“How did it go, my lovely?”
“Like an evening with the Marx Brothers. I’ve never known so many things go wrong. Fortunately Tim arrived in the break with his razor, which cheered Harold up. Until then he’d been grousing all night. Molto disastro, my darlings!”
“What’s the razor for, anyway?”
“You wait and see. If I tell you now, it’ll spoil the first night.”
“Nothing could be spoiled for me that has you in it.” He took her hand. “What’s that big bag for?”
“Wardrobe. Trousers to be let out. Broken zips. Some braid to replace.”
“You do too much.”
“Oh, Tom”—she nudged his feet off a low stool and sat on it herself, holding her other cold hand out to the fire—“don’t say that. You know how I love it.”
He did know. Earlier he had been listening to a tape she had made of the arias sung by Katherina Cavalieri. Joyce had a beautiful voice, a rich, soaring soprano. A little blurred now in the higher register, but still thickly laced with plangent sweetness. The aria “Marten Aller Arten” had moved him to tears.
His wife had been a student at the Guildhall School of Music when they had met and fallen in love. He had been a constable on the beat. When he had first heard her sing at a public performance in her final year, he sat there listening to the marvelous sounds, stunned and afraid. For a long while after that he had been unable to believe that she could really love the ordinary man he knew himself to be. Or that she would ever be safely his.
But they had married, and for four years she had continued to sing, at first giving small, ill-attended recitals, then joining the chorus at the Royal National Opera House. Barnaby, learning fast, had reached the rank of detective sergeant when Cully was bom. Alternately bogged down in the office by administrative work or exhilaratingly abroad hunting an elusive prey, he worked long hours and used his time at home to eat and sleep. And as the months went by, to play with his increasingly delightful baby daughter. The fact that Joyce’s career had virtually come to a halt almost (as he admitted with shame much later) escaped his notice.
Progress in the force had been slow—he had remained a sergeant for many years—and money tight, so when Cully was three, Joyce had got a job understudying in Godspell.
But her husband was frequently on night duty, which meant engaging babysitters, and one or two unsettling experiences left her so full of guilt and anxiety that when she did get to the theater, she was quite unable to concentrate. So, pro tem, she joined the Causton Light Operatic Society to keep her voice supple; then, when that folded, the CADS. Not what she’d been used to, of course, but better than nothing. And she and Tom agreed it was only until Cully was old enough to be left by herself.
But when that time came, Joyce found that the musical world had moved on and was full of bright, gifted, tough, and pushy young singers. And the years of more or less contented domesticity had blunted the knife edge of her ambition. She found she didn’t want to drag herself up to London and stand in a vast dim theater and sing to a faceless trio somewhere out there in the dark. Especially with a crowd of twenty-year-olds watching from the wings sharp as tacks with determination and buoyant with energy and hope. And so, gradually and without any fuss or visible signs of dismay, Joyce relinquished her plans for a musical career.
But her husband never saw her playing with such perceptive truthfulness the modest parts that were her lot, or heard her lovely voice in the Christmas pantomime gloriously leading all the rest, without a terrible pang of sorrow and remorse. The pang had become muted over the years, given their continuing happiness, but now, “Marten Aller Arten” fresh in his ears and the great bag of alterations seen out of the corner of his eye, a sudden shaft of sadness, of pity at the waste, went through him like a knife.
“Tom …” Joyce seized his other hand and stared intently into his face. “Don’t. It doesn’t matter. All that. It doesn’t matter. It’s you and me. And now there’s Cully. Darling … ?” She held his gaze forcefully, lovingly. “All right?”
Barnaby nodded and allowed his face to lighten. What else could he do? Things were as they were. And it was true that now there was Cully.
Their daughter had been obsessed with the theater since the age of four, when she had been taken to her first pantomime. She had been quickly on-stage when the dame had asked for children to watch for the naughty wolf and had had to be forcibly removed, kicking and screaming, when the scene was over. She had performed at her primary school with great aplomb (oak leaf/young rabbit), and had never looked back. Now in her final year reading English at New Hall, her performances in the ADC were formidable to behold.
“I thought you knew all that,” continued Joyce. “Silly old bear.”
Barnaby smiled. “Been a long while since anyone called me that.”
“Do you remember when Cully used to? There was that program she loved on television …” Joyce sang, “ ‘Barnaby the bear’s my name… I forget the rest.”
“Ah, yes. She was a little cracker when she was seven.”
“She’s a little cracker now.” The conversation rested for a moment, then Joyce continued, “A message from Colin.” Barnaby groaned. “Could you paint the fireplace? Please?”
“Joycey—I’m on holiday.” He always demurred when asked to help out with the set, and he always, work permitting, gave a bit of a hand.
“I wouldn’t ask if you weren’t on holiday,” Joyce lied brazenly. “We can all chuck a bit of paint on flats, but this fireplace Colin’s made. It’s so beautiful, Tom—a work of art. We can’t let any old slap-happy Charlie loose on it. And you’re marvelous at that sort of thing.”
“Soft soap and flannel.”
“It’s true. You’re an artist. Do you remember that statue you did? For Round and Round the Garden?”
“Only too well. And the letters to the local press.”
“You could do it Saturday afternoon. Take a flask and some sandwiches.” She paused. “I wouldn’t ask if it were gardening weather.”
‘‘I wouldn’t do it if it were gardening weather.”
‘‘Oh, thank you, Tom.” She rubbed his hand against her cheek. “You are sweet.”
Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby sighed, seeing the last few precious days of his annual vacation filling up with bustling activity. “Try telling them that at the station,” he said.
Harold aimed his Morgan at the space between the gateposts topped with polystyrene lions at seventeen Madingley Close and bombed up to the garage. He encouraged the engine to give a final great, full-throated roar, then switched off and braced himself for the awkward business to follow. Getting in and out of the Morgan was not easy. On the other hand, driving along in it, handling it, being seen in it, was tremendous. Heads were turned as the scarlet hood flashed past, slaking temporarily Harold’s ultimately unquenchable thirst for admiration. The fact that his wife disliked the car added to his pleasure. He withdrew his keys and patted the dashboard appreciatively. One instinctively knew when something was right, mused Harold, having long ago taken this cunning adman’s lie to his heart.
On the leather bucket seat next to him lay a sheaf of posters that Mrs. Winstanley would dish out to fellow members of the Townswomen’s Guild, her flower-arranging class, and the local shops. Apart from racking his brains promotionwise and being interviewed whenever he could create the opportunity, Harold had no truck with publicity. After all, he would tell any jibbers, you didn’t see Trevor Nunn popping in and out of his local newsagent’s with footage on the latest extravaganza. Briefly reflecting on that famous name, Harold swallowed hard on the bile of dissatisfaction. He had long been aware that if it had not been for his careless early marriage and the birth of three numbingly dull children now, thankfully, boring themselves and their consorts to death miles away, he would currently be one of the top directors in the country. If not (Harold had never been one to shirk hard truths) in the world.