by Patrick Gale
‘Thank you so much,’ Carla Gold said. ‘I’d like to play you the Prelude from the third Bach Suite. It begins with the C major scale and arpeggio, which my incredible teacher, Jean Curwen always said was all anyone starting the cello needed to play for their first year. And I like to think it shows Bach taking an instrument, which until then had been largely for accompaniment, and demonstrating just what it was capable of. It begins with the downward scale and arpeggio and then he opens the range out and out until it soars like a great C major eagle. So . . .’
There was a titter then an awed hush as she sat back on her piano stool, thrust out a shapely sandalled foot to her left, gazed up at the top left-hand reaches of the church, took an audible breath as though about to sing, and began to play.
She didn’t simply play the notes; she played as though urgently communicating. Listen! her playing said. This really matters!
Eustace was enthralled and clapped so enthusiastically when she was done that his father laughed and his mother murmured, ‘Not the harp, then?’
Had Carla Gold silenced the applause and said, ‘Now you must leave everything behind and follow me wherever we must go,’ Eustace would have obeyed her without a backwards glance. As it was, he was struck quite dumb as they all stood to file out, the adults chattering noisily as they went, many, astonishingly, about things other than the music.
Unusually the two musicians were standing by the doors as people left, quite as though they had just thrown a rather large dinner party and were politely seeing their guests off the premises. This slowed everyone’s exit because, naturally, so many people wished to thank them or say ‘lovely’ or whatever. When they drew near, Eustace was fascinated to see Carla Gold’s eyes light up at the sight of his mother, quite as though she’d recognized a kindred spirit.
‘Snap!’ she said and pointed her foot to show that she and his mother were wearing identical silver sandals.
‘Isn’t this where you ladies have a cat fight?’ his father asked.
Miss Gold said, ‘Not at all. We both have marvellous taste. And I love your dress. Is it Indian?’
His mother said yes but that she had cut the little bells off, as they were a bit much.
‘I say,’ she added. ‘I don’t suppose you give lessons?’
‘Of course. For you?’
‘Oh. No!’ His mother laughed. ‘Far too late for me. For our son, Eustace,’ and she laid a hand on Eustace’s shoulder and Carla Gold turned the full force of her glamorous attention on him.
‘How do you do, Eustace?’ she said and he could tell she thought his name was a bit funny.
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t have a cello yet.’
‘Good. Much better. I’ll lend him one of mine then we can find one of his own if he gets serious, find one that really fits. Cellos are like friends, Eustace. We choose them with care.’
Eustace was too awestruck for speech.
‘I’m in the book,’ Miss Gold added to his mother as she turned to the next well-wishers. For a moment Eustace found himself looking at the exotic pianist with the tidy beard who was smiling secretively and looked at him with an odd kind of recognition, and then they were out in the night which no longer felt like an ordinary Weston-super-Mare Sunday night but was transfigured by the spell of music and the lingering trace of Carla Gold’s spicy scent.
Most of the boys at St Chad’s read comics – either Beano or the crudely drawn and, to Eustace, quite inexplicable ones devoted to football or the Second World War. Eustace had learnt to feign interest, just as he was learning to pass comment only on the women pictured in the greasy old copies of Health and Efficiency kept hidden in the school locker room and occasionally taken out by the older boys and passed around in a tense atmosphere of pious awe. The men in the magazines, fat, thin, old and young, all quite ordinary-looking, all indiscriminately naked, he saved up in his head to pore over later.
What truly captivated him, however, were his mother’s copies of House and Garden and Good Housekeeping . She flicked through them when they were fresh, occasionally attacking them with scissors to remove a fashionable look she wished to emulate or a recipe to pass on to Mrs Fowler, who did all the cooking (and disliked novelty). She then left the magazines in the conservatory for the residents, from where Eustace would bear them briefly off to his bedroom before they became crumpled and soiled. He loved the smell that came off them, which was probably no more than glue and ink but which was encountered nowhere else in his life so became the odour of luxury itself, the essence of stylishness and escape.
He would shut the door so as to be undisturbed (having only one child, his parents were respecters of privacy) then study the magazines with something of the reverence the older boys brought to the pages of nudist campers playing netball or grilling sausages. He didn’t read every word, but he looked at every page to examine the men and women within for keys to unlocking the life of glamour, happiness and style. He had no desire to be the women, although it would be good to have them as friends one day, have them pour out their troubles or share their secret joys. He also sensed he could never be the men, manly but oddly innocent as they enjoyed the latest home saunas, open-topped roadsters or invigorating showers. The hairy, gold-watched wrist of an airline captain changing gear in a sports car while enjoying a Rothmans cigarette stood for all he could never be, even as it opened out a little hollow of confused desire within him.
Entering Miss Gold’s home was like entering the world of those magazines so that at first it made him so shy he could hardly speak. Luckily his mother had come with him, as it was his first lesson, and was talking for two, introducing herself, admiring everything. Eustace had never seen her like this before; she was cooing like a dove and smiling. She was not a great smiler, as Maman had told her it was the swiftest route to dewlaps and crow’s feet, but it made her look much more attractive, like a room when someone turned off the overhead light and lit a table lamp instead. House and Garden had taught him the importance of table lights. Accent lighting, it was called.
Miss Gold didn’t live in a house, but a rented flat in one of the older houses, converted into flats in the late Victorian era and carved out of the first floor. It was brilliantly sunny and furnished with bright, happy colours, everything very modern and possibly brand-new. It was like a flat in a film, somewhere Julie Christie might live but rarely be home. There was a shaggy white rug that made Eustace think of her bare feet, and a big, white leather sofa he longed to flop on full length. A big steel bowl piled high with shiny mandarins and lemons echoed a set of bright orange saucepans. The only touches of the antique were a railway clock ticking above the cooker and a funny old railway poster for Weston framed over the fireplace. He felt immediately at home there. So, evidently, did his mother, who so enjoyed being shown around that she feigned surprise when Miss Gold said it was time to start the lesson.
‘But perhaps we should meet for coffee,’ she added and, to his surprise, his mother smiled with none of her usual stiffness and said that would be delightful. ‘I’m always free on Mondays,’ Miss Gold said and touched his mother’s elbow as she showed her to the door.
The music room was what would have been the second bedroom. There was a sofa and upright piano and a bookcase full of neat stacks of cello music and a sort of family of cellos hanging on pegs on the wall or nestling in velvet-lined cases.
‘Are these all yours?’ he asked.
‘Cello is all I’ve ever done,’ she said. ‘So, yes. I started when I was very little, five or six, on this eighth, so I grew up through the quarter and the other sizes. You’re going to be tall like your parents, I expect, so you’ll start on the three-quarter. Then these full sizes are for teaching on, performing on or lending to students.’
‘Do they all sound the same?’
‘No. All different. That one I always use in chamber music as it’s such a good blender, whereas that one is super loud but fantastically resonant high up, so good for orchestral work where the big cello
tunes are often in the upper register of the instrument so they cut through the texture. And this yellowish one – it’s a quite early English one – is sweet but so quiet, so very good for practising at night or for playing Bach or Telemann on. So. First things first. Sit. That’s it. No, that chair’s too low for you. Your thighs must be parallel to the floor or pointing slightly downhill towards your knees. Try that blue one. Perfect! Now. Make yourself comfortable. Sit well back. Have a little stretch and a yawn. Loll a bit.’
She laughed at him.
‘Right. So this is how you will never EVER sit when you play the cello. Nothing wrong with being relaxed but I want your spine rocked forwards on your pelvis so that the two of you can dance more easily. You and your cello. So always choose a chair with a flat seat and always sit on the front of it. And sit up. That’s it!’
She clapped.
‘Remember how that feels. You’re relaxed but alert and you’re ready to dance. Now . . . Ivan? Meet Eustace! Spread your knees and extend your left foot a little further out than your right one. Eustace? Meet Ivan!’
She brought him her three-quarter size, showed him how to extend and adjust its spike and let him just get used to the feel of it against his upper chest, explaining that she wouldn’t give him a bow for a week or two, while he trained his left hand to find the notes. She guided his left hand to a strip of blue Dymo tape she had stuck across the fingerboard so that his first finger could find first position.
‘Ivan is your friend,’ she joked, ‘and first position is your home. When you’re not dancing with Ivan, you’ll feel bereft and when you’re not in first position, you’ll be on an adventure.’
She taught him a string of useful words when getting to know Ivan: pizzicato, fingerboard, bridge, pegs, neck, tailpiece. Then she had him pluck the four strings with and without his first finger pressing on them and then, while he did that again, she sat opposite him with her cello and plucked a melody so that the sounds he was producing went from being merely plonky notes to becoming music. She laughed as they played. It felt more game than lesson. It was very different to learning the clarinet with Mr Buck.
She wrote in a little marbled notebook for him then, having established he could read a stave, gave him a book of extremely simple music and taught him how to read the bass clef (Good Boys Deserve Favour Always!) before letting him introduce his second finger to the string so as to pluck out the first tune in the book while she played a sort of descant on her cello. The hour went by too fast.
‘So Eustace,’ she asked him. ‘Are you going to enjoy playing the cello?’
‘Oh yes,’ he told her. ‘Very much.’ And she laughed and pointed out how he had instinctively dropped an arm around Ivan as though to stop him being taken from him. ‘I can see Ivan has made a friend. I don’t teach just anyone who asks, you see,’ she explained. ‘I can’t bear teaching children who are only doing it to please their parents and be good. There’d be no point in that and music is too precious. Do you know what I mean by passion?’
‘I think so,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure.
‘Passion is a special word,’ she said, ‘because it means love, the sort of love that burns you up from inside, but it also means suffering. This isn’t a hobby. If you want a hobby, take up birdwatching or collecting stamps. This, my boy, is a passion. Are you with me?’
He nodded, too excited to risk speaking, and she smiled again.
‘Good for you. So. This time next week you’ll play me those first two pages of tunes. Oh. Tuning! I nearly forgot.’ She swiftly established that he didn’t have perfect pitch but was reassured that he could hear a perfect fifth when she played one.
‘Twinkle Twinkle ,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘or Georgy Girl. You know that song?’ And she sang it while accompanying herself by strumming her cello like a guitar.
Then she showed him how to use a tuning fork. (She suggested that his lovely mother buy him one at the music shop towards the Odeon.) He was to strike it on his knee or any hard surface then sound it by holding it near his ear, and then twist the tuning knob on his A string to have it match, then tune the next three strings to perfect fifths below it. Finally she showed him how to tuck and strap Ivan securely into his soft canvas case so he could take him safely home.
‘Thank you, Miss Gold,’ he said as he stood in the doorway.
‘My pleasure,’ she laughed. ‘Be good to Ivan. Play with him every day.’ He was half-way across the hall when she called out to him, ‘Eustace?’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you mind if I met your mother for coffee?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, although he did feel a small stirring of jealousy and he added, a little disloyally, ‘She doesn’t really have friends, so it would be nice for her.’
She smiled at that. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘But I promise not to teach her the cello.’
‘Good,’ he said and they laughed because she had sensed his jealousy.
He bought the tuning fork on the way home; spending his pocket money rather than asking his parents for it made the purchase feel somehow weightier. He took Ivan and the tuning fork straight to his room in the attic when he got home and immediately set out a corner as a dedicated practice area, as he never had for the clarinet, with a music stand and a chair he had to borrow from the dining room, as he immediately worked out that the chair at his bedroom desk was both too soft and a little too low. It was still his bedroom, still the room of an odd, rather shy boy in a house that periodically smelled of old people or kippers where normal houses smelled of frying bacon or wet dog, but he liked that the first thing he now saw on waking was the chair and music stand and waiting cello. He liked to think he had re-created a small part of Carla Gold’s flat in his room, a space where he could dedicate himself and, if necessary, suffer.
St Chad’s had always been a trial for Eustace. He found gangs and crowds oppressive and tended to respond to dread by tuning out at just those moments when some key feature of Latin or football was being explained. He wasn’t stupid but he was fatally inattentive, preferring to daydream than to memorize chunks of seemingly pointless fact. He liked the idea of Latin in principle – there was a romance to a dead language that had once been the tool of a superpower led by men in leather skirts – but for a small word like cum to have so many meanings, or for quite so many declensions to be necessary seemed to him arbitrarily cruel. When not being asked without warning to parse a word or writing Latin proses along the lines of O slave, thou hast betrayed the camp. At length many men must die on account of your perfidy they were translating their way doggedly through Caesar’s Gallic Wars around the class. Eustace would feel the blood drain from his face when it was suddenly his turn and always seemed to miscalculate when trying to work out in advance which clause or sentence would fall to him. Science was little better. As in football, the other boys all seemed to have absorbed the basics at home, along with speech and how to hold a knife and fork. They could dribble a ball, understand the offside rule and knew the difference between density and mass.
He longed to be one of them, part of the pack, able to catch a cricket ball without for one second worrying it would snap his fingers back, able to feel keen interest in this striker or that goalkeeper. He didn’t want to be special or superior, he didn’t wish to shine, but merely to pass muster. Being a bit dozy or even downright ignorant in class was no problem; it was usually preferable to being thought a swot, unless one was also good at games. Sport was Eustace’s downfall. He was malco-ordinated – malco was the insult most often shouted at him by others – never reliably able to catch a ball, never reliably able to throw or kick one in the direction required. He was all too able to lash out with his boot and miss a ball entirely and, were a racket or bat introduced to the challenge, the result was no better.
Sport shouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t a subject in which you sat exams and it surely wasn’t the reason some parents paid fees to have their children learn more
or less the same things they could learn up the road for nothing, but with added Latin. And yet it seemed to matter more than anything else. The height of social ambition at St Chad’s was to pass on to Millfield, one of the nearest public schools, which was renowned for its sporting prowess and sounded, to Eustace, horrific.
Sport took up half the boys’ conversation; the other two quarters were devoted to last night’s television and the spreading of jokes and gossip. Sport also accounted for more than half the cups given out on prize day. Clearly it must have a deeper significance that had eluded Eustace. He asked his mother, who never showed the slightest interest in any sport except tennis during the Wimbledon season, and she said she supposed it was a good way to avoid becoming fat. He asked his father, who laughed of course and said sport was metaphorical: battles without bloodshed.
Happily there was a handful of boys similarly useless at games. Rossiter was immensely fat and so unfit he turned an alarming colour at the slightest exertion and Sprague was so unco-ordinated and feeble it was almost a disability – his arms and legs flew out at unexpected angles when he ran and he had a delightful way of losing his temper really badly at the least provocation. Clearly it would not have done to befriend either of these boys but their presence was a daily comfort as it showed Eustace he was not quite at the bottom of the sporting heap.
Then there was Vernon. Vernon was not especially fat, although he did have asthma and hay fever so wheezed rather when pushed. Vernon’s failure at sport was a matter of magnificent choice. He chose not to be interested. Vernon amused Eustace’s father, who said he was like ‘a late-middle-aged man unexpectedly landed in a small boy’s body and making no allowances for the change of habitat’. Vernon read nothing but novels by Trollope, whom he declared no genius but simply amusing, and, although he rarely smiled, Vernon liked to be amused.