Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Seven: The New Orpheus

Elliott played because he couldn't sleep. 

One of his most ecstatic discoveries – in fact, his only ecstatic discovery since coming to Oxford – was that the Turl Street Music Rooms were open all night to students and guests of the University, and they were surrounded by lecture halls and libraries where no-one was likely to be trying to sleep.

There were only three other musicians who used the Music Rooms at night: a violinist from Wadham and two bulgy-eyed tuba-players on an academic exchange from Frankfurt. They had the nervy, sleep-deprived look of brilliant musicians everywhere – but because they were not quite so brilliant as Elliott, they returned his smiles with grimaces of terror, and hastened out of the room as soon as was decently possible. He was on his own in here even during the days now.

He didn't mind – it was the people in this city who were the problem. And the Turl Street Music Rooms had wonderful acoustics. Elliott had played concerts at La Scala, the Vienna Musikverein, and the Royal Albert Hall, but he had never made a sound as glorious as this. The walls and ceiling seemed to drink up every note, and, somehow, send it back cleaner.

He was supposed to be playing at the Opera Garnier in Paris tonight – he'd heard wonderful things about the acoustics there – but he'd had to extend his stay in Oxford. His sister, Magda, who accompanied him on all his tours, was being courted by a Duke – or would be courted be a Duke once he realized she was indispensable to his happiness. Elliott hadn't really been paying attention. 

At any rate, it was apparently very important that she marry the Duke, so they were staying. Additional concert-dates had been arranged. The performances in Paris had been postponed. 

The result was that he got to stay in the Turl Street Music Rooms – with the walls and ceiling flattering his every note – and, some days, he couldn't actually bring himself to leave. At the moment, the place was full of flowers. Vases filled with bouquets stretched for five feet around the piano in every direction.

There were roses of all shades – from peach to bright, buttery yellow. And there was always a little posy of forget-me-nots; Magda tended to place it on top of the piano these days, so that it was directly in his eye-line. It was a regular gift from some rich heiress in Boston, who followed Elliott around Europe on his tours.

He had been peacefully playing in the midst of this artificial garden for three hours when Magda came in – in her violet silk day-dress, with its lace cuffs, its bustle, and its looped-up overskirt. She stepped over the vases without upsetting a single one. She had always moved with this kind of ease, in all kinds of settings. And she was never short of conversation. She had been doing Elliott's talking for him ever since he'd been five years old.

He noticed with rising panic that she was weighed down with boxes and packages, and his suspicions were confirmed when she threw them down on top of the piano and exclaimed:

"Oh Elliott, I had the most wonderful morning's shopping!"

"You did?" said Elliott cautiously – because shopping usually meant a party, and he had been looking forward to a quiet night in the music-rooms, playing piano until his fingers cramped.

"I found the most divine redingote at Robertson's in the Broad."

Elliott rolled his eyes. When she had first arrived in the city, she'd been happy to refer to 'the Broad' as plain old 'Broad Street', but she insisted on talking like an Oxford scholar now.

"And I found a dinner-jacket for you to wear to the reception on Saturday," she said, taking off her gloves.

Elliott's heart sank. His life these days revolved around recitals and receptions. The recitals were all right, but the receptions would unfailingly involve talking...

He didn't look like a virtuoso pianist – that was part of the problem. Oh, he was slim and slight, with floppy black hair – but his face was too open and honest. There was no mystery to him. People were always looking for the 'secret' of his music, the hidden meaning. They thought he must be making fun of one of his predecessors, or making a profound point about the human condition. He hated the way they pulled his work to pieces and tried to build it up again into something so clever and cynical – something so English.

His music was about Franconia in New Hampshire. It was about a beautiful little town that he was probably never going to see again, because people kept booking him up for more concerts in more grand European cities, and sending him more flowers, and never letting him get any rest.

"This could be a collector's item someday," Magda went on, lifting the jacket out of its crepe-paper wrappings. "Did you know that when Franz Liszt was touring Europe, women used to fight over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves until they'd torn them to pieces?"

"Magda, I'm not Franz Liszt."

"I didn't say you were, did I?" She stepped over another vase of roses and slipped the dinner-jacket over his shoulders. This seemed to produce a good impression, because she clapped her hands ecstatically, and said, "The scholars are going to love you on Saturday!"

Elliott groaned. "They hate me every day."

"Rubbish! Why should they?"

"I don't know," he said, with a laughing sigh. "I don't think it's because I'm American – although I can tell that grates on their nerves a lot. I think it's because they expect my music to be about something clever. They come up to me with all these elaborate theories – do the nine movements in this piece symbolize the nine muses? Are you parodying the operettas of Sir Arthur Sullivan? Did you study at the Leipzig Conservatorium? Is your concerto about the fall of Troy? Or the rape of the Sabine women? And I just sit there looking blank and telling them it's about Franconia--"

Magda winced, but didn't comment.

"--a beautiful town in the Appalachians, with pine-trees, and sugar-maples, and echo lakes, where, thank God, nobody's ever heard of the operettas of Sir Arthur Sullivan!"

"Speak for yourself," said Magda archly.

"They call me a boorish American with magic fingers."

"No, they call you a charming innocent with a god-given talent."

"That's even worse!" he shouted. "Why can't they accept that my music comes from me, without blaming God or magic for it? I want to go home, Magda."

"No," said Magda crisply. "You want to play the piano."

"At home."

Magda sighed, and slipped the jacket off his shoulders, as though it was a treat that he didn't deserve. "Papa's so proud of you, Elliott. Are you looking forward to telling him you got scared and ran away because of a few academics?"

Elliott thought this was a very cheap trick. But then, if she was willing to resort to such underhanded tactics to get him to stay, then she probably loved her Duke, and he should probably stop pestering her about it.

He sighed. "Just hurry up and marry him, will you? Terence William the umpteenth, or whatever his name is. Then we can go to Paris. At least, in Paris, if the locals are patronizing me, I won't be able to understand them."

Magda beamed. "Don't worry, Elliott. Fitzwilliam owns a suite at the Grand Hotel du Louvre. I'll make sure he takes us there for the honeymoon, and then we can arrange your concerts for the same time."

"Good," said Elliott vaguely, turning back to the piano. But because he was still half-worried and half-annoyed, he couldn't help adding, "Magda? Are you sure Dukes marry middle-class American girls without a penny to their name?"

Magda's smile hardened. "Dukes marry whoever they want to, Elliott. They can afford it."

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