Elegance and Innocence (39 page)

Allyson, on the other hand, is going through her Maria Callas stage. If Piotr’s hands are his most distinguishing feature, Allyson’s cheekbones are hers. They’re like two evenly spaced shelves upon which her heavily made-up, green-grey eyes are balanced. Her long auburn hair is scraped back into a perfect chignon and she’s solidly, dramatically, emphatically curvy or, as she puts it, ‘ample yet agile’ (the world of opera being much more image conscious than it used to be). But despite her impeccably groomed exterior, she possesses the mouth of a merchant sailor. After struggling in England for three years now, she’s just beginning to cover roles at Covent Garden and sing a few major parts for Opera North and the Welsh National. That, along with a steady stream of young students, keeps her permanently occupied. But her real chance is coming next month. She’s due to perform a
recital of lieder at St John’s Smith Square and has had her heart set on being able to rehearse with Piotr. But now it looks like she’ll have to rehearse alone.

(This is one of the few advantages to shared housing: not all the dramas are your own.)

I move silently to the draining board and retrieve a mug.

‘But
why
?’ Allyson gestures wildly to the heavens; a move she used to great effect in a regional production of
Tosca
last March. ‘Give me one reason why not? For fuck’s sake! I’ll pay you whatever you like!’

Piotr leans against the kitchen counter, his hands in his jeans pockets, amused. ‘I’ve already explained to you. German is not a language that anyone should be singing! Ever! Italian, yes. French, OK. Russian, perfect! But German? Sounds like … like a noise you make when you, you know, spit!’ And he demonstrates the noise.

I put the mug down. Maybe I’ll give the tea a miss.

A slice of toast pops up in the toaster.

‘But you play German music! You play Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt …’ Allyson continues.

Piotr tosses the toast onto a plate, opening drawer after drawer in search of a knife.

I hand him one.

‘Thank you. Liszt is not German.’

He looks around.

‘Don’t be so pedantic!’ Allyson accuses, pushing the butter dish across to him.

He sighs, spreading the butter thick. ‘When I play Beethoven or Mozart, I don’t have to listen to German. I listen to music. When I have to listen to German, there’s no longer any music.’ And he shrugs his shoulders; a rolling, slow-motion version that’s somehow distinctly Eastern European. ‘I’m sorry.’

Allyson turns away, unable to combat this curious logic with anything but a stream of obscenities.

Piotr, apparently oblivious, turns to me instead, munching his toast. ‘How was your class?’

‘An old man walked out on me,’ I confess, sidestepping Allyson, who’s spluttering under her breath in the corner. ‘He only ever wants to read one poem. One incredibly long poem.’

‘Good for him! So important to stick to your ideals, don’t you think?’

He grins. Allyson growls threateningly.

‘And you? When are we going to see you perform?’

I laugh, a nervous, high-pitched little trill. Suddenly I’m wrong-footed; an intruder in this conversation of artistic preferences and ideals. ‘Oh, no, I … I don’t really do a lot of performing any more. I’m really just a teacher now.’

He raises an eyebrow.

I fumble about with a box of tea bags. Even without looking up, I know he’s staring at me.

‘I’m too old for all that nonsense,’ I say at last. ‘I gave it up long ago. Or rather, it gave up on me.’

‘And how is that?’ He takes another bite.

It’s far too late at night to unfold the facts of my failed acting career in front of a stranger.

But I make the stupid mistake of trying anyway.

‘Well, acting isn’t like music, Piotr. I mean, there are so very few jobs and so many people …’

He throws back his head and roars. ‘Ah, that’s true! There are hardly
any
classical musicians in the world!’

I’m blushing. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I just meant that … oh, I don’t know what I mean …’ I start again. ‘Well, I never got to play any of the parts I dreamt about. Never even got near them. I just ended up making B-rated horror films, a few commercials …’

‘You were an actress.’ He shrugs his shoulders again. ‘That’s what actresses do.’

‘No, that’s what
unsuccessful
actresses do, Piotr.’

‘No.’ He smiles. ‘That’s also what successful actresses do. It’s all the same thing, really.’

Like Allyson, I’ve come smack up against the World According to Piotr Pawlokowski. The rules are different here.

‘Well, no …’ I fumble, trying to articulate a yet unformed argument.

‘You’re American,’ he diagnoses my deficiency with a single wave of his massive hand. ‘You make too much of this idea of “success”. No artist sees life as success or failure, profit or loss, good or bad. The point of art is lost if you measure it in commercial terms.’

I blink at him.

‘But it was awful,’ I bleat weakly.

He frowns, popping the last bite into his mouth. ‘And you believed it would be
fun?
’

There’s a long silence.

I’d never thought about it that way before.

‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘I expected it to be much more fun than working in an office or teaching pensioners or … or anything else, really.’

He laughs. ‘Where did you get that idea?’

‘Because that’s the way it used to be.’ I can’t help but smile to myself at the memory. ‘It always used to be more fun than anything else on the face of the earth.’

‘Don’t you enjoy playing the piano?’ Allyson comes to my defence.

There’s that shrug again. ‘Sometimes. But “fun” isn’t a word to describe a relationship with an art form that’s embraced every aspect of the human experience for centuries.’ He looks at me sadly. ‘You Americans, I’m afraid, are like children – you don’t like to grow up. What is it? “The pursuit of happiness”. What is that? “To be happy”. Where is the nobility in a life devoted to happiness? It’s a shabby little goal.’

‘Lighten up, mate.’ Allyson moves next to me; she loves confrontation. ‘No need to pick on her just because she’s American!’

‘I’m not picking on you.’ Piotr glances at me, then back
to Allyson. ‘But there you go again! “Lighten up!” Nothing must be serious. Everything must be small, fast … light!’ He prowls the floor in frustration, reaching for the words as if they’re hovering in the air around him. ‘You are the hero of your life – especially in art! Without adversity, obstacles, where’s the hero’s adventure? What’s the point? Of course you do bad movies! Stupid commercials! So what? They’re your dragons; you slay them, you move on. You’re bigger than those things!’ He spins round. ‘What do you have to offer people, what experience, if life is only “fun”?’

I open my mouth.

Then close it.

It’s late; I’m overly sensitive. Instead, I focus on stacking the tea boxes in neat little rows. The silence builds, piling up between the three of us.

‘That wasn’t the only reason,’ I say. ‘My happiness wasn’t the only consideration.’

‘God, Piotr!’ Allyson shakes her head. ‘Could you be any more rude if you tried?’

‘Rude?’ He turns to her, baffled. ‘We’re just talking. A conversation, right?’ And he laughs, resting his hands against the counter. ‘What do you want? That we should stand here and flatter one another all night?’

There’s a long pause.

‘Oh. I see.’ His voice is sharp. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to offend you.’ For a moment his eyes meet mine. I’m startled by the kindness in them.

He turns away. ‘I forget how important it is that we agree about everything all the time. I’ll stick with the piano. Good night, ladies.’ He nods his head to each of us, a formal, slightly sardonic gesture, before heading up the steps easily, two at a time.

Allyson launches forward, nicking the mug I just put down and filling it with boiled water. ‘Well! Fuck me!’

The whole exchange has left me disorientated. I open the cupboard door, looking for something to eat. ‘I guess he has a right to his …’

‘God!’ She slams the mug down on the counter, half its contents splashing out over the sides. ‘I thought it would be brilliant to have a pianist in my own home to work with but I’ve never, not in my whole life, met anyone so fucking difficult!’ Plucking a knife off the carving board, she begins hacking at a fresh lemon, throwing it into the water along with a large dollop of honey. ‘What a fucking diva! And what was all that about? Americans and happiness and … Jesus! I would’ve hit him!’

I need to go shopping. I close the cupboard door.

‘His English is good …’

‘Should be! He studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Still bloody rude!’

‘Thing is, Ally, I’ve been here so long …’

‘Tits! I think I’m getting a cold!’ She wheels round, glaring at me accusingly. ‘Does Alex have a cold? I’d better not be getting a cold, Evie.’

I shake my head ‘no’, relinquishing any hope of actually finishing a sentence.

‘It’s the stress. The stress is outrageous! This concert is doing my nut in! Look at my glands, will you?’

I can’t tell you how many times a week I have to look at Allyson’s glands.

She sticks her tongue out. ‘Do you see anything? Is my throat red? Splotchy?’

No one is more paranoid about her health than Allyson. The kitchen counter is lined with vitamin bottles and herbal tinctures; her room emits a steamy, Arthurian mist from under the door, the result of a humidifier churning away constantly in a corner, and she sleeps more hours a day than a cat. Still, all her effort pays off: she has one of the clearest, most powerful singing voices I’ve ever heard.

I take a peek. ‘No, darling. It’s fine.’

‘Thanks. Oh God, Evie! What am I going to do?’

‘Well.’ I pick up another mug from the draining board. ‘You could always …’

‘Balls! I’ll have to call Junko again. But she’s like a robot; she understands nothing of the power and passion I need for these pieces!’ She looks at me. ‘You have heard about Piotr, haven’t you?’

I shake my head and she leans forward, her voice uncharacteristically low.

‘He’s the one who walked out in the middle of the final
rounds of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow a few years ago!’

She stares at me eagerly.

I’ve no idea what she’s talking about.

‘It’s the most famous piano competition in the world, Evie! He just stopped playing in the middle of his second concerto and left! When he was on the verge of winning!’

‘But why?’

‘It wasn’t good enough … he didn’t like the way he was playing.’ She rolls her eyes. Ally’s competitive nature is so keenly honed that the idea is clearly anathema. I find it quite intriguing. ‘He’s crazy, Evie! Insane! He was playing Prokofiev Three, with a full orchestra and suddenly he just stands up and walks away!’

‘So if he’s crazy, Ally, why are you so keen on working with him?’

‘Have you heard him? He was playing
Gaspard de la Nuit
yesterday and I thought I would faint it was so heart-breaking … Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck!’ She collapses her head into her hands. (If Puccini had been composing for Allyson, ‘One Fine Day’ would’ve become ‘Where the Hell Is He?’.)

I take a piece of cheese out of the fridge, turning this new information around in my mind.

‘And now he teaches at the Royal Academy.’

‘But he could’ve been huge!’ she mumbles.

We sit a moment.

Eventually, she looks up. ‘You know what we should do? We should go out, you and I; just the girls! We could go dancing or something!’

Every couple of months she does this; she launches into a campaign to force me into socializing, usually just after she’s finished some big job.

‘Well, maybe. I don’t know, Ally. I think I’m a bit old for dancing.’

‘I’m older than you are,’ she reminds me.

‘Yes, but you’re, you know, trendy …’

‘You could be trendy. Let’s go shopping. It would be fun!’

She’s staring at me with those huge, unflinching diva eyes.

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You always say that. If I had your face and your figure …’

‘Ally! Stop it!’ Why am I so embarrassed?

‘You’re not even wearing make-up, are you?’

‘Please!’ I shake my head.

‘I’m just saying it’s a waste! I’m going to stop asking one of these days and then you’ll be sorry!’ Opening one of the dozen bottles, she tosses a few pills into her mouth. ‘So the old fart walked out on you, did he? You’ve mentioned him before – what’s his name?’

‘Mr Hastings.’

‘Poor Mr Hastings.’

‘Actually, he’s a very difficult character,’ I point out, suddenly defensive.

‘Yes, but you would be difficult too, wouldn’t you? If you’d never lived out your dreams. Makes people crazy, Evie.’ She retrieves her drink and kisses me on the top of my head. ‘Night, darling.’

Standing alone, I pour what’s left in the kettle into my mug. There’s not enough for a full cup, so I leave it. And I stare out into the vast black space that’s the garden in the rear.

I’ve never thought of Mr Hastings as having dreams. Or at least not any that extended beyond making my class a misery. The revelation that he might endows him with an unwelcome vulnerability in my mind. This, along with Piotr’s anti-happiness diatribe, has finally tipped me over the edge. I’m exhausted and unexpectedly riddled with self-doubt.

I’m done slaying dragons for today.

Moving mechanically, I wipe down the kitchen counter before turning off the lights. And I have that feeling I get at the end of almost every day: the sensation of having left my body and watching it from a distance – a kind of physical déjà vu. Walking back up into the hallway, I’m floating, insubstantial; repeating the same evening rituals; pausing to make sure the front door’s locked, checking and rechecking.

I turn to make my way up the stairs.

And there, sitting in the darkness of the living room, is Piotr.

He’s at the piano. But there’s no sense of impending action. No crinkle of anticipation, as if he might, at any moment, begin to play. Instead, a powerful calm surrounds him.