Then the silence crackled. The concerto had begun. The violins made a suave forest through which Moraïtis stepped. The passage of the ’cello was difficult at first, struggling to achieve its own existence in spite of the pressure of the blander violins. Moraïtis sat upright. He was prim. He was pure. I am a peasant, he said. And he saw with the purity of primitive vision, whether the bones of the hills or the shape of a cup. Now the music that he played was full of touching, simple shapes, but because of their simplicity and their purity they bordered on the dark and tragic, and were threatened with destruction by the violins. But Moraïtis closed his eyes as if he did not see, as if his faith would not allow. He believed in the integrity of his first tentative, now more constant, theme. And Theodora, inside her, was torn by his threatened innocence, by all she knew there was to come. She watched him take the ’cello between his knees and wring from its body a more apparent, a thwarted, a passionate music, which had been thrust on him by the violins.
The ’cello rocked, she saw. She could read the music underneath his flesh. She was close. He could breathe into her mouth. He filled her mouth with long aching silences, between the deeper notes that reached down deep into her body. She felt the heavy eyelids on her eyes. The bones of her hands, folded like discreet fans on her dress, were no indication of exaltation or distress, as the music fought and struggled under a low roof, the air thick with cold ash, and sleep, and desolation.
But in the last movement Moraïtis rose again above the flesh. You were not untouched. There were moments of laceration, which made you dig your nails in your hands. The ’cello’s voice was one long barely subjugated cry under the savage lashes of the violins. But Moraïtis walked slowly into the open. He wore the expression of sleep and solitary mirrors. The sun was in his eyes, the sky had passed between his bones.
Theodora went as soon as it was over, out of the applause, into the trams. She walked some distance, the other side of the screeching trams, without seeing much. Her hollow body vibrated still with all she had experienced. Now it was as empty as hollow wood.
‘Did you spend an enjoyable evening?’ Mrs Goodman asked, glancing with apprehension over the covers of her book.
‘It was more than enjoyable,’ said Theodora, taking off her gloves.
Mrs Goodman would have said something hard and destructive, only she saw that Theodora was now strong, and for this reason she did not dare. Theodora was removed. She had the strength of absence, Mrs Goodman saw. This made her very strong. It was also rather immoral, the strange, withdrawn mood that one could not share. In her failure to find words Mrs Goodman’s old, soft-fed stomach grizzled and complained.
‘I am not feeling very well. I think I shall go to bed. It is something I have eaten.’
But the absence of Theodora persisted, and in the morning. Many mornings trumpeted across the bay their strong hibiscus notes. The mornings smelled of nasturtium, crushed by the bodies of lovers on a piece of wasteland at night. Theodora sat sometimes to remember the music she had heard. At these times she sat and looked at the piece of wasteland which was between their thin house and the bay. And the music which Moraïtis had played was more tactile than the hot words of lovers spoken on a wild nasturtium bed, the violins had arms. This thing which had happened between Moraïtis and herself she held close, like a woman holding her belly. She smiled. If I were an artist, she said, I would create something that would answer him. Or if I were meant to be a mother, it would soon smile in my face. But although she was neither of these, her contentment filled the morning, the heavy, round, golden morning, sounding its red hibiscus note. She had waited sometimes for something to happen. Now existence justified itself.
About this time Fanny wrote to say it was going to happen at last. When I was so afraid, dear Theodora, Fanny wrote. But Fanny had made of fear a fussy trimming. Emotions as deep as fear could not exist in the Parrotts’ elegant country house, in spite of the fact that Mr Buchanan’s brains had once littered the floor. Fanny’s fear was seldom more than misgiving. If I were barren, Fanny had said. But there remained all the material advantages, blue velvet curtains in the boudoir, and kidneys in the silver chafing dish. Although her plump pout often protested, her predicament was not a frightening one. Then it happened at last. I am going to have a baby, Fanny said. She felt that perhaps she ought to cry, and she did. She relaxed, and thought with tenderness of the tyranny she would exercise.
‘I must take care of myself,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I shall send for Theodora, to help about the house.’
So Theodora went to Audley, into a wilderness of parquet and balustrades. There was very little privacy. Even in her wardrobe the contemptuous laughter of maids hung in the folds of her skirts.
‘God, Theodora is ugly,’ said Frank. ‘These days she certainly looks a fright.’
The servants knew, and took up his contempt. Miss Goodman, an old maid, they said, a scarecrow in a mushroom hat. She wore long shapeless dresses of striped voile, which made her look an oblong with a head and legs.
Fanny heard laughter, she heard Frank, but she did not speak, because she did not care enough, in her condition, in a boudoir cap. She looked at her fair plump face and wiped the sweat from a wrinkle with a pink puff. She made little grimaces for her figure, but only as a matter of course. Because her figure, like her self-importance, had momentarily swelled.
Sometimes Fanny talked to Theodora about My Baby.
‘You’ve no idea, Theo,’ she used to say. ‘It’s most solemn. As a sensation, I mean.’
‘I don’t doubt,’ said Theodora.
She pushed her needle through the flannel. She sat with her head bent, so that you could not see, and really, Fanny said, she sometimes wondered why she had sent for Theodora, she was less than human, she was no advantage at all.
Fanny Parrott finally had her child. It was a girl, whom they called Marie Louise.
‘Sounds fancy,’ Frank said, out of his slow, red face.
‘It’s most distinguished,’ Fanny replied.
Theodora took the baby outside, where the landscape was less pink, and the baby learned to stare at her with solemn eyes. The baby’s head trembled like a flower. It was reminiscent of the tender unprotected moments of her own retrospective awkwardness. So Theodora loved the child. Theodora became beautiful as stone, in her stone arms the gothic child.
‘She is sweet,’ said Fanny. ‘Ugly, of course. But sweet. Give her to me, Theo. My baby. My little sweet.’
And at once Theodora was ugly as stone, awkwardness in her empty hands. But the child swelled round and pink on the mother’s pink breast, and had all the banality of wax.
Before she had finished, Fanny Parrott had three children. They were her husband’s also, but his achievement was secondary. Fanny spoke about Your Father to her children, giving an official status, but scarcely raising an image of love. Fanny was safe now, she had children and possessions, she could dispense with love.
‘When you are good little children I am the happiest of women,’ she used to say, though it was doubtful who was taken in.
‘Is Aunt Theo happy?’ asked Lou.
‘Why ever not?’