Dying Fall (10 page)

‘Is this what you call undercover work?' I asked when we met by the box office. My glance appreciated another well-cut suit, with more blue in the fabric, this time.

He glared.

It was not because I was wearing jeans. I too can dress up, even if not quite to the standard of the other concert-goers who'd decided to celebrate the removal of the MSO to its permanent new home with a fashion parade of shoulder pads and glitz that made me feel dowdy. Nor was it because I was late. He'd been at fault there, hurtling in just as a disembodied voice was making a final call. I'd passed the time getting outside an extravagant ice cream purchased at disproportionate expense from a man with a cute little machine, more fitted, with its wheels and parasol, to the front at Brighton than to the central plaza of a major concert hall.

He waited till we were moving towards the auditorium before he put his ear surprisingly close to mine, and muttered, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Undercover work.' He grinned, irresponsibly. ‘I just wanted to get the feel of the place, as it were.'

Oh, God, perhaps he had misinterpreted the bedroom business last night. And I'd been chatty with relief that I had at last found something to challenge the verdict on George's death: perhaps he'd thought I was flirting. I'd have to watch out.

Mayou had taken over Peter Rollinson's programmes with hardly any changes. But tonight we'd started with a brisk performance of the overture to
Ruslan and Ludmilla
, which he'd chosen in preference to Webern's
Five Pieces
for orchestra. Purists had tutted – but I thought it fitted better with the piano concerto, which happened to be Rachmaninov's Second. It was an extremely lush account.

‘My God,' said Chris, as soon as the applause had died down and we were fighting our way to the bar, ‘what was Mayou doing to his body? I thought he was going to have an orgasm right there on stage.'

I laughed, of course; but I felt vaguely uneasy.

No one seemed to be lingering over their drinks, not just because there were no seats in the bar but because there was so much to see and explore. In the summer there would be even more. The Centre had been built alongside a canal basin which was in the process of being tarted up, and there were rumours that there would be waterside terraces and even floating restaurants. Meanwhile, a great deal of tidying-up had been done since Monday, even, and the corridors along which we drifted had been laid with immensely thick carpets.

Suddenly Chris grabbed my forearm and squeezed it lightly. But when I glanced at his face he was failing to suppress a grin. ‘How many meanings can you work out for that?' he asked, pointing to a label on a door.

COMPLEX MANAGER
, it said.

‘I wonder if they've relabelled that door yet,' I said.

‘Which door?'

‘The one we nearly lost a soprano through.'

‘What?' Then he remembered we were supposed to be music-loving yuppies, and he lowered his voice. ‘What are you on about?'

‘The doors that opened on to nothing. That near-miss we had on Saturday.'

I explained about Mo's incident.

‘Show me.'

The speed with which we retraced our steps and hammered up the nearest staircase was far from fashionable. At first I stared hopelessly around me.

‘There it is!' I pointed. ‘The one that says “Strictly No Admittance – Acoustic Equipment”. It said “Ladies Cloakroom”. And there was no apostrophe.'

‘You're joking!'

‘I'm not. I meant to write and complain –'

‘About the signs being confused.'

‘Look.'

We peered at a ghostly rectangle: the dust had settled on the adhesive left by the first nameplate. The new one was a different shape.

‘Go and see that loo's what it claims to be.'

I obeyed. It was. I came back to find Chris opening the
EQUIPMENT
door. He shoved a bunch of keys quickly back into his pocket. Through vertical slabs of wood we could see an ornamental balcony like all the others round the auditorium. He closed the door and locked it, tapping the side of his nose with his index finger. I saluted in acknowledgement, and, as we made our way back for the second half, gave him a detailed account of the previous Saturday's events.

‘What I can't understand is why no one reported it,' he said, as if we hadn't paused in our conversation for the forty minutes or so it took for Stobbard Mayou to get through Sibelius' Second Symphony.

George had loved Sibelius. He used to take especial pride in making reeds to produce a particularly dark, elemental timbre to match the musical landscape. None of the bassoon-clown-of-the-orchestra syndrome for him.

Jools was acting principal bassoon tonight. I suppose the most damning thing I could say was that she'd done her best. And I could see from the expression on the face of the
Birmingham Post
music critic that it was simply not good enough. Her reed hadn't got that dark sound, but that wasn't the only problem. She couldn't deliver the nuances of tone and pace that Mayou was trying for. And there were several dominoes. She'd have to practise longer and harder if she wanted to sit up on a regular basis. That would mean limiting her work on the weights.

Why had she got away with it so long? Everyone else practised: muscles have to be kept fit as athletes'. And Jools had never pushed herself hard. She ought by rights to have been eased out years ago. Why had Tony never grasped the nettle? He'd shifted other players around, got rid of some altogether. He was getting quite offensively pleased with his reputation for being a hard manager.

But he'd let Jools get away with murder.

Her hair, for one thing. No, it was all right this season, although it looked as if it might have been cut with a knife and fork. But last year she'd had it shaved round the sides and back, leaving a Mohican tuft down the middle. Then she'd dyed it orange. Then it went black, with a treble clef sculpted into the shaven area at the back. I rather liked that look. With jeans and Docs, anyway. Perhaps it was less successful with the long black dress that forms a woman musician's uniform.

These days, of course, the long black itself was a disaster. Aberlene had adopted a heavy silk trouser suit, with a neat little mess jacket instead of tails. Jools could never aspire to such chic, but at least she'd look less like an unsuccessful drag artist.

Mayou was calling all the principals to their feet, one by one. Rollinson had been known to ignore one who'd performed badly, but here was Mayou smiling at her as if she'd played perfectly. What was it George had said about them? George rarely gossiped about orchestral liaisons. But I wondered – no: I refused to buy that theory.

‘I said, who did Tony Rossiter say he'd reported the door incident to?'

I jumped. ‘Everyone. Why not ask him yourself? He'll be backstage, being nice to Stobbard Mayou.'

‘Maybe it can wait till tomorrow,' he said.

The architects had decided that the musicians were to be not merely performers but performing animals: the Band Room might have been soundproofed but, like the penguin pool at Dudley Zoo, it was glass-walled. Anyone interested could watch them eating and drinking, playing cards, doing OU assignments or – in the case of the heavy brass – reading girlie magazines. If they wanted to quarrel or weep they no doubt had to book a practice room in those gloss-painted backstage corridors horribly like those at William Murdock. Haydn or Mozart would have recognised the distinction immediately – the front-of-house luxury and the spartan performers' territory. There was an insidious rumour that the management of the Music Centre were trying to insist that no performer should be allowed anywhere except backstage, and that the MSO felt that Tony wasn't backing them strongly enough in their opposition.

We were about to turn into the underground passage leading to the car parks when we heard running feet, and someone calling. Tony Rossiter.

I stopped, and smiled to Chris. ‘You can ask him now after all.'

Chris did not show much delight. He showed still less when Tony kissed me, as he sometimes does in public.

Tony was off for a drink with Mayou. They'd both be delighted if we would join them. Caste, of course, must be maintained, so the Duke of Clarence was out of the question. We must go to the Mondiale, the hotel where Mayou had a suite, a hotel I'd never done more than cycle past.

But how? The hotel, one of a clutch of new ones on Broad Street, is all of three hundred yards from the Music Centre, very near the Five Ways island. One of the men would take us in a car. Which man? Which car? Poor Tony and Chris were falling over each other in their efforts not to insist.

Mayou was looking as if he regretted the whole affair. My feet were getting bored too. I'd persuaded them into my only pair of high heels in honour of the evening. I don't wear ugly flatties all the time, don't think that. Very stylish flatties, à la Princess Di. A fall from my bike long ago left me with a tiny weakness in my back. Walking, running, training – it copes with all of these. But heels above an inch high and it soon screams. Mayou caught my eye. He made a minute gesture with the first two fingers of his left hand, his right being occupied by the controversial handbag. He repeated it. His fingers were walking. He smiled: we were to walk too. That was how we reached the Mondiale. The champagne was already on ice when the others arrived.

Mayou fell silent almost immediately. Completely silent. I got no help from Tony or Chris, who were busy condoling with each other on the fortunes of West Bromwich Albion. I'd have been happy to join in – I'd cheered them from the terraces in my younger and their more successful days – but could scarcely talk across the silent host.

Abruptly Mayou excused himself.

I sat staring at the champagne bucket, feeling thirsty and angry in unequal measures.

He returned quite swiftly, charmingly apologetic, and signalled for the champagne to be served. His first glass made him sneeze repeatedly.

‘That goddamn dust,' he said, mopping his eyes. ‘Half the time I can't see, my eyes water so much, I'm sneezing like I had hay fever, and now my physician's talking about my getting asthma, for Christ's sake. Asthma! Isn't that what old men get?'

Quietly I produced my Ventolin. ‘Not just old men.'

During the subsequent discussion of symptoms and treatments he becamed elated, as if he were really interested in how I dealt with the problem. Say, why didn't we jog together? Could I really teach him to ride a goddamn bicycle? As for leaving Birmingham for somewhere less allergenic, he had a job here. He was a professional. ‘Goddamn it, Sophie, I bet you don't stay off school just because you've got hay fever. I just wish I could do justice to this marvellous group of musicians here. I feel like I'm letting them down when I'm like this.'

‘Well?' asked Chris, fastening his seat belt.

‘Well what?'

‘Well, what did you get out of him?'

‘Get out of him? I wasn't aware I was supposed to be getting anything out of him. He was telling me all about his studies in Finland and the outsize mosquitoes they grow there.' I didn't want to discuss Stobbard with anyone.

‘Great. That'll be a terrific help.'

‘And what did you get from Tony, apart form an intimate review of his new car? All that black leather. A real seductionmobile, isn't it?'

We did not speak again until we reached my front door. Chris was busy demonstrating that he'd passed the police driving course with all available honours. I was trying not to pee secondhand champagne. He braked sharply, but pulled on the handbrake as slowly as if he were trying to reach a decision while he did it.

‘That friend of yours is hiding something,' he said at last.

‘Tony? Never!'

‘Bloody cagey.'

‘His mother was an oyster, his father a clam. And being a manager's made him worse.'

‘Shouldn't stop him reporting incidents like that.'

‘'Course it shouldn't. Look, I must go in. I'm desperate for a loo.'

‘OK. I'll phone you.'

He let me get out and only then got out himself. He followed me slowly.

There was a dull thud. His hand shot out, as if to pull me back. Then he pointed. Aggie's bin. A fox had knocked it over and was worrying the lid.

We started to laugh.

He touched my arm. ‘Good night, then, Sophie. You will be careful, won't you?'

I couldn't understand why he sounded so earnest. ‘Don't worry. I can take care of myself.'

But he was still watching and waiting when I shut my front door.

Friday is the day of my favourite class, that Access group, but today I had the business of Manjit to attend to before I could start teaching. She presented herself outside the staff room at nine sharp, wan, a bruise on her face where the red mark had been. She was far from apologetic, however. True, she presented me with a note, torn off her lined A4 notepad, apologising for using bad language, but when I tried to ask her about the circumstances she repeated that it was none of my business and I ought to back off.

I unlocked a classroom and gestured her inside.

‘Sit down and listen,' I said.

She did as she was told. But every line of her body expressed resentment and something else – fear? I returned to the door and locked it, so we wouldn't be interrupted.

‘Manjit, I'm trying to help you. You were very upset last Friday, upset enough to interrupt my class, and I know you're too responsible to do that without good reason. I haven't told a single soul about our conversation. OK?'

She nodded. Her face was still sullen but she glanced up briefly.

‘There's something wrong. We both know that. When you said it was none of my business you weren't quite right. Anything that makes a student as unhappy as you were – and still seem to be – is the business of people who care about her. And I care about you. Right?'