The Virtuoso

by Sonia Orchard

  I looked over at him. He was gazing up the road ahead, quietly humming as he walked.

  ‘So when do you leave?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry?’ He turned back towards me. ‘Oh, for France? Friday week. Must say, I’m rather looking forward to getting away.’

  We walked a little further. I was thinking of asking him if he wanted to stay and play some music then join me for lunch. I thought that maybe if I gave him more time he would realise how jolly it would be to have me along. But then I noticed him check his watch and quicken his step. We turned the corner into my street.

  ‘Can I come along?’ I asked. Even though the words had been repeating over in my mind, I was surprised when I heard them come out as casually as they did.

  ‘Where? France?’

  ‘Why not? Wherever.’ I shrugged and was suddenly overcome by an awareness of how I might appear. I felt that I amused him. ‘I’ve never been to France.’

  He laughed, and although I felt as if I might burst into tears any second, there was something about the escalating drama that made the situation strangely exciting. My entire body was whirring like an engine, blood surging about my veins; I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had lifted off the ground and taken flight. He seemed to take forever to respond, but I knew he eventually must. I’d said all I had to say and now he could do nothing other than reply.

  His eyes lit up and he exclaimed, ‘Oh look, there’s Walter,’ pointing up the end of the street at a tall grey-haired man, bent over, investigating something on the footpath. ‘Walter!’ he called out.

  Walter turned around, waved, then started marching towards us.

  ‘You remember Walter?’

  ‘I must go…Have a wonderful time…Knock ‘em dead, won’t you?’

  I’m sure he’d have noticed how ridiculously forced my smile was, that I was on the verge of tears, but he just grabbed my hand in both of his, wished me well, and thanked me. He gave me one of his ebullient grins, revealing his pearly teeth, patted me on the arm and took off.

  I barely left the apartment the following week. Each time I heard the phone ring downstairs I’d jump up from my bed or table, waiting, sure that it would be Noël. I took my best evening suit to the dry cleaners and every time I opened my wardrobe I worked out the clothes I’d pack and imagined the concert halls to which I’d wear them.

  Noël didn’t ring, and when Friday came around I woke with a fever and didn’t get out of bed all day.

  Ever since I can remember, I’ve had the feeling that I am the keeper of an extraordinary secret—something that had been given to me with great intention, been placed in my palm at birth, a small nugget that I could rub under my thumb—and along with it came the knowledge that one day it would propel me on a magnificent destiny.

  Its presence often frightened me—perhaps because it seemed I could never really lay hold of it. Sometimes when I heard music on the radio, as soon as the applause arrived, fevered and jubilant, I noticed the effect it had on me, the way I rose to it so naturally, as if I’d been rehearsing for some such role all my life. Nothing else mattered to me then—my lack of friends at school, my mediocre marks, the aching distance that stretched between my father, my aunt and me. This knowledge would arrive like a glorious gust of wind, lifting me off the ground. My secret—surely it was a gift, some phenomenal talent. And it would now be only a matter of time before it made itself known to me and the world.

  It was only after I began my affair with Noël that I felt for the first time the approach of this secret’s impending exposure, as if my relationship with Noël, and the extraordinary potential I carried around within me, were somehow inextricably linked.

  I was in love with Noël. That part for me was simple and filled me with immense joy. It also terrified me as there was now no avoiding the possibility—something I had only taunted myself with up until that point—that I might be queer. What this meant for me, I wasn’t sure. Because I couldn’t have imagined ever loving any other man but Noël, homosexual was not a label I was willing to accept.

  One time, early on in our relationship, after a concert at Morley College, we were talking to Noël’s close friend John Amis. Noël said to John that he thought the tenor was absolutely ravishing and John replied that he didn’t think the young singer was ‘TBH’—to be had. Noël retorted, ‘Well, that’s the problem with you, John; you don’t have the bugger’s eye!’ Then he turned to me and winked.

  John threw his head back, guffawing. I smiled at Noël but felt my insides grow cold and heavy. It was not just that Noël was quite openly admiring other men (I had become used to this), it was the way I’d now found myself a member of this elite but somewhat ignominious club. A part of me knew I ought to be grateful for their acceptance. But there was another part of me that felt unconsulted, that this had all been a terrible mistake, and that there might be no turning back. I couldn’t escape the sense that at the end of the day, if I ended up without Noël, I might be despised and derided by both sides.

  During those empty, blustery spring days, during that long wait for Noël’s return, it was only the thought of him bursting through my door—a golden bloom on his skin, his unruly hair in need of a trim, and sporting a piquant new cologne—that reassured me of the glittering future I had always, quietly, suspected.

  Noël was exceptionally busy after returning from the continent, so we didn’t see each other quite so often as before. Once, he dropped over to my place with Hindemith’s sonata duet and insisted we sit down and play it immediately; a fortnight after that we went out for lunch at Mon Plaisir, and one evening went to see Salome at Covent Garden.

  We next met up several weeks later for a swim at Roehampton. Noël lolled about on the grass like a sylph beside the crowded swimming-hole, naked except for his checked trunks, running his fingers through his curls and batting his willowy lashes into the sun. I remember feeling, once again, uncomfortable with his unfettered sensuality, his flagrant self-offering in front of scores of lusty-eyed men.

  It was an unusually warm day for mid-spring and Noël insisted we take a dip. He splashed about, occasionally lunging into a backstroke, while I frantically trod water in the shallows. We returned to our towels and Noël chatted about some of the concerts he’d recently attended, including the premiere of Britten’s new opera, The Rape of Lucretia, and the ensuing party where Gordon Stockard had got so drunk that he’d congratulated Britten on being ‘Britain’s most prominent rapist’.

  I told Noël I’d heard that he’d been invited to play at this season’s Promenade concerts and enquired what he’d be performing, knowing full well that he was premiering the revised version of Britten’s First piano concerto, as well as playing the Beethoven C minor. He lay down on his back, closed his eyes tight against the sun and, with a yawn, recited his programme.

  He then asked me what pieces I was working on. I shrugged and told him the Rawsthorne bagatelles, as if they were the most commonplace pieces in the world, despite my having practised them around the clock, anxious to get them up to speed before today. Noël didn’t respond immediately and I was just about to ask him if he knew them when he lifted himself onto his elbows, turned to me and said that he’d love to hear what I’d done with the Presto non assai. I paused for a moment, pleased everything was moving along in the direction of my digs, then Noël said he was terribly busy for the next little while but that we ought to try to find some time to get together soon.

  He was smiling out of the right side of his mouth, exploring my pale body with his glances. I felt exposed and could sense the thieving eyes of the other male bathers roaming over both Noël and me. I rolled onto my stomach, then turned my head away, afraid my disappointment was plain for all the world to see.

  ‘Did you hear me? Are you listening?’

  I turned to see Anton put my notebook down on the table next to him and lean in towards me at the piano.

  ‘I’ve heard about the work you’ve done for Dr Titchfield and I hope you realise i
t’s against Academy policy to let our students work professionally while studying here, especially those on scholarship.’

  Dr Titchfield was an obstetrician on Harley Street who fancied himself as a composer of piano and violin works. He’d decided to record his turgid compositions and had hired me to accompany him while he laboured away on his immaculately polished Stradivarius.

  ‘I’m sorry, Anton. I’m having a bit of trouble getting by at the moment—’

  ‘You’re on a good stipend; there ought to be no reason why you’re unable to survive quite adequately. I’ll overlook it this once, but I’m concerned about your practice. At this rate you’ll have little chance at any of the student prizes.’

  I mumbled an apology and shuffled my music together. All I could see was that image of Noël on the grass, propped up on his elbows, head hanging back, Adam’s apple protruding like a large ivory knuckle, long eyelashes gently meshed together, and the admiring glances shooting in from the other bathers.

  ‘Your notebook?’

  I turned around from the door. He was holding out my exercise book without rising from the chair, his jaw clenched.

  In the corridor outside I bumped into Will, Arthur and Stephanie, students from my composition and history classes, who invited me to join them for lunch in the cafeteria.

  Will, in his customary mocking tone, was teasing Arthur about doing his essay on Tippett. ‘Last week it was Britten, this week Tippett—next week it’ll be Mewton-Wood. Is there something you’re not telling me, Arthur?’ He laughed and put his arm around his friend.

  I lifted my gaze from the ground and glared at Will.

  ‘Are you propositioning me, Will?’ Arthur laughed back.

  ‘What’s that about Mewton-Wood?’ I asked, attempting a flippant tone but surprised to hear my voice sound absurdly high and thready.

  ‘You must have heard what they say about him,’ replied Will, who prided himself on being the authority on everything from Haydn’s use of Croatian folk music to the leisurely repentance of some of the more unfortunately married Academy professors. ‘He’s always knocking about with Tippett, Britten and Pears; spends his weekends down at that house—Long Crickey or something—with those critics Eddie Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor.’

  ‘Donald says he saw him out trolling the other night,’ Arthur added.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, somewhat accusingly. Not that I believed what I was hearing for a minute, but I was riled by the suggestion that Arthur and Will might know more about Noël’s life than I did.

  ‘Donald was walking home along Charlotte Street at about ten o’clock and there was this young chap standing out the front of the Fitzroy Tavern, you know, as if he was waiting for someone, and then next thing out steps Mewton-Wood, and the two of them walked off together towards Regent’s Park!’ Will raised his eyebrows and nodded, proud as punch.

  ‘When was this?’ My face was heating up.

  ‘Just the other night.’

  ‘Well, it could have been a mistake. It must have been dark—he could have been a friend…’

  ‘Hey, I’ve got a good one for you—where do you find Peter Pears in Groves Dictionary?’ Will asked, grinning.

  ‘I-I don’t know, I suppose—’

  ‘Just look under Benjamin Britten!’ And the two of them doubled over with laughter.

  ‘What have you two got against homosexuals, anyway?’ Stephanie asked, articulating each syllable carefully as if she were reading out a Latin term of unknown meaning.

  ‘I haven’t got anything against ho-mo-sex-u-als. My best friend’s one,’ Will laughed, looking at Arthur, to which Arthur responded with a punch to Will’s arm. ‘Quite to the contrary, I wish I were one—I might have some chance of getting published then.’

  ‘Sorry chaps,’ I interrupted. ‘I don’t think I can join you after all. I’ll see you later. Good luck with your essays.’

  I turned around and took the nearest stairway. Hordes of students were heading down for lunch and I found myself carried along in their stream. Floating down, I came face to face with the stone busts on the landing—Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Elgar—retrieved from the Queen’s Hall, which were now mounted just beyond the foyer where they met all entrants to the Academy. I stood for a moment, eyeballing their impenetrable stares; it seemed impossible to slip past them unnoticed.

  I wanted to run but it was as if these cold, grey faces were interrogating me. I closed my eyes and all of a sudden I saw myself back at the Queen’s Hall ruins, walking up Langham Street on that Sunday morning in May 1941, the day after the Luftwaffe’s final fling.

  We had spent that night hiding like mice while the sky was torn open by a harrowing roar, followed by the familiar sound of our city being destroyed. The next morning a dewy calm had spread over the smoking, rubble-strewn streets. My father told me to fetch my coat then walked with me to the bus.

  We didn’t speak as we made our way up from Oxford Circus, bowing our heads in the drizzle that had just started to fall. It had been a little over a year since Noël’s debut concert at the Queen’s Hall, yet in my mind the night had taken on such mythical proportions that those Venetian red seats had become plush velvet thrones, and the golden organ pipes reached miles up into the sky.

  With my father walking silently by my side I looked westward along Langham Street and noticed that something was grossly different. A slice of the world had been removed, but it was too extraordinary to say precisely what it was. I kept staring towards where the crowd was gathered, towards where the Queen’s Hall had once stood, and then I noticed it: a great stretch of smoke-filled sky where before there’d been none.

  We walked closer, arriving at the edge of the pit. The auditorium looked even larger than before, now that its roof had been ripped off and burnt down into this filthy black lake. People were standing around, whispering to each other or staring into the huge charred mine filled with water and burnt rubbish. I tried to reconstruct the hall in my mind, fill it with balconies, a stage, an orchestra, an audience. But all I could see was a monstrous gaping mouth exposing its macabre, torched innards.

  A few thin plumes of smoke rose up from the still mass, sullying the sky. Down in the swampy base I noticed a carpet of twisted vines, thousands of springs—all that remained of those Venetian red seats. I looked up the far end for those celestial pipes, glistening gold and majestic, and saw a tarnished mangle, a giant pile of black, slumbering snakes. We walked around the side, down Riding House Street, and I could just make out beyond the stage the sooty debris of musical instruments—cymbals, trombones, a harp with strings splayed out in the air, a cello rolled on its side and embedded in ash—like the scattered, broken remains from some Antediluvian civilisation.

  We returned to the front and I peered down one last time on to the floor and the stage, and that’s when I saw, just distinguishable, staring out ghostlike from the cinderous remains, the disembodied head of Beethoven, his stony gaze fixed towards the sky.

  I looked up at Beethoven’s granite bust now, years later, where it sat in the Academy corridor with the other heads salvaged from the ruins, Will’s haughty voice churning over in my mind. The sounds of the Academy foyer rose up around me—students heading off to lunch with their scores held to their chests; professors discussing lessons and upcoming concerts; the clanging and clattering of plates and cutlery in the cafeteria below. I turned and ran for the exit, almost toppling three women sauntering up the steps as I charged through the glass-panelled doors. I ran towards Regent’s Park, I ran past gentlemen swinging canes and secretaries perched on the benches eating sandwiches. I kept running, past the maples and the sycamores, beds of gladioli and snapdragon, and an old man cooing to the pigeons. I felt that I couldn’t breathe, my throat a thin, claggy straw. I wasn’t even sure why I was running or where I was going, but I was scared of what might happen if I stopped. So I kept going, no longer able to feel my legs, just aware that a blur of colour was moving swiftly past me and there
was something faintly beautiful about it all, as if I were seeing everything from very far away, as it really was, a large piece of elaborate scenery.

  I don’t know where I ran to; I can barely remember a thing. I just know that when I finally staggered up the stairs to my digs, unlocked the door, collapsed on my bed and looked out the window, it was night and I was staring at a heavy bank of dark blue clouds and the dull and muffled glow of the moon.

  In the late autumn of 1854, while in exile from his home in Germany, Richard Wagner wrote from Zurich to his dear friend Franz Liszt. Wagner was forty-one at the time, a well-regarded conductor and composer, having already written and performed The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. That day he wrote to Liszt in a considered but despondent tone that he had been reading Schopenhauer, finding consolation in the words of this philosopher who held that the final negation of life—death—was the only salvation possible. For Wagner, a man who lived with a perpetual rumbling in his heart, a genuine, ardent longing for death, this idea came as a great relief. It allowed him to bide his time riding a torrent of sonorous melodies, in sober anticipation of that glorious final cadence. It allowed him to create.

  I only play with art, he wrote, to pass the time.

  His art at this time was a four-evening opera—The Ring Cycle.

  He went on to say that as he had never in his life felt the real bliss of love, he must erect a monument to the most beautiful of all his dreams, in which, from beginning to end, love would be totally satiated. This opera sketch that he carried around in his head, this surrogate for a love he professed to know nothing about, was Tristan and Isolde.