Ghost Variations

by Jessica Duchen

  ‘Just one minute more? I’ve got to know who this is,’ Jelly pleaded. Clearly it was not Sep; she didn’t know whether to be sorry or thankful. ‘Perhaps it’s Onkel Jo.’

  Adila was one of the last pupils of their great-uncle, Joseph Joachim, whom they and many others called ‘Onkel Jo’: the violinist who had been a close friend of Johannes Brahms, and of Robert and Clara Schumann. Joachim’s playing and teaching had shaped generations of musicians; he was a celebrated performer and strict, demanding instructor who had died when Jelly was 14. ‘And if it is… who could the composer be? For Onkel Jo – surely Brahms?’

  They waited, fingertips poised on the glass. After a lengthy pause, it drifted through a golden patch of light towards the R.

  The name built slowly, letter by letter.

  In front of their eyes two words were forming: ROBERT SCHUMANN.

  Jelly felt as if she had fallen head first into the sea and was trying to pull herself out, feet and hands slipping in all directions. This couldn’t be real.

  ‘Concerto,’ spelled the glass, a step at a time. ‘D minor.’

  ‘Jelly,’ Anna said, ‘you’re playing a practical joke on me.’

  ‘But no, you are playing one on me.’

  The motion under their fingers continued. ‘May be museum,’ the transcript read.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Anna pleaded. ‘Aren’t you?’

  Jelly was experiencing an inner clash of titans: a thick-skulled ogre of scepticism, aided by a Himalayan Yeti of fear, was wrestling against her musical self – which, at the notion of an unknown violin concerto by Schumann, had sparked into a burgeoning inferno of curiosity. This couldn’t be real – but what if it were? What would the piece be like? She had to know more.

  ‘Hello?’ she burst out. ‘Are you still there? Is it – this concerto – is it any good?’

  What a question to ask a spirit messenger. It wouldn’t reply to such insolence. But that inexorable motion was beginning again. The letters kept flowing, as if pouring out of the glass, as if the visiting spirit, now that it had acquired this peculiar access to life, was determined not to relinquish it.

  ‘“It is not my best work”,’ Anna read out the transcript. ‘“But it is better than much music being written today”… ’ She shoved back her chair, clattered to her feet and plunged for the nearest lamp. ‘Jelly, no! Help! That was Schumann! That was Schumann himself! I can’t do this! We have to stop. I’ve never been so terrified in all my life.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Jelly’s whole body felt icy except for the heat in her palms, as if all her blood had rushed to them and formed whirlpools there. Electric light swamped the candle; the spell cracked and fell away.

  In the brightness they blinked, steadied their breathing and clasped hands. Jelly’s head had begun to throb with exhaustion. They sat without speaking, trying to absorb at least some small measure of what had just happened to them.

  ‘Why Schumann?’ Anna ventured. ‘Why would it be him?’

  Jelly racked her reeling mind for any possible explanation. ‘He was a great friend of Onkel Jo. Actually I think it was Onkel Jo who introduced him to Brahms.’

  ‘Schumann was much older, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Schumann would have been in his forties, Jo and Brahms were both in their early twenties, and they both adored him. Don’t you love his music?’

  ‘I remember Myra Hess playing the Piano Concerto – my hands hurt from clapping, it was so wonderful… So if there is a violin concerto, that would be really important, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it depends on the piece, but if it’s as beautiful as the Piano Concerto – it’s almost unimaginable! You know how often I play the Brahms and Mendelssohn concertos? It could be as significant as those. It could transform the whole violin concerto repertoire; it could transform concert life. Or certainly… it could transform mine,’ she reflected, ‘if I found it.’

  ‘Wasn’t there some appalling tragedy around Schumann? I can’t remember what happened.’

  ‘He became very ill – perhaps with manic depression – and eventually he lost his mind and he died in a mental asylum. Donald Tovey still winces when he talks about it.’

  ‘He went mad? Did that affect his music at all?’

  ‘That,’ said Jelly, ‘is a good question. I’m not sure anyone really knows the answer.’

  *

  Many questions hung in the air, most of them unasked. After Anna had gone home in a cab, Jelly sat at the table staring at the letters, the tumbler and the transcript lying where they’d left them. Her hands had cooled, her head cleared. What idiocy was this? She hadn’t pushed the glass. Anna was so frightened that she couldn’t have done so either. There had to be a rational explanation.

  If this piece of insanity was to be believed, she had received a message from the spirit of Robert Schumann, or his… representative. Telling her that a violin concerto he had written was lying unplayed somewhere and he wanted her to save it. Astonishing – an extraordinary demand, an overwhelming responsibility – that Schumann should choose her. But supposing it was a trick of some kind, a deception, or worse? If something truly supernatural had taken place, how could she be sure this communication was benevolent and not demonic?

  She could wait for Adila to come home, then tell her everything. Or she could clear away the evidence and pretend nothing had ever happened. It had to be nonsense. The very idea of a concerto by Schumann having lain untouched all these years was ridiculous; if such a thing existed, assuredly every violinist in the world would want to play it. Besides, she’d lose face if she admitted that she had been indulging in the glass game, since she habitually poured scorn on Adila and Erik for it.

  Jelly read back the transcript one last time – then took it upstairs to stow at the bottom of a drawer in Anna’s desk, in case it might someday come in handy. She’d leave it there, forget about it and tell her sister nothing now, nothing ever.

  But while the clock ticked, while Alec and Adrienne slumbered, oblivious, in their bedrooms and Caesar downstairs gave canine snores in his basket, and while around 3am the engine and brakes of a cab signalled that Adila was home, Jelly lay awake, still electrified. If Onkel Jo and his friend Robert Schumann could be there, communicating, then so could Bach and Beethoven, so could Shakespeare, Plato, Aristophanes, so could Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, so could her mother and Sep and…

  Supposing she ignored the messages, dismissing them as the product of her own wishful thinking – and then the work turned up after all? Supposing she were to find it and perform it? Supposing she could free it, save it from oblivion and infuse it with renewed life?

  She heard Adila moving about in the bathroom, humming to herself as she shed her evening dress and jewels. The tune was from Schumann’s Violin Sonata in D minor. Still wondering, Jelly let herself fall into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 3

  When Jelly tried to set off with Anna for Norman Hartnell’s salon one morning a couple of weeks later, the Fachiri family car refused to start. Anna, whose duties extended to occasional chauffeuse, sat in the driver’s seat, turning and returning the key. The car’s coughs reminded Jelly of Anna’s own.

  ‘It’s not going to work.’ Anna climbed out. ‘We’ll have to take a bus or taxi.’ Their part of Chelsea wasn’t well served by trams.

  ‘I can go on my own,’ said Jelly. ‘You should keep warm, with that cough.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Anna insisted, ‘and I’d so love to come along… ’

  The pair set off together along Netherton Grove towards Fulham Road, Jelly carrying her Bergonzi violin in its case. She always took it to dress fittings to make certain she’d be comfortable playing in the gown. Her shoes, though, were designed for style, not motion, which made it difficult to walk fast enough. Punctuality was ingrained in her; nobody would book a performer who was never on time.

  At the corner, she spotted a large black car approaching. ‘Look, there’s a taxi!’ She put up a hand
, but it showed no sign of stopping.

  ‘That’s not a cab,’ Anna laughed, ‘it’s a hearse!’

  The coffin-shaped back section was empty. ‘Not for you just yet, ladies!’ the driver called, with a wave.

  Anna snorted. ‘What a nerve!’

  A bus was pulling in; they stepped onto its rear platform. Jelly stared after the hearse. The incident had left a peculiar chill upon her.

  Anna wanted to sit on the top deck, in the open air, which afforded the best panorama of Chelsea and the river.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ Jelly worried. ‘There’s such a wind – we should go downstairs.’

  Anna obeyed reluctantly. ‘I love it up there.’

  ‘Darling, I’m worried about you. You need to take care of yourself better… ’

  ‘Jelly, tell me… ’ Anna changed the subject. ‘Have you looked into – you know – whether there really is a Schumann concerto?’

  ‘I haven’t really had time.’ She tried to sound nonchalant. She didn’t want to admit that she was far too scared of their glass messages to follow it up.

  The sunlit river came into view; Jelly, enjoying the sight, remarked that her mother used to say the glitter on the water was mermaids putting on their diamonds. Perhaps the Thames was home to some English counterparts of Wagner’s Rhinemaidens, she added – though the Thamesmaidens would probably be drinking tea and listening to a recital of gramophone records on the wireless…

  ‘Jelly?’ said Anna. ‘We shouldn’t be going south.’

  Silently cursing herself for still not knowing which was the right bus into town, even after six years in Netherton Grove, Jelly nearly lost her balance hurrying towards the back, hanging on to the railing with one hand and her violin case and handbag with the other while the bus plunged over uneven tarmac.

  ‘Please, could you tell us the best way to Bruton Street?’ she asked the conductor against the noise of the traffic.

  ‘Where, luv? That’s a grand foreign accent you’ve got, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Hooton Street, was it?’

  ‘Brrruton Street.’

  ‘Ah – I’d say you need to get off me bus and go to Wandsworth Town station, just round that corner there. Change at Clapham Junction for Victoria.’ He looked Anna up and down. ‘You all right, miss?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’

  Flustered on the pavement, Jelly spotted a road sign pointing to the train station. But this was a part of London, though not far from her home, that she wasn’t convinced she’d seen before.

  All around, disused shops sat black-windowed and deserted. A patina of soot clung to glass, walls and doorways; men, workless, though of working age, stood smoking in clusters; a group of passing women, faces pale and pinched – with hunger, perhaps – were hauling along grubby and recalcitrant children, and Jelly winced as one mother lost her calm and cuffed a squalling lad across the ear, which only made him cry even more. Sweating with alarm in her clean coat, tailored blouse and tulip skirt, plus those wretched heels, she felt overdressed and seriously anxious about the time. She imagined hostile eyes following their every step across the road. A symbol caught her eye, scrawled on the filthy wall under the railway bridge: the crooked flash logo of the British Union of Fascists. Beside it, in ill-formed white-painted letters, were the words JEWS OUT.

  Wandsworth Town station was set back from the parade of what used to be shops and it was busy; people who had jobs were still on their way to work. They joined the stream on the stairs to the platforms, hemmed in on all sides, closer and closer, by an army of clambering feet and swinging, pointed umbrellas. Jelly felt the inadvertent thump of a heavy leather briefcase against her leg. Anna, just in front of her, was clutching the banister hard. Her chest was moving up and down, and Jelly, glancing at her hands, was struck by them: were they really so skeletal? Why hadn’t she noticed before? Above them, a train clattered in across the bridge and she was wondering how to reach its doors despite the crowding when Anna stood still, swayed, then crumpled.

  Jelly let out a cry in Hungarian, so shocked was she.

  Anna was struggling to get up, racked with uncontrollable coughs, gasping out, ‘Oh, sweet Jesus… ’ Her face was the colour of the clouds.

  ‘Darling!’ Jelly put her arm around her to lift and guide her to the side of the landing halfway up the stairs, where she keeled over to the ground. ‘Speak to me!’

  Why was everyone walking by without even looking? Anna had bent double like a piece of cardboard, trying to muffle her desperate spasms in the folds of her clothes. When she paused, heaving for breath, her coat had acquired a soot stain from the station floor. Along the grimy mark were bright red blotches of blood.

  ‘Someone, please help us!’ Jelly shouted. Looking at the blood, she was beginning to feel faint herself.

  By now they had attracted the stationmaster, who took one glance at Anna with Jelly cradling her prostrate form, and ran for a telephone.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, there’s help coming. You’ll be all right.’ Jelly despaired of her own distraction. How could she have been so stupid as not to notice how ill Anna looked? Had she been working her too hard? Had she grown unwell so slowly that one small strain too much had tipped her over the edge? And never a complaint, never a word… Coughing blood – that was why the commuting crowd had rushed away from them.

  ‘Hartnell,’ mumbled Anna.

  ‘As if I’d leave you now!’

  Anna’s eyes, huge in her too-thin face, gazed up into Jelly’s at last. ‘You’re so kind, Jelly,’ she said. ‘You’re such a good, sweet, real sort of person, and we never tell you… ’

  The sound of a siren cut through the stairwell’s echoes, and a minute later two ambulance men were pounding up the steps towards them. Anna’s pulse was taken, her condition assessed and a stretcher brought. Jelly could hear the tension in their barked instructions.

  ‘She’s my secretary and my friend,’ she told them. ‘I’d like to go with her, please.’

  Jelly perched on a fold-out seat in the back of the ambulance, holding Anna’s hand, searching her face for any sign of awareness. She had either drifted into a light sleep or started to lose consciousness. It had to be what Jelly feared: the dreaded tuberculosis, which nobody dared talk about, even though it was everywhere. Less usual, though, in Chelsea, where they had assumed it was a disease of the slums and the dosshouses.

  ‘That’s an infectious disease, Miss, and it can infect anyone,’ said the ambulance man who was monitoring Anna’s weak pulse.

  If only she had bothered to see a doctor sooner. ‘Don’t let her die,’ Jelly prayed.

  ‘It’s all right, she’s not at death’s door,’ he reassured her. ‘But she should’ve been with us a long time ago.’

  ‘I envy your job. I should have liked to be a doctor.’

  ‘What’s the accent, Miss? Can’t say it’s one I know.’

  Jelly recognised the tone of voice: suspicion. She used to hear it more often before, during and just after the war: the English loathing of anything foreign. Since the recent upheavals in Germany, the doubt had begun to creep back. ‘I’m Hungarian,’ she said, fighting back her alarm.

  ‘Hungarian? That’s a rum one… ’ She could hear his relief that she wasn’t German. ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘I’ve lived here more than 20 years.’

  ‘Oh yes? Don’t you miss it? A country of your own?’

  ‘This is my country now,’ she said, still quailing a little.

  ‘Can’t be easy, being foreign, things as they are. What’s in the box, then?’

  ‘Violin. I’m a musician.’

  ‘Oh, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist?’ The ambulance man laughed aloud – he had no idea why she might not laugh with him.

  ‘Gypsy girls aren’t allowed to play the violin,’ Jelly said, conversational, keeping her calm. She registered that they were driving uphill. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The Savoy.’ He gave her a wink. ‘Nah, Mi
ss – closest hospital there is. Putney. There in no time.’

  *

  They unloaded the barely conscious Anna on the stretcher; Jelly followed, her nostrils assaulted by a stench of disinfectant and blocked drains. Blinking, she took in the surrounding anxious muddle, the officious nurses, the pallid relatives of patients sitting on wooden benches in the lobby: hollow-cheeked faces, blank eyes. She had no doubt now that what she was seeing was hunger. This was the look of people who would give their children what food there was, but go hungry themselves. It seemed impossible that they could afford their treatment; the papers were full of the way costs had been rising of late. Thinking of her own life, she wanted to hide somewhere for the shame of her shelteredness. How alien her world would seem to these people; yet, were it not for her music, she might have been one of them. The sea of greyness in front of her was punctuated only by the crimson flowering of bloodstains on Anna’s clothes, quickly concealed with a sheet.

  ‘Give us a tune, love?’ One of the men caught her eye and winked. She smiled back.

  ‘I would, but… ’ She gestured at the ailing Anna on the stretcher.

  ‘Never mind,’ he rasped – he had the voice of a heavy smoker. ‘Probably only play for rich people anyway, don’t you?’

  Jelly was trying to keep hold of Anna’s hand. ‘Miss, we have to take her in to see the doctor… ’ an apologetic nurse intervened.

  ‘Jelly.’ Anna opened her eyes with effort. ‘Don’t worry. Please go home. If you come back tomorrow, they’ll have cured me.’

  ‘Please take good care of her,’ Jelly said to the nurse. ‘And please send the bills to me. My Anna is “more precious than rubies”.’

  *

  Back at home, Jelly telephoned the salon to rearrange her fitting. Only hours ago, it had been imperative not to be late for Queen Mary’s preferred designer. Images galloped through her mind like speeded-up film – Anna, the ambulance man, the smoker’s accusation – along with an imagined portrait of Tom, confined to a hospital bed, emaciated and fading, telling her to be true to her vocation. She longed to take a jug from Adila’s kitchen and mix in it a spiritual punch: one part Hungarian energy, two parts empathy, five parts music. Then she’d pour out the magic potion for them all.