The shock floored him for months; after that it lingered. His mother needled him to tell her how he was coping, but he never spoke of it. If he felt lonely, he played the piano: the necessary concentration let him think of nothing else. The rest of the time he worked hard, keeping his mind occupied. His colleagues valued his devotion to the firm; he loved the company and the composers he couldn’t help considering ‘his’, even if they were really Ludwig and Willy’s. Taking calls from Richard Strauss or Igor Stravinsky, proofreading their new works, often becoming one of the first to play their pieces through, in private at his piano, he could still flourish in his natural habitat. He dined with Willy and his family once every week, and with Ludwig in the Biergarten once every other week. Every two Sundays he took a train out to the village to see his mother. Life was good. Yes, the Nazis held power and the Depression held sway, but he was employed, in his dream job, and he gave thanks for that every day in his prayers. Things must change if he could only hold on long enough…
Ulli turned over, shunting one arm out from its trapped spot under his chest. His ears took in the detail of late-night London: motors growling in the street, the claws of some creature scuttling over a dustbin lid, the glass xylophone of something that could only be a milk van, for dawn was approaching. He was a responsible man, a respectable man, a person of judgement. His work depended on the soundness of that judgement. He was not, at the vital age of 31, about to lose his head to a crazy Hungarian violinist, world famous and much older than he was. Many others had fallen for Jelly before him; that didn’t mean he must follow suit. But through his mind there flickered the idea that he didn’t have to leave London straight away. If the Streckers were willing, he could stay an extra day. He could perhaps invite her to coffee, or lunch, or tea, or cocktails, or dinner, or all five. But he’d need some daring and he wasn’t sure he had any. He dozed, then woke with the sound of his own snore as a sunny morning lightened his windowpanes in time for breakfast.
*
Jelly rose late. Her dreams had reverberated with the tango to which she and Ulli had danced; now she had to clear all that away and prepare for her next recital.
‘Adi, I’m going to the park,’ she said, glancing into the dining room, where Adila was working her way through a large pot of coffee.
‘Today, I know, there will be a miracle,’ she mumbled in return, ‘and I need one for my head… ’
Caesar’s leash in one hand, a book of music in the other, Jelly made brisk progress down the road, along Cheyne Walk and over Battersea Bridge to the park, where her ancient but serviceable fur coat and a brown hat over her ears protected her from the autumn chill. Caesar snuffled around the tree trunks, as far as his leash would let him, while Jelly settled on a favourite bench to focus on Bach.
The tango didn’t want to leave her. Nor did the image of her lovely friend, who looked so open and danced so well. It was the sort of evening your brain wants to hug. Caesar trotted over and put his snout on her knee.
An hour and a half later, she was about to let herself in, giving the ever-vigilant Mrs Garrett her habitual smile and wave. No doubt the Garretts hadn’t approved of their long, late party. It wasn’t as if they weren’t invited, because they always were, but they never turned up.
Adila, eyes gleaming, flung the door open before she could turn her key. ‘Darling, come quick! Your lovely Deutsch Doktor with the delectable derrière is here, waiting for you.’
Jelly could hear the piano. She made a clattery dive for the music-room stairs, and glimpsed, through the door’s rectangular glass panes, the gleam of Ulli’s fair hair; he was trying out the Bechstein. He sounded good. Very good. He was playing something she knew. A surging-waves accompaniment, a singing, faraway melody – it was from Schumann’s Carnaval, the number that was supposed to be a portrait of Chopin. Jelly watched, breathed, and prepared herself.
‘You like Bechsteins, Ulli?’ She strolled over as if she had left him where he was only minutes earlier.
‘I have one myself, rather like this.’ He stopped playing and his gaze met hers, every bit as bright as before. ‘It has a lovely woody, tenory tone. You can really sink your teeth into it.’
‘And you like Schumann? That was so beautiful.’
‘I love Schumann. He’s my favourite, especially to play. Jelly, please forgive me for just arriving, but I… ’
‘Darling, I’m thrilled you’re here! Now, what can I give you? You want some coffee, or something to eat, or perhaps we go for a walk, except I’ve just been for one with our doggie, and – ’
‘No, no, Jelly: what can I give you?’ Ulli smiled over the piano at her, and for a second he reminded her so much of Sep that she wanted to weep. ‘May I take you out to lunch?’ he was saying, and she, eyes watering, gave a mute smile and nod.
The closest restaurant to the house was the family-run place on the Fulham Road, opposite the Forum Theatre cinema. Here Jelly often used to have lunch or an early supper, with Anna or sometimes on her own; it offered fare such as toad-in-the-hole, roast chicken and Ravel’s favourite steak and kidney pudding. ‘I was actually thinking of the Savoy, or the Regent’s Palace Hotel,’ Ulli suggested.
‘I don’t mind where we go, unless you are especially eager to try them,’ she said, carefree. ‘But I often eat here. It’s very nice. Friendly.’ On the door, Ulli spotted a handwritten notice in smudged ink declaring: ‘No shellfish, no tinned food, no foreign produce.’
‘Most soloists would think it is not smart enough for them.’
‘If it’s not smart enough for you then we take a cab to the Savoy!’ Jelly gave a grin. Like a little girl, she was teasing him, laughing, with the assumption he would laugh with her.
He cursed his own tactlessness. ‘That wasn’t at all what I meant. For you, the best should be obligatory.’
‘Aha, but we are here together,’ Jelly declared, ‘so wherever we are, that is already the best.’ She pushed open the swing door and Ulli noticed the warmth of the waitress’s greeting, and the way Jelly chattered to her as she led them to a favourite table in the window. The décor was plain, the typical English oak and beige, but the tablecloths were clean and white and the whiff from the kitchen seemed appetising.
‘Jelly, there is so much I’d like to ask you, I don’t know where to start,’ he said, once they were settled. Opposite him, Jelly’s face was bowed over the menu, her bobbed dark hair swinging across her cheekbones.
‘Start by choosing some food,’ she smiled. ‘The lamb chops are extremely good. With mint sauce.’
‘Mint sauce?’ English food. Sweet mint with meat that was bound to be overcooked. ‘Fine, I’ll try it. Did you never think of staying in Hungary, or moving somewhere a little less far from home? Why London? Why not Vienna or Berlin?’
‘Fortunately we did not choose Berlin,’ Jelly remarked. ‘We like it here. Adila liked it best from the beginning – I think because Onkel Jo was here often and spoke of it to her – and it just… worked. I’m not sure why we came or why we stayed… but now it is home, absolutely. But Ulli, tell me things. Where do you come from? Why do you play the piano so well?’
‘I was born in a little village not far from Mainz. My father was killed in the war, so then it was just me and my mother. Later I went to Berlin to study the piano.’
‘And who was your teacher there?’
‘Professor Schnabel.’
Jelly gave such a cry that heads turned at the next table. ‘How amazing! Artur Schnabel, he is a genius, the best, the very best!’
‘That’s what I thought too. I still see his face every time I play a Beethoven sonata. Now I play only for my own enjoyment. I really wasn’t good enough.’
‘But Schnabel, he doesn’t take just anybody. You must be good. And you sound good, extremely good.’
‘The fact is, I didn’t like performing, all the nerves. And then… ’ Lotte and her parents wanted him to get a proper job. By the time she died, he had one.
‘Something happened? Something di
fficult, I can see.’
How sensitive she was. She reminded him of a fine piece of gold leaf conducting an electric current, shimmering with its own receptivity. He told her the sorry history, and watched her face soften and her eyes brim with sympathy.
‘I know what it is to lose someone,’ she said. ‘I lost my mother so long ago, but each day it’s as if she is still here with me, somewhere. And I have lost many others, too… I feel, sometimes, I am surrounded by ghosts. And it is not only the glass game that brings them.’
‘That portrait on the piano? It is very impressive. I think, perhaps, he was your fiancé?’
‘Not exactly, but I did hope to marry him. He was Australian, a wonderful composer. He died at the Somme.’
‘You must have been very young.’
‘Twenty-three.’ Her voice held all the pain of being at your most hopeful and lovely, ready for affection, passion and plans, only to see your friends and potential lovers slaughtered one by one. And losing one great love…
Ulli thought of Ludwig in the trenches and Willy interned at Alexandra Palace, and himself at school, doing his mathematics, practising the piano, battling the great rent in life caused by his father’s death. ‘So my father on the German side was perhaps fighting your Australian fiancé on the British side. They both died. I am German and you, I assume – if you’ll forgive me – may be Jewish if you are Joachim’s great-niece. And now here we are having lunch together in London. Is this not insane, Jelly?’
‘That’s war. That’s the world. What can we do?’ Jelly’s face darkened, then brightened. ‘I am partly Jewish, partly not, and Adi, Alec and I are Catholics – but why should that matter? We must make up for these crazy people. We must live to our fullest in the present, no?’
‘Definitely.’ Any last shred of sense was leaving Ulli. He wanted to lift her out of her plain wooden chair, tuck her under one arm and carry her off somewhere safe and warm where he could feed her the finest cakes, brush her hair, run a bubble bath for her, wrap her in satin, take care of her in every way there was. ‘And since your tragedy, Jelly, there’s no one else in your life? Do you mind that I am asking?’
Jelly seemed to hesitate, tracing a pattern on the tablecloth with one fingertip. ‘Sometimes I have the feeling that everyone I love then dies.’
Ulli absorbed this statement, waiting for her to continue.
‘There was someone, almost. Not quite. Not now. Someone I’ve known for a long time, and we are – well, friends, but close, if at a distance. I hardly ever see him. But now he is very ill. He calls me and tells me he will die sometime quite soon… ’
‘You care very much for him, don’t you?’ Ulli’s appetite had begun to fade, just as the waitress brought roast chicken and bread sauce for Jelly, and the chops for him. They were indeed overcooked. The fibres caught between his teeth: possibly mutton rather than lamb. Even if it wasn’t ‘foreign’.
‘But this is perhaps normal.’ Jelly was folding her handkerchief back into her bag. ‘Love is simple, Ulli, but nothing around it ever is.’
‘I know.’ He reached for her hand, raised it and kissed her knuckles. Her smile was gracious; perhaps kind, perhaps more, yet – now he understood – infinitely sad behind all that sparkle and charisma. What had this woman seen? What did she know of music and life, of this world and the world beyond? Far, far more than he did, that was certain.
He had to make a decision; he had to draw back, however magnetised she had made him, and he sensed she had enjoyed doing that, Heinrich Heine and all. Would he have accepted being third best to the dead composer and the dying baronet? Or fourth, given that her first husband was really her gorgeous Bergonzi violin? Besides, she had suffered enough; he would not risk adding to that. Tomorrow he must go home to Mainz. God alone knew when he’d come to London again; and Hitler would make sure Jelly never came to Germany.
‘I wish the world could be a different place,’ he said.
‘And then?’
‘Then we would play music together, when nobody was listening, and I’d walk the dog with you. And sometimes you’d come to Mainz and we’d go to Berlin and visit Professor Schnabel, who wouldn’t have left the country if the world were this different place. And we’d walk by the Rhine and go to Bayreuth to hear Wagner, and we’d travel around Bavaria and see Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig the Second’s castle on the mountain. You’d love Neuschwanstein, it’s a crazy place. A little bit like your house.’
Jelly began to laugh, but suppressed the volume into a gentle, upward gurgle, just as Ulli sometimes did himself. Their way of laughing was so similar – and the matters, too, that made them laugh – that once they’d started they couldn’t stop.
‘Even Neuschwanstein Castle couldn’t look stranger in Chelsea than my sister’s house!’ Jelly managed to say. ‘Ulli, I tell you, we will do it all.’
‘You think so?’
‘Of course. Sometime your government will change and everything will become more reasonable again. Then I’ll come and visit.’
‘I shall insist.’ Ulli dared to reach out and twist one dark strand of Jelly’s bob around his forefinger. And with that ballerina-like tilt of her head and neck, she leaned her cheek towards his hand and rested it in his palm for a second, eyes closed, lashes lavish and dark against her skin. Relishing it. As if it might not happen again.
*
Outside Hurricane House they paused by the drive.
‘I should go,’ said Ulli. ‘I have to pack.’
He half hoped she would invite him in, half waited for her to do so, but he could hear the squeal of children playing inside the house, the strains of two violins – Adila was teaching – and there, peering out of an upstairs window next door, was a nosy neighbour. This was no time, even if it were the only time.
‘And so… goodbye, then.’
‘Only auf Wiedersehen. That’s the only German I know!’
‘Auf Wiedersehen, my dearest Jelly.’ Ulli clicked his heels and kissed her hand. ‘Promise me we stay in touch.’
‘Of course we stay in touch. And the Schumann. Please don’t forget about the Schumann?’
‘I promise you, Jelly, that even if it is years before we meet again, even if the world goes to hell around us, I will get hold of that Schumann concerto and you will play it. I swear to you on everything I hold sacred.’
Jelly laughed. ‘You sound like a Wagner opera!’
‘Perhaps, but it’s true. We will do this together.’
‘Our shared endeavour… ’ Jelly smiled as if a window had opened in her mind.
‘We will write, and sometimes we can even telephone. So, auf Wiedersehen, dear Jelly.’
‘See you then, Ulli.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.
Chapter 9
As the year slid towards its end, Jelly wrote letters. To Anna in Scotland, telling her how much she missed her, and about Ulli and how no day went by without her wondering if she would meet him again. To Ulli, too; and in Mainz, once he had learned to decipher her bizarre handwriting, he wrote back. He told her he’d prompted Willy Strecker to contact his old friend Johannes Joachim, Elisabeth Joachim’s brother.
‘What’s the matter with Elisabeth?’ said Adila. ‘Why can’t she persuade her brother?’
‘She doesn’t want a fight with Eugenie Schumann,’ Jelly pointed out. ‘It’s not in her interests. But it is in Ulli’s, or at least in Schott’s. They’d sell masses of copies of the piano score and solo part; and they’d hire out the orchestral parts for performances and that would be worth a fair bit.’
The financial practicalities of the concerto’s existence had clearly never occurred to Adila, paling for her beside the significance of the spirit messages; yet to Ulli, the latter were clearly of no concern whatever. Jelly, caught in the middle, mulled it over while she practised.
*
The stamps on Ulli’s letters bore a chunky image of a shield-bearer, while the postmark showed the eagle of the Third Reich: it looked like an Eg
yptian hieroglyph balancing atop a swastika, an inside-out symbol from Sanskrit, as if the Reich couldn’t make up its mind which mystical tradition it most wished to ape. But the address would be written by the flowing, cultivated hand she now knew well. ‘Look, Adi!’ shouted Jelly. ‘Ulli says Willy says Johannes says yes!’
‘Johannes says yes to what?’ Adila whirled across the hall to read the letter over Jelly’s shoulder.
‘He has agreed to let Willy Strecker see the manuscript and assess the concerto! And then they will decide whether to publish it.’
‘Oh, Sai, you should have said yes to Ulli! You have this chance with this lovely young man, and what do you do? You ask him to look for something in a library? Listen. Make him come back here and take you out dancing. Then I will make sure Alec and Adri and I are away and you have the house to yourselves and… ’
Jelly screwed the envelope into a ball and threw it at her sister, who batted it straight back. Soon they were making so much noise that Caesar started to bark and Alec came down to see what was going on.
Their joy was short-lived. After a week had passed, Ulli’s next letter contained something considerably stranger.
My dear Jelly,
The most peculiar piece of news has come to us from the library.
Johannes Joachim, as you know, was the depositor of the Schumann manuscript. The library’s director, Dr Altmann, knows this. But he insists that because the concerto was left there with instructions not to release it for 100 years, that condition must be kept, even though the depositor himself, who first placed that embargo upon it, says that he would like to change the condition!
I’m afraid we are up against a form of bureaucracy that is so rigid – and so exultant, if you like, in the exercising of its authority – that it is unlikely much more can be done at present.
Ghost Variations Page 14