Music at Long Verney (3 page)

“Yes, Sibyl, I believe you're right. It's certainly very pleasant being here. Here's another bastard.” In his fine sloping calligraphy Oliver wrote:
July ye 7th. Job Hazzle inf. Base
. He was transcribing the Parish Registers, a winter occupation. With this he was combining a personal research into the prevalence of bastardy, which varied interestingly from decade to decade. He hoped to establish that bastards were more frequent in the Puritan epoch. Job Hazzle had not been baseborn in vain.

“1652? They're mounting up nicely, aren't they – poor little creature!” said Sibyl, reading over his shoulder. “I suppose he was one of the Hassalls. You know, that fat family at Lower Duckett.”

The keen-sighted gaze of their small grey eyes directed on the parchment page was identical; identical the long straight noses, the narrow heads. They were first cousins, they might
have been twins. It was an animal resemblance, as though they were dog and bitch out of the same litter. They shared with those comparable animals the expression of pedigree chasers and killers trained through centuries in obedience – now gentle, undestroying, and of limited intelligence.

“But don't you ever see them?” asked Sally Butcher.

“I saw the man,” said her host. “He was quite unbelievable. Dead from the feet up. But a harmless old stick.”

“I feel rather romantic about them,” said Mrs Simpson. “I hoped they'd call. They belong to that date, you know.”

“Mother-of-pearl card cases, engraved cards, two from the caller's husband, for the Mr and the Mrs, and one from herself, stay for fifteen minutes,” Sally Butcher supplied.

“Quite long enough,” said Anthony Simpson.

“Why only one from her, Sally?” inquired her husband.

“Dames don't call on gents.”

“Isn't Sally marvellous?” Nicky Butcher turned to Naomi Simpson. “I swear one day she'll write a book.”

They were sitting in the Long Verney hall, now converted to a lounge. Sally gazed at the Regency staircase. “And did those feet'?” she said.

“‘In ancient time,'” Nicky Butcher finished. “I don't believe there's a poem in the English language Sally can't quote.”

A car drove up. In came the Holbeins, exclaiming at the amplitude of the hearth, the linen-fold panelling, the distance from London.

But Naomi was fond of Penny Holbein, who had been kind when her second boy was found to be a Mongolian and had to be put away in a very special and exclusive institution. She lingered in the bedroom, explaining her rather romantic feeling about the Furnivals, her sense of having ousted them, her suspicion that they hadn't called because they had taken offence,
her silly inability to make the first move. Did Penny think she could ask them to a meal?

“Not too easy.” Penny cocked an eyebrow. “In their own house, you know. What about Anthony? Did he like them?”

“No.”

“Well, then –”

Anthony put on a Monteverdi record. He still hadn't found the right music for Long Verney. So far, Handel had fitted in best – but Handel fits anywhere. A great deal of Chopin must have been played in the house at one time. But what house hasn't had Chopin played in it? It ought to be something more home-grown: Arne, perhaps. Best of all, maybe, the counterpart music of the Church of England: Greene, Pelham Humfrey, Battishill. He must find records; if there were none, commission some. He liked the house well enough to intend on a longer lease, so it would be worthwhile taking a little trouble. Music and finance were his interests. He had an exquisite ear for both. Oliver and Sibyl had a gramophone too, with records of Noël Coward and Duke Ellington.

It was three months before Naomi could win Anthony's consent to an invitation to the Furnivals. It was a week before she could frame an invitation that would sound neighbourly while acknowledging that she had never met them – the Long Verney daffodils afforded a link. When no answer came, her feeling that they were rather romantic intensified into a feeling that they had the poetry of the unobtainable. She would have left it there (unobtainables were what she normally expected) had she not learned from Jane Elphick that the Furnivals were at Amélie-les-Bains, where they had gone for a course of treatment for Sibyl's knee. Anthony had struck up a flirtation with Jane Elphick, so the second invitation was written with more confidence, the likelihood of Miss Elphick's company replacing
daffodils. For the third man she had hopes of Basil, her creditable son. But the invitation was rejected, with the knee as a reason. “I never know from one day to another what it will let me do.”

In actual fact, the knee was so much better that Sibyl was walking about much as usual. She was also writing poetry again, which the stiff knee had made impossible. She could only compose satisfactorily when curled up on her bed.

The trees were heavy with summer, pigeons cooed all day, and a continuous mild buzz of insects filled the woods with a sound of piety. None of this was new to Oliver and Sibyl, but it was gratifying because it was familiar. Wild strawberries were plentiful in the North Wood because of the dryer soil.

“Not so many nightingales as there used to be,” said Oliver. “We can thank Simpson for that.”

“Horrid man! But why?”

“One of those companies he's a director of makes weed killer.”

“He would. And that silly woman, that wife of his, wishing I could have seen the daffodils. Who told you about the weed killer?”

“Grigson. He's got a nephew who's a chartered accountant.”

Here a little and there a little they were learning something about their tenants. Anthony Simpson was hand in glove with the Labour Party. He was not a Jew, but his wife was. They bought nothing locally; they had sent away old Jules the onion man. Their son drove through the village at a hundred miles an hour, wore bracelets, had been sent down from Cambridge for peddling cannabis. They filled the house with ballet dancers, opera singers, photographers, and intellectuals. They were never at home for two weeks running.

As Oliver said, it was a matter for thankfulness, for if they
had been modest and tolerable, they might sooner or later have had to be accepted as acquaintances.

The atoning merit of the Simpsons was that they were so often away. This was ascertainably true, for Rudge, being the postman, could be relied on. Oliver and Sibyl consulted Rudge as they consulted their barometer, and shaped their walks accordingly. No Simpson had ever been seen in the woods, no Simpson was likely to be seen there. Even if seen, they need not be met. They were the sort of people who could be heard a mile off. But naturally, one preferred to walk with an easy mind, assured that no Simpsons would start up from behind a beech tree or out of a holly brake. It was the sultry end of summer. The gamekeeper's cottage got rather stuffy towards evening. If one sat reading indoors with open windows, sooner of later it grew too dark to read; when one turned on the light, moths and blundering cockchafers flew in.

“Shall we go for a stroll?”

When Rudge pointed to Set Fair, they strolled more extensively, going beyond the North Wood, following the track downhill, skirting the wet patch where the spring oozed up among rushes and meadowsweet and trickled away to join the River Thames. The spring was a boundary point. Beyond it the track wound through the remnants of Great-Granny's ambition of an arboretum: startling occurrences of Wellingtonias, thujas, cork trees and evergreen oaks, monkey puzzles, Norway spruces, and Monterey pines. Oliver could just remember her, sitting in a Bath chair with her sketchbook, and her crow of laughter when he pointed out that she had drawn the Wellingtonia too tall. After the arboretum one came to the thickets of rhododendrons, still called the American Garden, and then the track ran into the drive and one saw the house. Sibyl's knee was so much better that she could walk as far as this and back again without feeling any the worse for it. It
became a favourite walk – known so long that they seemed to be walking through themselves. They had no sense of trespass. Their woods. Their house. They had no sense of trespass when they came out into the drive and saw the house lit up within; only of trespassers, when they noticed the row of cars drawn up in front of it. They had started their walk later than usual because they wanted to walk by moonlight, and at first sight Oliver took the lighted windows to be reflecting the moon. But only a few of the upper windows shone; it was the row of ground-floor windows, the seven windows of the long drawing room, which were lit up.

“They must have come back. How odd of Rudge!”

“They can't have needed all those cars to come back in. It must be one of their parties.”

“Funny kind of party. There's no-one there.”

For the windows were uncurtained and showed that the room was empty.

As they watched, they saw the colour of the illumination change. The electric lights had been switched off. The room was illuminated by candles, glowed instead of shining, was mysterious and withdrawn.

“Come on,” said Sibyl. “Since we're here, we'll see what's going on.”

“A trifle undignified, perhaps?”

A poem had begun to flicker in Sibyl's mind and she wanted to make sure of it. “Come on.”

They walked towards the house, made their way among the cars. The candlelight strengthened in the empty room. Apparently the Simpsons had respected its furnishings, except for adding more chairs and a grand piano. At one end, they had rigged up a low platform on which were four chairs and four music stands.

“Grigson said something about their being musical.”

At that moment, people came laughing and talking into the room, sat down. Among them were several people the Furnivals knew; this, for some reason, made everything more improbable and dreamlike. A moment later, three men and a woman, three fiddlers and a cellist, came in, mounted the platform, poised their instruments, glanced at each other . . .

For it had dawned on Anthony Simpson that Haydn – who is always there, whom one always forgets – might be the solution. The few friends had been invited, Naomi's secretary rung up, and that evening he and Naomi had driven down from London, bringing the Maria Teresia Quartet with them.

All but one of the seven long windows had kept its original thin glass. None of them fitted very well, for in the course of time the woodwork had shrunk. Standing outside, Oliver and Sibyl could hear every note of the music. It seemed to be having a great many notes, though not saying much to the purpose with them. But the candlelit room and the listeners, all well attired and many of them young, made a pretty sight. Music to hear, thought Sibyl, but rejected it, as being Shakespeare.

Calls, sprawls, appals? The music flourished like a wren and left off. The young man who had been sitting in the window seat, fidgeting, twisting himself round, got up and left the room. Knows his own mind, thought Oliver. The others sat on. The fiddlers did a little tuning, listening to their plucked strings like animals that hunt by ear.

“May I ask what you two are doing here?” The young man had come out of the house. His voice was loud and aggressive.

Oliver's was clear and cold. “We were listening to the music.”

Jane Elphick leaped to her feet, threw open the nearest window, leaned out of it. “Basil! It's Mr and Mrs Furnival.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Moaning, stumbling over feet, without glancing at Anthony, Naomi ran from the room. After a pause, Anthony got up and followed her. Outside was Naomi, making a fool of herself, Basil scorning Naomi, the Furnivals looking like tramps.

The musicians raised their bows, hesitated, decided to go on, for this was the sort of thing one expects from the rich, and began the minuet.

“I don't know what to say, I don't know how to apologise, I feel so disgraced, so upset, so terribly upset, so inhospitable. The very last thing in the world I wanted to happen. You see, it was all got up at a moment's notice, at the very last moment; otherwise of course I would have asked you –” On she went, making bad worse.

“The best thing you can do, Naomi,” said her husband, “is to ask Mr and Mrs Furnival to come in for the rest of the quartet. Haydn. Your house is acoustically perfect, Furnival. Basil! Go to bed.”

“Oh, will you, will you? Oh, please do! And please may I offer you something to warm you? Some vodka? A little soup? You must have got so cold, standing here.”

There was nothing for it. With the poor woman in such a state and saddled with a husband who said “acoustically”, they must be civil and go in. They went in, rejected the soup, drank the vodka. With all this going on, the Maria Teresia Quartet broke the minuet after its trio section and sat looking at the music before them.

“It's painful, isn't it, hanging about in the dominant,” Anthony remarked to Jane Elphick.

“Oh, do you think so?”

The musicians thought so and finished the minuet. There was
some tentative applause, swelled by social agony into a brisk patter.

The players began the slow movement.

The Furnivals had been put side by side on a sofa. Cushions were offered them but were repudiated. They sat bolt upright in listening attitudes. Their long thin red hands were relaxed. Their long thin legs, too long for the height of the sofa, were sharply bent at the knee. Their shoes were muddy. Each wore a whitey-brown raincoat, identical except for the sexual differentiation of buttons. Sibyl had a handkerchief knotted under her chin; Oliver held an old tweed hat dangling between his knees. It had a few fishing flies stuck in the band.

Their feet, thought Naomi, their poor wet feet. They'll catch cold. They'll die. She could not take her compassionate gaze off them. They were aware of it, but gave no sign that they were aware. If only she could put them to bed, run hot baths for them, pour in bath essence, warm her largest towels for them – they would need large towels, they were both so very tall. But it was impossible. They sat in their own house, listening to music, waiting for the music to end, identically dignified, impassive, and ridiculous. One can only hope they are enjoying the candles, thought Jane Elphick. They were church candles, made of beeswax, slow-burning, sweet-smelling, beyond the purse of any but the richest altar – and these Simpsons burned them like so many rush lights.