The Virtuoso

by Sonia Orchard

  ‘…what Heiser kept forgetting is that it was the Germans that needed re-educating, not the British. Really, it was maddening…’

  I looked back at his thin, pale lips, blotchy and dry, which moved so sluggishly as he spoke, and imagined Noël kissing them. I looked at the skin of his neck, his ears—all areas that Noël had explored. And I returned to his hands. Those plump, square hands. And I saw them on Noël. I tried to ignore it but this image played incessantly in front of me each time I saw his fingers twitch around the glass.

  ‘…there are five women to every man in Germany, and the “men” are either children or elderly. And it’s exceedingly difficult to get Germans to come out socially—large parties only confuse and depress them. Thank goodness for visits from Noël; we’d have such a jolly time together when he came over—’

  ‘Pardon?’ I had a sudden need to rejoin the conversation in order to quell my anger, and find out all I could about their time together in Germany.

  ‘I knew you two would get along swimmingly,’ Noël interrupted, arriving by Bill’s side. ‘The race is about to begin so you must step out for a few moments.’ Noël turned to me. ‘Which side are you on?’

  I hadn’t, up until now, considered that I ought to be cheering for a particular crew. I looked around and saw Gerald, his thick navy-blue scarf wrapped around several times under his chin, his Oxford boater tilted to the side, waving his cigarette about his head as he spoke. I looked at Noël, smiling expectantly at me in his navy jacket; Bill with his duck-egg blue tie.

  ‘Oxford,’ I replied.

  ‘Really?’ Bill said. ‘We’re cheering for Cambridge. May the best team win then, eh?’

  Noël charged our glasses and we headed out through the french windows onto the patio.

  Gerald wandered towards us and before long I heard Bill talking to him about how most of the libraries across Germany had been destroyed, the resulting gross shortage of books, and how the German view of British literature was represented by London, Kipling, Wilde and Galsworthy. I was dismayed to see that Gerald looked enthralled.

  The garden was now full of guests, many pressed up against the low brick wall overlooking the river, others on the wooden seats or gathered under the newly budded peach tree. Being some of the last to venture outside, we stood at the top of the bluestone steps that led down into the garden, overlooking the boaters, felt hats, umbrellas and glasses of champagne. Below, the river was a confused grey-brown, and waves were tearing up the water, heading downstream, despite the incoming tide.

  Inside, a couple of guests remained and had switched off the music and turned up the wireless. A call rang out from the living room, which soon spread across the yard—‘Oxford won the toss, they’ve chosen Surrey Station!’ The noise of the gathering rose as the news was sent around and discussed, everyone bracing themselves for the start.

  The voice from inside yelled out that the race had begun.

  Although it would be at least five minutes before we first saw the boats coming around the bend and under Hammersmith Bridge, people started shuffling towards the far end of the garden, leaning over the embankment, looking out and down to their left.

  ‘There are waves breaking over Oxford’s washboard!’ the voice called through the doors. No one outside seemed to be listening, though; everyone was too busy gazing out down the river, wrapping their scarves tighter, or, bored with the wait, returning to conversation. Noël started telling me about the next party they’d be having, sometime in June—‘a Kiftsgate party’—for the flowering of the Kiftsgate, and he pointed to the huge rose bush, almost fifteen feet high, that had climbed up the southern wall of the house and over the doorway behind us. Masses of clusters of creamy white flowers that smelt like apples, he told me—‘The bees go crazy.’ I looked up at the house to admire the huge shrub, which had almost entirely taken over the wall of the first floor and was grasping up higher, towards the second level. That’s when I realised that someone was shouting out from inside the house.

  ‘They’re sinking, they’re sinking!’

  Beneath the massive rambling climber a small, fat man in a checked jacket rushed out the french windows, waving his hands about.

  ‘The Bishop’s stopped the race. Oxford have sunk!’

  The first people I turned to were Bill and Gerald, both laughing and raising their glasses in mock celebration and commiseration. I didn’t want to even look at Noël, though I could hear him laughing loudly beside me. I just looked out to the river, at the murky, wild and icy waves, then into the garden, at everyone laughing, cheering and clapping in the biting wind, as if they couldn’t have anticipated such a wonderful result.

  As well as the annual boat-race party and the Kiftsgate celebrations at Hammersmith, Noël hosted a string of birthdays, theatrical performances (using one of his homemade marionette theatres, and performing Elektra, Salome, or a play he’d written and composed), and dinner parties where he’d impress guests with fish mornay, Polish poppy-seed cake or another dish or cocktail he’d picked up on the continent.

  One night I was there amongst the remnants of a daytime party. The food and sunshine had dwindled away hours earlier and only a dozen or so guests remained, all terribly drunk, gathered in the living room, holding gins and cigarettes. After wandering about, weary and quiet, for much of the late afternoon, Bill had disappeared completely. He had a habit of doing that: after chatting away for hours, he’d switch off as if he’d suddenly exhausted his reserve of energy and charm, and an insipid smile and slow, deliberate blinking would be all he could manage. I was always glad to see him slink off unceremoniously, while Noël stayed up, cavorting about and enjoying the company of his guests.

  Two men at the piano were improvising on a monotonous jazz riff; Noël glided past with a tray full of drinks and smiled at them: ‘You are fond of C major, aren’t you?’

  I’d had too much to drink, so slunk over to Michael Tippett, on whom I’d always been quite keen. I complimented him on the recording of his Heart’s Assurance song cycle with Noël and Peter Pears. His melancholy eyes sparkled as he spoke about the extraordinary radiance of Noël’s performance, his dialogue meandering about each topic like a dog tracking a scent.

  Knowing, as everyone did, that Tippett had served three months at Wormwood Scrubs during the war as one of London’s more famous conscientious objectors, I found myself talking with him about my father, about how he was suspended from his work at the Home Office in the weeks before he died, and was due to stand trial for his refusal to continue publishing a ‘litany of lies’ about the Germans. Tippett must have been accustomed to speaking on such topics, for, without a change in tone, he plainly assured me that in a world militarised to the point of self-destruction, pacifism would always be powerless and at odds with the rest of society.

  His soothing voice ambled on, and I was thinking that I could happily listen to Tippett chatting away all night, when all of a sudden a surge swept up through my body, my head started to spin and I thought I was going to be sick.

  I placed my drink down on the sideboard and concentrated all my attention on my rising nausea, leaning one leg against the sofa behind me and focusing my wavering stare on Tippett.

  He must have noticed my sudden muteness, but before I could think up any witticism and take leave, wooziness overtook me. I blurted an excuse right over the top of his words and staggered away as quickly as I could manage. His apologetic smile was the last thing I saw before heading out into the hall. After that I remember little, just collapsing through a doorway into a cool, dark room.

  I awoke cold and stiff with no idea where I was; my head was pounding and my throat painfully parched. I could feel the soft velvet cushions of an armchair beneath me. There was a thin strip of streetlight entering between the curtains, enabling me to make out, after a moment or two, a few greyish outlines.

  I stood unsteadily at first and felt along the wall until I found the light switch. An unfamiliar room appeared about me: a walnut wood
writing desk; shelves full of books on ballet, fine art and architecture; and framed photographs evenly spaced along the marble mantelpiece—family portraits, and one of a young uniformed man with a thick crop of blond hair and a familiar sheepish smile. Centrally placed, inside an ornate silver frame, was a large photograph of Noël, walking towards the camera, grinning. I didn’t recognise the landscape, a park of tall conifers, blanketed in snow—possibly northern Europe?

  I realised I was in Bill’s study.

  I couldn’t hear a sound. The party, I presumed, had long finished, and the eerie stillness of deep night lingered about the room as if about to pounce. I looked around at my new surroundings—the impressionist paintings, the large Peshawar rug, the Polynesian mask—feeling as if I’d woken in a dream, or in another’s life: Bill’s life.

  As I crept around the room a gradual realisation started to emerge in me of the sheer size and weight of this existence, everything it had amassed, all it encompassed: this man had a study, he filled drawers and cupboards with letters and work, and kept private belongings collected over a lifetime.

  What was I to make of my predicament? It was too ironic, scandalous. I looked at my watch—three o’clock. My heart was beating furiously and I felt a wave of agitation rise within me that I wasn’t able to distinguish as either excitement or rage.

  I walked to the desk, sat, and immediately had a sense of being in a control room, or even upon a throne looking down over Bill and the world. I ran my fingers along the leather armrests, wriggled in the seat, and then, for a frightful moment, felt that it was his plump skin and ungainly body I was rubbing against.

  I could just see him, sitting here, tapping away at his typewriter, making his telephone calls, organising his silly little exhibitions. My heart was pummelling faster and growing larger in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. So I closed my eyes and didn’t open them for some minutes, until I knew I could look at what was in front of me and not do anything rash.

  The first thing that leapt up at me was his handwriting. Everywhere: lists, notes, envelope labels—its perfect uniformity and monotonous angle giddying to read. There was also a typed letter in duplicate in front of me on the desk. I picked it up and began to read:

  Dear Mr Alwyn Jones,

  Thank you for your letter of 14th of April. Mr Mewton-Wood would like to avail himself of your kind offer to book him accommodation at the Park Hotel in Cardiff for the night of the 30th of May. Please note that the Brahms Concerto no. I that Mr Mewton-Wood will be broadcasting with the BBC Welsh Orchestra is in D minor, not D major. Mr Mewton-Wood also asked me to point out that the playing duration is 48 minutes 40, and not 45 minutes, as stated in your last letter. Please give my and Mr Mewton-Wood’s regards to Rae Jenkins and his wife.

  Yours Sincerely,

  William Lang Fedrick

  The file next to the letter was titled in the same immaculate copperplate script—BBC correspondence 1951——and was filled with carbon copies of numerous similar letters, all written or typed by Bill, organising Noël’s BBC Cardiff broadcasts for the Home and Light Programme, his fees, his accommodation, his programmes.

  I leaned back in the chair and started reading, one by one, every letter, my anger cooled by a prickling curiosity.

  It had never crossed my mind that Bill managed all of Noël’s affairs, that he had sewn himself into Noël’s life so intricately. I laughed aloud at the earnestness of Bill’s efforts, performing such a facile job. By the end of the file Bill’s words—his polite, meticulous tone—became so familiar to me that I felt I knew the man intimately, and was incensed by how tepid and ineffective he appeared.

  Ignoring the sound of the wind rummaging through the house, and my headache and thirst, I opened the second folder on the desk—Noël’s BBC correspondence 1940-50—and continued reading. Some of the letters, scrunched and ripped, dated back to during the war, when Noël had composed and broadcast for the BBC London Transcription Services—music for the British at home and at the front, and incidental music for the strip cartoon Fred Perkins, War Correspondent.

  I was about to close the file when I found a series of letters from the BBC Music Department, some of which appeared to have been screwed up, then pressed flat:…our director of music asks me to inform you with regret that we are unable to include your new piano concerto in the programme for the 1944 Prom season…

  …we are returning your sonata herewith and thank you very much for showing it to us…

  …I am afraid some time has elapsed since you sent in this score. It was reported upon by our advisers four years ago and none of them felt able to recommend it for our use…

  …the answer must be that I cannot broadcast it…

  Pages and pages of letters rejecting Noël’s compositions. I read through them carefully, certain that Noël had never breathed a word of these works to me.

  So many of the great composers had had their masterpieces rejected by publishers, critics or audiences. The Viennese public and the major publishing houses were so indifferent to Schubert’s work that a vast quantity went unnoticed during the composer’s life; ten years after Schubert’s death, Schumann discovered a wealth of unpublished manuscripts in dusty boxes at Schubert’s brother’s house in Vienna: operas, four masses and five symphonies, including the ‘Great’ C major symphony.

  I thought about this as I read on through the folder of rejection letters. My anger returned, shifting from H. Vowles to Dr Hely-Hutchinson and to other members of the BBC Music Advisory Panel, before coming to rest on Bill, on his incompetence, his inability to advance Noël’s career.

  I stopped occasionally to think of Noël, fast asleep, not far above where I sat. Leaning back in the chair, I felt that I could almost hear his breath, that I had somehow slipped into his unconscious sleeping world. Amidst the creaks and groans of the house, occasionally I even thought I heard laughter or chatter—the party still in full swing. I imagined Noël roaming through the rooms, knowing I was there, coming to find me.

  There was a photograph on the desk of Noël in evening tails, standing in the spotlight at the edge of a stage—his eyes were cast into the distance, his blank expression betrayed nothing. I recognised the auditorium, and the conductor, Maurice Miles. It was Noël’s recent performance at the 1951 Festival of Britain.

  We had all watched the Royal Festival Hall take shape on the banks of the Thames for two years, read of the two and a half million pounds it had cost to build: restaurants with furnishings in white maple and off-white leather, the auditorium—with acoustics like the soundbox of a Stradivarius—with floors of teak and Ugandan cork, the panelled walls of Australian walnut, and rosewood plywood chairs.

  Moiseiwitsch had performed in the inaugural concert of the Festival of Britain in front of the King, with Myra Hess and Denis Matthews performing later that opening week. It was being hailed as the greatest concert hall in the world—everyone had heard from someone what it was like to perform there: the wave-shaped sycamore soundboard above the stage, the massive Compton organ, the rows of black-and-white boxes jutting out from the walls of the auditorium that appeared suspended in space.

  Noël hadn’t performed until week three.

  I remembered that day—Bill was out of town and I had asked Noël if I could accompany him to rehearsal. As we walked along the corridors I was gazing through the glass wall overlooking the river, wondering why Noël showed so little excitement, whether perhaps he was nervous. He walked in silence, running his hand along the cool Derbyshire stone walls, then he stopped and looked at the polished surface next to his hand. When I moved towards him I noticed the white shapes floating in the greyish brown stone, thousands of them, some shaped like rings, others like small sausages or eggs.

  ‘Ammonites,’ he said. ‘They’ve waited hundreds of millions of years to be immortalised in these walls.’

  I looked closer and realised that the small white shapes in the marble were fossils, that I was standing next to a wall containing
thousands of tiny Palaeozoic animals. I gazed ahead along the smooth, glassy surface and was overcome by a feeling of great unease, by the motionless drift of creatures as far as I could see.

  As soon as Noël joined Maurice Miles and the Yorkshire Orchestra on stage he was his usual buoyant self. But watching him, grinning and making jokes, I wasn’t able to forget his troubled look—suddenly so much older than his twenty-eight years—as he’d stared at the wall, at that ancient, frozen parade.

  Now the silver-framed photograph commemorating his Festival of Britain performance was on Bill’s desk.

  I slipped the souvenir into my pocket.

  There was one last letter in the manila folder, addressed to Dulcie, still in its envelope. My lungs felt small and tight, and I realised I was grinding my teeth. I began reading, hoping the letter might provide some kind of relief, but it was another rejection letter, for a composition that Dulcie had sent to the BBC. I put the letter away and found, sharing the same envelope, a letter to Dulcie from Noël, written in the early years of the war. The crossings of the T’s were scratched almost across entire lines; the letters were barely legible, frantically written and oriented in all directions. I wouldn’t have recognised it for Noël’s usually steady hand if it weren’t for the sweeping signature at the bottom, with its two dots punched into the paper, umlauting the e.

  Saturday

  Dear Mother,

  I received your letter today and I must say I was very surprised at your feeble-mindedness. You may be sure that until I am really famous I shall receive many adverse criticisms but for you to change your opinion of any particular performance of mine because of a critic is so surprising. You told me after the concert that the only thing you wished to improve was the way I walked on. You now say in your letter that the pedal spoilt the effect of the Chopin étude yet when I especially asked you after the concert whether this was the case you definitely said ‘no’!!! If you thought it was spoilt you might have said so when asked: but if you didn’t think so then to change your opinions to that of someone else is very feeble-minded.