The Concert Pianist (7 page)

He was puzzled and curious. Two years ago he recorded the Chopin Ballades for Cecilia, who went bust prior to release. Cecilia's catalogue was subsequently assigned to Planetarium, who did nothing. John had told him to let things stand until he had a new contract; so he forgot about these particular recordings.

Philip held the disc in his hand, vaguely disconcerted. Maybe there was a review somewhere. Unlikely, given the label.

He drifted off again, uncertain what to look for now. At the end
of
the aisle he came to a magazine section in racks on the wall. He hesitated a second before reaching down the new
Gramophone
edition. He flipped the glossy pages. The ‘instrumental' review section seemed to have disappeared between a pull-out and ‘Opera'. Suddenly, he saw his name in print: ‘Chopin Ballades, Logos, £5.99'.

Philip looked over his shoulder in the direction of Angus and then moved behind a pillar. His heart fluttered with a mixture of vanity and dread. This was his first release in years. They had reviewed it all too promptly. He glanced to right and left, ashamed of his sickly excitement. He pulled open the magazine, flattened the spine, folded it over. He gripped the thing in both hands as if trying to control it.

Right from the very first line he sensed something odd. He would not skip ahead but read each sentence closely, hope on hold as he turned the page. There were neutral comments and impartial remarks and patches of lip-service that reflected his stature with preliminary conscientiousness, but the air of reserve grew chillier and chillier, and as he read on down the column unease became horror. The chosen comparisons were delicately destructive, favouring the recordings of Perahia and Zimmerman, and the summing-up was respectfully dismissive. But the last paragraph was awful. His playing, he read, had become ‘an anatomy lesson'. He ‘exposed everything and said nothing'. In this recording ‘spontaneity has been supplanted by intellect, impulse by calculation'. ‘On the evidence of this CD,' concluded the reviewer, ‘Morahan's playing has wholly lost its former incandescence.'

He sighed, fending off the shock, and then, head swimming, read it again. He drank in every word, savoured every sentence, steeped himself in every phrase, as if to know what other people would be thinking of him.

He replaced the magazine and walked in a daze along the aisle, passing out of Classical into Jazz. He was soon standing between display boxes of Oscar Petersen and Dizzy Gillespie. After a moment's light-headedness,he went to the escalator and ascended to the ground floor.

He halted outside on Oxford Street, registering noise and smell, and then dragged himself back to the underground entrance. One had to get through it. One had to press on, keep going.

Back
at home he put the kettle on. While it was boiling he frittered around nervously with sheet music in the living room. An hour later he sat dead still in the armchair, hands clubbed together, staring at the floor.

He was sitting in the same position at 9 p.m., amongst the shadows of a room lit only by lamps in the street outside.

Chapter Six

Ursula caught his eye as she entered the room.

He sat with John Sampson in the Highgate millionaire's music room, surrounded by abstract paintings on bare brick and art books across coffee tables. Behind him reared a grand piano, white. Before him lay a view of the garden: Monet bridges over lily ponds, cherry blossom and forsythia, glancing light through the still bare limbs of an acacia tree. His hands were tightly clenched, John was handsomely beaming everywhere, and now as she entered in haste, coming through from the hallway (she knew she was late), he could see in a glance why John was so chuffed with her.

Ursula's face was flushed and yet she met him with the togetherness of high female confidence, aware of the effect - impossible to disown - of her looks on first-timers. She possessed along-limbed figure of line and buoyancy, a radiant smile, twirling black hair. She stood before him like an unexpected gift or tribute, and was almost amused by the look on his face. For a moment she let Philip adjust to the spectacle, the smell of perfume, the gloss of hair, and readily followed whatever anybody else was saying. As John made introductory jokes about their client, she kept returning her eyes to Philip, looking for her chance to be more than a first impression.

They sat down on white chairs and sofas. John was manfully pleased with everything, particularly the Corot over the grand. Philip combated his unease with interlocked hands and did everything to avoid eye contact. John chatted on, drawing Ursula's attention, and Philip stole quick, disbelieving glances at his new agent. She sat forward on her chair, hair trailing in a cloud of curls to the small of her back, which rose from the bulb of her hips and bottom like the stem of an exotic plant. The tapering line of her
forearm
and wrist followed the long arc of her thigh. Her momentary glances were full of innocent goodwill.

He looked away. This was not what he wanted, not what he could bear. Ursula's beauty impaled his privacy. The very look of her appealed to a vitality he could no longer supply. Just to behold her was to experience, in a flash, generational redundancy. What could a perfect young woman know or care to know about the trials and tribulations of a medieval bachelor? He would have to talk to John about this later. He was desperate to be out of here.

All morning Philip had been trying to tell John he would cancel. He tried on the phone: John was too harassed. He tried in the limo: John was too talkative. He tried in the hallway of Bulmanion's mansion, but John was so urgently positive about this coup of a meeting, so buoyed by the concerts and publicity and the magnificent interior of this splendiferous house that it just seemed impossible. There was no right moment and no reprieve from this headlong charade and Philip knew anyway that John would never recover. Because Philip wasn't ill or dead or injured and John had invested so much time in setting up the concerts, and life was complicated enough without the nervous breakdowns of artists, besides which Philip was British, for Christ's sake: his only sane client! For Philip to cancel in these circumstances would be absolute bollocks.

So Philip had been thwarted and was now boxed into this false meeting, his frame of mind decaying, his social skills on holiday. Bulmanion's spectacular residence made it worse. Every grand room and chandeliered corridor and gilt-framed mirror breathed expectation, privileged opportunity. And Bulmanion had sought him out. ‘Ex-City, hedge fund, or some bullshit,' said John. ‘Cleaned up merrily, now worth a ton and is crazy about music. He's a veritable Medici, gets whole symphony orchestras to play in his country seat, sponsors the South Bank, lays on grants and scholarships, and now runs his own record label, specialising in guess what? Pianists! He's a great flapping angel for the music biz, and I've been stalking him like a puma.' John rubbed his hands. ‘Business warlord turned Renaissance man. Don't be put off by his face.' Bulmanion's first record label was launched in the nineties. Endymion, he would say, was ‘a learning curve, not about money - you lose money in classical - but values'. He was gearing up for a
new
venture, with a clearer philosophy, and seeking new artists. Colossally well informed about pianists in particular, he was keen to meet Philip. He thought Philip outstanding and under-recorded and envisaged a long-term arrangement of the greatest flexibility. Philip had resisted such commitments in the past, somewhat to his detriment, and John was determined that he grab the chance. ‘You'll find him civilised and persuasive if you don't look too closely at his face.'

‘I don't like business warlords.'

‘You'll love Frank. He's your number-one fan.'

John was convinced, if they met, that Frank's knowledgeable enthusiasm would overwhelm Philip. Philip's misgivings had meanwhile turned to rank antipathy.

‘Can we cancel the meeting?' he had pleaded on the phone that morning.

‘If you cancel the meeting, I'll slit my throat and bleed to death and leave a suicide note blaming you.'

‘I'm not signing anything.'

‘Just come!'

He sat in his seat, staring hard at the wall. They were waiting for Bulmanion the three of them, waiting for the lord and master to arrive and shower them with the gold dust of patronage. He could get up and go, just scramble, but John's mumblings to Ursula paralysed him somehow.

His agent brimmed with health and dynamism and sheer love of the job. His brilliant blue eyes glittered for Ursula. He listened in animation to some piece of office news and used the thrust of his dimpled jaw to affirm what she said. Because John was always scuttling back and forth - Milan, London, New York - to find him physically incarnated in any one place was almost uncanny. John did not have time to be in one place. John's time was so preciously and infinitely divided between the demands of his clients and the web of his activities that he had virtually ceased to exist in human form. He was ubiquitously absent and dynamically omnipresent. In some ways he was too switched on for ordinary social consumption, rushing through the day like a super-charged tennis pro, stretching, running, smashing hard. He had used cocaine in the past to good effect and would deploy it in the future. Ursula he
clearly
adored. A fabulous acquisition for the agency. With her full bosom and his dimple jaw what promoter could resist them? What artist could resist them? Young pianists would be smitten at a glance.

Philip gazed at Ursula and wondered what was in it for her. She had been catapulted into a milieu of the super-talented and frequently famous, but was it enough to be mere decorous scene-setting for those after-concert parties, an agency fillip for the brand-name clients? It was hard to believe the hand-holding and neurosis management would interest her for long.

John slipped off to the loo for a moment.

Ursula turned to face him, steering her legs round and flipping her hair back. She smiled uncertainly. She could see he was uneasy and no doubt felt uncomfortable herself.

‘I'm so looking forward to the concert.'

Philip inhaled deeply.

‘D'you get very nervous?'

He frowned.

She seemed to take this as a ‘yes'. ‘It's such an honour to meet you. I've always admired your playing so much.'

Philip forced himself to sit up a little.

‘Isn't this place incredible?'

He nodded.

She glanced over her shoulder. Her gaze was now very serious. She seemed troubled.

‘I do hope this isn't an imposition.'

‘Um . . .'

‘If you think it doesn't work out with me, please say. I'd love to represent you, but your wishes are paramount. I don't want to come between you and John. I just want to help.'

She looked at him with sweet sincerity. She had taken a risk in saying this and it seemed impossible not to come to her aid.

‘I'm sure it'll be fine,' he nodded.

Her smile intensified to a new level. The warmth of her expression he found unsettling. She seemed already to have nurturing feelings in reserve for him. He looked awkwardly around, amazed that he had capitulated so easily. Things were happening that he had no control over. Was she very kind, or was she just handling him? Was he just product now, to be stroked and schmoozed by
personable
executives, or did she really care, and if so, why? What could she possibly want with a crabby bachelor like him, a bespectacled relic, a man of self-defeating self-knowledge and no horizons beyond the ceaseless toil of his trade? Just to look at her was to feel in a glance the immunity of her sparkling youth to his shelved middle age.

John was back now, rubbing his hands and checking his watch and glancing nervously at Ursula and solidly at Philip. He pointed in the direction of a pair of loudspeakers beyond the piano. ‘You want to hear those guys, Pip. Two hundred grand's worth of high fidelity. Amazing.'

He tugged around to look over his shoulder.

‘British designed, God bless us. Bloke called Williams, lives in a shack in Suffolk or something. Total nutter.'

He nodded, unable to take anything in. Ursula was now looking at him with some concern and he found himself wondering in retaliation what reckless acts of submission she would perform for her lovers, what picturesque pairings she would instigate with the trendy young males whose lust she inspired.

They heard him first, barking orders in the hall with humorous menace. The grand vestibule took up the sound of his voice, distributing will power to the four corners of the house. Bulmanion entered the room and moved into their midst before anyone had time to stand up.

‘Have you had tea?'

John smiled appeasingly.

‘God, bloody hell!'

He swished off back to the door and bellowed down the hallway. ‘Jeremy! Guests! Tea! Music room!'

He returned quickly, huffing theatrically, his hand already extended in Philip's direction.

‘It's a great honour to meet you. I'm so pleased you could come.'

Philip rose and had his hand shaken.

Bulmanion nodded quick hellos at Ursula and John and reversed on to a sofa. He ran a finger around his cheek, as if to clear thoughts, and then launched in quickly. ‘I think you are one of the great artists of our time,' he intoned. ‘I'm immensely grateful that you've agreed to see me. I'm wealthy but I take no one for granted. I
wanted
to meet here because this room is a shrine to the sort of magnificent playing one hears on your records. I've sat in that chair and listened more times than I can remember to your Brahms and Liszt and everything else.'

He seemed to halt rhetorically. His eyes were fastened on a point in the air. His mouth ran agape.

Philip looked at him in amazement. Bulmanion was a rotund and emperor-like figure with a sack of a jaw that slumped on his collar and Humpty Dumpty legs that hung weakly from the sofa. He wore a fleece, tracksuit bottoms and open-toed sandals.