. The orchestra crashed once more into the last few lines of forgettable music. Their sudden energy came from indignation. Lewis Crone had kept them at it since ten this morning. They were now hungry, bored and fed up with his absurd attention to detail. Trouble was, Lewis had once seen André Previn rehearsing an orchestra on television. Since then he had applied his own version of Previn’s methods to the WCO, causing much suffering and discontent. In the old days they’d played through the score a couple of times at the beginning of the season – Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Mother Goose, whatever – and that was it. Now, all this pernickety fussing was driving them to near rebellion. Most of the players – weary, professional men – had considered resigning, but none actually did so. There were not many openings for their class of musician on the south coast. Tom was the most vociferous in his complaints. Reginald encouraged him in his discontent, for Tom’s resignation would be to Reginald’s own benefit. Once Tom had gone he, Reginald, would surely become first violin. He had waited some thirty years for this position. Over and over again others, outrageously, had been placed above him – incompetent musicians, mostly, from outside the orchestra. And once, worst of all, a very junior ‘talented’ violinist from the WCO itself. He hadn’t lasted long: no stamina. Many times Reginald had suffered the humiliation of being passed over, and had kept his silence and his hope. He could not afford to resign.
The morning’s rehearsal over, Tom and Reginald made their way along the front. They exchanged few words: music was their only common interest. Proper music. Tom carried his violin case under his arm. Home, this afternoon, Tom would be practising the Mozart concerto. Reginald would be attending to his mother.
The sea breeze on their faces was good after the stuffiness of the orchestra pit. Reginald always enjoyed the short walk home. It refreshed him, gave him strength for the tasks ahead.
‘Still haven’t got the coach finished, I hear,’ said Tom.
‘Coach and beanstalk, it’s the same every year, always late.’ Reginald smiled at the thought of the familiar incompetence.
‘At least we’ll see Valerie in her spangles, tomorrow’ Tom was something of a woman’s man, keenly sensitive to the potential of leading ladies.
‘She’s as good a Cinderella as I can remember, I’ll say that.’ Reginald himself had been quite taken with her – what he could see from the pit – during the past month of rehearsals.
As the men parted, Tom paused for a last look out to sea. There was a small fishing boat on the horizon.
‘Give anything to be out there,’ he muttered, more to himself than to his friend. ‘Always fancied playing on the deck of a boat, up and down in time with the waves.’ He gave a small, helpless laugh. Reginald smiled in reply. He, too, had known fantasies that would never materialise.
He slowed his pace, once Tom had gone. He was always reluctant to return home and face that kind of music: but face it he must, as he told himself every day. If he didn’t hurry and buy his mother her paper there would be more to answer for.
‘Is that you, Reginald?’
The familiar peevish tone bit into his ears as soon as he was through the door. Who the hell do you think it is, he wanted to shout back. Who else would let themselves in at twelve fifty-five precisely, as he did five days a week?
‘It’s me, mother, all right,’ he called, and clenched his fists, taking a grip on himself before going in to the front room.
Mrs Breen sat in an armchair in the bow window. Her vastly swollen legs hung from widely parted knees, slippered feet not quite touching the floor. A mustard crochet cardigan – made in the days when she still bothered to sew the crochet squares together – covered a bosom so cumbersome she was unable to see her own hands in its shade. But the fingers (the worst kind of sausages, Reginald thought, among other savage thoughts) worked skilfully on their own, crocheting away, square after square, hour after hour. The furious, pale eyes, scowling on their ledge of fat purple cheek, were attending to some cooking programme on the television. Mrs Breen had not moved since Reginald had left her that morning. She was not able to move on her own. Her illness meant she was almost completely immobile, though Reginald had reason to think that on secret occasions, when she wanted something badly enough, she was able to reach it. Chocolates in the tin on the bookshelf, for instance. Their unaccountable disappearance, observed by Reginald on many occasions when his mother was in bed, could only mean one thing. But the time had not yet come to challenge her.
Her mauvish bulk backlit by the netted light from the window, Mrs Breen made no effort to drag her eyes from the television.
‘I fancy the Ambrosia today, Reginald,’ she said, ‘with that tin of plums you got last Friday.’
Incapable of shopping herself, her recall of exactly what her son had bought, when, was extraordinary. She would plan the life of half a pound of cheddar down to the last slice, insistent that only an ounce should be used for the sauce for the macaroni, and the merest scrapings for the Tuesday cheese supper with biscuits and tomatoes. Should Reginald miscalculate, and the cheese be finished before its allotted time, Mrs Breen would be moved to one of her famous rages when every blood vessel in her body enlarged, darkened, and threatened to burst through her glowering skin.
‘Anything else?’
‘Tin of curried spaghetti still there, is it?’
‘It is.’
Reginald’s heart pounded in relief. Last night he had had half a mind to eat it, but had resisted on the ground that he had had no energy to ask his mother’s permission.
‘Then I’ll have that.’
Reginald went to the kitchen to set about opening tins and preparing the tray. The room faced north. Any light that managed to challenge the old curtain at the window was diffused by the coarse-grained and very dirty net. A smell of disinfectant clashed with the smells of years of frugal meals. Opening the window was forbidden, so the air was never cleared. The kitchen gave Reginald a headache every day. He dreaded it. But there was no escape. How many years, now? Eight? Almost nine. And how many more . . .?
When he had placed his mother’s tray of lunch beside her, he returned to the kitchen. But he could not face either washing up last night’s supper dishes and the breakfast, or making himself a sandwich. Instead, he went out into the strip of ill-kept grass that was the back garden. When his father had been alive, herbaceous borders ran down both sides – borders that kept the old man’s every spare moment fully occupied. From the thin earth, he had managed to persuade a magnificent show of hollyhocks, tulips, dahlias (his speciality) – the lot. But Reginald could never be bothered with gardening. Everything had gone to seed, died off years ago. Now the lawn was bordered with weeds. But the apple tree, the single tree in the Breen family possession, still blossomed. And the blackbird still lived there. Reginald listened to its song now – vibrant, optimistic notes that gave him the courage to go on, sometimes. He lit a cigarette. Into his mind came a picture of Valerie, who in tomorrow’s dress rehearsal would be in all her finery at the ball. He looked forward to that. He found himself pecking quite fast at the cigarette, then grinding its stub under his heel with a force that surprised him. Valerie was the sort of girl, had things been different, Reginald might well have approached. He had no great ambitions concerning her, of course, even in his imagination. With the difference in their ages, marriage was naturally out of the question. No: all he wanted, or told himself he wanted, was a friend. Her funny crooked smile and short bouncy hair inspired him with exciting ideas of friendship. Perhaps one day he would summon the courage to speak to her, see how things went.
‘Reg! It’s time.’
Reginald allowed himself a moment’s more reflection, then returned to his mother. It was time for the dreaded visit to the bathroom, the ungainly negotiating of the dim passage, the old woman’s entire weight on his arm, her invective spewing in his ear. Then, the long afternoon. He would have liked to go to his room, have another go at the Tchaikovsky. But his mother could hear, she said, however quietly he played. It hurt her ears, all that screeching, she said – she had always wanted Reginald to go into insurance, like his father. The violin was forbidden in the house.
Instead of music, it would be shopping at the Co-op, hoovering the stairs, two hours of bad-tempered Scrabble, another tray for high tea, television, and the terrible ritual of putting Mrs Breen to bed. By the time Reginald went to his own room he was exhausted. Like a disobedient child, he would play his radio under the bedclothes for a while, very loud. This was the part of the day he most looked forward to. Much though he enjoyed his nightly blast of illicit music, it put him to sleep almost at once. On the noticeboard at the stage door it was announced that the transformation scene was the first to be rehearsed. Reginald felt a slight pricking of anticipation as he undid his violin case, took out the instrument and wiped its bow. The awkward notes of his fellow musicians, tuning up, usually filled him with gloom and unease as he faced the long morning of indifferent music ahead. Today the squawks of striving notes could not touch him. He tried out a few notes himself, tightened a couple of strings. He scarcely noticed Lewis Crone blundering up on the podium, cocky, grinning, one hand fingering a yellow tie.
‘Making a statement, what?’ whispered Tom, who was using a duster to polish his violin – a very superior instrument which could not have been better cared for had it been a Stradivarius.
‘Won’t get anywhere,’ replied Reginald. He had no idea why he made this comment, or if there was any truth in his speculation.
The stage lights were switched on, bringing life to the Ugly Sisters’ grim kitchen.
‘Idiot,’ yelled a voice from off-stage. ‘That’s the ballroom effing light.’
The peach light was dimmed, replaced by the kind of light usually glowing in the front room at Reginald’s house. No wonder Cinderella, shortly to be sitting by the giant fireplace, needed a Fairy Godmother. Reginald could have done with one most days himself.
Bev Birley, in fishnet tights and a short satin tunic, came striding on to the stage. Bev was Prince Charming. Last year she had been Jack, the year before Aladdin. Beginning to show her years, too, thought Reginald, noting the definite thickness of her hips. He had never liked Bev – not that he had ever had occasion to talk to her. But she was stuck-up, haughty, tongue like a whiplash to junior members of the cast, though all agreeable smiles to visiting stars. Between seasons, Reginald saw her sometimes in the town walking a terrier. Once, he recognised her picture in the window of an optician. She was wearing flyaway blue-tinted glasses and her hair had been stuck down with grease. She still did not look very nice. Presumably, not being in national demand, she had to do any job she could to keep herself going between seasons.
‘Anyone wanting me this morning?’ Bev shouted into the darkness of the auditorium, legs spread wide, hands on hips, her annual stance in every proposal scene. There was a slight titter in the orchestra pit. Tom nodded towards Reginald. Bev scowled.
‘No one wanting you till two, darling,’ the director called from the back of the stalls. ‘See you then.’
Bev stomped off.
‘Stuck-up bit, know what I’d like to do to her,’ whispered Tom.
Reginald had no time to imagine what this might be because Cinderella came on to the stage just then, wrapped in a large cloak. She wore a great deal of scarlet lipstick which made her crooked smile look very grown up. As Bev passed her, she whispered something that made them both smile, and ruffled her hair.
‘Cheek,’ said Tom.
‘Taking liberties, sucking up, usual thing,’ agreed Reginald.
‘Quiet now.’ Paddy Ever, the director – or Ever Anxious, as he was known – had moved forward to take command. He leaned over the pit and shouted up at the stage.
‘Why are we wearing a cloak, darling, in the kitchen?’
Cinderella, Reginald could see, looked confused.
‘Wardrobe said it was a cloak for this scene. Suppose I’m cold in this bloody great kitchen, no central heating.’
The musicians smiled among themselves. At the beginning of the day they were ready to respond to any kind of joke, no matter how feeble.
Paddy scratched his head. ‘I mean, would Cinderella suddenly be in a cloak? Why would she be in a cloak, now, but only in a dress in the last scene? Is it viable, is all I’m asking. Is it rational?’
Paddy’s worries were known to hold up proceedings, sometimes for ages. The musicians flicked their music, rested their instruments. They could be in for a long spell of problem-thrashing before Lewis requested their first chord.
‘Don’t be daft, Pad: cloak on, amazing quick change in the dark. Stands to reason.’
Paddy’s face briefly relaxed. Reginald did not envy him his job. ‘Balldress under . . . point taken, darling. But why the sudden lipstick?’
They could hear Cinderella sigh. ‘Can’t put lipstick on in the dark, can I?’
‘Righty-ho, lipstick on. Let’s go.’
The Winterstown pantomime was all a very different kettle of fish to the Palladium, Reginald thought, as he did every year.
The rehearsal began. Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother, a dear old thing who had been in panto for years and whose underarms, these days, swung as the wand waved, played the scene too far downstage for Reginald to see anything. He could only just hear Valerie’s sweet voice and strange emphasis. ‘Oh, godmother . . .’ He liked such original rendering.
It wasn’t till after the mid-morning coffee break that the musicians were required to play the few high notes whose purpose, as Lewis so often explained, was to convey excitement. There was drama with the ponies, as usual: two nasty little Shetlands, hired at great expense from an animal psychiatrist, but who had minds of their own just the same. They refused to stand still, and laid back their ears warning what would happen should they be pressed to act against their will. One of them nipped young Andrew, the coachman. A part-time actor mostly out of work, Andrew proudly admitted he started off at the bottom year after year, but remained convinced that one day his moment would come. Trouble was, as he once confided to Reg, he was so nervous of the ponies, despite their small size, that it was all he could do to keep holding their reins, let alone think himself deeply into the part of the coachman. A lamp fell off the coach as soon as Andrew returned from being bandaged, and then the door wouldn’t open. ‘Bloody useless wand,’ snapped the old godmother, longing for her lunchtime Guinness as the carpenter hammered away at the door.
It was a morning full of laughs – the kind of morning that made up for so much of the aching boredom of the job. And at last Cinderella appeared alone in the spotlight, cloakless, dazzling in a dress of sequins splattered on to net. Reginald still could not see her properly: he would have to wait for her upstage number, I’m going to the ball, for that. As it was, the wolf-whistles and laughs from the stagehands – an old tradition at any leading lady’s first dress rehearsal – made him uncomfortable. For all its good humour, Reginald did not like the idea of Valerie in all her finery being laughed at.
At the lunch break, Reginald hurried out alone from the pit. He had to break the news to his mother – whose dinner was, thank God, provided by Meals on Wheels today – that there was to be an unscheduled rehearsal this afternoon, due to delays this morning caused by the coach and ponies. Her outrage was predictable. He would have to listen to ten minutes of abuse and insult – ‘If you were Sir Thomas blinking Beecham I might understand’ – before providing her with a calming glass of brandy and making his escape. Dreading the scene ahead, he barged clumsily round the corner that led to the stage door, and bumped into Valerie herself. She was still in her balldress. The sequins, in the poor winter light, looked asleep.
‘Excuse me, I’m so sorry . . .’
‘Reg, isn’t it?’ Cinderella gave him a wonderful smile. Her grasp of every name in the company endeared her to all.
‘I have to let my mother know . . .’
‘Like the dress? Isn’t it gross?’ She laughed. ‘See you later.’
Reginald spun home, weightless. His mother’s fury, the cold sausage for his lunch, the smell of the kitchen, the jibes at his general uselessness, meant nothing to him. Impervious to everything but the extraordinary thumping of his heart, inspired by Cinderella’s smile, he was in and out of the house with astonishing speed. As he hurried back up the garden path, almost enjoying his mother’s wailing in his ears, Reginald knew he was in love with Cinderella, and was to spend the afternoon playing for her alone while she danced above him at the ball.
In the next two weeks of rehearsal, Reginald did not run into Valerie backstage again. But in his new state of love he was quite happy to be patient, to hear her sweet voice above him, hear the tapping of her feet, and to catch the occasional glimpse of her when she was upstage. Her prancing little body and enchanting smile were particularly appealing in her ragged dress, though he saw her best at the ball: the choreographer had naturally arranged for the prince to waltz with his Cinderella as far upstage as possible. Reginald, putting his soul into every note of the banal waltz, followed her steps as Bev swung her about. They gazed into each other’s eyes, the woman and the girl, acting the kind of happiness which was so convincing it caused Reginald a jealous stab. Fact was, they were much better actors than he had ever given them credit for. The audience would believe this was Prince Charming – not Bev the part-time optician’s model – in love with Cinderella, not Valerie who, Reginald knew, sometimes sang in a pub to make ends meet.
He longed for an event that he knew would never happen: waltzing himself with Cinderella in some posh hotel ballroom with chandeliers, far from Winterstown. Then on the balcony of their suite, the moonlight and roses bit: he would play a little tune – one of his own compositions, maybe, while she sipped champagne. Next, he would kiss her. So hard she could no longer smile. After that. . . but there his fantasies stalled. He could only imagine a paling dawn sky.
None of that would ever happen. It was some consolation, watching her, to know that at least this was all make-believe. What Reginald could not have borne would have been Val (she had become Val in his mind) dancing, in real life, with another man. He closed his eyes as he pulled the final note from his violin. He longed.
At the first performance of Cinderella, as always, there was a full house. The audience, mostly pensioners and schoolchildren, loved it. Val, taking many bows, had never looked so appealing. She and Prince Charming held hands and smiled copiously at each other. Reginald would have liked to have gone round to her dressing-room and joined the crowd of admirers he presumed would be there, tell her she was wonderful. As it was, he had to hurry. His mother would be furious at his lateness caused by the prolonged applause.
Once again, he ran into Valerie, surprisingly, in the passage that led to the dressing-rooms. She was still in her balldress, an old cardigan slung around her shoulders.
‘Good first house, wasn’t it?’
Reginald nodded. The compliments rose, then withered in his throat.
‘Bev and I are just off for a hamburger. See you.’
She was gone.
On his way home, Reginald decided what to do – for now, he believed, he should waste no more time, act fast. He would send her flowers. Huge great bunch in cellophane, small card in the envelope saying From a secret admirer. The thought of this plan went some way to dispelling his fury with himself for not speaking to her. She must think him a useless old man. But time would change all that. Plans beginning to crowd his head, he opened the front door.
‘Is that you, Reg?’ His mother’s shriek was more than usually annoyed.
Protected from her by his inner strategies, Reginald went calmly to deal with her cocoa, the wearying process of putting her to bed, and all the arrows of her fury.
Reginald dreamed that night of himself and Cinderella at a princely ball, but he never sent the flowers. He managed to leave early enough, next morning, to get to the florist before rehearsals for a concert. But he was so confused by the scents and colours and prices, he left without buying. He’d had in mind pure white lilies, or cream old-fashioned roses mixed with cornflowers – the kind of thing his father had been so proud of in his border. The florist seemed to have only crude red or rust flowers on stiff stems, leaves unbending as swords. Nothing worthy of Cinderella.
Then, just as he was coming out of the shop – the assistant’s eyes contemptuous on his back – he observed Val and Bev walking down the other side of the High Street. Both wore jeans and anoraks. For a moment it was quite hard to recognise them. They paused, kissed each other on the cheek, and Bev disappeared into Boots. Valerie, turning to continue on her way, saw Reginald. She waved, smiled her glorious smile, arming him for the day against all adversities.
There were plenty of those. At the rehearsal for a concert in the Winterstown Hall, Lewis was at his most waspish and petulant, quibbling with Tom’s tone and Reg’s high C, and sneering so hard at poor old Jim Reed on the drums it was a wonder the man did not resign on the spot. But as his bow soared through the Enigma Variations, transporting him to the English countryside in May, walking in mead-owlands with Cinderella, it came to Reginald that the only way to make any progress with her was to do something. Like ask her out for a drink.
At the lunch break that day the other members of the orchestra left for an hour in the pub. Reginald could not be persuaded to join them. He wanted to be on his own: Meals on Wheels was dealing with his mother. There was no reason to move.
He sat, violin across his knees, in the forest of empty chairs on the stage. The music played on in his ears, not disturbing the real silence. Down in the vast hall, chairs were stacked against the walls ready to be regimented for the next concert. A thin rain pattered against high windows. The light on the bare walls was dull as old stone, and it was cold. But Reginald spent an undisturbed lunch hour, oblivious of everything around him, walking with Valerie in Herefordshire (a place he had always longed to visit). He was, for once, at peace.
After the performance that night he hurried to the stage door, and then out into the alleyway at the back of the theatre. It was still raining, a cold hard rain that damply spotted his mackintosh. He stood, eyes on the square light of the glass door, violin case under one arm, heart pumping audibly. Members of the cast and orchestra came out in groups, and singly. Once a show was under way, nobody planned much of a social life after performances. They were all keen to get home.
Almost last, Valerie emerged. She wore a scarf wound high round her neck, but no hat. In the rain, and the light from within, the frizzy mop of her hair glittered like a swarm of fireflies. Behind her, Bev was talking to the porter at the stage door. She wore her imitation leopardskin coat and seemed to be cross about something. Val saw Reg.
‘What’s up, darling?’ she asked.
Reg moved his free hand on to the solid, familiar curves of his violin case.
‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if you’d care for a quick drink on your way home?’
He deliberately said quick because there was not much time. He had taken the precaution of making up some story to his mother about having to see the manager, but her credulity would not stretch far. Half an hour’s grace, at the most.
Val laughed. It was not the friendly laugh. But perhaps sound was distorted here, out in the rain.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Bev and I and some of the others are going down to the Drake. Want to join us?’
Reg paused for a second. Val’s idea did not fit in with his plan at all. The last thing he wanted was to be with her in a crowd, perhaps unable to exchange a word. He wanted her to himself, just a small table, somewhere, between them. He wanted her full attention while he told her some of the things that had been piling within for as long as he could remember, and had never been spoken. His violin had been the sole recipient of his feelings, the music his only consolation. But man cannot live by music alone, as Tom, who had many an eager woman on his arm, so often said.
‘I don’t think I will, thanks. My mother . . .’
‘Very well. Another time.’ Val was not interested. But then something of the approaching Christmas spirit, Reginald supposed it was, entered her funny little head. She decided to be kind. ‘But tell you what: tomorrow after the matinee? Bev’s going to the dentist so we can’t go over to her mum as per usual. We could have a coffee.’
‘A coffee?’
A kaleidoscope of difficulties swooped through Reg’s brain. More excuses to his mother would have to be thought up, and where would be a suitable place to go?
‘Very well,’ he said.
‘Meet you here after the show, then. Bev!’
Bev hurried out, glanced at Reg. Val was all smiles.
‘Blimey, what a night.’ Bev snapped up an umbrella, put her arm round Val, drawing her beneath it. ‘Cheers, Reg,’ Bev said, and Reginald watched Val slip her arm into the crook of the nylon leopardskin one.
They moved away, in step, huddled snugly under the umbrella, confident of its shelter, like those people in the advertisement for a life insurance company. Reginald waited till they were out of sight. Then, hugging his violin case, he turned into the full blast of the rain, in the direction of home.
Reginald and Val sat at a small table in the window of the Wimpy Bar - nearest eating place to the theatre. Reginald had suggested they go to the tearooms further down the High Street, altogether a more comfortable place, but Val had insisted she fancied chips in the Wimpy.
Two cups of thin coffee sat between them. Val covered her chips with spurts of ketchup from a plastic tomato. Reginald kept one hand on his violin case, propped up beside him. His head was empty from lack of sleep. He was drained, exhausted, by his imaginings. He didn’t know where to begin. Ten minutes of their half-hour had passed, and all he had done was to make a disparaging remark about Lewis Crone. Val had disagreed. She said far as she was concerned he was a good sport.
‘It must be boring down in the pit,’ she said eventually, ‘not seeing anything.’
‘You can see enough. I get a good view of you dancing in the ball scene.’
‘That!’ Val laughed, more friendly than last night. ‘See Bev treading on my toes? She’s a horrible dancer.’
She laid one hand flat on the Formica tabletop, examined her nails with great interest as she slightly lifted each finger in turn. Reginald wanted to cover her hand with his.
‘You’re a lovely dancer, though,’ he said.
Val gave him a teasing look. ‘Reg! Haven’t you got a wife, a woman? Someone? You always look so down in the dumps.’
‘There’s my mother to be looked after.’ Reg suppressed a sigh and tapped his violin case. ‘There’s my music. I’m all right, just not one of life’s jokers.’
‘No.’
The speech Reg had rehearsed most of the night, inspired by Bach under the bedclothes, welled. It was now or never, he thought.
‘But I’d like to get to know you – nothing . . . out of line. Cup of tea sometimes. Talk. You know. I haven’t much of a life socially. What with my mother. Drink with Tom, Saturdays. End of a concert drink with the boys. Not occasions to talk . . .’
Reg petered out, aware he had lost the thread of his message. The rubbish he was talking sounded close to self-pity. He didn’t want Val’s pity: last thing he wanted. And she had stopped picking at her chips. She pushed her empty cup away, stiff-handed. Gave a tight little smile, as if she decided she must get through this little scene as graciously as possible, but it was boring.
‘Poor old Reg. Well, it’s fine by me if we have another coffee some time. Though I’m leaving Winterstown, March. Doing three months in Manchester, an Agatha Christie.’
Reginald’s heart contracted. He would have to think about that later: the bleakness of the spring.
‘Anyway,’ she smiled, nicely this time, ‘you must be fifteen years older than me, Reg.’
‘Probably.’
It was dark outside now. The pair of them made awkward shapes reflected in the plate-glass window. Madness seized Reg so fast he was unable to control it, to reason with himself.
‘But I’m over the moon about you, see. Nothing bothersome, mind. Just, watching you dancing away, Cinderella in her ballgown, I fancied your pretty smile was for me. Daft, I know’ He saw her look of alarm, tried to slow himself. ‘All I want is to talk to you, don’t I? To tell you things, give you a good time, spend my savings on you. I’ve a fair bit put on one side – nothing to spend my wages on all these years. What do you think, Val? Would you let me, sometimes?’
Val gave a small laugh, perturbed. ‘I don’t want anything like that, nice though you are.’
‘No. Well. I didn’t rate my chances high.’
‘It’s not that I’d mind a chat from time to time. But Bev wouldn’t like it. There’d be trouble. I’ve had enough trouble.’
‘Trouble with Bev?’
‘Bev’s my friend.’
‘I know Bev’s your friend. But she can’t order your life about. A woman.’
Val sighed. ‘Have to be going,’ she said. ‘Meeting her at six.’
‘Meeting Bev? What’s she got, this Bev?’
In his confusion, Reg could not be sure of anything. But for a moment – so short he might have imagined it – he thought Val looked scared.
‘A nasty temper if things don’t go her way.’
‘You shouldn’t put up with her. I mean, do you like her?’ Later, Reg reflected, his boldness may have been impertinent.
Val shrugged. ‘Thanks for the coffee ‘n’ chips.’ She stood up, swirling the scarf round her neck.
‘Cinderella,’ said Reg. ‘Cinderella.’
She bent briefly towards him. He could smell her breath: ketchup, chips, coffee. She patted his shoulder.
‘Chin up, Reg.’
‘I want you to know’ – her hand fled from his shoulder – ‘that every performance it’s you I’m playing for, Val, down there, all that rubbishy music. One day I could play you Brahms, on a beach somewhere, tide coming in, never go back to the orchestra. They’ll never make me first violin is what I’m afraid of, not even when Tom goes. You could, you could come with—’
Val turned from his jibbering, impatient. Reg could tell from her eyes she thought he was a silly old fool, letting go.
‘What you must remember is this, Reg.’ Her voice was harsh as flint now, cutting the quick of him. ‘You’re a nice guy, but I’m another kind of Cinderella.’
She was gone. Striding through the purplish light, the ketchup tables, the bleak landscape of Formica and burgers. Reginald remained standing, clutching his violin case, peering through the window. In the late-night shopping crowds he thought he glimpsed a leopardskin coat, but of Val he could see nothing.
That night he kept his eyes on the music, did not look up to see Cinderella in her balldress dancing with Bev the prince. Reg had always known she was not for him, any more than was the position of first violin. But who was she for? What did she mean, another kind of Cinderella?
After the performance he hurried off to avoid an accidental meeting. It was a night full of ironic stars. Just twenty-four hours ago, in the rain, she had given him some hope. He didn’t know why he bothered with hope, anymore.
‘Is that you, Reg?’ Furious voice. Usual thing.
Reg made his way slowly across the small, stuffy hall and into the front room. He opened the door, surveyed the familiar picture of the monstrous old woman who was his mother: the mother who had messed up his entire life. Plumped up with indignation, she sat upright in her chair, accusation flaring across her purple cheeks, obscene legs swinging. If it hadn’t been for his binding duty to her, things would have been different. If he had been a worse son he would have had a better chance.
‘What kept you then? Dancing with Cinderella?’
She gave a sneering laugh, thumping one swollen hand into the soft mess of crochet on her knee. Reginald swung his violin case above his head, and moved towards her in silence before they both screamed.