Remains of an Altar

‘I don’t know. Last night? Gha … ghastly.’ He stared at Lol, his eyes still too wide. ‘Look, I don’t … How do you know all this about me?’

‘Just know people who’ve worked with you. Whose lives you’ve changed.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think I … wanted to learn. I’m a musician. Of sorts.’

‘Yes.’ Tim seemed to accept that, his mind veering off again. ‘Used to walk the hills night after night. Listening to G along the path.’

‘Gerontius.’

‘Wanting to die because I knew I was never going to be as good as that. I was engaged, and she wanted us to go to London – chance of a teaching job with some conducting, on the side, with a jolly decent choir. But Winnie was on the scene by then, said I mustn’t leave Elgar. Got the ring thrown back at me. Pretty bad times at work. All got too much. Kept on listening to G, over and over. Got drunk. Embraced death.’

‘But then Winnie told you that you didn’t have to die. She rescued you. You called her the guardian angel.’

‘She said the journey could be accomplished in this life through the use of symbolism. With great art as a byproduct.’

‘What’s it going to be called?’

Tim looked blank for a moment. The white clouds were like pillows on the lumpy mattress of the hills.

‘Mr Phoebus,’ he said at last. ‘Mr Phoebus and the Whiteleafed Oak.’

‘I like it. It’s a wonderful title.’

‘Winnie’s doing a book, too. All about me and Elgar.’

‘Elgar’s biographer, Kennedy, says Elgar scored Gerontius in a kind of trance,’ Lol said.

‘Yes. Composing G, he said he could look out from Birchwood and see the soul rise. Tremendous emotional experience. State of near-ecstasy when he’d finished it. That was the summer he’d learned to ride a bike. In his element, laughing and joking … and then…’ Tim’s chin sank into his chest.

‘Then it all went wrong.’

‘First performance in Birmingham … complete disaster. Chorus was under-rehearsed and performed badly. The chorus master had died suddenly and the man they brought in to replace him wasn’t up to the job. All went to pieces. Elgar was suicidal.’

‘Actually suicidal?’

‘It brought on the most dreadful depression. I wish I were dead, he kept saying. He wrote, I’ve always said God was against art. Swore he’d never again attempt to write religious music. Closed his mind against the spiritual. ’Course, in later years G would be beautifully performed, its genius exalted, but in the early days…’

‘Elgar thought it was cursed? Why?’

‘Because he thought God was punishing him for overreaching his … mere humanity. For daring to approach … to approach God, I suppose. Head-on.’

‘You mean through the music.’

‘After the soul has withstood the torments of the demons, after his encounter with the Angel of the Agony, as he approaches judgement … he’s given one glimpse – sudden, cataclysmic – of the Holiest.’

‘God.’

‘A glimpse of God, yes.’

‘And Elgar had to convey that in music.’

‘Couldn’t do it,’ Tim said. ‘Or wouldn’t. Shied away from it. As a Catholic, he was afraid it might be approaching blasphemy. Anyway, thought he’d finished – I’ve put my heart’s blood into the score, he said, and sent the manuscript to his publishers. Thought he’d got away with it, but his friend there – friend and confidant – August Jaeger, accused him of bottling it, running scared of the big moment. Jaeger’s saying, you’re not doing enough with this. You’re not showing us God … you’re not giving us the moment. Pushing him. And Elgar, the timid Catholic, going, Can’t. Not humanly possible, almost blasphemous to try to convey in music the ultimate blinding light.’

Tim’s deceptively warlike face glowing now with sweat in the unnatural night whiteness.

‘And this, you see … in my own work, this is Elgar’s most agonized solo. We agreed, Winnie and I, that it should contain elements of foreboding … perhaps a premonition of that disastrous first performance in Birmingham.’

‘Nice touch,’ Lol said.

‘Jaeger was joshing him, knew exactly how to handle the poor chap. He said something like, Of course, conveying the full glory of God, that would take a Wagner…’

Lol nodded. Elgar’s major influence had been Wagner.

‘So Elgar goes back? To try again?’

‘Looks like muso-banter to us now, Jaeger winding Elgar up. But it would have cut him to the quick. Yes, of course he went back.’

‘Back here. To Whiteleafed Oak?’

‘Where else?’

‘And … what happened?’

‘On a basic level, I suppose you’d say he … simply restructured some chords to manufacture a climactic moment. This short series of swiping chords, and then … Do you know G?’

‘To a point.’

Certainly this point. The Guardian Angel had warned the soul that the momentary vision would blow him away with its power. When it finally happened, it was barely flagged-up and it went through your spine, that single chord, every time you heard it, like a razor-edged, shining scythe.

‘You see, my job here … I have to capture the moment it came to Elgar. Or Mr Phoebus fails.’

‘That’s why you’re here?’

‘Have to catch the moment, and more.’

‘More?’

‘No good just copying Elgar, Dan. You have to try to take it further or what’s the point?’

‘Further than Elgar?’

‘Winnie believes that whatever happened to him was so personal and terrifying that he was still afraid to orchestrate the full intensity of it. Clearly, the build-up to that one frightening, revelatory slashing chord was enough to convince Jaeger. Winnie – God knows, Dan, I’m not the bravest chap on the block either – but Winnie believes I can widen the crack in the door.’

‘That’s…’ Lol stepped back. ‘That’s a big thing, Tim.’

‘The biggest.’

‘That’s what the preparation’s all been about? Those three simultaneous choirs in the three churches?’

‘Yes. And the…’

‘She’s not without ambition, is she, Winnie?’

‘And the exercises. The meditation and the visualization. Endless. And the need for Elgar to be part of it. I just couldn’t hack it at first. Too much of an ordinary bloke, Dan.’

Tim sighed, sat down on the grass.

‘There was a girl. On a bike. Legs pumping up and down. For a while we … No!’ His voice going shrill and transatlantic. ‘Don’t you realize you will never have a chance like this again? You gonna throw it all away?’

‘Winnie.’

‘I owe her so much, you see. Saved my life. Made my life.’

Lol said nothing. Tim blotted the sweat from around his eyes with the heel of his palm.