The Concert Pianist (17 page)

Since the early sixties he had moved to the West. He was shy but his reputation brought him into contact with kings and movie stars. A recluse by nature, he disdained his own celebrity and loathed most of his recordings. Those who gained his trust he invited to a manor house in the Perigord Noir. Music could be played in an adjoining barn. Despite his fame he lived only for music and it would take many hours of shared music-making or solemn record-listening to gain his confidence. To those who had figured out how to fit in around him he was angelic. He revealed a gift for mimicry and a sense of satire. Serebriakov detested the vain and pompous and knew too many people with these qualities. Occasionally, a satirical rage would convulse him, and then his humour could be lethal.

By the seventies he was a living legend, so associated with the post-war years as to seem almost historic. His mountainous presence lurked mistily behind the new generation of pianists. In a way, his sovereign example was a backdrop to all who followed. Against
Serebriakov
you could measure any pianist. He incarnated an absolute musical integrity beyond the reach of ambition or fame.

This was the person who in 1974 attended a concert of Philip Morahan's. Philip had no idea of the maestro's presence during the concert and was stunned to see him in the dressing room afterwards, taking his place in the queue of well-wishers. They had never met before and, when the divinity shook his hand and congratulated him with the tenderest smile, Philip felt he had been blessed.

By then, Konstantine was already a decade into his friendship with Arthur England. Konstantine had fallen like a lover for the landscape around Arthur's home near Bromyard, with its views across Herefordshire to the Black Mountains. He would spend a fortnight there every summer, going on walks, and immersing himself in the music that Arthur lived and breathed: Britten and Delius, Howells and Bax, Finzi and Vaughan Williams. He had returned again this year (possibly for the last time) to celebrate his birthday and make a little music. He was eighty-eight, not well. He had come up from France by train and been collected in London by Arthur in Oswald's Bentley (driven on this occasion by Kevin - Kevin was Oswald's sous-chef and manservant when not chauffeuring the elderly great along Arcadian B-roads). The same driver had been sent to collect Philip two weeks later, and Philip now sat in the back seat, allowing himself to be conveyed along the M40 into the past, as Kevin slalomed in great swerves of effortless velocity between crowded motorway lanes.

He had not been to Herefordshire in years. As they drove through the Chilterns his tired eyes could not escape the scenery: the dramatic revelation of vast fields, sudden stands of beech, the forested capes of commanding hills enshouldering the road. In late May the beeches seemed shampooed. Their crowns were glossy and well conditioned. After Oxford the trees became more furrowed and antique, and as the grand old estates around Ledbury and Tewkesbury kicked in, the rolling landscape was indented by lordly Wellingtonias, and blasted oaks with antlered crowns and old limbs elbowed in cow mud.

He sank lower and lower in the back seat, catching everything, stone houses, the rivers of May blossom, the muffled heads of thatched cottages that came and went. He had nearly fallen asleep when the car pulled to the right and proceeded with reverential
moderation
down a lane. The lane levelled and broadened in preparation for the drive to Arthur's house, and then the gravel crackled and the palms of a cedar loomed overhead and they were there, approaching the posing corner of Moreton Manor. He watched the Edwardian pile draw closer, with its mock-Tudor chimney stacks and gables, and mullion bays blindly greeting all comers. They came under a gateway on to the forecourt and parked. Philip got out of the car and had time for a glance at the long view to the west before Oswald's cornet greeting cut the air.

He sat with Oswald in the old kitchen sipping tea. Arthur and Konstantine had driven off to Hergest Croft to see the azaleas, and Julius Robarts was upstairs, flat out with jet-lag.

Oswald's lined face and stringy dewlaps and eye pouches were all caught up in the excitement of the event, and twitched vitally as he described the delicacies he had prepared with his kitchen underlings, the wines that were assuming perfect temperatures, and the distinguished musicians Arthur had conscripted, not just from the four corners of England, but from all over the world.

‘We have Lola Montrero, ha ha.'

‘Lola?'

‘Set the cat among the bloody pigeons.'

‘My God.'

‘Vyacheslav Chuikov.' Oswald wobbled his jowls compassionately. ‘Veritable thumb-sucker and nose-picker. Autistic, I presume.'

‘Right.'

‘Geraint Davies, Cedric Bowles, Aldous Braebourne. Two Royal College professors.'

‘Which ones?'

‘Damien Baldwin. Lovely Mauritz Wengler all the way from Berlin. Your friend, Vadim.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘I've put you in that cosy b & b up the road, all expenses paid, so mind you eat your Full English. There's a peer. Some jackanapes New Labour acolyte keen on the blasted arts, would you believe! Couldn't keep him out. Amanda Holcraft. The Ambrose Quartet.'

‘You putting everybody up?'

‘
I'm packed to the rafters. More tea, please, Barry.'

A clean-cut young man emerged from the pantry. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and had a tattoo on his biceps.

‘Give Philip a spot more, too, would you, Barry.'

‘Thank you.'

Oswald laughed chestily. ‘I'm fortunate in having these paragons at my disposal.'

Philip watched Barry return to the pantry. ‘Where d'you get them?'

‘They're Harry Ploughman types from the local.' He managed a pursed smile. ‘Sweet dullards. But . . . you know . . . decorative!'

‘Watch your silver.'

‘Oh sure! I'm like a closed-circuit camera with these fickle youths. Follow your every move, don't I, Barry!'

‘How's Arthur?'

‘Indefatigable. I so hope he notices when I die.'

‘You're a juvenile by comparison.'

‘A buggered old wreck of seventy-two,' he chortled.

Philip looked in astonishment at the floor. ‘Lola's coming?'

Oswald nodded certainly.

‘God, I haven't seen her for about twenty-five years.'

‘Lovely girl. Julius said he calculated she must have smoked seven hundred and fifty thousand cigarettes since they last met. Doesn't look a day older.'

‘She's remarkable.'

‘Very great pianist and a total maniac.'

‘I'm glad Julius is here.'

‘He's a dear. Apparently he qualified as a chartered accountant before getting the piano bug.'

‘Oswald!'

‘Well, you know what I mean.'

Oswald was a doughty satirist of musical types. Whereas Arthur presented a timeless patrician serenity that was a bit out of date, but just about plausible given his vast age, Oswald had appointed himself court jester. He found musicians to be an extraordinary and ridiculous bunch: ‘People whose talents so far exceed their social skills that sometimes I feel I'm conversing with a pair of hands attached to a life-support system.' Oswald prospected for the one foible or characteristic which would make it impossible to take
a
great musician seriously again. He would look at you and say: ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand Marlboros. They call her Rola,' and that was it for the tumultuous Montrero. Oswald liked people to the extent that their conversation allowed him to recreate himself as wit and sophisticate. Someone described him as the gargoyle on Arthur's cathedral, but Arthur relied on his camp alter ego for everything, and the two had been inseparable for years. ‘Thirty-five years, actually, which is a lot longer than some of you promiscuous heterosexual bods.' Oswald had private means. ‘Based on biscuit tins, or something. Bloody catering. Look at me now. All I ever do is cook meals for people.'

‘How's Konstantine?' said Philip.

‘Oh.' Oswald looked away, blinking. He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘He's not got long.'

Philip glanced at his lap.

‘What will we do without them, Philip, these grand old boys?'

Philip spent the afternoon walking in the lanes. He heard rustic voices carrying in the wind, the cranking sound of farm machinery. The verges were dense with celandine and greater stichwort. Old trees looked young again, the wooded hillocks more buxom. He would take in the long view to the west, towards the Welsh hills, visible as a blue line over the interceding countryside, the soft patchwork that rolled from Moreton Manor across the Golden Valley to the Black Mountains, a rural Eden of meadows and parkland and cider-apple orchards glinting in the afternoon light.

He sat down at the foot of a hornbeam and gazed at the tracery of hedgerows, and out of nowhere he pictured Katie approaching him in the long grass and raising her hand to show him a pair of mating butterflies that had settled on a forefinger. They had sat together in the ragged shade of a hawthorn and watched in delight as hares bounded all over the field. He remembered walking back with her through a wood, and when they emerged the three-year-old pointed to a glider hanging over the far fields like a hovering gull, sheet white against azure.

Memory weighed on him. The past was all around him now.

Today, he felt no pain, merely the actuality of things.

After seeing Laura he had purchased the offending magazines:
Hi-fi News
and
Record Review, International Piano, Classic CD.
He
read the reviews in the privacy of his drawing room. He was satisfactorily numb. They were not terrible. They were certainly not good. The magazines slipped off the chair on to the floor as he stared at the writhing shadows of a tree on his ceiling and walls.

He had accepted Arthur's invitation right off. He was not presentable in any sense, just a shell of a man now, but a couple of nights in Herefordshire would help eat up the wait for the test results; and Konstantine he could not refuse. In his present knackered straits it moved him to contemplate the old boy's incorruptible purity, his allergy to compromise, his dogged perseverance. He had never been commodified by the record companies. No impresario had tamed him. Throughout a bustling musical life he had never let go of the main thing, the simple sense of how to play a piece. He knew. And what he knew was unfathomable. Philip dared not play his best recordings too often. He was not invariably attuned, but when in the mood he found himself experiencing something beyond insight or interpretation. It was like sharing for a moment a physicist's mentalisation of space-time or subatomic particles, as though Serebriakov divined the music of the spheres and made them audible. The celestial order of his playing induced a kind of ravishment - so beyond one's means to reproduce as to reek of total genius.

Serebriakov would simply say he followed the letter of the score.

Philip lay on the bed in his room at the b & b until six-thirty. He then got up and strolled back to the big house, as instructed. He came through the porch into the hallway and was shown to the main drawing room by Kevin. The room was full of evening light, which lifted its mahogany gloom to a twilight of fluttering blues and parchment oranges and deep warm browns.

Oswald hovered pleasantly over champagne and glasses. Arthur took his ease on the settee.

In the high-backed chair by the fireplace sat Konstantine Serebriakov.

Philip came forward solidly but then hesitated at the spectacle before him. He felt a qualifying respect that delivered the initiative to his host, as though he were waiting for a kind of acceptance into the group. The elderly gents were still recovering from their walk, and had only just sat down. Arthur took a while to register that Philip was Philip, and then greeted him from his seat.

‘
Konstantine, it's Philip Morahan!'

Oswald smiled from his station, and Arthur relapsed into his cushion.

Philip hesitated, not knowing whether to offer a hand or to nod. The old Russian tilted his head, as if better to hear. His eyes were large, vague. He seemed not to recognise Philip.

‘B & b OK?' said Oswald, handing him a glass of champagne.

‘Yes, thanks.'

Oswald sidled out of the room and Philip made to sit down between the two old boys. He was shaken by Konstantine's appearance. The old pianist was a ruined figure now, bald as a stone. There was something so vulnerably skeletal about him. The planes and curves of his skull had been tautened and harrowed by age. His hands lay on his lap like manacles, patchy with liver spots.

Arthur tweaked his pipe.

‘Did you . . . did you have a nice walk?' he asked.

The old man was wide-eyed.

Arthur cleared his throat blusterously. ‘Hergest Croft is lovely this time of year.'

Oswald swung back with a tray of smoked-salmon tidbits. ‘Were the azaleas absolutely glorious?'

Konstantine looked up, more in response to movement than sound.

Philip scratched the side of his head. He was sitting next to the greatest pianist in the world and had no idea what to say. What could he ask him?

‘Were the azaleas glorious?' said Oswald in a very loud voice.

‘They look good,' said Arthur. ‘Can I have one?'

Konstantine blinked. ‘Azaleas?'

‘Were they glorious?' said Oswald with a continuing expression of joyous enquiry.

Konstantine brought an old hand up to his breast pocket and drew out a handkerchief. He shook it open and let it dangle from forefinger and thumb. He stared at Philip, as if posing a question.

Oswald gingered around with the canapes and frowned patiently.

Konstantine's eyebrows were arched enquiringly.

‘Handkerchief trees?' said Philip.

The Russian cracked a smile. ‘Free in May.'

‘
They do a great job up there,' said Arthur, administering his pipe. ‘The colours are heavenly.'