Swan Song (10 page)

Adam said nothing – there was, indeed, nothing to say – but sat as rigid as if he had been confronted by the Gorgon's head. The car rushed on towards Headington. It was a small, red, battered and extremely noisy sports car; a chilled-looking female nude in chromium projected from its radiator cap; across its bonnet were scrawled in large white letters the words
LILY CHRISTINE III
.

‘I bought her,' said Fen, removing both hands from the wheel in order to search for a cigarette, ‘from an undergraduate who was sent down. But of course she was laid up during the war, and I don't think it's improved her.' He shook his head, sombrely. ‘Things keep falling out of the engine,' he explained.

The three-quarters of an hour which elapsed before they arrived at High Wycombe, Adam occupied with repenting, in some detail, the moral imperfections of his past life. By the time they had left the main road, and were climbing the hill which leads to Amersham, he was sufficiently resigned to be capable of conversation again.

‘Tell me,' said Fen, ‘is Charles Shorthouse married?'

‘No,' Adam replied. ‘He lives in what is reputed to be sin' – at this point Fen's negotiation of a particularly acute bend aroused in him afresh the fear of eternal torment – ‘I mean,
reputedly
he lives in
sin
with a woman called Beatrix Thorn. She is not attractive,' Adam added unchivalrously. ‘She is not attractive at all. But composers have a way of getting hold of the most appalling women. I can never quite see why it is. Look at the Princess Wittgenstein. Look at Mile Recio. Look at Cosima. Look at –'

‘All right,' said Fen. ‘I accept the general proposition.' He changed gear with a sound like a dragon in torment. ‘Then those two make up the ménage?'

‘There's also an amanuensis. I forget his name. He does the piano scores of the operas. And then there are hangers-on of one sort and another.' Adam frowned, in the effort of giving definition to this woolly asseveration. ‘Kept critics; admirers; parasites.'

‘What would you say was Shorthouse's standing as a composer?'

‘Pretty high,' Adam admitted reluctantly. ‘On a par with Walton and Vaughan Williams, anyway. Whether he deserves it is another matter; I'm inclined to think not. He's a kind of Salieri to their Mozart – or a Meyerbeer to their Wagner.'

‘And he disliked Edwin?'

‘Very much. As far as I know, there wasn't any special reason for it, though; a purely temperamental antipathy. They saw very little of one another, in any case.'

The road widened. A sand-pit flashed by on their right hand, dark ochre under the grey sky. They entered a beech-wood, dank and cavernous, the ground carpeted with rotting leaves. Through tangles of briar and dead bracken there were glimpses of deep dells. By a deserted, rickety cottage, its windows blank and its hedges untrimmed, they turned off to the left.

‘Nearly there,' Fen murmured.

They came out of the wood, and a few hundred yards farther on arrived at a tall gate with an old lodge beside it.

‘This is it,' said Adam. ‘It's a sharp turn,' he announced with considerably more urgency, ‘and the ground's very wet . . .'

A grinding shock accompanied their entry into the drive. In Adam's imagination the flames of the pit crackled with horrifying imminence. But Fen did not stop; the flames receded.

‘It's only a wing,' said Fen without much perturbation. ‘Goodness, what a clatter it's making. I suppose it must have worked loose.'

Creating a din like a gang of riveters on Clydeside, they sped up the short gravel drive. In another moment the house came in view.

It was an unspectacular building, large, modern, two-storied, constructed of red brick. The drive curved to the right and ended in a sundial surrounded by spiky-looking lavender bushes. Fen stopped just short of this, and switched off the ignition. After a moment the car backfired, and then, as if unsatisfied with the first attempt, backfired again, much more loudly.

‘It's funny she still does that,' said Fen, interested. ‘I've never been able to make out the reason for it. Well, let's have a look at the damage.'

But they were given no opportunity to do this. A small, savage-looking woman with a long nose and a harsh voice rushed suddenly out of the front door and up to them.

‘The noise,' she hissed vehemently.
‘The noise.
Have you no consideration for the Master?' She paused, her beady eyes almost popping out of her head with annoyance. ‘
Mr Langley:
you at least should know.
All cars must be left outside the gates.
Who
knows
what damage your uproar may have done to the Master's work?'

‘Uproar?' Fen repeated, greatly offended. ‘Lily Christine is a very quiet-running car. I admit,' he added
handsomely, ‘that the wing was making rather a noise, but then you'd make a noise if you'd just been torn off by a gate-post.'

‘The precise
cause
of the disturbance,' snapped the small woman, ‘is scarcely relevant. It's the
result
that matters. The Master's brain is a highly delicate instrument; the least shock may unhinge it – no, I don't mean that, of course . . .'

‘Well, whatever you mean,' said Fen, tiring abruptly of this subject, ‘we want to see Mr Shorthouse.'

‘
Im
possible,' said the small woman with furious emphasis. ‘Completely
im
possible. The Master is working and must not be disturbed.'

‘Please, Miss Thorn.' Adam was cajoling. ‘It's really a matter of some urgency.'

‘
Im
possible. The Master can only be seen by appointment.'

‘We've travelled a considerable distance, Miss Thorn.'

‘Mr Langley, if you had travelled from Mars the situation would be no different.'

‘Look here,' said Fen, who was liable to resort to unlikely impostures when in any difficulty, ‘I represent the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. I wish to negotiate with Mr Shorthouse for the
Oresteia
.'

‘Ha!' exclaimed Miss Thorn sharply; it was as though she had suddenly caught sight of a vampire. ‘Mr Langley, is this true?'

Under the compulsion of Fen's malignant blue eye, Adam admitted that this was true.

‘Then,' said Miss Thorn, mollified, but still a little suspicious, ‘you must come in. Please keep to carpets, and avoid tramping your feet on the bare boards.
The least noise
. . . And I should be obliged if you would pitch your voices to the faintest whisper.'

‘Oh,' said Fen, momentarily awed by these directions. ‘Oh.' They went inside.

Though preternaturally quiet, the house gave marked evidence of the vehement demeanour of its
châtelaine
.
Everything conveyed the impression of furious activity transfixed in mid-career. A bronze Mercury strained savagely upwards from his ballasting pedestal; on a large canvas, the Eumenides were represented fairly whisking along against a background of embattled cohorts; Beethoven glowered from a wall-bracket; a stuffed panther was in the act of hurling itself, open-mouthed, on some incautious denizen of the jungle; Laocoön, marble-limbed, struggled eternally in his coils; St George, with lance uplifted and muscles tense, would never, it was obvious, succeed in dispatching his dragon; and in one corner of the hall a furious-looking cat was trying to get at a parrot. It was far from restful; indeed, it was almost apoplectic. Though he had seen it all before, and hence might consider himself to some extent acclimatized, Adam was unable to repress a shudder.

Miss Thorn, striding unperturbed through this ghostly tumult, conducted them into a small back room. Here she turned to face Fen.

‘Well?' she inquired in a hoarse whisper.

‘Well?' Fen countered blankly. ‘Where is Mr Shorthouse?' He gazed suspiciously at a large urn whose sides were stencilled with an energetic Rape of the Sabine Women, as though expecting that the composer might be concealed within it.

‘All the Master's business affairs,' hissed Miss Thorn, ‘pass through my hands. You may speak freely to me.'

‘Oh, I may, may I?' said Fen, who was not possessed of much patience at the best of times. ‘But I'm sorry to say I have no authority to deal with anyone but Mr Shorthouse himself.'

‘
Im
possible.'

‘Then I shall go back to America,' Fen announced with conviction.

‘If you could wait an hour or so . . .'

‘No,' said Fen, on whose normal tones an American accent had rather implausibly grafted itself during the
foregoing interchange. ‘
Im
possible,' he added involuntarily. ‘I have to see Richard Strauss –
almost at once
.' He frowned with such severity that Miss Thorn, who, Adam suspected, was essentially a credulous soul, was visibly shaken.

‘Well,' she whispered, ‘I suppose we
might
disturb the Master . . .'

‘Let us by all means disturb the Master. I don't doubt he'll be most annoyed if you keep me from him.'

This was a hit, a palpable hit; it was evident that the last thing Miss Thorn wanted was the Master's disfavour. She drew a deep breath, like one about to plunge into cold water.

‘Wait,' she said, ‘I shall be back shortly.'

They waited; she was back shortly. ‘Will you come this way,' she said; it was less a question than an awestruck comment on their transcendent good fortune. ‘The Master will see you.'

They returned through the hall. How nice it would be, thought Adam, if by this time Consummation had supervened – Mercury flown, the Eumenides vanished, the panther quiescent and satiated, Laocoön dead, the dragon dispatched. But no; all were fixed and immutable in their rage, as before; and Adam shuddered again as Miss Thorn led them up the staircase. Her manner suggested that the Veil of the Temple was about to be put aside; she walked on tip-toe, with elaborate precautions against noise.

It was not long before they reached the door of the Holy of Holies. Miss Thorn opened it reverently and peered inside. A peevish voice said:

‘Well, come along, come along.'

Another moment, and they were in the Presence. The Presence, it should be said, displayed no special desire for Miss Thorn's continued company.

‘All right, Beatrix,' it said testily. ‘I can manage.'

‘You're quite sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure. Leave me alone with these gentlemen.'

‘Very well, Master. Don't tire yourself.'

‘I am perfectly fit.'

‘I wasn't suggesting, Master, that you weren't perfectly fit. But you mustn't exhaust yourself unnecessarily.'

‘Will you go away, Beatrix.'

‘Very well, Master. If you need me, you have only to call.'

‘It's very unlikely that I shall need you.'

‘But you might.'

‘In that case I'll call. Now please leave us.'

Sighing, Miss Thorn departed. The Master advanced to greet them. He was a small, plump, middle-aged man with a large head and horn-rimmed spectacles, and he looked harassed.

‘Nice to meet you,' he said; his voice held the faintest suggestion of Cockney. ‘I expect you'd like to hear some of my
Oresteia.
Can either of you sing?'

‘Surely you remember me, Shorthouse?' said Adam, annoyed.

‘Oh,
Langley.
Of course. How stupid of me. Are you going over to the Metropolitan? We're losing all our native singers nowadays . . . Well, I'll play you the second act of the
Agamemnon,
if you like. That'll give you an idea of the work as a whole.'

‘This is Professor Fen, from Oxford.'

‘Glad to meet you. Very progressive of the Metropolitan to employ an educated man as their agent.'

‘No, no . . . Professor Fen has nothing to do with the Metropolitan.'

‘Beatrix distinctly said . . .'

‘It was a ruse,' Adam explained. ‘She wouldn't let us in at first.'

‘I'm not surprised, either,' said the Master; and then, evidently feeling that this might sound ungracious, added: ‘What I mean is, she lets very few people in at the
best of times.' He had crossed to the window and was contemplating Lily Christine. ‘What a nice little car. I wish,' he said wistfully, ‘that I could have a nice little car like that.'

‘Surely you could if you wanted one.'

‘No. Beatrix wouldn't let me. She's very anxious to protect me from noise. People creep about this house, you know, as though one were lying dead. It becomes unnerving after a time . . . Well, do sit down, if you can find anywhere.'

For the moment this was a problem, since the room was less untidy than chaotic. It was dominated by a Steinway grand piano, and every available surface was littered with music manuscript paper. Over by the window was a tall wooden desk at which the Master stood while scoring; quantities of bedraggled hothouse flowers drooped from vases; and a photograph of Beatrix Thorn and the Master gazing at one another, rather self-consciously, hung crookedly on the wall. Fen and Adam cleared a couple of chairs and sat on them; the Master paced up and down.

‘I've really lost all control,' he was saying. ‘Beatrix doesn't want me to be worried with domestic details, so I can never find out what's going on. For example' – he shook his head, mystified – ‘there seems to be a huge number of maidservants, who whenever you meet them are always either tear-stained or actually weeping. I used to think Beatrix was responsible for this, but I've discovered recently that it's Gabriel, my amanuensis, who has a penchant for the opposite sex. I can't think,' he added with great frankness, ‘what he does to them . . . By the way, did you come to see me about anything in particular?'

‘Yes,' said Adam. ‘About your brother.'

‘Oh, Edwin.' The Master was not enthusiastic. ‘And how is the dear fellow?'