Fig and the Flute Player Read online

  ‘No. It’s just they don’t cross my path.’

  ‘Rare beasts?’

  ‘Come here, Maisie. Rare beast.’ She sat on the bed and he caressed her wrists, her forehead.

  ‘What sort of thing do you have to do?’ he went on, as he stroked her.

  ‘A typical day?’ Words counterpointed touch.

  ‘Well, what are you doing at the moment?’ He nodded towards the sheaves of paper on the table. His hands tried to span her waist. His words came as from some ethereal region somehow hovering above her.

  ‘I’ve been working on the authenticity of a relic. Authentic in a historic sense, that is. Actually, it’s the reliquary I am interested in. The relic itself is just a nasty bit of bone or something. The reliquary which houses it is the wonder – to me, that is.’

  His little finger caressed the soft inner skin of her wrist.

  ‘You have to travel a bit, then?’

  ‘Yes. Russia, mostly. Orthodox countries, or ex-Orthodox. But mostly Russia, and what used to be Russia.’

  ‘Didn’t they do away with all that religious stuff in the Revolution?’

  ‘Treasures like that. Art objects. They usually find a home before the invading hordes batter down the doors. Then they surface again in more propitious times – like these.’

  She was finding it a bit hard to string her words together, aware too much of his slight touch and that their bodies were having a different conversation.

  ‘I read somewhere,’ he said, ‘that the Russians dug up all their saints during the Revolution and put them on show to prove their corruptibility. Nasty.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. She stood up. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’ She hesitated.

  She had lived so long without sex, so very long, that it was a stranger to her, like this man – who had brought it suddenly back into her life. It was like starting all over from the very beginning.

  He was looking at her curiously, intently.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

  ‘Help yourself to a drink.’

  ‘Please don’t worry,’ he said again.

  ‘I’m not worried.’ She bent to sniff the chrysanthemums. A wintry smell. Time seemed to stop for a moment, like a snapshot. Maisie knew it was one of those flashed moments that would stay with her for life – the vibrant presence of the man, a young stranger; the fresh, slightly bitter smell of the flowers, their crisp, curling petals, ice-green in the centre.

  She had a bath, instead of a shower. She wanted to reflect. You can’t reflect in a shower. She wanted to remember how he had peered short-sightedly at his crumpled ticket. She wanted to hear again in her head how he sang the descant to a carol. She thought over his words. ‘When it’s right it’s easy.’

  As she got out of the bath she smiled at her reflection in the gold-rimmed ornate mirror. Thin shoulders, the hollows beneath them; long thin thighs, her hand reaching out for the snowy white towel. Her skin not white against it, but creamy. Her brown hair. Her mirror image looked like a sepia photograph in its gilded frame. She rubbed her body lotion over her thighs. She smelled her hand: it smelled smokily expensive.

  As she put on the kimono she had brought back from a trip to Eastern Russia, she heard him playing the flute. It was the song they had been practising, but he was adding embroideries of his own; it sounded like Mozart now.

  Perhaps it was the moment before the opening of Pandora’s box, when the mind was made up but all the consequences of action had not yet begun to tumble and flow. She opened the door and went back into the big room.

  ‘You look like a flower,’ said Michael, putting the flute down on the bed. ‘You look flower-like.’

  ‘What sort of flower?’

  ‘A bunch of flowers,’ he said, and they smiled at each other and he held out his hand.

  2

  MAISIE walked along the sea front at Brighton and rejoiced in the glistening winter waves. She had left Michael that morning sleepily drinking the coffee she had brought him.

  The square she was looking for now was just off the front. She found it, elegant, empty in the cold air, only a large dog nosing around.

  She rang the bell labelled Denisov, and waited for a long time. Eventually the door was opened by a frail old lady who showed Maisie upstairs and into a rather splendid room. She was left to wait and look round at the high ceiling with its chandelier, rose-wood book-cases inlaid with ivory cherubs, richly coloured Persian carpet, an ikon of Our Lady of Vladimir gleaming darkly in the corner, for what stretched into nearly half an hour.

  Maisie thought about how she had kissed the corner of Michael’s mouth where a little saliva had dried in his sleep. How she had put a key into his hand and said, ‘Don’t lose it.’

  Now the old woman was bringing tea in a samovar, and a little plate of lemon slices.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maisie. She sipped her tea. Three different clocks ticked. A seagull screeched against the window. She did not mind the wait. She sat on the high-backed upright chair, the taste of lemon on her lips, and thought about Michael Curran.

  She closed her eyes. She saw Michael at Paddington Station watching the band, his look of light-hearted intensity; the way he had stood there, forgetful of having met her, listening. She could never forget him like that, he was with her everywhere. He was part of her as she was not part of him, she thought. Though she was not sure.

  ‘It is very good of you to come.’ The old man who came in looked cobwebbed with age. ‘Dr Shergold, thank you for answering my letters. Thank you for coming to see me.’ He took her by the shoulders, with slightly trembling hands, and kissed her cheeks; it felt like moth’s wings touching her.

  ‘I was so interested in what you had to say,’ said Maisie. The old man spoke in careful English with a faint, perhaps French accent. Certainly his English sounded unlike that of Russians she knew. His voice was breathless and muffled as if someone was trying to smother him with a cushion. And what on earth was he talking about?

  ‘During the frightful turmoil of the Revolution,’ he went on, ‘it was thought the ikon was looted, lost track of forever. But it has been in safe keeping all the time.’ He paused, to allow this to sink in and to get his breath. He sat down and poured himself some tea, but did not drink it. ‘When it is restored to its rightful place a Tsar will occupy once more the throne of Russia – God’s representative on earth.’

  ‘How interesting,’ Maisie said again. She sipped the dregs of her cold tea to fill the gap of silence which followed this speech. Last night her love had raged like a fever, like a sickness. She had even whispered, ‘I love you Michael,’ as he had unlocked her. After all the long dry time, love had engulfed her, overwhelmed her. Like a predator, she had thought sadly, I will eat him up. Yet she had covered these feelings. Do not cling, do not grasp, do not want. She wanted this man. She had covered her feelings. Cover them, cover them, she had told herself.

  ‘Yes,’ the old man was saying, ‘we have been working towards this end all our lives.’ He trembled a little, as if the effort of that life’s long work had at last suddenly caught up with him. He seemed to go into a sort of trance.

  ‘It is very good of you to come,’ he said at last. ‘Good of you to make the journey.’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ said Maisie. ‘I am actually glad of a chance to come to Brighton. My mother lives here.’

  ‘Your mother. That is very pleasant,’ he said, ‘she will like to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Seagulls screamed faintly across another silence.

  ‘You would wish to see the ikon?’ Denisov spoke more strongly.

  ‘I would need to do so. Yes.’ Maisie smiled.

  ‘I believe you are an expert in such things?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The old man got up and went over to the window. Maisie had to strain to catch his words.

  ‘The holy ikon is at this moment in the vaults of the Westmi
nster Bank here in Brighton. Not a suitable place for it, but until it finds a Russian shrine, it must stay there safely. I will arrange for you to examine it.’

  Maisie told Denisov she would call again, she would telephone first for an appointment, and hoped to see the ikon.

  ‘That would be very kind,’ he said. ‘Yes, I will have the ikon here for you to see. I look forward to seeing it again myself, touching it.’ His voice became more and more muffled, as if someone was slowly stopping his mouth with snow. ‘We wish to know everything about it that is possible to find from any source,’ he urged faintly. ‘Its origins, its travels, we need an expert, Dr Shergold.’ His voice was a whisper. He was obviously very tired, his bluish lips could hardly move now, as if frozen. Maisie stood up.

  What made her kiss him she did not know. Perhaps because his days were so obviously numbered. He received her kiss naturally, without surprise, and rang the bell for the old woman to see his guest downstairs and out into the now entirely empty square.

  Maisie was glad to be out in the fresh cold air. As she walked along the sea front, the sea, against a darkening sky, looked deeper, more mysterious, and the realisation began to flood Maisie that she would not be going back to London that night. It was as if something outside herself had decided this.

  Her mother lived in a road only ten minutes’ walk away. At that moment, though, no one knew where she, Maisie Shergold, was. Not her mother, who had no idea she was coming. Not Michael, who would expect her by now to be on the train home. Not Rose, whose thoughts, anyway, would be on preparations for one of her so-called soirées.

  Then she suddenly wanted so much to catch the next train back to London. What was stopping her, like a hand on her shoulder? It wasn’t only because she wanted to see her mother that she had decided to stay overnight in Brighton. Was she testing Michael in some way? Testing herself, perhaps? Her ability not to be with him. To function alone. She did not want to examine what she was doing too closely. Her motives or her courage might fail. She entrusted herself to the hand she felt on her shoulder.

  She ran up the steps of the large double-fronted four-storey house, where a Christmas tree glittered from one of the upper-floor windows, and rang the bell labelled in neat black lettering, E. Sharpe.

  Evelyn Sharpe opened the door and clutched her head in a characteristic gesture. ‘Come in,’ she said.

  ‘Would you put me up for the night, Ma?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Sharpe, laughing. Maisie laughed too.

  Mrs Sharpe lived in the ground floor flat, and her sitting-room window overlooked the little garden, at this time of year colourless except for a flourishing red-berried shrub, which leaped like quick-fire about the little garden over dead leaves and stones. The bright berries were now being slowly drained of colour by night’s fall.

  ‘I was just thinking about starting dinner. Now I can cook for two. Lovely. Come into the kitchen and tell me everything, all the news, you never write. I wish you’d write, people always used to write letters. Now they never do. Why are you in Brighton? Apart, that is, from coming to see your mother.’ She gave Maisie an apron. ‘Omelette and salad. Raspberries from the freezer and cream. All right?’

  ‘Anyway, you never write to me.’ Maisie sliced the cucumber thinly.

  When it was ready they carried everything through to the living-room at one end of which there was a dining area with a highly polished table. Mrs Sharpe drew the heavy tasselled maroon curtains, threw a white cloth over the table and lit the gas fire.

  ‘This big room is so hard to heat,’ she said, ‘I live in this quilted jacket.’ It was one Maisie had brought back from one of her journeys abroad.

  ‘You look nice in it,’ said Maisie, looking at her mother and thinking really she was looking much older, smaller and thinner, and the bones were beginning to show, especially at wrist and jaw. ‘That shade of pink suits you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it’s funny, as one gets older it seems that baby colours suit one again. I used always to wear black. Couldn’t wear it now, I’d look like a death’s head.’

  Maisie smiled. ‘You’re pretty good for seventy-odd, Ma, don’t complain.’

  They sat down to eat. ‘How’s Rose?’ asked her mother. ‘She rang me last week. Says her business is doing well. Any boyfriends in view?’

  ‘She’s seeing someone – scarcely a boy – one Bernard Glantz. A doctor – psychiatrist, that is. Haven’t actually met him. He’ll be at her soirée thing, no doubt – she’ll be busy getting ready for it now – only time she ever clears up. He’s somewhat older – Glantz.’

  ‘She’d better be careful. I expect it’s just a silly phase. All girls go through it. Always falling in love. I did. You did. It’s nice to have done with all that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maisie. ‘It’s nice to have it all over.’

  ‘How’s Leo?’ Mrs Sharpe had always had a soft spot for Maisie’s ex-husband. ‘Fine. He’s going to be a father again.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ Mrs Sharpe put down her fork. ‘Oh, my dear. You must be so upset.’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. Really.’

  Mrs Sharpe looked at her curiously and Maisie said, helping herself to raspberries, ‘You’ve always had a weakness for Leo. I think you’re in love with him yourself – never mind being over all that.’

  ‘Yes, I am a bit,’ admitted Mrs Sharpe. ‘He’s so easy to get on with. So sociable and knowledgeable about things that interest me; like history, for example, or politics; as well as the antique business, of course. He’s interesting. And he never puts one into an age group. With Leo you are just yourself – whether you are a child or an old lady.’

  ‘Bit of a saint, really.’

  ‘You can be sarcastic. I think it’s rather a good thing to be sociable and knowledgeable and all of those things.’

  ‘He was a bit too sociable, Ma.’

  ‘You didn’t fight for him, Maisie, too proud for this wicked world.’

  ‘It wasn’t pride. It was fear, really. I couldn’t go into battle like that, like you would have done. I just had to watch from a hill nearby as it were, and see how things turned out.’

  ‘I always thought he’d come back.’

  ‘I didn’t, once he’d gone. I don’t want him back, Ma. Irene can have him now. He is Irene’s husband.’

  Mrs Sharpe looked at her, her old eyes only slightly yellow in the whites, the iris tawny-coloured.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ she observed.

  ‘I must telephone.’

  ‘Of course – help yourself.’ And Mrs Sharpe began clearing the table, taking a tray of things to the kitchen.

  ‘Leave that, Ma,’ Maisie said as she dialled. Mrs Sharpe took no notice. But the phone rang and rang. Michael had probably gone over to the Fiddler’s for a beer and a chat with his friends in the band, he would be back soon, expecting her on the evening train.

  Mrs Sharpe came back into the room, putting on her coat. ‘I’ve got to go out, dear, I hope you don’t mind. It’s my bridge night.’

  ‘Oh, Ma! I picked a silly night to come, didn’t I? I’d forgotten about your bridge night.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you later on and you’ll be here for breakfast. I can’t not go.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Maisie. ‘I might go to bed quite soon, I’m really tired.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You’re always here, there and everywhere. There we are,’ she said, hearing a car door slam.

  When her mother had gone Maisie dialled her flat number again. There was still no answer. She went through to the kitchen and made some coffee, feeling disorientated at being alone in her mother’s flat. It made her think too much about what it might be like to be her mother – over seventy years old and living alone in a draughty flat.

  She took her coffee into the living-room. Even with central heating and a gas fire the room was chilly. She looked inside the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece, to see who had sent them. One from Rose, a
minimalist type of card, typical of Rose, thought Maisie. A rich, festive one from Leo, threaded with a nice bright red ribbon. Hers was a representation of Our Lady of Walsingham, and one from someone called Imre, an un-Christmassy Bonnard, full of Mediterranean light.

  Who was Imre?

  She’d go to bed soon, she thought, and began looking on the bookshelf for something to read in bed, Evelyn Waugh – practically everything he’d written. Raymond Chandler, another of her mother’s favourites. An old copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass that Maisie had grown up with. She picked out the Waugh Diaries and, as an afterthought, the Alice. She turned off the gas fire and went into the spare room and made herself up a bed with sheets from the airing cupboard.

  Then she telephoned again. She let the phone ring for five minutes. She was beginning to feel a sense of restless uneasiness. Why hadn’t she gone back today? What a fool she was! What was all that about testing herself, or was it testing him? What a fool she’d been! She couldn’t get a train now, could she?

  Throwing the books on the bed, Maisie went back to the phone and rang the station. There was another train. She could leave a note for her mother.

  Then she felt the same hand on her shoulder she had felt walking by the sea.

  She would have a bath. Go to bed. Let things take their course. Perhaps everything was predestined from the start. With love affairs, she thought, that was probably true. All that was to happen was laid down from the beginning of time. And if she interfered with the fates, looked over her shoulder, turned back, she would lose him. Like Orpheus and Eurydice. She put the phone down.

  In the bathroom she turned the taps full on and watched the jets of water quickly fill the bath.

  After her bath, she wrapped herself in her mother’s thick blue towelling dressing-gown and went to telephone again. When there was no answer she started to dial Rose’s number and changed her mind. She really was very tired. Things must take their course.

  In bed, she opened the old copy of Alice and read favourite bits of it. Then she closed the book and went to sleep.

  She dreamed about the Tsar. In her dream he was called the Red Tsar. And her mother was the White Queen.