Part Eighty-Six
"Well, daddy, if I'm conducting the orchestra, then they had jolly well better behave themselves," George exclaimed very emphatically. She had a glint in her eye that was not altogether mischievous. Joe knew this look of old and nearly spluttered a mouthful of tea, which he had just drunk from the fine porcelain china cup. This was a tradition which George observed as he was well known to scorn the ghastly modern habit of drinking out of mugs, and what was worse, coffee instead of a decent cup of tea.
He mumbled under his breath "That's what I was afraid of." "What was that you just said, daddy?" Came George's bright reply, etching its climb up and down the musical scale. She chose to simulate temporary deafness to amuse herself at her long-suffering father's expense.
"I've a bill that hasn't been paid," Lied Joe with an ingratiating smile gesturing vaguely in mid air. He wasn't at his home but George's which made his words sound especially lame.
George let that go with a mischievous smile on her face, anticipating that delicious feeling of rightful control. It helped to spice up her day.
"Thinking it over carefully," coughed Joe nervously, "perhaps you ought to ease yourself in gradually with a small scale rehearsal to find your feet, so to speak." "Excellent," George's cool smile of approval reassured and surprised him. He had anticipated a battle, the attempt of the nearly irresistible force meeting the immovable object head on, and one besides with an unfortunately and expensively acquired education in English. "What do you have in mind?" "Well, er," improvised Joe, thinking fast on his feet, "It would be helpful for you to work with a string section of, let me say, two violins, a viola and a cello. This will reproduce on a small scale what you will find conducting the full orchestra."
"Would that be John, Karen, Jo and Roisin?" pursued George in a leisurely fashion.
"I was thinking something along those lines." "Hmmm, I think I could whip them into shape," She grinned, her voice drawling meditatively and with relish.
George reached for her tiny cordless phone and pressed a sequence of buttons in a leisurely way to conceal her eagerness to get the show on the road.
John was listening to the CD of Haydn's "Creation" for inspiration and was mentally there in the music in his place as first violinist when the insistent phone call that must have lasted twenty seconds finally broke through his intense concentration. His first stray thought had been that he had had a singularly inept performance foisted on him where some wretched musician had been allowed to play that same horrendous repetitive figure which disturbed the balance and the serene unity of the famous composer's musical genius. Whoever was phoning must be very determined, he had rightly thought and he was to be proved right. "John darling, I need you to come over and help me out with a little project. Nothing too demanding, as long as you behave yourself." George couldn't resist that little dig at the end where the tone of her voice arched up and down the scales with her usual articulation. She smiled with satisfaction as she heard the audible wince from the other end of the phone. This was not quite the fairly light hearted verbal sparring which the last year or so had seen develop between them as they had got closer. In turn, John hesitated before inviting George to enlighten him as to her cryptic invitation.
"So what other victims are you intending leading to the slaughter?" he eventually enquired as his idiosyncratic sense of duty was engaged.
"Nonsense, John, I shall radiate charm and expertise. To answer your question, Jo, Karen and Roisin have agreed to come along for the ride." John didn't pursue the matter further and, after signing off, reached for his beloved Stradivarius and placed it in his grey soft-top convertible and drove to Jo's flat to help manhandle her bulkier instrument into the back seat. In turn, Karen set off in her MG sports car without her very full brief case. For all of them, it was a change for them to be without their usual tools of their trade. Temporarily the instruments of another calling accompanied them and removed them from their day to day existence.
Roisin found herself in George's front hall at the same time as Karen appeared.
"Roisin, my father's here," George's unusually low pitched voice and slightly raised eyebrows greeted her.
Instantly, Roisin got the message. She had spent the last year or more in the company of Cassie and had got to the point that company of women with women had seemed the natural order of existence of what went on all around them. These words were a wake up call to the fact that in other households, other worlds, that this was not so.
"I must say hello to him, George," Roisin answered in her best style of polite, drawing room conversation that she knew how to assume if need be. Joe Channing appeared in the near distance through the open door to the sitting room. He was eager to ensure that everyone had turned up on time and was evidently pleased that everyone was punctual.
"I'll come with you, Roisin," Karen kindly offered. In the rapid concourse of greetings and of people moving in different directions, John joined the two women and accompanied them to talk to Joe in the sitting room. He had been fussing with the layout of the music stands to arrange them to his satisfaction. He had discreetly stolen back some of his authority which he had let George temporarily usurp.
In the meantime, George flushed with embarrassment as Jo appeared last of all through her front door from behind her bulky cello. She gestured to her to go into the kitchen while the others went into the sitting room, which had been transformed into a music studio. She was determined to talk to Jo and sort out the matter that had been whirling round in her thoughts since she saw her. Her debut performance as conductor was an additional reason for her to want to settle her mind. George's rapid walking pace was a reflection of her agitated frame of mind as she outpaced Jo to the kitchen.
"Calm down, George," came Jo's immensely comforting soothing tones as she shut the door behind them. "You don't have to worry about the immature and adolescent games that John was playing with both of us last time I saw you." "What do you mean?" came George's defensive reply as she was by no means sure exactly what it was that Jo had guessed about herself, not John. She was afraid that Jo was skating over implications that were obvious to her just to be nice to her and that it wasn't somehow real. The prospect with John had maddeningly teased her with what was all too attractive even though it was impossible. Whatever must Jo really think of her?
Jo immediately saw that she had rather jumped the gun and that what she saw her words outstrip the meanings, which she was trying to get over. She had telescoped her spoken train of thought and she ought to change tack and take matters more slowly.
"What I mean is, that it was perfectly obvious how you felt about the prospect that we should spend the night with John. I wanted to let you know that what you felt about the idea didn't worry me." "You mean it?" came George's near identical question, decisively rearranged.
"Why should it?" Came the utterly calm matterof-fact reply. "It's sweet of you to be worried for me, George. My problem with John was that he couldn't see how everyone felt about his idea or else chose not to think about it. Sometimes, John isn't good at understanding and responding to delicacy of feeling.
"Oh, that's John all right." "What I really meant to say was that I perfectly understood why you walked out of the situation. It was the wisest thing you could have done in the circumstances. Am I right?" George was speechless as her mind was racing to come up to speed with those incredibly vital sentences. It was immeasurably comforting to hear Jo validate her own feelings "We're good friends now. A long time ago, we've got past the point of playing games with each other." "To tell you the truth, I felt utterly pathetic and stupid," George confessed frankly as Jo's alternative reality of that event started to become real to her.
"There's no need to feel bad about it. Everyone has choices. That's something that I learned years ago and has always stayed with me."
George was amazed to hear Jo talk so freely and openly about herself with no sense of embarrassment. However she knew that Jo envied her in being supposedly a better lover than she thought she was, there was something in Jo's style that she had never put her finger on till today which caused her to admire her in turn.
"Is there time to sneak a quick cigarette on the terrace before we start? This is my one relapse before I have to go back on the waggon." George questioned, even though it was her house. The laughably solitary manifestation of John's puritan side of his personality imposed itself everywhere even if he wasn't in the room.
"If it will help you, George, then yes," Jo grinned.
George gave Jo a quick affectionate hug and they strolled out onto the patio.
"Come on, George. We must make a start," boomed Joe, looking at his watch, and he opened the way to what was now the music room. George and Jo had sneaked back unobtrusively while conversation was in full flow. Roisin felt a little shy and had hung back reticently in the general conversation which had relaxed them into the right frame of mind. Despite recent practice and her own desire to play, she could not help worrying now the time came to performing in a larger, more formal setting than before. Next step, the Albert Hall, her fears told her. "You don't need to worry, Roisin," John murmured kindly, sensing her visible nerves. "It's my card that has been marked." "George will be very kind to you. She'll be keeping a stern eye on John." added Jo, smiling as she sensed that discreet backup support would help.
"Just what I want," John sighed in response.
"Everyone comfortable?" George enquired as a formality, picking up her baton. "We'll take it from number 22." Jo's loose fitting trouser suit enabled her to cradle the cello comfortably, and use the spike to position it comfortably. In turn, Karen was equally at home with her smaller viola. Even fairly casually dressed in trousers and open white shirt, John conveyed that ostentatious air of showmanship while Roisin nervously wedged her violin against her chin, anxious to be ready yet to follow and hide behind John's lead. In front of them, George stood poised as she assumed her position, her arm outstretched and her baton in her hand. She hesitated for a second as she drew into herself all the powers of concentration and the decisive downstroke of her baton cued in her orchestra.
Suddenly out of nowhere, the preliminary sketch of the full orchestral feel of smooth banks of the string section filled the air. Roisin admired it as a miraculous ensemble even as much as the smooth sweep of her bow described added to the flowing tones. With one eye on the sheet music, she surely tuned herself in to the music and all her remaining doubts were dissolved away by the power of the music. This was, after all, the ultimate promise fulfilled of all those years ago when she had spent so many Wednesday afternoons dutifully mastering the ability to translate all the crotchets and quavers from the written page and coax the sounds from her left fingers pressed down on the fretboard and the bow that her right hand coaxed lightly from those four nylon strings. It made up for the sneaking envy she had felt of all her friends who were out there playing. This was the payoff from all the hours she had seemingly sacrificed. To one side of her, the sonorous, flexible sound of Jo's cello provided that rock solid steadiness, that necessary foundation to the quartet that she and the other members of the orchestra knew from that other life they all led. Midway between them, Karen's viola discreetly stayed in the background and securely held the space safe in that distance between high and low. George's sure ear picked every detail out in stereo sound as her baton described the music, which she was surely in the middle of. Her ear picked out the assemblage of sounds and how they interacted against each other. Even at a moment of utter concentration, she could not help notice John's studiously earnest manner and the unobtrusive way that he subtly led the intertwining lead in their musical journey. Together, they found their way triumphantly home as they came to a rest in that breathing space which all of them knew would be in that charted spot in that marked place in that orchestral score.
"Can we have another try at that piece. There was something in there that was not quite right. Besides." She smiled disarmingly, "It would do me good to thoroughly rehearse being your stand in conductor in rehearsals while daddy is away and the critics would be out to snipe at me." With a good grace, the members of the orchestra turned the pages back to the beginning and launched into the piece, more certain this time of the twists and turns that the music demanded of them. They all felt more confident in their playing, in the musical understanding between them that they rode the piece triumphantly to its conclusion. Somehow they had all recharged themselves which a lazy Sunday would normally have done the same by taking it easy.
"That was splendid," Joe's voice boomed out as the piece drew to a close. "I do believe that everyone is making more of an effort than I dreamed was possible." "You mean, Joe, that when you see us in our everyday clothes, it's hard to conceive that we are all capable of another identity," John dryly cut in.
"Something like that, John," Joe smiled that rare smile at him. Even in that way, something was starting to change.
The spirits between them were flowing over of good fellowship and Roisin now found that she was drawn out of herself and her natural sociability to the fore.
"Surely George's house looks just quite like Yvonne's, don't you think?" John had been laughing away to some witticism tossed out by Karen, feeling at his most relaxed when this attractive dark haired Irishwoman lobbed this very dangerous googly right when he was least expecting it. It gave him that feeling of being at a school cricket match when one split second thought of action lay between him and, metaphorically, his stumps splayed out in all direction as his defences lay wide open. Ever since that period, he had known how to cover up and his instincts remained sure and certain over time. "I think you must be mistaken, Roisin. If I remember rightly, I have never been to Yvonne's house or had cause to go there, thoroughly admirable woman though she is." John's blue eyes looked at Roisin in a fixed stare while his voice was low pitched.
"My apologies, John. I must have made a mistake….." Roisin felt immediately uncomfortable and was immensely grateful that the chatter of conversation around her covered up for her. She grasped urgently for a swift change of conversation, a ploy which she had found useful on more than one occasion with her children.
"This has been the first time that I have played in anything like an orchestra and certainly with another violin player who is so obviously talented." Immediately John smiled, almost visibly purring like a cat that has been tickled under his ear. "A well played violin, is a treat from the gods," She elaborated.
Despite the lateness of the day, John dug deep into the ancient recesses of his memory as the connection with his childhood hero, Sherlock Holmes, came to him out of nowhere. Despite the way that his memory had been taxed over the years by the necessity of his calling, those stories had been irrevocably laid down in his childhood memories forever and could be recalled at any minute. "I could swear that you know where those words come from," He exclaimed. He was genuinely surprised as he had always supposed that Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts were invariably male. It was extraordinary that Roisin obviously knew this line.
"Sherlock Holmes, "A study in Scarlett," Explained Roisin. "My son Michael is reading "A Study in Scarlet" in school and both Cassie and I make it our practice to keep up with whatever our children are reading. I like the story for its own sake and I can still remember the way that Sherlock Holmes explained what had led him to identify Jefferson Hope, though my heart went out to him for why he had killed the man for what had happened to his poor dear departed fiancee……but I like it for the detection work of Sherlock Holmes himself." Roisin had struck the right note. While there was obviously a strong romantic streak in her, she had read the stories for entirely the right reasons. He was a purist in such matters. It enabled Roisin and John to get into a spirited discussion on parenting on which they had a lot in common.
"John, can we have a moment?" George politely asked. She felt utterly relaxed and centred after the performance and felt that she could handle anything, which Jo's kindly intervention had helped immeasurably.
"He's all yours," Roisin said with a gracious smile. The whole day was a real novelty for her, what with the realisation of her musical dreams and a conversation with an attractive man who was a real charmer.
"Is this something I should be afraid of?" he enquired in a rather too elaborate manner as he took in the smiles on both Jo's and George's faces. There were, he reflected, certain disadvantages personal to him now that Jo and George got on so well.
"George and I were having a little heart to heart," began Jo in her silkiest tones. "And we really ought to be all friends and behave like friends." "Quite," Came his guarded reply.
"And you really didn't behave like one when George came round last week, as she had the perfect right to expect of you. It isn't a good idea to make a proposition of us all spending the night together, when you should have known that would have made George feel uncomfortable, not that it was any problem for me, being fairly broad minded." "Well, that's frank," John temporised.
"John, darling, you know that I know you of old, even older than Jo does, and that is your first gambit in dodging any issue. You have, I recall, ten more strategies I can think of off the top of my head," George's amused tones broke in. In reality, her humour was skin deep.
"Look here, whatever I may have done wrong, this is hardly the place for debating it, not with your father around," John said in a slightly agitated fashion, seeing that his cover was blown.
"Poor darling," George's casual drawl turned this gambit back on itself. "Are you worried that daddy will come out and horsewhip you for your caddish behaviour?" "Yes I am as a matter of fact. All right, I promise to behave myself better in future. Will that satisfy you?" A silence hung on the air as John's plea hung in the balance.
"All right, I really am sorry. Now can we please be friends?" "You looked really worried. If we are to share your affections, John, then please make it easy for us as well," Jo asked softly, ever the diplomat.
John looked at the two women. If only his life were as simple in settling down with the one woman who would satisfy him. He had both a fear and a liking for the fact that this would never be. He was forced to listen to the justice of the case put before him and he had to admit that he had made an error of judgement. In turn, both Jo and George realised that this was as much of an apology as they were ever going to extract out of this impossible man and that they really couldn't resist John's plea.
"I think we should go through and relax after all we've achieved between us," Jo's soft measured tones diplomatically eased the situation in the same way that her cello playing had been rock bottom reliable. In this, they were all agreed to savour the leisure moments of a lazy Sunday afternoon.
"Well, daddy, if I'm conducting the orchestra, then they had jolly well better behave themselves," George exclaimed very emphatically. She had a glint in her eye that was not altogether mischievous. Joe knew this look of old and nearly spluttered a mouthful of tea, which he had just drunk from the fine porcelain china cup. This was a tradition which George observed as he was well known to scorn the ghastly modern habit of drinking out of mugs, and what was worse, coffee instead of a decent cup of tea.
He mumbled under his breath "That's what I was afraid of." "What was that you just said, daddy?" Came George's bright reply, etching its climb up and down the musical scale. She chose to simulate temporary deafness to amuse herself at her long-suffering father's expense.
"I've a bill that hasn't been paid," Lied Joe with an ingratiating smile gesturing vaguely in mid air. He wasn't at his home but George's which made his words sound especially lame.
George let that go with a mischievous smile on her face, anticipating that delicious feeling of rightful control. It helped to spice up her day.
"Thinking it over carefully," coughed Joe nervously, "perhaps you ought to ease yourself in gradually with a small scale rehearsal to find your feet, so to speak." "Excellent," George's cool smile of approval reassured and surprised him. He had anticipated a battle, the attempt of the nearly irresistible force meeting the immovable object head on, and one besides with an unfortunately and expensively acquired education in English. "What do you have in mind?" "Well, er," improvised Joe, thinking fast on his feet, "It would be helpful for you to work with a string section of, let me say, two violins, a viola and a cello. This will reproduce on a small scale what you will find conducting the full orchestra."
"Would that be John, Karen, Jo and Roisin?" pursued George in a leisurely fashion.
"I was thinking something along those lines." "Hmmm, I think I could whip them into shape," She grinned, her voice drawling meditatively and with relish.
George reached for her tiny cordless phone and pressed a sequence of buttons in a leisurely way to conceal her eagerness to get the show on the road.
John was listening to the CD of Haydn's "Creation" for inspiration and was mentally there in the music in his place as first violinist when the insistent phone call that must have lasted twenty seconds finally broke through his intense concentration. His first stray thought had been that he had had a singularly inept performance foisted on him where some wretched musician had been allowed to play that same horrendous repetitive figure which disturbed the balance and the serene unity of the famous composer's musical genius. Whoever was phoning must be very determined, he had rightly thought and he was to be proved right. "John darling, I need you to come over and help me out with a little project. Nothing too demanding, as long as you behave yourself." George couldn't resist that little dig at the end where the tone of her voice arched up and down the scales with her usual articulation. She smiled with satisfaction as she heard the audible wince from the other end of the phone. This was not quite the fairly light hearted verbal sparring which the last year or so had seen develop between them as they had got closer. In turn, John hesitated before inviting George to enlighten him as to her cryptic invitation.
"So what other victims are you intending leading to the slaughter?" he eventually enquired as his idiosyncratic sense of duty was engaged.
"Nonsense, John, I shall radiate charm and expertise. To answer your question, Jo, Karen and Roisin have agreed to come along for the ride." John didn't pursue the matter further and, after signing off, reached for his beloved Stradivarius and placed it in his grey soft-top convertible and drove to Jo's flat to help manhandle her bulkier instrument into the back seat. In turn, Karen set off in her MG sports car without her very full brief case. For all of them, it was a change for them to be without their usual tools of their trade. Temporarily the instruments of another calling accompanied them and removed them from their day to day existence.
Roisin found herself in George's front hall at the same time as Karen appeared.
"Roisin, my father's here," George's unusually low pitched voice and slightly raised eyebrows greeted her.
Instantly, Roisin got the message. She had spent the last year or more in the company of Cassie and had got to the point that company of women with women had seemed the natural order of existence of what went on all around them. These words were a wake up call to the fact that in other households, other worlds, that this was not so.
"I must say hello to him, George," Roisin answered in her best style of polite, drawing room conversation that she knew how to assume if need be. Joe Channing appeared in the near distance through the open door to the sitting room. He was eager to ensure that everyone had turned up on time and was evidently pleased that everyone was punctual.
"I'll come with you, Roisin," Karen kindly offered. In the rapid concourse of greetings and of people moving in different directions, John joined the two women and accompanied them to talk to Joe in the sitting room. He had been fussing with the layout of the music stands to arrange them to his satisfaction. He had discreetly stolen back some of his authority which he had let George temporarily usurp.
In the meantime, George flushed with embarrassment as Jo appeared last of all through her front door from behind her bulky cello. She gestured to her to go into the kitchen while the others went into the sitting room, which had been transformed into a music studio. She was determined to talk to Jo and sort out the matter that had been whirling round in her thoughts since she saw her. Her debut performance as conductor was an additional reason for her to want to settle her mind. George's rapid walking pace was a reflection of her agitated frame of mind as she outpaced Jo to the kitchen.
"Calm down, George," came Jo's immensely comforting soothing tones as she shut the door behind them. "You don't have to worry about the immature and adolescent games that John was playing with both of us last time I saw you." "What do you mean?" came George's defensive reply as she was by no means sure exactly what it was that Jo had guessed about herself, not John. She was afraid that Jo was skating over implications that were obvious to her just to be nice to her and that it wasn't somehow real. The prospect with John had maddeningly teased her with what was all too attractive even though it was impossible. Whatever must Jo really think of her?
Jo immediately saw that she had rather jumped the gun and that what she saw her words outstrip the meanings, which she was trying to get over. She had telescoped her spoken train of thought and she ought to change tack and take matters more slowly.
"What I mean is, that it was perfectly obvious how you felt about the prospect that we should spend the night with John. I wanted to let you know that what you felt about the idea didn't worry me." "You mean it?" came George's near identical question, decisively rearranged.
"Why should it?" Came the utterly calm matterof-fact reply. "It's sweet of you to be worried for me, George. My problem with John was that he couldn't see how everyone felt about his idea or else chose not to think about it. Sometimes, John isn't good at understanding and responding to delicacy of feeling.
"Oh, that's John all right." "What I really meant to say was that I perfectly understood why you walked out of the situation. It was the wisest thing you could have done in the circumstances. Am I right?" George was speechless as her mind was racing to come up to speed with those incredibly vital sentences. It was immeasurably comforting to hear Jo validate her own feelings "We're good friends now. A long time ago, we've got past the point of playing games with each other." "To tell you the truth, I felt utterly pathetic and stupid," George confessed frankly as Jo's alternative reality of that event started to become real to her.
"There's no need to feel bad about it. Everyone has choices. That's something that I learned years ago and has always stayed with me."
George was amazed to hear Jo talk so freely and openly about herself with no sense of embarrassment. However she knew that Jo envied her in being supposedly a better lover than she thought she was, there was something in Jo's style that she had never put her finger on till today which caused her to admire her in turn.
"Is there time to sneak a quick cigarette on the terrace before we start? This is my one relapse before I have to go back on the waggon." George questioned, even though it was her house. The laughably solitary manifestation of John's puritan side of his personality imposed itself everywhere even if he wasn't in the room.
"If it will help you, George, then yes," Jo grinned.
George gave Jo a quick affectionate hug and they strolled out onto the patio.
"Come on, George. We must make a start," boomed Joe, looking at his watch, and he opened the way to what was now the music room. George and Jo had sneaked back unobtrusively while conversation was in full flow. Roisin felt a little shy and had hung back reticently in the general conversation which had relaxed them into the right frame of mind. Despite recent practice and her own desire to play, she could not help worrying now the time came to performing in a larger, more formal setting than before. Next step, the Albert Hall, her fears told her. "You don't need to worry, Roisin," John murmured kindly, sensing her visible nerves. "It's my card that has been marked." "George will be very kind to you. She'll be keeping a stern eye on John." added Jo, smiling as she sensed that discreet backup support would help.
"Just what I want," John sighed in response.
"Everyone comfortable?" George enquired as a formality, picking up her baton. "We'll take it from number 22." Jo's loose fitting trouser suit enabled her to cradle the cello comfortably, and use the spike to position it comfortably. In turn, Karen was equally at home with her smaller viola. Even fairly casually dressed in trousers and open white shirt, John conveyed that ostentatious air of showmanship while Roisin nervously wedged her violin against her chin, anxious to be ready yet to follow and hide behind John's lead. In front of them, George stood poised as she assumed her position, her arm outstretched and her baton in her hand. She hesitated for a second as she drew into herself all the powers of concentration and the decisive downstroke of her baton cued in her orchestra.
Suddenly out of nowhere, the preliminary sketch of the full orchestral feel of smooth banks of the string section filled the air. Roisin admired it as a miraculous ensemble even as much as the smooth sweep of her bow described added to the flowing tones. With one eye on the sheet music, she surely tuned herself in to the music and all her remaining doubts were dissolved away by the power of the music. This was, after all, the ultimate promise fulfilled of all those years ago when she had spent so many Wednesday afternoons dutifully mastering the ability to translate all the crotchets and quavers from the written page and coax the sounds from her left fingers pressed down on the fretboard and the bow that her right hand coaxed lightly from those four nylon strings. It made up for the sneaking envy she had felt of all her friends who were out there playing. This was the payoff from all the hours she had seemingly sacrificed. To one side of her, the sonorous, flexible sound of Jo's cello provided that rock solid steadiness, that necessary foundation to the quartet that she and the other members of the orchestra knew from that other life they all led. Midway between them, Karen's viola discreetly stayed in the background and securely held the space safe in that distance between high and low. George's sure ear picked every detail out in stereo sound as her baton described the music, which she was surely in the middle of. Her ear picked out the assemblage of sounds and how they interacted against each other. Even at a moment of utter concentration, she could not help notice John's studiously earnest manner and the unobtrusive way that he subtly led the intertwining lead in their musical journey. Together, they found their way triumphantly home as they came to a rest in that breathing space which all of them knew would be in that charted spot in that marked place in that orchestral score.
"Can we have another try at that piece. There was something in there that was not quite right. Besides." She smiled disarmingly, "It would do me good to thoroughly rehearse being your stand in conductor in rehearsals while daddy is away and the critics would be out to snipe at me." With a good grace, the members of the orchestra turned the pages back to the beginning and launched into the piece, more certain this time of the twists and turns that the music demanded of them. They all felt more confident in their playing, in the musical understanding between them that they rode the piece triumphantly to its conclusion. Somehow they had all recharged themselves which a lazy Sunday would normally have done the same by taking it easy.
"That was splendid," Joe's voice boomed out as the piece drew to a close. "I do believe that everyone is making more of an effort than I dreamed was possible." "You mean, Joe, that when you see us in our everyday clothes, it's hard to conceive that we are all capable of another identity," John dryly cut in.
"Something like that, John," Joe smiled that rare smile at him. Even in that way, something was starting to change.
The spirits between them were flowing over of good fellowship and Roisin now found that she was drawn out of herself and her natural sociability to the fore.
"Surely George's house looks just quite like Yvonne's, don't you think?" John had been laughing away to some witticism tossed out by Karen, feeling at his most relaxed when this attractive dark haired Irishwoman lobbed this very dangerous googly right when he was least expecting it. It gave him that feeling of being at a school cricket match when one split second thought of action lay between him and, metaphorically, his stumps splayed out in all direction as his defences lay wide open. Ever since that period, he had known how to cover up and his instincts remained sure and certain over time. "I think you must be mistaken, Roisin. If I remember rightly, I have never been to Yvonne's house or had cause to go there, thoroughly admirable woman though she is." John's blue eyes looked at Roisin in a fixed stare while his voice was low pitched.
"My apologies, John. I must have made a mistake….." Roisin felt immediately uncomfortable and was immensely grateful that the chatter of conversation around her covered up for her. She grasped urgently for a swift change of conversation, a ploy which she had found useful on more than one occasion with her children.
"This has been the first time that I have played in anything like an orchestra and certainly with another violin player who is so obviously talented." Immediately John smiled, almost visibly purring like a cat that has been tickled under his ear. "A well played violin, is a treat from the gods," She elaborated.
Despite the lateness of the day, John dug deep into the ancient recesses of his memory as the connection with his childhood hero, Sherlock Holmes, came to him out of nowhere. Despite the way that his memory had been taxed over the years by the necessity of his calling, those stories had been irrevocably laid down in his childhood memories forever and could be recalled at any minute. "I could swear that you know where those words come from," He exclaimed. He was genuinely surprised as he had always supposed that Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts were invariably male. It was extraordinary that Roisin obviously knew this line.
"Sherlock Holmes, "A study in Scarlett," Explained Roisin. "My son Michael is reading "A Study in Scarlet" in school and both Cassie and I make it our practice to keep up with whatever our children are reading. I like the story for its own sake and I can still remember the way that Sherlock Holmes explained what had led him to identify Jefferson Hope, though my heart went out to him for why he had killed the man for what had happened to his poor dear departed fiancee……but I like it for the detection work of Sherlock Holmes himself." Roisin had struck the right note. While there was obviously a strong romantic streak in her, she had read the stories for entirely the right reasons. He was a purist in such matters. It enabled Roisin and John to get into a spirited discussion on parenting on which they had a lot in common.
"John, can we have a moment?" George politely asked. She felt utterly relaxed and centred after the performance and felt that she could handle anything, which Jo's kindly intervention had helped immeasurably.
"He's all yours," Roisin said with a gracious smile. The whole day was a real novelty for her, what with the realisation of her musical dreams and a conversation with an attractive man who was a real charmer.
"Is this something I should be afraid of?" he enquired in a rather too elaborate manner as he took in the smiles on both Jo's and George's faces. There were, he reflected, certain disadvantages personal to him now that Jo and George got on so well.
"George and I were having a little heart to heart," began Jo in her silkiest tones. "And we really ought to be all friends and behave like friends." "Quite," Came his guarded reply.
"And you really didn't behave like one when George came round last week, as she had the perfect right to expect of you. It isn't a good idea to make a proposition of us all spending the night together, when you should have known that would have made George feel uncomfortable, not that it was any problem for me, being fairly broad minded." "Well, that's frank," John temporised.
"John, darling, you know that I know you of old, even older than Jo does, and that is your first gambit in dodging any issue. You have, I recall, ten more strategies I can think of off the top of my head," George's amused tones broke in. In reality, her humour was skin deep.
"Look here, whatever I may have done wrong, this is hardly the place for debating it, not with your father around," John said in a slightly agitated fashion, seeing that his cover was blown.
"Poor darling," George's casual drawl turned this gambit back on itself. "Are you worried that daddy will come out and horsewhip you for your caddish behaviour?" "Yes I am as a matter of fact. All right, I promise to behave myself better in future. Will that satisfy you?" A silence hung on the air as John's plea hung in the balance.
"All right, I really am sorry. Now can we please be friends?" "You looked really worried. If we are to share your affections, John, then please make it easy for us as well," Jo asked softly, ever the diplomat.
John looked at the two women. If only his life were as simple in settling down with the one woman who would satisfy him. He had both a fear and a liking for the fact that this would never be. He was forced to listen to the justice of the case put before him and he had to admit that he had made an error of judgement. In turn, both Jo and George realised that this was as much of an apology as they were ever going to extract out of this impossible man and that they really couldn't resist John's plea.
"I think we should go through and relax after all we've achieved between us," Jo's soft measured tones diplomatically eased the situation in the same way that her cello playing had been rock bottom reliable. In this, they were all agreed to savour the leisure moments of a lazy Sunday afternoon.