Prelude (24 page)

These days, with the internet, it might have been easier to track her down.

But twenty-five years back, it was no simple thing for a seventeen-year-old to find a lost love. I did the best I could, sent a score of love-notes. But as the weeks went by and I received no calls and no letters, there were only two possible conclusions remaining: either my letters weren’t getting to India, or she was choosing not to respond to them.

More and more it was the latter option that came to dominate my imagination. She must have received my letters—how could she not?—and, for whatever reason, had chosen not to reply. I conjured up every single scenario I could think of: that she’d seen me at my very worst and couldn’t stomach the sight of me again; that I had driven her back into Malcolm’s arms; that, following on from her divorce, the last thing she needed was a relationship with an emotionally-retarded teenager.

I don’t know. There may have been any number of reasons why she did not write. But by the time I arrived back at Eton for the start of the Michaelmas Half, still with a slight limp from my shattered knee-cap, I had resigned myself to the fact that India did not want to see me again.

I thought that I deserved it, that I had behaved despicably, that I was beyond redemption.

My father took me back to school. It was a Thursday, the second week of September, spitting with rain, and my heart was dead. My love was gone and I felt certain that no woman, no girl, would ever be able to hold anything for me again.

A few boys were milling around. They joshed me as I limped into the Timbralls Hall. One of them took my suitcase upstairs. I followed my father out to the car. The streetlights gleamed on the wet bonnet.

“Well, goodbye old boy,” he said. “You look after yourself.”

He hovered. For the first time, I realised that he was unsure about what to do next.

“Goodbye,” I said, “and thank you.” And before he could turn on his heel, I took the two steps to give him a hug. Both my arms round his waist. At first there was no response. Then I felt his arms come up warm around me. It was all a little bit rigid. But both of us were out of practice.

We broke off. My father flushed with embarrassment. “I wish I’d been able to do that before, but . . .” He trailed off.

“I know.”

He paused, his hand on the car door, drawn to me yet desperate to hide any hint of emotion. “I think we should do it more often.”

“I’d like that.”

He gave a wave, and with a relieved roar the car thrummed off into the night.

I waved till his taillights blinked into the darkness. It was a strange feeling. I think that hug had probably called for more courage than anything else my father had ever done.

I mooched back into the Hall, shaking my head with amused surprise.

My pigeon-hole was crammed with post.

I flicked through the letters. Was I expecting something? Possibly. But I didn’t want to start hoping again, because I knew deep-down that it would only cause more pain.

For the most part, they were ‘Get Well’ cards. But right at the back there was a small white letter, and just the sight of it made my hands tremble, for I knew that copper-plate handwriting all too well.

India.

I hobbled quickly up the stairs, my knee shrieking with every step.

I hardly even noticed my room as I walked in. It was exactly as it had been before the accident. But how much my life had changed in the last two months.

I only had eyes for the letter.

I stared and stared at the letter’s postmark and the date.

She had sent it the morning after I’d last seen her; the morning after I had stormed from her flat in a jealous haze of hate.

What I would have given to have taken it all back.

The letter was thin. I could feel the trace of a card. My hands twitched as I slit open the envelope with a paperknife.

This is what she had written.

I’m sorry
.
I love you
.
Please forgive me
.

The card is in front of me now, though my tears over the years have made the ink fade and blur.

I would never hear from India again.

BOOK 1

PRELUDE 17,

A-flat Major

I AM NOT quite done.

There are a few strings yet to be tied, though I am afraid none of this ends happily. No one especially gets their just desserts.

I finished my final year at Eton and passed my A-levels without mishap. As for my Eton companions, I know next to nothing. Jeremy and I soldiered on. But when it came to our final parting, he never even said goodbye, just left and that was that. I have never seen or heard from him since.

Angela, beautiful Angela, would still gaze at me in the English classes, but nothing ever came of it. We never kissed, we also never said goodbye, and, like Jeremy, I have not the faintest idea what happened to her.

It was like we had all served a five-year stretch together in this gilded army camp. And, at the time, just like those poor benighted Argentinian conscripts in the Falklands, we had done the best we could, had made new friends. But once we’d left, we had come to see how those friendships had been forced on us, and that outside Eton it was possible to make companions of our own choosing.

So, I’d like to hear from Jeremy, from Angela, from a few other of my unruly band of Scallies, but it’s never happened. It’s another era and another world, and it’s as if we have all made a silent pact never to return there.

Frankie and my Dame, as far as I know, continued their Eton lives without a blip. They both must be close to retirement now.

And Savage—what of him? I would so love to report that he had met some hideous end. But the truth is, like almost every one of my peers, I have not heard a word of Savage since he left Eton.

As for me . . . well one thing was quite apparent after my accident—any career in the army was out of the question. My knee was finished, caput.

But my injuries were merely the catalyst. For thanks to the Falklands, I’d already begun to realise that an army career was not for me.

So instead of Sandhurst, I read English at Bristol University; Bristol, of course, because that was where India had been.

I left university with an all too predictable 2:2 in English. That, by the by, is often the way with Etonians when they go to University. There’s no one driving them as hard, no tutors to give them a kick up the backside, no beaks shouting with incoherent rage. As a result, the boys suddenly realise that at university they can coast along quite nicely on just a bare minimum of work.

After Bristol, I travelled the world for a couple of years, and then became a journalist. I well remembered my father’s outraged reaction to
The Sun
newspaper on that Fourth of June. So I set out to become a ‘Red Top’ reporter. But not even that could annoy him. It hardly registered a flicker. For my relationship with both my parents had bumped, had jinked off the rails, and was now set on a new course.

They’d thought I was going to die after my accident. And when I lived, it was as if every day was a bonus. My father learned to kiss me on the cheek when he greeted me; my stepmother learned to unbend.

And for me, it was as if a ton of expectation had been lifted from my shoulders. I was left to roam wherever I pleased.

I found new girlfriends and new love, and discovered to my utter amazement that it was more than possible to relive love’s first careless rapture.

Girlfriends, many, many wonderful girlfriends, and every one of them has taught me so much about myself and about life. One day, I may yet get round to telling some of their stories.

But, no matter how much I loved them, the one thing I never wanted to know about was their pasts. I was like a schoolboy who’d been caught smoking, and who was then made to puff his way through an entire box of cigars—for my experience with India’s chest of secrets was the most profound aversion therapy.

Of course, I still had a part of me which was that infamous, jealous, screaming horror that longed to know everything about my girlfriends’ past loves. But that was now so tightly-shackled, locked away in the dungeons of my mind, that it couldn’t move a muscle without receiving a savage kick to the ribs.

I know that it is not how the psychiatrists would recommend that you deal with your baser emotions. They would tell you to talk it out, to work it through until you are spent, to understand reasons and motives. Only then, they’d say, can you properly move on.

That is one way, but it is not my way. Not for me weeks of intensive therapy. No—like many better men before me, the matter of my own jealousy is so unpleasant that I prefer to duck the issue altogether.

I used specifically to instruct girlfriends that I did not wish to know anything—not one jot—about their pasts. As for their old love-letters and their photos, you could have waved them all in front of my face and I would have ignored them. My aversion therapy had been so severe that even if I had found an open diary on the kitchen table, I would have left the house rather than read a word.

Every time I felt even the smallest stab of jealousy, it reminded me of my own ugliness and my terrible loss.

India.

I still think it the most beautiful name in the English language.

After I’d received that short note from her, I tried once more to get in touch. I even sent a letter care of the letting agents who had rented her flat in Eton.

I went through the motions, chased up every last avenue that I could think of. Though I knew in my heart that we were done, that our little ship on which we had briefly placed such high hopes had sunk without trace.

I never heard anything more of her.

But.

There is one thing more left to tell.

GRADUALLY MY MEMORIES of India dulled—as did my piano-playing skills. Eton found me a new teacher for my final year, but I’ve not had a lesson since I left the school.

For over two years, I couldn’t play or even listen to
The
Well-Tempered Clavier
. Just a couple of bars would be enough to set me off.

But new girlfriends came into my life and I started to remember the rapture of the music. Listening was always a bittersweet experience, always awash with memories of India. I tried to play some of the simplest preludes. But after a three-year lay-off from the keyboard, I was back floundering in the shallows and the miseries of Grade 1.

Eventually,
The Well-Tempered Clavier
became a memory, a rather awkward memory. I still liked the music but, whenever I heard it, I could not but be reminded of my own repellent nature. It’s funny, but the things that haunt me now are never the slights and snubs of other people; rather, the memories that make me shudder are the hideous things that I have done to my friends and to my loved ones.

I married once and we had a son. It ended horribly; again, one day I may tell the tale.

I married again. My second wife is a good woman, a special woman. She cares for me and puts up with my little foibles and the fact that my emotions are kept wrapped in their own icy citadel. We get on well. It is amicable, comfortable. We understand each other.

Of course there is none of the soaring passion that there was with India. But I do not think any couple on earth could sustain that level of passion for more than a few months.

We have three daughters, three adorable daughters. They’re the cement that keeps us together. Splitting up is not even an option. There are not, perhaps, as many highs as I might like, but there are also none of those depressing lows when the rows and arguments seem to roll on from one day to the next.

It is a strong, workable marriage. We tell each other that we love each other.

And India—India, like
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, has become nothing more than a blissful, if occasionally painful, memory. Although, like the music, if I dwell on her for too long, she still has the ability to make me cry.

A MONTH BACK, we were in Edinburgh for the festival, three weeks of cultural mayhem with something to tempt even the most jaded palates. I still like the Fringe, the crazy comics and the mime artists, but as I get older I take fewer risks. I prefer to go for the safe and the steady rather than risk an hour’s boredom with something new.

So, instead of bearding the stand-ups or venturing to see the latest gritty drama, I took my wife to one of the late-night concerts at the Usher Hall.

Andras Schiff was playing Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
. They are slightly similar to some of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
fugues, but I think they’re more highly evolved. I like the variations. Most importantly, I can listen to them without crying.

The Usher Hall is a classic round concert hall—Scotland’s version of the Royal Albert Hall. The concert was a sell-out, not a seat left in the house. We arrived, just as we always do, a few moments before the lights went down. There was no time for a drink. It was wet, which was making my bad knee throb.

My favourite part of the Goldberg’s is the Aria at the beginning. It’s Bach at his tranquil best, and you’ve got it all to look forward to again at the end, when the Aria is repeated.

I took time to settle down. I stared at Schiff. I could feel the pack of people sitting shoulder to shoulder, smell the moist hum of wet coats. My mind wandered from this to that.

By these days, I was not thinking of India quite so much. She was just my golden Goddess. Whenever I thought of her I mentally genuflected. In my mind she had been returned to her rightful pedestal.

But the Goldberg’s, being so similar to
The Well-Tempered
Clavier
, had pricked at my memory. I started to remember the times we’d had—not that awful fight at the end, but the good times. That day when I’d first seen India outside the School Hall, a moment cast in amber. Laughing with each other in the Eton practice room till the tears dripped onto the grand piano. The way she’d snatched my hand at Judy’s Passage and bundled me into the elderflower bush. A rainy afternoon on the Long Walk and a day that I will never forget. Love in the fields and in the spinneys of Eton. And love, too, sandwiched up against the dustbins of a Windsor hotel.

One of the happiest months of my life.

Had she abused me? Pish and tush. She might, just possibly, have abused her position as a music teacher.

But it wasn’t just about the sex.

She’d loved me; I knew it. Maybe it was just circumstance, me being in the right place at the right time. Maybe I’d caught her at a moment of maximum vulnerability during her divorce. And, just maybe, it could have been because, for one single term, we both shared an incredible passion for
The
Well-Tempered Clavier
.

Who knows why it started, what made it tick.

Lick up the honey stranger, and ask no questions.

As I stared through Schiff, I started to wonder what had happened to India after she’d left Eton. Had she received any of my letters? Had she quit the country to join VSO?

One final thing: had she ever known how many tears I’d shed for her, how I’d begged for her forgiveness?

Schiff was on the Aria for the final time. I gazed at the Usher Hall’s domed ceiling and stretched back.

During the previous two decades, I had seen India many times over. Chance meetings at the train station, the street, or the airport. But always, when I looked for a second, a third time, I would see that it was nearly her, but not quite.

But this time, as I leaned my head back and turned from left to right, I really did see her.

It was as if a pin had been thrust into the back of my neck. I convulsed.

Out of nowhere, my heart was drilling and I was feeling just like that sweaty teenager who had first stepped into India’s music room. I thought it was her. I was sure it was her.

It wasn’t just the frame of brown hair, but the way she was sitting—exactly as she’d used to sit when I played
The Well-
Tempered Clavier
.

As discreetly as I could, I took another look. She was in the row behind me, about ten seats along.

I turned to the side and stared, not being able to tear my eyes away.

I had envisaged India’s face so many times over the years, had got my hopes up so many times. But this really was her; I knew it, from her hair to her clothes, still the same elegant pastels that she’d always loved. Even her hands, clasped in her lap, were a giveaway.