the idea grew and grew.
Maybe it wasn’t so preposterous after all. Maybe this was our opportunity to restore things. To pick up all the broken pieces and put things back the way they once were. Yes, this was the chance to heal our fractured souls.
Ever since the funeral I had been aware of slight changes to your behaviour.
Instead of the sombre strains of Pablo Casals, or your own cello, I would hear a different kind of music coming from your room. A violent and ugly kind of noise that I would ask you to turn down almost every evening.
You rarely practised your cello, now. You still went to your lesson at the music college every week, but when I asked how it went I’d get shrugs or small hums in return. A friend I had never heard about – Imogen – suddenly became someone you had to call every evening. Your bedroom door would always be closed and I would sometimes stand there behind it, trying to work out if you were on your bed or at your computer. I noticed, once, when you stepped out, that you’d taken your poster of Pablo Casals down from the wall. The old cello maestro who had always been such an inspiration.
It seemed incredible. I thought that man was your idol.
You had adored his interpretation of Bach’s cello suites. You had even ordered that old footage from the library. Pablo, aged ninety-four, conducting a special concert at the United Nations. The tiny old man, his time-creased face reflecting perfectly the strain and emotion of the orchestral movements until there seemed to be no difference between them, the man and the music, so that each refrain heard in that grand hall seemed to be a direct leaking of his soul.
You had devoured his memoirs, and told me to read them too. The story I remember now was when he and a few companions walked up Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco. Pablo was in his eighties, and had felt very weak and tired that morning, but to the bemusement of his friends had insisted that he still wanted to climb the mountain. They agreed to go with him but then, during the descent, disaster struck. Do you remember that story?
A large boulder had become dislodged further up the mountainside and was now hurtling towards them. The boulder missed all of his companions but, having seen it, Pablo froze. As it shot past, the giant rock managed to hit and smash Pablo’s left hand, his fingering hand. His friends looked with horror at the mangled, blood-soaked fingers, but Pablo showed no sign of pain or fear. In fact, he was overwhelmed with a kind of relief, and thanked God he would never have to play the cello again.
‘A gift can also be a curse,’ wrote the man who had felt enslaved by his art since he was a child. The man who had anxiety attacks before every single performance.
This last fact that had always comforted you when playing in public. And so it made no sense, with the annual York Drama and Music Festival not too far away, that you would want to take down his poster. A trivial issue, I suppose, but one I viewed as symptomatic of a broader change.
Maybe I should have been firmer with you then.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you shut yourself away. At the time, though, I imagined this was your way of grieving. In tribute to the life of your brother you were shrouding yourself in the same mystery.
What I didn’t realise was that this retreat would continue, that you would slip further and further away from me until the point at which I couldn’t call you back.
As I flicked through the travel section of the newspaper I saw it – a weak black-and-white photograph of the Colosseum. ‘Price includes flights and six-night stay in the Hotel Raphael.’
The city of faith and antiquity and perspective, the place people go to mourn and accept the transient nature of human life, where old temples and frescoes outlive us all. Such was my thinking.
Oh, pity the folly of a desperate mind!
Do you remember that sunny evening we walked to Cynthia’s and I had to stop halfway down Winchelsea Avenue? You asked me what the matter was and I told you I didn’t know, that I just felt a bit dizzy. It was the feeling I had experienced at the church, and when selling Reuben’s bicycle. A darkening of vision accompanied by a kind of tingling towards the rear of my skull. Similar, I suppose, to pins and needles, only this felt warmer, as though tiny fires were raging through the dark spaces of my mind, generating sparks that wriggled and danced before losing their glow. And these fires were burning those parts of me that knew when and where I was, leaving me for a moment deprived of all identity.
I turned to see the house I had passed, number 17, and it looked as depressing as all the others on the street. I told myself to keep my head. It was only a dose of the shudders, I reasoned. A result of frayed nerves and poor sleep, nothing more. Although if you ever wondered why we never walked that way again, you have the reason.
By the time we reached Cynthia’s bungalow I was feeling much better, and quite hungry. Although of course one can never be quite hungry enough for one of Cynthia’s curries.
‘It’s an authentic Goan recipe,’ she said, as it slopped onto our plates. ‘I printed it out from the computer. It was meant to be mild but I’m worried I might have overdone it a little with the chilli.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,’ I told her, as I tried to avert my eyes from the charcoal sketch of a nude on the table. We must have arrived before she had time to frame it. A study of creased female flesh from one of her life-drawing classes.
‘Mmm, it’s lovely,’ you said, enjoying your first mouthful. You actually sounded like you meant it.
Cynthia smiled at you, and seemed for a moment mildly entranced. ‘Oh good. Good. Not too hot?’
‘No,’ you said, although within five minutes you were in the kitchen topping up your glass of water.
‘I’ve thought about what you said,’ I told Cynthia, in a hushed tone, as you ran the tap. ‘And I think you might be right. I’m going to book a holiday.’
‘Good, Terence. Good. Have you told Bryony?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to keep it a surprise.’
‘Well, maybe you should consult her first.’
I shook my head. ‘She’s always loved surp—’
You were back, drinking from your glass, feeling our admiring eyes upon your neck. Two old ducks in awe of a swan.
Somehow, we made it through the curry. A feat of endurance on all our parts I imagine, and Cynthia tried to humour us with some of her old am dram stories. ‘It was on the opening night of The Glass Menagerie . . . Ray was in his toga . . . I was sitting in the green room . . . It was the third act . . . There I was, queen of the fairies . . . And someone broke wind in the audience . . . Oh, our faces!’
And then she went quiet, keeping her dark lips in position even after her smile had died. For quite a while she stared into some indeterminate space between us, as the sadness shone in her eyes.
‘It was less than a year ago, wasn’t it?’ she said, after a while. ‘When Reuben did his work experience at the theatre?’
I tried to think. Yes. It must have been. You had spent a week at the music college, arranged weeks in advance, while Reuben was still unsorted right up to the last moment. If it wasn’t for Cynthia having a word with David wotsit then he’d have been in all sorts of trouble at school.
‘Yes,’
