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 chateau 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.
Half-Lives
The First Luisa Rey Mystery
Rufus Sixsmith leans over the balcony and estimates his body’s velocity when it hits the sidewalk and lays his dilemmas to rest. A telephone rings in the unlit room. Sixsmith dares not answer. Disco music booms from the next apartment, where a party is in full swing, and Sixsmith feels older than his sixty-six years. Smog obscures the stars, but north and south along the coastal strip, Buenas Yerbas’s billion lights simmer. West, the Pacific eternity. East, our denuded, heroic, pernicious, enshrined, thirsty, berserking American continent.
A young woman emerges from the next-door party and leans over the neighboring balcony. Her hair is shorn, her violet dress is elegant, but she looks incurably sad and alone. Propose a suicide pact, why don’t you? Sixsmith isn’t serious, and he isn’t going to jump either, not if an ember of humor still glows. Besides, a quiet accident is precisely what Grimaldi, Napier, and those sharp-suited hoodlums are praying for. Sixsmith shuffles inside and pours himself another generous vermouth from his absent host’s minibar, dips his hands in the icebox, then wipes his face. Go out somewhere and phone Megan,
