Nora Webster: A Novel

  Laurie pulled the record from its sleeve and put it on the turntable. Nora closed her eyes and listened.

  “Follow the piano first. Then we’ll do the voice.”

  At the beginning, the sound the piano made was direct and open. As soon as the woman’s voice, a deep rich contralto, began, however, it quietened and moved with subtlety, hardly there at all sometimes, but always ready to fill the silence, to come back in with more complexity between the verses.

  “Now, let’s listen again,” Laurie said. “This time, the voice.”

  What she noticed was a lingering tenderness on notes, a way of approaching the melody gently. The tone was neither sweet nor harsh; it hovered strangely between the two. The voice was sincere, she thought, but the singing was perfect and beautiful.

  “This is Schubert’s hymn to music,” Laurie said. “The words were written by his poet friend who lived to be old. Imagine the music we would have if Schubert had lived to be old too! But that is the way of things. The German words are beautiful, and it loses a lot in translation. But this is the first verse in English:

  “‘Thou lovely art, in how many grey hours

  When the wild round of life ensnared me,

  Hast thou kindled my heart to warm love

  And carried me into a better world.’”

  “It’s very beautiful how Schubert put these words to music. It was, of course, an act of love. He and the poet were lovers, or so they think.”

  “Schubert and another man?” Nora asked.

  “Yes, isn’t that marvellous? But sad, too, because Schubert died so young but the other man lived on and on. But we have the song to remember them, a song that came from love of music and love for someone else.”

  “Who is the singer? She has a beautiful voice.”

  “She’s Kathleen Ferrier. She was from Lancashire and she died young too.”

  Laurie made Nora read the German words, made her try to get the pronunciation right. She showed her how, in German, the verb often came at the end of the phrase. They listened to the recording one more time and for the following week Laurie asked her to learn the first of the two verses in German.

  Donal bought some records of his own and played them over and over. She did not want to ban his using her record player, but there were times when all she wanted to do was listen to something herself sitting in the armchair in the back room, only to find that Donal was there already.

  Both Donal and Conor took a great interest in Fiona’s social life, where she was going and whom she was seeing. Her preparations for outings at the weekend, the clothes she wore and the make-up she used, and the arrival of her friends, had a way of filling the house with something new. When Aine came for her first visit after her appearance on The Late Late Show, she pretended that it was nothing, and did not seem to want to discuss it. Fiona found a way of including Aine in her new social life, and they went to a lounge bar in the town that Friday night together.

  Close to Easter Fiona met a man named Paul Whitney, who was a solicitor from Gorey, at a dance in Wexford. Nora and Maurice had known his parents, as had Jim and Margaret. He was in his mid-thirties, and when Elizabeth Gibney heard the news, she told Nora that she had heard that he could become a district justice.

  “He has a very good practice,” she said, “which he set up on his own, and people speak very highly of him. A friend of Thomas’s used him in an insurance case and he was delighted with the outcome.”

  Fiona began to invite Paul Whitney to the house. On Friday and Saturday evenings and often on Sunday too he would come into the back room and talk to all the family while Fiona was getting ready to go out. He had an opinion on everything; he knew a great deal not only about politics but about the church as well, as he handled legal affairs for a number of parishes and was on first-name terms with the bishop.

  “He misses Rome,” he told Nora one evening. “He lived in dread of being made a bishop and being sent back to Ireland. And some of the priests in the diocese are a few kopeks short of a rouble, if you know what I mean. Not the brightest.”

  Nora had never heard anyone talking about priests, or indeed bishops, in this way before.

  He also knew about music and stereo systems. One evening he promised Nora that he would lend her his box set of Beethoven quartets and she could keep them as long as she liked, as he had gone back to listening to Bach.

  “Ah, he was the genius of them all,” Paul said. “If God ever existed in Germany, which I doubt, then he came in the form of Bach.”

  With Conor, he spoke of hurling and football, and with Donal, about types of cameras. He was open and friendly; even on Saturdays he came to the house wearing a jacket and tie. Each week the jacket was different, and the tie too. On the subject of Charlie Haughey, he had information that Nora had never heard before.

  “If he could stay away from the women,” he said, “that would be the best thing for him and for all of us. But mark my words he has a lot of the party behind him and he’s the coming man.”

  One evening in early summer when Jim and Margaret were there, Paul arrived and began to discuss politics with them. Nora noticed how much at ease he was in the company of older people and could see Jim warming to him. She wondered what he spoke to Fiona about when they were alone.

  Nora began to look forward to his visits. A few nights when Donal and Conor were in the other room, and Jim and Margaret not there, Paul sat for a while in the chair opposite hers and told stories and discussed matters of the day with herself and Fiona. Fiona would grow quiet as Paul addressed himself to Nora on the subject of music or religion or politics, matters on which Nora had often something to say as well. He was like Maurice in the way politics interested him, but he knew more, and he was interested in music, of course, which Maurice never was, and also, it emerged, in theatre. He read novels and had opinions on writers. On those nights when Paul and Fiona eventually left together to go to a lounge bar or a dance, Nora found herself sitting alone almost content. She had enjoyed his company and it was clear, she saw, that he had enjoyed talking to her too.

  One day in the Market Square, as she was passing Essie’s, she saw a dress in the window that she thought might suit her, and she wondered about the price and if it would fit her. It seemed to be made of a light wool and was red and yellow in colour. She had not worn a dress like this for years. Once she went into the shop, she began to try on other dresses in the same light wool and in colours that she liked even better. She agreed to have three of them sent up to the house on approbation, thinking that she would need to check what they looked like in the light of her own house and to check also if she had the shoes to match them. The price was higher than she had ever paid for a dress before, but she thought that if she waited for the sale these dresses might be gone.

  Fiona answered the door when the messenger-boy came with the parcel of dresses. Later, she mentioned to Nora that Essie had sent up three dresses that she had thought might be for her, as she had been in Essie’s recently looking for a new dress, but these were the wrong size and the wrong look. Nora went into the front room where the parcel lay open and came back and told Fiona that they were, in fact, for her.

  “Is it for something special?” Fiona asked.

  “No, no,” Nora said. “I was just passing and saw a dress in the window that I liked and then I went in and tried some on.”

  “I see,” Fiona said.

  Upstairs, when the others had gone to bed, she tried the three dresses on and with each one walked down the stairs and checked herself in the hall mirror and, having carried down various pairs of shoes to see if they would match the dresses, she walked into the back room as though there were other people there and sat down on the armchair she normally used. She liked one of the dresses that had a belt around the waist and brighter colours than the others. She went into the hallway again and looked at her neck in the mirror and saw that
the collar of this dress covered her neck better than the other two. She resolved that she would buy this one, and she would also buy new shoes, something more stylish, with a heel, she thought.

  She left the other two dresses back with Essie the next day and paid for the one with the belt and the collar, but she did not think she would wear it until she had to go somewhere. It would be a good dress to have in the wardrobe. But on Friday after tea, as she was in her bedroom, she decided that she would wear it there and then. Having put it on, she sat at the mirror and brushed her hair and looked through her make-up bag, finding a light mascara and a black eye-liner. When she heard a car, she went to the window to see who it was and, on seeing it was just two of the neighbours, she went downstairs and made herself a cup of tea and put on some music.

  Later, in the kitchen, she bumped into Fiona.

  “You look great,” Fiona said. “Are you going out?”

  “No,” she said, “I just thought I’d wear the dress since I bought it.”

  A few minutes later she heard Fiona going out. She was sitting in the back room listening to a Mozart piano concerto when Fiona returned.

  “I’m going to need the car tonight,” Fiona said.

  “Are you going to Wexford?”

  “I’m not sure where we’re going,” Fiona said.

  Nora was about to ask if Paul was having a problem with his car, but there was a sort of briskness in Fiona’s tone that made her stop. Later, she heard the car starting and thought it strange that Fiona had not come in to say goodbye.

  Over the next few weeks Fiona was moody, going to bed early on the nights when she did not go out. When Aine came for the weekend, Nora asked her if Fiona’s relationship with Paul Whitney had come to an end.

  “No, not at all,” Aine said. “I think it’s going great.”

  “But he hasn’t been in the house for weeks.”

  “That’s the way she wants it, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think she felt that everybody here was getting too friendly with him.”

  “Who’s ‘everybody here’?”

  “You had better ask her, but she said that there were a few nights when she felt left out of the conversation.”

  “We all just talked to him in the normal way.”

  “Don’t ask me. I wasn’t there.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Aine looked at her sharply.

  “One night she saw that you were dressing up.”

  “And so?”

  “And so she went and phoned Paul and they met in Bennett’s Hotel instead.”

  “She thinks I dressed up because he was coming?”

  “Don’t ask me. Ask her.”

  “But is that what she thinks?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “I have more important things to do.”

  With Laurie at the piano, she worked hard on her two songs. Sometimes the work was slow and frustrating, as Laurie ensured that she knew what every single German word meant and that her pronunciation was perfect.

  Sometimes she wondered about Laurie, about the stories she told and the familiar way she spoke about people whom she did not know, including indeed people long dead. She liked to live in some realm of her own invention, as far away as possible from the small town where she actually found herself. Sometimes, as they worked, Laurie could create the illusion that much depended on the result of this, that they were in Paris or London, and thus, under Laurie’s intense scrutiny, Nora learned the two songs and managed to sing one of them in German as best she could, while Laurie’s concentration did not slacken for a single second.

  One day Laurie told her that she had persuaded Frank Redmond, the choirmaster in Wexford, that, even though he did not actually need a new mezzo-soprano, he should hear her latest pupil, Nora Webster, with a view to allowing her into the choir. It was agreed that Nora should come to the Loreto Convent on a Saturday afternoon, when the piano would be free in the music room.

  She had her hair done the day before, with some new colouring added, and wore the dress from Essie’s, with a new pair of shoes that she had bought in Mahady Breen’s. She had arranged to see Phyllis when it was all over, for a coffee in White’s. When she arrived at the convent and met Frank Redmond at the door, she was surprised to be ushered immediately into a recital hall. Besides the pianist, there were two other people, to whom she was not introduced. She showed Frank Redmond and the pianist the sheet music she had brought; the pianist said that he could play the first song from memory and would need the sheet music only for the Schubert song. He practised while she went to the bathroom.

  She wished she had had time to do the vocal exercises that she always did before Laurie would let her sing. She would have to start cold. There was not even a glass of water on the stage and she felt that her mouth was dry. It was clear that these people had other work to do and they wanted this over with as little fuss as possible. She stood beside the piano and faced out into the hall. She put her hands by her sides first and then, since she felt exposed and uncomfortable, she put her right hand on the piano, only to be told by the pianist that she should not do this. Laurie would never let her sing until she was fully comfortable, but she had no choice now, she could feel the pianist’s impatience.

  The minute he began she knew that there was something wrong. Instead of playing the opening of the melody, he was playing something more complicated. She could not tell at what point she was meant to come in. The playing went under the melody, as though the pianist was harmonising with someone else, and then he began a number of trills, before going back to the original melody. It was impossible to know what to do, so she simply began to sing. She had come in at the wrong moment, she knew as soon as she started, but there was nothing she could do now. When it came to “no flower of her kindred,” her breathing failed and she wavered too much on the high note.

  When it came to the second verse, the pianist was barely playing and that made it easier, but she was not letting the depth of her voice emerge. Still, she did her best, and with a few phrases, concentrating hard, she found a tone she could work with. She relaxed and sang as Laurie had taught her to, controlling her breathing perfectly now as she came to the end of the song.

  The three members of the audience left silence when she finished. She saw Frank Redmond making a sign to the pianist and she turned to him to see if he had the sheet music for “An die Musik” in place. Instead, he shut the piano. She wondered if this meant that, since his playing for the first song had not gone well, he would allow her to sing the Schubert unaccompanied. She was not sure how she would find the right key.

  “Maybe it would be better if we went outside,” Frank Redmond said, coming up to the stage, taking the steps in twos.

  As she looked puzzled, he took the sheet music from the piano and handed it to her. She presumed that he was going to take her to a smaller and more intimate room to sing the Schubert, where she might be less nervous. He led her off the stage and out of the hall and into the corridor.

  “Thank you very much,” he said. “We’re very grateful to you for coming all the way down.”

  “I haven’t sung the Schubert,” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “So, is there another room that has a piano?” she asked.

  “That song is one of my favourites,” he said, “and I’d prefer not to hear it just now. Really, if we need to hear you again, we’ll let you know.”

  “I got off to a bad start. The accompaniment at the opening was not familiar.”

  “Was it not?” he asked.

  Suddenly, she saw that he was coming close to mocking her and that she was being dismissed. Even though she knew it was better to say nothing, she could not stop herself.

  “I think he was using a different arrangement
,” she said with some authority, as if she knew about arrangements.

  “Yes, the whole thing sounded like the tune the old cow died on, you are right about that.”

  He was being openly insulting.

  “Thank you,” she said, when he opened the front door for her.

  She parked her car at White’s and did some shopping before she met Phyllis.

  “Well, not since Janet Baker has anyone sung so beautifully. Is that what he told you?” Phyllis asked.

  “What is the tune the old cow died on?” Nora asked.

  “I don’t know,” Phyllis said.

  “I’m sure that it was not melodious in any case,” Nora said.

  “Nora, did you not triumph?”

  “The pianist played his own personal introduction to ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and they wouldn’t even let me sing the Schubert.”

  “Who was the pianist?”

  “A little mousey fellow in a suit.”

  “That’s Lar Furlong. He did that before to someone I know.”

  “Well, I hope never to see him again.”

  “He is a well-known crank.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes he is. Now let’s have coffee and cakes and work out how you are going to break the news to Laurie O’Keefe. You are her big discovery.”

  When she arrived home, Jim and Margaret were there, talking to Fiona in the back room.

  “We were just having a discussion about Donal,” Margaret said, “because I met Felicity Barry, who’s a speech therapist and she’s working in a number of schools, including St. Peter’s College in Wexford, and they have great facilities, including darkrooms to develop photographs and a camera club. And some of the boys get very good results in the Leaving Cert.”

  “You mean the boarding-school?” Nora asked.

  “Well, I would be quite happy to pay the fees, especially if there was going to be a speech therapist.”

  “Donal’s stammer gets better sometimes,” Nora said.