The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  We take a stroll through the garden. She indicates places where alterations have been made since I was last here, and talks about Jonathan’s plan to convert one of the outbuildings into a restaurant. Only local produce will be used; Helen will manage the business. “An enterprising couple,” she remarks. We go as far as the little lake with the yew tree and hellebores and bleeding hearts—the “glade of gloom,” as young Imogen named it, she tells me. I admire the glade. I assume that we will now return to the house, and that I will leave soon after, but she produces a small surprise. “I am going to walk a little farther,” she announces, turning to face me. She thanks me for the visit, for my “loyalty.” Smiling, she shakes my hand and says: “Well, on we go.” The dismissal has taken thirty seconds. The meaning of the handshake is unmistakeable: There will be no need for you to come here again.

  •

  Imogen imagined the ideal final scene: her mother would administer the releasing dose on a Sunday morning, so that the church bells would be the last thing that Imogen would hear. We studied a selection of exit lines, genuine and apocryphal. “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life” was one that she particularly admired, but she decided to compose her own: “No bloody way I’m doing this again,” she would murmur, as the bells chimed.

  •

  Legend has it that Mary Magdalene, having been set adrift in a boat that had neither a rudder nor sails, with her brother Lazarus and their sister Martha and several other followers of Jesus Christ, came ashore on the coast of Gaul at the place where the town of Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer is now situated. Soon after, Mary withdrew to a mountain cave, now known as La Sainte-Baume, where she was to spend her last thirty years in prayer, contemplation and penance. Maximinus, another occupant of the rudderless boat, became the first bishop of Aix. When Mary was near death, angels transported her to Maximinus, in whose arms she died; he interred her body at the place of her death, which became known as Saint-Maximin. Eleven hundred years later, monks in Vézelay claimed to be in possession of her relics, but in 1279 the saint’s remains were discovered in Saint-Maximin by Charles of Salerno. The Magdalene had appeared to him in a vision, telling him that her body would be found in a coffin marked with her name, with a green shoot on her tongue and an amphora of bloody soil from the foot of the cross beside her. The skin of her forehead would be uncorrupted, because Christ had kissed her on the forehead in the garden of Gethsemane. All this was duly discovered, on December 9th, 1279. Construction of the basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume began soon after.

  According to the Golden Legend of Jacobus da Varagine, the Magdalene was a wealthy woman; her family weren’t merely residents of Magdala—they owned the whole town, and a piece of Jerusalem too. That’s why she fell into sin, I told Imogen, as we looked out over the vast garden of the Gough family’s home. Throughout her years of penance, the Magdalene was lifted up by angels, “at every hour canonical,” to receive heavenly nourishment. “Heavenly nourishment sounds good,” said Imogen. Eating was no longer a pleasure for her. I continued to read. The figure of Mary Magdalene is a conflation of several different stories; the penitent prostitute is not in the Gospels. And if all the relics of Mary Magdalene were what they were claimed to be, the woman would have had no fewer than two heads and eight arms. The arm in Fécamp, I read, was damaged when Saint Hugh of Lincoln took a bite out of it; one is permitted to ingest the Eucharist, argued Hugh, so why not the flesh of the Magdalene? “Please tell me you’re making this up,” Imogen said.

  •

  Saint Teresa: “The pain was so sharp that it made me moan many times; and so great was the sweetness caused by this intense pain that I would never wish to lose it...It is no bodily pain, but spiritual, though the body has a share in it—a great share, indeed.”

  •

  That stupendous afternoon in Sainte-Chapelle—standing in the indigo light of the stained glass, Imogen remarked that she imagined that the spectacle of this building might be enough to make some doubters wonder. We were looking at the window that shows the rediscovery of the relics of Christ and their relocation to Paris, carried by the saintly King Louis, in penitential garb. I mentioned Pascal’s wager: if you win, you win an infinite and infinitely happy life; if you lose, you lose nothing.

  “So you then start acting as if you believe in God?” she asked.

  “Or you could say that you apply the faculty of reason, then start living a Christian life.”

  “In the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s nonsense?”

  “One could argue that the idea of evidence is of no weight. The supreme entity cannot be confined to our categories of thought.”

  “Well, I could manage the acting,” she said. “Repentance is the bit I’d struggle with.”

  •

  According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the first sect that is known to have made use of images of Christ were the Carpocratians, a Gnostic group that took its name from Carpocrates of Alexandria. The Carpocratians claimed that one of these images of Christ was a portrait created by Pontius Pilate. It seems that they also venerated images of Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, among others. The earliest account of the Carpocratians appears in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus (c. 130–202), in which he alleges that they practised sorcery and indulged in licentious behaviour. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–210) similarly accuses the Carpocratians of immorality. At the agapai or love-feasts of the Carpocratians, claims Clement, the participants “have intercourse where they will and with whom they will.” Epiphanius of Salamis, writing two hundred years later, repeats the allegation. Carpocrates, he writes, taught his followers “to perform every obscenity and every sinful act.” The justification for these orgies, supposedly, was that the Carpocratians believed that in order to ascend to heaven the imprisoned soul must pass through every possible condition of bodily life. It was in order to release the soul from the cycle of reincarnation that they gave themselves up to “all those things which we dare not either speak nor hear of.”

  •

  William glum: Suzanne has reverted to the mid-morning delivery time; thus no mother of Tilly. He is inclined to take this as an adverse judgement: evidently he did not impress. No reference to the missing friend was made by Suzanne, nor by William. He has to find a way of speaking to her again, with nobody else around, he tells me. Perhaps he should simply come right out with it and ask Suzanne if she could pass on his number. “What would you do?” he asks me. The assumption seems to be that anyone who managed to attract a woman of Imogen’s calibre must know a thing or two about strategy. I counsel patience. He has felt all along, from first sight, that it was going to happen. “It will, in its own time,” I tell him. William considers the advice. “Yes, you’re right,” he decides. Two minutes later, he has another idea: next time he has time off in the middle of the day, he could station himself for an hour or two within sight of Suzanne’s flat. Many people would be inclined to describe that as stalking, I advise.

  •

  Last year’s visit to Imogen’s mother—fine weather; coffee on the terrace, at the iron table. An elegant old coffee pot, delicate cups, a tiny jug of cream, petits-fours, borne on a black and gold lacquer tray. Seated against the backdrop of the house, she presented a superb appearance. A grey cashmere sweater, roll-neck, was combined with black slacks; on a wrist hung a loose chain-link gold bracelet; the make-up was subtle and perfect—a little enhancement of the lips, lashes and brows, and some high-quality creams for the complexion, I imagined. If ever the fire alarm went off, she’d touch up her hair and lipstick before leaving the building, Imogen once said. In the evening there was some function in the village that she was obliged to attend, she told me. “It will be tiresome,” she said. “But one should not withdraw into one’s shell.” We talked about the responsibilities that came with the house and her position. Then she said, in a tone of instruction: “But you know, David, every woman has to be an actress.” She smiled as if a camera had been pointed at her, and made a small
supple-wristed flourish of her hand. For a moment, she resembled her daughter too closely.

  •

  For Imogen’s mother, the films of Antoine Vermeiren exemplify traits of French culture with which she had no patience whatever, notably an over-indulgence of artists who seem to believe that they are under some sort of obligation to shock. Her daughter’s attachment to Vermeiren was explicable chiefly as an over-extended protest against the values that her English schooling had for some reason failed to inculcate. In itself, acting was an inappropriate activity for a person of Imogen’s background, though as a semi-Frenchwoman her mother could of course appreciate that cinema was capable of being an art form, albeit an art form of a minor order. Perhaps she would have been able to come to terms with her daughter’s career had she been an actress in the style of Grace Kelly, said Imogen—someone soignée and enigmatic; dressed by Dior; the type of actress who would look perfectly at home in a scene set in an opera house or a Mayfair gallery. It was at the Royal Opera House that her parents had met: Gerald, having stepped out into the street to clear his head of the tedium that had accumulated during the preceding hour, found himself standing in close proximity to Charlotte, who similarly was accompanying her mother that evening. He offered a light for her cigarette; a conversation ensued, in which Gerald, perceiving at once that this attractive young woman was something of a connoisseuse of the ballet, gladly assumed a chiefly receptive role. With little difficulty he evinced a more positive attitude to the evening’s entertainment than he had felt until this moment. She disclosed her place of employment; this too signified refinement. At the next opportunity Gerald paid a visit to the gallery in which Charlotte’s elegance was utilised in a vaguely secretarial capacity. Though possessing no more knowledge of the contemporary visual arts than could reasonably be expected of any young woman of her class and expensive education, she was, as photographs attest, a striking presence. Potential customers liked to look at her; her face, her manner, helped to put them in a spending frame of mind, or at least in a mood to linger, as Gerald did.

  •

  Some of what I saw at the maison de maître excited me. This must be confessed. Looking at people whom I did not know—this could be arousing. Watching Imogen, however, there was torment; but also admiration, even wonder at such abandonment. Perhaps I was witnessing a kind of courage, I told myself.

  •

  Imogen’s gaze at the maison de maître: as if looking up from the depths of a pit into which she had fallen, and seeing the light of the sky. The same gaze on waking, one morning near the end.

  •

  As I’m falling asleep, an idea presents itself: of people preserved on the page, lustreless, like pallid specimens in formaldehyde. The idea expires a moment later. Words do not preserve the person; they are not held in a colourless medium of language. Another image arises: an object calcifying in a stream of mineral-rich water; a bottle becoming encased in stone. In the stream of memory and retelling, the reality of the past is transfigured. The image of the bottle does not satisfy. Better, perhaps, to think of the restoration of a building. Bit by bit, the old fabric is replenished. Stonework is renewed, damaged glass repaired, carvings are recut, rotten timber replaced. In time, little of the original remains; it becomes impossible to tell what is new and what is old. Thus each recollection of a moment, of a conversation, reinforces some part of what is being remembered, and in the process of reinforcement something is replaced. With each retelling, the past becomes more solid and less true. Then, on the brink of sleep, another image—the body-casts at Pompeii. Words take the place of the dead, filling their vacancy, just as plaster poured into the voids within the hardened ash took on the forms of the dead of Pompeii, whom we can almost imagine alive.

  •

  William joyful. This afternoon, his day off, he was sitting on the seafront, reading his book, when suddenly he had a strange sensation, as if the pressure of the air had changed. The sound of his pulse had become more prominent than the voices of the passing people and the gulls. He looked up, for an explanation. He saw Tilly first, twenty yards away, running, and then her mother in mock pursuit, ten yards back, making the empty buggy veer from side to side, as if it were out of control. When might such an opportunity come again? William waved, and Tilly’s mother saw him immediately. She raised a hand, but the chase could not be abandoned; they passed him, and it seemed that the wave would be the end of it. But then a swerve, and a call to Tilly, who turned and came to her mother, to take her hand and clamber aboard. They came up to him. “How are you today, Tilly?” William enquired, and by way of answer the little girl showed him her arm, adorned with a bracelet of pink plastic beads, a gift from her mother that morning. William complimented Tilly on her jewellery and footwear. Behind him, an ice-cream van was parked. “Would Tilly be allowed—?” he asked her mother, indicating the van. “Yes!” shouted Tilly; already the child was his ally. Ice cream in hand, Tilly wandered; her eating technique was beguiling—a precise quarter-turn of the cone for every lick. “She is very methodical,” her mother commented, before asking: “What are you reading?” William handed over the book—the mysteries of Stonehenge. The subject appeared to be of interest to her; she read the back cover, then began to flick through the pages. “Jenna,” she said, interrupting the browse to hold out a hand. “Not working today?” she asked. Within a couple of minutes there was something that William had to say. He knew that it might be better not to say it, but the words were inside him and they could not be held down; it was as if he were holding his breath and the only way to get oxygen into his lungs was to get rid of the words. So he told her, “completely out of the blue,” that he very much liked the colour of the shirt she was wearing, which he did—it was the colour of thunderclouds. Jenna blinked, and frowned, and looked at him. “Are you trying to pick me up?” she said. “No,” he told her, which was the truth, but it would not be possible, at that moment, to explain why it was true. On some other day, with enough time, it would be possible; but he was afraid, now, that there would be no other day. “Really?” said Jenna. She was looking at him steadily; she might be annoyed; she might not. “Really,” he answered, laying a hand over his heart. And she said, narrowing her eyes, as if about to threaten him: “Oh, go on. Give it a go.”

  •

  Even after Imogen had gone to Paris, she marked this day, Francesca’s birthday. The year of her departure for Paris, she sent a shirt. It was an amazing colour, Francesca reported—a metallic blue-green, or maybe more a greyish ash blue. Imogen had enclosed a postcard. On the front was a picture by an artist called Nattier, whose penchant for this soft green-blue-grey was such that his name has been given to it. On the postcard, Imogen wrote that the young lady depicted on the other side was known for her “great appetite for learning.” The card came from the Louvre, so the painting must have been Nattier’s portrait of Marie Adélaïde, a daughter of Louis XV. Madame Campan refers in her Memoirs to Adélaïde’s “immoderate thirst for knowledge”; she refers also to Adélaïde’s bad temper and domineering manner. In the absence of any eligible monarchs or high-born heirs, Marie Adélaïde preferred not to marry. Madame Adélaïde, as she was known, “found solace in music,” I have read.

  •

  The costume designer for Le Grand Concert de la Nuit made effective use of Nattier’s blue. It’s the colour of Agamédé’s dress, the one on which she is lying when she looks up from the bed and smiles, having seen in the shadows of the coffered ceiling what appears, to us, to be a beetle moving in a hole in the timber. We see a movement that is perhaps a twitching of the beetle’s wings. Slowly the camera zooms into the ceiling, and we see that the beetle is a human eye; the young Guignan. At the third or fourth blink the angle is reversed, to show the coupled bodies: the rough reddened back of the Count; the pale skin of Agamédé’s legs against the blue-green velvet.

  •

  Today, the long-awaited call. With great regret, it has been agreed that council funding for the Sanderso
n-Perceval Museum is an expense that can no longer be justified. “In an ideal world we would not countenance such a decision, but we can no longer afford to maintain the cultural resources that we have hitherto provided for the city.” Closure will not be immediate, however, and might even be prevented. Third parties are being invited to submit plans “for the future operation of the museum.” These are hypothetical third parties.

  •

  The only photo I have of myself with Imogen is one taken by Francesca, in a restaurant in Rome. She is leaning towards me, with her head resting on my shoulder; there may be an element of parody in the pose, but Imogen’s affection for Francesca is evident in the smile; but my smile could be that of a man who had been in the dentist’s chair only an hour earlier. There is one other image: we appear together in a few dozen frames of Devotion. At 49.25, a servant opens a door for the lady of the house—the most evanescent of cameo roles, my reward for assistance given. Freeze the film at 49.27 and there we are, momentarily, her face and mine in a single image.

  •

  Text from William: A lot going on. She’s great, the kid’s great, everything’s great. You have to meet her.

  September