Every seat in the concert hall was occupied. I was sitting towards the back, accompanying someone from work who had offered me a free ticket. I did not know him very well, but he must have known enough about me to guess I would be interested in classical music.
“It’s a pity your wife couldn’t come,” I proffered as an attempt at conversation. This was in fact the only reason I was there, as a late replacement. I said this as the conductor, amid applause, strode, baton aloft, to the rostrum.
The lights dimmed and the audience quietened, except for an isolated cough or two. But, then, my companion announced, in an embarrassingly loud voice, that his wife had died earlier in the day.
With that, Verdi’s Requiem took off, thus releasing me from any response. But I hardly heard the music, as my mind ticked over...
***
The resounding roar of a multitude of human palms smacking against each other, as the orchestra and chorus took their bows. A few people were standing in ovation, including my companion who was even shouting his head off.
We walked out eventually into the night where the roads were still glistening from a late shower and the sky was sufficiently clear to see the stars. I plucked up courage to continue our conversation:
“I’m so very sorry to hear about your wife. It must have been very sudden.”
I could not believe that he had cane to the concert at all, in view of the circumstances.
“She’s up there somewhere.”
He pointed to the night sky.
“I expect she was with us tonight in spirit,” he continued, “because even if Heaven is beyond that half of the sunlit moon, souls of the dead are always everywhere . . . In fact, I heard her screech in the violins, her wind in the brass...”
I was speechless. I could not credit what I was hearing.
We were walking towards the underground at High Street Kensington, along with several others who were chatting of the performance. It was almost as if we were being dragged along, as the rain began to soak down again. I pulled up my collar and looked to see if my colleague was keeping up.
He had evidently disappeared into another part of the crowd. Everybody seemed happy, but something in the behaviour of my colleague had turned something in my brain and my stomach was heaving as if I was about to cry.
I was hustled into the tube entrance, even if I had not wanted to go down there. The platform was milling with ex-concertgoers, and I was relieved to hear the churning noise of the train arriving fran the dark tunnel. I felt I did not want to see my colleague again tonight – Monday at work would be soon enough.
The train careered into the lighted station, its doors sliding open even as it drew to a halt.
The whine of the wheels, the hiss of the doors, the clatter of feet and the insistent tannoy calling “Mind the gap, mind the gap” were almost musical, but composed by Satan rather than by God.
I was thinking along tracks I’d never thought along before.
I was a bit behindhand getting on board, what with the crowds, and the doors came together smoothly through my body, slicing bone from flesh like a chef with his expert cleaver. It would have no doubt hurt me if I had stayed in that position long enough, but I escaped from that body space by the skin of my teeth, to miss the exquisite agony of my own gristle being pulled from its flutings.
I was relieved to find that my sanity and identity had returned and, as I brushed off my spectral skirt, I sat down, through the lap of a complete stranger, beside my beaming husband.
Published 'Dark Dreams' 1992
