Because rehearsal time was running out, Bo let the orchestra play on to the end. Clive slumped in his seat. It all sounded different to him now. The theme was disintegrating into the tidal wave of dissonance and was gathering in volume, but it sounded quite absurd, like twenty orchestras tuning to an A. It was not dissonant at all. Practically every instrument was playing the same note— It was a drone. It was a giant bagpipe in need of repair. He could only hear the A, tossed from one instrument, one section, to another. Suddenly dive’s gift of perfect pitch was an affliction. That A was drilling through his head. He wanted to run from the auditorium, but he was right in Giulio’s sight line, and the repercussions of leaving his own rehearsal minutes before the end were unthinkable. So he slumped further into his seat and buried his face in an attitude of profound concentration and suffered right through to the final four-bar silence.
It was agreed that Clive would travel back to the hotel in the conductor’s Rolls, which was waiting by the artists’ entrance. But Bo was caught up in orchestra business, so Clive had a few minutes to himself in the darkness outside the Concertgebouw. He walked through the crowds on Van Baerlestraat. People were already beginning to arrive for the evening’s concert. Schubert. (Hadn’t the world heard enough from syphilitic Schubert?) He stood on a street corner and breathed the mild Amsterdam air which always seemed to taste faintly of cigar smoke and ketchup. He knew his own score well enough, and how many As were there and how that section really sounded. He had just experienced an auditory hallucination, an illusion—or a disillusion. The absence of the variation had wrecked his masterpiece, and he was clearer than ever now, if such a thing were possible, about the plans he had made. It was no longer fury that drove him, or hatred or disgust, or the necessity of honoring his word. What he was about to do was contractually right, it had the amoral inevitability of pure geometry, and he didn’t feel a thing.
In the car Bo took him through the day’s work, the many sections that seemed to play straight from the page and the one or two that would have to be picked apart tomorrow. Despite his awareness of its imperfections, Clive wanted the great conductor to bless his symphony with a lofty compliment and angled a question accordingly: “Do you think the whole piece is hanging together well? Structurally, I mean.”
Bo leaned forward to slide shut the glass that separated them from his chauffeur.
“Is fine, everything is fine. But between you and me…” He lowered his voice. “I think the second oboe, the young girl, is very beautiful but the playing is not perfect. Fortunately, you have written nothing difficult for her. Very beautiful. Tonight she will have dinner with me.”
For the rest of the short journey Bo reminisced about the BSO’s European tour, which was almost at an end, and Clive recalled the last occasion the two of them had worked together, in Prague on a revival of the Symphonic Dervishes.
“Ah yes,” Bo exclaimed as the car stopped outside the hotel and the door was held open for him. “I remember it. A magnificent piece of work! The inventiveness of youth, so hard to recapture, eh, maestro?” They parted company in the lobby, Bo to make a quick appearance at the reception, Clive to collect an envelope from the desk. He was informed that Vernon had arrived half an hour ago and had gone to a meeting. The drinks party for orchestra, friends, and press was being held in a long chandeliered gallery at the rear of the hotel. A waiter was standing by the door with a tray, from which Clive took a glass for Vernon and one for himself. Then he retreated to a deserted corner, where he settled on a cushioned window seat to read the doctor’s instructions and open a sachet of white powder. From time to time he glanced toward the door. When Vernon had phoned earlier in the week to apologize for setting the police on him—I was an idiot, pressure of work, nightmare week, and so on—and especially when he had proposed coming to Amsterdam to seal the reconciliation, saying he had business there anyway, Clive had been plausibly gracious in reply, but his hands had been shaking when he put down the phone. They were shaking now as he tipped the powder into Vernon’s champagne, which effervesced briefly, then subsided. With his little finger Clive wiped away the grayish scum that had collected round the rim of the glass. Then he stood and took a glass in each hand. Vernon’s in the right, his own in the left. Important to remember that. Vernon was right. Even though he was wrong.
Only one problem now preoccupied Clive as he made his way through the cocktail roar of musicians, arts administrators, and critics: how to persuade Vernon to take this drink before the doctor came. To take this drink rather than another. Best, perhaps, to intercept him by the door, before he reached for one from the tray. Champagne slopped over Clive’s wrists as he edged around the loud brass section, and he had to go a long way back up the gallery to avoid getting close to the basses, who already seemed drunk, in competition with the tympani. At last he attained the tempered sodality of the violins, who had permitted flutes and piccolo to join them. There were more women here to exert a tranquilizing effect. They stood about in softly trilling duets and trios, and the air was pleasantly heavy with their perfume. To one side three men were discussing Flaubert in whispers. Clive found an unoccupied patch of carpet from which he had a clear view of the high double doors that gave onto the lobby. Sooner or later someone was going to come and talk to him. Sooner. It was that little shit Paul Lanark, the critic who had pronounced Clive the thinking man’s Gorecki, then later publicly recanted: Gorecki was the thinking man’s Linley. It was a wonder he had the nerve to approach.
“Ah, Linley. Is one of those for me?”
“No. And kindly bugger off.”
He would have been happy to give Lanark the drink in his right hand. Clive half turned away, but the critic was drunk and looking to have fun.
“I’ve been hearing about your latest. Is it really called the Millennial Symphony?”
“No. The press called it that,” Clive said stiffly.
“I’ve been hearing all about it. They say you’ve ripped off Beethoven something rotten.”
“I suppose you’d call it sampling. Or postmodern quotation. But aren’t you meant to be premodern?”
“If you don’t go away I shall smack your stupid face.”
“Then you’d better give me one of those to free up a hand.”
As Clive was looking round for somewhere to put down the drinks, he saw Vernon coming toward him with a big smile. Unfortunately, he had two fiill glasses of his own.
“Clive!”
“Vernon!”
“Ah.” Lanark mimicked adulation. “The Flea itself.”
“Look,” Clive said— “I had a drink all ready for you.”
“And I got one for you.”
“Well…”
They each presented a glass to Lanark. Then Vernon offered a glass to Clive, and Clive gave his to Vernon.
“Cheers!”
Vernon gave Clive a nod and a meaningful look and then turned to Lanark.
“I recendy saw your name on a list of some very distinguished people. Judges, chief constables, top business people, government ministers…”
Lanark flushed with pleasure. “All this stuff about a knighthood is complete nonsense.”
“It’s certain to be. This concerns a children’s home in Wales. Top-notch pedophile ring. You were videoed going in and out half a dozen times. We were thinking of running a piece before I got bounced, but I’m sure someone else will pick it up.”
For at least ten seconds Lanark stood erect and motionless, with military dignity, elbows rucked in at his sides, champagnes held out before him, and a remote grin frozen on his lips. The warning signs were a certain bulge and glaze in the eye and an upward rippling movement in his throat, a reverse peristalsis.