Nora Webster: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

  When the lesson was over, Nora felt free of Laurie and looked forward to the six days ahead when she would not have to stand at the piano obeying orders. She arranged to meet Phyllis that Saturday in the lounge of Murphy Floods Hotel, and asked her about Laurie.

  “Either she knew everyone, including de Gaulle and Napoleon Bonaparte,” Phyllis said, “or she knew no one and lived in a convent. I can never work out which. And either it was a silent order in perpetual adoration, or they spent their time singing and chattering.”

  “She makes me do all sorts of exercises,” Nora said.

  “She is a law unto herself. And she landed on her feet. Billy built her those rooms and bought her the piano,” Phyllis said. “And she really can play. And one day I heard her speaking in French on the phone, so at least that part is true.”

  “Why did you send me to her?”

  “Because she asked me to. She says that on the day of the funeral she promised that she would do anything for you if she could. She has a very good heart. I think all ex-nuns have good hearts, it’s such a relief for them being out of the convent. Or maybe that’s a wrong thing to say.”

  “She made me look at these two paintings she has.”

  “While you were singing?”

  “Yes.”

  “She does that for very few people. Has she said yet that singing is not something you do, it is something you live?”

  “She has.”

  “She told me one day that I could sing all I liked, but it would be no use. I didn’t have it, she said.”

  “Have what?”

  “Something quite essential. But I don’t know what it’s called.”

  At the next lesson Laurie told Nora to look again at the colours in the frame and try to imagine them coming into being.

  “Not there at all, and then slowly there, tone by tone. Emerging. Emerging.”

  Laurie almost whispered these last words and then she watched Nora sharply as Nora looked at the shadows and the grades of colour.

  She went to the piano and played the introduction. Nora had learned to wait until the end of each phrase to breathe, and to follow the tone of the piano, and find a pace from the pace of the playing. Her singing voice now was much deeper than her speaking voice, and this led her towards a greater confidence as she allowed the voice to vibrate darkly on end notes. She knew Laurie was checking regularly to see that she was watching the colours, and she learned to trust Laurie’s playing, her tact, her ability to respond.

  As she sang, she concentrated hard on one small square of colour. Something stirred within the depths of it; something she could see clearly for a second, and then when she blinked it had gone. When the playing stopped and the song had ended, Laurie did not move. Nora stayed still too.

  It was only after a month, when she had had four or five lessons, that she realised that the music was leading her away from Maurice, away from her life with him, and her life with the children. But it was not merely that Maurice had no ear for music, and that music was something they had never shared. It was the intensity of her time here; she was alone with herself in a place where he would never have followed her, even in death.

  When Phyllis mentioned the Gramophone Society again, Nora nodded and tried to look serious. Of all of the things that happened in the town, it was the weekly event that Maurice and Jim, and by extension Margaret, thought funniest. One of its leading lights was Thomas P. Nolan and it was regularly attended by a man from Glenbrien, M. M. Roycroft, who had an old house, Phyllis said it was Georgian, and a large farm. He lived alone there, it was reported, with two thousand records and several rooms full of books. Calling Thomas P. Nolan “Tom Piss Nolan” and M. M. Roycroft “Madman Roycroft” gave Maurice and Jim infinite pleasure. The two men would laugh, and Margaret too, and the two girls, if they were in the room, would look at Nora, relishing the fact that she never found this funny. She knew Thomas P. Nolan and liked how courteous he was, and she had seen M. M. Roycroft a number of times driving a strange old car and had wondered about his life in Glenbrien and if he went to Dublin to buy the books and records, or if he sent away for them.

  Phyllis now wanted her to come to the meetings of the society every Thursday in Murphy Floods Hotel. Each week, she said, one of the members chose the music they listened to.

  “So you know everyone’s taste, including, of course, their bad taste. And that Dr. Radford has the worst taste, big long modern German things that would knock you into the middle of next week. But the best of all is Canon Kehoe, he only plays sopranos. He knows more about sopranos than any priest in the western world.”

  “I don’t have any records,” Nora said. “Or none that I have listened to in years.”

  “That’s all the more reason to come, and they love a new member.”

  They were all people that she half recognised, including a teacher and a man who worked in one of the banks. Canon Kehoe, she saw, was in charge of the turntable and the speakers.

  She had never been in this room in the hotel before, or never when it was filled, as it was now, with sofas and easy chairs. She wondered if they were provided specially for the Gramophone Society. Maybe, she thought, they were an example of the power of Canon Kehoe. The music, he informed the members, this week, was the choice of Mr. M. M. Roycroft from Glenbrien, who bowed and then handed each of them a slip of paper. He would make no comment, Mr. Roycroft said in a tone of some gravity, but rather he would allow it to speak for itself. He began by playing a Schubert piano sonata in its entirety. Nora thought of Maurice and Jim and decided that she agreed with them about the Gramophone Society. She knew how easy it would be to burst out laughing in the middle of all this solemnity. No one whispered or moved. When Mr. Roycroft played an orchestral piece next, Nora noticed that Betty Rogers, who had taught for many years in the Protestant school, began to conduct the music with one hand and then two. Nora thought that she would have to excuse herself. Instead, she closed her eyes. No matter what she did, however, images from work came into her mind, things that had happened, or things she would have to do. When the interval came, she realised that she had not really listened to the music at all.

  Phyllis said at the bar, “It’ll be better in the second half, I promise, and that old Betty Rogers spends her time simpering over Mr. Roycroft. She would have more luck if she turned her attention to Canon Kehoe, and that’s not saying much. But at least he likes sopranos.”

  “Is Betty a soprano?”

  “No, she can’t sing at all.”

  “Does she always conduct?”

  “When she thinks Maitland Roycroft is watching.”

  The second half of the recital was devoted to cello music and all of the pieces were slow and sad and beautiful. Nora had heard none of them before even though the names of the composers were familiar. A few times when she opened her eyes she saw that everyone was listening closely. She looked around at the men in the room, at Mr. Roycroft himself, at Canon Kehoe, at Dr. Radford, at Thomas P. Nolan and all of them seemed now not only sad but strangely vulnerable.

  When the recital ended, Betty Rogers was the first to speak.

  “Casals was, of course, the greatest, don’t you think, Mr. Roycroft?”

  “For Bach, maybe,” he replied.

  “My husband thinks Casals is too harsh, don’t you, darling?” Mrs. Radford said.

  “Perhaps it’s the recording, but in the Beethoven sonatas he loses the beauty, you know the beauty, and goes for something else.”

  “What does our new member think?” Canon Kehoe asked.

  “I thought it was all beautiful,” Nora said. “All of it.”

  Slowly, led by Canon Kehoe, they went out to the lobby of the hotel.

  “You know, those Casals recordings of Beethoven were done live,” Dr. Radford said in a loud voice, “and I don’t think the recording was done well.”

  �
�But you get the immediacy,” Mr. Roycroft said, “I think that compensates.”

  “I agree with you totally,” Thomas P. Nolan interjected. “You feel you are in the room while it is being played, don’t you?”

  He looked at all of them, seeking their agreement.

  It was just then that Nora saw Jim having a drink with a man from Fianna Fáil. They were listening to the conversation about cellists with open amusement. The expression on Jim’s face changed when he spotted Nora. She could not think what to do. She had obviously been at a meeting of the Gramophone Society, the organisation that Maurice and Jim had singled out for mockery. She turned to Phyllis and asked her if she had enjoyed the recital.

  “I prefer singing,” Phyllis said, “but that’s just me, and next week will be Canon Kehoe, so we’ll have plenty of that.”

  Nora kept close to Phyllis, hoping that she could avoid Jim, who now was giving his companion his full attention.

  “But it’s a democracy,” Phyllis said. “Everyone gets their turn. Still, it would amaze you the music that some people like.”

  When she told Laurie O’Keefe about the Gramophone Society, Laurie smiled and shook her head.

  “Someone told me that there’s a woman who conducts, waving her hands about.”

  “You can close your eyes,” Nora said.

  “I would wring her neck. Imagine conducting when you have not been trained!”

  “Well, the music was nice,” Nora said.

  When Jim and Margaret next came to visit, Nora waited in case they were going to ask her what she was doing at the Gramophone Society; she wondered if Donal, who tended to tell his aunt Margaret any news she might be interested in, had already told her. But Jim and Margaret said nothing about it. They talked about the town and the boys and asked about Aine in Dublin, and when Fiona came in they discussed the advantage of bigger schools over smaller ones and the advantage of free education. A few times, when Nora found Jim looking at her, she suspected that he was thinking about seeing her in the lobby of the hotel. But he did not mention it.

  The following Thursday she met Phyllis for a drink in the lounge of the hotel before the meeting of the Gramophone Society.

  “It’s hard to know what to say about the canon,” Phyllis said. “He talks about the sopranos as though he knows them.”

  In the room, most of the members were already assembled. The canon handed to everyone a list of the tracks he had chosen.

  “We are going to listen first to the two Marias—Maria Caniglia, who I think is the best singer of Verdi there is, and then Maria Callas, who is even better again, if you can be better than the best. And after that we are going to have Joan and Elizabeth and Rosa and Rita. We are in for a feast.”

  One day when she was in Cloke’s electrical shop in Rafter Street buying a new iron, Nora noticed a stereo record player with a sign on it saying that the price had been reduced.

  “Is there something wrong with this?” she asked the assistant.

  “No,” he said, “it’s perfect, but there are newer models coming in. All the others like this have been sold and there were no complaints. This was the demonstration model, so I can easily set it up for you to hear.”

  Nora looked out towards the street and hoped that no one she knew was passing as she said that she would like to hear how it sounded.

  “Go through the records,” the assistant said, “and find something you’d like to listen to while I rig this up. You have to put the speakers far apart, or an equal distance from the turntable.”

  She flicked through the records, wondering if it would be best to test the sound with a singer or with orchestral music. In the end she selected a record, Your Favourite Music, and handed the record to the assistant.

  “Is there any particular track?” he asked.

  “No, if you just let a few of them play.”

  Nora stood in the shadows so that no one on the street could see her. It was a movement from Grieg’s Piano Concerto and, even though it was not turned up loud, it sounded to her as though the pianist was in the shop with them. She could hear every note clearly, but it was not just that, she could also feel an energy from the playing that made the sound seem urgent and present.

  In the budget there had been another increase in the widow’s pension, also back-dated. She still had money from the other back-dated cheques in the bank. Nonetheless, Jim and Margaret and Una and even Fiona would all think buying this was wasting money. She wondered if she could set up the stereo in her bedroom so that none of them could see it, but then it would be hardly worth it.

  When the first track ended, she was going to tell the assistant that she would need time to think about it. Then the next track began, the “Hymn to the Moon” from Dvorˇák’s Rusalka. Sometime in the past she had heard Dvorˇák’s “Humoresque” in a version for solo violin. This was for a soprano. Canon Kehoe would recognise the name of the singer, she thought, but it meant nothing to her. The voice rose steadily with the music and then soared above it. What she felt now more than anything was a sadness that she had lived her life until now without having heard this. But still she could not make up her mind about buying the stereo. It would be too much fuss, she thought, collecting it in the car and then putting a low table in the back room and trying to get it working. She did not know whom she could ask to help who would not think her extravagant. When the track ended, she nodded to the assistant to let him know that this was enough.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said and smiled.

  One evening a few weeks later, she arrived early at the hotel for the Society meeting and found herself alone in the room with Dr. Radford and his wife. Years ago he had lent Maurice a book, she could not think what the book was, but Maurice had mislaid it. They had searched the house thoroughly for it, but in vain. Having asked for it to be returned a number of times, Dr. Radford had driven up to the house early one Saturday morning and said that he needed to consult the book for something he was writing. Maurice was still in his pyjamas and Nora in her dressing-gown. Dr. Radford stood tall and imposing in the hallway. He was not leaving, he said, until the book was found. Nora remembered his grand and dismissive tone when she offered him a cup of tea. Maurice rummaged among the bookcases in the front room and invited Dr. Radford to look too. Maurice then searched in the large press in the back room where he kept all his papers. When it became clear to Dr. Radford that the book would not be found, Maurice led him slowly out of the house and closed the door behind him and remained preoccupied all day.

  “Are you busy at the moment?” she asked Dr. Radford.

  “Oh, the waiting room fills up in the morning and it’s full all day,” Mrs. Radford said.

  Nora wondered if Dr. Radford was going to ask her if the book had ever turned up. He could not have forgotten the episode on the Saturday morning years ago.

  When the recital was over, Mrs. Radford motioned Nora to the side so that she could have a private word with her.

  “We’ve noticed how much you enjoy the music,” she said. “And you don’t make a sound when a record is playing. And we’d love to have you down some evening to Riverside House. We often play records in the evening.”

  “Well, I am not sure,” Nora said. “You see, I have the boys at home and I don’t like being out too many evenings.”

  “Well, perhaps you could let us know.”

  Nora got a phone call at work from Mrs. Radford wondering if she could come in the evening anytime the following week. She was so surprised that she found herself agreeing to Monday at eight. That Thursday at the Gramophone Society the Radfords sat close to her and a few times between records Mrs. Radford nudged her and made some comment about the music. On the way out, Dr. Radford spoke to her.

  “You’ll have to make sure now that we play records on Monday that you like, and maybe introduce you to a few new things.”

  W
hen she told Phyllis what had happened, Phyllis insisted that she should phone them and cancel.

  “They are a dreadful pair of bores. He’s full of Trinity College and the Church of Ireland. You’d wonder that he has any patients at all.”

  “Why did they ask me?”

  “They like to impress people.”

  “They want to impress me?”

  “They’ve seen that everyone in the Gramophone Society likes you.”

  “I didn’t know that anyone even noticed me.”

  “After all you’ve been through, everyone thinks you are . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, dignified. That would be one thing.”

  The house lay between the Mill Park Road and the river. There was a small entrance with a notice saying Surgery and then another larger entrance to an old two-storied house with a garden in front of it.

  The door was opened by Mrs. Radford.

  “Now, call me Ali,” she said. “We’ll have no formalities. Trevor is upstairs. There’s an old patient of his out near Blackstoops who’s very weak and if the phone rings then Trevor will have to go. But I’d better not say who it is or Trevor will kill me. You know, we keep things very confidential here.”

  Trevor appeared wearing a red pullover and an open-necked white shirt.

  “You know, I think before we do anything,” he said, “we’ll have some Schubert. Don’t you think? And perhaps a gin-and-tonic.”

  He led her from the hall into the long room on the right. All around the room in the places where other people might have china cabinets or bookcases the Radfords had records. The record player was on a stand with a large speaker on each side of the fireplace.

  “Old Roycroft is proud of his collection,” Dr. Radford said, “and, of course, he does have rarities, but he was flabbergasted when he came into this house and saw the room upstairs where we keep most of the records. I work hard and while other people like golf or going on safari, this is what I like. Music.”