Snow
I called in on my way from practice - twice a week perhaps, never three, sometimes only once and sometimes not at all, on which weeks I would write a card and post it because she did not do text. She would come to the door when she heard the scooter on the drive and wait in the doorway so my visits began in old-fashioned formality, an air that remained even when we had almost forgotten the old relationship and calling her a friend no longer seemed strange.
This evening was different. I would come, I telephoned to say, but would walk because of the forecast so to expect me late. I thought she might be watching out, but I had to knock. It was a brass ring that gave a dead sound in which one had little confidence, but the door opened. She looked round it when it was half ajar as though she was cautious of a stranger, but she smiled, and said, ‘George,’ in a friendly way or like someone relieved, then stood aside.
‘Let me take your coat. What about your gloves?’
Instead of leading to the kitchen she left me in the sitting-room while she made coffee. That was different. She returned with the pot, hot milk, and a bottle of Champagne and two flutes. She was smiling with the surprise of it.
‘You’re not driving so you’ve no excuse.’
‘I’m not sure I need an excuse.’
‘We must celebrate your success. But let’s have coffee first, to revive you after your day.’
She had always ‘taken charge’. Was it the teacher in her, the large gracious parties she had thrown before the divorce, her girlhood? Perhaps all. She asked the questions that I would expect her to ask, and told me I must visit Salzburg when I got settled. ‘Not just for the Mozart, you’ll get plenty of that in Vienna. It has the beauty of the captial but not the pompousness. And the park there is lovely, especially in autumn, lovely and bittersweet.’ I said most places with deciduous trees are better in autumn, which she thought about. ‘Some parks are too formal,’ she concluded. ‘Austerity doesn’t go well with decay. One wants excess.’
There were fresh flowers in her room. I remarked the lilacs.
‘Yes, I love them. You know that,’ she said and pulled one from the vase. She brought it me to smell and sat with it, slowly twisting the stalk as she spoke.
She told me about her Austrian cousin who had divorced the Swiss banker. ‘There’s something terribly vulgar about that kind of wealth,’ she remarked. We remembered concerts together. She handed champagne. The old melodies sputtered in my mind, phrases wavered like candle flame. We let the room go dark. It was comfortable so I encouraged her and before long the bottle was empty. It had gone to my head a little, but not much, so I agreed to just one more. She had a half bottle, she said. She turned on a lamp as she went for it, illuminating the old things. She used to change them around, so the Regency table would appear under the Dutch oil on the far wall, and then between the Bristol clock and the upright piano. The writing desk would swop with the William IVth diner in the centre so the 18th century faience could flower in its place. In the under lit room it all seemed humped and old and forgotten.
‘This is dreadfully indulgent,’ she said as she returned, ‘but as we’re unlikely to meet for ages… Besides, you have cause to be glad.’
We toasted the future.
‘It will be rather sad when you’ve gone, I must admit, though I am so glad for you. I hope I played a little part in your story. That the triumphs to come will not entirely overshadow your old confidante and mentor.’
I would not forget what I owed her.
‘That is all I need,’ she said with her head firm on stiff shoulders, her glass held out like an emblem. She drained it. ‘You do not know how rare and strange it is to find someone who appreciates all this,’ she waved her hand at the furniture, ‘who understands the place of the ceremonious, to whom pleasure is compatible with dignity.’ She brought herself up. I was getting uncomfortable, but she smiled. ‘I want to play us something,’ she said. ‘A farewell serenade.’
I excused myself, it was the drink, and went to the downstairs toilet. It was beyond the kitchen. Chopin was playing when I came out. Under cover of its noise I looked in the fridge. There was an open bottle of white by the jars, a quarter full.
She settled into the chair, smiling.
‘You remember this?’
I said I did. How could I forget? I ventured.
‘So intimate.’ Her voice was a caress. ‘He is the one composer, I think, best played at home, with a good friend, rather than in the concert hall.’ She leaned forward, resting the glass on the wine table. ‘But we know that, don’t we?’ she murmured.
It was not an invitation. It was not quite an accusation.
So we listened to Ashkenazy’s smooth rendition in silence until she said, ‘When I do not hear from you I will play this, and remember this moment, and the lovely moments we’ve had, those moments that enrich us... Of course, your life will be more crowded, more full than mine, but I know you will do the same. When you delight so many, I shall be here, with my things, entertaining old friends. It’s not been a bad life,’ she concluded. ‘Who could not feel privileged in a town like Oxford? In a house like this?
She switched on more lamps, with a ritual care, so the room lighted like a theatre set. She was soft so as not to disturb the Preludes.
‘So that is that,’ she said when the last note ended.
When she cleared the glasses and bottles I picked up the lilac from the chair where she had absently left it and replaced it in the vase. Then I put on my coat in the hall. The fridge door clinked shut. When I turned to say goodbye - for the moment had come - she stood with her feet together, like a lone column among ruins, and watched me. She gave a hardly perceptible sway.
‘Goodbye George,’ she said.
I muttered mine, my self-possession wobbling like a drunk on a cliff, and stretched for the door but she had locked it. Her laugh was a bark of self-deprecation. ‘Force of habit,’ she said, and took her keys from the little shelf and opened it for me, the shaft scraping a little before clicking.
It was snowing. The drive was covered with untarnished smooth white under the harsh street lamps, and white hats lay heavy on the bushes and laced the leaves. The twigs on the trees and the sides of the high hedge were dark pricks through the clinging cold.
‘It’s so pretty,’ I said.
‘It’s terrible,’ she responded. Her face was tragic. But then she said, simply, ‘I think it’s general over the country. Will you be warm?’
I would be home in twenty minutes.
‘The winters in Vienna,’ she said, ‘are bitter.’
‘It’ll be a change,’ I said. ‘But I will write.’
‘Perishing,’ she said. ‘But we can’t stand here in the cold.’
She gave me her hand, which I took. It was cold and dry. So I went into the snow.
And what if I learned she had died? On a night like this, lovely and cruel, the impulsive indifferent ice shivering off blown branches, or on a long summer twilight, sinking like the sun into a cold oblivion. I clicked on news sites. A banker said he would forfeit his bonus. A Russian girl was dead in a basement. A TV presenter had sued News International. Snow was general over the country. Would it be seemly to be glad?
Alan
