Natasha finally spoke.
‘This is really… flattering. But did you knock on my door just to tell me that?’ This man unnerved her with his excited grin and breathy voice. It was only curiosity that stopped her shutting the door. ‘I’ve not got a fan club yet.’
He stared at her and the nature of his smile changed. Until that moment it had been sincere, almost childish in its excitement. Slowly his lips closed a fraction and hid his teeth. He straightened his long back and his eyelids slid halfway down over his eyes. He leaned his head slightly to one side, without taking his eyes off her.
Natasha felt a wave of adrenaline. She looked back at him in shock. The change which had come over him was extraordinary. He stared at her now with a look so sexual, so casually knowing, that she felt vertiginous.
She was furious with him. She shook her head a little and prepared to slam the door. He held it open. Before she could say anything, his arrogance had gone and the old look was back.
‘Please,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not explaining myself. I’m flustered because I’ve… been plucking up courage to talk to you.’
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘what you’re playing is beautiful, but sometimes it feels a little bit — don’t get angry — a bit unfinished. I sort of feel like the treble isn’t quite… working. And I wouldn’t say that to you except I play a little bit myself and I thought maybe we could help each other out.’
Natasha stepped backwards. She felt intrigued and threatened. She always stonewalled about her music, refusing to discuss her feelings about it with any except her very closest friends. The intense but inchoate frustrations she felt were rarely verbalized, as if to do so would give them form. She chose to keep them at bay with obfuscation, from herself as much as from others, and now this man seemed to be unwrapping them with an unnerving casualness.
‘Do you have a suggestion?’ she said as acidly as she could. He reached behind him and picked up a black case. He shook it in front of her.
‘This might sound a bit cocky,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want you to think I reckon I can do better than you. But, when I heard your playing, I just knew I could complement it.’ He undid the clasp of the case and opened it in front of her. She saw a disassembled flute.
‘I know you might think I’m crazy,’ he preempted hurriedly. ‘You think what you play is totally different to what I play. But… I’ve been looking for bass like yours for longer than you could believe.’
He spoke earnestly now, his eyebrows furrowed as he held her gaze. She stubbornly stared back, refusing to be overawed by this apparition on her doorstep.
‘I want to play with you,’ he said.
This was stupid, Natasha told herself: even if this man was not arrogant beyond belief, you could not play the flute to Jungle. It was so long since she had stared at a traditional instrument she felt a gust of déjà vu: images of her nine-year-old self banging the xylophone in the school orchestra. Flutes meant enthusiastic cacophonies at the hands of children or the alien landscape of classical music, an intimidating world of great beauty but vicious social exclusivity, to which she had never known the passwords.
But to her amazement, this lanky stranger had impressed her. She wanted to let him in and hear him play his flute in her room. She wanted to hear him play over some of her basslines. Discordant indie bands had done it, she knew: My Bloody Valentine had used flutes. And while the result had left her as dead cold as the rest of that genre, surely the alliance itself was no more unlikely than this one. She realized that she was intrigued.
But she was not simply going to stand aside. She had a reputation for being intimidating. She was not used to feeling so disarmed, and her defences flared.
‘Listen,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know what you think qualifies you to speak about my tracks. Why should I play with you?’
‘Try it once,’ he said, and again that sudden change flooded his features, the same curled smile on the edge of the lips, the same heavy-lidded nonchalance about the eyes.
And Natasha was suddenly furious with this pretentious little art-school wanker, livid where a moment ago she had been captivated, and she leaned forward and up on tiptoes, until her face was as close to his as it would go, and she raised one eyebrow, and she said: ‘I don’t think so.’
She closed the door in his face.
Natasha stalked back up her stairs. The window was open. She stood next to it, close to the wall, looking down at the street without putting herself in view. She could see no sign of the man. She walked slowly to her keyboard. She smiled.
OK, you cocky fucker, she thought. Let’s see how good you are.
She turned the volume down slightly, and pulled another rhythm out of her collection. This time the drums came crashing out of nowhere. The bass came chasing after, filling out the snare and framing the sound with a funky backdrop. She threw in a few minimal shouts and snatches of brass, looped a moment of trumpet, but the treble was subdued; this was an offering to the man outside, and it was all about rhythm.
The beats looped once, twice. Then, sailing up from the street came a thin snatch of music, a trill of flute that mimicked the looping repetition of her own music, but elaborated on itself, changed a little with every cycle. He was standing below her window, his hastily assembled instrument to his lips.
Natasha smiled. He had made good on his arrogance. She would have been disappointed if he had not.
She stripped the beat down and left it to loop. She stood back and listened.
The flute skittered over the drums, teasing the beat, touching just enough to stay anchored, then transporting itself. It suddenly became a series of staccato flutterings. It lilted between drum and bass, now wailing like a siren, now stuttering like Morse code.
Natasha was… not transfixed, perhaps, but impressed.
She closed her eyes. The flute soared and dived; it fleshed out her skeletal tune in a way she could never achieve. The life in the live music was exuberant and neurotic and it sparked off the revivified bass, the very alive dancing with the dead. There was a promise to this tension.
Natasha nodded. She was eager to hear more, to feed that flute into her music. She smiled sardonically. She would admit defeat. So long as he behaved, so long as there were not too many of those knowing looks, she would admit that she wanted to hear more.
Natasha paced silently back down the stairs. She opened the door. He was standing a few feet back, his flute to his lips, staring up at her window. He stopped as he saw her, and lowered his hands. No trace of a smile now. He looked anxious for approval.
She inclined her head and gave him a sideways look. He hovered.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy it.’ He finally smiled. ‘It’s Natasha.’ She jerked her thumb at herself.
‘Pete,’ the tall man said.
Natasha stood aside, and Pete passed into her house.
Chapter Six
Again Fabian tried Natasha’s number, and again she was engaged. He swore and slammed his receiver down. He turned on his heel, paced pointlessly. He had spoken to everyone who knew Saul except for Natasha, and she was the one who mattered most.
Fabian was not gossiping. As soon as he had heard about Saul’s father he had got on the phone, almost before he was aware of what he was doing, and begun to spread the news. At some point he had rushed out to buy a paper, before starting again on the phone. But this was not gossip. He felt a powerful sense of duty. This, he believed, was what was needed of him.