Fatal Inheritance (8 page)

‘But surely the love of music, the feelings of emotion connected to art and the ability to communicate them are more than just a fine ear,’ I said.

‘Can we be certain? Could not an emotional, artistic temperament be a consequence of a more fragile heart, thus more easily and more strongly moved, again, by visions that are considered lovely by all? Could not a tendency to rage be due to some physical quality of the brain or the body?’

‘We do speak of “hot blood”,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘Someone, somewhere, must have had an intuition of your claim that character traits are purely physical, to invent such a phrase. Yet it shocks my feelings!’

‘It shocked mine also, at the beginning,’ he said. ‘And, of course, it is true that education can be another powerful vehicle for transmission of certain things between the generations, but not this kind of thing. Certainly, Mendel’s ideas go beyond and even against many received notions about character. Yet I have come to believe in them absolutely. If I see any remarkable resemblances between any two members of a family, I now attribute them automatically to heredity, and begin to reflect upon what physical peculiarity they might reflect.’

‘I suspect that if I think about it enough, I will soon begin to do the same,’ I admitted. ‘It is too convincing. It opens up new vistas of possibilities – albeit slightly frightening ones. But now that I understand it, I cannot help believing in it. Even before I have had time to get used to it.’

‘That is because you are a very unusual young woman,’ he said, taking my arm.

‘Vanessa! It’s me! I’m visiting at home for a few days – I simply had to see how you were getting on!’ Rose’s delightful face beamed at me from the doorway. The afternoon sun shone on her thick, wavy hair, once gold, now burnished to the colour of ripe honey. Her whole being radiated joie de vivre; the kind of happiness that simply comes from inside, with no cause and no explanation; some people are born happy and the happiness wells up inside them no matter what the circumstances. I felt how lucky it was for Rose, and for those around her, that she could express her feelings in music.

‘I was going to write to you,’ I told her. ‘Do come in. It’s nearly teatime.’ As I spoke, a tornado stormed through the front room in the form of the twins, who flung themselves bodily upon Rose, one clinging to her legs and the other attempting to scale the vertical surface of her back with the aid of her hair, which immediately came down.

‘Rose! Rose! Rose!’ they screamed in a cacophonous medley. I had already noticed with pleased astonishment how deeply they were attached to her, even though they rarely had occasion to see her; still, she had known them from the earliest moments of their existence, and in their little minds she was as familiar as their own nursery. It was a charming feature of their love for her, that they were able to sit silent and attentive through an entire concert of cello music, if only it was Rose who was playing.

‘Dear me,’ I remonstrated, trying to pull them off her as they shouted for her to come up to the nursery to see their newest toys. ‘It seems we will not get any calm if we have tea at home. They won’t stay upstairs if they know you’re here. I propose a bargain,’ I added, grasping each twin firmly by the arm in order to get its complete attention. ‘Rose will play with you in the nursery for half an hour, and then Rose and Mamma will go out to tea and you will have yours in the nursery with Nurse.’

‘I should love to,’ said Rose warmly. ‘It is amazing how they grow each time I look away for a few moments!’ And she sailed off up the stairs, towed like a little ship by two eager tugs. An unseemly racket was immediately heard to proceed from the nursery, but I forbore to interfere.

Half an hour later I collected my things and went to fetch Rose, causing something of an uproar, which was fortunately soon quelled by the sight of three severe adult faces combined with the sudden production of a sponge cake for nursery tea. Rose and I took ourselves outside, and walked across the Green to a tea shop I was fond of, tucked away in Little St Mary’s Lane.

It was not until tiny sandwiches, scones, jam, cream and a steaming teapot had been set before us that I undertook to tell Rose something of what I had learnt, and to ask her the questions that were troubling me. I recounted to her the entire tale of my Swiss adventure, and she listened intently, but at the end of my tale she sighed.

‘I only wish he had really heard something on that evening!’ she exclaimed. ‘But I simply can’t pick out anything special from what you describe. If only the doctor you haven’t seen yet told him something special. But probably that would be too much to hope. For the rest, it sounds so banal that I’d have died if I had been there. Sebastian loved that kind of attention, though. He basked in it, he really did. He always wanted to be the centre of attention; always centre stage.’

I looked up quickly.

‘You almost sound as though you didn’t like him,’ I remarked.

‘No, no – I didn’t mean it that way! I loved him, really. How could I not? Everyone did. He was so magnetic. He had such energy, and when he looked at you the effect was tremendously strong. He was ardent like flame. He made you feel drawn up in the whirlwind of his life when he paid attention to you, and everything seemed possible. Sebastian really reached for the stars, Vanessa. He wanted the fame and the wealth and the success, but only to laugh over. What he really wanted was to play music the way no one ever had before. I know what I’m trying to say even if it isn’t coming out right. I should love to be able to make you see what he was like. He was inhabited by a kind of devil. I don’t mean something evil, but something wild and strange, uncontrolled, that drove him, that made him too beautiful, too attractive, too irresistible from the outside, but that was burning him up inside. You know, there were times when he really seemed a little out of control. He could actually be a bit frightening, because he reacted to things so strongly and violently sometimes. He really needed to play the violin, to play out that thing that was inside him. The violin is really the devil’s instrument, isn’t it? Because it’s also wild. Can you imagine the devil playing the harpsichord?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ I said, ‘but perhaps I should have thought of him playing the drums.’

‘Drums express the savage within us, not the devil,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anyway, this is all a digression. I wanted to tell you something about Sebastian. You know, I’m glad he was engaged to Claire, because that made it impossible for me to fall in love with him. I mean, it helped me keep my distance and protect myself. Otherwise, I might very well have fallen in love with him, and that wouldn’t have been good at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of the centre stage thing.’ She blushed. ‘Claire was content to be his shadow and to pour all her love for him into her music, which she offered to him as the supreme gift. She is enormously talented, but her interpretations were largely adapted to his. For the trio, of course, we all adapted to each other to some extent, and I found his approach exciting and experimental, and also very beautiful. But when I play sonatas for piano and cello, I don’t want to be upstaged by the pianist. I want to play them
my
way. I want someone who will share my ideas and help them bloom, without sacrificing either my ideas or his. Playing with Sebastian helped me discover many things about music, but not much about myself. And that’s what I will really need from the person I fall in love with. I don’t think I could do what Claire did.’

‘If one is lucky, one’s husband can be remarkably good about letting one be what one truly needs to be,’ I said philosophically, spooning up some cream. I had a fleeting feeling of guilt which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a mixture of a suspicion that Arthur, while indeed being remarkably good, was making something of a sacrifice in letting me do quite so very much as I pleased with regards to detective work, and a feeling that I oughtn’t to be enjoying such a delightful tea without the twins. But I ignored it firmly.

‘Enough about me,’ said Rose eagerly, pouring herself another cup of tea and smiling at the waitress who hovered near her elbow with a pot of hot water. ‘Now that you’ve told me what you found out, tell me what you think! Do you have any ideas? Have you put two and two together?’

‘Not yet,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know enough. It doesn’t make sense to me yet in the least. I have been thinking over the possibilities, but none of them seem to be particularly supported by the facts.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s hear them.’

‘I asked myself what kind of thing Sebastian could have found out about himself, and I decided we could divide the possibilities into two types: on the one hand, he found out something about his own character – for example, by a spontaneous reaction to some event of which his higher self disapproved; on the other, he could have found out something purely factual about himself – for example, that he was suffering from some illness.’

‘That makes sense,’ she said. ‘Well said. It’s an important distinction. Pity he didn’t say more in his note.
Please try to
understand
– what a thing to say, as if one could!’

‘Perhaps he tried to say more, but found himself unable to explain,’ I suggested. ‘His note does sound a bit like a beginning, as though he had meant to say more, and then gave it up as a bad job. Well, that is our task, isn’t it? To find out what it may have been. So, returning to my classification, I want first to try to imagine what kind of thing might have provoked Sebastian to feel negatively about himself. Does anything I’ve said give you any ideas?’

‘No. Really not, I’m afraid. You know, I simply can’t imagine Sebastian feeling really badly about himself. Even if he discovered some feeling inside him that he didn’t know about, he would be more likely to observe it with fascination, even with delight. He really loved living, Vanessa. Much more than with morality, he was concerned with life itself.’

‘But surely, if it were something really bad, he could hardly feel delight.’

‘Well, but what could possibly be so very bad? He discovered that he liked to smoke opium? He fell madly in love with somebody else? He committed a crime? And liked it, perhaps?’

‘Such levity! No, nothing I’ve learnt indicates that anything of that sort happened. But I was wondering about the fact that Herr Hegar was reluctant to schedule a concert of your trio playing the Beethoven Triple Concerto.’

‘That was a pity, to be sure. But if Sebastian were to kill himself over not being able to play such a concert, then the concert would be even more impossible than it already was. That makes no sense at all, Vanessa!’

‘Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that he felt disappointment. I was wondering if he thought of himself as betraying the trio, by accepting to return and play other concerts without you. Perhaps he realised that he would actually be able to sacrifice the trio for the sake of ambition, and disliked observing such a trait in himself.’

‘But Vanessa, surely you don’t think it would have been a problem if Herr Hegar had preferred to invite him back alone to play some virtuoso violin concerto instead of the Beethoven? Of course we’d have understood. It was just an idea, that Beethoven concert. The musical world is like that. You play the concerts that you can; it’s no use crying over those you can’t.’

‘I suppose so. But you don’t think that Sebastian might have been troubled inside by the knowledge that he risked always keeping his wife in what she might perceive as a subordinate position, professionally?’

‘Vanessa – have you looked around you? Do you know any couples in which the wife is not in a subordinate position? I know we’ve just entered the twentieth century, Vanessa dear, and that we both expect great strides in the advancement of women from it! But I think you need to give it a little time. We’ve had it for less than a month!’ She laughed, and so did I.

‘You mean that Claire would not have expected anything different?’

‘Of course not. Claire would probably have stopped playing concerts once she had children, and stayed at home, teaching them their scales.’

‘Does that really go without saying? Will you do that?’

‘Well … no, I don’t think I will. A woman doesn’t absolutely
have
to, you know. There are some exceptions. You’ve heard of Clara Schumann, the wife of the composer? She went on playing concerts while having eight children and then losing her husband first to madness, then to death. She never stopped playing publicly until she was seventy! She died just a few years ago. And yet, you know, it can’t have been easy for the children. And Clara too considered herself subordinate to her husband, musically speaking. He composed, she interpreted. She longed to compose, but she didn’t have the time because she needed to play to support the family. Crowds adored her, and she adored her husband. Well, why not? She was famous, she was celebrated, she enjoyed the limelight as much as anybody, and yet her husband came first. That corresponds to the idea of the perfect couple, doesn’t it? I do wonder if the twentieth century will eventually change that ideal, or not.’

‘So you think that Claire would have accepted that Sebastian pursue a grand career in music, at some point leaving her behind, without any resentment?’

‘Without resentment towards him, in any case. Surely women sometimes feel a little resentment against their destiny in general. But Claire is not much of a fighter. Believe me, Vanessa, Sebastian did not kill himself over such a thing.’

‘I do believe you.’

‘But then, what other possibilities exist?’

‘Perhaps he fell in love, and committed some mad act on the way home from Switzerland?’

‘You think he might have done that? But then, I think he would simply have broken off his engagement to Claire. He’d have written to her – why, now that I think of it, he’d have written just what he did write.
Darling Claire, how can I say this to you? I’ve found out something about myself – I can’t go on with it any more. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please try to understand.
He might have written exactly that!’

‘But you’ve forgotten the most important part, the bit about cursed inheritance and the danger of taking risks. If this idea is right, what would he have meant by that? Could Sebastian’s father have been a known philanderer?’

Rose burst out laughing.

‘Oh dear. No, I’m afraid not. From what I’ve heard, poor Mr Cavendish was a very upright old gentleman afflicted with gout. He was ill and in pain for many months before he died. Sebastian says he was always correct and just, and he does remember him with respect, even though he was a rather cold and distant kind of father. He never played with Sebastian as a boy or anything like that, and always talked about improvement. Still, though, he encouraged him to excel and allowed him to follow his bent and study music when so many other fathers would have wanted him to study law as he did himself. He said that if that was Sebastian’s choice, he would have to make his own way in the world, but Sebastian says he didn’t mean this disapprovingly; he thought it was good for a young man to make his own way in the world. He left nothing to Sebastian when he died, by the way. His will left all of his worldly goods to his wife. I don’t think it was an awful lot, though. Sebastian says they were wealthier when he was a child, but the family fortunes declined badly, and they live very simply now. But Mrs Cavendish is to be married next summer, to Lord Warburton, the gentleman who accompanied her to the memorial concert.’