URSABLOG: Let Me Live In Your Heart. A Short Story.

The following story is fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

I was eating breakfast when I noticed a man peering at me over his silver coffee pot from the other side of the dining room. He was about my age, wearing a casual deep red cashmere turtleneck, navy wool jacket and subtle black thick-rimmed glasses. His short grey hair was immaculately trimmed, and he was very cleanly shaven. He could have been a lawyer, a banker, a shipowner even; he was kind of familiar to me, but I could not place him exactly, so I carried on reading my book, eating my scrambled eggs, and occasionally checking my phone.

Morning is not a good time for me: I prefer silence, or indifference at the very least. I have always wondered why so many alpha types seem to revel in breakfast meetings. I have long resigned myself to being non-alpha.

But the inevitable eventually happened: touching his lips to the perfect white linen napkin, my distant breakfast companion got up and approached my table, challenging me to recognise him. Something in his walk and posture triggered deeper memories from before my time as a shipbroker.

“Simon? Simon Ward?” he asked, still not entirely sure as he came to stand before my table.

“Yes?” I said, not curtly, but not very invitingly.

“You remember me? Tom O’Sullivan, from college?”

It suddenly dawned on me: “Sully!” I got up and shook his hand. “How are you? What are you doing these days? What are you doing here?” He smiled warmly, and returned my handshake confidently.

“I’m good thanks, here on a spot of business, something I have to do this evening. How about you?”

“More or less the same.”

“Listen, I need to run because I have to prepare for this thing tonight. But how long are you staying?”

“I fly on Friday afternoon.”

“What about lunch tomorrow? On me? It would be great to catch up.”

“Sure, I can do that, it would be nice.”

“Great! Do you have a card?”

“Not on me, but give me your phone, and I’ll give you my number.”

I typed my number in, and he looked at it.

“+30? Where’s that? Greece?”

“Yes, I live and work there.”

“Really? For how long?”

“Over fifteen years now.”

“Wow. We do have a lot to catch up on. I’ll be in touch later about the venue and time tomorrow. Have to rush, but really, really great to see you!”

And he strode out of the room.

+++++

I had been put up in the Hotel d’Angleterre by my hosts, a hotel stratospherically out of my normal price range, but I had done something for them that couldn’t be invoiced so they were paying me in kind. I had been summoned to be praised, and be debriefed, both of which – combined with the hotel – would mean I would be obliged if a similar request came along in the future. I was sure it would.

But Copenhagen in December, especially when it is still and clear, is a delight. Walking back from my meeting to the hotel to change for dinner, I cut through the narrow streets east of the Tivoli Gardens, where bars and restaurants – either just above or just below ground level – twinkled their tempting welcome through their small windows. I walked on.

Copenhagen is a place of gentle melancholy for me. Even though some of my best business has been done there, there are always memories – or half memories – waiting in ambush for me. The city makes me suffer nostalgia, even though I have never lived there. I found myself looking out for people I might bump into who I knew could be there, wary of the circumstances under which I would meet them: would they be alone, or with a new lover? What would we say, if anything at all? Would I still be significant in their memory? Would I be remembered at all?

And because Copenhagen is reminiscent of other Scandinavian cities, the architecture blended in my mind with other places. Memories of other times, other meals, other walks with other people, sprang up unbidden and unwanted. I returned to my hotel in a pensive mood.

I was about to run a bath to wash these feelings away when my phone rang, an unknown UK number.

“Hello?” I said.

“Simon Ward?” said a chirpy home counties voice. “This is Emily Bowen-Hughes, Tom O’Sullivan’s assistant.”

“Ah yes,” I said. “Good evening.”

“I am calling to confirm tomorrow’s lunch appointment. Tom will not be staying at your hotel tonight, so he will meet you at the restaurant. It’s a bit outside the centre, so a car will pick you up at your hotel at 12 o’clock.” Ms Bowen-Hughes did not think for a minute that I might have other plans, or it might be inconvenient for me. It was not a confirmation of an appointment, it was an order to attend. I sighed: the efficient voice combined with the assumption that I could not have anything else better to do irritated me. But as it happened I didn’t have anything else better to do.

“Yes, I will be there,” I replied, and thanking her, closed the call.

But I was annoyed with myself: I hadn’t asked where the restaurant was, I hadn’t tried to assert my authority. I was also annoyed by the fact that Tom had an assistant at all. All I had was my phone. I ran the bath myself.

Dinner was as I expected: expensive, long and heavy. My hosts made a show of giving me a say in choosing the wine, but when I showed an interest in the cheaper end of the menu – the wines there looked more to my taste – they took the matter out of my hands and ordered some blatantly over-priced vintage Bordeaux. They knew I was a bit of a wine buff, and they wanted to treat me, but the cost of the wine was beyond the sophistication of my palate. I resigned myself to playing along.

Nonetheless, it was an agreeable evening, especially as one of the waitresses was Greek, and I was able to chat in Greek with her, as if to prove – to her, to myself perhaps – that I wasn’t really like the men around me. But I wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all her.

After dinner I walked back through the dark, cold streets, trying to settle my stomach before the inevitable indigestion began, reflecting on opportunities not taken, decisions not made, if indeed they had been mine to take. Copenhagen has this effect on me: it soothes me even whilst it taunts me.

++++

Tom and I had met at college through friends of friends. He was one of the few people with whom I could bond away from my normal routine of hard drinking and sleeping it off. He was, unlike me, a serious student and diligently completed his coursework on time, read all the books and articles on his reading list – he was often to be found in the library – and went to the theatre and concerts regularly.

We went out for dinner once every month or so, and the conversations that flowed along with the wine mostly revolved around literature and music. But the conversations never crossed the line to becoming confessional: we never shared our deepest feelings, he wasn’t open in that way.

And although he was amiable and easy going on the surface, there was an intensity about him that surfaced occasionally. He seemed to resent apparently talented and intelligent people who were wasting their lives, drifting along, just doing the next thing that came along. I always felt a little guilty after one of our dinners: I felt I was a disappointment to him.

He had been privately educated, I at state school, and whilst I openly wore my prejudices on my sleeve he was one of the few people who convinced me – before it was too late – that I wasn’t too cool for school. I scraped through with a third with minimal work and less effort; he, despite his dedication and hard work, landed a respectable 2.2. I was relieved, he was baffled and disappointed.

After college we kept in touch for a year or two intermittently – he came to my wedding, I met him for dinner when I found myself in London – and then we drifted apart, occasionally sending Christmas cards to each other, and then silence.

The last I had heard of him was that he was working in a small publishing house in London that specialised in classical and contemporary music, and was settling down with a woman from the town where he was born.

In the meantime, my life moved on, first to London and then to Greece, married, no children, then divorced, still no children. And now, having met by chance in a hotel way beyond my comfort zone, Tom and I were about to continue the conversation.

++++

I awoke, groggy and grumpy after an interrupted night, and after a solitary breakfast I worked until eleven thirty when I decided to get ready for lunch. I was at a loss what to wear. I had no smart casual clothes to match Tom’s, and was reluctant to go out shopping for clothes in Copenhagen. I decided that I would wear my suit, a shirt, and no tie. I was slightly nervous and jittery as though I was about to go to an interview. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, and would have been happier staying working in my room, or calling up various contacts to invite myself for a coffee at their offices. But Emily had ordered me to attend, so attend I must.

The car – a sleek black BMW – was waiting for me outside as I entered reception. Doors were opened and shut for me as I got into the car, and with a brief “good morning” from the chauffeur, we set off gliding through the traffic.

We headed northwards, occasionally blinded by the low winter sunshine, beyond the limits of the city centre on to a highway. After about ten minutes we pulled off the main road, drove down through the country on a road lined with trees stripped bare by the cold. We entered a village, turned into a side road and there, next to a small frozen pond, was a long, white two-storey building.

“Here we are,“ said the chauffeur, who had thankfully not said a word during the whole journey, and he got out to open my door. The maître d’hôtel was outside the entrance, ready to greet me with a smile.

“Mr Ward?” he asked. I nodded. “How was your journey up here? Short and smooth, I hope.” I murmured something suitably agreeable in reply. An increasing unease was added to my nervousness; this was all a bit too much for a lunch with an old friend. The maître d’hôtel guided me through to a low-ceilinged dining room, where Tom was waiting for me at a discrete table for two in the corner. Our chairs were placed either side of a small window looking out on the leafless trees outside, the sun exaggerating their stark profiles against the cold pale blue sky.

Tom rose to greet me, and we shook hands again, he too enquiring whether my journey was pleasant and whether the arrangements were to my satisfaction. I replied that they were more than enough, too much perhaps, I knew how to use Uber after all.

“Oh Emily sorts all these things out for me, I don’t know how she does it. I leave everything to her,” he explained.

“She’s certainly very efficient,” I replied.

“I just told her to arrange a lunch for us, and make sure you got here on time.”

“Well, here I am, so she’s done well.”

“I don’t know how I would live without her. Anyway I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the tasting menu, and I know how fond you are of wine, so now we won’t be disappointed by our own tedious choices. They will look after us here, I’m sure.”

As if on cue, a young waitress arrived with two bottles of water – “still or sparkling sir?” – with a rather imperious waiter in her wake with two glasses of champagne, and some olives. He announced the provenance of both the wine and the olives, and withdrew.

“So, Emily has also done some research on you for me, so be prepared for a thorough interrogation. First of all, how come you ended up as a shipbroker? And in Greece?”

I went through my story with him, and whilst he was very attentive, and followed up with supplementary questions (it seemed that Emily really had done her work very well), he seemed eager to move on from my news, and was not really interested in the intricacies of global shipping.

“So what about you Sully? What have you been up to all this time? I feel bad that I haven’t kept in touch or done even the most preliminary research on you. But I couldn’t find anything on the internet, and I’m not on social media at all these days.”

“Well you won’t find me anywhere online as Tom O’Sullivan I’m afraid. Emily has done a good job of cleaning all traces of me.” He winked conspiratorially.

“But you seem to be doing very well, at least from what I can gather,” I replied.

“Well yes, but I like to keep myself out of the limelight, and low key,” he said. “For one reason or another.”

“Well tell me what you are up to, what you have been up to, and why you are an international man of mystery.”

We had got to our third course – mushrooms in an amazing fishy yet foresty sauce with an astounding glass of white Burgundy – and after a couple of minutes of silent contemplation of how beautiful the world is with such wondrous things in it, he began to tell me his story.

He had carried on working at the publishing house for many years, but things were moving very slowly. Because of his limited academic musical knowledge he read everything he could lay his hands on, and went to as many concerts, recitals, lectures and workshops that he could. His relationship with his girlfriend, and then fiancé, suffered: he was not earning much, and was spending all his spare time improving himself. She could not understand why he could not go into banking, or finance – they both had plenty of contacts in the City – and be able to live a more agreeable life than living in a small flat off Clapham Junction. But he was stubborn and was beginning to be beguiled by the world of music. She – inevitably perhaps – took matters into her own hands, and left him for a derivatives trader.

He carried on as he was, and at first was relieved of the freedom that he had been given. And then he met a cellist from the Academy of Ancient Music – an intense and passionate woman called Isolde – and so began an affair that made him feel really alive, in all keys and registers. They moved in together in a flat Clerkenwell – financially assisted by her parents – and had two children one after the other (Henry and Magdalena) and were happy, until they weren’t.

Tom’s passion and knowledge for music grew, but he could not express it well, and although he appreciated music deeply, he could not play any instrument, or even sing. He felt increasingly isolated from her living passion, and as the sex that had ignited and bonded them in the first years of the relationship faded as their children and work took precedence, the gap between them grew.

Into the gap came a younger woman working as a publicist for the Festival Hall, who pursued Tom relentlessly until his wife started getting jealous and paranoid. That jealousy led to her falling into the arms of a sympathetic trombonist with the London Symphony Orchestra.

She kicked Tom out, and kept custody of the kids (they were never married), and he fled back over the river to a one-bedroom garden flat in Denmark Hill. The publicist was unable to acknowledge that she was a factor in the breakup, and dropped him with alacrity. Thus began Tom’s years in the wilderness, but at the same time the seeds of his renaissance were sown.

“I was at rock bottom, devastated and lost. I drank a lot, and listened to a lot of music. I didn’t have to fight for access to the kids – Isolde wanted to live her new life to the full – but I was a poor father to them at the time, and they complained when they had to come and stay with me.

“But after a while a routine developed, and I started looking forward to seeing the kids, and planning to do things with them. We did a lot of trashy things, low culture: theme parks, cinema, shows, eating burgers and shakes, buying cheap and nasty toys. Isolde would berate me for it, but never enough for her to change her own lifestyle and forbid me from taking them off her hands.

“I bought a cheap keyboard and started to learn to play piano. I enjoyed it and became quite good at it. The kids helped me – they were attending the Guildhall every Saturday at the time – and we had a lot of fun.”

The waitress took away the empty plates and glasses, and the waiter arrived with the next course and wines. We paused to appreciate them both down. And then Tom went on:

“But deep down I was lost, and could not comprehend where I had gone wrong. I was a hollow shell: I was empty inside. I was drifting along and waiting for something to happen. I had no goal, no target. I had dedicated myself to my work, and I had reached the limits of what I could achieve there. There had to be something else.”

This was not the Tom I once knew, talking so openly about his emotions, his vulnerabilities. I told him so.

“Ah yes Simon, I am now in touch with my feelings. I had no choice: I had my face shoved in them, just like a puppy who has shat on the carpet needs to be taught a lesson. But that lesson was worth learning.”

“Is that why you have cleansed the internet of your past self?” I asked. “If so, who are you now?”

“Professionally I am known as Derek Mulligan,” he replied.

“Professionally? What is your profession now?”

“I am a songwriter, for other artists.”

“Will I know any of your songs? Are they popular?”

“Oh they have been taken on by various people here and there, but my most famous one is ‘Let Me Live In Your Heart.’ I expect you have heard of that one.”

My fork slipped from my hand and clattered off the plate onto the floor. The waitress noiselessly replaced it immediately. I stared at Tom, dumbfounded.

“You wrote that? Of course I know it, there must be no one on the planet that hasn’t heard it. Really?”

“Yes. I’m afraid that most people have a similar reaction to the one you just had, so you must understand why I keep my identity quiet, and guard – with help from Emily – my privacy jealously. I trust you will respect that too.”

++++

For anyone who does not know the song, here are the lyrics:

Let Me Live in Your Heart

Let me live in your heart:

I want to feel its every beat.

Without it, there is no joy in living,

There is no air worth breathing:

Let me live in your heart.

Let me hold your heart:

Gently soothe your dark stormy nights.

I don’t want to possess it.

I want to shield and protect it:

Let me hold your heart.

Chorus

Darling, I adore you, but my words are never enough:

I am speechless when I look in your eyes.

But I am stronger when I think of you:

Holding you, being held by you, is all I need.

Let me make love to your heart:

Let me show you the things I cannot say.

Let me loose in you

Let me get lost in you

Let me make love to your heart.

Chorus

Let me give you my heart:

I know that it is not enough,

But with every pulse I live for you.

So what else could I ever do

Than completely give you my heart?

The lyrics may seem a little bit trite on the page, but combined with the music – soft piano to start with, introducing strings to a restrained but passionate tension, peaking at the last refrain to gently resolve in the final verse – it is, for me at least, a hauntingly beautiful song. Like many truly popular things – it has become a classic – it is ridiculed by many “serious” critics, but once heard it is hard to shift from your head. Every time I hear it, it brings tears to my eyes.

++++

I took a swig of wine to recover my composure, and asked Tom the first question I could think of.

“Where did you get the name Derek Mulligan from?”

“Ah, I’m afraid it’s a mixture of pretentiousness and clinging on to my Irish roots. Derek is the English version of Dieterich, as in Dieterich Buxtehude, my favourite Baroque composer, the link between late Renaissance and Bach. Bach walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck – 250 miles there and back – just to hear him play. And Mulligan’s is a great pub in Dublin.”

“And how did the song come about?” I asked.

“Well, I had been trying out a few things but they weren’t quite working out. I was concentrating too much on craft – the old problem – and not on feeling. I found it very useful to use themes, ideas from various composers – Bach for emotion, Gesualdo for passion, Buxtehude for sadness, Monteverdi for joy and so on – and synthesise them into different more modern forms. But the song wasn’t coming through: I felt that I had something to say, but couldn’t say it using the usual tools.

“So I gave it up, and watched a film – Tokyo Story I think – and went to bed. But I woke suddenly in the middle of the night, with the song in my head. I got up to write it immediately: the tune flowed out, and I built the lyrics around it. It took less than an hour. It was as though the song was using me to be written; I felt I had very little part in actually creating it.

“I went back to bed exhausted. I was afraid that it would turn out to be terrible, but playing it again the following day I realised it was not only good, it was brilliant. I took it into work – I had my own music and book publishing company by then – and played it to two of my team. They were enthusiastic – making a couple of minor tweaks here and there – and we brainstormed who would be the best voice for it. We chose Jack Ashcroft – he’s a little older, a little more lived in, can play the piano, has a smokers’ baritone even though he doesn’t smoke – and we hit the jackpot. When it was used in the soundtrack to Anne Hathaway’s best romantic film in ten years, we broke the bank. And the rest is history.”

“So how come I’ve never heard of Derek Mulligan?” I asked.

“Well the company says he is a recluse, and as I am the creative director, I am the one that guides the song through production. I go through a charade of being the liaison between Derek and the artist or producer, and go off to talk ‘in private’ with him on my mobile. But normally what I do is just go for a walk, or for a cup of coffee or something, and come back with the solution.

“All the senior staff in my company are in the know, but it’s written into their contracts that if they so much as whisper the secret to anyone, that’s the end of their time with us, and litigation will follow. But generally it doesn’t come up that much: people are more interested in Jack, or Anne Hathaway than the writer of the song, but it is good business for the company to maintain an air of secrecy.”

“So why are you telling me?” I asked. “I haven’t signed anything, and I could just walk away from here and call people.”

“I always trusted you Simon, and from what Emily tells me you are seen in your world as a man of integrity who deserves respect.”

“But apart from that, why are you telling me?”

“Well I have to tell someone. I can’t tell Isolde, even Emily doesn’t know the full story, efficient as she is. You are my confessor, now, as you were in the past.”

“But you never told me anything in the past,” I objected. “We just talked about books, ideas, life. You never told me anything personal then. I had no idea what you were thinking, or how you felt.”

“I confessed what I could at the time, in my own way. Anyway I hadn’t done anything worth confessing, and I didn’t know how I felt, except a disappointment with more talented people – like you for example – who were frittering their talents away by drifting along aimlessly. At least you came right in the end.”

“And now?”

“I’m still fundamentally alone, but I’m ok with it. Occasionally women do try and track me down, because they are trying to find such a man that could write such a song: their ideal man. And although I never reveal myself as the writer I benefit from their presence, and I invite them for dinner, and see how it goes. Sometimes it lasts longer than either of us expect, and sometimes it ends with bitter disappointment. I don’t want anyone too close. But it helps pass the time.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “by putting the real you in the background, the writer of that song I mean, you are ultimately unapproachable to anyone. It’s as if you cannot risk doing what you say you want to do in your song.”

“I have thought of that, but the strange thing is I didn’t write that song for anyone. I had nobody in mind when it arrived. As I said the song wrote itself.”

“So,” I said, “You have made a huge amount of money, and built a company, and you are just passing the time?”

“A very good time, as it happens.”

Our meal had eventually drawn to an end, and something was bothering me. After I made a half-hearted attempt to pay the bill – the maître d’hôtel gently informed me that it had been taken care of – I turned to Tom again.

“So why am I here?” I asked. He looked at me with an impassionate gaze. Thirty seconds passed as the good-natured conversation evaporated and an invisible barrier rose up between us.

“To bear witness,” he said finally. “To show someone who knew me as I was who I am now.”

I smiled as warmly and appreciatively as I could, but the chill in the air was palpable.

“Thank you for an excellent meal, and a wonderful – if surprising – conversation,” I said. “It really has been wonderful to catch up.”

“Thank you for your time,” said Tom.

The imperious waiter arrived at my shoulder to tell me the car was waiting outside. It seemed that my audience with Tom was over. I was ushered back through the building and I stepped outside. I motioned to the driver that I was having a cigarette, and stood there watching the setting sun through the sparse and spare branches of the trees, buffeted by an increasingly violent and bitter wind.

++++

Later, back in the hotel – after sleeping off the worst excesses of lunch – I did an hour or two of work: answering emails, making a couple of catch-up calls. I went to the window, and saw that snow had started falling: big fat flakes floating down in the now gentle easterly breeze. I watched as it covered the benches and statues, the trees and flower beds. I thought about Tom, and wondered idly where he was. But I realised that I didn’t really care.

The snow continued to fall, and the square became emptier. A few homeless people huddled at the edges, and the only skaters left on the rink were either the most dedicated or the foolhardiest. Parties of revellers slipped and slid their way to and from Nyhavn in search of the next drink.

I closed my laptop, changed out of my suit into something more comfortable, and went downstairs. At the lobby doors I paused again to look at the snow, exchanged some amiable remarks with the doorman, and set off for a wine bar I knew on a street off the other side of the square.

Reaching it, I stepped down from the street to open the door, brushing the snow off my coat and stamping my feet. The waitress recognised me – I had been there a few times before – and greeted me warmly. Two English couples were rowdily drinking at a stand in one corner; I moved to the opposite side, at a small table near the back. I ordered a glass of Sicilian Primitivo with some olives to wash away the bitter taste of my superlative lunch.

After a while the English couples settled up and tumbled out of the door, leaving me alone in my corner, contemplating my single glass. The waitress cleaned the tables, wiped down the bar. She then turned out most of the lights except those right above my table, picked up a half empty bottle of red, two wine glasses and a platter with cheese on it. She came towards my table, smiling, and as she placed them down in front of me, she asked:

“Do you mind if I join you?”

And without waiting for a reply, she went and locked the front door.

Simon Ward