The Beethoven Medal by K M Peyton

Author:K M Peyton [K. M. Peyton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2013-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

THEY WENT BACK to Liverpool Street and caught the train home. Ruth felt she had grown up during the day. She was not prepared to be a doormat any more; she realized that her dog-like devotion was not enough, either for Pat or for herself; the relationship needed more nourishment, or it was going to die. And it was for Pat to decide. She thought he would. She felt cool, and optimistic, and about five years older than the day before. She didn’t say anything at all. Pat didn’t seem to notice, being in a cloud himself, but when they were on the train, and she had merely gazed out of the window for three stations, she became aware that he was conscious of the situation. He was watching her, and glowering slightly. Five stations later the man sitting next to Ruth got out, which left an old man asleep in the far corner, and Pat leaned forward and said, ‘Ruth.’

Ruth looked at him.

He said, ‘I’m sorry if you didn’t like it—if you thought—’ He hesitated. ‘It was work, you see. I didn’t want it to be anything else. And with Clarissa it’s very difficult now. But that engagement to play was arranged by my Prof. I couldn’t cancel it.’

Ruth thought that it was a greater effort for him to say this to her than to go out on to the stage and play the Moonlight Sonata to five hundred people. He looked far more nervous. She could scarcely believe that he had apologized.

‘Clarissa is no more to me than the noise she gets out of her catgut. I don’t want you to think anything else, that’s all.’ He looked better, having cleared this terrible hurdle.

‘She was more once? I got that impression.’ She was so curious, wondering what had happened, as bad as her mother.

‘Well, yes. You’ve only seen her being bitchy, but she’s not always like that. She wasn’t. Not last summer. Oh, cripes, let’s not talk about that. People like that—and her mother—her mother—’

He looked harrowed, his eyes dark and scowling.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to know,’ Ruth said quickly. She wanted to know desperately, but not at the cost of such obvious pain to him. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not now you’ve explained.’

‘I’m no good at explaining, that’s the trouble. I can’t talk. They—most of them—at college, they can talk, they know all the words. It doesn’t mean they’re any ruddy good. But if you listen to them you think they must be. You—you must think I’m a pig, the way I am, but I can’t tell you . . . I can’t, how difficult it is, I mean. I don’t want to—to—I don’t want you to think I don’t—I don’t care. I—’

He paused, looking at her very earnestly, scowling. Then he gave a sort of groan and dropped his head and rubbed his hands through his hair.

‘Cripes, it’s hot. I must change out of this ruddy suit when we get to Northend.’

Ruth was touched almost to tears.

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