They were the same vintage, she and Claude: forty-two. Mid-life was a good time to revisit all this, to see the signs more clearly. If only she’d known the half of it when she married Sigismond so long ago! Seventeen, she’d been. What did anyone know at that age?
Now, at least, she knew who she was and what she needed. And as accommodating as Sigismond had been – offering her a life of security and looking the other way when she had an amour with someone from her artistic circle – Emma realised she needed something else. The time had come to enter another door.
There would be a scandal, of course. Paris would talk about it for days until the affair was superseded by the next one. She wondered if Claude considered how it might affect his wife. Sigismond would be fine; he’d find solace in the consoling pats from others at his club, or the arms of expensive consorts. With Lilly, Emma wasn’t so sure. Sure, she’d probably seen something of the demimonde and the appalling behaviour of men during her time as a mannequin – but there was something fragile about her.
Emma shook her head, straightened herself and returned to the music. This was becoming too fanciful. Wasn’t she getting ahead of herself? Claude was playing the piano for her, that’s all. He wasn’t saying anything, and she hadn’t decided anything. Middle age, old girl. Deep breaths.
The recital lasted an hour, during which Debussy’s body stayed immobile apart from the movements of his arms. There was a long gap where the music merged into silence, the quiet becoming an essential part of the meditation, before he finally lifted his hands from the keyboard.
He turned on the stool to look at her, one eyebrow raised as if to repeat the unspoken question.
Time to decide. Now.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Lilly was incredulous when he made the proposal later that week.
‘Again? This afternoon? Claude, I won’t even have time to let them know I’m coming! What will they think when I arrive unannounced with a suitcase?’
‘Your parents will be delighted by the prospect of enjoying their beloved daughter for a month without the presence of her surly husband. Paris in July, Lilo! Why would you want to spend the month sweltering all the way up here on the fifth floor?’
‘What about you, darling?’ He could tell it made no sense to her at all. She was incapable of seeing the enormity of what was going on.
‘I’ll go somewhere too for a spell, ma petite. The trouble isn’t so much La Mer. I’ve got to find something new, instead of revolving in the same old circle of ideas. If I don’t, my reputation will suffer, and so too will my livelihood – such as it is. We can’t go backwards from here, Lilly. We’ve had quite enough of living like this.’
She started to cry. ‘Claude, Claude – I don’t understand …’
‘I want you on the train as soon as possible, Lilly. All these explanations will make sense to you very soon. Right now, let your parents hear your laughter. It’ll delight them as much as it delights me.’
Lilly lifted her face from her hands to see if the expression on his face matched the concern of his words. It was the same impassive mask.
JULY
Jacques Durand put down his knife and fork and leaned forward to make sure André Messager would hear his lowered voice.
‘That’s part of the mystery solved,’ Debussy’s publisher said. ‘Claude’s in Jersey.’
‘Jersey?’ said their mutual friend, who’d conducted the premiere of Pelléas. ‘He goes to a resort for the summer – without Lilly?’
‘She’s terribly confused, the poor woman. He’s just written to me to say his work is going well. You’d think he could put the pen down for a holiday in July, especially with someone like Lilly on hand to fan your face when it gets a bit hot. Claude’s trying to make it sound like a research project. You know – if you’re writing a piece about the sea, it’s better to be close to the real thing. He says the sea has shown him all its guises.’
‘I remember when we were rehearsing for Pelléas. He needed to be close to Mary Garden as well – and not just during work hours. I bet Claude wouldn’t have minded seeing all her guises. It was almost as if he imagined himself the Pelléas to her Mélisande.’
Durand put down his wine glass. ‘He’s working out there in the Channel, though. I also received a small set of songs from him, all of them settings of Verlaine. He made one rather mysterious request about publication.’
‘Claude always likes to keep us all guessing. What’s this one?’ said Messager.
‘He wants the dedication to say “In gratitude for the month of June 1904 – A.l.p.M”. He says it’s a contribution to legend.’
The conductor considered this briefly. ‘Do you think it’s some sort of code?’
‘It looks more like an anagram to me.’
‘A.l.p.M – you could be right. Where was he last month?’
‘Right here in Paris. It’s not the anagram of a place, in my opinion. I think it refers to a person. And I don’t think that person is Lilly. She doesn’t even know where he is.’
Messager sighed and reached for his wine. ‘Another typically Parisian situation,’ he said. ‘We’re both able to deduce what’s going on. I just hope it all ends in the usual way so the woman can return to some peace of mind. Contribution to legend, indeed. Claude is a genius on a good day, but then he becomes just another arrogant prick.’
58 RUE CARDINET, 13 OCTOBER
Debussy’s father had just left. Lilly slumped in a chair and looked across the room to Claude’s desk with the blotters and Chinese figurines still in their place.
So that was it, after three months of not knowing.
Sure, his letter back in August requested a separation. But Claude had been through a lot of stress while writing La Mer. Special people like him needed to retreat for a while, make some room for their imaginations. At least, she supposed so.
And they were married. She had done everything she could to make his life a comfortable one. He used to write that her love was ‘Wisdom in its most beautiful form’. ‘Let’s never demean it,’ he said. She kept all his letters.
She was prepared to wait, but she wanted to know where Claude had gone. Just to know. His father had told her he would find out.
Dieppe. Claude had spent time in Jersey, and now he was in Dieppe. Another place by the sea. She knew that La Mer was still being completed, but how much damned sea did he need?
‘Lilly, you must be strong now,’ Debussy senior had added. Claude was not alone.
He was living with that ‘society’ woman. That Madame Bardac.
‘We’ll try to talk some sense into him, Lilly. Leave it to me. Promise me that you’ll be all right for a few days.’ He is a dear old man.
‘I promise, Papa. We have friends I can call on. I’ll make some plans.’
Now that she was alone, she stood up and walked across the room to open the drawer of Claude’s desk where the revolver was usually kept. It was still there.
She was amazed at her composure, her clarity of purpose, and wondered if Gaby had felt the same before she did this.
First, she sat and wrote a short letter to Claude addressed to his father. Racing downstairs, she handed it to the concierge for the next post.
She returned upstairs in slow steps, pausing to look out the window of each landing at the trees shedding their leaves. It was three o’clock.
When she reached their apartment, she closed the door, returned to the study and retrieved the gun, carefully inserting a bullet. Then, with trembling hands – Lilly had never handled a loaded weapon before – she turned the gun on herself, pointed the end of the barrel below her left breast, and pulled the trigger.
POSTSCRIPT
Lilly Debussy survived her self-inflicted gunshot wound, although the bullet remained in her body until her death in 1932.
The scandal of her suicide attempt engulfed Paris and turned Claude Debussy into a social pariah. Most of his friends, including André Messager and Mary Garden, broke their ties wi
th him. His divorce from Lilly was finalised in August of 1905.
The financial settlement of Emma Bardac’s divorce from her husband was resolved very much in his favour due to the circumstance of her adultery. She and Debussy had a daughter, Claude-Emma (‘Chouchou’), in October 1905, and were married in January 1908, staying together for the rest of his life. It was to Emma that he dedicated the second set of Fêtes galantes songs published by Durand in September 1904; ‘A.l.p.M’ was the acronym of ‘à la petite mienne’ (‘To my dear little one’), chère petite mienne being Debussy’s nickname for his lover.
La Mer was first performed in October 1905 and given the thumbs-down by critics as retribution for the Debussy/Bardac episode. It is now considered one of the supreme orchestral masterworks of the twentieth century.
Claude Debussy died of rectal cancer on 25 March 1918 in Paris. His daughter, Chouchou, died the following year.
IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME
He was classical music’s most eligible bachelor during the 1850s: young, beautiful, and gifted. Johannes Brahms was in his mid-twenties and on the cusp of success with one of the greatest piano concertos ever written when he took a fateful holiday to an idyllic university town. There, he would encounter love, inspiration, and a crucial choice between two women in his life. Most importantly, he would face his most intractable problem: himself.
‘How delightful to run your hands through such hair!’
Joseph Joachim to his friend Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) about Brahms’s fiancée, Agathe von Siebold
HAMBURG, SPRING 1858
‘What do you mean, you don’t want to go?’ Joachim said, waving the letter. ‘Just read what Julius promises: “good voices lodged in very lovely girls”. Apparently, they will “take pleasure in being at your disposal”. Hello, Mister Choirmaster! You’re twenty-five, buddy. It’s summertime. You’re a nature boy. Surely you feel a bit of sap rising? Here’s your chance to dispose of some of it.’
At the word ‘dispose’, the violinist poked his accompanist in the crotch with his bow.
Johannes swept back his fair hair and narrowed his eyes. ‘Look who’s talking, you misanthrope,’ he said, only partly as a joke. ‘Clara’s giving me hell about this as well. She wants to bring five of her kids, for heaven’s sake.’
‘That’s a holiday, then! Means she’s leaving two of them behind.’
Brahms fell silent, as he always did when it came to divulging intimate details – even to his best friend. Clara had done more than complain about his reluctance; she’d brought up the old issues of ‘longing’ and ‘unspeakable woe’ he thought to be long settled between them.
Joseph saw the pale-blue eyes grow distant, and broke the reverie.
‘Johannes! Don’t go drifting back into your piano concerto.’ He and his workaholic Hamburg colleague were giving the concerto its first public run in Hanover in January, before it headed for the big time in Leipzig.
‘Well, it is the biggest thing I’ve done yet,’ Brahms protested, ‘making its way in a centre of European music, and the first movement still refuses to be properly born. On top of that, I’m starting on a serenade.’
‘You can develop your serenade by trying it out on those Göttingen lovelies, then. Johannes, some of us want to see you enjoying yourself away from manuscript paper. We’ve already had a run-through of your magnum opus with the Hanover orchestra and it’s shaping up brilliantly. Get your nose out of that score, dammit. Rub noses with a pretty singer or three instead. And if you’re worried about temptation, Clara will be there to hold your hand.’
‘Okay – okay, Jussuf,’ Brahms said, holding his hands in the air. ‘If it shuts you up, and it makes her happy, I’ll do it.’ He looked around the apartment he shared with his parents, brother and sister. ‘Come to think of it, a bit of space for a few weeks isn’t a bad idea.’
GÖTTINGEN, JULY
‘Maestro!’ Julius Grimm bounded down the stairs as Brahms was shown through the front door. ‘It’s been such a long time! Our ladies’ choir became too much of a lure, eh?’
‘Not at all.’ The young Turk was already notorious for his brusque manner. ‘It’s good to see you, Julius. Düsseldorf feels so long ago.’
‘Call me Ise, like everyone does here. Soon you’ll meet my wife, Pine. And here,’ he said, holding up a toddler, ‘is our little one, Johannes. I wonder who he’s named after?’
Brahms was touched. ‘My dear man!’ he said, attempting to embrace his friend, little Johannes wriggling between their two bodies. Both men laughed.
‘You’re comfortable in your room around the corner? There was no room at this inn once Clara decided to bring so many of her family.’
‘Truly, Ise – I’m having a break from family.’
They both remembered only too well those sad days in 1854, when Brahms moved into the Schumann house in Düsseldorf to help Clara with her large brood after Robert was taken away to the asylum. He was a godsend at first, but the dynamic became complicated: he and Clara fell in love with each other, writing passionate letters whenever they were apart. By the time Robert died two years later, the couple had to decide on their future.
Brahms was resolute: he and Clara were each other’s most trusted confidant – but that was all. These days he still had the distinct feeling Clara kept the flame of romance alive; she sometimes behaved as if she owned him. He didn’t appreciate feeling like anyone’s captive, worrying that this was what future domesticity might be like – living in a cage.
Julius, on the other hand, looked like he thrived on his captivity, marrying a local girl, starting a family. And as cages went, Göttingen was an attractively gilded one: the historic brick buildings in the old town, the modest size, the cobblestones and ivy, the charge of youthful energy from the students at the colleges. Grimm was director of music in this enclave, running a ninety-voice choir named the Cäcilienverein after the patron saint of music, and some smaller all-women groups. Brahms thought he looked blissfully happy.
‘Some of the women are coming around tonight to rehearse,’ Julius said. ‘You’ve picked a good time to arrive.’
And you’ve picked a good time to rehearse, you sly dog.
‘It is fortuitous. Ise, you’re not up to anything, are you?’
Grimm placed the fingertips of both hands on his chest as if offended by the accusation. ‘Really, Johannes – mix a young blond gentleman destined for a brilliant career with a roomful of equally young women musicians at the beginning of a holiday? Surely you don’t think me capable of anything so obvious?’
They looked at each other, heads cocked. Then they laughed again.
Late that afternoon the prattle of baby Johannes was subsumed into a sea of exuberant voices growing louder by the minute as more of the choristers arrived.
‘Johannes! Get in here!’ yelled Grimm. The composer stepped gingerly into the large parlour and was met with a sea of faces, most of them his own age. An older woman with wary eyes followed him.
‘Ladies, I present to you two of the foremost musicians of the age: the legendary pianist Frau Clara Schumann, and a young man whom the late Robert Schumann declared the successor to Beethoven – Johannes Brahms. They’re going to spend time with us this summer.’
Clara looked decidedly uncomfortable. Brahms felt for her. She was not yet forty, yet the juxtaposition of her care-worn face with the panorama of freshness in this room wasn’t flattering. Life had been harsh to the person who on a good day was still one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. The tragedy of Robert’s death, the strain of raising and supporting seven children almost single-handed, the continuing tension between her and Johannes after his decision that their being a married couple was out of the question; it had all taken a toll. There was no getting around it – she was fourteen years his senior. The difference in their ages never looked more obvious than right now. None of this impacted on their closeness or took away their history, but neither was it going to exclude him from what migh
t be in store, he decided.
Pine Grimm plucked a young woman from the gathering and led her by the hand to Brahms.
‘Johannes, I want you to meet a very special friend of the family, one of our finest singers in the group. Agathe von Siebold, this is our child’s namesake – and just as gorgeous too, don’t you think?’
‘Really, Gur!’ said the girl with mock indignation. ‘What am I to say to that?’
‘Gur?’ echoed Brahms, eyebrow raised.
‘That’s our nickname for Pine,’ she said. ‘In return, they call me Gathe – as you must do. We’re a little trio: Gur, Ise and Gathe.’
‘You know what they say about trios.’
‘No, I don’t. What do they say?’
‘A trio is just a quartet that can’t get along.’ He smiled and looked about sixteen.
‘You’ve just made that up, haven’t you?’ She smiled back.
‘I have, in fact.’
‘Presuming it’s true, we’ll just have to make up a quartet, then. Depends if we get along.’ She hadn’t blushed at all. Brahms liked that.
‘It’s like any ensemble,’ he said. ‘You play together and wait to discover how good the music is.’
Clara cleared her throat behind them.
Pine stepped forward. ‘I’m so rude, Frau Schumann. Allow me to take you around the room.’
‘That’s a good idea, my dear,’ Clara said, a trace of acid in her voice. ‘I’ve always found that quartets exist in their own world.’
Hypnotised by the vision in front of him, Johannes was unaware of the sarcasm. He was still taking in the lushness: rich dark hair that, when loosened, would fall past her shoulders, a curvaceous figure owing nothing to the trickery of restrictive undergarments, her high, generous bust and sumptuous hips on either side of a slim waist. Joachim had described the attributes of the Grimms’ ‘dear friend’ before Johannes set out from Hamburg, comparing her voice to an Amati violin. Jussuf was right about the presentation, Johannes thought. Now to the voice and the musicality. I’ll jump on the piano and we’ll find out, shall we?
Symphony of Seduction Page 17