In Paige’s performances Conroy detects a troubling insincerity, a desire to please out of a sense of duty. “Play me something you love,” he tells her, and she offers Janacek’s suite On An Overgrown Path. An intriguing choice; its demands are expressive rather than technical. Here, thinks Conroy, is someone genuinely more interested in art than showing off. The tone feels exactly right, her playing is sensitive but restrained, completely devoid of sentimentality. She conveys what for Conroy is the real essence of this piece: the loneliness of a bad relationship. She can’t possibly understand at her age, perhaps even Janacek didn’t know it when he wrote the music (though he would come to know it), but Conroy can hear it as he looks down on the muted street. Truth is not something we discover consciously; it discovers us.
He turns to watch, his view of her is from the side, her concentration appears total. She looks younger than twenty. If he’d ever had a child, he thinks, he would have wanted one like this. But it’s too late. It almost feels as if his life is already over.
Towards the end of the piece there’s a section marked ‘adagio dolcissimo’; a mysterious, floating passage that sounds like a memory, but a memory of what? If the whole piece is really about loneliness then this section is the dream of how things might otherwise have been, a false memory of happiness, a path denied. Yet this girl has so many possibilities in front of her, such potential — he hears it now — what can she know of suffering and disappointment? It moves him that she should be able to express so clearly a pain still to be felt. And this, he realises, must be the key to Pierre Klauer’s music. A life full of promise, haunted by its own doomed future.
He wonders about the other path she might have taken; after she’s finished he asks her what degree subject she gave up. Physics, she tells him. He’s surprised, and thinks of the gauche student at his recital recently, the one who said we’re all inside a box. What he meant is that we’re dead in our graves from the very first moment of existence; it just takes a while to figure it out. Yes, he’s sure she said physics.
Conroy decides they should spend more time on the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, he understands now that all the faults he heard before were those of her teachers, she needs to unlearn what was drilled into her. He sits at the neighbouring keyboard, demonstrating passages he wants her to try, pointing out where she was apt to shorten a note, blur a chord or misplace an emphasis. In every case she takes his suggestion and turns it into something new, never mimicking, always pushing herself to experiment. So many ways to play the same piece and none is definitive, there’s always room for variation. But Conroy’s job is to bring her to competition standard, he’s a quality-control inspector on a production line in an industry that demands consistency and predictability. He wonders if she’s just too good for the professional circuit, the world of crowd-pleasing monstrosities like Tune Inn with their banal maxim of inclusivity. Paige, he senses, is an individual, not an acrobat. Beethoven is what they ought to work on but Conroy wants to hear more of that depth of feeling Paige found in the Janacek; they should go off the familiar track.
He shows her the Klauer slow movement. She takes a moment to prepare then picks up the bare opening theme, more slowly than Conroy had played it, and as the full chords enter he senses a different orchestration from what he had previously imagined. Paige’s tone is warmer, the view less tragic. He can see the Paris park again, the strollers in their antiquated clothes, but now the same scene is reinterpreted and crucially altered: Klauer is a man filled with hope and optimism. Yet still he puts a gun to his head. Contradiction is the key.
“Stop there,” he tells her. “When do you think it was written?”
“Nineteen sixties?”
Conroy’s first impression had been that it was typical of its era; Paige sees it as a work ahead of its time. A further reconfiguration occurs in Conroy’s mind: it is not he who debuts the work, but Paige. He sets the slow movement as homework and keeps the remaining pages for himself. For the rest of the day he can’t stop thinking about her, this soft-spoken brown-haired girl.
At home with a new bottle of malt whisky to console him, he studies his bookshelf, finds the work by Theodor Adorno he had thought of, opens it and sees on the yellowed front page his own signature, twice as old as the venerable drink in his glass. He looks up the story he told Paige, about the ‘Waldstein’, flicks and finds it, and it occurs to him: this is what the rest of your life will be like until you die. An index of former experience.
He plays through the rest of the Klauer. It isn’t a lost masterpiece, such things don’t exist except in minds conditioned by the preformed categories of convention, where everything possesses a measure of greatness as inherent and inviolable as the weight of a stone. To be a masterpiece means to be perceived as one; the work that is lost is unperceived, when found it is open to any kind of perception. The music speaks to Conroy of the certainty of failure, not a take-home message the public would want to hear. It says, we are all fools.
When Verrier calls a few days later, Conroy tells him at once, “I’ve played it.”
“Splendid, I’m wondering if we could meet.” He’s in Conroy’s town on business; perhaps they could have lunch together? Conroy suggests a place; central, bright, reasonably priced, they fix a time. Conroy arrives early, can’t see anyone resembling his memory of Verrier, orders a mineral water and looks at the menu, nothing’s changed since he was here before, still as false. Eventually he hears a voice, looks up, Verrier in tweed jacket is standing with an old-fashioned brown briefcase hanging from one arm, like a doctor’s bag, and is extending the other across the table in greeting. He looks older than Conroy remembered, more confident now they’re meeting as equals. Verrier sits and after exchanging pleasantries Conroy asks, “What’s your business?”
“Property. Music’s a hobby, an expensive one.”
“Not if you can buy a life’s work for a few quid.” He’s thinking of Edith Sampson’s trunk.
“Sometimes you find a bargain.”
The waitress comes and takes their orders, after which Verrier asks Conroy about his forthcoming concerts, the assumption being that they already exist. Conroy evasively speaks of projects he’s considering, then says, “What do you think of Paul Morrow?”
“I heard his Rachmaninov recording. Do you know him?”
Conroy nods but says they’re not close, he invites Verrier to be completely honest.
“Then I’d say he’s still a bit raw but could well be a genius.”
“A genius or a fraud?”
Verrier smiles. “Excellent question. You’re not a businessman, are you? If you were, you’d appreciate how fine the dividing line can be.”
“Art and business don’t mix.”
“But everyone has to earn a living. And if art doesn’t pay, what then?”
“You mean we should all sell out, like Morrow?”
“Not his fault if he looks like a pop star. Got to make the most of the hand you’re dealt.”
The gambling metaphor is almost enough to put Conroy off the food that arrives soon afterwards. The waitress swiftly deposits their meals, asks automatically if they require anything else, and leaves with a swing of her hip.
“Well then, you like The Secret Knowledge?” Verrier enquires, bringing their meeting to its point.
“I asked one of my students when she thought it was composed…” Conroy sees a change in Verrier’s expression and realises he’s made an error of judgment, the work was given to him in confidence. “I showed her part of the slow movement.”
“And what did she think?” Verrier asks cautiously.
“She reckoned nineteen sixties.”