Labels and Other Stories

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘I’m selling it, man. You buying?’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Farfrae, and he opened the case. Farfrae was himself a pianist, but he had been interested in instruments of all kinds for quite long enough to be able to recognise a superior violin. It was strongly constructed, largely proportioned, but not at all clumsy or heavy. The scroll was a perfect imitation of a Stradivarius, as indeed, now he came to think of it, was the entire violin. It had margins that were full and strong, and the purfling was executed with perfect elegance. On the back the sycamore was wonderfully marked, with a dark yellow varnish in the middle that graduated to a deep ruby red in the hollows.

  Farfrae looked inside to try to discern a maker’s label, and there was indeed one there, but it was too filthy to be legible. ‘How much do you want for it?’ he asked, and Henchard swayed on his feet and made a meaningless gesture with his left hand.

  ‘Like, I dunno, man, I mean, like … fifty?’

  ‘Fifty?’ repeated Farfrae incredulously.

  ‘Yeah, well, like, if it’s too much …’ said Henchard.

  ‘I think it’s worth a lot more than fifty,’ said Farfrae, who was struggling with his conscience, and had already won a small battle. He was one of those people who naturally find dishonesty too much of a strain.

  ‘Well, man, whatever,’ said Henchard.

  ‘How do I know it’s yours? I can’t accept stolen goods, or even goods which might be. Do you have provenance for it?’

  Henchard blinked and tried hard to concentrate. ‘Well, like, it was passed down, and we always had it, you know? There was this story …. there was … I mean, it was sold to one of my great-grandads, or great-great or whatever, and the dude who sold it … he was like … I mean, he won it as a prize or something. At the conservatoire, man.’

  ‘The Paris Conservatoire?’

  ‘Hey …’ said Henchard, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘How do I know it’s yours, though?’

  ‘Jesus,’ protested Henchard. ‘All these questions.’ He picked up the bow, and tightened the horsehair. He opened the little compartment in the case which was situated under the neck of the instrument, and took out a lump of rosin, which he stroked a couple of times along the hairs. He laid the bow down and took up the violin. He tuned the three lower strings deftly with a few exact movements of the pegs, tuned the E string with the micro-adjuster, and put the instrument to his chin. He tapped the strings a couple of times with the bow, to check that he had the right tension on the hairs, held a momentary pose, and began to play.

  Farfrae watched and listened, utterly amazed, because a miracle was taking place before his eyes, in his own shop. It was a simple little piece in C, allegro moderato, consisting of four clusters of semiquavers to a bar. It was very regular, and there was nothing very surprising in it, but it was extraordinarily pretty in the hands of the ragged young man, who was now altering the pattern of the piece by inserting all kinds of unpredictable slurs and staccatos. He reached the final jump from the last C of the second beat of the last bar, and brought it down smartly to the final minim C an octave below. He ended the note with absolute precision, and looked up at Farfrae. ‘Kreutzer etude number two, man,’ he said, ‘like, just to warm up, you know. With improvements I kinda just made up.’

  ‘That violin,’ said Farfrae disbelievingly, ‘the tone is unbelievable. It’s like silver, or gold, or … I’m gobsmacked, I really am.’

  ‘You’re Scottish,’ said Henchard, and he tucked the violin under his chin again, and tore through ‘Up Tails A’, skipping across two strings at a time, and making it sound as if it had been written by Arcangelo Corelli. Then he launched into the Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust, executing the high Bs and As with astonishing clarity and distinctness. Even more remarkable than this display of musicianship was the transformation of the player as he played. He swayed a little, his eyes closed, and Farfrae really thought he looked as though he had been possessed by an angel.

  ‘OK, I believe it’s yours,’ he said, ‘but really you shouldn’t sell it. You’re too good.’

  ‘Please, man,’ said Henchard. ‘I mean, like, really please. I’ll take fifty.’ He put the violin back into its case, detensioned the bow, and returned it to the case as well. ‘Fifty,’ he repeated, and looked up pleadingly.

  Farfrae resolved the terrible quandary within himself: ‘I’ll give you fifty, but it’s only a deposit. I’m going to get it valued, and when you come back we’ll talk about it again, and either I can pay you the rest or, if you want it back, all you’ve got to do is give me back the fifty pounds, OK?’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Henchard. ‘I just need, you know, like, the dough, man, that’s all.’

  Farfrae opened the till and took out fifty pounds in ten-pound notes. ‘What might your name be?’ he asked, and then he found his receipt book, opened it up and wrote, ‘To Michael Henchard, the sum of fifty pounds in consideration of Stradivarius pattern violin. 3/5/82.’ He tore the receipt out of the book, and tried to give it to Henchard, who did not respond, so he reached out and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Then he handed over the fifty pounds.

  Henchard took it, and lurched away towards the door. When he reached it, he turned and waved loosely, clutching the notes in his fingers. ‘Thanks, man,’ he said, ‘but, like … today, you know … it’s a really really bad day.’

  With a leaden heart, and tears in his eyes, knowing that he was a traitor to himself but unable to do anything about it, Henchard went out into the street and began to wander down the hill. Dejected and bereft, he sat at the foot of the statue of William Barnes, enduring the hostile and suspicious glances of passers-by, and waited until after dark. Then he went and crouched in a doorway near a dim street lamp in Grey School Passage, where he prepared his gear, drew a tourniquet round his arm, and injected his last dose. It was a larger hit than usual, and he realised almost straight away that it was bad stuff. The vengeful dealer had written off his debts with a malicious cut. Michael Henchard was half dead at midnight by the stone post in the middle of Bull Stake Square, and he was lucky that an insomniac found him when they were out walking the dog.

  In January of 2003, approximately twenty-one years later, a tall and rubicund man in his forties called in on Farfrae’s Music, coming in out of the snow, and stamping his feet good-humouredly. He had about him an air of prosperity. At his side was a woman about ten years his junior, whose hand was being tightly held by a little girl of about six, who was wrapped up in a scarf and coat, and wore a Bugs Bunny hat with rabbit’s ears upon her head.

  Outside the newsagent’s, a Sun poster said something like, ‘GO GET ’IM, TONE!’ Everyone was talking about the possibility of a new war in Iraq, with the intention of deposing Saddam Hussein, and the usual people were making the usual predictable points in the media about the United Nations, and the value or otherwise of unilateral action. The man who had just entered Frafrae’s shop, however, was thinking of no such thing.

  Behind the counter stood Donald Farfrae, singing to himself, ‘… When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree, The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree.’ He was moustacheless and bespectacled these days, his golden hair, much shorter and thinner, was subdued by specklings of grey. He had lost none of his Scottish charm, and nowadays it was women aged twenty-eight and above who took up musical instruments so they had good reason to dawdle in his shop. As far as he was concerned this was a distinct improvement on schoolgirls that he wasn’t allowed to touch at all. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I certainly hope so,’ said the customer. He drew from his wallet a very old slip of paper, very grubby, much crumpled, and handed it over. ‘Do you remember anything about this?’ he asked.

  Farfrae looked at it for a moment, and then said simply, ‘Good God.’

  ‘Do you remember anything? Was it you that I spoke to?’

  ‘The violin! Good God, the violin! Yes, indeed! Indeed, it was
me. But how you’ve changed! I never would have recognised you.’

  ‘I did sell it to you, didn’t I? Something’s been tweaking at my memory, and it’s really been bothering me. You may recall the state I was in. I was on my last legs, and that night I really overdid it. I suppose you realised that I was, um … you know, an addict … a junkie? After I left you I nearly killed myself, by accident, I mean, and it’s just lucky that I was found in time.’

  ‘Well, sir, I had my suspicions. As you say, you were in a state. But I’ve never forgotten the noise you made when you played. One of the highlights of my musical life, I would say. I do hope you still play, sir, it would be criminal not to.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to say so. I can’t imagine it can have been very good. I do play. It took me a very long time to get back on course, but I made it in the end, I swore off the stuff and eventually I managed to put everything back together, except that I didn’t have the violin. The one I have now was lent to me by a Japanese foundation.’

  He paused, and Donald Farfrae exclaimed, ‘Of course! You’re Michael Henchard! The Michael Henchard! I saw you last year, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra! You were doing the Bruch and the Walton. Well, well, well. I must say, it was marvellous. I’d say that times have certainly changed for you since you last entered these doors, that’s for sure.’

  Henchard ignored these comments. ‘You sold it eventually, I suppose? I mean, I’m not asking for it back. I just wondered what happened to it. Recently I’ve been thinking about it, and as we were staying nearby, I thought I’d come in on the off chance.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Farfrae, much excited, ‘I took it to my friend Colin in Chalk Newton. He did all my repairs – he still does, in fact – and he knows a lot about violins. He said it was the most perfect imitation of a Strad he’d ever seen. He played it a bit and said it was something really special, so he took it to Hill’s, in London.’

  ‘You’re not telling me it was a Strad, are you? Aren’t they all accounted for?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a Lupot. There was a label inside that they managed to decipher, and then it was obvious from everything else that it was original. It said, “N. Lupot. Luthier de la Musique du Roi et de l’Ecole Royale de Musique, Paris 1820.” You see, I even memorised it. It explains a lot: why it was so beautiful, why it sounded so perfect.’

  ‘Oh God, it was a Lupot,’ said Michael Henchard, ‘and I promised my father I would never part with it. We’d had it so long. For generations.’ He looked at Farfrae. ‘He died last year, and he never really forgave me for it, though God knows I’ve done worse things. I can’t believe it was a Lupot. I’d kill to have a Lupot. All the violinists I know would kill to have one, even if it was just for chamber music. There’s a story that Spohr even preferred his to his Strad and his Guarnerius. And Reményi used to soft-talk his, as if it was his mistress. Everyone loves them.’

  ‘You don’t have to go out and kill for one, sir,’ said Donald Farfrae, his voice brimming with pleasure. ‘Obviously we couldn’t sell it. I can’t tell you what arguments and discussions we had about it. It was worth hundreds of thousands, but it was really quite plain all the time that we couldn’t sell it. Quite apart from the question of provenance, there was the simple fact that I hadn’t bought it.’

  ‘You didn’t buy it?’

  ‘No, sir.’ He waved the receipt. ‘I gave you fifty pounds as a deposit. This isn’t a receipt for a sale, it records that I gave you a deposit. I never put a time limit on your return, which was perhaps stupid of me, but there you are, it’s too late now. Colin’s had the violin all this time, safely under lock and key. I’ll draw you a map to get to his workshop, it’s not far, and I’ll phone him and tell him you’re coming. I know he’s there because I just spoke to him.’

  His hands trembling with excitement, but perhaps with some regret in his heart, he drew a map that directed Michael Henchard northwards from the Top o’Town roundabout, past the statue of Thomas Hardy.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much this means to me,’ said Henchard, as he took the piece of paper. ‘I’ll never forget this, and I’ll be grateful till the day I die, I can promise you. The most amazing thing is that you could have sold it for a fortune, and you didn’t.’

  Farfrae shrugged. ‘It’s not my style,’ he said, ‘ducking and diving. Altogether too much bother.’

  As Henchard reached the door, Farfrae said, ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You owe me fifty pounds. If you take the violin back, you have to return my deposit.’

  ‘Oh, quite right,’ said Henchard, much amused. He took his wallet out of his pocket and counted it out, all in ten-pound notes.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing,’ said Farfrae. ‘Would you be so kind as to come back here with it and play that Kreutzer etude for me? I never forgot it, how wonderfully you played it.’

  ‘The Kreutzer Number Two? Well, of course, but wouldn’t you like something a bit more sophisticated? I learned that when I was twelve. ‘

  ‘No, sir,’ said Donald Farfrae, ‘I would not like anything else.’

  ‘It’s funny how everybody loves to hear you play that,’ said Henchard’s wife, speaking now for the first time. She turned to Farfrae. ‘It was hearing him play it that made me fall for him in the first place. He was warming up before a concert, and I was waiting for him to stop so that I could get some practice in myself. It made me feel that an angel had got inside him. God knows, there wasn’t much else to recommend him.’

  ‘I can play it, too,’ announced the little girl, ‘and I’m only six.’

  ‘This precocious little rabbit is Elizabeth Jane,’ said Henchard, squeezing her shoulder. ‘She’s got a quarter size, and she’s not bad at all.’

  ‘Hello, Rabbit,’ said Farfrae.

  Henchard turned to his wife, saying, ‘Let’s go to Chalk Newton for a touching reunion. And on the way back we’ll pick up a case of champagne for Mr Farfrae here.’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, I’d greatly prefer Scotch,’ said Farfrae.

  ‘Whisky it is, then. I’ll get you some nice single malt.’

  Farfrae laughed, and said drily, ‘Well, as long as you don’t go thinking it’s a deposit you can come back for. I don’t think I’ll be hanging on to it for twenty years, and in this case I don’t think I’d agree to be parted from it.’

  ANDOUIL AND ANDOUILLETTE BEGIN THEIR HOLIDAY

  To those who know her, Madame Andouil is fondly nicknamed ‘Andouillette’. This diminutive feminisation of her husband’s surname was so obvious a notion that very soon after her marriage she had ceased to resent it, even though the name denotes a type of sausage that she considers particularly odious, with its offcuts of intestine and windpipe, and its mildly sickening taste of sewers. She likes it when her husband calls her ‘my sausage’, and considers it a sign of affectionate esteem when others refer to her quite openly as ‘Andouillette’.

  On the day which concerns us, she and Andouil are setting off on holiday, and our story begins as René Andouil, with his right foot, is playing indolently with the accelerator of his beloved Peugeot. It ticks over contentedly as the dawning sun washes its first pastel shades on to the horizon behind Lisieux, making the sky look like a bathroom whose decor has been chosen by an elderly woman of excellent repute, and René Andouil blinks his eyes and stifles a prolonged yawn with the back of his hand. He loves these early starts to his annual holiday, and does not even resent having to misinform his wife about their projected time of departure. After forty years of marriage, René knows without bitterness that in order to leave at half past six, Andouillette has to be told that they are going at half past five. He sits calmly in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel whilst she flutters in and out trying to remember where she has left her handbag, her keys, the tissues, the dogfood, and (most difficult of all) trying to remember whether or not she has forgotten anything that she hasn’t recalled. For
the fifth time René gets out of his car and inspects the caravan to check that all is well. He prods the linkage of the towing apparatus, he kicks the tyres with the toecaps of his shoes, he tugs at the electrical connections, and he scrutinises imperfections in the paintwork, lifting his chin so he can take proper advantage of the lower half of his bifocals. Andouillette thinks complacently that when he does this he looks just exactly like a professor.

  René Andouil observes dispassionately as from outside the house he discerns the random passage of his wife from one room to another. He remembers how her permanent level of mild panic had once struck him as peculiarly lovable and appealing, how it had eventually become exasperating, and how he has finally learned to witness it with the same puzzled detachment with which one might, for example, watch a group of outlandish foreigners playing cricket.

  ‘It’s going to be a lovely day,’ he says to himself. The dawn is pleasantly chilly, an even mist is lifting off the sea, and the rich iodine smell of seaweed is drifting in off the beach. Luc-sur-Mer is a lovely place in which to live, and it seems almost silly to leave it in order to go on holiday somewhere else. The trouble is that every August the town fills up with Parisians who also think it is a lovely place. They bring with them their impatience and arrogance, their jostle and noise, they bring those pop bands that play loudly on the esplanade until eleven every night, and they turn a mere trip to the supermarket into a veritable nightmare. Every year Andouillette suggests, ‘Why don’t we get on the ferry at Ouistreham, and go to England?’, and every year Andouil agrees, ‘Why not?’, but every year, nonetheless, they hitch their caravan to the Peugeot, and head off towards the same campsite in the Val de Loire. This is never discussed, because between them they share the same tacit horror of England and the English. ‘The food: what a catastrophe. The hooligans: what horror. The language: so ugly, so unpronounceable, so hopeless for true communication. The English: such hypocrites. The hygiene: so primitive. The driving on the left: just asking for accidents. The prices: appalling. The civilisation: how backward. The coffee: brewed for three days and served up with oil on the surface.’ Andouil and Andouillette have never been to England, but they know all these things with the absolute certainty of a mathematician who knows without thinking about it that a chair is a chair and that two plus two makes four. No, it is better by far to go to Chisseaux, where they can meet up with Claudine and Pierre. Pierre and René can smoke their pipes and catch small roach in the placid River Cher, whilst Claudine and Andouillette can set up a table directly behind them on the riverbank, play cards and pass comment on the foreign tourists traipsing past on the way to the whimsical chateau of Chenonceaux. The other thing, of course, is that if one travelled across the Channel, one could not take the dog, and tears are apt to spring to the eyes of Andouillette even at the contemplation of the remotest possibility of separation from her beloved Jonnijon.