‘Thanks.’
‘Nice fellow, old Sir Roy, I thought when I went up to see him. Makes you feel brilliant, doesn’t he? There wasn’t anything came up he didn’t go on as if I knew ten times more about it than he did.’
‘Including music?’
‘You mean classical? In a kind of way. Like of course he knew more, but what would a bloody great genius like me care? Sort of, me witch-doctor, you heap big American scientist with computers and all. Does he always go on like that?’
‘No. Only sometimes.’
‘There was a parson down the youth club I used to go to . . . Here we go again. Full of piss they are, actually. Not much in them for me, never mind you.’
The ensuing stretch of time recalled to me a night I had once passed in the grip of a fairly severe throat infection. I had had a series of vivid, realistic dreams that each appeared to cover the events of an hour, an afternoon, a whole day, and had awoken again and again in a sweat, frightened or just bewildered, but with the thought that anyhow morning must now be appreciably nearer, to find something like two minutes had elapsed since my last awakening. So, there in the dirty vastness of the tram shed, my mind seemed to be plunging and skidding towards and through everything I could remember or imagine, seemed to be when measured against the all but stationary hands of my watch. When I put my fingers in my ears it was worse. I was very relieved when it came to me from somewhere or other that I had felt like this, though less intensely, in the Dug-out at the start of the night of the favour. It had been Penny’s arrival that had put an end to that phase.
I had just decided to try to think about her when those on the stage stopped doing what they were doing and began to go away. Hubbub was restored, somewhat louder than before. Next to me, Bolsover had turned preoccupied, once or twice scribbling a couple of lines in a notebook of incongruously neat appearance. What were presumably Pigs Out appeared before us one by one. I registered a strong impression that, should the choice arise, I would reject them in favour of a joint Nazi-Soviet tribunal as arbiters of my destiny, then heeded them no more. A man aged between twenty and sixty, wearing a shoulder-length wig that might or might not have been made of fine silver wire and clothes that glittered fiercely all over, spoke over the loudspeakers in tones of clangorous wheedling. Then the noise was back.
Penny. When I tried to think consecutively about her, I found that my mental traction had slipped out of overdrive into bottom gear. It was hard even to remember what she looked like. I worked at it, but every time her image showed signs of clearing and steadying, my surroundings shook it out of focus again. In the end I clutched at a single idea and held on to it: that I would telephone her and try to get her to come down to the flat while Gilbert was on one of his nature rambles. Another thought swam up alongside, to do with something having happened or been said to me recently that had engendered the first thought, but a drum solo put paid to that.
After several false stops, the noise came to an end. The silver-wigged man stepped up and delivered a mixture of misstatements and (to me) unpalatable half- and three-quarter-truths about Roy, who presently came into view carrying his violin case. The ambient hubbub grew, became mildly enthusiastic, but I fancied that some of the enthusiasm had an ironical edge to it. So, it seemed, did Bolsover.
‘I don’t know why some people come,’ he said. ‘The bunch who went on first tonight have got a couple of queers on guitars, it’s well known. That lot up the front gave them the hell of a time. I don’t know why they come.’
‘Roy’s not queer.’
‘No.’
‘What is he, then, from their point of view? Old?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bolsover, implying in the monosyllable that that was only about half the story and that he was not going to tell the other half.
‘I see.’
By now, with a grinning jauntiness that made me want to turn my eyes away, Roy had taken his fiddle and bow out of their case, disposed of the case, and shaped up to begin playing without further ado. I had never before known him to reach this stage without careful, even fussy, preparatory tuning. My heart fell. He had stopped caring. Or perhaps – my heart rose again a notch – he had reasoned that, apart from himself, me and any other professional critics who might be present, nobody would notice a disparity of pitch smaller than about a semitone. The hubbub sank to the level one might expect from a soccer crowd just before the appearance of the teams – a solemn hush by the standards prevailing.
Pigs Out squared themselves and played a short series of what they probably thought of as chords, during which the bongoes rattled and thumped. Roy lifted his bow – giving it, I thought, an inquisitive glance – and, as Pigs Out fell silent, brought it down across the violin strings. A faint slithering and squeaking, not altogether unlike that of rats in a cellar, was all that resulted. On the stage, general bafflement followed; elsewhere, heightened hubbub.
‘Bum mike,’ said Bolsover. ‘Bloody bad luck. Still, they can—’
‘I don’t think it’s that. It sounds to me as if someone’s doctored his bow. Grease or oil of some sort. Anybody could—’
‘Fuck me!’ thundered Roy’s amplified voice, refuting Bolsover’s diagnosis.
The audience loved that. They also loved Roy’s hurried production of his spare bow, his equally speedy discovery that it too was unusable, the intervention of the silver-wigged man, and the whole thing. The lot up the front identified by Bolsover loved it most. I could see Roy thinking, and could guess at least one of his thoughts: that it would take much too long to find by telephone some fellow-violinist who was not out at a concert, or just out, and have a bow of his or hers brought to this comparatively remote spot. Then he was struck by a thought I could not guess. Turning away from his microphone as he spoke, he said,
‘I wonder if there’s a doogher-boogh boogh aboogh.’
The silver-wigged man left the platform at a run. In the ensuing minute or two, the hubbub grew further and became less generally amiable. At one point, Roy turned towards his microphone again, and I was very much afraid he was about to harangue the audience on the repressive tolerance of bourgeois society, or perhaps lead them in some revolutionary community singing, but he changed his mind, followed a style more deeply rooted in him, and stood gazing over everybody’s head with admirable impassivity. In the end, the silver-wigged man returned bearing what I recognized as a double-bass bow. Roy took it from him and nodded authoritatively at Pigs Out.
‘But Christ,’ said Bolsover, ‘that thing’s only about half the size.’
‘He can make a fair shot at it. He’s a professional, you see. And anyway, it’s not as if—’
Elevations 9 began again, and this time continued. I devoted myself to the horrible task of listening to everything that was being played: the popping of the bongoes, the wailing of the sitar and the sticky thudding of the bass guitar as well as Roy’s obbligato. This started off with some passage-work that, while probably exacting enough even for a performer equipped with the right kind of bow, made no demands on the listener – indeed, a contemporary of Brahms could quite safely have gone out for a pee during it. About the time that such a one would have been returning to his seat, however, Pigs Out took on a more subordinate role and the character of the violin part changed. Having calculated (I guessed) that by now, if ever, the audience would be reconciled to the fact and sound of a violin, Roy was going to show off his paces as a transmedial innovator. Or so he might have put it to himself. What he proceeded to play, still cleanly enough to an untrained ear, was a set of variations on his theme in, or not far from, a jazz style that even I knew had faded out thirty years before, round about the end of his student career. I remembered once having had to let him play me half a dozen thoroughly scratched records of some jazz fiddler of that epoch, an American with an Italian name, and thought now that I recognized one or two of the man’s turns of phrase. I could have had no better proof, had I wanted one or known any use to put it to, of the total failure of r
ecent or contemporary products of the pop industry to impress themselves on Roy’s musical consciousness. Well, that was something.
Perhaps, in their unimaginably cruder way, those about me had come to a roughly similar judgement on what Roy was offering them, perhaps it was just too unfamiliar to be borne. At any rate, a momentary increase in the nearby hubbub distracted my attention from the stage sufficiently to bring it home to me that the central aisle, in which earlier there had been about as much movement to and fro as in a village street on a fairly busy morning, was now more than half full of people shuffling unhurriedly but steadily in one direction: towards the door. I drove my mind back to its business. Some sort of climax evidently approached: the fiddle mounted to a high note and held it, Pigs Out did another series of as it were chords and sustained one that quite closely resembled that of the 6/4 on the dominant – the signal, in the true classical style, that the accompanying forces are about to shut up while the soloist displays his technical skill in a cadenza.
I felt my cheeks burn. Absurdity amounting to outrage – how many of those still inside this abode of muck would recognize the ‘wit’ and ‘piquancy’ of this last transmedial stroke, or would fail to jeer at it in the rare event that they did? And what followed was worse: a passage of fast double-stopping into which Roy was putting everything he had, making what must have been troublesome enough with a violin bow, and quite fiendishly difficult with the short and clumsy double-bass bow, sound natural, effortless, easy. Oh God, I thought, how could he not know that this lot positively disliked the idea of the difficult being made to seem easy, seem anything at all, exist in any form – that what they liked was the easy seeming easy?
Without sparing me the trill on the supertonic that classically heralds the return of the accompaniment, Roy was briefly reunited with Pigs Out and brought his composition to a close in something like silence. Distant hubbub marked the departure of the last of the audience, except for a few individuals like Bolsover and myself. Elevations 9 had been a complete flop. I had devoutly hoped it would be, and yet I found myself overwhelmed with feelings of anticlimax and defeat.
Bolsover lit a cigarette. ‘Was it any good from your point of view?’
‘No. It was . . . No. Was it any good from yours?’
‘No. I’ll have to put something about it in my piece, but not much. I might ring you, if that’s all right. See you in the office, anyway.’
We got up and began to move along the row of empty seats.
‘Right. All the best, Terry.’
‘Look, Doug, I should get the maestro away a bit smart if I were you. There’s some rather gaunt lads here tonight. I’ve seen a couple of them round the festivals, turning messy. The maestro’s enough out of the ordinary to take their eye.’
‘I’d better go and find him, then. Thanks.’
Lights were already being switched off and equipment dismantled when I came upon Roy on the far side of the stage. He, the silver-wigged one and a Pigs Out or so were standing in reflective silence near a low doorway through which (imagination suggested without trouble) overalled men carrying tool-kits had once been accustomed to arrive on errands of repair and maintenance. Roy, violin case in hand, looked round at me with a fixed grin.
‘There you are, old lad. I was just saying, it might have been as well if I’d accepted defeat when I had the chance.’
‘I suppose it might.’
‘Don’t worry: I’m not going to ask you what you thought of it. That can keep, among other things. Anyway, the majority view was clear enough.’
‘Dead ignorant,’ said somebody.
‘Lot of sheep,’ said somebody else. ‘One goes, next thing they’ve all gone.’
‘Let’s be off,’ I said to Roy.
‘Indeed let’s. A drink and a chat somewhere or other, I think. Good night, everybody. My sincere thanks and apologies.’
After some handshakes, protests that no apologies were called for, and general Roying, the two of us made our way in near-darkness along the side of the building towards the main entrance, opposite which Roy had parked his car.
‘Roy, I want to say I’m sorry about—’
‘Don’t say anything for now, Duggers, if you don’t mind. Not another word until we’re clear of this remarkably unwholesome spot.’
We reached the area round the entrance, which was crowded with chatting and dispersing groups. My eye fell immediately on a tall young man in a suede-and-leather jacket who turned briefly to the half-dozen others standing near him and led them across to bar our path.
‘Hey, it’s Sir Roy Vandervane,’ said the leader. ‘With his awful old violin. I say, fellows, let’s be frightful rotters and take it off him.’
He made a token, indeed balletic, grab in the direction of the case; token or not, I took off my glasses and put them in the top pocket of my coat. Roy did a wriggling shrug.
‘Yeah, well I know it ding go,’ he said in his worst accent and a matey tone. ‘Can’t win ’em aw, you know.’
‘Let’s go, Roy.’
‘Still, I thought Pigs Out did okay, din you?’
‘Piss off,’ said the boy in the jacket. ‘Right, let’s have it.’
This time he made a real grab for the case, while two of his mates seized Roy by the arms. Two others converged on me. As the leader swung away with the case in his hand, I hit him behind the ear and dropped him to his knees, which caused him inadvertently to slam the case down on the pavement. Somebody’s head butted me in the stomach and brought my own head down. A knee came up, missing my face but connecting with my collar-bone hard enough to knock me over. As I fell, I was conscious of a silence spreading outwards round us. Before I could get up, somebody’s foot swung at me; I caught it and twisted it and it slipped from my grasp. Another foot struck me in the back, not hard: whoever it was, I reflected, was merely going through the motions of inflicting damage. Now I did get to my feet, and began an inconclusive struggle with probably two people. I could hear panting and scuffling, and the splintering of wood, and then the dreadful sound of what I knew was a human head striking the pavement, and then running feet. I took a kick in the shin and was free. An arm came round my shoulders.
‘Are you all right?’ asked a frightened voice, that of a young man in a bluish corduroy suit.
‘Yes. Thanks.’
Some way off, figures were fast receding into the darkness; at least one of them was a policeman. Nearer at hand were the violin case, its lid half ripped off, and Roy’s Stradivarius in half a dozen pieces, held together here and there by its strings. Two girls were bending over Roy himself, who lay still. Voices called in the distance. More people began to arrive.
Nine: The Other Bloke
‘Now are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes, honestly, Viv, absolutely. Just a couple of bruises.’
‘It didn’t sound like that in the paper.’ Vivienne’s voice over the telephone was distrustful, as if she suspected me of covering up a broken back for motives of vanity or financial betterment.
‘Well, you know what they’re like. All I really am is tired. I had to talk to the police, and then it took them God knows how long at the hospital before they were sure Roy hadn’t fractured his skull and I could come home.’
‘So he’s all right after all, then.’ This time, the implication was very roughly that Roy’s cranium was of that special hardness commonly found among show-offs, adulterers, etc.
‘Well, up to a point. A bang on the head can have all sorts of odd effects. They haven’t given him a clean bill of health yet. Comfortable, was all they’d say when I rang them just now. I’m going along there later.’
‘When will that be, about?’
‘When I’ve summoned the energy. Probably about eleven. Why?’
‘I thought we could have lunch together.’
‘Fine. Shall I pick you up at the office?’
It was arranged that I should do so at twelve fifteen, returning her at one fifteen. The less than i
deal time and duration of her regular lunch-break had meant that we rarely met in the middle of the day, and I would be seeing her that evening as usual, but I relished the thought of an earlier chance of telling her all about what had happened last night, plus whatever was going to happen at the hospital. Before I went there I had a couple of hours to fill in. This I managed without any trouble at all, shaving at adagio sostenuto pace instead of my usual allegro con brio, playing the gramophone (only records I had already reviewed, and nothing by Weber or any of his contemporaries, so that the remotest possible suggestion of work was rigorously excluded), falling asleep, and trying to wonder effectively what was going to happen about Roy’s Mahler concerts.
The day was hot and hazy. I was sweating while, in the gloomy vestibule of the hospital, I tried to find someone who could tell me who to ask where Roy was. Eventually, after provoking much bafflement and a couple of rebukes, I was confronted by a middle-aged woman in grey who wanted to know if I was a reporter. I said I was not, gave my name, was asked if I were not the one who had been with Sir Roy when he was admitted, agreed that that was the one I was, received directions and climbed a great many stairs.
Roy was in a private room, sitting up in bed with newspapers and wearing what amounted to a lopsided white skull-cap. Otherwise he looked quite normal.
‘Good old Duggers.’
‘How are you, Roy?’
‘Fit as a fiddle, old lad. They . . .’ His face went loose. ‘Though that’s hardly the . . .’
He stopped speaking and drew in his breath. I was afraid he was going to cry, and that, if he did, I would do the same.
‘There are others,’ I said.
‘Not enough others. You probably know four hundred odd were destroyed in the last war. But even if they hadn’t been, there still wouldn’t be enough. Oh, I’ll find one all right, but it won’t be the same one. Do you know, I’d had the bloody old thing for nearly twenty-nine years? Played my first concert on it. The Max Bruch war-horse. Anyway, in answer to your kind inquiry, I have five stitches, they say no concussion to speak of, and I should be out some time tomorrow, with a couple of days’ rest afterwards. Balls to the last bit – there’s Gus to think of. George’ – the leader of the NLSO – ‘is keeping them at it today and tomorrow, but I’ll have to be back waving the stick the morning after that.’
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