the unmistakable stench of blood. She felt fear begin to stifle her. She threw what was in her hands onto the floor, steadying herself on the sofa as she tried to stop herself from retching.
She ran to the door, wrenched it open and finally screamed.
‘ Ron! Help. Ron!’
‘ What the fuck –‘ he said, as he opened his door and saw Cassie, her bathrobe open, her sightless eyes wide with terror.
‘ In – there,’ she said, her arm pointing not to her apartment, but to a bare wall. In her panic she had lost her sense of direction. ‘That package. The package.’
‘ What?’
‘ It contained a couple of – of –‘ She couldn’t spit out the word. ‘The ends of – two or three – ‘
‘ Cassie?’
‘ F-fingertips.’
7
Wherever she went in the house Kate saw something to remind her of her father. On the walls of the dining room were a number of his watercolours, sketches of Hope at different stages in her life, charcoal drawings of Kate as a girl, quick portraits of some of his showbiz friends and the occasional landscape: the view of the sea from the beach house, a colourful gouache of the Beverly Hills home he had bought way back in the fifties, vistas from various hotel rooms in Europe. There were a number of impossibly glamorous black and white photographs of the couple – her mother with a smile as dazzling as the diamonds that circled her neck, her father in a dinner suit, looking serious, his dark eyes brooding, troubled.
As she walked into his study she almost expected to see him sitting there at his piano, his long, tapering fingers poised above the keyboard. The room was exactly as it had been the day he had died. Unfinished musical scores littered the surface of the piano, the series of seemingly haphazard black notes arranged around the faded paper like the remains of an insect colony. A pair of half-moon glasses lay on the piano stool, as if they were waiting for their absent-minded owner to walk into the room to reclaim them. On the desk, situated by the French doors that looked onto the lush garden, was a mass of paper – a couple of appointment books, old diaries, pages ripped from the New York Times , letters from various orchestras around the world asking about the possibility of performing his work, statements from his agents in America and London, a few of his favourite scores (Prokofiev, Stravinsky) that he seemed to read with the same ease as Kate read novels. On one of the shelves next to his desk were arranged a number of his awards – accolades from the American Film Institute, the British Academy of Film and Television, even an Oscar for his score for The Place Outside . But all these awards, Kate knew, had meant little to her father.
‘ Sure the film business has been good to me,’ he had once said to her, during one of his recurring bouts of depression, ‘but really it’s no better than prostitution. I shouldn’t have been seduced by it. I should have held out for something else, something more lasting. Nobody is going to be interested in me after I’m gone.’
She had tried to argue, tried to convince him that wasn’t true. That he was an artist. But he wouldn’t listen. He was just a second-rate composer who hired out his talents to philistines, he said. She had left him sitting at the piano, his head in his hands.
She walked over to the keyboard and pressed one of the keys. The sound was still clear, beautiful. Hope had the piano tuned regularly even though neither she nor her daughter played, probably for the same reason she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch her deceased husband’s things. Both mother and daughter half expected him to return. Kate sat down at the piano and took hold of one of her father’s scores. She opened it at random, amazed that her father – the descendant of poor Russian Jews who had come to America at the very end of the nineteenth century – had possessed
She ran to the door, wrenched it open and finally screamed.
‘ Ron! Help. Ron!’
‘ What the fuck –‘ he said, as he opened his door and saw Cassie, her bathrobe open, her sightless eyes wide with terror.
‘ In – there,’ she said, her arm pointing not to her apartment, but to a bare wall. In her panic she had lost her sense of direction. ‘That package. The package.’
‘ What?’
‘ It contained a couple of – of –‘ She couldn’t spit out the word. ‘The ends of – two or three – ‘
‘ Cassie?’
‘ F-fingertips.’
7
Wherever she went in the house Kate saw something to remind her of her father. On the walls of the dining room were a number of his watercolours, sketches of Hope at different stages in her life, charcoal drawings of Kate as a girl, quick portraits of some of his showbiz friends and the occasional landscape: the view of the sea from the beach house, a colourful gouache of the Beverly Hills home he had bought way back in the fifties, vistas from various hotel rooms in Europe. There were a number of impossibly glamorous black and white photographs of the couple – her mother with a smile as dazzling as the diamonds that circled her neck, her father in a dinner suit, looking serious, his dark eyes brooding, troubled.
As she walked into his study she almost expected to see him sitting there at his piano, his long, tapering fingers poised above the keyboard. The room was exactly as it had been the day he had died. Unfinished musical scores littered the surface of the piano, the series of seemingly haphazard black notes arranged around the faded paper like the remains of an insect colony. A pair of half-moon glasses lay on the piano stool, as if they were waiting for their absent-minded owner to walk into the room to reclaim them. On the desk, situated by the French doors that looked onto the lush garden, was a mass of paper – a couple of appointment books, old diaries, pages ripped from the New York Times , letters from various orchestras around the world asking about the possibility of performing his work, statements from his agents in America and London, a few of his favourite scores (Prokofiev, Stravinsky) that he seemed to read with the same ease as Kate read novels. On one of the shelves next to his desk were arranged a number of his awards – accolades from the American Film Institute, the British Academy of Film and Television, even an Oscar for his score for The Place Outside . But all these awards, Kate knew, had meant little to her father.
‘ Sure the film business has been good to me,’ he had once said to her, during one of his recurring bouts of depression, ‘but really it’s no better than prostitution. I shouldn’t have been seduced by it. I should have held out for something else, something more lasting. Nobody is going to be interested in me after I’m gone.’
She had tried to argue, tried to convince him that wasn’t true. That he was an artist. But he wouldn’t listen. He was just a second-rate composer who hired out his talents to philistines, he said. She had left him sitting at the piano, his head in his hands.
She walked over to the keyboard and pressed one of the keys. The sound was still clear, beautiful. Hope had the piano tuned regularly even though neither she nor her daughter played, probably for the same reason she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch her deceased husband’s things. Both mother and daughter half expected him to return. Kate sat down at the piano and took hold of one of her father’s scores. She opened it at random, amazed that her father – the descendant of poor Russian Jews who had come to America at the very end of the nineteenth century – had possessed
Similar Books
