Prelude Read online

  Snug on the Chesterfield, we’d already listened to the first and second preludes and fugues. She was melting in my arms. Deep kisses, my hands already up the back of her shirt.

  Then that Third Prelude started, and I decide to move things on.

  I was only seconds from disaster.

  My right hand had wormed up to the back of Estelle’s bra-strap and I was trying to undo it.

  I knew what I was supposed to do, knew that I was meant to unfasten the clip, but nothing was happening.

  Estelle gave me a delicious smile and leaned back. She took off her shirt and undid her bra—unclipped it at the front where the catch was. And there she was in front of me, naked from the waist up, basking in the candlelight. It was so unexpected. I’d thought there might be resistance, but instead it was her who was taking the fight to me.

  She was the very image of a girl on the brink of womanhood. The swell of young breasts, the candles flickering shadows over her downy skin.

  I had dreamed of this moment for so long. And now that it was upon me, all I could do was gaze.

  But just as I was finally moving forward to touch her, she said something.

  Words that I will never forget.

  Words that were like a vat of cold seawater on my burning desire.

  She smiled. “You Etonians are all the same.”

  That’s all she said.

  My jaw dropped in bewilderment. From every recess of my brain, alarm bells were jangling.

  My hideous, primeval jealousy was back, far, far worse than before and this time baying for blood. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Trying to prevent the words coming out would have physically choked me.

  I moved back from her. The expectant smile dissolved from her face.

  “You mean there’ve been others?”

  “Well . . .” She gave me a coquettish smile. “You don’t want to know.”

  I was bristling now, bristling with outraged hurt. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Ask no questions and get no lies.”

  How I was on the rack. On the one hand, I was on fire to know all the details—when, where, with whom, and for how long. Explicit details too; I wanted to know everything, every single thing, so that I could be disgusted at what she’d done—and disgusted also with myself. And on the other, I could still hear the quiet insistent voice saying, ‘Don’t go there; don’t go there.’

  But how could I not go there? I had to go there. My jealousy was a ravening monster that had to be fed. I even moved back towards Estelle and cupped her hand, looked into her eyes, told her she could trust me; insisted that it wouldn’t make any difference.

  As it turned out, all my hunches had been correct. She had been to Eton before, had come along to the Fourth of June the previous year to see a boy whom I didn’t even know. It had been his last term.

  I. Was. Outraged.

  I sat there, posing like a father confessor, but all the while feeling like a cuckolded husband. I insisted—yes, insisted— on knowing every last detail. They, too, had kissed in his room, had watched the Procession of Boats.

  It had all fizzled to nothing and so Estelle’s story came to an end—she had tears in her eyes. And all I could think of was not forgiveness, or warmth, or sympathy, but cold, unremitting vengeance.

  God, I was repellent.

  I couldn’t begin to get my head round the fact that Estelle had been doing all this before with another boy. Not just any other boy, but another Etonian.

  She tried to hug me, but I had none of it, had withdrawn to the end of the sofa and sat there huddled in a festering bundle of jealous rage.

  And you know the worst of it, the very worst of it?

  She actually pandered to me. She went along with the idea that it was her—yes, her—who was at fault.

  Oh, if only she’d slapped me hard across the face and told me to grow up. Or walked out and left me alone.

  But no, she did none of that.

  “Can you forgive me?” She tried to hug me.

  In my vileness I twisted away.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I think I’m going to bed.”

  She quickly put on her top and watched as I left.

  Over breakfast, we barely said a dozen words. Even at the station I rebuffed her.

  I would never see her again.

  PRELUDE 9,

  E Major

  JUST A FEW days later, on 14th June, the Falklands War came to an end at a cost of 255 British lives and 777 wounded. Among the Argentinians, 652 men were dead or missing.

  The stories had been shocking, quite different from any other war that I’d ever read about. The thirty-three Welsh Guardsmen who were killed on the Galahad; the twentieth SAS commandoes who were drowned when their Sea King helicopter struck an albatross; the taciturn Old Etonian, Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, dying the hero’s death as he stormed a machine-gun nest.

  But far more moving for me than the stories were the pictures in my newspapers. The submarine HMS Conqueror returning to Faslane with a jaunty Jolly Roger on its conning tower to mark the sinking of the General Belgrano. The Sheffield, with smoke and flames pouring out of its guts. The Antelope, still gushing oily smoke as its prow slipped into the Atlantic. And a photo of a rifle, a paratrooper’s helmet and a jam-jar of daffodils, marking the spot where the Falklands’ second VC, Sergeant Ian McKay, fell on Mt. Longdon.

  Frankie ran a Union Jack up the house flagpole. Sap was so gung-ho that given half a chance he’d have quit his A-levels and joined up.

  But all I could do was stare at that tragic picture of the rifle and Sergeant McKay’s helmet, and wonder if the military was for me. Was that what I wanted out of life? Another decade or two in the sole company of men? More rules, more regulations?

  There was a plus side, I was aware of that. I would be maintaining over a century’s worth of family tradition. For the first time, my father might be proud of something I’d done. The truth was, I had no idea what I wanted to do after I left school. But if not the army, then what else could I turn my hand to?

  I was equally in two minds over Estelle. For days, I imagined myself the wronged victim. I believed that I was 100 per cent in the right, that it was me who was in need of succour, and that it was within my remit to offer forgiveness.

  Every night as I went to bed, I would torture myself with vivid images of Estelle at the Fourth of June, not kissing me but another Etonian. Truly, it felt as if she had done the deed right in front of my very eyes.

  Occasionally, I would relent. I would leaf through her letters, putting them to my nose and smelling her perfume. I could recall every one of our kisses and how I had stroked her back; ah yes, and that image of her topless, sitting in front of me—that was another memory that was forever playing in my mind.

  But every time Estelle called on the house pay-phone, all these happy memories were snuffed out by my jealousy, which was like a tank steam-rollering everything in its path. When we spoke, I was clipped, formal, like an upstanding Victorian father dealing with a disobedient child. I made light of her coming to Eton the previous year. I said it didn’t matter, I said I forgave her—and she was grateful.

  It was all supposed to be behind us. But everything was different. It kept cropping up in conversations. I believed I had a perfect right to bring the matter up as and when I felt like it. My daily letters had become curt and precise.

  For although I’d said I’d forgiven Estelle, I could never forget.

  Now I can only shake my head at that foolish, foolish boy.

  For in this life, there are so many things that it is possible to feel aggrieved about. But jealousy over your loved one’s past should never be one of them.

  Things might—possibly—have been different if I had been able to work through my feelings. Though how laughable the very thought of that is at a school like Eton. I didn’t even feel able to confide in my best friend Jeremy.

  The truth was that I was not even able to come clean to myself.
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  The letters and the phone calls, they fizzled, they sparked, and, after a short period, I had stamped it out. Killed it.

  And my primary and foolish feeling at the time was that Estelle had received her just desserts.

  SHORTLY AFTER HALF-TERM, I was in an English class. I remember it well, for it was the first time that Shakespeare had ever really resonated.

  In previous years I had studied Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar. All of them had left me cold. Stories of flawed men and conniving women. Not one of them had meant a thing to me.

  But Othello, the dark, charismatic, trusting Moor . . .

  I got it.

  I could understand the madness, the cold logic with which his clinical mind had appraised the situation; the seething impotent rage; and the final red raw explosion of anger as his unbridled jealousy was given its head.

  Angela and I still liked to look at each other during the lesson. We would gaze at each other across the room, and probably imagine all manner of fond and libidinous encounters.

  She was still looking at me as she raised her hand to ask a question.

  “Do you have to be in love to feel jealous?” Her hand came down and for a moment I thought her accusing finger was pointing dead at me.

  Her eyes never left mine.

  The question stopped McArdle in his tracks. He was intrigued, had never thought of the question before. He perched himself on the edge of his desk.

  “Interesting.” He temporized and tugged at the point of his beard. “Never thought about that before.”

  For a while he stared at the ceiling. “If you’re truly in love, then you won’t suffer from the grosser excesses of jealousy. You might still feel the odd pang, but you could work it through. True love can dilute almost anything.”

  McArdle was up now, strutting around the front of the room, hands behind his back. “The problem arises when you’re in love for the first time and you experience jealousy for the first time. Like, for instance, Othello.

  “He’s been so used to being in control of everything about him. Then out of nowhere comes this powerful new emotion and he has no idea how to deal with it. Yes—the first time it hits you, it can be as powerful as love itself.”

  My eyes were on Angela but I was taking it all in. It all made perfect sense.

  McArdle had paused in mid-stride as if struck by a new thought. “The first time you experience them together, the two are like yin and yang, black and white, each as strong as the other.

  “It takes practice to learn to deal with jealousy, to control it.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “It takes practice to learn to cherish the one you love.”

  Wise words indeed, and, as he said them, Angela unfolded her hands and proffered her palms towards me, as if to say that this was me, a yin-yang mixture of love and jealousy.

  I blushed to the roots of my hair, for it was as if she had found out my darkest secret.

  SINCE HALF-TERM, INDIA and I had had only one music class together. Although she’d seemed pleased to see me, the lesson had been formal, as if the coffee and crying, and, yes, that kiss, had never occurred. I didn’t know what it was about. But then I had never truly expected anything to happen with India. I was grateful to gather up whatever scraps fell from her table.

  And then everything changed. And I mean everything.

  I can recall each moment.

  My life has never been the same since.

  It’s a half-day, a Thursday, and, yet again, it’s another scorching afternoon.

  I’d been practising The Well-Tempered Clavier at the Music Schools. But this relentless diet of Bach could pall for even a devotee like me and after a couple of hours I was taking a break to go for a dip in Eton’s outdoor pool. I remember it distinctly—I was wearing faded jeans, a white T-shirt and some Green Flash plimsolls. Under my arm, my sheet music, towel and trunks.

  I was taking a different route from my usual one, going via Judy’s Passage, one of Eton’s main walkways.

  I’ve just crossed the Eton Wick Road and was just about to turn into the high-walled gloom of the passage.

  And suddenly from the other direction appears India.

  “Hello you,” she says. She looks exquisite in another of her white cotton dresses, a rug under her arm and leather knapsack on her back. India’s beauty in the flesh was always far superior to any of my memories.

  “Good afternoon.”

  We stand opposite each other at the end of Judy’s Passage and India takes in my towel, my music book.

  “You’re right,” she says.

  “I am?”

  “On a day like this, swimming is definitely better than Bach.”

  All I can do is smile. “And where are you off to?”

  “Oh, you know—any leafy bower . . .” She kicks at a dandelion, about to say more. Then her eyes dart down the passage. The smile trails from her face. “God, it’s him.”

  “Who?” I squint into the shadows, making out a silhouette. I can recognise the figure only too well.

  India is already one step ahead of me. “Come with me.” She takes my hand and we are dashing over the Eton Wick Road. We dive into the elderberry bushes by the Master’s Field, and, like scrumping schoolchildren, drop to our knees. It’s crazy, it’s madness, but India and I are hiding in a bush because neither of us wants to be seen by Savage.

  We watch him as he emerges from Judy’s Passage. He’s wearing his full pop regalia and sunglasses. For a heart-stopping moment, he stares directly at the elderberry bush, looks straight at me. I’m sure he’s spotted us, must have spotted us.

  Then he looks to the left, to the right, and lopes off down the Eton Wick Road.

  For the past minute, I’ve been holding my breath. I let out a huge sigh. And I realise with surprise that India is still holding my hand. She gives it a squeeze.

  Yes—she gives my hand a squeeze.

  “Can’t stand that boy,” she says. “I see him almost every day.”

  “I’m stuck in the same house with him.”

  “Did you see him when the Monarch capsized?”

  “Did I see him?” I laughed. “I only wish I’d got it on film.”

  We’re resting back on our heels, easy, comfortable, squatting amid the roots and dry old leaves of an elderberry bush. Over the green tang of the tree, I can smell her lily-of-the-valley.

  I wish I could have bottled up the moment—that time when we were right on the brink, my guts churning with a mixture of terror and expectation.

  An elderberry bush on the Eton Wick Road, with dead leaves scrunched beneath us and dappled sunlight filtering through the branches. It is not the first place that springs to mind for the beginning of a romance. But that, nonetheless, is where it all started.

  “I can feel your pulse.” India is lightly holding my hand, two fingers against my wrist.

  I gaze at her, our heads only a foot apart. “Yes?”

  She presses her fingers and counts. “Fast.”

  “It is?”

  She counts off the seconds. “150 beats a minute. At rest.”

  She had found me out. For two months I had done my best to mask my ardour, to hide my feelings, to be nothing more than the model pupil who was devoted to Bach and his preludes. But now . . .

  All had been revealed. There was nothing more to hide. “I’m sitting next to you,” I whisper. “You’re holding my hand.”

  “I am?” She looks at my hand as if for the first time realising it is attached to my body. “I am.” She brings my hand close to her face and looks at my fingers, my nails, glances at my palm. “A kind hand.”

  And with that, India, my twenty-three-year-old music teacher, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, the vision whose very presence makes me go weak at the knees, raises my hand to her lips and kisses the inside of my wrist.

  It is the most mesmerising thing I have ever seen or felt. India’s eyes are still locked on mine, but slowly she is plantin
g kisses on my wrist.

  Inch-by-inch she is working her way up the bare flesh of my arm.

  My body is in a vise. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. Couldn’t speak even if I had words to say.

  I’m in freefall, have finally been swept off the precipice and have no idea how or when it will all end.

  India isn’t moving her head. Instead she is drawing my arm towards her, reeling me in. She’s at my elbow and I can feel her hair trailing on my hand. Her kisses are the lightest of touches, the delicate stroke of a humming-bird’s feather.

  My arm may be still, but the rest of my body has started to shake. Cramps in my legs, fire in my belly, and the hairs on my neck prickle like a pin-cushion. I am fascinated. Ensnared. Even in my most outrageous dreams, I had never thought to imagine she would be staring into my eyes and kissing my arm.

  She kisses the sleeve of my shirt. I dare myself to think how it may end. For now her unblinking eyes are just inches from mine, drawing me in. I can’t see her lips, but I can feel them. Pecking at my shirt. Her breath is warm on my neck, her chin light on my shoulder.

  That lily-of-the-valley, how can I ever forget it? For me the scent could never be anything other than India.

  I am a statue, not moving an arm, a leg, a finger, even an eyelid.

  But underneath, I am a raging, pulsating cauldron of emotion and desire. Total turmoil masked by a stoic veneer.

  A car goes past, a sigh of wind. Ever more slowly, India kisses my neck, her lips lingering longer. A kiss on my jaw. On my cheek. The silk caress of her cheek against mine. I haven’t moved, can’t move, but I am quivering at the hope, the desire, of what might happen next. My thumping heart feels as if it will shatter with the strain.

  A kiss on my cheek, just an inch from my lips. She pulls back ever so slightly, looks me in the eyes, so close that I can feel her long black eyelashes.

  India.

  Kisses.

  Me.

  And nothing will ever be the same again.

  The lightest touch of an angel’s wing.