Rancid Pansies (29 page)

The last few months have whizzed by, and in a pleasurable way that reminds me how grim my life was for so much of this past year. From the moment Joan and Marta moved out and I had this house to myself things began to settle back into those half-forgotten routines that do so much to preserve one’s
sanity
. Cooking and singing, to name but two.

The weasel (and putative
capo
) Benedetti found the perfect house for Marta. At least it’s perfect from my point of view, being several hillsides away from Sciupapiedi. In the light of recent experience I can now say I don’t think it’s healthy for famous collaborators to live in each other’s pockets. I can’t believe Arthur Sullivan periodically moved himself into the Gilberts’ spare room for months at a stretch, nor that
mercurial
Mr Procter used to burst into the Gambles’ marital
bedchamber
in the small hours with a brilliant new formula for soap powder. It’s true that back in June I said proximity was important when a librettist and a composer were writing an opera. But I meant availability rather than actual cheek-
by-jowl
propinquity, especially if the jowls are Marta’s. To be plainer still, after enough years on this planet we all of us tend to draw up lists of Things To Be Avoided At All Costs. Books whose title includes the word ‘Joy’, for example; members of Amnesty International; any product with the word ‘Team’ on it. To these I can add: sharing a house with a Voynovian
composer
and her nicotine-stained girlfriend.

And yet all this being said, it has to be admitted that Marta has done brilliantly. In early August she sent Max an
electronic
file of her score and he began raving about it soon
afterwards
. Within a fortnight he had taken the decision to perform it at the Haysel in the run-up to Christmas
this year.
Obviously this was prompted by his impresario’s intuition that he is on to a winner but I think certain other considerations influenced him, such as his own Colchester Symphony
Orchestra’s
availability. There was also the unexpected slot in the otherwise tight schedule of Tizia Sgrizzi-Pulmoni. Yes! TS-P herself, one of the great sopranos of today, is to première the part of Diana in my very own opera! That at least will
guarantee
it gets attention. Incredible luck, really. Max’s first
suggestion
for the role was Dame Evelinne Cummeragunja, but I assume he was joking even though I realise she’s an old friend of his. Never mind that she’s really a contralto. The fact is that Dame Evelinne’s being squat, black and proudly Aboriginal would make her task of convincingly impersonating the late Princess of Wales unusually taxing. But TS-P, being both tall and quite slender, will be perfection. The Di is cast, one could say.

The part of Prince Charles is written for a tenor, and Max originally tipped another old friend of his, Markus Strephon, for the role. He would have done marvellously, but within a matter of weeks a tragedy occurred that briefly turned into a major news item when he and a companion disappeared while walking in the Scottish Highlands. As you will doubtless recall, Strephon was eventually discovered after four days on the freezing, mist-shrouded slopes of Glen Gould having lost three fingers to frostbite as well as his mind and his friend. None of these has yet been recovered. It’s a real tragedy: Markus had a lovely and expressive voice with acting talent to match. He also looked wonderful in a kilt, as anyone will
testify
who saw him from the front stalls in the Covent Garden revival of
Bruce and the Spider
, let alone from the orchestra pit. Never mind: Max has managed to get Brian Tydfil instead. It’s a slight pity that this celebrated Welshman (‘The Sweet Singer of Wysiwyg’) is really a light baritone and Marta may need to modify some of the Prince’s reedier outbursts, but this can only add much-needed dignity to the part.

Anyway, the signing-up of singers of such calibre ought to convey how seriously Max is endorsing this opera even if one
hadn’t already appreciated how his opening the Haysel for a special winter season – no matter how short – is itself an extraordinary new departure. But obviously he thinks he can guarantee audiences over the festive season, which these days is increasingly turning into the restive season with secular, sated people casting about for something to do that won’t involve either children or Ryanair. When Max became so enthusiastic in August it never occurred to me that it mightn’t take at least a year before the opera was performed – if ever. I suppose I was thinking like a writer, geared to book
publishers
’ long lead times. But evidently producing an opera can be done in as little time as it sometimes takes to compose, always provided that enough weight is thrown behind it. So really, the five months or so between Marta’s finishing the score of
Princess Diana
and its scheduled first performance is ample time to ensure the production goes smoothly. The only thing Max wants changed is my hard-hitting chorus of amputee children in ‘Sing a song of jubilance / For unexploded
ordnance
’. He feels that apart from questions of taste (
that
old thing again!) it will be difficult to find enough mutilated kids who can reliably carry a tune.

An entire autumn is plenty of time for them to put together a collection of suitable dresses for TS-P to wear, whether by scouring Oxfam shops or by running up copies. The iconic ‘Elvis dress’, as worn by my late bathroom’s statuette, is one of those that will obviously have to be copied. Luckily, la Tizia is remarkably slender for an operatic soprano so the dress need not be of dimensions more suitable for its namesake. Dame Evelinne, of course, is built like an oil barrel and I simply can’t imagine how Max could ever have considered her, no matter how fleetingly, for the part. The time will also be needed to assemble a selection of boys’ and youths’ mannequins which will play Diana’s two sons at various ages. Probably they can be borrowed from Selfridges or hired from whoever makes such things. The most realistic child mannequins I ever saw were in a Tokyo display window: just for a moment I thought
they were little performance artists. But I think a William and Harry who look Japanese might be contentious. It would
certainly
make people wonder who their father was. Harry’s
ginger
hair is bad enough as it is. The two mannequins will stand in the background fetchingly dressed in school uniforms,
rugger
shorts, etc. as they get progressively older. Their role is to be silent, unaccusing spectators of their mother’s via crucis and, occasionally, of her via cruris also.

It’s awful how obsessed I’ve become by production details that strictly speaking are none of my business. I wake in the night, suddenly worrying about where they’ll find all the
cameras
to hang around the necks of the paparazzi for their big vindictive chorus in the final act. It’s going to be highly
effective
because Marta has set it as
Sprechgesang
, as used by Schönberg and Berg, so the paparazzi neither quite sing nor speak but declaim with rhythmic menace:

It’s unfortunate that only the most musically literate will notice that Marta’s orchestral bass line quotes the fugal motif
Laß ihn kreuzigen
– ‘Let him be crucified’ – from the St Matthew Passion. But I’m sure no one will miss the haunting sense of threat and impending tragedy. Anyway, how they’ll get hold of the paparazzis’ cameras is neither here nor there, it’s just an example of the sort of detail that occupies my
sleeping
as well as waking thoughts. And here I must admit that Max, Marta and Adrian have all given me stern orders
not
to appear in Crendlesham – and preferably not even in the UK – before December 12th at the earliest. They evidently think I
might interfere and pick holes and generally faff around in a state of high anxiety and drive everyone nuts, and they’re
perfectly
correct.

In the meantime I have made sure of giving Derek plenty of warning. If he is not there for my triumph on the first night I can’t guarantee to keep silent indefinitely about certain
matters
. The concept of ‘for old times’ sake’ will not necessarily be proof against his treachery. He knows exactly what I mean even if it conveys nothing to anybody else. So I expect him to be present and correct at the Haysel Hall on December 20th. ‘Correct’ here means bringing the right person if he brings anyone at all. His current Mr Wonderful, the Russian pianist Pavel Taneyev, fits that bill perfectly. Some awful pick-up he’s met at work does not. My grandmother used to describe an aunt of hers using the conspiratorial code NOOTTDD. This stood for ‘Not out of the top drawer, dear’ and referred to unsuitable suitors and the like. Although it’s in Jermyn Street, Derek’s barber’s salon Blowjob attracts a certain residue of customers who most decidedly are not out of society’s top drawer. I’m sure you will follow me if I say the phrase ‘bottom drawer’ describes rather more than just their social standing, and I doubt if I’m telling unheard tales out of school if I observe that Derek has a regrettable taste for such low life. As I say, if he turns up to my première with one of those creatures on his arm he will live to regret it, but turn up he must. I don’t mind admitting his clicking with Taneyev has been a sore point with me. I mean, what on earth can a dazzling pianist of
international
stature possibly see in Derek, bubbly company though he sometimes can be? Well, if Derek thinks he alone has collected a free pass into the upper echelons of musical society he’s got another think coming on December 20th.

Somehow the time goes by. Since I’m now living out of town I no longer get the paparazzi treatment myself in the way I did back in the hellish days of late spring and early summer. Not that the cult up at Le Roccie has diminished. Quite the contrary, as I discover in November when my curiosity grows
too great and Joan and I drive up to take a look. Marta has already left for the UK to sort out a problem with the
orchestral
parts before rehearsals begin. Needing a disguise, I borrow a beret from Joan that smells of terriers and add a pair of dark glasses and a small brown moustache backed by sticky tape. This was brought me as a joke by Adrian when he came out in the summer. I think it originally came from a dressing-up set owned by Josh. It is unquestionably effective and the anonymity it confers greatly outweighs its hideousness. The complete kit makes me look like someone in a photograph taken in a Paris night club in the late 1950s: probably the man who’s supplying William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Alan Ginsberg (at the same table) with their hashish. At any rate I don’t remotely resemble the suave and rather-too-well-known figure of Gerald Samper, the atheist who has unwittingly founded a local religion.

In the intervening months Le Roccie has been transformed. A steel barrier has been erected right across the edge of the precipice and the ad hoc shrine has, exactly as I predicted, turned into a fully grown grotto. This is now a considerable structure assembled out of large chunks of rock, in appearance somewhere between a stylised cave and the Hollywood Bowl. Inside it is about the size of a spacious living room. There is a back-lit altar supporting a careful hierarchy of images. On a small wooden plinth is a conventional brass cross. Behind and above this is one of those all-purpose faux-Renaissance
pictures
of the Virgin Mary with stars around her head. And in front of the cross, lower but even more eye-catching, stands a foot-high statue of Princess Diana. She is wearing her Elvis dress and the image seems to have been inspired by that
infamous
Franklin Mint statuette, but with her arms extended and wearing a manic come-hither smile. This arm gesture is not easy to read. It’s less a papal-style blessing and more like
something
glimpsed by strobe light in a disco. However, the altar cloth is well strewn with roses – some wilted, some fresh,
others
costly fakes – so whatever the ensemble says to people they
apparently treat it with reverence. There are some batteredlooking supplicants hanging around as though waiting for something to happen: a materialisation, perhaps, or just a voice from a cloud.

In a prominent position on the back wall, lit by a small spot, is a rectangular gold frame containing some lines handwritten in illuminated black lettering as though on parchment and
surrounded
by swirls of coloured flowers and acanthus leaves. They are in English, with an Italian translation beneath. If they are not the work of Baggy and Dumpy I should be depressed to think anyone else capable of them:

‘Bleedin’ arseholes,’ murmurs Joan incredulously in her forthright naval manner as we go back outside. I feel incapable of adding anything to this, not least because the sight of my old pear tree brings a lump to my throat as now being almost the only surviving landmark of my old property. Its
autumn-stripped
branches are even more humanly laden than before with twirling notes tied on with ribbon, fragments of cloth, cabbalistic signs, little dangling objects and mildewing stuffed toys. Gone is the stout wooden fence beyond it that I put up with my own hands a few years ago to demarcate my
property
from Marta’s. Thirty metres away her house, newly exposed, has acquired the faintly heroic, hectic look of a patient putting a brave face on things after a punishing course of chemo. The doors and windows have been painted dark green, the roof scraped clear of moss and some bright copper guttering fixed around it, but it still looks unmistakably like Marta’s hovel. Behind it, visible through the leafless twigs and bushes, some new concrete columns sprouting rusty tufts of steel reinforcing stand in what was recently her paddock.