Adrian would never have marched along the road I bicycled out of Bruges (too deep in Hun territory) but nonetheless felt an affinity with my brother by virtue of breathing the same air of the same land. The Plain is flat as the Fens but in a bad shape. Along the way I fueled myself with the last pastries and stopped at impoverished cottages for cups of water. Nobody said much, but nobody said no. Thanks to a headwind and a chain that kept slipping off, the afternoon was growing old before I finally reached Ayrs’s home village of Neerbeke. A silent blacksmith showed me how to get to Château Zedelghem by elaborating my map with a pencil stub. A lane with harebells and toadflax growing in the middle led me past a deserted lodge house to a once stately avenue of mature Italian poplars. Zedelghem is grander than our rectory, some crumbly turrets adorn its west wing, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Audley End or Capon-Tench’s country seat. Spied a girl riding a horse over a low hill crowned by a shipwrecked beech tree. Passed a gardener spreading soot against the slugs in a vegetable garden. In the forecourt, a muscle-bound valet was decoking a Cowley Flat Nose. Seeing my approach, he rose and waited for me. In a terraced corner of this frieze, a man in a wheelchair sat under foamy wisteria listening to the wireless. Vyvyan Ayrs, I presumed. The easy part of my daydream was over.
Leant the bicycle against the wall, told the valet I had business with his master. He was civil enough, and led me around to Ayrs’s terrace, and announced my arrival in German. Ayrs a husk of a man, as if his illness has sucked all juice out of him, but stopped myself kneeling on the cinder path like Sir Percival before King Arthur. Our overture proceeded more or less like this. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ayrs.”
“Who in hell are you?”
“It’s a great honor to—”
“I said, ‘Who in hell are you?’ ”
“Robert Frobisher, sir, from Saffron Walden. I am—I was—a student of Sir Trevor Mackerras at Caius College, and I’ve come all the way from London to—”
“All the way from London on a bicycle?”
“No. I borrowed the bicycle from a policeman in Bruges.”
“Did you?” Pause for thought. “Must have taken hours.”
“A labor of love, sir. Like pilgrims climbing hills on their knees.”
“What balderdash is this?”
“I wished to prove I’m a serious applicant.”
“Serious applicant for what?”
“The post of your amanuensis.”
“Are you mad?”
Always a trickier question than it looks. “I doubt it.”
“Look here, I’ve not advertised for an amanuensis!”
“I know, sir, but you need one, even if you don’t know it yet. The Times piece said that you’re unable to compose new works because of your illness. I can’t allow your music to be lost. It’s far, far too precious. So I’m here to offer you my services.”
Well, he didn’t dismiss me out of hand. “What did you say your name was?” I told him. “One of Mackerras’s shooting stars, are you?”
“Frankly, sir, he loathed me.”
As you’ve learned to your cost, I can be intriguing when I put my mind to it.
“He did, did he? Why might that be?”
“I called his sixth Concerto for Flute”—I cleared my throat—” ‘a slave of prepubescent Saint-Saëns at his most florid’ in the college magazine. He took it personally.”
“You wrote that about Mackerras?” Ayrs wheezed as if his ribs were being sawed. “I’ll bet he took it personally.”
The sequel is short. The valet showed me into a drawing room decorated in eggshell green, a dull Farquharson of sheep and cornstooks, and a not-very-good Dutch landscape. Ayrs summoned his wife, Mrs. van Outryve de Crommelynck. She kept her own name, and with a name like that who can blame her? The lady of the house was coolly courteous and inquired into my background. Answered truthfully, though I veiled my expulsion from Caius behind an obscure malady. Of my present financial straits I breathed not a word—the more desperate the case, the more reluctant the donor. Charmed ’em sufficiently. It was agreed I could at least stay the night at Zedelghem. Ayrs would put me through my musical paces in the morning, permitting a decision on my proposal.
Ayrs did not appear at dinner, however. My arrival coincided with the start of a fortnightly migraine, which confines him to his rooms for a day or two. My audition is postponed until he is better, so my fate still hangs in the balance. On the credit side, the Pies-porter and lobster à l’américaine were the equal to anything at the Imperial. Encouraged my hostess to talk—think she was flattered at how much I know about her illustrious husband, and sensed my genuine love of his music. Oh, we ate with Ayrs’s daughter, too, the young equestrienne I’d glimpsed earlier. Mlle. Ayrs is a horsey creature of seventeen with her mama’s retroussé nose. Couldn’t get a civil word out of her all evening. Might she see in me a louche English freeloader down on his luck, here to lure her sickly father into a glorious Indian summer where she can’t follow and isn’t welcome?
People are complicated.
Gone midnight. The château is sleeping, so must I.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
6TH—VII—1931
A telegram, Sixsmith? You ass.
Don’t send any more, I beg you—telegrams attract attention! Yes, I’m still Abroad, yes, safe from Brewer’s knuckle men. Fold my parents’ mortifying letter into a paper boat and sail it down the Cam. Pater’s only “concerned” because my creditors are shaking him to see if any banknotes drop from the family tree. Debts of a disinherited son, however, are nobody’s business but the son’s—believe me, I’ve looked into the legalities. Mater is not “frantic.” Only the prospect of the decanter running dry could make Mater frantic.
My audition took place in Ayrs’s music room, after lunch, the day before yesterday. Not an overwhelming success, putting it mildly—no knowing how many days I’ll be here, or how few. Admit to a certain frisson sitting on Vyvyan Ayrs’s own piano stool beforehand. This Oriental rug, battered divan, Breton cupboards crammed with music stands, Bösendorfer grand, carillon, all witnessed the conception and birth of Matryoshka Doll Variations and his song cycle Society Islands. Stroked the same ’cello who first vibrated to Untergehen Violinkonzert. Hearing Hendrick wheeling his master this way, I stopped snooping and faced the doorway. Ayrs ignored my “I do hope you’re recovered, Mr. Ayrs” and had his valet leave him facing the garden window. “Well?” he asked, after we’d been alone half a minute. “Go on. Impress me.” Asked what he wanted to hear. “I must select the program, too? Well, have you mastered ‘Three Blind Mice’?”
So I sat at the Bösendorfer and played the syphilitic crank “Three Blind Mice,” after the fashion of a mordant Prokofiev. Ayrs did not comment. Continued in a subtler vein with Chopin’s Nocturne in F Major. He interrupted with a whine, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?” Played V.A.’s own Digressions on a Theme of Lodovico Roncalli, but before the first two bars were out, he’d uttered a six-birch expletive, banged on the floor with his cane, and said, “Self-gratification makes you go blind, didn’t they teach you that at Caius?” Ignored him and finished the piece note perfect. For a finale of fireworks, gambled on Scarlatti’s 212th in A major, a bête noire of arpeggios and acrobatics. Came unstuck once or twice, but I wasn’t being auditioned as a concert soloist. After I’d finished, V.A. kept swinging his head to the rhythm of the disappeared sonata; or maybe he was conducting the blurry, swaying poplars. “Execrable, Frobisher, get out of my house this instant!” would have aggrieved but not much surprised me. Instead, he admitted, “You may have the makings of a musician. It’s a nice day. Amble over to the lake and see the ducks. I need, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I can find a use for your … gifts.”
Left without a word. The old goat wants me, it seems, but only if I’m pathetic with gratitude. If my pocketbook had allowed me to go, I’d have hired a cab back to Bruges and renounced the whol
e errant idea. He called after me, “Some advice, Frobisher, gratis. Scarlatti was a harpsichordist, not a pianist. Don’t drench him in color so, and don’t use the pedal to sustain notes you can’t sustain with the fingers.” I called back that I needed, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I could find a use for Ayrs’s … gift.
Crossed the courtyard, where a beetroot-faced gardener was clearing a weed-choked fountain. Made him understand I wanted to speak to his mistress and pronto—he is not the sharpest tool in the shed—and he waved vaguely toward Neerbeke, miming a steering wheel. Wonderful. What now? See the ducks, why not? Could strangle a brace and leave ’em hanging in V.A.’s wardrobe. Mood was that black. So I mimed ducks and asked the gardener, “Where?” He pointed at the beech tree, and his gesture said, Walk that way, just on the other side. I set off, jumped a neglected ha-ha, but before I’d reached the crest, the noise of galloping bore down on me, and Miss Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck—from now plain old Crommelynck shall have to do or I’ll run out of ink—rode up on her black pony.
I greeted her. She cantered around me like Queen Boadicea, pointedly unresponsive. “How humid the air is today,” I small-talked sarcastically. “I rather think we shall have rain later, wouldn’t you agree?” She said nothing. “Your dressage is more polished than your manners,” I told her. Nothing. Shooting guns crackled across the fields, and Eva reassured her mount. Her mount is a beaut—one can’t blame the horse. I asked Eva for the pony’s name. She stroked back some black, corkscrew locks from her cheeks. “J’ai nommé le poney Néfertiti, d’après cette reine d’Egypte qui m’est si chère,” she replied and turned away. “It speaks!” I cried and watched the girl gallop off until she was a miniature in the Van Dyck pastoral. Fired artillery shells after her in elegant parabolas. Turned my guns on Château Zedelghem and pounded Ayrs’s wing to smoking rubble. Remembered what country we are in and stopped.
Past the sundered beech, the meadow falls away to an ornamental lake, ringing with frogs. Seen better days. A precarious footbridge connects an island to the shore, and flamingo lilies bloom in vast numbers. Now and then goldfish splish and gleam like new pennies dropped in water. Whiskered mandarin ducks honk for bread, exquisitely tailored beggars—rather like myself. Martins nest in a boathouse of tarred boards. Under a row of pear trees—once an orchard?—I laid me down and idled, an art perfected during my long convalescence. An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton. Watched the aerial bliss of coupled dragonflies. Even heard their wings, an ecstatic sound like paper flaps in bicycle spokes. Gazed on a slowworm exploring a miniature Amazonia around the roots where I lay. Silent? Not altogether, no. Was woken much later, by first spots of rain. Cumulonimbi were reaching critical mass. Sprinted back to Zedelghem as fast as I’ll ever run again, just to hear the rushing roar in my ear canals and feel the first fat droplets pound my face like xylophone hammers.
Just had time to change into my one clean shirt before the dinner gong. Mrs. Crommelynck apologized, her husband’s appetite was still feeble and demoiselle preferred to eat alone. Nothing suited me better. Stewed eel, chervil sauce, the rain skittering on terrace. Unlike the Frobishery and most English homes I have known, meals at the château are not conducted in silence, and Mme. C told me a little about her family. Crommelyncks have lived at Zedelghem since far-off days when Bruges was Europe’s busiest seaport (so she told me, hard to credit), making Eva the crowning glory of six centuries’ breeding. Warmed to the woman somewhat, I admit it. She holds forth like a man and smokes myrrhy cigarettes through a rhino-horn holder. She’d notice pretty sharpish if any valuables were spirited away, however. They’ve suffered from thieving servants in the past, she happened to mention, even one or two impoverished houseguests, if I could believe people could behave so dishonorably. Assured her my parents had suffered the same way, and put out feelers re: my audition. “He did describe your Scarlatti as ‘salvageable.’ Vyvyan spurns praise, both giving and receiving it. He says, ‘If people praise you, you’re not walking your own path.’ ” Asked directly if she thought he’d agree to take me on. “I do hope so, Robert.” (In other words, wait and see.) “You must understand, he resigned himself never to compose another note. Doing so caused him great pain. Resurrecting hope that he might compose again—well, that’s not a risk to be undertaken lightly.” Subject closed. I mentioned my earlier encounter with Eva, and Mme. C pronounced, “My daughter was uncivil.”
“Reserved” was my perfect reply.
My hostess topped up my glass. “Eva has a disagreeable nature. My husband has taken very little interest in rearing her like a young lady. He never wanted children. Fathers and daughters are reputed to dote on each other, are they not? Not here. Her teachers say Eva is studious but secretive, and she’s never tried to develop herself musically. I often feel I don’t know her at all.” I filled Mme. C.’s glass, and she seemed to cheer up. “Listen to me, lamenting. Your sisters are immaculately mannered English roses, I am sure, Monsieur?” Rather doubt her interest in the Frobishery’s memsahibs was genuine, but the woman likes to watch me talk, so I painted witty caricatures of my estranged clan for my hostess’s amusement. Made us all sound so gay, almost felt homesick.
This morning, a Monday, Eva deigned to share breakfast—Bradenham ham, eggs, bread, all sorts—but the girl spouted petty complaints to her mother and snuffed my interjections out with a flat oui or a sharp non. Ayrs was feeling better so ate with us. Hendrick then drove the daughter off to Bruges for another week at school—Eva boards in the city with a family whose daughters also attend her school, the Van Eels or some such. Whole château breathed a relieved sigh when the Cowley had cleared the poplar avenue (known as the Monk’s Walk). Eva does so poison the air of the place. At nine, Ayrs and I adjourned to the music room. “I’ve got a little melody for viola rattling about my head, Frobisher. Let’s see if you can get it down.” Was delighted to hear it, as I’d expected to start at the shallow end—tidying up sketchy MSS into best copy and so forth. If I proved my worth as V.A.’s sentient fountain pen on my first day, my tenure would be well-nigh assured. Sat at his desk, sharpened 2B at the ready, clean MS, waiting for him to name the notes, one by one. Suddenly, the man bellowed:” ‘Tar, tar! Tar-tartar tattytattytatty, tar!’ Got that? ‘Tar! Tatty-tar! Quiet part—tar-tar-tar-tttt-TAR! TARTARTAR!!!’ “Got that? Old ass obviously thought this was amusing—one could no more notate his shouted garble than one could score the braying of a dozen donkeys—but after another thirty seconds, it dawned on me this was no joke. Tried to interrupt, but the man was so engrossed in his music making that he didn’t notice. Sunk into deepest misery while Ayrs carried on, and on, and on … My scheme was hopeless. What had I been thinking about at Victoria Station? Dejected, I let him work through his piece in the lean hope that having it complete in his head might make it easier to duplicate later.
“There, finished!” he proclaimed. “Got it? Hum it back, Frobisher, and then let’s see how it sounds.”
Asked what key we were in. “B-flat, of course!” Time signature? Ayrs pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you saying you’ve lost my melody?” Struggled to remind myself he was being totally unreasonable. I asked him to repeat the melody, much more slowly, and to label his notes, one by one. There was an acute pause that felt about three hours long while Ayrs decided whether or not to throw a tantrum. In the end, he released a martyred sigh. “Four-eight, changing to eight-eight after the twelfth bar, if you can count that far.” Pause. Remembered my monetary difficulties and bit my lip. “Let’s go all the way back, then.” Patronizing pause. “Ready now? Slowly … Tar! What note is that?” Got through a hideous half hour with me guessing every single note, one by one. Ayrs verified or rejected my guess with a weary nod or shake of the head. Mme. C carried in a vase of flowers and I made an SOS face, but V.A. himself declared that we call it a day. As I fled, I heard Ayrs pronounce (for my benefit?), “It is desperate, Jocasta, the boy cannot take down a simple tune. I might as we
ll join the avant-garde and throw darts at pieces of paper with notes written on ’em.”
Down the passageway Mrs. Willems—housekeeper—laments the damp, blustery weather and her wet laundry to some unseen underling. She’s better off than I am. I’ve manipulated people for advancement, lust, or loans, but never for the roof over my head. This rotting château stinks of mushrooms and mold. Should never have come here.
Sincerely,
R.F.
P.S. Financial “embarrassment,” what an apposite phrase. No wonder the poor are all socialists. Look, must ask you for a loan. The regime at Zedelghem is the laxest I ever saw (fortunately! My father’s butler’s wardrobe is better supplied than my own at present), but one needs to set some standards. Can’t even tip the servants. If I had any wealthy friends left, I’d ask ’em, but truth is I don’t. Don’t know how you wire money or telegram it or send it in packets or whatever, but you’re the scientist, you find a way. If Ayrs asks me to leave, I’ll be scuppered. The news would seep back to Cambridge that Robert Frobisher had to beg money from his erstwhile hosts when they threw him out for not being up to the job. The shame would kill me, Sixsmith, it truly would. For God’s sake send whatever you can immediately.
CHTEAU ZEDELGHEM
14TH—VII—1931
Sixsmith,
All praise Rufus the Blessed, Patron Saint of Needy Composers, Praise in the Highest, Amen. Your postal order arrived safe and sound this morning—I painted you to my hosts as a doting uncle who’d forgotten my birthday. Mrs. Crommelynck confirms a bank in Bruges will cash it. Will write a motet in your honor and pay your money back soon as I can. Might be sooner than you expect. The deep freeze on my prospects is thawing. After my humiliating first attempt at collaboration with Ayrs, I returned to my room in abject wretchedness. That afternoon I spent writing my sniveling lament to you—burn it, by the way, if you haven’t already—feeling v. anxious about the future. Braved the rain in Wellington boots and a cape and walked to the post office in the village, wondering, frankly, where I might be a month from now. Mrs. Willems bonged the gong for dinner shortly after my return, but when I got to the dining hall, Ayrs was waiting, alone. “That you, Frobisher?” he asked, with the gruffness habitual to older men trying to do delicacy. “Ah, Frobisher, glad we can have this little chat alone. Look, I was rotten to you this morning. My illness makes me more … direct than is sometimes appropriate. I apologize. Give this cantankerous so-and-so another chance tomorrow, what d’you say?”
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