The Virtuoso (29 page)

Gerald had barely closed the door behind Monk when he turned to me with a pursed grin. ‘Champagne?’

I was relieved by Gerald’s good cheer; Monk was, after all, a friend of his. I would have been most upset if Gerald thought I’d just fleeced him.

Gerald filled two champagne flutes and we raised our glasses.

‘Cin-cin then, ol’ boy. To the book.’

‘To the book,’ I repeated. Then we both took a sip.

‘So have you got any idea what you’re actually going to write about, then?’ Gerald smiled, almost mockingly.

‘Haven’t the foggiest. Beethoven, I suspect. Something will pop up…I hope.’ But I wasn’t really thinking about the book at all. I was noticing how devilishly handsome Gerald appeared to me all of a sudden. The realisation almost made me want to weep.

‘Righto then, that’s good enough. To hope.’ Gerald raised his glass before taking another sip. I watched him, so different from me, I thought—his eyes closed, sucking the tiny bubbles against the inside of his cheeks, savouring each miniature explosion.

On the twenty-ninth of March 1827, Beethoven’s coffin was carried through the streets of Vienna, preceded by an honorary escort of a hundred men, and followed by a long procession of riders and carriages carrying the nobles. Around twenty thousand mourners crowded behind fences, hoping to catch a last glimpse as the funeral cortège moved past. A travelling merchant arrived in the city that day and asked an old woman what the fuss was about; the woman answered, ‘Don’t you know? They’re burying the Herr General of the musicians.’

As I walk along Notting Hill Gate, watching the after-work crowd spill out of the shops and offices and
into the bars and buses, I imagine myself yelling out a similar announcement. Noël’s memorial concert has loomed in my mind for months, and although I’ve done my best to put the thought aside all day, now, as I head towards the Wigmore, the evening sinking further into night, a steely terror prickles under my skin. The disinterest of the crowd—all rushing off to get done up like a dog’s dinner and to swing their clammy bodies around a dance hall, or head to a neighbourhood hall to laugh along with some dreary New Year pantomime—only increases my feeling of dread. I’m not bothered by being dragged back through the muck of that dreadful time a year ago—God knows I could do enough of that on my own—but, rather, by the thought that this is to be Noël’s final burial, his very last concert.

People don’t talk much about Noël any more; his name only comes up when discussing great performances of the past. Someone will mention the thundering
Ludus Tonalis
at Morley College when the small brown Steinway seemed about to collapse under his crashing hands, or the Busoni concerto at the Chelsea Town Hall with Norman Del Mar conducting and an orchestra that took up half the hall, a huge wax-disc machine in the centre of the room (that no one could remember how to operate) and a chorus of critics in the first three rows sitting like hyenas ready to pounce on this long, difficult, atrocious piece. And how Noël had just walked onto the stage and tossed it off so effortlessly, so magnificently. Yes, he’s given us an extraordinary catalogue of
programmes and discs to flick through and reminisce over. But Noël himself, the man—he is now, undeniably, history.

Everyone will be there, of course. Except Tippett. He requested that his song
Remember Your Lovers
be played, but apparently is still too shattered to attend. Poor chap—not the first close friend of his to suicide and he really hasn’t coped with it at all. Cecil Day Lewis has written a poem about Noël that Bliss has put to music
—A fountain plays no more
, it begins, then goes on to say something about
the fury and the grace.
Alan Bush has also composed a memorial piece, and of course there’s Ben—he’s written something to an Edith Sitwell poem about the Blitz. Ben’s also going to play a piece Noël composed when he was fifteen years old, the year he and his mother boarded the
Rubicon
in Melbourne and steamed to London. Fifteen, and heading to the other side of the world to meet Turner, Schnabel and Beecham. Fifteen, with his whole illustrious life stretched out ahead of him.

The memorial ought to have been a month ago, of course, on the anniversary of his death. But then Ben’s bursitis flared up and the whole thing was postponed until today. I was furious when John told me; it was like postponing Remembrance Day because the bugle player has a cold—inconceivable. It’s not a performance for Britten, I said, it’s a memorial for Noël. If Ben’s arm’s too sore, I told him,
I’ll
play the bloody piano!

I actually had a good chat with John when he rang to tell us. Lovely chap, John—strange how I never
really got to know him when Noël was alive. He said that I could come over and play on Noël’s Steinway anytime I liked. He also told me the most extraordinary story. The week after Noël died, John said he went to Hillgate Place to help Dulcie sort through Noël’s things. He sat at the Brinsmead and started playing his part to the Busoni concerto, one of Noël’s and his favourite duets. After playing the five-minute orchestral introduction, just at the moment when Noël’s part enters with a low forte C, the low C string in the Steinway snapped, like a gunshot echoing around the room. John said he was in fits of laughter when Dulcie raced back in to find out what all the palaver was about.

Yes, a very kind offer, I thought, for me to come over and play Noël’s piano, but I’m not sure—it might be a bit grim. I said I’d have to think about it.

He also told me Peter and Ben have Noël’s sofa now, up at Crag House. They asked Dulcie for something to remember him by, as everyone did at the time (Noël didn’t leave anything for anyone in his will, except for John, to whom he left both pianos, his radio-gramophone and all of his records). There was a terrible frenzy of friends, colleagues and admirers all scavenging for mementos from Dulcie—asking for the music to this or that, a pair of gloves, a scarf or a photo. I didn’t ask for anything—I still had the mother-of-pearl cufflinks, the
Davidsbündlertänze
, as well as the sheet music to Debussy’s duet
La Mer
(which had actually been my father’s, but I once took it to Noël’s house when I went
over for lunch and Noël spilt a forkful of omelette with wine sauce on the front page—so I still have that, the stain under the title of the music). No, I didn’t want a
souvenir—
how was that going to help matters? I can understand the Steinway or the Brinsmead or one of his lovely paintings (I’ve heard that a couple of Lowrys and Grants have been popping up occasionally at Sotheby’s already). But the
sofa
—I can’t imagine how they could even think of sitting on it.

I spent the day of the anniversary at home listening to Noël’s recordings. That devastating second movement of the Chopin E minor—cried like a baby all through it; couldn’t stop the tears but just had to hear it over and over. I hadn’t listened to them for such a long time; for months I couldn’t even glance at the sleeves let alone play them. Each note had the metallic whiff of gin, each minor cadence was the quivering and sudden bow of his knees as he collapsed on the floor next to the sofa. So a relief, of sorts, to be hearing them again. To close my eyes and be carried to the second row at the Wigmore, or the Albert Hall. To listen as if I’m hearing them for the very first time, Noël playing them just for me.

A poster in a shop window I just passed caught my eye, a woman in skirt and bonnet with her arm around a girl with blonde plaits, both waving down at a steamship on a river, snow-capped mountains in the distance and, underneath, the words
The Beautiful Blue Danube is Calling
You! I smile, thinking of Gerald and our little trip, and am surprised that even the thought
of meeting him in half an hour at the pub before the memorial is so
gladdening
for me. I have to admit, I have been looking forward to our Viennese jaunt enormously. We packed the Citroën this morning and after the concert we’re driving straight to Dover; we’ll be on the ferry to Calais by eleven o’clock this evening. Gerald bought tickets for the Orient Express as a birthday present, tried to cheer me up a bit, dear soul. We had planned to travel straight after the memorial on the fifth of December—pictured an eggnog and marzipan Christmas—but then, of course, everything got delayed and we were stuck in London. Probably for the best, remembering the maudlin state I was in over that awful birthday period. For weeks, I just sat around in my room, listening to records, hardly eating a thing. Gerald was most relieved I was sorted out by Christmas, knowing the effort his mother would go to, the roast goose, the pudding with bread and brandy sauce, the bonbons. Then one morning just before Christmas, I walked out from my room, met Gerald downstairs for breakfast, and he said to me, ‘My word, you look quite a different chap this morning!’ I was glad he’d noticed as I felt remarkably changed myself. For the first time in weeks I hadn’t woken thinking about Noël. No, instead I’d woken excited about my research and the writing of the book. What’s more, I’d decided I wouldn’t write anything at all about the Immortal Beloved—it seemed almost vulgar to dissect that too much—but, rather, I would write on a subject that I believed
encapsulated
the Immortal
Beloved, encapsulated it all: a book about Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’. It was only later that day that I again thought about Noël and resolved that I would write the book in memory of him. Because, I thought, it was really seeing Noël perform the Beethoven C minor that got it all started. I still remember so clearly sitting there at the Queen’s Hall next to my father, the
joy
of watching Noël perform up on stage, of rising up above my seat, floating around the dome of that magnificent building, and everything else simply sloughing away.

From the entrance to Notting Hill Gate tube, the crowd carries me down the stairs, every step taking me closer to the Wigmore, and I think about that very first performance, how hearing Noël perform the concerto had made Beethoven come
alive
for me, so that I felt that I almost
knew
him. Since that day there’ve been times when, walking along a street, I’ve seen someone who, for a moment, I could’ve sworn was the great composer. With turbulent eyes; ruddy, febrile skin; a fright of brown hair; dirty, patched coat over bullock-like shoulders; bruised black boots; storming through the crowd like a pitching bull. This shocking vision would be more real to me than the sight in the street of a classmate from school and I’d have to stop myself from running up to him and tapping the damp wool of his shoulders.

I step down onto the platform and stand against the yellow-brick arches, humming that luminously sad second movement of the Third, wondering if I’ll ever
hear it played like that again, and watching the stream of people exiting the westbound train. Then all of a sudden, amongst the crowd, almost a head above everyone else, I see Noël. The crowd is moving quickly, as if some great current is sucking them off the train, up the steps and spitting them onto the street, and, in the midst of it all, there he is, joyfully oblivious, his wavy hair floating up and down in time to his heedless stroll, a playful rhythm all his own. There is no time to realise how impossible this all is, I just feel this wondrous fluttering in my chest, as if my heart has swelled and actually
lifted.
He is only thirty yards away
—how glorious to see him again!
Blood rushes to my cheeks and this great bubbling energy surges about my limbs. Then the gentleman I am adoring turns his head to look in my direction and instantly I am aware of my folly—a complete stranger who bears no real resemblance to Noël at all. Yet
I had seen
Noël’s features so clearly, heard his chuckling voice in my head.

I watch this unfamiliar, unremarkable man walking through the crowd and this deadening stone drops within me as I remember, once again, that
I will never
be seeing Noël again. But for that one moment before the realisation—half a second, perhaps that’s as long as it lasted—the melancholy second movement in my head skipped over to the radiant Rondo finale, and all it took was for me to quicken my pace and lunge through the after-work throngs, call out his name and tap him on the shoulder. Because for that one moment,
with that exhilarating
Allegro
rippling all about me, there wasn’t anything in the world that wasn’t perfectly possible. It didn’t matter that I’d been mistaken, a fool, because for that one divine moment, he did exist: it
was
him.