The Courage Consort (7 page)

'Dreadful,' she said.

'I hate him,' hissed Dagmar when he had driven away.

'It's probably a communication problem,' said Roger spiritlessly.

'I hate him,' repeated Dagmar, intently flicking her damp hair with her thumb and index finger. 'That's what I'm communicating to you.'

'Well,' sighed Roger, 'he has
his
idea of the piece, we have ours…'

Ben was padding around the house like a bear, going from window to window, opening them all wide. It wasn't until he was opening the biggest, nearest window that his fellow Consort members noticed the whole château stank of the sort of perfume probably derived from scraping the scrotums of extremely rare vermin.

***

U
NITED IN THEIR DISLIKE
of the composer, the Courage Consort devoted the next week to getting on top of
Partitum Mutante.
By day, they did little other than sing. By night, they slept deeply. Even Catherine was less troubled by insomnia than ever before. No sooner had the piercing, plaintive cry of the creature in the forest woken her up than she was drifting off again.

In the Château de Luth, she was developing a kind of routine, to which, amazingly for her, she was able to adhere religiously. She who had always seemed programmed to disappoint, abandoning the best-laid late-night plans in the suicidal torpor of dawn, was now getting up early every morning, cooking porridge for Ben, going off for a bike ride with Dagmar, then freshening herself up for a long afternoon's singing. Looking down at herself in the shower as the misty water cascaded over her naked flesh, she wondered if she was merely imagining a more youthful appearance, or if it was real.

Roger was retreating into a hard shell of professionalism, a state he tended to go into whenever a deadline was growing too near. It was by no means unattractive: Catherine liked him best this way. He focused utterly on the task at hand—in this case, the fiendish
Partitum Mutante
—and strove to understand the nature of his fellow singers' difficulties, keen not to dissipate their precious energy or fray their raw nerves. Rather than demanding endless repetition, he was tolerant when things went wrong. 'Let's not waste our breath,' he'd quip gravely, whenever an argument loomed. Afterwards, he'd lie flat on his back in bed at night thinking up ways to make the next performance run more smoothly. Catherine almost felt like embracing him when he was like this. If she could have been sure he'd stay flat on his back, she would have rested her head on his shoulder and stroked his frowning brow.

She wondered if Ben was happy. He was such a mountain of poise, but was he happy? Every night at 11:00
P.M.
sharp, he would retire to his little room, to a bed that could not possibly be big enough for him. What did he do to make himself comfortable? Did he miss his wife? Was his own body, when he was horizontal, intolerably heavy, like an unwanted other person bearing down on him?

Before this fortnight in Martinekerke, it would never have occurred to Catherine to wonder about such things. Each Consort member had his or her separate life, mysterious to the others. Their personal happiness or unhappiness was irrelevant to the purpose that brought them together—at least, that was the way it had always been in the past. They would rendezvous at the Lambs' place in Tufnell Park, like five football fans who were going to sit down and watch a televised match together, and with barely a word spoken they would start singing a Josquin
Miserere
or whatever was on the agenda. Ben's wife would make herself scarce, cooking what smelled like very large quantities of Asian food in the kitchen. In all the years the Consort had been doing this, Catherine had never even got around to asking what nationality Mrs. Lamb was. She looked Vietnamese or something, and dressed like an American hair-care consultant. At intervals, she would serve her guests coffee and cake: apple and cinnamon slices subtly impregnated with stray aromas of prawns, turmeric, garlic, soy sauce. Now and then Catherine got a hankering to ask Ben a few questions about his wife, but as the years passed she tended to feel she might have missed the right moment to raise the subject.

Julian was an unknown quantity too, although there were signs that he might inspire complex emotions in more people than just his fellow singers. Once, while the Consort were rehearsing at the Lambs' house, a drunken man, shouting unintelligible abuse, had kicked dents into Julian's car parked just outside. Julian went white and sat waiting stoically as the characteristic
bimff
of breaking windscreen resounded in the night air. Again, no one in the Courage Consort asked any questions. Julian's extramusical activities were his own affair. He could sing the pants off any tenor in England, that was the important thing.

Even Catherine's mental frailties were tolerated, as long as they didn't interfere with the music. Last year, she'd even been able to show up for rehearsals with both her wrists wrapped in snowy white bandage, and nobody had mentioned it. By contrast, if she dared to spend a few minutes too long in Heathrow's toilets when the Consort had a plane to catch, she was liable to hear an admonitory summons over the airport PA.

As for Dagmar, the most recent addition to the group, she'd stuck with the Courage Consort because they gave her fewer hassles than any of her many previous liaisons. After walking out on the Dresden Staatsoper because the directors seemed to think she was too sexually immoral to sing opera (her last rôle for them was Berg's prostitute Lulu, for God's sake!) she'd been a bit wary of these smiling English people, but it had turned out OK. They allowed her to get away with tempestuous love affairs, even illegitimate pregnancy, as long as she showed up on time, and this she had no trouble with. For nine months of ballooning belly she'd never missed a rehearsal; she'd given birth, prudently, during the lull between Ligeti's
Aventures
in Basle and the 'Carols Sacred and Profane' Christmas concert in Huddersfield. That was good enough for Roger Courage, who had sent her a tasteful congratulations card without enquiring after the baby's name or sex.

This strange fortnight in Martinekerke, though, was making them so much more real to each other as human beings, at least from Catherine's point of view. Living together as a family, cooking for each other, seeing the stubble on each other's faces—well, not on hers, of course—watching each other's hair grow, even … Catherine was finding it all really quite exciting. She could definitely see herself, before the fortnight was over, asking Ben about his wife, or cycling all the way to Duidermonde.

It was her impression, though, that Julian was not a happy man. As the days in the Château de Luth wore on, he was growing increasingly restless. Not restless in the sense of lacking ability to concentrate on the task at hand; he worked as hard on
Partitum Mutante
as any of the Consort. Nor restless in the sense of itching for physical exercise; he was quite content to let Dagmar and Catherine cycle daily to Martinekerke to fetch their supplies. No, it appeared he was restless sexually.

In London, Julian was a lone wolf, never actually seen with a partner. Roger and Catherine had always assumed he must be gay, what with the Freddie Mercury ansaphone message and the waspish comments he was wont to make, but in Mar-tinekerke it became clear that, at the very least, he was prepared to stoop to females if nothing better was available.

Females were in limited supply in the forest, but Julian made the most of what strayed his way. The first time Gina had come to clean the château, Julian behaved (Roger told Catherine later) like a gallant lord of the manor receiving an impressionable guest. The girl's flat refusal to let him carry her equipment frustrated this line of approach and so he hurried back indoors to launch Plan B, leaving the formal introductions to Roger. When, less than two minutes later, the time came for Gina to be introduced to Julian Hind, 'our tenor,' he was already seated at the piano, playing a piece of Bartók's
Mikrokosmos
with serene intensity. He turned his cheekbones towards her and raised his eyebrows, as if he'd never glimpsed her before this moment, as if she'd just blundered, childlike, into a sanctum whose holiness she couldn't be expected to understand. He inclined his head in benign welcome but did not speak. Disappointingly, Gina did not speak either, preferring to get down to business. With the plug of the vacuum cleaner nestled in her hand, she nosed around the room, murmuring to herself: 'Stopcontact, stopcontact'—the Dutch word for electrical outlet, apparently. Once the vacuum cleaner started its noisy sucking, Julian stopped playing the piano and settled for a more passive role. Then, all too soon, Catherine had returned from her walk in the woods, and it was time for
Partitum Mutante.

The second time Gina came to the château, five days later, Catherine was actually there, privileged to witness the changes that Julian's growing discontentment had wrought on him. It was an extraordinary sight, an unforgettable testament to the power of accumulated sexual craving.

To begin with, he welcomed her at the door as if she were royalty—the English rather than the Dutch kind—and immediately tried to get her to sit down with him on the sofa. When she insisted that she had work to do, he followed her from room to room, raising the volume of his velvety tenor to compete with the noise of motorised suction and clanking, sloshing buckets. He guessed, correctly, that she was involved in the expressive arts and only doing this cleaning work as a way of supplementing a government grant. He guessed, correctly, her birth sign, her taste in music, her favourite drink, her preferred animal. Dashing into the bathroom to fetch her some Elastoplast when she'd cut her finger, he returned naked from the waist up and with water combed through his hair, complaining of the heat.

Catherine didn't dare follow them upstairs, so she made herself a cup of tea, wondering despite herself whether there was going to be some sexual activity in the château after all. By the time she saw Julian again, ten minutes later, he was installed on the sofa, fully dressed, glowering into a book. A strange sound—bed-springy, rhythmic—from upstairs was eventually decoded as Gina slamming an iron onto a padded ironing board.

***

F
OUR DAYS BEFORE THE END
of the fortnight, Jan van Hoeidoncks dropped in to see how they were getting on. Reacquainting himself with Catherine Courage, he at first thought she must be the sporty German contralto he'd been told about, she was so tanned and healthy-looking. He'd fixed Catherine in his memory as a slightly stooped middle-aged lady dressed in taupe slacks and a waterproof, with a freshly washed halo of mousy hair; here she was in green leggings and a berry-stained T-shirt, standing tall, her hair shiny, plastered with sweat. She'd just been for a long cycle, she said.

The real German woman appeared moments later, cradling a sleeping baby in her arms. She shook Jan by the hand, supporting her infant easily in one arm as she did so.

'This is Dagmar Belotte,' said Roger, 'and … erm … Axel.'

As a way of breaking the ice, Jan made the mistake of asking Dagmar, rather than Roger Courage, what the Consort's impression of Pino Fugazza had been.

'I hate him,' she volunteered. 'He is a nutcase and he smells bad.'

'Extraordinary composer, though, of course,' interjected Roger.

'Don't you check them out before you give them money?' said Dagmar.

The director smiled, unfazed. The German girl's frankness made much more sense to him than the strange, twitching discomfiture of the pale Englishman.

'Pino is very crazy, yes,' he conceded. 'Sometimes crazy people make very good music. Sometimes not. We will find out.'

'And if it's bad?' enquired Dagmar.

Jan van Hoeidonck pouted philosophically.

'Bad music is not a problem in our circles,' he said. 'Ten years later, it's completely disappeared. Biodegradable. It's not like pop music. Bad pop music lasts forever. Johann Strauss. Herman's Hermits. Father Abraham and the Smurfs. These things will never die, even if we put a lot of effort into killing them. But for bad serious music, we don't need to do anything. It just sinks into the ground and it's gone.'

'But Jan, what do
you
think of
Partitum Mutante?
' asked Roger.

'I haven't heard it yet.'

'You've seen the score, surely.'

The director gratefully accepted the steaming cup of coffee being handed to him by Mrs. Courage.

'I am a facilitator of musical events,' he explained carefully. 'I read budget sheets. There are enough crescendos there, I promise you.' His face was solemn as he said this, though there was a twinkle in his eyes.

Dagmar excused herself and the conversation moved on to more general matters, like the château and its facilities. Were the Consort enjoying their stay? How was the environment suiting them?

The big fat man called Ben Lamb, sitting in the far corner of the room, made a small gesture indicating no complaints. Roger Courage said something to the effect that concentration on a musical project made the outside world cease to exist, but that during the brief moments when his Consort was not beavering away at
Partitum Mutante,
the Château de Luth and its setting were very attractive indeed. Julian Hind deflected the question, preferring to discuss with the director the feasibility of a hire-car from Antwerp or Brussels.

'I was wondering,' Catherine said, when Julian, appalled at the high cost of Netherlandish living, had retreated to his room. 'You've had many artists staying in this château over the years, haven't you?'

'Very many,' affirmed the director.

'Have any of them ever mentioned strange noises in the night?'

'What kind of noises?'

'Oh … cries from the forest, perhaps.'

'Human cries?'

'Mmm, yes, possibly.'

She and Roger were sitting together on the sofa. On the pretence of bending down to fetch his plate of cake off the floor, Roger knocked his knee sharply against hers.

'Excuse me, dear,' he warned, trying to pull her back from whatever brink she was dawdling towards.