Andrew Crumey - The Secret Knowledge

Carreau reaches into his jacket for something, cocks an eyebrow in apparent surprise, mutters an impatient self-condemnation and then says to both Suner and Yvette, the two of them equal in their ignorance of his intention, “I must go upstairs briefly.” He leaves them standing awkwardly alone.

Suner smiles sympathetically at madame who is looking old and tired. “Would you like to sit down?”

She responds with no more than a dignified lifting of her nose. This little hovel is like the whole of Spain, she can’t wait to be out of it, just as soon as her husband can complete his work.

“If madame would like a drink…?”

Nothing the manager might possibly say could make her any less eager to escape. She moves away from the desk, Suner becomes occupied with meaningless paperwork, then absents himself to the adjoining office. Not long afterwards, the dining room door opens. It is the lone stranger who comes out, eyeing Yvette significantly in the instant before she glances aside and focuses her attention on a potted plant on the windowsill, potent object of simulated interest.

“Good evening, madame.”

She thinks she hears a German accent embedded in his good French, and cannot avoid his greeting, nor conceal her unease. “Good evening, monsieur.”

“How many goodly creatures are there here.”

It sounds like some form of code; a relief, because it means he must be looking for someone else. “Monsieur,” she says with a polite and final nod as she turns away to examine once more the trailing leaves of the plant.

But he is not to be so easily dismissed. In a whisper close beside her ear he suddenly says, “Take my advice, get out of town, you and your husband. Do it tonight.” Startled, she sees the curt bow with which he takes his leave of her.

She is still trying to make sense of it when Louis returns, looking cross. “Come on,” he says gruffly.

Suner, alerted by his guest’s descent, comes back out of the office and goes to hold open the door for them, attending their every movement like a panting dog, exhorting them to return tomorrow for an even more delicious meal. Once outside in the street, Yvette asks her husband what happened with the professor.

“I offered him some medicine,” he says. Then drawing his wife close to his side, he escorts her safely away.

Paige is in Starbucks with Ella when she gets the call.

“It’s David Conroy. There’s something we need to discuss. Could we meet?”

She’s seen him only once, when she had her first lesson a few days ago, and already he’s phoning her. Paige’s confusion is obvious to Ella who watches with a mixture of fascination and concern, able to hear the male crackle at her friend’s ear. Ella mouths Who? and Paige mimes helplessness. The meeting is fixed for later that week, the tutor hangs up and Paige explains.

“But you surely aren’t going to…”

“I’m seeing him at the college,” Paige says reassuringly.

“He fancies you.”

“It’s about the piece I’m meant to be learning, that’s all. He wants me to give him back the score.”

“Hasn’t he got one of his own? Can’t you drop it off?” Suspicion comes easily to Ella’s mind. “How old is he?”

“I don’t know, pretty old, in his forties.”

“This isn’t about music. He arranges extra lessons in college, next thing he’s asking you back to his place for some advanced tuition.”

Paige won’t be treated like a child. “Nothing’s going to happen unless I want it to.”

“When did you ever know what you want?” Ella says lightly, and Paige’s silence chills the atmosphere. “I didn’t mean…”

“Forget it.”

But the subject has been raised and Ella won’t let it go. “Sean got a new job.”

“I don’t care what he does.” Sean was a mistake, like the foetus he made. They’d pretty much split already when she found out. Her body told her what her mind must do: reject everything of him.

“You’ve got the right attitude, Paige. Ignore them completely, best way to make them feel bad. Cut loose and never go back.”

“I’m not playing games.”

“But surely you miss him sometimes? Bound to, until you find someone else. Then you make certain he knows.”

Paige doesn’t want to talk about it, she gazes towards the door of the café and sees two boys entering that she knows from college. Ella registers the distraction and turns to look. One of the boys waves.

“Who are they?” Ella asks.

“I think the tall one’s called Rob.”

The boys get their order then come to say hello. Introductions are made, the tall one isn’t called Rob after all, his friend hides shyly behind a long fringe. Ella invites them to sit.

“Hear about the bust?” says not-Rob to Paige. Police came to the college and arrested an Egyptian violinist who’d been posting offensive remarks online. “He said the British troops deserved to die.”

“Then what did he expect?” says Ella.

“Got to have free speech,” the shy one offers, possibly wanting some kind of debate about it, but the conversation lapses. Ella restarts it. “Do you know a teacher at college called Conroy?”

“I had him once as accompanist,” says the tall one.

“Does he have a reputation?” Ella asks him. “You know, with girl students?” Seeing Paige’s reaction she adds, “Just asking.”

“I couldn’t say,” he responds. “Only thing I heard is he had a breakdown in the past, gets moody. One time he got really angry with my mate Harry, swore at him.”

Ella folds her arms in vindication.

“What did your mate do to upset him?” Paige asks.

He shrugs. “Nothing.”

Paige has to go, she’s booked a practice room. Her plan was to work on the Klauer slow movement, there’s no need if Conroy wants her to return the score, but she’s glad of an excuse to leave Ella with the other two who look to Paige as though they should still be at school. She feels so much older than them all, after what she’s been through.

Walking to the college she wonders how it would have turned out if she hadn’t miscarried. She’s sure she would have aborted it, but can’t help imagining the parallel world with an extra life in it. Adoption, perhaps, then years later her daughter finds her, demands to know everything. You work so hard to eliminate mistakes but they always happen.

The practice room is still occupied: peering through the small window in the thick door Paige sees a Chinese girl playing what she guesses to be Rachmaninov, head bent in concentration, right hand leaping gymnastically across the keyboard. It looks dispiritingly perfect. Paige checks her watch then abruptly opens the door on the girl who stops, startled, and immediately apologises for having overrun. Paige tells her it’s no problem, drops her bag to the floor and feels the energy being pulled out of her by this clockwork virtuoso who will always be so much better and brought nothing but her talent. She bows and scuttles out.

Klauer is irrelevant but it’s the only score Paige has, and rather than perform mechanical exercises or play from memory she prefers the distraction of reading, so she sits and begins. The dark and complex music is appropriate to her mood; the doomed composer’s handwriting makes Paige feel as if her fingers are able to touch his across a distance of a hundred years, a span that means nothing. When she played for Mr Conroy he asked what the music made her see, but the images keep changing, she’s distracted by thoughts of that idiot Sean, why did Ella have to mention him? She thinks of Mr Conroy’s sudden change of mind about the score, wonders what prompted his breakdown, knows there doesn’t need to be a reason though people always want a neat answer. Like Klauer, probably he got a bad review from a critic or fell out with his lover so he killed himself, that’s how it’s meant to work, one thing logically following another, except that his music isn’t like that, there seems no connection between the parts, no necessity, only chance.