A Mixture of Frailties tst-3

by Robertson Davies

  And thus a new and unwelcome complication was introduced into her love for Giles. Monica had been brought up with a Fundamentalist’s horror of this particular interference with Nature, and with an ill-defined but strong notion that if the consequences of sin were avoided now, some triply-compounded exaction would be made at last. She faithfully did as Eccles’ friend bade her, for she feared open disgrace, but she added immeasurably to her sense of guilt by doing so.

  By the irrational account-keeping of unhappy love, the humiliations and labours which she underwent for Giles made her love him the more; and the more she loved him, the more inevitable it seemed to her that some day he must recognize the burdens which she had incurred on his account, and love her for it. He could not know the truth, and still withhold his love from her. Such indifference could not be reconciled with her estimate of his character.

  Easter fell late, and it was the beginning of March when Molloy said to her, one morning—”Got a message for you from His Nibs; wants you to study the St Matthew Passion thoroughly and in a hurry—which can’t be done, as he well knows. But he’s conducting the Oxford Bach Choir in a performance on the first Sunday in April, and he wants you to be one of his London soloists. Oh, nothing tremendous, so don’t think it! You’ll be the soprano False Witness—seven glorious bars in your part. But he thinks it’s time you got a smell of public performance, and here’s your chance. You’re to bone up on the whole job, sit in the choir, sing your bit, and get your expenses paid. Know any Bach?”

  “I’ve been through the Anna Magdalena Notebook with Revelstoke.”

  “Ever look at the Passion? Ever hear it?”

  “Never.”

  “We’ve a month; we’ll scratch the surface.”

  It seemed to Monica that they did much more than scratch the surface; she slaved at it, and Molloy even made her study the full score, so that she might have some acquaintance with classical orchestration. He forbade her jealously to seek help from Giles. “What would a fellow like that know about this sort of music?” he demanded, unreasonably. It was not Giles’ musical competence he doubted, but his moral worth. Molloy had a cult for the Passion which astonished Monica, for she had net supposed him to be a deeply religious man. “If the Bible was divinely inspired, so was the Matthew Passion,” said he; “you’ve not only to know it note for note and rest for rest—you’ve to feel it in the furthest depths of your soul.” It was in this spirit that they worked.

  The effect on Monica was deeply unsettling. As the great music took possession of her, it became a monumental rebuke to the life she was living. Without having done so consciously, she had moved far from the Thirteener faith; the altered conditions of her life shoved it into the background, and when she thought of it at all, it was the crudities of its doctrine, the sweaty strenuosities of Pastor Beamis, and the trashiness of its music which recurred to her. Not that she condemned it in such clear terms, for to have done so would have been to condemn her family, and her own former self. Loyalty was as strong in Monica as it had been when she declared to George Medwall that nothing would make her untrue or ungrateful to her home. Fifteen months was not long enough to shake that resolve, though it was long enough to give quite another colour to the situation. The Thirteener faith was like a shoddy and unbecoming dress which she had ceased to wear, but had not yet thrown out.

  The bigotries of Ma Gall, and the palaverings of Beamis were not the whole of Monica’s religious experience, however. Christian myth and Christian morality were part of the fabric of her life, dimly apprehended and taken for granted behind the externals of belief. And it is what is taken for granted in our homes, rather than what we are painstakingly taught, which supplies the bones of our faith. Monica believed, as literal truth, that her Lord had died on the cross to redeem her, Monica Gall, from the Primal Sin of Adam; a life of devotion of His will was her duty and her glory; strict adherence to the Ten Commandments was the whole moral law; her sins were fresh wounds in the body of her wounded Lord. Because of the special nature of the Thirteener faith—the notion that historic time was an illusion, and that it was possible to “make contact” with Christ by living a godly life—Christ seemed at times to be awesomely and reproachfully present and palpable, grieved because she could not break through the prison of her own imperfection and exist fully with Him. She had not been much troubled by this sense of His imminence since she was sixteen, when she had been somewhat worried by sexual fantasy, but it returned to her now, with new strength, as she worked over the pages of the Passion.

  The noble utterance of Bach wakened in her a degree of religious sensibility of which she had never previously been conscious. She had outgrown the Thirteeners and in one or two daring moments had thought of herself as finished with religion; but in the presence of this majestic faith she was an unworthy pygmy. She was overwhelmed, frightened and repentant. It seemed to her that there was something ominous and accusatory in the fact that Domdaniel had chosen her to appear as a False Witness.

  “But why?” she asked Molloy. “It says in the score that the part is to be sung by an Alto, and it’s plain enough that I’m no alto. Has there been a mistake? Should we tell him?”

  “No mistake at all,” Molloy replied. “You can sing the notes all right, and the other Witness is a very light tenor, so the balance will be better than if he was paired with some girl with a big, bosomy note. Ben knows what he’s doing; it’s that covered, chalumeau effect of your lower register that he wants—hints at something a bit spooky.”

  Revelstoke was quick to see the change in her, and it was characteristic of him that as Monica’s reluctance to yield increased, so did his demands as a lover.

  “I like you much better in this Lenten mood,” he said one afternoon, as she lay beside him, very near to tears. “For a while I had begun to doubt if you could make love in anything but the key of C Major, but this is a far, far better thing. Mr Revelstoke is pleased to report to the Bridgetower Trust that the pupil is making steady progress.”

  Wretched and guilty as Monica had felt, these words filled her with a piercing delight. If this were sin, how sweet it was!

  6

  In the front row of the Oxford Bach Choir sat Monica, soberly dressed and self-possessed, a professional in the midst of amateurs. Behind her rose the ranks of undergraduates, dons male and female, dons’ wives and daughters, which comprised the Choir; before her was the orchestra, part local and part brought down from London, and ranging in demeanour from the splendid calm of the concert-master and the aloof grandeur of the harpsichordist to the fussy eccentricity of the player of the viol da gamba. High above them, and inconveniently placed for the conductor, was the organ-loft, into which the ripieno choir of boys had been packed. The Sheldonian Theatre was crowded with a university audience, so much odder and frowsier than a London audience, so young in the main, so long of hair, so fortified with scores of the Passion. Monica was conscious that many eyes had found her, and that she was looking very well. And why not? Had she not been made free of the room in the Divinity School where the London artists made ready for the performance? Had not Miss Evelyn Burnaby, the great soprano, spoken to her in the pleasantest terms, when Domdaniel had introduced them, and asked for help with a difficult zipper on the back of her gown? Monica felt every inch a professional, and concealed her surprise that the Sheldonian Theatre was not a theatre at all, as she understood the word, but a kind of arena which looked as though it might be used for some sort of solemn, academic circus. The ceiling was beautifully painted, and she had to check herself from gaping upward at it; everywhere in the building there were odd little balconies, pulpits and thrones; part of the audience was very high up, almost under the roof. Altogether a wonderful place in which to make one’s first, real professional appearance as a singer. Nothing at all to do with the Heart and Hope Quartet.

  It was five minutes past eleven, and by that curious instinct which audiences have, silence fell suddenly and Sir Benedict Domdaniel, elegant in morning d
ress, walked to his place, raised his baton, and the introduction to the Passion, rising majestically from its first deep pedal-point, began. Monica’s knowledge of this music was intimate but remote, for she had heard it only as it sounded on Molloy’s piano and her own. She had rehearsed once with Domdaniel in London, again with a piano, but she had no conception of how it would sound with the heavy forces of organ, double orchestra and continue, and the double choir. The mighty, ordered grandeur came from everywhere about her, and she seemed to shake and vibrate with it. It was a glorious and alarming experience. In her capacity as a very minor soloist she rose and sat with the choir, and sang with the sopranos, keeping her voice well down, both that she might not make mistakes through lack of rehearsal, and that its superior quality should not singularize it among the amateur choristers. Standing in the midst of these voices and instruments, she was conscious as never before of the power of music to impose order and form upon the vastest and most intractable elements in human experience.

  She was conscious also, and for the first time, of why Domdaniel was regarded as a great man in the world of music. He conducted admirably, of course, marshalling the singers and players, succouring the weak and subduing the too-strong, but all that was to be expected. It was in his capacity to demand more of his musicians than might have been thought prudent, or even possible—to insist that people eased themselves, and to help them to do it—that his greatness appeared. With a certainty that was itself modest (for there was nothing of “spurring on the ranks” about it) he took upon himself the task of making this undistinguished choir give a performance of the Passion which was worthy of a great university. It was not technically of the first order, but the spirit was right. He had been a great man to Monica, for he could open new windows for her, letting splendid light into her life: but now she saw that he could do so for all these clever people, who thought themselves lucky to be allowed to hang on the end of his stick. Without being in the least a showy or self-absorbed conductor he was an imperious, irresistible and masterful one.

  At one o’clock the performance halted, to be resumed again at half-past two. As soon as she left her place in the choir Monica was claimed by John Scott Ripon who bore her off to the George restaurant for lunch.

  “Poached salmon and hock,” said he. “Fish is the only possible thing during the Passion, don’t you agree? And hock, to keep your pipes clear for your solo bit—just a single glass, because we don’t want you to be not only false but drunk. Now tell me all your news. How’s the ineffable Giles? Still the same old Satanic genius?”

  “He’s well. Why do you inquire about him in that sneering way?”

  “Well, Monny, you’re surely the last person to ask that, considering how he behaved toward you at Christmas. I’ve been doing a bit of research on him. Reading Lantern. Dreadful muck, most of it. Who’s this twit Tuke? I mean, how second-rate can you get? But Giles’ stuff is very good—very good, that’s to say, considering how old hat all that sort of thing is now.”

  “Old hat? You think it’s old-fashioned?”

  “Monny, it’s not as good as old-fashioned. It’s just plain out-of-date. All that preciosity belongs to the ‘twenties. The modern line for little mags and reviews is frightful dyspeptic anger and working-class indignation and despair and shameless gut-flopping self-pity—real Badly Behaved Child stuff. Lantern belongs to a much earlier, more romantic time, the Wicked Twenties, when every Englishman of the intelligentsia was ashamed of himself because he wasn’t a Frenchman; it belongs to the era when chaps boozed on absinthe, when they could get it, and wished they had the guts to take drugs. No, Lantern’s an oddity; I suppose there’s a public for it among chronic harkers-back and hankerers-after, but it is not going to attract anything really first-rate. Except for Giles. He can really write. Of course outsmarting the critics is always good fun, and popular, too. Nobody likes critics, and I seriously doubt if there is an artist of any kind worth his salt anywhere who wouldn’t poison every critic if he could. I mean, why not? You create something—it’s your baby. Then along comes some chap, quite uninvited, and points out to the world what a puny, rickety little shrimp it is. Of course you want to kill him. Critic-baiting is very good fun, and they’re easy game. But Giles does it in a rather old-fashioned style, all the same. He’s a man of the ‘twenties. A Satanic genius, as I said.”

  “You mean he poses?”

  “Certainly. Don’t we all? He just does it a bit more obviously and consistently than most.”

  “You’re quite wrong, Johnny. His music isn’t a pose. It’s very fine. And that’s not just my own opinion.”

  “Oh, quite. I don’t deny it for an instant. You saw what Aspinwall said about his broadcast piece? When Aspinwall takes him seriously, it’s important. Aspinwall is one critic that Giles can’t make a fool of. But that’s what’s so silly about Giles; he’s obviously a real genius—whether first, second or third-rate I don’t know, but certainly more than just a competent chap. But he has to act the genius, as well. And the way he plays the role isn’t the modern way. And maybe he isn’t play-acting. Ceinwen says that all that bad temper and sardonic laughter and nonsense is quite natural to him. It would be hard luck to look like a fake when you were simply being yourself, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’ve been seeing Ceinwen?”

  “Not seeing. Writing. But I am going to see her in the Easter vacation. Her father has asked me to stay for a bit.”

  “Is it serious, Johnny?”

  “Yes, it is, really. But I don’t know—I can’t imagine her in Louisiana, standing with her back against the wall of the family shoe factory.”

  Monica found herself in the role of confidante, and being young she had little patience with it, unless she were given an opportunity to confide in return. It was over the coffee that she told Ripon about herself and Giles, and said a little about the religious scruple which was troubling her. His reply had that clarity, objectivity and reasonableness which is possible only to advisers who have completely missed the point.

  “If it makes you unhappy, break it off. You’re a charmer, you know, Monny, in your quiet way; it’s a quality you have of looking as if you could say a devil of a lot if you chose, but had decided not to—a kind of controlled awareness; so you don’t have to behave as if Giles was the only pebble on the beach. You’ll have dozens of chaps after you. What if he is a genius? Being a genius doesn’t excuse being a bastard. Not that we should be too hard on him. I mean, how would you like to be the son of Dolly Hopkin-Griffiths, who doesn’t know one note from another, and wants you to settle down to honest work? And I’m sure he hates old Griff, though Ceinwen says not. But it’s a Hamlet situation, as I told you at Christmas. And what he’s taking out on you is his resentment against Dolly, for being unfaithful to Daddy.

  “But the religious business—I’d pay it no mind, if I were you. You’re an artist, Monny. You’ll have to shake off that Fundamentalist stuff. If you are of a religious temperament, be religious like old Bach, not like a grocer with a hundred thousand recollections of short-weight chewing at his vestigial conscience. No, no; live in the large, Monny; dare greatly; sin nobly.” Johnny had finished the bottle of hock, and was shouting a little.

  No, Johnny simply did not understand. Be religious like old Bach! As the afternoon session of the Passion got under way the religion of old Bach seemed more than Monica could bear. The pathos of the Prologue to the Second Part worked searchingly within her, as the voice of the contralto soloist (Miss Emmie Heinkl, herself, if the truth were known, the mistress of a director of the Midland Bank) repeated—

  Ah, how shall I find an answer

  To assure my anxious soul?

  Ah! where is my Saviour gone?

  Quickly followed the recitative in the Court of Caiaphas, then the chorale begging for defence against evil, and then—Christ’s Silence Before Caiaphas, and the False Witnesses! She could not stand; she could not sing; she was unworthy, and what might be forgiven in others could nev
er be forgiven in her! Terror seized her. She must not sing; she was unworthy!

  But when the moment came she stood, she sang—and sang well—and sat again. For the remainder of the Passion her head throbbed, she was in misery, and she feared that she might burst into tears.

  She was surprised when, after the performance, Sir Benedict offered her a seat in his car for the drive back to London; she was still more surprised to find that no one else was to drive with them.

  “You were very nervous,” said he, as they sped toward Abingdon.

  “I didn’t think I could utter.”

  “But you did. That’s Molloy’s training. That’s being a pro.”

  “I was afraid of the music.”

  “Well you might be. So was I.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. Not of the choir or the orchestra, or anything like that, of course. But I never conduct the Passion or the B Minor without a sensation that the old Cantor is listening. It’s not the kind of thing I readily admit to, because if publicity people got hold of it, the result could be very sticky. But I’m telling it to you, because this was your first public performance of any consequence, and I think it may be helpful to you. Don’t make sloppy nonsense of it, but remember, sometimes, when you sing, that if the composer were listening you’d want him to be satisfied with you. Don’t presume to guess what his answer might be. Don’t conjure up silly visions of him nodding his peruke and saying ‘Well done!’ But use it as an exercise in humility. That’s what all of us who perform in public must pray for at dawn, at high noon, and at sunset—humility.”