The Horn of Roland

by Edith Pargeter

  ‘Then I’m a clumsy fool,’ he said, dismayed. ‘I meant no such thing. God, no, you’ve done me more than justice.’ He was terrified that there were tears gathering in the dark eyes. He took her hand very quickly, and lightly kissed the backs of the smooth young fingers that were so cold in his. ‘You’ve helped me, not hurt me,’ he said. ‘Don’t for God’s sake, make me feel that I’ve hurt you, or I shall be miserable for the rest of my life.’

  Crista turned her head aside, with a stiff, blind motion of pain and resistance, drew her hand away as though his touch burned, and went very quickly out of the room.

  He stood where she had left him, shaken and chastened, wanting to go after her and make good whatever he had done wrong, but uneasily aware that he might make bad worse. And she had always been so aloof and contained! What had happened to her, within that shell of calm, while she had been caught up into his accidental circle of tension and strain? He should never have touched her. Where was the kindness in involving her more deeply, even with gratitude? Disgusted with his own clumsiness, he sat down to his coffee, but with his ears pricked for the soft click of her sandals returning. But when he looked up warily at the first light step in the corridor, it was Una who came in.

  She looked round the room, noted his solitary condition, and the fact that the table was laid for only two, and asked at once: ‘Aren’t the bodyguard eating with us this morning?’

  ‘I rather think,’ said Lucas, ‘that they breakfasted before we were up. They both seem to be out on patrol at the moment.’

  ‘And Crista? Oh, dear, she’s done everything single-handed. I intended to be up in time to help.’

  ‘Didn’t you meet her? She went out only a few minutes ago. I think she must have breakfasted with the young men.’

  ‘And what about the other young man?’ Una asked. ‘Aren’t we going to feed him, too?’

  She had not been sure until this moment whether she was going to tell Lucas what had passed in the night or not. It was the sight of his bent head and shadowed brow as he studied the letters that made up her mind for her. True, a draught of hope could do him nothing but good, provided it was well grounded; but how could she make her account, at second-hand, as convincing to him as the reality had, for some reason, been to her? She drew back from the difficulties of making long explanations which would explain nothing, but only create a tangle of minor doubts and annoyances, some of them – such as irritation that she should act independently with doubtful discretion – childish. Not petty – there was nothing petty about Lu – but yes, childish. His pattern of essentials had always been different from hers, and he would be seeing Mike Brace from quite a different viewpoint. Hope, too, could be double-edged. No, she would hold her hand, and wait for hope to become substance. Even if he knew, he could not help in any way whatever enterprise Mike had in mind.

  ‘The bird’s flown,’ Lucas said with a faint smile, and handed her the note to read. ‘Apparently he thought better of it, and decided to get himself off the hook. But he left a hostage behind.’ He nodded towards the case on its brocaded throne. ‘We have to take his horn with us to the hall this afternoon. Or rather,’ he corrected himself, ‘I have. No need for you to come to the rehearsal, you go off with Crista and have a look at the castle, and pick me up afterwards.’

  Una refolded Mike’s note with a private and almost invisible smile. ‘No, I’m coming with you.’

  He was surprised for a moment. Rehearsals usually bored her to extinction, and he knew it. Then he realised that she had now no intention of letting him out of her sight for a moment if she could help it. He offered her his warmest smile. ‘Oh, come!’ he said gently. ‘I can’t come to much harm in the company of the entire orchestra, can I?’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said again, with such determination and finality that he didn’t presume to argue further. But he did wonder, mildly and fleetingly, why she should flush so fiercely as she overruled him. Almost as though her loyalty was something to be ashamed of.

  Crista reappeared to take down two letters for him, make the necessary telephone calls, supply Geestler and Schwalbe with more coffee at mid-morning, and help Una to cook an early lunch. She was perfectly composed and exactly as usual, trim and precise in her yellow linen suit, a girl of few words and scrupulously controlled actions. Her attentive but aloof attitude to Lucas had not changed at all. Clearly he was not to be made to pay for his morning indiscretion – though what had been indiscreet about it he still could not quite fathom – nor did she intend to take the slightest advantage of it.

  It was an encouragement to him, rather than otherwise, that she should take him at his word. No more mention was made of landing at the castle jetty. It was to the main landing-stage of the town that Richard Schwalbe steered them in the motor-boat at half past one; and if the car that met them there was not an open car, that was doubtless due to Herr Graf’s tender consideration for his own investment. On such a glorious day the lake-side promenade was crowded with strollers, shoppers and holiday-makers regaling themselves on beer and coffee and ice-cream at the pavement cafés. The beach was bright with bathers and children, the shore waters full of small craft. The whole of Gries, en fête, had come out into the sun.

  Schwalbe made the boat fast, and the sunburned young man who was his relief dropped lightly down from the jetty as soon as the party was ashore. Another anonymous boy vaguely in those later twenties, another with eyes hidden by sun-glasses. But before nightfall Schwalbe would be back again after his rest. It was his assignment, he was detailed to stay with it to the end. Whatever that end might be.

  Lucas walked with deliberate slowness between the strolling promenaders, refusing to hasten his steps when he saw that he was recognised. Heads turned, feet lagged, eyes rounded, people nudged one another and whispered, morning papers were turned hurriedly to confirm the identification. This was the man! This was the lion they were saying now was no lion, but a coward who ran to save his own skin and left his friend to die. Of course he denied it. But it was easy enough to say he had a witness, so long as it was the kind who couldn’t possibly be produced.

  Gries had not yet made up its mind what to believe. When it did, Lucas Corinth would soon find out which way it had decided. So would the concert offices. If the decision went the wrong way he might very well find himself boycotted, and the effect on Herr Graf’s prospects and prestige, and the town’s balance sheet, would be catastrophic. The July Festival might never recover from a blow like that.

  In the harbour park the car waited for them, drawn as close to the stage as possible; and Lucas was well aware that on either side of them, as they crossed to it, strolled a policeman in plain clothes. No skin-fitting tee-shirts here, but loose cotton jackets adequate to cover the holsters of their guns. They sauntered, but kept station, looking very like all the middle-aged saunterers around them. He wondered if this large black limousine, slightly hearse-like already to his sardonic eye, had bullet-proof glass.

  Crista sat beside the driver. Una settled herself beside Lucas in the back seat, her arm firm and warm against his, whether to comfort him or herself she hardly knew. They had never felt the need to be demonstrative, and could not begin now.

  ‘I feel naked,’ she said, watching the frieze of peering faces slide by on either side.

  ‘So do I, but I’m getting used to the idea. After all, naked I came into the world, and naked …’ He broke off there with a slightly distorted smile, realising where his tongue was leading him. ‘Do you really want to come to this session? No need, you know. Once I’m delivered to the Town Hall nothing can happen to me, and you’ll be picking me up again there afterwards.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m coming.’ Briefly she smiled; to herself, but he caught the fleeting brightness. It was true that usually rehearsals bored her. Unless you had some instrument to play, a personal flag to show and a personal fulfilment to win, all those maddening repetitions and snatches and insistent, punishing exercises, frequently ge
tting more and more tired and cross, were a penance. Today she had private reasons for not expecting even to be bored by this one, and more urgent and equally private reasons for hoping for a more than musical gain from it. Though what could he have done in so few hours? What could he even have attempted, beyond what the police, with greater resources, were doing already, combing the fairground and questioning its habitués? Unless, of course, he really had recognised something, penetrated to some possibility, which everyone else had missed?

  The car drove into the courtyard of the Town Hall, under the foaming window-boxes and across the polished cobbles. Werner Seligmann was waiting in the vestibule to lead them to the hall where the orchestra was gathering, in the usual chaotic aviary noise of plucked strings, and tentative chords, and soft, blown notes from the brass, and loud general conversation by way of continuo. A high rostrum for Lucas, and a forest of music-stands and chairs; and all those faces turning towards the door as they entered, and the hush.

  Only a momentary hush, for they were early, and a few players were still coming and making their way to their places. The chorus began again. Herr Seligmann wandered among the ranks with a hand at Lucas’s elbow, presenting the leader, and the principal players of the sections.

  ‘And our horn soloist …’

  He looked round for him, as Una had been looking round, from her retirement in a quiet corner, ever since they had entered the room. She was nursing his horn in its case, her passport to him as soon as he should appear. Musicians on their non-public occasions are an untidy, casual, down-to-earth crowd, and there were so many of them here, and moving around so loosely, that it was difficult to be sure at first who was present and who was not. Yet she thought she would have been able to pick him out on the instant if he had been there. That yellow hair, and the corn-coloured sweater … No, he was not in the room. As Herr Seligmann had just discovered, to his consternation. He went on talking, with creditable delicacy, and one eye on the door. ‘Your own countryman, Mr Corinth. At least, what I mean is that he is English.’

  ‘So I’ve been hearing,’ said Lucas.

  ‘He came to us as an unknown quantity, of course, but he has turned out so well that when Müller went down with this throat infection we could do no other than put this boy in his place. You will see what you think of him. Personally I am enthusiastic. He lacks experience of course, but he is enormously gifted, and has excellent musical judgement. Confidence? – well – perhaps a little too much confidence, even! But he will learn.’

  ‘In time,’ said Lucas, rather drily but without any ill-humour, ‘I hope he may even learn to be punctual.’

  ‘I assure you it’s unusual. He takes his music very seriously. There must be a reason. But I agree he is late. Perhaps you would like to begin without him.’

  In her corner Una sat and wondered, as Seligmann presented the composer-conductor, and handed over his orchestra to Lucas’s mercies. Was it possible that that boy had fooled her, after all? Had he really had something serious to hide, and taken the opportunity of skipping while they were lulled into believing him harmless? She couldn’t believe it. Mike Brace was honest, and she was staking her own faith on him.

  The rehearsal had been in progress for more than seven minutes, and Lucas was gradually warming into eagerness and animation, as he did with deceptive slowness on these first occasions. In the middle of a smooth, slow passage the door opened quietly but abruptly, and in the brief burst of invading sunlight the yellow head glowed. He exploded violently but silently into the room, and the door closed after him with a faint but distinct clap. Lucas looked up, and broke off operations with a flick of his baton.

  Una had the horn out of its battered case before the silence washed to the back of the hall, and had slid softly round to the door and thrust it into Mike’s hands. He gave her one startled but welcoming look, made a conspirator’s face at her, and shot to his place, composing himself into an image of innocence all in one movement. He lifted the horn experimentally to his lips, and raised a wary blue eye to see how Lucas was taking it.

  Where most people keep the rough edge of their tongues, Lucas kept a smooth cutting edge which could be more effective. He gazed back steadily at the delinquent, long enough to produce absolute silence.

  ‘Would five pages give Mr Brace time to recover his breath?’ he inquired with solicitous gentleness.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Mike apologised engagingly, in very passable German to match the question, ‘for turning up late. I was unavoidably delayed. It won’t happen again.’ And he cocked one cautious eye at Lucas, and affirmed brazenly, still panting: ‘I’m quite ready to play.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear that. Then let’s proceed now to the third part, shall we?’ He located the bar, and with what Una privately considered unpardonable vindictiveness, took Mike at his word, driving them at a slightly exaggerated tempo – they might not realise it this time, but they would when he wasn’t being bloody-minded – through the most fiendishly difficult passages he had ever written for the solo horn.

  It went a little raggedly, but with mounting excitement and force. Honours were about even. Mike survived the ordeal without disgrace, though he emerged with heaving chest and damp forehead; and Lucas ended laughing. He kept his face straight, but Una knew when he was laughing. After that he settled down to the business in earnest, and let Mike Brace alone. And Una knew, if Mike did not – and she suspected he did – that Lucas was pleased with him.

  She knew what she had taken on, coming to sit through this. He would work them and himself to death, and as soon as they were released all of them, Lucas included, would feel rather more than usually alive and refreshed, potent and creative. She was the one who had to endure what she could not share. Not yet, not until it flowered in performance. If, of course, it ever did! But it had to! Nobody on earth had the right to deprive the world of art, or its creator of his fulfilment, or its interpreters of theirs, which was equally valid.

  Una played no instrument, had not perfect pitch, could not sing except as people sing for their own satisfaction. But she knew about music, and this was going well; Lucas was surprised and pleased at the material he had to work with, and they were responsive to him. When he burned up, he could set them both alight. And Roland’s horn … There was a certain distraction of mind there, she thought, compensated for, sometimes too generously, by a wild lyricism which was not quite in the score. He was thinking of something else, parallel with his passionate thinking about what he was doing. His tone was lovely, pure and confident. Lu would teach him, at some happier and more peaceful time, how to discipline the imagination that drove it. But this was no fair test; his mind was divided. It was not musical arrogance that made him strain; he was drawing on all the resources he had in order to play, and reason, and plan all at the same time.

  It ended at last, late, as it had begun. It was five o’clock before Lucas laid down the baton, and lifted a tired, perspiring face to his orchestra. Only then did she realise that he had been preparing the ground for someone else to take over, if this should be both his first and last rehearsal with them.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen, that’s enough for today. I’m afraid I must have exhausted you, forgive me. I’ve been very happy. I hope I haven’t achieved that by making you unhappy.’ They murmured dissent and pleasure back to him gallantly; she thought they meant it. ‘Tomorrow at eleven. And I promise not to work you so hard again.’

  It wouldn’t be necessary. If, of course, he took up that baton again tomorrow at eleven! That gained, they had time, plenty of time.

  Lucas moved down purposefully among his team, exchanging a word here, a word there, to be remembered, perhaps, to be recorded. Or perhaps only to encourage them, if he did not come back, to look at the work he had rehearsed with them, and somehow give it the positive form which alone could deliver it to the world. Encountering Mike Brace, as that young man edged his way determinedly out of the press, he said with a sudden flashing smile: ‘Very nice
performance, Mr Brace. I should cut out running, if I were you, it’s even worse for the wind than cigarettes – especially before rehearsals.’

  He passed on without waiting for an answer. Mike, with a kindling eye, wormed his way clear of the wind section, and looked round for Una. She saw him coming, and slipped through one of the glass doors into the silence of the deserted corridor beyond. He came shouldering his way through after her, and reached for her hand. He had left the precious horn behind him, unguarded in the hall; that was a measure of his urgency. And he was a funny and endearing sight, flushed pink with his exertions under that wild yellow hair. Dead serious, and so sharply focused on something he could see, but she couldn’t, that her heart rose in a wild surge of faith and hope.

  ‘Una, listen! I’ve got to go out of Gries. Not far, I’ll be back this evening. Watch out for me on the island, will you? Even if it’s late. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me. But I’ll come. I will come!’

  ‘Mike, have you found out something? Are you on to something? Really?’

  Lucas wouldn’t be long. Just five minutes of touching and leaving impressions with his hands and his mind. And she didn’t want him to know anything about what Mike Brace was doing, not yet. Whatever it was! She didn’t know, and there was hardly time to ask; she had simply to believe.

  ‘I think I’m on to something – I think so! I’m playing a hunch, and I don’t know that it’s going to come off. I just don’t know. But if it does fit … Let’s give it a chance, eh? And don’t fret, even if this falls down on us. I’ll think of something else.’

  ‘I believe you, Mike,’ she said. Who would have thought they had met only yesterday, and in such crazy circumstances? Though maybe this was crazy, too, in its own way, this headlong encounter. It felt reasonable enough to her, secure as the ground she walked on. ‘I believe you will. And it isn’t even your worry! I’m ashamed to let you lift it from me, but you do!’