The Storytellers by Robert Mercer-Nairne Page A

do.
    â€œLooking for the car?” the porter asked solicitously.
    â€œYes,” answered Jack hopefully.
    â€œYour friend took it.”

C HAPTER

    F AKE SNOW DAPPLES the stage. Marcello’s painting has become a sign above the tavern door. The friends – poet, painter, philosopher and musician, have fooled their landlord out of another week’s rent for the garret they share in the Latin Quarter. Rodolfo the poet and Mimi, the embroiderer who lives downstairs, have already met and are in love. Now it is winter and Rodolfo’s feigned jealousy is driving Mimi away. He hopes she will find a wealthy lover who will pay for the medicines she needs. Harvey is moved. Puccini’s score opens an ache in his own heart for a kind of love he has not known. The custom-house officers, asleep around a brazier, make him think of the pickets doing the same back in Britain. Did Abigail have a lover? Does life change, or just repeat, again and again, in a cycle of domination and resistance, love gained and love lost? He knows Mimi will die of consumption and that Rodolfo will be bereft. He has seen La Bohème before.
    Mimi’s illness had a deeper meaning for Harvey. His mother’s mortality had started to weigh on him. She had complained of tiredness, which she had never done before, and he had paid for her to see a doctor.
    â€˜Right as rain, Harve,’ she said afterwards. So, in celebration, he had taken her to Milan. His star was rising. George Gilder even mentioned the editorship one day, but that had been after a heavy session at the bar, so he thought little of it. His pay was good though, which was a reality he could bank on – or spend.
    His mother had never been on an aeroplane. So he had booked them first class to Malpensa International Airport, which delighted her, although the expense of it would have upset him greatly in any other circumstances. But that was nothing compared to the Grand Hotel and car he’d hired for the evening.
    â€œLook, Harvey, it’s all lit up like a fairy castle,” she said as their limousine glided to the front of the Teatro alla Scala and they were ushered inside. As they settled into their box, Sylvia’s diminutive body swathed in a flowing chiffon gown smothered with costume jewellery, she leant over, revelling in the imagined intrigue of it all, and whispered, “They’ll think we’re a duchess and her lover, Harve!”
    Mimi appears on stage and finds Marcello. She tells him of her problems with Rodolfo. He goes into the inn to find him but when they come out together, Mimi is hiding. Rodolfo confesses to Marcello that his jealousy was a ruse to drive Mimi away so that she might find a rich lover. Mimi’s consumptive cough gives her away and the two agree to stay together until the spring – ‘Ah!’ she sighs. ‘That our winter might last forever.’
    In the last act, Mimi is dying. He sings, ‘How cold your hand.’ She sings back, ‘They call me Mimi,’ to the music that accompanied their first meeting. As she draws her last breath, Rodolfo’s friends gather round in disbelief and he throws himself onto her now lifeless body sobbing, ‘Mimi! Mimi!’
    For seconds that feel like hours, the audience is silent, undone by the tragedy it has witnessed. Then eyes are dabbed, handkerchiefs put away, and everyone jumps up and claps frantically, as if trying to attract a passing ship that will pull them back on board to a saferreality. Ileana Cotruba ş and Luciano Pavarotti come forward with the players and then again with their conductor, Carlos Kleiber, to acknowledge the applause. A moment in time has come and gone, never to be repeated.
    â€œThat was sad, Harvey,” she said as they were making their way down the stairs to the door. “I don’t want you to miss out on love because of me.”
    â€œDon’t be silly. Now let’s hope that car is