Time Will Tell (24 page)

‘And us,' added Allie. Ollie shook his head in agreement.

‘You too, right,' acknowledged Craig.

‘And the towel. Don't forget the towel,' yelled Susan, laughing.

‘Oh, the towel, yeah.' Craig nodded. ‘He'd decided that he wants to get a shower, so he'd stripped off. He'd been wandering around in his towel, shouting at the walls, and worked himself up into a right frenzy. And when he comes down to reception, he's only got this skimpy towel wrapped round him.'

‘No muscles,' added Susan, wrinkling her nose.

‘And he starts shouting at the guy: “Why doesn't my phone work?” – “I've never been treated like this.” – “What kind of hotel are you running?” That sort of thing. And the guy's just looking at him. So St John says, “Do you even speak English?” “Of course, sir,” the guy says, “we all speak English in Holland.” And he's right, of course, ‘cos they've got British telly and they watch it all the time, and they all speak it really well.'

‘Better than me,' said Allie.

‘So – and this is it right – so St John says, “How do I ring abroad?”'

Craig paused and looked around him, checking that everyone was ready for the punch line.

‘And this guy, the guy at reception, absolutely straight-faced, says, “You don't have to ring a broad, sir; you can simply go to the red-light district.”'

All of them, even those who had witnessed it first-hand or had heard the story before, began to laugh. Marco, despite Craig's indication that the punch line was coming, had to spit a mouthful of water back into his glass. The basses too were laughing, Allie despairingly trying to tell Ollie that the red-light district in Utrecht was appropriately called
Hardbollen straat
, an observation that would have added something to the anecdote. It was taken up and passed around the table as something for them all to share, a suitable coda to Craig's story.

Andrew joined in the laughter. A thought struck him: maybe this was how the parties were, the ones described in the chansons and in various historical accounts, stories of meetings between Dufay and Binchois, Ockeghem and Busnois? Composers like that, having sung solemn Mass, would have loosened their tongues with wine provided by the authorities and told tall tales, outdoing each other with recollections of abandoned behaviour in foreign cities, perhaps exaggerating slightly, adding small details here for the benefit of those, like himself, who hadn't heard the story before. The singers here, even those who had clearly heard the stories that others were telling, welcomed the excuse that he, as an entirely fresh audience, provided. What he had witnessed this evening was surely not dissimilar to the oral traditions of the medieval period? Poetry would have been handed down from one generation to another, subtly altered to accommodate the company in which it was told, perhaps like this as a traditional part of a feast.

And here he was, a
musicus
amongst
cantores
, but were these
cantores
as ignorant as the theorists implied in their condescending descriptions that likened them to drunks unable to find their way home? Certainly they liked a drink, but most of them were graduates – witty, intelligent, insightful and undoubtedly talented. He felt at home here, but how did they see him? Did they think he was like this St John character, socially awkward with poor communication skills?

 

Charlie was lying on his back on the red banquette, alternately closing one eye and then the other, trying to make sense of the
trompe l'oeil
paintings on the ceiling.

‘You'd think they'd look better from here, but they don't,' he muttered.

Allie pointed to the list of wines hand-painted on the walls: Chinon, Vouvray, Laurent-Perrier, Montlouis, Anjou. ‘I'll have one of them, one of them, one of them, one of them…'

Peter repeated the mantra, pointing to the young waiters in turn until Claire physically wrestled him into silence, though not before he screamed ‘rape' in mock horror.

‘Des cafés?' enquired the head waiter.

‘Coffees, anyone?' said Susan. A chorus of ‘me' and ‘
café crème
' and ‘
au lait
' followed before Claire took the situation in hand and, like a schoolmistress, demanded a show of hands. The only other occupants of the brasserie now were a table of suited businessmen drinking Cognac and a young British couple arguing.

‘Sambuca,' Marco shouted to the waiter and a volley of approximate Geordie accents ensued. Andrew was surprised but pleased; he had thought that the music for the evening was over.

‘Who's going to play?' he asked Susan.

‘Sorry?'

‘The Sambuca. Who's going to play it?'

‘It's a drink,' she said, looking askance at the musicologist.

Andrew knew Sambuca only as a medieval harp. So it was a drink as well? Clearly, if he was to fraternise with singers, he would have to devote some time to researching arcane alcoholic beverages. The table was cleared of the paper tablecloth: a sensible precaution, Marco pointed out, given the imminent arrival of the flaming
digestifs
.

Emma had kept an eye on Andrew during the meal. He'd chatted happily with Susan and sometimes eavesdropped quite unselfconsciously on others' conversations. Now, though, he seemed to be flagging. Craig was trying to explain how cricket was played.

‘These are like your catchers,' he said, gesturing to a semi-circle of silver salt and pepper pots. ‘We call them slips.'

‘Slips?' Andrew said.

‘Slips. It's like in baseball. When you have one catcher, we have five or six.'

‘And they're all behind the batter?'

‘Batsman. But these two are called gullies.'

‘Girlies?'

‘Gullies.'

‘And the thrower's where?'

‘The bowler. He's here. He bowls it. Oh, look,' said Craig, aware of Emma coming towards them, ‘it's too complicated to explain. Come to a match. Actually, read a book.'

‘How's it going down here?' she asked, one hand on Peter's back and an arm around Susan's shoulder.

‘Wonderful, and thanks again for the champagne,' said Susan. ‘Scrummy.'

‘Yeah, thanks,' added Peter.

‘Cheers, Em,' said Craig, obviously grateful to have been interrupted.

‘Andrew, we must talk. Is now a good time?' asked Emma.

‘Er, yes, of course. Do you want to go somewhere?'

‘No. Here's fine.'

Andrew hadn't expected that his meeting with Emma would be so public. He looked around the brasserie. The businessmen were too smart to be academics and, even if they were spies, were unlikely to be on his trail. The young couple were distracted by their quarrelling and hardly likely to overhear, and the waiters hardly posed a threat. But, after six months of total secrecy, it felt strange to be here, on the precipice, about to announce to strangers a discovery that he had guarded all this time. He'd dismissed his earlier concerns about Emma and the group; he liked her – and them – and, after all, only he knew where to find the original. He'd come this far and knew he needed to take a terrifying leap. He could feel fear and excitement, a fluttering of ecstasy in his chest.

The strange thing was, he didn't know
how
to tell them. His frequent daydreams featured more formal presentations: he'd written and re-written the introduction to his book several times and provided the occasional modest preface to collections of essays in his honour; he had delivered keynote speeches at conferences devoted to reappraisals of fifteenth-century compositional practice, had wittily and modestly responded to excitable interviewers with self-effacing humour in brightly lit television studios in London and New York, and told pre-rehearsed anecdotes in French from cavernous sound-proofed radio stations. He had even mentally drafted his acceptance speech of the award of the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres here in Tours, which he was sure the government would ultimately award him for services to France. Such temporary assurances had sustained him when keeping such a monumental secret had tested his self-restraint, but for some reason he'd never imagined the moment that was upon him now.

Emma had pulled up a chair to his left and was looking at him expectantly. Susan was to his right and next to her was Claire who, after spending most of the meal finding problems with her food, was now smiling blearily across a glass of white wine. Surrounded by women, he suddenly needed Karen.

He took a big breath.

‘I've found a new piece of music. By Ockeghem.'

He waited for the applause, but none came.

‘It's a secret,' he said.

‘Oh, goody. I love secrets,' said Susan, clapping her hands together.

‘No. Really. You mustn't tell anybody. It's
really
important.'

‘I'm sure we can all keep this a secret, Andrew,' said Emma gently. ‘Go on.'

‘Well,' he said, deliberately breathing slowly, ‘it's a big piece. A
really
big piece. And it's definitely by him: Ockeghem. There's no question. And I've cracked the notational puzzle, all of this only recently. And it looks like a
really
good piece. I reckon it's a late work, probably the last thing he wrote. But there's no mention of it anywhere, which is really extraordinary in itself. Oh, and it's also an autograph sketch. Written by an amateur, not a scribe. Maybe by his best friend. It's amazing really.'

He felt deflated. This was not the fluent rendition of which he was capable, the carefully wrought, controlled discourse he had anticipated. The despairing inarticulateness of his description, with detail haphazardly piled on detail, each phrase underlined by the flailing repetition of the word ‘really', a word he always crossed out when he came across it in student essays, had him suddenly doubting the importance of his discovery and the musical merits of the motet. With each frantic qualification, he heard himself undermining the composition's historical importance rather than testifying to its existence with academic certainty.

Emma was smiling, though he couldn't tell if it was reassurance or benign tolerance. ‘That's great, Andrew, but tell us about the piece and where we come in. I assume you wouldn't be telling us if you didn't want us involved?'

‘Of course, of course.' He gulped some water, then took another, deeper breath. ‘I want you to give the first performance. I don't know where that would be, or how that would happen, and I need your advice on that. Also, you're big news these days and the natural inheritors of the fifteenth-century choral tradition, and … and…' He'd lost his train of thought.

‘The piece itself?' Emma prompted. Sensing the change of mood, Marco and Charlie had both now turned towards their end of the table.

‘It's a
Miserere mei
. Psalm fifty-one. But it's in thirty-four parts.'

Charlie whistled, a sound like a firework streaking across the sky. ‘Big piece then.'

‘A
very
big piece. Scored for eight basses, eight tenors, nine countertenors and nine
discantus
parts. There's a numerological reason for the scoring: the design encodes Ockeghem's name. So, a big piece, and well before anyone else did anything like it. Canonic, of course. Intricate. Typical Ockeghem in many ways. It's probably the biggest musical discovery of the past fifty years. Maybe even a hundred.'

‘And do you have it here?' asked Emma.

‘Not the original, obviously, but a transcription. You can see it if you want?'

Emma very much wanted to see it. Her expectation of an offer of workshops or maybe a residency in the USA with her delivering a couple of lectures felt like a feeble joke now and she was glad she hadn't dismissed Andrew as she'd been inclined to when he'd first written to her. His proposal made her and the group partners in a major musical discovery. Her mind was racing. It would be an obvious piece for a Prom and, beyond that, the kind of large-scale work which would introduce Beyond Compère to the larger stages of the world: The Met in New York, Sydney Opera House, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Vienna Musikverein – the kinds of places at which an early-music ensemble would never otherwise perform. She told herself to calm down; she would need more than Andrew's say-so. The manuscript would have to be checked and authenticated, authorship proven beyond doubt. She didn't want to be famous for participating in the biggest hoax since the Hitler diaries, and, though that seemed unlikely given Andrew's guilelessness, she couldn't rule out wily ambition. The piece itself would have to be worth performing, but surely it must be? Thirty-four parts? By Ockeghem? That was a story in itself, whatever its aesthetic value.

Andrew pulled the transcription from his case and showed it to her – careful, Emma noted, to display it rather than let anyone else touch it. Its imaginative scope and sheer physical size was immediately obvious.

‘Can we lay it out on the table?' Emma asked. Andrew looked doubtful, but already Charlie and Marco were creating space, collecting glasses and sweeping away the debris. Andrew started laying out the sheets in order. Suddenly he yelped with concern. The waiter had arrived bearing a tray of glasses filled with flaming clear-liquid drinks: the Sambucas. Emma took charge.

‘Fire up that end of the table.' She pointed to Allie and Ollie who were debating whether it was possible to drink Sambuca while it was still alight. ‘Music down this end. And ne'er the twain shall meet.'

Reassured by Emma's improvised safety curtain, Andrew arranged the manuscript as he had done earlier in the hotel. Craig, Marco and Claire left their seats and came around the table to give themselves a better view. Now Andrew was flanked by the singers and he hoped they couldn't discern, as he could, the shadowy indentation of his body in the crumpled pages.