Appassionata

‘The elm is a patient tree,’ murmured Rannaldini, ‘it hateth and waiteth.’

A few days after Malise’s death Rannaldini was lunching on oysters and seafood salad in his penthouse flat which was papered with platinum discs and photographs of himself with the famous and which overlooked the tawny autumnal beauty of Central Park.

Picking up The Times which was flown out to him every day from London, Rannaldini observed that another wife was standing by her cabinet minister husband. The photograph had been cropped at waist level, but Rannaldini felt sure the wife had a stiletto heel in her husband’s Gucci toe-cap and a knee in his groin despite the linked arms and the frenetically smiling faces. Kitty had not stood by him — the bitch.

Turning the pages, easing a piece of squid out of his back teeth, Rannaldini discovered Malise’s obituary, a glow job describing his brilliant war, his knowledge of paintings, his work on the flute and his skill as a chef d’equipe where he was the only person who could harness the genius of Rupert Campbell-Black.

He is survived by a second wife and one daughter from his first marriage, read Rannaldini, pouring himself another glass of Pouilly-Fume.

He could remember the exquisite Helen at a school concert, definitely one of Rupert’s finest thoroughbreds, an earnest intellectual snob, thirty years younger than her upright second husband and in need of a little excitement.

Smiling, Rannaldini took out a piece of dove-grey writing-paper, and picked up his jade-green fountain-pen. He wrote in green ink:

My dear Helen, (may I?)

Please forgive my presumption but going through some old newspapers which I hadn’t had time to read, I found The Times obituary of your husband.

What an extraordinary fine-looking, multi-talented man. I had no idea that the M. M. Gordon, who wrote, to my mind, the definitive work on the flute, was married to you. I would so like to have met him.

You won’t remember but we met briefly when your son accompanied my daughter Natasha when she sang ‘Hark, Hark the Lark’ at a Bagley Hall concert a few years ago. He showed immense promise. I hope he has taken up the piano as a career.

You must be utterly desolate but please comfort yourself. As Voltaire wrote-

Rannaldini sighed with pleasure. Helen would love Voltaire, but he decided to translate the poem, Americans weren’t too hot on French.

There are two deaths,

And one is such that all men dread and all abhor.

The one is to be loved no more,

The other’s nothing much.

This is in no way to dismiss the depths of your suffering but at least you are safe in the knowledge you were never betrayed. My young wife left me for a boy her own age two and a half years ago. I cannot say I envy you, but at least Malise’s love for you and yours for him is intact and untarnished.

Does Malise have any unpublished work? I would be so interested to read it and assist its publication.

Perhaps when your heart is a little easier you would have lunch with me. I have a jet or a helicopter that could collect you, perhaps when I am next in London, and we could share our sadness.

Yours ever,

Rannaldini.

‘Hark, Hark the Lark,’ sang Rannaldini as smirking, he sealed the envelope and set the letter aside to be posted in a few weeks’ time when the trickle of consoling letters would have dried up and his would have far more impact.

Helen was utterly charmed. Rannaldini’s letter arrived at the beginning of November at the nadir of her despair. It looked as though she was definitely going to have to sell the Old Rectory and Malise’s daughter, whom she had never liked, although she’d taken on Malise’s two black labradors which Helen had also never liked, was contesting the will and had laid claim to Malise’s prettier pieces because they were family heirlooms.

Of course Helen remembered Rannaldini from the school concert, arriving late and plonking himself next to Hermione Harefield so Helen had been forced to move back a row and sit next to Rupert, who had behaved abominably as usual, whispering to Taggie and even nodding off and snoring in counterpoint to the Mozart concerto Marcus had been playing so beautifully.

Helen was utterly heartbroken over Malise’s death but Rannaldini’s letter comforted her. She wrote back a charming note, littered with quotations, saying lunch would be delightful. After all, she told herself firmly, Rannaldini might well be able to give Marcus a leg-up in his career.

Marcus, meanwhile, with conspicuous gallantry, had tackled his father about giving Helen an allowance. Rupert had replied that he’d think about it but had gazed out of the window at the reddy-gold leaves cascading down from his towering beeches as fast as his money seemed to be pouring into Lloyd’s. Thank God, he hadn’t been too badly hit and had never risked the house or any of the land, but he didn’t see why the hell he should support Helen. It was sixteen years since she’d buggered off and he’d paid every penny to support Marcus and Tabitha and was still giving them both whacking great allowances.

When he’d first met Helen she had been working for a publisher and always pointing out his literary deficiences. She could bloody well get a job now.

Privately Rupert was absolutely livid with Helen for asking Jake Lovell back to the house after the funeral. Jake was doing too bloody well as a trainer and Rupert was consumed by all the ancient jealousy that Malise had loved Jake more than him.

To top it, Taggie had enraged Rupert by asking Helen to stay for Christmas, claiming that she and Marcus couldn’t be all alone the first year after Malise’s death.

‘I suppose you’re going to serve lame duck at Christmas dinner?’ he said nastily.

And Taggie, remembering Sister Angelica’s warning about too many limping ducks, felt a cold chill.

THIRTEEN

Rannaldini planned his first telephone call to catch Helen at a particularily low ebb. She had just returned from Evensong at which Malise should have been reading the lesson. The church had always been full of admiring ladies on such occasions. Tonight they had turned up to see how his widow was coping. Not very well it seemed. Afterwards, as Helen emerged into the drizzle of a chill November evening, feeling them all shying away, she had scuttled off, black-scarfed head bowed, slipping on the yellow leaves concealing the slimy paving stones. She was too distraught to pause and to speak a word of comfort to Malise in his cold bed. Tomorrow she would bring him the pinched remnants of the rose garden.

As Marcus had gone to hear Murray Perahia playing at the Wigmore Hall, Helen had a long night ahead, terrified of sleeping alone since the black labradors had departed, even more terrified of waking to the horrors of life without Malise and a new one hundred thousand pound Lloyd’s bill.

The telephone was ringing as she came through the door. Malise? An instinctive desperate hope, but it was only a friend who’d been in church bossily summoning her to a dinner party.

‘Only ten of us, do you good to get out. Eight for eight-thirty, strictly caszh.’