The Choir by Joanna Trollope Page B

In fact, there was only one curtain, as Leo had taken one down once to wrap up a friend’s fiddle for a journey to London and the curtain had never come home again. He had a centre light and four lamps and he was sitting at the piano with a score and a pencil, wearing a green T-shirt that said “Warwick University Ski Club” on the back, which was typical of Leo, since he had never been near either Warwick University or a ski slope in his life. The wallsof the house rose straight up from the cobbles of Chapter Yard, so Ianthe could lean her elbows on Leo’s windowsill and gaze without hindrance. If she tapped on the glass, he’d be unlikely to notice—she had never in her life known anyone who concentrated as Leo did. In her best fantasies she imagined that intensity of concentration focused entirely on her; it would be like being consumed by a wonderful flame. She gazed at him, at his thick, rumpled hair and the knobs on his vertebrae through the T-shirt as he hunched over the keyboard, and his lovely narrow bottom on the piano stool and his really intelligent hands—she could only see the right one properly—moving knowledgeably over the keys. It was a real turn-on, standing watching him secretly like this. She’d think of it when she saw him come in to the cathedral on Saturday for this service to celebrate the restoration of the organ, and he’d be in his surplice and might even have brushed his hair, and only she would know about the private messy lovely Leo underneath.
    She banged on the window. He didn’t hear, so she banged again, more loudly, and he turned around crossly and came to open the window and said, “Go away, Ianthe, I’m working.”
    “How did you know it was me?”
    “Because it’s Friday and I saw your mother today in Sainsbury’s.”
    “Can I come in?”
    “No.”
    “Five minutes?”
    “There’s this huge concert service tomorrow and a thousand last-minute things—”
    “I’ll only stay a second, I
promise
. I’ve got some vodka.”
    “You drink too much, you and Petra.”
    Ianthe put her bottle down inside the room and attempted to heave herself over the sill.
    “Use the door,” Leo said rudely, not helping her.
    Breathlessly, she wriggled in, falling into the muddle of books and boxes on the floor.
    “Five minutes,” Leo said, “and then I’m throwing you out.”
    She beamed at him.
    “It’s so lovely to see you.”
    “I’m in a horrid mood and I don’t want to see anyone.”
    She made her way into the disgusting kitchen and returned with two smeary tumblers.
    “It always comforts me that this house is so revolting that no woman but me could bear it. At least the mess proves to me you haven’t
got
a woman.”
    “Who’d have me?” Leo said unwisely, pouring vodka.
    “Oh, me, me, me—”
    “I don’t count you.”
    Her face grew suddenly sad and serious.
    “One day you
will
count me.”
    He looked at her. She said, “Do you think I’m at all pretty?”
    He went on looking. After a while he said reflectively, “You are good-looking, I suppose, but you look so contrived and aggressive. Why don’t you let your hair just lie down like hair likes to?”
    “I like looking like this.”
    “Then don’t ask me if I think you’re pretty.”
    She said humbly, “I sort of need to know.”
    If she became submissive, she always set off warning bells in Leo’s head.
    “I’ve got a cause for you to put your extra energy into.”
    “Oh, what, what?”
    “A waif has turned up in our midst, an ex-chorister, unemployed and homeless. You talk to him and see if there’s some way anyone can help him. He’s becoming a slight problem and he is weighing on my conscience because it was me who found him weeping in the cathedral. I’ll introduce you.” Leo looked at his watch. “Time’s up. Out you go.”
    “Oh—!”
    He picked up the vodka bottle and rammed it into the pocket of her huge black cotton jacket.
    “Out.”
    “Will you kiss me?”
    “No,” Leo