Prelude Read online

  The lessons were the formal times when I was scheduled to meet with India, but I had taken to lurking around the Music Schools at all hours. I usually hoped to see her there at least twice a week. Sometimes she’d pop into my practice room, or I might catch her on the pavement as she was heading home.

  I lived for those moments. For unlike my actual lessons, they were in the lap of the gods. It was their very spontaneity that made them all the more thrilling. One moment practising a prelude, focused on my music, and the next she’s walking through the door. She would be pleased to see me, but I think also that she delighted in the fact she had introduced me to The Well-Tempered Clavier. It was the private thrill of the matchmaker who brings two lovers together.

  Seeing India, even for a few seconds, could make my day, although to say that these sightings were in the lap of the gods is not strictly accurate. Like a big-game hunter, I could maximise my chances of seeing India by being in certain places at certain times. The Music Schools, for instance, were a favourite hunting ground, as was the School Hall at 11 a.m.

  But I soon learned that there was one place where, almost every morning, I could find India. As soon as I knew of it, I never once missed a chance of seeing her there.

  Eton has two main chapels, one for the lower boys, which is Gothic and depressing, and the other a bigger chapel for the senior boys, which is magnificent. The upper chapel is over 500 years old, and when you walk in and stare up at the huge vaulted ceiling, it feels like you’ve entered a cathedral. It is the sister chapel to Henry VI’s other pet academic project, King’s College, Cambridge, and it is vast, though not half as vast as Henry had wanted it. When the King had originally planned his chapel (where, naturally, the boys would send up regular prayers for his mortal soul), he had wished it to be at least eighty-yards longer. But, as so often occurs with these building projects, the money ran out.

  Despite this, what remains is still a spectacular school chapel, with a grand organ, old oak pews, and carved stalls for the masters. My favourite part came courtesy of the Nazis. A time-bomb landed in the schoolyard on December 4, 1940 and a day later, on the eve of Founder’s Day, most of the chapel windows were destroyed. They were replaced by the most remarkable John Piper stained glass, four of the miracles on the northern side and four of the parables on the south. I have spent many hours staring up at them.

  In the mornings, the junior boys had to go to the lower chapel, but the seniors had the option of going to either the upper chapel or the School Hall where some form of entertainment would be laid on—a talk, perhaps, or some music. I would do everything in my power to stay away from the chapel. I loathed it. For an entire decade, I’d been forced into various school chapels and, to this day, church services remain to me nothing but an exercise in tedium.

  But on Sundays there was no getting out of chapel and I would dutifully join the rest of the rabble and take my seat.

  IT WAS THE third Sunday of term, and the upper chapel was filled to the gunnels with tailcoats. I am already going into hibernation, preparing myself for seventy-five minutes of torpor, when out of the corner of my eye I detect a flash of green-and-red skirt. It is India, show-stoppingly beautiful. Conversations dry up. Eyes dart. There is not a boy in the chapel who has not seen her, who is not inspecting her in the most minute detail.

  She walks down the aisle like a catwalk model and, even in her innocence, she must have been aware of the reaction. She scans the oak stalls by the walls before spotting an empty seat.

  Immediately after she finds her place, she leans forward to pray. She prays for a long time, and once more at the end of the service, her head still bowed as I join the merry cavalcade out of the chapel and into the sunshine.

  Ever after that, I would forego the School Hall option to attend chapel instead. Most days she would be there, sliding into her seat just before the start of the service.

  The chapel became my secret delight. No one, not even Jeremy, knew why I went there every morning.

  On the second day she spotted me and after that she would always scan the boys for a glimpse of me and would bestow on me that impish smile. For those smiles alone, I would have endured a month of chapel services.

  INDIA WAS THE woman to whom my thoughts would first stray. But as I’ve said, she was not the only woman in my dreams.

  Angela had the monopoly of my English classes.

  And Estelle had the pick of all my literary outpourings. We were writing to each other at least three times a week, and every one of her letters would provoke another paroxysm of delight. Always they smelled of lavender. I kept them in numerical order in my burry and sometimes at the weekend I would give myself up to an orgy of puppy love and would read every single letter from start to finish.

  One Sunday, just after prayers, I was lounging with Jeremy in my room, me on my bed, polishing my shoes, while Jeremy lay on the floor with his feet vertically up against the wall.

  By tilting his head back, he was just able to look at me.

  “I don’t spend time with you anymore,” he said.

  “Got a lot of work on,” I smirked. Jeremy knew only too well that my sole work in progress was the piano.

  “Well, I hope she’s suitably appreciative.”

  “She’d better be.” I lovingly dabbed some more polish onto the toe of my black lace-up. “If I’d met her six years ago, I’d have had a chance at a music scholarship.”

  “So, what do you actually do in your lessons?”

  I could feel a dreamy smile wash over my face as I recalled my time with India. “I do my scales. I play her The Well-Tempered Clavier. She might play something back. We talk a bit and then I leave.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Just about.”

  “And what about Estelle and her blue lavender-scented letters?”

  I spat on the heel of the shoe and worked the cloth in tight little circles. “Well, it’s not as if I have to commit to one or the other, is it? All I’m doing with India is working hard at my piano practice.”

  “You’re not just practising the piano; you’re obsessed.”

  Before I could reply there was a thump at the door and Archie stropped in. “Evening gents.” He preened himself in the mirror, scratching at a spot on his chin before turning to us. “I’ve just had a very interesting little chat.”

  “Good for you Archie,” I replied.

  “Very interesting,” he said. He ran his finger round the inside of his greying white collar. “She spoke very highly of you Kim.”

  “Well, it definitely wasn’t my step-mum then.”

  “Not your gorgeous step-mum, no. Have another guess.”

  “Marie wanting to borrow my English notes?” I said. “Or was it Angela?”

  “None of those,” Archie said. He started to kick the end of my bed. “Try again.”

  “All right Archie—has Brooke Shields been calling me up again from Bel Air?”

  “She said such nice things about you.” Archie continued toeing the bed.

  “Amaze me.”

  “Does the name Estelle ring any bells?”

  “Estelle?” I said. “You’ve been talking to Estelle? Estelle called here?”

  “Certainly did.” He was grinning now.

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “That’s what I’m doing now.”

  “You mean she’s still on the phone?” I was up and flying out of the door. “Archie, you are such a tosser.”

  I took the stairs two at a time, cursing Archie, wondering if Estelle would still be on the line. The Timbralls had just the one pay-phone for its 50 boys and there was every chance another boy had cut her off by now.

  “Hello?”

  “Is that you Kim?” Relief, cascading through me like cold spring water.

  “Estelle! I thought you’d have hung up.”

  “Who was that funny boy I was talking to?”

  “Don’t even ask,” I said, making a mental note to give Archie a hefty kick the
next time I saw him. “So, how nice to hear from you! How are you? What’s happening in sunny Cheltenham?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “How are you?”

  “All the better for hearing you.”

  My brain was at warp speed. We chatted about this, about that, and gradually my heart stopped convulsing every other second. I started to enjoy performing various mental gymnastics for the benefit of a girl. She said she missed me; I said I missed her.

  “I wish I was with you now,” she said.

  “And what would you do then?”

  “I might hold your hand.”

  “Hand-holding? That sounds nice.”

  “And I might kiss you on the cheek.”

  “Only the cheek?”

  “Well, maybe both of them.”

  “And then?”

  She giggled. “I might give you a peck on the lips.”

  “Just the one?”

  “I’d see what sort of reaction I got.”

  “Maybe I could give you a peck too.”

  “That might be nice.”

  There was a tap at the window. One of the fags was mouthing at me outside the door and tapping his watch. I cheerily thumbed my nose at him.

  It was Estelle’s turn to start asking the questions. “And what would you do if I were with you now?”

  “Very gently, I might slip my arm round your waist.”

  “Only one arm?”

  “Depend on your reaction. But I might try the other too.”

  “And?”

  “I’d kiss you. But a little longer.”

  She sighed. “And would your lips start to open a little?”

  “The tiniest fraction.”

  “And what about your tongue?”

  “I’d use it.”

  “To do what?”

  “To tease your lips.”

  “I think I’d like that. And then what?”

  “I’d use it to whisper sweet-nothings into your ear.”

  My first-ever attempt at phone sex—or, more accurately, phone petting. I loved it. After a while we moved from possibilities to practicalities.

  Our half-terms coincided. I made her an offer.

  “Would . . . would you like to come here for parents’ day?” I asked.

  “And see you in your fancy little tailcoat?” she laughed. “I bet you look good in that.”

  “It’s on the fourth of June.”

  Estelle was enthused. I was ecstatic.

  She’d ask her parents that night; she’d get a new outfit; and on the big day—three weeks hence—she’d catch the train down to Windsor. We’d spend the day at Eton before spending the night with my parents in London. What a night it was going to be . . .

  She blew me a kiss down the phone.

  After hanging up I tore back to my room. Jeremy was still there lying on the floor with his feet up against the wall. I gave him a double thumbs-up, just like the Fonz from Happy Days.

  “What’s happened now?”

  “Estelle’s coming down for the Fourth.”

  “English students, music teachers and now pen-pals, all of them doting on young master Kim.” Jeremy slowly brought his legs back over his head until his toes touched the floor. “I just hope you manage to keep them all apart.”

  Now as it happened, I would be able to keep my three ladies, my three loves, apart. But I was more than capable of wrecking any relationship with Estelle all by myself. And, in a small way, the abrupt end of my courtship with Estelle was to exactly mirror the catastrophic self-implosion that engulfed me with India.

  BY NOW, INDIA and I had reached a plateau. We had had four lessons and maybe a dozen other meetings. But we maintained the formalities and kept our teacher-pupil distance. I worshipped her with my music; she was aware of my existence.

  I don’t know what she thought of me then. I think she must have liked me. But outside of the Music School, I don’t think she gave me a thought. Why should she? She must have had at least twenty other music pupils, all of them bright, personable, and—like me—dreaming wistful fantasies of their piano teacher.

  It is possible that I do myself a disservice. That one term, there cannot have been a boy at Eton who put in as much music practice as me. That dedication must, I suppose, have warranted a certain admiration from India. Admiration, yes, but certainly nothing more.

  And that is how things might have remained, were it not for an interlude that launched my feelings onto a whole new level; and possibly her feelings too.

  For the first time, I started to see India not just as a Goddess, but as a flesh-and-blood woman with passion, emotions. Needs too.

  She would still remain on her pedestal but, ever after, my dreams of India started to be sprinkled with a hint of sexuality. And how quickly they snowballed. In my mind’s eye, clothes and stockings were to start being peeled away, to reveal . . . well I had no idea. I had seen porno pictures of women before, though somehow I could never begin to imagine India naked. But I did know that I would like to find out.

  IT’S A TUESDAY afternoon and I have a vista of spare time to fill, and yet again I aim to fill it at the Music Schools. I’m wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt, but they are not just any old jeans and T-shirt. As I know full well, India might see me at any moment. The jeans are Levi 501s—I’d even bathed in them, just like the guy in the TV advert, to ensure a snug-fit. As for my T-shirt, it’s a tight blue v-neck. About as good as I can get in Eton mufti.

  All is quiet at the Music Schools. How I had come to love the sepulchral calm of that building.

  I bound up the stairs hoping to snare one of the grand pianos. But just as I am about to plunge towards the practice room, I hear the soft fall of piano music. I can tell immediately that it’s Bach.

  I pad down the corridor, all too aware that the music is coming from Room 17. In general I hadn’t liked to go too near this room on my practice days. Even then, I appreciated that it might have smacked of stalking, that less is sometimes more. But the music has me entranced. I’m drawn to it like an eel to the Sargasso Sea when the moon is full. Only later do I learn that it’s Prelude 22 in B-flat Minor.

  It’s solemn. I can imagine it being played at Evensong. In the dark passage, I stand in silence outside India’s practice room. I inhale the music. I’m so focused I’m hardly even aware that it must be India who is playing.

  Abruptly it stops, halts in mid-note, and there is the sudden crash of fists slamming into the keyboard. The jarring discord clangs in my ears.

  I turn to go. Standing outside her practice room feels like an intrusion, as if I have crept up to spy on her.

  I start to slip away just as a fresh sound comes to my ears. Not music, but a light sob.

  I can’t ever recall hearing a woman cry before. Like everything else about India, it is another virgin experience.

  I am turned to granite, my legs paralysed with indecision. My first instinct is to leave. Quickly flee the scene like a thief in the night, to race to the far end of the building and immerse myself in Bach.

  But another part of me longs to be with her. To go into the room and . . . what? Help her? Offer my handkerchief?

  To and fro my mind dithers, flopping between action and passivity.

  I finally decide—I’ll leave her to it. It would only be hideously embarrassing. She wouldn’t want to be seen in this state anyway. Certainly not by me. What good could I do in any case?

  But with each step away, I yearn to do something for her. I can’t think what.

  I stop again, close to the stairs. The sound of her crying has changed too, almost stuttering as if she can’t catch her breath. It’s a cry of feral pain.

  My mind changes. I’ll go back. I’ll knock on the door. I’ll go in. Don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do what I can to comfort her.

  Outside the door of Room 17, a room that has come to represent the epicentre of the storm in my heart, I daren’t look in through the window. I formulate what I will say: “Can I help you?”
<
br />   Before I can prevaricate any further, I have committed myself, knocked twice on the door.

  The sobbing stops dead.

  With a leaden heart, I turn the door handle.

  I’m about to speak, to say what I’d planned to say. But India is hunched over the piano, elbows on the keyboard and her red tear-stained face buried into her hands. My heart goes out to her and all my rehearsed words are forgotten.

  Even though she hasn’t looked up, she must know it’s me. I can’t help being drawn towards her. I sit beside her on the piano stool and enfold her in my arms. One arm loops round her back, the other round her front, and I hold her taut to my chest. It’s an instinctive act of succour that I’d offer to anyone in this amount of pain.

  After the sudden heat of action, my head is spinning. It takes a few seconds for my senses to come alive again, to realise that I am holding India in my arms. My nose is buried so deep into her hair that I can smell her exotic shampoo. Her tears are running wet on my arms and her soft sobs are hot in my ear.

  I don’t know how long we remain locked like this, India fast in my arms, trapped in her grief. It could have been a minute, it could have been more, but all of a sudden she lowers her hands from her face and throws them round my waist before dropping her head to my shoulders. Our legs, hips, torsos are squeezed against each other, the feeling so sensuous that I didn’t want to move for fear of shattering the spell.

  It was the first time that I’d ever been held like this by a woman. Estelle and I had hugged and kissed. But this was more tender. It was affectionate. Almost non-sexual.

  I stroke India’s hair with one hand. Up to the back of her head I reach with my fingers and let them glide down to her shoulders. I’ve never felt hair so satin-soft. I entwine my fingers in her locks, can feel the trace of her shoulders.

  She stops crying and I can sense her breath steady on my neck. Other little sensations pop into my head. The press of her breasts against my chest. For the first time I can smell her sweat, a light animal trace over the lily-of-the-valley. I lick my lips, can almost taste it.