“Come on then, let’s go. The wind is wonderful outside.”
He pushes the door open, into the wind, gives me his arm. I close my eyes and smell the river, autumn, the future. He holds his sketches under his coat to protect them from the rain. And we walk like this to Vauxhall, into the approaching evening, as the lamps are lit inside the houses, as a Robin hides himself within the greenness that will be here a little longer still.
His face is with me the whole weekend, and the lilt of his voice—I can’t hear its precise tone any more; I only know how he spoke the words, drawing them out just a bit. When I’m bringing a stack of bird books back to the library, I twice think I see him. My surroundings turn into a screen onto which he’s projected. Thomas. Thea whistled when I told her about him. She said it was high time I lost control of myself a little.
On Monday, when the rehearsal is over, I’m the first to pack my violin, the first at the door. He isn’t there. I wait. Pigeons are keeping an eye on the street from the roof across the road. When the last of the wind section comes out, I pretend I’ve forgotten something. I walk back through the stream of chitchat. There are still people in the room. I go to the lavatory, lock the door, wait, then slowly walk outside again, stopping to chat with Stockdale at the front door. He was satisfied today and thinks that the premiere on Friday will go splendidly. Thomas isn’t there, I can’t go inside again, so I walk home and try to remember if he was ever there before on a Monday.
On Tuesday we rehearse later. I look out for him before going in, and again during the break, then take my time packing up. I talk to Billie, help Stockdale think about a change of tempo, listen to the new cellist who is explaining something to Joan about vibrato—he’s all aglow, this skinny, lopsided man who suddenly has two women hanging on his words. I can still see Thomas’s face before me, wish for him to be waiting outside; he knows when I’ll finish. “Ladies, gentleman, this is all very interesting about the cello, but now we must stop.” Stockdale raises his hands to thrust us out of the room. “Off you go.” I daren’t look, keep my eyes fixed on the door, can’t spot anyone in front of the building. I linger near the doorway.
Behind us two Sparrows fly into a hedge. Their wings are so swift that I can’t see them move. “Look,” I say, pointing at the hedge.
Billie gives me a questioning look. “Coming for a drink?”
“Sorry. Prior engagement.”
They vanish into the street, their voices dying away, drowned out by horses, wheels, wagons, other people. So many others.
I wait till the clock strikes five, hopeful as a puppy dog, and then walk home. All the time I’m walking, I expect him to come up behind me. I listen for him without glancing back. I’d hear his voice above the wind, the wind would help me.
Wednesday, Thursday. My body has never felt so untouched before.
On Friday we have the final rehearsal. The sky is clear, the sun makes the leaves on the ground look an even deeper yellow. Ochre. I feel calmer, no longer so full of him. The rehearsal goes well. We have to be at the concert hall by seven o’clock; Stockdale suggests we should go out together for a bite to eat. I leave the building with Priscilla, and then, after all, there he is. “Hang on.”
I run to the other side of the street.
“Hallo, Gwen. I’ve got something for you. And it’s nice walking weather. Shall we go to the park?”
I gesture towards the other members of the orchestra. “We’re off to eat somewhere. It’s the premiere tonight.”
He takes a small packet from his satchel, presses it into my hands. “Where will the performance be?”
I tell him the address. “And now I really have to go. What’s in it?”
“A surprise.” He touches my shoulder, turns round and walks away.
“He’ll come to the performance tonight,” I announce to Joan, because I have to tell someone.
“Wonderful,” she says. “Let’s hope it all goes well.” Joan often throws up before a performance—her passion for the violin barely outweighs her fear.
I can’t spot him in the auditorium, but I play as if he’s there. The piece we’re performing is like a landscape: at first there’s grass (and each blade of grass is alive), then water—a river that turns brackish and then joins the sea; there is water all the time, in fact, sometimes calm, sometimes swirling—then a line, a horizon or a coast, a still frame around all the movement, a fence in front of a transition that is both unexpected and expected; the landscape changes, becomes hilly, steep cliffs, rocks, depths, firm ground in the distance, mountains in the distance, and from the mountains you can see everything, or nearly everything, and you think you can see everything that exists, the whole world, and when you come down again it’s clear that it’s all endlessly intricate and detailed and complex, far more than you thought, and that what is in the smallest things is also in the largest: you’re here now, you’ve been everywhere and you’ve never left your spot.
Playing is like flying: the altitude, speed, lightness, the confidence that the magic will endure, that the magic can be trusted, for as long as it lasts. Playing, the word says it all. We play. And through our playing we enable those on the ground to see something, those gazing awestruck through their telescopes, those who can never view the world from above, except on the rare occasions they’re carried by someone else.
At the end of the performance Stockdale thanks me, his face warm, the muscles relaxed—he’s handsome when he’s like that, and I can see why they all fall for him. “Finally, it went as it should. I was afraid we were going to founder.” His shirt is damp beneath his evening suit. It sticks to his skin.
“You shouldn’t be so nervy.” I put my violin in its case.
He shakes his head. “If nothing is at stake, then nothing happens. I have to make you feel what it’s all about.”
“If you tighten a string too much, it will snap.”
“But strings can take a lot of tightening. Are you coming with us?” His breath is warm against my cheek.
I say no, thanks. I long for a place with no voices.
The moon is full, the second time this month, so it’s a blue moon. I tuck the violin case firmly under my arm and walk through streets that seem emptier than usual, walking slowly because I feel at home within this walking, within what passes by.
I find the little packet again only the next morning. It’s a drawing, on brown paper, of a Great Tit. The little creature is looking at me just as Thomas does. I hang it above my music stand, next to the window.
“This is my home.” Thomas swings open the red door of the houseboat, bends down and enters ahead of me. “Like a cup of tea?”
At the front of the cabin there is a small kitchen. There’s a large painting on the worktop—red sun, water, reflections, colours. “How lovely!”
“Oh, that. It isn’t finished yet. The colours are fine but the composition’s awful.” He searches in the little cupboards, then turns around, as if he has suddenly thought of something, and takes my hand. The boat is lifted up by a wave. “I’m so pleased you’re here.”
In the weeks that follow I get to know the river through the movements of the boat. I become familiar with the Swans who live a little further on with their four large children and who regularly glide past the round porthole above the bed, the bed below the waterline. I become familiar with the light that makes the water glitter and with the mist that makes the waves fade into the distance. The water that makes the sheets damp in the morning, makes the wooden planks warp. And I become acquainted with the Great Tits who nest on the ledge above the door, with the soft sloshing of the water, signals from a muted world.