I took a yellow cab from the airport to downtown, specifically to the Hyatt Hotel, where I knew the orchestra was staying, and sank into a deep leather armchair in the lobby that faced the entrance. I sat and waited for Caroline to return, and promptly went straight back to sleep.
She woke me by stroking my head and running her hands through my hair.
“Hello, my sleeping beauty,” she said.
“You’re the beautiful one,” I said, slowly opening my eyes.
“I see you’re keeping a good lookout for potential murderers,” she said.
“Don’t even joke about it,” I said. But she was right. Going to sleep in plain view of the hotel entrance and the street beyond was not the most clever thing I had done in the last twenty-four hours if I wanted to stay alive.
“Where are the rest of the orchestra?” I asked.
“Some are upstairs. Others-boring, boring-are still hanging around at the concert hall. And a few have gone shopping.”
I looked at my new watch. It read eleven-thirty. Six-hour time difference, so it was five-thirty in the afternoon. “What time is the performance?” I asked.
“Seven-thirty,” she said. “But I have to be back, changed and ready by six forty-five, and the hall is a five-minute taxi ride away.”
We had an hour and ten minutes. Was she thinking what I was thinking?
“Let’s go to bed for an hour,” she said.
Obviously, she was.
I MANAGED to stay awake for the whole concert. I remembered my father having seriously advised me, when I was aged about eight or nine, that you never, ever clap at a concert unless others did so first. He didn’t tell me, but there must have been an embarrassing moment in his life when he had burst into applause, isolated and alone, during the silent pause between orchestral movements. I sat on my hands to prevent a repeat.
Caroline had worked a miracle to find me a seat. A single house seat in the center of the eighth row. It was an excellent position, ruined only by the fact that the conductor, a big man with annoyingly broad shoulders, stood between me and Caroline, and I couldn’t see her.
Even though I wouldn’t have admitted so to Caroline, I wouldn’t have known which piece was by whom without the program telling me that it was all Elgar before the intermission and Sibelius after. But I did recognize some of it, especially “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations. Listening to it reminded me so much of my father’s funeral. My mother had chosen “Nimrod” to be played at the conclusion of the service, as my father, in his simple oak coffin, had been solemnly carried out of East Hendred Church to the graveyard for burial, an image that was so sharp and vivid in my memory that it could have happened yesterday. Caroline had told me how powerful music could be, and, now, I felt its force.
For the first time, I cried for my dead father. I sat in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall surrounded by more than two thousand others and wept in my personal, private grief for a man who had been dead for thirteen years, a condition unexpectedly brought on in me by the music of a man who had been dead for more than seventy. I cried for my own loss, and my mother’s loss too, and I cried because I so longed to tell him about my Caroline and my happiness. What would we give to spend just one hour more with our much-loved and departed parents?
By the time the intermission came, I felt completely drained. I was sure that those alongside me had no idea of what had taken place right next to them. And that was as it should be, I thought. Grief is a solitary experience, and the presence of others can lead to discomfiture and embarrassment for all parties.
Caroline had told me that she wouldn’t be able to get out to see me during the intermission, as the directors frowned upon such behavior and she wasn’t in the mood for crossing them at the moment, not after missing the original flight. It was probably a good thing, I thought. Even though we had met only last week, Caroline knew me all too well already, and I didn’t yet feel comfortable with every one of my innermost thoughts and emotions being open to her scrutiny. So I remained in my seat and decided against buying a cardboard cup of ice cream to eat with a miniature plastic shovel, as everyone around me seemed to be doing.
The second half of the concert was the Sibelius symphony, and I didn’t find it so dark and gloomy as Caroline had warned me to expect. In fact, I loved it. Somehow, as I sat there absorbing the music, I felt released from the past and fully alive for the future. I had no house, no car and precious few belongings to worry about. I was about to embark on two new and exciting journeys, one with a new London restaurant and the other with a new companion whom I adored. And someone was trying to kill me, either for what I knew or for what I had said, neither of which seemed that important to me. I had run away to America and was now enjoying the heady excitement of having left my troubles behind. The troubles in question may not have been resolved, but they were out of sight and, for an hour or so, out of mind too.
The audience stood and cheered. They even whooped with delight and put fingers in their mouths and whistled. Anything, it seemed, to make a noise. There was no decorum or restraint here. Unlike we British, who sit and politely applaud, the Americans’ way of expressing their approval is to holler and shout and dance on their feet.
The orchestra smiled and the conductor bowed, repeatedly. The ovation lasted for at least five minutes, with the conductor leaving the stage and reappearing six or seven times. Some in the audience even bellowed for more, for an encore, as if this were a pop concert. Eventually, the conductor shook the hand of the orchestra leader, and they left the stage together, putting an end to the acclaim and allowing the players to retire gracefully for the night.
I met Caroline outside the stage door, and she was as high as a kite.
“Did you hear them?” she said breathlessly. “Did you hear the noise?”
“Hear it?” I said, laughing. “I was making it.”
She threw her arms around my neck. “I love you,” she said.
“You’re just saying that,” I said, mocking her slightly.
“I’ve never said that to anyone in my life before,” she said rather seriously. “And yet it seems so simple and obvious to say it to you.”
I kissed her. I loved her too.
“It made such a difference,” she said, “to have you in the audience. But I spent the whole concert trying to find you in the sea of faces.”
“I was behind the conductor,” I said. “I couldn’t see you either.”
“I thought you must have gone back to the hotel.”
“Never,” I said. “I really enjoyed it.”
“Now, you’re just saying that,” she said, mocking me a little too.
“I’m not,” I said. “I loved it, and…I love you.”
“Oh goodie,” she squealed, and hugged me. I hugged her back.
I STAYED the night in Caroline’s room without telling the hotel or giving them my name. Even though it was very unlikely that anyone would have traced me, I took no chances and propped the chair from the desk under the door handle when we went to bed.
No one tried to get in, at least I didn’t hear anyone trying. But, then again, by the time we finally went to sleep at midnight I was so tired that I don’t think I would have heard if someone had tried blasting their way through the wall with a hand grenade.
In the morning, we lay in bed and watched breakfast television, which wasn’t very good and full of far too many commercial breaks for my liking.
“What do you have to do today?” I asked Caroline while running my finger down her spine.
“Nothing until four o’clock,” she said. “We will have a run-through of a couple of movements. Then tonight’s performance is at seven-thirty, like last night.”
“Can I come again?” I asked.
“Oh, I hope so.” She giggled.