Valley of Decision (12 page)

‘How did you find that?' Payne asked David. They sat downstairs.

‘I didn't feel so comfortable.'

‘No. Walter had it on him tonight.'

‘Is he often like this?'

‘Well. It's his wife. She doesn't want him to turn to professional quartet playing. When he was in the BBC Symphony, she wasn't happy until she had him out. I don't blame her. She had full responsibility for the children, and he had to be away often. It's a pity. He's a marvellous player. He keeps me on my toes.'

‘Will he go with you?' David asked.

‘Yes, I think he will.'

‘It'll be a loss if he doesn't,' Cy Barton said. ‘It's this awkwardness of his that makes us. He rubs us up the wrong way. That makes us better, because he's such a good player. Not like Jon.'

‘He just annoyed us.'

‘He wasn't anything but a good sight-reader,' Cyril said. ‘You give us more after two rehearsals than he gave us after two hundred. I think that's why Walter's on edge. He thought this might put the evil day off.'

They laughed.

‘What's his wife like?' David asked.

‘We're bachelors. She's an attractive girl. Met her in the music library here. Like your wife. A singer. In the local choirs. Or was, till the family started. Trouble with Walter is that he thinks she hasn't had the opportunities he has. And she hasn't. He feels guilty. Walter's what you'd call a good man. He bothers about being fair.'

‘And that will never do,' Payne added.

‘Not in this game.'

MARY'S ONE LETTER
in the next week said she had been unwell.

She did not write at length about her illness, just that she felt off colour, and took up the rest of the letter with a satirical outline of preparations for the first performance and sourly with the constantly changed proposals about the itinerary. Simple as the scenery was, it took some moving, as anyone in his right mind could have foreseen, and yet this college, that theatre was allowed to cry off performances or demand more or call for alterations. Getting the show on the road made lunatics of the most sensible; she had had one desperate day in bed away from it all. People had been most kind. They were to spend an extra three days in New York, she added in a PS, before they made for Boston and their next longest stay. Redvers Gage was now superb.

Her first performance took place on the same day as his, but he worked it out that the Trent's concert would be finished by the time
Semele
began.

David consulted his mother, who had heard nothing from her daughter-in-law, but who had been in touch with their friends in New York. On Saturday the senior Blackwalls would listen to the quartet's concert, would drive down at leisure to London on Sunday, stay the night with a cousin, fly to New York on Monday morning and attend performances on Tuesday and Thursday. A letter to this effect had been dispatched to Mary.

‘I hope you're writing regularly,' his mother warned.

‘I add a bit every day and send it off every third.'

‘It could be worse.'

‘The playing takes up such a time. I've started on the Shostakovich, no. 8, C minor. It's tricky, especially as I've never seen it before. It's for the third concert.'

‘Have you done it together yet?'

‘No. That's part of the trouble. It doesn't make sense to me.'

‘I've got a record.'

It would be reasonable to listen, even if the performance misled, but he felt bound to refuse, to be awkward, to do a Wilkinson and cite moral grounds, musical integrity. Joan laughed at him.

‘They'll make you as bad as they are,' she told him.

‘I've not far to go.'

When he asked what she thought about Mary's illness, she refused to be dogmatic.

‘It could be a chill or something of the kind.'

‘You don't think she's fed up with it all?'

‘I don't see why I should think that, but by a week on Monday evening we'll be back with an eyewitness account.'

‘“How pleasant it is to have money”,' he said, grudgingly.

‘I hope so.'

Kenneth Reeve stopped him in the corridor to inquire about Mary's progress. Taken by surprise, David explained that the first performance had yet to take place.

‘Keep me informed,' Reeve said. ‘My wife is always worrying me about it.'

‘That's kind of her.'

‘It's her nature.' Reeve coughed drily and stalked quietly off, on his toes.

On the Saturday of the concert, David rose early, completed the weekend shopping by 9.30 and did an hour's playing, not at the quartets, before coffee. He had decided to lunch out, and then make his way to Newark for their rehearsal at three o'clock. Without haste he decided on a walk in the park; the air stung crisp, small pockets of frozen, sooty snow piled in shadowed hollows; middle-aged women walking their dogs were muffled up to the eyebrows. He met no one he knew; such a morning ought to have exhilarated him, but though he walked smartly only children seemed cheerful among the black trees. The concert nagged at his nerves, but he could do nothing to settle himself; his breath came short and, he reminded himself gloomily as he emerged through the cast-iron gates into the main road, he had not once thought of Mary and
Semele
.

He chewed his way through a boring expensive steak and, deciding against alcohol or coffee, sipped mineral water. The meal was not enjoyable, but he comforted himself that he would not be hungry again that day. Back at home, he checked that he had spare strings, that his music was complete, that he had three bows packed. To fill in time, he rang his mother to make sure she knew the venue of the concert; she went there, it appeared, quite often. The hall was shabby, an ex-cinema, but magnificent for chamber music, and she was looking forward to the evening. She sounded cheerful and confident, unperturbed by the imminent flight to America, more concerned, he guessed, that he looked smart than that he played well.

‘We'll see you in the interval or afterwards, I expect.'

He wished time would melt as he kicked around the house from room to room, finding nothing to occupy him.

At five minutes to three when he parked his car outside the Fine Arts Centre in Newark he found Cyril Barton stamping about, slapping his overcoat. The sun had gone; an east wind harried every corner. Cyril tapped his window, slipped in alongside.

‘I hope it's warm in there,' David began.

‘That's one thing about this place. They do know what they're about.'

‘What was it? A cinema?'

‘Combined cinema-theatre. The stage is still there, though we shan't use it. But it's been an arts centre for ten years, more, now. It's a nice size, good high ceiling and no draughty windows. It's big enough for a small orchestral concert. Haven't you ever played there with the Symphonia?'

Payne and Wilkinson had arrived in the same car and seemed in no hurry to disembark. A hatless man, with beard and glasses, in a navy anorak, waved hard from the small door above six brick steps and an iron rail.

‘Oh, Harry's here,' Barton said. ‘We can get the kit out.'

Inside in a yellow corridor, streakily discoloured, dampish, they were led into a room with four canvas chairs, two deal trestle tables and a hat rack. Harry led them, then Wilkinson, David, Barton, Payne last.

‘By God, it's cold,' Wilkinson said.

‘Not in here.' Harry filled a pipe, with fingers too large for the task, but made no attempt to light it, after he had shaken hands with David. ‘We've got a full house for you tonight.'

‘Why's that?' Wilkinson again.

‘The programme for one thing. And a bit of cooperation between two music societies. For once.'

The hall was large, barn-bare, its walls a faded orange decorated with swirls and knobs of lifted plaster. The stage stood curtainless and in front of it a raised platform, four rostra with chairs and a shaded lamp, which Harry immediately tested out.

‘No trouble seeing with that,' he said, pulling at the switch. He and Payne wandered towards the auditorium, which sloped upwards. The cinema seats had been removed, replaced by modern metallic chairs. The two men perched with their backs to the others, heads down in earnest consultation.

‘Good place to play in,' Barton told David.

‘It's warm.'

‘It's bloody ugly, but the sound's superb – really bounces off the walls.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Pure chance. It always seemed too loud and too blurred for me in the old picture palaces. Let's go and hang our glad rags up. Fred'll be gassing to Harry for twenty minutes.'

‘Who's Harry?' David asked once they were outside in the corridors.

‘Harry Owen. A solicitor. President of this place. Runs culture, but he keeps the books and turns the heating on. I don't know whether he likes music or just dragooning his fellow citizens. Wouldn't be the only one.' He let David into the changing room, closed the door behind him. ‘I've got something to tell you. There's an agent coming to listen. Fred said not to say anything to you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Not fair on you. We argued. He said you'd give your best whether you knew or not, but it might knock you off your cool, that it was our concern, not yours.'

‘I don't know that I like that.'

‘Don't say anything. You've not heard a word.' Barton laughed, open and sunny, losing something of his diffidence, as he stroked his suit straight on its hangar. ‘We're divided as it is. Wilko's got this wife, and I'm too comfortable. We shall play well, in spite.' He now picked up a top programme from a pile, perused it. ‘At least they've spelt us properly.' He handed it over. ‘There you are, in print.'

Looking round this stripped place, David wondered how Mary felt at 10.30 in the morning, in the bright American snow. A depression nagged, because he could do nothing for her, she for him. He wanted to risk a prayer, dared not for self-scorn.

‘Well, let's get back,' Barton warned, ‘before Fred flogs your cello.'

‘How long shall we practise?'

‘Dunno. That's one thing Fred won't make up his mind about. He's a marvellous leader, but he can't be sure whether we take the edge off things scratching away all afternoon. And you worry him.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you're new. If you were Rostropovich he'd be wondering. But it makes him play better. You wait till you hear him tonight. He's like an angel.'

‘You terrify me,' David said, only half laughing.

‘Wait till you catch Wilko doing his yoga.'

Wilkinson was fiddling hard, bow elbow energetic, whiskers bristling, but Payne turned from Harry Owen, they both stood watching the second violin, immediately the others entered.

‘Right,' he said. ‘Let's see what we can do.'

‘I shall have to go,' Owen said.

‘You just hold your horses. You've time to hear a bar or three.' He took out his violin and tuning fork, which he banged. ‘You're spot on, Wilk.'

‘I know where bloody A is.' Wilkinson rosined away at his bow.

‘Make sure that your seat's rock solid,' Payne told David, standing over him. ‘You can't play on a seesaw.' He circled the platform, blowing like a grampus, the violin he was carrying dwarfed. ‘Can you see, Cy? Wilk's not hogged the light again?' He took his chair, shifted it about as if to show David what was necessary. ‘Right we'll tune. In order.' The three sat silenced until he had satisfied himself, then Wilkinson, Barton and finally David took their turn. ‘Check your scores.' He turned his own pages, then eyed his troops, lifted fiddle to chin, bow arm up, and they had started.

‘What's that like?' he shouted to Owen. They'd done half a dozen lines, stopped without reason.

‘Beautiful, beautiful.'

‘I hope you're right. Again.'

They worked through the Haydn, without breaks. David Blackwall, breath crushed inside his lungs, played uncomfortably, but not badly, and without show. He had practised carefully, and the superb instrument served him well. Payne asked for a repetition on one or two bars, expressed gratification, scratched his face, practised furiously a run he managed with easy limpidity and said, interrupting the others who were fluently fingering awkward passages, that they'd have the Beethoven.

‘That's second,' he told David. ‘Mozart after the interval.'

Owen noisily left his seat, came down, congratulating them.

‘You've got the dressing-room key?' he asked.

‘Cyril has.'

‘Fear not.' Barton, socially. Wilkinson in some world of his own dashed away at Beethoven as if he grudged time off from the music. Owen banged the door; somewhere in the recesses of the building a telephone trilled. The four became one.

After the Beethoven, during which Payne stopped them several times with a show of ill-temper, as if Owen's departure had opened his lips, and they repeated the unsatisfactory sections, never more than a half-dozen bars, the order was given.

‘Walk round and a pee.'

David three or four times played the solo opening of the last movement, Allegro molto quasi presto.

‘Perfect,' Barton said. ‘Couldn't do it better myself.'

‘You have a walk round,' Payne commanded. David laid his cello down, replacing the bow in its case.

‘How's it going?' he asked.

‘Good enough. As long as you've a decent chair and your instrument's not on the wobble. Harry knows that. You've plenty of light?'

‘Yes.'

That Payne should bother himself about details of comfort rather than interpretation seemed improper, but he himself was in no mood to judge. He had lost fear, but with it his exhilaration, was locked inside himself in a mild insensitivity, as if he were beginning a cold.

‘Walk to the back,' Payne ordered. They stood by the main doors, watching, hearing Wilkinson play, hunched over his fiddle, with powerful clarity, repeating passages already polished. David whispered a compliment and the leader nodded succinct agreement. ‘He can't trust himself. But if somebody pinched the scores he'd be the one who could play it through. Whole programme. No bother. And there he sits, worrying himself to death.' They had walked into the foyer. ‘He'll be here till the concert starts, you know. Lying on the floor doing his exercises. I want you to go out with Cy for a bit of tea. When we come here I go to visit an aunt. Cy'll look after you. He's the nearest to a human being we've got. I think he'll get married.' He showed yellow teeth.