The new term had just begun and the freshers were easy to spot, timid and goggle-eyed, clutching books, tethering bicycles, so desperately young. Thinking of her male friends who had been just like these boys at one time – Sep, dead at the Somme, and George Mallory, lost beyond the clouds on Everest, and Tom, sick and fading in Ireland, and Aldous Huxley, working on his latest book in Italy, one that he hoped might cause a bit of a splash – Jelly stared at the boys with their short back and sides, their blazers, spectacles and tweeds, and wondered what would become of them all.
The Joachims lived on a tree-lined street off Banbury Road in Summertown, north of the city centre, but south of the suburban sprawl that had attached itself to Oxford in the past decade. They kept their substantial house simply furnished and open-hearted; Jelly remembered several teas there at which she found them entertaining Harold’s students with plentiful cakes, plus string quartets in the lounge. Harold, a quiet man with beautiful hands, was a good violinist in his spare time and in the quartets had often taken second violin to Onkel Jo’s first.
It was several years since Jelly had last seen Elisabeth; approaching the villa she had a brief attack of nerves. The inhabitants of Hurricane House, fond though they were of their cousin, couldn’t help wondering whether she entirely approved of them, for here in the heart of establishment academia, where Harold was admired for his writings on idealism and the ‘coherence of truth’, Elisabeth had developed a hint of her father’s piercing gaze.
Her welcome, though, was warm as can be, complete with scones, jam and clotted cream. Soon Jelly, sipping from the family china, was happily filling her in on the gossip from London and the way that Adila’s teaching, modelled on Joachim’s, was making such a difference to young Madge. They chatted about Tovey, the music societies, the students, the Proms, until finally Elisabeth said, ‘Jelly, it’s very unlike you to turn up needing to talk about something and then not talk about it. What’s happened? Is there news of the concerto?’ Jelly had told her the basics when she telephoned to arrange the visit and Elisabeth professed herself amazed.
‘Read this.’ From her handbag Jelly drew a small envelope containing two thin sheets of paper, sent from Interlaken.
Perusing them, Elisabeth grew very still. ‘Never?’
‘That’s what she says. Never. It should never, ever be played. Lisa, this is horrible. Can you believe that there is a concerto by Schumann, but his daughter insists we are never, ever to be allowed to play and hear it? I can understand a hundred-year ban, perhaps, but… ’
Eugenie Schumann had other ideas. Although she could have been no more than 5 years old when her father died, and was now 82, she declared her memory vivid. The decision to put the concerto aside, she wrote, was her mother’s alone, not Joachim’s. Clara, she insisted, had taken years to determine what to do about it, discussed it at length with Brahms and Joachim and had even asked the latter to create a new finale for the work, as she considered Schumann’s defective. She had made it clear to her children that the concerto contained traces of his final illness.
‘I shall never forget the instant in our home at Frankfurt-on-Main,’ Eugenie wrote, ‘when my mother came in to us and said, with deep but suppressed feelings visible in her face: “I have just agreed with Joachim and Brahms that the concerto shall not be published, not now nor at any time. We are entirely in accord on the matter.”’ She went on to speculate on the anguish, responsibility and courage that must have been entailed in making that decision, inspired, she insisted, by the triumvirate’s love for, and faithfulness to, Schumann’s memory and their desire to show him only at his best.
‘They were high-minded people.’ Elisabeth refilled the cups. ‘Vati always said that Clara’s standards were unutterably lofty, and that most remarkably of all, she could keep to them. Why would she not marry Brahms? Schumann was dead; why must she devote herself solely to his memory? Brahms loved her and he adored the children. Eugenie once wrote about how he used to perform acrobatics on the banisters to make them laugh.’
It struck Jelly that the spirit messages had given no indication that Schumann’s own family might raise objections. And though there was an expression of regret supposedly from Onkel Jo himself, suggesting that perhaps his original judgement of the concerto had been too harsh, not a single letter in the glass game, not so much as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, came in purporting to be from either Brahms or Clara.
‘You don’t remember anything about the concerto? Nothing your father might have said to you, or to Harold? If there’s anything at all that could counter her… ’
‘Not that I can think of,’ said the mystified Elisabeth.
Jelly had written to Eugenie in great hope and in a spirit rich with wit and enthusiasm, imagining her as a freethinking and enlightened woman. Not as someone who might send her this.
‘She’s certainly free-thinking,’ Elisabeth confirmed. ‘She had a relationship with another woman for over 50 years. That takes courage.’
‘Who was she? The – friend?’
‘A singer. Marie Fillunger, apparently an excellent musician, a friend of Brahms and devoted to Eugenie. Clara was remarkably accepting. She of all people knew true love when she saw it.’
Jelly stared at Eugenie’s handwriting. ‘I know we’re talking about some of the finest musicians who ever lived… but how can we be sure they were right?’
‘Harold would have ways to look at that,’ Elisabeth remarked. ‘He would probably say that until we can be sure we have every single fact in place, nothing is demonstrably true. Until all the components are assembled, every suggestion can only be partially right and partially wrong.’
‘That’s exactly it,’ Jelly said, eager. ‘We don’t have all the components for the truth, and we can’t have them until we have the concerto itself! I can’t bear it that Erik has seen the manuscript, but he can’t read it. He can’t tell me the first thing about the music.’
Elisabeth cast a shrewd eye over her het-up guest. ‘You’re quite flushed, Jelly. I hope this business isn’t coming to mean more to you than is strictly necessary?’
‘What gets to me is that the only person I know who’s seen it is him. And I don’t understand how these spirit messages are showing us one thing, but what happens is something else. I even think I am going a little mad.’
‘Presumably you haven’t told Eugenie that you first heard of this work through messages from her father in the beyond?’
‘No, no, but… ’
Elisabeth surveyed her, head on one side. ‘What is it you’re trying to do? Why is this concerto so important to you? Forgive me, but it seems to be coming to obsess you a little bit.’
‘It’s there,’ Jelly hedged, ‘and they chose me to find it.’
‘Other than that.’
‘I don’t know… I’m perhaps – trying to save something. The only thing that I might ever be able to save.’
‘Like a kitten from a lake?’
‘Not exactly. More a matter of… salvaging something good, something worthwhile out of my life, while I can.’ Jelly fought the tears that often accompanied her mental images of Sep, Tom, Anna, the hospital patients, the Yorkshire children. ‘Do you think your brother Johannes would be able to help? Could you convince him?’
‘Oh, Jelly… ’ Elisabeth hesitated, avoiding Jelly’s watery gaze. ‘It’s very difficult. I can’t quite contemplate asking him to do that, having seen how Eugenie feels about it. And as for what he’d say about your spirit messages… well, I’m not sure that I can feel it would be the right thing.’
Jelly despaired. The spirits must advise, then. She would prefer wise words from live human beings. But if not that, what else?
Chapter 8
Ulli Schultheiss thought the Queen’s Hall one of the finer venues he had had the pleasure of attending, at least in terms of acoustics. The place had scarcely changed in the 20-odd years since he first walked through its doors as a star-struck schoolboy, visiting from pre-war Germany. He wo
ndered if it had even been repainted.
The best of British, Tovey remarked, escorting him up Regent Street from his hotel near Piccadilly Circus, but the hall still seemed to Ulli the embodiment of British understatement, or underestimation, possibly, of its contents’ worth. It stood on the corner of Langham Place, beside a small church that now was dwarfed on its other side by the pale stone of the recently completed BBC Broadcasting House. The interior was a delicate taupe. ‘Supposedly the colour matches the belly of a London house mouse,’ Tovey declared, while they queued to leave their winter coats and hats in the cloakroom.
Ulli felt fortunate to be here at all. He’d persuaded Willy Strecker to delegate the trip to him, on the grounds that any discussions concerning the Schumann Violin Concerto could be merely speculative at this stage. Strecker responded to his cautious mention of ‘spirit messages’ with remarkable equanimity. What really mattered was the concerto’s commercial potential. Fighting the embargo would require a considerable input of time and effort; they should not get involved unless there was a convincing case for it. The piece had to be good enough, and if Clara and Joachim had chosen not to publish it, perhaps it really was questionable. ‘But go, Ulli,’ said Strecker, after some consideration. ‘See what you can find out. Then see what you can do.’
He kept to himself the impression that this hall looked a little miserable. Taking his seat beside Tovey, he surveyed the ceiling mural, where there sailed some desultory cupids. Over several centuries of composition, Britain had produced nothing better than Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Music simply did not hold the same status here as it did in Germany or Austria; the latter coddled the world’s finest composers with the architectural equivalent of fine gateaux and schlagobers.
‘Are you writing music at the moment?’ he asked Tovey. He was under strict instructions from Mainz not to mention the professor’s recent heart trouble.
‘I am, if a little slowly.’ Tovey seemed pleasantly surprised to be asked. ‘My opera’s going to be done, finally.’ He was shifting his spidery legs about in the cramped seat. ‘How is life in Germany?’
‘Difficult,’ Ulli admitted, lowering his voice. ‘You know they have made a Reichsmusikkammer, an official section for music within the state’s cultural department. One of their jobs is to look at the planned concert programmes and decide which they can sanction, and which not.’
Tovey nodded, glum. ‘I’ve read something to that effect. Who makes the decisions?’
‘Artists. Some of our finest artists. Wilhelm Backhaus, Wilhelm Furtwängler – ’
‘Oh, not Furtwängler? The best conductor I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing… ’
‘And Georg Kulenkampff, the violinist. Not that I rate him quite as much as the other two, but still… ’
‘But these are great, great musicians – surely they’re not in sympathy with the regime?’
‘As I said, it’s difficult… I think they have no choice.’
‘Which violinists do you admire?’ Tovey changed the subject.
‘A few years ago I heard little Yehudi Menuhin. In Berlin, wearing knickerbockers. That was some kind of miracle. He has such intensity in his sound, something almost prophet-like. I’ve heard child prodigies before, but never one like that. I fear he may have ruined me for all other violinists.’
‘Well, I hope Miss d’Arányi will change your mind,’ Tovey smiled.
Where Jelly d’Arányi was concerned, Ulli had a tickling in the nose – an instinct he usually trusted – that the investment of time, money and effort in travelling to London would be repaid. If this missing concerto could be secured, and succeeded, and he was the person who helped to recover it, that could bode well for his own future. He had heard from colleagues that the Streckers spoke of him as likely heir for a senior post. Perhaps in sending him to see her they were giving him a chance to prove himself.
‘What is the latest about the Schumann story?’ he asked.
‘Stalemate. Jelly needs you, Ulli. She needs you to help her with this. Schott’s are probably the only people who can.’
The orchestra was in place; the audience quietened and applause greeted the entry of the conductor, Adrian Boult. After an opening overture and commensurate clapping, a dark-haired, slender figure in a red dress made her way onto the stage with him. While the concerto’s first bars sounded, Ulli sought a closer look at Jelly d’Arányi. He’d retained, from years ago, a faint impression of a light shimmering through the throng like a will o’ the wisp.
Her image filled two rounds as he peered through his opera glasses: just as he remembered, all scarlet gown, dark hair and rather dusky skin, her eyes kindling the flame he recalled. And when she began to play she seemed more spirit than body. She moved not like a normal musician, but like a dancer, with her entire being. He imagined that when she spoke to him eventually, he might hear not her human voice but the Bergonzi’s emanating from her delicate throat. So this was what had captivated all those composers. This solitary woman had sparked into existence a whole new repertoire of violin pieces. Something exceptional had to lie behind that.
The concerto didn’t sound much like genuine Mozart. The harmonies were in no way radical or sensual enough; the melodies were unmemorable. And though Jelly d’Arányi was giving it all the energy she would have devoted to Ravel’s Tzigane, somehow it was not… well, what wasn’t it? What was the matter? Perhaps she was having an off night. Not that her devoted audience would know – but to a trained ear that heard music every day, year round, the fact that not all was well could not go entirely unnoticed.
‘She sounds a little tired?’ he ventured at the end, while Jelly took curtain call after curtain call; her public, no doubt, still saw the lithe, Gypsyish girl they had always loved.
‘She’s had a difficult year,’ was all Tovey said. ‘Let’s go and see her.’
In the corridor outside Jelly’s dressing room – a dingy spot that in Vienna or Berlin would have been assigned to a broom rather than a soloist – Ulli watched Tovey watching Jelly, who was fluttering about like a scarlet-clad sparrow, embracing her family. Two little girls: who were they? Not hers? They couldn’t be; they adored her far too much for her to be their mother. Everyone received the same wild embrace from her, whether they were her close friends or unknown fans waiting for autographs. Great paprika-strong hugs, intense lingering handshakes, a smile that put the London Power Company to shame. And Tovey… Tovey was long married and settled, Ulli knew, but it was obvious to anyone with a sensitive eye – from his softened gaze, the gentleness with which he stooped towards her, the way he reached out to brush her wrist – that the professor might once have been head over heels in love with this woman. Time goes, passion with it, but the traces never quite vanish and sometimes the full feeling floods back as if to trick you. Tovey’s hands shook slightly when he returned Jelly’s hug, as if she were still the youthful violinist he had known in the century’s first decade. Her face powder left a pale streak along his dark lapel.
‘This is Ulrich Schultheiss, from Schott’s Music Publishers in Mainz,’ said Tovey to Jelly. ‘He is a grand fan of yours.’ And the whirlwind was upon him, Jelly grabbing his hand, and the current that coursed from her nearly jolted him off balance. He looked down into her face, stricken with vertigo. It was a very, very long time since this had last happened to him.
‘Darling, darling, you came all this way to hear me?’ she beamed. Did she preserve that accent deliberately, for its charm? If so, it worked.
He’d had a long day of travelling: the boat, the train, a taxi. Perhaps the giddiness was really from that… As if from a distance, he heard Tovey’s voice introducing him to someone else – Adila Fachiri, Jelly’s sister, and Adila’s husband, Alec; and one of the little girls was theirs, the other was Adila’s pupil, and an older girl, Jane, was the pupil’s sister, and a poised and strong-faced woman beside them was… good heavens, the pianist Myra Hess, who cast him an inscrutable stare; and they were inviting him back to
their house for a party, a fair distance from his hotel, but he’d go, because now he couldn’t not.
‘I’m so glad,’ Jelly said. ‘I very much want to talk to you about something rather special.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Ulli was smiling like an idiot; he couldn’t help himself. ‘Tovey mentioned you have a… project… ’
*
It took a minute for the cab containing Ulli, Tovey and the Harvey-Webb sisters to turn in to Netherton Grove, because another car was backing out of it. The street was a cul-de-sac, but easy to mistake for a thoroughfare between the Fulham Road and the King’s Road. When they pulled up outside No. 10, Ulli could see this was the ideal house for these extraordinary beings. It was an outlandish terracotta colour, and it sported a fake Renaissance citadel effect, a bit like a bell tower. Hungarians trying to be Italian in Chelsea!
Inside, the party gobbled him up into a stew of languages and accents, together with the dog barking and a gramophone working its way through a stack of dance-band records. ‘It has its place,’ Adila told him. Her bluebell eyes clear and direct, she was as striking as her sister, in a wholly different way: fairy godmother rather than elfin pixie. And a nurturing fairy godmother, at that: she was holding out towards him a huge silver bowl of sausages. Ulli tasted one; it was surprisingly good. ‘Germanic food in honour of you and Mozart,’ Tovey joked, behind him. Ulli couldn’t work out whether or not he meant it. English irony sometimes eluded him.
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