‘Aw, mate, but you’d make a great maid,’ Nathan said, approvingly. ‘Feel free
to wear that one in the daytime. Really.’
‘You’ll be asking her to dust the skirting next.’
‘It is a bit dusty, now you mention it.’
‘You,’ I said, ‘are both going to get Mr Muscle in your tea tomorrow.’
I discarded outfit number three - a pair of yellow wide-legged trousers -
already anticipating Will’s Rupert Bear references, and instead put on my fourth
option, a vintage dress in dark-red satin. It was made for a more frugal
generation and I always had to say a secret prayer that the zip would make it up
past my waist, but it gave me the outline of a 1950s starlet, and it was a ‘results’
dress, one of those outfits you couldn’t help but feel good in. I put a silver bolero
over my shoulders, tied a grey silk scarf around my neck, to cover up my
cleavage, applied some matching lipstick, and then stepped into the living room.
‘Ka-pow,’ said Nathan, admiringly.
Will’s eyes travelled up and down my dress. It was only then that I realized he
had changed into a shirt and suit jacket. Clean-shaven, and with his trimmed
hair, he looked surprisingly handsome. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of
him. It wasn’t so much how he looked; it was the fact that he had made the
effort.
‘That’s the one,’ he said. His voice was expressionless and oddly measured.
And as I reached down to adjust my neckline, he said, ‘But lose the jacket.’
He was right. I had known it wasn’t quite right. I took it off, folded it carefully
and laid it on the back of the chair.
‘And the scarf.’
My hand shot to my neck. ‘The scarf? Why?’
‘It doesn’t go. And you look like you’re trying to hide something behind it.’
‘But I’m ... well, I’m all cleavage otherwise.’
‘So?’ he shrugged. ‘Look, Clark, if you’re going to wear a dress like that you
need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it mentally as well as
physically.’
‘Only you, Will Traynor, could tell a woman how to wear a bloody dress.’
But I took the scarf off.
Nathan went to pack Will’s bag. I was working out what I could add about
how patronizing he was, when I turned and saw that he was still looking at me.
‘You look great, Clark,’ he said, quietly. ‘Really.’
With ordinary people - what Camilla Traynor would probably call ‘working-
class’ people - I had observed a few basic routines, as far as Will was concerned.
Most would stare. A few might smile sympathetically, express sympathy, or ask
me in a kind of stage whisper what had happened. I was often tempted to
respond, ‘Unfortunate falling-out with MI6,’ just to see their reaction, but I never
did.
Here’s the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they
do. They were too polite to actually stare. Instead, they did this weird thing of
catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking
at him. Until he’d gone past, at which point their gaze would flicker towards
him, even while they remained in conversation with someone else. They
wouldn’t talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.
As we moved through the foyer of the Symphony Hall, where clusters of
smart people stood with handbags and programmes in one hand, gin and tonics
in the other, I saw this response pass through them in a gentle ripple which
followed us to the stalls. I don’t know if Will noticed it. Sometimes I thought the
only way he could deal with it was to pretend he could see none of it.
We sat down, the only two people at the front in the centre block of seats. To
our right there was another man in a wheelchair, chatting cheerfully to two
women who flanked him. I watched them, hoping that Will would notice them
too. But he stared ahead, his head dipped into his shoulders, as if he were trying
to become invisible.
This isn’t going to work, a little voice said.
‘Do you need anything?’ I whispered.
‘No,’ he shook his head. He swallowed. ‘Actually, yes. Something’s digging
into my collar.’
I leant over and ran my finger around the inside of it; a nylon tag had been left
inside. I pulled at it, hoping to snap it, but it proved stubbornly resistant.
‘New shirt. Is it really troubling you?’
‘No. I just thought I’d bring it up for fun.’
‘Do we have any scissors in the bag?’
‘I don’t know, Clark. Believe it or not, I rarely pack it myself.’
There were no scissors. I glanced behind me, where the audience were still
settling themselves into their seats, murmuring and scanning their programmes.
If Will couldn’t relax and focus on the music, the outing would be wasted. I
couldn’t afford a second disaster.
‘Don’t move,’ I said.
‘Why -’
Before he could finish, I leant across, gently peeled his collar from the side of
his neck, placed my mouth against it and took the offending tag between my
front teeth. It took me a few seconds to bite through it, and I closed my eyes,
trying to ignore the scent of clean male, the feel of his skin against mine, the
incongruity of what I was doing. And then, finally, I felt it give. I pulled back my
head and opened my eyes, triumphant, with the freed tag between my front teeth.
‘Got it!’ I said, pulling the tag from my teeth and flicking it across the seats.
Will stared at me.
‘What?’
I swivelled in my chair to catch those audience members who suddenly
seemed to find their programmes absolutely fascinating. Then I turned back to
Will.
‘Oh, come on, it’s not as if they’ve never seen a girl nibbling a bloke’s collar
before.’
I seemed to have briefly silenced him. Will blinked a couple of times, made as
if to shake his head. I noticed with amusement that his neck had coloured a deep
red.
I straightened my skirt. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I think we should both just be
grateful that it wasn’t in your trousers.’
And then, before he could respond, the orchestra walked out in their dinner
jackets and cocktail dresses and the audience hushed. I felt a little flutter of
excitement despite myself. I placed my hands together on my lap, sat up in my
seat. They began to tune up, and suddenly the auditorium was filled with a single
sound - the most alive, three-dimensional thing I had ever heard. It made the
hairs on my skin stand up, my breath catch in my throat.
Will looked sideways at me, his face still carrying the mirth of the last few
moments. Okay, his expression said. We’re going to enjoy this.
The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush
descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought
down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a
physical thing; it didn’t just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me,
made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will
hadn’t described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the
most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found
myself thinking of things I hadn’t thought of for years, old emotions washing
over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled from me as if my perception itself
were being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn’t want it to
stop. I wanted to sit there forever. I stole a look at Will. He was rapt, suddenly
unself conscious. I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was afraid
of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of his fears. Will
Traynor’s life had been so far beyond the experiences of mine. Who was I to tell
him how he should want to live it?
Will’s friend left a note asking us to go backstage and see him afterwards, but
Will didn’t want to. I urged him once, but I could see from the set of his jaw that
he would not be budged. I couldn’t blame him. I remembered how his former
workmates had looked at him that day - that mixture of pity, revulsion and,
somewhere, deep relief that they themselves had somehow escaped this
particular stroke of fate. I suspected there were only so many of those sorts of
meetings he could stomach.
We waited until the auditorium was empty, then I wheeled him out, down to
the car park in the lift, and loaded Will up without incident. I didn’t say much;
my head was still ringing with the music, and I didn’t want it to fade. I kept
thinking back to it, the way that Will’s friend had been so lost in what he was
playing. I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport
you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the
air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went. For some
time, as we sat there in the audience, I had completely forgotten Will was even
beside me.
We pulled up outside the annexe. In front of us, just visible above the wall, the
castle sat, floodlit under the full moon, gazing serenely down from its position
on the top of the hill.
‘So you’re not a classical music person.’
I looked into the rear-view mirror. Will was smiling.
‘I didn’t enjoy that in the slightest.’
‘I could tell.’
‘I especially didn’t enjoy that bit near the end, the bit where the violin was
singing by itself.’
‘I could see you didn’t like that bit. In fact, I think you had tears in your eyes
you hated it so much.’
I grinned back at him. ‘I really loved it,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I’d like all
classical music, but I thought that was amazing.’ I rubbed my nose. ‘Thank you.
Thank you for taking me.’
We sat in silence, gazing at the castle. Normally, at night, it was bathed in a
kind of orange glow from the lights dotted around the fortress wall. But tonight,
under a full moon, it seemed flooded in an ethereal blue.
‘What kind of music would they have played there, do you think?’ I said.
‘They must have listened to something.’
‘The castle? Medieval stuff. Lutes, strings. Not my cup of tea, but I’ve got
some I can lend you, if you like. You should walk around the castle with it on
earphones, if you really wanted the full experience.’
‘Nah. I don’t really go to the castle.’
‘It’s always the way, when you live close by somewhere.’
My answer was non-committal. We sat there a moment longer, listening to the
engine tick its way to silence.
‘Right,’ I said, unfastening my belt. ‘We’d better get you in. The evening
routine awaits.’
‘Just wait a minute, Clark.’
I turned in my seat. Will’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t quite make it
out.
‘Just hold on. Just for a minute.’
‘Are you all right?’ I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some
part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.
‘I’m fine. I just... ’
I could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against it.
‘I don’t want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think
about... ’He swallowed.
Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.
‘I just... want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress.
Just for a few minutes more.’
I released the door handle.
‘Sure.’
I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there
together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in
the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.
My sister and I never really talked about what happened that night at the maze.
I’m not entirely sure we had the words. She held me for a bit, then spent some
time helping me find my clothes, and then searched in vain in the long grass for
my shoes until I told her that it really didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have worn them
again, anyway. And then we walked home slowly - me in my bare feet, her with
her arm linked through mine, even though we hadn’t walked like that since she
was in her first year at school and Mum had insisted I never let her go.
When we got home, we stood on the porch and she wiped at my hair and then
at my eyes with a damp tissue, and then we unlocked the front door and walked
in as if nothing had happened.
Dad was still up, watching some football match. ‘You girls are a bit late,’ he
called out. ‘I know it’s a Friday, but still ... ’
‘Okay, Dad,’ we called out, in unison.
Back then, I had the room that is now Granddad’s. I walked swiftly upstairs
and, before my sister could say a word, I closed the door behind me.
I chopped all my hair off the following week. I cancelled my plane ticket. I
didn’t go out with the girls from my old school again. Mum was too sunk in her
own grief to notice, and Dad put any change in mood in our house, and my new
habit of locking myself in my bedroom, down to ‘women’s problems’. I had
worked out who I was, and it was someone very different from the giggling girl
who got drunk with strangers. It was someone who wore nothing that could be
construed as suggestive. Clothes that would not appeal to the kind of men who
went to the Red Lion, anyway.
Life returned to normal. I took a job at the hairdresser’s, then The Buttered
Bun and put it all behind me.
I must have walked past the castle five thousand times since that day.
But I have never been to the maze since.
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