by Jilly Cooper
Rodney sighed as she switched off the telephone.
‘Probably just as well, darling. Tell Boris to give Lionel a long, flashy but not too difficult solo to keep him quiet. Haydn said you could do anything with musicians if you gave them the chance to show off.’
He was sad to see Abby go, but quite relieved. He wanted to learn the cello part of Don Quixote and he didn’t think he could have coped with a month of such obsessive introspection.
No-one could have been more obsessively introspective than Boris. Abby reached home before he did, and was pleased to see her little faded red-brick cottage peering out of the yellowing woods, the fox cub now seeking refuge from the hunting season.
‘You don’t think Boris has topped himself,’ said a worried Flora. ‘We expressed him some cash for his train fare and a taxi.’
Boris arrived with the first stars, having drunk his taxi fare on the train and drenched himself, falling into the lake, on his stumbling walk from the station. His only luggage was a bulging Waitrose carrier bag, of which Flora speedily relieved him.
‘Have you brought us some goodies?’
‘I vish.’
Inside, frantically scrawled on a mass of manuscript paper were the endless abandoned beginnings of Rachel’s Requiem.
‘I cannot write. I cannot pay back the RSO, I cannot pay Astrid, my lovely au pair, so she has taken the cheeldren to Rachel’s parents, who think me murderer anyway, for one month to geeve me peace to write.’
His upended dark curls were streaked with grey, his eyes were black caverns. He was shaking uncontrollably.
But after a very hot bath, and a change into Marcus’s sweatshirt and jeans, which now fitted his formerly stocky body, Boris had cheered up enough to tuck into a large steak, French beans and mashed potato, cooked by Marcus, and was soon pouring out his troubles and a great deal of red wine.
‘Schumann say: Requiem is a thing one writes for oneself! I shall not leeve long,’ Boris coated a piece of steak with mustard, ‘I am like Mozart, someone vill have to finish vork for me.’
Flora, who had Scriabin on her knee, removing goose-grass burrs out of his plumy white tail, picked up a spoon and helped herself to some French beans.
‘Who could finish it for you?’ she asked innocently.
‘Edith Spink or perhaps Sonny Parker,’ suggested Marcus equally innocently.
‘Never,’ Boris crashed his hand down on the kitchen table, spilling his half-pint of red wine. ‘Ovair my dead buddy.’
‘It’s going to be dead anyway,’ giggled Flora. ‘You’ll be twanging a harp on a cloud beside Rachel.’
‘Flora,’ reproved Marcus, mopping up the wine with a piece of kitchen roll. Scriabin’s proximity was making his eyes water.
‘I listened to John Tavener at the proms last night,’ Flora ignored Boris’s scowl. ‘It hardly left the note of D. You can be less boring than that.’
‘How far have you got?’ asked Abby.
‘I sketch most of it in the head, but I am so tired vorking sixteen hours a day.’ Then, as Flora played an imaginary violin, moaned, ‘I am so disappointed and frustrated at non-performance of my vork.’
‘How can they perform it, when you don’t write anything but rude postcards to Edith Spink?’ said Flora, returning to the French beans.
‘Are you still not having singers?’ asked Marcus, trying to lead the conversation into less thorny paths.
Boris nodded his shaggy head.
‘Britten write requiem to his parents wizout singers. I ’ate singers.’
‘I hate musicians,’ sighed Abby. ‘You’ve licked that spoon Flora. Why don’t we dispense with them as well.’
‘Then we could have sixty minutes of silence,’ said Flora, ‘jolly peaceful and much cheaper.’
‘The Arts Council would find it very meaningful,’ added Marcus.
‘You all joke,’ grumbled Boris, scooping up the rest of the mashed potato and adding an ounce of butter. ‘None of you realize, not Lear, nor Oepidus nor ’Amlet suffer like I do. I’m so vorried I’m written out.’
‘Course you’re not,’ said Flora, ‘you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep, and no bottles of red under the bed. We’ll all help you.’
‘Tomorrow I go on vagon,’ said Boris, refilling his glass.
Because Marcus stayed at home to practise and give piano lessons while Flora and Abby left the cottage to work, it was assumed that he had the time to shop, cook, unload the dish-washer, transfer dripping underwear from washing-machine to dryer, feed the cats, change duvets, let in plumbers and electricians and often pay for them, too.
Predictably the lion’s share of helping Boris fell to him. Thus the following morning, it was Flora who read out the nine sections of the Mass, so Marcus could copy them down and Boris could later tick off each section as he finished it.
‘“Dies Irae”,’ read Flora, who was wandering round the kitchen with Scriabin, a purring black-and-white ruff round her neck.
‘That’s a joke for a start. Rachel was such a crosspatch she gave Boris months and years of “Irae”, always making him smoke outside and not putting salt in anything except wounds.’
‘Next,’ Marcus looked up.
‘“Rex Tremendae”, what a terrific name for a dog.’
‘Got that.’
‘“Agnus Dei”,’ Flora giggled. ‘Sounds like Doris Day’s sister. Doris was seriously kind to dogs and filled her house and the annexe with strays — I wish we could have a dog.’
‘Well, you can’t.’ Clad only in her bikini, Brahms’ Second Symphony under her arm, Abby was on her way out to the garden.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked crossly, as she went through the living-room and found Boris sitting on one of her pale beige Habitat sofas, with manuscript paper, several pencils and erasers on an uncomfortably low table in front of him.
‘I’m thinking what to put,’ said Boris sulkily. ‘It’s August and the birds are mute from feeding their young as I am. Zee muse as desert me.’
‘We are not a muse,’ murmured Flora to Marcus.
‘Rodney suggested you wrote a long easy solo for Lionel to keep him quiet,’ suggested Abby.
‘I ’ate Lionel, little vanker, I will make eet impossibly deeficult.’
Cheered at the prospect of Lionel on the rack, Boris started to scribble down notes, but, having been bawled out by Abby for spilling a sneaked glass of red wine over her new yellow rush-matting, he retreated sulkily to Marcus’s studio.
Here he worked feverishly, sometimes stopping to discuss ideas with Marcus, working out details on the piano together, singing phrases which Marcus, who had absolute pitch, could take down like shorthand.
But Marcus’s main task was emptying waste-paper baskets of scrumpled-up paper. The progress was desperately slow. Boris spent a lot of time ringing Astrid, ostensibly to check on the children.
‘Such a good father,’ sighed Abby.
A week later, Boris had struggled to the end of the ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Rex Tremendae’, and Flora and Marcus were copying them out in the garden, helped by the kittens who kept jumping on top of the manuscript paper and shooting their black pens all over the place.
‘Probably improving it,’ muttered Flora. ‘Talk about Slav labour. And how many times do I have to tell you not to clean up after Abby — you’re too nice to her.’
They were harvesting in the field beyond the front gate, huge gold blocks rising like ingots out of the platinum-blond grass. But suddenly over the roar of the huge combine, Flora and Marcus heard Boris tapping out a tune on the piano, rising fourths and fifths, tentative but haunting. He was playing it again, changing it slightly, shoving in a few discords, then he played the first version.
Marcus and Flora looked at each other.
‘Oh, please don’t spoil it,’ they said in unison, as Boris introduced an interrupted cadence, and started messing around with the tempo.
‘We must tell him,’ Flora leapt to her feet.
/> ‘He told us not to disturb him.’
‘We should before he buggers it up. Write it down. That is the most glorious, glorious tune,’ cried Flora, pushing open the door of Marcus’s once immaculate studio. ‘Play it again.’
Marcus followed, removing Boris’s wine glass from the top of the Steinway, which was already covered in drink rings, then scribbling down the notes on a piece of manuscript paper. As he finished he said in ecstasy: ‘It’s miraculous, Boris.’
Boris shook his head and, retrieving his glass, filled it up.
‘It’s too good, too little, too nice, too predictable.’
‘You’re crazy, Boris,’ interrupted Abby, who had heard that last version. ‘It’s so beautiful.’
‘Stunning.’ Flora picked up the piece of manuscript paper and sang the tune, lifting the hair on the back of everyone’s necks.
‘That’s it, “Rachel’s Lament”,’ said Marcus, sitting down and playing it on the piano.
Abby fingered the curves of Boris’s violin, never more longing to join in.
‘Please make it a horn solo for Viking,’ she begged. ‘Viking wouldn’t sentimentalize it.’
Boris looked sulky. ‘It is too sweet for my Rachel.’ And, snatching the page, he tore it into little pieces and stormed off into the wood, not returning until nightfall.
All the same the composition of such a beautiful tune, unleashed something in Boris. The next day, although he grumbled every time the others sang it, he kept working feverishly, sixteen hours on the trot, increasingly encouraged by what he had produced, wading through the rapids, clinging to one stepping-stone after another, until by the last evening of the third week, he had written six out of nine sections.
It was still so hot, they had all the cottage windows open. Abby was upstairs working on the Brahms Second Symphony which the RSO were playing their first week back. Flora was copying out the ‘Agnus Dei’ in the kitchen and also watching a prom production of Götterdammerung on television, fulminating because Brünnhilde had just jumped Siegfried’s horse into the funeral pyre.
‘Bloody bitch, I’ll report her to the RSPCA.’
She had turned down the sound because Marcus, who had a recital in the North of England the next day, was practising Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. Even on the old sitting-room upright, it sounded exquisite, and Marcus had hardly had any chance recently to play anything except Boris’s stuff.
He’s the most talented of all of us, thought Flora guiltily, and he’s the one who makes all the sacrifices.
Marcus had reached a little piece called ‘By the Fireside’, when Boris burst in, tears streaming down his anguished face.
‘Rachel play that very last time I see her, she, too, have recital next day,’ he sobbed, ‘I pull her off piano-stool in middle and we made love.’
Seizing Flora’s yellow sarong from the floor, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose.
Marcus leapt up in horror.
‘I’ll stop, Boris, I’m dreadfully sorry.’
‘No, no, go on, play it on Steinway, it ees catharsis.’
Marcus was not very happy with his recital. He drove all the way to a small Lancashire mining town. No-one welcomed him except the caretaker. There were thirty people in the audience who clapped him politely. Afterwards a secretary paid him one hundred pounds. The whole trip cost him almost as much in petrol, as he drove on the following day to see his grandmother in Cheshire, who’d been hit by Lloyd’s and her sixth husband, and who never stopped grumbling about the small allowance given to her by Rupert. Marcus stayed a couple of nights trying to cheer her up, but depressing himself, realizing how desperately he missed his father and everyone at Penscombe.
Returning to Woodbine Cottage in the early evening, he found the usual chaos, the washing-up machine was full and unloaded, the sink full of mugs, glasses and plates. In the fridge there was no milk, half a yoghurt, some apricot-and-nut pâté and half a grapefruit. There was also no bread. Tapes and CDs lay out of their cases like loose change on the sitting-room carpet, the plants had wilted, no-one had emptied the dustbin. Finding a squirming sea of maggots when he opened the lid, Marcus closed it quickly. The cats were weaving round his legs, reproachfully, rejecting a bowl of Whiskas covered in flies’ eggs.
Marcus wanted to yell at someone but the place was deserted. He had just finished straightening things out and was gasping for breath as he staggered round the house with a watering-can, when the others rolled back from the pub in total euphoria.
‘We’ve had a brilliant few days,’ cried Flora. ‘Boris has finished except for the orchestration.’
‘You did the trick, playing the Schumann the other night.’ Boris thumped Marcus on the back so that the watering-can missed a pot of geraniums and spilled all over the sitting-room table. ‘That night I dream my Rachel forgive me. I weave By the Fireside into “Lachrymosa”.’
‘And into “Rachel’s Lament”, which reappears again as the most ravishing solo in the “Libera Me” at the end — it’s stunning,’ sighed Abby.
‘How did you get on, Marcus?’ asked Flora, getting a bottle of white wine out of a carrier bag.
‘Not brilliant.’
‘Many people?’
‘Not a lot, but at least they paid me.’
‘Ah well, that’s good, then.’ Flora picked up the corkscrew.
‘If you’re not too tired,’ asked Abby, ‘perhaps you could play us what Boris has written.’
They were all so happy, he couldn’t shout at them.
No-one could be bothered to stagger over to Marcus’s studio, besides he was fed up with the drink rings on the Steinway, so Flora lit one turquoise candle and one blue and put them in the candleholders on the old upright.
Their soft light flickered on Marcus’s face, which gradually grew less pinched and strained as he miraculously deciphered Boris’s scrawl, his fingers moving with increasing assurance over the sticky yellow keys.
Meanwhile Flora on the viola and Boris on the fiddle, when he wasn’t reaching for his pencil to scribble some change or sobbing his heart out, joined in, harmonizing as they went.
Often the music was dense and hideously discordant, particularly when Boris muddled through Lionel’s appallingly demanding solo, muttering happily, ‘This’ll fix him, zee vanker,’ but often some magical tune or cadence would emerge, and Marcus would pause and shake his head in wonder.
‘This is incredible, Boris.’
After the beautiful solo of ‘Rachel’s Lament’ had faded softly away, the requiem ended most uncharacteristically with a joyous fanfare.
‘And trumpets sound for Rachel on zee uzzer side,’ said Boris, wiping his eyes.
The next moment, utterly exhausted, but triumphant, the three of them collapsed in each other’s arms.
‘You’ve done it, you’ve done it.’
‘No, you play zee Schumann, Marcus, you deed it,’ said Boris. ‘After zat I produce in trance like Handel’s Messiah.’
‘Levitsky’s Messier,’ giggled Flora, ‘if we’re going to compare handwriting and crossing out.’
As Marcus started to play the ‘Lachrymosa’ again, really making it sing, Boris raised his glass to Abby who was huddled on the sofa clutching Sibelius.
‘I zank you, Abby, for giving us roof over the head.’
‘We’re The Three Tenants,’ announced Flora, shimmering down a glissando with a flourish of her bow. ‘Eat your hearts out Placido, Luciano and José.’
Glancing round, Marcus realized Abby’s shoulders were shaking: ‘What’s the matter?’ He jumped to his feet.
Abby looked up, her face crumpled and soaked with tears.
‘You’re all so lucky.’ And, dropping Sibelius on the carpet, she ran out into the garden.
‘She’s pissed, and Boris has been getting too much attention recently. Leave her,’ said Flora.
‘I cheer her up,’ Boris went towards the french windows.
‘I think you should have a bath first,’ said Flora
, ‘I don’t believe you’ve touched a bar of soap for a fortnight.’
Putting the kettle on, Marcus realized he hadn’t eaten all day. There didn’t seem any point starting. When he took out a cup of coffee to Abby in the garden, all the daisies that had shrivelled on the parched yellow lawn seemed to have sprung up in the star-covered sky. Boris was sitting on the old white bench under the greengage tree with his arm round Abby.
‘You must guest more,’ he was telling her. ‘When I conduct the London Met or the New World, the musicians adore me because they ’ate Rannaldini so much. Don’t cry, my darling, I vill dedicate Requiem to you.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Boris had cracked the Requiem, now, as Flora said, he had only to ‘add the rough edges’. The next morning, having bathed at length and washed his hair in Marcus’s shampoo, and put on yet another pair of Marcus’s boxer shorts, he took the draft into the garden, looking handsomer than most dawns as he sat in a deck-chair eating dried apricots.
All great artists sacrifice the emotions and lives of those around them to further the interests of their art. In a mood to be expansive, Boris realized he had pushed Marcus too far.
‘You are sad.’
‘I’m OK. I wish my father would forgive me and I could see Taggie and Tab and the kids again. I wish my mother wasn’t married to that shit Rannaldini and I wish my career wasn’t going backwards.’
Boris’s face softened. ‘I will write a very good piano part into the Requiem.’
‘Not much point. I was so rude to Old Mother Parker, George Hungerford’ll never let me over the RSO threshold again.’
‘Markie.’ It was Abby calling from the kitchen, looking radiant in a new scarlet bikini. She had also washed her hair and was reeking of Amarige. ‘I can’t open this jar of coffee,’ She said as Marcus went inside. ‘My grip still isn’t right. Isn’t it a beautiful day?’
‘Forecast says rain,’ Marcus said, handing back the jar. Out of the window, he could see huge white clouds gleaming like arctic cliffs in the sunshine, banking up beyond the wood. ‘God, we could use it.’
