As it happened, this was so. After I left the room, I went down the stairs and came to the great stone dogs that guarded the house. At the base of them there was a sharp little corner behind their base and the house. It was a convenient place to squeeze in, as I thought, to carry on listening to the music.

  I had only been there a few moments when Frederick Barnsley came from the direction of the orchards, and passed me on the stairs. He did not see me, and I was becoming less afraid of detection, as I had learned to slip from place to place more easily of late.

  Within moments, the crash I had half expected when I was in the room, came. There was a violent disharmony, and then a savage attack at the piece that Elva had been playing as if on no account would she relinquish it.

  ‘Elva, will you stop?’ I heard Barnsley shout. The music continued. ‘Elva, I want you to listen to me. Please.’

  The music stopped. ‘Will no one give me any peace in this place?’ she screamed.

  ‘Elva, listen to me,’ he beseeched her. His voice was lower, now that she had stopped playing. I judged that she was going to give him an audience and that he was not likely to come storming out immediately. I scuttled up the stairs again and positioned myself against the wall close to her room, but still several jumps ahead of anyone leaving there.

  She was speaking in a low rapid voice to him. ‘All night I have given to you, can you not leave me alone with my music in the morning at least.’

  I expected him to react in his usual domineering fashion, brooking no arguments with anyone, but instead he was, to my ears, amazingly humble. ‘You’re very good to me at nights,’ he said.

  ‘Well then,’ she said scornfully, ‘What are you complaining of? Not every tin plate soldier has beautiful famous pianist in his bed at nights.’

  ‘I know Elva, I know that,’ he said. ‘You’re so good.’

  My grandmother took me to the pictures now and then before I went north. There wasn’t much to see and often it was silents. Once we had seen Valentino with his hair all slicked back bending over a wan white lady. I suddenly saw the Brigadier just like that. Only there was more to it than just bending over her while she swooned. He had mentioned bed. It was suddenly clear to me, another of those things which become clear when the light is still and bright enough, given a certain angle, to shine through the most opaque surface. There was a difference between Valentino and my mother and father in bed, although the implications were the same. Valentino and my father had nothing in common except intent. Barnsley both looked and did. He shared Elva’s bed.

  ‘Now I make music, not love,’ she was saying. ‘Just let me play.’ Her voice rose dangerously high.

  ‘I want more of you than this.’

  I could see his words in neat white letters across the bottom of the screen.

  ‘I do not have to do anything. I am my own woman.’

  ‘Are you?’ And there was the hint of a sneer as if he was moving onto firmer ground.

  After a pause she said, ‘Do you think that I am not grateful to you? I owe you life.’

  ‘Then show that you are.’

  ‘I have tried. I have sought to give you much. Is it not enough?’

  ‘You know what I want.’

  ‘Perhaps it is you that owes now. Perhaps you now owe the world the life of Elva von Hart.’

  ‘You’ve never had a small opinion of yourself have you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she shouted at him. ‘One moment you are pleading, the next minute you make … make the bad scene at me, you are rude to me.’

  And as her voice rose, the knocking began on the wall.

  ‘Be quiet, keep your voice down,’ he hissed.

  ‘Oh yes, yes, yes, you surround me with your spies don’t you. Shut up Lily Barnsley.’

  I hugged myself tighter to the wall, wondering if I was one of the spies she had referred to. Right then I could hardly have blamed her.

  The knocking stopped as their voices dropped. I had to strain to hear them.

  ‘I want this posting Elva. I have to get away from here.’

  ‘Then go if you want it so much,’ she said.

  ‘I want you to go with me.’

  There was a silence. ‘You would take my uncle?’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘You would consider it?’

  ‘That is no answer to my question.’

  ‘He could stay here very comfortably,’ said the Brigadier.

  ‘And very usefully to you, yes? Ah when I fled with my deaf and dumb uncle, Elva I thought to myself, you are saint to take him with you. And you — yes, I thought you were a saint too. Perhaps we deserve each other huh? But he has proved most useful to you eh? You need him. You need his silence.’

  ‘And what of you? Don’t you find saintliness a rather uncomfortable burden?’

  ‘You are being rude to me again. I was no saint Frederick, I told myself that I was, but the truth is I needed him too and I have always loved that old man since I was a little girl. That was no saintly act, that was pure love. But that is something you perhaps cannot understand.’

  ‘Love! Him? He’s an old scoundrel.’

  ‘It’s not true. The world has mocked him and now he mocks the world. But he is not bad.’

  Even though the morning sun was scorching across the balcony I shivered. What was Schwass? He appeared at my mother’s side seeming to cast spells over her, yet helping her too. He laughed at Lilian Barnsley yet he cared for her when no one else did. Could it be that he was also a murderer? Was it Barnsley or was it he who had pushed boulders down cliffs towards me? The thought hammered inside my head. Would Barnsley try to kill me? For surely it was one of them. Would this smooth lover-like man try to kill a girl like me? I remembered he had killed many people, and not so very long ago. Why not me?

  ‘You could persuade him to stay here,’ the Brigadier said.

  ‘Ah, but would I?’

  ‘He could take care of her,’ said Barnsley urgently. ‘And I’d pay him well.’

  ‘And I would go to this new thing … what you call it … United Nations … and no one know that she is still here? Is that your idea?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Hmmm. It’s a clever idea. But not clever enough Frederick.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Hm, it’s true that the world would not be so interested in whether little tin plate soldier had wife dead or alive. They soon forget that. Even your Prime Minister would probably not ask you what she look like before he send you off. But the world would soon remember the face of Elva von Hart again. And beside you, they might ask questions. No, you would be better to take Dan Cape’s wife, or the cook, than Elva von Hart.’ She pealed with laughter and I seethed. How easy it was for these people to be disdainful and jeering, to think well of themselves at the expense of others.

  ‘There’s no need to tell them whether I have a wife or not. I have no need to present you as such. That wasn’t my intention —’

  ‘But you’d like it?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ha. It is impossible.’ She seemed pleased.

  ‘What or who they think you are is over to them. You will be with me and that will be enough. I don’t intend to go round the world proclaiming to all and sundry, look, this lady is not my wife, she is my —’

  ‘Paramour?’

  ‘Companion, she is the lady I happen to be at this or that reception with, but no we do not have a marriage licence, we are simply together and they can think what they choose about us. When I meet a man and woman together I don’t say are you married to each other, I accept them as they present themselves to me.’

  ‘People ask, when the woman is Elva von Hart. The newspapers come and they say, to me perhaps, “And tell me Miss von Hart, how did you and your husband meet each other?” “Where did you first fall in love?” “Is he a good husband?”’

  ‘And you say, “When I was fleeing from Europe in the war.” “When we first met each other,” and, if it pleases you to do so, “Yes, he is.”’

  ‘Then you compound the lie, yes? You admit that you would try to make me seem to the world like your wife.’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know, you’re twisting everything I say. If you want to come with me it’s easy. It’s only hard because you don’t want to come with me.’

  ‘I don’t know, I do not.’ Her voice was agitated.

  ‘You talk of leaving here anyway. Why not with me?’

  After another hesitation she said, ‘What about your children?’

  ‘Becky would do very well in America,’ said Barnsley.

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Yes I know he’s a difficult boy. It’s true, he doesn’t seem like mine. Maybe he isn’t.’

  ‘That’s one way to forget you are responsible.’

  ‘You don’t like him either.’

  ‘True. He is detestable child.’

  ‘It’s you I’m thinking about. He’s a handful at the moment. I could make some arrangement for him in the meantime.’

  ‘You would expect Schwass to look after him too?’

  ‘Well he does go away to school most of the time.’

  ‘But not all of it. My uncle’s old. He’s often sick. He seems strong enough because he does many things for you, but me, I think he will soon die.’

  ‘I’ve got Freeman helping him with the work outside,’ he said defensively.

  ‘He would not leave me. Nor I him. Don’t you see, it is all so impossible, imposs-ible.’

  ‘Why must it be?’

  ‘I stay here till he dies, or I take him with me. And there is her. You might hide her but I cannot forget her.’

  ‘She will simply … cease to exist.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In our minds.’

  ‘You. You are too used to wars, spies, intrigues. No. It’s all crazy, that which you talk about.’

  ‘Is this your answer then?’

  Her voice was firm. ‘Yes. I’ve decided.’

  I heard him walking around, and for a moment I thought he was going to come out onto the balcony. I prepared for flight, but soon he stopped and I could tell from his voice that he was close to her.

  ‘Play something for me,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. But you must sit still and quiet and not fret around the place like an animal in the zoo.’

  ‘I will sit quietly.’

  So she played to him, quiet tender music full of some other time and place, a place where the colours were not violent and bright, where the light was softer and more filtered than in this harshly-lit landscape. When I think of her music I think now that some part of her must have loved him, or perhaps just wanted to, or maybe she was simply playing for herself. It is hard to tell, yet whatever her music was trying to say to him, or for her, its mood infected me. For the moment I could not think of him as wholly bad. I had made up my mind that it was he who had attacked me, and now again, I was confused, my mind casting this way and that.

  She finished playing and they sat in silence a while. I wanted to leave then for it seemed that all was calm between them and I had no business there, not of course that I ever had. But the quiet was so profound that I risked discovery with the smallest sound. So I stayed.

  At last he said, ‘Look Elva, we’ll take him if that’s what you want. I’ll work out something for her.’

  ‘What?’ she said numbly.

  ‘I don’t know. Something.’

  Her voice was firm again and strong as it had been before she started to play to him. ‘I do not wish to go Frederick. I have made up my mind. When I go into the world again, I go alone. When I am ready, I sweep back, and I do it on my own terms. They will not forget me, and when I go I will be happy inside of myself and then I will make great music for them. It is not yet time, but when it is, then I go. And that is how it will be.’

  ‘Then you won’t come with me? Ever?’ His voice was full of pain. Who am I to deny that he felt pain?

  It is the knowledge that Barnsley understood both pain and beauty that still haunts me. Without that understanding he would have been a plain man indeed, falling into gross and vulgar badness or the grubby side of a dark nature. It sometimes fascinates me to recall that we both loved that same beautiful Chinese ornament.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Then go now,’ he said, his voice hardening against her. ‘Get out. Pack your bags and — and your fripperies —’

  ‘You bought them —’

  ‘And your piles of rubbish,’ and he kicked something.

  ‘My music,’ she moaned softly, ‘That is my music.’

  ‘Take it and get out.’ His voice was raging with frustration and helplessness.

  Then she started to laugh. Not a merry laugh, but a resonant sound between tears and amusement. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she said at last when she had controlled herself.

  ‘Oh don’t I?’

  ‘No,’ she harangued him. ‘No. Because you want me, and you need Schwass, and if I go I will take him with me, and then you have neither. So — I stay as long as I like eh?’

  ‘I want this posting. It’s quite impossible for me to go on here. How do I make you understand that?’

  ‘I understand. It’s a bad situation yes? All right then. Be brave. Take it.’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Take her with you.’

  I was sure that he would be destroyed by her venom, or that he would destroy her, either by words or actions. And yet he carried on as if the discussion were simply taking a new direction which he must follow.

  ‘As she is? But you know that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘She’s not incurable,’ said Elva.

  Then a terrible storm of blows erupted on the other side of the wall, a veritable beating that went on and on and there was shouting and incomprehensible screaming. It continued for several minutes, mounting in intensity, then all of a sudden it stopped. I remembered that I had delivered Elva’s breakfast because Schwass was caring for Lilian. I wondered how he had stopped her noise.

  After the noise had stopped, Barnsley said, as if there had been no interruption ‘Don’t you believe that.’

  ‘But I do believe it,’ said Elva. ‘She could be made better. She could make herself better. Schwass knows. For you, she would make herself better.’

  ‘I can’t even bear to see her any more,’ he said.

  Then hell let loose again, and it seemed as if Lilian must come through the wall like an avenging angel and stop their talk. Her husband must have understood something she said because suddenly he shouted out, ‘Stop it Lilian. Be quiet d’you hear.’

  And in reply, I heard her cry, ‘Damn you, he’s mine.’

  ‘Never,’ he shouted back. Then, lowering his voice, he muttered, ‘This is insane. Understand, everything here is over. Elva come away with me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps you enjoy this.’

  ‘She is yours. And I am mine. My own woman. If I am to conquer th’world, then I must not allow her to conquer me. You ask me to understand, but it is you who understands nothing.’

  I heard his footsteps approach the door to the balcony. I shot down the stairs so fast, tripping as I went, that I was sure he must hear me. I leapt behind the pillars as his step echoed on the wooden floor above me.

  ‘I’ve had enough for one day. Let me know if you think better of all this,’ he called over his shoulder as he passed within feet of me. The smell of his cigar mixed with the heavy inescapable scent of the ginger plants made me want to cough. He was near enough for me to see his face, bitter, frustrated, angry, the persecutor persecuted. I cowered behind the great leering stone animals, and then all was quiet again. Upstairs the silence was broken by a woman weeping. It was so close that I knew it must be Elva, and in a moment her sobs were punctuated by crashes of notes on the piano. Only she could be so dramatic.

  Yet I felt the presence of other weeping in the house.

  Eight

  Lilian belongs to me. I cannot allow anyone else to take responsibility for her. How portentous that sounds. As if, given the long view anyone takes responsibility for anyone else.

  What I mean is this. I chose to go to Lilian and what I know of her then and now was what I chose to know. One cannot hide behind childishness forever, even if it is childishness that drives others away. As a ploy it works for a while. The child idles in the sun, is grateful for not being called upon to do what it’s told or to perform duties that are unpleasant. But after a while there is the lure of the unknown.

  I’d done with idling in the sun that summer. I was often bored, sometimes afraid, and almost always now, alone and lonely. There had been days when Thomas would tail me in the garden still, and I suppose that he wasn’t much better off than I was, but he had as much potential for danger as the other members of the household.

  Now I wanted to know more. Most of all, I wanted to find a friend. Why I thought that in Lilian Barnsley I would find one, it’s hard to say. But there was still in the back of my mind that pathetic cry to her children the first evening I had come to Carlyle House.

  At least I knew that she too was lonely. I couldn’t stand my curiosity any longer. I knew that I had to see this woman whose presence was so strongly felt in the house.

  Even as I came to this decision I was assailed by various terrors. I had no clear idea of the form that Lilian’s illness took, but I was certain that it was some kind of insanity. So it was possible that she might be dangerous. She might even kill me, tearing me with her strong frenzied hands that beat out their tattoos on the wall. Or if the Brigadier were to catch me, that would just as effectively be an end to it.

  Being so afraid, it’s perhaps surprising that overriding all these considerations was the question of how I would get in to her room. I had no clear idea in my head of how I was going to achieve this when I made my way down through the passageway that led past her bedroom door and opened at the end of Elva’s suite. Yet I was not entirely unprepared, for I had chosen my time well. It was Sunday morning and the Barnsleys and Elva had gone to church, a nice touch. My parents had taken me to the little church over the hill one morning not long after our arrival. We had set off along the red road and my white shoes had been covered in dust when we were halfway there, and then just as we were arriving, the Barnsleys had swept past us in the car, and we all arrived dirty and coated with grime. I don’t know what Elva thought about it. Thinking back I am surprised that she consented to go. Perhaps she regarded it as tourist value.

 

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