Review copies of the book had been sent to the press. A reporter phoned Netherton Grove a few days before publication, wanting to ask Jelly some questions for an article. He introduced himself as Rollo Myers, a music specialist from The Listener. Jelly, pleased that he was interested in the tale of the Schumann concerto and the spirit messages, answered as best she could, then returned to her work on the tricky last movement. Her anxieties had eased, and in her home circles she had noticed some resurgence of hope, now that Neville Chamberlain was prime minister. He had brought in better conditions – holiday pay for many people who had never had such a thing before, and limited working hours for women and children. As chancellor when Jelly undertook her cathedral tour, he had added a government grant of a thousand pounds to her proceeds; remembering that, she was ready to place her faith in him. Perhaps he could be strong enough to negotiate with Germany and avoid the war that everyone feared if Hitler’s ambitions went unchecked. ‘He’s a great, great man,’ Erik enthused. ‘His heart’s in the right place,’ was all Alec would say.
At the Swedish residence, the door under the portico stood open to the warm early evening. Alec and Adila walked ahead, arm in arm; Jelly tottered behind, her sore feet stuffed into her highest-heeled shoes. Alec, exhausted by constant travel between London and The Hague, where the League had had a complex year, was fighting a recurrent cough and slight fever; he paused in the entrance hall, while Adila pressed a hand to his forehead, tut-tutting with anxiety. ‘I’ll be fine, my dear,’ he insisted. ‘Let’s go up.’
The drawing room beneath its Wedgwood mouldings was filling with guests, who gathered in groups to converse and browse through the new book. Swedish and British mingled, as always at 27 Portland Place: the official, the titled, the press and a smattering of artistic types hand-picked to offset them. To one side, near the windows, stood a table piled high with fresh copies, the paper so new that it still smelled of wood. ‘It’s real! It’s out!’ Adila pressed one to her heart.
‘Of course it’s real,’ Alec sighed. ‘Otherwise what have you been working on all these months?’
Jelly had read little of the book, beyond the extracts that Adila had foisted aloud on them all. The proofs had been strewn about Hurricane House, but she had been too busy working to take much notice.
‘Jelly! Welcome, welcome, my dear.’ Erik kissed her on both cheeks. ‘As you know, you have most of a chapter.’ Smiles waltzed about his jowls as guest after guest gushed congratulations and asked him to sign their copies. Ebba with her walking stick stood by his side, gracious and pallid, the corners of her mouth fixed upward as if by staples.
Around the room scents mingled – beeswax polish, passing whiffs of Chanel and dill sauce from the canapés; photographers’ flashbulbs turned the assembled guests into freeze-frame silhouettes, glasses poised at various heights. Jelly wasn’t sure if the cameras were for the embassy or from the press. Normally a constant bright planet, she felt adrift today in an unfamiliar universe. She accepted a glass of wine, then retreated to the stairs with a copy of the book to see what Erik had written about her.
It was right at the end, entitled ‘Retrospect’. He’d called her ‘J d’A’. The messages were there – well, many of them. The book suggested that the first their little group knew of the spirits was the occasion on which ‘two friends’ – Jelly and Anna, evidently – had received the initial communication from Schumann or his representative, and that it was only after this that Adila discovered her gift as psychic ‘sensitive’. Why would he say that, when he and Adila and half the people they knew had been playing the glass game at salons and parlours and after-dinner parties for decades, even if it had become less prevalent of late? To put the responsibility on to her, Jelly, when she was the most reluctant participant? Perhaps to push his friendship with Adila into the background? Then there came the story of Schott’s involvement, though not of Ulli’s, and the tale of how Erik himself had gone to Berlin and rooted out the manuscript after others had failed to find it. This account made the author of the book into a hero. She took a sip of wine. Her old friend George would have directed her to something stronger for this occasion.
‘Sai, what are you doing?’ Adila bustled over to her. ‘Everyone is asking for you! Someone from The Times wants to see you, and there is a charming young man who says he is a pianist, and our friends from the Society for Psychical Research who – ’
‘Adi, give me a moment – I’ll be in soon.’ Jelly, experiencing a carousel of disquiet, waved her sister back into the party. She leaned against the wall, trying to stay calm.
In the drawing room the chatter quietened and the baron took the floor, reading out an extract of the book. Jelly had just read those same words. They were the last in the volume.
‘“The actual purpose of sending these messages is not the widening of intellectual knowledge; rather it is an inspiration, an awakening to a life which carries within itself the solution of our most urgent problems… ”’ The messengers, declared the baron, wished to reach not a small elite, but a grand multitude of people: all those whose souls craved the answers they could find nowhere else.
Our most urgent problems? In the short months between Erik penning his book and publishing it, world events had been threatening to overtake them all. Everywhere she went, even backstage after her concerts, the preoccupation of all conversation had become the likelihood of war with Germany, Chamberlain notwithstanding. Alec thought it only a matter of time. The government was talking about building air-raid shelters. Yet in this tranquil green-gold evening, the city seemed ripe with vitality and contentment… How could that be? What would they do? Where could they go? What would happen to their friends in Mainz? What of Ulli? He was only 35; if there was a war, with conscription… And why did Erik think his spirit messages could help? No earlier generation had had any idea how to handle war. Why should the spirits of those generations hold the answers now?
‘Jelly! You’re still there!’ Adila was marching towards her, trailing in her wake a young man who sported slicked-back hair, shiny shoes and a buff-coloured trenchcoat, which he had not bothered to hand to the cloakroom. ‘Here she is,’ Adila declared. ‘This is my sister, Jelly d’Arányi.’ She walked up to Jelly and gave her a kiss.
‘Miss d’Arányi? Lionel Hartshaw from the News of the World.’ The young man held out a hand, which Jelly, briefly paralysed on the stairs upon hearing the paper’s name, reached up to take and shake. ‘Nice to meet you. I wonder, do you have a moment?’
‘Of course.’ Jelly rose and waited.
The reporter pulled from his briefcase a notebook, a pencil and the latest issue of The Listener. This he spread out in front of Jelly. A photo. A headline: FINDING A LOST SCHUMANN CONCERTO: A recent discovery based on ‘spirit messages’. Quotations from Erik’s book. And a name, Rollo Myers. ‘Oh yes – he phoned me… ’
‘Now, here’s my question,’ said Lionel Hartshaw, pencil poised. ‘Why should we believe that messages from the spirit world justify your claim to this famous composer’s violin concerto?’
Jelly hesitated. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Let me rephrase that, Miss d’Arányi: all this frankly sounds a bit like woolly spiritualist balderdash to me and I think to many others too. If you believe it, then why do you believe it?’
Jelly’s throat tightened. ‘This is from Baron Palmstierna’s book. He was there. He saw it all happening.’
‘But you are the lady who’s come along saying that the Nazi chap mustn’t play it first, the Jewish–American chap mustn’t play it first, it’s yours because you got a message from Schumann saying so? Excuse me, Miss d’Arányi, but this is 1937. People will think it’s a fairly outrageous assertion.’
‘But… it is what happened. It is true.’ Jelly grabbed the magazine and pointed. ‘And look. Mr Myers, who wrote this article, agrees. He himself says we are vouched for by people of “absolute integrity”.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ Hartshaw gave
her a cheeky smile. He had a dimple in his left cheek. Under other circumstances, it might have been charming. But though the dimple indented, the eyes mocked her. ‘Evidently he means Baron Palmstierna, so it still comes back to what you think of the baron’s activities in the, er, paranormal. How d’you intend to prove it?’
‘Prove? It’s there, in the book, exactly as it happened.’
‘All right.’ The dimple deepened, the mockery with it. ‘So, the first so-called “message” came to you, didn’t it? Not to Baron Palmstierna and your sister?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So, can anybody corroborate your story?’ He leaned forward, speaking too loudly and slowly – the way a nanny might talk to a toddler, or a colonial Englishman to a native abroad. Perhaps he thought that because she was foreign, she couldn’t understand English. ‘Was there anybody with you who can confirm that what you claim is true?’
Jelly was about to protest that her personal assistant was there. But – supposing he phoned Anna? Supposing she wasn’t well enough for the shock of being quizzed by a slimy reporter?
‘Name? Telephone?’
‘A friend.’ She maintained a semblance of calm. ‘But I am not giving you this person’s name and number.’
‘Oh, Miss d’Arányi – that is just too, too tantalising. Surely you want your friend to let us know what really happened? It wouldn’t do you any harm.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Hartshaw, but I think my sister is going to play.’
‘You look rather pale. Shall I fetch you another drink?’
‘Thank you, but no.’ She moved away.
‘If you ask me,’ came the sly voice behind her, ‘it’s an outrageous heap of lies. The pack of you ought to be locked up.’
In the drawing room the clinking of glasses had stilled. Music. A violin. Jelly, teetering across the landing, saw a picture framed by the doorway: her sister, radiant in blue, in the centre of the room, violin cradled beneath her chin, bow caressing the strings in a Bach Allemande. The room’s wood and glass took up the sound and polished it. Erik presided at the front, stance proud, arms folded. Alec at first was nowhere to be seen; eventually Jelly located him on a window seat. Her brother-in-law was listening to his wife’s performance with head lowered, his face turned away, muffling his coughs with his sleeve.
Hartshaw slithered past her into the throng, not caring who he disturbed, sneering at all he saw. Jelly watched him. With luck, she’d never set eyes on him again.
*
Back at home, much later, trying to joke and laugh and be pleasantly tipsy together after the party, Jelly concealed her rattled nerves as best she could, until Alec switched on the radio for the BBC news bulletin.
‘A long-lost violin concerto by the composer Robert Schumann has been unearthed in Berlin,’ came the announcement. ‘The work was consigned to a library by the composer’s family and friends after his death. But now the famous violinist Miss Gelly d’Arányi claims to have located the concerto thanks to an intervention in a séance from the spirit of the composer, asking her to find and perform it. A new book by the Swedish minister, Baron Erik Palmstierna… ’
‘They should know by now,’ Jelly muttered. ‘Yelly. Not jelly-and-ice cream.’
‘It wasn’t a séance,’ Adila said. ‘It was the glass. It’s not the same thing at all.’
The telephone rang; Alec answered. It was Anna Robertson, who had heard the broadcast at her new home in Sussex and was concerned for Jelly’s peace of mind.
‘Darling,’ Jelly said. ‘I’m not dreaming, am I? You were there. You saw it too.’
‘Of course I did.’
‘But please – if any reporter calls you – I didn’t tell them you were. I didn’t. The journalist man – I won’t call him a gentleman, because he is not; he is a rodent, a rat… ’
‘Jelly, what are you talking about?’
‘He wanted to know someone who could back me up. But I wouldn’t tell him your name or your phone number or anything. If anyone calls you, you know nothing, yes?’
‘But I don’t mind, if it would help you.’
‘No, no! He must leave you in peace.’
‘Jelly, listen, call me any time. You know I’d do anything for you.’
No sooner had she hung up than the phone rang again. Tovey, in Scotland, had also heard the broadcast. ‘I’m worried about you, my dear,’ he said.
‘I’m fine.’ Jelly knew her voice had started to waver. ‘Absolutely fine.’
It was late by now, but next came a call from her sister Hortense.
‘Sai, what on earth?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing? That’s Adi’s department. I thought you were the sensible one.’
‘No, Titi darling, the sensible one is you,’ Jelly told her.
‘What a time for Schumann to choose to get in touch with you. Couldn’t he have tried before there were Nazis? It would have been so much easier… I wonder why he decided to do it now. Has he said?’
Jelly didn’t need her sister’s barbed words just then.
‘Seriously,’ Hortense added, ‘if you need any help, Ralph has friends.’
Jelly’s second brother-in-law was as well connected as anybody in the country. ‘That’s kind of you, but don’t worry. I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’
The phone rang as soon as she put it down, time after time. Her sometime pianist, Ethel Hobday. Madge’s sister, Jane. Norman Hartnell, in person. Everyone had heard the broadcast. Everyone was worried about Jelly. Perhaps that meant she needed to be worried too.
‘They hardly mentioned Erik’s book,’ Adila grumbled.
‘This is ridiculous.’ Alec took charge, fighting his cough. ‘It’s nearly midnight. Some of us have to work tomorrow. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough.’ He pulled the telephone receiver off its stand and left it dangling by the cable, swinging like a pendulum. The light switches were next, one by one, in the music room, drawing room and dining room, turning the house stage by stage from gold to grey, charcoal to black. ‘Come on, ladies. Time for bed.’
The sisters paused in the dark entrance hall; Jelly reached for Adila’s hand, which closed warm and strong around hers. ‘Adi… This is going to be bad, isn’t it?’
‘It will pass – and we will win, because we have the truth. Whatever happens, remember that, little sister.’
*
Before nine o’clock in the morning, the phone, reconnected, started to ring. Adrienne, at her new boarding school, was in tears in the headmistress’s office. ‘They won’t shut up about it,’ she howled to Adila. ‘They won’t leave me alone. They’re teasing me about ghosts.’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’ Adila stormed. ‘Let me speak to that blasted headmistress.’
Jelly retreated to her room, dizzy and nauseous, with no appetite for breakfast beyond half a cup of coffee. Brushing her teeth, she nearly threw up what she’d managed to swallow. She sat on the edge of the bath, trying to calm her breathing, vaguely remembering that today she had not heard Adila make any reference to an impending miracle.
Not that one could hide from a telephone, but at least she couldn’t hear what the headmistress said to provoke Adila’s lengthy outburst of fury. Adila, a tigress when her cub was threatened, could send the anger at the right target: those beastly schoolgirls who could neither mind their own business nor imagine what they’d feel were they in Adrienne’s shoes, dealing with an apparently deranged aunt.
Next The Times rang. Adila slammed down the phone.
Jelly called one of the paper’s critics, James Gambrell – whom she had visited when she was first trying to locate the concerto four years earlier. He claimed no recollection of the event, then finished the conversation in a hurry, saying he was just on his way out. A telegram arrived from George in Dublin, saying that she had booked a phone call; Jelly, overjoyed to hear her voice, talked to her for ages, going round and round in circles as she tried to explain who knew what, and when, and why, and wondering how she ought to
weather this storm. ‘It mightn’t be easy,’ said George, who was somewhat experienced at protecting artists with supernatural difficulties. ‘But stay strong, Sai. I’m here. I’m with you.’
Tovey, who called next, provided some light relief. He had received a note from a lady who was eager to tell them she was psychically in touch with the spirit of a Tibetan lama. ‘She says,’ he added, ‘that the broadcast of Schumann’s Violin Concerto will set loose a wonderful flood of Thought Power across the earth.’
Jelly’s feet seemed to have acquired a life independent from her legs. They wanted to run and keep running. She had to escape. She could go to Battersea Park, get out of the house and away from all this madness. But there people might recognise her. They used to say good morning, tip their hats, smile. Today things might be very different.
Yet another phone call – and Adila, as self-appointed watchdog, summoned her and this time wouldn’t let her escape. ‘It’s Adrian Boult. You’d better talk to him yourself, Sai. It’s not about the report. It’s Germany, and Mehuhin.’
‘Can I call him back?’
‘Sai, speak to him now, and that’s an order,’ Adila thundered. ‘He’s a busy man and you need him more than he needs this.’
He was Sir Adrian Boult now; he had conducted the orchestra in Westminster Abbey for the coronation and since then been knighted.
‘Don’t worry, Jelly, there’s nothing about how you found the concerto that I didn’t know already,’ came the familiar clipped voice from his BBC office. ‘Now, regarding the concert – well, there’s a little spot of bother. As you know, what the Germans have cooked up is that Herr Kulenkampff must play it first, Yehudi Menuhin will play it second, and you will go third with the British premiere. They’ve made it terribly official. We mustn’t blame Kulenkampff – he may be little more than their pawn. I’m afraid that negotiating with the Nazis is not my favourite pastime… but in short, they’ve shifted the date once more.’
Ghost Variations Page 21
