by Patrick Gale
‘Not sure, eh? It is just hard. But Schubert was a string player. He never asks the impossible the way Tchaikovsky does. Let’s just hear the three of you for a bit without Eustace and Ralph.’
She pronounced Ralph Rafe , at which Naomi gave Eustace a sort of secret smile with just her eyes. Jean counted them in and walked slowly around them in a circle as they played. Eustace took the opportunity to gaze full on at Turlough. He had tugged off the jersey he had been wearing when he came in and his striped T-shirt revealed very pale arms with well developed muscles, as though he rowed boats when not playing the viola. As he bowed, his forearm actually rippled. It was in oddly manly contrast to the child’s Timex he wore.
‘That’s it,’ Jean said softly as she walked. ‘Try to keep those chord changes so together and smooth that we hardly notice them happen. Smoother bow changes. That’s more like it. Thank you.’
She clapped her hands and the three of them stopped playing. Turlough looked directly at Eustace in a way that made him sure he’d seen him watching. Freya scratched her scalp under her hat with the tip of her bow. As she talked, Jean rested a hand on Freya’s shoulder very kindly, as if to show she knew it could not be spoken of but that she understood that she wore the hat because she was unhappy and felt self-conscious without it even though it drew attention to whatever lay underneath.
‘Now let me hear those first thirty bars again with all of you. Ralph, what do you think this is about?’
Ralph paled. Eustace had already picked up from talking to him that his approach to music was deeply technical and that Jean’s narrative interpretation made him uncomfortable.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said at last.
She laughed. ‘I do like a man who says nothing when there’s nothing to say. Well it’s Deutsch 956 – opus 163 posthumously – so it’s very, very late. He finished it just two months before his death. He almost certainly knew he was dying. He was desperately ill and being treated with mercury. We know that he wrote this, along with the great last three piano sonatas, just months from his death at only thirty-one – and that a few years earlier he had written these words. On the road to martyrdom, nearing eternal ruin, my life is annihilated in the dust; a prey to unheard-of grief – kill it and kill me myself. So imagine! His bones are in constant pain, all his body hair has fallen out or been shaved. Light hurts his eyes. He has pustules all over and he has lesions in his throat and on his tongue that mean he can no longer sing his songs or talk to friends. And yet he writes this! This wonder! Now Ralph, you’re a sensible, scientific man just as dear Freya here is a sensible, scientific woman so let’s not talk sad stories, let’s talk theory. What key are we in?’
‘E major?’ Freya said it as a question but it was clear and they all knew it.
‘Yes. Sunniest of keys for these strange, still outer sections. But then where do we go? I bet Eustace knows.’
‘F minor,’ said Eustace.
‘And is that odd?’
‘Well it’s completely unrelated to E major,’ Naomi offered.
‘Exactly! And it erupts into this tranquillity but the tranquillity isn’t quite the same after. Traces of the tempest remain, see? There?’ Jean leaned to point over Naomi’s shoulder at her music. ‘Right near the end he dips back into F minor then out again into E major. It’s as though he’s lifting a trapdoor in the floor in front of you to reveal the abyss. I always think it’s rather terrifying. But the hard thing is not to over-egg it. It’s Schubert, not Mahler. So, young Ralph,’ she laughed, ‘bearing all that grimness in mind, have another go. Remember it’s a conversation, not a solo. Chamber music is always a conversation, even when only one of you is talking. But what’s so strange and sad here is that the violin doesn’t get proper answers. The second cello gives dusty answers, almost echoes. They’re like poor Echo following Narcissus around, if you like, and Ralph says I’m so sad and all Eustace can answer is So sad. And now The Madwoman will shut up and let you play.’
But then she continued, ‘Just two more things! You three, with your long, held notes, try thinking of them as lights. These two are walking sadly through the world’s most beautiful wood at dusk and you three are like film lighting men holding them in this halo as their conversation, their circular conversation, winds on towards the eruption. And finally, finally, ask yourselves if the E major is as happy as it seems. Or is it like moonlight on the face of a dying man? So. Off you go.’
They lifted their bows and began the movement again. She had given them no technical advice whatsoever, just talked at them, ranted almost. And yet it seemed to Eustace their playing was changed for, as he concentrated on timing his pizzicato answers precisely, trying to make them sad echoes of Ralph’s questions, he found he was picturing the Fort at home, in autumn, with piles of dead leaves and him walking a few paces behind Vernon, and finding nothing he said could catch his attention or make him turn around to face him again.
She left them alone soon after that, listening long enough to hear some of the middle section and telling Eustace they could look at that together in his afternoon session. They were playing when she left and continued until Freya complained that she had flunked an entry and wanted to try it again. Then Naomi said,
‘You know this means she has singled us out?’
‘What for?’ Turlough asked warily.
‘She usually leaves supervision of the morning sessions to Fraser and the others. But on most courses she picks one group and visits them every day and makes their piece the finale on the last night. Last time it was those sisters from Hungary, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ Ralph sighed.
‘Isn’t that unfair on the others?’ Eustace asked. ‘I mean, everyone has paid to be here.’
‘Music’s never fair,’ Freya told him. ‘Like beauty.’
‘It’s good Jean wants to work with you on this,’ Naomi added. ‘How are you bowing that figure in the middle section?’
He demonstrated his idea, slurring the triplets. She frowned.
‘I think that’s too uneven, and bloody hard to keep up. Try just bowing it out; you’ll end on an up bow, I know, which feels odd but actually that gives a nice propulsion and lets you swell into each repeat of the figure and start again with a wallop of a down bow. ’
He tried it. She was right; that bowing had far better momentum. He sensed Naomi was right about most things.
At around eleven there were footsteps on the stairs and a rush of noise and chat in the kitchen as the others broke for coffee. By unspoken agreement, the five of them played on, working on the passionate middle section, and Eustace couldn’t decide if they were showing off or simply single-mindedly dedicated, or both at once.
They broke when everyone else had gone upstairs again, stopping for instant coffee and banana bread, which Freya insisted they spread with butter and honey for energy. She wasn’t sad, he was coming to realize, but furious. From little things she let slip, she revealed she had a great store of anger, like a banked-up boiler hotbox, against her school, her father, her teacher, her hair and most other people. She had extremely high standards about everything and he was honoured when she began to smile at his comments.
As they stood around the kitchen table munching their buttery honeyed banana bread, stretching out their backs after long sitting and dazed from intense focus on the Schubert in a badly lit room, Freya suddenly said, ‘It’s appalling you’re not being allowed to take up that scholarship.’
‘The important thing is my lessons with Carla. And those are nothing to do with school.’
‘I can’t believe you’re taught by Carla Gold,’ Naomi said.
He felt a glow of pride.
‘I heard her play Beethoven in Cork,’ Turlough said. ‘She’s pretty stellar.’
‘Doesn’t mean she’s a good teacher,’ Naomi said.
‘She has such good hair,’ Freya said and pushed angrily at her hat.
Lunch was a cauldron of vegetable soup and a mound of bread rolls heated in the Aga. The s
oup was thin and under-seasoned but there was a big block of cheddar to grate into it. The Klengel Variations for cello quartet were being worked on, a Haydn piano trio and the Fauré one. Everyone enjoyed saying how amazing their piece was, but how challenging, how much fun they’d had with whichever tutor came in to work with them on it. Nobody mentioned Jean visiting their rehearsal and the quintet kept quiet about it. Pudding was tart apples and woolly pears.
Eustace’s session with Jean was the first of the afternoon and she had written BE PROMPT! in capital letters at the top of the schedule so he decided to go straight to the library so as to practise there while he waited for her. But Jean was already in there when he arrived, eating the last of a plate of oatcakes, sliced apples and fingers of cheese.
‘Oh sorry,’ he said, making to back out. ‘I’m early.’
‘Come in, dear Eustace,’ she said. ‘It’s quite all right. Punctuality is so important for musicians. You’ll hardly ever be working alone and one late person holds everybody up. You set yourself up over there while I finish nibbling.’
The library was a beautiful room, panelled in oak. The shelves were packed with music and books about music and composers. A watercolour of the house hung over the mantelpiece and the silk curtains and cushions on the window seats were rotting, fabric hanging in strips here and there, but the effect on a fine day was pretty, their pinks and blues faded like old flowers.
There were two chairs and stands still in place from a piano trio rehearsal that morning. He set his Schubert part and pencil on one of the stands then perched on the piano stool and played himself a D minor triad to tune to.
‘I can tell who taught you,’ she said, with a smile.
‘I don’t have a piano at home,’ he admitted. ‘Just a tuning fork.’
‘And what more does a boy need?’ she said. ‘What an interesting old instrument. I couldn’t help noticing last night. Could I have another look?’
She came to sit in one of the chairs and he handed it to her along with his bow. She thanked him, sounded the strings to check his tuning and flattened the C string slightly. Then she played a few bars of the middle section of the Schubert.
She didn’t play out, the way the rest of them tended to, parading their big tones to one another like so many peacock tails, she played inwardly, as though to herself. And yet the tone was rich. It was like someone playing at full volume but in a distant room.
‘How do you do that?’ he asked.
She grinned. ‘Little finger,’ she said. ‘He just seems to rest there but on a piano up bow he does so much. What a nice cello. Did Carla find it for you?’
‘Yes. In Bristol.’
‘Ah. A famously good hunting ground. Well done her. I’m rather envious. There you go. Have it back before I grow too attached. Play me that very bit, from the key change, until I tell you to stop. I’ll talk probably. I talk all the time while pupils play, but keep on playing.’
She sat back on the other chair. She sat as though about to play herself, very erect, as though at table but perching almost on the chair’s front.
He began to play, trying not to rush, trying to remember how the other parts had sounded above him that morning. But she didn’t talk. She listened intently until he reached the end of the arco passage and began on the pizzicato of the last third.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Good simple bowing. Some people fiddle around with it but that’s a good solution for that figure because it gives it the right propulsion.’
‘That was Naomi’s suggestion,’ he confessed.
‘Ah. Naomi is good at bowings. You know why? She sings! Singers get it almost instinctively because there’s a natural grammar to stresses and uplifts when we sing, as there is when we speak.’
‘Carla always tells me to sing when working out bowing,’ he told her.
‘Good for Carla. Now listen. I’m appalled about Clifton. She wrote to tell me when she signed you up for the course.’
‘Ah.’
‘You’re at a crucial stage, you see. Two years in the wrong environment could ruin your technique.’
‘Oh but I’ll still be learning with her,’ he assured her. ‘It’s just school.’
‘But it’s not, do you see?’ Her tone became suddenly urgent, firm. He had heard the boys talking about Jean’s notoriously swift rages but this wasn’t rage so much as caring very deeply. He could not imagine daring to look away when she spoke like this. ‘It’s about nurturing. If you’re a music scholar it’s a clear, unambiguous statement of priorities. If you’re just another boy in just another school, it wouldn’t matter how marvellous your teacher was, if the lessons happen elsewhere and outside school hours, do you see?’
‘I think so,’ he said, although he didn’t, not really, since he had always had his cello lessons away from school.
‘You enjoyed this morning, I think. Playing with the others?’
He nodded.
‘I could see it the moment I came into the room,’ she said. ‘You were glowing with it. We must see if Carla can help set you up with a quartet or a piano trio back at home or in Bristol.’
‘I’m hoping to join the youth orchestra in Weston.’
‘Well that’s good,’ she said, ‘but the trouble with orchestral playing is you’re so hidden within the group it might get you into bad habits, whereas in a chamber group you’re effectively a soloist whenever you play. So. Play me that section again, but I’ll fill in the first cello part. It’s such a strong figure, such a strong rhythm that you need to lean into the other lines but sort of pull away from them at the same time.’
He had no idea what she meant but nodded and quickly retuned while she went to collect her own cello. She sat, played her A as a cue to him to play his so that she could tune to him, then she counted them in and he began to play. To his amazement she had the first cello line by heart and, because she had no music in front of her, she watched his playing closely as she played. Her look was hawkish and unsmiling, so he focused on reading his music instead.
She broke off abruptly. ‘Would you like to study here, Eustace?’ she asked. ‘As a full time student, I mean. Once you’re sixteen?’
‘I’d like that more than anything,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Dear boy. Such enthusiasm. Well I can’t promise anything. You’re still very young and we’d only take you after O levels. It was different when we were based in Ladbroke Grove but it is so remote here you’d have to board and we’d have to teach you everything. And we can’t do that until you get most of the other subjects out of the way. But talk it over with your parents. There are grants and scholarships you can apply for if, well, if they can’t manage fees. When you come back at Easter, we can see how you’re progressing and then maybe lay plans. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Now. Back to the beginning and show me that pizzicato again. You’re in dialogue with the violin, echoing him at least, sad little echoes, but we need a sense of direction in each phrase like the one you’d produce if you were bowing, not plucking . . .’
After the lesson he couldn’t put his cello back in the ballroom because a group was rehearsing Klengel in there. A log fire had been lit in the intervening sitting room, as it had turned chilly since the morning, and Freya, Naomi, the Alice Bands and several other girls were flopped in there across the sofas and chairs, worn out from practising. He lingered a while to warm his back and pet Rowena, who was slumped on the rug before the fire, mumbling a toy made from an old sock stuffed with other socks and knotted. But they were talking about teachers and players he didn’t know, then Naomi condemned someone’s description of a concert programme as so provincial in a way that made him uncomfortable. Besides, his head was still buzzing from the things Jean had told him and he dreaded having them made ordinary by thoughtless cross-examination so he gave the deerhound one last lingering rub behind the ears, which she seemed to like, then quietly slipped off upstairs.
He had thought to lie on his bed for a while s
o he would be at his best when they played again later. Turlough was practising Bach in the bathroom across the way. It took Eustace a few moments to place a piece he recognized as the sarabande from the second cello suite because it was up an octave. It hadn’t occurred to him before that, of course, any cello piece could be borrowed for the viola, or vice versa, with only this simple transposition, as their string arrangement was the same.
Turlough didn’t break off diffidently as Eustace would have done, but then Eustace would never have practised facing a wide-open door as though playing to an audience. He was standing with his back to the window and afternoon sunlight formed a halo around his curly hair and made his expression hard to read. Eustace had thought to walk heedlessly into their room, which he saw through its open door was mercifully empty, but Turlough shifted position in such a way as he played that the light fell full on his handsome face and their eyes met. After which it would have felt rudely dismissive to walk on, so he simply sat on the creaking floorboards and leaned against the wall to watch and listen until the movement came to an end.
Clapping would have felt silly and he was learning from the others to be cooler in his responses.
‘That works well,’ he said. ‘I like the way you didn’t draw out the last phrase the way some cellists do.’
‘Thanks,’ Turlough said, scratching an itch on his thigh with his bow adjuster. ‘Oh my God, you just had your Jean session. How was it?’ His lazy smile did something to Eustace’s stomach.
‘She’s incredible,’ Eustace said. ‘It’s odd because, compared to my teacher at home, she doesn’t give much technical instruction. It’s more that she just inspires or talks in terms of phrasing or feeling.’
‘It’s flattery,’ Turlough said. ‘She takes your technique as read and talks to you as a fellow musician. Bet she’d have the same effect on a clarinetist or a trumpeter.’
‘But she— Well, she cares so deeply about the music you feel you’re sort of doomed to disappoint her just by being human.’
‘Listen, you did well this morning. Weren’t you intimidated?’