But on this following morning Molly had persuaded him to stroll through the town, at least to see the Opera House and have an ice-cream. And suddenly there had seemed nothing else to do. Fortescue had been met the previous day by an ebullient man in late youth, undoubtedly the old comrade Johnny Proctor. These two had spent much time supervising the swinging ashore of large crates which emerged from the holds looking pale and raw, criss-crossed with stencilled admonishments which none of the Brazilian stevedores could surely have read. Chartair Ltd, consisting of Fortescue, Johnny, the crates and two monkey-like men who had about them a bristling air of Scots stubbornness which might have passed for loyalty, disappeared in a series of ramshackle vehicles towards an alleged airfield on the outskirts. Everybody else on board had gone ashore and the company of the ship’s cat, while agreeable, seemed too studiedly poignant.
Molly was explaining that the slabs of dark jam on sale at a stall were guava jelly, and pointing out that a sign reading ‘pudim’ sort of meant ‘pudding’ but of a quite un-English genre, when Edward became aware of a woman staring at him. She was imposing, probably in her late fifties or early sixties, with greying hair. She held a parasol which shaded her face so he could not read it but the impression her whole figure gave was of someone long used to feeling confident. When she spoke it was with a faint accent he unthinkingly assumed to be Portuguese.
‘Have I the honour of addressing Sir Edward Elgar?’
‘I doubt it’ll do you much honour, madam,’ he ungraciously said after a moment’s hesitation, ‘but yes.’ His voice had taken on a gruffness Molly had come to recognise as that of displeasure at being put out. He was clearly not a man who relished the effort of having to rise to an occasion.
It was the stranger’s turn to hesitate. ‘I … Please forgive me for intruding on you both like this –’ her dark eyes took in Molly but her face remained turned to Edward. ‘I am … You may perhaps have received a letter of me, from me. I heard you had arrived and at once I wrote. But …’
‘A letter? Ah. Now you come to remind me I do have some letters with me. They, ah, arrived but my steward put them on one side where I’m afraid I didn’t see them.’ Like a child discovered he felt in his pocket and produced the sheaf of envelopes. ‘I was just about to read them, you see, over a cup of coffee somewhere.’
‘Of course, Sir Edward; I wouldn’t have dreamed … Yes, there is mine you’re holding.’
‘This one? The, um, Schiller Institute?’
‘Yes, exactly. I … I am Magdalena von Pussels. I was waiting … but you will read it when you read it, Sir Edward. Please not now,’ she motioned with a gloved hand to prevent his opening it on the spot. ‘At your leisure, I beg. Introductions in the street like this are not convenient. I ask the forgiveness of both of you.’
The fraction by which she inclined her parasol and upper spine before sweeping away made him place her on the spot as being German even before his mind had had time to recall the suggestive name she had left.
‘I say.’ He was looking after the green parasol as it sailed steadily off above the dark Brazilian heads. ‘Now there’s a character.’
‘You don’t know her?’
‘Never clapped eyes on her in my life.’
‘How strange. I had the impression she knew you.’
‘Oh, I expect she’s seen a photograph in a magazine or something. I’m afraid it happens all the time. Once one’s face becomes familiar complete strangers imagine they know one. As I said before, pray it never happens to you.’
He dismissed the incident and, resuming their stroll, began to take evident pleasure in the variety of small surprises the town sprang on him. He said he had not expected to see so much civic ironwork a thousand miles up the Amazon – lamp-posts, balconies, fountains and the like – and certainly not stamped with the names of Scotch foundries.
‘Somehow one never thinks of Britain as having exported elegant things,’ he murmured. ‘Why is that? Why shouldn’t we? But I believe our reputation is for sturdy functionalism. Those new cranes down at the docks are all from England, I noticed as we passed. They’re perfectly hideous and I suppose will last a hundred years, highly efficient and perfectly hideous to the end. But look at that lamp-post – it’s really rather something, isn’t it? I thought only the Italians could do that. Have you seen Bologna? The Corso’s so grand, we’ve nothing like it in England. But apparently we could have if only we imported Scotch lamp-posts to replace those mass-produced metropolitan horrors they keep planting in London. The problem with the English is they’re not a race which sets much store by aesthetic values. They mistrust such things because they smack of flightiness and pleasure. I wonder if it isn’t also a kind of laziness … ? By Jove!’
For they had reached the Opera House standing in its piazza, a creation with pink-washed walls likely to remind any English visitor of nothing so much as blancmange. The interior into which they passed hardly lessened the impression of a confection. Edward and Molly stood in the foyer surrounded by gold draperies, tall Sèvres vases on plinths and pillars of marble in various shades of coral and cream such as he had last seen outside the botteghe of funerary masons in Carrara. The same style extended exuberantly through the jacaranda-wood doors into the auditorium itself. Inside among the cherubim and angels it was dim and cool, a lofty rococo temple echoing not to the tremulous vibrato of Tetrazzini but to the cries of several budgerigar-like birds which had somehow got in. A gentleman in torn shorts and straw hat was sweeping the top of an upright piano with a long broom in one corner of the orchestra pit.
‘What a place to conduct in,’ Edward was saying. ‘It’s so wonderfully bizarre. When one has made all the jokes and poked all the fun the solid fact remains that here we have a people for whom music is central to life. Remember the theatre in Pará? That’s grand too. I admire it. It even makes me feel jealous. Had the English as a race been as musical as the Brazilians then composing for them wouldn’t have been such an ungrateful business. Anything to do with music in England’s an uphill struggle from first to last. I always wanted to write an opera, you know. Still do.’
‘Really? Have you got a subject – or is it a libretto?’
‘More or less. But I keep getting disheartened. Nobody wants that sort of stuff nowadays, not there at any rate. All they want is cinema shows and Jazz and sport. Look what happened to poor old Stanford when he tried to write opera. For the English it’s Gilbert and Sullivan or nothing. Or, of course, The Beggar’s Opera. Have you seen the Nigel Playfair revival? It’s splendidly improper and amusing, just a jingle of songs really, but it’s the perfect proof of how radically unmusical the English are. Their imagination never runs beyond burlesque. In our own way I’m afraid we’re barbarians. That woman who spoke to us just now? The Schiller Institute? Good example. I bet we could scour Manaos all day without finding a Shakespeare Institute. The arts simply aren’t a living part of us.’
‘Surely you exaggerate slightly? We’ve some marvellous writers and painters. As well as the odd composer.’
‘Yes, and look how they had to suffer for it. Penury and neglect for a lifetime and then being turned into classics as soon as they’re safely dead.’
His voice had joined the insistence of the budgerigars inside the dome and Molly realised she had once again provoked a piece of autobiographical vehemence. She steered him out of the building and they left it echoing with grievance. The sunlit piazza, the grand trees trailing aerial roots like Krakens surfacing, blotted away this brief mood.
‘I’m holding you up,’ he said at last.
‘No you’re not. I haven’t much to do until my boat leaves except I’m tempted to come up and paint this lost temple one day. There are a few places worth a visit after the Opera House but not many. The Cathedral’s a possibility and I can recommend the Public Library. Apart from being a nice building it’s got the prettiest double staircase in iron which looks as light as a feather. Glasgow again, I seem to remember. There’s the English
Club and of course the Schiller Institute, wherever that is. But really apart from those sorts of things life in Manaos seems to be principally a matter of little launch-trips up and down river. There are lots of tiny resorts with bathing-boxes and bungalows where people can go and fish for their lunches. The Purser’s got outings laid on, I think. For me the real attraction of the place is its oddness. I like all this civic splendour on the edges of nothing, and the decay, and the newspapers and the trams and the modern docks all covered with river-mud and naked children. I like taking the tram out to Flores which is still really in the jungle.’
‘A tram in the jungle? That sounds interesting. Flores, you say? What’s there?’
‘Nothing. A restaurant. It’s wonderful fun having dinner. Oh, we should go. I’ll try and detach Forty from his airfield one night, shall I?’
‘I’d quite like to see the airfield.’
‘I bet he’d take you up if you wanted. Why don’t you?’
‘Ah, he’ll have better things to do than fuss around pandering to fogeys … D’you think he would?’
They stopped at a café and Edward read his letters. ‘Did you know they had a racecourse here?’ he asked. ‘Somebody must have found out about my weakness. This is the Secretary of the Club – an Englishman, apparently – inviting me out to the “hippodrome” hoping I might care to view some racing, Brazilian-style. He says here it’s, what, “capital entertainment even if not exactly run under Jockey Club rules. Sometimes there are fatalities.” That sounds quite sprightly. I wonder if he means horses or riders? I hope not the horses … I do like this word, hipódromo. Now, ah, the Schiller Institute. Of course, let’s see …’
But there was something about Frau von Pussels’ letter which seemed to throw him into a clouded thoughtfulness and he said nothing beyond a muttered ‘No shortage of guides, I see,’ which gave Molly a pang of indignation. Later they lunched at the Britannia Club where they found a good many of their fellow-passengers. Edward was visibly irritated by the effect of his unannounced arrival. The Club Secretary bustled up, evidently having been dragged away from a drink in order to greet this celebrity, but neither quite knew what to say to the other and Edward was left with a feeling of being over-dressed and stuffy. From cool rooms in the background came a good deal of laughter and the men were mostly in shirt-sleeves. The food was acceptable but an uncomforting silence fell as they entered the dining room. Neither he nor Molly was sorry to leave.
Returning to his cabin for a brief siesta he found, laid on his desk next to the microscope, another Schiller Institute envelope. ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ he said under his breath. Was there no end to this harrying? But he sat on the edge of the bed and opened it resignedly.
Dear Sir Edward,
I am extremely sorry we happened to bump into each other like that this morning. Since you were already carrying my letter it must appear to you as if I am pestering.
Please accept my assurance that I am not. But as you evidently did not recognise me I cannot bring myself to remain silent and watch you sail away again in a matter of days. Nearly forty years have passed (and left you looking magnificent, I must say). Might we not salute them if only for half an hour? For some reason I badly wish to know if you remember the last piece of music we played together in Worcester.
Truly yours,
Lena (Magdalena von Pussels)
And it hit him like an attack of some vital organ midway between heart and head: her eyes, that voice, her carriage as she had walked away down the street. All were Lena’s, disguised by nothing but time itself and her long absence from his thoughts. The more he considered them the more he remembered her and the less he could imagine not having seen it at once, not even in her handwriting, not even though she now spoke almost faultless English. In this of all places … How could he have expected that half-thought, disgruntled act of booking a passage to lead to his past arising like vapour from the Amazon jungle and massing over his head? Once one had reached a certain age there was evidently no place on earth whose neutrality was guaranteed. The entire planet was peopled with ghosts. Even the most alien of its terrains might exude them, the most preposterous place quicken thoughts and memories. Perhaps one had to be young in order to travel, for it could be diverting and adventuresome only so long as there was no past to press. The older one became the less possible it was any longer to travel in that sense: the exterior globe was increasingly displaced by an interior lifetime. It would be an act of great purity to be able to jettison that deadweight of memory and travel at the end of one’s life as if seeing for the first time just clouds, just a forest, just a great river. He knew he would never achieve that purity; there was something relentless about the way in which he felt himself contaminated. It was as if his very culture demanded it.
He lay back on the bed. Once the shock had begun to diminish his initial dismay was displaced by an amicable curiosity. Might it not be interesting to find out what her life had been? Two elderly people would scarcely wish to embroil themselves in anything more emotionally muddying than peaceable recollections of another world, one distant enough to have left nothing but an afterglow, maybe a fondness, surely the comradeliness of survivors. Besides, so far as he was concerned he had – he reminded himself as if addressing her – done her more than justice, all things considered. He had twined her into some of his earliest successes – Enigma, for example – even though doing so had written her a little more irrevocably out of his life. She had lingered for many years after her abrupt departure as The Girl, the unmarried bride such as a young man would have chosen for himself. But she had commenced her gradual fade from the moment the woman he actually married began taking control of his creativity. The one Girl was squeezed out by the one Woman, then by several women – ladies, even, with titles and influence at Court. The team of Edward and Alice had assumed dominion over English music of the century’s first decade even though that music had its roots in a past which pre-dated their first meeting, one which contained Lena as well as pre-dating her too.
There could be no harm now in seeing what had become of her. In any case, what else was there to do here? Somehow he felt he had already absorbed Manaos – it was like Pará only more so – and Molly’s description of its attractions had suggested only a momentary quaintness. Since he had no interest in bathing and picnic excursions he had a matter of four days left to get through before the Hildebrand cast off and began her downstream voyage. It occurred to him that had one of his boyhood friends like Hubert Leicester been there they might have celebrated finding themselves up the Amazon by swimming in it as they had once swum in rowdy groups in the Severn and Teme. In those days country boys had swum naked and he could quite see it would be essential to find a secluded spot. However, from his observation seclusion was one of the things the region was richest in. And think what a jape it would be …
On impulse he snatched up his hat and cane and, having asked directions, walked down the gangway and set off for the Schiller Institute. This building, when he found it, almost bore out Molly’s guess that it might be worth seeing. It was an imposing but very large old house set back from the rumbling avenue by walled grounds with ironwork gates. As he approached the front door he thought for a moment there was evidence of crime or mishap partly concealed by a bush of garish flowers: a single brown leg emerged at an angle, the sole of its foot palely gleaming. But as he walked on he could see it belonged to a sleeping Brazilian lying crosswise in a hammock slung very low between two trees in deep shade. He rang the bell and after a moment the door opened and there stood the lady who had addressed him in the street that morning.
‘You came,’ she said in evident pleasure. ‘Oh, I’m so glad.’
‘Your letter left me little choice, as you intended. Good heavens Lena … What a long, long, time,’ and they grasped one another’s forearms uncertainly. ‘Ah,’ said Edward after a moment, ‘I thought I’d stumbled on the scene of a dramatic crime.’ He indicated the shrubbery. ‘That fellow looked de
ad to me: I could only see his feet.’
She followed his gaze and laughed. ‘That’s our gardener João. I sincerely hope he’s not dead since only he knows how to put up our Christmas tree. But please, please come in, Edward. I’m going to call you Edward, you see: that’s how you were. The “Sir” is somebody else.’
‘I’m afraid it is. I often fear it’s what I’ve become.’
‘Well, we’ve all acquired our stage names, it was inevitable. See? I’m Frau von Pussels, the widow of a merchant and the director of an institute. But my memory is excellent. And do you remember what it was we played?’
‘I rather think it was a sonata by Rubinstein. I’d guess the one in G.’
‘Ach! There’s nothing wrong with your memory either. Imagine, thirty-nine years.’ She had led the way automatically into the salon as if this were her private house. Now she walked to the piano, threw up the lid and, still standing, played the sonata’s opening few bars, turning her head to watch him with a smile which anticipated his delighted recognition. But he only remained as if turned in wood before saying ‘Terrible rot really.’ She closed the lid, perplexed, even deflated.
‘I suppose one might outgrow Rubinstein,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I’ve outgrown music, Lena. It no longer gives me any pleasure.’
‘Oh Edward, you haven’t changed. It’s incredible. I can still hear you saying how boring it is playing the violin instead of flying a kite.’
‘Did I say that? It shows how wise I was at such an early age. It also shows I’m nothing if not consistent. Now you must tell me about yourself. Who was Herr von Pussels? I seem to have heard the name even though I know it’s on your letters.’
Gerontius Page 27
