The Best Thing for You

by Annabel Lyon

  You’re quite the thoroughbred, aren’t you? he said finally.

  She stopped playing.

  You’re good, he added negligently. Not quite as good as Jacoby would have it, but that’s hardly a surprise. You know I keep a studio in Kreuzberg?

  Hannah did not know.

  I generally teach from there. Your mother was quite insistent, however, that you should take your lessons at home. Why was that?

  My mother doesn’t like to go out, Hannah said. She’s happiest when we are all at home, together. She likes to know where we are at all times.

  How gruesome.

  She shrugged.

  I can see that for a man it might be so, she said, thinking of her brother.

  She saw he had pulled a few scores from the shelves and laid them open.

  You will learn these for next time, please, he said.

  Bach, mostly. She realized she did not like him well enough to confess she had already been playing most of the pieces for years.

  Goldberg, eh? he said at the end of the hour, as she was putting her instrument away. She had reiterated her mother’s invitation to tea and he had accepted with an ironic bow and a bitter rind of a smile. Goldberg, he repeated. Any relation?

  There are Goldbergs in Bremen and in London, she said, not sure what he meant. Cousins of ours.

  He laughed, and played on the piano a famous phrase, the opening of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

  Oh, that! she said, laughing with a relief she could not have explained. My father says yes, in fact. You know the story, the count with insomnia who commissioned the variations to be played to him in bed, to help him sleep. Goldberg was the count’s musician, who had been a student of Bach’s. It was he who asked his old teacher to write something for his patron. My father says he is the great-grandnephew of the Goldberg who was Bach’s student. I never quite believed him, though. I always thought he told the story to humour me, and make me feel special. Even when I was a little girl I thought that, I’m not sure why.

  Herr Bernhardt was watching her with a curious fixed expression.

  It could be true, though, she added. I would like for it to be true.

  So it talks after all, the little Goldberg, he said, this time with a smile that reached his eyes.

  They took tea in the sitting room, she and her mother and the new teacher, with her brother and his English tutor, Herr Asbury. Accordingly, they spoke mostly English, though Herr Bernhardt’s competence in the language was feeble. He offered little in any tongue, in fact, except to refuse plates of bread and cheese and cold meat and pickles. In the end he accepted only a cup of tea and a single jam tart. Hannah felt obscurely ashamed, as though she were somehow responsible for him and his odd behaviour.

  After tea, after Herr Bernhardt had been paid and left, she and her mother returned to the music room so she could practise.

  It’s up to you, her mother said. But I didn’t like him at all. He was – well, impudent sounds such a trivial word, but I want to say impudent. Not rude outright, but –

  I know, Hannah said quickly.

  Her mother opened her eyes and sat up straight.

  He wasn’t rude to you, was he? she asked. During your lesson? Because that I won’t tolerate for a minute. I didn’t like leaving you alone with him, I didn’t like that at all. Shall we ask Herr Jacoby to find someone else? I’m sure he must know many qualified teachers. Berlin is such a musical city. He can’t be the best, can he, with those trousers?

  Hannah pictured the trousers and the hair and the eyes and the queer changeable temper of the man. Also, he had slighted her playing, something she was not used to at all.

  Perhaps we should give him a chance, she said. I mean, wouldn’t Herr Jacoby be offended if we didn’t trust his judgment for at least a month or two, after all these years?

  Herr Bernhardt was twenty-five minutes late for her second lesson. Fortunately it was one of her mother’s bad days, and she was not present to witness this impertinence. Neither were Paul and Herr Asbury, who had gone to the Pergamonmuseum for the afternoon.

  You play like a child, he told her.

  He worked her harder than she had ever worked in her life, and deep down, in the part of her mind that was still cool, she wondered if he was trying to bring her to tears. She realized, too, that Herr Jacoby had never worked her as hard; indeed, these last few months, he had not worked her at all, only let her play and play while he smiled and nodded. She felt a spasm of irritation at Herr Jacoby.

  Again, Herr Bernhardt said. Again. My God. I suppose those metronomes are ornamental?

  No, Hannah said. They all work.

  Then why do you not use them? he asked, in apparently genuine anguish. It’s Bach, not Chopin. Why do you play in that disgusting mincing way? Why do you move your body so much, and take so many liberties? You think you’re being emotional? Your emotions interest no one. Not me, not your audience. Your mother, perhaps. Where is she today?

  In bed, Hannah said. She has migraine.

  She seems sickly, Herr Bernhardt said. He sat down in the chair opposite her for the first time and began to open his case. Yes, yes, he added, seeing her uncertainty. Take a rest.

  She set her bow on her music stand and watched him remove his cello.

  Yours is nicer than mine, isn’t it? he said, with the smile she disliked. She said nothing.

  Watch, he said, and began to play.

  Discipline, he said, when he was done. Purity, precision. You lack all these things. Not surprising, really.

  Really, she whispered.

  The same teacher all your life, I mean.

  You don’t play with the symphony, do you?

  Herr Bernhardt laughed.

  Is that what Jacoby told you? he said. No, I don’t play with them any more. Jacoby may not exactly know that. How is he, anyway? Do you see him still?

  My father visits him, she said, hoping this was true.

  Tell me, he said at the end of the hour, as she rang for the maid to see him out. I see all these Christmas decorations. Which holiday does your family celebrate?

  A moment, then, a ripple across the clear surface of things.

  We celebrate all the holidays, Herr Bernhardt, Hannah said.

  That evening at supper her father asked how she was getting on with her new teacher.

  Your mother seems to find him a little rough around the edges, he said, when she hesitated.

  He plays beautifully.

  She found she was thirsty, and drank from her water glass until Paul laughed.

  Hannah’s in love, he said.

  Stupid, she said, setting her glass down with absolute composure, and her father smiled.

  He’s scruffy and a snot, Paul said. He pulled himself up tall in his chair, waved at a dish of peas, and said in lisping English, No sank you. No sank you.

  Strongly influenced by Herr Asbury, her brother had adopted dandyism with his politics, and had once informed Hannah in a voice of languorous boredom that poorly cut trousers gave him pain.

  You only dislike him because he’s poor, she said now. You’re afraid he might contaminate you with his poverty.

  Hannah, her father said, sharply for him.

  He shouldn’t be poor, if he works for the symphony, her brother said.

  Both of you, her father said, with a rare strain in his voice.

  Brother and sister looked at each other, and between them quickly turned the conversation to Paul’s visit to the museum.

  At the end of the meal Hannah took a tray up to her mother’s room.

  Is that my soup? she asked from her bed.

  Hannah helped her sit up. Her face was haggard, her eyes sunken with pain.

  Well, this was a silly day, she said. I’ll be much better tomorrow.

  But after a few mouthfuls of consommé she said the weight of the tray was too much, and she had no particular appetite anyway.

  It’s all right, she said, seeing the worry in Hannah’s face. The doctor came tod
ay, while you were having your lesson. He said not to worry about the loss of appetite so long as I keep taking fluids. He said the body tells one what it needs. If I were to crave grapes, for instance, or quail.

  Her eyes drifted closed.

  And do you? Hannah asked.

  Her mother opened her eyes again, with obvious difficulty.

  Crave grapes, Hannah said.

  Downstairs, in her father’s study, she asked him what was wrong.

  Worry, he said simply. There is nothing physically wrong with her, the doctor says. The headaches, of course, but he says those could be cured with fresh air and relaxation. She must get out more, but she gets so anxious, and then the pain comes.

  They sat in immense leather wingback chairs before the pleasantly cracking fire, her father sipping his whisky and soda. Earlier he had touched a match to a crumpled newspaper and the fire had opened up like a mouth while they talked of the department store he owned, his pressures and successes there. Hannah knew if her mother were feeling better it would be the older woman sitting in her place, while she played chess with her brother in the nursery upstairs, or squeezed in a last half-hour of practice before bed. She flexed her bow hand a few times, unthinkingly.

  Molehills are mountains for your mother right now, her father said. Will he do, this new teacher?

  Hannah nodded.

  Perhaps, then, let it stay at that. Your mother doesn’t need every detail. The less worry the better, you see what I mean.

  The fire snapped and bit at the air.

  I see, Hannah said.

  So her mother did not hear about Herr Bernhardt’s chronic lateness, nor about his displeasure with every aspect of her playing, his sarcasm, or his almost anthropological interest in her family (did they observe the Sabbath, did they keep kosher, had Paul had his bar mitzvah, and so on). When she, emboldened, tried to respond in kind by asking unexpected questions about his training or his career, he replied with bitter, oblique comments about the power of rumour. When she did well he would turn his face away so she would not see it soften. And when, one Monday in February, he did not show up for her lesson at all, her mother did not hear about Hannah’s frantic, inexplicable tears.

  There were other troubles in the household by then. Herr Asbury, disgusted (he claimed) by the recent elections, had given his notice and was preparing to return to England. Paul, who for all his fashionable clothes and self-confidence had few friends, was despondent. Privately he confessed to Hannah his fear of becoming a prisoner in the house (“like you”). Their mother had trusted Herr Asbury, but he suspected she would not trust his next tutor as far. It was not a trusting season.

  He’s invited me to come visit him, though, he said, brightening a little. He says I may stay as long as I like. I know he had a long talk with Papa about it, too.

  Papa will let you go, I’m sure, she said. In fact, their father had grown so distracted by work, lately, she knew he would have consented to just about anything that spared him tension at home. Nervously she traced a crease in the lap of her skirt, over and over, a line and a loop: P, for Peter. She had seen it on the calling card wedged in the lining of his cello case, and his address too, the week after his unmentioned absence.

  Then, in the spring, just as the first blur of life was appearing in the naked branches of the linden and her mother had begun to come downstairs for meals again, calamity. One Saturday morning her father called the maid into his study.

  There is a new law, he explained to Hannah, who had encountered the sobbing maid in the hall ten minutes later and gone to him immediately, indignantly. (Käthe was her own age and the two had grown up together, playing with their dollies in the kitchen while Käthe’s mother cooked and gossiped with Hannah’s mother.) A Jewish household may no longer employ a single German girl under the age of forty-five as a domestic.

  Nonsense, Hannah said. She might even have laughed, a little, in disbelief.

  Be quiet, her father said.

  By afternoon the house was in deep gloom. Paul had locked himself in his bedroom with the previous day’s papers and would not come out. Her mother had suffered a relapse and returned to her bed. Käthe was already gone, and her father had already spent two hours on the telephone trying to find a suitable, legal replacement. Hannah sat in the music room with her Bach and her metronome, willing herself to practise. Her father found her there, still silent, at tea time.

  You like the most stylish one, he said, sitting beside her and gesturing at the metronome. Like your mother.

  She’s been vomiting, Hannah said in a low voice.

  Her father took the bow from her hand and laid it carefully across the music stand. He pulled his chair as close to hers as he could and awkwardly put his arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder.

  You would not believe the difference, he said. You would not believe the girl she was when she was young, so carefree, always laughing. She was a musician too. When I met her she was mad about the piano. This little fellow –

  He picked up the metronome.

  This was my first gift to her. Have I ever told you that story?

  No, Hannah said, a lie. She knew the story well enough. But so consumed was she with the whirling, shameful troubles of the house – the loss of the maid, her brother’s palpable fear, her mother’s illness, Herr Bernhardt’s constant abuse, and above all, the despair of the intervening hours and days until she would see Herr Bernhardt again – that she didn’t mind letting her father talk, as a way of filling that void.

  May 10, 1915

  Dear Mr. Newbery,

  It is now my extremely unpleasant duty to write to you about the events of yesterday evening, events which it appears shall precipitate our departure from Walberswick. I feel it is my obligation to inform you first, as it was your great kindness and hospitality that brought us to Suffolk, and until this last day or so had been such a refuge for us from our troubles at home. I would not like to think of you hearing of these events from some other source.

  As you know, Margaret and I had intended to stay on at the Millside house instead of returning to Glasgow. We found much that was congenial here – the house, the beach studio, our friendships with other visiting artists, and the easy acceptance (we thought) of the local people – and so much to avoid at home – a grim, provincial city, a lack of commissions, even an outright hostility to my own work especially that wounded me deeply, as you know. If Glasgow found us bizarre, queer, decadent, and long past fashion, well then, we thought, Walberswick was for us, so be it. We were so pleased to accept your invitation to share the house at Millside last summer, and (I confess it now) enormously relieved when, returning to Glasgow yourselves, you so kindly permitted us to stay on for the winter. Glasgow does feel less and less like home.

  I am writing to you now from a jail cell in the Walberswick police station, where I am being kept overnight, like a rowdy. The charge, I fear, is in fact far more serious, though the absurdity of it would make one laugh, were one able to watch from the distance of the stars. They have been kind enough to provide me with a little chair and table, at any rate, and have permitted me to write letters to pass the time. Sleep is out of the question.

  Last night, as is our custom, Margaret and I took a stroll around the village. Returning to Millside at around half past seven, we were stopped by a soldier with a bayonet fixed at the gate, and informed that military police were searching our rooms. Finding some letters with German and Austrian postmarks – from a Viennese architect inviting me to work with him in that city, a possible commission from Berlin, a German publisher interested in a book of watercolours, and so on – they accused me of being a German spy and took me into custody. One of the constables who knows me from the Anchor let slip that my habit of walking at night and my “strange” Highland accent raised suspicions with some of the locals, and thus was I “tipped off” to the authorities.

  My work has always been more accepted on the Continent than at home; indeed, were it not for the
present war, I dare say I would have more work in Germany than a man could comfortably handle in a lifetime. Yet my contacts and connections with that country have always been of an artistic nature, and anyone who knows me knows there never lived a stauncher Scottish patriot. On top of all the indignities I have suffered these past few years, this disgrace truly is more than I can bear. I am resolved to take my case to the House of Lords just as soon as I am able, to clear my good name.

  Meanwhile, I am told I will be forbidden to live in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, or anywhere along the coast, near main roads, or railway lines. I cannot now see us returning to Glasgow, or rather I can see our reception there all too clearly, and have no appetite for it at all. That leaves London.

  I hope what I have written here will not cause you to doubt for a moment our gratitude for all your many kindnesses and your hospitality. Margaret and I have no regrets about coming to Walberswick; I only wish we were leaving under happier circumstances. Please accept, too, my apologies for any future embarrassment you may suffer in the village as a result of my having been a guest in your house at the time of these unfortunate events.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Chas. R. Mackintosh

  May 10, 1915

  My dear Margaret,

  I am compelled to write to you, though I imagine you will never read this, or if you do, it will be with me at your elbow reading over your dear shoulder, apologizing for the anger, the haste, the untidiness, the bitterness of this screed. I imagine a warm fire in the grate, the tea on its tray, and our bags packed and waiting, in the downstairs hall, for the morning train. We must leave, we will leave, we will start again in London, that is if you think that you can work there; for I have said before and I say again that I have talent, but you have genius, and it is your work, above all, that matters.