Music at Long Verney (20 page)

They argued and argued. Then Fanny went over to the enemy.

“Get it on somehow, Ludovica! We can't stay fooling about till midnight.”

The squeal hung on the air, brightened like a soap bubble, thinned, turned downward like a sigh, and was gone. Beneath it the muted voice had set out on its ghostly wandering. He felt his throat stiffen, ice form on his skin. It was the voice of something eternally lonely and destitute and blind. It probed his flesh. Tears streamed down his face as he wept for joy.

It was because of this coda with its swaying five-beat ground bass that Julius Morley had at one time thought of calling the work
Full Fathom Five.
The Ludovica one did not play too badly, and the mute obscured her professional alacrity. He waited uneasily for the entrance of the unmuted Fanny, who had to slide in on an offbeat (slide, not collide) and thread her shifting tonalities through the ground bass. He scarcely noticed how she did it, for a moment earlier he had been transfixed by a conviction that another listener had come into the room. Covertly glancing round for another pair of legs he saw the boy under the piano and that his face was rigid with ecstasy and glittering with tears. “Another of us,” he said proudly to himself. “Poor brat!” The unmuted violin began to take its farewells of the ground bass, which after the seventh farewell would go on its way alone,
senza diminuendo,
till it stopped, insignificantly, like a clock.

The fifth farewell vibrated with emotion.

“Excuse me –”

They ignored him and went on to the end.

“You were going to say –”

Ignoring them, he got up and walked across to the piano. The boy saw him stoop, almost as though he meant to get under, too.

“Do you like it?” His voice was serious; at first sight he looked
just as a Mr MacRabbit should – snub-nosed, with furry cheeks and an innocent expression. On closer view, his face was savage and anxious, as all grown-up faces are.

URSULA PUT DOWN
her hairbrush and stared at her face in the glass. It was a plump, smooth face, with nothing remarkable about it except a resolute chin. Its reflection assured her that she had made another poem – the first in five days, just when she was beginning to despair. She took the block of lined paper, wrote it down, and considered it. It was one of her best – sarcastic and passionate. But did it say everything as emphatically as it should? Should there be a thump? She wrote it down again and changed the last line.

With the impetus of a postscript, another poem, cynical this time, darted into her head:

This took a little longer. Finally she copied the one and the other in the careful printing hand she kept for poetry, added the date, and put them in the casket-shaped box that had once held
expensive chocolates. She finished dressing and went downstairs to confront her twelfth birthday.

December 31st was a hopeless day to be born on – ten days before she went back to school, ten days before she had anything worth attending to. It was dregs; no-one would give her a typewriter so soon after Christmas. There was nothing much to be said for St Sylvester, either, whose day it was. She had looked him up in the Calendar of Saints in the school library. He was a pope, he tried to establish a general peace, he was venerated at Pisa. She intended to go to Pisa, but it was Shelley she would go for, not poor old Sylvester.

Father was in the hall, putting on his raincoat. He gave her a kiss, and said, “Many happy returns, my pet. I must be off.” The door slammed behind him. Mother and Uncle Terence were sitting at the breakfast table, killing time with toast. A bulging parcel in Ursula's place held the woollen jersey Mother had been knitting and hiding for weeks, and a coral bracelet. Uncle Terence handed her a shop-tied oblong. Inside was a manicure set. Mother flushed. Uncle Terence gave her a look and grinned. He was her brother, old enough to be her father, and lived with them as a paying guest. Among her school friends Ursula referred to him as P. G. Pig.

Presently Mother got up and began to collect the dirty china. Ursula also got up. Sooner or later on this ghastly day she would have to make her bed. But Mother intercepted her, saying, “Come and help me wash up.”

She stood at the sink, rinsing and re-rinsing a coffee cup, biting her lips and arranging her expression. When she spoke, it was in her holy voice. “Darling, there's something I must tell you about –”

“Yes, I know. Judy Hollins has got hers already.”

The coffee cup slid under the suds. After a pause, Mother began to laugh. “So I've put a packet in your underclothes
drawer. Funny sort of birthday present.”

Escaping to her bedroom, Ursula sat on the rumpled bed. Life was like that. An hour ago, the four walls had enclosed a kingdom, hers by right and unassailable. Now they gaped on shabbiness and familiarity, and they were papered with those interminable old pink rosebuds. There would be more pink rosebuds on her birthday cake. Year after year Mother had decorated them with pink sugar rosebuds. Sometimes they were quite successful, at other times smudged. She looked at the alarm clock – another of Uncle Terence's hateful presents. She had forgotten to wind it. But the whole house was an alarm clock. There was Mother, drudging with the Hoover; there was Uncle Terence, turning off the radio at the beginning of the Morning Service. How was she to get through this interminable dreary day – drearier now, because it had begun to rain.

There was a knock on the door, and a voice saying, “Am I disturbing you, Miss Ursula?”

“It's Arkie, my darling Arkie!” Ursula leaped up and flung herself into a damp embrace.

“I had to look in on you, Miss Ursula, to wish you your happy returns. So I caught the early bus –”

“Oh, Arkie, you must have got up at dawn!”

“– happen a bit earlier – so as to have a sight of you before I go on to the lady I work for now. There's a poodle dog there, too – pedigree – but not to compare with old Dragon. Stand back, love, and let me have a look at you.”

Ursula stood back, remembering not to stoop.

“To think you're a year older this very day. You'll be a lady in no time. But don't study too hard, ducks, lying awake all night with your book-reading. Take life easy while you have the chance.”

“Darling Arkie, you've saved my life. It was being such a horrible birthday till you walked in.”

“Bound to be even come odd, love – like kippers. I've brought you a little remembrance.”

They sat side by side, snuffing the uncorked lavender water and recalling Dragon's exploits, while Mrs Arkenthwaite's professional eye travelled over the room. Before she left, she made the bed. Byron, too, had his old charwoman, who was faithful to him when everyone else deserted him. It was clear to Ursula that when she went to Pisa Arkenthwaite must accompany her.

At lunch, after the falling pound, Arkenthwaite was the subject of conversation. “The house was so clean we might have been living in the depth of the country instead of Manchester. Terence, do you remember her pork cheese? And Ursula, do you remember the holystone patterns she used to make on the kitchen floor? Professor James said they went back to the ancient Britons. Why did she go? I don't know what made her.”

“I do. She couldn't stand the way Uncle Terence left his bath towels lying about for her to pick up.”

“A family trait,” said Uncle Terence. “But at least mine aren't filthy.”

“More apple pudding, either of you?”

Uncle Terence shook his head, so Ursula ate a second helping as slowly and ostentatiously as she could, folded her napkin with exactitude, and left the room with dignity. Halfway upstairs she remembered that the knitted jersey, the bracelet, and the manicure set were still lying unclaimed. Poor Mother had enough to put up with without her feelings being wounded by an apparent ingratitude for all that knitting: the jersey and the bracelet must be collected, the manicure set conspicuously ignored. She descended. Leaving the room with dignity, she had omitted to shut the door. Their voices were raised. One could not call it eavesdropping.

“The adjective was justified.”

“I'm not talking about bath towels. I'm talking about the way you nag at the child. You never miss a chance to say something unpleasant, and then you grin at me as if I were your accomplice. Of course she notices. You mean her to notice. She's sensitive.”

“So am I.”

“Pooh!”

Mother swept out of the room, holding the tray, and collided with Ursula. Inflamed with chivalry, Ursula picked up two broken pudding plates and some cutlery, and said leave the washing-up to her.

When she had washed everything in sight, paying particular attention to the tines of the forks, and exhausted two dishcloths, and polished the glasses, and swilled the sink and the draining board, she turned round. Mother was sitting sprawled on a kitchen chair, seeming entirely absorbed in breathing. “Angel,” she said absently, and went on breathing. Ursula saw herself single-handedly dealing with heart failure – where were the smelling salts, or did one burn feathers, and where were the nearest feathers? – when Mother drew a sharp breath, sat up, combed her fingers through her hair, and said, “I've been thinking.”

“Oh, good!”

“Yes, I've been thinking. What you and I both need is to get out of the house and have a dash of luxury. So I invite you to a birthday tea at the Vienna Tea Room. I'll ring up a taxi at quarter to four.”

The Vienna Tea Room was dusky, spacious, unresonant; it was what a church, if thickly carpeted and draught-proof, might be, and never was. If Mother hadn't been sitting opposite, though she was actually making no demands, it would have been possible to compose a quite different sort of poetry – less outright, not sarcastic at all:

In blank verse, probably.

“What about a meringue? Or another slice of
Sacher Torte
? Grand Viennese families had a
Sacher Torte
delivered every day.”

“How did you know?”

“That sort of thing sticks in one's head. Now it will stick in yours.”

“You must have had a rather different life when you were young.”

“I always had Terence. I hated him as a child as much as you do now. Poor Terence! He's always had something wrong with him, something vexing him – migraine, stomach ulcers. Did you know he was married? She was charming, and then went off with another man while he was having an operation. When he came out of hospital, no Susie.”

“Is that why we're stuck with him?”

“The odd thing is, your father really likes him.”

When they left, the rain had stopped. The wet streets shone between the dark, clifflike housefronts. The traffic speeded, skidded, bellowed like angry beasts. It felt dangerous, not like Manchester. I shall never be the same again, Ursula thought. I shall never be able to call myself my own again. I shall never go to Pisa, never write another poem, never have a typewriter, never see a poem in print. I only wanted the typewriter because magazines think poems in handwriting are by children. I let myself feel interested in Mother, I almost felt interested in Uncle Terence; now I'm trapped. I shall always have to go on feeling interested in them, sorry for them, wound up with them. She heard her feet, step for step with her mother's feet, on the wet pavement.

She had almost decided to be a nun, when her mother stopped. Ursula stopped with her. Mother was hailing a taxi.

“I've just realised how late it is. Your father will be back at any moment, and there's dinner to get.”

The change to the unhuman speed of a taxi changed Ursula's outlook. An earlier poet, a Mrs Greville, had written a “Prayer for Indifference.” It was in the school library, and had a lot of verses; when she was back she would look it up and read it more carefully. For indifference was what mattered, indifference was the answer; not to be upset or caught out or involved or understood – above all, not to be horribly, pawingly, understood. Praying was nonsense, of course. No truly indifferent person would pray; he wouldn't need to. His indifference would have insulated him against being sensitive, being annoyed, being interrupted. It would set one above all the daily idiocies – above or apart. Probably apart; keeping oneself to oneself, mysteriously aloof, quellingly calm and polite. Vowed to indifference, Ursula enjoyed the superior sensation of being in a taxi, and was calm and polite when they were caught in a traffic jam and Mother began to fuss about time and dinner.

“At last!” Mother said as the taxi approached the house.

“If we had gone on walking, it would have taken longer.”

The taxi drew up. Father also had come by taxi. It was driving away and he was mounting the doorsteps, holding something at the length of his arm. They went in together.

“Here's your birthday present, young lady. Don't drop it. It's heavy.” He retrieved it from her grasp and laid it on the hall table. Even before she guessed, she knew. She watched him unclasp the case, lift it out.

QWERTYUIOP

“Oh! Oh!” The second “Oh” was a yelp.

Embarrassed by the sight of her face, smitten expressionless by ecstasy, he began to explain as though he were in guilt and must
exculpate himself. “You ought to have had it this morning, but it wasn't ready when I went to collect it yesterday evening. It's second-hand, you see, and I told them to give it a thorough going-over to make sure it was in working order. There's a spare ribbon in the case, and a book of directions, and a brush for cleaning the keys. And paper and carbons. Everything. After dinner I'll show you how it works – which knobs do what. And tomorrow you can start away. Tap-tap-tap!”