Upright Piano Player Read Online Free

they had a responsibility to fashion the tone and conduct of their companies. He had spoken with grace and good humor, yet he hadnot tried to entertain them. He had sat down to restrained applause. The clients at Henry’s table were barely polite. Naïve was the general verdict.
    “If I want a sermon I go to church, not to Claridges.”
    There was general agreement at the table, guests tapping their wineglasses with their coffee spoons to underline their approval of this sentiment. Henry said nothing. He had found himself moved by the cardinal’s speech and admired its courage. He had resigned from the club a week later, pleading pressure of business. A meaningless gesture, since his partners went on taking the firm’s clients to the dinners and Henry’s absence went unnoticed.

    Two young women came out of the pub arm in arm, their high heels barely coping with the slick cobbles as, bent double, they hurried to get out of the rain. Reaching the darkened car they stopped for breath or support—he wasn’t sure which—their breasts flattened against the windows, their arms flung over the roof. They were celebrating an escape.
    “Well, I don’t have to put my tongue down his throat, just to say hello.”
    He lowered the passenger window and the car was suddenly full of curves and the smell of wet wool.
    “What the fuck?”
    They were startled, but when they saw him in the driver’s seat they ran off laughing.
    He started the car and drove home, saddened by the empty seat beside him.
    He lived just off the Fulham Road in a two-story, double-fronted house that the local estate agent had sold him as “a country cottage in London.” The house was larger than it looked, and in one of the three reception rooms there had been space to tuck his piano against the wall. He had taken lessons until the age of fifteen when hormones had directed his energies elsewhere. But on the death of his parents, he had claimed the piano and it had gone with him from flat to flat and house to house. It was the only remnant he had of his childhood, its tone a song line to his past. He played it late at night—hushed, tentative jazz—the chords barely reaching the walls.
    His friends thought his house somewhat modest, considering his success, but Henry and Nessa had bought it for the gardens.
    In the front they had planted four standard holly trees, each in a square bed of lavender edged with box. In the beds below the windows, catmint and ladies mantle were ground cover for Queen of the Night tulips in the spring and Japanese anemones in the autumn. The whole front of the house hosted a magnificent
Rosa banksiae
“Lutea”—small round buds appearing in late April, bright green and tipped with the yellow of the rose to come.
    In the back garden, a formal pond took center stage in a lawn framed by a mossy brick path. Behind this lawn, up two gentle steps and concealed for the most part by yew hedging, was a raised parterre and a small pavilion. Enclosing everything were walls of London brick topped with lengths of trellis that buckled under the weight of ramblers. In summer,the serenity of the center seemed always under threat from the chaos of the edge.
    There were no lights on in the house when he arrived. He turned off the alarm and went into the kitchen. The morning’s post was on the table, most of it junk. He sat down to open the rest, too tired to take off his overcoat. He had won £50 on his Premium Bonds. There was a brochure from a wine merchant, several bills, and a letter erroneously addressed to Sir Henry Cage. He studied the envelope. The address had been typed on a computer, the label perfect—a secretary’s mistake rather than a cynical ploy, he thought.
    Having read the letter, he was not so sure. It was from someone he had met only once and instantly disliked. It appeared the man was now the chairman of an appeal fund for a government-backed business school. They had been awarded £30 million by the Lottery for a new