“Just because of that. Mallelieu had lost his chance to be an aristocrat-by-marriage.” Milan’s voice was contemptuous.
“But he could have supported you and helped you to be a famous virtuoso. Wouldn’t that have been good enough for his daughter?”
“Not at all.” Milan laughed mirthlessly. “Have his daughter marry some penniless scholarship student from the backwoods of the Eastern bloc? No way.”
“He really was a snob.”
“He really was. He’s dead now, of course. But, back then, Europe was dead to me. Which is why I end up here, on this little island where they don’t care so much about the politics in Paris and Vienna and all those places. Playing in an orchestra. Not what I dreamed of, not at all.”
“The best orchestra, though,” said Lydia, tweaking his nose.
“Oh yes, of course. The best orchestra. At first I just did it because it was a secure income and I could live. I always said I’d still try to get solo work and get an agent but as the years went on, I suppose my confidence left me a little.”
“You? Lacking confidence?” Lydia snorted.
“I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true.”
“You could have gone to America.”
“There are things I don’t want to face, in America.”
His father. His brother.
“Even now?” said Lydia softly.
Milan didn’t answer.
“I am having a bath,” he said eventually.
Lydia watched him lope into the bathroom, his hips swaying, his back view reminding her of some priceless sculpture of David. She heard the taps turn and the water roar into the big corner bath.
Surely his father and brother had come back to Prague for his mother’s funeral, she thought. Surely he must have seen them then. But he didn’t appear to be back in touch with them in any meaningful way. Was his sense of betrayal and deep-seated anger really still as strong as it had been when he was a child and a young man?
Perhaps they hadn’t attended the funeral after all. Perhaps they had felt too guilty, too implicated in her death. Perhaps they had been afraid to face Milan.
She tried to imagine going through the experiences he had been through and couldn’t. She thought losing a lover was bad, but what about everything he had lost? True, the career issue had been partly of his own making, but the punishment had massively outweighed the crime.
He had been living these last eighteen years in a half-life, a limbo. Unable to express his talent fully, unable to go home, unable to communicate with his family or any element of his past. He had been a true exile. No wonder he was so difficult.
She buried her face in a pillow. What was she going to do? About him, about Karl-Heinz? She felt responsible for them both, and they had both poured out their darkest secrets to her. How could she abandon either of them now?
“Are you coming into the bath?”
Milan’s voice drew her out of her agonised trance. Whatever had happened in his life, he was happy now. He had solo work, and a woman who loved him. He no longer drank or took crazy risks, sexually and otherwise.
She wasn’t doing him wrong. She wasn’t.
In the bath, he lay back, a peaceful face amidst the foaming bubbles.
Lydia climbed in, enjoying the effect of the warm water on her aching muscles. She sank down between Milan’s legs, leaning back against his chest, ready to fall back to sleep there in that steamy double-embrace.
“So you see why I don’t want you to go to that party,” whispered Milan.
The party. She had forgotten all about it.
She was supposed to be going to enjoy kinky sex play with the man who had trashed Milan’s career.
“Yes. I do see,” she whispered back.