The Horn of Roland

  She turned in mild surprise, and gave him a long, narrow look, estimating the possibilities and finding them only moderately explosive. Lu could be temperamental at times, especially over music; and what with a big new work about to be launched on the world, and only an obscure provincial orchestra and soloists of unknown capabilities at his disposal for the purpose, he might well be on edge at this stage. After the first rehearsal he’d be all right. However inadequate his material – for she didn’t quite believe in the optimistic estimates of Jörg-Erich and Herr Graf – he’d know then how to get the best out of it.

  ‘Only half-nonsense to me, darling,’ she said serenely, ‘and not at all to them. Why shouldn’t they think of you like that?’

  Lucas stretched himself out full-length on the couch, with a resigned sigh. ‘Heroes and geniuses are equally rare,’ he said with lingering irritation, ‘and I make no claim to be either, and never have, and I won’t have you making it for me, either.’

  ‘All right, no hero, no genius. But tell them, don’t tell me.’

  She glanced at the clock on the delicate, green-damasked wall. Nearly an hour before the car was due to collect them, and Lu still had the gift of prompt cat-napping and instant awaking that dated from the uneasy years of his boyhood here. His eyes had closed, he breathed long and softly, and his face had the distant calm of sleep already, but the tensions of his body had not relaxed. That was how he slept in times of stress, ready to be on his feet at any moment, and grasp instantly any situation to which he might open his eyes.

  Una sat down in an armchair across the room from him, and studied him thoughtfully in the silence. The short brown hair paled into an edging of silver at his high temples. It had been like that as long as she could remember, and it only made him look more youthful than ever, echoing the greyness of his eyes, which her own so strongly resembled. After all, he was still barely middle-aged, only forty-seven, and built on a long, slender scale that would keep him looking active and elegant into old age. And with that thin face of his, those fastidious features and aloof eyes, he had always been a magnet to women, ever since Una’s mother had died, nearly ten years ago. Una was used to that. At first she had guarded him like a small dragon minding a captive prince; but it had soon become clear that he needed no guarding from admiring females whom he never seemed even to see. These days, Una thought, she would almost be glad if he would catch sight of one of them, provided, of course, that he picked out one of the nicer ones. There was no denying he was a great responsibility.

  Once, she remembered, in the first year of her total possession and greatest protective passion for him, she had had a stand-up fight with another girl at school, a real fight with torn dresses and pulled hair and scratched faces, because the other girl had bragged about her actor father until Una could bear it no longer, and had told her roundly who, of all the girls in England, had the handsomest father, the bravest and the most brilliant. The resultant uproar had sent her home in disgrace to collect a second lecture from the object of her adoration. She still remembered how superior it had made her feel to stand in silent forbearance, and let his anxious reproaches run off her like coronation oil. She never had told him what the fight was about, but some days later she had unbent so far as to inform him that she had won it.

  She wouldn’t have shared him with anyone, then; as he had become suddenly both father and mother to her, so she had assumed a like enlargement, and constituted herself everything her mother had been to him, hostess, secretary, manager, shock-absorber against the buffeting of a world not then quite so appreciative as it had since become. At ten years old, the surrender of any part of her absolute right in him would have meant the loss of her own personality. At twenty she looked a little further afield, and her world was peopled by a great many others besides Lucas, even if no one of them had yet come anywhere near supplanting him.

  Meantime, she thought, eyeing the clock, I’ve just got nice time to unpack properly, and decide on a frock for tonight. Should she change for the afternoon? No need, she decided; after all, on this occasion they were only spectators, not playing a main part. But tonight she would have to pull out all the stops.

  She was in her walk-in wardrobe, with a bouquet of dresses over her arm, and one hand operating as quietly as possible among the tinkling hangers, when the telephone rang in the sitting-room. She dropped the dresses on her bed, and ran to catch it before it could awaken Lu, but she should have known she would be too late. At the second ring he was already sitting upright and wide awake, his hand outstretched to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Lucas Corinth here.’

  Una heard the faintest of metallic murmurs at the other end of the line. Crista Lohr, perhaps, announcing her arrival for them from reception? No, there remained twenty minutes yet before she was due, and everything about her up to now suggested that she would arrive precisely when she had promised to arrive. Jörg-Erich, perhaps, with some detail that had been forgotten, or a slight change of timing? The possibilities, in this town where his family had been well known for generations, were wide and exciting, even, perhaps, to Lu himself, curiously alarming and discomfiting. Taking up links broken for nearly thirty years is a wincing business, no matter how much goodwill there is on both sides. She saw how the lines of his face had tightened and paled, and how still his body was, tensed as though he held his breath.

  He did not speak again. He did open his lips, arduously, as though they had dried into parchment; but before he could utter a word she heard the infinitely distant and faint click of the receiver at the other end being replaced. The caller had simply spoken and hung up, without waiting for any reply.

  Lucas replaced the handset with a movement very slow and careful, as though it weighed heavily in his hand. She saw him moisten his lips. Then he got up and crossed the room, his back turned to her, and helped himself to a cigarette from the box on the centre table. That was a mistake. The flickering of the match told her that his hand was shaking.

  ‘What was it, Lu? Is there something wrong?’

  A silly question, she thought. I know there’s something wrong, and he knows I know it.

  ‘Wrong? What should be wrong? Except the number,’ he said, inhaling smoke, and turning upon her a face carefully composed, like a too exact portrait. ‘They made a mistake at the switchboard downstairs. Someone was calling the next suite. She caught up with it next moment, and switched the call.’

  If there was one thing Una was sure of, at that moment, it was that the entire staff of the Grand Hotel had been drilled into the fullest possible realisation of their duty to their guest of honour, and whatever room in this establishment received a misdirected telephone call, it would not be the room Lucas Corinth occupied. It shocked her that he should lie to her, as by now it was probably shocking him that he could not make a more convincing job of it when the need arose. If he had to protect his privacy by lying it must mean that her very presence had been a trespass. She hadn’t thought there was any ground at all where she could not confidently follow him. For the moment it was more unthinkable to force her way through the invisible barrier he had raised than to leave him to be wretched in loneliness on the other side of it.

  This was one problem she had never faced before with her problem parent, and she didn’t know how to deal with it; and her moment of indecision made it for ever impossible to say, as she might have said bluntly at once: ‘I don’t believe you! Now tell me the truth.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said flatly. ‘I see! That was all.’

  ‘That was all.’

  But why should he turn his back again, unless it was because he didn’t want her to see his face, or the hands that were still not quite steady?’

  ‘Is that the time?’ he said, looking up at the wall clock. ‘I’d better go and wash, or the car will be here before I’m ready.’

  He went away into his own room, and closed the door between them; and she had to stand and watch him go, infinitely farther than simply into the next room, and
could think of no immediate way of drawing him back to her.

  The procession took an hour and three-quarters to pass through the streets of Gries, from its gathering point on the fairground near the Filsertal woods. Installed in a place of honour on the balcony of the Town Hall, along with the official party, Una watched the cavalcade of decorated vehicles, tableaux, bands, dancers and singers wind its way unhurriedly round three sides of the square, and out again on its way back through the winding streets to its starting point.

  The shock and preoccupation of that queer little scene with Lucas stayed with her only briefly. The sun shone too brightly, the holiday spirit was too insistent, to let her fret for long. And Crista at her shoulder, prompt and attentive, was ready with information on everything she wanted to know, from the origin of the banner of the town, borne at the head of the procession by a herald resplendent in local costume and mounted on a lively, russet-gold Haflinger, to the words of the song the smallest school-children were singing as their flower-filled wagon sailed slowly by under the balcony.

  After the herald and his escort of horsemen came the town’s brass band, and then the fantastic floats began, foaming with ribbons and flowers and balloons, and peopled by gnomes, giants, mermaids, Martians, monsters, princesses, dragons of fantasy and reality. Between the horse-drawn wagons came more bands, from villages lower down the valley, troops of dancers in local dress, individual carnival figures of every kind. Then a wave of excited laughter and cheering announced the approach of a small group of clowns and acrobats, and two spangled girls on horseback, and one glittering man in black tights who juggled coloured rings even as he walked.

  ‘There’s a circus here, too?’ said Una, delighted. ‘I didn’t realise the festival cast its net so widely.’

  ‘Oh, the circus has always come for the summer fair every year they are here. Didn’t you see the tents and stalls from the road, when you came this morning? Out at the southern end of the town, where there’s a big level meadow – that has always been the fairground. It’s bigger than ever this year, the festival has attracted showmen from further afield, naturally, but all the old regulars will surely be there. Look, here are some of the gypsies.’

  They came dancing, in a whirl of brilliant colours and blinding white smiles, to a ragged orchestra of their own. Ragged only in the casual disorder in which it marched, for its music had a frenzied precision. Their instruments were mainly strings, they walked with even the bass viols slung by leather straps from their shoulders, bowing unconcernedly, and fingering without any apparent need for concentration or thought. In the general merry uproar their music must have been practically inaudible to the musicians themselves, but it mounted clear of the shouting and laughter to reach the balcony in clear string tone, dazzlingly competent. In the tangle of show-ground folk that followed them some were gypsies, but many were not, and even among these latter there were a number of fiddlers and pipers. One tall, gaunt elderly violinist strode steadily ahead, playing with all his might, though he was led along by a little boy, who trotted beside him with a hand clasping the elbow of the arm that held the fiddle, and slowed or hastened his pace slightly according to the traffic around them, as though to preserve a clear space about his charge.

  ‘He’s blind!’ said Una, suddenly realising the meaning of this partnership.

  ‘Yes, I think you must be right.’

  ‘Is he a regular, too? Everybody in the street seems to know him.’

  ‘I expect he must be, but I don’t know him. These wandering players usually make the same round of fairs and shows every season, and perhaps play in inns in the towns during the winter, or at family parties, weddings and christenings.’

  ‘Not in orchestras?’

  ‘Some may, of course. But most play by ear, they know no written music.’

  The rising breeze that made the balloons dance brought back a distinct skirl of fiddle playing to Una’s ears, momentarily clear of the gay hubbub of the street. A sparkling silver thread of sound. I only wish, she thought, astonished and charmed, that I could play like that. On any instrument – by ear or from the page!

  ‘Then, too,’ said Crista thoughtfully, ‘most like better to play alone, and to be always moving on. And I think with country weddings, and fairs, and often free lodging, they make not a bad living.’

  The procession, ending with a final resplendent float full of school-children, drew into its wash the entire population of the streets, which until now had stood crowded along the narrow pavements to watch. Now both hems of the crowd swirled outwards into the roadway and followed, laughing and singing, prolonging the pageant. Most of the town would spend the rest of the day on the fairground or by the lake. Shops and restaurants would do a brisk trade with the visitors from other regions and other countries, and the town brewery would dispose of prodigious quantities of beer, not much doubt of that. Una wondered, but did not ask, if Herr Graf had a controlling interest in the town brewery? It seemed more than likely.

  The official party stirred gently out of its composed groupings on the balcony, circulated civilly for ten minutes or so to give everyone time to speak to the distinguished visitor, and adjourned to the salon to drink coffee before dispersing.

  It was midnight when they got back to their suite at the Grand that night. Ordinarily Gries would have been fast asleep by that time, but now the town had adapted itself to the habits of its profitable guests, so that they had company in the lift, and could still hear dance music drifting up faintly from the garden on the lower terrace as they entered their sitting-room.

  ‘Tired?’ asked Lucas, his finger on the light switch.

  ‘Not a bit. I should be asking you that,’ she said wryly. ‘Frau Graf is pretty heavy going, isn’t she?’ Her own partner at dinner had been, predictably, Jörg-Erich Fischer – I wonder, she thought, if Jörg-Erich didn’t make the table arrangements? – with Werner Seligmann on her other side, and she had found them both remarkably pleasant company. Especially after a glass or two of wine, which greatly assisted her fluency in German, she noticed. Lu must have needed quite a lot of wine to cope with Herr Graf’s suppressed and monosyllabic consort. Not that he had drunk much tonight, or for that matter eaten much. She had been watching him from time to time, and she knew.

  ‘Never mind, an easy day tomorrow,’ she said consolingly. ‘I thought we might even go and have a look at this fair. No social load there, nobody’d know us. Would you like me to ring for some coffee for you?’ Sometimes, when he was tired almost to obliteration, it required a cup or two of strong coffee to restore him to a condition where he could fall asleep properly.

  ‘No thanks, kitten. I shan’t need it. I’m going straight to bed. Goodnight! Don’t stay up too late.’

  ‘I won’t. Bathroom’s all yours, I’d like mine in the morning. Goodnight, Lu!’

  When the door of his room had closed on him, she went out through the parted curtains to the balcony, and looked out over the moony shimmer of the water, just barely quivering in the lightest of winds, and refracting into her eyes in infinitesimal sparks the distant starlight. Round the lake’s rim the terrestrial lights glowed, indenting the live, liquid radiance with fixed stars. The air was mild, the darkness not dark, but milky with a lambent lustre. She felt as fresh as if she had risen from eight hours’ sleep. And he looked worn to the bone and the essence, honed to a translucent fineness. It would be good for him to take her to the fair and ride all the crazy side-shows with her, and eat garish, indigestible sweets, and turn juvenile again at the circus. To forget himself for a day, and come back to himself quite fresh and new, seeing this whole relationship with his town from a different angle, and gloriously simplified. She was certain then that that was all he needed, and his hypersensitive dreads would all have fallen away from him. She knew him, after all, rather well.

  Behind her, in the sitting-room, the telephone pealed abruptly. She turned with no foreboding in her mind, simply reacting to the summons as she would have done at home. The u
npleasant impression left by the noontide incident was almost erased by this time, and she was afloat upon a philosophical tide laced with more wine than she normally allowed herself. She picked up the receiver with nothing in her mind but mild surprise at this late call, and a pleasurable curiosity about its motive.

  The door of her father’s room flew open abruptly, and there he was in his shirt-sleeves, confronting her across the table, his hand held out authoritatively to take the receiver from her. She almost handed it over with a shrug, she was so used to humouring him, and he had given her so little reason, ever, to resent any order or wish of his. But then, while the thing was still in her hand, she realised the importance of what she was doing. She looked Lucas squarely in the eye, and put the receiver to her ear.

  ‘Yes? Lucas Corinth here!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  She had tuned her voice as low as she could, to a brusque and muted murmur, but the listener at the other end knew.

  ‘Miss Corinth?’ said a husky whisper in her ear, in German. ‘Will you be so kind as to give your father a message from my father, please? The name is Gelder, Valentine Gelder. Will you say that my father expects him during the next few days? Say he is looking forward to the meeting.’

  ‘Why of course!’ she began, relaxing into relief and pleasure at a message so innocuous. ‘He is here himself now. Would you like to …’ She broke off there, as the small, final sound of the distant receiver being replaced stabbed at her senses again like an ominous pinprick of mistrust. Why the whisper? Or was she imagining it? Why the haste to get off the line? She looked up at Lucas over the mute instrument, and slowly laid it in its cradle.

  ‘He rang off. He didn’t wait. But it’s only somebody who seems to be hoping for a visit from you, Lu. I bet there are a lot of people here who used to know you, and are hoping to meet you again.’

  She heard the strained tone in her own voice, and wondered whom she was trying to convince, herself or him. He was very pale, but his voice was quiet and calm.