Crescendo

Once as he moved he caught sight of her and looked at her. Marina was so nervous that she looked away, clasping her hands in her lap.

He was talking when she looked again. A woman with wreathed silky black hair hung on his arm, smiling at him, the languid sensuous lines of her body betraying to Marina's stare that she was in love with him. As she watched she saw his sinewy hand slide down the woman's shoulder and arm, saw him smile into her eyes, and she knew then that Gideon Firth was the woman's lover. Her innocence of passion had been somewhat rudely shattered when she arrived at the college. All her fellow students seemed to lead exciting lives. Marina had no time for love, but she learnt to recognise the look of it, to comprehend the emotions behind the way some­one touched the person next to them.

Grandie had come over to collect her, smiling. 'Now why did you hide away like that?'

He knew her shyness and was indulgent with it. His arm around her he led her towards the door. Gideon Firth stopped them before they reached it. He turned his glittering eyes on Marina and she looked into his hard, sensual face and saw the up­lifted excitement of the performance still on him. He was reckless with it, his mouth smiling widely.

'You haven't introduced me, Grandie,' he said.

Grandie smiled, pleased. 'Gideon, this is my granddaughter. Marina, Gideon Firth.'

Gideon held out his hand and she shakily put her own into the strong fingers. Holding her hand, he had bent that dark face on her with a confident, piercing smile.

'Marina,' he repeated. 'Incredible!' He spread her fingers out over his palm. 'You play, of course.'

Grandie laughed and began to tell him about her while she stood with a flushed face and downcast eyes, so conscious of Gideon that she could not look at him.

They were interrupted a moment later by the dark woman who twined herself against Gideon with the assurance of one who has a claim to such familiarity. Once Marina looked up and the woman's cold eyes assessed and dismissed her with a flick from head to foot. Hot-cheeked, Marina did not look up again.

They left, and Marina was silent all the way back to the hotel at which Grandie was staying. She had a room there too for the night.

'He could be a great pianist,' said Grandie, nod­ding, as they were on their way home next day.

'Could be?' she repeated in disbelief. 'He is!'

Grandie's mouth went straight, wryness in the shape of it. 'He's technically amazing and very clever, but the feeling ... it's too much on the sur­face, a mimicry of the thing, not the thing itself.'

Marina stared at him, remembering the fluent ease and delicacy of the playing. Was he right?

'He's too hard,' Grandie added. 'Too certain.'

She remembered Gideon's elevation after the con­cert, his triumph and glitter, and sensed that Grandie might be right.

Christmas came with a bitterly cold spell of weather. Marina wore a little circle in the frost on the window pane by leaning against it, her nose pressed to the cold glass, her breath slowly thawing the brittle crystals. The grass was stiff and silvered, the roofs glistening, the cats walking over icy ground with a pained expression.

Grandie gave her a white fur muff and hood for Christmas. She put them on for the first time to walk along the cliff paths and watch the sea coldly breaking on the stones. Two days after Christmas she was playing absorbedly when she felt someone in the room behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, expecting Grandie, she met Gideon Firth's black eyes.

Her hands stiffened and fell still.

'Go on,' he said, sinking into a chair.

She shook her head, hurriedly getting up from the stool. 'Does Grandie know you're here?' Her voice sounded unlike itself, thin and high.

'He told me to come in and listen,' Gideon said softly, staring at her. 'I'm here. So sit down and play to me.'

She gave him a half-frightened look. 'I couldn't!'

His brows rose. 'You play at the college. Why not to me?'

She didn't know why, only that she did not want to have him sit there and listen to her. Hurriedly escaping into the kitchen, she put on her red cloak, muff and hood and went out into the frosty air.

Grandie did not say anything, just looked at her with affectionate amusement.

Walking along the cliff path, she heard twigs breaking behind her and looked round to find Gideon at her heels. Her face coloured.

'Hallo, Red Riding Hood,' he said mockingly. 'I'm the wolf.'

She had a self-protective flare of annoyance. 'My hood's white,' she pointed out.