by Paul Bailey
I asked him why.
I was trapped in his fierce brown stare for a moment.
—Oh, it was no place for good people. He added, mysteriously: But you are my future, Andrew. That’s why. Whatever happens, I shall always be at your side when you need me. Yes, you are my future, for the time being.
Perhaps he had considered telling me the real reason why on that April day in 1945, and had then – in the course of staring at me – persuaded himself that a boy of fifteen was too raw for such knowledge. Perhaps.
He suggested that we take a walk in the fields. There was no danger any more from German planes. The lord of the manor, as he mockingly described himself, would inspect the estate with his heir apparent.
We ate an omelette that evening, cooked with the fresh eggs his hens had laid.
—What luxury. What a simple luxury, said my – smiling uncle. We are very fortunate.
I was to receive the real reason why, the real answer to my question, when I was eighteen.
—You are mature for your age, Andrew. I will pour you a large brandy before I say what I have to say. I certainly need one.
What he told me on the tenth of August, 1948, caused me to shiver today.
I remember that I needed a second large brandy after I had read my father’s last letter to my uncle, written in the old words I no longer spoke.
The words that are ashes in my mouth when I catch myself speaking them now.
—We shall have an English Christmas, not an Orthodox one. Santa Claus will come down the chimney with your presents. He’s like Saint Nicholas only different, as they say here. You must sleep tight, my dear, because Santa doesn’t want you to see him being kind. Do you promise me you won’t try to look at him?
—I promise, Uncle.
It was December 1937, and I was still in England, on holiday. We were at Uncle Rudolf’s Elizabethan house in the Sussex countryside, with his devoted entourage – Annie, Teddy and Charlie – whom he now instructed me not to call his servants.
—They are my friends, Andrew darling. They work for me, yes, but on the best of terms. They are our equals, not inferiors.
(Yet the girls Annie ruled over with a steely eye for any slipshod cleaning or polishing or bed-making were obviously there as unobtrusive servants, fulfilling necessary chores.)
Annie, Teddy and Charlie were a privileged trio, and they basked in that privilege. The widowed Annie, the divorced Teddy and Charlie, the dedicated ‘bit of a skirt-chaser’ – a phrase I learned from Charlie’s lips even before my English lessons began in earnest – regarded their friendly employer as a very paragon.
I kept my promise to sleep tight. Uncle Rudolf had ensured that I would, by having dinner served late on Christmas Eve. It might have been the sherry in the trifle and the half-glass of champagne I was advised to sip that made me drowsy, but I was definitely ‘on the way to the Land of Nod’ – as Annie often joked – when my uncle carried me upstairs to bed. And what delights awaited me that Christmas morning, delivered to my little room with such amazing stealth: a train set, complete with signals and stations, with miniature porters and passengers and a beaming driver at the helm; a huge wooden jigsaw puzzle of the Houses of Parliament; sheets of drawing paper, with coloured pencils and crayons; Babar the Elephant in French, and an English dictionary, my first and most beloved, that would, as Uncle Rudolf predicted, bring me not only a new language but a whole new world. These are the gifts, the precious gifts, I remember today, but I think there were others to unwrap beneath my uncle’s adoring gaze.
My playmate, if the term is appropriate, that Christmas was Maurice, the ten-year-old son of Charlie and a skirt he had chased successfully. Maurice was bored and morose in my company, though I did reduce him to jeering laughter whenever I attempted to speak a snatch or two of English.
—You sound funny. Your uncle doesn’t, but you do. You don’t know how funny you sound.
But otherwise Maurice glowered at me – yes, glowered is right – during our playtime. I suppose, now, that he felt too grown-up in my childish presence, too preoccupied with the fact that his parents, Charlie and Edith, were not united in either love or marriage. He had no family, as I had. That may be my old man’s fancy, set down with all the confidence of hindsight, but Maurice, coming home on leave from Malta would try, and fail, to kill his mother ten years later. The young sailor had found her with a stranger, naked on the kitchen table. The man, a respected doctor, dressed in haste while Maurice glowered at him, I imagine, as he had once glowered at me. Alone with Edith, who was offering excuses for her behaviour, Maurice picked up a knife and stabbed her in the arm, the shoulder and, most dangerously, the chest. It was the contrite Maurice who summoned the police. His mother survived, after an emergency operation that lasted several hours. Maurice stood trial, in 1948, for attempted murder, and was found guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. The defending counsel depicted Edith as the loosest type of loose woman, and a Sunday newspaper named her the Finchley Jezebel. Maurice was sent to prison, where he shortly died.
Maurice’s laughter as he scorned my feeble English wasn’t happily full-throated. I know that I sensed the strain in it. We were always uneasy together, and grateful when Annie or Charlie or Uncle Rudolf appeared with cake and jellies and chocolate. We both needed those cheerful adults to be with us, and for subtly different reasons, it occurs to me. I can express today what I couldn’t then, even in the old words – that, seeing a few snowflakes fall, my heart was suddenly in my throat. As the flakes fell and almost instantly evaporated, I had a vision of the wonderful carpet I had walked on the previous December, hand-in-hand with Tata. I thought, too, of Mama ordering me away from the window, to eat – what was it I ate? – the pie she had baked with caşcavel cheese, which comes from ewe’s milk, and mushrooms.
My uncle hosted a supper party that Christmas evening. I wore a tailored suit with short trousers, a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie.
—Andrew is the guest of honour, he announced as each of his guests arrived. My nephew, my darling nipote.
Uncle Rudolf raised me aloft to shake hands with a famous actor, a famous prima donna (who kissed me on both cheeks), a famous theatrical designer, another famous actor and his famous actress wife, a famous cabaret singer, a famous playwright and a pianist who wasn’t as famous as he deserved to be. Among all these famous or not-so-famous people, I was the guest of honour, my uncle insisted. He sat me next to him, at the head of the dining table.
We ate by candlelight. No, they ate by candlelight, while I nibbled, nothing more, at the strange food that was set in front of me. The meal was served by the always-perspiring Annie with the aid of two girls from the village, who mumbled ‘Beg pardon, sir’ and ‘Beg pardon, madam’ until Uncle Rudolf ordered them, politely, to stop. It was Annie who noticed my reluctance to touch the dark meat on my plate, and it was she who removed the partridge breast and the pear stewed in red wine, scolding Mr Rudolf for expecting her poor, lovely boy to eat such a rich dish. I was given some Brussels sprouts and a roast potato, cut into small pieces, and felt less discomfort.
The wines were poured by Teddy Grubb, who was said to ‘have a nose’ for them. In later years, my uncle would tease me for saying ‘Mr Grubb has a nose’ before I had even mastered the alphabet. The faces of the famous became redder and livelier as the supper progressed. They cheered when Annie brought in the Christmas pudding, which Uncle Rudolf doused in brandy. Someone shouted ‘Whoosh’ when he put a match to it, sending flames rising. I was afraid the flames would spread and that we would all be burnt, but they soon subsided, to everyone’s applause.
—Clap your hands, Andrew. It’s the custom.
Everyone clapped again when I discovered a bright new shilling in my slice of pudding. I had to lick it clean of custard to appreciate its brightness.
—That’s a sign you’ll be wealthy one day. As you will be, I promise.
My uncle stood up and asked for silence. Conversation and laughter s
lowly drifted away.
—I should like us to drink a toast to absent friends.
He patted me on the head as the famous guests rose and said, almost in unison:
—Absent friends.
Did I realize that I was the object of pitying looks? I think I must have done, for the eyes of everybody in the dining room were suddenly focused on me.
—To all our dear ones.
—To all our dear ones.
—To those who are with us.
—To those who are with us.
—And to those who have been taken from us.
There was a hush. No one responded to this toast, as they had responded to the others. I waited to hear them repeat ‘And to those who have been taken from us’ but the hush prevailed. Uncle Rudolf told me, some years on, that I wriggled in my chair and blushed with embarrassment, to have so many kind and thoughtful eyes fixed upon me that night.
—Now let’s be happy again.
After the ladies had ‘powdered their noses’ and the gentlemen had smoked their cigarettes and cigars, the Christmas party took place in the drawing room. I sat on the famous prima donna’s knee and watched the adults play charades. I was, of course, mystified. Maurice, who had not eaten supper with us, was invited to join in. One of his few boasts would be that for three Christmasses he had acted with two of the most famous actors in the theatre, thanks to the fact that his dad was Rudolf Peterson’s personal driver.
It is the not-so-famous pianist I remember best, simply because he was my uncle’s regular accompanist. His name was Ivan, but he wasn’t Russian. Uncle Rudolf called him Ivan the Terrible whenever he hit a wrong note or was out of time. The prima donna refused to sing that first Christmas and the cabaret artist was so drunk that he forgot his words, to everyone’s amusement, and so it was that my uncle, who was not sober, beckoned Ivan Morris over to the piano.
—You must forget Danilo, and the Gypsy Baron, and the Vagabond King, and that bloody idiot of a brigand Zoltan, and all the other halfwits in my repertoire.
My uncle cleared his throat, signalled to Ivan that he was ready to begin, and then sang the aria from Handel’s Jephtha in which the anguished father offers up his only child for sacrifice:
Waft her, angels, through the skies,
Far above yon azure plain;
Glorious there, like you, to rise,
There, like you, for ever reign.
I was unaware of Jephtha’s plight, and I had never heard Handel’s music before, but I did understand, at the age of seven, that I had just listened to something radiantly beautiful.
On a fine morning in November 1919, my uncle went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked down on the city.
—It wasn’t only Paris I was seeing, Andrew. I had the world in my sights. I was young and glowing with confidence. I really believed what my teacher in Botoşani had told me – that my voice was a gift from God. When you have God as your benefactor, my darling, you don’t have any doubts.
Uncle Rudolf walked the streets of Paris for most of that day, speaking French whenever he could. He stopped for lunch at bistro, where he ate cassoulet and drank, such was the state of excitement he was in, an entire bottle of claret. When he boarded the night train for Nice, he was in a mood to sleep, but his by now highly-charged nerves would allow him no rest. Towards the end of the eighteen-hour journey – tired, and with dust in his eyes and throat – he began to wonder if God, who had been his inspiration and ally in Botoşani and at the Conservatoire in Bucharest, might now be abandoning him, relegating him to the ranks of mere mortals. It was an anxious Rudi Petrescu who stood on the platform at Nice, wondering for a terrified moment if he should return to Paris, and thence to the country in which God had not deserted him. But some hope, a residue of the confidence he had enjoyed at the top of the Eiffel Tower, spurred him on, pushed him – so to speak – in the direction of the little pension where he had a room reserved indefinitely. The pension’s owner, Mme Barrière, inspected him through pince-nez, and let out a noise indicative of her approval of his looks. She was fifty, perhaps, and gone to fat, but he was seduced, quite literally, by her charm. They made love in his room – quickly, passionately – for the one and only time. From then on, he was her ‘pretty Romanian boy’; her fils, even.
—Whenever she called me her son, I felt rather like Oedipus. She became really motherly after our – how shall I say? – rencontre brève et violente.
Thanks to his exertions with the buxom landlady, my uncle was able to sleep at last. The following morning, his anxiety returned. He was conscious, as he got out of bed, that his heart was beating unusually fast and that his hands were shaking. He would have to calm down somehow. Disaster loomed. He rang for the maid to bring him a jug of hot water. He needed to shave with especial care on this, the most important day in his life so far. In two hours – less, a glance at his fob watch confirmed – he would be shown into the presence of the greatest operatic tenor of the nineteenth century, who was now the doyen of singing teachers. While he was thinking of his extraordinary good fortune – he could always claim he had met Jean de Reszke, whatever the outcome of today’s meeting – he cut himself on the chin. He tried to still the flow of blood with a towel pressed tight against it, but as soon as he took the towel away the blood trickled out once more. He tore off a strip of writing paper and applied it to the offending spot, pressing and pressing until his patience cracked. He looked in the mirror above the wash basin and as he did so the blood started to spurt again. He was in a panic; he was desperate. He applied another strip of paper to his chin and left it sticking there as he washed and dressed. He combed his hair and dabbed cologne on his cheeks and ears.
He drank coffee and a glass of chilled water at a bar before setting off for the Villa Vergemère. He strolled along the Promenade des Anglais, counting each palm tree he passed in order to keep his mind distracted. The day was already warm and he feared he might begin to sweat if he walked at a brisker pace. He turned into the avenue leading up to the villa and realized he had sung nothing since waking up. A ridiculous sense of embarrassment – ridiculous because he was totally alone – prevented him from practising his scales as he moved ever closer to his destiny.
—Yes, Andrew, my destiny. That was what was about to be decided.
At last the villa came into view. Poplars as well as palms lined the approach to it. Although it was November, there were roses in bloom. He paused for a moment and saw the Mediterranean glittering below. He was in paradise. If his nerves would only cease tormenting him, he was in a paradise on earth, he thought. He continued to climb, because Jean de Reszke’s villa was on the very peak of the hill. The gates were open and he entered the driveway. A man was standing on the steps leading up to the Villa Vergemère with a hand outstretched to welcome him.
—You will be Monsieur Petrescu?
My uncle answered, in French, that he was.
—I am Louis Vachet, the master’s secretary and valet. You have something attached to your face. A piece of paper, is it not?
—Yes, Monsient Vachet. I cut myself shaving.
—Do you wish to remove it?
—Of course.
—Give it to me. I will dispose of it for you.
The smiling Louis Vachet took the blood-stopper from him with the words:
—You were nervous, I expect. The master will put you at your ease. Follow me, Monsieur Petrescu.
Uncle Rudolf remembered that the Great Hall of the Villa Vergemère merited its name. It was as long as it was wide and the ceiling seemed impossibly high.
—You are his only pupil this morning, Monsieur Petrescu. You are honoured.
—Yes, Monsieur Vachet.
—Do not be disconcerted by Koko, Louis Vachet remarked mysteriously, opening the door of an enormous room, into which he almost had to push my awestruck uncle.
The tall man who stood by the window overlooking the sea bore little resemblance to the one disguised as Faust and Tristan in the photogr
aphs Uncle Rudolf had studied. This Jean de Reszke was bald – though he still had a moustache, neatly trimmed and less voluminous than Tristan’s or Faust’s or Romeo’s – and noticeably fat, with a paunch his elegantly-fitted suit emphasized rather than hid. A green parrot was perched on his right shoulder. This, it was clear, was the disconcerting Koko.
—May I present Monsieur Petrescu, Master?
Jean de Reszke smiled at the trembling Monsieur Petrescu, nodded, and said:
—Sing.
God has gone from me, thought my uncle. Here I am with a parched throat and lungs clogged up with the dust of Nice.
—Sing? he heard himself ask, to his immediate shame.
—Yes, monsieur. It is a natural request. You wish to become a singer, do you not? Sing for me, if you will. A cappella.
Dalla sua pace la mia dipende
Rudi Petrescu sang, croakily. Koko screeched, and Jean de Reszke commanded him to stop.
—Don Ottavio must wait, Monsieur Petrescu. You are not prepared for him. He will be there when you are. Sing me a song. Forget opera for the moment.
It was then that my uncle sang the Romanian folk song his first teacher, Cezar Avadanei, had heard him sing five years earlier. A Carpathian shepherd is sighing for love of the beautiful girl found dead in the winter snow. His sheep cannot tell that his heart is for ever broken.
—Bien, said Jean de Reszke when he had finished.
—Bien is my favourite word in any language, Andrew. De Reszke was not the man for lavish praise. His bien told you what you wanted to hear from him. On the days he said bien, I left Villa Vergemère in a state of happiness that had no limits. All was well for me.
