The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  The Connoisseur got up from his chair and walked over to a bookcase, plucking out a narrow volume in black, with no lettering upon its spine or covers, which he placed beside me. Then he stirred the last embers into a fitful crackling, and warmed his palms before the sullen golden tongues.

  ‘I was never sure how much the old lady consciously knew and how much she arrived at by family instinct, as it were. I don’t think she had ever been told anything directly by her father, who seems to have shunned it all and hoped it would go away. But we can piece together these things: that her ancestor who became obsessed with the idea of a fairy castle for Barlocco must have heard some dim memory of the true fairy castle, the domed earthwork on the island, one of several such embanked hills around our coast, which some trace to the enchanted spiral “Caer Sidi” of the old poems of the bards; that her family had a tradition—one might call it a feudal duty—that they must keep and preserve the island in the summer months, the months of light; and that they were there merely as Regents for a Prince who must never be named, but who would claim his realm on the appointed day each year. And some of the family knew too, or had been told, that the Prince’s guards were white hounds with red-tipped ears, and thus their staffs were fashioned so, to show that they were already en-ranked in his service and should not be rounded up with the rest.

  ‘We can surely deduce too that the ban upon the house that the old Regent sensed and knew, and which even I felt, seeping out from the stones, was because for so long her family had failed in their duty to tend to the island, that realm they held for another. And her instinct was right that the return of a steward would in some measure remedy this: but to truly remedy it, the steward must be of the family.

  ‘He was not: but now he is. For Edward Kesteven and Grace Wriothesley were married last May and made their troth both in the usual way and also upon the top of the island, each holding a stick of pale wood with a hound’s-head handle, the hounds having scarlet ears. Some days they stay upon the island, not least to deal with all the postal transactions: other times they pay a passing visit; but what is sure is that they tend it with great care.

  ‘What you have there,’ concluded The Connoisseur, ‘is the rarest stamp of all the offshore islands, since there is only one copy, and it is not for profane eyes: we call it the Dark Barlocco. Open its album and see.’

  I untied a black silk fastening on the boards and gently lifted up the cover. Beneath frail paper, and protected again by a sturdier transparent film, was framed a single postage stamp, of the usual commemorative scale, with the neatly incised lettering, BARLOCCO, across the top, and below a drawing in black and white, done in the woodcut style, in which the clear, swift, swirling lines depicted with intricate detail the moon-illumined descent upon the domed hill that The Connoisseur had described to me with such fervour, though only a single dark flicker of the pen, as of a great cloak of darkness, intimated the nature of the Prince: and for this I felt strangely glad.

  The Black Eros

  When I made my way one evening to the rooms of The Connoisseur, collector of the recondite, I was surprised to hear music emanating from within, and as I entered I heard its brittle crackle peter out. My friend carefully raised a gramophone recording from its place on a green velveteen-coated turntable below a great brass horn, and replaced it in a frail brown paper sleeve. He sighed, then, beckoning me to be seated, he stirred the surly coals in the grate to a hissing life with a gargoyle-handled poker, and began this account:

  ‘You remember that cubist-influenced arts house in Worcestershire, which I helped to restore? Lucifer Hall. Well, after a while, we looked about for other events to put on, in keeping with its past reputation and its unusual design. Word got around, and as a member of the Trust, I had a visit from Julian Griffin, the author of Wild Men in Wing Collars, the best history of the British dance bands of the 1920s and 30s. He took his title, incidentally, from an irascible remark made by a guardian of morals in those days, who could not understand how such immaculately-dressed and exquisitely-groomed youths could give themselves over to what he termed “primitive rhythms and the hubbub of savages”. It is perhaps difficult for us to imagine now, but the frivolity and the abandon of that music was seen by some as a threat to the very civilisation of the day—that same civilisation, incidentally, that had just wiped out thousands of men in the mud-holes of the Front.

  ‘Griffin, it seemed, had been researching some of the stranger shores of the dance bands’ tunes and wanted to put on the premiere concert of these with his own revival orchestra, The Midnight Room—named after a notorious jazz club which Scotland Yard closed down due to its rather too avid licentiousness. I put this proposal to the trustees, and we thought it was just the thing—we knew that Barwick-Fowkes, who founded the Hall, was an admirer of all that was new and bold, and we thought it likely that concerts of this kind had once been held there.

  ‘We held the recital in the upper floor, with a greenish dusk stealing through the slanting windows, dim prisms of light on their angular standards lurking in corners of the room, the trapezoidal tables and sleek, slim chairs set out in a haphazard way. There were cocktails in tall white conical glasses, and glistening olives in silver crescent dishes. Griffin’s Septet soon made itself heard above the excited babble, with a set that comprised all the most curious numbers that he had been able to find from his assiduous researches. Leading, intoning the nonsensical or fanciful words in faultlessly precise diction, or coaxing sinuous melodies from his soprano saxophone, his crest of golden hair giving him something of the appearance of his heraldic namesake, he was a great success. We heard “Bolshevick Rag”, a frantic tribute to the Russian Revolution, “The Waltzing Cat”, complete with feline yowls from members of the band, “The Anaconda”, with its slow, spiralling opening and its fierce crescendo, “Orbit of Saturn”, a whirling rondo, “The Stomp from the Swamp”, and “The Revolting Doom of a Gentleman Who Would Not Dance With His Wife”, which took its title from a short story by the Roaring Twenties author Michael Casparian, who had such an enormous success with The Green Aigrette.

  ‘Then the orchestra played a wordless number he announced simply as “Clandestino”. It had a lunging, halting tempo, tumbles of sound followed by a sudden stop, and then an intenser resumption. It built and built and built in this way and I could see the audience were transfixed.

  ‘The room was by now very hazy and warm, and vague shadows flickered behind the iron lanterns, cast by the bevelled glass into elongations and diminutions of the human form that implied a gathering of grotesques. As the music stalked on in its insidious, feverish dance time, a young woman stepped forward of the band, with her bobbed and Cleopatra-fringed dark hair, and, staring straight ahead solemnly, and drawing in her breath with a rapid catch, struck her bow across her amber-wooded violin. Over the pacing, patient rhythm she drew a bitter, keening refrain… .’

  The Connoisseur paused, as if hearing again the music of that night.

  ‘After the concert, as I joined them to offer congratulations, Griffin was in excited discussion with his violinist. He said he had never known she could play like that. She was exhilarated, her eyes gleaming and a violet vein in her delicate neck pulsing, but at the same time clearly a little dazed, holding the violin limply by its neck, and her gaze quartering the room.

  ‘At last, after Julian had repeated her name jubilantly and joshingly several times, “Dominica! Dominica! Hades, will the starlet even speak to us now!”, she turned and looked at us enquiringly. And then she said two things that, yes, musicians have been known to say, with various shades of meaning, but which from her seemed to have a very curious ring of conviction; first, that it seemed as if the melody just played itself, that her fingers found their places without her own volition, much better than in rehearsal; second, that something about the audience seemed to be willing her on; but then she corrected herself and said it was not so much the audience, more the atmosphere, the sense of tension, and something about the waver
ing of the shadows.

  ‘The success of the performance led to other engagements, and I heard of these from Griffin at intervals. They were just hasty notes, but I discerned a change in them. Early on, there was exultation at The Midnight Room’s reception by successive audiences eager to hear what had been seen as rather staid music restored to its original looseness and loucheness: but later I began to pick up hints that all was not quite well.

  ‘Then, unexpectedly, one evening he came to see me, carrying a dark valise, from which he drew out carefully two shiny black discs. The first of these bore a label in red, gold and black with the largest legend in bold capitals, curving around the top arc, stating “The Circus Music Co.”, and a stylised sketch of the famous Eros statue in Piccadilly, loosing an arrow. The artist had made Eros grow up a little, so that now he was a lithe youth, with a suggestion of wings in the streaming hair at his temple and an impression of sleeker, more streamlined attire than the robes that usually adorn the boy-god. The text on the label read: “Savoir-Faire: The Perceval Taverner Orchestra”. “That is the more usual sort of label from the Circus Company,” remarked Griffin, “Now look at this”.

  ‘As I turned my attention to the second disc, I felt a quiver of recognition; it read “Clandestino”. The artists were given as “The Saragossa Orchestra”. My guest told me to look at the two more closely, but I did not at once discern any particular difference. Then Griffin pointed out that in this disc, the figure of Eros was differently masked, with a black vizard rather than the ragged band of cloth on the first; also that the wings were darker and gave a suggestion of a floating dark cloak more than the conventional white plumes; and that the set of the mouth was more sullen, almost a leer. He added that in his experience such a variation on the label’s emblem was very unusual: he had never seen another. “I don’t quite know why I chose this tune for our repertoire,” he reflected, “It’s not so obviously bizarre as the others. And yet, when I played it, something about it fascinated me.”

  ‘Then he paused, as if uncertain how to continue. “I am going to make the next one our last performance of ‘Clandestino’,” he said, “I wanted to drop it at once but Dominica is furious, and I had to agree to try it one more time. I feel as if it has quite taken hold of her. She … well, she has changed. She often goes off alone to practice it, though lord knows she’s already a virtuoso at it and could do with getting some of the other tunes better. And I’ve noticed that while she’s playing she’s always staring across at some corner of the room, and when I try to make out what’s there … well, I just see some suggestion of a figure, a hazy column of black and … you’re going to think me quite mad, I’m sure, but I’ve begun to think I see the figure on the label, the same folds of cloak, the same dark eye-mask… . She just won’t talk about it, but I can tell there’s something wrong.”

  ‘Julian Griffin relapsed into silence, and looked at me keenly. “Won’t you join us when we play again next Saturday? We’ve been asked to play at the Republic Club—do you know it? It was set up by exiles from Spain and Portugal and elsewhere, all quite aged now of course, but they should enjoy the ‘Bolshevick Rag’ … and ‘Clandestino’, I suppose.”

  ‘Of course, I agreed to go, and made my way to the long, low cellar bar with its faded, wreathed pictures of veterans and victims, its old red slumped banners, its display of pieces of jagged shrapnel and dusty rubble, each with the names of lost and long-ago battles inscribed on cards before them. I was a little late, and The Midnight Room were already engaged in their performance when I arrived, with Griffin’s tall, elegant presence bringing a strange hauteur into the shabby surroundings, delivering his round-vowelled recitation of the Casparian-inspired song: “The Revolting Doom of a Gentleman Who Would Not Dance With His Wife/He would not waltz nor cha-cha-cha, and so he paid with his life/He would not mambo, he would not rhumba/Thus, he found that his days were numbered …” And so forth with similar grim nonsense.

  ‘Although I studied the band attentively through the gloom and the floating pale-blue mist of cigarette fumes, I could not make out Dominica’s form in her usual place, and I noticed in some of the following numbers that her melody lines were being taken by the guitar instead. Feeling I had let Griffin down a bit by not being there to help assuage his natural anxiety at her absence, I went back up the iron staircase to keep a lookout for any sign of her.

  ‘In the chill and quiet street, with just the faint strains of The Midnight Room’s playing audible to me, I waited and watched. The dim amber lamps hardly pierced the dark and, left to my thoughts, I found myself pondering upon the cloaked figure Griffin had thought he saw. In the popular literature of the 1920s and 30s, it struck me, there is a presence like that who keeps recurring. You can find him in Casparian, where he is known as the Knave of Clubs. Put simply, he is a masked cad, a sinner in evening dress, a suave villain with a veiled visage, with all the insouciance of the doomed about him. I began to wonder if each of these writers had heard rumours of just such a character, had discerned the influence of a spirit in this guise, his shadow flitting through the salons and clubs of the age.

  ‘I was brooding deeply upon this matter, absently stalking up and down outside the arched entranceway to the Republic Club, and thus you might say I was predisposed to what followed. I heard a car draw up softly at the top of the street, I looked up quickly to see its black shining, and I sensed rather than distinctly heard a susurrus of movement. There were footsteps and murmurings. I advanced toward them.

  ‘Just beyond the nimbus of the furthest lamp, Dominica stood quivering in her light stage-gown of brittle blue, staring, holding her uncased violin and bow closely to her. There was a succinct weal across her left cheek, a slender crimson scar which glinted evilly against her white, white face. I uttered an oath and strode to her side. I caught a hint of a flicker in the darkness, as of the swinging of a cloak, and I lunged forward. I grasped at nothing.

  ‘I helped Dominica forward, though she did not respond to any of my imploring questions. A door must have swung open in the club below and there was a momentary onrush of noise, the band’s baying uppermost above it. As though jolted suddenly into recognition, she looked at me with startled eyes and dashed down the steps before I could stop her. Griffin could have caught only a glimpse of her as she made her way adroitly through the tables and up on to the stage but as the current number came to an end she quickly played a few notes by way of a cue to the tune she wished only to play: and he stared keenly out into the audience, then wordlessly acquiesced.

  ‘The loping rhythm began, more suggestive than ever before of a music of pursuit and capture, of the chase. The stalking footfall of the bass, the whispering of the drums, the glinting shards from the soprano saxophone and the other brass, set up a thrill of expectation. Then the violin began. I do not expect ever to hear the instrument played that way again, even by the veriest maestro. Every struck note seemed to stir plangent echoes deep within one, calling to half-buried instincts, turning every thrill of the body into a thrilling in the air, making audible all our innermost urges, so that as the strings sang all the hidden senses of the flesh sang too. Dominica, her cut face caught in a rapture, danced off the stage and insinuated her way in serpentine movements around all of the dimmest recesses, people parting to let her through as her violin soared out the quick high refrains of “Clandestino”. Barefoot now, in her coruscating gown of sapphire, she paced a running, halting measure across the gaping floor, while her fingers and her bow coaxed more and more yelping and imploring sounds, in a sequence of shrill arpeggios, from her violin.

  ‘Higher and fiercer grew the sound, until there came a hoarse and urgent torrent of cries from within the audience and, as if released from an enthrallment, Dominica ceased abruptly, released her violin and, swaying on her feet, finally succumbed to the ground.

  ‘The music came to a juddering halt and Julian Griffin leapt off the platform to go to her side, while the customers nearest her variously flapped menu cards
to give her air, and tried to force reviving drinks to her lips. Judging it a mere hindrance to join this well-meaning mêlée, instead I strode over to one side to retrieve her precious instrument from where it had fallen. As I picked up her bow, I discerned an odd thing: there was a slim rime of redness on the string. I did not have too much time to examine this, though, for I became conscious that the hubbub which had followed Dominica’s prostration had given way to a new sudden hush.

  ‘A slightly hunched form in black, her pale and riven face shrouded in a dark mantilla, had emerged from the throng and begun a slow, painful mime across the dance floor, reaching her cruelly-clawed hands up, then pulling them fiercely into herself, her mouth ajar and her eyes dank. It was as though she were still hearing the music riding on and on and was somehow drawing it down, down. For many moments she carried on this strange, crooked mummery, until at a sudden she let her head drop onto her withered frame, clasping her hands to her and standing perfectly still.