The Mandolin Lesson (18 page)

This month, I am preoccupied with my approaching birthday celebrations. Somehow I managed to agree to a party, suggested and organised by my husband. He is brilliant at organising things and comes into his own on occasions like this. He has printed an invitation card for my ‘
Forte
Party', which is a clever musical play on the word ‘forty'. Invitations have been sent out to forty of my closest friends and colleagues. I am deeply troubled.

I can barely bring myself to speak of or write anything about these impending celebrations, since it seems an acknowledgement of my own mortality. I hadn't realised that I am so old, that I am possibly halfway or further though my life. In my mind, I am still twenty. I have an odd twinge in my knee occasionally and my health is a bit fragile if I get overtired or overstressed, but otherwise I feel fine. It is not that I feel no different exactly, more that my health hasn't deteriorated. And in terms of appearance, I am much better than I was twenty years ago. Now, I have blossomed. At twenty, I felt awkward and uneasy about my frizzy long hair and self-conscious about my complexion. I always felt slightly old-fashioned and behind the times. Now, I feel a sense of new self-confidence. I wear beautiful clothes that make me feel good. After experimenting with various different hairstyles over the years, my hair has returned to the shoulder length it was at the end of my teens. It is curly, and naturally so. At my very smart London hairdressers, the staff say I am lucky not to need a perm or colour. They think my hair is wonderful since others at my age seek all kinds of help. And where I once found it difficult that I looked so young and naïve, now I enjoy being mistaken for being younger than my chronological age. Perhaps I am like a vintage bottle of wine that improves with age.

Perhaps being a late starter has contributed to my state of mind. My childhood, up to the age of eleven, was lost to illness. I spent most of the time away from school as a result of a weak chest. I suffered with continual bouts of bronchitis and undiagnosed asthma. Sometimes I was quite ill and I spent a lot of time in bed. Nowadays, the advances in medicine have meant that asthma is more successfully diagnosed and treated. In addition, the efficacy of new medicines means that sick children are rarely so ill that they spend a prolonged time in bed. Ill children today are often up and playing with their toys, both at home and in hospital. Science and technology, as we are all too aware, has changed the world dramatically in the last thirty years.

Losing so many opportunities in the first quarter of my life meant that when I was a teenager I had to make up for lost time. My family spent a year in Canada when I was just twelve and during this period I taught myself to play the violin. I didn't realise that what I was doing was remarkable. I had begged my father for the violin. I was so desperate that the ukulele, given to me by my paternal grandmother when I was four and had first expressed my interest in a stringed instrument, was transformed into a violin. I made a crude bow out of wood and horsehair that I found in my father's shed, and then proceeded to make dreadful sounds on the ukulele with the help of my newly crafted bow. It was completely wrong, of course, because the ukulele has a flat bridge, unlike the violin, which has a curved bridge to accommodate the bowing. I was so disappointed but I held onto my dream.

My father asked around at work and found that a colleague had an old instrument in his loft. The violin came complete with case and bow and he wanted thirty shillings for it. My father, always with an eye to a bargain, thought it expensive. He hummed and hawed and I pleaded with him to purchase the violin. It is the only thing I remember wanting so much – the only thing I ever really made a fuss about.

One night my father came home with the violin under his arm and he also brought me a copy of a tutor entitled
Teach Yourself the First Step How to Play the Violin
. Thus, I began my journey.

In Canada, I took the violin everywhere with me. I remember hugging it like a security blanket. In a taxi at Montreal, my parents tried to persuade me to put it with the other luggage in the boot, but I insisted that I held it close to my body. In Winnipeg there seemed no opportunity for violin lessons, so I bought some pitch pipes to tune the instrument and set about work. As I had always heard music in my home, my father was a keen but nervous amateur pianist, I knew the sounds that I was aiming towards. I am enormously grateful that my father played the piano in the evenings when I had gone to bed. He would play popular tunes such as
‘La Paloma'
and I remember creeping out of my bed and sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to the hypnotic rhythms. My mother would discover me and be cross with my father for disturbing my bedtime routine. I, however, was totally delighted with the beautiful sounds resonating through the floorboards. I would want to hear more and more and more.

When I returned to England, I found the opportunity I had been looking for and joined a violin class at a local Saturday morning music school. Within months of starting formal violin lessons, I had passed the first grade examination and then continued working quickly though all the other grades, skipping a few on the way, because I just didn't have the luxury of time in order to complete my studies by the age of eighteen. At the same time, I had to work hard on my academic studies to make up for lost time. One of my peer's parents asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I knew I wanted to be a musician but I was also realistic. Playing professionally is almost unheard of amongst late starters. I told the father in question that I wanted to be a peripatetic violin teacher. I was met with a puzzled response. No one was ever quite sure what the word ‘peripatetic' meant.

This pattern of doing everything late and then with great urgency has been repeated time and time again in my life. Perhaps this explains my inner turmoil, the searching and questions now. Have I achieved everything I want to? The answer is certainly no. I think the problem is fear. Fear that I am running out of time. Fear that there will not be enough time for all the things I have still to accomplish.

*

There is a lot of cleaning to do in preparation for this party. I hadn't realised how dirty my house is. I start a little job and it becomes a major project. I wash all the lace curtains at the front of the house and I find I am embarking upon the washing of window frames. This leads on to skirting boards, pictures rails and so on. It is never-ending.

It is not just a question of cleaning my living room and breakfast room for the party guests. It is also a question of pride. Ette and Marco are coming to stay for a few days and the party will take place in the middle of their stay. It is the first time Ette has visited me in England and I want to give her a happy and comfortable stay. I would like her to find her stay as welcoming as I find mine when I stay with her. The problem is that her home is immaculately clean and tidy and I am discovering that it is difficult to maintain the same standards in English houses.

For example, there is the matter of carpets. English houses are usually carpeted, wall-to-wall throughout. Fitted carpets have become the norm – but to keep them truly clean, even with shampooing, is impossible. They are so unhygienic, always a trap for dust. In Italy, houses have marble, wood or tiled floors. A damp cloth, after hoovering or sweeping, or a bucket of water and a mop is all it takes to have a dust-free floor.

Then we rely on huge heavy curtains, another dust trap, unlike Italy where the windows always have a shutter to provide correct lighting and privacy. And I have also found that wallpaper attracts dust. I have a special wool mop to wipe the walls with, but eventually repapering is the only answer. In Italy, however, the plain white walls of houses can be repainted when necessary without too much fuss. I could go on and on.

I have found myself making numerous changes to my house since I began my trips to Italy. I have roller blinds at some of the windows. They are as dust-free as possible and allow the light to be more effectively controlled in each room. I have begun to remove carpets, replacing them with wooden floors. In my bedroom, I replaced our sixteen-year-old divan bed with an iron bedstead and a new mattress. This is easy to keep clean. It is possible to have access to the floor under the bed in order to clean and the iron framework can be cleaned with a damp cloth for a dust-free finish. The floorboards were not of sufficiently good quality to strip and seal with varnish. Instead, I scrubbed them clean and applied some floor paint specially formulated in bland, old-fashioned colours by a company for the National Trust. I am not really a do-it-yourself enthusiast – that is my spouse's department – but I actually felt so passionate about my solution for the bedroom floor that I undertook the whole project myself.

I have also attacked cupboards and wardrobes, completely reorganising their contents. In my room in Ette's home, an old-fashioned wardrobe much like mine stands between modern fitted wardrobes. This old-fashioned wardrobe in Italy, with a full-length mirror on the door, is a linen cupboard. I found my airing cupboard infested with moth larvae and was spurred into washing everything and beginning my own linen cupboard. In my Edwardian wardrobe, I have arranged towels, sheets and pillowcases. I was amazed when I first saw Ette's cupboard. It was a labour of love prepared for her wedding by the women in her family, who contributed all the items with their lace and embroidered finishes. I had hardly anything when I married, but now I find myself throwing out floral duvet covers and replacing them with plain white covers. I have also begun collecting white pillowcases with embroidery and other decorative edges. And I feel a great sense of peace and harmony in surveying my new linen cupboard.

*

I am rushing to get my grant application off to the Arts Council before my trip to Bologna.

I read the words at the head of the information sheet.

‘The scheme,' it says, ‘is designed to enable creative and performing musicians of professional status working in all areas of music.'

That includes me. I am a professional performing musician.

It goes on ‘to research and prepare new and unusual repertoire, to explore new techniques or to pursue a programme of work, which will benefit their career in the music profession.'

All these criteria apply to me. I underline the words
‘research
' and
‘prepare new and unusual repertoire
'. I underline even more boldly
‘to explore new techniques'
. The words are so appropriate. They describe exactly the work I am undertaking by attending the mandolin course. I am filled with a new sense of confidence that I might have, at last, found a source of funding for my project. It seems a realistic possibility.

I fill in the application form with details of my professional work, all my past and present performing work, and a brief description of my project. On a separate sheet, because the box provided on the form is too small, I write my description. I explain how the project is to visit on a monthly basis the Conservatoire in Padua in order to study, with Professor Ugo Orlandi, the Italian school of mandolin playing, which has a different approach to right-hand technique and interpretation.

I continue: ‘I am the first mandolinist from England to study on this unique course and to study this method. As a result of attending this course, I will develop a new right-hand technique, which is central to the Italian school of mandolin playing. The right-hand technique with its different hand position allows greater contact with the instrument, better placing of the plectrum, and results in a greater resonance, accuracy and speed, together with a more relaxed and elegant style of performance. In addition, it affords greater clarity and precision in the ornamentation of Baroque music.'

I read over the words to myself. I feel I have encapsulated clearly my plan and my objectives. I am really quite pleased with my eloquence.

The form requires further details, so I have to explain how the project will help develop my career and I list ways in which I intend to use the experience gained from the project in my future work. It seems obvious to me that I will utilise the new technique in my performance and teaching. Similarly, it seems clear to me that the experience will help me in editing and publishing my own editions of Baroque mandolin music. It will help me in the performance of mandolin music, especially in historically informed early music, and, it will also help me in my teaching, which will focus on the Italian style.

By the time I complete the form with two references, I am fed up with forms and I hastily depart for the postbox.

The ‘Forte Party' is upon us. Ette and Marco have arrived and Ette is surprised at how open houses in England are. By this, she means that the windows are without external blinds and shutters. It is difficult for her to sleep on the first night because she finds the bedroom too light. The orange glow of the street lighting pervades the room despite the lace curtains and roller blinds. In Italy, I always find the complete block of light and the consequent pitch black unsettling. Here, Ette is disturbed by the opposite. I find a solution in some eye masks, the kind provided on long-haul flights, which I borrow from a neighbour.

Although my husband has organised my birthday party, I still have an important contribution to make in cooking at least half of the food required for the supper. I am busy working on a huge casserole of lamb cooked with wine, garlic and tomatoes, and another huge pan of
calamari
cooked with the same three ingredients and with the addition of anchovies. I am also cooking large trays of roasted Mediterranean vegetables: aubergine, peppers, onions, tomatoes, courgettes and fennel. All of this is to be accompanied by a choice of pasta or rice and pieces of
ciabatta
bread, and is washed down with wine and water. The meal begins with a selection of cold Italian meats, such as salami and
prosciutto di speck
. After the hot dishes, it follows on with various desserts: mouth-watering meringues, prepared by my husband, fresh fruit salad and
tiramisù,
made authentically by Ette. This celebratory Italian feast is to be concluded with champagne and birthday cake.

I have a wonderful party. I so enjoy the idea of delighting some of my closest friends with a special meal, and I love chatting and sharing their company. I wear a short black dress, a new acquisition for the occasion, a classic piece, which I judge to be an investment. It makes me feel fantastically gorgeous.

Music comes after eating. Many of my guests are either professional or excellent amateur musicians, and the invitations had requested possible musical contributions. Sadly, my English friends are mostly reserved, probably feeling that they are required to put on a performance. My intention had been for some genuine music-making for our own amusement. In the end, only a few of us, including Ette and I playing mandolin duets, make music. This is perhaps the least satisfying aspect of the evening. It has become very much an audience and listener situation, instead of a few people playing and having fun in a corner, which might or might not attract the attention of other people. I suppose I have somehow managed to engineer a fairly formal component into the evening, when in fact I had desired a much more relaxed and informal situation.

I have received a number of thoughtful messages from friends and acquaintances counselling me not to be worried and saying that life gets significantly better from this moment onwards. When the room, suddenly darkened, is illuminated by only forty spindly candles on a cake, I feel unexpectedly empowered, for the first time in my life, to blow out every single flame with one breath. In this moment, I am focused. I take a deep breath and concentrate on extinguishing each and every light. To my utter astonishment, the room is dark and I have succeeded.

*

In the Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament, Ette and I are occupied dispensing a picnic made up of the leftovers from last night's party. My family and I are spending a day showing my Italian friends the sights. With us is Ette's childhood friend, Chiara, who is presently working in England. I am so pleased that she was able to come to the party and that she stayed the night. It has been company for Ette to have another person able to communicate with her in her own language.

Like me, Ette is fond of the roasted
melanzane
, aubergines, and we both pile them on top of salami placed on
ciabatta
bread, making a kind of open sandwich. We look out across the Thames, mesmerised by the endlessly changing water. The sunlight throws silver sparks on the grey-green surface. It is not so different from Venice. The air is sharp. It is not a day that Italians would choose to have an outdoor meal. Ette looks at me and I wonder what she is about to say. She tells me that the
melanzane
is particularly good. This compliment fills me with a warm glow. It strikes me that yesterday's gathering had another function besides celebrating my life so far. It also brought together some strands of my life. It provided an opportunity for my Italian friends to meet some of my English friends and vice versa. It helped sew together the threads of my English life with those of my Italian life, and I am grateful.

*

A letter arrives this morning. It is dated April 22
^nd
, the date of my birthday. It informs me courteously that the Arts Council has made ‘no recommendation for support' of my grant application. They had a number of applications competing for a limited amount of money. They hope I will be able to obtain the necessary funding from other sources. I have heard it all before.

I don't feel disappointed exactly, maybe a little numb, or perhaps a little philosophical. I don't know really. I just know that I have to carry on visiting Italy, taking it one month at a time, one day at a time.

I have to forget the letter and practise my scales for the next visit.