He fell silent and seemed once more to become lost in his thoughts. There was now farmland to either side of the road and I could see tractors moving slowly in the distance across the fields. I said to him:
‘Excuse me, but this particular evening you talk of. How long ago was it?’
‘How long ago?’ Hoffman seemed slightly affronted by the question. ‘Oh … I suppose it was, well, Piotrowski’s concert here, that must have been twenty-two years ago.’
‘Twenty-two years,’ I said. ‘I take it your wife has remained with you all that time?’
Hoffman turned to me angrily. ‘What are you implying, sir? That I don’t know the state of affairs in my own home? That I don’t understand my own wife? Here I am confiding in you, sharing with you these intimate thoughts, and you care to lecture me about these matters as though you know far better than I …’
‘I apologise, Mr Hoffman, if I appeared to be intruding. I simply wished to point out …’
‘Point out nothing, sir! You know nothing of all this! The fact is, my situation is desperate and has been now for some time. I saw it that evening at Mr Fischer’s, as clear as daylight, as clear as I see this road before me now. Very well, it hasn’t happened yet, but that’s only because … only because I’ve made efforts. Yes, sir, and what efforts I’ve made! Perhaps you would laugh at me. If I know it’s a lost cause, why do I torture myself? Why do I cling to her like this? It’s very easy for you to ask such a thing. But I love her deeply, sir, more today than ever. It’s unthinkable for me, I could never watch her leave, everything would become meaningless. Very well, I know it’s pointless, that sooner or later she’ll leave me for someone like Piotrowski, someone like that, someone like the man she thought I was before she realised. But you can’t scoff at a man for clinging on. I’ve done my very best, sir, I’ve done my best in the only way open to someone like me. I’ve worked hard, I’ve organised events, sat on committees, and I’ve succeeded over the years in becoming a figure of some stature among the artistic and musical circles of this city. And then of course, there was always the one hope. There was the one hope, which perhaps explains how I’ve managed to keep her so long. That hope is now dead, has been dead for a good few years already, but you see, for a while, there was this one, single hope. I refer, of course, to our son, Stephan. If he’d been different, if he’d been blessed with at least some of the gifts her side of the family possess in such abundance! For a few years, we both hoped. In our separate ways, we both watched Stephan and hoped. We sent him to piano lessons, we watched him carefully, we hoped against hope. We strained to hear some spark that was never there, oh, we listened so hard, each for our different reasons, we wanted so much to hear something, but it was never there …’
‘Excuse me, Mr Hoffman. You say this about Stephan, but I can assure you …’
‘For years I fooled myself! I said, well, perhaps he will develop late. There’s something there, some little seed. Oh, I fooled myself and I dare say my wife did too. We waited and waited, then in the last few years it became useless to pretend any more. Stephan is now twenty-three years of age. I can no longer tell myself he will suddenly blossom tomorrow or the next day. I’ve had to face it. He takes after me. And I know now, she realises it too. Of course, as a mother, she loves Stephan dearly. But far from being the means to my salvation, he has become the very opposite. Each time she looks at him, she sees the great mistake she made in marrying me …’
‘Mr Hoffman, really, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Stephan’s playing, and I have to say to you …’
‘An embodiment, Mr Ryder! He’s become an embodiment of the great mistake she made in her life. Oh, if you’d met her family! When she was young she must always have assumed. She must have thought she’d one day have beautiful, talented children. Sensitive to beauty, like herself. And then she made her mistake! Of course, as a mother, she loves Stephan utterly. But that’s not to say she doesn’t look at him and see in him her mistake. He’s so like me, sir. I can’t deny it any longer. Not now he’s virtually a grown man …’
‘Mr Hoffman, Stephan is a very gifted young man …’
‘You don’t have to say such things, sir! Please don’t insult the frank intimacy into which I’ve taken you with such banal expressions of courtesy! I’m not a fool, I can see what Stephan is. For a while, he was my one hope, yes, but since then, since I saw it was useless, and if I am honest, I suppose I saw it at least six or seven years ago, I’ve tried – who can blame me? – I’ve tried to cling to her virtually one day at a time. I’ve said to her, look, wait at least until this next event I’m organising. Wait at least until that’s over, you might see me differently then. And when that event has come and gone, I’ll say to her immediately, no, wait, here’s something else, another magnificent event, I’m working at it. Please wait for that. That’s how I’ve worked it, sir. For the last six or seven years. Tonight, I know, is my last chance. I’ve staked everything on it. When I told her last year, when I first told her of my plans for this evening, when I outlined to her all the details, how the tables would be, the programme for the evening, even – you’ll forgive me – I had foreseen that you, or someone else of almost comparable stature, would accept the invitation and form the centrepiece of the evening, yes, when I first explained it all to her, explained how because of me, this mediocrity she has been chained to for so long, how because of me, Mr Brodsky would win the hearts and confidence of the citizens of this town, and on the crest of this great evening, turn the whole tide here – ha ha! – I tell you, sir, she looked at me as though to say: “Here we go again.” But I could see in her eyes a flicker. Something that said: “Perhaps you really will bring it off. That would be something.” Yes, just a flicker, but it’s just such flickers that have kept me going for this long, sir. Ah, here we are, Mr Ryder.’
We had pulled into a lay-by beside a field of tall grass.
‘Mr Ryder,’ Hoffman said. ‘The fact is, I’m running a little late. I wonder if I could be so discourteous as to ask you to make your own way up to the annexe.’
Following his gaze, I saw that the field rose steeply up a hill and that perched at the very top was a small wooden hut. Hoffman rummaged about in the glove compartment and produced a key.
‘You’ll find a padlock on the door of the hut. The facilities are not luxurious, but then you’ll have privacy, just as you requested. And the piano is an excellent example of the sort of uprights Bechstein produced in the twenties.’
I looked up at the hill again, then said: ‘That hut up there?’
‘I shall return for you, Mr Ryder, in two hours’ time. Unless you would require a car sooner?’
‘Two hours would be fine.’
‘Well then, sir, I hope you find everything to your satisfaction.’ Hoffman waved his hand towards the hut as though politely ushering me, but there was a trace of impatience in the gesture. I thanked him and got out of the car.
25
I pulled open a barred gate and followed a footpath that climbed up to the little wooden hut. The field was at first disconcertingly muddy, but as I climbed higher the ground grew firmer. Half-way up, I glanced over my shoulder and found I could see the long road curving through the farm fields, and the roof of what might well have been Hoffman’s car going off into the distance.
I was a little out of breath by the time I reached the hut and unlocked the rusted padlock on the door. From the outside, the hut looked no different to an ordinary garden shed, but I was nevertheless taken aback to find it entirely undecorated inside. The walls and the floor were just rough boards, some of which had warped. I could see insects moving along the cracks in between them, while above me the remains of old cobwebs dangled from the rafters. An upright piano of somewhat grubby appearance took up most of the space, and when I pulled out the stool and sat down, I found my back virtually touching the wall behind me.
This same wall contained the only window in the hut, and by twisting round on my stool and craning
my neck I found I had a view of the field outside descending steeply down to the road. The floor of the hut did not seem entirely level, and once I turned to face the piano again I had the uneasy feeling I was about to slide backwards down the hill. However, when I opened the piano and played a few phrases, I found it had a perfectly fine tone, the bass notes in particular having a pleasing richness to them. The action was not too light and the instrument had been very adequately tuned. It occurred to me the rough timber around me might even have been carefully chosen to provide the optimum level of absorption and reflection. Aside from a slight creaking each time I pressed the sustaining pedal, the facilities left me with little to complain of.
After a short moment to collect my thoughts I went into the vertiginous opening of Asbestos and Fibre. Then as the first movement settled into its more reflective phase, I became increasingly relaxed, so much so that I found myself playing most of the first movement with my eyes closed.
As I began the second movement, I opened my eyes again and found the afternoon sunshine streaming through the window behind me, throwing my shadow sharply across the keyboard. Even the demands of the second movement, however, did nothing to alter my calm. Indeed, I realised I was in absolute control of every dimension of the composition. I recalled how worried I had allowed myself to become over the course of the day and now felt utterly foolish for having done so. Moreover, now I was in the midst of the piece, it seemed inconceivable that my mother would not be moved by it. The simple fact was, I had no reason whatsoever to feel anything other than utter confidence concerning the evening’s performance.
It was as I was entering the sublime melancholy of the third movement that I became aware of a noise in the background. At first I thought it was connected with the soft pedal, and then that it was something to do with the floor. It was a faint, rhythmic noise that would stop and start, and for some time I tried not to pay any attention to it. But it continued to return, and then, during the pianissimo passages mid-way through the movement, I realised that someone was digging outside not far away.
The discovery that the sound had nothing to do with me enabled me to ignore it all the more easily and I continued with the third movement, enjoying the ease with which the tangled knots of emotion rose languidly to the surface and separated. I closed my eyes again, and before long began to picture the faces of my parents, sitting side by side, listening with looks of solemn concentration. Oddly I did not picture them sitting in a concert hall – as I knew I would see them later in the evening – but in the living room of a neighbour in Worcestershire, a certain Mrs Clarkson, a widow with whom my mother had for a time been friendly. Possibly it was the tall grass outside the hut that had reminded me of Mrs Clarkson’s. Her cottage, like ours, had been in the middle of a small field and naturally enough, being on her own, she had been unable to keep the grass under any sort of control. The inside of her house, by contrast, had been impeccably tidy. There had been a piano in one corner of her living room, which I could not remember ever having seen with the lid raised. For all I knew, it might well have been out of tune or broken. But a particular memory came back to me, of sitting quietly in that room, my cup of tea on my knee, listening to my parents chatting to Mrs Clarkson about music. Perhaps my father had just asked if she ever played her piano, for certainly, music had not been a regular topic with Mrs Clarkson. In any case, for no real logical reason, as I continued with the third movement of Asbestos and Fibre there in the wooden hut, I allowed myself the satisfaction of pretending I was back in that room in Mrs Clarkson’s cottage, my father, my mother, Mrs Clarkson listening with serious expressions while I played the piano in the corner, the lace curtain threatening to blow across my face in the summer breeze.
As I approached the latter stages of the third movement I became conscious again of the digging noise. I was not sure whether it had ceased for a while then started up again or if it had been going on all the time, but in any case it now seemed much more conspicuous than before. The thought then suddenly occurred to me that the noise was being made by none other than Brodsky in the process of burying his dog. Indeed, I recollected his having declared on more than one occasion this morning his intention to bury his dog later in the day, and I even had a vague memory of having agreed to some arrangement whereby I played the piano while he performed the burial ceremony.
I now began to picture something of what must have taken place prior to my arrival at the hut. Brodsky, presumably, had arrived some time earlier and had been waiting at a spot just over the peak of the hill, a stone’s throw from the wooden hut, where there was a cluster of trees and a slight dip in the ground. He had stood at the spot quietly, having placed his spade against a tree trunk, and nearby on the ground, concealed almost entirely by the surrounding grass, the body of his dog wrapped in a bed sheet. As he had said to me this morning, he had planned a simple ceremony for which my piano accompaniment was to be the sole embellishment, and understandably he had not wished to commence proceedings until my arrival. He had thus waited, perhaps for as long as an hour, gazing at the sky and the view from the hill.
At first, naturally enough, Brodsky would have turned over memories of his late companion. But as the minutes had ticked by and there had continued to be no sign of me, his thoughts had turned to Miss Collins and their forthcoming rendez-vous at the cemetery. Before long, Brodsky had found himself remembering again a particular spring morning of many years ago, when he had carried two wicker chairs out into the field behind their cottage. That had been no more than a fortnight after their arrival in the city, and despite their depleted funds Miss Collins had been going about furnishing their new home with considerable energy. On that spring morning she had come down to breakfast and expressed a desire to take a short rest sitting in the fresh air and sunshine.
Thinking back to that morning, he had found he could recall vividly the wet yellow grass and the morning sun overhead as he had positioned the chairs side by side. She had emerged a little later and they had sat together for a time, exchanging the occasional relaxed remark. For a small moment that morning, there had been for the first time in months a feeling that the future might hold something for them after all. Brodsky had been on the verge of articulating such a thought but then, remembering that it touched on the delicate topic of his recent failures, had changed his mind.