by Francis King
1983
Chapter Twenty Six
Michael’s hands are gripping the lectern for support. He has spread his address out on it, but he never looks at its pages. Before they set off, he told Christine: ‘I always used to be able to talk impromptu about almost anything – as you may remember. But now I so often find that I have absolutely no idea what’s to come next. So as a precautionary measure …’
Age and illness have made his voice hoarse. It would be inaudible except to the people in the front three or four rows were it not for the microphone (‘How I loathe these gadgets!’ he muttered earlier to the chaplain) that relays it, exaggerating its sibilance and its breathiness, to the farthest corners of what is generally regarded as one of the finest of Gilbert Scott’s smaller churches.
He begins by speaking of the suitability of holding this memorial concert not in the assembly hall but in this chapel, since for so many years Thomas played its organ and trained its choir. Thomas and Christine, he says, found happiness at the school, he as music master and she as head of the classical side, after some difficult years. Their son, Tim, is now himself music master, he adds. He peers down at Tim over the tops of his reading glasses and gives him a gentle, loving smile. Tim, always ill at ease with Michael’s devotion, nods and smiles back uncertainly.
Soon after that, Michael has lost his way. In panic, he looks first down at Christine and Tim, and then up at the rose window at the far end of the nave, while the frail twigs of his hands, twisted from rheumatoid arthritis, shuffle the papers. Everyone in the audience experiences an identical embarrassment and dread. But eventually, after many seconds, his voice becomes stronger and clearer, and he resumes.
‘Sadly, he never had enough time for his own composition. When he was a young man – a prisoner of war in Oxford, where I, like his future wife Christine, first met him – I felt sure that he would eventually become as famous as, well, Hans Werner Henze and, oh dear, yes,’ – he gives a wintry smile – ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen. But sadly – such were the circumstances – that was not to be. Dis aliter visum’. He again grips the lectern, leaning across it, so that the thick lenses of his glasses momentarily flash. ‘However … however … It would be wrong to conclude that his life was a disappointment, much less a failure. As I have said, he and Christine found happiness, great happiness, here. And they brought happiness, great happiness, to the pupils not merely of their own house but of the whole school. Isn’t that the most important thing in life – to be happy, to make others happy?’ He looks round at the mostly young faces of the audience, as though expecting an answer.
Christine feels Tim’s hand closing over hers. She turns her head to give him a questioning glance. He pats her hand twice, then pulls a small face, more to himself than to her.
‘… To begin this concert, the choir is going to sing one of the first pieces of music that he wrote. I well remember a wintry afternoon in Oxford, so many years ago now, when he played it over to Christine – then a brilliant student at Oxford – and myself on her piano. I knew then that he had a gift wholly out of the ordinary – one to be cherished and encouraged. What you’re going to hear is a setting of the 137th psalm. You will all know the one, I’m sure. The one,’ – he clears his throat – ‘the one that begins ‘‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yes, we wept, when we remembered Sion.” A beautiful psalm. And a beautiful setting – made at the time for four singers but later rescored for full choir.’ He pauses. ‘What more is there to say? Nothing.’ He smiles. ‘The music says it all – far better than I could or anyone could. That is the way of good music. And this is good music, I can promise you that. So … here endeth the first – and from me, perhaps fortunately, last – lesson. I hope it has not been too long. Or too boring. The young have a better capacity for getting bored than ancients such as myself have.’ At that last remark, one or two students titter. He gives a little bow and begins unsteadily to edge round the lectern, preparatory to descending to his seat in the front row, next to Christine. He totters, all but falls. Tim leaps up and grips his arm, frowning with concentration, and then supports him down the three steps.
The chapel is overheated because of the installation of a new system over the Christmas vacation. But nonetheless Christine shivers as the vinegary, ethereal voices of the boys’ choir flutter around her.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
The voices grow louder and more and more insistent. They seem to beat at her with invisible wings. She turns, in incipient terror, to Michael, who sits slouched forward, head bowed and eyes closed, as though, his address over, he had at once fallen asleep.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
The wings crowd around her, their beating deafening her.
She wants to ask Michael: ‘How, how, how?’ She wills him to open his eyes, to look at her, and to tell her.
At last he does so, turning his head and gazing into her face with a rapturous vagueness. Soundlessly he mouths a single word: ‘Beautiful.’
Then he shuts his eyes again, totally absorbed in the clamorous, yearning, inconsolable sound of the youthful voices echoing down to them both not merely from the high, Victorian Gothic ceiling, but from a time that they had thought to be lost forever.
Copyright
First published in 2009 by Arcadia
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