‘You’re busy on Sundays?’
‘Somebody’s always asking me to do something. I s’ll be glad to go this afternoon, though. It’ll take my mind off Shostakovich.’
‘We shan’t have much time on that.’
‘Play it straight through. Hear what it sounds like in their hall. Glad I caught you. I thought you said you’d be home later.’ He described the route. ‘I’ll tell Walt to be ready.’
Wilkinson opened the front door to David.
‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘While I get my coat on.’
In front of a gas fire Wilkinson’s wife sat with a small girl on her knee. The child, perhaps two or three years old, had been bathed, so that her golden, fine hair was still damp, with darker flat stripes on the soft halo. She wore a long nightgown and stared at the visitor with large eyes.
‘Lorna, this is David Blackwall. You’ve heard me speak about him.’
Mrs Wilkinson smiled. She looked no older than Mary, in jeans and a white blouse. She lowered the book of stories in greeting.
‘Read it, Mummy,’ the child whispered.
‘In a minute, chick.’
‘What is it?’ David asked. ‘A fairy tale?’
The girl quite violently buried her face in her mother’s breast.
‘That’s Emma,’ Wilkinson said.
‘Hello, Emma.’
The child did not move, sat still enough to conceal breathing.
‘She’s shy,’ Mrs Wilkinson said.
‘Till you get to know her.’ Proud father.
Mrs Wilkinson put an arm tighter about her daughter. She seemed an untidy young woman, fair hair loose, in shabby jeans, but smiling, much at home, showing large, even teeth. Her hands were red though the skin of her arms was pale, gold-furred.
‘It’s early upstairs tonight,’ she said. ‘We’ve been to Nana’s. My dad had to bring us home. Walt’s car broke down.’
‘Is this the usual bedtime?’ David asked.
‘As long as she’s in by seven.’
‘And this is number two,’ Wilkinson stood by the table on which lay a carrycot. David looked in. A very small bald baby slept under a ribboned quilt. ‘That’s Sarah Amelia.’
‘How old is she?’ David asked the mother.
‘Seven weeks tomorrow.’
He noticed that Lorna’s blouse was discoloured, splashed at both breasts. Emma had resumed her upright pose. Wilkinson had left the room. On the wall above the gas fire incongruously shone mounted crossed swords over a heraldic shield.
‘They keep you busy, I expect,’ David said.
‘Between the three of them.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’ll be calling out for a handkerchief in minute.’ She smiled, easily, painlessly; she would know the answer.
‘Read it, Mummy.’ This time the child’s voice had a small, forceful clarity.’
‘When Daddy’s gone. In a minute.’
‘Do you get broken nights?’
‘Yes. But we can’t grumble. She’s not too bad.’
Lorna Wilkinson crossed her legs, lifting her daughter. She leaned back, unembarrassed, seemingly very young. One could meet a dozen such in the cloakroom of any disco. She wore uneven mauve eyeshadow and her short fingernails were plum-dark red; her shoes had ridiculously crippling high heels.
‘She’s a good baby. They both are. Weren’t you, chick?’ She hugged Emma to her. Wilkinson returned in dark raincoat. ‘You’ve found the hankie I put out for you?’
‘Yes, thanks. We’ll be off now. I shouldn’t be late. We’ll have it over for half past nine. You go to bed, if you want.’
He bent to kiss his daughter, wife, and then dipped into the cot.
‘Right.’ He rattled the ‘r’ for David, an adult. ‘Bye-bye.’
In the car he complained about his banger, but without ferocity, as if his family had softened him. After a minute he jerked inside his seatbelt.
‘Lorna’s not keen on our turning professional,’ Wilkinson said.
‘What about you?’
‘Starting kids on the fiddle bores me stiff. But travelling round wouldn’t suit, either. That’s if we made it. Still, you can’t have everything.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know. Wait. I’m putting it off until Bob Knight comes. I mean, if I stay the Education Committee’s quite likely to cut down on peripatetic music teaching. They regard that as expendable. I’m in two minds. It’d be different if I were a bachelor.’
‘Is your wife a musician?’
‘Not professionally. She sang in the Harmonic and the Bach. She worked at the Central Library.’
Wilkinson sucked his cheeks in sombre reverie.
A caretaker led them into a hall where Payne and Barton were already occupied in discussion.
‘Big place.’ Wilkinson cocked a suspicious eye after greetings.
‘And only a small audience,’ Payne answered.
‘The students have been invited,’ Barton told them. ‘Not that many will come.’
‘Will you try the light?’ The caretaker wore a suit. ‘I stepped the bulb up, and put another by in case that one blows.’ Payne fiddled for the switch.
‘Can you raise it a couple of inches?’ the leader asked. More time wasted.
‘We’ll try the Mozart for volume,’ Payne said. ‘Bit of the first movement, and anything else you want, and then we’ll do the whole shebang of Shostakovich.’ They removed their coats in no hurry, prepared to play.
‘Have we got a room somewhere?’ Payne quizzed the caretaker, and tiptoed round, unwilling to sit.
‘Just through the door there. Not very spacious, but you won’t have far to walk. Cloakroom just across the passage. Shall I show you?’
‘Are you in a hurry? To go?’
‘No. I might just as well sit here and listen to you.’
He took his seat in the middle of the front row, where he swelled his chest, crossing his arms, proprietorially.
They began the Mozart, confidently, stopping at the first double bar.
‘Beautiful sound,’ Payne said.
‘And we can hear one another.’
‘Let’s do it again, so we aren’t caught out.’
They completed the movement this time enjoying themselves.
‘I’d like the Adagio,’ Barton said. ‘Or some of it.’
‘How’s the time?’
‘Twenty-five past six.’ David.
‘Right. I want us out of here at half seven or soon after.’
They smiled, satisfied with the big sound of their Mozart.
‘Now then. Shostakovich. As if this were the real thing. Blind on straight through. We’ll pick up the bits and pieces when we’ve done that.’
They played cautiously at first, then, caught up, strongly, as if amazed at their progress. The concert performance two hours later touched, snarled, hung sobbing amongst the wide spaces, the empty seats, with a hundred or so spectators jolted, goaded, arm-broken into sympathy by the plangency of sound. True, the four told one another there were still too many mistakes, weak joints, awkwardnesses, but their fear furbished their skill and the composer’s shattered art shouted his apprehension, his sorrow, his clawing for stars. Only when the Trent Quartet had finished their concert did they grasp quite what they had done; talent and terror had united.
‘Some bloody good playing,’ Payne congratulated them as they cased their instruments.
‘We got somewhere near it.’ Barton.
‘How about it, David?’ Wilkinson asked, as if the few minutes inside his home justified the intimacy of questioning.
‘It was good,’ David answered. ‘And puzzling. As if we didn’t quite make out what we were doing so well.’
‘That’s exactly right.’ Barton, bemused.
A handful of the audience broke in on them garrulously. A bottle of champagne was opened for their benefit, but the effect was spoilt when they had to drink from teacups. The recipient of the concert, a stout m
an with untidy hair and insecure spectacles, thanked them but vaguely as if he had difficulty in recalling what they had done for him. His wife boomed out her pleasure. The principal of the place, grey hair smoothed down over his square white face, a trio of subordinates at his shoulder even on Sunday, arranged words into three banal sentences. A balding man, with a red, lively, Jewish face, touched Barton’s arm.
‘Great, Cyril,’ he said, ‘great. Thanks.’
‘Shostakovich must have been a poor, lost sod.’
‘You showed us how much. It was superb. I’ve never heard that better played, on record or off. You’d fathomed it.’
‘Who was that?’ David, who’d been close by, asked when the man darted away.
‘Joe Horowitz. A mathematician. Family all killed in Auschwitz. They didn’t know how he stayed alive. He’d be three or so at the time.’ The age of Emma Wilkinson. ‘Some English professor adopted him. I don’t think he’s got over whatever it was he saw.’ Cyril watched the congratulatory antics with a guarded expression. ‘It doesn’t seem right that Shostakovich is battered about and all the result is a retiring present for some stuffed shirt.’
‘“Butchered to make a Roman holiday.”’
Cyril’s expression cleared, and he laughed out loud, committing himself with gusto. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘It really is.’
David guessed that Barton had worried himself that his colleague might be unable to bear Shostakovich’s collateral grief, and was relieved to find himself wrong. Pleased with his knockabout psychologizing he offered to take Wilkinson back.
‘I like Cyril Barton,’ he said to Walter in the car.
‘He’s all right. Bit of an old woman.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Just a year or two older than Fred. Thirty-five, perhaps.’
‘I thought he was more than that.’
‘He’s mean,’ Wilkinson answered, at a tangent. ‘Wouldn’t give the parings of his fingernails away.’
‘Was he an only child?’
‘Yes. And his parents were getting on, from what he says. I was one of five.’
‘Are the others musicians?’
‘Two of my brothers are brass players like my dad. An uncle left us a fiddle in his will; that’s why I started. How do you get on with Fred?’
‘Payne? He’s good.’
‘He’s a homo, you know.’ A throwaway whisper.
‘Does that make any difference?’
Wilkinson struggled largely in his seat.
‘Can’t help it, can he? Funny chap. I knew him a bit at the Royal Manchester. He was ahead of me. Bit of a big noise. Led the orchestra and so forth. He wants to drag the rest of us along with him and his ambitions.’
‘And you don’t approve?’
‘I don’t know about that. You’re either one hundred per cent behind Fred, or you’re out. He got rid of Jon Mahon. Oh, I know he left for Australia, and all the rest of it, but he knew Fred didn’t want him, was fetching Knighty down. Jon tried to do it on him by nipping off without notice and saying nothing. That’s why we’re lucky with you. You don’t think of taking it up, do you? As a career?’
‘No.’
‘Fred’s weighing you up, I reckon. He’s not sure about me, but keeps me on because I play well. He knows the sounds I make are as good as his, if not better. And that’s what you need as number two. A bloody good player who practises and doesn’t go in for ideas above his station. He’ll out me if I don’t fall in with his plans, I tell you. The reason I asked you was that when Bob Knight arrives there’ll be ructions. Between him and Fred. Knighty can play, he’s better than some fancy soloists, but he’s aggressive and high-spirited, all for a barney. Fred’ll let anybody argue; he’ll listen to you for a bit, but he’s got to be the leader.’
‘Isn’t that as it should be?’
Wilkinson looked across, considering.
‘Yes, if he knows what he’s on with. Somebody’s got to make his mind up. He’s also very good at organizing practices. He knows when to go over bad patches, and when to leave them. You don’t waste much time at rehearsals; you’ll have noticed that. But once old Jocko Knight appears there’ll be bust-ups, I reckon. And that’s why he’s so pleased to have found you. He’ll waft you in Knight’s face; a Cambridge man who can play.’
‘And is this good for the quartet?’
‘There have to be stresses. There are bound to be, it stands to sense. But a good leader’ll use them. He’s made me feel uncomfortable these last few weeks because I wouldn’t turn out every hour of the day and night to rehearse this Shostakovich. Oooh, yes. A hint there, a plain prod here. He’s let me know.’
They had arrived outside Wilkinson’s house.
‘Are you coming in?’ He consulted his watch. ‘Nine twenty.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘What would you do if you were in my position?’ Wilkinson asked.
‘I can’t answer that, because I don’t know how successful you’ll be. Presumably you have a mortgage. Would your wife mind your being away at nights?’
‘Yes. She’d put up with it, especially if we were making money.’
‘Which you won’t be for a start?’
‘That’s the snag. We’re starting late. It might be some years before we get recognized. I’ve some private pupils I’ll be able to fit in. Jim Talbot’ll find me casual work. I think Lorna wants me to give it a whirl. I’m the one dragging his feet. I thought I quite liked a flutter. What did you think about your wife going to America?’
‘She would have regretted not taking the chance.’
‘And you let her go. If she makes a success of it, you might never get her back. Not in the old sense. She’ll be dodging about the world.’
‘That’s so.’
‘And you still let her go?’ Question and statement.
‘The financial situation’s different from yours.’
‘I see that.’
David, suddenly reduced, debated whether to unburden himself to the man, decided against it.
‘We did ourselves proud tonight,’ he said, dredging the muddy sentence up.
‘Ye’. Thanks for the lift, then. Seeing yer.’
Wilkinson had left the car, slammed the door and disappeared up the entry of his house, quick as a snake.
For the first time David saw the face of the street, a well-built terrace of workmen’s cottages, each decorated differently with bright colours. One had white shutters; several flush doors. Curtains varied; pink lace to heavy yellow; one or two tenants had replaced the sash windows with black lengths of plate glass. Families lived here; made their mark. Fifty years ago, the doors would have been brown, varnished with artificial combed grain; only wear and tear marking off one from another. Now doors and windows, drainpipes and ledges had the garishness of a fairground.
That represented human effort. Men pleased their wives and established their egos with this free-for-all do-it-yourself.
He did not like it.
15
DAVID SPENT THE last Thursday and Friday of his Easter holiday with the Trent in Lincolnshire. They performed on Wednesday evening in Stamford; drove north early next morning to Cleethorpes where they demonstrated themselves about the district for two days in secondary schools, already launched into their summer term; and concluded with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, on the Saturday in Lincoln Cathedral. David drove back in the darkness, over flat roads, to Newark, along the Fosse, tired.
He had wasted his time; fatigue plagued his limbs; he yawned all the way.
Tomorrow, without a rehearsal, he would lounge about, preparing for the opening of term on Monday. He would see nobody, as his parents were holidaying in Cornwall; he would eat out of the fridge and since he had done no shopping would need to scout round for bread before he could have breakfast. He had not enjoyed the trip as he had expected; they had played together a good deal, had socialized with schoolteachers and culture-vultures while he had drunk more beer, precious little at th
at, than he had for months. The three nights in bedrooms in small hotels had not been uncomfortable, but the scratch nature of the school performances, nothing longer than a Mozart first movement, seemed unnecessarily unsatisfactory. The pupils looked interested enough, listening passively; even the final full concert in the cathedral had disappointed. The organizers blamed each other for lack of publicity, and certainly the audience was not large, seeming to crouch in dwarf rows round the quartet whose playing, good enough, precise, vibrant at the point of origin, long-bowed, dissipated itself into the huge darkening spaces of that great building. The prodigality of ordered stone about them diminished Mozart and Beethoven; he had never felt this before. It was as though the Lord God hovered and listened, a Jehovah compared to whom the divine sonorities of these gifted beings were as the lisping babble of a child learning to talk. He knew, and he regretted the knowledge, for the first time that music had limitations, that in eternity one would not listen to Mozart.
Perhps he was at fault. His colleagues were not displeased. This was to them the beginning of their professional career; some hundreds of people who had previously been ignorant of their existence now could name, remember the Trent Quartet. They had started, and saying little, keeping fingers crossed, went down to their houses, justified.
‘Have you enjoyed it?’ Barton in the windy darkness in Lincoln on the castle hill where they had parked. Payne and Wilkinson were staying behind in the Bell for a last drink.
‘Yes. Very good.’
Barton pulled himself up from the boot where he was stowing away a portmanteau, took two or three steps over towards David, who stood as if uncertain of his next action.
‘You’ll have to put her out of your mind, David. Sooner or later.’
David Blackwall nodded; Barton might, like Cicero, have spoken Greek.
‘There’s plenty going for you, however it looks now.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You can’t let her ruin your life. I know that’s what it seems like, but you’ll get over it. I’ve been meaning to say this to you all week, but I could never find a minute when there wasn’t somebody else about. But you looked so down in the mouth.’ That surprised David, who had been sprightlier than usual, he flattered himself. ‘You get over these things to a large extent. They might even bring good.’
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