Chapter Nineteen

Toks held her hand and led her onto a private plane – and into a whole new world.

“This is how you travel?”

Toks shrugged. “Why not?”

Sumi rolled her eyes. “This is how she gets around Europe. You should have heard her begging her cousin to send the plane out to Sydney for her.”

“I didn’t beg.”

“You wheedled and cajoled.” Sumi put the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, do be a sport, cousin dearest. I’m trying to impress a girl. Please let me have the jet.”

Polly giggled. Toks looked murderous.

“I don’t sound even remotely like that. Never happened. Didn’t say it.”

Polly pulled her down onto a very ample cream leather sofa and laughed some more at her outrage. “So, you’re not trying to impress me, then?”

Toks opened and closed her mouth. Opened it again. No sound came out.

Sumi’s grin was merciless. “Polly, you and I are going to get along so well.”

Toks growled.

The maestro was astonishing.

She wrung life from every moment until Polly was singing with it.

Vienna was first.

Toks had an apartment in the First District, but she announced on the plane that she couldn’t be bothered opening it for the three days they’d be there. She had Sumi check them in to the Hotel Imperial instead and Polly nearly swore like Magpie at the grandeur.

Toks ignored it all and simply pulled Polly into the bed.

“I can’t stop touching you. I should be studying. I need to be studying, but I can’t stop wanting you.”

She breathed this into the crook of Polly’s neck and smiled far too smugly when it made all of Polly’s skin crinkle.

“You spent the entire flight touching me.”

Toks sniggered and made her way down to Polly’s breasts. “That was called fucking, babe.” She chuckled when Polly swatted her bare arse. “I want more.”

“So do I,” sighed Polly.

There was a very triumphant nip at the skin just below Polly’s belly button, and Toks settled in for the evening.

Later she did study, the score propped up on pillows, lying on her stomach while Polly straddled the backs of her thighs and massaged her back.

“I didn’t realise there were so many groans in the Bruckner,” Polly teased and leant down to slide her breasts against the glory of Toks’ skin. There was another lost, low moan. Polly had forgotten what it was like to be able to ruin Toks like this. Toks tried to roll over but Polly squeezed her tight between her legs. “You’ve got work to do, darling.”

“But you’re killing me,” Toks sobbed.

Polly squeezed her arse. “And you’re loving it. Shall I order more champagne?”

They barely made it out of bed the next day for her rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic, but while Polly was exhausted, expecting an easy four-hour call and then maybe a stroll through Vienna’s tourist district, she was surprised when Toks put in a twelve hour day and still made time to spend with Polly.

She was attentive and charming, and determined to do everything right. Meals in exclusive restaurants, gifts and crazy-expensive chocolates. Salons and pampering when orchestra matters meant Polly couldn’t follow her. A shopping trip that Polly couldn’t talk her out of, secretly loving Toks’ showy, possessive attitude when she insisted on a selection of jaw-dropping outfits Polly would never have purchased for herself.

“We’ll be performing in the Sagrada Família, babe. We’re touring the Vienna Phil around Spain. Best band in the world, under my baton, with you on my arm. Then we’re at La Scala for my Tristan und Isolde. I’m not having you in any of your hippy cheesecloth frocks.”

Polly could tell she knew she’d overdone it the moment she opened her mouth, but Toks’ irrepressible arrogance meant she flicked an eyebrow at Polly and decided to own it. Putting her hands on Polly’s hips, pulling her in and whispering a totally unrepentant ‘sorry’ into the hollow under her ear was all part of her charm.

“You are so full of yourself,” Polly told her.

Toks reached down to squeeze her arse right there in the boutique. “Rather be full of you,” she smirked.

They both pressed their foreheads together and giggled when the attendant coughed with embarrassment and left them alone.

After a mere three days of rehearsal they were back on the jet and heading to Spain. Five performances in three cities. True to her word, Toks sent Sumi cattle class on a commercial flight with the orchestra while leading Polly away to the private airport and her cousin’s plane.

Sumi put the handle of an extra piece of luggage in Polly’s hand. “All her scores,” she muttered. “She won’t let them out of her sight.”

Polly hefted the bag. “This weighs a tonne!”

“I’ve got that!” Toks sailed past them, swiping the bag and swaggering up the steps of the jet. Sumi and Polly both watched her go, Polly with no small amount of admiration for the swing her backside in the tight fit of her jeans.

Sumi gave her a small smile. “She likes you, then. I’ve never seen her so gallant.” Her eyes darted away for a second and then back. “Polly, fair warning. The maestro has women she’s been involved with in every orchestra she regularly works with. You’re probably going to notice some, um, unsolicited attention from them once we’re on the road.” She looked at her shoes. “And I’ve, um, been there too. Just so you know. But I can see she’s completely besotted with you now. I think she always has been. And I just want you to know that I would never—”

“I understand,” said Polly. And she did. She’d never expected Toks to live the same monkish life she had. “Thanks for telling me.”

Sumi re-inflated in front of her. “So, we’re cool then?”

She was young, Polly thought. She needed someone who truly valued her. “We’re cool.” She smiled at the girl’s wide grin.

“Have a good flight.” The woman actually winked. “See you there.”

It shamed Polly to realise she hadn’t put too much thought into how Toks might have coped during sixteen years without her. Oh, she’d snooped on her public life often enough, bitter at her achievements at first, impressed at the path she forged. Toks was genial and extroverted – annoyingly so, and Polly hadn’t factored a lonely string of empty liaisons into the life Toks had had to create on her own.

She hadn’t considered how brave Toks had needed to be.

Polly kissed Toks hard when she got on the plane and smiled when her surprise melted immediately into smugness. She’d earned that, Polly decided. Still, she kissed her again, deeper, slower, until the smugness dissolved into wonder, and the wonder into need.

How could Polly ever have hidden herself away from this?

Madrid was amazing. Barcelona was sensational. Valencia was divine. Toks, leading the world’s finest orchestra through hours of blissful music, was extraordinary. The music that flowed from her was immense. The power and control she exerted over everyone under her direction was intoxicating. The inspiration those around her took from her generous musicality was breathtaking. The art they created together was wondrous.

Polly was addicted.

In another opulent hotel room in Milan – this one with a grand piano in cream and gold – she fell all over again for the elegance in Toks’ fingers as she played. She leaned on the belly of the piano, folding her arms on its edge, fully aware the pose bunched up her boobs right in Toks’ line of sight. She exalted at the twitch of Toks’ lips as she noticed. Nearly died for the way Toks tossed her hair, flicked a brow, and doubled down on the sumptuous Rachmaninoff she was playing. Damn the burn in Polly’s cunt – Toks knew it was there and she was going to make her wait.

“You’re drooling, darling,” Toks told her, bringing the piece to an end with a flourish the composer never wrote.

Polly wasn’t embarrassed. “You think?”

Polly had been drooling for days. Dripping. The sex in Toks’ eyes whenever they landed on her. Her mastery during rehearsals, and the sly looks she darted at Polly. The sheer strut of her confidence, her magnificence in performance. Audiences loved her, colleagues venerated her. Polly was lost on the magic in her jaw, her collarbones, the sheen of perspiration on her throat when they fucked.

The way Toks looked at her like she loved her.

And yet, Toks was still gentle with her in bed. Greedy, but doing her best to restrain herself.

“You don’t need to be careful with me,” Polly murmured.

The body in her arms went very still. There was a deep, wet kiss on one breast. A hard suck, the brush of a tongue and a helpless moan.

“I want to treasure you.”

Polly kissed her hair. “Darling Toks, I want you to do whatever you want to me.”

Later, Toks hooked her leg over Polly’s thigh and they lay hip to hip.

“How long have you been alone?” Toks asked. Her fingers swirled in the dip in Polly’s side, over and over, never resting, chasing some symphony running around in her head.

Polly wasn’t sure she wanted to answer that. “I’m not alone. I haven’t been alone for ages. You’ve been to Jerinja. You’ve met the gang.”

Strong fingers found her chin. Gently. So, so carefully.

“I meant intimately. You know that’s what I meant. I meant love.”

Polly didn’t want to explain that either. One girlfriend over ten years ago and two one-night stands in sixteen years had a cringe to match the scars. People made their own judgements. She didn’t know what a record like that said about her, but she’d filled her life with other things.

She looked at Toks long and slow. “Love like the kind we had, Toks, only happens once.”

Toks nodded. Then frowned. “So, you mean, no one?”

Polly lifted one shoulder to her ears. “There are so many reasons why I never found someone.”

She didn’t miss the smirk that grew in the corner of Toks’ lips. The ego on this woman! She swatted the back of her hand.

“I said so many reasons! Not one!” Her voice pitched upwards as Toks rolled on top of her, her fingers tickling, her eyes laughing. “Not everything is about you, you incredible—”

“Incredible,” Toks preened. “Tell me more.”

“Oh yeah? Well, what about you? I saw that trumpet player giving you the eye. She was hot too. I’d go there—”

Toks was up on her elbows in a second. “You wouldn’t! I thought we were— But aren’t we— Polly?”

“You idiot,” Polly said. She wrapped her legs around Toks’ hips so she could grind against her. “It’s only ever been you.”

It took way too long for Polly”s comment to cycle through Toks” mind. Half an hour later, Polly saw her self-assurance crumble when it did.

“What do you mean ‘love we had’?” Toks’ voice was so small.

Polly took pity on her. “Have,” she promised. And why not? This was wonderful. She was alive next to Toks again. Exhausted and sleeping through the night, rising brightly to face each new day. She knew it had everything to do with Toks – her skin, her body, her annoying, bloody ego, her meticulous care and her loving devotion.

“The love we have,” she said again, and then squealed with laughter as Toks tickled her til she cried, pulled her into a deep, luxurious bath and loved her all over again.

Toks remembered love.

Ever since she’d tossed that purple sofa down the stairwell in that miserable apartment in Kreuzberg she’d turned off her heart. A conscious decision that had hurt like hell. It still did, but now she was allowing the beautiful potential of Polly Paterson to seep back into the dusty, echoing cavern in her chest the pain was different. Polly’s love was stinging like cold toes in a warm bath and Toks was keen for the burn.

Not keen, she realised. Desperate.

She let Polly into her luxury apartment in Berlin and fought down memories of the love-nest she’d built in Kreuzberg sixteen years ago. Kreuzberg had been cheap and tatty, but heartfelt. This was painfully bare. Expensive as hell. She’d only picked it because the designer had won awards, not that Toks cared. Sumi and her agent had managed to swing articles in six different luxury magazines linking the celebrated conductor with the esteemed architect. Publicity was gold in any realm, but it was hardly an appropriate foundation for a home. That knowledge, learnt so late in life, stung especially when she watched Polly peer doubtfully around the space.

“How long have you had this place?”

Toks wanted to throw the single armchair – fashionably soulless Italian leather – right over the balcony and onto the exclusive Mitte street. She wanted to seize Polly’s hand and hop on a tram to the flea market in Arkonaplatz and wind back the clock sixteen years with a kitschy sofa and some college student art.

“Six years.” She stood near the Steinway and looked at her apartment with Polly’s eyes. All the homeliness and comfort, the family and friendship that filled Jerinja was utterly absent here. A bookshelf full of symphonies and concerto scores, and three cardboard boxes with more still stacked in the corner all these years later

There was no laughter here.

The music in Toks’ life was work, not pleasure. Nothing to dance to with arms in the air and heads thrown back with exuberance.

This wasn”t a home.

Not until Polly Paterson smiled and suddenly Toks didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“Nice Steinway,” she said. “You pay for this one?”

“Cheeky.”

Polly’s smile widened. Toks adored its wickedness. Polly settled down in the single armchair and quirked an eyebrow. “Play for me.”

Only a few short weeks ago Toks would never have tolerated such impudence from a lover.

That thought gripped her heart. A lover.

She’d forgotten the meaning of the word. Whatever she’d taken from all the women who’d come to her bed since she dropped those roses in the snow at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, it hadn’t been love.

But right now, something that looked very much like love was stinging and burning – god, scoring – its way back into Toks’ heart on the music in Polly’s eyes, on the playful perfection of her smile.

“Well?” asked Polly. She smiled softly. The gentlest request, with just the hints of cheek still in the glitter in her eyes. “Play something for me, Toks. Please?”

So Toks sat and played Polly’s love back into her own heart – Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc – all the lyrical, gorgeous sounds that were Polly’s favourites – until Polly got up from the chair and came to stand behind her at the piano.

Her body pressed to Toks’ back. Her arms wrapped around Toks’ shoulders. Her kiss was hot in Toks’ hair.

“It could do with a tune,” Polly teased, quietly.

“Don’t you dare touch it!”

Toks felt a tear on her cheek and was forced to admit it was her own.

“I missed you, Polly,” she whispered, still playing for her. Never wanting to stop.

“I know.” The sweetest hush. “It’s okay.”

And the music changed, flowing from her fingers, achingly hopeful variations on a song she hadn’t heard for so long.

Two of Toks’ dreams were within her grasp.

This week she was conducting the Berlin Phil and she was almost eighty percent sure Polly Paterson loved her again. Her third wish – spending the rest of her life with the woman currently in her bed – was looking like it could be on the verge of coming true too.

Toks was happy. Confidence burned through her blood like rocket fuel and she was bursting with music. There was so much she wanted to do – whole symphonies she wanted to write, the orchestrations for Tightly Strung she was excited about, leading the best orchestra in the world in a love song for Polly. She was up out of bed and eager – properly eager – for the day.

“Up!” she demanded, flicking the covers off Polly’s sleeping body. She grinned at Polly’s groan and snatched back the covers even further when Polly grabbed at them.

Long pale legs in her bed. Naked in the morning sunshine. Toks enjoyed the moment and just looked at the woman curled on her sheets – past the scars – at the rise of her hip, the soft spill of her breasts, her freckles, and the tangled mess of her hair.

The love bite on her thigh.

Toks licked her lips as she thought about how she’d put it there.

“Rehearsal!” she proclaimed. “Out of bed, my darling. Let’s go have breakfast.”

Polly didn’t open her eyes. “I bought bread, you maniac.” She mumbled it into her pillow. “And we have that jar of vegemite from home. You even have a coffee machine. I saw it. You must have a toaster.”

“No idea. Get up.”

“Go away. I’m actually sleeping for once.”

“No, you’re not. We’re going out for bacon pancakes.”

“Ew.”

“We have a world to conquer!”

Polly reached out blindly and caught her hand. Her fingers were bed-warm. It was enticing.

“But you’re the best, Ksenia Tokarycz,” she teased softly. “What is there left to conquer when you’ve already conquered the world?”

Toks choked on her breath. Polly thought she was the best. Fuck, that inspired her.

“You,” she murmured.

Polly tugged with her fingers. Her lips looked so lush and kissable.

“You’ve conquered me too.”

It took everything Toks had to roll her eyes. “Not falling for that,” she whispered, knowing she already had. “Get out of bed.”

“Twice,” Polly insisted. She tugged again.

Toks surrendered and fell to her knees on the mattress. She was still naked. So was Polly. Their skin called them together, the whole length of Polly’s body warm for her to press against, thighs slotted together, breasts touching, lips finding lips and Toks’ eyes already blissfully closed.

She even let Polly roll them over, laughing weakly when Polly pulled the quilt up again.

“Wicked girl.”

“I learnt from the best.” Polly held her lips to ransom just out of reach. Her red hair tumbled down around them both, a secret room that swelled with their love. Toks felt her eyes blow out of focus. Polly was everywhere and everything, and her slow, greedy smile healed a thousand hurts. “Breakfast, you say?” Polly murmured. “I know what I want.” She looked down between their bodies and chuckled when Toks’ legs opened completely of their own accord.

A filthy hot kiss to Toks’ throat turned into a wet, open-mouthed trail down to her breasts, then lower, and Toks lost herself to eternity once Polly settled down between her thighs with a happy sigh. Her mouth was hot, her tongue was clever and her fingers fell inside her and reached through to her soul. But it was her eyes – a deep, searching gaze that never faltered, that watched Toks as if she was the only woman in the world – that tipped Toks over the edge.

She could be cocky and confident, she could stride the globe and conquer its highest peaks, she could be the very best, the very finest in the world – and she could do it all not for three foolish dreams she’d had as a kid, but for Pearlie Paterson.

But as Polly wrapped an arm around her bent thigh and her fingers drove deeper into her, as her eyes seared into Toks’ soul and her tongue coaxed something monumental from her, and as Toks lifted and Polly chased her all the way up and lovingly back down Toks knew now she was also happy to fall – now she remembered what it was to love.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to be as obnoxious as shit the rest of the time.

Polly’s patient eyerolls only encouraged her.

She had a busy programme with the Berlin Phil but there was also a schools programme she headed in Germany thanks to her cousin’s funds. The student conductors who were part of her Women on the Podium project generally looked after that, but when the maestro herself was in Berlin, they all came together for some fun.

They were a little late to their first rehearsal but things were well in hand when they arrived. Toks strode onto the stage knowing Polly was watching. One hundred kids on stage, their teachers and parents in the audience, her own students standing by. She was brilliant, flying higher than ever because Polly was there. The kids achieved magnificence, so did her students. There was laughter, there was wonderful music, and none of it was better than Polly’s crooked grin.

She was straight into a free lunchtime performance on the small stage after that, conducting a chamber orchestra from the piano. Sight reading because she’d barely gone over the material with Polly consuming her attention. No matter. The challenge was just as thrilling as knowing Polly was listening from the wings.

A rehearsal with the full orchestra was next – Berg, Brahms and Mozart. She threw herself into that too, all the complexities of the Berg twice as dazzling knowing she was drawing them out for Polly. The intensity of the Mozart, the agony of the Brahms – all of it polished to an exquisite shine with the glow Polly had given her. She worked her musicians hard. She coaxed the utmost from them. She drew out sublime and laid it at Pearlie Paterson’s feet. Everything she was, just for her.

She took Polly to the finest restaurant in Berlin for dinner in the city’s most famous hotel. Paid through the nose for seats with a view of the Brandenburg Gate. Ordered the most expensive champagne, an utterly superb meal.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Polly told her.

“I want to.”

Polly smiled a small, slightly sad-looking smile.

A terrifying thought hit Toks like a train crash. “Are you not… enjoying this? Do you not like—?”

“Oh god, Toks. I love it,” Polly urged, her hand flying across the table to link her fingers immediately in hers. “I’m having the best time. Honestly.” She shrugged a little. “I’m just not used to… all this. Your world moves a lot faster than mine does back at Jerinja.”

“This was always going to be our world,” Toks said, ashamed of how small her voice sounded. “Wasn’t it?”

Polly squeezed her hand. “Things change, Toks.”

“I’ve never understood why.” Her biggest, and humblest truth.

There was a sigh and another squeeze. “I know you haven’t. And I’m finally okay with that. The best thing, I suppose, is that things can change back.” Polly’s smile was every symphony she hadn’t yet conducted. “Kiss me, Toks.”

It was a challenge. One that demanded Toks get up from her seat in full view of the rest of the diners in the restaurant, crook one finger under Polly’s chin and tip her mouth up to meet hers. Toks bent to kiss her and made it as possessive as hell, taking what Polly had denied her all these years, right there in Berlin, in the place that had always been her dream.

She didn’t understand why Polly hadn’t been on that train sixteen years ago. Her chest still hollowed itself out whenever she thought of the awful silence Polly had visited on her afterwards. Something had happened – something Polly still didn’t seem to want to tell her, though when she gave Toks her lips it tasted like an apology.

Toks could be content with that, she supposed.

Because at night she buried her face in the softness of Polly’s tummy, in the heaven between her breasts, in the inside of her thigh and kissed between her scars.

They weren’t scars from an accident – not even Toks was that blind or stupid now. The marks on Polly’s body were ordered. Deep and angry. Definitely inflicted by human hands.

In the quiet of the smallest, darkest hours, when Polly’s body curled back into her own – the small spoon that had been the perfect fit against Toks’ body since the very first time – when the woman made tiny, distressed snuffles in her sleep and Toks calmed her with a palm on her belly and a kiss on the back of her neck, Toks wondered if they’d been made by Polly’s own hands.

It was an awful thought. Had she cut herself? These straight, meticulous lines on her legs, her breasts, her arms? Toks considered her Steinway hanging in the tree, the wreckage of instruments around Jerinja, and knew there was something wrong inside Polly. Had this precarious imbalance always been there? When they were kids, teenagers?

How had Toks missed it?

Did Polly do this to herself because they were apart?

The rough feel of them under her touch made Toks ache – but that explanation didn’t seem right either and she frowned the thought away. There were scars on her own soul too, cut there when Polly left her standing at the train station.

Toks sighed into the night. She couldn’t reconcile the notion of self-harm with the Polly she knew now. Not with the generous family at Jerinja and the retreat that shared the place’s healing spirit with others, or the easy friendship she’d built with the musicians at the Opera House, with the residents at her mother’s nursing home. Polly’s patience with Draga and her love for Tilda were whole and real, and deeper than any friendship Toks had with anyone. Polly was a rock, solid and content with the great river flowing around her, safe from the currents that tipped and tumbled Toks through life. She was home, while Toks scrambled for the merest scraps of happiness.

And so Toks didn’t even know how to ask. In the silence before another dawn, she knew it was safer not to. As Polly whimpered and twitched on the edge of another bad dream, Toks gave her the only thing she could – a soft kiss and a whisper that it was all okay, even though she wasn’t sure it really was.

And, as if Toks’ touch was magic, Polly settled.

Toks loved her life and she loved living it with Polly Paterson, but she knew, in those dark hours, that she’d give Berlin away, she’d give music away, just to comfort this woman in her arms and love all of her – even the scarred parts of herself Polly was still trying to hide.

Her Berlin performances always sold out, but Toks put Sumi on the case and demanded the box office track down any no-show tickets.

It was almost as if they’d never been apart. Polly looked stunning in Toks’ dressing room in the Berliner Philharmonie. She brushed invisible lint off the lapels of Toks’ tux in the final moments before performance. She stood on tiptoes to kiss her and whisper toi toi toi.

“Not that I need it,” smirked Toks.

“Big head,” Polly told her.

It was all of her dreams, right there in the sass in Polly’s kiss.

She strode onto the stage and acknowledged the adoration of the crowd. They always loved her in Berlin. The executive committee were on the verge of asking her to take on the principal conductor role again. Ksenia Tokarycz was, very literally, on top of the world.

She shot her cuffs and turned to face the orchestra.

Polly Paterson was seated behind the timpanist, just a few rows back from the stage.

Toks winked at her.

Polly rolled her eyes.

She launched into a flawless interpretation of Mozart’s 29th and conquered the world.

She couldn’t wait to take Polly to Korovinja.