Gerontius

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  On the basis of their short acquaintance Molly was unable to know how brilliantly he had pitched his description, so exactly did it console her for her own lack of academy training and so precisely did it conjure up the fierce independence of wayward genius. But even he might not have said whom this version of events was designed to impress since he himself believed it a little more deeply at each retelling. Not that it was untrue; it was merely economical with the truth. But Molly had lived in the world for longer than most students.

  ‘Even so,’ she said, ‘technique has to be learned.’

  ‘Of course it has. How else but by example? From my earliest boyhood I read every score I could lay my hands on, I played and sang in groups and chamber orchestras without number. I spent every last penny on train fares to London to hear concerts at the Crystal Palace and I was still coughing yellow fog out of my lungs days later. I took violin lessons; I gave violin lessons; I wrote cotillions and quadrilles for a lunatic asylum. Year after year it went, penny-pinching in the provinces. Doubts? Despair? My father wanted me to be a lawyer, you know, and I actually started in one of those offices with high stools. But I soon stopped that, unlike Chabrier who I gather qualified and practised, brave fellow. You ask about doubts and despair when I rejected the respectable career urged on me by my tradesman father in order to be a damned musician with cracked boots and a teaching suit which was more invisible mending than it was cloth.

  ‘And in all those miserable years not one person gave me a single shred of support or encouragement. Not one person. And my advice to you, Miss Air, is to expect nothing from anybody. An artist is on his own. He’s stuck up a tower preaching to pigs, no matter that now and then they’ll pretend to listen and even to applaud. But don’t be deceived. They soon get tired of rattling their trotters at you and wander off to find someone more diverting. After that they’d cut you down as soon as look at you.’

  This last sentence was added with lowered voice as if he were talking more to himself. Confused as she was by the violence it implied Molly hardly liked to pursue it. In any case a steward in a white uniform took that moment to emerge on deck from a companionway and blow a brightly polished B♭ on a brass bugle.

  ‘We’d better dress. We’re late.’

  ‘Oh, hang all clothes,’ he said to the passing sea. Like a small boy chafing at being put into his Sunday best, she thought, while observing the paradox of his obviously liking to be well groomed to the point of nattiness.

  When they came back on deck after dinner it was clear that the day’s visit to Madeira had sanctioned a change in the atmosphere aboard the Hildebrand. The passengers were in evident quest of the night life whose imagining had enlivened the gloom of their autumns. As far as they were concerned a formal promise had been made the moment their cash had been exchanged for a ticket. They now roamed the ship expecting its fulfilment and enviously presuming it in the various couples talking in low voices at the rail or in pools of shadow. But it was altogether too early in the voyage to think of disconsolation and they drifted towards the ballroom from which came the muffled and lively strains of Tommy Hawtree’s Melodeers. Edward scarcely felt like turning in yet: his afternoon’s sleep had taken the edge off his weariness and he detected the beginnings of that second wind which, when he was in London, increasingly took him on lonely rounds of indiscriminate theatre-going or kept him chatting in the smoke rooms of his various clubs until his mouth was rank with pipes and his brain whirled with the names of horses.

  ‘Come on everybody, it’s spring,’ said Dora Bellamy’s voice behind them. ‘We allow no moping here.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Edward. ‘What do you propose?’

  Dora dropped her voice confidingly. ‘I hear tell of a lively little game starting up below. For those who like a flutter now and then. Only don’t tell Kate, Sir Edward. As you already know, her views on gambling are irreproachable and fiercely held.’

  ‘They certainly are,’ said Kate from the dark behind her. ‘Never follow an even number by an uneven with two digits.’

  ‘Very sound advice too,’ said Edward. ‘I never go twice on a red.’

  ‘I say, the gentleman’s a sport. Give him a gasper, Dora.’

  ‘Not for me. But by all means go ahead. We’ll follow you shortly.’

  Kate and Dora drifted unsteadily away trailing cigarette smoke.

  ‘They’re rather awful, aren’t they?’ said Molly.

  ‘Frightful. I like them quite a lot. I don’t believe they care very much what anybody thinks and I always find that endearing. Though I must say I can’t imagine what their husbands are like.’

  ‘If they have husbands.’

  It had never occurred to Edward to question their acquaintances’ self-description. ‘Golly,’ he said. And then, ‘Golly.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they have. In any case I don’t care either.’

  Since they were last on deck the sky had darkened into true night. The starfields sprawled in brilliant prodigality, traversed by the running-lights on the Hildebrand’s masts and gaped at by the sooty O of her funnel. No further trace showed of the islands they had recently left behind them. The ship was alone and infinitesimal in the night and the faint sounds of revelry only made it the smaller. The stars’ brightness defined the surface of the ocean beyond the dim yellow cocoon spun by deck-lamps and portholes.

  ‘“The sun has gone, the tide of stars is setting all our way; the Pleiades call softly to Orion as nightly they have called these million years.”’

  He spoke so quietly that he was finished before she realised he was quoting, not addressing her, not addressing anybody.

  ‘That’s beautiful.’

  ‘It is. Surprising, really, amid all that twaddle. It’s from the old Starlight Express. About the only memorable thing in it including, some might think, the music.’

  Nevertheless it was the music he heard as he watched the stars, music which had first come to him as a boy and had been written down in pencil for a childhood play under the elderly title The Wand of Youth. How those tunes had recurred! Throughout his life they had come back, first in full orchestral guise then once more for pit orchestra in a wartime theatre. And still they haunted him and offered themselves as little mines which had the air of refusing to be abandoned and from which things of value might yet be dug. Two hours later as he undressed for bed he heard the cadence at the words ‘nightly they have called these million years’ and thought of that incomprehensible gap which was no gap at all and could never separate him from that far-off self who had first heard the notes and in time had turned them into his second Suite’s ‘The Little Bells’. He sat on the edge of the bed fiddling absently with studs. There was a spot of port on his shirt-front.

  ‘What was it all for?’ he murmured. ‘What rot it was … Dear old rot.’ He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Oh, damn it all.’

  V

  Of course Edwardian fairies wore Edwardian costume. My trees sang me music of my time, not plainsong or organum or snippets of the ‘Pastoral’ sym. Being of your time means making everything in the world yours for as long as you’re in it. It may once have belonged to Beethoven but it belongs to me now. Belonged.

  We’ve left Madeira (yesterday) and are reportedly facing more than a week’s blank ocean. Staring at the sea – as after breakfast just now – makes one banally reflective. I found myself thinking that eight or nine days without land is quite a long time in these days of steam. But even as recently as Conrad’s (and my) youth it was obviously possible to be becalmed on some ocean for a month or two without the sight of anything more solid than clouds at dawn and dusk. First the unease of being so deserted by the wind, then panic as fresh water needed rationing, then listlessness & torpor. (Meeresstille. I love the sound of that word.) Long before their month was up the sailors must have begun to wonder whether land any longer existed or whether it hadn’t been some kind of communal dream or folk legend. Even now aboard the old ‘Hildebrand’ the reality of Engl
and is beginning to seem hazy, faintly in doubt. It still has a solid inner presence but then so does anything imagined & lived with for years. There may after all be no external counterpart to the England we all carry within us. Maybe the ship will arrive back at the right co-ordinates for Merseyside and – sail straight on over vacant waters. It was a myth after all. I think we’ve no confidence in things we don’t constantly touch or see & even then they all the time suggest something else. It’s a shifting wasteland, this world, & necessarily viewed from another. Just as the Patriarch said, the mind moves. So at the moment England no longer exists for me. (I manifestly don’t exist for it.)

  Quite enjoyed Madeira & have at any rate become better acquainted with some of my fellow-travellers. It appears I was wrong about everybody that first evening. Mrs (Miss?) Bellamy & Mrs (Miss?) Hammond turn out to be racy while Fortescue seems neither cad nor buffoon. Each in his/her own way – I include Molly – is to some extent an adventurer. I like that (so different from the members of one’s clubs to say nothing of those damned musical asses who keep pestering) tho’ it does make me feel old … I suppose I am old, hang it all, until I’m by myself when I become pretty much ten or twelve again. Talk about keeping faith. There are some things one can’t betray even if one wanted.

  Meeresstille … How that word brings it all back tho’ not really with pain. If I’d had a leg cut off in 1884 I’d not now be able to remember the anguish with much acuity nearly 40 yrs later, only much-revised memories of pain. Even tho’ we never saw each other again I did feel a pang 15 yrs. afterwards when I heard from Stämpfli that Lena was married & had left Europe. By then of course I’d got over being turned down, not least because I’d since been accepted by dear Alice; but it did seem the final lopping-off of my painful twenties. Well, putting it into music was as good a way as any of burying an unwanted past & it was a happy accident I was actually writing Enigma vars at the time. An even happier was being able to use Mary Trefusis as the alibi for Lena’s var even tho’ it really didn’t bear close scrutiny. However the dolts swallowed it whole & even Alice never twigged despite my saying that the asterisks at the head of no. 13 stood for the name of a lady who was on a sea voyage at the time of composition & Mary palpably wasn’t. She was, though, later that same year when that brother of hers was appointed Governor of NSW & she went off to Australia with him. So of course it wasn’t the engines of her ship I heard as it rumbled eastwards across the ocean but those of Lena’s as they had carried her away for good many months earlier & in quite the other direction. In any case I wdn’t have written a var for Mary as at that very moment I was dedicating my 3 Characteristic Pieces to her. Nor does anyone seem to have bothered to notice that all the other vars have names/initials so why wdn’t I have put Mary’s? Everyone who knew us also knew there cdn’t possibly be anything mysteriously romantic – it’s absurd. As for the idea that if I had intended putting her initials I’d have made one of the asterisks stand for her title – that’s downright vulgar. It suggests that had I – in a moment when my brain had turned to addle – decided to dedicate a var mysteriously to Dame Clara Butt I’d have put ***!

  I think the whole thing started when people saw my sketches for no. 13 headed ‘L’ (I ask you, imagine using a working-title of ‘Lady’ or ‘Lygon’ for a friend like Mary!). Then when we were dickering with the Finale Jaeger with his huntsman’s eye must have looked at one of my original drafts & spotted that I was thinking of working in some of ‘LML’ at that time. Well, I was: but it was Lena meine Liebe I was going to work into the summing-up of my own var. But it didn’t quite go & anyway I’d given her a close enough place to me by putting her own var right next to mine. This neatly satisfied various proprieties: Alice first, me & Alice last & Lena penultimate. The anguish may have long gone but I’m very glad the mystification has lasted so well. It’s part of the advantage of calling something Enigma: the amateur sleuth straightway ignores all verifiable fact such as chronology. If one obligingly puts a ring through his nose one can lead him into the most implausible territory. It’s splendid to behold!

  Even the Meeresstille quotation … True, nobody’s likely to know that this was the Overture to the Leipzig Conservatoire concert the afternoon Lena & I first met. But a few with a knowledge of German might have thought that the usual English translation (Calm sea & prosperous voyage) is, if not inaccurate, misleading. Meeresstille isn’t just a calm sea: it’s a desolate menacing becalming as per the Ancient Mariner – the slow intro. – followed by the hopeful lyricism of the happy onward journey (wh. God knows I wished her). How much I wished it her is plain enough since it’s the prosperous voyage bit I quoted from rather than the becalming. But those are the reasons for the quotation: our first meeting, our shared enthusiasm for Mendelssohn, his own connection with Leipzig, the significance of it having been an overture for both of us … And of course her going away did make me sad with old memories so the orchestral light in which I quoted an otherwise lyrical extract is mournful with hints of flat abandonment & shot with unease. Of course it matters not a jot at this late stage, any of it; but it’s funny the wilful way the same amateur sleuths will ignore the evidence of their own ears, mis-read & mis-hear Mendelssohn so as to uphold a shaky alibi for me. Gawd bless ’em!

  Later

  Made some good slides before lunch. Sample taken from Funchal harbour as we lay at anchor yesterday. Quite a plentiful crop of the plankton I’ve already seen but almost every drop I looked at was swamped with E. coli! Either they’re normally there (drains!) or we aboard the ‘Hildebrand’ were flushing unmentionables into the Madeirans’ water. Perhaps if I run into this Dr Ashe of Molly’s I’ll ask what he thinks. There’s something of a ghoul about the man’s appearance – seems a funny choice for a cruise doctor & suspect he has a past. Never did I think everyone on board wd. have one too, still less that within a week I shd. be slightly privy to several. Strange how briefly being ship-mates together turns total strangers into confidants practically overnight. Even the most reticent souls throw caution to the winds (some of the conversations I’ve overheard, esp. among the younger element!). Why is this? I return to my theory: England’s no longer real to anyone aboard so anything they say is equally unreal & will never be accountable. H’m. We shall see.

  Over the rail postprandially (excellent word) I thought some more about the amateur sleuths who from time to time have sniffed me over. I expect they’ll give up now – they’ve done their sleuthing & got it all wrong but everyone’s happy with their version so they can move on to some more fashionable composer. It’s wonderful how much they’ve missed – all those initials in the chorus of Devils in Gerontius! – & heaps more little encodings à la Schumann. Well, they’re just part of the crowd who constantly write about music – talk & talk & talk about it – almost none of whom are performers & still fewer composers. Whom do they think they’re addressing? And about what? Music is what it says & it says what it is through sounds & not the written word. Most of those who prate about music are nincompoops, which isn’t to be wondered at since most people are that anyway. But they’re often musical illiterates, which is intolerable. They’re illiterates in the sense that while they may know all the right terms & technical flummery they’re ignorant of what’s being said. They don’t understand – or even appear much to like – the language & what it expresses so they waffle on about the grammar instead. I except Shaw from this accusation. His politics may be benighted & many of his plays wrong-headed to a degree but not only is he the kindest man who ever stepped, he understands & feels music. He alone among contemporary critics acknowledges that composers & musicians think, but that they do so in A minor & not in words. He alone wdn’t be puzzled by watching an orchestral rehearsal where we stop & start & clarify whole passages with often scarcely a word spoken. That’s how professionals communicate when they’re attuned. I grunt, I mutter, I draw a waggled curve in the air at the violas: they know what I mean. ‘Too h’m,’ I expect I say, leaving out the adjective o
r adverb. A disappointed ‘Twenty-eight’ will re-start them at that cue but this time I draw the bassoon line in the air & lo! out it comes. Sublime dictation. Shaw knows; the rest are asses & as far as I’m concerned can go & re-bury themselves in the nearest library with Hadow. The concert hall’s got far too much to do with the heart for them.

  Pleased to discover that ‘RMS Hildebrand’ yields ‘Brindled Marsh’. This must surely be the name of one of those minor moths which fall into one’s lamp at night. Check South on return.

  The unfamiliarity of shipboard days and the torrent of air through which they forged greatly affected Edward’s awareness of the slipping away of time, which for some years he had pretended to welcome both in public and private. ‘Trivial pursuits’ or ‘masterly inactivity’ were the phrases he indifferently offered when people asked him what he was up to nowadays. It had become a habit as he sat on the edge of his bed at night, letting his fingers undo his tie with the minimal skill of fifty years, to say – half to assert his own bleakness and half to harrow the shades of any listeners: ‘One more day I shan’t have to get through.’ Even a diary bristling with engagements (if he let it) represented no proper curriculum but only diversions for day-to-day indulging: luncheons, dinners, outings to the Races, conducting his own works up and down the country, having the vet over for the dogs, attending Three Choirs Festivals. Forward momentum had ceased; what remained was the temporarily eternal present to be bought off.

  But that was on dry land. It soon became plain that it was different on board ship because no matter how one frittered or filled the days one was willy-nilly going somewhere. Over and above the lassitudes of chatter and the empty cries of bugles there was a steady progress carrying on independently and on one’s own behalf. There were constant reminders of it in the purposeful life of officers and crew glimpsed now and then; in the endless banner of smoke and smuts unravelling from the funnel; in the liquid tumulus which raised itself glassily and followed the ship at an unvarying distance of fifty yards. Future ports of call took on the significance of destinations. ‘When we reach Pará,’ a husband could be overheard promising his wife as they strolled past. Or, ‘Just wait till we get to Manaos.’ But to Edward Pará and Manaos were as Wednesday and Thursday. Somewhere ahead lay Sunday, Liverpool again, and the resumption of the habits and patterns which brought him to his bed each night yawning and saying, Well, that was one November the twenty-fifth he’d never have to re-live. Meanwhile in the Hildebrand’s bar and smoke room, on its bridge now empty of Mr Mushet’s dour presence, beneath its awnings and sightless in its deck chairs turned to the unvarying expanses hurrying by, Edward recognised that a ship was no place to escape being directionless and neither might strangers allay anxieties of loss.