The Professionals Circuit Archive - Come Scoglio	 Come Scoglio

 

by Fanny Adams 

  
 *For-those-who-care-about-this-sort-of-thing-dept: Come Scoglio (Co-may
Sko-lee-oh) is the title of an aria from Cosi Fan Tutte and means 'firm as
a rock.' Make of it what you will.

 Story #5 (or possibly #4) in the Emma universe*

 ******

Even though he'd first heard her sing Janacek, it was with the music of
Mozart that Cowley associated Juliette Austin. By the age of thirty, she'd
mastered the key roles -- Cerubino was her signature role. Juliette with
her soaring, ecstatic voice and gamine face, and an uncomfortable hold on
a tiny, neglected piece of George Cowley's heart.

 It was to hear her sing Cerubino that he'd come that night -- to hear her
sing and nothing more. More would be disastrous. Between the acts he
remembered the first time he'd ever seen her. She was singing the role of
a shepherd boy, her wispy blonde hair clipped short rather than tucked
under a cap. She looked like an adolescent boy. Her voice even so early in
her career was rich and warm and lyrical, and it touched something in
Cowley the music-lover that had last been touched by Schwartzkopf.

 He checked the name in the programme -- Juliette Randall-Austin (she'd
dropped the Randall not long after) -- and he wondered if she was related
to Henry Randall-Austin, one of the near-great helden tenors of the later
fifties.

 "He's my father," she said when later he was able to ask her. He'd
brought her violets and asked her to a late supper, never really expecting
her to accept. She did, though, with what appeared to be genuine
enthusiasm.

 Dressed in a severely tailored suit, her close cropped hair brushed back,
she was so striking as to make Cowley a little uncomfortable. She wore the
violets pinned to the lapel of her jacket.

 "I heard him sing many times when he did a season here," he told her.

 "I never heard him perform. He lost his voice when I was five."

 Cowley vaguely recalled the publicity -- some physical disorder
necessitating an early retirement. He didn't pursue the subject but Julie
was candid.

 "It's something I wonder about -- will it happen to me, I mean. It
destroyed my father." She sipped the champagne he'd ordered. "I grew up
hating him for what he did to his children."

 After that, he came to see her regularly when work permitted. She
expected him backstage at least once a week. They shared late suppers,
went dancing .. . . she even coerced him into going to a jazz club with
her and he suffered it gladly, for George Cowley, despite his iron control
and his firm belief that there's no fool like an old fool, was coming to
love Juliette.

 He remembered too the night when, as he was about to take his leave at
her door, she kissed him and rubbed her face, cat-like against his cheek
and whispered, "take me to bed, George."

 He must have seemed mad, he thought as the curtain rose on the last act,
babbling on about his awkward political position and security risks.
Julie's expression was wry, disappointed -- confusion on her strange,
lovely face -- a face that would suddenly, a year later, be famous. Cowley
never allowed himself to consider what might have happened had he been
less forthright.

 He'd not intended to go backstage -- not until he saw the old woman on
the pavement selling sweet violets, and he knew that in this, at least, he
had no choice.

 It was crowded backstage, the dressing room filled to overflowing with
people and a riot of expensive flowers. His own offering seemed very
meager. Julie was in the centre of a crowd of admirers giving a very funny
rendition of Polyphemus' aria from Acis and Galatea, her voice pitched low
and her stance mock macho. He was about to give up the attempt when the
song came to an end suddenly and a familiar voice -- a too familiar voice
rose above the din: "George! Come over and kiss me." Red-faced he pressed
through the crowd until like a shy schoolboy he stood face- to-face with
one of the most celebrated singers of the decade.

 "Oh, violets. No one ever brings me violets but you . . . and I love them
so. George, why haven't you come to see me before this?" Breathless. They
kissed as friends. She smoothed his hair with an elegantly manicured hand
and he noticed that she no longer bit her nails. "You're taking me to
supper, of course," she said in a voice that brooked no refusal. "I'm
ravenous. I hope you're flush tonight."

 She hopped up on a chair and whistled for attention, like a boy with two
fingers in her mouth. "Friends, I'm going next door to change. Please
enjoy the hors d'oeuvres and champagne. I'll be back as soon as I've
scrubbed off this damn make-up."

 "Meet me outside the stage door with your car," she whispered to Cowley
just before she disappeared. Ten minutes later she dashed out of the
theatre and into the car, barefaced and dressed in jeans, a t-shirt that
bore the legend "save-a-pet" and a tweed jacket. The violets were tucked
into the long, loose braid that hung over her left shoulder. She smelled
of violets. "I'm so glad to be out of there," she sighed as she sank into
her seat. "My feet are killing me. Can we have pasta, George? I'm
famished. I always am after a performance."

 It occurred to him that he hadn't spoken yet, that she had made him dumb
with her strange beauty, like some sorceress in lavender trainers. "You've
not changed. You still . . ."

 "Talk too much? Oh, but there I go finishing your sentences again. That's
terrible and I'm sorry. I won't say another word, I promise, except to
tell you how very happy I am to see you again. I've missed you. Now tell
me what you've been doing all these years. You know what I've been doing."

 "You got married."

 "Who told you that?" she demanded.

 "I, ah, I assumed . . ." He was extremely and pointlessly embarrassed.
She laughed.

 "Oh, you heard about Maggie, my daughter. No I'm not married. Are you
awfully shocked?"

 "No, nor surprised either."

 "Have I just been insulted?" she asked playfully. "Goodness, George, I
never took you for a prude."

 "You had enough reason to, I expect. It's good of you to give me the
benefit of the doubt. Georgio' s all right with you?"

 "Wonderful," she said, meaning the restaurant. Then: "What do you mean?"
She leaned towards him, her arm stretched across the back of the seat. He
could feel the warmth of her through his coat and shirt.

 "Nothing."

 "No really, do you mean that little scene we went through the last time
we were together?" He nodded. "I took you at your word, George. I never
thought you were being prudish. Were you?" she asked, a sly grin lighting
up her face. She was cat-like, he decided, almost feral.

 "Of course not!" He did not like feeling the fool in front of Julie.

 "Am I still such a dreadful security risk, then?"

 "You'll do."

 "Then you'll just have to explain to me why. This time I want to know why
I'm being turned down . . . in detail."

 Why he said it, he would never be sure. "What makes you so sure you'll be
turned down?" he asked.

 "Oh . . . good," she said, settling back into her seat.

 Over dinner she spoke more about her family than her career, and Cowley
began to understand why she'd hated her father so. (Henry Randall-Austin
had died since the last time Cowley had seen Julie. He'd sent a brief note
of sympathy, but it was never acknowledged.) "There's not one of us who's
whole and healthy and stable, and I blame him more than anyone else," she
said, with perhaps more vehemence than was necessary. She stabbed at her
place of fettucine with real feeling. "Still," she added, "we're
surviving, which is something . . . isn't it?" She looked up with mute
appeal in her blue-green eyes.

 "You seem eminently stable to me, Julie."

 "Oh, but I'm the lucky one, you see. I had a voice. He expected the most
from me, but he loved me best at the same time. He never raised a finger
to me no matter how horrible I was to him. Ashley, on the other hand,
would get knocked around regularly. Dad hated Ashley." Once again she was
business-like and animated. "I suppose that surviving is a sort of victory
in itself. And I had my revenge. The summer that I was pregnant with
Maggie, I went home and mooched around town one of those dreadfully posh
north-shore suburbs of Chicago looking for all the world like the Goodyear
blimp and making sure that all of our neighbors knew that I wasn't
secretly married or anything. To make it worse, my sister Eden was
pregnant too, and that was before she married Stewart, so the two 'loose'
Austin girls gave the town a thrill that year." She laughed. "We'd walk to
the center of town and get ice cream and Baskin- Robbins and flirt with
the counter boys. Our neighbors were gleefully scandalized."

 Cowley sipped his wine thoughtfully. "How old is your daughter?"

 "Almost three . . . just think, that means it's been . . ." She did a
quick mental tally, "five years since we've seen each other. Yes, of
course, Dad died eighteen months ago. Goodness, George, wherever have you
been keeping yourself? I was in London two years ago for a benefit
concert. I had hoped to see you."

 "Och, I wanted to come and hear you sing that time, but I was tangled up
with a difficult case."

 "Tell."

 "I don't want to talk about business, " he demurred.

 "I'm a firm believer in getting to know your rivals. I want to know all
about your mistress."

 He was embarrassed. "What makes you think . . ."

 "Your job, I mean. You know, now that I move in exalted circles I have
access to a lot more information than I used to. I even know what CI5 is
now, thanks to a sweet peer who shall remain nameless. He told me quite a
bit about you." She reached across the table and took his hand. "For what
it's worth, I'm terribly trustworthy."

 The idea that she'd thought of him at all in the seven years since last
they met was strangely thrilling. It had been a very long time since any
woman had made him feel so special, and he was not immune to that
pleasure.

 "Can we have canneloni?" she asked, making that startling transition from
alluring woman to anxious child that always unnerved him.

 "Of course. Whatever you want."

 "Oh my," she said.

 Later, when he took her back to her hotel, she asked him in to meet
Maggie, and he was charmed by the lovely child of this lovely woman.
Maggie was quiet and affectionate and she resembled Julie to a great
degree. "Austin looks," Julie said as she smoothed Maggie's fair hair.
"Only the twins were dark. God knows who they took after."

 "Isn't it a bit late for the child?" he asked.

 Julie shrugged. "She keeps my schedule. Doesn't seem to hurt her." She
cradled Maggie and nuzzled the silver-blonde hair, humming softly at first
then singing 'Bist du bei mir' as Maggie dropped off to sleep in her arms.
"Her name is Anna Magdalena so I sing her to sleep with Bach," she
explained with a shy smile. She gestured to Maggie's nanny who led the
child away. Then Julie sat down beside him. "She's nice, isn't she? I
decided when she was born . . . well, before really, that even if she has
a voice I'm not going to push her into music. She's going to be her own
person. Well, for a while she's going to be my person, but I don't think
she minds right now. God, I'm nuts about that kid. That's why I let her
stay up until I get home. I don't want to miss her growing up." She leaned
close to him. "But there's other things I don't want to miss right now,"
she whispered, her breath raising the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck.

 He kissed her. He knew he was going to stay.

 Never the sort of man to allow even the smallest of private concerns to
intrude on his public life, Cowley stoically accepted the fact that
Julie's schedule was far from compatible with his. Still, it was with a
twinge of regret that he realized that she wouldn't be able to accompany
him to one of the annual affairs that occasionally plagued him. Deadly
things with their hearty speeches about "jobs well done", usually turning
into mutual admiration societies, Cowley had always hated them. Juliette's
company would have made the evening considerably less tedious. It was just
as well, though, he decided as he dressed that evening, because he had a
few words to say to the assembly that might take much of the evening to
say . . . and a few of the wee, small hours as well. Yes, it was perhaps
better this way. And she had asked him to come by afterwards, no matter
how late, and tell her all about it. He was far from convinced that she
found stuffy political affairs 'fascinating' as she put it, but he was
flattered even by her feigned interest. It was part of her charm -- that
willingness to make the effort to appear interested. And it was something
that many contemporary women had forgotten how to do. Men were vain
creatures, he reflected. They wanted someone who would listen to even the
dullest nonsense and seem interested. The thought quirked his mouth into a
little grin. He felt like a cross between besotted schoolboy and dutch
uncle.

 A little part of him felt the pangs of regret when he saw the dates that
Bodie and Doyle had dredged up for the evening -- regret because Julie was
easily as lovely as either of their women, and (he was willing to bet)
rather more clever. He realized that he was feeling the lamentably vain
desire to show her off.

 Later, while he was speaking, his gaze fell on the two women. They looked
bored and tired. He thought of Julie and faltered slightly. Not good, he
decided, clamping down on extraneous thoughts. There would be time enough
later to be with her, talk to her.

 But later when they were together, drinking coffee and brandy and
discussing their respective evenings, and he'd only just begun to unwind
from the fierce outpourings of energy that had carried him through the
evening, a call came through from a Detective- Superintendent Tilson
complaining about -- predictably enough -- Bodie and Doyle.

 What Cowley really wanted to do was to tell the man to go to hell and
hang up on him, but his sense of duty was much too strong for anything but
a guilty fantasy along those lines. He took the address and promised to be
along immediately, adding that Tilson and his men ought not to impede the
two CI5 men. "They're apt to be ugly at this hour," he said with a touch
of asperity before he rang off.

 "Duty calls, eh?" Julie remarked. She held his coat for him. "I'm marking
all this down, you know. 'Lost hours' I call it, and I promise you that
we're going to make them all up eventually." She gave him a
brandy-flavoured goodbye kiss that underlined her words. "Call me," she
said. "I miss you when you're not around."

 "Oh, tell the truth, girl," he chided, vaguely embarrassed.

 "All right then . . . nobody else ever brings me violets. I have to keep
you around for that, don't I?" Julie grinned at him. "That and because
you're willing to listen to the tedious details of my day. I'd propose to
you, but I wouldn't want to ruin your life."

 "What d'you mean?" He held her close, not wanting to leave her.

 "You don't know what a bitch I really am, George. You wouldn't hang
around long if you did." To which pronouncement he gave a hearty
'nonsense.'

 He was feeling tetchy, and took his frustration out first on Tilson, then
on 4.5 and 3.7. They were still in their evening clothes, Bodie unshaven
but elegant like an advert from a posh men's magazine, Doyle withdrawn and
sullen -- troubled. He was sharper with them than he should have been.
They had good instincts. When he found the paper with the P.M.'s private
number he knew they were on to something important.

 Later, in his office, he allowed himself to unwind a little in their
company. His leg was aching mercilessly, and he numbed the pain with
whiskey. About the vaguely uneasy feeling this situation was giving him,
he could do nothing.

 He studied them as they worried at the problem. Chalk and cheese, someone
had said of them once . . . perhaps he'd said it himself. No matter, the
team was working which was the most important consideration. They were
still new to each other, still testing limits, looking for weakness. At
that, Bodie was a past master. He pushed and tested and prodded until you
thought you'd murder him cheerfully, but it was his barometer. A man
singularly untrusting, and with good reason, he was looking for someone to
trust. And Doyle, passionate and intense, didn't understand Bodie; but he
trusted him and was a man that Bodie would come to trust, Cowley would bet
on that . . . had, in fact. Well, their pasts were equally colourful and
checkered, though in very different ways. It made them even more useful as
field agents.

 He didn't call Julie until late that afternoon, preferring to let her
sleep. He told her that he couldn't be sure when he'd be able to see her
again. His instincts told him that this case was going to be very
unpleasant.

 It was, of course. Unpleasant and uncomfortable, particularly in light of
his relationship with Julie. Badger games were always ugly, but this one
was potentially deadly -- he realized that in the one awful moment after
he recognized Tcherkoff pursuing the girl to Culver's flat. Something in
Cowley recoiled, but he had no time to examine the feelings.

 Later though, after the girl was safe and Doyle was in hospital, and the
films were viewed; then Cowley recognized his fears. It could have been
him in those films. It was not suspicion of Julie that plagued him, but
rather the certainty that had Julie been something other than what she
was, he would still have been attracted to her. Had there been danger
there, he would have ignored it. The sudden self- knowledge was painful as
was the knowledge that he was going to have to break off with Juliette. In
the final analysis she was as dangerous in her own way as Sarah had been
to Sir Charles.

 ******

It was several days later that he finally had the nerve to go to see her
again. She was sitting on the floor of the suite surrounded by stacks of
music, listening to Tristan, talking on the phone and playing jacks with
Maggie who seemed more interested in watching her mother play than in
playing herself.

 "Oh, I've gotta go," she said into the phone. "I'll call you back later.
Love you." She rang off. "My brother, Ashley," she explained as she rose
to greet him with a kiss on each cheek. "He's in town this week and I want
to go see him one night. Do you like rock 'n' roll, George? Anyway, I want
you to meet him. He's wonderful -- a brilliant guitarist and gorgeous. All
the girls and most of the boys are mad for him." She pulled him over to
the couch and pushed him down. "Do you want a drink? Goodness, you're
quiet, aren't you? Is something wrong?" She sat beside him and fixed him
with that terribly unnerving frank look, that had sent lesser men into
attacks of extreme anxiety. "You're upset. Is it the case?"

 "Yes, it is. I want to talk to you about it."

 "Oh, and I've been babbling again . . . Sorry."

 "Julie, we cracked a badger ring. Do you know what that is?"

 "Sex?" she said with a grin. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not treating this with
enough seriousness, am I?"

 "They were using a young woman to gain a hold over a politician. They
wanted the classified information that he had access to."

 "That's not sporting, is it? He should have been more careful."

 "That's not the point."

 "Isn't it? If he'd been discreet it wouldn't have been a problem, would
it?"

 "The spirit may have been willing . . . " he began.

 "Oh bullshit. We make our own choices, George. We all know what those
choices entail." She glared at him. "And you've made a choice too, haven't
you?" He was taken aback. "You're going to tell me that we're quits,
aren't you? Frankly I've been wondering when this was going to happen . .
. and what I was going to do about it."

 She got up and paced the room. The opera was nearly over and the
liebestod was swelling to its ecstatic finish. She switched off the
receiver with an impatient gesture. "How wonderfully symbolic," she
snapped.

 "Julie . . ." What to say? What words were right? "I made the choice and
I'm going to stand by it. I'm not sorry. Our relationship made me
uncomfortable."

 She turned and stared at him. "I can't argue with that, George. You said
the one thing I couldn't argue with. Oh hell, I suppose you're right." She
flopped back onto the couch and put her arms around him. "Can we be
friends or is that verboten too?"

 "Oh friends, by all means," he confirmed, relieved that she was taking
this so well.

 "And you'll still bring me violets and take me to Georgio's after a
performance now and then?"

 He nodded. "Whenever you like."

 "And we just won't do anything blackmailable anymore, right?" He nodded
again, and uncontrollable urge to laugh stealing up on him. "So, can we go
to Georgio's tonight? My brother is going to meet us there after his last
set." She gave him a sly grin and he knew he'd never really be free of
her. "Well, it sounds almost as good as before. Oh hell, George, it's
better because friends last but lovers almost never do."

 He did laugh then. She was not for him -- never had been -- but she'd
been one of the most remarkable experiences of his long life. "I wonder,"
he mused as she chattered on, "did Maggie's father refuse to marry you
because you talk too much?"

 "I couldn't marry him, George. He never let me talk at all. And he never
brought me violets."

 -- THE END --

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