The Concert Pianist (33 page)

‘No time to print new programmes so it's Xerox handouts. There'll be a notice in the foyer. Sometimes box office likes to apprise punters of a substitution. A few migraines, but we aim to please.'

Philip felt sick. He promised to call back in half an hour.

Ursula was calm. She came across to where he was sitting, put a hand on his shoulder. After a while she sat down next to him. She was wearing a pale-green silk shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was still wet from the shower.

She waited, hands pressed together between her thighs.

Philip sat before his toast and marmalade in a daze. He had got
out
of bed feeling poorly, enervated by the sea air. He found it impossible to line up his thoughts and was aware of a swarming sensation in his belly.

Ursula reasoned with him carefully. She said he was in the wrong frame of mind, nicely relaxed by the break; she thought it inadvisable two days before a major operation to put his system through the stress of a concert and anyway, his shoulder was sprained, thanks to Vadim, and he might not play his best. Things had moved on. Far better to stay a couple more days at the hotel, really winding down and sticking to the plan. ‘It won't be easy to have sex after your operation. We should pack it in now.'

‘They're not removing my parts.'

‘You'll have stitches. You'll need to take it easy.'

He smiled at her.

She kept talking, and he kept thinking it through. He wanted to know why Vadim had changed his mind. Was it pity, largesse, repentance, cowardice, sinister rivalry?

‘Two injured pianists celebrating a dead pianist. Great.'

He kissed her on the mouth and called John to say he would play. She watched him expressionlessly as he spoke to his agent. He wanted to do the first half, before the interval, and would need to programme Bach's A minor Prelude and Fugue, transcribed by Liszt, Schubert's A major Sonata, and the Chopin B minor Sonata. Vadim could play the second half as advertised: Liszt and Rachmaninov, with a duet for an encore. John relayed this to Vadim but was told that he had prepared the first half better and had to go first with the Waldstein and Funeral March Sonatas, which meant that Philip could not follow with the Bach, wrong in that position, and Philip anyway could not play the Rachmaninov. He approved of the idea of playing Chopin's third sonata after Vadim had played the second so agreed to perform after the interval. He would start with the G major and B minor Rachmaninov Preludes Opus 32, insert Schubert's G flat major Impromptu, and finish off with the Chopin. The key sequence worked well and the shorter pieces were manageable on short notice. The sonata was sort of ‘ready'. He had forty-eight hours to clean it up, and two nights to sleep on it.

After the call was over, she ran her hand across his forearm.

He regarded her appreciatively.

She leaned forward to enclose him in her arms. This was the man
she
had fallen in love with. She would now have to go through an agony of nerves and worry.

She smiled uneasily.

‘I just hope his arm injury is worse than mine,' he said.

She watched him get ready in the dressing room, shirt off, trousers off, a stripping-down and dressing-up, a practised transformation.

She sat on a chair talking about the news, another suicide bomber in Jerusalem, the weather, anything. He seemed to be listening and managed replies that were quite thoughtful, though all the time she could tell he was somewhere else. She wanted to be released, allowed to suffer her nerves in private out in the foyer with the milling people, or on the concourse in front of the Festival Hall, anywhere but here. But he seemed to need her, wanted her around and didn't mind if she talked nonsense, or just sat there, raising her eyebrows, smiling, looking at the clock, stomach churning, sipping at a glass of white wine that John Sampson had sweetly brought backstage. John was gleaming with excitement and pride. ‘Full house. I saw Gerry Mandelson, Vladek Notar, Cosima Whatserarse.' He snapped a finger. ‘Fat soprano features . . .'

Ursulalaughed.

‘She'll need two seats. Mikhael Aronowitz. Oodles of young lovelies. Are you all right?'

‘Vadim's cutting it fine.'

‘Oh, sorry.' John touched his forehead. ‘Called this morning to say out of sorts. Could you do the whole concert?'

‘What!' Ursula was aghast.

John's face collapsed with amusement.

‘John,' she swiped at him. ‘You devil!'

Philip turned away, adjusting his bow tie.

‘The word's got round about Philip.' He was serious now. ‘There's a head of steam out there. Pip, you'll be brill. I'll get out of your hair.' He glanced at Ursula. ‘Before he does a Bruno Gillespie on the new suit.'

‘Bruno Gillespie?' she enquired.

‘He puked on me before an Albert Hall gig. Trashed a brand-new Turnbull & Asser shirt. That's got to be worth twenty per cent.'

Philip smiled. He was working his hands, massaging the muscles and joints. The plan had changed so that he and Vadim would start
the
recital together, a duet, after Benno Alexandrovich had given an introductory speech commemorating Serebriakov, explaining the change of programme and introducing the artists. They had yet to rehearse and the plan was to run through it on the upright in Philip's room when Vadim arrived. They could probably wing it.

‘If he's late, drop the duet,' said Ursula.

Philip breathed in and out deeply.

She had spent the last two days at his place, acting maidservant and helpmeet, shopping, cooking, running errands, taking messages, talking when he needed to talk, being out of sight and behind scenes when he needed to practise, which he did single-mindedly right through Monday afternoon and evening till 10 p.m., and then off again the next morning. He said it was much easier doing half a concert, but he was cutting it fine on the Chopin, certain passages in the scherzo bothering him, and couldn't get what he wanted in the opening movement, which was more a question of flow and integration. He played the work in slow motion, repeated sections a dozen times, broke off to play scales, thirds, octaves. She was amazed by the energy that poured through the piano and by how much sound was unleashed into the house. His coruscating scales and arpeggios were generated by huge reserves of focused physical energy, a current held in control, but almost frightening to behold when he played. His Rachmaninov B minor Prelude was there right off, immense, gigantically sonorous in the middle section, knocked off first time at the height of declamation. She could see he was enjoying getting his fingers into the keys.

Off the keyboard he seemed quiet, mildly preoccupied, as though husbanding resources. He lay down twice during the day and slept for an hour. In the afternoon on Tuesday they walked in the park and he seemed to enjoy the rose garden and waterfall, pointing things out, recalling stories. He was not quite the same as the man she had walked with in Sussex. He seemed alive with secret purpose, and occasionally his attention wandered when she spoke, but he always came back to her, was attentive, aware of her importance to him.

Over dinner the day before the concert he spoke about Chopin's music, explaining how Chopin's melodic line was fraught with accidentals, notes that are not part of the scale of a given key, but
which
fall between those notes and must push up or lean down in order to resolve. So many melodies or decorative fioriture were threaded with these accidentals it was as if Chopin craved the subtle pain and exquisite resolution they gave. Feeling had to be wrung out in some way, made to hurt. ‘He inscribed suffering in his music. It was what he had become after all. But no self-pity, no sentimentality. He had the courage and the stoicism to depict the utterly tragic. Take the end of the Fourth Ballade, for example. After everything that work contains he ends it with such definitive and utter despair that is even more tragic in implication than effect.'

He released her at twenty-five-past seven. Vadim was still getting changed, and it looked as though they would scrap the duet as an opener.

The Russian came into the dressing room, hugged Philip, kissed Ursula, begged to be forgiven, made a great business of his injured arm, but glowed with excitement and energy.

‘I have Nurofen,' he said. ‘Improve neuro-transmission. Guaranteed no mistakes.'

‘Vadim!' She smiled. She found him very charismatic. His eyes were full of mischief. He could do a kind of bravura chivalry when in the mood.

‘Philip, sorry about the other night.' He whistled and raised his eyebrows.

‘I heard about that,' she said. ‘Very laddish.'

‘Sociologically interesting,' said the Russian.

‘I'll bet!'

‘You don't like sociology?'

‘It was full of sociology students, was it?'

Vadim shrugged innocently. ‘Philip says I should widen my horizon.'

‘Get dressed!'

He touched his half-buttoned shirt. ‘Good idea.'

Philip gave her a flat look when Vadim had gone.

‘Are you going to stay in here or watch him play?'

‘I might listen from the stage door.'

She kissed him, squeezed his hands. ‘OK.'

She
felt hardly less nervous slipping through the auditorium, already half full, into the foyer. The gong was going. People were drifting to the doors. The bar was deserted. There were all kinds of faces, civilised faces, elderly Mittel European-type faces, eccentric, distinguished faces, young men with spectacles, girls in long dresses, the ranged middle classes, scented, measured, discriminating, now filtering into the expectant space of the auditorium. It was not the world, just a cross-section of music lovers who had come out that night with informed interest, knowledgeable listeners ready to concentrate hard for a couple of hours, because this was a part of their culture - a moment of musical history that could never be repeated.

She could sense the anticipation. She experienced more intensely than ever the burden of expectation focused on the empty stage, on the lone piano, on the evening's performers hidden backstage. With what confidence this crowd expected to be served by Vadim and Philip, who were only humans like the rest of them but would soon be tested by hundreds of ears, and whose playing would be completely exposed down there. With what confidence they must face the challenge, even while their hands shook and their hearts beat hard.

Friends called out to her as she moved down the aisle. Very few people knew about her and Philip, but she sensed from somewhere an awareness that she was specially connected to the hero of the evening, or to one of them. She sat down with a weird feeling almost of bridal pride, as if she in her way were part of this effort, this extraordinary production. She felt momentarily self-conscious as John, sitting across the aisle, pointed her out to a neighbour. What did it mean to be associated with a man everybody had come to see, to be the maestro's girlfriend, that special person?

Her heart beat fast. She felt for Philip, backstage, going through it for the entire first half, and then suffering the inevitable comparison with Vadim. She was full of curiosity for how Vadim would play. It was almost unbearable waiting for him to appear. She wanted the concert to start. She wanted it to be over. How could they endure such tension, poor lambs? What courage you needed to get through this hell?

When the lights dimmed, her heartbeat accelerated as if this marked the point of no return. She drew back her hair, pursed her
lips,
felt as though she were dissolving; and then Benno came on and the sense of occasion mounted, and he stood at the front of the stage, short, dignified, waiting for the audience's full attention, the stage lights warm behind him ready for the soloists; and when he spoke his voice was soft but carrying, almost confidential, grave. He must have been nervous, seeking the right words, talking of a legend, a figure of such global stature, and connecting the importance of that man, so loved and mourned, to the special task of the pianists tonight: to commemorate his art and to carry the torch. He craved indulgence for changes to the programme and to the scheduled concert and thanked the artists in advance for gearing their preparations to this special occasion. He concluded by saying that Serebriakov did not see classical music as a privilege but as a necessity, ‘and hence my deep and personal gratitude to the great performers we are going to hear tonight'.