Ghost Variations

by Jessica Duchen

  Her confidence grew. After Durham, she had four days to get her breath before Lincoln; then time to go home briefly before starting the southern route to Winchester, Salisbury, Chichester, the big day at Westminster Abbey, and finally Gloucester. She began to experiment. In Chichester she started by playing in the organ loft, then came downstairs for the Bach and only then noticed that the audience wasn’t packed only through the nave, but through every side-chapel and outside in the cloisters. The south was less harrowing, the concentration of poverty less intense; from Winchester, 75 per cent of the takings would go to the Northern Industries Workroom Council, where it was most needed, and the remainder to the unemployed of Hampshire.

  English summers, though, were English summers, and cathedrals were difficult to keep warm when it rained – as it did, copiously. Before the concerts, while she paced about in the vestry, sometimes Jelly’s hands were so cold that the knuckles hurt as if she’d rammed nails into them. Her gowns might be simple, but the backs usually involved the fashionable plunge, exposing her shoulder blades to the chilly church air. Waking in hotels or deaneries the morning after, she would feel pain colonising her spine, arms and sacroiliacs as if injected while she slept. Everywhere her audience came up to thank her for giving them so much of her spirit. She fixed her smile, looked them in the eye and thanked them in return, while in truth she wanted to crawl away and howl. The spirit wasn’t the problem. It was her body that was wearing out.

  July arrived. Jelly, aching and exhausted, was home at last with just two more concerts to go, sitting in a Chinese silk dressing gown on her bedroom floor surrounded by mounds of unopened correspondence. She felt she had scarcely enough energy to slit the envelopes, until she found one she really wanted. How I wish I could be with you for the Westminster Abbey concert, Tom wrote. Please don’t waste your time worrying about me. Go there and play wonderfully. That’s all I ask.

  Jelly hunted for a handkerchief. There was one by her bed. She sat down to mop up, but a cricket bat of exhaustion seemed to swing into her face. Surely she could take just 15 minutes for a nap. Caesar found her there and jumped up to lick her face before settling by the crook of her knee.

  Four hours later, Adila, who was joining her to perform in the Abbey, was less easy-going.

  ‘Sai! What’s going on? I’ll call the doctor.’

  ‘No, Adi, I just need to rest. Let me sleep.’ Jelly smiled at her sister, who leaned over and hugged her as if trying to transfer her overwhelming energy into Jelly’s delicate frame. She was in such pain that she could scarcely turn over.

  *

  The evening before Westminster, Erik arrived with a bouquet for the sisters almost the size of the sofa. Jelly hauled herself upright and put on a white blouse and light skirt. She’d been in bed for three days. Claws of pain dug into her back when she tried to bend over her chest of drawers to find some stockings. The impact of each step rebounded through her right hip.

  ‘Jelly’s hurt her back and she’s tired out,’ Alec was telling Erik when Jelly, after clunky progress down the stairs, arrived in the music room. Adila was arranging the flowers in a porcelain vase that bore only one tiny chip. The evening was warm and she had flung open the doors to the garden, letting in the scent of roses and rays of light giddy with spiralling sunbeams. Madge had come for a lesson, but now she was out on the lawn playing with Adrienne, a tennis ball and the dog. Alec and Erik were both relaxed and smiling in their shirtsleeves.

  Jelly made an effort to put on her public self, trying to ignore what was happening to her joints. She saw a flash of concern in the baron’s perceptive eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine tomorrow.’

  ‘She won’t let us call the doctor,’ Adila growled. ‘Three thousand people we expect in Westminster Abbey and my sister cannot move!’

  ‘I won’t make you play on your own, if that’s what worries you,’ Jelly teased.

  ‘You will have good company,’ Erik said. ‘We have had a session this afternoon with our friends, who tell me they will all be there to hear you.’

  For a moment Jelly thought he meant living people. She wondered how much Adila truly believed in the presence of these spirits – and how much she might herself. Adila, as far as she knew, had never questioned her belief in the messages any more than she had questioned her belief in God. But Jelly, seeing the consumptive patients around Anna, the begging children in Yorkshire and the shipyard wives in Durham, now found herself inwardly interrogating any deity’s actions on a regular basis.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sai,’ said Alec. ‘The reality is only what we can do for others, human to human. Believe me, you’re doing more than most.’

  A commotion from the garden and the little girls bounced in, flushed, happy and ready for cake and ice cream.

  ‘Darlings! Something wonderful has happened: we have been speaking to Schumann and Joachim,’ Adila cried, slicing giant pieces of plum cake. ‘Just think, when you are there tomorrow listening to us, so are they!’

  Madge’s astute blue eyes cast a sphinx-like stare at her violin teacher. ‘I was going to ask, please can I telephone Jane to pick me up?’ Jane, Madge’s stepsister ten years her senior, was an excellent cellist who often came round to play chamber music.

  ‘Of course, darling – tell her come now and have tea – and tomorrow you will both come to the concert?’

  ‘Isn’t it only for unemployed people?’

  ‘No, no, it is for everyone, free, and then there is a collection at the door for the unemployed. That is the point.’

  ‘A collection to which all those spirit friends are not well placed to contribute,’ Alec remarked, while Madge slunk towards the telephone. ‘I hope her mother won’t change her mind about the lessons.’

  ‘She’s so gifted! She’s making such progress! Whyever would she change?’

  ‘Well, don’t you think we should perhaps be more discreet about these little visitations? Not everyone approves, you know. People find it a bit odd. You know attitudes aren’t exactly as receptive to these things as they used to be.’

  ‘But, sweetheart, it’s true, it’s happening to us. How can one argue with that?’

  ‘People only believe what they want to believe – and if they don’t want to believe something, nothing you say will change that. They’ll always find a way round it. It’s human nature. Besides, there are too many frauds… ’

  ‘You’re sure it’s real, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m ready to be convinced,’ he smiled.

  Adila glowered. ‘This is still incontrovertible evidence – there is an afterlife and the spirits of the departed are communicating with us. What are they going to do about that? One day our research will show it all… ’

  ‘I love the way it’s called “research”,’ said Alec. ‘Who’s for another cup of tea?’

  *

  Big Ben was striking four when Jelly and Adila walked together into Westminster Abbey. Inside, they paused at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. For the unknown war dead, wherever they fell. They both remembered the unveiling in 1920 and the crowds that flocked to pay tribute to the dead soldier. Over 1.25 million in the week after the burial, Alec reported. Queues as far as parliament. Everyone in the country seemed to have someone to mourn – a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a fiancé, or several of these. Jelly had shed tears in Westminster Abbey for Sep, though at home she rarely spoke of her pain. Everyone might tease her about being overemotional, but she was quite capable of keeping her deepest feelings to herself and her violin when she wished. Seventeen years after Sep’s death, the tombstone still tore at her.

  Adila understood; she slid her arm through her sister’s and squeezed. She read out the inscription at the side: ‘“Unknown and yet well known, dying and behold we live… ” Do you think it’s Sep, down there?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair that we only mark this one because we think he was British,’ said Jelly. ‘They all fought for us.’

  S
he stood absorbing herself into her surroundings: the Gothic arches, the dark wood of the screed, the tombs of Chaucer, Purcell, King Henry V. Stained glass scattered flecks of royal blue, tangerine and scarlet onto the ancient stone.

  Supposing the spirits of those composers and her great-uncle really were there, watching her? And if they were, what of Sep? What of her parents? She had to stop thinking about it.

  They decided to play from the organ loft, where it would be easiest to coordinate with their accompanist. Shortly before it was time to start, after he had gone out to make his preparations, Jelly lay down on a rug on the floor, stretching out her aching back. Above her, soot-stained vaulting reached towards infinity.

  ‘Sai, we should go and get dressed.’ Adila held out her hands to pull her up.

  ‘I’m floating. Come and try it.’ Jelly patted the floor beside her.

  Adila lumbered down and lay back. The sisters stayed there in silence, gazing up into the arches. ‘You could take leave of earth like this,’ Jelly said.

  ‘Listen, everyone’s arriving… ’

  The hum of voices in the air reminded Jelly of bees in the Dorset heather. Staring only upward, while different protrusions of carved stone tossed sounds between them, she couldn’t identify the directions of the myriad noises. They could have been the spirits murmuring, winging around in search of a good spot on which to perch and listen. Proof of spirits meant proof of an afterlife – and was that not the real problem with her Schumann concerto?

  ‘I feel better. Let’s go and change.’ As Jelly stood up, the blanket of pain seemed to rise and carry on rising, leaving her body clear, her breath controlled and her hands warm, supple and ready for anything.

  ‘Nervous?’ Adila was moistening her own lips.

  ‘Not remotely.’ With her violin and bow in her hands, her sister beside her and, who knows, invisible spirits giving their support, Jelly felt the freedom of the stage taking hold. Tonight would be one of their best concerts. She needed no more reassurance.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Sai! Come here, quick!’ Adila was in the hall, hair wild, eyes aflame, a telegram from Erik in her hand. ‘We have found the Schumann Violin Concerto!’

  Jelly flew down the stairs, narrowly avoiding an overexcited Caesar underfoot. It was late August; they had just returned from a holiday in Scotland, staying with the convalescent Anna by a Highland loch. Erik and Ebba had spent the summer in Sweden – but returning to London, Erik engineered a diplomat’s circuitous route.

  ‘He has managed to go to Berlin, and he has found the manuscript himself, in person.’ Adila shoved the paper towards Jelly. ‘It was in the Prussian State Library. In the wrong file.’

  Jelly read the impersonal typewritten words over and over again, wondering why she didn’t share her sister’s joy.

  ‘We are to go to their dinner party the day he’s back and he’ll tell us everything!’ Adila grabbed her by the waist and whirled her round the hall in a manic waltz. ‘Today, I knew, there would be a miracle. It is found! Found!’

  *

  ‘Found? If only it were that simple.’

  In Portland Place Erik presided at the head of the table, with Adila to his right, Jelly to his left, Ebba at the far end with Alec beside her; the Palmstiernas’ daughter Margareta and her husband François were visiting from France and sat in the centre, one on each side; and, in between, more dinner party guests were arrayed in alternation of the sexes – men in black tie, women in sleek evening gowns, their jewels grabbing light from the chandelier above and the tall candles in the middle. Jelly, wearing crimson silk, and Adila, in lilac satin, both leaned towards the baron as he described his unlikely ambassadorial adventures in the music libraries of Berlin.

  ‘But what’s the concerto like?’ Jelly begged.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said the baron, ‘it’s one of my great regrets that I have never learned to read music. So I’m afraid… ’

  ‘And they wouldn’t let you photograph it?’ Adila pressed.

  Indeed they had not. It was pure chance he had found it at all. He had gone first to the Musikhochschüle library, where nothing was in evidence, but overhearing him talking to the librarian, a passing academic glanced round and suggested he try the Staatsbibliothek – the Prussian State Library – instead. There, some official in uniform barred his way, accusing him of being Jewish, prodding him in the chest with a gun. Erik, who was stocky and dark, had to produce three rounds of diplomatic papers before he was believed. Once inside, he found nothing of interest in files marked SCHUMANN, but acting on a hunch, well aware of the possibility of misfiling alongside misidentification, he decided to check those marked JOACHIM as well. This revealed a modest sheaf of faded manuscript paper signed with the name ‘Robert Schumann’.

  Not that anybody at the library had been particularly aware of the treasure stashed away in their archive, but once they were – oh dear. That was just the start. For one thing, there were apparently several manuscripts of the same piece, in different formats; he had only found one of them. The archive’s head, hunting through some records, told him that another, the first movement with piano score, had been used for a play-through at Zwickau, Schumann’s birthplace, three years earlier, but was then laid to rest again. And last, but assuredly not least, a note accompanied the file, declaring that the concerto was ‘not for publication’. It was not to be performed until 100 years after Schumann’s death.

  ‘But it’s not lost at all, or even suppressed, if it’s been played?’ Ebba challenged her husband.

  He shrugged. A private try-out with piano, no orchestra, precious little audience; that didn’t really count.

  ‘You’re over-romanticising the entire situation. Someone already knew about it,’ Ebba protested. ‘A lost concerto? That, my dear, is not “lost” in the slightest.’

  ‘But the concerto is strictly embargoed,’ Erik explained. ‘There is a clause, apparently placed there by – Adila and Jelly – your cousin Johannes Joachim, who apparently wrote this, according to his memory of his father’s words. When did Schumann die?’

  ‘In 1856… Oh no.’ Jelly, calculating, took a long draught of wine. ‘That means – it is not to be seen for another 23 years?’

  ‘Willy Strecker at Schott’s is bound to help,’ Adila insisted. ‘Jelly, didn’t you say Tovey had been in touch with him, or his assistant, some nice young man there?’

  ‘Embargoes are extremely awkward in legal terms,’ Alec said. ‘Often you’re dealing with someone’s last wishes, people’s wills, that type of thing… ’

  ‘But what is this note? Some silly, unreadable squiggle from Johannes?’ Adila was tapping her heel hard against the wooden floor, which fortunately was protected by an oriental rug.

  ‘But why?’ said Jelly. ‘How can we ever see the piece?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait until 1956,’ Adila growled. ‘You will be 63. I will be 67.’

  ‘Seventy,’ Alec mouthed at Jelly, with a wink. Adila sometimes took executive decisions to reduce her own age.

  Adila ignored him. ‘There has to be another way.’

  *

  While the men went into the wood-panelled library for post-dinner drinks and cigars, Jelly and Adila adjourned with the other women to Ebba’s parlour. Adila gazed with delight, as she usually did, at the sweep of staircase and down at the pillared entrance hall, tiled in black and white. ‘Wouldn’t you love to live in this house?’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps you should move in,’ Jelly remarked, with equanimity. She wondered how Adila could possibly be happily married and still entertain such closeness to another man; she was sure that in her sister’s place, she could never have done so. Nor did she share Adila’s passion for the Swedish Residence. She could be happy living anywhere, provided it had heart – which was precisely what she found lacking chez Palmstierna. If everything looked too perfect, you couldn’t tell what was going on beneath. She regarded perfection as a graceful variety of hiding place, possibly a form of dishones
ty.

  The baroness, tall, grey-haired and charismatic despite her disability, walked stiffly, supported by her maid, who held one elbow and kept patiently in step with her. Neither the magnificence of her home, nor her evening dress – ivory silk with fabulous pearl beading – could protect her from spending much of her life in pain. Nobody talked about its causes, although the general consensus was that it was either a form of rheumatism, or perhaps a neurological issue, which Jelly did not understand. How it affected her daily existence, and her married life with Erik, was something nobody would dare discuss. Jelly, who was trying to hide her anxiety about her own painful joints, watched her, warm with sympathy, cold with dread.

  The women settled in window seats or armchairs, taking turns to go into the bathroom to refresh their powder and make-up, meanwhile chatting about children and grandchildren, husbands and servants – for most of this gathering still employed staff. Jelly had little to add to any of those topics; as ever, when her friends discussed the illnesses, foibles and growing pains of children, she felt herself excluded. She went over to Ebba’s chair and crouched beside her. ‘How are you feeling, Ebba? I hope we’re not being too much of a strain on you.’

  ‘As if you could be, my dear.’ The baroness patted Jelly’s hand. Few of the guests felt it tactful to mention their hostess’s state of health, but Jelly knew how to show that her concern was for the person, not the problem. ‘I’m pleased to be taken out of myself for an evening,’ Ebba remarked. ‘And you know, dear, we enjoy your company – and Adila’s – so much. There are no accents in London to match yours!’

  ‘Oh, but baroness, darling, your accent is beautiful.’ The Swedish inflections could easily be mistaken for aristocratic English ones, with a drawn-out roundness that Jelly preferred to the delicate little vowels of Princess Alexandra or the Asquith family, including Katharine; they always sounded as if they were trying not to bite into a bee.