“Not necessarily. Some people are born with huge, gusty typhoons of feeling, all ready to be unleashed. Others have to learn to feel. And when they’re both forty, you’d have a hard time telling one from the other. But when they’re fifty the typhoons will be getting weaker, and the feeling which has been carefully nurtured and schooled may well be growing still. I don’t suppose anybody ever told you that.”
“Never.”
“Look at your physical type. Medium blonde, northern-looking, good solid bones, strong as a horse, I’ll bet, and with an excellent, good big head. You’re not one of those little southern passion-pots, with a rose in her teeth and a stiletto tucked into her garter. She’s got feeling; you’ve got intelligence. She’s a sprinter, you’re a miler. You’ll have to learn, painstakingly, things that she seems to have known from her cradle. But because she’s never had to learn them, they may desert her quickly—after an illness, or when her lover runs off with another girl, or something. Whereas you, once you’ve learned a thing, will cling to it like a bulldog, or like a snapping-turtle which is supposed never to relax its hold till sundown.”
“I see,” said Monica, who was overjoyed to be compared to a bulldog or a snapping-turtle under these circumstances.
“So get on with the job. Stop fretting because you’re not worldly-wise and chock-full of Beethovenian Sturm und Drang at twenty. That’s not your type at all. Stop fussing that comfort is going to knock the props from under your genius. Develop what you’ve got: make it possible for your emotions to grow. Get on with the job. Work, work, work. How are the languages?”
“Not too bad, Amy said.”
“Well, work harder and make them damned good. And do what Murtagh tells you; if anybody can make a singer of you, he will. And you may take it from me that you’ll get all the experience you want, soon enough. Most people reach a point where they’re wishing experience would stop crowding them. Anyhow, it isn’t what happens to you that really counts: it’s what you are able to do with it. The streets are crammed with people who have had the most extraordinary experiences—been shipwrecked, chased out of Caliph’s harems, blown sky-high by bombs—and it hasn’t meant a thing to them, because they couldn’t distill it. Art’s distillation; experience is wine, and art is the brandy we distill from it.—Now, you’ll have to go. I’ve a man coming about some music for a contemporary composers’ series. And don’t worry; we’ll think of some ways to spend the Bridgetower money.—By the way, did you ever know this Mrs Bridgetower?”
“Oh no; she was an invalid for years, I think. Anyway—I wouldn’t have known her.”
“She sounds like a loony. This Trust of hers is silly. Still, if the money has to be spent, we’ll spend it.”
2
Experience—well, Paris had been experience. Amy Neilson had taught her a lot about eating, for instance. It had been a surprise to Monica to find that her very best manners weren’t the thing at all, according to Amy, and she had had to modify them, not in the direction of more gentility, but less. And the gay little laugh with which she had been accustomed to pass off any social difficulty—Amy had quickly rooted out that little laugh. There had been, well, dozens of things that Amy had discouraged, always in the kindest possible way, and Monica had been a quick learner. Her clothes had been reformed in the direction of plainness; some rings and earrings, which were certainly not expensive, but which she had once thought very pretty, had been discarded; a tendency toward cuteness in dress and manner had withered under Amy’s hint that to be cute was not the whole end of woman.
Yes, that was all experience. But shallow, surely? Not the raw material for one of Molloy’s muhds. What else? That party to which Amy had taken her in that wonderful apartment on the Rue Scheffer—just like the movies, with a view which included the Eiffel Tower—that had been experience. For it was a very musical party, to introduce the work of a promising young composer, and Monica had gone to it in a reverential spirit. And what had happened? The assembled musicians, and patrons and critics and concert agents had listened far less intently and politely than the audience of the Community Concerts in Salterton would have done; some of them, sitting on a stair which led to a gallery above the salon, had actually talked, in loud whispers, and not about the music, either! That was experience, surely—to discover that in Paris, of all places, real music-lovers could be so rude as to talk while music was being played? She had mentioned this to Amy, and Amy had laughed. “You don’t have to be serious about it all the time,” she had said. But surely you did have to be serious about it all the time? Wasn’t that what Sir Benedict had just—been telling her?
But Sir Benedict wasn’t very serious. He just shot off a lot of talk which seemed to be serious, and turned suddenly into jokes–the silly kind of jokes the English seemed to like so much. Still, a visit to him always made Monica feel that music was something even better than being serious—it was exciting. And what a marvellous person! So tall, and with a wonderful figure, even though he was fifty-three (she had checked him in Grove) and it didn’t matter a bit that he was so bald and had really an uncommonly big nose. Her attitude toward him was worshipful, but she did wish he would explain himself a little more fully. His remark that she was intelligent, for instance. Why couldn’t he have expanded that? If she was intelligent, why couldn’t she summon up more muhd for Molloy?
What had he meant when he said that some people had to learn to feel? Surely that was a contradiction? And all that about distilling experience from the wine of life. What experience had come her way that could be distilled? Did he mean that everything was experience?
As Monica pondered, a large, middle-aged nun, with a school-girl in her charge, entered the bus and sat down beside her. The nun composed her vast skirts, and fished a rosary of workmanlike appearance from their depths. “Come along now, Norah,” she said in a loud, cheerful voice to the girl at her side, “never waste a minute; let’s say a rosary for the conversion of the people on the bus.”
Was that experience? Could it be made into anything? Did it add anything to her?
Distilling thus, Monica went back to Courtfield Gardens, buying some special cakes for her tea on the way, to celebrate having spent half an hour with the exciting Sir Benedict.
3
October passed in more work with Molloy. A splendid combination gramophone and radio had arrived one day at Courtfield Gardens for Monica, with a note from Sir Benedict urging her to make good use of it, and to buy as many records as she wished. It was unfortunate that on the very day of the arrival of this glossy monster, Peggy Stamper and one of her dirty young men in corduroys dropped in.
“Coo!” said Peggy, surveying it in wonder; “have you bought that?”
“I suppose so,” said Monica; “it’s to be part of my training.”
Peggy and the young man commented freely, and not without envy, on the kind of training which demanded so costly an object, and it was plain to Monica that the radiogram put her, so far as these two were concerned, in a different world from themselves. They were poor on principle; it was part of their creed that nobody who was serious about art ever had a bean, and those of their group who had allowances from home took good care not to offend against this tenet. When they left, Monica knew, without anything having been said about it, that her position on the fringe of Peggy’s group had become even more remote. They had nothing against her, but obviously she was rich, and that was that.
Without being aware that she was doing so, she salved her wound in a manner common to the rich; she bought a lot of expensive albums of recordings, some swansdown cushions for her divan, and some luxurious things to eat; these expenditures numbed, but did not remove, her sense of loss. So she increased the dose of her anodyne; she bought some new clothes—really good ones, of the kind that Amy approved for the well brought up young girl, and a quiet but expensive winter coat. If she had lost her place in the corduroy group, she might as well be thoroughly out of it. The clothes and the pleasure of listening to th
e machine insulated her against loneliness for almost a fortnight. But she knew, every night, and as she prepared her breakfast each morning, that another bout of that terrible destructive despair which had seized her on her first arrival in London was imminent, waiting for an opportunity to descend. It would not be quite the same, for her circumstances had changed, but it would be of the same essence.
Sometimes she had to fight hard against panic. Should she confide in Meg McCorkill? Yes, but confide what? That she was afraid that money was cutting her off from serious work and the people who might be her friends? How silly it seemed when put into words! That the English winter, which was now beginning, filled her with dread? That pegging away at French and German made her feel like a schoolgirl, without a schoolgirl’s resilience against the boredom of study? Meg would have a ready and immediate remedy for both those ills—frequent visits to Beaver Lodge. But three months in Paris, and the English spring, had put a barrier between her and the raw simplicities of Beaver Lodge which seemed to her to be insurmountable.
Of course she had Molloy’s unfailing method of summoning and controlling emotion. She had only to breathe a happy and confident muhd, and serenity and confidence would certainly follow. But it didn’t work. She determinedly set about it on two occasions, and both ended in crying fits. Real heaviness of heart could not be budged by such imaginative effort.
4
Relief came suddenly. One day, at the end of a lesson in which Molloy was particularly exacting, he said: “Sir Ben wants to hear you tomorrow, and he’s coming here. So be on your best behaviour and do me credit.”
Half an hour of the next day’s lesson had passed before Sir Benedict Domdaniel appeared; in Monica’s eyes he seemed more elegant than ever against the background of Molloy’s shabby teaching-room, and beside the stubby figure of the Irishman. He heard her sing some of her folksongs, and declined Molloy’s earnest request that she be allowed to recite some passages of Shakespeare for him.
“Done much about scales, Murtagh?”
“Not yet, Ben, but I’m goin’ to get at them right away. She’s ready for a good grind on exercises. But you know my way; the exercises must be linked with some real music, or you’ll get nothing but a technical voice. But now the voice is warmed up, I can see where we’re goin’.”
“You’ve done a good job. Better voice than I thought it might be.” He smiled at Monica. “Are you pleased with yourself?”
“I can’t say,” said she. “You must be the judge.”
“Yes, but you know that you sing better than when you came here, don’t you?”
“It feels better; I didn’t know I had such a big range.”
“Your voice is beginning to declare itself. Some technical work will make it very useful. But at present you haven’t much to say with it, have you? And that’s really what I’ve come about; it’s time you went to another coach.”
“Leave Mr Molloy!”
“Oh no, not at all. He’ll continue the work on your voice, make it agile and strong and give you a sound technical equipment. But I think you ought to go to another man to learn something about music generally, broaden your musical experience. You don’t want to be just a singer; well—you must learn something more than singing.”
“Aw, now, Ben, I’ll give her all o’ that she can take,” said Molloy; “I’ve started her already on some Shakespeare, and if you’d only let her show you what she can do, you’d get the surprise of your life. Come on, give him the Seven Ages—”
“Murtagh, I don’t want to hear the Seven Ages or anything else. I know exactly what I want her to do, and if you’ll listen—”
“Ben, some day you’ll insult me once too often. Are you suggesting that I’m not capable of giving this girl a good cultural training? Is that what you mean? Because if so—”
“You’re the best voice-builder in London. I tell you that, and don’t forget I got my training with old Garcia, and I know what I’m saying. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“You want to snatch a promising pupil away from me and give her to God knows what charlatan—”
“She’s not your pupil; she’s my pupil, and I’m responsible to the What’s-Its-Name Foundation for her. I’m doing the best I can for her. That’s why I sent her to you in the first place, Murtagh, and if you weren’t so damned stubborn you’d know it. And I’m not taking her from you; I just want to send her to Revelstoke for some coaching in things you probably haven’t time for.”
“What in the name o’ God are you sending her to Revelstoke for?”
“Excellent reasons, my dear Murtagh; excellent reasons. Let’s say that it’s to broaden her musical experience, and leave it there.”
“It’ll do that. That fellow’s worthless, Ben, and you know it.”
“On the contrary. I have been working on some of his things for my series of contemporary music broadcasts, and he has been most helpful. And I’ll tell you more: he’s one of the best of our younger composers.”
“Ha! Quite the little genius.”
“Yes, quite the little genius.”
“But an impossible fellow to get on with.”
“Exactly what he says about you, so it’s a draw. Now you mustn’t take away the character of Monica’s new teacher before she’s even seen him, Murtagh, so shut up. And it’s no good shouting any more, because I’ve settled everything. Monica, tomorrow at four o’clock you are to call on Mr Giles Revelstoke; he lives at 32 Tite Street—on the top floor. He’ll be expecting you, and he’ll undertake some general musical training for you. And that’s what you need.”
After a little further pacification of Molloy, Sir Benedict carried Monica off in his car, and went some distance out of his way to leave her at Courtfield Gardens. As they were parting, he said: “By the way, I made rather a bloomer last time we were talking; I re-read the letter from the lawyers afterward, and I don’t think I should have told you that we had to spend more money on you. Apparently you’re not supposed to know, though I don’t really see how it’s to be kept from you. I’m a terrible chatterer—my little vice. Anyhow, it’s not my business to fall in with lawyers’ schemes like that. It’s a fact; more money must be spent. That’s why I feel we can afford Revelstoke now. You’ll like him. Delightful chap.”
5
Thirty-two Tite Street was a gloomy house across the road from a large Infirmary, from whose windows came an unceasing sound which Monica at first thought was the weeping of baby chicks, but which she later learned was the crying of infants in the nurseries. A rack of cards in the hall told her that Giles Revelstoke was on the top floor, and she was about to press the bell beneath his name when she heard someone coming down the stairs very rapidly and noisily, shouting “Sorree, sorree” in a loud voice. It was a very tall young man with tousled hair, who arrived beside her as her finger was poised to push.
“You want Giles?” said the young man. “Don’t ring; don’t dream of ringing; you’ll cut him to the heart if you ring. Go right up, and right in without knocking, and if you don’t see him about give a cooee. Most informal fellow in the world. Hurry up, old girl; up you go—”
Monica had dressed herself elegantly for this first meeting,with her new teacher, and had worked up a sense of the dignity of the occasion. She did not want to burst upon him without all the proper formalities. But the tall young man was not to be gainsaid, so she went up two flights of long dark stairs, and found a door at the top which opened into what was plainly a studio, an extremely crowded and untidy room furnished with a large work table and an upright piano, and beyond that nothing recognizable as furniture, but with heaps of books, papers and music piled on the floor and all the other flat surfaces. The only pleasing thing about the room, apart from a large black cat asleep on the piano top, was a dormer window set in the sloping roof which gave a view, through chimneypots, toward the Thames.
Should she sit down? But where? She stood for a few minutes, then picked her way through the debris on the floor to the window and l
ooked out of it for a while. But she was disturbed by the sense that she was in somebody else’s room. She must not make free. But where was Mr Revelstoke? Had he forgotten that she was to come at four? The tousled young man had said that he was at home. This was quite unlike a visit to Molloy, who was as punctual as the clock, or to Sir Benedict, whose valet was always at hand to take her at once to the great man. What had Molloy called Revelstoke? “Quite the little genius”. This looked like a genius’s room. But how to inform the genius of her presence?
She coughed. Nothing happened. She coughed again, and walked about heavily, making a noise with her feet and feeling a fool. Should she go downstairs again, and ring the bell?
No; she would play the piano. She seated herself and played what came first into her head, which was her one-time favourite, Danse Macabre. The cat roused itself, yawned at her, and slept again.
She had played for perhaps three minutes, when a voice said very loudly behind her, “Stop that bloody row!” She turned, and standing in the doorway was a man. He was utterly naked.
Nothing in Monica’s previous experience had prepared her for such a spectacle, and it was the most shocking sight, within the bounds of nature, that could have confronted her. The Thirteeners, and everybody else with whom she had ever been intimately acquainted, thought very poorly of nakedness. Courtships, even when carried to lengths which resulted in hasty and muted weddings, were always conducted fully dressed. The intimacies of married life were negotiated in the dark, under blankets. Shame about nakedness was immensely valued, as a guarantee of high character. It is true that, when in Paris, Monica had been taken to the Louvre several times by Amy Neilson, and she had learned to look at naked statuary—even the Hermaphrodite—without betraying the discomfort she felt in the presence of those stony, bare monsters; but that was art and idealized form—no preparation for what she now saw—a naked man, not especially graced with beauty, coloured in shades which ranged between pink and whitey-drab, patchily hairy, and obviously very much alive.
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