Krog's eyes took this in appreciatively, but his mind was still on the music.
'So you will change your program for the opening concert?' he said. 'Good. Inger will be pleased too. The transcription for piano has never been one she liked.'
'She talks to you, does she?' said Elizabeth. 'That must be nice. But chuffed as I'd be to please our Inger, it's too late to change.'
'Three days,' he said impatiently. 'You have the repertoire, and I will help all I can.'
'Thanks,' she said sincerely. 'And I'd really like your help to get them right. But as for changing, I mean it's too late in here.'
She touched her breastbone.
He looked exasperated and said, 'Why are you so obsessed with singing these songs?'
'Why're you so bothered that I'm singing them?'
He said, 'I do not feel that, in the circumstances, they are appropriate.'
'Circumstances?' She looked around in mock bewilderment. They were in the elegant high-ceilinged lounge of the Wulfstans' town house. French windows opened onto a long sunlit garden. Faintly audible were the rumbles of organ music under the soaring line of young voices in choir. If they'd stepped outside they could have seen a very little distance to the east the massive towers of the cathedral, whose gargoyled rainspouts seemed to be growing ever longer tongues in this unending drought.
'Didn't think you got circumstances in places like this,' said Elizabeth.
'You know what I mean. Walter and Chloe-'
'If Walter wanted to complain, he's had the chance and he's got the voice,' she interrupted.
'And Chloe?'
'Oh, aye. Chloe. You still fucking her?'
For a moment shock time-warped him to his early forties.
'What the hell are you talking about?' he demanded, keeping his voice low.
'Come on, Arne. That's one English word no one needs translating. Been going on a long time, hasn't it? Or should I say, off and on? All that traveling around you do. Must be great comfort to her you don't let yourself get out of practice, but. Like singing. You need to keep at your scales.'
He had recovered now and said with a reasonable effort at lightness, 'You shouldn't believe all the chorus- line gossip you hear, my dear.'
'Chorus line? Oh, aye, I could give Chloe enough names to sing The Messiah.'
He said softly, 'What's the point of this, Elizabeth? What do you want?'
'Want? Can't think of owt I want. But what I don't want is Walter getting hurt. Or Chloe.'
'That is very… filial of you. But you work very hard at that role, don't you? The loving, and beloved, daughter. Though in the end, alas, as with all our roles, the paint and wigs must come off, and we have to face ourselves again.'
He spoke with venom but she only grinned and said, 'You sound like you got out the wrong side of bed. And you were up bloody early too. Man of your age needs his sleep, Arne.'
'How do you know how early I got up? Am I under twenty-four-hour surveillance, then?'
'Woke with the light myself, being a country lass,' she said. 'Heard your car.'
'It could have been someone else's.'
'No. You're the only bugger who shifts gears three times between here and the end of the street.'
He shrugged and said, 'I was restless, the light woke me also. I wanted to go for a walk, but not where I'd be surrounded by houses.'
'Oh, aye? See anyone you know?'
He fingered the soft hair of his beard into a point beneath the chin and said, 'So early in the day I hardly saw anyone.'
She said, 'Give us a knock next time, mebbe I'll come with you. Listen, now you're here, couple of things in the Mahler you can help with.'
He shook his head wonderingly and said, 'You are incredible. I tell you I think you made a mistake to sing these songs on your first recording and that you will be making another to sing them at the concert. You ignore my advice. You make outrageous accusations. And now you want me to help you to do what I do not think you should be doing anyway!'
'This isn't personal, Arne. This is about technique,' she said, sounding puzzled he couldn't make the distinction. 'I might think you're a bit of a prick, but I've always rated you a good tutor. Mebbe that's what you should have gone in for instead of performing. Now listen, I'm a bit worried about my phrasing here.'
She pressed her zapper and the song resumed.
'Oh, yes, they've only gone out walking, Returning now, all laughing and talking. Don't look so pale! The weather's bright. They've only gone to climb up Beulah
Height.'
'You hear the problem?' she said, pressing pause again.
'Why did you say up Beulah Height?' he demanded. 'That is not a proper translation. The German says auf jenen Hoh'n.'
'All right, keep your hair on. Let's say on yonder height, that keeps the scansion,' she said impatiently. 'Now listen, will you?'
She started to play the song again. This time Krog concentrated all his attention on her voice, so much so that he didn't realize the door had opened till Elizabeth said, 'Chloe, what's the matter? What's happened?'
Chloe Wulfstan, heavier now than she'd been fifteen years before, but little changed in feature apart from a not unbecoming pouchiness under the chin, had come into the room and was leaning against the back of a sofa and swaying gently. 'I've been listening to the local news,' she said. 'It's happening again.'
Krog went to her and put his arm round her shoulders. At his touch she let go of the sofa and leaned all her weight into his body so that he had to support her with both arms. His eyes met Elizabeth's neutral gaze and he gave a small shrug as if to say, So what am I supposed to do?
'What's happening again?' asked the younger woman in a flat, calm voice. 'What have you heard?'
'There's a child gone missing,' said Chloe. 'A little girl. Up the dale above Danby.'
Now the man's gaze met Elizabeth's once more. This time it conveyed as little message as hers.
And around them the rich young voice wound its plaintive line:
'Ahead of us they've gone out walking-But shan't be returning all laughing and talking.'
Ellie Pascoe was ready for fame. She had long rehearsed her responses to the media seagulls who come flocking after the trawlers of talent. For the literary journalist doing in-depth articles for the posh papers she had prepared many wise and wonderful observations about life and art and the price of fish and flesh, all couched in periods so elegant, improvement would be impossible and abbreviation a crime.
For the smart-asses of radio and television she had sharpened a quiverful of witty put-downs that would make them sorry they'd ever tried to fuck with Ellie Pascoe!
And for her friends she had woven a robe of ironic modesty which would make them all marvel that someone revealed as so very much different could contrive to remain so very much the same.
She'd even mapped out a History of Eng. Lit. account of her creative development.
'Her first novel, which she steadfastly refused to allow to be published, but whose discovery in her posthumous papers was the literary event of 2040 -no, make that 2060-is the typical autobiographical, egocentric, picaresque work by which genius so often announces its arrival on the world stage. Much of it is ingenuous, even jejune, but already the discerning eye can pick out that insight, observation, and eloquence which are the marks of her maturity.
'Her second novel, which, after much pressure and considerable revision, she allowed to appear at the height of her fame, is the story of a young woman of academic bent who marries a soldier and finds herself trying to survive in a world of action, authority, and male attitudes which is completely foreign to her. The autobiographical elements here are much more under control. She has not merely regurgitated her experience, but first digested it, then used it to produce a fine piece of… art.'
(that metaphor needed a bit of work, she told herself, grinning.)
'But it is in her third novel, which exploded her name to the top of the best-seller lists, that the voice of the mature artist-assured, amused, amusing, passionate, compassionate, compelling, and melismatic-is heard for the
