Music and Freedom

by Zoe Morrison

  I tested them gingerly with a fork. I tested them again, but gently, so that I did not break them, ruin their shape. I was making sure they were cooked just right. I was perfecting them. (Again, a bit like doing scales, I thought.)

  I didn’t rush through the housekeeping anymore; once, I spent the whole morning on my hands and knees polishing the floorboards in the hall so they were perfect. When he came in that evening, I made sure I was at it again.

  ‘Working hard, I see,’ walking past me into the study. Then: ‘Come here.’

  I sat down in front of the desk, careful not to move or touch anything. He told me that one of his papers was to be published in a prestigious journal; I congratulated him. He told me the reasons he detested a colleague whose office was next to his. Why the man should be sacked; how he was going to make sure this happened. Then he took me out to dinner. The night after, he was horrid again. I realised that it had been a long time since he’d asked me to play the piano.

  He yells at me and says harsh things. He smashes plates. He is particular, overly particular. He used a glove on a shelf to see if I had dusted it properly.

  I played Prokofiev today, the Toccata. You should have heard it. I thought the keys were going to bruise or singe, my hands beat them so hard and fast. You should have heard the ring of that piano, the reverberation of those strings. It’s a Steinway, did I tell you? When I sit on the chaise longue sometimes, resting between playing, it looks like a bull readying itself to charge.

  I continued to address them; I never sent them.

  36.

  Oxford, December, 1950

  How long can a pianist play to an empty room? To the view of a quiet street? It took about a month until I could do it no more. And then I waited. I waited for a favourable mood. I prayed for something good to happen in the editorial offices of economics and political journals around the country, around the world. I prayed for Edward Haywood to be feted, at least momentarily.

  In he came one evening, and he was whistling. Nothing recognisable, but still.

  ‘Dinner’s ready.’

  ‘Good,’ and by some stroke of luck I’d made that chop and roast onion dish again. He sat down; he even smiled when he saw it. He tasted it. ‘Delicious.’

  It was as if I couldn’t help it, the feeling I got then, responding to compliments, still performing for applause, examining its timbre. As he ate he told me about his victory at work that day.

  ‘Edward,’ I said, when his stomach was surely full. My hands were shaking again. ‘I’m wondering if you might be able to introduce me to some other musicians in Oxford.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Well … I would like to start doing some concerts. Start to get going with things.’

  ‘Really,’ he said. ‘Start to get going with things.’

  ‘Yes,’ thinking that already this didn’t sound good. I took a sip of water, tried to calm myself.

  ‘Why do you want to do that?’

  ‘Well,’ astonished I needed to spell it out, ‘as I said, I would like to get on with my musical career.’

  ‘I don’t know any musicians. I only know economists.’

  ‘What about the other people who ran the Summer School?’

  ‘None of them know anything about music, I can assure you. Holding that thing was just for the money it brought into the college; we’d had a lean year.’

  ‘But all those maestros …’

  ‘Visitors. Obviously,’ he snapped, and now he was frowning deeply.

  I knew that I should stop now, but this was too important. I kept going. I tried to slow my breathing, the way I did before a recital, except that I’d never been this nervous before performing.

  ‘I was also thinking you might be able to help me arrange an introductory recital in the Holywell Music Room,’ and looking at his face I said quickly, ‘or even a room in your college.’

  He got up suddenly, the chair leapt back, hit the floor.

  ‘And why would I want to do that?’ Glaring down at me.

  And then I was going to kill him. I was going to get the knife from his plate, smeared with that blasted gravy, and plunge it into his heart. Instead I said, ‘I am a pianist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am a pianist.’

  He glanced down at his plate, peered at the stove to see if there was any left, and then he went back to work.

  I sat there for a long time, thinking, recovering.

  I decided that I wouldn’t let his attitude matter, that I would do it all myself. I would find out from other women in this place how things worked, wives of people like Edward, who were sure to know. I needed some friends. I needed a lot of things.

  37.

  Oxford, October 10th, 2005

  Chopin, the ‘Revolutionary Étude’, was pouring into the house. It was a deluge, a flood. I was spinning down the stairs, a dervish in the air. Before I reached the ground floor it had stopped.

  I stood in the front room feeling sick and lay down on the floor. I wondered if I had entered that stage in the process of starvation when the body starts to eat its own organs. So far the hands and ears had gone, probably also the mouth. What was next? Ah yes, I should have guessed, that feeble throbbing, a faint flick; the heart was next, the heart, of course.

  The cold was immense and it was everywhere, it was like wet cement poured on top of me; the floor was painfully hard, pressing itself up into me. I got myself slowly upright, shuffled into the library.

  Lighting a fire took energy, but energy was given back, for just a bit, and I progressed. Gone now was his entire oeuvre on rational expectations and their applications (four-and-a-half shelves; all the scholars had wanted them). Gone were the three shelves of government reports (and what a thrill it was to see those coats of arms on the covers flare up before dissolving). No, it was not too hard to sit in front of a fire burning books and papers about conservative economics. Filing the music was hard. That’s what was killing me. Lifting those scores. Writing the labels. Tucking them into the file boxes. You’d never believe the energy this took. And making the phone calls, of course.

  I wished I could have found my Chopin book then and looked at that étude. I remembered seeing a small child play it once in a concert hall at the Royal College, some startling prodigy, her little body so animated, so definitive at the piano.

  I went out to the phone. It felt as if my body were slightly in front of me, then behind me, then below me, then above me. Battling with the very air I breathed. I was going to do it. I cleared my throat, called the number, but as soon as he answered I hung up. I sat in the hall, smelling smoke.

  38.

  Oxford, December, 1950

  Since marrying Edward I had not been to his college. At that time all the dons were men. Wives, along with other members of the public, were allowed to enter the college grounds (except at times when they would disturb the scholars, such as before exams) but were not allowed to attend college meals or enter the common rooms. Once, a special dinner was held for Fellows, and their wives were invited by the Master’s wife to the Lodge. The women were served buns and coffee and invited to look through a slit in the wall at the men feasting in Hall.

  The term I arrived, the college’s governing body had debated whether wives should be allowed to dine in Hall once a year. The argument against this proposition was that the presence of wives would dramatically lower the standard of conversation. They would speak of nothing but nappies and chores. But there was a growing feeling among the Fellows that this exclusion looked outdated, and that progress, or at least the appearance of it, should be respected. That term the yea vote won. So out we wives duly trotted one Friday evening to spend a night at High Table, aprons put to one side, as if we had been waiting forever for the occasion.

  The night before, I asked Edward about the dress code; he went wordlessly up the stairs, into the bedroom, over to the chest of drawers, where my clothes remained, pulled things out, dropped them onto the floor. />
  ‘These are all creased,’ he said, frowning.

  He inspected things quickly, picking them up, dropping them again.

  ‘There is nothing here,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to get you something.’ And out he walked.

  I picked up the clothes, folded them all, put them back.

  He bought me a pair of shoes and a black velvet frock, quite glamorous. That evening we walked to the college in the dark; winter was nearly upon us. I was feeling very nervous and to my surprise Edward took my arm.

  I was worried about having to make conversation with men like him and getting something wrong. But I was also worried about meeting the other wives, because this mattered to me very much.

  We walked through the college gate, Edward’s black gown flapping behind him. Through the quads, the cloisters, into the Hall, huge and dimly lit. Like Edward, the other academics wore black gowns over their suits. I saw a row of pale talking heads suspended above the black murk of the table. Until my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the place it was as if those men possessed no bodies at all.

  Edward and I were seated apart, which relaxed me momentarily. But the wives were so outnumbered that we were nowhere near each other. I’d been placed between two men who, deep in conversation, appeared not to even notice me sitting down.

  ‘It was that committee Hebdomadal Council created last year,’ one of them said as I lowered myself beside him.

  ‘What committee?’ And my other neighbour leant across me. Quickly, I leant back.

  ‘They’re the ones who did it. It’s all their fault.’ Like a snarl.

  The conversation went on and on – what had been said, what had been put into the minutes, it seemed to have something to do with new admission standards for the colleges. I sat silently, looking around. Pictures on the wall opposite showed previous college masters: an old one of a man in a curly wig holding a globe and scroll; a modern one in broad brush strokes at the other end, hands held loosely in his lap, one of his fingers curled, as if beckoning to someone.

  Staff pushed trolleys alongside the table, large white soup tureens on top. They served quickly, expertly, silver ladles flashing. Conversation continued unabated. Sometimes a man leant slightly to one side to let the ladle reach his plate, or he lifted an elbow. It was as if it had been choreographed, these movements: the person dining never looked at the one serving, yet seemed to know exactly where they were.

  I watched a woman further down the table, caught her eye; she looked away. I watched the way she kept her hands in her lap as her soup was served, thick steam drifting up in front of her face.

  Then it was our turn, our bowls were filled, and, oh, that soup, how delicious it smelt. It was thin, clear and brown, a consommé, and when I took a mouthful I felt a ripple of pleasure, for despite its appearance of watery simplicity its taste was intense, multi-layered.

  Silence around me as I sipped, then one of my neighbours glanced in my direction; the other one did too. I realised with a jolt that they were expecting me to say something, that this was when I was meant to speak: while they were eating. I put down my spoon, opened my mouth (I had prepared several erudite conversation topics; I’d been studying the papers closely). To my horror I found that I couldn’t remember anything about domestic politics, international affairs, European philosophy or that new play in London. All that came to mind was a comment about the delicious liquid cooling before us, which I knew was the wrong thing to speak of, absolutely.

  ‘Who is your husband?’ one of them asked me.

  ‘Edward Haywood.’

  He nodded, head still bent, spoon moving back and forth. I noticed his lips quivered slightly just before the spoon went in. There was a small patch of dark bristles below his left nostril. He picked up his napkin, mopped at his mouth.

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  Nodded again.

  ‘Hobbies?’ tipping his bowl back to scoop up the last of the soup. When I didn’t say anything, he glanced at me, then back at his bowl. He’d missed a bit. He tipped it back again.

  ‘Do you have … interests?’

  He was looking around now, at his elbows, at my elbows. What was he after?

  ‘I’m a pianist.’

  Ah, he wanted more bread, and he’d spied some, a bread roll on the side plate in the vacant place opposite me.

  ‘And how long have you been doing that? Playing the piano?’

  He heaved himself across the table, grabbed the roll in three fingers and reeled back; it was an astonishing move.

  ‘A long time,’ I said. ‘About seventeen years.’

  He laughed a bit at that, not kindly, tore the bread roll open, pressed a square of butter, hard, into the gash.

  ‘Are you any good at it?’

  And he put the whole thing, the entire roll, into his mouth. He must have realised straight away he’d made a mistake, his mouth could hardly hold the thing, let alone chew it. He sat there frowning, jaws struggling to work themselves around the lump of hard crust, to get to the soft, buttery centre. It would have helped, I thought, if he had a dislocating jaw like a snake.

  ‘I recently completed my studies at the Royal College in London on a scholarship,’ I said, trying not to watch. ‘But I must say,’ and it was strange, I was suddenly speaking to this man quite honestly, ‘I’ve started to doubt myself, which I hope to get over soon. I do so hope it’s just a phase. I have this dream, you see, of becoming the next Rubinstein or, even better, the next Rachmaninoff. I suppose we all —’

  But he had started to choke, he was making hee-haw sounds like a strangled donkey, and then he jerked up in his chair and clutched at his throat. I was just about to whack him on the back when he croaked and a piece of half-eaten bread flew from his mouth and landed in front of us on the table. It was wet, shiny. It was covered in a brownish green sheen. It looked like a slightly-over-the-edge oyster, and we both stared at it, appalled, fascinated.

  Dessert.

  Another room, smaller, an oval table, a box of cigars and cigarettes passed one way, port the other.

  This man had thin strands of hair stuck to the top of his head with hair cream. He had a cigar, which he hadn’t yet lit; he was rolling it in his fingers and little bits of tobacco were falling onto the table. He pressed a finger to them, put the finger to his lips, licked it.

  ‘Did you know,’ he said, and his voice had that ripe, end-of-an-evening timbre, ‘that there has been some recent research on musical performance and sexual attraction?’

  I looked around for doors through which to exit.

  ‘It found that the first two rows of every concert hall are always filled with women.’

  ‘That was a consistent observation?’ I replied.

  ‘Obviously,’ loudly. ‘As I said, it’s published research.’

  ‘And in all these cases,’ I asked, ‘the gender of the performer was …’

  He frowned. ‘Male,’ he grunted. ‘The theory,’ voice mellow again, back on track, ‘is that musical performance is akin to a mating dance. The raising of the peacock’s feathers, if you will,’ and he grinned, and it must have been something about the position of his lips because I could see every one of his yellow teeth. ‘They tell me,’ he breathed, and now he was leaning in close, I could smell the stilton from the cheese plate, ‘that the pretty little colonial one likes to tickle the ivories.’

  I froze. My eyes darted around like searchlights in a dark field. I saw two women conducting a whispered conversation behind an elderly man who had fallen asleep at the table; his gown was folded like a blanket across his considerable girth. The women were rising, their heads still together, they looked as if they were suppressing laughter. They made their way towards what looked like part of the wall, but no, there was something there, a handle, a panel, they pushed at it. A door.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ I said, rising as regally as I could. I scuttled off after them.

  Leaning on each other laughing, bent over double, snif
fing, wiping their eyes – when they finally recovered they started talking at a thousand miles an hour and I stood beside them slowly washing my hands, thinking about how I could break in, introduce myself. They left the washroom; I dried my hands fast, jogged after them, back through the cloisters.

  There were rectangles of light on the black grass in the quad: the windows of the Hall were lit up, bright; the staff must have been cleaning in there. The women went to a different door this time; I followed them in and found myself in a room that resembled a large sitting room. There was a thick carpet on the floor, armchairs arranged in circles, the heavy curtains were drawn. People were drinking coffee, brandy. In the middle of the room, Edward sat talking to an elderly man. They both rose when they saw me; Edward introduced me to the College Master.

  ‘Did you enjoy the dinner?’ he asked. There was a slowness to him, a tiredness, but also a contentedness, a serenity, which was different from the other men.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, noticing Edward out of the corner of my eye, looking at me with frowning concentration. ‘Yes, thank you, it was —’

  ‘I hear you are from Australia. How are you settling in? I do hope you are not too cold, we do try …’ he trailed off.

  ‘Cold? Oh, I’m used to it, you see I —’ but it didn’t matter, the Master had caught the eye of someone entering the room behind me; Edward was looking over at whomever it was too. As they moved away from me I saw that the room had a fire and went and stood in front of it.

  I watched the skin beneath my nylons go red and blotchy. My shoes were new and very uncomfortable. I was wondering if anyone would notice if I slipped one off, for just a minute, when Edward came up behind me, put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You look pretty.’

  When Edward stepped away a minute or two later, a man came over and stood next to me. He peered at me for a second from behind his glasses, then nodded and smiled. He looked like a mole who had just popped up out of the ground expecting it to be spring.