Body & Soul (62 page)

"You were just a nice boy, you see," she said, rubbing his back. "And you thought I was just a girl."

"I don't understand."

She said nothing. She dried his entire body, slowly but not erotically. A loving task, as she might have dried her child, down on her knees on the bathroom floor. They went back to bed, under the quilt, pillows bunched up behind their heads. They lay in comfortable silence for a long time, so long that when she spoke it took him a moment to realize she was responding to his last remark. "I wasn't just a girl." She waited, then said, "I'd been sleeping with Dewman since I was thirteen years old."

He couldn't quite take it in. "What do you mean?"

"I'd been having sex with him."

"With Dewman Fisk?" He was incredulous, at a total loss.

"Oh, you know," she said quickly, "a powerful man, bringing all those famous people to the house." It was almost offhand.

As the implications dawned on him he remained motionless, staring at the ceiling. "Holy mackerel."

"I've never told anyone," she said.

He thought about it. "Not even your husband?"

"No."

He thought some more. "You mean he raped you? Why didn't you tell somebody?"

"He didn't rape me." Her voice was calm. "It wasn't like that."

More than anything—despite his confusion, his mind racing almost desperately—more than anything he wanted to avoid saying the wrong thing. They were in a zone of unreality, or so at least it felt to him as he struggled toward comprehension. For the first time since they'd knelt together on the prayer rug—which had been a couple of days ago but felt infinitely longer, outside of time altogether—he felt the presence of danger. What she was talking about was so alien, so utterly weird, that he might inadvertently, in his ignorance, do or say something to hurt her. Or
not
do something or
not
say something. He was locked.

"He started watching me when I was twelve," she said. "And then the next year it was games, and then, well..."

"But how ... all those people in the house?"

"Never when my mother was there." She caught herself. "No, a few times when she was sick, I think. It wasn't continuous, you see. Sometimes months went by and I'd think maybe it was over."

"Did you want it to be over?"

"Oh, yes. Pretty quickly. But he knew just how to play it." She said this without any apparent bitterness. "By the time I was seventeen I couldn't stand it anymore. So I ran away with the first man who asked me."

"So people thought you'd just fallen in love and eloped."

"Except Dewman. He knew, I'm sure."

"And the son of a bitch got away with it." He shook his head. "Unbelievable."

Now little snatches of memory began playing in his head. Catherine coming down the stairs with Dewman right behind her the night of the dance. Lady's reluctance to talk about Catherine except for an occasional anecdote about school, and the observation that even as a young girl Catherine had been "hot" or "sexy" or "a vamp," and that it was "undignified." He remembered Peter's remark that she was always trying to be so "grown up." He remembered Catherine's no longer mysterious question about Dewman's response when receiving the laurel crown. Now he thought about the servant giving him the cross to ward off evil. "I think the maid knew," he said. "Or suspected, anyway."

"Why do you say that?"

"She seemed to be warning me of something. What was her name? Isidra. Could she have known?"

"I remember her." Catherine thought about it. "Maybe. We were never caught, but maybe. She certainly hated me. It doesn't matter now."

"Sure it does. She's still there. Only now she's the housekeeper and they call her Miss Sanchez. Your mother's out of it and Isidra runs the place. Lady said her clothes were very expensive, and I can tell you she doesn't look like a servant or act like a servant. Maybe he didn't get away with it altogether."

"It doesn't matter. I'll never see any of them again. I left it behind a long time ago." She turned on her side and put her hand on his shoulder. "I don't know why I told you."

A closed book for her. He understood that, and certainly he wasn't going to push. But another memory floated up and he could not stop himself. "The children's section!" he cried.

"What?"

"Did you know when he was deputy mayor he wrote the city law that mandates a children's section in every movie theater? You know, matinees and everything, so sex fiends wouldn't bother the children?"

"Don't be angry, Claude."

"Why not? He stole your childhood. You were living a double life before you were out of grammar school. You couldn't talk to your own mother, for God's sake. He put you in solitary. It's a fucking outrage!"

"Shh." She stroked his face. "Shh. Let's just lie here for a while."

"What a monstrous hypocrite."

"Shh. Hush now."

But hours later, when they made love, he felt it all falling away from him. As her soul welcomed him, his own was cleansed. As they ascended together into the blue beyond blue, all else was trivial. Life itself was trivial. They flew out of the world. Out of its present, and out of its past.

On Monday morning they went for a walk in a nearby park, which seemed to Claude not so much a park as a large chunk of unspoiled countryside. Rolling meadows, some mowed and some wild, great stands of trees, buttercups, even a brook. He was glad to walk. His body felt wonderful, glowing from within, loose, oiled, but his legs were not altogether dependable and he had a rehearsal to do in the afternoon. It was as if he were too light, too buoyant, and had to bring his body down a bit. After half an hour of wandering over the low hills, with Catherine beside him periodically holding his arm and pressing his side, he seemed to reach a perfect balance. They found an immense boulder, already warm from the sun. and sat with their backs against it.

"I feel like I've been asleep all my life," he said.

"Good morning, then."

"Sex is so powerful it's always blinded me. I've never really known what I was doing, in a way. You know, so eager, and maybe scared a bit, it seems like now."

"Well, there are an awful lot of women who don't particularly like sex, if the truth were known," she said. "Most women, I think."

"You're kidding." Although he was learning fast, he was not entirely free of his romantic miseducation from movies and books.

"For some it's a kind of social thing, no more important than that. Some see it as a sign that they're needed. A kind of reassurance. And then it can be an exercise in power over another person. None of these things means you have to like it."

"A tool, you mean."

"Sometimes. Sometimes just a gift to the man."

"Nobody talks about it like that."

"Of course not," she said. "But don't forget, there are women for whom it's just as important as it is to men."

"Forget!" he protested. "How could I ever possibly forget? Where we've been?"

"That's good." She smiled and gave him a soft kiss, surprising him. "Because it goes away, you know."

"Never."

"The passion does. It's too intense for us. It fades. Think of colors, colors gradually changing hue. It's like that."

"I don't want to think that."

"I know."

"It's like you're warning me."

She took his hand. "It's good I know these things. I'm not warning you. I'm not going to back off when the colors change."

"But you won't marry me."

"I'm not going to marry anyone. I have Jennie, my work, and my life. That's more than enough."

"Suppose your work took you to America? Some incredible job at Princeton or Harvard, say?"

"I wouldn't go."

She released his hand and they sat in silence for some time. Suddenly a large black dog ran out from behind the boulder and stood ten feet away, looking at them. Collarless, Claude thought, immediately thinking of his hands. The dog lowered its head.

"You," Catherine said firmly, "are a big, ugly, slobbering mess of a dog. We have nothing for you."

After a moment the dog pivoted on its rear legs and sprang away. They watched it cross the meadow, running full-out, its spine folding and unfolding like a hinge.

"The British worship animals, you know," she said. "It's ridiculous." She stood up and smoothed her skirt.

"Will you come to the rehearsal?" he asked.

"That'll be bits and pieces, won't it? I'd rather hear the whole thing in one go."

Claude entered the auditorium through a side door and paused. They were playing his music, the first tutti from the second movement, Mr.
Dove conducting from the piano. Claude stood with his back to the wall.

For the first few minutes he was too thrilled to think. The sound was there, alive in the air, and it made the hair stand up on the backs of his hands. He had heard it in his mind numberless times, an idealized version, but now it was real and what surprised him most was the grittiness, the textures. Rosiny strings, the wide, edgy sound of the brass, the ever so slightly fuzzy, plush depth of the woodwinds. Dove was not playing the full piano part, but only the cues and a reduction to the top and bottom lines. The orchestra dominated with its powerful, organic, almost funky sound. Claude bathed in it, simply drank it in through the pores of his skin, a huge, unconscious smile on his face. It worked on him like some euphoric drug, and it was quite a while before he could force himself to listen analytically.

Eventually the first violinist spotted him and pointed him out to Mr. Dove, who waved for silence. "There you are, sir," he called, glancing at his watch. "Well, we've done what we can by way of preparation." He got up from the piano. "Please join us."

Claude walked down the aisle, mounted the stage, and approached the nine-foot Bosendorfer grand.

"Anything you'd like to tell us before we begin?" Mr. Dove asked as he picked up his baton.

Claude faced the orchestra—so many people, old, young, a few women, a tall, thin black man in the contrabass section—and for a moment he was nervous. "It's an honor to be able to play with you people. I've got an awful lot of your records." A few smiles, a few nods of recognition. "About the music. Well, you'll hear it anyway, but I don't play the old way, louder going up, softer going down. Breathing, or whatever they call it. The dynamics should be as marked, so when we're playing a line together that's the way I'll be doing it. I guess that's it." He sat down at the piano. The score was in front of him. He looked up at Mr. Dove, who was turning pages at the podium.

"Right," said Dove. "First movement, second tutti. That figure. How do you want those sixteenths?"

Claude looked down at the keys, imagined the phrase in his mind, and played it with his right hand.

"Aha!" Dove leaned forward to address the players. "Distinct, but making a smooth curve. Right, then." He raised his arms. "Let's get it the first time."

They hopped around the concerto in this manner for almost an hour and then took a break. As the others got up, Claude remained at the piano and, very softly, played Art Tatum's version of "Tea for Two" just to stretch his fingers. One of the violinists, an older man with bags under his eyes, paused to watch. "Wonderful stuff," he said when Claude had finished. "Tatum was a master."

"Where can I go for jazz?" Claude asked.

"You mean clubs? There isn't much, I'm afraid. Ronnie Scott's in Soho. And one of our people works nights at the Castle, also in Soho. Let me get him, he'll know more." He moved away.

Mr. Dove came over with a couple of questions. "I take it you want a feeling of wildness in here, the free bars in B major, and D major scales for these horns?"

"Yes. Random sounds. A little pocket of chaos, like a building being demolished."

"Good. That's what we thought."

The older violinist returned with the black bass player, a man in his thirties with extremely long hands and a worried look on his face. Creases stood out on his forehead.

"This is Reggie Phillips. He knows all about it."

Claude stood up and shook the man's hand. "Hi. You play jazz at the Castle? I'd like to come."

"Just a trio. But Ronnie Scott's has a big band. Good musicians." He had a soft voice, barely above a whisper, and an accent that sounded Jamaican. "You'll have a good time at Ronnie Scott's."

Claude didn't know what to make of the man's manner. Reggie looked down at the floor, off to the side, his face averted, almost as if he were afraid.

"Well, thanks very much," Claude said.

Reggie started away, but then paused and said, "Your concerto is very good, very strong, and it has a freshness. Everybody is saying this." Then he walked off, threading his way through the folding chairs.

L
ORD LIGHTNING
was a stocky, prematurely bald forty-eight-year-old jazz pianist whose cafe-au-lait complexion was the only obvious indicator of his Negro blood—one quarter, he had been told by his half-white mother before she died. His stage name had emerged because his right hand was thought to be faster than Oscar Peterson's, and because Light, as his fellow musicians called him, was, in fact, light-skinned, maintained a particularly dignified demeanor, dressed well (just short of dandyism), and had an almost obsessive interest in the royal family. He lived in a tastefully furnished Edwardian house in Hampstead (eight years to go on the mortgage, when they would throw the party to end all parties) with Reggie Phillips, bassist with the LSO, bassist with Lord Lightning's trio at the Castle jazz club, and companion of ten years. They sat in matching wing chairs in the front room drinking tea.

"I think you're overreacting," Reggie said.

"The whole thing scares me to death." Light regarded the bone china service for a moment and reached for a lump of sugar. "We've got to be very, very careful."

"You don't know it's him. A single telegram, what was it, twenty-five years ago? Nothing since."

"That's the way she wanted it." Light sighed. "I was relieved at the time."

"Understandable." Reggie gave a soft laugh. "Considering."

"Don't be stupid about this, Reggie. It was more than that. The child never had to know, quite possibly. There was every chance it could grow up white, and in America that's..." He waved his hand and left the rest unspoken.