by Francis King
Götz also sometimes danced; but it was invariably a performance the clumsiness and absurdity of which—his legs were perpetually getting tangled in each other—had too much in it of pathos to be amusing to witness. His pink-blond hair would fall into his blinking eyes, his shirt would come out behind, and his harelip would be puffed in and out as he painfully gasped for breath. Nobody laughed at him; nobody had the heart to do so. All the customers in the taverna would keep their eyes averted from the dance-floor until he had finished.
Usually such evenings ended with our retiring to Theo’s house in a taxi that carried, not only us, but at least one stranger: a taciturn evzone, perhaps, who only smiled sleepily when anyone addressed him, a pert sailor working with the British military mission, one of the waitresses from the Arachova whose hair, as she sat on my lap, would smell of mutton fat and cigarette smoke and who would fling her arms around my neck with a screech whenever the taxi bounced on a pot-hole; or a couple of girls in service (‘hopeless from the start’ as Cecil rightly prophesied, ‘never take a couple’) who would giggle alternatively as Götz tried to paw them and then refused his invitation to come into the house for a drink.
Sometimes it would be Cecil’s evening, sometimes Götz’s; sometimes, by a stroke of fortune, it would be the evening of both. ‘You know, my dear,’ Theo would say to me, ‘if there’s ever anything you want you’ve only got to tell me.’
‘Thank you, Theo.’
‘Meanwhile let me play you the tenth movement of my Concerto. You will see that I have made a number of alterations.’ Running his hands up the piano, he would sigh and exclaim: ‘Art, art, art! In the end—as Thomas Mann said to me in Venice—it’s the only thing that counts.’
The Concerto was now occupying much of Theo’s time; for he had, as he had prophesied, emerged from his ‘depressive’ phase and entered on a ‘ manic’ one. The failure of the Fashion Parade was no longer mentioned; perhaps it had even been forgotten. Now we talked, not about Theo, the revolutionary designer of men’s apparel, but about Theo, the composer; and instead of being consulted about whether I considered that two colours matched each other or lace would be preferable to net, I was asked to give my opinion on whether a certain theme should be given to the oboe or French horn. On both subjects I was, unfortunately, equally ill-informed; which may be the reason why Theo once burst out at me: ‘Don’t just say ‘‘ H’m, h’m, h’m!’‘ You have a mind—speak it.’
‘But, Theo, I don’t know.’
‘I’m afraid you’re lazy,’ Theo said in a gently reproving tone. ‘You left a lot of mistakes in Nadia’s manuscript. Even I could see that.’
He had already decided that the first performance of the Concerto must be given abroad. ‘Here I am surrounded by enemies—you saw what they did to me on that never-to-be-forgotten-day.’ He was, I assumed, referring to the Fashion Parade. ‘There is no one as jealous of the success of others as the Athenian; and no one as contemptuous of the products of his own country. But if I bring back laurels from London or New York or Vienna or Paris; then even Athens must accept me.… I think I would like, best of all, to have my first performance in London—in your Festival Hall—but whether I would want to play the solo, or conduct, or merely be a spectator, I have not yet decided. What do you think? You know how terribly I suffer from nerves.’
‘I should advise you to be a spectator.’
‘Yes, I feel you may be right—if only I can find a suitable pianist. You have some good pianists in England, haven’t you? Solomon, and Dame Hess, and—what’s his name?—Charlie Kunz. Do you think it would cost a lot to hire the Festival Hall?’
‘A great deal, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps Cecil would help me.’
A few days later Theo arrived, greatly excited, at Dino’s flat, with a newspaper cutting which he removed from the lining of his hat: ‘ Look at this! It’s about the arrival of Lady Aaronson.’ He handed it to me and then snatched it back: ‘Let me read it to you—you’re too slow with Greek letters.’
It was the briefest of announcements: Lady Aaronson was expected in Athens the week after next, on a tour of the Greek schools which had benefited from the Fund of which she was President. Lady Aaronson and her husband, Sir Emmanuel Aaronson, the cutting went on, were generous patrons of the arts in England and it was due to their encouragement that the Frinton Festival of Modern Music had ever come into existence. Lady Aaronson would be a guest at the British Embassy.
‘I must get on to the Ambassador at once. This is too good a chance to miss. If I can interest a woman like that—who has the whole of the artistic world at her feet—all my difficulties will vanish. Ah, if only the dear Princesse de Polignac were alive!’
‘Funnily enough, I had a letter this morning about her.’
‘About Winny de Polignac?’
‘No, about Mabel Aaronson.’
‘What!’ Theo looked at me in amazement. ‘You had a letter about her?’
‘Yes, I was asked to take her round the sights. Still, if she’s going to be at the Embassy, she probably won’t need my help.’
‘But we must take her around.… And I shall help you.’ Theo looked into my face for a moment and then said: ‘ You’re not joking, are you?’
‘No, of course not. Why should I?’
‘You have such an odd sense of humour.… But this is marvellous, Frank! Then you can introduce me, can’t you?’
‘Certainly, if you wish.’
‘I suppose she is one of the most important people in the English musical world?’
‘Oh, hardly that.’
‘But she has a lot of influence?’
‘A lot of money.’
‘Which comes to the same thing.… And the family’s very old, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.… Mabel Aaronson was governess to two of my cousins.’
‘Was what?’
‘Governess.’
‘Oh, how terrible! I think it’s so tragic when girls of aristocratic families have to take jobs like that with people who probably made their money out of groceries.… Still, it seems all to have ended happily. She’s very rich now?’
‘Very, very rich.’
But like many people who are very, very rich, Mabel Aaronson was also very, very mean. She believed, as I remembered from the accounts of my cousins, in organised charity and not in spontaneous charitable acts; and just as, at my uncle’s house, when a tramp called to beg, she would give him, not a shilling, but a coupon for the Salvation Army Shelter, so now, in Greece, the woman who had organised a Fund which had benefited schools throughout the country would hurry past, murmuring ‘Disgraceful, this begging’, when some ragged child attempted to extort the equivalent of threepence from her. However far across Athens we might be, she always insisted on returning to the Embassy for her meals: which might, I admit, be more charitably but less plausibly ascribed to her mania for cleanliness.
She was a tall, lean woman, with close-cropped sandy hair streaked with grey the colour of pepper, a determinedly jutting chin under a vast nose, and great masculine hands and feet that never seemed to be properly joined to the attenuated arms and legs on which they moved. She always carried a string-bag which, soon after her arrival, was supplemented by another bag of supposedly Western Macedonian embroidery (‘Perhaps your friend, Colonel Grecos, would be so good as to go in and buy it for me; when they see a foreign face, they always put up the price’). The sun had peeled her cheeks and given to the vee of her bony chest the inflamed texture of the badly plucked breast of a chicken. She was a woman of immense energy, intelligence and honesty. ‘It’s women like her,’ the Ambassador’s wife had remarked, ‘who won the war for us.’
‘And made it such hell for everyone else,’ she then quickly added.
Lady Aaronson had been given the C.B.E. for her work with the Red Cross.
At the first meeting, it was obvious that she did not wholly trust Theo, and I ascribed this to a remark of his when we were driving past th
e Gymnastic Club in the taxi which Lady Aaronson would so obviously have preferred to have been a tram. ‘What’s that building?’ she had asked.
‘Ah—that!’ Theo sighed. ‘It’s so many years since I set foot in there. Believe me, Lady Aaronson, you can get closer to Ancient Athens by walking in there for a minute than by spending a whole day on the Acropolis.’
‘Are there some Classical remains there?’ Lady Aaronson enquired.
‘No, no—it’s the Gymnastic Club. What happy days I spent there! There was a time when I and my dear friend, General von Freibusch, used to go there every morning before breakfast. But then there came a day when I realised that it was no longer compatible with my dignity to be seen hanging from the parallel bars or scrambling over a horse. And I never went there again.’
Lady Aaronson said nothing, but as she looked out of the taxi window her chin seemed to be jutting even more than usual and a vertical line had appeared between her sandy eyebrows. When, at the end of the afternoon, Theo left us, she asked:
‘Tell me—who was that General von Freibusch that your friend mentioned? A German, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘A Nazi?’
‘It seems most unlikely.’
‘Was he here during the Occupation?’
‘No. He spent the Occupation in a concentration camp—until his death.’
‘Oh.’ Her face was clearing. But a moment later, she switched from a discussion of the ikons in the Benaki Museum to say: ‘ Did your friend say that his uncle had been a Minister under General Metaxas?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was a Fascist, surely—as far as I remember?’
‘In a way—yes. But it was he who gave the famous ‘‘No’‘ to Mussolini.’
‘Oh, yes, of course—so he did! It’s so difficult now to remember all that happened at the beginning of the war. One was never quite sure who was on what side—one moment one was running a ‘‘Finland Fête’‘ and the next moment a ‘‘Help Russia Bazaar’’.’ Her large yellow teeth were revealed now in a smile. ‘I liked your friend,’ she said. ‘ He seems a real gentleman.… It was just that mention of a German General’s name—one likes to get people’s war records straight.… Still, I knew from the first that he was obviously all right. I’m usually pretty shrewd at seeing through people.’
Soon, Theo had completely won her over. She had, as I remembered from childhood visits to my cousins, an extraordinary greed for information which I myself was wholly incapable of satisfying. She would ask the measurements of the Theseum, the age of the Greek Queen and the exact number of members in Parliament; and invariably it was Theo, not I, who provided her with the answers. Often, I suspect, he was merely bluffing: but since there was no one at the Embassy likely to contradict her when, that evening at dinner, she announced that the pediment of the Acropolis weighed thirty-three tons, his position was safe. ‘How knowledgeable the Colonel is!’ she exclaimed when Theo had given her an entirely fictitious account of the Byron signature on the temple at Sunium. ‘I suppose your work keeps you far too busy to get round much,’ she added acidly to me.
Obviously she was no less charmed by Theo’s exaggerated and, to me, slightly ridiculous gallantry and by the shameless way in which he would flatter her. Like many people who congratulate themselves on being able to ‘see through’ others, Mabel Aaronson never doubted the sincerity of any compliment that was paid to her. Theo could tell her that she looked charming in her grey woollen two-piece and plaid skirt; he would compare her profile to that of a Hetaira in the Archaeological Museum; he would chuckle appreciatively when she barked out some roughly facetious comment, congratulate her on her knowledge and culture, and reiterate what a pleasure—what a real privilege—it was to accompany such a distinguished Englishwoman round his native city. Never for a moment did it seem to occur to her that he might not mean all he said.
It was on our third morning of sight-seeing that Theo first mentioned the subject of his music. He began to question Mabel Aaronson about the Frinton Festival, implying, as he did so, that for real music lovers it was Frinton, not Salzburg (which had become sadly disappointing) nor Edinburgh (which had always been vulgar) that exerted the most potent spell. ‘How I have always wished to have enough money to take myself there! Last year I thought I had saved enough; but then I had a lot of unexpected demands from all sides, and in the end I had to content myself with a fortnight in Corfu.’
‘Our beginnings are still small,’ Mabel Aaronson said.
‘But what does size matter?’ Theo protested vehemently. ‘That is what is wrong in modem life—this mania for size! Look at Mycenae! It might be a village!’
‘True.
Theo went on to ask if the works of foreign composers were ever performed; he meant, of course, he added, living foreign composers.
‘No, not for the moment,’ Mabel Aaronson said. ‘We really designed our Festival as a shop window for English talent only. But perhaps later …’
‘Certainly, later,’ Theo said.
As they parted he held her hand for an unusually long time after he had shaken it, and said: ‘As one lover of music to another—may I ask something of you, Lady Aaronson?’
‘Why, certainly, Colonel.’
‘I have a few friends coming in to listen to some music of my own, next Thursday week—quite informal, you understand, the French Ambassador and his wife, perhaps Madame Venizelou, Nicholas Ghikas, Seferis—if he has returned from England—Spiro Harocopos and, of course, my very good friend, the Colossos of Maroussi—just a small, and very select, party. Won’t you come too? I’d so like you to meet my little circle, and I am certain that they would like to meet you.’ He smiled slyly: ‘You probably didn’t guess that I wrote music, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t.… What a surprise!’
‘You will come, won’t you? I’m going to play my Athens Concerto—but there’ll be no orchestra, of course.’
‘What day did you say? Next Thursday week? … Well, of course I must ask the Ambassador first. He’s arranging my programme, and he really makes me work! Still, if he’s willing to give me a few hours’ leave, I’d be delighted to come.’
I had the feeling that, after she had spent two weeks at the Embassy, the Ambassador would be delighted to give her all the leave that she wanted.
‘Wasn’t that clever of me!’ Theo said, as Lady Aaronson walked up the Embassy steps (as she had thanked us for taking her round, she had added: ‘One day, when I’m not expected back to lunch here, you must let me take you both out to lunch at some little taverna round the corner’).
‘Very clever. But how are you going to get hold of all those guests you promised her?’
‘Oh, it needn’t be exactly those. Don’t worry—I shall work on it. And you, of course, will help me.… Do you know the French Ambassador?’
‘No.’
‘No, I was afraid not. Do you know any Ambassadors?’
‘Only our own. And Madame Landerlöst.’
‘Who?’
I explained that this was the French wife of the Ambassador to one of the Scandinavian countries.
‘Good. Well, you can get hold of her. And Spiro. And bring Dino, too. Oh, and contact some of those Council people in whose houses you’re always drinking tea.… And, of course, there’s the American crowd … But the most important thing is to get this Madame—Madame Whatever-she-is of yours. First things first; the rest will all follow.’
I was still terrified of Sophie Landerlöst, though by now I had become a frequent visitor at her house. She had once been on the stage, her friends saying that Landerlöst had first seen her at the Comédie Française, her enemies at the Bal Tabarin; though to me either alternative seemed equally improbable. She was a vast woman, with an enormous sagging dew-lap and bosoms that she was always patting as though they were footballs which she feared might slip out of position. Her feet and chubby, heavily be-ringed hands were tiny and so were her mouth and eyes. She dyed her hair a redd
ish purple, put green shadows on her eyes even during the day, and wore hats that seemed to be made entirely of sequins and ostrich feathers. One would not expect such a woman to be energetic: but Sophie Landerlöst, who climbed mountains, and swam and danced the Greek dances, was the most energetic woman I have ever come across. Landerlöst himself one seldom saw for more than a second; except that, when he spoke English, it sounded as if the water were running out of a bath, no clear recollection of him is now left with me.
Sophie and I first met in the bar of the Grande Bretagne. She was perched on a stool, and having obviously drunk too much, was engaged in trying to provoke a political argument with the taciturn bar-tender. She spoke Greek well: ‘Plastiras – Papagos – Venizelos – Tsaldaris – Tsouderos—Markezinis—they are all——’: she used a French word which, if it had not been understood by the bar-tender, had certainly been understood by most of the other startled drinkers. Perhaps one of the gentlemen named was even then present. Again she repeated the word, and flung out her hand in which she was holding a black bag studded with gold stars. As neatly as if she had made an off-cut at cricket her glass of whisky jumped into my lap. ‘Ah, pardon—pardon—pardon!’ She began to mop me with an enormous silk scarf printed with Michelangelo’s ‘David’, but in doing so, succeeded in spreading the damage further.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll dry.’
‘Yes, but what will people think until it dries?’ She went off into boisterous laughter; and then crossed, swaying a little, towards a radiator. ‘It’s warm,’ she said, patting the bars. ‘Come and sit on it.’
I did not accept this invitation; but I accepted the drink which she next offered. We drank a lot together, and when we parted, though my trousers were dry, I myself was sodden.