Parting was horrible. Leonora cried and Alicia scowled because once again she had to look after her. Audrey left quickly on this occasion having learned from the time before, but she sobbed all the way back in the car and all the way back to Buenos Aires in the plane so that when she arrived at the airport her eyes were so swollen she was barely recognizable.
But she could never have anticipated or imagined what had taken place in her home while she had been away.
Chapter 20
When Audrey stepped out of the car and heard the hauntingly familiar sound of the piano dancing on the air like an echo of a distant memory, she believed it to be an illusion produced by exhaustion and sadness. A cruel illusion that ripped at her heart and mocked the hope that she always harboured even though she knew her wishes were impossible wishes and her dreams nothing but mirages forged out of hopelessness. She stood there listening, not believing her ears but wanting desperately to believe. She glanced at her husband who was already opening the boot of the car to retrieve her luggage. She looked at the house and found herself walking towards it as if in slow motion, fearful of what she would find inside. Surely, she thought, if Louis had returned, Cecil would have told me. The certainty that she would have been informed clouded her mind with doubt and disappointment and yet there still remained a spark of hope.
As she entered the door the music got louder. The tune was unmistakeable. It was their tune. ‘The Forget-Me-Not Sonata.’ Her legs felt unsteady, her emotions raw so that she worried she might give herself away by collapsing or dissolving into tears. She heard Cecil on the path behind her and this spurred her on. She didn’t dare turn to ask him who was playing the piano in case her voice exposed the sudden turbulence that had seized her spirit.
Cecil walked on up the stairs to put her suitcase in their bedroom and Audrey remained in the doorway to the sitting room, where Louis sat at the piano, his fingers floating over the keys that she had touched so often and with such wistfulness, thinking of him.
He must have sensed her there for he stopped playing and turned around. They stared at one another for a moment that seemed to defy the laws of time and hung suspended in an uneasy limbo. Within that moment each nervously watched the other, Louis in search of a flicker of affection to reassure him that she still loved him and Audrey in fear of finding anger in those faraway eyes. She felt guilty. Here she was married to his brother when she should have been married to him. But he could smell the marital discontent in the alcohol on his brother’s breath and see it in the tight knot of hair that restrained Audrey’s joy and her vitality and clung severely to the nape of her neck. In the fortnight that he had been there he had made a pretty damning assessment of his brother’s marriage. It could all have been so different.
When Audrey managed a tender smile it was the only encouragement Louis needed. He rose to his feet and pulled her into his arms, pressing his lips to her temple, murmuring that he still wanted her, that he still loved her and that he always would. ‘Louis, please,’ she begged, pushing him away as the stairs creaked under Cecil’s feet.
‘How could he break you like this?’ he whispered, holding her face in his hands, his expression crumpled with compassion and sorrow. Audrey looked away tearfully. She wanted so much for him to hold her because in his arms was the only home that counted. But they didn’t have time. Cecil appeared as Louis drew away.
‘I wanted Louis to be a surprise,’ he said, walking past his wife into the sitting room where he poured himself a strong whisky. Audrey followed him, tearing her eyes off the man she had feared she might never see again. She floundered, not knowing what to say, trying to act as normally as she could. Cecil continued seemingly oblivious of the emotions that tore through the air in razorsharp vibrations. ‘It was a hell of a surprise for me, I can tell you. He just turned up one day, about a week after you’d left with the girls. No warning. Rather in the same manner that he left us.’ He looked up at his brother then across to his wife. In the weighty pause that ensued he lit a cigar.
‘Where is he staying?’ Audrey asked, too scared to direct the question at him.
‘With us,’ Cecil replied, swirling the ice around in his glass. His face was grave and his jaw stiff. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He looked up at her from under his brow.
Audrey panicked but shook her head. ‘Of course not. Have Mummy and Daddy seen him?’ Louis went and sat on one of the sofas where he could see her better. She perched on the arm of the other. He thought how much older she looked with her hair tied back. The girl in her seemed to have disappeared altogether.