The Secret Knowledge (Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback) Read online

  “They’ve helped me see the world in a completely different manner. Not through a window at all. They speak of new laws of science: relativity, quantum theory.”

  “What does this have to do with us?”

  “They’ve made me realise that every moment is a decision, a test. You thought of turning back, but didn’t.”

  “Because I trust you.”

  “If we hadn’t got on, it would only have made the tiniest difference to the world, but differences add up, everything matters.”

  “Are you saying that if I walked away it would have been the end?” The absurdity of the idea is what permits her to express it; Pierre seems to take it seriously.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know what would have happened.”

  This is the test, then; her future happiness depends on a fairground ride. “Don’t play games with me.”

  “I’m not, it’s life that plays with us – a game of chance.”

  “I thought you believed in destiny.”

  “I believe in hope.”

  The carriage passes its apex once again; Yvette wonders how many more rounds there will be before the finish. “I also have my hopes, Pierre. Tell me whatever you have to.”

  “Two things,” he says. “Two very great things on which the whole of my world now hinges.” He clasps her hands. “Yvette, I want you to be my wife.”

  He has timed it imperfectly: they are not far from the ground. But others in the carriage catch the flavour of Yvette’s rapturous response, they hear her acceptance, see the way she kisses and holds him, so that when they all reach the top there is a general mood of celebration, of quiet congratulation. There are smiles and sighs, and a polite turning away to allow the couple a restoration of their privacy.

  “I’m so happy, Pierre.” She wipes a tear from her eye.

  “I was very nervous about asking.”

  “Is that all? Is that why you were so strange?”

  “I suppose.”

  She laughs. “You’re so adorable!” A catalogue of plans passes through her imagination: the church, the dress, the guests. An entire future constructing itself in an instant out of the simplest, humblest materials, like a palace of playing cards, and at its foundation the parents whose permission will be needed: his proud German father. It worries her. “You said there were two things.”

  “Not here, my love.”

  The wheel slows to a halt and beneath them a carriage is unlocked. The spell has ended; the atmosphere in the compartment changes to an impatience to be freed. Waiting in silence, Yvette feels anxiety return like an inexorable tide. It was such a short and blissful experience, soaring free of gravity. “Give me the tickets,” she says when their door is opened and they step into the dull terrestrial air.

  “You see why I said we should keep them?” Crumpled from his pocket, they have the solemn mortality of fallen feathers. “This is the happiest day of my life, Yvette.”

  “And mine.” She is a sleepwalker in two worlds at once, reality and dream; his proposal should have turned one into the other but hasn’t, instead it has emphasised their separation. She wants someone to shake her by the shoulders, wake her, show her that the marriage has happened, the children are born.

  He leads her back to the row of stalls that was their rendezvous; he wants to buy her something, a sweet biscuit perhaps, or a posy of flowers. He speaks rapidly as if trying to placate a child while thinking of more important matters only an adult can understand; he sounds nervous and evasive.

  “Tell me now,” she demands. “If I’m to be your wife there can be no more secrets.”

  “You must wait here for me,” he says urgently.

  “What?”

  “I have to leave you for a few moments.”

  “Why?”

  “As soon as I come back I’ll explain everything, I promise. I will tell you the secret knowledge.”

  He has the face of a stranger, an emerging look of barely suppressed panic.

  “You’re going to meet one of them, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t try to guess, Yvette, you can’t possibly imagine… Please don’t make this harder for me. I love you so much.” “Then why not trust me?”

  “First I have to trust myself. My own destiny. Yvette, I believe in the better world that’s approaching, I really do, but it won’t come unless we make it happen. There are risks…”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, after asking me to marry you. Do you want me to reject you? Is this the test you had in mind?”

  He nods vigorously. “That’s right, it’s a test. Your test, Yvette. All you have to do is wait here for me. Five minutes. Wait here, and when I come back our future can begin.”

  “You mean this is like making me go on the big wheel?”

  “Exactly.”

  His sinister friends have put him up to this ridiculous stunt, she knows it. He will come back and confess, then she must persuade him to forget about them forever.

  “One thing, Yvette.” He reaches inside his jacket and brings out something small, hidden in his fingers. A ring? No, what he holds before her is a key. “The manuscript – it’s in a drawer of my desk.” He gives her the key and she stares at it in bewilderment, not hearing his words. She raises her eyes and sees him already hurrying away.

  “Pierre!”

  He doesn’t look back. Pierre goes in the direction of the boating pond, disappearing among the trees, but Yvette has lost sight of him before then, her eyes filled with tears. She holds the key so tightly that it hurts. This is the future he has promised: lies and deception. It has to be another woman. Pierre is a partisan of the avant-garde and she is not naive. There are secrets she will need to learn.

  This is worse than her earlier wait, the fairground looks monstrous and hostile, every smile a taunt. What if she were to walk away? Can she not put Pierre to the test, make him prove himself worthy of her love? Is she to be nothing more than the muse of a genius? She can see the tent with the painted wooden dummy outside that made him pause. Ariel: The Extraordinary Flying Girl. The unseen show within becomes a sudden source of fascination for her. She wants to witness the spectacle, enjoy it alone while she is still free. Yes, free, without a ring on her finger. Only a key. With her gaze fixed stonily on the flapping canvas tent she walks toward it, clutching his ridiculous gift and wondering if she should toss it away like an apple core – his desk, his unscored symphony, his destiny. Growing before her eyes is the wooden figure of a diminutive flat-chested girl, a fairy beckoning with a fixed expression, so that Yvette sees nothing else, hears nothing, feels herself drawn inside the sprite’s realm, being swung like an acrobat on a giant rotating wheel of fortune, and only gradually she realises that encroaching on her consciousness is a noise, a din, anguished shouts and a general rushing. Startled, she turns and sees a convergence like water in a funnel, a flow of people following others to discover what is going on near the boating pond where the crowd is densest, and she goes too, feeling herself pushed and jostled but with her senses dulled like a diver’s at great depth, catching eventually, from distraught onlookers making their way back in her direction, that there has been an accident, a gun went off, a man is feared dead, and somehow she knows immediately who it must be, though it will be so long before she can ever bring herself to believe it. Yes, she keeps telling herself, it’s the happiest day of my life. The happiest day of my life.

  Chapter One

  The venue is a provincial town hall, the concert an item in the annual local arts festival. Why was David Conroy invited to perform? Probably because among the better known pianists the organisers tried first, none were available, or all were too expensive. He didn’t think of it while playing, the music mattered more to him than thoughts of his declining career, but standing beside the instrument to acknowledge applause for the final piece in his recital, he senses the disappointment of people who would have preferred tunes they already knew, played by someone whose name they recognised.
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  He walks from the stage and the clapping continues; they’ve paid good money and expect an encore, though some have trains to catch or restaurant tables waiting; he can see figures leaving while he returns and sits to give the obligatory bonus feature, Liszt’s Églogue providing an envoi as civilised and unambiguous as coffee and mints. Departing the platform once more he is congratulated in the wings by the young female assistant who has gauged the diminishing ovation and politely shows him back to his dressing room.

  He’s not yet fifty but feels too old for this. Sitting alone in front of the mirror’s tired reflection he checks his phone, there’s a text from Laura, she hopes the tour is still going well. Tour is too grand a word for the three engagements that have taken him out of his college routine for a week. The truth is that he no longer tours, or records; the prize-winning rising star of three decades ago turned into a disappointed teacher who does occasional performances like this, off-circuit, low fee, barely more dignified than a church-hall vanity concert. Laura’s text is concise, impersonal, the sort of thing she could have sent to one of her journalist colleagues. Their last interaction before parting was an argument about the fridge.

  A knock on the dressing-room door, it’s the assistant, Tiff. Bubbly and petite, she has immaculately bobbed hair and the limitless enthusiasm of someone at the beginning of what she considers a career. When she introduced herself earlier in the day she said she would be “handling things”, and he said it would be a pleasure being handled by her. They both laughed.

  Tiff has brought a few autograph hunters; two elderly ladies are shown in, enveloped in floral perfume and dressed smartly for their evening out. One has a limp and uses a walking stick, the taller is mannish with a wispy moustache. Both thank Conroy lavishly for his wonderful performance while he signs their programmes. “I particularly enjoyed the Beethoven,” says the limping one, with the confident benevolence of a parish organiser. “Though I wasn’t so keen on the modern piece.” She means a suite by Luigi Firelli composed more than half a century ago, Conroy has always liked to include some twentieth-century repertoire, especially if the composer is unknown. Schoenberg or Stockhausen will half box-office returns at a stroke; Firelli’s name is as obscure and innocuous as Conroy’s own.

  “The Schumann was remarkably fast,” the taller woman announces, looking at her signed programme as though it were an application form. “He went mad, didn’t he?”

  “Depression,” Conroy corrects.

  “Obvious from the music that he must have been disturbed.”

  The other interrupts to relate that she studied piano in her younger days, and on one occasion met Alfred Brendel, who was a family friend, and played Schubert for him, receiving great encouragement in return. So this is what she really came for, to share this piece of history that she can already see passing over the horizon of her existence. She wants the world to know that Alfred Brendel heard her play, liked it, and right now Conroy is the world. “Well done,” he says, an invitation to leave that both women accept.

  At the open doorway Tiff stands with a pale, earnest-looking teenage boy, next in line, who comes and holds out a notebook open at a double-page, the left sheet bearing a bold illegible scrawl. He points to the empty right.

  “Would you like a message, a dedication?” Conroy asks.

  “Only a signature.”

  It feels like checking in at the hotel earlier; Conroy wonders if the kid will want his car registration too. Just for the hell of it he tries making conversation. “I hope you enjoyed the music.” The boy says nothing, which Conroy takes as a no, so he tries a different line. “What are you studying at school?”

  “I’m at university. Physics.”

  “Really?” The surprise is that he’s old enough to vote, not that he should be studying a subject in which he need never talk to anyone. “Have you worked out what happened to Schrödinger’s cat?” This is pretty much the only problem of physics Conroy can think of, unless he asks if the kid knows how to fix fridges. He hands the book back.

  “Schrödinger’s cat?” the boy says, almost scornfully, as if it were some elementary exam question. “I reckon we’re all inside the box.” He glances at the signature, closes the book and walks away.

  That, thinks Conroy, is one reason why he was never cut out for this line of work – having to be nice to pricks just because they bought a ticket for the show. It looks like he’s already reached the limit of his fan base for the night but then Tiff reappears with a final visitor, a plump, balding man in his thirties, jacket and tie, polite handshake, the air of a scholar, and when he compliments Conroy on his rubato, the welcome voice of a genuine connoisseur. “I particularly enjoyed the Firelli,” he adds unexpectedly. “In fact it was why I came, I have a special interest in twentieth-century music, rather a large collection.”

  “Of recordings?”

  “Scores, first editions, some manuscripts.”

  This is an agreeable surprise. Both of them, it transpires, are interested in “minor” composers, though it is a term neither of them cares to use, their interest being premised on the denial of such facile pigeonholing. They trade a few names; Timman’s Rembrandt Sonata is one the collector knows, in fact from Conroy’s own recording of it made fifteen years ago, likewise Hessel’s Tapestry, though DuFoy’s Prolegomena is as unfamiliar to him as Dagmann’s Little Studies. “How about Edith Sampson?” the collector counters, explaining she was a Manchester schoolteacher who produced as many as five hundred works including an opera and several symphonies, all unpublished and probably never performed, which he bought for fifty pounds from a junk shop, the price having mainly been for the trunk they were in. Conroy hasn’t heard of her, nor the next name he is offered, a fusion of French and German whose second half rhymes with flower: Pierre Klauer.

  “You have his manuscripts too?”

  “Only a piano work. Quite remarkable, I think. Perhaps it might interest you.”

  Conroy detects that the collector is actually a dealer; their conversation is in danger of becoming a business transaction. “If you’re looking to sell it…”

  “I could send you a photocopy, I’d value your opinion. I believe he died young.”

  “How?”

  “I’m still trying to find out. The piece is a mystery, too. I take it to be a sonata but on the title page it’s called Le Savoir secret.”

  The Secret Knowledge: an attractive name. For a moment Conroy fancifully imagines a come-back performance at the Wigmore Hall, a newspaper headline about a rediscovered masterpiece. “Do you have a card?”

  The collector brings one from his wallet, bent and bruised from having been carried around too long. Conroy, lacking his reading glasses, holds it at a distance to see the name. “Claude Verrier. French? You don’t have an accent.”

  “French descent but I pronounce my name the English way, it’s simpler.”

  “Send me the Klauer sonata, I’d like to see it.” Conroy gives his address, then it’s time to say goodbye. Verrier leaves without an autograph.

  At the restaurant it’s Conroy, Tiff and a couple of others, local arts bureaucrats of some sort; pleasant and friendly, well used to dining out on other people’s expenses. One is a charming self-described divorcee with a gleam in her eye that speaks of possibility, but she gets a call and has to leave. In the face of every diner Conroy sees the emptiness of pleasure and the inevitability of oblivion, and with each bottle of wine, flat-chested Tiff becomes more beautiful. Eventually they’re all leaving, the handshakes on the pavement are brief and cursory, there’s drizzle in the air and taxis have been spotted. Conroy says to Tiff, “Would you like to go for a drink?” She knows a good bar near his hotel, they talk there about music, the job market, basically nothing, and after a couple of whiskies he asks her to come back with him.

  “I can’t,” she says simply, with the polite forcefulness of someone turning away a door-to-door salesman. He returns alone.

  Lying clothed and shoeless on his mid-p
rice bed sucking a miniature vodka from the minibar he feels glad she turned him down, regretful that he should have sunk so low. He’s never been unfaithful to Laura in the years they’ve been together. In fact he wonders if loyalty is all that’s left, dishonesty of a different kind.

  He thinks of Edith Sampson and the trunk that must have been cleared out of her house by strangers after she died, the old lady’s kitchen smelling of cat pee, her bedroom thick with dust, cupboards overwhelmed by ancient newspapers. The certainty of decay and the defiant will to write five hundred pieces of music only God would ever hear: the unshakeable faith of an artist in her own vision. He tries to replace the image with a more comforting one of Tiff’s slender naked body but guesses she would have handled him in the same business-like way she settled the restaurant bill. For a young girl like her it’s all so pragmatic and clearly defined, the future offering strength, not sadness. What future did Pierre Klauer have? Conroy guesses possible endings: doomed consumptive, spurned lover, uniformed skeleton in a trench. He imagines him a blood-streaked newborn spat into a midwife’s hands, face pre-creased with inescapable fate.

  He reaches to retrieve his phone from the pocket of his jacket, tossed on the chair beside the bed. It’s late but he wants to hear Laura’s voice, wants to say sorry for something, anything. He can’t remember if she’s meant to be back home by now or else still away on her assignment, some kind of environmental story she was investigating. Whenever she talks to him about practicalities and logistics he’s got into the habit of tuning out.

  Her phone can’t be reached. Somewhere remote she was heading for, sheep and hills, poor signal. Probably sitting in front of a log fire in her B&B thinking what a shit he is. He’s too old and scared to envisage a life alone without her, too weak, but he thinks of it, wondering if it might be best for both of them.

  Stupid to imagine there was any chance with Tiff, she must have done it with artists far more successful than David Conroy. Her world is an open-plan promise of infinite efficiency but around its upper balcony stand an exiled crowd refusing to be ignored: the old and dead and forgotten. From beyond the ceiling of the hotel room, Pierre Klauer, Jan Timman, George DuFoy and a thousand others look down, angels of lowest rank, proletarians of artistic heaven, bathed in transcendent, annihilating light. Conroy’s a minor pianist who had his chance but never hit the big time. That’s why he has such affection for the little guys. When the woman told him that story about Alfred Brendel he wanted to puke, knew that if Brendel ever heard it he’d laugh his head off, wouldn’t have a clue who she was. All of us, we’re just performers.