Bunny to visit them in Rome, Paris, New York, Berlin…I’ve known a few of them myself over the years. As Bunny says, ‘Evie, if this goes on much longer, one of us is going to have to propose!’
And she’s right. I should get myself together and move on. But it’s never quite as easy as it sounds. Whole years have evaporated, just waiting for the kettle to boil. Maybe one day I’ll be the one sending postcards, even if I only get as far as south London.
But right now, I’m just grateful to be home.
Dumping my bag and coat down on the reindeer antler coat-stand in the front hallway (the work of a Norwegian furniture designer who lived here two years ago and now designs plastic chairs for Habitat), I make my way down to the kitchen for a cup of tea and a ferret around the fridge, only to find Allyson and Piotr arguing about lieder.
They barely notice me as I fill up the kettle and switch it on. Both are fairly formidable; it’s like a scene from Twilight of the Gods. Piotr is incredibly tall and slender; he moves with a confident, swaggering ease, unusual for a man of his height. His dark hair’s cut quite short at the back but still manages to tumble into his eyes, which are a particularly warm shade of brown; the concentrated golden walnut of a tiger’s eyes and equally intense. However, his hands are his most remarkable feature. They’re Rachmaninov hands, vast and powerful; each one easily the size of a grown man’s face. He’s only been here a week and I’ve never heard him say more than three words together. So it’s quite a surprise to hear him speak in full sentences.
Allyson, on the other hand, is going through her Maria Callas stage. If Piotr’s hands are his most distinguishing feature, Allyson’s cheekbones are hers. They’re like two evenly spaced shelves upon which her heavily made-up, green-grey eyes are balanced. Her long auburn hair is scraped back into a perfect chignon and she’s solidly, dramatically, emphatically curvy or, as she puts it, ‘ample yet agile’ (the world of opera being much more image conscious than it used to be). But despite her impeccably groomed exterior, she possesses the mouth of a merchant sailor. After struggling in England for three years now, she’s just beginning to cover roles at Covent Garden and sing a few major parts for Opera North and the Welsh National. That, along with a steady stream of young students, keeps her permanently occupied. But her real chance is coming next month. She’s due to perform a recital of lieder at St John’s Smith Square and has had her heart set on being able to rehearse with Piotr. But now it looks like she’ll have to rehearse alone.
(This is one of the few advantages to shared housing: not all the dramas are your own.)
I move silently to the draining board and retrieve a mug.
‘But why?’ Allyson gestures wildly to the heavens; a move she used to great effect in a regional production of Tosca last March. ‘Give me one reason why not? For fuck’s sake! I’ll pay you whatever you like!’
Piotr leans against the kitchen counter, his hands in his jeans pockets, amused. ‘I’ve already explained to you. German is not a language that anyone should be singing! Ever! Italian, yes. French, OK. Russian, perfect! But German? Sounds like…like a noise you make when you, you know, spit!’ And he demonstrates the noise.
I put the mug down. Maybe I’ll give the tea a miss.
A slice of toast pops up in the toaster.
‘But you play German music! You play Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt…’ Allyson continues.
Piotr tosses the toast onto a plate, opening drawer after drawer in search of a knife.
I hand him one.
‘Thank you. Liszt is not German.’
He looks around.
‘Don’t be so pedantic!’ Allyson accuses, pushing the butter dish across to him.
He sighs, spreading the butter thick. ‘When I play Beethoven or Mozart, I don’t have to listen to German. I listen to music. When I have to listen to German, there’s no longer any music.’ And he shrugs his shoulders; a rolling, slow-motion version that’s somehow distinctly Eastern European. ‘I’m sorry’
Allyson turns away, unable to combat this curious logic with anything but a stream of obscenities.
Piotr, apparently oblivious, turns to me instead, munching his toast. ‘How was your class?’
‘An old man walked out on me,’ I confess, sidestepping Allyson, who’s spluttering under her breath in the corner. ‘He only ever wants to read one poem. One incredibly long poem.’
‘Good for him! So important to stick to your ideals, don’t you think?’
He grins. Allyson growls threateningly.
‘And you? When are we going to see you perform?’
I laugh, a nervous, high-pitched little trill. Suddenly I’m wrong-footed; an intruder in this conversation of artistic preferences and ideals. ‘Oh, no, I…I don’t really do a lot of performing any more. I’m really just a teacher now’
He raises an eyebrow.
I fumble about with a box of tea bags. Even without looking up, I know he’s staring at me.
‘I’m too old for all that nonsense,’ I say at last. ‘I gave it up long ago. Or rather, it gave up on me.’
‘And how is that?’ He takes another bite.
It’s far too late at night to unfold the facts of my failed acting career in front of a stranger.
But I make the stupid mistake of trying anyway.
‘Well, acting isn’t like music, Piotr. I mean, there are so very few jobs and so many people…’
He throws back his head and roars. ‘Ah, that’s true! There are hardly any classical musicians in the world!’
I’m blushing. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I just meant that…oh, I don’t know what I mean…’ I start again. ‘Well, I never got to play any of the parts I dreamt about. Never even got near them. I just ended up making B-rated horror films, a few commercials…’
‘You were an actress.’ He shrugs his shoulders again. ‘That’s what actresses do.’
‘No, that’s what unsuccessful actresses do, Piotr.’
‘No.’ He smiles. ‘That’s also what successful actresses do. It’s all the same thing, really’
Like Allyson, I’ve come smack up against the World According to Piotr Pawlokowski. The rules are different here.
‘Well, no…’ I fumble, trying to articulate a yet unformed argument.
‘You’re American,’ he diagnoses my deficiency with a single wave of his massive hand. ‘You make too much of this idea of “success”. No artist sees life as success or failure, profit or loss, good or bad. The point of art is lost if you measure it in commercial terms.’
I blink at him.
‘But it was awful,’ I bleat weakly.
He frowns, popping the last bite into his mouth. ‘And you believed it would be fun?’
There’s a long silence.
I’d never thought about it that way before.
‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘I expected it to be much more fun than working in an office or teaching pensioners or…or anything else, really’
He laughs. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘Because that’s the way it used to be.’ I can’t help but smile to myself at the memory. ‘It always used to be more fun than anything else on the face of the earth.’
‘Don’t you enjoy playing the piano?’ Allyson comes to my defence.
There’s that shrug again. ‘Sometimes. But “fun” isn’t a word