The Virtuoso (4 page)

I glanced down at my father’s old leather brogues, shining up at me so eagerly, and fiddled with the corners of my collar. Up the road, a dull light shone out from the Black Lion Inn and I had the sudden desire to be sitting in there by the fire, surrounded by strangers, all perhaps escaping a party of their own. I decided that’s where I’d go if things didn’t work out. I’d happily stay there all night, I thought, occasionally wandering outside to sit on a bench and watch the guests arrive and leave from number nine.

Anton was thumping the brass knocker, his chin pressed against his Fair Isle vest, humming Corelli. I stood beside him, waiting with my head bowed and hands clasped in front of me.

The door swung open and Walter Turner appeared, arched over us on the landing, glaring at us through the grey hair that hung in front of his crow-like eyes. He was a tall, wiry character in a dark woollen suit, a white shirt and a thin mauve tie. The tips of his shirt collar were buttoned underneath the tie, which jutted out awkwardly below its tiny knot. He appeared to have dressed in rather a hurry.

‘Hello—excellent, excellent,’ he said, flicking his hair to the side, after which it fell immediately back in front of his eyes. ‘It’s Anton, yes? Wonderful. And who’s this? You must be the young chap having a birthday! Seventeen? Wonderful, what a glorious age; yes, the purity and intensity of youth,’ he announced theatrically and nodded to Anton. ‘Do come in, do come in. Would you like a drink? Delphine? Del-
phiiiine?
’ he called over his shoulder as he darted behind us, pulling off our coats and hats. ‘Two champagnes, dear.’ He continued, ‘Of course by the time one reaches my age, unless one fosters that youthful spirit, one becomes all dry and withered from lack of life.’ He turned to me, smiling. ‘Like parched orange skin.’ He then launched off down the hall, a flick of his hand behind his back signalling us to follow.

Not an eyebrow was raised as we entered the living room and walked amongst the small clusters of guests, gathered like posies of weary wind-blown poppies. Most stood about in earnest discussion, and although there was the occasional garish bow tie or audacious laugh, on the whole I had to admit it all looked rather dull. Books lined one entire wall, and impressionist paintings of landscapes and figures hung along the others. Then I noticed through the crowd, on the far side of the room, playing at a Steinway Louis XV Grand—Noël.

His head was turned towards the higher octaves as if he were listening to, rather than watching, his hands. He appeared lost in thought, as though he too were
standing away from the piano amongst a party of strangers, absorbing the sound that drenched the room. He was playing Schumann’s
Fantasie
opus 17.

Anton handed me a glass of champagne then signalled for me to follow him. I excused myself, telling him I’d join him presently, hardly recognising my own voice, then walked over to sit on the chartreuse-coloured silk sofa in the far corner, at the foot of the piano.

The instrument almost completely obscured my view of Noël; a sliver of his face, in between the walnut satin body and lid of the piano, was all I could see. If he raised his head and looked forward, he would have been staring straight at me. He did, in fact, lift his head on several occasions, but each time he had that dreamy gaze of a child who’s just woken, oblivious to his environment. The rest of his face was expressionless. I felt a little self-conscious, sitting there staring at him, but was unable to avert my eyes. And no one else seemed to be taking any notice at all. Least of all Noël—his head tilted to the left, his eyes half closed, playing as if he were at home, quite alone.

I looked about the room, recognising several notable faces that, ordinarily, would have filled me with nerves. But next to Noël, and the impassioned pleas of Schumann streaming out of the piano and rattling every ounce of my body, all the other guests appeared remarkably mundane. The composer Benjamin Britten was over near the gramophone, in a buttoned-up pinstriped suit, holding a beer. With his hair smoothly
combed in corrugated waves and his large eyes set too far apart, I couldn’t help thinking how comical he looked up close. Next to him, his musical and romantic partner, the tenor Peter Pears, was wearing a green cable-knit vest with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and stood with his chest pushed out as if he was about to break into an aria. There were others—the radio broadcaster John Amis; the Earl of Harewood; and the author A.P. Herbert, who, with his large rubbery nose and the small furry circumflexes that floated above his black-rimmed glasses, looked like he was wearing a children’s disguise. Some faces were so familiar I momentarily thought to nod to them. But, thankfully, just before humiliating myself entirely, their eyes brushed over me without a flicker of recognition and I politely looked away.

I placed my champagne down beside me on the occasional table and noticed a pair of mother-of-pearl cufflinks lying on a crumpled bed of blue tissue paper, with a gold ribbon and card to the side—
Dear Noël
and a flouncing message and signature. I picked up the cufflinks, stroked their smooth, iridescent surfaces then closed my fingers, holding them like a beetle trapped in my hand, looking around the roomful of guests, challenging anyone to meet my gaze. Noël was deeply absorbed in his playing, staring dreamily at his hands; a sprightly old man with a white beard, who I could have sworn was Bernard Shaw, let out a high-pitched laugh on the other side of the room, but no one else stirred from conversation. From nearby I could
hear snippets of discussion on the libretto of Britten’s new opera
Peter Grimes
, and over the top, the strident voice of Walter, who stood only yards away, talking with a rake-like woman with a severe middle parting.

‘The secret of all the great artists is of pouring the infinite into the finite. And the task for us is to learn to discriminate, to acquire a fine spiritual palate so as to appreciate the true and beautiful, to find that every day is crowded with a thousand beauties…’

I looked about at this new world in which I sat—a world of Bohemian crystal and Dora Carrington portraits. Listening to Walter’s words chime over me, I let the cufflinks tumble about in my sweaty palm before slipping my hand into my jacket and dropping the shimmering bugs into my pocket, thinking that no truer words had ever been spoken.

Despite enjoying the view from the sofa, and the sweet musky smell of the champagne bubbles as I rolled the flute against my lips, I was aware of being the only person in the room, other than Noël, not engaged in conversation. Not wanting to be any sort of burden for Anton or the host, I leaned over to peruse the titles of the library, and my eyes fell immediately upon a book with a blue canvas spine and gold-embossed title—
The Correspondence of Robert and Clara Schumann.
I pulled it out and opened it on my lap. I’d read these letters a dozen times before; it was one of my father’s favourite books. But sitting there at Walter’s house listening to Noël, I could hardly keep my eyes focused on the page; I just kept thinking to myself how terribly portentous
this was, that I had stumbled upon a book on Robert and Clara Schumann, one of the greatest musical and romantic partnerships in history, who’d met at a musical soiree thrown by Clara’s father. I’d always been very taken by the idea that the most profound events in one’s life could take place, not at the end of some arduous trek, but quite fortuitously—any moment could be your very last before fate swoops down and snatches you in its talons.

‘For heaven’s sake, put the book away.’ Anton was squatting down beside me. ‘Noël is very fond of playing duets and I told him you’d be delighted to join him.’

I looked over at the piano. Just at that moment, Noël, still playing, lifted his head, and it was as if the spell he was under suddenly lifted, flinging his presence into the room. He was now at a party—Noël the birthday boy. He looked at me, smiling like an old friend, improvising upon the Schumann, spilling into flamboyant flourishes.

‘Don’t be afraid, he’s a charming young man,’ Anton said.

Anton had called Noël a
charming young man
; Noël had beckoned me over; it was too extraordinary—maybe I was drunk. I had no time to think about what was happening, something was lifting me to my feet. I turned to Anton and thanked him, then walked around the side of the piano, barely able to feel my legs carrying me along.

Noël looked up with a chummy smile, his hands continuing to play as if they didn’t belong to him. I
walked behind him and, without a word, edged onto the burgundy leather piano stool, our bodies almost touching. I looked down and saw how close we were—the grey plaid of my trousers only inches from the charcoal wool of his—and when his arm brushed along mine, it felt like the pluck of a harpsichord string rippling right through me. I might have been sitting next to Schumann himself.

The piece Noël was playing, the
Fantasie
opus 17, is Schumann’s most passionate piano composition, a piece I must have heard a thousand times as a child. But how different it sounded that evening, being played for me by Noël Mewton-Wood.

My father used to tell me that the
Fantasie
was a love letter written in musical notes, the falling five-note phrase at the beginning of the first movement echoing a quote from one of Beethoven’s love songs. Schumann wrote it during the three years when his teacher Friedrich Wieck forbade the struggling young composer from making any contact with his teenage daughter Clara. The separation unleashed a frenzy of artistic activity in Schumann—he composed piece after piece, reams of extraordinary music, then found a way to deliver them to Clara.

I used to love listening to this piece with my father. Huddled together at the gramophone, I’d watch the black disc circling around on its bakelite base, the needle bobbing up and down in its groove, then hear that warm crackling sound before the music started.

My father would be peering down through the glasses that clung to the end of his nose, staring at the score in his lap. As the music began his finger would travel along the phrases like a boat sailing along smooth water, leaving a trail of notes in its wake. And whenever that five-note phrase appeared in the music, he’d tap me then hold up his finger, tracing the melody through the air, as it hung so visibly in front of him.

The
Fantasie
was the first piece of music with which I fell in love.

Noël had just returned to the main theme and was approaching the coda, where the reference to Beethoven’s amorous line is unmistakable, repeating over and over. The rumbling left hand slowed into an adagio, Noël’s fingers barely stroking the ivory keys. The final announcement—pianissimo—stripped of accompaniment, was like a shyly spoken revelation; his long white fingers splayed across four octaves in the culminating chord. By the time Noël’s hands settled into the final radiant C major chord, my heart was beating hard against my chest and it was only the feeling of sheer terror that kept me pinned to the seat.

There was a moment’s pause before Noël lifted his hands in one smooth movement from the piano, dropped them into his lap, then swung around to face me.

‘Well, it’s your birthday. What would you like to play?’ he said, grinning, exposing his pearly teeth, and I realised that for all the times I’d seen his photograph
in the newspaper or watched him on stage I’d never really seen him smile. His fingers started skimming up and down the keys again, fluttering like wings in flight, as if he had little control over them. I stared down at his hands, avoiding his gaze. I had expected, and wanted, to find his face somehow unknowable, like a screen idol, or the bust I once saw of King Akhenaton in the British Museum, whose beauty made me tremble. I wanted some physical sign of his divinity; but to my disappointment he looked quite ordinary. Up close, his features were rather plain, too coarse to be truly handsome, and his thick brown hair grew straight out from his head, wiry and wavy, with a design all its own. The most distinctive feature of his face, which I’d never before noticed, was its boyishness: pleading eyes and an effusive smile that, once arrived, didn’t want to leave.

‘It’s your birthday too,’ I said, cursing myself that I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

‘And I’d like
you
to choose,’ he replied, continuing to play, and nodding his forehead towards the stacks of music on the sideboards of the piano.

I stood and started thumbing through the pile: Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Weber, Poulenc, Debussy, trying to concentrate on reading the covers while glancing back at him, afraid he might vanish.

He was still smiling, looking straight ahead, then down at his hands. ‘Have you found something?’ he asked. ‘We’ll be another year older, shortly.’

I pulled out the first duet that I came across. ‘How about the Moszkowski dances?’ I asked, putting the music up in front of him.

‘Splendid,’ he replied. Then he stopped playing, turned straight towards me, grinning, his eyes enveloping me. Blood filled my face and I quickly turned away, and concentrated on settling comfortably on the seat.

‘Well, off we go then, shall we?’

I nodded, hardly able to speak, and lifted my quivering hands to the keys.

As soon as we began, I relaxed. There was something about the way he played that put me completely at ease. I enjoyed playing duets immensely; it was like dancing a waltz—allowing you to be swept up into someone else’s tempo, and they, likewise, to be carried along in yours. It was extraordinarily intimate, and no duet partner could ever be like another. Sometimes when I played duets, I felt that I was locked in a battle of wills, a fierce game of cat and mouse. (There was a girl at the Academy, Eileen Saunders, who always insisted upon playing primo, and whenever I played with her, by the end of the work, I’d be all thumbs, feeling frantic and undone, as if I’d only just escaped with my life.) Playing with Noël was quite the opposite: he had a manner that buoyed me up and took charge in a most tender fashion. I felt more accomplished than I actually was, as if no music was beyond me. I’m not sure what prompted this feeling. Perhaps it was
because Noël was so acutely aware of everything I was doing, more aware than I was myself. He’d ritardando ever so slightly when I was approaching a challenging part, or push me along, like a driver whipping a horse, when he knew both the music and I had it in us to charge. Even though he played primo, I never felt that he was the leader, that I had to blindly follow him whatever he did. With Noël next to me, I could play better than I ever could have done on my own or with anyone else.