Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

3. At the Opera

‘Sexiest voice in the business, that Latour,’ said Mr Rinyo-Clacton. ‘So mysterious, her Mélisande, so haunted and haunting, so full of death! First words out of her mouth are “Ne me touchez pas!” Don’t touch me! But she’s expecting to be touched, she’s a kind of touchstone — people reveal themselves by what they do with her; she seems so vulnerable that she makes things happen. She’s afraid that Golaud is going to tear her clothes off and have her right there by the pool in the wood; maybe in some way she even wants it, who knows? Why is she crying when we first see her? What was done to her before Golaud found her by the pool? What about that golden crown glimmering under the water, eh? Is that her lost virginity or what?’

Although I’d heard bits of Pelléas et Mélisande here and there I rarely went to the opera and I’d never seen it before or read anything about it. Seeing it now from Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s box I found that the story, the music, and the staging took me to a place where I couldn’t be sure of anything; all of it seemed to be speaking to me in a way that I didn’t understand. The dark wood through which Golaud followed a trail of blood, the pool by which Mélisande huddled so pitifully — the look of them troubled me.

With the help of the surtitles I followed the action carefully. When Golaud asked her if anyone had hurt her Mélisande said, ‘Everyone,’ and I felt guilty; she looked like Serafina. What had they done to her? She didn’t want to say. She said her golden crown had fallen into the water. Golaud said he could see it glimmering down there and it was very beautiful. Where had she got it? He’d given it to her, she said. Who? Her answer to that was that she didn’t want it. Golaud noted that the pool wasn’t very deep and he could easily reach in and retrieve it but Mélisande threatened to throw herself into the water if he did — not much of a threat really, if the water was that shallow.

Golaud kept trying to find out where she’d come from but he couldn’t get a straight answer out of her. She said she’d run away, that she was cold, that she’d come from far away. She marvelled at his grey hair, she asked if he was a giant. Partly she acted as if she could be picked up but she also behaved like an animal wary of traps.

When Golaud suggested that she come with him she said she’d rather stay alone in the wood. When he asked her a second time she said, ‘Where to?’ He said he didn’t know, that he too was lost. Then she went with him. The music had murmured and surged like the sea, full of darkness and death.

‘What do you think of it so far?’ said Mr Rinyo-Clacton.

‘Golaud isn’t right for her,’ I said.

‘That’s why it isn’t called Golaud et Mélisande,’ he said. Sparkling and rosy-cheeked Mr Rinyo-Clacton with his silver card-case, slurping oysters and sipping Cristal ‘71, a champagne so far beyond my means that I’d never even heard of it. And I, too, sipping Cristal ’71 and slurping oysters that smelled of the sea in Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s crimson and gilded box at the Royal Opera House, our refreshments catered by his minder with hands that looked capable of crushing a skull like a walnut. He also was in formal attire and almost invisible in his attendance. Except for the hands. I thought his name might be Igor but it was Desmond.

‘I have an odd collection of books,’ I said. ‘One of them is an archaeological dictionary.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Rinyo-Clacton, squeezing lemon juice on to an oyster.

‘You call yourself Rinyo-Clacton,’ I said. The Cristal ’71 was like liquid velvet and my worods, my woordos, my words came out of my mouth in such a way that I felt entirely other than what I was used to. ‘Rinyo-Clacton is the name given to a Late Neolithic pottery style found in Scotland and in southern England.’

‘What are we but clay,’ said Mr Rinyo-Clacton, ‘and infirm vessels all. One million pounds.’

The long darkness of Serafina’s hair! The raven’s wing of it sweeping over my face! Gone! ‘One million pounds what?’

‘Later,’ he said as the house lights dimmed, the audience murmured, coughed, and shifted from buttock to buttock; the conductor appeared, bathed briefly in his spotlight, bowed to us, then faced the orchestra and lifted his baton. The curtain went up, the music and the voices rose and fell like the sea, after a time becoming Mélisande’s song as she combed her hair in the tower window. ‘Mes longs cheveux descendent…’ she sang. ‘My long hair goes down to the door of the tower; my hair is waiting for you …’ said the surtitles over the stage, and I began to cry as Mélisande, leaning from her tower window, let down her long, long hair to cover the face of Pelléas.