Chapter Eighteen
London, 2014
One week after her niece’s reappearance Cord went back to the Royal Academy of Music, for the first time in years. Her old singing teacher, Professor Mazzi, who’d stuck by her and was one of the few who believed her voice might one day return, had invited her to take part in a panel discussion on singing careers post degree. Cord would have done anything to get out of it.
The old broken-backed book held her captive. Autumn was in the air and every evening, despite herself, she would carefully open a page at random, and start reading Mads’s difficult, tight handwriting for the second, fourth, eighth time. She was only vaguely ever at peace when she was reading it, yet she dreaded opening the pages each time, fearing the pain it would cause to read it all again, and from the point of view of one she had loved, and hurt, so very much.
She could not undo what had happened and she could not tell anyone what she knew. That autumn she began to dream again, to wonder, to see patterns emerging down the years, and it was terrifying, opening it all up again, because for so long she’d survived simply by closing her mind to the whole business of her parents, Ben, Mads, Hamish, her voice, the Bosky, the person she had once been. She was intelligent enough to have not repressed it utterly, but she had cut most of her past life – the part that makes us who we are – out of her present life for years. Now she could not seem to stop the two mixing together.
The dreams were strange, sometimes horrific, dreams where she was back there again, where she saw the old witch on the beach who looked like Daddy’s aunt, where wild flowers grew up around the house and smothered it, where she conjured up ghoulish sights: her brother and her mother kissing, a shelf of water engulfing the house and the wild flowers and the beach huts, washing it all away . . . Night after night she came home and reread Mads’s words, read again the diaries of a terrified little girl and the warmth she had found with Cord’s family. And Cord began to understand. But she couldn’t go back in time and change what had happened.
The news was all about the appearance of a terrifying group called Isis, taking over vast swathes of Syria and Northern Iraq seemingly with no opposition. There were pictures on TV bulletins of men driving into Mosul, hacking at the stones of ancient Assyrian cities nearby like Nimrud and Nineveh, winged lions they said were idolatrous, statues of kings who had lived thousands of years before Mohammed whom they said were infidels. Cord felt protective over her little angel, who she liked to imagine had been rescued from just such an Assyrian city, and had cleared a space for her on the cluttered mantelpiece. Now the angel stared down at Cord as she ate breakfast or shuffled ineffectively through papers looking for music or articles she had lain aside, or lay on the old sofa rereading the diaries late into the night. She liked the owl’s baleful stare which reminded her of Professor Mazzi, in fact. Most of all she liked the way the small square sat neatly amongst her rubbish, as though it belonged there. Just sometimes Cord found herself wondering if the angel was actually watching her, waiting for Cord to do something, trying to tell her something. And then she’d tell herself she really was going mad. I’m not going to see Mumma. I’m not going back there. Nothing’s changed, she’d tell herself, but for the first time this withdrawal and isolation felt not like a necessary position she’d had to take to save herself, save them all, but like an excuse.
The other two members of the panel were a mousy shy young counter-tenor and a baritone who – with tours, albums, appearances on chat shows – had done very well for himself though, Cord privately thought, more with bombast than with actual talent.
The questions ranged from the technical – how to warm up the voice when singing chamber music in a large venue – to the optimistic – when should I get a manager? – and she was pleased to be asked as many questions as the baritone, whose slightly bumptious, self-referential manner and commercial success had not particularly endeared him to the audience of serious young students arrayed in front of them. She loved their confidence. They knew they were good, the best – they wouldn’t have got to the Royal Academy of Music if they weren’t. Cord regretted many things but didn’t actually mind growing old, having grey hairs, twinges in her knee, or a lack of knowledge about pop culture because she had always been old before her time in any case. But here, in the warm wooden hall surrounded by portraits of former principals and successful old students, she felt a sudden primal, blazing envy for these young people and their unsullied careers, what was there for the taking if they so chose. What she wouldn’t give, not for their unlined skin but for the chance to go back and do it again. To choose differently . . . to still have her voice. To open her mouth and to have back the glorious, peerless sound that once came out . . . The afternoon sun shone in shafts through the tall windows like search-lights, and she blinked, suddenly overwhelmed.
My darling friend it’s so wonderful to see her again . . . I can live the rest of the year having had the sunshine of her company for a few weeks. In fact she asks me about me and wants to know all these things but I just want to hear her talk, or hear her sing . . .
‘Time for one more question,’ said Professor Mazzi, who was chairing the event. He pushed his glasses up his nose irritably. ‘Yes—’ He pointed to an eager girl with enormous round wire glasses and a large forehead, in the second row. ‘You. Oh.’ His voice changed, took on a tone of resignation. ‘Soo-Jin. What question do you have for the panel?’
‘My question is for Miss Wilde,’ said Soo-Jin, leaning forward. ‘Thank you very much for coming today, Miss Wilde.’
She paused, and Cord, thinking that was the question, laughed awkwardly.
‘Well, it’s my pleasure, although I’m not sure that’s actually a—’
Soo-Jin interrupted her. With devastating clarity she said, ‘I wanted to ask you what happened when you ruined your voice?’
There was a quick in-draw of breath from someone and then a heavy silence.
‘Sorry, could you be more specific?’ said Cord, softly. She could feel the counter-tenor next to her stiffening and even the baritone stopped checking his phone and looked up. Professor Mazzi looked more owl-like than ever, but said nothing.
‘Your voice used to be perfect. We had an English Song class last month and they showed us a clip of you singing Dido when you were twenty-two and it was very inspirational.’
Imagine being Cord and knowing what you want to do, having your life all mapped out already.
Soo-Jin was still talking. Cord blinked again, trying to recall herself to the present.
‘But I heard you at a performance of the St Matthew Passion in June. Your voice doesn’t sound like that any more. It was very bad, really. You cracked on the high note and you couldn’t make the end of the run and—’
‘Soo-Jin, that’s enough.’ Professor Mazzi was glaring at Soo-Jin who sat, calm and mildly curious, her arms folded. ‘I do apologise. Cordelia, you don’t have to answer the question.’
There was an awkward silence. The roar of traffic outside seemed to grow louder, like a swarm of approaching bees, and Cord wanted to press her hands to her ears. Not this, not this now, not as well as everything else. She kept nodding, idiotically, trying to buy time . . .
‘Anyone else want to ask something instead?’ said the baritone suddenly, for which Cord was grateful.
But, before she could stop herself, she’d raised her hand, and greatly to her own surprise heard herself say, ‘It’s fine. Really. Listen, Soo-Jin. Do you know what the epithelium is?’ Soo-Jin shook her head. ‘No? Well, you should learn it. It’s the membrane that covers the vocal cords. I had a lesion on it, eight years ago. I had it removed and during the operation the epithelium was torn. It can happen, it’s a very delicate procedure. Now if I was a teacher, or an accountant, or anyone with a normal job it wouldn’t have mattered. My speaking voice would have sounded the same. But it tore and afterwards I discovered—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence and so she swallowed. ‘It had badly damaged my singing voice. That’s what happened.’
There was a silence, broken only by the shuffling of feet on the varnished wooden floor. People looked down, not meeting her eye. As though she were polluted, contaminated.
Soo-Jin, however, nodded. ‘OK. Thanks.’ She added, ‘That really sucks, I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you know what caused the lesion in the first place?’
Cord swallowed again. ‘I – I noticed it one day.’
‘How come?’
I loved Cord more than any of them. When I was scared at night she used to get into bed with me and hug me and our toes would touch.
She looked down at her wet palms, smearing the wooden table, her shaking hands, and folded them in her lap. ‘I shouted at someone. It was a bad day.’ She looked up but they stared blankly back at her, embarrassed. ‘I had the nodes on the cords already but they weren’t that big. Nevertheless, I’d seen a specialist, and I was considering the operation. They weren’t sure I needed it, that the risk was too great. But I was very upset and I—’ She broke off, unable to go on.
‘So you’re saying we mustn’t shout at people, that’s correct?’
Someone gave a nervous titter. Cord hunched her shoulders almost up to her ears.
‘I had a row with my dad.’ She felt her throat swell, and tears came to her eyes. ‘I found out something and I was devastated and I lost control. Anyway, the reason doesn’t matter – to you. But that’s what happened.’
She felt lighter, suddenly. She had said all this out loud.
‘What bad luck,’ the baritone said quietly in her ear and he patted her arm. ‘You poor sod.’
Bad luck. She had never been able to see it other than as utterly bound up in her own fortunes, some retribution, some part of the myth of her family. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was just that: bad luck? She had damaged her voice, she had had an operation, the operation hadn’t worked, and it was bad luck. Nothing more.
She smiled at Soo-Jin, who was writing furiously in a notebook, and let her shoulders drop. How strange, she found herself thinking. They asked me and I told them the truth. And it’s OK.
Cord’s always been so full of purpose. I find that very comforting, someone who always knows what to do. She always has.
She didn’t want to get on the tube: it was a beautiful day. Cord lingered in the hall after the panel was over, not wanting to get caught up with the dispersing students. Eventually she was just leaving, the heavy door she remembered so well swinging hard behind her, when she heard a voice calling her. She kept her head down and carried on walking up to York Gate and into the park, over the bridge underneath which the sludgy green water mooched lazily along and the trees were still, the sky a piercing autumnal blue.
Suddenly a moped screeched to a halt just in front of her and Professor Mazzi, removing his helmet, said crossly, ‘I nearly got killed crossing the road. What a way to die. Cordelia, don’t you listen? I was calling your name. So many times.’
‘I thought you were a student wanting to ask difficult questions.’ Cord took his helmet, smiling. ‘I’m so sorry, Professor. How can I help you?’
‘By listening, as before, as I used to beg you to, when you were a young girl and so sure of yourself that you never listened, even then, always with your opinions,’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘“Here, and there, I sing like this, I walk like this.”’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘Maybe we sit down here, if you have a minute?’ He gestured to a bench past the bridge and flicked out the moped’s kickstand.
‘Oh – OK.’ Cord looked at her watch.
‘What?’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘You are busy? You have somewhere to go, a new concert, an interview? No. You are going home to wallow in the mire as the poem says.’
‘I’m teaching a class later,’ Cord lied.
‘Don’t tell untruths to me. Now, listen, please. I am a patron of Goldsmith’s Choral Union. They have commissioned a new work for next summer from Alfred Gatek; you know him? He is a brilliant young composer.’ Cord nodded. ‘They are performing it at the Royal Festival Hall. It will be a grand event. The piece is called Nineveh.’
‘Nineveh?’
‘Yes, you have heard about it?’
‘No . . .’ Cord shook her head. ‘My great-great-aunt – oh, it doesn’t matter.’
‘I have suggested you as the mezzo. I said I would ask you about it.’
‘Me? No,’ said Cord. She put her hand on the professor’s arm. ‘Professor Mazzi, you’re very kind, but my voice—’ She gave a bittersweet smile. ‘That girl in the class, she was right. My voice is ruined.’
‘This is it, you see, you are wrong. You recovered badly from the operation.’
‘No—’ Cord shook her head. ‘It was torn, Professor Mazzi, they couldn’t fix it. Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes, I remember, of course I remember, I remember that one of my best – no, my best student – I remember that her voice was ruined,’ said Professor Mazzi, furiously. ‘Stupido. È molto incredible – Chiedere questa domanda. Allora, una donna che . . . Incredible . . .? Certo, certo . . . Bah.’
He thumped the bench angrily. ‘All right then,’ said Cord, mildly. She just wanted to get away, really, to be back at home, reading the diary again.
‘You don’t have any interest in this, what I say? You don’t care! You are single-minded. You make up your decision and – è finito.’ He sliced both hands through the air. ‘Like that poor boy you broke your heart over.’
‘I didn’t break my heart over him, Professor Mazzi,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘We split up. He went abroad . . . It was for the best.’
‘No, no, cara mia.’ The professor stared at her. ‘I remember it differently, then.’
She closed her eyes briefly, turned away. But he went on.
‘I always took such an interest in you. From the moment I see you and I see – aha, this girl is Sir Anthony Wilde’s daughter. So she is born with this gift of her father, perhaps. I saw him in Macbeth when I come to live in Londra, in nineteen seventy-seven, and such art. Such mastery of art. And then I meet you and it is the same. The dedication, the control of the voice, it was perfection.’
Cord waggled her jaw from side to side.
‘You don’t want to hear this, you pretend to not listen. But I remember. There was the concert at the end of the year and Sir Bryan Linton, he pick you for the solo recital. And as we are waiting backstage, you remember what you said to me?’
Cord shook her head.
‘You said, “Should I be nervous? Because I am not. I want to sing to them.” Do you understand? It was the most important performance, everyone out there who could shape your career and you knew . . .’ He pointed his finger at her. ‘You knew how good you were, carissima.’
Cord nodded, trying to block out what he was saying, but she found she couldn’t. All she could hear were the words of the diary in Mads’s quietly intense, heart-piercing little voice.
Just for one day, one day, I would like to know a feeling where you are totally, utterly happy with nothing else but happiness in your heart, no worries about anything else. Just once, just one day.
She squeezed her aching eyes shut, and then forced herself to listen. ‘It is this that I can’t believe, Cordelia. That you haven’t looked into this and thought about it, when it could help you so much.’
‘Thought about what?’
‘Agh. You don’t even listen to me. Thought about having the operation again. The success rate is optimal. Yes, even for you.’
‘What operation?’
‘My dear,’ said Professor Mazzi. ‘You are a severe trial to me. The operation on your vocal cords.’
‘Oh, that.’ She shook her head. ‘You are kind. There’s no point, though, is there?’
‘I have gone so far as to make the telephone call, and to speak to that man Khan, at Imperial College Trust. He assures me it would be worth your coming to see him.’
‘What? No – oh.’ Cord pressed her hands to her now-burning cheeks. ‘Dear Professor Mazzi, I wish you hadn’t. It’s very sweet of you but—’
‘Dr Khan remembers you and he has looked into the operation. He says it would be easy to correct. He thinks you would suffer a slight adjustment to the range – you would be a mezzo, not a soprano – but I have always longed to see you as Cherubino, cara mia. Anyway, I say to you that Dr Khan is hopeful.’
‘Mr Khan,’ said Cord, after a few moments. ‘He’s a surgeon. It’s Mr Khan.’
Professor Mazzi raised his eyes to heaven, pointing a finger upwards. ‘I do not know why I try to help you, Cordelia. You are a bull-china young woman.’
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Young woman indeed. Thank you, Professor.’
He reached along the bench, took her hand. ‘Do you understand me? He thinks he can help you get your voice back again. If you want it, that is.’ His grasp tightened gently; his own voice softened. ‘That is the question, isn’t it, Cordelia? Do you want it back? Do you actually want to sing again?’
Cord walked home through Regent’s Park. It was gloriously hot, more like late summer than autumn. She turned into the rose garden. Funny, talking about Hamish again; this was where she and Hamish often used to have lunch when he came to see her in a break from his rehearsals. Oh, it looked fine on a day like this, with the last roses still blowsy and full, the scent of fallen petals on the ground, the trees still rustling and heavy with leaves. Hamish would pick roses for her. The open ones, lemon-yellow at the centre, blushing pink at the petal’s edges. ‘We’re helping them flower,’ he’d say. ‘We have to pick them so they flower again.’
The vast cream houses lining the inner circle glowed in the afternoon sun. She remembered that one of Daddy’s friends, an ancient old actor whom they’d been to visit once for tea, had lived in one – which one exactly she couldn’t be sure. She supposed it showed her age if nothing else for it would have been in the days when actual Londoners still lived in Regent’s Park, not absent billionaires or sheikhs or both. What was his name? He’d adored Daddy, who had played his son, Hamlet, and he Claudius and the Ghost. Every night he’d walk across the battlements humming very softly the theme to ‘Hitler Has Only Got One Ball’ – Daddy had loved this story, bringing his knees up and guffawing with laughter when he told it. His laughter was childish, infectious; it was at the centre of her earliest memories, the sound of Daddy laughing.
‘I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end.’
Inside the park she peered past the ticket office of the Open Air Theatre. It had been one of her and Ben’s first theatre trips as children, when they’d seen Olivia as Titania, and Daddy as Bottom. She’d had to hold Ben’s hand all the way through – he got so scared of things. And the memory of Daddy, at the curtain call, pulling Olivia and Guy forwards with him as the cast held hands, peering into the audience, spotting the children at the back of the stalls waving furiously at him, throwing his arms wide and calling out, ‘Hello, darlings! Did you like it?’ in front of the whole theatre, and Cord pulling Ben to his feet with her, the pair of them clapping even louder, Ben so happy now, hands cupped around his mouth as they both called back to him.
‘Yes! Yes, Daddy!’ The other theatregoers, turning to stare at them, smiling as they all shuffled out: ‘His children. Isn’t that lovely? Weren’t they well-behaved? What a lucky man.’
In the broad sunlight Cord blinked back tears, yet still the light feeling continued. She had not thought of her father with affection for so many years now, this man for whom she had formerly felt only pure and total adoration and more than that, understanding. Simpatico, Professor Mazzi used to call it. She walked through the rest of the park, past the children playing football, past the croaks and roars from the zoo. He’d taken them there too, on Ben’s birthdays, when Mumma was away, and he’d impersonated all the animals. Even the stick insects . . .
‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you love, remember.’
Do you actually want to sing again?
Suddenly, Cord crossed the road and, instead of turning off for home, walked up Primrose Hill. She sat right at the top of the park and looked out over the city, her arms resting on her knees. She was shaking. Without asking herself why, she turned out of the park and began to make for Ben’s house. I might as well do it now, she said. While I think I can. After all, someone asked me about my voice today and I told them the truth, I didn’t run away.
Ben’s road had been bohemian and even rather down-at-heel when he’d bought it after their move to London: book publishers, actors, academics who had lived there for years. Now it was grand, box hedges everywhere, gleaming black Jeeps in each driveway, and very still. No children playing in the street, curtains drawn: no signs of any inhabitants at all.
Cord knocked on her brother’s bright red front door. Her hands were shaking. Please be in. Please don’t be in.
‘Hello,’ she said, when Iris answered.
Iris held on to the door with long slim fingers, her pale face flushed in the afternoon sun. She stared at her aunt. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had a thing near you so I thought I’d pop by.’ Cord shook her head. Pop by, as if she were one of their multimillionaire neighbours wanting a teabag.
‘So you’ve changed your mind,’ said Iris, her tone neutral.
‘I don’t know,’ said Cord, simply. ‘Look, can I come in?’
Iris turned around without speaking and walked down the corridor. Cord followed her inside.
She wouldn’t have recognised the place. It was extremely grand – of course, it should be, she had to keep reminding herself of this. Ben was a big shot, married to a – was she a set designer, his wife? He certainly wouldn’t have kept the eighties album posters, the frameless frames stuffed with photographs of days gone by, the sixties art nouveau posters of concerts and albums of which Mads had been so fond. Now it was all tasteful muted colours, expensive prints on the wall. Cord remembered that Lauren was a set dresser. The house looked like a set.
Cord plunged her hands into her pockets, wondering if it was a mistake to have come. She paused at a flight of small steps.
‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ said Iris, gesturing. ‘Oh, look, there’s Emily.’
Her sister had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She stared at Cord. ‘Hello?’ she said.
‘This,’ said Iris, ‘this is Auntie Cord.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Emily, who was all pre-Raphaelite curls in contrast with Iris’s geometric black-and-white-ness, was still for a moment. ‘Sorry. Hello.’ She turned to her sister and stuck out her jaw, an infinitesimally small gesture of anger, but Cord saw it, and that made up her mind.
‘Maybe I should go,’ she said. ‘I only came by to see – to see . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I’ll fix up a time again—’
‘You were right, Iris,’ said Emily, and she turned back to Cord. ‘So you’re off because now you’re here you can’t quite hack it? Wow.’ She pushed her curtain of golden-red hair over her shoulder; hair so like Althea’s Cord wanted to smile.
‘I only mean it was a mistake to turn up like this, I should have rung . . .’ Cord shook her head, cornered, overwhelmed.
‘Emily, be quiet,’ said Iris, and she put out a slim hand. ‘Please stay, just for a quick cuppa. It’s great that you’ve come, Auntie Cord.’
Could she just say it now?
You don’t understand. I’m not your aunt.
Cord rubbed her forehead. ‘OK.’
The twins looked at each other; she saw how alike they were, despite their differences. I’m the only one alive who knows the truth, she thought. I have to do this for them.
She followed them into the kitchen where Emily sat down at the breakfast bar, hands cupped under her chin while Iris put on the kettle and fussed in the fridge, taking out food and offering it to Cord, who shook her head every time.
‘Just a cup of tea, please.’ She sat down on a bar stool next to Emily. ‘So. What do you want to know, in particular? How can I help you? If that doesn’t sound too formal . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s for the best. Tell me what you want to know.’
They looked at each other and she saw how young they still were in the darting, awkward glances they exchanged. After a moment Iris, obviously the one who spoke for them both, said, ‘Can we start with how our mum died, please.’
Her voice had the tiniest crack in it. Cord’s stomach lurched. It was too warm in the perfect glass box of a kitchen. Could she tell them that they’d inadvertently given her their mother’s diary and that had the truth in it? No. Never.
‘There’s a reason you haven’t seen much of me, you see—’ she began, and stopped, her throat so dry something seemed to be scraping at the back of it. She swallowed and started again, her voice low, eyes cast down on to the table. ‘I killed her. You can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure I did.’
I killed her – it sounded so melodramatic, there in the pristine interior of the sunny room. But Emily shivered, and looked at her sister, biting her lip. Her eyes filled with tears.
‘What do you mean?’ Iris demanded. ‘What did you do?’
‘I told her the truth,’ said Cord. ‘What I thought was the truth.’
‘But wh-what is the truth?’ Emily leaned forwards.
‘I’m not even sure, any more,’ said Cord. She swallowed and looked at them both, both so young, so like their mother, whom she had loved more than anyone else for so much of her life.
Oh, Mads. Why did you go and do what you did? Why did you break us all apart?
Her heart swelled with love for them, for these beings in front of her who were her flesh and blood, no matter what happened, and somehow, it was done, it was over, the isolation. She could no more walk away from them now than she could forget the diary. But she could still ruin their lives, if she accidentally let slip the truth.
Cord put her hands out towards them.
‘Look, I’ll tell you what I know about your mum and dad. I always wanted to push people who loved me away, I’ve never learned how to let them in. I don’t know why. My dad, probably. But, girls, I promise you something, you have to understand this most of all: they were mad about each other. They were so happy, before it all fell apart. They really were.’