CHAPTER
ONE
After what seemed an
eternity the taxi turned into
Picking up his attaché case, he stood for a moment seemingly
undecided what to do. There was still
time for him to turn back, resign from the magazine, and have done with this sort
of apprehension once and for all! What
rotten luck that Neil Wilder had suddenly gone down with influenza and been
obliged to withdraw from his professional commitments all week! How disconcerting to be informed by the
editor that, other correspondents being ill, on holiday, or otherwise engaged,
he would have to deputize for the sick man and interview the composer
instead! As if he had nothing better to
do than interview someone whose music he had little knowledge or understanding
of, never mind inclination towards.
Really, things were becoming more than a trifle farcical at the offices
of 'Arts Monthly' these days!
He pushed open the plain metal gate and slowly walked up the
gravel path towards his professional destiny.
He didn't have the courage to back out of the assignment, after
all. It would only further complicate
matters to find oneself being pompously lectured at by a cunning Nicholas Webb
and induced to retract one's resignation because, in his editorial estimation,
the magazine couldn't afford to lose such a talented young correspondent at
such an inconvenient time, since people like Keating weren't easy to find,
etc. Besides, what would he do if he
didn't slave for Webb five days a week?
What else could
he
do?
He stood in front of the front door and, with stoical
resignation to his fate, pressed its bell a couple of times. Almost immediately, a loud bark issued from
somewhere deep inside the interior of the house, followed by a dutiful scampering
of paws, as a large dog bounded towards the door and, drawing-up just short of
a head-on collision with it, began to bark on a still fiercer note, until the
sharp sound of a woman's voice served to create a temporary lull in its
aggression. "Be quiet,
Ludwig!" the woman shouted again, as the dog, a golden labrador
(and not a rottweiler or pit bull
terrier, as Keating had at first feared), renewed its barking at sight of the
caller. She gave the brute a sharp slap
on the nose and held it by the collar to restrain its aggression. Then, turning to her visitor, whose attention
was largely focused on the over-zealous animal, she apologized for any
inconvenience.
"Oh, that's nothing!" Keating politely assured her,
smiling apprehensively in self-defence.
He gripped the handle of his attaché case more firmly and then informed
her who he was and for what purpose he had come, as previously arranged.
"Ah, do come in!" cried the grey-haired lady, ushering
him, with her free hand, into a brightly-painted, elongated hall. "My husband has been expecting you. What name was it again?"
"Er, Anthony Keating."
"Right! Just wait
here a moment whilst I tell him you've arrived." She smiled reassuringly and, dragging a
reluctant Ludwig along by the collar, shut him into an adjoining room. Then she headed down the hallway and
disappeared round a corner at the far end.
Ludwig barked gruffly a few times from his new place of confinement, but
his initial aggression had considerably subsided, and soon he grudgingly
resigned himself to the presence of a stranger in the house by growling a
little for form's sake, as it were, and then relapsing into a brooding silence.
Meanwhile Keating had taken out a small notebook, which
contained a number of hastily scribbled questions which he intended to put to
the composer in due course - assuming his illustrious quarry would be willing
to answer them, of course.
Unfortunately, they hadn't been compiled by him but by Neil Wilder and,
since he wasn't particularly familiar with Wilder's
methods of conducting interviews, he considered it worth his while to check
them over once more, even though he had already checked them over in the
taxi. But before he could get beyond the
fourth question, Mrs Tonks duly reappeared in the
hall to inform him that her husband would be ready in a minute. "He's just completing some work on the
garden," she explained, as she led Keating down the hallway and into a
large room to the right, which gave on to the back garden. Sure enough, there, no more than thirty yards
away, stood Howard Tonks with a watering can in his
hands and a bed of bright red roses directly in front of him.
"Would you like a tea or coffee while you wait?" asked
Mrs Tonks, offering her guest an armchair.
"A tea would be fine, thanks," he replied, waiting until
her plump middle-aged figure had vacated the room before, abandoning his seat,
he ventured to tiptoe towards the french
windows. He didn't want to go too close
to them in case the composer, who had his back to the house, suddenly turned
round and caught him staring through them.
But from where he stood he could just about discern the body of a
bikini-clad young woman lying on an air bed a few yards to the right of the
rose bushes. Overcoming his timidity, he
tiptoed a couple of paces closer to the windows to get a better view of her and
discovered, to his additional satisfaction, that there were in fact two young
women lying side-by-side on adjacent air beds - one in a pale-blue bikini, the
other in a pink one. He almost whistled
to himself at the sight of them, for they appeared to be highly
attractive. That, at any rate, was the
case as far as their bodies were concerned; for he couldn't, as yet, see much
of their faces. Perhaps if he tiptoed a
yard or two closer...? But at that very
moment the composer turned towards the two bikini-clad sunbathers to his right
and stared down at the nearest of them - a development which served to freeze
Keating in his spying tracks!
Slightly disappointed, he turned away from the garden and,
catching sight of a medium-sized portrait of Bela Bartók above the mantelpiece, gazed up at it with mild
curiosity. But Bartók
had never been one of his favourite composers, so he quickly lost interest in
the portrait and turned away from it in disgust. He soon discovered, however, that there were
some other portraits in the room as well - a large one of Stravinsky on the
wall opposite and, on the wall facing the garden, two smaller portraits of what
appeared to be Ives and Varèse respectively. It was evident that Mr Tonks
liked to be surrounded by his musical precursors or heroes when he
composed. Perhaps they prevented him
from losing faith in himself, or precluded any untoward frivolity from marring
the austere atmosphere of his study?
Standing in the middle of the room with the oily gazes of these
particular composers upon him wasn't exactly the most uplifting of experiences,
however, for Anthony Keating and, as though in a determined effort to break the
spell which their stern miens had momentarily imposed upon him, he smiled to
himself in seeming defiance of everything they stood for.
Taking mental leave of the portraits, he turned his attention
upon an open music score resting against the stand of a Steinway grand piano,
which stood, at that moment, with its ivory keys bathed in bright
sunlight. He stared down at it with a
slightly puzzled expression on his face, since the many lines and dots scrawled
across its cream-coloured surface presented him with one of the strangest-looking
musical hieroglyphs he had ever beheld.
Should he attempt to decipher it?
He bent closer to the manuscript and managed to make out the words
"Sonata in indeterminate key for solo performer" above the first
treble staff on the left-hand page, followed immediately underneath by "At
one's own pace". With mounting
amusement he scanned the treble bars of the first line, which contained a
profusion of quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers, and, calling upon the
remnants of his youthful education in music, attempted to distinguish between the
various notes on display there.
Tentatively he groped his way deeper into the score, smiling to himself
and, in spite of his contemptuous attitude, almost feeling proud that he could
still differentiate between quavers and semiquavers, crotchets and minims. But there were many notes and signs there
which neither the eccentricity of his school music teacher nor the
concentricity of his private piano tutor of several years ago had intimated the
existence of, and he wondered, while persisting in his investigations, whether
he was really looking at music at all?
However, just as he was about to extend his gratuitous curiosity to line
five of the treble staff, the door burst open and in came Mrs Tonks bearing a heavy-looking tea tray in her hands. Startled out of his preoccupation with the
score, Keating blanched at sight of her, then blushed when she smiled at him
and apologized for her husband's delay.
"Unfortunately, he's had to go upstairs to wash and change after
his gardening," she explained, placing the copiously stocked tea tray on a
small coffee table to the right of the piano.
However, with nothing more to say on that subject, she pointed to a
plate of assorted biscuits and informed him that he needn't feel obliged to eat
any of them if he didn't want to, it simply being a custom of hers to serve
biscuits with tea.
Politely thanking her for her generosity, Keating reseated himself and, when she had withdrawn again after
pouring him some Chinese tea, selected a pink-topped biscuit from the plate and
devoured it in a couple of ravenous bites.
He was really quite pleased to savour the taste of a sweet biscuit, for
he hadn't eaten one in about six years and had virtually forgotten such things
still existed. Washing it down with a
mouthful of tea, he turned towards the garden, where the mid-afternoon sun,
shining high in the right-hand pane of glass, momentarily caught his
attention. Its brightness quickly
dazzled him, however, making him see sparks in the air as he averted his gaze,
but it served to remind him of the sunbathers outside and, prompted by a
lustful desire to spy on them afresh, he abandoned his armchair for the second
time and, with cup in hand, tiptoed across to the french
windows again.
To his surprise he discovered that the sunbather in the pink
bikini had risen from her horizontal position and was applying suntan lotion to
her shins, massaging them slowly and steadily - first the left and then the
right. As she bent forwards Keating
noted, with especial avidity, the curvaceous outlines of her ample breasts,
snugly nestled in the cotton material supporting them. They appeared to hang loosely and to swing
gently backwards and forwards, like a pendulum, with her undulating movements. He was almost hypnotized by them. But what if she were suddenly to look up and
catch him standing there in such an uncompromisingly voyeuristic position,
teacup in hand and mouth hanging open like a dog in heat? He felt a reluctant misgiving at the thought
and would have abandoned his curiosity there and then, had not the subtle
pleasure resulting from it induced him to stay.
Lifting the china teacup to his lips, he took a few absentminded sips of
tea and continued to stare at the young woman, whose long fair hair, having
adjusted itself to her movements, was now partly obscuring his view of her
breasts. But as though in compensation
for this intrusion, the other young woman suddenly raised herself from her back and said
something to her companion. Almost
immediately, she unclipped her pale-blue bikini top and exposed a pair of the
most ravishing-looking breasts Keating had ever seen! In his excitement the young correspondent
almost spilt some tea down the front of his shirt. For he had been about to take another sip of
it when the unclipping took place and had quite forgotten to adjust the angle
of his cup, which he held an inch or two in front of his quivering lips. And now he was half-hoping that the informal
striptease act wouldn't stop there; that she would remove the lower part of her
bikini as well when, to his dismay, she turned over onto her stomach and lay
with head turned towards the rose bushes, while her companion applied suntan
lotion to her back. He took another sip
of tea and had time to note the seductive contours of her cotton-covered
buttocks before a deep male voice, sounding a few yards behind him, made him
start violently awake from his self-indulgent preoccupations. Turning sharply round, he recognized the
silver-haired figure of Howard Tonks advancing
towards him with outstretched hand. He
almost dropped the teacup in his embarrassment, as the composer's gesture of
introduction obliged him to transfer it to his left hand.
"So sorry to have kept you waiting Mr ... er ... er ..."
"Keating," he obliged, blushing to the roots of his
hair. Was that irony he saw in the man's
eyes? His right hand went limp as it
encountered the firm grasp of the composer's predatory handshake. He hardly dared look into his face.
"The weather has been so fine recently that I simply had to
water the flowers today," Mr Tonks informed him
with an ingratiating smile.
"Yes, I was admiring the roses when you came in here,"
explained Keating, who wondered whether this ruse might not serve to justify
his presence at the french windows.
The composer, having terminated his python-like handshake,
directed his attention towards the garden and commented approvingly on the way
his plants had thrived this year. Not
only the roses, he ventured to stress, but the dahlias and fuchsias as
well. And with an air of satisfaction he
pointed to the respective beds in which the majority of those plants were
reposing - the dahlias to the left of the garden and the fuchsias to the
right. "You like fuchsias?" he
asked, briefly turning towards the figure in profile at his side.
"Most beautiful," replied Keating, the consciousness
of renewed embarrassment endowing his response with a degree of irrelevance
which only served to embarrass him the more, insofar as the part of the garden
the fuchsias were to be found in caused one to look in the general direction of
the two young women to the right of the roses, and the sight of them somehow
implicated one in an opinion not wholly confined to plants! The tingling sensation beneath his skin was
virtually at fever-pitch. "Yes, I'm
very fond of fuchsias," he added, automatically stressing the noun, as
though to preclude any possibility of ambiguity being inferred from his
statement. And, resolutely, he kept his
gaze riveted on the shrubs in question.
"Such charming things," opined Mr Tonks,
as his eyes came to rest on the sunbathers.
"Incidentally, in case you're wondering who those immodestly clad
young females are, the one on the left is my daughter, Rebecca, and the one on
the right is a friend of hers, a fellow-student from
"Oh, really?" exclaimed Keating, feigning surprise as
best he could. One would have thought
that he hadn't noticed them until then.
His attention wavered and focused, wavered and focused again. And the tingling sensation beneath his skin
actually reached fever-pitch.
"One can hardly blame them for taking advantage of the
weather in such an unequivocal way," remarked the composer, smiling
delicately. "Though they looked
sufficiently well-tanned when they arrived back from the South of
Anthony Keating was wondering to what extent his red face was making him a pariah when the
composer's next words, applying to the business at-hand, quickly cooled him
down and restored it to something like its normal colour. Instantaneously the spell of fuchsias and
breasts, buttocks and roses was broken, as he returned to the sober context of
a correspondent for 'Arts Monthly' who was there to interview the world-famous
composer and conductor, Howard Tonks, on the
important subject of his life and music.
"I was quite impressed by an article your magazine did on Berio a couple of months ago," continued Mr Tonks, turning away from the french
windows and slowly walking towards his Steinway. "One felt that you had a genuine
interest in the man."
Keating feigned a smile of gratitude on behalf of Neil Wilder,
the author of the article in question, while feeling less than grateful for
this allusion to something he hadn't even bothered to read, let alone
write. There was certainly a genuine
interest in the man as far as Wilder was concerned. But as for himself ... he hastened to change
the subject and, since Mr Tonks was standing in front
of the piano, ventured to suggest he had noted a Berio-like
quality about some of the music in the score there which, out of idle
curiosity, he had taken the liberty to scrutinize, shortly after entering the room.
"How interesting!" exclaimed Mr Tonks,
eyeing his score in a detached manner.
"In point of fact, this work is a little more complex than Berio." He sat
down on the velvet-cushioned piano stool and, positioning his fingers on the
keyboard, informed Keating that he hadn't yet completed it, there being a
number of bars in the last movement still to be composed. "But listen to this," he went on,
and immediately commenced playing the opening bars of his new piano sonata with
obvious relish.
At first Keating's reaction was one of dismay for having
blundered with his reference to Berio, made on the
spur-of-the-moment and without any genuine conviction. But as Mr Tonks
proceeded with his playing, the young correspondent's attitude became tinged
with amusement until, by the time the composer had got to the middle of the
first movement, he was obliged to grit his teeth together in an effort to
prevent himself from exploding with laughter.
Really, this was becoming more than a trifle farcical; it was positively
grotesque! Where, one might wonder, was
the slightest intimation of genuine music among all this confusion of notes,
this outbreak of diabolical cacophony?
And why was it that a man who, only a short time ago, had given one the
impression of being reasonably intelligent, should suddenly seem an imbecile -
worse, a lunatic - as his fingers performed the most unbelievably strange
antics on the keys? And not only his
fingers but, to judge by this performance, his elbows and arms as well! For he had got to a section of the sonata
which apparently necessitated the simultaneous application of elbows and
fingers! Keating almost bit his tongue.
"Oh, damn it!" groaned an irate composer as the
technical demands of the 'complex' work suddenly got the better of him. "I've gone and messed it up again!"
he complained, frowning down at his fingers with a look which might have
suggested, to an impartial observer, that they alone were to blame for the
mistake.
Despite efforts to retain a respectful silence, Keating was
unable to prevent himself from sniggering slightly. Frankly, he would have been incapable of
discerning a mistake at any stage of the performance simply because, to his mind, the
whole damn thing was a mistake! It had
been a mistake from the very first note!
"You see, I'm utilizing a technique here which requires the
utmost concentration and is extremely difficult to perfect," revealed Mr Tonks, once he had recovered his aplomb to a degree which
made it possible for him to articulate an explanation. "The chord clusters in this bar are
dependent upon the elbows of both arms as well as the fingers of both hands,
so the successful co-ordination of each is of the utmost importance in
achieving the desired effect.
Unfortunately, my left elbow struck a note adjacent to the ones
specified in the score, while the middle finger of my right hand connected with
a note reserved for the index finger," he confessed, leaning on the keys
with elbows outstretched and fingers contorted in accordance with the exacting
demands of the inner part of this particular chord cluster. He raised himself a little from the keyboard
and slumped forwards, causing the Steinway to emit a violent discord. "There!" he cried, with an
expression of unequivocal triumph on his bony face. "That's how it should have been played. After which one proceeds to another chord
cluster formed in a similar way ..." He raised himself anew and slumped
forwards to the dictates of the next cluster of chords, which somehow sounded
even more violently discordant than the previous one.
Keating put a hand over his mouth, but the mirth he was
attempting to stifle somehow succeeded in relieving itself through his nostrils
instead. This being the case, he took a
paper tissue from one of his front pockets and pretended to be blowing his
nose. And when Mr Tonks
produced yet another violent discord, he availed himself of the cover it
afforded him to give vent to his repressed amusement in the form of a series of
low-key sniggers, which were successfully drowned by the noise coming from the
piano.
"Fortissimo!"
bellowed the composer, as he repeated the third elbow-finger chord with
triumphant glee and lent on the keys for the duration of a minim. "Undoubtedly the most difficult bar of
the entire movement!"
Keating wiped his eyes with a corner of the small paper tissue
and mumbled something about hay fever before inquiring, in a less than
respectful tone-of-voice, why it was necessary to utilize both fingers and
elbows simultaneously, since he had always been under the impression that, with
piano music, fingers were quite sufficient.
At this, Howard Tonks stared across at
him with a decidedly reproachful air, an air which seemed to imply that it
should be perfectly obvious why it was necessary, and then replied, with
ill-disguised impatience, that it permitted one to explore further afield, to push back the boundaries of musical experience
and embrace chord structures which lay beyond the range of the fingers
alone. "And besides," he
added, on the heels of a brief reflective pause, "it makes life more
interesting to have such unprecedented technical complexities to master. That, amongst other things, is what
contemporary serious music is all about."
Having said which, he turned back to the score and continued his
performance from approximately where it had so discordantly left off.
Once more a sequence of atonal motifs plunged Anthony Keating
into making a renewed attempt to stifle the amusement that assailed him with
the onslaught of Mr Tonks' piano music, as he plied
the tissue afresh and blew his nose even more emphatically than before. And this time it wasn't just the music which
was to blame; it wasn't just the profusion of notes without melody or chords
without harmony, of phrases abruptly terminated before they could develop into
anything intelligible, or of cadences modulating to keys with which they had no
connection whatsoever and from which they acquired scarcely any musical support
- no, it wasn't just these and so many other aspects of the music which excited
his disrespect. It was also the blatant
incongruity between the composer's serious and seemingly gratified approach to
his work and the patently ludicrous nature of the work itself! If one of the most garishly painted and
bizarrely dressed circus clowns had sat down at this very piano and performed
Beethoven's Pathétique sonata without a
technical blemish, the incongruity between performance and performer wouldn't
have been any greater. In fact, it would
probably have been somewhat less marked, because the music would have spoken for
itself and in some degree redeemed the ludicrous appearance of its
performer. As, however, for this sonata,
more pathetic by far than anything by Beethoven, the sedate and slightly
pompous appearance of its performer in no way redeemed the ludicrous nature of
the music but, on the contrary, served rather to intensify it, making it sound
more ridiculous than it probably would have done had a clown been seated at the
same piano.
Yes, there was undeniably something grossly incongruous about
the stark contrast between appearance and reality as manifested in the person
and music of Mr Howard Tonks! Could it really be true, as informative
opinion had led Keating to believe, that this man was world famous; that his
works were known and performed in every country which knew or cared anything about
serious Western music? And, if so, how
did a man like him get to be world famous anyway? Surely not on the strength of compositions
like the one he was now playing? The
contrary thought seemed too absurd to entertain, though Keating had to admit to
himself that he wasn't familiar with more than a handful of the composer's
works altogether.
He tried to recall the first occasion his ears had witnessed the
disturbing vibrations of one such work - a couple of years ago, it might have
been, when he was listening to a radio concert featuring avant-garde music, and
had heard mention of a sextet for flute, cello, acoustic guitar, organ, french horn, and vibraphone by the 'Eminent British
composer, Howard Tonks,' prior to being condemned to
twenty-five minutes of the most unequivocal cacophony for small ensembles ever
inflicted upon him. How he had managed
to persevere with it, throughout that time, he could neither remember nor
understand. But it seemed not
improbable, in retrospect, that he must have been pretty hard-up for anything
better to do on the evening in question!
There was a sudden loud discord for two hands alone, followed by
an even louder one for both elbows and hands together, which startled Keating
out of his morose reflections and brought him back to the problematic
present. "There!" exclaimed Mr
Tonks in apparent triumph, as the sustained notes of
the final dissonance simultaneously died away.
"Did you like it?"
"Quite thought-provoking," replied Keating, wiping his
tear-drenched eyes with the remaining dry corner of his by-now sodden
tissue. But something about the
composer's reaction to this comment suggested that his manner of answering the
question hadn't been exactly what was expected, so he quickly added: "I'm
sure it would grow on one with repeated listenings."
"Indeed!" confirmed Mr Tonks,
and, evidently mollified, he turned the page of his score to the second
movement. "Would you like to hear
some more?"
"Well, quite frankly, I don't think I've got the time to
listen to that and interview you as well," replied Keating nervously. "You see, I really ought to be asking you questions, in
accordance with the agreed terms of our interview." He hesitated, as though undecided what to say
next, and, fearing that his negative response might not suffice to deter the
composer from pressing ahead, he reached out his hand for the attaché case,
extracted a slender battery-operated cassette recorder from its felt-lined
interior and, pushing the tea tray to one side, placed the cassette recorder on
the coffee table prior to turning it on.
Then, by way of introducing Mr Tonks to the
interview via a question designed to flatter his ego, he asked the composer
when and where he was likely to be giving a public recital of his new work once
it had been completed, only to receive the curt reply: "I haven't a
frigging clue." Unfortunately,
Howard Tonks' ego wasn't to be flattered by questions
relating to such relatively trivial events as public recitals! It was only in private that he took any
pleasure in performing. And, as though
to confirm this fact, his hands began to respond to the score of the sonata's
second movement. "In point of fact,
I haven't written all that many works for piano," he added, after a
thoughtful pause which gave Keating time to take out his notebook and scan the
first few questions again, "so I rarely give recitals. I did give one at the Festival Hall last
year, but that could only have been my ninth or tenth in all. A piano concerto incidentally."
"Yes, I know the one," lied Keating impulsively. "Quite a success apparently."
"The thing is, I'm not a concert pianist," revealed Mr
Tonks, momentarily turning towards his young
interviewer, "so I don't make a point of performing in public. There was a time, however, when I had more
interest in becoming a concert pianist than a composer - indeed, I was actually
trained to become one. But I
subsequently lost interest in the idea and dedicated myself almost exclusively
to composition instead. I didn't want to
end-up playing Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and other such hackneyed
composers year after year in the same old germ-ridden halls to the same old
stuck-up audiences with the same old prejudices against anything modern. That would have proved too demoralizing by
half! Particularly as one would have
been partly, if not largely, responsible for their prejudices in the first
place!" His fingers depressed the
keys specified in the score, and another painful discord, painlessly registered
by the cassette recorder, sent its belligerent waves crashing against Keating's
sensitive eardrums. "It's more
pleasurable to play historical composers at one's leisure," he added, once
the dissonance, having been dutifully dispatched, had begun to fade away.
"Do you play such composers these days?" the young
correspondent tentatively ventured, in an effort to maintain the dialogue.
"Indeed I do, Mr Keating, and with considerable
pleasure." Having smiled which,
Howard Tonks nodded, as though in confirmation of his
feelings towards such composers, before asking: "Would you like to hear an
example?"
This offer struck Anthony Keating as well-worth accepting, since
he had his doubts that the man who had just demonstrated what seemed to him a
lunatic composition would also be capable of rendering a credible
interpretation of one of the representative composers of, say, the previous
century. He smiled inwardly and bade the
composer go ahead.
Turning to a pile of scores stacked together in a slender
cupboard to the left of the Steinway, Mr Tonks began
to sort through it for something to play.
"Do you like Schumann?" he asked. "Or would you prefer Chopin or
Liszt?"
"Schumann would do fine," responded Keating,
addressing himself to a stooped back and plump backside. He realized with some dismay that the
intended interview, his real reason for being there, would now have to wait a
while longer.
"How about Kriesleriana, then?" suggested
Mr Tonks, and, without giving Keating time to
respond, he opened the score at page one of the first variation and, carefully
placing it on the piano stand, reseated himself at
the keyboard. "A wonderfully brisk
tempo to begin with!" he remarked in a cheerful tone, before his
delicate-looking fingers set the requisite keys in fast motion, in deference to
Schumann's markings. And there suddenly,
to Anthony Keating's manifest surprise, came an explosion of melody and harmony
- indeed, a succession of melodies and harmonies that filled the air with their
beauty and quickly transformed the room's atmosphere from sterile
intellectuality into potent spirituality; from cacophonous hell into euphonious
heaven.
At first, he could hardly believe his ears; it seemed too
incredible. Yet, as the music
progressed, he had no option but to acknowledge the fact that the seemingly
imbecile composer of the previous performance had become, as though by magical
transformation, the well-nigh brilliant performer of the composition he was now
playing with such evident relish. And as
the quick first variation gave way to the long, slow second one, and that, in
turn, was eclipsed by another quick one, the conviction that Howard Tonks was, after all, highly intelligent grew increasingly
more difficult to suppress, and served, moreover, to throw the subject of
contemporary composition into a new light - one whereby the cacophonous
creations of such composers appeared not, invariably, as the work of
charlatans, imbeciles, lunatics, or demons, but, more usually, as the work of
dedicated, intelligent, refined men who were compelled, by the Zeitgeist, to turn
their back on the past and produce music as different from Schumann's as his
was from Bach's, and perhaps even more so, whether or not that meant progress
or regress.
Yes, there could be little doubt, on the strength of this
performance, that Mr Tonks was a child of his time, a
composer whose music, no matter how cacophonous or seemingly anarchic, was
liable to make him appear less absurd, to the ears of his contemporaries, than
any number of futile attempts one might make to reverse time and compose in the
style of, say, Schumann or Mendelssohn or Weber. The past was dead and what had died could
not, as a rule, be resurrected. Howard Tonks was definitely a composer - arguably one with a small
'c' compared with Prokofiev, an even smaller 'c' compared with Liszt, a still
smaller 'c' compared with Beethoven, a tiny 'c' compared with Mozart, and a
virtually minuscule 'c' compared with Bach.
Even so, he was still a composer of sorts, and that, after all, was
better than nothing!
A slender shadow falling across the carpet between the coffee
table and the piano suddenly distracted Keating's attention from the music and,
glancing towards the french windows, he beheld one of
the young women from the garden staring fixedly at the composer's back. The pale-blue bikini she was sporting
belonged, he remembered, to the sunbather nearest the rose bushes, the one he
had seen without her top on for an instant, and whom Mr Tonks
had subsequently referred to as his daughter.
It was evident that the piano had attracted her attention in passing and
induced her to spy on her father.
Perhaps she was unaccustomed to hearing him perform tonal music? He didn't know. But he was beginning to realize, as he sat
perfectly still in the relatively inconspicuous position afforded him by the
dark-blue armchair, that she was extremely attractive, and that her shapely
figure possessed all the feminine attributes one could ever hope to
encounter. To spy on someone so
attractive who was simultaneously, and for quite unrelated reasons, spying on
someone else - what felicity! Keating
hardly dared breathe.
All of a sudden young Rebecca Tonks
cast a glance in his direction and, noticing him for the first time, began to
blush. Instinctively, Keating smiled
across at her, since he didn't want to give her the wrong impression. But the young beauty, caught psychologically
off-guard, immediately turned away from the windows and disappeared from view,
leaving his ingratiating smile hanging embarrassingly in the lurch. He encountered, in her place, a weaker sun
and, swiftly averting his gaze from it, became newly conscious of Mr Tonks' presence at the Steinway and of Schumann's
music. The notes of variation five
penetrated his eardrums and entered his consciousness, and so, too, in due
tonal course did those of the last three variations as well. They were all so very pleasant.
Having dispatched the final bar, the 'pianist' smiled
triumphantly across at him as the silence reasserted itself. He smiled his appreciation of the performance
back at the 'pianist', thus eclipsing the composer. But the latter had no intention of allowing
himself to be eclipsed for long, and duly informed Keating that there were
aspects of his playing which an Ashkenazy, a Richter,
a Lill, or a Brendel would
have been severely critical of, albeit, from a composer's point of view, he
hadn't done too badly all the same.
Still, even if he had done far worse, even if he had been obliged to
stop from time to time to correct a wrong note or had played each variation at
the wrong tempo, Anthony Keating would have preferred that performance to the
previous one, and he hastened to assure Mr Tonks
that, so far as he was concerned, the
playing had sounded virtually flawless.
In fact, almost divine. But he
was conscious, as he said this, that his appreciation hadn't been entirely
confined to the music, since his opinion now embraced more experiences than the
composer could possibly have suspected!
So he endeavoured to modify it, and thus save face in his host's eyes,
with words to the effect that, given a little more practice, the Schumann would
soon be up to recital standard.
"Quite possibly," Mr Tonks
agreed with some reluctance. "But I
don't think that I would want to run the risk of improving on it. As I remarked earlier, I've other and more
important commitments to consider."
And here he turned his attention upon the small portrait of Ives which
hung from the wall directly in front of him.
"But to think that Schumann should have composed this great work in
merely a few days, and at a time, moreover, when the refusal of old man Wieck to part with his daughter was causing him such acute
unhappiness! Quite remarkable, don't you
think?"
Keating blushed faintly and nodded. Then, realizing the composer's attention was
still focused on the portrait of Ives, he said "Yes," and blushed
some more.
There was a momentary silence in the room before a sharp click
emerged from the vicinity of the coffee table.
To his considerable dismay the young correspondent realized that he had
forgotten to press his cassette recorder off at the commencement of the Kriesleriana. For the tape had run its course and come to
an abrupt end.
"So you've recorded my performance!" exclaimed Mr Tonks enthusiastically, as his gaze in turn fell upon the
cassette recorder. "I hadn't in the
least realized."
'Neither had I' was what Keating felt like replying, but,
instead, he merely smiled and said: "I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all!" Mr Tonks
assured him. "But it isn't
something you'll be able to publish in your magazine, is it?"
"Unfortunately not," conceded Keating, remembering
anew the real reason for his presence there, and realizing, with mounting
dismay, that the interview had still not got properly under way. But perhaps they could now get on with
it? After all, there was another side to
the tape and a couple of fresh tapes in his attaché case. And he still had his notebook to hand.
"Dear me," murmured Mr Tonks,
glancing down at his watch. "I do
believe we've run out of time. You see,
I'm expected out to dinner this evening, and I have to wash, dress, pick up a
couple of friends in my car, and then drive the remaining seven or eight miles
to my host's house. Since it's now
half-past five, I really can't afford to lose any more valuable time."
Keating's expectations sank drastically. He hadn't anticipated any such prior
engagement on Howard Tonks' part, and was wondering
how he would explain to Webb when he arrived back at the offices of 'Arts
Monthly', the following morning, without the interview, which had been
scheduled to go into print in four day's time.
"But what about our arrangement?" he objected, almost
desperately. "It had been
specifically arranged for today."
"Well, I'm afraid it'll have to be postponed for a few
days, Mr Keating," the composer replied in a mildly apologetic tone. "Tomorrow and the following day I shall
be in Birmingham at the request of the City Orchestral Society, supervising
arrangements for the forthcoming performance of my Second Symphony. But if Thursday afternoon would suit you, then
I can arrange to be available from two o'clock."
"Thursday afternoon?" Keating repeated on a distinctly
dubious note. But that would be too
late! The September edition of 'Arts
Monthly' was due out the following week, on August 26th, and the final
contributions were to be in by Tuesday.
A Thursday appointment meant the interview would have to go into the
October edition instead.... Not that that was the end of the world. Fortunately, there were plenty of other
interviews or articles Webb could put into the magazine in its place, since he
hoarded them up for months on-end sometimes.
All the same, it would certainly be inconvenient for him to have to
change his plans at the last moment, particularly in view of the fact that he
had been so determined to secure an interview with Howard Tonks
in order to tie-up with the latter's sixtieth birthday on September 6th. Not surprisingly, his professional reputation
wouldn't be greatly enhanced by the public or other criticisms attendant upon
its October publication instead!
But why-the-devil had they left the interview so late
anyway? Surely it would have been more
sensible ... but then, all of a sudden,
Keating recalled Webb telling him that Howard Tonks
had been away when they first wanted the interview to take place, and had
absolutely refused to have anything to do with the matter until he returned
home. Such, apparently, was what the
housekeeper, a Mrs Marchbanks, had told Webb's
sub-editor, Martin Osbourne, when he had
optimistically rung the composer's number at the end of July. And Mr Tonks
wouldn't be back, she had informed him in a rather nervous tone-of-voice, until
August 14th, which was a Friday. So, all
things considered, they hadn't done too badly to get him to accept the
interview, as soon as he returned home, for the following Monday. But even then the composer had shown himself
oblivious to the urgency (one of Webb's favourite words) of the situation so far
as 'Arts Monthly' were concerned. With
the unfortunate consequence that Keating now found himself in the unenviable
position of having to accept the Thursday afternoon appointment against his
will and without the prior permission of Nicholas Webb, who would probably have
left the office by now. Oh, if only
Wilder hadn't gone down with the flu at such a critical time! Being considerably more experienced in
interviewing people of eccentric disposition, he would probably have gone out
into the back garden as soon as he arrived and begun to conduct proceedings in
front of the rose bushes. And he
certainly wouldn't have allowed himself to get dragged into listening to Howard
Tonks' latest piano composition, or his performance
of the Schumann piece either! No, in all
probability, he would have been heading back to the office with over an hour's
steady and relevant conversation in his attaché case by 4.30pm. And by the following afternoon it would have
been transcribed to paper, edited, and made ready for the printers. Well, they only had themselves to blame for
putting someone as inexperienced as Anthony Keating on the job! After all, it wasn't entirely his fault that
things had not gone according to plan.
There was also Mr Tonks to blame. And not only him but ...
Packing his cassette recorder away in the large black attaché
case which he personally loathed the sight of, and loathed even more at
present, the young correspondent nervously shook hands with the composer,
thanked him - God knows why! - for his co-operation, cast a farewell glance
through the french windows at the now-deserted
garden, and, turning on his heels, briskly strode out of the room. There was muffled growling from behind a door
to the left as he headed back along the hallway towards the front door, but,
mercifully, no sign of its canine instigator!
Standing outside on the pavement, he stared-up at the front
windows and thought he could detect the outlines of a young woman's face
watching him from behind a mesh-darkened window on the first floor. But the face or apparition or whatever it was
quickly drew back from its clandestine vantage-point, and he was left staring
up at an empty window. He smiled to
himself in ironic response to this gentle comedy and, with attaché case firmly in
hand, ambled off back along Ravensthorpe Drive. Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that
the interview still had to take place?
