The Virtuoso

by Sonia Orchard

  There was a hold-up in the traffic, so we sat idling behind a bus, the car humming away contentedly, making occasional hiccups as if choking on the cold. I was about to suggest that maybe I’d write about Chopin when Gerald, with his usual candour, said, ‘Perhaps you could write something on Noël.’ Then his voice trailed off, his eye drawn to something on the street outside the passenger window. I turned around and saw, parked alongside us, a hearse. Yards away from where I sat, two men in black suits stood at the open back doors, sliding in a casket or, rather, a casket-shaped box. It didn’t seem to be made from solid wood but what resembled plywood, and was draped in lengths of blue and red satin material.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Gerald said.

  We both sat there, unable to avert our eyes from the box. I measured the length of it in my mind, felt the weight of it in the pallbearers’ hands, imagined the body supine beside us. We barely spoke a word for the rest of the drive.

  We had lunch at a pub in Golders Green. I don’t know what I was thinking, ordering steak-and-kidney pie (I could stomach little more than the crust); the stout went down far easier. Our conversation, which had started up as soon as we took a seat by the fire, was again beginning to grow rigid. Each time I spoke I felt as though I was in front of an entire auditorium, every word rattling about awkwardly in my head. By the time we turned into Hoop Lane and were approaching the gates to the crematorium I felt almost mute.

  We found a park just behind Pat’s Bentley. From both directions along the street, darkly dressed figures moved like sleepwalkers towards the main gate and the redbrick Lombardic buildings that spread out grimly just off the road. A large, motionless crowd was gathered inside the gate, and as we walked closer this mass of dark grey began to define itself into hundreds of suited gentlemen, hands in pockets or drawing on cigarettes. There were faces I’d seen on stage, on screen, in the green rooms, at music festivals, or at Noël’s and other parties over the years; it seemed every London musician, conductor, composer and critic was here on this overcast Wednesday afternoon. For a moment I felt a twinge of pride, seeing all these famous men with whom, for one day, I belonged.

  I only recall seeing a few women, though there were probably more. Chatting to a group of men (whom I just managed to recognise without tumblers and cigars in their hands) was Claire, who ran the Copa Bar in Soho, looking like Queen Mary, draped head to toe in crêpe and clutching a bunch of Palma violets. As I watched her, tears streaming almost gaily down her blotchy face, a man from one of the tabloids approached Gerald and me, nodded in Claire’s direction and asked if that was Noël’s mother.

  ‘Heavens no,’ Gerald replied, almost laughing.

  It didn’t take us long to spot Dulcie and point her out. Chatting to Pat, in the sea of tar-coloured suits, she was wearing white cat’s-eye glasses, a narrow-waisted sky-blue frock and a matching blue hat with a plume of white ostrich feathers spraying out from the top. She looked as if she was on her way to Ascot.

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled, amused, then turned back to us. ‘Knew him well then, did you?’

  The word knew hit hard—Gerald and I had refrained from using such language, delicately sidestepping the past tense—and I resented hearing it from a journalist I’d only met in passing. What’s more, he had that perky stare of a newshound on the job.

  ‘Fairly well,’ I replied.

  ‘First time I saw him was during the war with the Liverpool Philharmonic,’ the journalist stated. ‘The way he played that big cadenza at the end of the first movement of the Beethoven number one was absolutely dazzling. Everyone leapt to their feet at the end. Later I heard some old colonel say to FitzBrown, “I wish you’d ask your young pianists not to play those flamboyant cadenzas!” Fitzie put him straight, told him it was Beethoven’s original cadenza, just played as it ought to be played.’ He was grinning. Quite proud of himself, it seemed.

  Gerald smiled politely. ‘I’m sure the colonel was much obliged for the information.’

  The wooden doors to the chapel opened, and as we shuffled towards the entrance I saw a glass-fronted box mounted on the wall, and within, a plaque that read Noël Mewton-Wood. It was then that I was struck by a grave familiarity: we had all queued like this, to see Noël, so many times before. The Wigmore, the Albert Hall, the Festival Hall—it now seemed, as we were ushered past the name printed boldly at the door, that all those past occasions had been rehearsals for this one final performance. It seemed impossible that Noël wouldn’t step out under the lights and play for us all, as he always had.

  Inside the chapel, waiting for his audience, there he was. On a navy-skirted podium, surrounded by wreaths of white lilies and roses: a plywood box draped with blue and red satin.

  The sermons began, followed by hymns, and then telegrams from Stravinsky, Hindemith and other conductors, composers and musicians from around the world. Eddie Sackville-West stood and spoke of Noël’s enthusiasm, his friendliness, his brilliant intellect, and that rhapsodic Lisztian quality he possessed. That hidden strain of romanticism, he said, the mixture of power and extreme sensitivity that made his playing of the Davidsbündlertänze so utterly memorable.

  Despite the reminiscing about Noël, or perhaps because of it, I listened without any sense of Noël’s absence. It was only once the service was over and we were asked to move out into the memorial garden that I felt a stab of panic. I looked over my shoulder at the casket for the first time, properly, and imagined Noël lying inside.

  The doors were opened and a numbing wind landed on my cheeks. Outside, I moved about amongst the sniffing and weeping, the glazed, blinking eyes and hankies blotting cheeks. I walked through the grieving crowd, watching with fascination, as if I were a bird perched up in the maple, gazing down upon the mourners.

  Britten was shaking his head to Pears and Myra Hess, exclaiming that he didn’t understand why so many people he loved found living so difficult. As everyone started to shrink into small groups, unburdening themselves with memories, crying freely, crumpling under one another’s embrace, I started to feel everything unravelling. It was as if an air-raid siren had sounded and I was the only one who could hear it. My lungs were contracting and rising in my chest, a hard-walled capsule wedged beneath my throat. I knew that I had to get away from there immediately.

  Gerald clearly would have liked to stay—his eyes and cheeks were sodden, and he now wanted to douse himself further with wine and recollection—but he took one look at me, patted me on the back and said, ‘Let’s get you home, shall we?’ And thank God he did. When we arrived back at my digs and bumped into Ma O’Grady at the bottom of the stairs she handed me a letter that had been mistakenly delivered to the neighbours on Monday.

  I took one look at it, saw that sweeping handwriting that I knew so well, and burst into elated laughter, as if everything over the last few days had been one extraordinary farce. I ripped open the envelope; inside was a thin piece of notepaper, folded in half.

  Friday

  My dear friend,

  Thank you so much for your kind letter, I really am very grateful. I’m so glad you and Bill got along so well, he thought you most charming and was looking forward to more of our evenings together.

  I leave for Germany next week and expect to return just before Christmas. I would so like to pop over and see you after I get back, I recently stumbled upon some wonderful Weber duets that I’m sure you’ll find delightful. Have you managed to get going on the Schumann?

  I’m sorry that your arm is still playing up

  —Really, one’s insides are the devil.

  Once again, very many thanks.

  Yours,

  Noël

  I must have read the letter several times, unable to make any real sense of it at all. I just stood there reading it over and over, without actually registering the words, just looking at the lines, the swirls, the crosses, trying to untangle the shapes on the page. I started to feel angry and confused, as if I’d been the subject of some perverse joke. After that
I can’t remember what happened. Gerald later told me that I started laughing and speaking absolute gibberish, then walked upstairs, went as white as a sheet and collapsed.

  Some time that night, or perhaps early the following day, Gerald admitted me to Westminster Hospital.

  I vaguely recall waking and finding myself lying in a large, white-walled room filled with beds of howling patients and incessant traffic moving past. I remember a nurse with loose, puckered flesh and large, freckly arms that would hover over me holding a syringe—‘Just a little injection to help you sleep.’ The entire time, even though I had little sense of where I was or why, I felt a tremendous sense of calm. And that’s how I remained, drifting about in a soporific state from which I became irate if ever disturbed. I didn’t see Gerald—he told me afterwards that only family was allowed to visit—and the only company I enjoyed was that of a little red-haired child of a nurse who brought my meals—usually a tray of pills in a small kidney-shaped metal dish accompanied by a serving each of stew and jelly—and who I’d insisted call me Clara. She seemed, like me, oblivious to the blood-curdling screams and barking military commands that ricocheted about the brick walls and vinyl floors. Thinking she was doing the right thing, she told me that Noël Mewton-Wood (who I’d apparently called out for several times) had been an inmate in this very ward only two weeks earlier—he’d been an absolute gentleman, she said in her dreamy cockney voice.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell the dear girl he was now gone.

  I was only there for three days before Gerald convinced my doctor that I wasn’t about to kill myself, and that he would manage my medication and keep an eye on me. I don’t think the doctor would have needed much coercing—he clearly couldn’t wait to see the back of me. When Gerald arrived at my bed and started packing my suitcase, repeating the conversation he’d had, I smiled wearily in agreement.

  No, I wasn’t going to kill myself. Even in that respect I felt like a complete and utter failure.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Ma O’Grady,’ he started, once in the car. ‘Told her some story about a sick uncle in Bournemouth you’ve gone to visit; so I’ve packed up some of your things. Thought it best if you stayed at my place for a while. Mother’s in the country, so it’ll be nice and quiet.’

  I only then noticed that the back seat was piled high with suitcases and boxes of my belongings.

  ‘Your work’s been ringing. Ma O’Grady said she’d pass on about your uncle if they rang again.’ He waited for me to reply; I said nothing. ‘We’ll probably have to do something about that.’

  I was looking out on the street. Somehow it was even greyer than usual, a storm coming perhaps. There was a lady with a barking terrier at her feet, unsuccessfully trying to erect her umbrella with such a sour look on her face that no one bothered to help; two young secretaries with heads in the air carrying boxes of flowers (I guessed one had just got herself engaged); and a stocky, grey-haired man in an olive-coloured suit who, at first, I thought was Anton, my old teacher from the Academy. I felt entirely removed from it all—a bus could have run them all down that very second and I wouldn’t have flinched. I watched, simply because there was nothing else to do, and because there was something strangely amusing about the way everything, so pointlessly, went on by.

  ‘There’s a gathering at Pat’s tomorrow.’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘Anyway, we can see how you pull up in the morning.’

  I realised I ought to speak—that Gerald was trying—but there was really nothing I could think to say.

  I didn’t go to Pat’s. I stayed in the room that Gerald had had made up for me with a four-poster and a desk with gramophone, wireless and typewriter, overlooking a grove of walnut and pear trees, all of which stood naked and shivering in the fog on the frosted grass. Martha had stacked the fireplace, and for lunch brought me up The Times, a tray with a plate of beef-hock stew and waxy potatoes, and a bottle of brandy. So after lunch I sat in the armchair by the fire, read some Genet and proceeded to get drunk.

  The wireless played in the background and every hour my ears pricked up to hear the BBC news, each time feeling a sense of both betrayal and relief to hear no word of Noël. The only mention came in the afternoon when Neville Boucher spoke of a forthcoming performance of Alan Bush’s Voices of the Prophets, which, he added, was premiered last summer at the Festival Hall by Peter Pears and Noël Mewton-Wood, to whom Bush had dedicated the piece. ‘Mewton-Wood, of course, who sadly passed away last weekend’. And in those few simple words, I thought, Noël had been swept from the world.

  The papers had been conspicuously quiet. Bliss had written an obituary in The Times, and apparently Pat had been put in charge of the press, making sure no scandal erupted. There had only been oblique mention of the recent death of a friend and associate, which had caused the pianist some distress. They had also reported no suspicion of foul play. The death was believed to be due to poisoning, while the balance of the mind was upset.

  I’d always envied Noël’s robust and optimistic spirit, the apparent grace and ease with which he moved through the world. But as I remembered him perched on the edge of the sofa with that unflappable smile, handing me the Davidsbündlertänze, I had the terrible notion that perhaps there was far more to this thoughtful gift, and the dedication he made to me—Clara—over the radio the week before he died.

  Shortly before Schumann had given Clara the dances, he’d made a confession to his fiancée about a psychical malady that he’d been burdened with for as long as he could remember: relentless cycles of suicidal despair and euphoria. He begged her not to worry, assuring her that she was capable of curing him entirely and making him completely happy.

  Schumann thought of the two battling sides of his personality as characters, which he named Florestan, who was passionately enthusiastic, and Eusebius, who was lonely and introspective. I wondered what Clara thought, when, several weeks after confessing his secret, Schumann presented her with the Davidsbündlertänze— the League of David Dances—each piece bearing an F or E, or both, at the beginning, and several of them titled with thoughts or gestures of the two contrasting personalities. Perhaps she had felt as we had when Noël walked out on stage to perform this extraordinary opus: awestruck by the man’s genius. Surely she could never have conceived how anyone capable of creating works as beautiful as these could one day simply lose the will to live.

  I thought about how Schumann’s fits of depression were followed by periods of frenzied composition—the First symphony in B flat major only took four days to compose, as did the Liederkreis of twenty songs; and about the furious pace at which Noël would learn some horrendously difficult work like the Busoni concerto, sometimes in a matter of days. The more I thought about these remarkably similar men, the more convinced I became that neither had lost the will to live, or lost anything at all; but, rather, had simply just stopped—stood still. And let that thing—whatever it was—that had been chasing them, driving them on, finally just catch up.

  London audiences had rarely heard the Davidsbündlertänze before Noël performed them. So satisfied, they were, with knowing all the great classical works, so resistant to hearing anything new. Yet, when Noël played these pieces, I’d look around the concert hall and see tears streaming down faces and smiles of recognition. Noël’s extraordinary understanding: that’s what we all talked about after he played, without giving a thought to what it meant—this understanding. None of us considered it as anything more than some supernatural gift that had landed in his lap, some astounding ability that he possessed—to be able to walk on stage and into the shoes of Schumann.

  Gerald arrived home from Pat’s around ten, came to my room and asked me to join him for a drink in the library. He stood hunched over at my door, leaning all his weight on the knob as if it was the only thing holding him up. The few wrinkles around his brilliant brown-blue eyes were more prominently etched than usual, with fine layers of skin drooping over each line.

  ‘They a
ll say it was guilt,’ he trailed off, swilling his brandy in its balloon and looking over towards the wall of books. ‘And grief, of course. Yes, most certainly grief. Devastated about Bill, naturally. But everyone was talking about how happy he’d been those last days—that he kept saying he felt he was getting over it all. He rang John Amis the night before and they spoke for two hours.’

  I wondered why Noël hadn’t tried ringing me. I felt a weary anger towards John, as if he’d misappropriated those precious two hours of Noël’s final night.

  ‘John says Noël was talking about the future, upcoming tours—terribly excited about the recordings he was going to be doing with Max Rostal.’ Gerald had his legs stretched out, crossed in front of him, and was staring at his shoes, quite intently, as if some answer might lie there.

  Martha carried in a basket of wood for the fire. She knelt down and started loading the blaze without glancing back at either of us, clearly aware we were in for a long night.

  ‘Earlier in the week,’ Gerald continued, ‘Pat and Noël drove down to Cambridge to visit Carl Winter at the Fitzwilliam Museum—he’d just opened an exhibition on eighteenth-century portrait mezzotints; Pat thought it’d be good to get Noël out of town. They’d only been there half an hour when Noël excused himself, said he wanted to drop in on a friend and that he’d be back in ten minutes. Several hours later he returned—quite cheerful, apparently—and had this small, dark brown bottle.’ Gerald paused and put his drink down on the desk beside him, looking at it quizzically. ‘Said something about the damned rats in his new house—that this friend of his in the Chemistry Department had given him some cyanide to get rid of them.’