Edward’s first string quartet, In Memory of Lost Parents, received its premiere at a concert in the hall at Tompion. An ensemble formed by some near contemporaries of his had wanted something new to sandwich between a Beethoven Rasumovsky and the Schubert Quartettsatz. Tipped off by Thomas, they had approached Edward. His piece was not easy to learn, and there were only three weeks in which to practise, but the musicians seemed confident.
It was the sort of concert Edward might well have taken Sally to anyway, but this time she felt as anxious as if she herself were expected to perform. It was an unusually formal affair, since the university chancellor was to be present and the Master of Tompion had invited some of the concert-goers for dinner afterwards.
Sally wore an old hand-me-down of her mother’s in midnight blue crushed velvet and black, elbow-length gloves. She had to sit with Edward in the front row, within bowing distance of the chancellor. She was introduced to his wife by Thomas during the interval but her mind was entirely on Edward, who was so nervous he had wandered off to stare balefully at the portraits around the panelled walls. Thomas tapped her elbow and pointed out two former college men who had come down to review the concert for The Times and some highbrow arts quarterly.
Edward had never played her any of his music properly. Once or twice, when she had begged him, he had started, but each time, abashed, he played the buffoon, breaking off, after a few impenetrable wanderings on the keyboard, into a jokey rendition of a Glenn Miller dance number or some corny Ivor Novello hit. Once he had mocked her ignorance, slyly launching into a delicious piece and only telling her after she had exclaimed at its loveliness and his genius, that it was by Mozart. She had eavesdropped, of course, sitting in a room off the gallery, and keeping very still for as long as she could bear. On his own, however, he never seemed to play anything through, contenting himself with snatches and chords in between scribbling, making noises more like the piano tuner who called in once a month and drove her half-mad with his nagging repetitions.
They resumed their seats and the quartet returned to the platform. As the applause died down – even she could tell that the Beethoven had been excellently played – she reached over to touch Edward’s hand. He smiled at her but returned her hand to her lap as though she were an overly demonstrative child. Someone coughed. The four bows were raised in expectation and, with them, the four players’ eyebrows.
With the first chords she honestly thought there had been some mistake. Someone was playing the wrong piece, perhaps, or had their music upside down. But the strident cacophony continued its angry way and was met with the same complacent welcome as had greeted the Beethoven, only now it was punctuated by the occasional gathered brow or fine-minded wrinkling around the eyes at a particularly startling harmony. Sally realised, with a sickening finality, that she hated her husband’s music. Perhaps hate was too emotive a word for something she felt she altogether failed to understand. The sounds he had written had no discernible melody, no comforting sonority. He had composed in an entirely alien language and she felt a mounting panic that he would expect her to understand it simply by virtue of their being in love.
With each successive movement, her hopes were raised then dashed on hearing more of the same. When he glanced at her, she smiled reassuringly back, but she felt that a crude wedge had been driven between them. The last movement came as a relief. She seized on its demonic gaiety and whistlable tune as something she could enthuse about later, but as the room filled with polite applause and the musicians took their bows, faces shining from effort, she knew she would always have to lie to him.
Bird-watching she could have handled, or a sudden bizarre demand in bed, a consuming interest in cacti or Victorian industrial architecture, but this music that was so central to his very being she knew she could never appreciate, never honestly admit to liking. When the concert was over, she clasped his arm as he received congratulations and she smiled proudly, in spite of the splinter of iron in her soul.