Ronnie was always going to fantastic lengths in the hope of even meeting someone suitable: joining organisations, enrolling himself in mixed parties to all kinds of places, even studying those dismal advertisements. There are some people of both sexes who are good at finding companions, and some who are not. I realise that with many men there are special tastes that make a big difference, but I did not take that to be the problem with Ronnie. Ronnie simply was not good at making his mark, in the most general sense. It is a bad handicap in life for anyone.
I should not write down these rather painful things about Ronnie (and all the more painful because they are so commonplace) were it not for what happened to him, and through him to me. I have to give an idea of the kind of man he seemed to me at the time to be; and I still think really was—at that time.
The crucial aspect for present purposes was that Ronnie was always game for a certain kind of undertaking, where most men simply do not bother. They have no need to bother. The certain kind of undertaking was a pretty limited kind, seldom particularly appealing in itself, or as a prospect. People like Ronnie go in for such things mostly as the better alternative to being alone. We can all understand that. A far too large number of people find themselves placed as Ronnie was; and there is an immense wedge of activity and near-activity which would not go on at all, were it otherwise. I doubt whether much would be lost to the world as a whole if the things did not go on at all, but that is not the point.
I admit that I liked Ronnie Cassell, and I always felt that he ought to do better for himself. I should sincerely have liked Ronnie to make good, and I frequently accompanied him to this or that happening which he thought might salvage him. In a year or two, I saw enough to set me up as a part-time sociologist: the futile public meetings; the despairing social and artistic occasions; the worthy causes, seldom prospering, and often just as well. Ronnie never cared to attend these occasions on his own, even though the underlying idea was for him to meet someone. After much experience of the occasions, I perfectly well understood this paradox.
One day Ronnie showed me a circular announcing a gather for charity at the home of someone called Vera Z―. It was, I imagine, through the charity that Ronnie had become involved, but I cannot of course remember what charity it was. The particular attraction offered was slightly curious: something like “The Z― Family Will Entertain”, though probably expressed in a less big-top idiom. The broadsheet itself was not home-printed in that squelchy manner we all know; nor had it been professionally printed by a good firm. Obviously, it had been run off as cheaply as possible by some jobbing printer, and it contained several errors, such as upper case letters back to front and lower case letters upside down. I already had an immediate eye for such things, even before I became responsible for the lists of my own firm. I am putting down the things that remain with me. Ronnie gave me my own copy of the circular with which to find my way, if it should prove necessary; but I parted company with it, as I shall describe.
“Refreshments, I see.”
“Yes, but don’t expect too much,” said Ronnie.
“I don’t know. They’re a well-heeled lot in Hilltop.”
“Yes, but it’s for charity.”
We both knew how little that had to do with it, but it would have been unkind to go on; about the refreshments or about anything else. It was entirely a matter for me whether I went or not.
“There’s supposed to be a younger brother who shows promise,” volunteered Ronnie. “But I don’t know.”
“What kind of promise?”
“At the piano, I understand.”
Ronnie never actually pressed one to do anything. One could remain morally free.
“Is there a sister performing?” I enquired. It was a natural question, and one that I should still ask.
“Tricks,” said Ronnie. “Tricks?”
“Some sort of conjuring.”
“Surely it’s the boy who produces the rabbits and the girl who plays the pianoforte?”
“No. I’m told it’s the other way round. That’s what Theresa Baldock says, anyway.”
Mrs Baldock had something to do with almost all Ronnie’s extramural activities, much as C.A. Howell acted as universal middleman for the Pre-Raphaelites. When we trace the pedigrees of pictures for our Auction Rooms, we find Howell everywhere. Didn’t he murder one of his wives? I am quite sure that Theresa Baldock had done nothing like that.
I well remember asking Ronnie whether or not there was a Mr Z―.
“I understand there is,” said Ronnie. “Any more questions? Do you wish to come or don’t you? I’ll gladly pay the entrance for both of us.”
I had already noticed that it was a very small sum; an amount I could accept from him.
“I should be delighted, Ronnie. Thank you very much. I look forward to it. I really do.”
###
I didn’t have to find my own way, guided only by the broadsheet.
Ronnie and I went together, by the London Underground from Old Street Station, and then walked up the hill. Of course it is a long and steep hill, for the short distance from London, and it was a moderately muggy Autumn evening.
In any case, the truth was that whereas Ronnie did not know Hilltop at all (his formative years had been spent beside the Thames, somewhere near Grays, I believe), I already knew it extremely well. This was for the simple reason that I had been sent to the Grammar School there, centuries old, and socially somewhat ambiguous and amidships, assuredly not Eton or Sedbergh, but very positively not A― or L― either. There had been a tramcar up the hill in those more civilised days, and all the boys knew it had special, unique brakes, working on a cast-iron roller.
When, mopping our brows, we saw the Z― abode on the other side of the noisy highway, I realised that I already knew that too.
In my salad days, it had been the habitation of a swarthy medical man, about whom the myth among the boys was that he could always be relied upon for an effective abortion. I daresay it was merely a fable (as was possibly the cast-iron roller also, though one seemed to hear it grinding), but the belief played an affirmative and reassuring part in the half-acknowledged inner life of the older boys as they pursued the local girls in shops, picture houses, and laundries. I myself had kept out of all that. With another senior, I used to find love at H— Island, off the South Coast, where my friend’s Papa had a hospitable villa. In those days, H— Island was a gorgeous place.
“The house looks in poor shape,” said Ronnie. Never for a moment was he one to claim that his goose was his swan.
“Houses of that exact period were often not very well built in the first place,” I pointed out. I was already accustoming myself to ideas of that kind with a view to the future I was planning.
We managed to dart across. It seemed right that I should leave Ronnie to ring the bell, which was still labelled “Night Bell”. Most of the paint had fallen off the doors and windows.
Not a sound came back to us: possibly on account of the very heavy lorries in very low gear, and the fleets of screaming motorbikes. The lads of the village go to Hilltop from all over London with their bikes in order to roar up and down the various slopes in and around the cemeteries.
Ronnie started pushing, I think, and in the end the door opened. I encouraged Ronnie to enter first.
It was Mrs Baldock who awaited visitors in the narrow passage within. Possibly the night bell had not rung since the good doctor’s time.
“Splendid of you to come, Ronnie. I shan’t forget it.” Mrs Baldock first shook his hand and then continued holding on to it.
Ronnie motioned me forward with his free limb.
“It’s wonderful of you too, Mr Roselink. Between ourselves, Ronnie, I don’t know a single other person here. None of the regulars seem to be turning up. I suppose it may be the hill that causes the trouble for some of them. There is always so much that ought to have been foreseen, Mr Roselink.”
“It may be a good thing to bring in some new blood,�
� suggested Ronnie.
“New blood is always wanted,” said Mrs Baldock.
But a woman was standing in the passage behind her.
“Young masculine blood particularly,” said this woman in a low but very clear voice that I can hear now, and hear without especially trying or wishing. It was a voice like the Walbrook in its pipe. “Young masculine blood is hard to attract.”
“Vera!” cried Mrs Baldock. “You made me jump.”
I had often seen for myself how true the woman’s words were. They applied wherever I had been with Ronnie. In those circles at least, one asked, with the singer, where had all the young men gone?
Mrs Baldock had looked momentarily quite startled, but it was true that Vera had entered upon the scene without a sound. Now she was smiling at Mrs Baldock.
“Present these two handsome young men to me, if you please,” said Vera. Her formality was, I thought, only half-humorous. She was sovereign and she knew it.
“Mr Ronald Cassell and Mr Richard Roselink,” said Mrs Baldock, still fluttery. She did not put a name to our hostess.
I could see at once that Vera was drawn to Ronnie; strongly drawn at first glance. Not to me. It really did not much matter, but there it was, and I could not be mistaken.
Vera Z― was a short, perhaps even dumpy woman, with damp-looking black hair hanging over her shoulders and parted widely down the middle, after the style of Myra Hess, who had been at the top of her vogue only a short time before. I recalled the piano-playing younger brother, whose talents we were there to assess. Myra Hess might have played her part in the domestic legend. Vera had somewhat the same features; but she also had large, dark, glistening eyes, and a noticeably big and luscious mouth. She was wearing a long black skirt and the simplest possible white blouse with an oval neck and short sleeves. Her bare arms were by now a little too long and bony, but her neck was still firm and well-shaped.
A woman of force, one thought, both in physique and in costume. I glanced at Ronnie. Duly, he was all eyes for her; for her big eyes.
There was even a perceptible silence for a moment among the four of us. It made me aware of something else. The whole house, at which a party was supposed to be going on, even if only for charity, seemed equally silent.
“Are we the first?” I asked, almost involuntarily. One tries never to speak involuntarily, but, in bizarre circumstances, one does not always succeed.
“By no means the first,” said Vera Z―, in her dark voice, and giving me a look that might mean anything or nothing, but which probably meant that I was something of an ass to speak at all.
She addressed Ronnie. “Would you take my hand, Mr Cassell?”
Ronnie simply snatched it. He had of course previously abandoned Mrs Ballcock’s hand. Vera drew him behind her down the passage.
I glanced at Mrs Baldock, who now seemed to be flushed rather than frail.
“I’ll wait here, Mr Roselink,” she said. “I expect there’ll be some latecomers.”
I looked at my watch, and saw how unwise I had indeed been to suggest that Ronnie and I might have been the first arrivals. The hour named on the circular had already passed. I have always been one who is never late for anything. I felt certain that the time had gone in some inexplicable way while I had been discussing the house with Ronnie as we waited to cross the road. It sounds unlikely, but I was sure of it.
Almost all the seats in the room within were occupied. At the far end from where one entered was a rough dais, made of cases and chests, on which duly stood a piano and its stool. It was not a concert grand, but a baby grand; which, from the weight point of view, might have been just as well. The room was full of plain and artless wooden chairs. There was a single empty one at the corner of the back row to my left as I entered. Doubtless it was empty because an average occupant might well complain of draughts. Ronnie had been escorted to a seat in the front row, as if he had been an Alderman or a Housemaster, and Mrs Z― was leaning markedly towards him and captivating him. However old was she? I had simply no idea.
I glanced at the occupant of the next chair to my left. He was a thin, elderly man in a serious suit. He offered no recognition of my arrival. I sat down on the empty chair, as it seemed to be the only one available. My neighbour never so much as glanced at me. I was trying to think of something to say to him, possibly with an inward quality to it, when the fraternal pianist appeared from nowhere, and everyone but I clapped for some time. Dead silent though they had been hitherto, at least they seemed all to care deeply for music. Of course we all care for music in these days.
In the nature of things, I had applauded more reticently, and in that I proved not to be mistaken either.
The recital did not begin immediately, because first the lid of the piano had to be opened. Normally, it might have been done before the performer had entered, or even the audience; but possibly there were aspects of that particular room, or even that particular audience, which would have made it unwise to do it too soon.
It was Mrs Z― who set about the task in person, while the pianist stood behind the stool looking on; but at least not seating himself while others worked. Soon Mrs Z― was being assisted by Ronnie, and in the end they brought it off between them, and the open lid was stayed with a rod.
It had dawned on me by then that there were at least ten males in the room to every female, not a proportion I normally care for; and, furthermore, ten males with grey hair, white hair, mottled hair (as in the case of the pianist), or no hair, to every male with hair of any other kind. No hair at all seemed the commonest. Of course for most of them I had a back view only. It is also a fact that solo music recitals always do seem to attract more solitary men than solitary women. One learns that. I thought a bet could safely be taken that Ronnie and I were the youngest persons present. I wondered where Mrs Baldock would find a seat. I might easily have to vacate my own for her, and stand in the draught.
In the event, Mrs Baldock never entered at all. Quite probably, she had another good work to assist that evening, perhaps far away. At this point it came to me that, as far as I had noticed, no-one had paid the small admission charges for Ronnie and me.
There had been a single-sheet programme on my seat, palely mimeographed, and with some of the words written in reverse; but I parted company with it too before the evening was over, in circumstances I shall shortly come to. Works by ten or a dozen composers were promised, but they meant little to me, because I had never heard of one of these people, even though by then I was going to the Queen’s Hall quite often (and not only to the Promenade, which certain girls didn’t care for) and sometimes to the Wigmore and Aeolian Halls also. Acquaintances sometimes involved me in far stranger musical hideouts than those. Already I knew many names in music.
Whether I did or not made little difference: the man on the rostrum played every composer and every composition in exactly the same way; flawless, I daresay, if followed note by note by someone thoroughly familiar with the notes in question (I always agree with John Worthing in that context), but careful, regular, unintermitting and mechanical to the level of frenzy. I soon found it hard to be sure whether specific works by specific composers were being played at all.
He was a small man, and his expression, faintly worrying from the start, was as totally inflexible as his technique (though, to do the man justice, that is not a word I care for either). He pounded evenly along, shooting out his arms and drawing them in again; pedalling methodically; looking from first to last as frozen-faced as Buster Keaton, though less comical, far less. I guessed that he was sitting on his nerves the whole time, holding in the shrieks; but I had become used to the type in my days at the ancient Grammar School, only just up the road. Our friend might once have been a pupil there, of course and have been taught his art there. It seemed eminently possible, though again one could not attempt a date. I myself had done little at school that was musical beyond roaring out the successive school songs in Great Hall, one with a thousand eager others. I remember
all three tunes now.
Trying to keep my mind occupied as the first half of the programme steamrollered forward, I gazed systematically around me at the appointments of the Z― home.
Alas, there were very few appointments visible. The walls were long faded. The ceiling was noticeably in need of attention. There was no carpet. There was nothing you could name beyond the rows of hard chairs. The middle-sized pianoforte could easily have been hired, though the shape was a little unusual. I next realised there were not even light-fittings, or none that I could distinguish.
I looked at my watch. It was only forty minutes until official lighting-up time. We had a race on our hands, especially when one allowed for the promised refreshments during the intermission. The pianist was showing exceptionally little awareness of this. Would the order ultimately be given for candles to be brought in? As in the eighteenth century? If only there had been something worth looking at by candlelight; or, preferably, someone!
Despite the wild applause at the outset, I must admit that not a mouse stirred at the occasional, sudden pauses or gaps; presumably between the different pieces, though it was difficult to tell. At least these funny people were not behaving like pop fans. Moreover, the man had no sheet music for someone to shift, since he played on remorse-lessly without it. I did not think it was possible for anyone in the audience to be actually asleep.
###
The interval was upon us. It had come suddenly, as so often happens at recitals. There was applause once more, rustling and lengthy; not merely disproportionate, I thought, but almost irrelevant to anything that had happened. I took the occasion to [text missing] resemble one of the hysterical amateur dramatic performances Ronnie and I had attended in different suburbs: antique though they were, these people were making glad acknowledgment to one of their very own.
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three Page 15