Refrain

Chapter 12: Concerto (Part I)

Our bedroom. Past midnight. Too late for work. Too early for sleep.

Cadence and K lying in bed, in full pyjamas. The sheets are freshly changed, smelling of laundry detergent, and a bit of smoke from drying in the garden. Our neighbours don't play house. When it gets this cold, their fireplaces throw bourgeois symbolism into the fire. Dead-serious heat, cracked against the stone-cold energy prices. Smoky bedding is dangerous, especially when the last food we had was hours ago at dinner. It smells like charcuterie. K insisted on writing in bed, so we had a contraption set up: a writing-board, tilted upward, propped up on knees.

K: Had we not better do this tomorrow?
C: I'm away tomorrow.
K: Oh forgive me, I forgot.
C: Forgot what? That I don't actually get to retire like you?
K: But you chose it. It's the fate of artists.
C (double-checking the alarm, smiles, sighs): You have to get up too, you know. We have to set off by 5.
K: AH! Torturous...
C: It will be, if I'm not awake enough tomorrow for Rachmaninov. And please don't doze off like last time. Reviewers pick up on these things. Anyways. (Yawns.) Shall I start?

Against all claims and speculations, the thing you have to understand about Elgar's Violin Concerto, reader, is that there was no great mystery to begin with. When it was first drafted (and remember, I had touched and collected those sheets from his pen tip), the mysterious Spanish dedication wasn't there yet. All it had was floundering, restless scribbles, everything the word 'draft' implies.

But I guess, I can only dismiss the mystery with such confidence because I was given the answer without wanting to know it:

'Aquí está encerrada el alma de .....' ('Herein is enshrined the soul of .....') Read Elgar's dedication.

What other souls can there be? I wonder.

The true mystery was Frankie's house. The house had a charitable heart obscured from the outside, just like its owner: it had no drawing room, even though the English of his class were all obsessed with their drawing rooms. Instead there was a hollow, temple-like structure (the Buddhist kind, not the Greek kind), big and symmetrical, almost circular, with four sloping roofs meeting at the zenith, where a small skylight opened into the world, framing the beginning of an early summer sunset.

A grand piano sat in the middle, surrounded by high-backed chairs. The room was never made to listen to small humans, the clinking of their sherry glasses, or the drunken conversations that would soon flow. It was a chamber music hall, made for music, for the divine. Always had been.

When we first went in, we had to dodge some obstacles on the porch. There were emptied glasses, standing between half-finished plates, with cutlery scrupulously placed on the same side, asking to be cleared away with utmost propriety, even in the absence of servants. The aftertaste of a banquet left by nursery-aged gods.

They were already inside, some of them on the floor, picnic-style, with the chairs mere prop trees. I can't remember who they were and, to be honest, I'm not awfully good at recognising white people's faces against black-and-white photos. I do, however, remember that in the small group of five, there were more women than men. All in what they'd call opera attire.

K: But you saw Lady Stuart Wortley, did you not?

C (pausing pen): Well, that was just my speculation. I never got to confirm it. The portrait I saw of her later was a smudgy oil painting.

K: Right, sorry. (His hand points at the page in a 'Please go on'.)

They had Elgar on the spot in the middle, swiveling around on an old-fashioned piano stool, so he could be roasted evenly with attention. Two much younger women studied him at his feet, their flounced dresses scattered around them like ill-timed confetti. As Billy and I approached them to hand Elgar the script, I was expecting to catch the composer in the middle of a tirade on harmony. But to my surprise, he was talking about the Kennel Club, an upcoming dog show for 'foreign breeds'.