by Vikram Seth
What I had not realised was that once the door had clicked, I wouldn't be able to open it from the inside.
My thumping and yelling were almost drowned out by the growl of the motor and the shouts of the game. Still, it could not have been more than a couple of minutes before someone in the rooms above heard me and came to my rescue. When I was brought out I was in a state of suffocated terror, screaming still but almost incapable of speech. For months afterwards I had nightmares about the incident and would wake up in a sweat, inarticulate with claustrophobia and panic.
The fridge also figured in my first major rebellion over food. When I was ten or thereabouts, Dad and I drove down in a van to collect a number of birds from a turkey farm. Some turkeys were having their heads chopped off, some their feathers plucked, some were still running around gobbling. I was so unhappy at the thought of the very birds I was looking at turning into the lifeless mounds that stocked our fridge that I promised I wouldn't eat my Christmas turkey, then or ever. Despite the aroma of the stuffing to tempt me and my father's scoffing to goad me, I kept my resolve for one Christmas.
My mother's apple sauce has given way, under Auntie Joan's regime, to cranberry sauce, and Dad invariably complains about this. It's not really Christmas without apple sauce, cranberry sauce is an American import, it is too tart and gives him indigestion.
It is not going to be a white Christmas this year after all, but the usual drizzly nondescript one. But I am in good spirits after a huge meal culminating in Christmas pudding with a white rum sauce. Auntie Joan's attempt to replace this a few years ago with brandy butter was successfully repelled. I have bought a bottle of champagne, and my father has had several glasses.
"A little of what you fancy does you good," he says.
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"Yes," says Auntie Joan, "and I suppose that a lot of what you fancy does you better."
"It's good for my heart," says my father. "Isn't that your Serpents?" he asks, pointing at the TV.
Indeed, the Water Serpents are on the news, doing their annual hundred-yard Christmas Day swim. About half the old gang are there, horsing around, but there's a whole host of one-timers on the diving-board. A crowd has gathered and is cheering them on. I am very happy to be where I am, snugly stroking Zsa-Zsa behind the ears. I wonder idly when the programme they shot of us will be shown. Perhaps it's been on the air already.
"I never forgave Maggie Rice," says Auntie Joan, her eyes on the TV.
"What was that, Auntie Joan?"
"Maggie Rice. I never forgave her."
"What didn't you forgive her?"
"She tripped me up at the Whit Friday races."
"No!" •:
"Her excuse was that I had won twice before. I never spoke to her again."
"How old were you?" I ask.
"I was seven."
"Oh." = ,,
"Never forgot, never forgave," says Auntie Jqan Vfith satisfaction. , . . ;, •
"What's happened to her since?" I ask. : r>/•*>
"I don't know. I don't know. She might be deadrforall I know. Quite a nice girl, really." - -- ;
"Was she?" I ask. I am feeling very drowsy, -n st;
Auntie Joan looks across at Dad, who has nodded off • with a pleased expression on his face. ;..; j
"Her father had a shop on Drake Street," continues Auntie Joan. "But Drake Street's dead - killed off by the =
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shopping precinct. And they've even sold Champness Hall."
"I'm going for a walk," I say. "I might give the Queen's speech a miss this year."
"Oh, all right," says Auntie Joan to my surprise.
"I might walk over to Mrs Formby's with some of your Christmas pudding."
"Her husband was with the council," says my father, his eyes still closed.
"I'll be back in an hour or two," I say.
2.11
Mrs Formby laughs with pleasure to see me at the door. She is a fairly rich, very ugly woman, with pebble glasses and buck teeth. Her husband, who died some years ago, was also quite ugly, though I saw less of him when I was a child. They were, for me, an excitingly exotic couple. He had been - of all things - a roller-skating champion in his youth, and she had been a violinist in an orchestra, though it was difficult to imagine them ever having been young, so old did they appear to me even then. They lived in a large stone house with a big garden full of brilliant flowers, quite close to our humdrum cobble-streeted neighbourhood of small terraced houses and shops. How they met, where their wealth came from, or how her husband was associated with the council, I still have no idea.
"Hello, Michael, how nice to see you today. I thought it was tomorrow you were going to come over to give me my run."
"I'm on foot today. Just walking off my lunch."
"What's that? Is it for me?"
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"Some of my aunt's Christmas pudding. Weeks in preparation, seconds in consumption. Rather like music."
The Formbys had no children of their own. I, being an only child, had no natural companionship at home. Mrs Formby in particular took to me, and insisted I go with her to all sorts of things that were, and would have remained, outside my ken. It was she - not he - who taught me to roller-skate, and who took me, when I was only nine, to hear the great "Messiah" at Belle Vue.
"Have you met my nephew and his family? We've just had dinner. But our pudding's only from M&S. Why don't you join us in a glass of something?"
"I think I'll just continue on my way, Mrs Formby."
"Oh, no, no, no, Michael, none of that, you just go through now."
The nephew, a bald, florid man of about fifty, a chartered surveyor from Cheshire, acknowledges me with, "Oh, yes, the violinist." He looks appraisingly and somewhat disapprovingly at me. His wife, much younger, has her hands full with the three girls who are pulling each other's hair between whining recriminations, and quarrelling about which channel to watch.
Once I have a glass of wine in my hands, Mrs Formby settles herself down in a comfortable armchair and sits calmly through the noise. I drink my wine as quickly as I politely can, and take my leave.
I am now close to my old neighbourhood. There is very little traffic about. My feet turn towards the carpark where our shop stood. It is bound to be empty today. But at the last moment something stops me, and I stand still, uncertain of purpose, afraid of the descent of unpeaceful thoughts.
Into my mind comes an extraordinarily beautiful sound. I am nine years old. I am sitting between Mr and Mrs Formby in a state of anticipation. On the seats all
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around us are people chattering and rustling programmes. Into the circus ring enter not elephants and lions but a group of men and women, many of them bearing amazing instruments, gleaming and glowing. A small, frail man enters to applause such as I have never heard before, followed by the strange, absolute silence of a multitude.
He brings down a stick and a huge and lovely noise fills the world. More than anything else I want to be part of such a noise. •
2.12. -
On Boxing Day I drive Mrs Formby along the road past Blackstone Edge. When I left home to go and live in Manchester, it was an old friend of hers who lent me a spare violin. But when she heard that I was going to Vienna to study under Carl Kail himself, she insisted I take her own Tononi with me. It has been with me ever since. She is happy that it's being played, and that it's I who am playing it. Whenever I come to Rochdale I bring it with me. She calls this annual drive the rent for her violin.
The sky is clear with only a few clouds. I love the light near Blackstone Edge. We should be able to see far into the distance, across the whole of the plain, past Rochdale and Middleton to Manchester, even into Cheshire.
"Everything all right at home?" she asks. Mrs Formby's relations with our family have had their peaks and troughs. She was always one of t
he best customers at the shop, but for a while she was mainly viewed as the one who had beguiled me away from university.
"Yes," I say. "Everything's fine. Dad's been a bit out of sorts, but, well, he's getting on -"
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"And in London?"
"Everything's going fine there too."
"Have you got a window box yet?" Mrs Formby often chides me about my flower-less existence. Having the run of her garden as a child I learned a certain amount about plants from her. But I'm too lazy, I travel too much to take care of them, the park is so close to me anyway, and the constitution of Archangel Court frowns on window boxes. I tell her so, as I already have once or twice before.
"Are you travelling a lot?"
"About the usual amount. We've got a concert in Vienna next May. It's the sort of thing you'd enjoy. Nothing but Schubert."
"Yes," says Mrs Formby, her face lighting up. "Schubert! When I was young we used to have Schubert evenings. A friend of mine tried to infiltrate some Schumann. I didn't allow it. I called him the wrong Schu! . . . That reminds me, Michael. Our local music society was wondering whether your quartet might want to perform here in Rochdale at the Gracie Fields Theatre. I said I thought not, but I promised I'd ask you. Believe me, I'm simply relaying a request, so I don't want you to feel any pressure one way or the other."
"Why did you think I might not want to, Mrs Formby?"
"Just a sixth sense. Well, the music society is still quite active. It's our one bright spot, culturally speaking, in my opinion. Of course it is silly that the only decent auditorium in town is inaccessible by public transport . . . But what do you think?"
"I just don't know, Mrs Formby," I say at last. "I would like to do it -1 mean, I would like us to do it. But I just don't feel I'll do justice to what I play here. I don't think I can even explain it. It sounds stupid, I know, and somehow, well, even a bit small-minded."
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"It sounds neither, Michael," says Mrs Formby. "You'll play here when you're ready. And, quite frankly, if it isn't in my lifetime, I won't mind. Some things can't be forced. Or at any rate, if they are, no good comes of them ... By the way, you must thank your aunt. That Christmas pudding was quite delicious."
"Did you eat any of it, or did you feed it all to your grand-nieces?"
"Well," says Mrs Formby, laughing, "I did eat a little. How is our violin?"
"It's doing wonderfully well. I took it for a few adjustments earlier this year. It was buzzing a bit, but it's singing like a lark now."
I have stopped the car by the side of the road and am looking out over the sharp green slope. I used to cycle down this road full tilt, with the wind raking through my hair. Where do larks go in winter?
"You know I want you to play it, Michael," says Mrs Formby in a troubled voice.
"I know. And I love it, Mrs Formby," I say with sudden anxiety. "I didn't tell you, did I, that we're going to Venice after Vienna? So I'll be taking it back to its birthplace for a visit. That should make it happy. You aren't thinking of taking it back, are you?"
"No, no, not really," says Mrs Formby. "But my nephew's been pestering me about setting up a fund for my grand-nieces' education and making a will and so on. I don't know what to do. And he's been making enquiries and he tells me that it's very valuable now - the violin."
"Well, yes, it is, I suppose," I say sadly.
"It didn't cost me very much so many years ago," she continues. "It actually bothers me that it's gained so much in value. I don't like my nephew but I'm fond of my grand-nieces."
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"If you hadn't lent it to me, I could never have afforded to buy it," I say. "You've been very generous."
As both of us know, if it hadn't been for her, I would very likely not have become a musician at all.
"I don't think I could bear it to be played by a stranger," says Mrs Formby.
Then give it to me, Mrs Formby, I want to say. I love it and it loves me. We have grown to know each other. How can a stranger hold and sound what has been in my hands so long? We have been together for twelve years. Its sound is my sound. I can't bear to part with it.
But I cannot say it. I say nothing at all. I help her out of the car, and we stand for a few minutes by the side of the road looking past the tower blocks that landmark Rochdale to the vaguer plains beyond.
2.13 : . . -.-'"
When I was just nine years old, our rowdy, chattering, sweet-paper-crinkling, paper-aeroplane-throwing class was taken to a Schools' Concert. It was my first experience of live music. When I visited Mrs Formby the next day I told her all about it. What I particularly remembered was a piece about a lark - "The Lark in the Clear Air" I think it was called.
Mrs Formby smiled, went to the gramophone and put on what she told me was another piece inspired by the same bird. From the first note of "The Lark Ascending" I was enchanted. I had noticed a couple of violins lying around among the many marvels of the house and I knew Mrs Formby used to play the violin, but I could hardly believe it when she told me she used to play that piece herself. "I don't often pick up the violin now," she said, "but I'd like to read you the poem that led to that piece."
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And she read me the lines by George Meredith that had inspired Vaughan Williams. It was strange fare for a nine-year-old, still stranger as I watched Mrs Formby's face, the ecstatic expression in her eyes magnified by her thick glasses.
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound, '/' Of many links without a break, 'In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake ...
For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes . . .
Till lost on his aerial wings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
Mrs Formby did not bother to explain the poem to me. Instead she told me that they wanted to go to hear Handel's "Messiah" in a few weeks - a niece of theirs from Sheffield was singing in it - and that, if my parents agreed, they would take me along. It was thus that I heard and saw the small and ailing Barbirolli re-create in the King's Hall at Belle Vue the soaring sound that rocked my head for days, and that, together with "The Lark Ascending", made me beg Mrs Formby to teach me to play the violin.
For a while she taught me on the small violin she had used as a child. It supplanted roller-skating as my prime obsession. While I was still at junior school, she managed to get me a good teacher. My parents were nonplussed, but felt that it was a sort of social grace and at any rate would keep me out of mischief for a few hours a week.
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They paid for it, as they did for my school trips, my extra tuition, books that I felt I had to have, all the things that would, as they saw it, broaden my mind and help me on my way to university. They had no particular fondness for music. There had been a piano in my grandparents' parlour, and the furniture was arranged around it, as it would be around a TV today, but it was never played except by an occasional visitor.
Because the comprehensive I went to had been the old grammar school, it had a fine tradition of music. And the services of what were known as peripatetic music teachers were provided by the local education authorities. But all this has been cut back now, if it has not completely disappeared. There was a system for loaning instruments free or almost free of charge to those who could not afford them - all scrapped with the educational cuts as the budgetary hatchet struck again and again. The music centre where the young musicians of the area would gather to play in an orchestra on Saturdays is now derelict. Yesterday I drove past it: the windows were smashed; it has been dead for years. If I had been born in Rochdale five years later, I don't see how I - coming from the background I did, and there were so many who were much poorer - could have kept my love of the violin alive.
The
handsome town hall presides over a waste - it is a town with its heart Tom out. Everything speaks of its decline. Over the course of a century, as its industries decayed, it lost its work and its wealth. Then came the planning blight: the replacement of human slums by inhuman ones, the marooning of churches in traffic islands, the building of precincts where once there were shops. Finally two decades of garrotting from the government in London, and everything civic or social
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was choked of funds: schools, libraries, hospitals, transport. The town which had been the home of the co-operative movement lost its sense of community.
The theatres closed. Every one of the five cinemas closed. The literary and scientific societies shrank or disappeared. I remember my despair when I heard our bookshop was going to close. We now have a few shelves at the back of W.H. Smith's.
In the next few years my father will die, Auntie Joan will die, Mrs Formby will die. I doubt I will visit Rochdale after that. If I myself am then determined to cut my ties with my town, by what right do I mourn for it so angrily now?
2.14
On the way back to London, I spend a few hours wandering around in Manchester.
About noon I find myself at the Bridgewater Hall. I have come to consult the huge, smooth-curved touchstone outside. Today, when I pass my hands over it, it gives me an initial sense of peace; but from somewhere in its cold heart emanates a delayed impulse of danger.
At the Henry Watson Music Library I browse around. I have not yet ordered the score and parts of the Beethoven string quintet from London. I am eager to play it, yet filled with uncertainty. Here I am, however, in the very place where the music is housed. The librarian, after checking my credentials, permits me to use my old card.
On the train down to London I look at the score. When, after early nightfall, I get to London, I phone Piers.
"Well," says Piers, "how was Christmas?"
"Fine. And yours?"
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"Awful in the usual way. Charades. Endless fucking jollity. I quite enjoyed it, except that Mother's become a complete alcoholic. The parents have finally given up on me. Helen's getting the marriage-and-babies flak now. Did you get any of that?"