The Concert Pianist

by Conrad Williams

  She was startled, but rallied quickly, finding the presence of mind to look him in the eye. ‘We were finished for reasons you understood at the time.’

  He touched his spectacles.

  She frowned.

  ‘Sorry, I . . .’

  ‘Don’t rake it up, Philip!’

  ‘I only heard the other day.’

  ‘Who?’

  He shook his head.

  She was flushed with dismay and embarrassment.

  ‘I needed to know, Camilla.’

  ‘Oh God. This is fifteen years old!’

  ‘It was a very long time ago and I’m trying to . . . work out why, you know, why it’s so . . .’

  She moved a coffee mug from the dish-rack to the shelf. The memory of a certain impatience crept into her expression, as though there were things that Philip had never accepted. She looked at him starkly.

  ‘It was awful.’

  The words seemed to comfort him.

  She gazed at him with candid regret.

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You didn’t want to tell me?’

  The suggestion seemed to weary her.

  ‘I might have . . .’

  ‘Oh, please.’ She was distraught now. ‘You were completely unviable as a husband or father. On tour, rehearsing . . .’

  ‘ I know . . .’

  ‘You were a brilliant pianist. From another planet. There was never any question of us . . .’ She shook her head.

  He nodded, almost trying to appease her. She had made an executive decision, very definite, very sensible. She knew what was best for herself, what kind of life she wanted, what sort of husband. Not him. He was no good for such a purpose, not appropriate.

  He moved away, buffing the palm of his hand on the kitchen counter. He was steeped in unfamiliar feelings. After a long moment he said, ‘I’ve let music dictate my life.’

  ‘Music was always going to dictate your life. You’re a wonderful musician.’

  He looked up. ‘But I should have had a family. I should have found a way. In the end, love is the only thing that can make you happy.’

  She could hardly argue with this.

  There were children’s voices in the yard outside.

  The feeling was stronger now, a mixture of suffocating stress and anguish. The woman he loved had destroyed their child because he was a concert pianist. It came to him simply, dangerous to admit, but clear in his mind. ‘It’s not a sacrifice I want to make any more.’

  ‘Philip . . .’

  ‘I’ve lost the will to play!’

  She wilted. She was so unprepared for this.

  Emotion was like a blast of jet lag, or sudden fever. Once expressed it left you ruined, slightly poisoned. He was stooped.

  Camilla regarded him tensely. She wanted him to go quickly now, because there was nothing she could say to make him feel better, and she was afraid the children would come in. She had loved Philip as a friend before they split up, but he was never the final choice, and if she knew it, in his heart he knew it, too.

  ‘I suppose it’s never too late for a man to have a child.’

  He looked at her in quiet devastation. The remark relegated him, pushed him off into the average happenstance of human experience.

  She looked away, unable to bear his gaze.

  ‘It’s not some hypothetical child I want!’

  Vadim entered the room and came over to the kitchen counter, placing his palm on the edge of the work surface. He acknowledged the intrusion with a simple nod.

  ‘Philip, we must go.’

  ‘It’s that child.’

  She stared at him bleakly.

  As they stepped into the car, she managed a repairing smile. Philip belted himself in and rolled down the window to say goodbye.

  ‘Lovely set-up you’ve got here.’

  He could see in her expression the thought that after this he would probably never want to see her again, and that this was a final leave-taking.

  ‘Give my love to Peter,’ she said.

  ‘Wish I could.’

  She wasn’t sure what to make of this, and nodded as though she understood something she didn’t.

  He put his key in the ignition.

  ‘Are you and he no longer buddies?’

  ‘Buddies?’ It made him smile.

  The car came on powerfully. He released the handbrake and revved the engine a little.

  She stood there, arms crossed. Behind her he saw the two girls advancing across the lawn. Their two heads of blonde hair glimmered in the afternoon sunshine.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  She started.

  ‘Why is it always me that has to tell people?’

  ‘Can we go?’ said Vadim.

  ‘We’re going. We’re going!’

  She was frozen with horror, and he could see the two girls coming closer, so he flicked it out quickly.

  ‘House burnt down. They all died.’

  ‘No!’

  He let the clutch up.

  ‘Sorry, Camilla.’

  The BMW circled around the gravel before pulling away down the drive. He saw her half-raised hand through the rear-view mirror and Lulu and Fernanda approaching through the garden gate.

  Chapter Two

  In the dressing room it was cold. Brown water came from the washbasin tap. Vadim hunted around for a mirror. Nothing in the WC, nothing on the inside cupboard door. He stood in shirt and underpants holding a cigarette.

  Driving into Southampton he had been fine. They had talked about Chopin and Szymanowski. Now in the dressing room he was panicky. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. He stared at the hand with an almost clinical interest. A grandly confident person in general, he was palsied with fear right now.

  Philip eased him into his tailcoat like a gentleman’s gentleman; quite an operation because the younger man was heavy and getting heavier. He had a tussle with the trouser clip, problems with his belt, which notched too tight or too loose; and when the outfit was on he stood in the middle of the room looking desperate.

  ‘I’m indisposed.’

  ‘What! The Russian Lion indisposed?’

  They had parked behind the building on a meter. Philip went off in search of cigarettes and change, and Vadim checked in at the box office. A dilapidated elderly gent in a tweed jacket with a spotted hanky took him through the hall to the artists’ changing room. It was a 1950s civic building, used for lectures and theatricals, with long curtains hanging from high windows. Vadim tossed his bag into the dressing room and returned to the piano for a play. The instrument sounded like cotton wool in the dull acoustic.

  ‘I’ve got you down for a salami sandwich,’ said the old boy. ‘Will it be lapsang souchong, or British worker’s tea?’

  Vadim looked up. ‘Working-class tea, please.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  He needed a bath, but there was no bath or shower. In the dressing room he became distressed by a patch of rising damp that had corrupted the plaster behind the coat hook. Philip found him rubbing his hands and shaking his head.

  ‘This is not good.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Think biriani. There’s an Indian round the corner.’

  ‘I think cancellation.’

  ‘Come on, Vadim!’

  ‘The hall is terrible! I can’t have shower. There’s nobody here. Why must I play?’

  ‘Just hack through it. You can’t play the Brahms in London for the first time.’

  ‘That piece is too long.’

  ‘Play from the score.’

  ‘I haven’t French polished it!’

  ‘French polish it out there in front of the locals.’

  Vadim looked desperate.

  Philip patted him on the shoulder. ‘Tie on. Comb hair.’

  He would get Vadim through the concert, and then tackle him over dinner - for fucking around. Nervous disarray lurked behind even the most autocratic talents. Beneath nervous disarray simmered infant
ile egotism and unhappiness. Compressing the ragged human being into an artist was his mission tonight. Urgent, because Vadim’s malaise was beginning to harm his career. Promoters and sponsors were already wary of his cancellations and even John Sampson, their mutual agent, was wearying.

  ‘OK. So warm up while I stretch my legs.’

  ‘Stay!’

  ‘Vadim!’

  ‘I won’t play.’

  ‘You must! As a favour to your chauffeur.’

  ‘Piano-playing is no favour.’

  ‘Listen! If John hears you’ve cried off again, you’ll get the red card.’

  Vadim sucked on his cigarette, thumbed his forehead.

  ‘Pianists come cheaper than agents. Especially first-rate agents like John.’

  ‘Not this pianist.’

  Philip stared at him. He felt responsible and yet powerless. The brilliant protege was turning into a twenty-five-year-old problem child. For weeks Vadim had been stupidly unable to focus. There were marital issues, of course, but the real reason was an adolescent refusal to accept the pressure of his calling, a doomed bid for free will in an industry of fearsome competitiveness and declining audiences. It was as though he had not accepted that, because of his gifts, he had no choice but to play the piano and to try dutifully to be a great pianist, because anyone born with such gifts was too precious to be allowed any other course, and suddenly agents, mentors, and critics were joined in a conspiracy to exert pressure and raise bars. The Moscow years were driven and unhappy (both his parents died in a Soviet air disaster). Vadim was taken over by a grim uncle and the head of the Conservatoire piano faculty, who jointly saw to it that he was grown like the hottest of hothouse flowers, and only rewarded for the death of his parents with early fame. Since moving to London, freedom and choice had engendered a kind of rebellion. No sooner were the foundations of a fabulous career laid than his appetite for experience beyond the piano stool overwhelmed him. He wanted suddenly to do everything, try everything. Vertiginously he needed football matches, water-skiing, nightclubs, sexual spice. Casually he got married, as though marriage were a drug that could be trialled and dismissed. The breaking-free was of course vital, because artists need to live like everyone else, but Vadim’s tour of instant gratification became a willed exercise in cultural superficiality, impairing the nuclear-fission programme that virtuosos need to contain safely by focused practice and rigorous self-discipline if they are to erupt brilliantly in concert and not destructively elsewhere. He now had a wife, baby, and mortgage, but his attitude was in tatters and his artistry distempered. This maddened Philip.

  ‘Have you called Marguerite?’

  Vadim leaned against the wall, eyes downcast.

  ‘She’s left two messages on my mobile. I don’t know what’s wrong with yours.’

  The non-reaction amazed him.

  There was a knock on the door. The stage manager leaned in, a young fellow with a neck tattoo, pierced eyebrow and number-one haircut. ‘Everythin’ OK, sir?’

  Philip sighed. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘A’right, guv. I’ll pop by when it’s five to go.’

  They heard the door click shut.

  ‘Why green paint!’ Vadim was incredulous. ‘I don’t like this colour.’

  ‘Please call her after the concert.’

  Vadim looked down, his face overcast by untranslatable feelings.

  ‘I’ve spoilt your preparation, I’m sorry.’

  Vadim pulled away, slumping down on to a chair. ‘Cigarettes,’ he said.

  ‘Have the pack. I’m going to take my seat.’

  There were things he must say, but not now.

  On the street Philip gazed at the evening sky and inhaled the bad air. A one-way system brought the traffic in rush-hour surges around the square, wafting fumes across the concourse. He tapped out a cigarette, desperate to inhale. There were so many things he could not bear about the day, the debacle of his meeting with Camilla, the coming struggle with Vadim: an Oedipal vying with an ‘adopted’ son if ever there was one. And now Vadim’s crisis reprised his own. His playing was dreadful at the moment. For days he had been out of sorts and utterly terrified by the thought of his concert and the standard expected of him. He had forced a practice session at the weekend with grim results. Sleepless nights and bad feelings had stripped his playing of its confident strength and control. There were memory lapses, fluffs everywhere, lagging reflexes. The whole mechanism was in turmoil. His sense of crisis was held in check only by a disbelief that this could be happening to him.

  The auditorium was large and dull. Curtains had been pulled across the back of the hall, a lectern set to one side. Up on the stage - like an ocean liner in profile - the piano. Two youths at the door handed programmes to the incoming public.

  Philip sat in the stalls and gazed at the motley array of humans who, on a Tuesday evening, were attending a piano recital in Southampton of all places. Most were music-society oldies sinking stiffly to their seats, or shakily standing in the aisle - genteel listeners from a bygone age when every parlour had an upright. Two plump grannies sat at the front, cramming flapjacks from tissue paper into their mouths whilst fluttering programmes like fans. There were sundry Plain Jane music maids with lank hair and bony knuckles, a pair of schoolmaster types fruitily murmuring. The rest were odds and sods scattered here and there, laxly curious, vaguely aware that despite all appearances this was an ‘event’, but the sort of event that drew few people these days, no one funky or hip, or God forbid glamorous or socially exciting, no opinion-formers from the vanguard of contemporary culture whose enthusiasm would make word of the concert ripple through media pages galvanising young readers to see this young pianist, to collar an experience as exciting as anything modern life could offer. It was a pianist’s fate to play to this loyal straggle of oddballs, the remnants of an elapsed century’s fading mental culture, and despite the drab eclecticism of the folk here tonight, he felt deep gratitude for anybody who could be bothered to turn up these days to a piano recital. For such loyal, rare souls the pianist’s anguished craft was still worthwhile.

  He pulled a tube of mints from his pocket. He was in a mess, complexly anxious. Fringe issues were irking him: another doctor’s appointment for the test results; the unsettling prospect of a new agent John Sampson wanted to foist on him, some gorgeous young woman - the last thing he needed! In a professional adviser Philip required a man of his own age and prejudices who remembered his triumphs and forgave his weaknesses. He was in no mood for anyone modern, attractive, or challenging.

  His child would have been fourteen by now. A girl, he was certain. He blinked concertedly, as though on the edge of tears. Sorrow was almost tidal in its surges and abeyances.

  When Laura first told him, he managed to ignore the news in the way one would kick aside a rumour too old to bother with. His reaction was a defence against the need to suffer the consequences of unwelcome knowledge. It happened so long ago, but something from those long-gone days was still palpitating, live enough to wriggle into the present so that suddenly he felt the news like a young husband, the marvellous surprise of conception, the heady novelty of creating a child with someone you loved, the warm wash of broody feeling triggered by a pregnancy - all these things he felt, out of nowhere, violently. As if he and Camilla were still lovers, he experienced a disabling love for this glimmer of a child, as though a river of feeling existed within him designed for the purpose that he had never known before. It all welled up, together with a swamping sense of loss and waste that made it impossible to concentrate on the piano, on anything. He grimaced, guarding the edge of his face with his hand.

  A man appeared from the wings. He raised an arm to hush the audience. Philip held his breath, fearing the worst.

  Holding a scrap of paper the man read out a last-minute change to the programme. Vadim had ducked Brahms’s Handel Variations and would play a Rachmaninov selection instead.

  Philip looked at the ceiling, struggling to co
ntrol his vexation. He was acutely concerned for Vadim. Almost for the sake of his nerves he determined to think about something else. He was actually dreading the performance.

  It came back to him now, something Vadim had mentioned in the car. Konstantine Serebriakov had been heard by someone or other playing in Reigate. The great Russian was absolutely ancient but he still managed, fifty years after his coronation as the world’s greatest pianist, to make music where he could, small venues, private gatherings, nothing grand or pretentious. Philip had been thinking of him recently because a producer friend, Derek Woodruff, was nobly hoping to make a documentary for BBC 2 about pianists. Philip had given him the principal figures, a few basic pointers. Derek was fired up by the whole idea of the artist hero/virtuoso, a priestly figure on the one hand mediating between God (the composer) and his audience (the flock), and a proto rock star on the other. His enquiries were like mirrors reflecting unfamiliar angles and aspects of one’s life. He rather rashly decided that Philip should be the subject, and although a TV programme held no allure, Philip was happy to answer his questions. Derek’s courteous detachment licensed a kind of intimacy.

  ‘Did you make some kind of executive decision not to get married?’ ‘I was always a hard worker, a perfectionist. And in the old days I travelled all over the world.’ ‘You liked the freedom?’ ‘Well, you can’t do it without the freedom.’ ‘Are you afraid of commitment?’ ‘You see, for me, playing the piano is the most intense way of being alive. How d’you reconcile the give and take of a good relationship with that kind of consuming passion? I never wanted to take more than I gave, but it seemed I was bound to if I got married.’ ‘So you have no regrets?’ ‘I have only regrets.’

  Vadim was on stage almost before anyone had noticed. He arrived beside the piano and bowed to a weak burst of applause in which the splatting sound of individual pairs of hands could be heard. He acknowledged the sparse audience with an opaque dignity.

  He looked even larger on the platform. His trunk was burly, his head somehow grand in profile. Philip found it almost comforting to see him solidly ensconced at the head of the instrument.

  Philip averted his eyes, heart beating hard. He could barely endure the indecent knowingness of being a fellow pianist.