The Concert Pianist (19 page)

‘Konstantine and I have known each other for near on forty years, but on days like today time seems to dissolve. We look a little older, of course, but we've been looking older for a very long time, whereas inside we're just the same. And what remains immutable helps us to remember. What wonderful memories, indeed, are conjured by the faces around me now! Memories of things that passed a lifetime ago. We share them all, and to celebrate everything that we have shared and loved I thought we should anoint this happy occasion with the very thing that drew us together in the first place.'

Arthur smiled, and brought a knuckle to the corner of his eye.

‘There is not a person in this room whose life has not been made by music. We take it for granted sometimes, but it's always there. And when you get to my age, and so much lies behind you, and so little ahead, music remains to the fore. Other things fall back. But music draws closer. Because music is infinite, inexhaustible, and in that respect very similar to the persistent genius of one Konstantine Serebriakov, whose gifts have been the wonder of the world for
three-
quarters of a century, and whose service to music has been unstinting throughout a long life, and who is blushing to the roots of his hair - what's left of it - as I speak. My dears, may we thank Konstantine for everything he has given, and may we rejoice in the dedication of all musicians, who bring happiness to the world, and who make it a wonderful thing to be alive and ninety. To Judith, and Cedric, and the marvellous players of the Ambrose Quartet, thank you so much and God bless you all.'

As Arthur turned there was renewed burst of applause that grew louder and fonder as Konstantine rose and came over to take Arthur's hands, smiling and bowing, and without further ado the two men went to the piano and took seats side by side to play a duet.

Konstantine sat nearest the audience. Arthur leaned across him to dog-ear a page. Each placed his hands on his lap and waited for quiet. They glanced at each other and nodded and then Arthur reached up to start the opening of Schubert's Fantaisie in F minor, a gentle rocking accompaniment to which Konstantine soon added the tune.

The sound of the Bechstein was soft and sweetly ringing. The two old men were so instantly and effortlessly caught up in the business of playing. They gazed with wide eyes at the staves of music and swayed slightly, hands rising and falling, rising and falling; and as the melody moved from minor to major, from the dolorous to the skittish, people settled into positions of comfortable concentration, succumbing to Schubert's melancholy drift with ease. Philip looked into the cups of his palms and then up at the ceiling of the music room, and then slowly and unstaringly around him at the faces of his fellows. He raised his eyebrows at the peak of a phrase, felt the music somehow in his body, let himself regard the performers almost abstractly, taking on something within and without him, the hold of a phrase pulling at him, entwining his heart, so that suddenly he was dissolving inside and had to blink back the moisture in his eyes. He was fortunate to be sitting at the back, alone with his teary incontinence. He swallowed hard and pulled on his cheek, as if to banish the ache, but it would not leave go. He grasped for his hanky and blew his nose quietly.

He was more controlled during the Duparc. Judith Garwood sang and Gerard Philips accompanied, and the vibrant beauty of
her
voice had an enlivening effect on one's being. Through a gap in the blinds the tilting sun inflamed her hair. Konstantine looked up - as if at a goddess.

Judith and Gerard were succeeded by Konstantine at the piano, accompanying Cedric on the violin. Cedric tuned in a trice, working his fingers on the string, and then at a glance had Konstantine ready and was soon with his eyes shut drawing the bow flowingly across the string, emitting the purest tone, which Konstantine supported with the wispiest sounds on the piano. Philip could see Arthur listening intently, trying to hear his Third Violin Sonata for the first time. Cedric played as though lost in violent reminiscence, eyes shut tight throughout; and Konstantine allowed the piano to sound around the violin's thin thread like running water, an iridescent stream, throwing points of light and reflections into the air.

After the violin sonata, the players of the Ambrose Quartet took up position. Soon the music room vibrated with the united power of their strings as they launched Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. The convergence of energy and purpose was irresistibly involving. Arthur was watchful, caught up, and suddenly in the old man's face Philip glimpsed the unageing artist. So often in Arthur's look one sensed that he belonged to a bygone era, was estranged from this one. One saw the wistfulness of a man who believes he has had his day and is no longer able to change things. Deep into retirement, toweringly old, Arthur had come to seem closer to the remote past of his own childhood than the period of his heyday - the mid-sixties: and whereas he was in the sixties a true contemporary to the age, now that he was really old he seemed the embodiment of something much earlier, almost Edwardian. His persona was gloriously old-fashioned, and this he enjoyed, distrusting the modern. But the outer man was a convention, a bufferish façade behind which the artist furtively lurked; and this artist was always on the look-out, always alert, as now, for example: hearing new balances and tensions in a familiar masterwork for the first time ever, secrets that had escaped his ears until this very moment, thanks to the Ambrose Quartet. Engaged with the thing he knew and loved, Arthur was as timelessly contemporary as the next man.

Judith provided the first of the encores and Konstantine was prevailed upon to finish with a solo, which he cast around for as he sat on the piano stool. He let his head fall to the side before settling
his
hands on the keys. There was a moment's silence, and then he started to play Siloti's transcription of Bach's B minor Prelude. The audience responded with a collective sigh. This was Emil Gilels' famous and invariable encore, and in playing it Konstantine seemed tenderly to be linking this world with the one into which he would shortly follow his great compatriot.

Philip listened, forehead on his palm, knowing what would go through him when the melody came round a second time.

They were here to celebrate more than musical greatness. They were here to give thanks for a heroic longevity. Konstantine's life transected so much of the last century. Grim past eras were sustained in his memory. Long-dead people lived on in his mind. He was the product of a talent and a history that would never recombine. It was inconceivable to imagine anyone like him ever existing again. Age, experience, heritage and history had concentrated his musical wisdom into something unique, something that would pass for ever when he died. And whilst it was wondrous to find him at eighty-eight still able to convey what music could mean to one who had come through so much, this unique, invaluable consciousness would soon be no more.

They had come to celebrate, he realised, and inevitably to mourn.

Cake was served on the lawn. Philip slipped away down a footpath and through the rose garden. Somebody called after him, but he pretended not to hear. He crossed a stile at the bottom of the garden and disappeared into a wood.

He walked aimlessly for a while, under the leaf-light of oak trees. He sauntered through twigs and bracken, hands in pockets, until he came to a fence. Carefully, he got across the fence and into a field. He kicked against the tufts of grass and aimed for a group of trees. There, with the valley in view, he sat at the foot of a beech, rubbing his eyes and gazing at the folding hills.

After a while he let his head fall back into the grass. His face was creased with sorrow.

He was only halfway through his life. Only halfway through.

He watched an ant cross his hand. In a distant field a tractor moved slowly, like a ladybird.

Ursula stood before his enquiring imagination. She sat down to play. Her arms and wrists were graceful. He joined her by the piano
stool
and she turned to smile at him. She waited for him to comment. He moved to guide her arm a little and place her hand just so, but she catches his eye and suddenly their gazes lock and she breathes in deeply. But now she is fading as though all this could lead nowhere.

He wants to try again and places her this time on the recamier, where he has seen her before, a memory to get things going. He moves across to sit by her and she seems happy with this and looks at him sideways before shifting and cradling her knees in her arms. She is relaxed. She laughs and smiles, sips at her wine. He leans forward to make a point, his left hand penetrating the space between them. They are alone in the flat and the hour is late. He must be gentle. He must bring her with him. It would have to be so. He is right up close now and she looks at him in surprise. Her eyes this near are enormous, questioning.

This is how it would be.

He is acutely aware of his age as he takes her neck and chin in his hands. She yields a little, not withdrawing, but still waits for his next move; because she has no idea what this could lead to, this intimate moment, or how she would feel when his lips touch hers. He holds the nape of her neck and gazes into her eyes.

And then he is inside her and they are fucking, her breasts swaying with each thrust, her head jammed against the base of the armchair.

He grips her arm, powerfully engaged with her body, which is shockingly beautiful, and she turns into Laura, and the scene removes to Laura's double bed where they are familiarly connected, Laura panting, teeth bared in effortful pleasure. She is willing him to make her pregnant.

He tries to bring back Ursula, but Ursula has gone, and now he holds an infant in his arms. The nurse bends over him, makes a cooing noise. So this is Katie. He remembers very well. This little baby is new to everything, has never existed before in all the millennia man has been on the planet!

He holds a blade of grass between forefinger and thumb, gazes at the sky.

And now they run helter-skelter across the leaves, James and Katie in their winter coats. He follows their freewheeling antics, walking a few yards behind them, his measured steps inversely
proportional
to their spurts and charges. The children are suddenly alert to a carpet of pigeons on the ground. Someone has dropped a loaf on the grass and the thick birds are bunched in a seething mass. Red rag to a bull, because the children are suddenly charging this bloated target, screaming at the tops of their voices, at first ineffectively because the fat birds won't desert their prize and cling on to the last second, daring the children to risk their ankles in a sea of beaks. But suddenly they erupt from the ground with a sound like gunshot, in mass vertical take-off, beating themselves airborne, into a great flapping cloud that begins to organise itself into a giant circle around the children, going round and round with increasing speed, held in formation by the sight of the bread, which the children are unwittingly guarding; and now something weird starts to happen as the birds revolve in the air, a raucous whorl going faster and faster, round and round as if madly possessed by the sight of the loaf and the need for attack. The children will not shift and the birds won't disperse and suddenly he is afraid that something unnatural will happen; so he runs past the kids, starting a race, and as they rush on behind him he turns in time to see a twister of pigeons sucked down to a clump on the ground.

People in the park thought they were his. He was proud of the attribution, which was near enough. It was a privilege to have charge of rumbustious innocents, nice to be mistaken for a parent.

Philip looked at the grey hair under his wristwatch. The skin on his hands was changing. In the mirror that morning he had seen an older man. One's complexion changed: crow's feet, deepening pores, thinning lips - all this happened slowly. But something else changed, too. The cast of one's face altered according to the body's time code, so that age developed from inside, joining in with the wear of the years, producing someone else to stare back at you.

He reclined as far as he could, and gazed up the skirts of the beech tree.

His mobile rang.

He checked the number before answering. ‘Hello.'

Her voice made him blush.

‘Where are you?' she said.

He gazed across the field. His heart was beating hard.

She
was calling from her flat. He could tell that she was worked up.

‘Did something terrible happen with you and John? You know about his son?'

‘What about his son?'

‘Septicaemia. He's been in hospital for a week. John's in a total state. You mustn't take him seriously.'

‘Oh, Christ!'

‘Where are you?'

He could feel the pressure of Ursula's concern.

‘In the country.'

‘John says you fired him.'

‘We fired each other.'

‘What's going on? This is ridiculous.'

‘Is his son OK?'

‘They're pumping him full of antibiotics. It's been really scary. Tell me what happened and I can patch it up.'

She was intense and distressed and had been working up to this call.

‘I'll find a new agent. It's no problem.'

‘I'm your new agent! You can't leave me just like that!'

‘Listen, Ursula. .

‘John says I can't represent you. Suddenly I'm not allowed to talk to you. This is ridiculous.'

‘It's no use intervening.'

‘You've been with him for years. You're friends. I have to make you see sense. Can we meet?'

He did not answer.

‘When are you coming back?'

‘Ursula! Don't do anything to jeopardise your position!'

‘Why are you holding me at arm's length?'

He hesitated, unable to think quickly enough.

‘He's given the concerts to Vadim. He's blown you out with Bulmanion. This is madness.'

‘Vadim?'