The Virtuoso

by Sonia Orchard

  For a 36-year-old bachelor such a resolution mightn’t seem unusual at all, except for the fact that Tchaikovsky had never so much as glanced at a woman and was quite undoubtedly hermo sumi obrepens. Now I can’t claim that the thought of marriage had never crossed my own mind. Marriage did often appear to solve myriad problems for gentlemen like Tchaikovsky and, if I may be so bold to include myself in the same sentence, myself also—the main problem being the curse of desperate loneliness. I’d often thought what a thrill it would be to lie in bed and have another heartbeat galloping alongside my own, to have someone who knew how much milk I liked in my tea, who grew concerned when I was even moments late home from work. Unfortunately most women I met, though capable of fulfilling these functions, I found either tediously dizzy or terrifyingly overbearing. But Tchaikovsky was after more than another being with whom he could share his meals and his thoughts; Tchaikovsky wanted to silence the malicious whisperings of his society and, more than that, to curb what he called his ‘natural inclinations’, which he blamed as being the greatest obstacle to his happiness. Convinced that people despised him for his vices, he declared to his brother Modest that he would make a serious effort to marry, legally, anybody, and that if he was not brave enough for that, then he would, at any rate, conquer his old habits once and for all.

  Whenever I’d thought about giving up Noël I’d acknowledge that I might be able to stop attending his concerts for a while, but I knew, deep down, it would be impossible to sit at the piano and play a piece of music without thinking that it was he for whom I was performing. But didn’t everyone have such a figure? Someone to whom they dedicated everything they did?

  Tchaikovsky, however, went ahead with his harebrained idea, and married Antonina Milyukova, a young student of his who’d threatened to end her life if she had to go on without him (I’m sure that this sense of melodrama was partially what drew him in). As anyone could have foreseen, as soon as the train carrying the honeymooners pulled out from Moscow Station, the composer fell into a deep depression and state of panic, suddenly certain that the finest part of his being—music—had died forever.

  Soon after the newlyweds returned to Moscow, Tchaikovsky fled from his marital apartment to his sister’s place and worked on what were to be two of his greatest works: Eugene Onegin as well as his Fourth symphony, and it seemed that in composing, he was able to claw his way back to sanity. But as soon as he returned to his wife and his Moscow flat, his feeling of desperation returned, and it wasn’t long before he waded fully clothed, up to his waist into the ice-covered waters of the Moskva River, in the hope that he would catch pneumonia and die.

  In my essay for the Academy I wrote much about Tchaikovsky’s twelve-week marriage with Antonina Milyukova. I was fascinated by the way he continually brought himself back from the edge of madness through his feverish outpourings, and that even though he went on to live alone and in fear of being caught in the midst of a clandestine affair, he survived by escaping into his music: dedications to some impossible love, works so amorous that they teetered on the edge of hysteria.

  I listened to Tchaikovsky’s First piano concerto each evening, imagining myself performing it for Noël, as he had performed it for me at the Albert Hall in the early years of the war. As the hissing crackle of the disc began I’d sit at the piano looking down at the keys, so quiet and lifeless. Silence echoed about the room, my hands trembling as I anticipated the quiver and fall of the baton.

  During the horn introduction and the orchestra modulation up to D flat, I’d lift my hands to the piano, and a feeling of tremendous vulnerability would sweep over me, as though my flesh were falling from my bones. Then I’d launch onto the keys—a thunderous sound crashing out from the wood, a colossal steamship pounding through the tumescent waves of the orchestra.

  Afterwards, in the silence that followed the final chord, I’d see Tchaikovsky sitting alone at his desk at night in his dim Moscow flat, in front of him a glass of vodka, a gas lamp, an abandoned game of solitaire, and page after page of the most fiercely romantic orchestration. Music in which he evaded the realities of his life. But as any rationally minded person knows, one can only escape one’s life to a point, and for so long. For men like Tchaikovsky life will always fall short of the perfected beauty they are able to compose in their minds. And I realise it is easy enough to say this with full knowledge of the desperate act he was to commit eighteen years later. But you do only have to listen to the man’s music, full of so much longing, so much desperate desire for love, to hear the whisperings of his final lethal escape, singing out loud and clear.

  I was walking home from the Academy when the drizzle that had set in two days earlier finally broke into a leaden downpour. I’d left my umbrella in one of the rehearsal rooms, so I bought the Spectator from a newspaper stand, ducked into a café on Regent Street and ordered a pot of tea.

  Flicking through the concert notices, I saw one by Walter J. Turner on Noél’s performance of Ludus Tonalis by Hindemith: It is a work which makes exacting intellectual and pianistic demands, all of which were completely met with astonishing assurance and verve. Mewton-Wood gave a superb performance.

  I closed the paper. It had been six months since I’d last spoken to Noël, yet rarely a day went by without something triggering a memory—hearing the Beethoven Third on the radio, walking past the Wigmore, seeing his favourite pickled tomato relish on the shelves at Woolworths—and then it would seem an eternity stretched between us.

  As our shared birthday approached I started thinking about him even more. Almost a year had passed since the evening Walter had opened the ivy-green door at Hammersmith Terrace and offered me a glass of champagne. I was certain now of an imminent meeting, and each day as I dressed and headed out of my room I’d wonder where the encounter might take place. I started to imagine Noél everywhere; I’d walk to a tube station and sense that he’d just left—every wavy brown coiffure bouncing above the crowd would be his.

  Then, the day before our birthday, I turned on the BBC news and heard that Walter J. Turner had died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage in his Hammersmith home at the age of fifty-seven.

  Our birthday came and went. I bought every newspaper, every day, and pored over the tributes for Turner from Schnabel, Hindemith and Stravinsky. Much was said about Mewton-Wood, the beloved cousin, who would move into the Hammersmith house with Turner’s widow, Delphine, and would inherit his books, paintings and pianos. How this fifteen-year-old had arrived with his mother on Turner’s doorstep from Australia before the war, and that Turner had warned Dulcie of the legions of young musicians in England—that so few of them ever came to anything. But when the young boy sat at the Steinway and played a Beethoven sonata, Turner knew that his cousin was destined to be one of the greatest pianists in the world.

  Turner had immediately organised for Noël to travel to Tremezzo, Italy, for master classes with the great Artur Schnabel; he then arranged Noël’s audition with Sir Thomas Beecham.

  I wondered to whom Noël would turn now that Walter was gone.

  The following week I was with a friend from the Academy, a jaunty young tenor called Clifton, walking along Notting Hill Gate. Clifton was laughing, in the middle of one of his jokes—‘We don’t need a tuning fork, said the conductor, we need a forking tune!’—when I looked up and saw, walking towards us, a familiar tall, lean figure in bags, pullover and scarf. A soft bounding walk, gently melodious. It was Noél.

  When he was ten or so yards away he recognised me and broke into a sheepish smile. His eyes were moist, sparkling. He appeared quietly glad to see me.

  ‘Hello there,’ he grinned.

  ‘Noël.’ I held out my hand; his grip was strong and his palm warm and soft, as I remembered. ‘This is Clifton Coombes…Clifton—Noël Mewton-Wood…’

  Clifton, with a dopey grin fixed wide across his face, already had his hand stuck out towards Noël. I watched Noël give Clifton the same lingering handshake I’d received, and then smile, somewh
at coyly, in response to Clifton’s puppy-dog enthusiasm.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Walter,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, terrible business. Poor Delphine. It was all so sudden; they were planning a trip abroad…’

  He was looking down, and ahead up the street—anywhere but at me. He looked sad, I thought, and I began to wonder if I ought not have got in contact with him earlier. ‘I heard yours was the last concert he attended.’

  ‘Yes. Awfully good of him, wasn’t it? But he always was very good to me.’ He smiled briefly and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. ‘How’s your music going?’

  ‘Good, good. Yes, really well.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’

  ‘And yourself?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. Keeping busy,’ he laughed, and his eyes, at last, fixed upon mine.

  I smiled and even harrumphed or half said something, then glanced at Clifton, sensing his hankering fidgeting beside me.

  ‘I was planning to come and see you with Peter Stadlen next Wednesday,’ Clifton said.

  ‘Oh yes. The duets.’ He turned to me and smiled. ‘I could post you two tickets if you like.’

  ‘Would you?’ Clifton said, his voice rising shrilly. ‘That would be smashing!’ He turned and beamed at me.

  I refused to even acknowledge him. I was wishing desperately he would disappear.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Mewton-Wood,’ Clifton continued. ‘We’ll be there all right. We were just saying the other night how we’d like to get out to more concerts. And this ol’ sop has been in such a sulky mood lately, seeing you at the Wigmore will cheer him right up.’

  I couldn’t speak; all I could think about was how terribly this was going.

  ‘Can we come up and say hello after the show?’ Clifton asked.

  ‘I’d be offended if you didn’t,’ Noël replied, and I was horrified to detect a flirtatious smile on his otherwise despondent face.

  ‘We must get going. Cliff?’

  Clifton looked at me, confounded.

  ‘Noël…I’ll look forward to seeing you…next Wednesday, yes? I ought to be able to make it—’

  ‘Listen to him.’ Clifton turned to Noël. ‘He wouldn’t miss it for the world! Lovely to meet you, Mr Mewton-Wood. See you at the Wiggers, then. Thank you again.’ He tilted the rim of his hat and nodded to Noël.

  Noël shook my hand and left with a weary smile. Clifton and I continued on our way up the street, Clifton jabbering away, springing off the footpath with each step. I didn’t say a word, until I told Clifton—who was clearly expecting to come back to my place—that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home alone.

  I can barely remember the concert. I organised to meet Clifton at the Pontefract Castle beforehand, arrived two hours early and proceeded to get drunk. By the time Clifton turned up I could hardly balance on my stool, and my forearms, heavily planted on the bar, seemed to be the only part of my body still active and keeping me upright. He took one look at me and burst into giggles. Then he ordered a Pimms for himself, a bitter lemon for me, and began tucking in my shirt and fixing my tie.

  ‘Have you managed to hang on to the tickets or did you hock them for beer?’

  I panicked, reached into my pocket and pulled out two dog-eared tickets and a half-smoked Jamaican cigar that I swore I’d never seen before in my life.

  After the concert I realised I’d sobered up when the cold air smacked me in the face as we stepped out from the artists’ entrance onto the wet cobblestone laneway behind the Wigmore.

  ‘Why on earth are you so rude to everyone?’ Clifton asked.

  I raised my eyebrows and drew in a breath, about to speak, but decided against it and kept walking, turning left on to Wigmore Street. We strode along in silence, and as we drifted further away from the glowing lights of the foyer, the evening seemed to sink rapidly into night.

  ‘I thought he was a friend of yours,’ Clifton said.

  ‘I didn’t like the chap he was with,’ I said, recalling the tall balding man with the ridiculous medallion around his neck who’d hovered by Noël’s side in the green room, making any conversation with Noël impossible. ‘He laughed when I mentioned Bruckner —Noël doesn’t think Bruckner’s a very good idea at all,’ I said, imitating the man’s camp inflection. ‘I found him utterly tiresome.’

  ‘Well, if you can dig your way out of your sour mood, I’ve grabbed a bottle of wine from Pops.’ Clifton grinned mischievously and reached into his satchel. ‘Ready for a hair-of-the-dog? How about we head back to your digs and run through the Mahler?’

  I shrugged. My non-objection interpreted as compliance, Clifton smiled, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started rabbiting on about a fellow he’d recognised in the audience who’d been a conductor in the RAF and who’d posted his cousin Geoffrey, an oboe player, to the Orkneys for disagreeing over a tempo.

  We headed in under the dark, dripping leaves of Cavendish Square towards Oxford Street, Clifton leading the way back to my place with a long, determined stride, occasionally flicking his messy curls from his eyes with a horse-like shimmy. He chatted without pause until well after we walked through my front door, and only seemed to draw breath once his score was open at the piano and he was ready for me to lift my hands to the keys. That was how our relationship began.

  Ever since the day Clifton rushed up to me in the cafeteria, introduced himself with a roguish smile and blustering enthusiasm, and invited me to a performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, I’d become the recipient of not only his fawning attention but also numerous gifts that he skimmed from the family coffers. Clifton’s mother was apparently a descendant of William Byrd and his father was on the board at Rover, and due to their combined mixture of generosity and inattentiveness, Clifton could regularly swan out of their presence and into mine with tickets to various premieres, along with nougat from Montélimar and bottles of Hennessy Cognac.

  I quickly grew accustomed to these little luxuries; however, I remained wide awake to the fact that Clifton and I were less than perfectly suited—he was a little too coltish and immodest for my liking. Moreover, my rather passionless regard for him was no match at all for his burning ardour. Nevertheless, I did look forward to seeing him each time we arranged to meet. In the hours before he was due to arrive at my digs I found myself thinking about that handsome face: the broad jaw, the unruly auburn hair, the elfish eyes, the wide mouth already smiling its devilish smile before I’d even opened my door. There he’d be on the landing, staring at me, grinning. I couldn’t help but admire his gall—that while the rest of London was getting about in patched-up utility suits or, if lucky, a demob suit, he’d be standing there, shamelessly, in a bespoke double-breasted ensemble, hand-sewn in the brightest of Italian fabrics, which his uncle, a diplomat, had procured from some dethroned monarch on the continent.

  But before I’d even have time to register my pleasure in seeing him I’d notice that look—his head tilted back, his eyelids laconically drooping, and his lips pursed at the edges. I’d see something greedy in those dark eyes, smug almost, and I’d feel immediately repelled. Then both his arms would shoot around me, thrusting me against his chest. As those big wet lips crushed against mine, my eyes would open wide, gaping down the hallway, terrified that Ma O’Grady or another lodger might walk past and see.

  I’d pull him inside and make him take a seat (not at all what he had in mind) and try to recover the feelings of affection, fondness, that I’d cultivated in the hours leading up to his arrival. But then I would take one look at him, smarting from my rebuff and slumped angrily in a chair—that showy suit, those ravenous lips now wearing the trace of a sneer—and I’d move to the other side of the room to make a cup of tea and rummage around for something to say.

  ‘Did you enjoy the records I lent you?’ I’d enquire.

  ‘Not too bad. Though I have to say, Schnabel’s not really my type. I find his playing a little earnest.’

  ‘Earnest?’ I’d attempt to maintain my com
posure while finding a fitting reply, something that would make him realise what an unsophisticated remark he’d made. ‘Schnabel’s the greatest. Anyone will tell you that. That record is musical perfection.’

  ‘Well I disagree,’ he’d shrug, that riling smirk of his challenging me to tell him he was outside of the anyone of my world. ‘He’s too restrained. The Andante—’ He’d pause for a moment, looking about. ‘It left me cold.’

  And so our evening would begin. Occasionally I would thaw out—usually with the assistance of a few drinks—enough to allow him to stay. It didn’t take him long to stumble upon this equation and from then on he never arrived without the antidote in hand—a few bottles of Carlsberg, a bottle of gin or, if he’d arrived from his parents’, a liqueur or plummy red he’d snuck from the cellar. Before he’d even removed his jacket he’d pull out his loot and place it in the centre of the table, along with the score he wished to rehearse, then sink purring into a chair, like a hunter who’s just presented his kill.

  We became mildly addicted to the intoxicating drama of our flexing wills, behaving like two drunks with permanent hangovers, our heads always throbbing with just enough lingering bitterness to be intolerant of anything the other said about which we didn’t entirely agree. To make matters worse, Clifton constantly invented stories about things I’d said or done after a few drinks. It was a ridiculous situation—we both knew that—but anytime we tried to have a calm and frank discussion, I could never resist suggesting that he ought to be less overbearing and boorish, to which he’d reply that I ought to sober up and try to be less of a righteous little sulk. We continued on though, nonetheless, both convinced that all could easily be resolved, if only the other would simply admit to and undo all his wrongdoings. There was also the unspoken understanding that an evening of tireless bickering was more agreeable than a night spent on one’s own.