When Ralph brought Daphne a record of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and gave an impression of how the dancers moved, he said, ‘You have to feel the pagan spirit.’ He looked like a madman with his uninhibited jumping, in-turned feet and manic rhythms, but persuaded her to join him. ‘I’ll take you to see it one day,’ he said when they fell to the ground, breathless and giggling. ‘It’s already sixty years old but it’s still astonishingly modern. There were riots when it was first performed. That’s what I’d like to happen with my music.’
One summer afternoon, when they sat on beanbags in her room, the sash window wide open to the garden, he explained how to listen to ambient sounds.
‘Can you hear the bass notes? The rumble of traffic in the distance, that chugging getting more muffled as the tug goes away along the river? Then you’ve got the high register. There, like those brakes screeching.’ He replicated the sound and then joined in the barks and yelps of some nearby dogs. Even more entertaining was his imitation of birdsong. He could do about twenty different species. Not just obvious calls like the cuckoo or the owl, but the sweet whistle of the blackbird, the thrush’s warble, the swallow’s chirp and the descending cry of the buzzard. He opened her ears to things she would not have noticed, but it didn’t feel as though he was trying to educate her. Another time, when he gave her a record of sacred music by Elizabethan composers like Tallis and Byrd, he turned it into an adventure, talking her through the parts, explaining some of the Latin, and identifying the entwined voices as though they’d crept into a dark, sixteenth-century church and were spying on the singers. ‘I sang that stuff as a child,’ he said. ‘A scrawny little choirboy in Worcester cathedral. I’d sail right up to the high Cs without a thought.’
When Daphne was eleven he took her to a recording studio to sing for his latest piece, Songs of Innocence and Experience. They were based on William Blake’s poems and Ralph assembled a huge children’s choir from several London schools and a band of Gambian drummers. For the Songs of Experience, he gathered up some homeless men and paid them to read the poems, accompanied by a small string orchestra. Ralph wanted untrained people rather than musicians – unpretentious voices of innocence and of experience. He was determined to have Daphne participate, and insisted she sing some solos, along with a young boy of about eight with an angelic voice. ‘Like a bird singing – the sounds coming straight from the body. That’s what I want.’
Singing in front of all those people was terrifying and, while she tried to do what Ralph requested, she couldn’t understand what was going on much of the time. The drummers wore African robes and treated the event as a party and Ralph encouraged it, providing beer for them and Coca-Cola and crisps for the kids.
‘Pandemonium,’ Ed said when he dropped by one day.
In the end, the recording was a success. Daphne even had her photograph taken for a piece in a weekend colour supplement. The journalist who interviewed Ralph, the drummers and one of the homeless men asked her what she thought. ‘It’s really super. I enjoyed it,’ she was quoted as saying. She never forgot her song; in fact, she had sung it as a lullaby to Libby when she was little.
My dear Strawberry girl,
I really really enjoyed yesterday. I can’t imagine who else could have done those solos or who would have given it what you did. I just felt so happy afterwards. I always hope you are happy and look forward to seeing you.
Daphne had been ten when Ralph met Nina. A friend of one of Ellie’s many cousins, she had come from Athens to London to study painting at the Chelsea School of Art and stayed on to do postgraduate work. She was invited to Barnabas Road one weekend when Ralph was there and Daphne had immediately spotted his attentiveness. Nina had a doe-eyed face with pleasing, regular features and an extravagant amount of chestnut hair that was so long she could sit on it. She often wore it in a loose plait, and dressed in kaftans and long skirts, all of which Ralph said made her resemble an Ancient Greek. Daphne was present when he told Ed that Nina was like a caryatid – classical and timeless. He appreciated women who didn’t slap on make-up or wobble around in ridiculous high heels and tight skirts. He often told Daphne: ‘Don’t think you’ll attract the boys with lipstick and feminine flimflam.’
After Ralph and Nina became a couple, Daphne overheard Ellie gossiping on the phone about how Nina would be the perfect match for Ralph, being both pretty and intelligent but, most important, silent. This would allow him his fantasies, she said. And that’s what men need. And what’s more, despite her artistic inclinations, Nina would be a thoroughly traditional Greek wife, who would stick close to the hearth and the cradle and not ask questions. ‘Plus ça change.’ Daphne liked how her mother’s spiky verbal nails were hammered home. But in fact, Ellie and Nina became increasingly friendly. She often returned from school to find them ensconced in the kitchen chattering away in Greek about the latest political developments or the impossible nature of English weather.
Ralph never hid his relationship with Nina. Quite the reverse. Daphne was his true friend and confidante who ‘should know everything’. Even his sexual escapades were not taboo in their conversations and there had always been various passing girlfriends he made fun of to her so they could both laugh about them. ‘A silly, drunken fuck,’ he said without compunction. ‘It’s like eating too much chocolate – you feel greedy before and regretful after, but nothing serious. It’s just physical.’ He hugged her. ‘You’re the one I love.’ Nevertheless, when Ralph and Nina moved in together, Daphne was perplexed. This was evidently something much more serious than she’d understood, though he’d never explained it as such. He took her to see the terraced house they’d bought in Battersea while it was being decorated – a two-up two-down on the hill near the park, with a rickety extension for kitchen and bathroom. They edged past workmen sanding floorboards and repairing windows.
‘This is the best part,’ he said, leading her through a cramped garden to a shed. ‘This is where I’ll work.’ There were trees hanging over the wooden structure. ‘It’s almost like a grown-up’s tree house, even if it is on the ground.’
When Ralph announced he and Nina were getting married, Daphne felt a spasm of envy she couldn’t express or even comprehend. Although she was only eleven, Ralph had already made her grasp the exceptional position she held in his life. She didn’t say anything but he evidently noticed the change in her expression.
‘The thing is, I feel she’s like your family,’ he said, as if making an excuse. ‘And if there are babies, they’ll be half-Greek like you!’ He claimed he was getting closer to Daphne through this arrangement, becoming an honorary Greek of sorts, and Nina was as good as Daphne’s cousin, even if it wasn’t strictly the case in terms of blood. ‘You know it doesn’t affect how much I care about you.’
The wedding was held in Greece in September and, although all the Greenslays were invited, in the end only Ellie went. Ed had obligations at the university and the school term had just started. It was Daphne’s first year at Hayfield and she was pleased to have the excuse not to attend the nuptials. Before he left, Ralph tried to reassure Daphne that his feelings for Nina were entirely separate to the unique attachment to his young friend. ‘Nothing can change my love for my Miss Monkey,’ and he kissed her hand, moving his lips in little jumps up towards her elbow like an old-fashioned suitor. Eventually she giggled and he looked relieved.