Chapter 9 #2
SHE LISTENED, RAPT, as he sang. The chilled air faded away; the people around her faded away.
Even the undeniable prowess of the concertmaster, which ordinarily Inez would study and memorize to try to pick apart every detail in her mind later on—even that was nothing compared to him.
To George Vernon and his pure, heartrending voice, song after song.
She would not recollect most of what he sang, not the titles, not the melodies, only that he did sing, and it was so beautiful and flawless that she felt something inside herself, some inner turmoil she’d scarcely fathomed or put a name to—that slow smothering dread, in fact—fall still.
Become arrested. Suspended by him. Made weightless through him.
By the time he was done, she had a neckache from her first-row seat just below the stage, one she wouldn’t even notice until hours later, after he’d dropped her off at the flat.
When George offered his final bow, every member of the audience was on their feet, applauding. Roses were being tossed just past Inez, the first to stand, clapping madly. Loose petals settled like red snowfall all along the apron of the stage.
HE INSISTED UPON taking her to dinner afterward.
“It’s a cozy place,” he’d assured her, when she’d tried once again to point out she wasn’t wearing anything smart enough. “No one will mind.”
But as soon as they were seated at their table, she’d excused herself to the ladies’ lavatory to try to do what she could with her appearance.
Good gracious. Was that her in the looking glass? Was that her with her hair in messy coils around her face, her cheeks flushed, her eyes so vivid?
She hardly recognized herself. She looked young and exuberant. She looked foolishly happy. She looked like some insipid country milkmaid, star-dazzled by her first taste of the town.
Inez tried scowling at her reflection, attempting decorum, but it was no use. Her heart was still beating in time to his voice. Her weightless worries were flying dim and far away, and it felt like … it felt like …
Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t love. This is infatuation. You are infatuated, that’s all. Who wouldn’t be at this point?
Inez splashed water on her face. She pinned back what she could of her hair and tried to brush out the wrinkles in her skirts. When she rejoined him at their table, none of the other patrons even glanced her way.
Only George did, rising to pull out her chair.
It was an Italian eatery on Oxford Street she’d never noticed before, although surely she’d passed by it.
They’d taken a table by a window, in open view of the road outside.
Night was falling, and the sky beyond the pitched roofs and sawtoothed treetops was stained a thin, translucent blue, chased with clouds.
A solitary votive burned in a small purple glass bowl between them; the window doubled the flame, twin lights dancing.
A server walked by carrying a tray of something garlicky and sizzling, and Inez’s stomach gave an audible rumble.
Her face heated. She was more milkmaid now than ever. “I beg your pardon.”
“It did smell rather splendid, didn’t it? That’s the scampi in umido. I recommend it.”
“It’s been a while since luncheon, is all.”
He looked at her affectionately, and her heart did a peculiar hard flip. “Dear girl. I kidnapped you, didn’t I, and didn’t even think to feed you until now. I apologize.”
“No,” she said, leaning forward. “It’s been … oh, it’s been the most astonishing day.”
“Has it? I’m glad.” He lifted a finger for the server, who appeared at once, a gentleman perhaps in his fifties, with very black hair and a surprisingly gray moustache. “Valerio, my friend,” George said. “How is your Ginevra getting on?”
“Very well, Mr. Vernon. She’s finished her studies and is a nurse in the East Midlands, nearly six months now, out in Leicester. We’re proud as could be.”
“Naturally you are, you and Beatrice both! Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir. May I bring some wine, sir, or chilled Prosecco?”
“A bottle of your Nebbiolo, if you please.”
“Of course. And menus?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The man bowed and moved off.
“How easily you do that,” she said.
“What, now?”
“I don’t know, just …” Inez tried to find the right word. “Charm people. Transfix them. Put everyone at ease. I think it’s a gift.”
George lowered his eyes, brown lashes masking green. The flame rising from the glass bowl flicked and twisted. “A good one, do you imagine?”
“It could be,” she answered, thoughtful. “I suppose so, yes, as long as your intentions are honorable. My sister thinks you’re a spy.”
His lips lifted, not quite a smile. “Does she?”
“But after today, I believe I can safely inform her that you are indeed a singer. A celebrated tenor.”
He raised his eyes again, did not look away. Between the light from the candle and the sky outside, he was contoured in dusk and gold, lit from beside and below. “I could be both, though. You never know.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. The server named Valerio reappeared with the wine and two crimson cut-glass goblets on a tray, plus paper menus so recently printed that a thumbprint of ink smudged the bottom of hers. She waited until he left before replying.
“I honestly can’t tell if you’re in earnest.”
George released her from his gaze, turning his attention to the menu, angling the written descriptions of the dishes toward the meager votive.
“I was speaking hypothetically, of course. The fact of the matter is, you might as well know that I am two opposites at once. A walking contradiction, if you will. Singing is my passion—one of my passions,” he amended.
“Less sensationally, I am also an agent for certain kinds of imports and exports, depending on market forces. Supply and demand.”
“You sell things?”
“No,” he said, abandoning the menu to the tabletop.
He moved to pour the wine, monitoring the thin aubergine splash filling their glasses, finishing off both pours with a deft twist of his wrist. “I make things available for selling or buying. I connect people with others who might need their products, or their money. Or their information. I am the grease on the wheel. The whisper in the ear, the hand guiding the pen drawing up the contract.”
“So … a mastermind.”
He laughed, that real laugh, hushed but genuine. He lifted his glass to her. Light sparked every shade of red on the carvings along its surface, tracing lozenges and whorls. “Your word, not mine. But it’s quite flattering, so thank you.”
Inez tapped the rim of her goblet against his. They both drank. It was her first taste of Nebbiolo; it slipped warm and tart across her tongue.
“But how fascinating to travel so far and wide. To see so many different places, meet so many different kinds of people.”
“And wade through so many different layers of bureaucracy, from so many different governments,” he added dryly.
“Oh?”
“It can be a delicate dance, balancing the politics of it all. The diplomatic affronts, perceived or real. The personalities. Half the crowned heads of Europe are either siblings or cousins, so you have all the usual petty family jealousies playing out on an international scale.”
“But you’re good at that dance.” She didn’t make it a question.
“I try. It helps to make friends as you go.”
“Have you many friends, then, in all these countries?”
A pause. “Friends is perhaps not quite accurate. More specifically, I have people who owe me favors. And people for whom I can grant favors in return.”
“Mastermind,” she said again, and his faint smile returned. “Were you really off traveling the world all these months since Sandringham? With the postcards, I mean?”
He nodded. “Did you like them?”
“Immensely.”
“I’m glad if they pleased you. Trifles, I know, but I didn’t want you to forget me.”
“An impossible task.”
“Is it indeed?” He bowed his head again, his long fingers adjusting the fork beside his plate, then the knife.
His voice came to her muted, almost drowned beneath the ringing steel echo of a landau bouncing by.
“From anyone else, I would doubt. But from you, Inez Jolivet, the artist who is sometimes Leigh, I’m simply grateful. ”
BY THE END of the meal, he’d admitted that, although he had posted most of the cards to her himself, there were occasions when he’d relied on fellow professionals—that was the term he used, fellow professionals, not colleagues or coworkers or teammates—around the world to send her one or two when he was unavailable for the task.
Another enigmatic word: unavailable.
He’d written every one of them himself, he assured her, all in his own hand; every silly sentence in the message box was his own creation.
But when she’d pressed him about if he’d been in Moscow, or Munich, or Barcelona, he only shrugged as if embarrassed, and said he couldn’t recall.
He traveled so much, so often, by stage and train and steamship, the lines on the maps tended to blur in his memory.
Some mornings he awoke and for minutes couldn’t recall where he was, what city or country, he’d galloped through so many.
That’s what he said.
But Inez wondered. George Vernon didn’t seem a man who let any relevant fact sneak away from him.
She ordered the scampi in umido, and so did he. As George broke into the warm boule of bread served with it, sending a spray of crumbs across the tablecloth, Inez asked if he himself had sent the one from Calcutta. The one with the tiger and crown.
“Oh, that one,” he said, passing her a slice. “Yes, absolutely I did.”
“It was my favorite,” she said.
“Mine too.”
They asked Valerio for a second bottle of wine, and toasted to that.
BY THE TIME he drove her home, it was full night. The feathery clouds of before had bunched and thickened and now hung a dark pearly gray above them, their bellies illumed by London’s legions of streetlights.