He looks down at my psychedelic mini dress and white knee-high boots. I felt like a model when I put them on, one that dances the twist and who knows how to have fun, but now, because of the way he’s looking at me I feel self-conscious and worried that I might have chosen the wrong thing.
He starts the car and turns on the radio. It’s crackly and loses the station now and again, but we can tell that the record playing is ‘Something Stupid’ – and because it’s about saying ‘I love you’ we both blush as we smile.
He blushes so easily.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask as he drives away.
‘To a place where no one knows us,’ he tells me.
Quite soon the record changes to Percy Sledge singing ‘Dock of the Bay’ and because we’ve sung it in his appreciation class we sing along now, knowing all the words, and we continue singing when the Beach Boys come on with ‘Good Vibrations’. I get quite excited when The Doors’ new one plays, ‘Hello, I love you’, and he drums his hands on the steering wheel while I dance in my seat. I don’t feel worried or shy or afraid any more, I only feel so happy I could fly.
We drive for a long time, much longer than I expected to, sometimes singing, other times just listening. I know we’re heading south because I recognize some of the signposts, but then I stop recognizing them until we pass one for Brighton. We don’t follow that turn-off, but soon after we take another and wind through country lanes, so narrow that we have to pull over sometimes or reverse to make way for cars and tractors coming in the opposite direction.
We stop in front of some tall wooden gates and he gets out to open them. At the same time he pulls letters from a mailbox. Once we’re through the gates he stops the car again to go and close them and then he drives us along a narrow lane lined with trees and wild flowers. At the end, in a small clearing is a house that’s more of a cottage with a thatched roof and ivy-covered walls.
‘Is this where you live?’ I ask, starting to feel nervous again. I know he has a flat in the town near school, but so do lots of teachers who have other places they go to at weekends.
‘It’s my uncle’s,’ he tells me. ‘He’s in Asia on tour and while he’s away he lets the rest of the family use it.’
He tells me later that his uncle is a famous conductor and that he travels all over the world. His mother is an opera singer and his father a concert violinist. He has a brother who’s in America learning about jazz from black people in the south, and a sister who’s travelling around India with some friends.
I must admit I’m finding it hard to take everything in. I’m thrilled and daunted and bemused and excited. I miss my parents, but obviously I don’t want them to be here. I feel I’ve entered another world as I follow him inside the house and help to open the curtains and windows. It smells of dust and lavender-scented polish. The ceilings are high and criss-crossed with dark oak beams; the walls are crammed with shelves of books and long-playing records and piles of glossy brochures. These turn out to be the concerts his uncle has directed from Berlin, to Hong Kong, to London, New York, Buenos Aires and Cape Town. There is a wooden bar to separate the kitchen from the sitting room, and in front of some French windows there is a beautiful grand piano.
He’s brought a picnic basket in from the car and we take it into the back garden where magnolia trees are coming into flower and the lawn needs mowing. He points out a gazebo that he and his brother used to defend from dragons and monsters when they were small.
We spread a tartan blanket under the trees amongst daisies and dandelions, and after we sit down he pours us some cider and lemonade to drink. I tell him I’ve had cider before, so he lets me have some of his. He’s brought pork pies and cheese sandwiches, bags of ready salted crisps, apples, grapes and chocolates. The May sunshine is too warm for me to keep my boots on so he tells me to take them off and lay them down next to his shoes. He goes back inside and a few minutes later the sound of some classical music (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 19 in F Major, he tells me when he comes out) drifts down over the lawn as lazily as the breeze that’s tilting the grass and cooling my legs.
We eat and drink, look at one another, blush and laugh. He tells me that the music we’re listening to now is Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor conducted by his uncle, with his father playing lead violin. I can tell how proud he is of them, and I feel proud that he wants me to hear it. I ask about his mother, the opera singer, and he laughs as he says she’d be very cross if she knew he’d told me about her brother and husband before telling me about her.
His family sound exciting, clever and different. I imagine them meeting my parents and I know they’d all get along because my parents love music of all sorts even though they don’t play any instruments themselves.
He lights a cigarette and when I see it’s a joint I ask if I can have some too. I know how it’s done, I’ve seen it often enough at home, but this is the first time I’ve tried it. Though I choke on my first inhale the second and third are fine and as my head starts to swim with words and joy I can feel myself drifting and flying like a jubilant bird in currents of music and air. I wonder what I’m doing here in this strange and beautiful garden, but there is nowhere else I want to be.
I look at him and we laugh and laugh rolling around the blanket, convulsed in our merriment until the music stops and the cigarette runs out – and the bird is finally caught in his gentle hands.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Joely looked up from her laptop, blinking to draw focus on the real world that surrounded her, consisting of winter-torn sea, cliffs and tors, not a sunny back garden with magnolia trees and picnic rugs. She’d been so engrossed in the latest part of Freda’s story that she hardly knew how long she’d been here in the writing room, perched like a ghost in a lonely observatory. Long enough for her limbs to feel stiff and her stomach to cramp with hunger.
Sitting back in the chair she stretched her arms overhead and noticed there was rain on the windows and a small flock of cormorants was gliding on invisible thermals over the cove. Although in many ways this was a perfect place to write, isolated, calming and nourishing, she’d become so captivated by the story and how best to tell it that she’d actually lost the sense of where she was some time ago. Even now, in her mind, she still couldn’t quite shake free of the teacher and student who were sparing no thought for the future, or for anything beyond the new intimacy of that early summer day.
Even before starting to write she’d known she would find it hard to get beyond this point. The notes were there in front of her, Freda had told her everything, how Sir had unzipped the psychedelic dress and helped to remove it; how he’d undone her lacy bra and slipped off her panties and while she’d lain naked on the grass his eyes had drunk her in as he’d removed his own clothes, but Joely couldn’t find the right words to tell the story as Freda wanted it told.
Freda had gone into some detail about the tender exploration of unfamiliar bodies, hot, breathy kisses and the breaking of the final barrier that had allowed him to take her completely. She’d even talked about the tears of happiness and the music he’d chosen to celebrate the momentous event. Nothing triumphant or rousing, as Joely might have expected, but the Allegretto Scherzando from Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor – a gentle, playful piece, Freda had told her, that he’d performed himself, seated, still naked, at his uncle’s piano. At the same time his young student, also still naked, had stood behind him with her hands on his shoulders as she swayed and listened and adored him.