Music and Freedom

by Zoe Morrison

  ‘The second order?’

  ‘The one today. After the one the night before.’

  ‘I didn’t order a second delivery.’

  ‘Well, it came – the evidence is all over the kitchen.’

  ‘They must have made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’ll make sure they haven’t charged us twice.’

  ‘All right. I mean, you have to admit that is a lot of sausages.’

  ‘Yeah. Absolutely. Heaps. I guess, just throw them out. Don’t let it bother you,’ and his voice, maybe it was because he was sleepy, but it was so soft, and I began to quietly weep.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ he said. ‘Mum.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Richard. I didn’t realise it was so late.’

  ‘Never mind, I wasn’t sleeping anyway.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Looking at the ceiling.’

  ‘Are you all right, Richard? Are you really?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  And I realised then that there was no point, that I had squandered all my chances. I seemed completely unable to speak the truths I needed to get out.

  ‘You go back to sleep. Maybe get yourself a warm milk, or something nice to read, nothing too stimulating. I’m so sorry to have troubled you, I feel terrible about phoning at such a time. So kind of you to have —’

  ‘Not at all, Mum, not at all.’

  I remember getting up the next day, creeping down the stairs, throwing away the chopped-up food, sitting at the front window and being almost unable to move after that. Just my eyes, resting on the tree outside. I watched a wind pick up, the leaves flitter, the small branches start to waver, then the whole tree swayed, and when the wind dropped it was just the leaves again, plucking the air. There was no one out there, the place stood so still, except for the occasional cyclist passing. The exertions and tensions of the previous days had sped things up. Death felt near, an invisible stalker, impatient. And I was about to go and ring him, tell him what I needed to, finally set things right, talk to him properly, mother to adult child, but I couldn’t manage it yet, I couldn’t. I still didn’t even know what the right words were. And if I couldn’t do it, then it was wrong to disturb him.

  I found I no longer cared about burning the rest of Edward’s library, which was vast anyway, far too big. Let them put it all under lock and key, in golden cases lined with dark velvet; why had I ever thought such a thing mattered? I couldn’t do the filing either, I had no capacity to lift or sort a thing. So the chores would remain unfinished, and what sad, unnecessary chores they were anyway.

  I went to the piano, locked my fingers around the keys, lifted them, sank them down and played a minor third, a C and E flat. The interval sounded softly. I have lost my heart (lift up, sink down), I have lost my heart (lift up, sink down), and how pathetic it was, how pathetic in its inadequacy.

  46.

  Oxford, June, 1951

  My next concert in Oxford was the Rachmaninoff Concerto number 2 in C minor. The invitation to perform this extraordinary work came out of nowhere, towards the end of the academic year.

  The concerto is one of the most difficult in the piano repertoire. Rachmaninoff wrote it after a period of depression and writer’s block, following the disastrous reception of his First Symphony. (He was found after the premiere in Moscow crouched beneath the theatre’s stairs with his hands over his ears, blocking out the booing audience.) Eventually persuaded by his family to see a therapist, his treatment was a great success and in 1900 he wrote the second and third movements of the concerto quickly. Then in the spring of 1901 the famous first movement walked onto the page.

  A visiting music scholar at Edward’s college, a specialist in Romantic repertoire, was planning to conduct the concerto in the Sheldonian as part of his program of study, but the soloist had pulled out. The scholar brought his problem to lunch one day at High Table. Did anyone know a suitable pianist in Oxford? And Edward offered me.

  I didn’t know why. Maybe he was feeling guilty, although Edward never felt much remorse. Maybe he was trying to help me, but that also seemed unlikely. Maybe he thought my performance would make him look good, but in actual fact I think any success of mine at that point would have been threatening to him, made him feel inadequate. No, Edward always liked to have the answer to a question, especially if no one else did. The possibility that he was not thinking of me at all when he offered my services, that it had nothing to do with me, did not occur to me, but it should have.

  I’m told the scholar questioned Edward about this wife of his and her musical qualifications in front of his High Table colleagues, which would have clinched it. I could just imagine him, the flashing eyes, the words articulated oh so carefully. I think you’ll find she’ll do it nicely, he would have said quietly, his voice full of ice and scorn. That night he handed the score to me.

  ‘That silly ass Fincher wants to conduct this in the Sheldonian and he can’t get himself organised. So you’re doing it.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What do you mean “sorry”? You’re the soloist. Here’s that concert you wanted. In the Sheldonian.’

  I looked at the score.

  ‘Are you joking, Edward?’

  ‘No,’ irritated. ‘When?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When is the concert?’

  ‘October,’ he said, heading down the hall.

  ‘October of this year?’

  He didn’t say anything. I got up, went down the hall.

  ‘October of this year?’ I said at the door.

  ‘Of course,’ he spat.

  Four months, an impossible time frame in which to learn the work.

  I took the score with me into the front room and sat down with it on the chaise longue. I knew it well to listen to, but I had never played it. I imagined, for just a minute, performing this work in the Sheldonian. I pictured myself on stage in a new concert gown, the orchestra behind me, the conductor by my side, then afterwards in the foyer holding a big bouquet and being plied with more flowers.

  Edward left the next day for a fortnight in Cambridge. With no teaching commitments in summer, he was often away (it became a time I looked forward to with eagerness, which I was careful to hide). I would not perform the concerto, of course, it was clearly not feasible; I would have to extricate myself from the arrangement when he got back. Edward would have to tell the scholar it wasn’t part of my repertoire. A terrible thought; I pushed it to the back of my mind. In the meantime, I had the score; I decided I might as well have a look at it.

  I ended up playing it nearly constantly for two weeks. Parts of it seemed to fall easily beneath my hands, naturally, I began to think. How I loved all those passionate swells and dives. Those grand old arcs of melody, both hands spread wide. The melancholy of the work, the driving bass notes in the first theme of the first movement that keep the beat and provide that constant, driving momentum, while everything else swirls around them – I liked it all. The intensity of it, the high emotion, the unbridled fervour. It was something to aspire to.

  The fortnight passed quickly. The night before Edward returned I sat with the score, away from the piano, and had a close look at it, all of it, not just the parts I enjoyed playing. It went on for pages. It required technique, stamina and interpretation that would challenge the best of pianists, and I’d hardly learnt any of it. I realised someone needed to be told, and quickly, that I would not be performing.

  When he got home I stood in the bedroom watching him unpack, then I followed him down to the study, made him a cup of tea, handed him the paper.

  I was feeling unusually strong, bolstered, perhaps, by that two weeks away from him. I’d seen a few of my Oxford friends. It was as if a part of me had started to grow back, emerge again. And what a joy to realise it was still there, just underneath, waiting.

  ‘You know that concerto,’ I started.

  ‘What concerto?’ looking at his desk.

  ‘The Rachmaninoff, the one you … th
e one I’m supposed to be performing.’

  He looked up.

  ‘The one you are performing in the Sheldonian. Yes, what of it?’

  ‘Unfortunately it isn’t possible. You see, I have never played it before. It isn’t part of my repertoire. To learn it in time to perform in October is impossible. It’s an enormous work. Monumental.’

  Silence. He was staring at me.

  ‘I’m sure that someone else could be found easily,’ I said. ‘It’s such a desirable invitation.’

  ‘The arrangements were very clear,’ he said. ‘The commitment was made.’

  ‘Without consulting me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me before saying I could do it. I would have told you, if you had asked me, that it wasn’t part of my repertoire.’

  ‘I thought,’ he said, very carefully, ‘that this is exactly what you had asked for. That a performance of a Rachmaninoff concerto in the Sheldonian might be exactly what you wanted.’

  ‘Well, yes, partly.’ (In fact, I would have been better equipped to perform a Beethoven concerto, but this wasn’t the conversation we were having.)

  ‘So what, exactly, is the problem?’

  ‘It is just as I said. There is nowhere near enough time to learn it.’

  ‘Oh, now, we both know that’s not true,’ and he looked back at his desk, started arranging papers.

  I didn’t understand.

  ‘You see, I spoke to some colleagues about it, as well as Fincher, who is an accomplished pianist, a scholar of the Romantics, and they all agreed that it was possible. The Music Master, for example,’ he cleared his throat, ‘the Oxford Chair of Music, said it was achievable, if the pianist had sufficient skill and self-discipline. The Organ Master agreed. Furthermore, a visiting Russian scholar, who dined on two occasions with Rachmaninoff himself, said that any pianist with adequate training should be able to do it, if they wanted to, if they had the stamina. So, I repeat, what, precisely, is your problem? Is it that you are not good enough?’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  ‘I need to work now,’ he said. ‘I suggest you start studying that music.’

  Oh, how young I was then. How my sense of what was right and wrong was so pliable. I was starting to doubt, you see, my own assessment of that music. I was starting to think I might have overestimated things, that I might be able to perform it after all, if I just worked a bit harder, was a bit better.

  It does not seem unreasonable now that I thought such a thing back then. I still believed that the people who were supposed to be right about things could be trusted. Wasn’t the entire town of Oxford predicated on the basis of that knowledge? It was convenient if the truth, the answer, was to be found in one place, and I didn’t have to look for it myself, didn’t have to search and determine and question forever. It felt hard – dangerous, even – to be right about things when other people thought I was not. To be right about things I didn’t particularly want to be right about (as I said, I really liked that music).

  Also, I wanted to do something that meant something to someone else, to do something that mattered, that helped. Most of all I wanted to love, and to be loved. And I nurtured some hope, a forlorn little stub of a candle, that the possibility of this sort of love still existed between Edward and me. If I worked hard enough, if I was good enough, I could be loved, and love back.

  Never mind that the love of the performer up there on stage, blurred under the lights, far away, was not the sort of love I was after. Never mind that what I yearned for was love that cared, that was near, that was the truth, that was four arms tangled up together, holding each other up.

  So I decided to spend a bit more time working on the concerto and see how I got on. I would probably have to find another way to extricate myself, other than through Edward. And because he was away for the rest of June, and I had little housekeeping to do, I immersed myself in the music and progressed quickly. When my hands hurt badly after hours of constant playing, I kept going, working as hard as I could.

  Then he got back and all the housekeeping and meals had to recommence; and I couldn’t play when he was in the house, my progress slowed markedly. I started to think again about how I was going to get out of it. I thought about contacting the conductor myself, suggesting he ask the Royal College for a replacement, giving him names, even arranging it all and presenting it to him as a fait accompli. And every time I planned these things I prevaricated, thinking I would just give it one more day, or two, or three, see if I could get a bit further with it, for they had said it was possible, hadn’t they? And I thought I was good.

  In August Edward didn’t go away as planned; he worked in the house instead. I stood in the morning at the sink, listening to him moving around upstairs, pleading with him in my head to leave, then pleading with God to make him, then hearing him walk down the stairs into his study.

  After several days of tiptoeing around the house doing chores, the concerto roaring, soaring and crashing in my head, I could bear it no more. I crept into the front room, pressed the soft pedal down with my left foot, and started, very quietly, to play.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted, exploding into the room, bending over me, jabbing me with his words. ‘I need quiet, absolute quiet!’ and he slammed back into the study.

  I sat on the stool, heart thudding.

  Later, I started to play on the table in the kitchen, the score in front of me, my fingers pummelling the wood. He came in.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ amused, and suddenly in a much better mood (perhaps his work was going well). He poured himself a glass of milk, drank it standing up.

  ‘You are working very hard,’ I said.

  He kept drinking, looking out the window.

  ‘I’ll do some practice this evening,’ I said, ‘if that won’t disturb you terribly. You’ll remember I have this concert in October.’

  He jerked around, put the glass down hard on the sink.

  ‘I am working hard,’ he hissed, ‘because I am about to deliver a highly confidential report to the government on unemployment.’

  I started to feel hot.

  ‘What a worthwhile piece of work,’ I stammered. ‘How is it going?’

  But he had left the room.

  After that he disappeared up to London again and I could practise whenever I wanted, but by this point I was dispirited, and my anxiety was stratospheric. I found it hard to eat, sleep was sporadic, my dreams frightening. I vomited once or twice thinking about the performance; sometimes I found it hard to breathe when I sat at the piano. I felt inadequate when I played, as if no matter what I did I was always failing. I always felt rushed and was no longer thoughtful about the way I approached things or expended my energy. It was as if I were drowning in the work, as if it were a huge body of water and I was struggling upwards in vain, never breaking the surface.

  When Edward came back and I knew that my practice would be curtailed again, I felt terror. I had spent the day of his return in a frenzy of house-cleaning, laundry, shopping, cooking. It was evening; he was reading the paper.

  ‘Edward, you know that concerto I —’

  ‘What? What concerto?’

  I gaped.

  ‘The Rachmaninoff you —’

  ‘Christ,’ rustling the paper noisily, ‘you’re not still on about that are you?’

  I would not let this put me off, I would not.

  ‘Edward, when you asked me to do it I said that I did not think it possible in the time frame. Since then I have been practising extremely hard, in the time that I have, and I’m very sorry to say this but the answer remains the same. While I very much want to do this, I mean I would dearly love to, it just … it simply can’t be done.’ And I felt tears gathering in my eyes then; I was exhausted. He looked at me, curious, almost.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘what weakness is?’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ I was shaking now.

  ‘Weakness is crumbling
and flailing about when the hurdle has become a little higher.’

  ‘I don’t think that description quite matches this situation. In the first place the hurdle is rather more like an enormous —’

  ‘All of those men said it was possible.’

  ‘All those men are not trying to do it themselves, and in these circumstances! What is their evidence? I have a feeling they set you up.’

  This stunned him.

  ‘You!’ pointing, furious. ‘You are the one who is weak and lacking!’

  And it was so unkind, and I was so worn out, that I started to cry properly, big hot tears sliding down my cheeks. Crying for everything that was ruined and not working, and he was staring over the paper at me in a way that I did not understand, except to see – I could not help it – that there was pleasure in that look, definitely.

  ‘I thought you said you were a pianist,’ he said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be good.’

  And I cried even harder.

  ‘Come on now,’ in a different voice entirely, almost matronly, ‘pull yourself together. Come on. Blow your nose,’ and he handed me his hanky. ‘We’ll have some tea.’

  We tramped down to the kitchen; he started looking in cupboards (he never made the tea). I told him where to find things. He poured milk into my cup, spooned in sugar (which I didn’t take, it didn’t matter).

  ‘There you are. Drink.’

  ‘It’s a bit hot.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Edward —’

  ‘No, no,’ one hand up, ‘not until you’ve drunk your tea.’

  I drank it, scalding my mouth. I rearranged my face.

  ‘I’m very sorry, but I think we very quickly need to —’

  ‘You see, you’ve started to panic. This is what some people do in such situations. You need to treat this like an exam. You have done an exam, haven’t you? Perhaps at school? Well, what I tell our nervy undergraduates is that if they’ve put the work in all year and not been lazy, they’ll be all right. They just have to go in there,’ and he held his hand close to his chest, then shot it forward like a spear, ‘and do it.’