Chapter 29
OK, this is not what I was expecting. At first, I assumed the sleek black limousine must be for someone else, and did a double take when the receptionist indicated me to the driver.
‘Miss Tori?’ the driver asks. He’s dressed immaculately, in a dark suit, with a shirt so white I wonder for a moment whether he makes laundry detergent adverts in his spare time. Even his shoes are perfectly polished.
‘That’s me,’ I tell him, getting to my feet. I’m wearing Gabriel’s favourite dress again, mainly because it’s the only one that’s vaguely suitable for a concert, but I feel definitely underdressed compared to this man.
‘I’m Berkley, and I’ll be driving you this evening,’ he says, smiling warmly. ‘Would you follow me, please?’
Although the car itself is enormous, the rear door is surprisingly small and, despite Berkley holding it open for me, my entry is more awkward than sophisticated, which only adds to my sense of being out of place.
At least my dress is long enough to prevent me flashing my knickers as I clamber in, although Berkley strikes me as the kind of person who would modestly avert his eyes in that instance.
‘You’ll find a gift from Mr Campbell in the refrigerator,’ Berkley says once he’s started the engine and eased the enormous car out onto the road. ‘He was most specific about it, so I hope we’ve got it right. There are glasses in the cabinet.’
It takes me a moment to locate the refrigerator he’s talking about, but I can’t help smiling when I do.
Inside, there is a small bottle of champagne and a bowl of strawberries.
I pull one of the crystal glasses from the cabinet, noting that it slots neatly into a holder in the armrest that keeps it from tipping over when Berkley goes round a bend, but wait until he’s stopped at a traffic light before easing the cork out of the bottle and pouring myself a glass.
I notice that the strawberries have been hulled already, and I pop one into my mouth, enjoying the tart sweetness of it as I bite into it and it releases its juices.
As I eat the strawberries and sip my champagne, I can feel the hurt draining away.
Evil Harvey may have monopolised Gabriel from the moment of his arrival, but this gesture shows that Gabriel has been thinking of me, and he’s taken the trouble to give me a treat he knows I’ll enjoy. I’m glad I came now.
The concert is obviously a big enough deal to draw the Jamaican press, as I’m amused to note a number of paparazzi eagerly raising their cameras to take pictures as the limousine pulls up and Berkley strides round to open my door for me.
No sooner do they catch a glimpse of my face and realise that they have no idea who I am than most of the cameras are equally swiftly lowered again, although one or two die-hards snap me anyway, presumably just in case I turn out to be someone important.
Sadly, there isn’t a red carpet to make my moment in the spotlight complete, but Berkley leads me to a turnstile marked ‘VIP’ and hands my ticket to the attendant.
‘When the concert is finished, I’ll be waiting for you in exactly the same location,’ he explains. ‘I hope you have a lovely evening, and please don’t hurry back on my account. I believe there is an after-show party, so I’ll just wait here until you’re ready.’
‘Thank you, Berkley,’ I tell him with a smile.
Once I’m through the barrier, I find myself in a park, where the air is thick with the buzz of excited conversation.
I’m surprised to see that, instead of conventional concert seating, a number of tables have been set up in the roped-off VIP area.
Each one has a battery-powered lamp in the centre, its light just enough to illuminate the surface so guests can find their glasses of wine or whatever, without distracting the eye from the stage.
The stage itself reminds me a little of a scaled-down version of the kind of thing you’d see at festivals all over the UK.
It’s a domed, clamshell type thing with chairs for the orchestra, a dais for the conductor, and a large black grand piano taking up the centre of the stage.
Its lid is propped up, presumably to maximise the amount of sound reaching us.
‘Tori, over here!’ a voice calls from one of the tables, and I turn to see Gabriel’s sister Grace waving at me. Her husband Leonard is sitting next to her, along with Constance and Uriel, but there’s no sign of Raphael.
‘He was going to come, but he had a staffing problem and had to work,’ Grace explains when I ask her about it. ‘He’s very upset to be missing it. This is the first time Gabriel’s played in his home country for years.’
There’s an open bottle of champagne on the table, along with a setting of glasses, plates, and cutlery in front of each chair.
A number of serving dishes are arranged around the light in the centre of the table, each one covered with a mesh cloche to keep the insects off, but evidently containing a selection of snacks and salads.
Constance nods sharply at Leonard as I sit down, which is evidently a cue, as he reaches for the bottle and fills my glass without me saying anything.
I take an appreciative sip, just as another woman that I’ve never met before joins us.
She’s absolutely tiny, and that’s before you take into account the fact that she’s stooped over almost double.
She must be ninety if she’s a day, but her eyes are bright and she smiles warmly at everyone, although her expression turns quizzical when she spots me.
‘Mrs Brown, this is Tori,’ Constance tells her once she’s sat down. ‘Tori is a friend of Gabriel’s from the UK.’ She turns to me. ‘Mrs Brown was Gabriel’s first piano teacher.’
‘Gabriel told me all about you,’ I say to Mrs Brown. ‘He says you inspired him.’
‘That boy,’ she sighs affectionately. ‘I taught so many people over the years, more than I can remember, but I knew that boy was special from the beginning.’
‘How is your friend, Amy, is it?’ Constance enquires as she starts passing around the snacks. I don’t recognise most of them, and I feel a little lost without Gabriel to tell me what they are, so I decide to take potluck and help myself to a selection.
I smile. ‘I think she’s learned a valuable lesson about her tolerance for spicy food,’ I tell her, congratulating myself on my tact.
‘I don’t know what possessed the girl,’ Constance says with a definite edge of disapproval in her voice.
‘She’s, umm, very competitive,’ I reply carefully.
‘What happened?’ Mrs Brown asks, and I tune them both out as Constance tells her the story of Amy and the jerk chicken.
The members of the orchestra are starting to file onto the stage, taking their seats and adjusting their music stands.
After a while, one of them sounds a note and there’s a cacophony as the different instruments chime in, checking their tuning.
The buzz of conversation from the audience dies down, replaced by an anticipatory silence.
After a few moments, a voice booms out of the loudspeakers either side of the stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ it says. ‘The Jamaica Philharmonic Orchestra is delighted to present tonight’s programme to you. As you know, this concert was organised at rather short notice, but we’re all very excited. Please, put your hands together for your orchestra!’
The crowd erupts, with a few whoops and cheers for good measure.
‘And now,’ the voice continues once the applause has died down. ‘Please welcome to the stage your conductor for this evening, Frederick MacDonald!’
There’s another explosion of clapping and cheering as a tall man marches across the stage, shakes one of the violinists by the hand and then bounds into a podium at the front, bowing low to the audience before turning to face the orchestra.
‘Finally,’ the disembodied voice booms once more. ‘It gives me great delight to welcome your soloist for tonight’s concert, Jamaica’s own Gabriel Campbell!’
If the previous rounds of applause were enthusiastic, they pale beside the deafening roar as Gabriel walks out onto the stage.
He pauses for a moment, before bowing to the audience in the same way and taking his seat at the piano.
The applause stops, and there’s a real sense of anticipation in the air as the conductor raises his baton for the first time.
I don’t recognise the piece, but it is also vaguely familiar at the same time.
The orchestra is playing and Gabriel is sitting so still it’s almost as if he’s been frozen.
I glance at the glossy programme that was helpfully on my chair when I arrived and, after a few pages of adverts and other guff, discover that this is Beethoven’s first piano concerto.
I shift my attention to the conductor, trying to work out the correlation between the movements of the baton and what the orchestra is doing, but it’s a mystery.
Gabriel’s entry, when it comes, is soft and I’m mesmerised by the way his fingers caress the keys.
Although I’ve watched him play several times at the Elixir, this is somehow even more extraordinary, and I can feel warmth flush through me as I remember the way those same fingers have caressed me.
Thankfully, my train of thought is brought back to the music as the notes start pouring out, and it’s almost like a dialogue between two people as the piano and orchestra take turns in the limelight.
I’m absolutely spellbound. I’ve been to a fair number of pop concerts, particularly in my early twenties, but this is completely unlike any of them.
There’s no doubt that Gabriel is the centre of attention, but there’s no showy lighting or anything like that.
The music is left to speak for itself without any adornment.
By the time the interval arrives, my champagne and snacks have long been forgotten and I’m marvelling at the genius that has brought this about.
Firstly and obviously, the composer who wrote it in the first place, but also the members of the orchestra, the conductor and Gabriel himself, who made it sound so fresh it could have been written yesterday, not over two hundred years ago.
I may never really have ‘got’ classical music before I met Gabriel, but I get it now. In spades.
‘That was extraordinary,’ I say to Constance and Mrs Brown as Gabriel disappears from the stage, followed by the conductor and the members of the orchestra. The audience has obviously enjoyed it too, if the hum of conversation is anything to go by.
‘I told you he was special,’ Mrs Brown agrees, and I notice that her eyes are wet with emotion.
The second half of the concert is made up of a number of shorter pieces, all of which are piano solos.
I’m particularly taken with one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, and the final piece in the concert, a Rachmaninov Prelude with so many notes I can’t begin to fathom how Gabriel remembers them all.
At the end, the audience erupts once more, many of them getting to their feet in a standing ovation and repeatedly calling for an encore.
Gabriel bows several times, but it’s clear there’s no way they’re going to let him off stage without more so, after a while, he takes his seat as a runner brings him a handheld microphone.
‘Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen,’ he begins.
‘Before I play my encore, I’d like to tell you a little bit about it.
During my annual break this year, I met someone, and I’m delighted to tell you that she’s here with us tonight.
I won’t embarrass her by asking her to make herself known to you, but this encore is dedicated to Tori, with sincere apologies to Franz Liszt, who wrote the original. ’
I’m aware of both Mrs Brown and Constance looking at me as he sets the microphone down and, after pausing for a moment, begins to play.
I instantly recognise the hesitant opening notes of ‘La campanella’ and my heart goes into my mouth as I realise what he’s about to do.
Sure enough, he launches into a version of the mashup he played me in the bar of the Elixir but, as well as the Lady Gaga themes I recognise from before, he’s added a section dominated by the riff from ‘Disturbia’.
When he finishes, there’s a moment of total silence where I briefly start to wonder if he’s made a colossal mistake, before the audience goes absolutely nuts, on their feet once more, clapping and cheering.
It seems like the adulation is never going to end as Gabriel bows over and over but, eventually, it starts to die down and Gabriel leaves the stage.
‘I’ve never seen him do anything like that before,’ Constance says in a tone that could equally be amazement or horror.
‘So brave to improvise over such a well-loved work,’ Mrs Brown adds. ‘But total genius. Tell me, Tori, what were those parts he added? They sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place them.’
I’m just about to tell her when we’re interrupted by the arrival of a runner holding an envelope. ‘I have a message for Tori,’ he announces. ‘Which one of you is that?’
‘That’s me,’ I tell him. He presses the envelope into my hand and disappears as quickly as he’d come.
My name is written on the front in a spiky scrawl, and I’m aware of my heart quickening as I slit it open and remove a single sheet of paper.
I scan it quickly with a mounting sense of disbelief, before letting my legs buckle as I sink back into the chair.
‘Are you OK, honey?’ Constance is standing right next to me, but her voice sounds distant. ‘You look a little pale all of a sudden.’
‘Nothing a glass of something at the after-concert party won’t fix, I’m sure,’ I hear Mrs Brown say, but I already know I’m not going to the after-show party. I can feel tears of bewilderment starting to fall as I slowly re-read the words in the letter.
Dear Tori,
I hope you enjoyed this evening, especially the champagne and strawberries.
I have really valued your friendship and I wanted to give you this experience as a token of my gratitude.
I wish we could have had longer together, but the time has come for me to focus once more on my work.
From here I fly straight to the US for a concert tour and then I have a number of other engagements planned, so I think it’s best to say goodbye now.
I’d invite you to join us at the after-concert party, but I’ll be busy pressing the flesh of the sponsors and keeping my supporters onside, so I’ve arranged for the car to take you straight back.
It really has been a pleasure knowing you, and I wish you every happiness in your future.
Love
Gabriel. xx