After spending the day walking around the festival city, drinking a few Stiegls at the bustling Hotel Pitter and feeling underfoot the shadowy rumble of the past, I returned to the small third-floor pension room with its lace curtains, frosted-glass lamps and floral quilts that smelt like over-boiled peas and lavender. Clifton was sitting in an armchair near the window, with the Domplatz in the distance, reading Then and Now by Somerset Maugham, bookmarked with two tickets for that evening’s performance of The Marriage of Figaro.
I went to shave and dress in the pink-tiled bathroom down the corridor, and when I returned Clifton was still sitting in the armchair, no longer reclining with his book but perched expectantly on the edge of the seat. As I closed the door he rose and stepped towards me, clasped his hands at his front, tilted his head and smiled. His smile was not one of excitement nor reflection, but rather it seemed the involuntary gaze that can overcome someone quite unwittingly when watching something that brings them great joy. His hair was oiled and combed with California Poppy, and his suit was neatly pressed with a sprig of edelweiss pinned in the lapel.
The smell of Chanel wafted to me at the door and he remained standing there, as if he was prolonging, now consciously and proudly, this chanced-upon moment. He told me I looked magnifique, then held out his hand. I looked over his shoulder through the window and saw the scaffolding on the cathedral and the shifting mass of darkly coloured hats and umbrellas in the square and, for a moment, I seemed to lose my hold on time completely, and was sure I could hear the troubled ghosts of Mozart and Reinhardt amongst the meandering promenade, calling out fearful warnings. I felt a clamouring in my chest and glanced around the room, then turned to catch in the washstand mirror a startled stare I hardly recognised as my own. I took my coat off the stand and, as I pulled it onto my left arm, I could feel him behind me, straightening out my collar and drawing the right side around, then assisting my other arm through. His perfume grew stronger, throwing its diaphanous arms around me, sucking the air dry with its demanding bloom.
As he stepped in front of me I quickly turned my head, realising I was no longer even able to kiss this man on the cheek, then I opened the door. ‘Mozart beckons,’ I said, and directed him out before me with outstretched hand. We walked down the stairs, out on to the street, and entered the slow and steady stream of the festival crowd.
Part III
a fugue
An innocent flirtation with an American tourist in a Salzburg bar put a swift end to my relationship with Clifton. As the two of us marched around Salzburg, calling each other every name under the sun, I defended myself until I was blue in the face, quietly pleased that his hysterical claims were tearing the two of us apart. When I did finally get back to London and started receiving postcards from a music student called Max, inviting me over to Minnesota, I panicked, having no clear recollection of this man and feeling that I had fallen prey to some elaborate hoax.
I wonder what’s happened to old Clifton? I’m ashamed to say I’ve thought little of him over the years, despite now being well aware of the significance of our relationship in regard to my attempts to wean myself off Noël. The last I heard was that he was the lead in some American cabaret, touring around the South Pacific. His parents live around here, so I’m sure I shall bump into him at some time or another. It’s quite unnerving reflecting back on it all: part of me horrified that I could have become so embroiled with such a flounce, and another part thinking that if the circumstances had been different, we might easily have stayed together and been remotely happy. Yes, fancy that—I could have been reclining with Clifton on the deck of a luxury liner, sipping a Tom Collins and voyaging around some provincial region this very minute.
Which couldn’t be further from where I do find myself. Sitting at an oak desk in a Georgian manor, scribbling meaningless notes, biting my nails, watching the second hand on the clock chop away at the minutes (this damned concert looming ahead of me!). And with a vase of daphne—which I picked yesterday for tonight, thinking a sprig would add a nice touch in my lapel—choking the room with its funereal aroma.
Anyway, enough of Clifton; there were many other men who arrived before his scent had even faded from my sheets. There was Clifton’s friend Hamilton, another singer, who would stop at nothing until he’d landed first baritone in the Sadler’s Wells Opera; David, a banker I met in a bar in Soho, who took me on drives up to Suffolk in his silver Triumph roadster and cajoled me with promises of escapes to his family’s castle in Argyll; Jean-Paul, a portrait painter, who entertained me with stories of all the earls and viscounts he claimed to have seduced after sittings; and many more who have merged into one faceless creature, whose vague outline I can just make out behind a veil of smoke rings and cologne.
Most were very good to me; they adored my curling eyelashes and milky skin, and enjoyed parading me about in restaurants, bars and galleries. I obliged, with a resignation that translated as modesty, accepting their Chinese jade rings, Moroccan teapots and gramophone records from America. But these affaires d’amour were over before they began. I would fall into them quite dutifully, but it would only be a matter of weeks before my obedience would sprout thorns of contempt. The more they fawned over me, the more I despised them and their cold, dry hands slithering down my back. Then one day without a moment’s notice—I would be as surprised as they—an hour before they came to pick me up for the theatre, I would find myself ringing and explaining in my most doleful manner how my dear father had been taken seriously ill and I would be taking the overnight train to Aberdeen—Yes, I would be fine…No, I didn’t need a lift to Kings Cross. And that’s how it would end: they, fumbling for commiserations; and me, thanking them humbly, promising a call, returning the phone to the receiver, tiptoeing up to my room and seating myself at the piano.
At the end of my second year at the Academy I entered several piano and composition prizes, and performed remarkably well in all, winning a total of twelve pounds in prize money. One of them in particular, I swore I’d completely botched. I walked into the room, sat, and had barely started Beethoven’s Les Adieux when I could hear an examiner, only yards from where I played, scribbling away with his pencil. I stumbled through the first few lines, most of my concentration consumed in channelling fury towards the examiner. I was in half a mind to stop and ask him to be quiet, remembering the occasion I saw the soprano Maggie Teyte singing ‘Chansons de Bilitis’ at the Wigmore, when, after beginning poorly, she called out to Gerald Moore, her accompanist, ‘Stop! We’ll do that again,’ shaking her head to the adoring crowd, sighing, ‘What would Mr Debussy say?’
At the end of my programme I stood with my hand resting on the arm of the piano and nodded to the panel, recognising the offending examiner as Professor Cecil Bellamy. I’d heard many stories about this chinless accompanist with the great buck teeth, whom everyone swore was such a magnificent sight-reader that he could be woken in the middle of the night and sight-read anything, but that sadly, there wasn’t an ounce of beauty in his playing. I had it in my mind there and then to write a letter to the Dean complaining about the professor’s behaviour, but dilly-dallied for a few days, chastising myself every time I remembered that I’d let him off, and then decided after a week that I had let the whole affair drag on far too long to do anything about it. You can imagine my feelings when, two weeks later, in front of a crowded Duke’s Hall, I was announced as the winner of the major piano prize, and awarded the certificate and cheque by Professor Bellamy himself, shaking my hand furiously and grinning that dreadful buck-tooth grin at me.
The growing recognition I was receiving for my playing, and the attention I procured from an ever-changing band of suitors continually amazed me. After some time, however, although I never felt any great sense of gratitude for what came my way—but rather, a mischievous sense of having hoodwinked another innocent—I did begin to expect a certain level of success.
During the 1948 summer I travelled down to the rarefied halls of Dartington and took
some composition lessons from Imogen Holst, Gustav’s eccentric daughter. She was a woman who gave no concessions to glamour, playing the piano with her elbows in the air, and parting her hair in the middle, tying it back with a piece of string. But I did get an awful lot out of her teaching and was most pleased when she offered to give me the odd lesson in London at Peter Pears’s house in Regent’s Park, for only a nominal fee.
Most afternoons before our lesson she’d be with Benjamin Britten—with whom everyone knew she was desperately in love—writing out his scores, and tirelessly performing other duties. Then one day Imo burst in late for my lesson and railed across the room, frightening the life out of Berta, Peter’s long-haired Dachshund, crying, ‘We can’t go on meeting like this—I just had to leave Ben in the middle of a phrase!’ She put her satchel down on Peter’s desk and marched out of the room for a glass of water to calm herself. As soon as she was gone I packed up my books, rifled through her satchel for some music she had of mine, and started for the door, seeing no reason to stay any longer or to wait for Imo to return from the kitchen to say goodbye.
Later that night she rang me at home and accused me of stealing the manuscript of Britten’s Michelangelo sonnets from her satchel. I actually had it in my hand when she rang (I was studying the underlined musical direction on the second-last line—Sempre pp—where the tenor’s song becomes particularly affectionate, a message, I suspected, for the tenor for whom Ben wrote all his music). So I told her I was utterly offended that she would accuse me of such a thing and that perhaps she was losing her mind.
Around this time I also met a young family friend of Peter Pears’s called Tilly, who studied music at the Guildhall, and who’d often invite me to visit at her father’s house outside Oxford. Her father was an ornithologist—and as queer as a coot—with a large, rambling house filled with shelves overflowing with books, and ledges from which leered dusty stuffed raptors. Many a Sunday afternoon we’d sit at the piano in the sunroom, surrounded by cabinets of owl pellets that quivered away while we played Mozart and Schubert. As well as being a fine pianist and a wonderful cook, Tilly also had a lovely voice and would transcribe the songs of the various blackbirds around the garden, singing me their melodies to the words ‘pretty birdy’.
Tilly was very close to her father and talked about him all the time, and I fear it must have been this great affection that tainted her choice in men; not only did I once or twice have to dodge her giddy advances, but the following year, when I ended up at her engagement party, some time late in the night, while Tilly drank champagne in the next room, I was seduced by her fiancé, a budding Tory statesman, right under the bust of Wellington. I’m not sure whether it was connubial bliss or wagging tongues that carried Tilly away, but I wasn’t invited to the wedding and don’t believe I’ve laid eyes upon her since.
I was amused by how entirely unfazed I was by the sudden departures of friends. I found it peculiar that the thought of losing a close acquaintance was quite mortifying, yet the reality of the constant comings and goings was often, dare I say, tremendously refreshing. I was tending to believe, more and more, that only music could ever be my true companion. Yes, only music could move me with its beauty and grace; only music could provide me with a constant and reliable source of raison d’être.
Even though I continued attending as many nightly concerts as I could afford (or find myself escorted to), my weekly musical highpoint was often the access we were given, as students of the Academy, to Wednesday-morning rehearsals of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall. Just to be in this glorious building with its auditorium swathed in gold and maroon, sitting beneath the royal box, gazing up at the dizzying height of the ceiling, watching the lighting and stage technicians dashing about, and listening to the orchestra tuning their instruments and warming up—one needn’t hear a bar of music to feel completely entranced.
Then the captain of the ship would stride onto the stage, and everyone in the hall would be immediately transfixed. The orchestra’s conductor, Beecham (or Tommy, as everyone called him), had the entire orchestra poised in a state somewhere between hilarity and absolute terror. He would halt the orchestra into a trembling silence in the middle of a movement and point his baton towards a cellist and scold, ‘Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is scratch it!’ But as rude and disparaging as his wit could be, Beecham had the absolute respect of every instrumentalist and always got the very best out of any orchestra, especially when performing Delius or Mozart.
During those rehearsals I was privileged to hear dozens of astounding performers, many of whom, I soon realised, played far better in front of a few stagehands than in front of a worshipping crowd of thousands.
Other musicians were entertaining simply for their antics. There was the soprano Kirsten Flagstad, who used to sit in the wings and knit before rehearsals as well as performances, and who’d often have to be woken up when it was time to walk on stage. And Wilhelm Backhaus, who was also relaxed to the point of indifference and knew every concerto so well that, even at the start of a performance, he’d walk over and sit at the piano, not even knowing what he was about to play until he heard the orchestra tutti begin. Then there was Beecham’s wife Betty Humby (Beecham was one of those archly heterosexual men who got involved with silly women, and his second wife, Betty, was no exception): I remember a group of us sitting in the third row while the orchestra warmed up, waiting for her to arrive to run through the Beecham-Handel piano concerto. Betty marched through the doors half an hour late, in a big fur coat with her hands shoved deep in the pockets, announcing that she wouldn’t be able to play as she’d just cut her finger on a box of tea.
Also unforgettable was the soprano Elizabeth Schumann. On the morning she came in to rehearse, a chap I was seeing at the time dragged me right to the top of the hall, where I sat pinned against the back of my seat, feeling sick as I gazed down from those vertiginous heights. But then Elizabeth started to sing, and I no longer even remember the lad being there, let alone anything we might have got up to, but just recall leaning back in my seat and hearing every single word of Elizabeth’s sweet voice singing the aria from Der Rosenkavalier as it ran like treacle over my skin.
I always stayed home, though, when Noël was due to rehearse. Gazing up at him on stage while surrounded by a rabble of pimply students was not how I wished to be seen.
I was, however, convinced that I’d shed the pain of his neglect, and so every now and then I’d pluck up the courage to buy a ticket to one of his performances. Each time I’d feel quite blasé until the moment I arrived at the concert hall, and then, as I shuffled into my seat, my heart would be pounding in my throat, my skin chilling with sweat, terrified that he might look in my direction and just stare straight through me as if I wasn’t even there.
By the time he walked on stage I’d be deliberately slowing and deepening my breath, my eyes closed to postpone being confronted with his image. It wasn’t too late to leave, I’d think. I could duck out easily—people would imagine I’d been taken ill and would enable me a swift exit; I could be standing outside on the footpath within a minute. But each moment that I pondered the feasibility of my getaway was a moment lost, increasing both the difficulty of departure and the level of disruption it would cause. The point would arrive when I felt utterly trapped; escape then seemed both an imperative and an outright impossibility.
Then, in the midst of the applause, I would open my eyes and there he would be: an aurora of light balanced on the edge of the stage. He seemed older now, more confident and natural. But the boyish charm remained. His lips gently quivering, his eyes blinking rapidly, nodding slightly as he stared out into the lights and the crowd.
Seated at the piano, he would look down at the keys for a few seconds, then slowly bring his hands up to his gaze. Ever so softly his fingers would sink into the ivory as if he were dipping them into a bowl of cream.
And I would sit,
quietly enthralled throughout the performance, not even realising that I’d been crying until I felt the stream of tears rolling down my neck and dampness spreading along the edge of my collar.
I was twenty years old, and gradually being regarded as one of the top pianists at the Academy. Fellow students, I found, wanted to make my acquaintance. All in all, it ought to have been a very happy period in my life, and perhaps, relatively speaking, it was. But it’s clear to me now that, despite all the success and coquettish behaviour (I really was becoming quite the libertine), my hedonism was close to getting the better of me. At the time I was quite chuffed to wake up after a night out drinking with classmates to find myself in another student’s bed. To me it showed an element of spunk that had been absent in my make-up until that point. I was aware I was drinking more than most (and once did have to call upon my aunt to bail me out from a debt at the licensed grocer), but failed to see, when I was doing so well with my musical studies, why a bit of nightly decadence was such a problem. Especially when it provided relief from the one tangible complaint I could claim: my invisible ailment—the pain in my arm—that worsened over this time.
It was not so much during, but after, my practice that I’d often be in so much agony that I’d lie on my bed in tears—not simply from the blazing sensation running down from my shoulder and the near paralysis of my wrist, but also from complete exhaustion and fury. I was at a point in my life when I was as close as ever to embarking upon a career as a pianist, and accompanying me on my way was this troll on my back, trying to force me to the ground, ruin me.
The Virtuoso Page 12
