The Shivering Sands (2 page)

We began to bicker. “Excellent, Franz Liszt,” I would cry when he played one of the Hungarian Rhapsodies pounding the piano, flinging back his leonine head in a good imitation of the master.

“Envy is the bane of all artists, Caro.”

“And one with which you are on familiar terms.”

He admitted it. “After all,” he pointed out, “excuses must be made for the greatest artist of us all. You will discover that in time.”

He was right. I did.

He said I was an excellent interpreter. I could perform gymnastics on the piano, but an artist was a creator.

I would retort, “Was it you, then, who composed the piece you have just played?”

“If the composer could have heard my rendering he would know he had not lived in vain.”

“Conceit,” I mocked.

“Rather the assurance of the artist, dear Caro.”

It was only half in jest. Pietro believed in himself. He lived for music. I was continually teasing; I clung to our rivalry but this may have been because subconsciously I knew that it was that rivalry which had attracted him in the first place. It was not that, loving him, I did not wish him all the success in the world. I was, in fact, ready to give up my ambition for his sake—as I was to prove. But our bickering was a form of love-making; and it sometimes seemed that his desire to show me that he was my superior was an essential part of his love for me.

It is no use making excuses. All Pietro said of me was true. I was an interpreter, a performer of gymnastics on the piano. I was not an artist, for artists do not allow other desires and impulses to divert them. I did not work; at a vital stage of my career I faltered, I failed, and my promise was one of those which were never redeemed; and while I dreamed of Pietro, Pietro was dreaming of success.

My life was suddenly disorganized. Later I blamed what I called ill luck for what happened. My parents had gone to Greece on a dig. Roma was to have gone with them for she was a fully fledged archaeologist by this time, but she wrote to me that she had a commission to go up to the Wall—Hadrian’s of course—and that she would be unable to go with our parents. Had she gone I might not have been traveling up to Lovat Mill; for I should never have thought there was anything significant about the place. My parents were both killed in a railway accident on their way to Greece. I went home to the memorial service, and Roma and I were together for a few days in the old house near the British Museum. I was shocked, but poor Roma had been close to our parents and was going to miss them bitterly. She was as ever philosophical. They had died together, she said, and it would have been more tragic if one of them had been left; they had had a happy life. In spite of her sorrow she would make what arrangements had to be made and then go back to work at the Wall. She was practical, precise, she would never become emotionally involved as I was fast becoming. She said we would sell the house and furniture and the proceeds would be divided between us. There was not much but my share would enable me to complete my musical education, and I should be grateful for that.

Death is always disturbing and I went back to Paris feeling dazed and uneasy. I thought a great deal of my parents and was grateful for so much that I had casually accepted. Afterwards I said it was due to my loss that I behaved as I did. Pietro was waiting for me; he was in control now; he was surpassing all the rest of us; he was beginning to put that great gap between us and himself that always divides the real artist from those who are merely talented.

He asked me to marry him. He loved me, he said; he had realized how much while I had been away, and when he had seen me so deeply shocked by my parents’ death his great desire was to protect me, to make me happy again. To marry Pietro! To spend my whole life with him! It filled me with elation even while I sadly mourned my parents.

Our music master was aware of what was happening for he watched us all carefully. He had made up his mind at this stage that while I could doubtless go a long way in my musical career, Pietro was going to be one of the blazing stars in the musical sky; and I realize now that he had asked himself whether this marriage was going to help or hinder Pietro in his career. And mine? Naturally a talented player must take second place to a genius.

Madame, his wife, was more romantic. She took an opportunity of talking to me alone.

“So you love him?” she said. “You love him enough to marry him?”

I said fervently that I loved him completely.

“Wait a while. You have suffered a great shock. You should have time to think. Do you understand what this could mean to your career?”

“What should it mean? It will be good for it. Two musicians together.”

“Such a musician,” she reminded me. “He is like all artists. Greedy. I know him well. He is a very great artist. Maestro believes it is a genius we have there. Your career, my dear, would have to take second place to his, and it is dangerous for an artist to settle for second place. If you marry him you may well be just a good pianist…a very good one without doubt. But perhaps it is goodbye to dreams of the big success, to fame and fortune. Have you thought of this?”

I didn’t believe her. I was young and in love. It might be difficult for two ambitious people to live together in harmony; but we would succeed where others had failed.

Pietro laughed when I told him of Madame’s warning and I laughed with him. Life was going to be wonderful, he assured me. “We’ll work together, Caro, for the rest of our lives.”

So I married Pietro and quickly learned that Madame’s advice should not have been dismissed so lightly. I didn’t care. My ambition had changed. I no longer felt the deep urge to succeed. All I wanted was for Pietro to do so; and for a few months I was certain that I had achieved my purpose in life which was to be with Pietro, to work with Pietro, to live for Pietro. But how could I have been so foolish as to imagine life could be so simply docketed, like papers that were safely filed away under the heading “Married and Lived Happily Ever After”?

Pietro’s first concert decided his future; he was acclaimed; and those were wonderful days of achievement, when he went from success to success, but he did not become easier to live with because of this. He demanded service; he was the artist, and I was musician enough to be told of his plans, to listen to his renderings. He had success beyond even his grandiose dreams. I can see now that he was too young to cope with the attention which came his way. It was inevitable that there should be those who smothered him with adulation…women, beautiful and rich. But he always wanted me there in the background, the one to whom he could always return, the one who was a near artist herself, who understood the constant demands of the artistic ego. No one could be as close to him as I was. Besides, in his way he loved me.

Had I been of a different temperament we might have managed. But meekness was a quality I had never possessed. I was not slave material, I pointed out to him, and I was soon bitterly regretting my folly in jettisoning my own career. I was practicing again. Pietro laughed at me. Did I think one could dismiss the Muse and then summon her back when one felt like seeing her again? How right he was. I had had my chance, thrown it away and now would never be anything but a competent pianist.

We quarreled constantly. I told him I would not stay with him. I contemplated leaving him, all the time knowing I never would; and maddeningly so did he. I was anxious for his health because he was squandering it recklessly and I had discovered that he was not strong. I had noticed a certain breathlessness which alarmed me, but when I mentioned this he shrugged it aside.

Pietro was giving concerts in Vienna and Rome as well as in London and Paris and was beginning to be spoken of as one of the greatest pianists of the day. He took all the praise as natural and inevitable; he grew more arrogant; he gloated over everything that was written of him. He liked to see me pasting the cuttings into a book. This was my rightful place in his life—his devoted minion who had thrown aside her own career to further his. But like everything else the book was a mixed blessing, for the mildest criticism could throw him into a fury which would make the veins stand out at his temples and take his breath away.

He was working hard and celebrating the success of his concerts far into the night, and then he would be up early for his hours of practice. He was surrounded by sycophants. It was as though he needed them to keep alive his belief in himself. I was critical, not realizing then how young he was and that it is often more of a tragedy than a blessing when success of this magnitude comes too early. It was an unnatural life…an uneasy life; and during it I learned that I could never be happy with Pietro, yet could not face a life without him.

We came to London for a series of concerts and I had an opportunity of seeing Roma. She had taken rooms near the British Museum where she now worked in between digs.

She was her old self, sturdy, full of common sense, jangling her weird prehistoric bracelets, a chain of uneven rather cloudy-looking cornelians about her neck. She referred to our parents in a sad though rather brisk way, and asked after my own affairs, but of course I did not tell her very much. I could see that she thought it was rather strange of me to have given up a career after having spent so much time and energy on it—and all for the sake of marriage. But Roma had never been one to criticize. She was one of the most sane and tolerant people I had ever known.

“I’m glad I was here when you came. A week later I should have been away. Going to a place called Lovat Mill.”

“A mill?”

“That’s merely the name of the place. On the Kent coast…not all that far from Caesar’s Camp, so it’s not surprising really. We discovered the amphitheater and I’m certain that there’s more to be found because as you know these amphitheaters were invariably found outside the cities.”

I didn’t know but I refrained from remarking on this.

Roma went on. “It means excavating on the local nabob’s land. It was quite a bit of trouble getting his permission.”

“Really?”

“This Sir William Stacy owns most of the land round about…a difficult gentleman, I do assure you. He made a fuss about his pheasants and his trees. I saw him personally. ‘You cannot think your pheasants and trees are more important than history?’ I demanded. And in the end I wore him down. He’s given his consent for us to excavate on his land. It’s a really ancient house…more like a castle. He has plenty of land to spare. So he can allow us this little bit.”

I wasn’t paying much attention because I was hearing the second movement of the Beethoven No. 4 Piano Concerto, which was what Pietro would be playing that night, and I was asking myself whether or not I should go to the concert. I suffered agonies when he was on a platform, playing each note with him in my mind, terrified that he would stumble. As if he ever would. His only fear would be that he would give something less than his best performance.

“Interesting old place,” Roma was saying. “I think Sir William is secretly hoping we may find something of importance on his estate.”

She went on talking about the site and what she hoped to do there, now and then throwing in an observation about the people in the big house nearby; and I didn’t listen. How was I to know that this was to be Roma’s last dig, and that it was imperative to learn all I could about the place.

Death! How it hovers over us when we least suspect it. I have noticed how it will strike in the same direction in quick succession. My parents had died unexpectedly and before that I never gave a thought to death.

Pietro and I left London for Paris. Nothing unusual happened that day, there was no premonition to warn me. Pietro was to play some Hungarian dances and the Rhapsody No. 2. He was strung up—but he always was before a performance. I sat in the front row of the stalls and he was very much aware of me there. I sometimes had the impression that he played for me, as though to say, “You see, you could never have readied this standard. You were only the performer of gymnastics on the piano.” And that was how it was that night.

Then he went to his dressing room and collapsed with a heart attack. He did not die immediately, but there were only two days left to us. I was with him every minute and I believe he was conscious of me there for now and then his dark soulful eyes would look into mine, half mocking, half loving as though to say he had scored over me yet again. Then he died and I was free from bondage to mourn forever and long for those beloved chains.

Roma, like the good sister she was, left her dig and came to Paris for the funeral, which was a grand affair. Musicians from all over the world sent tributes; and many came to pay personal homage. Pietro had never been so famous alive as he was dead. And how he would have reveled in it!

But the shouting and the tumult was over and I was left in an abyss so dark and so desolate that I was in greater despair than I thought possible.

Dear Roma! What a solace she was at that time! She showed so clearly that she would have done anything for me, and I was deeply touched. I had sometimes felt shut out when I had heard her and my parents discussing their work together; I no longer felt that. It was a wonderful comfort to belong, to feel these family ties; and I was grateful to Roma.

She offered me the greatest consolation that she could imagine. “Come to England,” she said. “Come down to the dig. Our finds were beyond expectations—one of the best Roman villas outside Verulamium.”

I smiled at her and wanted to tell her how I appreciated her. “I shouldn’t be of any use,” I protested. “Only a hindrance.”

“What nonsense!” She was the elder sister again and going to take care of me whether I liked it or not. “In any case, you’re coming.”

So I went to Lovat Stacy and found comfort in the company of my sister. I was proud of her when she introduced me to friends on the dig, for it was clear what respect they had for her. She would talk to me with that enthusiasm of hers, and because I was so glad of her company and that affection which she had always tried not to show but which was so obviously there, I became mildly interested in the work. These people were so fervent that it was impossible to be unaffected. There was a small cottage, not far from the Roman villa, which Sir William Stacy allowed Roma to use and I shared this with her. It was primitive and had a couple of beds and a table and a few chairs and little else. The lower room was cluttered with archaeological tools—shovels and forks and picks, trowels and bellows. Roma was delighted with the place because as she said, it was so close to the dig and the others were scattered about the place lodging in cottages and at the local inn.