Autumn Read online

  Sometimes I didn’t bathe for days and other times I turned the tap up as hot as it would go, slid down the shower wall to the floor and let the water rain down on me until it turned cold.

  And then, the morning of Valentine’s Day, I woke up at an ordinary hour and out of nowhere, had a hankering for breakfast. Not sweets or bagels but a proper breakfast, the sort that I used to regularly eat at home in New Zealand. Eggs Benedict, perfectly poached so the yolks were still runny on the inside, served on sourdough bread with a glass of chilled pulpy orange juice and a flat white coffee. I showered, dressed, nipped down to the nearest small supermarket to pick up supplies and then set about preparing the first real meal that I’d eaten in the better part of two months.

  Inspired by my early morning industry, I then resolved to pack away the last of Dominik’s things, besides his books, which I had decided to keep on the shelves indefinitely.

  Lauralynn arrived just as I was getting started.

  ‘God, he had awful taste, didn’t he? I tried to change him, you know.’

  A bejewelled silver tie-pin that had found its way into his regular wardrobe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor, broke into two pieces and clattered along the wooden floorboards before disappearing under the sofa.

  ‘Christ, hun, can’t you knock?’

  ‘You left the door open,’ she replied in a muffled voice. She was now on her hands and knees groping blindly beneath the furniture. ‘I’m going to get Viggo to come over here and Hoover,’ she added as she pushed herself up again and brushed off her now dusty palms on her trousers.

  Viggo had become a permanent fixture in Lauralynn’s life, and they now shared a house together in nearby Belsize Park. Their relationship bore many similarities to mine and Dominik’s, albeit with the shoe worn on the other foot. Viggo was the lead singer of a band, and his public persona was that of the typical eccentric rock star, all shaggy dark hair and swagger, rake thin limbs and drainpipe jeans that sat low on his hip bones.

  Behind closed doors though, I strongly suspected that Lauralynn took charge of their sexual as well as their domestic lives. She owned enough riding crops to furnish a stables, I knew. We had once even dominated a man together, and I had been both aroused and shocked by the feelings that had been evoked in me as I watched Lauralynn circling around him with a whip in hand and her long blonde hair falling like a sleek wave around her shoulders. I did not ordinarily desire women sexually, and I had never imagined that I possessed even the slightest domineering streak. But Lauralynn’s charisma was like a siren song, and it was impossible to deny her anything.

  She held her hand out to me with the two broken pieces resting on it.

  ‘Sorry. I hope you weren’t fond of this.’

  ‘It’s fine. Really. He hated all that stuff.’

  She tossed the pieces unceremoniously into the bin and began unpacking the contents of her handbag into the kitchen cupboards. Coffee. Haribo sweets. A large bottle of gin.

  A lump rose in my throat. Not for Dominik, this time, but for Lauralynn and her kindness. She, too, knew me well, and so hadn’t sent flowers, casseroles, a sympathy card or any of the other stuff that had ended up in the trash. Trust her to bring the things that I actually wanted, even if they weren’t good for me. She had developed a habit of turning up unexpectedly at times when I least wanted company, and therefore probably needed it. She had been a vigilant overseer, and keeping an eye on my well-being, I was sure.

  Lauralynn still had a key, which she had never returned after the brief period that she and Dominik had platonically shared the house. She and Viggo had been kind enough to pop in and open a window when we travelled, or let us into the house on the one occasion we’d managed to lock ourselves out. So it could only have been her, or Viggo under her instruction who had let themselves in while I’d been out walking on the Heath and washed the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and disposed of the food going off in the fridge.

  ‘You need a stiff drink, lady,’ Lauralynn said, when she returned from the kitchen, holding a short glass full of ice, gin and a splash of tonic. ‘And a hot bath.’

  ‘I showered this morning,’ I rebutted, like a petulant child.

  ‘Your hair needs washing,’ she said, wrinkling her nose as she eyed my limp ponytail. I would not have put it past her to lift me up and deposit me into a basin so she could wash it herself.

  Lauralynn was no stranger to grief. Her brother had passed away in recent years, and though we never really talked about it, I knew instinctively that she understood in many respects the way that I was feeling.

  ‘But I didn’t come over to nag you,’ she added. ‘Or to help you clean up. Though god knows this place needs it.’

  I waited for her to continue.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I need your help.’ She turned her back to me and stretched across the bench top for the gin bottle and a glass and poured herself a shot, neat. Her black jeans were high-waisted and emphasised the extraordinary length of her legs and the round curve of her rump. Her blonde hair was held high in the centre of her head, making her seem even taller. It swished as she swung back around to face me again, awaiting my response.

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Anything. Though I can’t imagine what help I could possibly be to anyone at the moment.’

  ‘You can still play, right?’

  Her question caught me off guard. I hadn’t actually touched a violin since Dominik had died.

  ‘I haven’t tried. Since then. But I can always play …’

  Music was my refuge, and the simple act of running my bow over violin strings was like a soothing balm to my soul. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t even thought to pick up any of my instruments since Dominik’s passing. Perhaps, since my playing had been such an integral part of our meeting and eventually falling in love, it simply reminded me too much of him. But I knew that he would have wanted me to play.

  ‘Good,’ Lauralynn said, tossing her head back and gulping down the remainder of her gin. She put the glass back on the bench and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

  ‘Viggo has a show next week. Just an intimate performance in a small theatre … but some industry people will be there. And these people are … Well, they’re not the usual rock music types. He’s been working on some solo stuff, reinventing himself, but it’s not quite coming together. He needs something else, something different. You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You’ve played rock on stage before. He said you were great.’

  It felt like a lifetime ago now, but she was right. Chris’s band, Groucho Nights, had opened for Viggo and the Holy Criminals at the Brixton Academy and Chris had called me on stage as a guest. I’d become a regular fixture on their European tour. Dominik and I were apart at the time and the excitement of those days had been overshadowed by how much I missed him.

  ‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because Viggo’s waiting in the studio for you now.’ She checked her watch, a slim, plain silver affair with a small oval face. ‘I told him you’d be there in 45 minutes, so you’d better hurry. I’ll finish this.’

  ‘And what if I had said no?’ I protested.

  ‘You are eternally predictable, Summer, even if you think that you aren’t,’ she replied.

  I quickly changed into a clean pair of black leggings, ballet flats and a long-sleeved white shirt, pulled my cycling jacket over top, put my gloves and scarf on and headed out the door. There was no need to take an instrument. Viggo had dozens in every persuasion and would provide me with whatever best suited the tone he was trying to achieve. Most likely, it would be plugged in.

  My legs spun quickly as I pedalled the short journey to Viggo’s. It was the first time I’d ridden my bike since Christmas Eve, the afternoon of the recital and Dominik’s death. The road was icy and even with gloves on my h
ands were stiff in the cold. But it felt good to be moving on two wheels.

  Lauralynn had been right about Viggo. I had half suspected that he didn’t need my help at all, and the whole thing was just a plan to distract me and get me out of the house but when he arrived at the door to let me in he looked even more dishevelled than usual and his eyes were red, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  ‘Morning,’ I said chirpily, realising as the word left my lips that it was probably the middle of the afternoon. Time held little meaning for me anyway, since I had never worked a typical 9 to 5 job. Of late, my weeks folded in on themselves like an accordion and the hours floated by without my noticing, or sped up and slowed down according to my emotional state. The worse I felt, the longer the days seemed.

  ‘Summer, hi,’ he replied, managing half a smile as he swept a hank of long dark hair back from his face. ‘Come in.’

  He didn’t offer me a drink, or any of the usual social niceties. Just led me to the studio where he was practising his routine. I had to break into a jog to keep up with him as he strode through long passages to reach the basement room he was now using as a studio. His jeans were a deep shade of grape, a blur of colour against the white walls that surrounded us.

  ‘When is the show?’ I asked him, as he handed me an instrument. As I expected, he wanted me to play electric. It was a Bridge. I raised it into position and began to run through some warm-up exercises. The violin’s tone was nice, but I hadn’t played electric since my brief tour with Groucho Nights and it would take some getting used to. My fingers felt stiff and wooden on the strings.

  ‘Next week,’ he replied. ‘Wednesday. Just a small affair, but I’m trying some of my own stuff and a couple of journos will be there … God, I must sound so un-rock n’ roll. But I really want it to go well.’

  The public Viggo was a world away from the private one. I found it hard to believe now that I had ever been seduced by his stage character, the version of Viggo that had women across the world lining up and screaming outside concert venues when he played live. This man sitting in front of me staring at the floor and scuffing the toe of his boots against his chair leg as we discussed the line-up and my possible involvement now seemed like an entirely different person.

  We agreed, in the end, that I would open with a riff on ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. A technically demanding piece with just the right degree of originality and well-suited to Viggo’s typically phantasmagorical stagecraft, I felt.

  ‘It’s cool, Sum, don’t worry,’ Viggo insisted, as I tried again to master the electric. My hands were moving so stiffly I felt as though I was dragging my fingers through tar instead of air. ‘It will come back to you.’

  ‘I don’t have my partition here …’ I explained, ‘and it’s a tricky piece to play from memory …’

  I pumped my legs furiously as I cycled uphill. My gloves were stuffed into my jacket pockets and I had accidentally left my scarf in Viggo’s studio. It was now dark, and within minutes my hands were so cold that operating the gears was painful. The wind whipped against my bare throat. I had forgotten to bring my lights, and relied on memory to navigate the back streets and just my bike’s small fixed reflector panels for safety. Dominik’s image appeared unbidden in my mind, berating me for my recklessness. He had always worried about me cycling in London.

  ‘Fuck you, Dominik,’ I thought bitterly. Tears rolled down my face, making my cheeks even colder. My fingers were too frozen onto the handlebars to attempt to wipe them away, even if I could summon the energy to do so. As soon as the words entered my head I was assaulted by waves of guilt and grief, and wished that I could take them back, though I knew he couldn’t hear me anyway. I had no truck with ghosts, or any kind of afterlife.

  But had the grief, the shock affected my ability to play music?

  Part of me knew that I was being melodramatic. I was out of practice, and for reasons unknown even to myself I had opted to play a virtuoso piece that would be challenging even on my best days. But right then, I didn’t care. Emotions flew through me like a tornado, and I had no other way to express them. All I had ever had was Dominik, and my violin, and now I felt that both had abandoned me.

  I dumped my bike against the side of the house without bothering to either lock it up or carry it inside. My Bailly was in its usual place, leaning against the wall in what was now my bedroom. Once it had been ours. The lights were all off. Lauralynn had evidently finished her work and left, but I didn’t stop to check. I took the stairs two at a time, picked up my violin case and turned to leave again. As I did so, I caught my reflection in the mirror. My hair mussed from the wind, and pulled back into a hair band – a practical style, but one that always left me feeling not quite myself. Though cumbersome at times, my thick, red curly locks were one of the things that I associated totally with my identity, with me as me. I didn’t typically wear trousers, either, unless occasion or practicalities demanded it. And my cycling coat was hi-vis and unfashionable. I didn’t recognise myself.

  My hands seemingly moved of their own accord. I tore the band from my ponytail and let my hair fall around my shoulders. Pulled off my ballet pumps and leggings, underwear, blouse, bra and jacket. I was naked. I picked up the case again and hugged it against my bare skin.

  When I reached the front door, I paused, and picked up my long, hooded grey puffa coat from its hook. I could abandon it again when I reached my destination, but at least I wouldn’t be stopped and arrested on the way for indecent exposure. Even in my most self-destructive moments, I still retained some sense. I stuffed my feet back into the trainers I had initially kicked off.

  But I needn’t have bothered, as not so much as a solitary walker stopped to glance at me as I made my way across the Heath to the bandstand, despite my dishevelled appearance and musical cargo, which might have passed for something more sinister in the dark.

  The bandstand. It was the place that I had first played for Dominik. Where he had instructed me to stand, fully nude in bright daylight, as I performed for him – Vivaldi, the ‘Four Seasons’. That had also been a challenging piece. It was the place that I had led him to, shortly after we had moved in together, where we had reaffirmed once and for all that unusual though our relationship might be, each of us fitted the other as perfectly as if nature had moulded us to form a pair. And it was where he had left the bracelet with the padlock for me to unearth. And now it was the place where I intended to find whatever part of me it was that had been buried when Dominik died. I wanted that part back.

  I took my place in the bandstand’s centre, dropped my coat, and began to play.

  One by one the notes fell into place, and soon I had forgotten my surroundings entirely. Forgotten my scratched ankles, forgotten the icy wind that cut against my bare skin like the vicious claws of a frozen hand, forgotten my nudity and the strange picture that I would make to any passer-by.

  The frenzied lullaby of my song enveloped me in the soothing balm of both presence and absence. With my focus on only the next infinitesimal movement of my fingers on the strings I was hyper aware and yet completely lost. My grief temporarily disappeared, from my conscious mind at least, and if my music had taken on a new dimension of yearning that had not previously been present, I was unaware of it. We can only ever be the sum of our parts.

  I played on.

  I caught my breath and my fingers moved away from the instrument’s neck and strings where they had settled by the top nut and I slowly but triumphantly lifted the bow. I’d finally mastered the Dukas piece. There was a loose string dangling from the end of the bow which I hadn’t noticed in the mad frenzy I had attacked the music with. I felt feverish and before I’d even batted an eyelid, the night cold assaulted me with full frontal wrath, enveloping my body in a glacial carpet, raising goosebumps all over my skin. I laid the violin on the bandstand’s floor and reached for my puffa coat and wrapped myself inside it, shivering already. The fervour
of the music had protected me while I was playing but its force field had as quickly evaporated.

  I drew the material close over my nudity, reaching for the zipper to shield my body from the cold. I bent my knees to lower myself and retrieve the instrument and carefully placed it back in the safety of the case, rose to my feet and began the descent from the bandstand to the sketch of a walking path that unfurled a hundred yards below and which would return me to the ponds, and eventually home.

  A cloud passed across the path of the moon and I found myself in pitch darkness.

  Which was when a voice reached me.

  ‘Bravo, bravo …’

  It was a man’s voice. Raspy, educated, BBC-like with just the hint of an estuary accent.

  I looked ahead and squinted. The red dot of a cigarette consuming itself pierced the darkness.

  I shivered.

  Stopped in my tracks.

  ‘I won’t bite.’

  I remained motionless, becoming increasingly conscious of my vulnerability out here in the wide open night.

  The fear steadily beginning to flow through me paradoxically reminded me of some of the contradictory feelings I so often experienced in the first year following my initial encounter with Dominik. When I had recklessly but deliberately fallen into dangerous situations and the anxiety had been both a craving and a magnet for the broken part of me. A moth attracted to the flame.

  Now, I could smell the smoke of the cigarette through the veil drawn by the London night. Acrid but fragrant, powerful and aromatic. A cigar maybe? Or some exotic form of tobacco?

  The dot of red light piercing the darkness separating me from the stranger rose and fell in intensity with every successive puff the man took.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, move closer, music spirit …’ he said.

  Did I have any choice?

  The moon above made a shy reappearance, a slice of

  distant light piercing the cloud cover as I reached him.