The Virtuoso (3 page)

One morning in mid-October, just after eleven o’clock, Myra apparently received a telephone call to say that a time bomb had fallen on the Gallery. When the audience started to arrive an hour later to see the Griller Quartet and Max Gilbert playing Mozart string quintets, a young boy standing at the front of the Gallery directed them across Trafalgar Square to the library at South Africa House, where the concert had been relocated.

Several days later it was reported in the paper that a one-thousand-pound bomb had been discovered in the wrecked part of the Gallery, and that the concerts were to move to the furthermost room while the bomb-disposal squad disengaged the bomb. Days later, when the workmen were out at lunch and the Stratton Quartet was performing Beethoven’s F major
Rasoumovsky
quartet, the bomb went off right in the middle of the
Scherzo.
A loud explosion followed by a
rain of shattering glass. The musicians continued without missing a beat.

It seemed everyone in London attended the Gallery concerts: people who’d never before heard a classical note mingling with those who dedicated their lives to music. As a young teenager in my grey-and-maroon school uniform, I could slip in amongst it all, as eligible to attend as the Queen.

When I remember those days I find myself having to admit that there is an aspect to the war that I still miss. It’s the incandescence of a person, of a city, only visible in its darkest times. I knew that any day the Fifth Army could come knocking on our door, or I might return from school to find my entire street ablaze. But then I only had to walk through those arched wooden doors of the Gallery and glance up at Noël as he stood on the edge of the stage, tall and still as an obelisk, and I would know at that moment there was nothing that I wasn’t able to endure.

We met because we shared the same birthday—it was as simple as that. So many years passed, so many days and nights daydreaming at the piano, designing our first encounter (it was usually in the green room after one of his recitals or maybe after one of mine, he’d approach me like a friend, his arms out wide, throwing them around me, more a rugby tackle than a hug—
Magnificent performance, truly astounding!
), and in the
midst of my whimsy, fate tripped and landed me blithering at his feet.

Anton Steiner was my teacher at the Academy at the time. A student of the great Leschetizky, he was a bear of a man with a faded Bavarian accent that would sharpen like a whetted knife when he became excited about music. He’d chosen me as his student after my June audition: I’d only just looked up from the piano upon finishing the Chopin Third étude when he stormed up behind me, grabbed my shoulders and threatened, ‘I will make a pianist of you!’

Anton—as he allowed me to call him—had given me Schumann’s
Fantasiestücke
to start on the previous week, and as I played the second piece—‘
Aufschwung
’—he sat there nodding his head, sucking his gums so that his white tobacco-stained moustache writhed like a caterpillar. He groaned a little as he did when he was thinking, then, scribbling away in my notepad, told me that the following Tuesday he was going to a birthday party for ‘your dear friend Noël’. Anton knew I was smitten with Noël, but so was half of London, and although he often quipped that he’d arrange for me to meet the pianist one day, his comments, tossed out like gratis concert tickets, seemed merely intended to encourage and inspire my practice. I never believed he’d really concern himself with anything as trivial as a schoolboy infatuation.

‘Tuesday is my birthday as well!’ I spun around from the piano, thrilled about Noël’s and my astrological
connection, feeling that a part of the pianist’s brilliance had been endowed upon me.

Anton let out a baritone laugh, then said he would ask if he could invite me along. He may have said more, I don’t recall; I sat gazing out the window at the alders and oaks of Regent’s Park, sparkling in the clear, still, nectar-coloured light, imagining myself in some opulent ballroom, stepping up to shake the hand of Noël Mewton-Wood.

Anton leaned over, patted my shoulder and said, ‘Keep it up on the Schumann. And I’m sure it will be fine for you to come along this Tuesday.’

It would be my seventeenth birthday, the twentieth of November 1945, and I’d been invited to the twenty-third birthday party of Noël Mewton-Wood. I ran home from the Academy that day, opened the
Fantasiestücke
at the piano and practised for hours, imagining myself as the seventeen-year-old pianist Clara Wieck, just arrived home in Leipzig after another long European tour and having received this manuscript from my secret admirer, Robert Schumann.

On the Tuesday morning I slept until nine; I wanted to be well-rested in case the party ran late. But before I’d even swung my legs out of bed, the magnitude of the day landed upon me, an avalanche of anticipation and panic, as if I’d never truly believed this moment would arrive. I took my brolly and went for a walk around the lake at Regent’s Park, watching the swans and grebes gliding to and fro, carelessly at the mercy of the wind
skimming them across the water. On the way home I bought the morning paper and some flowers. It was a preposterous idea—I wouldn’t even let myself admit it—but I did want my room to be looking presentable. I also bought fresh rolls and marmalade and imagined pouring him a cup of tea at my wooden table by the window, the sun reflecting off his handsome face.

I returned home, arranged the crocuses in a jar of water, put the kettle on the burner, then sat and opened the paper.

So this was seventeen, I smiled, looking around my lodgings. There was my bed with its patchwork eiderdown, a wardrobe, my Bechstein upright surrounded by piles of music fanned out all over the floor, a sideboard for the wireless and gramophone and all my records, an old Persian carpet that had worn through in several places, two bookcases filled with my father’s collection of musical biographies, a green sofa and a round wooden table with four matching chairs near the window. Everything I needed was here, I thought; I felt quite grown up. Then I wondered how it would look to a visitor—my little room. The sofa cushions looked discarded, neglected; I jumped from my seat and puffed them, then angled them along the back crease. Then I noticed the downy grey of the floorboards—I rolled up the rug, grabbed the dustpan and brush and, on my hands and knees, began sweeping. Lastly, the piano: I polished its wooden surfaces, restacked my piles of music, putting the Romantics on top, and chose a couple of impressive pieces—the
Hammerklavier
and the Liszt B minor—to leave open at the piano.

When I was finished I sat down again at the table, looked about, and felt as though I might be seeing my little grey-walled room, with its small patch of sun that floated aimlessly across the floorboards, for the last time. It seemed that everything was poised, ready to spring up and away. I looked at the crocuses and noticed a small ant crawling over the lilac lip of one of the petals to be confronted by the saffron flame within the bell. For a moment I imagined myself looking back on this morning and it all feeling very far away, and I sensed a faint, bleating nostalgia. I thought about everything that had brought me to this point, everything that had passed since
then
—March 1940 when my father had first taken me to see Noël perform at the Queen’s Hall—and it felt as though my seemingly endless longing for this day had sucked away, in an instant, the last five and a half years.

I was roused by Ma O’Grady’s knock at the door, telling me my aunt was on the phone to wish me a happy birthday. After taking her call I sat at the piano and began my practice. Starting at C, I played every scale—major, harmonic and melodic minor—climbing chromatically up the keyboard. I practised my technical work staccato, legato, in rhythms, lifting each finger towards the roof, marching them like soldiers, each note ringing shrilly about the room. Then I pulled out some pieces: Chopin études, the Schumann, and a
Fantasie
I had composed in the
manner of Schubert—which I had secretly dedicated to Noël—in case I had the opportunity to play at the party. By the time I stopped it was already dark and I realised I hadn’t eaten a thing all day.

Anton had told me the party began at eight. I arrived at Stamford Brook Station at ten minutes to, surprised to be early, as I had taken so long to get dressed that a mild panic had set in, almost preventing me from leaving my room. I had five decent shirts to choose from; I tried them all on several times but was unhappy with how I looked in each. The pale blue one made me look young and gormless; the white dinner shirt was too stiff; the striped one, too prosaic; the patterned one, too cloying; and the woollen one made me perspire. I was certain Noël would sum me up in a glance—
that young boy’s been dressed by his mother—
and have no interest in meeting me at all. Noël had such effortless poise; clothes hung on him so naturally—it was something that struck me every time I saw him. I’d once seen him walking around Covent Garden with a tall, horsy woman, presumably his mother, and I followed them for some time as they wandered in and out of bookshops and tailors. Even though he was simply strolling along in bags and an open-necked checked shirt, I remembered thinking that every hand gesture, every step, exuded such majesty and calm.

I’d buttoned up the striped shirt and slipped into a jacket when I finally settled upon the blue, remembering that a girl at the Academy who was trying to impress me once remarked how this shirt brought out the colour of
my eyes, ‘the shade of a Spanish ceramic glaze,’ she’d said. Then there was my hair, dead straight with an obstinate cowlick that hung forward in limp bands across my brow. The more I combed it, the more it bounced about mockingly. I tried to convince myself that whatever happened that evening would not be determined by the state of my hair, but each time I picked up my scarf and gloves and walked to the door, I’d take one last glance at the mirror and be horrified by the mawkish face that glared back. I was in a state of near exasperation by the time I finally made it out the door.

The party was at the house of Noël’s cousin, the poet and music critic Walter J. Turner. I’d studied the
A-Z
map so carefully that morning that I was able to head straight towards Hammersmith Terrace as if I came home that way every day. I couldn’t help but think about the sorts of people who might be there—musicians and artists, of course; and plenty of critics, no doubt. I pictured them all standing about chatting about opera premieres, drinking champagne and picking at oysters and other delicacies that my father had talked about eating at the Savoy before the war. He’d told me about functions he’d been to, attended by Chamberlain and other ministers, always shrugging off the distinction of these occasions, telling me that these people were just the same as other human beings—they’re only from another class, he’d say, not another planet. Then again, he was only really talking about politicians and other dignitaries, not about geniuses such as Noël Mewton-Wood.

It was cold and the moon had not yet risen. I rounded the corner into St Peter’s Square when all of a sudden it dawned on me: I hadn’t a clue what I was going to say to Noël when I arrived. All these years—those fanciful conversations I’d had with him, telling him about my life, my music—and all day today, and I’d prepared absolutely nothing! Perhaps meeting him was a ridiculous idea; I ought to return home immediately. I imagined making some comment to him about music, and him throwing his head back in laughter. I had no one there to turn to except Anton, and what was I to say to him? I’d never seen him at a party, only at the Academy and at concerts. And what if he wasn’t there when I arrived? I decided I couldn’t speak to Noël about music—
And how was your recent Australian tour? I heard they loved the Beethoven but didn’t know what to make of the Hindemith.
No, that would be far too embarrassing, too tedious for him. I’d read he lived out of town in Tunbridge Wells with a wealthy couple called the Eckersleys, and that Nancy Eckersley and Noël bred geese and Alsatians. I also knew he loved literature, painting, antiques, building model theatres and playing tennis. All of a sudden the possibilities overwhelmed me. The more I thought about Noël’s life, the more insignificant mine seemed, and the more I resigned myself to the fact that it would be better if I didn’t speak with him at all.

At Hammersmith Terrace I pulled out my watch, it was only ten past eight. I was at a low brick wall overlooking the Thames, which ran full and fast below
me, a light wind wrinkling the surface. The moon was just beginning to peak over the elms on the far side, splashing little daubs of light on the water so that it looked like a river of writhing snakes.

I sat on the steps that led down to the water and started squeezing my right wrist between the fingers of my left hand and then massaging around the joints at the base of my thumb. My right shoulder and arm had been giving me trouble again recently, and when I rubbed it the dull pain, with the occasional electric jab that shot all the way up to my shoulder, gave me a strange sense of relief. Sometimes I could find a point and pinch it crab-like between my thumb and second finger, and it would sustain the intense pain that ran up my arm. I had that point now and the sensation was like a burning wire that ran from my collarbone to my fingertip.

‘Don’t jump, you fool,’ a voice called out from behind me.

I turned around; it was Anton, silhouetted by the streetlights, swaying left and right as he came laughing towards me. He was swaddled in coat, scarf and hat and had a bottle of red wine held like a club in his mittened hands.

I stood up and brushed off the dirt and leaves that clung to the back of my coat, and walked up the road beside him, telling myself that whatever happened inside, it didn’t matter. If it all went terribly wrong, I could just thank the host, slip out, catch the train home and go to bed. I’d wake up in the morning and it would be as if nothing had ever happened.

Anton asked about the
Fantasiestücke
, and I mumbled a few words in reply as we stepped up to the glossy ivy-green door with its heavy brass knocker. The somnolent street now seemed to be bathed in the glow of the party inside—chatter and laughter emanated from the house, and above it all the sound of Schumann, purling like a breeze through a chandelier.