Prelude Page 5

  As I’ve already mentioned, that summer we were studying Shakespeare’s Othello. We’d read the play over the weekend, and now McArdle was taking a backseat to let the boys do the talking.

  Just to recap, the story is of Othello the Moor, a senior commander in Venice who has just married the beautiful Desdemona. But Othello has a lieutenant, Iago, who at every moment is breathing bile and spite into his ear. Somehow, Iago persuades Othello that he’s been cuckolded. Othello is consumed by jealousy, ‘the green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds upon’, and, finally convinced of Desdemona’s infidelity, he smothers her with a pillow.

  But when we talked of the play that morning, the feeling was that the plot was unbelievable. How could this brilliant man, this leader, be duped into believing that Desdemona had had an affair?

  To and fro the argument went, the scholars, or tugs, holding forth with their brilliance. Their words rolled over my head as I gazed in a trance at Angela. I could stare at her for minutes on end, feasting on her girlish loveliness.

  She must have known how long I’d been gazing at her, for suddenly she tilted her head up and gave me the most perfect wink. I can still picture it exactly. Mascaraed eyelash flashing down and up. Blink and you would have missed it.

  My father had once winked at me across the table during a dinner in the Officers’ Mess. But it was the first time I’d ever had one from a girl, not to mention a girl I had spent so long fantasising over. Such a small thing, but it was like she had fired a broadside right at me. I could only stare at my desk as the beetroot blush suffused my cheeks.

  Not that Angela and I had exchanged more than twenty words in the previous six months, but that wink had suddenly rocketed my fantasies into a whole new orbit.

  I longed for her to do it again.

  I was too nervous to look.

  While these Tectonic Plates were shifting against each other, McArdle had started to speak. He’d given us our head for fifteen minutes and was now having his say.

  After the shock of the wink, it took time for his words to register. “Jealousy is a strange beast—it makes you do strange things. I don’t know if any of you have ever suffered from it.” He was walking around now, and he shrugged. “Maybe you have. Just like the Bard says, it eats you up. Even the most rational, sane people can’t think straight.”

  McArdle stopped pacing and perched himself at the front of his desk. He played with the tip of his Don Juan beard, musing for a moment. “I suppose it’s another of those raw emotions like love. You only truly understand jealousy once you’ve experienced it.” He gave a little sigh and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I know you’re sceptical. But it can consume everything in its path.”

  He twitched, aware of the morbid tone, and flashed his palms up to us. “Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  I was gazing at Angela again and at this moment she imperceptibly raised her eyebrows and tipped her head to me. I looked to the side and back again. But her meaning, for whatever reason, seemed quite clear to me: ‘That’s you.’

  At the time, McArdle’s words meant nothing. But how they would come back to haunt me.

  For it was just as he said.

  Jealousy is as powerful a motivator as love, possibly more so. It can make you do things, awful things, for which you will forever despise yourself.

  And, for a short period, it can even make you believe that the sweetest orchid is nothing but a noxious weed that must be trampled underfoot.

  FOR THE REST of the week, I practised the piano as if my life depended on it. I was putting in a minimum of three hours a day, either at the Music Schools or on the piano in the house dining room, and I was just ripping through scales, chromatic scales and the rest. For the first time ever, I could play a B-flat Minor arpeggio without a wrong note. As for some of the easier scales, like D Major and G Major, I could play them with my eyes closed. I was in uncharted territory.

  Non-musicians might imagine that scales are nothing but a chore, that it’s the music which is the fun. Well, up until a week before, that had also been my opinion. But times had changed and I had taken to scales with a religious zeal. They are the bedrock of any good piano technique. But more than that, I believed scales were the path to India.

  I’d hoped to see her again while I was practising in the Music Schools.

  But instead of India, it was my bête noir that walked through the door.

  It was Friday afternoon and I was yet again playing the First Prelude in one of the rooms. I now knew the piece so well that I could play most of it from memory. But, even on its fiftieth time of playing, the prelude made me glow, as if by playing it I was somehow in touch with India.

  Suddenly there was a smart rap at the door, not a gentle knock, and in barged not my love but Savage, guitar-case under his arm. He oozed behind me and slumped into the armchair. Without a word, he stretched out his legs and placed his feet on the bottom rung of my chair.

  It was unnerving. I felt like a rabbit locked into the Svengali-stare of a cobra.

  At seventeen, a year’s age difference is an ocean. But more than that, Savage was in the rowing VIII and my house captain.

  And one thing more, he was a popper.

  Pop, or the Eton Society as it is formally known, is the powerhouse of the school’s discipline. To describe a popper as a mere prefect would be like describing the college’s extraordinary tailcoats as just another school uniform.

  The poppers were viewed as Gods. The society was self-electing and its members were invariably the most popular boys in the school: the sports stars, the intelligentsia, the ladies’ men and the all-round good-guys.

  The poppers had many perks: their own set of rooms; the right to grow a beard; the ability, just by their mere presence, to create starry-eyed awe in a junior boy.

  And, most important of all, they had the world’s most beautiful prefect uniform. Bar none.

  Since leaving Eton, I have often thought that the only time a man can truly shine in his clothes is at a smart wedding, when he can deck himself out in tails, fancy waistcoat, button-hole and all. Well, that is what the poppers wore every day of the week, and carried it off with great style and panache.

  So that day in the music room, while I was tricked out in Eton’s standard black-white ensemble, this is what Savage was wearing: spit-polished black winklepickers with toes so sharp that they ended in a stiletto point, black silk socks, sponge-bag trousers with black-and-white hound’s tooth check, a magnificent purple waistcoat with black trim, immaculately laundered white shirt with a starched wing-collar, or stick-ups, and a perfectly symmetrical white bowtie. The edges of his tailcoat were piped with black braid, while in his buttonhole was a gorgeous gardenia.

  He was the gilded butterfly to my black-and-white moth.

  He still hadn’t said a word. He just sat there with his thumbs tucked into his waistcoat pockets and stared at the ceiling. His middle-fingers tapped against his hips.

  “Why don’t you play for me Kim?”

  It was the first time he’d ever used my first name.

  “What would you like me to play?”

  He stared at me glassily, as if he’d suddenly been made aware of my presence. “Why don’t we try that little piece that you have been practising so assiduously this past week?”

  I started to play, but Savage’s presence turned the prelude into a dirge.

  “That’s enough, thank you,” Savage said, his voice silky. “Tell me Kim, do you know of a woman called India James?”

  “India who?” I didn’t turn a hair.

  “India James. She is a new piano teacher here.”

  “I thought you played the guitar.”

  He ignored me. “All this week, Kim, I have been wondering why, at all hours, I find you practising here.”

  I shrugged. “I like the piano.”

  Savage stood up, and as he walked past he cuffed me round the ear with his guitar case.

  “Jesus!”

&nb
sp; “Sorry about that.” He lingered in the doorway. “So, who is your piano teacher?”

  I rubbed the back of my head, working my fingers into the scalp. “Charlie Massey.”

  The door slammed shut. I was left to dwell on my lack of perception. For while I had spent the past week paying homage to India at the piano keyboard, it had not occurred to me that she would also be featuring in the fantasies of hundreds of other Etonians. Idiot. There wouldn’t be a boy in the school that didn’t already know of her; know of her, and, like Savage, wish that they knew her better.

  I’VE ALWAYS LOVED dogs. They only ever live for the moment, don’t give a damn about what happened an hour ago, let alone yesterday.

  This is the direct opposite of me. I am perpetually wondering about the past, fingering over the details, wondering about how my life might have changed for the better—or the worse—if just one small thing had been different.

  What if, for the sake of example, instead of liking dogs I’d had a distinct aversion to them? For then I might not have become a dog-walker, and might not have injured my hand, and might not have shared a piano-stool, and might not have stolen a kiss . . .

  I would so love to have a glimpse of all those parallel universes, just to find out whether the minute occurrences really do make a difference; or whether, right from the moment we are born, our destinies are already fixed like the constellations in the night-sky.

  Hopeless. Spend years fretting over it, and you’ll still be none the wiser.

  But as it happened, I did like dogs . . .

  The Dame, Lucinda, had broken her leg in the spring. Her little Renault had been hit by a drunk driver and she’d been in hospital for weeks.

  She had taken it in her usual stoic fashion and, instead of cursing her ill-luck, had thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t been killed outright.

  She did have one regret though; she couldn’t get out to exercise her King Charles Spaniel, Rufus.

  So for a few months, I and a couple of other boys had been helping Lucinda with the dog-walking. Of a weekend, and sometimes during the week, I’d pop over to her private quarters and take Rufus out for an hour.

  That Saturday after lunch, I went up to her suite of rooms. Her lounge was a shrine to her lost suitors—the hundreds of Etonians who had courted and attempted to beguile her for five years at a stretch, and who had then departed Eton, never to write or speak to her again. Every wall was plastered with mementoes and pictures from Lucinda’s thirty years at the school. Thirty years of house photos, scores of individual boys’ pictures, or leavers, and a vast selection of caps, scarves, plaques, cricket bats, oars and rugby balls.

  Rufus was already raring to go, dog-lead in his mouth, tail thumping the floor. Lucinda had her crutches next to her and was easing herself into her armchair.

  “It’s the dog-walker-in-chief,” she said. Lucinda had neat, greying hair and when her face relaxed it fell naturally into a smile. She nosed through a box of chocolates and selected a truffle before handing them to me. “Take a couple.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am,” I replied. Lucinda was always addressed as ‘Ma’am’, as if we were talking to the Queen.

  I took a caramel for myself and fed a praline to Rufus.

  Lucinda slipped off her shoes and put her feet up onto the leather pouffe.

  “Much better.” She sighed and wriggled into the cushions. “Do you know that until my accident, Kim, I never knew you liked dogs.”

  “We’ve always had Labs at home.” I scratched Rufus under the ear. “When Mum died, Dad went off the deep end. At one stage we had five in the house.”

  “Five?” Lucinda was incredulous. “That might be too much even for me.”

  “If they saw a cat, they could tug you off your feet.”

  “I’m sure.” Her fingers trailed over the chocolates before she plumped for a chocolate liqueur.

  “Twice a day I had to take them out, otherwise they made the house look like a midden.”

  “So that’s why you like dog-walking so much.”

  “Beats cricket.” I attached Rufus’s lead.

  “Most things do, dear,” she said, picking up her pen and cracking open her Daily Mail to the crossword page. “Take a few more chocolates before you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  I took Rufus to Agar’s Plough. He was yapping as if he’d spent the last six months in quarantine.

  I let him off the lead and he sniffed round a bramble bush, lying flat on the ground, paws outstretched, peering intently through the leaves. There were a few games of cricket going on. How pleasant it was to be there with Rufus rather than wasting the afternoon chasing balls for other boys.

  Suddenly Rufus snarled and lunged, darting into the edge of the bush. I couldn’t make out what he had in his mouth but his head shook violently from side-to-side.

  “Rufus! Rufus!” I looked more closely. At first I’d thought it was a rat, but then I saw it was a grey squirrel. It made a shrill, keening shriek.

  Rufus champed down harder on the squirrel’s neck. I grabbed the dog by his choke collar and tried to prise open his jaws, digging my fingertips into his nostrils.

  Rufus flicked his head and let go. The squirrel flailed in the air and sank its teeth into my thumb. One short, savage nip, before it was on the ground and scurrying to the nearest oak.

  My thumb was thick with blood. The first thought to go through my head was, ‘Christ, that’s going to hurt.’

  The next moment the pain kicked in, lancing through my hand—so excruciating, it couldn't have been much worse if I'd had an amputation.

  I bound up the wound with my handkerchief, whimpering with the pain. I couldn’t believe such a small bite could create such a seismic throb. Rufus meekly tailed behind as I stumbled back to the Timbralls.

  Lucinda only needed one look. She gave me a chocolate liqueur to steady my nerves, then, her leg causing her to hobble with pain herself, drove me to the school sanatorium where they sewed me up and gave me a tetanus jab.

  By the evening, my thumb had swollen to the size of a fat sausage. So long as I didn’t touch it, the pain was a steady dull throb. However, the moment it was pressed in any way, it was as if a blowtorch was scorching over my knuckles.

  It meant that for the next couple of days any sort of piano-playing—at least with my left hand—was out of the question.

  That said, it certainly wasn’t going to stop me from attending my second piano lesson.

  I had been looking forward to it so much that I could hardly eat. The anticipation was so intense that it made me feel queasy—although I didn’t know what I’d be able to accomplish with one hand out of action.

  That Monday morning, my bathroom regime reached a new peak. I showered, shampooed, gelled, shaved, moisturised and layered on enough anti-perspirant to see me through a desert.

  How I wished that I could have been a popper so I could have worn an eye-popping waistcoat and sweet-scented flower. I’d have been happy, even, just to have been a ‘school officer’, which would have allowed me to wear a bowtie.

  But I made the best of what I had. My black lace-ups would have done justice to an army officer, my suit Bible black, and my shirt dazzling in its whiteness.

  “Very nice,” Jeremy said, as I prepared to leave for the Music Schools. “Shame about the thumb.”

  “It is.” I’d applied a fresh white bandage that morning.

  “How are you going to play?”

  “With difficulty.”

  I blew him a kiss.

  I LEAVE WITH time to spare and as I amble down Keate’s Lane I feel like a young swain on a first date. My skin is prickly, hyper-sensitive, and the blood is surging through my veins. I’ve never felt so excited, so alive. All at the prospect of a piano lesson.

  But what a teacher.

  I’m not sweating when I enter the Music Schools, but I’m as skittish as a young colt and would have jumped at my own shadow.


  The walk up the stairs has all the solemnity of a pilgrimage and now I am there on the top floor, walking towards my beauty. Already I can hear her playing a prelude.

  Three deep breaths, I knock on the door and I’m in. Even though I am fully prepared for the shock, the sight of her still whips the air from my lungs. She is simply that striking. My longing eyes suck her up. If anything, the last week has made her more beautiful. The scent of lily-of-the-valley has already hit me.

  She looks up and for a moment pinches her lower lip as she notices my thumb. “What’s happened to you then?”

  “I was . . .” I cough. “I was bitten by a squirrel.”

  “A squirrel?”

  “I was trying to rescue it from a dog.”

  “Ahh.” She nods her understanding. “I once tried to break-up two dogs in a fight. You know what happened? I got bitten too. You’re better off using your feet.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Well, I’ve got a present to cheer you up Kim.” She stretches up to her attaché case on the piano. Even when her fingers grip the handle, she has all the grace of a ballerina.

  “Thank you.”

  And out she brings Bach’s complete The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II, and, for a moment, it feels as if she has given me the golden key to her heart, for with this book I will court her.

  “You must be note perfect with the First Prelude by now,” she says. “I’ve heard you practising.”

  “I’m sorry I won’t be able to play it for you today.”

  “Well, which one do you fancy next? Let me play you a couple.”

  And so she did, a prelude, a fugue, and then another prelude: Prelude 2 in C Minor.

  Like many of Bach’s preludes, it seems at first to be an almost mathematical exercise. It takes time to appreciate the tempestuous emotions running beneath its rock facade.

  I gaze at India, dazzled by her back, her hair, her dancing fingers. And although I’d thought that I knew her face and hands so well, I notice something new.