Letters from Zedelghem
CHÂTEAU ZEDELGHEM,
NEERBEKE,
WEST VLAANDEREN
29TH-VI-1931
Sixsmith,
Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiquities etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits. Exactly what happened, but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord rang out, half-cello, half-celeste, D major (?), held for four beats. My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal—E-flat, whole string section, glorious, transcendent, angels wept. Deliberately now, smashed a figurine of an ox for the next note, then a milkmaid, then Saturday’s Child—orgy of shrapnel filled the air, divine harmonies my head. Ah, such music! Glimpsed my father totting up the smashed items’ value, nib flashing, but had to keep the music coming. Knew I’d become the greatest composer of the century if I could only make this music mine. A monstrous Laughing Cavalier flung against the wall set off a thumping battery of percussion.
Woke in my Imperial Western suite, Tam Brewer’s collectors nearly knocking my door down and much commotion from corridor. Hadn’t even waited until I’d shaved—breathtaking vulgarity of these ruffians. Had no choice but to exit swiftly via the bathroom window before the brouhaha summoned the manager to discover that the young gentleman in Room 237 had no means of settling his now-hefty balance. Escape was not hitchless, sorry to report. Drainpipe ripped free of its mounting with the noise of a brutalized violin, and down, down, down tumbled your old chum. Right buttock one hellish bruise. Minor miracle I didn’t shatter my spine or impale myself on railings. Learn from this, Sixsmith. When insolvent, pack minimally, with a valise tough enough to be thrown onto a London pavement from a first- or second-floor window. Insist on hotel rooms no higher.
Hid in a tearoom tucked into a sooty nook of Victoria Station, trying to transcribe the music from the china shop of dreams—couldn’t get beyond a measly two bars. Would have walked into Tam Brewer’s arms just to have that music back again. Miserable spirits. Laboring types surrounded me with bad teeth, parrot voices, and unfounded optimism. Sobering to think how one accursed night of baccarat can alter a man’s social standing so irreversibly. Those shopworkers, cabbies, and tradesmen had more half crowns and threepenny bits squirreled away in their sour Stepney mattresses than I, Son of an Ecclesiastical Somebody, can claim. Had a view of an alley: downtrodden scriveners hurtling by like demisemiquavers in a Beethovian allegro. Afraid of ’em? No, I’m afraid of being one. What value are education, breeding, and talent if one doesn’t have a pot to piss in?
Still can’t believe it. I, a Caius Man, teetering on the brink of destitution. Decent hotels won’t let me taint their lobbies now. Indecent hotels demand cash on the nail. Am barred from any reputable gaming table this side of the Pyrenees. Anyway, I summarized my options:—
(i) Use paltry funds to obtain a dirty room in some lodging house, beg a few guineas from Uncle Cecil Ltd., teach prissy missies their scales and bitter spinsters their technique. Come now. If I could fake courtesy to dunces I’d still be swabbing Professor Mackerras’s arse with my ex-fellow undergrads. No, before you say it, I can’t go running back to Pater with yet another cri de cœur. Would validate every poisonous word he said about me. Would rather jump off Waterloo Bridge and let Old Father Thames humble me. Mean it.
(ii) Hunt down Caius people, butter ’em up, and invite myself to stay for the summer. Problematic, for same reasons as (i). How long could I conceal my starving pocketbook? How long could I stave off their pity, their talons?
(iii) Visit turf accountant—but if I lost?
You’d remind me I brought it all upon myself, Sixsmith, but shrug off that middle-class chip on your shoulder and stick with me a little longer. Across a crowded platform, a guard announced that the Dover-bound train for the ship to Ostend was delayed by thirty minutes. That guard was my croupier, inviting me to double or quits. If one will just be still, shut up, and listen—lo, behold, the world’ll sift through one’s ideas for one, esp. in a grimy London railway station. Downed my soapy tea and strode across the concourse to the ticket office. A return ticket to Ostend was too costly—so parlous has my position become—so a single it had to be. Boarded my carriage just as the locomotive’s whistle blasted forth a swarm of piccolo Furies. We were under way.
Now to reveal my plan, inspired by a piece in The Times and a long soak’s daydream in my Savoy suite. In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won’t have heard of him because you’re a musical oaf, but he’s one of the greats. The only Briton of his generation to reject pomp, circumstance, rusticity, and charm. Hasn’t produced any new work since the early twenties due to illness—he’s half blind and can hardly hold a pen—but the Times review of his Secular Magnificat (performed last week at St. Martin’s) referred to a drawerful of unfinished works. My daydream had me traveling to Belgium, persuading Vyvyan Ayrs he needed to employ me as an amanuensis, accepting his offer to tutor me, shooting through the musical firmament, winning fame and fortune commensurate to my gifts, obliging Pater to admit that, yes, the son he disinherited is the Robert Frobisher, greatest British composer of his time.
Why not? Had no better plan. You groan and shake your head, Sixsmith, I know, but you smile too, which is why I love you. Uneventful journey to the Channel . . . cancerous suburbs, tedious farmland, soiled Sussex. Dover an utter fright staffed by Bolsheviks, versified cliffs as Romantic as my arse and a similar hue. Changed last shillings into francs at the port and took my cabin aboard the Kentish Queen, a rusty tub that looks old enough to have seen service in Crimea. Spud-faced young steward and I disagreed his burgundy uniform and unconvincing beard were worth a tip. Sneered at my valise and manuscript folder—“Wise of you to travel light, sir”—and left me to muck for myself. Suited me fine.
Dinner was balsawood chicken, powdery potatoes, and a bastard claret. My dining-table companion was Mr. Victor Bryant, cutlery lordling of Sheffield. Not a musical bone in his body. He expounded on the subject of spoons for most of the meal, mistook my civil deportment for interest, and offered me a job in his sales department on the spot! Can you believe it? Thanked him (keeping straight face) and confessed I’d rather swallow cutlery than ever have to sell the stuff. Three mighty blasts on the foghorn, engines changed timbre, felt the ship cast off, went on deck to watch Albion withdraw into drizzly murk. No going back now; consequences of what I’d done struck home. R.V.W. conducted Sea Symphony in the Orchestra of the Mind, “Sail forth, steer for the deep waters only, Reckless, O Soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me.” (Don’t much care for this work, but it was perfectly programmed.) North Sea wind had me shivering, spray licked me from toe to crown. Glossy black waters invited me to jump. Ignored ’em. Turned in early, leafed through Noyes’s Contrapuntals, listened to the distant brass of the engine room and sketched a repetitive passage for trombone based on the ship’s rhythms, but was rather rubbish, and then guess who came a-knocking at my door? The spud-faced steward, his shift over. Gave him rather more than a tip. No Adonis, scrawny but inventive for his class. Turfed him out afterwards and sank into the sleep of the dead. One part of me wanted that voyage never to end.
But end it did. Kentish Queen slid into Dover’s snaggletoothed twin sister over the mucky water, Ostend, the Lady of Dubious Virtue. Early, early morning, Europe’s snoring rumbled deep below bass tubas. Saw my first aboriginal Belgians, hauling crates, arguing, and thinking in Flemish, Dutch, whatever. Packed my valise sharpish, afraid the ship might sail back to England with me still aboard; or, rather, afraid of my letting this happen. Grabbed a bite from the first-class galley’s fruit bowl and dashed down the gangplank before anyone with braiding on his uniform caught up with me. Set foot on Continental macadam and asked a Customs man where I might find the railway station. He pointed toward a groaning tram packed with malnourished workmen, rickets, and penury. Preferred shank’s pony, drizzle or no drizzle. Followed tramlines down coffinesque streets. Ostend is all tapioca grays and stained browns. Will admit, I was thinking Belgium was a b. stupid country to run away to. Bought a ticket for Bruges and hauled myself aboard the next train—no platforms, can you believe it?—a decrepit, empty train. Moved compartment because mine smelt unpleasant, but all compartments had same pong. Smoked cigarettes cadged off Victor Bryant to purify the air. The stationmaster’s whistle blew on time, the locomotive strained like a gouty proctor on the pot before heaving itself into motion. Soon steaming through a foggy landscape of unkempt dikes and blasted copses at a fair old clip.
If my plan bears fruit, Sixsmith, you may come to Bruges before v. long. When you do, arrive in that six o’clock in the morning gnossiennesque hour. Lose yourself in the city’s rickety streets, blind canals, wrought-iron gates, uninhabited courtyards—may I go on? Why, thank you—leery Gothic carapaces, Ararat roofs, shrubbery-tufted brick spires, medieval overhangs, laundry sagging from windows, cobbled whirlpools that suck your eye in, clockwork princes and chipped princesses striking their hours, sooty doves, and three or four octaves of bells, some sober, some bright. Aroma of fresh bread led me to a bakery where a deformed woman with no nose sold me a dozen crescent-moon pastries. Only wanted one, but thought she had enough problems. A rag-and-bone cart clattered out of the mist and its toothless driver spoke companionably to me, but I could only reply, “Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas flamand,” which made him laugh like the Goblin King. Gave him a pastry. His filthy hand was a scabby claw. In a poor quarter (alleys stank of effluent), children helped their mothers at the pumps, filling broken jugs with brown water. Finally, the excitement all caught up with me, sat on the steps of a dying windmill for a breather, wrapped myself against the damp, fell asleep.
Next thing, a witch was poking me awake with her broomstick, screeching something like “Zie gie doad misschien?” but don’t quote me. Blue sky, warm sun, not a wisp of fog to be seen. Resurrected and blinking, I offered her a pastry. She accepted with distrust, put it in her apron for later, and got back to her sweeping, growling an ancient ditty. Lucky I wasn’t robbed, I suppose. Shared another pastry with five thousand pigeons, to the envy of a beggar, so I had to give him one too. Walked back the way I might have come. In an odd pentagonal window a creamy maiden was arranging Saintpaulia in a cut-glass bowl. Girls fascinate in different ways. Try ’em one day. Tapped on the pane, and asked in French if she’d save my life by falling in love with me. Shook her head but got an amused smile. Asked where I could find a police station. She pointed over a crossroads. One can spot a fellow musician in any context, even amongst policemen. The craziest-eyed, unruliest-haired one, either hungry-skinny or jovial-portly. This French-speaking, cor anglais-playing, local operatic society-belonging inspector had heard of Vyvyan Ayrs and kindly drew me a map to Neerbeke. Paid him two pastries for this intelligence. He asked if I had shipped over my British car—his son was mad keen about Austins. Said I had no car. This worried him. How would I get to Neerbeke? No bus, no trainline, and twenty-five miles was the devil of a walk. Asked if I could borrow a policeman’s bicycle for an indefinite period. Told me that was most irregular. Assured him I was most irregular, and outlined the nature of my mission to Ayrs, Belgium’s most famous adopted son (must be so few that might even be true), in the service of European music. Repeated my request. Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction, and now was such a time. The honest sergeant took me to a compound where lost items await rightful owners for a few months (before finding their way to the black market)—but first, he wanted my opinion on his baritone. He gave me a burst of “Recitar! . . . Vesti la giubba!” from I Pagliacci. (Pleasant enough voice in lower registers, but his breathing needed work and his vibrato quivered like a backstage thunder board.) Gave a few musical pointers; received the loan of a Victorian Enfield plus cord to secure valise and folder to the saddle and rear mudguard. He wished me bon voyage and fair weather.
Adrian would never have marched along the road I bicycled out of Bruges (too deep in Hun territory) but nonetheless felt an affinity with my brother by virtue of breathing the same air of the same land. The Plain is flat as the Fens but in a bad shape. Along the way I fueled myself with the last pastries and stopped at impoverished cottages for cups of water. Nobody said much, but nobody said no. Thanks to a headwind and a chain that kept slipping off, the afternoon was growing old before I finally reached Ayrs’s home village of Neerbeke. A silent blacksmith showed me how to get to Château Zedelghem by elaborating my map with a pencil stub. A lane with harebells and toadflax growing in the middle led me past a deserted lodge house to a once stately avenue of mature Italian poplars. Zedelghem is grander than our rectory, some crumbly turrets adorn its west wing, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Audley End or Capon-Tench’s country seat. Spied a girl riding a horse over a low hill crowned by a shipwrecked beech tree. Passed a gardener spreading soot against the slugs in a vegetable garden. In the forecourt, a muscle-bound valet was decoking a Cowley Flat Nose. Seeing my approach, he rose and waited for me. In a terraced corner of this frieze, a man in a wheelchair sat under foamy wisteria listening to the wireless. Vyvyan Ayrs, I presumed. The easy part of my daydream was over.
Leant the bicycle against the wall, told the valet I had business with his master. He was civil enough, and led me around to Ayrs’s terrace, and announced my arrival in German. Ayrs a husk of a man, as if his illness has sucked all juice out of him, but stopped myself kneeling on the cinder path like Sir Percival before King Arthur. Our overture proceeded more or less like this. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ayrs.”
“Who in hell are you?”
“It’s a great honor to—”
“I said, ‘Who in hell are you?’ ”
“Robert Frobisher, sir, from Saffron Walden. I am—I was—a student of Sir Trevor Mackerras at Caius College, and I’ve come all the way from London to—”
“All the way from London on a bicycle?”
“No. I borrowed the bicycle from a policeman in Bruges.”
“Did you?” Pause for thought. “Must have taken hours.”
“A labor of love, sir. Like pilgrims climbing hills on their knees.”
“What balderdash is this?”
“I wished to prove I’m a serious applicant.”
“Serious applicant for what?”
“The post of your amanuensis.”
“Are you mad?”
Always a trickier question than it looks. “I doubt it.”
“Look here, I’ve not advertised for an amanuensis!”
“I know, sir, but you need one, even if you don’t know it yet. The Times piece said that you’re unable to compose new works because of your illness. I can’t allow your music to be lost. It’s far, far too precious. So I’m here to offer you my services.”
Well, he didn’t dismiss me out of hand. “What did you say your name was?” I told him. “One of Mackerras’s shooting stars, are you?”
“Frankly, sir, he loathed me.”
As you’ve learned to your cost, I can be intriguing when I put my mind to it.
“He did, did he? Why might that be?”
“I called his sixth Concerto for Flute”—I cleared my throat—“ ‘a slave of prepubescent Saint-Saëns at his most florid’ in the college magazine. He took it personally.”
“You wrote that about Mackerras?” Ayrs wheezed as if his ribs were being sawed. “I’ll bet he took it personally.”
The sequel is short. The valet showed me into a drawing room decorated in eggshell green, a dull Farquharson of sheep and cornstooks, and a not-very-good Dutch landscape. Ayrs summoned his wife, Mrs. van Outryve de Crommelynck. She kept her own name, and with a name like that who can blame her? The lady of the house was coolly courteous and inquired into my background. Answered truthfully, though I veiled my expulsion from Caius behind an obscure malady. Of my present financial straits I breathed not a word—the more desperate the case, the more reluctant the donor. Charmed ’em sufficiently. It was agreed I could at least stay the night at Zedelghem. Ayrs would put me through my musical paces in the morning, permitting a decision on my proposal.
Ayrs did not appear at dinner, however. My arrival coincided with the start of a fortnightly migraine, which confines him to his rooms for a day or two. My audition is postponed until he is better, so my fate still hangs in the balance. On the credit side, the Pies-porter and lobster à l’américaine were the equal to anything at the Imperial. Encouraged my hostess to talk—think she was flattered at how much I know about her illustrious husband, and sensed my genuine love of his music. Oh, we ate with Ayrs’s daughter, too, the young equestrienne I’d glimpsed earlier. Mlle. Ayrs is a horsey creature of seventeen with her mama’s retroussé nose. Couldn’t get a civil word out of her all evening. Might she see in me a louche English freeloader down on his luck, here to lure her sickly father into a glorious Indian summer where she can’t follow and isn’t welcome?
People are complicated.
Gone midnight. The château is sleeping, so must I.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
6th—VII—1931
A telegram, Sixsmith? You ass.
Don’t send any more, I beg you—telegrams attract attention! Yes, I’m still Abroad, yes, safe from Brewer’s knuckle men. Fold my parents’ mortifying letter into a paper boat and sail it down the Cam. Pater’s only “concerned” because my creditors are shaking him to see if any banknotes drop from the family tree. Debts of a disinherited son, however, are nobody’s business but the son’s—believe me, I’ve looked into the legalities. Mater is not “frantic.” Only the prospect of the decanter running dry could make Mater frantic.
My audition took place in Ayrs’s music room, after lunch, the day before yesterday. Not an overwhelming success, putting it mildly—no knowing how many days I’ll be here, or how few. Admit to a certain frisson sitting on Vyvyan Ayrs’s own piano stool beforehand. This Oriental rug, battered divan, Breton cupboards crammed with music stands, Bösendorfer grand, carillon, all witnessed the conception and birth of Matryoshka Doll Variations and his song cycle Society Islands. Stroked the same ’cello who first vibrated to Untergehen Violinkonzert. Hearing Hendrick wheeling his master this way, I stopped snooping and faced the doorway. Ayrs ignored my “I do hope you’re recovered, Mr. Ayrs” and had his valet leave him facing the garden window. “Well?” he asked, after we’d been alone half a minute. “Go on. Impress me.” Asked what he wanted to hear. “I must select the program, too? Well, have you mastered ‘Three Blind Mice’?”
So I sat at the Bösendorfer and played the syphilitic crank “Three Blind Mice,” after the fashion of a mordant Prokofiev. Ayrs did not comment. Continued in a subtler vein with Chopin’s Nocturne in F Major. He interrupted with a whine, “Trying to slip my petticoats off my ankles, Frobisher?” Played V.A.’s own Digressions on a Theme of Lodovico Roncalli, but before the first two bars were out, he’d uttered a six-birch expletive, banged on the floor with his cane, and said, “Self-gratification makes you go blind, didn’t they teach you that at Caius?” Ignored him and finished the piece note perfect. For a finale of fireworks, gambled on Scarlatti’s 212th in A major, a bête noire of arpeggios and acrobatics. Came unstuck once or twice, but I wasn’t being auditioned as a concert soloist. After I’d finished, V.A. kept swinging his head to the rhythm of the disappeared sonata; or maybe he was conducting the blurry, swaying poplars. “Execrable, Frobisher, get out of my house this instant!” would have aggrieved but not much surprised me. Instead, he admitted, “You may have the makings of a musician. It’s a nice day. Amble over to the lake and see the ducks. I need, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I can find a use for your . . . gifts.”
Left without a word. The old goat wants me, it seems, but only if I’m pathetic with gratitude. If my pocketbook had allowed me to go, I’d have hired a cab back to Bruges and renounced the whole errant idea. He called after me, “Some advice, Frobisher, gratis. Scarlatti was a harpsichordist, not a pianist. Don’t drench him in color so, and don’t use the pedal to sustain notes you can’t sustain with the fingers.” I called back that I needed, oh, a little time to decide whether or not I could find a use for Ayrs’s . . . gift.
Crossed the courtyard, where a beetroot-faced gardener was clearing a weed-choked fountain. Made him understand I wanted to speak to his mistress and pronto—he is not the sharpest tool in the shed—and he waved vaguely toward Neerbeke, miming a steering wheel. Wonderful. What now? See the ducks, why not? Could strangle a brace and leave ’em hanging in V.A.’s wardrobe. Mood was that black. So I mimed ducks and asked the gardener, “Where?” He pointed at the beech tree, and his gesture said, Walk that way, just on the other side. I set off, jumped a neglected ha-ha, but before I’d reached the crest, the noise of galloping bore down on me, and Miss Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck—from now plain old Crommelynck shall have to do or I’ll run out of ink—rode up on her black pony.
I greeted her. She cantered around me like Queen Boadicea, pointedly unresponsive. “How humid the air is today,” I small-talked sarcastically. “I rather think we shall have rain later, wouldn’t you agree?” She said nothing. “Your dressage is more polished than your manners,” I told her. Nothing. Shooting guns crackled across the fields, and Eva reassured her mount. Her mount is a beaut—one can’t blame the horse. I asked Eva for the pony’s name. She stroked back some black, corkscrew locks from her cheeks. “J’ai nommé le poney Néfertiti, d’après cette reine d’Egypte qui m’est si chère,” she replied and turned away. “It speaks!” I cried and watched the girl gallop off until she was a miniature in the Van Dyck pastoral. Fired artillery shells after her in elegant parabolas. Turned my guns on Château Zedelghem and pounded Ayrs’s wing to smoking rubble. Remembered what country we are in and stopped.
Past the sundered beech, the meadow falls away to an ornamental lake, ringing with frogs. Seen better days. A precarious footbridge connects an island to the shore, and flamingo lilies bloom in vast numbers. Now and then goldfish splish and gleam like new pennies dropped in water. Whiskered mandarin ducks honk for bread, exquisitely tailored beggars—rather like myself. Martins nest in a boathouse of tarred boards. Under a row of pear trees—once an orchard?—I laid me down and idled, an art perfected during my long convalescence. An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton. Watched the aerial bliss of coupled dragonflies. Even heard their wings, an ecstatic sound like paper flaps in bicycle spokes. Gazed on a slowworm exploring a miniature Amazonia around the roots where I lay. Silent? Not altogether, no. Was woken much later, by first spots of rain. Cumulonimbi were reaching critical mass. Sprinted back to Zedelghem as fast as I’ll ever run again, just to hear the rushing roar in my ear canals and feel the first fat droplets pound my face like xylophone hammers.
Just had time to change into my one clean shirt before the dinner gong. Mrs. Crommelynck apologized, her husband’s appetite was still feeble and demoiselle preferred to eat alone. Nothing suited me better. Stewed eel, chervil sauce, the rain skittering on terrace. Unlike the Frobishery and most English homes I have known, meals at the château are not conducted in silence, and Mme. C told me a little about her family. Crommelyncks have lived at Zedelghem since far-off days when Bruges was Europe’s busiest seaport (so she told me, hard to credit), making Eva the crowning glory of six centuries’ breeding. Warmed to the woman somewhat, I admit it. She holds forth like a man and smokes myrrhy cigarettes through a rhino-horn holder. She’d notice pretty sharpish if any valuables were spirited away, however. They’ve suffered from thieving servants in the past, she happened to mention, even one or two impoverished houseguests, if I could believe people could behave so dishonorably. Assured her my parents had suffered the same way, and put out feelers re: my audition. “He did describe your Scarlatti as ‘salvageable.’ Vyvyan spurns praise, both giving and receiving it. He says, ‘If people praise you, you’re not walking your own path.’ ” Asked directly if she thought he’d agree to take me on. “I do hope so, Robert.” (In other words, wait and see.) “You must understand, he resigned himself never to compose another note. Doing so caused him great pain. Resurrecting hope that he might compose again—well, that’s not a risk to be undertaken lightly.” Subject closed. I mentioned my earlier encounter with Eva, and Mme. C pronounced, “My daughter was uncivil.”
“Reserved” was my perfect reply.
My hostess topped up my glass. “Eva has a disagreeable nature. My husband has taken very little interest in rearing her like a young lady. He never wanted children. Fathers and daughters are reputed to dote on each other, are they not? Not here. Her teachers say Eva is studious but secretive, and she’s never tried to develop herself musically. I often feel I don’t know her at all.” I filled Mme. C.’s glass, and she seemed to cheer up. “Listen to me, lamenting. Your sisters are immaculately mannered English roses, I am sure, Monsieur?” Rather doubt her interest in the Frobishery’s memsahibs was genuine, but the woman likes to watch me talk, so I painted witty caricatures of my estranged clan for my hostess’s amusement. Made us all sound so gay, almost felt homesick.
This morning, a Monday, Eva deigned to share breakfast—Bradenham ham, eggs, bread, all sorts—but the girl spouted petty complaints to her mother and snuffed my interjections out with a flat oui or a sharp non. Ayrs was feeling better so ate with us. Hendrick then drove the daughter off to Bruges for another week at school—Eva boards in the city with a family whose daughters also attend her school, the Van Eels or some such. Whole château breathed a relieved sigh when the Cowley had cleared the poplar avenue (known as the Monk’s Walk). Eva does so poison the air of the place. At nine, Ayrs and I adjourned to the music room. “I’ve got a little melody for viola rattling about my head, Frobisher. Let’s see if you can get it down.” Was delighted to hear it, as I’d expected to start at the shallow end—tidying up sketchy MSS into best copy and so forth. If I proved my worth as V.A.’s sentient fountain pen on my first day, my tenure would be well-nigh assured. Sat at his desk, sharpened 2B at the ready, clean MS, waiting for him to name the notes, one by one. Suddenly, the man bellowed: “ ‘Tar, tar! Tar-tartar tattytattytatty, tar!’ Got that? ‘Tar! Tatty-tar! Quiet part—tar-tar-tar-tttt-TAR! TARTARTAR!!!’ ” Got that? Old ass obviously thought this was amusing—one could no more notate his shouted garble than one could score the braying of a dozen donkeys—but after another thirty seconds, it dawned on me this was no joke. Tried to interrupt, but the man was so engrossed in his music making that he didn’t notice. Sunk into deepest misery while Ayrs carried on, and on, and on . . . My scheme was hopeless. What had I been thinking about at Victoria Station? Dejected, I let him work through his piece in the lean hope that having it complete in his head might make it easier to duplicate later.
“There, finished!” he proclaimed. “Got it? Hum it back, Frobisher, and then let’s see how it sounds.”
Asked what key we were in. “B-flat, of course!” Time signature? Ayrs pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you saying you’ve lost my melody?” Struggled to remind myself he was being totally unreasonable. I asked him to repeat the melody, much more slowly, and to label his notes, one by one. There was an acute pause that felt about three hours long while Ayrs decided whether or not to throw a tantrum. In the end, he released a martyred sigh. “Four-eight, changing to eight-eight after the twelfth bar, if you can count that far.” Pause. Remembered my monetary difficulties and bit my lip. “Let’s go all the way back, then.” Patronizing pause. “Ready now? Slowly . . . Tar! What note is that?” Got through a hideous half hour with me guessing every single note, one by one. Ayrs verified or rejected my guess with a weary nod or shake of the head. Mme. C carried in a vase of flowers and I made an SOS face, but V.A. himself declared that we call it a day. As I fled, I heard Ayrs pronounce (for my benefit?), “It is desperate, Jocasta, the boy cannot take down a simple tune. I might as well join the avant-garde and throw darts at pieces of paper with notes written on ’em.”
Down the passageway Mrs. Willems—housekeeper—laments the damp, blustery weather and her wet laundry to some unseen underling. She’s better off than I am. I’ve manipulated people for advancement, lust, or loans, but never for the roof over my head. This rotting château stinks of mushrooms and mold. Should never have come here.
Sincerely,
R.F.
P.S. Financial “embarrassment,” what an apposite phrase. No wonder the poor are all socialists. Look, must ask you for a loan. The regime at Zedelghem is the laxest I ever saw (fortunately! My father’s butler’s wardrobe is better supplied than my own at present), but one needs to set some standards. Can’t even tip the servants. If I had any wealthy friends left, I’d ask ’em, but truth is I don’t. Don’t know how you wire money or telegram it or send it in packets or whatever, but you’re the scientist, you find a way. If Ayrs asks me to leave, I’ll be scuppered. The news would seep back to Cambridge that Robert Frobisher had to beg money from his erstwhile hosts when they threw him out for not being up to the job. The shame would kill me, Sixsmith, it truly would. For God’s sake send whatever you can immediately.
CHÂTEAU ZEDELGHEM
14th—VII—1931
Sixsmith,
All praise Rufus the Blessed, Patron Saint of Needy Composers, Praise in the Highest, Amen. Your postal order arrived safe and sound this morning—I painted you to my hosts as a doting uncle who’d forgotten my birthday. Mrs. Crommelynck confirms a bank in Bruges will cash it. Will write a motet in your honor and pay your money back soon as I can. Might be sooner than you expect. The deep freeze on my prospects is thawing. After my humiliating first attempt at collaboration with Ayrs, I returned to my room in abject wretchedness. That afternoon I spent writing my sniveling lament to you—burn it, by the way, if you haven’t already—feeling v. anxious about the future. Braved the rain in Wellington boots and a cape and walked to the post office in the village, wondering, frankly, where I might be a month from now. Mrs. Willems bonged the gong for dinner shortly after my return, but when I got to the dining hall, Ayrs was waiting, alone. “That you, Frobisher?” he asked, with the gruffness habitual to older men trying to do delicacy. “Ah, Frobisher, glad we can have this little chat alone. Look, I was rotten to you this morning. My illness makes me more . . . direct than is sometimes appropriate. I apologize. Give this cantankerous so-and-so another chance tomorrow, what d’you say?”
Had his wife told him what state she’d found me in? Had Lucille mentioned my half-packed valise? Waited until I was sure my voice was purged of relief and told him, nobly, nothing was wrong in speaking his mind.
“I’ve been far too negative about your proposal, Frobisher. It won’t be easy extracting music out of my noddle, but our partnership stands as good a chance as any. Your musicianship and character seem more than up to the job. My wife tells me you even try your hand at composition? Plainly, music is oxygen for us both. With the right will, we’ll muddle along until we hit upon the right method.” At this, Mme. Crommelynck knocked, peered in, sensed the room’s weather in a trice the way some women do, and asked if a celebratory drink was called for. Ayrs turned to me. “That depends on young Frobisher here. What d’you say? Will you stay for a few weeks, with a view to a few months, if all goes well? Maybe longer, who knows? But you must accept a small salary.”
Let my relief show as pleasure, told him I’d be honored, and did not out of hand reject the offer of a salary.
“Then, Jocasta, tell Mrs. Willems to fetch a Pinot Rouge 1908!” We toasted Bacchus and the Muses, and drank a wine rich as unicorn’s blood. Ayrs’s cellar, some twelve hundred bottles, is one of the finest in Belgium, and worth a brief digression. It survived the war unlooted by the Hun officers who used Zedelghem as a command post, all thanks to a false wall Hendrick’s father built over its entrance before the family’s flight to Gothenburg. The library, and various other bulky treasures, also spent the war down there (used to be the vaults of a monastery), sealed up in crates. The Prussians ransacked the building before Armistice, but they never rumbled the cellar.
A work routine is developing. Ayrs and I are in the music room by nine o’clock every morning his various ailments and pains let him. I sit at the piano, Ayrs on the divan, smoking his vile Turkish cigarettes, and we adopt one of our three modi operandi. “Revisionals”— he asks me to run through the previous morning’s work. I hum, sing, or play, depending on the instrument, and Ayrs modifies the score. “Reconstitutionals” have me sifting through old scores, notebooks, and compositions, some written before I was born, to locate a passage or cadenza Ayrs dimly remembers and wants to salvage. Great detective work. “Compositionals” are the most demanding. I sit at the piano and try to keep up with a flow of “Semiquaver, B-G; semibreve, A-flat—hold it four beats, no, six—crotchets! F-sharp—no no no no F-sharp—and . . . B! Tar-tatty-tatty-tarrr!” (Il maestro will at least name his notes now.) Or, if he’s feeling more poetic, it might be “Now, Frobisher, the clarinet is the concubine, the violas are yew trees in the cemetery, the clavichord is the moon, so . . . let the east wind blow that A minor chord, sixteenth bar onwards.”
Like that of a good butler (although you can be sure, I am better than good), my job is nine-tenths anticipation. Sometimes Ayrs will ask for an artistic judgment, something like “D’you think this chord works, Frobisher?” or “Is this passage in keeping with the whole?” If I say no, Ayrs asks me what I’d suggest as a substitute, and once or twice he’s even used my amendment. Quite sobering. People in the future will be studying this music.
By one o’clock Ayrs is spent. Hendrick carries him down to the dining room, where Mrs. Crommelynck joins us for luncheon, and the dreaded E., if she’s back for the w/end or a half holiday. Ayrs naps through the afternoon heat. I continue to sift the library for treasure, compose in the music room, read manuscripts in the garden (Madonna lilies, crowns imperial, red-hot pokers, hollyhocks, all blooming bright), navigate lanes around Neerbeke on the bicycle, or ramble across local fields. Am firm friends with the village dogs. They gallop after me like the Pied Piper’s rats or brats. The locals return my “Goede morgen” and “Goede middag”—I’m now known as the long-term guest up at the “kasteel.”
After supper, the three of us might listen to the wireless if there is a broadcast that passes muster, otherwise it will be recordings on the gramophone (an His Master’s Voice table model in an oak box), usually of Ayrs’s own major works conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. When we have visitors, there will be conversation or a little chamber music. Other nights, Ayrs likes me to read him poetry, especially his beloved Keats. He whispers the verses as I recite, as if his voice is leaning on mine. At breakfast, he has me read from The Times. Old, blind, and sick as Ayrs is, he could hold his own in a college debating society, though I notice he rarely proposes alternatives for the systems he ridicules. “Liberality? Timidity in the rich!” “Socialism? The younger brother of a decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed.” “Conservatives? Adventitious liars, whose doctrine of free will is their greatest deception.” What sort of state does he want? “None! The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.”
Irascible as Ayrs is, he’s one of few men in Europe whose influence I want my own creativity informed by. Musicologically, he’s Janus-headed. One Ayrs looks back to Romanticism’s deathbed, the other looks to the future. This is the Ayrs whose gaze I follow. Watching him use counterpoint and mix colors refines my own language in exciting ways. Already, my short time at Zedelghem has taught me more than three years at the throne of Mackerras the Jackass with his Merry Band of Onanists.
Friends of Ayrs and Mrs. Crommelynck regularly visit. On an average week, we can expect visitor/s two or three nights. Soloists returning from Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, or beyond; acquaintances from Ayrs’s salad days in Florida or Paris; and good old Morty Dhondt and Wife. Dhondt owns a diamond workshop in both Bruges and Antwerp, speaks a hazy but high number of languages, concocts elaborate multilingual puns requiring lengthy explanations, sponsors festivals, and kicks metaphysical footballs around with Ayrs. Mrs. Dhondt is like Mrs. Crommelynck but ten times more so—in truth, a dreadful creation who heads the Belgian Equestrian Society, drives the Dhondt Bugatti herself, and cossets a powder-puff Pekingese called Wei-wei. You’ll meet her again in future letters, no doubt.
Relatives thin on the ground: Ayrs was an only child, and the once-influential Crommelynck family evinced a perverse genius for backing the wrong side at decisive moments throughout the war. Those who didn’t die in action were mostly pauperized and diseased out of existence by the time Ayrs and his wife returned from Scandinavia. Others died after running away overseas. Mrs. Crommelynck’s old governess and a couple of frail aunts sometimes pay a call, but they stay quietly in the corner like old hat stands.
Last week the conductor Tadeusz Augustowski, a great champion of Ayrs in his native Cracow, dropped by unannounced on a Second Day of Migraine. Mrs. Crommelynck was not at home, and Mrs. Willems came to me all of a lather, begging me to entertain the illustrious visitor. I could not disappoint. Augustowski’s French is as good as my own, and we spent the afternoon fishing and arguing over the dodecaphonists. He thinks they are all charlatans, I do not. He told me orchestral war stories, and one indescribably smutty joke that involves hand gestures, so it must wait until we meet again. I caught an eleven-inch trout, and Augustowski bagged a monster dace. Ayrs was up when we got back at twilight, and the Pole told him he was lucky to have engaged me. Ayrs grunted something like “Quite.” Enchanting flattery, Ayrs. Mrs. Willems was less than enchantée with our finny trophies, but she gutted ’em, cooked ’em in salt and butter, and they melted on the fish fork. Augustowski gave me his visiting card when he departed the next morning. He keeps a suite at the Langham Court for his London visits, and invited me to stay with him for next year’s festival. Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Château Zedelghem isn’t the labyrinthine House of Usher it seems at first. True, its west wing, shuttered and dust-sheeted to pay for modernization and upkeep of the east, is in a woebegone state, and will need the demolishers before v. long I fear. Explored its chambers one wet afternoon. Damp disastrous; fallen plaster hangs in nets of cobwebs; mouse, bat droppings crunch on the worn stones; plaster escutcheons above fireplaces sanded over by time. Same story outside—brick walls need new pointing, roof tiles missing, crenellations toppled to the ground and lying in piles, rainwater runneling medieval sandstone. The Crommelyncks did well from Congo investments, but not one male sibling survived the war, and Zedelghem’s Boche “lodgers” selectively gutted whatever was worth looting.
The east wing, however, is a comfortable little warren, though its roof timbers creak like a ship when the wind’s up. There’s a moody central-heating system and rudimentary electricity that gives one crackling electric shocks from the light switches. Mrs. Crommelynck’s father had enough foresight to teach his daughter the estate business, and now she leases her land to neighboring farmers and just about makes the place pay, so I gather. Not an achievement to be sniffed at in this day and age.
Eva still a prissy missy, as hateful as my sisters, but with an intelligence to match her enmity. Apart from her precious Nefertiti, her hobbies are pouting and looking martyred. She likes to reduce vulnerable domestics to tears, then flounces in, announcing, “She’s having another weeping fit, Mama, can’t you break her in properly?” She has established I am no soft target and embarked on a war of attrition: “Papa, how long is Mr. Frobisher to stay in our house?” “Papa, do you pay Mr. Frobisher as much as you pay Hendrick?” “Oh, I was only asking, Mama, I didn’t know Mr. Frobisher’s tenure was a delicate subject.” She rattles me, hate to hand it to her, but there it is. Had another encounter—confrontation more the word—on Saturday just gone. I’d taken Ayrs’s bible, Also sprach Zarathustra, to the stone slab bridge over the lake to the willow-tree island. A scorching hot afternoon; even in the shade I was sweating like a pig. After ten pages I felt Nietzsche was reading me, not I him, so I watched the water boatmen and newts while my mind-orchestra performed Fred Delius’s Air and Dance. Syrupy florentine of a piece, but its drowsy flute is rather successful.
Next thing I knew, found myself in a trench so deep the sky was a strip high above, lit by flashes brighter than day. Savages patrolled the trench astraddle giant, evil-toothed, brown rats that sniffed out working-class people and dismembered ’em. Strolled, trying to look well-to-do and stop myself breaking into a panicky run, when I met Eva. I said, “What in hell are you doing down here?”
Eva replied with fury! “Ce lac appartient à ma famille depuis cinq siècles! Vous êtes ici depuis combien de temps exactement? Bien trois semaines! Alors vous voyez, je vais où bon me semble!” Her anger was almost physical, a kick in your humble correspondent’s face. Fair enough, I had accused her of trespassing on her mother’s estate. Wide awake, I stumbled to my feet, all apologies, explaining I had spoken whilst dreaming. Quite forgot about the lake. Plunged right in like a b. fool! Soaked! Luckily the pond was only navel-high, and God had saved Ayrs’s precious Nietzsche from joining me in the drink. When Eva eventually reined in her laughter, I said I was pleased to see her do something other than pout. I had duckweed in my hair, she answered, in English. Was reduced to patronizing her by praising her language skills. She batted back, “It does not take much to impress an Englishman.” Walked off. Couldn’t think of a snappy response until later, so the girl won the set.
Now, pay attention while I talk books and lucre. Poking through an alcove of books in my room, I came across a curious dismembered volume, and I want you to track down a complete copy for me. It begins on the ninety-ninth page, its covers are gone, its binding unstitched. From what little I can glean, it’s the edited journal of a voyage from Sydney to California by a notary of San Francisco named Adam Ewing. Mention is made of the gold rush, so I suppose we are in 1849 or 1850. The journal seems to be published posthumously, by Ewing’s son (?). Ewing puts me in mind of Melville’s bumbler Cpt. Delano in “Benito Cereno,” blind to all conspirators—he hasn’t spotted his trusty Dr. Henry Goose [sic] is a vampire, fueling his hypochondria in order to poison him, slowly, for his money.
Something shifty about the journal’s authenticity—seems too structured for a genuine diary, and its language doesn’t ring quite true—but who would bother forging such a journal, and why?
To my great annoyance, the pages cease, midsentence, some forty pages later, where the binding is worn through. Searched high and low in the library for the rest of the damn thing. No luck. Hardly in our interests to draw Ayrs’s or Mrs. Crommelynck’s attention to their unindexed bibliographic wealth, so I’m up a gum tree. Would you ask Otto Jansch on Caithness Street if he knows anything about this Adam Ewing? A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.
Find enclosed an inventory of the oldest editions in Zedelghem’s library. As you see, some items are v. early, early seventeenth c., so send me Jansch’s best prices as soon as ever, and keep the tightwad on his toes by letting it slip you’ve got the Parisian dealers interested.
Sincerely,
R.F.
CHÂTEAU ZEDELGHEM
28th—VII—1931
Sixsmith,
Cause for minor celebration. Two days ago, Ayrs and I completed our first collaboration, a short tone poem, “Der Todtenvogel.” When I unearthed the piece, it was a tame arrangement of an old Teutonic anthem, left high and very dry by Ayrs’s retreating eyesight. Our new version is an intriguing animal. It borrows resonances from Wagner’s Ring, then disintegrates the theme into a Stravinskyesque nightmare policed by Sibelian wraiths. Horrible, delectable, wish you could hear it. Ends in a flute solo, no flutter-bying flautism this, but the death-bird of the title, cursing the firstborn and last-born alike.
Augustowski visited again on his way back from Paris yesterday. He read the score and shoveled praise upon it like a boiler man shoveling coals. So he should! It’s the most accomplished tone poem I know of written since the war; and I tell you, Sixsmith, that more than a few of its best ideas are mine. Suppose an amanuensis must reconcile himself to renouncing his share in authorship, but buttoning one’s lip is never easy. But best is yet to come—Augustowski wants to premiere the work under his own baton three weeks from now at the Cracow festival!
Got up at crack of dawn yesterday, spent all day transcribing a clean copy. Suddenly it didn’t seem so short. My writing hand came unscrewed and staves imprinted themselves in my eyelids, but finished by supper. We drank five bottles of wine between the four of us to celebrate. Dessert was the best muscatel.
Am now Zedelghem’s golden boy. Been a v. long time since I was anyone’s golden boy, and I rather like it. Jocasta suggested that I move out of my guest room into one of the larger unused bedrooms on the second floor, furnished as I pleased with whatever catches my eye from elsewhere in Zedelghem. Ayrs seconded the motion, so I said I would. To my delight Prissy Missy lost her sangfroid and mewled, “Oh, why don’t you just write him into the will as well, Mama? Why not give him half the estate?” She got down from the table without being excused. Ayrs croaked, “First good idea the girl’s had in seventeen years!” loud enough for her to hear. “At least Frobisher earns his damn keep!”
My hosts wouldn’t hear my apologies, they said Eva should be apologizing to me, that she has to lose her pre-Copernican view of a universe revolving around herself. Music to my ears. Also re: Eva, she and twenty classmates are bound for Switzerland v. soon to study at a sister school for a couple of months. More music! It’ll be like having a rotten tooth fall out. My new room is big enough for badminton doubles; has a four-poster bed from whose curtains I had to shake last year’s moths; centuries-old Cordova peels off the walls like dragons’ scales, but it’s attractive in its way; indigo witch ball; armoire inlaid with burr walnut; six ministerial armchairs, and a sycamore escritoire at which I write this letter. Honeysuckle laces abundant light. To the south one looks over the grizzled topiary. To the west, cows graze in the meadow, and the church tower rises above the wood beyond. Its bells are my own clock. (In truth, Zedelghem boasts a good many antique clocks, whose chimes go off some early, some late, like a Bruges in miniature.) All in all, a notch or two grander than our chambers in Whyman’s Lane, a notch or two less grand than the Savoy or the Imperial, but spacious and secure. Unless I do something clumsy or indiscreet.
Which brings me to Madame Jocasta Crommelynck. Damn my eyes, Sixsmith, if the woman hasn’t begun, subtly, to flirt with me. The ambiguity of her words, eyes, and hand brushes is too consummate to be chance. See what you think. Yesterday afternoon, I was studying rare Balakirev juvenilia in my room when Mrs. Crommelynck knocked. She wore her riding jacket and her hair pinned up to reveal a rather tempting neck. “My husband wants to give you a present,” she said, moving in as I gave way. “Here. To mark the completion of ‘Todtenvogel.’ You know, Robert,”—her tongue lingers on the t of “Robert”—“Vyvyan’s so very happy to be working again. He hasn’t been this spry for years. This is just a token. Put it on.” She handed me an exquisite waistcoat, an Ottomanstyle silken affair, too remarkable in pattern to be ever in fashion or out. “I bought it on our honeymoon in Cairo, when he was your age now. He won’t be wearing it again.”
Said I was flattered, but protested that I couldn’t possibly accept a garment of such sentimental value. “That’s precisely why we want you to wear it. Our memories are in its weave. Put it on.” Did as urged, and she stroked it, on the pretext (?) of removing fluff. “Come to the mirror!” Did so. The woman stood just inches behind me. “Too fine for moths’ eggs, don’t you agree?” Yes, I agreed. Her smile was double-bladed. If we were in one of Emily’s breathy novels, the seductress’s hands would have encircled the innocent’s torso, but Jocasta is a more canny operator. “You have exactly the same physique Vyvyan had at your age. Bizarre, isn’t it?” Yes, I agreed again. Her fingernails freed a strand of my hair that had got caught in the waistcoat.
Neither rebuffed nor encouraged her. These things shouldn’t be rushed. Mrs. Crommelynck left without another word.
At luncheon, Hendrick reported that Dr. Egret’s house in Neerbeke had been burgled. Luckily no one was hurt, but the police have issued a warning to be on the lookout for gypsies and ruffians. Houses should be secured at night. Jocasta shuddered and said she was glad I was at Zedelghem to protect her. Admitted I’d held my own as a pugilist at Eton, but doubted whether I could see off a whole gang of ruffians. Perhaps I could hold Hendrick’s towel whilst he gave ’em all a sound drubbing? Ayrs didn’t comment, but that evening he unwrapped a Luger from his napkin. Jocasta chastised Ayrs for showing his pistol at the dinner table, but he ignored her. “On our return from Gothenburg, I found this beastie hidden under a loose floorboard in the master bedroom, with its bullets,” he explained. “The Prussian captain either left in a hurry or got himself killed. He stowed it there perhaps as an insurance policy against mutineers, or undesirables. I keep it beside my bed for the same reason.”
Asked if I could hold it, as I’d only ever touched hunting rifles before. “By all means,” replied Ayrs, handing it over. Every hair on my body rose. That snug iron fellow has killed at least once, I’d wager my inheritance on it, if I still had any. “So you see”—Ayrs had a crooked laugh—“I may be an elderly, blind cripple, but I still have a tooth or two left to bite with. One blind man with a gun and v. little left to lose. Imagine the mess I could make!” Can’t decide if I only imagined the menace in his voice.
Excellent news from Jansch, but don’t tell him I said so. Will post the three referred volumes to you from Bruges next time I go—the postmaster here in Neerbeke has an inquisitive streak I don’t trust. Take usual precautions. Remit my lucre to the First Bank of Belgium, Head Branch, Bruges—Dhondt snapped his fingers and had the manager open me an account. Only one Robert Frobisher on their lists, I’m quite sure.
Best news of all: started composing on my own account again.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
16th—VIII—1931
Sixsmith,
Summer has taken a sensuous turn: Ayrs’s wife and I are lovers. Don’t alarm yourself! Only in the carnal sense. One night last week she came to my room, locked the door behind her, and without a word passing between us, disrobed. Don’t wish to brag, but her visit didn’t take me by surprise. In fact, I’d left the door ajar for her. Really, Sixsmith, you should try to enjoy lovemaking in total silence. All that ballyhooing transmutes into bliss if you’ll only seal your lips.
When one unlocks a woman’s body, her box of confidences also spills. (You should try ’em yourself one time, women I mean.) Might this be connected to their hopelessness at cards? After the Act, I am happier just lying still, but Jocasta talked, impulsively, as if to bury our big black secret under littler gray ones. Learnt Ayrs contracted his syphilis at a bordello in Copenhagen in 1915, during an extended separation, and has not pleasured his wife since that year; after Eva’s birth, the doctor told Jocasta she could never conceive another child. She is v. selective about her occasional affairs but unapologetic about her right to conduct same. She insisted that she still loves Ayrs. I grunted, dubiously. That love loves fidelity, she riposted, is a myth woven by men from their insecurities.
Talked about Eva too. She worries that she was so busy instilling a sense of propriety into her daughter, they never became friends, and now, it seems, that horse has bolted. Dozed through these trivial tragedies, but shall be more careful around Danes in future and Danish bordellos in particular.
J. wanted a second bout, as if to glue herself to me. Did not object. She has an equestrienne’s body, more spring than you normally get in a mature woman, and more technique than many a ten-shilling mount I’ve ridden. One suspects there stretches back a long line of youthful stallions invited to forage in her manger. Indeed, just as I nodded off for the last time she said, “Debussy once spent a week at Zedelghem, before the war. He slept in this very bed, if I’m not mistaken.” A minor chord in her tone suggested she was with him. Not impossible. Anything in a skirt, that’s what I heard about Claude, and he was a Frenchman.
When Lucille knocked in the morning with my shaving water, I was quite alone. J.’s performance over breakfast was as nonchalant as my own, happy to note. Was even slightly caustic with me when I spilt a blob of jam on the place mat, prompting V.A. to reprimand her, “Don’t be such a stickleback, Jocasta! Your pretty hands won’t have to scrub the stain out.” Adultery is a tricky duet to pull off, Sixsmith—as in contract bridge, eschew partners clumsier than oneself or one winds up in a ghastly mess.
Guilt? None. A cuckolder’s triumph? Not specially, no. Still rather miffed at Ayrs, if anything. The other evening, the Dhondts came to dinner and Mrs. D. asked for some piano music to help the food go down, so I played that “Angel of Mons” piece I wrote on holiday with you in the Scilly Isles two summers ago, though disclaimed its authorship by saying “a friend” had composed it. I’ve been rewriting it. It’s better and more fluid and subtle than those sherbety Schubertian pastiches V.A. spewed out in his twenties. J. and the Dhondts loved it so much they insisted on an encore. Was only six bars in when V.A. exercised a hitherto unknown veto. “I’d advise your friend to master the Ancients before he frolics with the Moderns.” Sounds like innocuous enough advice? However, he pronounced friend in a precise semitone that told me he was quite aware of my friend’s true identity. Perhaps he used the same ruse himself, at Grieg’s in Oslo? “Without a thorough mastery of counterpoint and harmonics,” V.A. puffed, “this fellow’ll never amount to anything but a hawker of fatuous gimmickry. Tell your friend that from me.” I fumed in silence. V.A. told J. to put on a gramophone recording of his own Sirocco Wind Quintet. She obeyed the truculent old bully. To console myself, I remembered how J.’s body is under her crepe de chine summer dress, and how hungrily she slips into my bed. V. well, I shall gloat a little over my employer’s cuckold’s horns. Serves him right. An old sick prig is still a prig.
Augustowski sent this enigmatic telegram after the performance in Cracow. To translate from the French: FIRST TODTENVOGEL MYSTIFIED STOP SECOND PERFORMANCE FISTICUFFS STOP THIRD ADORED STOP FOURTH TALK OF TOWN STOP. We weren’t sure what to think until newspaper clippings followed, hot on the telegram’s heels, translated by Augustowski on the back of a concert program. Well, our “Todtenvogel” has become a cause célèbre! So far as we can see, the critics interpreted its disintegration of the Wagnerian themes as a frontal assault on the German Republic. A band of nationalist parliamentarians strong-armed the festival authorities into a fifth performance. The theater, eyeing receipts, complied with pleasure. The German ambassador made an official complaint, so a sixth was sold out within another twenty-four hours. The effect of all this is to raise the value of Ayrs’s stock through the roof everywhere but Germany, where apparently, he is denounced as a Jewish devil. National newspapers across the Continent have written to request interviews. I have the pleasure of dispatching a polite but firm pro forma rejection to each. “I’m too busy composing,” grumbles Ayrs. “If they want to know ‘what I mean’ they should listen to my bloody music.” He’s thriving on the attention, though. Even Mrs. Willems admits, since my arrival the Master is invigorated.
Hostilities continue on the Eva front. Of concern is how she sniffs something rotten between my father and me. She wonders, publicly, why I never receive letters from my family, or why I don’t have some clothes of my own sent over. She asked if one of my sisters would like to be her pen-friend. To win time I had to promise to put her proposal to ’em, and I might need you to do another forgery. Make it very good. The devious vixen is almost a female Me.
August in Belgium is blistering this year. The meadow is turning yellow, the gardener is anxious about fires, farmers are worried about the harvest, but show me a placid farmer and I’ll show you a sane conductor. Will seal this envelope now and walk to the village post office through the woods behind the lake. It wouldn’t do to leave these pages lying around for a certain seventeen-year-old snoop to come across.
The important matter. Yes, I will meet Otto Jansch in Bruges to hand over the illuminated manuscripts in person, but you must broker all the arrangements. Don’t want Jansch knowing whose hospitality I’m enjoying. Like all dealers, Jansch is a gluttonous, glabrous grasper, only more so. He wouldn’t hesitate to try blackmail to lower our price—or even dispense with a price altogether. Tell him I’ll expect payment on the nail in crisp banknotes, none of his funny credit arrangements with me. Then I’ll forward a postal order to you, including the sum you loaned me. This way, you won’t be incriminated if any monkey business takes place. I am already disgraced and thus have no reputation to lose by blowing the whistle on him. Tell Jansch that, too.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
EVENING, 16th—VIII—1931
Sixsmith,
Your tedious letter from my father’s “solicitor” was an Ace of Diamonds. Bravo. Read it aloud over breakfast—excited only passing interest. Saffron Walden postmark also a masterly touch. Did you actually drag yourself away from your lab into the sunny Essex afternoon to post it yourself? Ayrs invited our “Mr. Cummings” to see me at Zedelghem, but you’d written time was v. tight, so Mrs. Crommelynck said Hendrick’ll drive me into town to sign the documents there. Ayrs grumbled about losing a day’s work, but he’s only happy when he’s grumbling.
Hendrick and I set off this dewy morning down the same roads I cycled from Bruges half a summertime ago. Wore a smart jacket of Ayrs’s—much of his wardrobe is gravitating into mine, now my few items rescued from the Imperial’s grasp are beginning to wear out. The Enfield was roped to the rear fender so I could honor my promise to return said bicycle to the good constable. Our vellum-bound loot I had camouflaged in MS paper, which everyone at Zedelghem knows I am never without, and stowed out of casual sight in a mucky satchel I’ve appropriated. Hendrick had the Cowley’s top down so there was too much wind for conversation. Taciturn chap, as is appropriate to his station. Peculiar to admit it, but since I’ve started servicing Mrs. Crommelynck I feel edgier with the husband’s valet than I do with the husband. (Jocasta continues to bestow her favor on me, every third or fourth night, though never when Eva is at home, which is v. wise. Anyway, one mustn’t gobble one’s birthday chocolates all at once.) My unease stems from the probability that Hendrick knows. Oh, we above the stairs like to congratulate ourselves on our cleverness, but there are no secrets to those who strip the sheets. Not too worried. Don’t place unreasonable demands on the servants, and Hendrick is canny enough to lay his bets on a strident mistress with many years ahead of her, not on an invalid master of Ayrs’s prospects. Hendrick’s an odd one, really. Hard to guess his tastes. Would make an excellent croupier.
He dropped me outside the Guildhall, untied the Enfield, and left me to run various errands and pay his respects, he said, to an ailing great-aunt. Rode my two wheels through crowds of sightseers, schoolchildren, and burghers and only got lost a few times. At the police station, the musical inspector made a great fuss of me and sent out for coffee and pastries. He was delighted my position with Ayrs has worked out so well. By the time I got away it was ten o’clock and time for my appointment. Didn’t hurry. Good form to let tradesmen wait a little.
Jansch was propping up the bar of Le Royal and greeted me with an “Aha, as I live and breathe, the Invisible Man, back by popular demand!” I swear, Sixsmith, that warty old Shylock looks more repulsive every time I clap eyes on him. Has he got a magical portrait of himself stashed in his attic, getting more beautiful by the year? Couldn’t fathom why he seemed so pleased to see me. Looked around the lounge for tipped-off creditors—one beetly glare and I would have bolted. Jansch read my mind. “So suspicious, Roberto? I’m hardly going to make trouble for a naughty goose who lays such illuminated eggs, am I? Come now”—he indicated the bar—“what’s your poison?”
Replied that sharing a building with Jansch, even such a large one, was poisonous enough, so I’d rather get down to business straightaway. He chuckled, clapped me on the shoulder, and led me up to the room he’d reserved for our transaction. Nobody followed us, but that didn’t guarantee anything. Was now wishing I’d had you arrange a more public rendezvous, so Tam Brewer’s thugs couldn’t clap a sack over my head, throw me in a trunk, and haul me back to London. Got the books out of the satchel, and he got his pince-nez out of his jacket pocket. Jansch examined ’em at a desk by the window. He tried to knock the price down, claiming the condition of the volumes was more “fair” than “good.” Calmly, I wrapped the books up, put ’em in my satchel, and made the stingy Jew chase me down the corridor until he admitted the volumes were indeed “good.” Let him woo me back to the room, where we counted the banknotes, slowly, until the sum agreed was paid in full. Business over, he sighed, claimed I’d beggared him, smiled that smile, and put his hairy paw on my knee. Said it was books I’d come to sell. He asked why let business preclude pleasure? Surely a young buck abroad could find a use for a little pocket money? Left Jansch asleep an hour later and his wallet starved. Proceeded directly to the bank across the square and was seen to by the manager’s own secretary. Sweet bird of solvency. As Pater is fond of saying, “One’s own sweat is one’s best reward!” (not that he ever sweated in his sinecured pulpit overly much). Next stop was the city’s music shop, Flagstad’s, where I bought a brick of MS paper to replace the missing bulk from my satchel for benefit of watchful eyes. Coming out, I saw a pair of drab spats in a shoemaker’s window. Went in, bought ’em. Saw a shagreen cigarette box in a tobacconist’s. Bought it.
Two hours remained to kill. Had a cold beer in a café, and another, and another, and smoked a whole packet of delicious French cigarettes. The Jansch money is no dragon’s hoard, but God knows it feels like one. Next I found a backstreet church (steered clear of the tourist places to avoid disgruntled book dealers) of candles, shadows, doleful martyrs, incense. Haven’t been to church since the morning Pater cast me out. Street door kept banging shut. Wiry crones came, lit candles, went. Padlock on the votive box was of the best. People knelt in prayer, some moving their lips. Envy ’em, really I do. I envy God, too, privy to their secrets. Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I’ve stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again. Did my best to think beatific thoughts, but my mind kept running its fingers over Jocasta. Even the stained-glass saints and martyrs were mildly arousing. Don’t suppose such thoughts get me closer to Heaven. In the end, it was a Bach motet that shooed me away—choristers weren’t damnably bad, but the organist’s only hope for salvation was a bullet through the brain. Told him so, too—tact and restraint all well and good in small talk, but one mustn’t beat around any bush where music is concerned.
At a prim and proper public garden named Minnewater Park, courting couples ambled arm in arm between willows, banksia roses, and chaperones. Blind, emaciated fiddler performed for coins. Now he could play. Requested “Bonsoir, Paris!” and he performed with such élan I pressed a crisp five-franc note into his hand. He removed his dark glasses, checked the watermark, invoked his pet saint’s name, gathered his coppers, and scarpered through the flower beds, laughing like a madcap. Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.
Sat down on an iron bench. One o’clock bells chimed, nearby, far off, interspersed. Clerks crawled out from the law and merchants’ offices to eat sandwiches in the park and feel the green breeze. Was wondering whether to be late for Hendrick when guess who waltzed into the park, unchaperoned, in the company of a dandified stick insect of a man twice her age, a vulgar gold wedding ring on his finger as bold as brass. Right first time. Eva. Hid behind a newspaper a clerk had left on the bench. Eva wasn’t in physical contact with her companion, but they strolled right by me with an air of easy intimacy that she never, ever wears at Zedelghem. I jumped to the obvious conclusion.
Eva was stacking her chips on a doubtful card. He crowed, in order to be overheard by strangers and impress them. “A time is one’s own, Eva, when oneself and one’s peers take the same things for granted, without thinking about it. Likewise, a man is ruined when the times change but he does not. Permit me to add, empires fall for the same reason.” This jackdaw philosophizer flummoxed me. A girl of E.’s looks could do better for herself, surely? E.’s behavior likewise flummoxed me. In broad daylight, in her own city! Does she want to ruin herself? Is she one of these libertarian suffragette Rossetti types? I followed the couple at a safe distance to a town house on a well-heeled road. The man gave the street a shifty once-over before putting his key in the latch. I ducked into a mews. Picture Frobisher rubbing his hands with glee!
Eva returned as usual late on Friday afternoon. In the vestibule between her room and the door to the stables is an oaken throne. In this I planted myself. Unfortunately I became lost in the chords in the chroma of old glass and didn’t notice E., riding crop in her hand, not even aware she was being ambushed. “S’agit-il d’un guet-apens? Si vous voulez discuter avec moi d’un problème personnel, vous pourriez me prévenir?”
Being caught by surprise like that made me speak my thought aloud. Eva caught the word. “Sneak, you call me? ‘Une moucharde’? Ce n’est pas un mot aimable, Mr. Frobisher. Si vous dites que je suis une moucharde, vous allez nuire à ma réputation. Et si vous nuisez à ma réputation, eh bien, il faudra que je ruine la vôtre!”
Belatedly, I opened fire. Yes, her reputation was precisely what I had to warn her about. If even a visiting foreigner to Bruges had seen her consorting in Minnewater Park during school hours with a scrofulous toad, it was only a matter of time before all the rumormongers in the city had turned the name of Crommelynck-Ayrs to Mudd!
One moment I expected a slap, the next, she reddened and lowered her face. Meekly, she inquired, “Avez-vous dit à ma mère ce que vous avez vu?” I replied that, no, I had not told anyone, yet. E. took careful aim: “Stupid of you, Monsieur Frobisher, because Mama could have told you that mysterious ‘consort’ was Monsieur van de Velde, the gentleman with whose family I lodge during my school week. His father owns the largest munitions factory in Belgium, and he is a respectable family man. Wednesday was a half holiday, so Monsieur van de Velde was kind enough to accompany me from his office back to his house. His own daughters had a choir rehearsal to attend. The school does not like its girls to walk out alone, even during daylight. Sneaks live in parks, you see, dirty-minded sneaks, waiting to damage a girl’s reputation, or perhaps prowling for opportunities to blackmail her.”
Bluff or backfire? I hedged my bets. “Blackmail? I have three sisters of my own, and I was concerned for your reputation! That is all.”
She relished her advantage. “Ah oui? Comme c’est délicat de votre part! Tell me, Mr. Frobisher, what exactly did you think Monsieur van de Velde was going to do to me? Were you frightfully jealous?”
Her awful directness—for a girl—quite knocked the bails off my wicket. “I am relieved that this simple misunderstanding has been cleared up”—I chose my most insincere smile—“and offer my sincerest apologies.”
“I accept your sincerest apologies in the precise same spirit they are offered.” E. walked off to the stables, her whip swishing the air like a lioness’s tail. Went off to the music room to forget my dismal performance in some devilish Liszt. Can normally rattle off an excellent La Prédication aux Oiseaux, but not last Friday. Thank God E.’s leaving for Switzerland tomorrow. If she ever found out about her mother’s nighttime visits—well, doesn’t bear thinking about. Why is it I never met a boy I couldn’t twist round my finger (not only my finger) but the women of Zedelghem seem to best me every time?
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
29th—VIII—1931
Sixsmith,
Sitting at my escritoire in my dressing gown. The church bell chimes five. Another thirsty dawn. My candle is burnt away. A tiring night turned inside out. J. came to my bed at midnight, and during our athletics, my door was barged. Farcical horror! Thank God J. had locked it on her way in. The doorknob rattled, insistent knocking began. Fear can clear the mind as well as cloud it, and remembering my Don Juan, I hid J. in a nest of coverlets and sheets in my sagging bed and left the curtain half open to show I had nothing to hide. I fumbled across the room, not believing this was happening to me, deliberately knocking into things to buy time, and reaching the door, called out, “What in hell is the matter? Are we on fire?”
“Open up, Robert!” Ayrs! You can imagine, I was ready to duck bullets. Desperate, I asked what time it was, just to win another moment.
“Who cares? I don’t know! I’ve got a melody, boy, for violin, it’s a gift, and it won’t let me sleep, so I need you to take it down, now!”
Could I trust him? “Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“No, it bloody can’t, Frobisher! I might lose it!”
Shouldn’t we go to the music room?
“It’ll wake up the house and, no, every note is in place, in my head!”
So I told him to wait while I lit a candle. Unlocked my door, and there stood Ayrs, a cane in each hand, mummified in his moonlit nightshirt. Hendrick stood behind him, silent and watchful as an Indian totem. “Make way, make way!” Ayrs pushed past me. “Find a pen, grab some blank score paper, turn on your lamp, quickly. Why the deuce do you lock your door if you sleep with the windows open? The Prussians are gone, the ghosts’ll just drift through the door.” Garbled some balderdash about not being able to fall asleep in an unlocked room, but he wasn’t listening. “Have you got manuscript paper in here or should I have Hendrick go and get some?”
Relief that V.A. hadn’t come to catch me tupping his wife made his imposition seem less preposterous than it actually was, so fine, I said, yes, I have paper, I have pens, let’s start. Ayrs’s sight was too poor to see anything suspicious in the foothills of my bed, but Hendrick still posed a possible danger. One should avoid relying on servants’ discretion. After Hendrick had helped his master to a chair and wrapped a rug round his shoulders, I told him I’d ring for him when we were done. Ayrs didn’t contradict me—he was already humming. A conspiratorial flicker in H.’s eyes? Room too dim to be sure. The servant gave a near-imperceptible bow and glided away as if on well-oiled coasters, softly shutting the door behind him.
Splashed a little water on my face at the washbowl and sat opposite Ayrs, worrying J. might forget the creaking floorboards and try to tiptoe out.
“Ready.”
Ayrs hummed his sonata, bar by bar, then named his notes. The oddity of the miniature soon absorbed me, despite the circumstances. It’s a seesawing, cyclical, crystalline thing. He finished after the ninety-sixth bar and told me to mark the MS triste. Then he asked me, “So what d’you think?”
“Not sure,” I told him. “It’s not at all like you. Not much like anyone. But it hypnotizes.”
Ayrs was now slumped, à la a Pre-Raphaelite oil painting entitled Behold the Sated Muse Discards Her Puppet. Birdsong foamed in the hour-before-dawn garden. Thought about J.’s curves in the bed, just a few yards away, even felt a dangerous throb of impatience for her. V.A. was unsure of himself for once. “I dreamt of a . . . nightmarish café, brilliantly lit, but underground, with no way out. I’d been dead a long, long time. The waitresses all had the same face. The food was soap, the only drink was cups of lather. The music in the café was”—he wagged an exhausted finger at the MS—“this.”
Rang for H. Wanted Ayrs out of my room before daylight found his wife in my bed. After a minute H. knocked. Ayrs got to his feet and limped over—he hates anyone seeing him assisted. “Good work, Frobisher.” His voice found me from down the corridor. I shut the door and breathed that big sigh of relief. Climbed back to bed, where my swampy-sheeted alligator sank her little teeth into her young prey.
We’d begun a luxuriant farewell kiss when, damn me, the door creaked opened again. “Something else, Frobisher!” Mother of All Profanities, I hadn’t locked the door! Ayrs drifted bedward like the wreck of the Hesperus. J. slid back under the sheets while I made disheveling, surprised noises. Thank God, Hendrick was waiting outside—accident or tact? V.A. found the end of my bed and sat there, just inches from the bump that was J. If J. sneezed or coughed now, even blind old Ayrs would catch on. “A tricky subject, so I’ll just spit it out. Jocasta. She isn’t a very faithful woman. Maritally, I mean. Friends hint at her indiscretions, enemies inform me of affairs. Has she ever . . . toward you . . . y’ know my meaning?”
Let my voice stiffen, masterfully. “No, sir, I don’t believe I do know your meaning.”
“Spare me your bashfulness, boy!” Ayrs leant nearer. “Has my wife ever made advances? I have a right to know!”
Avoided a nervous giggle, by a whisker. “I find your question distasteful in the extreme.” Jocasta’s breath dampened my thigh. She must have been roasting alive under the covers. “I wouldn’t call any ‘friend’ who spread such muck around by that name. In Mrs. Crommelynck’s case, frankly, I find the notion as unthinkable as it is unpalatable. If, if, through some, I don’t know, nervous collapse, she were to behave so inappropriately, well, to be honest, Ayrs, I’d probably ask for Dhondt’s advice, or speak to Dr. Egret.” Sophistry makes a fine smoke screen.
“So you’re not going to give me a one-word answer?”
“You shall have a two-word answer. ‘Emphatically, no!’ And I very much hope the subject is now closed.”
Ayrs let long moments fall away. “You’re young, Frobisher, you’re rich, you’ve got a brain, and by all accounts you’re not wholly repugnant. I’m not sure why you stay on here.”
Good. He was getting mawkish. “You’re my Verlaine.”
“Am I, young Rimbaud? Then where is your Saison en Enfer?”
“In sketches, in my skull, in my gut, Ayrs. In my future.”
Couldn’t say if Ayrs felt humor, pity, nostalgia, or scorn. He left. Locked the door and climbed into bed for the third time that night. Bedroom farce, when it actually happens, is intensely sad. Jocasta seemed angry with me.
“What?” I hissed.
“My husband loves you,” said the wife, dressing.
Zedelghem’s a-stirring. Plumbing makes noises like elderly aunts. Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end.
To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!”
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
14th—IX—1931
Sixsmith,
Sir Edward Elgar came to tea this afternoon. Even you’ve heard of him, you ignoramus. Now, usually, if one asks Ayrs what he thinks of English music he’ll say, “What English music? There is none! Not since Purcell!” and sulk all day, as if the Reformation were one’s own doing. This hostility was forgotten in a trice when Sir Edward telephoned from his hotel in Bruges this morning, wondering if Ayrs might be able to spare him an hour or two. Ayrs made a show of curmudgeonliness, but I could tell by the way he badgered Mrs. Willems about the arrangements for tea, he was pleased as the cat who got the cream. Our celebrated guest arrived at half past two, dressed in a dark green Inverness cape despite the clement weather. The man’s state of health isn’t much better than V.A.’s. J. & I welcomed him on the steps of Zedelghem. “So you’re Vyv’s new pair of eyes, are you?” he said to me, as we shook hands. Said I’d seen him conduct a dozen times at the festival, which pleased him. Guided the composer into the Scarlet Room, where Ayrs was waiting. They greeted each other warmly, but as if wary of bruises. Elgar’s sciatic pain bothers him greatly, and even on good days, V.A. looks pretty frightful at first sight, still worse at the second. Tea was served, and they talked shop, mostly ignoring J. & me, but it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall. Sir E. glanced at us now and then to make sure he was not wearing out his host. “Not at all.” We smiled back. They fenced over such topics as saxophones in orchestras, whether Webern is Fraudster or Messiah, the patronage and politics of music. Sir E. announced he is at work on a Third Symphony after a long hibernation:—he even played us sketches of a molto maestoso and an allegretto on the upright. Ayrs most eager to prove that he isn’t ready for his coffin either, and had me run through some recently completed piano sketches—rather lovely. Several dead bottles of Trappist beer later, I asked Elgar about the Pomp and Circumstance marches. “Oh, I needed the money, dear boy. But don’t tell anyone. The King might want my baronetcy back.” Ayrs went into laughter spasms at this! “I always say, Ted, to get the crowd to cry Hosanna, you must first ride into town on an ass. Backwards, ideally, whilst telling the masses the tall stories they want to hear.”
Sir E. had heard about “Todtenvogel” ’s reception in Cracow (all London has, it would seem), so V.A. sent me off to fetch a score. Back in the Scarlet Room, our guest took our death-bird to the window seat and read it with the aid of a monocle while Ayrs and I pretended to busy ourselves. “A man at our time of life, Ayrs”— E. spoke at last—“has no right to such daring ideas. Where are you getting ’em from?”
V.A. puffed up like a smug hornyback. “I suppose I’ve won a rearguard action or two in my war against decrepitude. My boy Robert here is proving a valuable aide-de-camp.”
Aide-de-camp? I’m his bloody general and he’s the fat old Turk reigning on the memory of faded glories! Smiled sweetly as I could (as if the roof over my head depended on it. Moreover, Sir E. might be useful one day so it won’t do to create an obstreperous impression). During tea, Elgar contrasted my position at Zedelghem favorably with his first job as a musical director at a lunatic asylum in Worcestershire. “Excellent prep for conducting the London Philharmonic, what?” quipped V.A. We laughed and I half-forgave the ratty old selfish crank for being himself. Put another log or two in the hearth. In the smoky firelight the two old men nodded off like a pair of ancient kings passing the aeons in their tumuli. Made a musical notation of their snores. Elgar is to be played by a bass tuba, Ayrs a bassoon. I’ll do the same with Fred Delius and Trevor Mackerras and publish ’em all together in a work entitled The Backstreet Museum of Stuffed Edwardians.
Three days later
Just back from a lento walk with V.A. down the Monk’s Walk to the gatekeeper’s lodge. I pushed his chair. Landscape v. atmospheric this evening; autumn leaves gusted around in urgent spirals, as if V.A. was the sorcerer and I his apprentice. Poplars’ long shadows barred the mown meadow. Ayrs wanted to unveil his concepts for a final, symphonic major work, to be named Eternal Recurrence in honor of his beloved Nietzsche. Some music will be drawn from an abortive opera based on The Island of Doctor Moreau, whose Viennese production was canceled by the war, some music V.A. believes will “come” to him, and its backbone will be the “dream music” piece that he dictated in my room that hairy night last month, I wrote to you about that. V.A. wants four movements, a female choir, and a large ensemble heavy in Ayrsesque woodwind. Truly, a behemoth of the deeps. Wants my services for another half year. Said I’d think about it. He said he’d up my salary, both vulgar and crafty of him. Repeated, I needed time. V.A. most upset I didn’t give him a breathy “Yes!” on the spot—but I want the old bugger to admit to himself that he needs me more than I him.
Sincerely,
R.F.
ZEDELGHEM
28th—IX—1931
Sixsmith,
J. growing v. tiresome. After our lovemaking, she spreads over my bed like a mooing moon-calf and demands to know about other women whose strings I’ve quivered. Now she’s teased names out of me, she says things like “Oh, I suppose Frederica taught you that?” (She plays with that birthmark in the hollow of my shoulder, the one you said resembles a comet—can’t abide the woman dabbling with my skin.) J. initiates petty rows in order to undergo tedious reconciliations and, worryingly, has started to let our moonlight dramas slip into our daylight lives. Ayrs can’t see further than Eternal Recurrence, but Eva is due back in ten days, and that hawkeyed creature will sniff out a decomposing secret in a jiffy.
J. thinks our arrangement lets her fasten my future more tightly to Zedelghem—she says, half playful, half darkly, she’s not going to let me “abandon” either her or her husband, not in “their” hour of need. The devil, Sixsmith, is in the pronouns. Worst of all, she’s started to use the L-word on me, and wants to hear it back. What’s wrong with the woman? She’s nearly twice my age! What’s she after? Assured her I’ve never loved anyone except myself and have no intention of starting now, especially with another man’s wife, and especially when that man could poison my name in European musical society by writing half a dozen letters. So, of course, the female plies her customary ploys, sobs in my pillow, accuses me of “using” her. I agree, of course I’ve “used” her; just as she’s “used” me too. That’s the arrangement. If she’s no longer happy with it, she’s not my prisoner. So off she storms to pout for a couple of days and nights until the old ewe gets hungry for a young ram, then she’s back, calling me her darling boy, thanking me for “giving Vyvyan his music back,” and the stupid cycle begins all over again. I wonder if she’s resorted to Hendrick in the past. Wouldn’t put anything past the woman. If one of Renwick’s Austrian doctors opened up her head, a whole beehive of neuroses would swarm out. Had I known she was this unstable, I’d never have let her in my bed that first night. There’s a joylessness in her lovemaking. No, a savagery.
Have agreed to V.A.’s proposal that I stay on here until next summer, at least. No cosmic resonance entered my decision—just artistic advantage, financial practicalities, and because J. might have some sort of collapse if I went. The consequences of that would not come out in the wash.
Later, same day
Gardener made a bonfire of fallen leaves—just came in from it. The heat on one’s face and hands, the sad smoke, the crackling and wheezing fire. Reminds me of the groundsman’s hut at Gresham. Anyway, got a gorgeous passage from the fire—percussion for crackling, alto bassoon for the wood, and a restless flute for the flames. Finished transcribing it this very minute. Air in the château clammy like laundry that won’t dry. Door-banging drafts down the passageways. Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don’t remember summer even saying good-bye.
Sincerely,
R.F.
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