The Dangerous Years

by Richard Church

  A Powerful Ally

  The alpine weather broke again, and gales swept up the valley, bringing first snow, then sleet and rain, and ruin to outdoor sport. Joan was relieved, for it meant that the recent toboggan escapade could not be repeated. John failed to appreciate how distressed she had been. He talked of it with gusto, as a schoolboy would recall the pleasures of a strawberry ice. Nor did she have support from Adrian, whose hands had, after all, survived unharmed, though he had lost a pair of gloves that afternoon. The escape had been too narrow, however, for Joan to feel safe, especially as John appeared to be incapable of sharing her anxiety about the child.

  Thinking over the incident, she realised that John’s agreement about keeping Adrian away from the dangers of the concert platform was due simply to his disapproval of allowing any youngster to ‘show off’ or to be treated in any way that savoured of favouritism. He had, apparently, interpreted Dr. Batten’s wishes in that way, for he said nothing about the music, the child’s gifts, the possibilities that lay therein.

  Life in the hotel was not dull, in spite of the disappointments felt by the hearty folk and the fanatical sporters. Charades, games, card parties, billiards, snooker and table tennis made a full programme, bringing the guests together and decorating the semi-daylight hours with goodwill and enjoyment.

  This went on for two days, during which the Boys and their small charge shared in what was going on. In spite of her somewhat bitter conclusion about John’s motives in helping her over the responsibility for Adrian, Joan saw her husband at his best. He found several people congenial to him, among them a couple of unmarried dons from Cambridge who, with an American of the same profession, made up a foursome for snooker. This, and a bit of homework brought from the laboratory, kept him from being bored by indoor life while the gales raged round the hotel and flung dour blankets of cloud round the mountains. From time to time John would leave what he was doing, to peer craftily and hopefully out of the double windows, up at the racing skies. “God!” he would murmur, then grin at his wife, or his fellow-guests, and return with renewed enthusiasm to the billiard table, or his papers.

  Joan found it impossible not to respond to his placid contentment. He was affectionate with her, more than he had ever been at home. The recent estrangement had wakened him up to that extent. He tried his best, and the very earnestness of the effect was endearing. Something else, perhaps, made it easier for her to be reconciled. She allowed herself to suspect that the presence of Adrian had made John conscious of an element missing from his own life, and from the marriage. His interest in the boy may have been conventional, rather like that of a preparatory schoolmaster, but it brought a mature light into his eyes, and a softness into his voice, as well as a certain difference into his attitude toward her.

  She dared not speculate further, but made herself rest content with what she had observed. One thing she did recognise; it was that she was less lonely. And this was due not solely to the adoration from Adrian. Indeed, she had not dared to allow herself to accept that, for the child’s sake, and for her own, because she could not believe herself capable of inspiring so masculine a passion. And anyhow, it was absurd, coming from a child of nine!

  Adrian, meanwhile, demanded as much as he gave. He would not allow Joan out of his sight, and even lingered about in the corridor when she went to the bathroom or the w.c., waiting for her to reappear. His faculty for intense concentration on one object, one purpose or motive, was frightening.

  On the third afternoon, when she was changing for dinner, John came into her room through the communicating door. He came with no particular request, and appeared merely to want her company, to chat and smoke a cigarette. She had only just persuaded Adrian to leave her, for he had been with her since lunch-time, and was something of a burden, with his intensity, his unflagging worship, through those burning grey eyes and those expressive hands. He had demanded to help her to dress, and she had caught him picking up her silk scarf, still warm from her body, and burying his face in it. Making the excuse that he must go and wash, and change his shirt, she had bundled him into his own room. But returning to her own, she found her cheeks flaming, and a curious sensation of animal pleasure pervading her, as though she were standing in hot sunshine, or were plunged into a warm sea beyond the shadow of palm trees.

  “Is that child quite safe?” she asked John, sorting out a pair of stockings from the débris in the chest-of-drawers. She was as unlike her mother in domestic habits as in her clothes.

  “Safe? What are you always worrying about safety for? He’s a perfectly healthy kid, and needs a bit of risk in his life. Too much pampering already, I should say, in that hot-house atmosphere.”

  “I don’t mean physically. I’m thinking of his mind, his character. Either he’ll go mad, or become a voluptuary.”

  “Isn’t that what all these damned artists do?”

  “John, you don’t mean that. You are only baiting me because I love music and you don’t. You and Mother are a pair.”

  Suddenly, in the act of speaking, she realised that this was the first time she had mentioned her mother since they came to Switzerland. What was happening? Had the thaw entered her soul as well as the alpine valleys? Evidently her words now carried no sting, for John did not, as he would formerly have done, rise to the bait.

  “I don’t know,” he said; and he actually picked up her dress and helped her to put it over her head; an act completely out of character.

  “It’s like this, Joan,” he resumed, after some rumination, “he’s a damned interesting brat. Plenty of pluck there, as we’ve seen. The way he took that spill on the run made me proud of him. Not a murmur, did you notice?”

  Did I notice? she echoed, but to herself, trying not to laugh at this simplicity which made her husband seem younger than the child they were discussing. She wanted to ask him if he had noticed anything else, the small hands exposed to that horrible possibility of frostbite, for example. But the moment was not appropriate for a return to the old moods of criticism. Husband and wife were breathing a warmer air. She merely nodded, as her head emerged through the dress, and she turned for him to fasten the zip at the back. To her amazement, he touched the back of her neck with his lips.

  “John,” she whispered.

  “That’s all right, old girl,” he muttered, in a shamefaced return to his normal self, “you’re a good sort, you know, a good sort.” He hesitated, looked down at the carpet, then at her. “You’re fond of that boy, aren’t you?”

  “How could I be otherwise? No woman could withstand such flattery, John.”

  “Oh, is that what it is?” He frowned, in perplexity. “Joan, I don’t believe you. No! It’s not that. I was thinking …” But he could not find the words, and with an air of bafflement, he left her and returned to his own room, where she heard him stumbling about, collecting his dinner-jacket and white shirt for the early change so that, in accordance with the habit of the place, they need not come up again between six o’clock and dinner.

  Adrian now reappeared, his hair brushed down, its fine silkiness thus accentuated. He had washed himself and put on a clean shirt. Joan re-tied his tie, which had eluded his own effort, in spite of his clever fingers.

  “Now you’ll do,” she said, and he looked up at her with such ardour that she stooped and kissed his forehead. “Not too late to bed, to-night, young man.”

  She saw his eyes grow old with a little glint of mischief. Good heavens, she said to herself, I’m giving far too much attention to this infant.

  “Let’s go down, John is coming.”

  “He wouldn’t let me play snooker,” said Adrian.

  “Of course not. You can hardly reach the table.”

  “I could have used a stool.”

  “And who is going to wait while you do all that manœuvring?”

  They both laughed, and went down, to be met by the happy hubbub of voices in the lounge, the salon, on the stairs, in the winter garden. John came hurrying after them.r />
  “I say,” he cried, “you might have waited for me, you two. Let’s stick together for once.”

  Joan looked at him, and saw that he meant it. Her heart missed a beat; but it was through happiness, and hope. She knew that she was grateful for something, and to whom except to this small intruder who was forcing up the price of her qualities as a woman?

  They merged in the crowd, John being greeted by many people with friendly cries, signs of his popularity, especially among the men. The party was mixed, and incoherent, for the children were still about, and not much could be organised at that hour so close to the juvenile bed-time. But all the guests appeared to be down, for the crowd was thick everywhere. The Boys and Adrian elbowed their way to the large salon, hoping to find more room there. They did, and possibly a modicum of quietness, for all the chairs and sofas round the walls were occupied with people quietly chatting or reading. The band had not reassembled since the end of the tea-time session, and their instruments stood around the piano, and some half on it. An open violin-case lay on a chair, with a black silk scarf poured out of it.

  “Look, Joan,” said Adrian, releasing her hand, “the piano is left open. I know what it is. It’s a Blüthner. I’ve never played on a Blüthner, Joan.”

  She glanced at him, and saw his eager face thrust forward, as though he were trying to smell the instrument. You odd child, she thought, you little sensualist. But having released him, she lost him, for he darted away, no longer able to restrain himself. She was too shy to follow. And what did it matter? Childish curiosity was nothing out of the way, and who would notice?

  Somebody did notice, however. It was the elderly man who had spoken to Adrian the day after their arrival. He had not been about since that escapade when Adrian intruded into his private sitting-room.

  He sat hidden away, not far from the stove, smoking cigarettes and staring idly at the people across the salon. As Adrian approached, he got up and Joan saw him join the boy, and lead him to the dais. They stood side by side looking at the piano. Both nodded their heads, two connoisseurs agreeing about something. Then, to her alarm, they went nearer, and the old gentleman pushed the piano-stool towards the bass end, and put a gilt chair beside it. She was not near enough to hear what was said between them.

  “Young man,” were the words from that massive and grim mouth under the grey moustache, “they played a piano duet this afternoon, while I was resting here. It was clumsy work, but good enough. Let us play it again. You do not mind playing in public? But we will talk to your parents about that afterwards. Once will do no harm.”

  He lifted the child on to the stool, and looked through the pile of music on the lid of the piano.

  “Ha! Here it is. Now then, you shall be my partner. We will amuse the guests, if they care to listen and stop their conversation; which I doubt!”

  He had found a Mozart Sonata for four hands, in C Major (Kochell 521).

  “Strange, little man, isn’t it, to find such music among the numbers of a hotel band?” The old man chuckled, and his solid body shook with ironic mirth. Then, raising his hands to the keyboard, he looked sideways at the child, all his amusement vanished. “Ready now?” he asked severely. Adrian glanced up at the rock-like face, and nodded as gravely as the master. They began.

  That master was Artur Schnabel, the artist and teacher who disapproved of sensationalism in music. He played now with his legs tucked back under the legs of the gilt chair, leaving the pedals untouched. He hesitated during the first two or three bars, then accommodated his volume to that of the child’s playing; but this did not result in much diminution of the quantity of sound, for Adrian, sitting on his cushion, appeared to be as firmly established as the massive figure beside him, and he played with the same stolidity, his hands and arms moving with a minimum of display and effort. Schnabel, after the statement of the theme, grunted, and his head moved slightly, in approbation.

  From that moment he played without further restraint. The difficulties made Adrian frown from time to time, but he did not lose the beat or break the rhythm. Once or twice he jumped a note, as though willing to sketch the work rather than pause and break. Each time this happened, Schnabel half-glanced down at him, the fierce eyes warm with a twinkle, and the grim lips moving.

  The effect on the guests was not instant. Nothing untoward having been expected, and most people being engaged in something of private interest, some moments passed before it was remarked that this music demanded attention.

  “Who are they?” someone whispered, only to be hushed instantly. Silence gradually fell over the salon, and penetrated to the other parts of the hotel where people had been chattering. By ones and twos those guests outside the salon tiptoed in, grouping themselves as quietly as possible, all facing one way, towards the piano. They were so commanded by the music that curiosity about the performers was suspended. Everybody listened, merely listened.

  The delicious, coralline music flowed, its shape and colour revealed under the tide of sound; something of another world, this quality being accentuated by the child’s performance, to which the old master had suited his own approach. Thus the element of anguish, always underlying Mozart, the anguish of sheer beauty which makes a failure of perfection, was reduced and almost banished from the sonata. What entranced the audience was the technical sureness. Women especially, watching the small boy, his head set so sedately, with the light glinting on his silky hair, his shoulders held in almost exactly the same immobility as those of his partner, found themselves in a physically emotional state of protest, they knew not why. Perhaps they sensed a power abnormal in childhood, a danger, a force that snatched them from the authority of the womb. Like the mother of Christ, they wanted to ‘ponder these things in their hearts’, though in so doing, they had to realise the mystery of this possession, a genius too remote, too inexplicable, to be born of woman. And they resented it; or they would have resented it, were they not spellbound, lost in wonder, and utterly subjected.

  Most of the men present looked glum. They too were puzzled, and wanted to ask a social question or two about the propriety of a child being allowed to do things of this kind. It was hardly decent, especially if the boy were English. It was taking things altogether too seriously. The work that kid must have been made to put in; slightly inhuman. One or two of them felt inclined to write to the R.S.P.C.C. about it. Who was this old boy who was showing off the child? He didn’t look the long-haired type. Might have been a cavalryman, from his appearance; Colonel of a regiment.

  But they too were gradually subdued to the music, and solely to the music. They listened, they heard the magical phrases, and they forgot the interpreters. Here was something absolute, and all the problems that led up to it, and others that were to lead down from it, were dissolved—while it lasted.

  But it came to an end. Schnabel dropped his hands on to his thighs, and sat with head bowed a little, his face set again into its mineral impassivity. Adrian studied his own fingers, sniffed, groped for his handkerchief, and looked round for Joan.

  She, throughout the display (for she dared not think of it as a performance), had been standing up, too frightened to remain in her seat. She was half-angry, because here was being done all that she and John had been commissioned to prevent being done. The public performance! It had happened, and she was responsible for allowing it.

  “What do we do?” she whispered, at the beginning, to John. But he could not reply. He shook his head, only half his attention being given to her. After that, they had to acknowledge defeat, at the hands of chance, for the stranger could hardly be blamed.

  As soon as the music ceased, and the guests saw that the performers remained at the piano, as though entranced by their own efforts, applause broke out, at first shyly, politely, with hand claps here and there. Then someone shouted, in a voice on edge with emotion, “Bravo!” and that was a signal for the release of enthusiasm, that shapeless and incoherent hysteria of pleasure which will suddenly seize an audience or a crowd, to m
ake them unanimous.

  That unanimity was a demand for more. The cries rose, the clapping increased to a thunder of applause. People began to ask questions, “Who are they? Who is the child? Who is that fierce old man?” Joan felt herself growing hot in the face. She turned to John and grasped his hand. He returned the pressure, and she saw his lips frame the words, “By God!” but the hubbub was too great for him to be heard, though he was close beside her.

  These cries of enquiry were answered by a newcomer, whom Joan saw enter at that moment, still in travelling clothes, along with one or two further guests who had arrived with him by the hotel bus. He took off his hat, and she recognised him. It was the enemy, Aloysius Sturm! So he had followed them, determined to capture the boy? Her anger increased. She determined to fight, and in that resolution she knew that she could rely on her husband. She could not know that she was only half-right. She might have discovered the truth had she been near enough to hear Mr. Sturm answer the queries that filled the salon.

  “Who is that!” he repeated grimly, for he disapproved of this unprofessional display by two assured box-office draws, “who is that! Why that is Artur Schnabel, ma’am. And the little boy is nobody at all, just at present.”

  This news was snatched from his lips by the lady nearest him, and it spread as rapidly as had the fire of pleasure. The roar increased, and at last Schnabel looked round, nodded his massive head, and reached across to the litter of sheet music on the piano. By this time the members of the band had begun to reassemble, but they were not averse to a late start, and they waited at the door below the dais, finishing their cigarettes and looking with mild interest at the interlopers whose performance they had not been there to appraise. Then one of them recognised the master.

  “By God!” he muttered in German. “D’you see who it is? Schnabel!” He stumped out his cigarette and stood at attention.

  The famous pianist appeared to be somewhat annoyed by the enthusiasm of the guests. He frowned, hunched his head into his shoulders, and refused to acknowledge the applause. Little Adrian, however, was less impassive. He enjoyed the excitement, and bobbed up and down, trying to look past the living rock of his partner’s figure. Seeing that the old man did not move, he clambered on to the stool and reached over to another pile of music on his side of the instrument. There he found something which interested him, after scattering sheets and albums across the lid behind the reading desk. He set up his find on the desk, and nudged the old man, who remained lost in cogitation that, to judge from the frown and the closed eyes, must have been perplexing him.