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

  “You don’t have to. I wish to help, that’s all. Give me some of your newspapers and I’ll sell them at the works.”

  “You could be sacked.”

  “I’m not afraid. I’ll write for you, speak at your meetings, whatever you require. And if you like, you can always assume that I’m a spy. That way you’ll never tell me anything you wouldn’t want the enemy to hear.”

  Jessie is closing the front door on her father, soon to come back. “I can’t work you out at all,” John says to Pierre.

  “Then don’t try. Let’s simply be friends.”

  As Jessie enters she sees their handshake, feels the eerie solemnity of the alliance. That night, writing to her ailing mother, she makes no mention of it.

  The newspaper is produced at Maclean’s printing works, whose usual output is headed stationery or calling cards for inhabitants of the town able to afford such tokens of prestige, though lately it has been matter of another kind that has rolled from the presses, the printing shop serving as editorial office for as long as the Advance committee can keep up regular payments and avoid prosecution. Ten days after first meeting Pierre, John Quinn is there amid the rhythmic clatter of the machinery, looking at the freshly produced sheet being held up for his perusal.

  “You’ve misspelled committee.”

  “Eh?” Angus Blackhorn, sleeves rolled dirtily up his ink-blackened arms, peers where Quinn indicates, and discovers the misprint. “Damnation!”

  “We can’t let it go like that.”

  “What, re-do the whole bloody run?”

  “Or correct them by hand.”

  “Stay all night, then,” Blackhorn bawls irritatedly above the mechanical din. “You and that damn idiot Harry Orr.”

  “We have to do something about it.”

  “Smash his bloody teeth’s what I’ll do when he gets here. Calls himself a proof reader and can’t spell committee.”

  At the far end of the room, typesetter Malcolm Baine is going about his work, glad to be beyond range of Blackhorn’s verbal shrapnel, though not for long.

  “Aye, you as well, Baine, at least Orr’s got a bloody mouth. How did you not see it? 24-point headline!”

  Quinn attempts diplomacy. “It’s nobody’s fault, Angus.” This only lights another fuse.

  “It’s everybody’s fucking fault! Orr and Baine and you too. All the decent men got blown to buggery, that’s the problem.”

  Quinn’s ears are hurting, he carries the still-wet sheet to the adjoining room where Joe Baxter, sitting peacefully and caressing warm tea in a tin mug, looks up and asks, “What’s the matter with you, then?” When Quinn shuts the door on the noise and tells him, he laughs. “Committee? You reckon there’s five people in Kenzie know how to ruddy spell?”

  Quinn pulls a chair beside the old man, spreads the sheet on the table and reads the rest of it, fearing further errors. But the date and venue of the public meeting are correctly given, the arguments in favour of a forty-hour working week appear in order. From the page, words come forward for inspection: industry, grievance, solidarity, participate; stepping out of context of neatly printed lines and standing to attention looking proud, obedient, doomed.

  “Discovered any more?” Joe Baxter asks after a while.

  “Not yet.”

  “When you’ve been in the trade as long as me you know how little it matters to anyone else, it’s only ourselves who notice.” Quinn keeps reading but Baxter, on his break, is in conversational mood. “We like to do a perfect job, that’s natural. Nothing worse than slack work, makes me irate when I see a badly set line in a newspaper, even books these days are in a poor state and not only because of the war. Young ones now have no self respect, not like when I started. Do your shift and draw your wage, that’s their way, and never mind the task in hand. It’s a sad business. I wouldn’t want to be your age now, John, not with the way the world’s going. Soon you’ll all be pushing buttons ten hours a day.”

  Quinn looks up. “Not on basic pay though.”

  Baxter laughs and raises his mug. “A toast to the revolution and home rule.”

  The door opens before they can discuss it further and Pierre Klauer briskly enters, cheerfully depositing his canvas bag on the table. Quinn moves his page clear of the intrusion.

  “I sold nearly all of mine today,” Pierre announces, opening the bag to show how few copies of Advance lie bent beside a bundle of greasy brown paper containing the remains of his dinner.

  “Well done young Frenchman,” Baxter declares, having grown paternally fond of Pierre in the short time they have been acquainted.

  “There’ll be more for you to sell tomorrow,” Quinn says with what both other men register as a scowl.

  “He’s vexed over a misprint,” Joe Baxter explains.

  “Only that? If I worried about every mistake I made in life then my hair would have turned white by now.”

  “It’s in a headline,” says Quinn. “It looks foolish.”

  Pierre removes his bag to see the page pushed beneath his gaze, his lips quivering as he reads. Eventually he says, “I find nothing wrong.”

  Quinn points. “Committee.”

  “I would never have known.”

  “You see, John?” says Baxter. “Let it pass. Angus has enough on his hands out there without getting the dictionary thrown at him.”

  Pierre agrees. “I can tell he’s in one of his black moods.” Angus was invalided back from Passchendaele and all who knew him agree he has never been the same since. Pierre remarks on the printed notice. “The meeting is so soon.”

  “It’s the only date I could get for the hall.”

  “No use advertising it here, there should be posters and leaflets.”

  “That’s too much to ask of Maclean.”

  “Then your meeting will be a failure, John. I should worry about that instead of a spelling mistake.”

  If this is meant as a provocation it fails. “I know how to run the campaign, Pierre.”

  “And I am trying to help.”

  “Then sell as many of these as you can tomorrow.”

  Pierre is immovable. “I cannot sell to men who gave me money today.”

  “It’s a petty sum.”

  “Not when doubled in a single week. I shall give copies gratis and ask my comrades to distribute them. Otherwise the meeting will be a waste of time.”

  John stares at the table, bridling at this challenge to his authority while doubting his ability to exert it. He says quietly, “Do you wish to help or do you prefer to be in charge?”

  “What?”

  “This is a great deal of work, Pierre, I’d happily give it to someone else.”

  Baxter gets up, puts his half-empty mug beside the sink, and goes back to the printing room.

  Pierre asks, “Who will speak at the meeting?”

  “I’ve contacted a few people.”

  “You’ve left it all too late. This needs thought and planning, it takes time. If you want to persuade the workers of this town to become involved in national action then you have only one opportunity to do it, one moment when you can win their hearts. One test that you either pass or fail.”

  The words sting Quinn’s heart; he looks sadly at Pierre. “I always fail.”

  “That’s not true at all.”

  “How my father will laugh.” He bites at his lip. “What are we to do?”

  “It’s quite simple,” says Pierre. “Let me be the main speaker. I promise you that what I say will be worth hearing.”

  Chapter Three

  Samuel Johnson said that if you want to be an artist then be a mediocre one, since the public for the most part have mediocre taste. Arriving home from his concert tour Conroy considers this observation as true nowadays as it was in the eighteenth century. The last of his three appearances was part of “Tune Inn”, a crassly named festival of music and fine food put together by some kind of local development agency in association with various media and sponsorship partners. Conroy never f
igured out the details and honestly didn’t care, he was there to give the same programme he’d offered at his other two engagements: Beethoven’s Opus 26, Firelli’s Dance Suite, some Chopin mazurkas, Schumann’s Kreisleriana. He got there and found he was up against Paul Morrow, they’d put the two pianists head to head, the timings overlapped so it was impossible for anyone with a genuine taste in art rather than salad dressings to attend both recitals. Morrow, half Conroy’s age, is the latest photogenic long-haired wunderkind, the press love how he plays in jeans and says he doesn’t mind if people talk during the performance, they do it at rock concerts after all, so why not classical ones? When Beethoven was debuting his own works, people would drink and talk.

  Yes, thinks Conroy, and Beethoven fucking hated it. He unlocks his front door, deactivates the burglar alarm and sees the mail piled on the floor, he thought Laura would be back already but she must still be away on her assignment. He’s had no more texts, hasn’t been able to speak to her since that last argument. Among the junk mail there’s a large envelope with a handwritten address, he takes it to the kitchen and opens it after he’s put on the kettle. The collector he met at the second performance, Verrier, has sent a photocopy of the sonata he mentioned.

  Conroy’s parched, makes some tea and sits at the kitchen table. Showed up at Tune Inn and the green room was a marquee with rugs and sofas, ethnic finger food, crew of enthusiastic helpers fresh out of university. One of them said come and meet Paul Morrow who was sitting holding court with a glass of white wine in his hand, Conroy couldn’t tell if the ongoing repartee was a press interview or regular conversation. Of course he didn’t want to come and meet bloody Paul Morrow.

  He quickly looks at the Klauer score and reads the accompanying letter from Verrier who’s been doing some research and says the composer died from a gunshot wound in a Paris park in 1913, reported in the press as a tragic accident, probably a polite way of saying suicide. Klauer’s handwritten notation on the photocopied sheets is neat and readable, first movement looks interesting, perhaps a touch of Busoni about it. Again the tantalising vision of a come-back concert, media interest. Forget the music; the troubled young genius blew his brains out and the world unjustly forgot him, that’s a story.

  Morrow, unshaven in baggy blue pullover, was telling his little entourage about his plan to do the complete Well-Tempered Clavier at Heathrow airport. “Like, you can buy your duty free, listen to some Bach, whatever.” The juvenile assistant with a Tune Inn tee-shirt did the introductions, Morrow didn’t bother getting up but stretched an arm in languorous handshake. He’d obviously never heard of Conroy, had no idea he might face any kind of competition for audience-share that afternoon, knew in any case it would be no contest. Wine-glass in hand, Morrow generously asked about Conroy’s programme, nodding with approval. “Great line-up, I’ve never heard of the Firelli, that sounds really cool. I’d love to hear your gig, man, it’s fucking nuts the way they scheduled it. Wonder if they could change the timings? And Kreisleriana, that’s wicked.”

  The Tune Inn organisers hadn’t stopped to ask themselves how two guest artists might feel about being made to clash, they had thought only about abundance of consumer choice: a jazz quartet in a kitchenware promotion, Mongolian folksong next to a lecture on Italian wine, some Debussy for dessert; or if not that, then an entirely different permutation from the menu. Morrow was inter-changeable with a TV chef, Conroy with a jar of mustard. He asked Morrow, “Have you ever read Kreisleriana?”

  A double-take, like it was some new kind of street-talk that needed decoding. “You mean played it?”

  “It’s a book by E.T.A. Hoffmann.”

  “No shit.”

  Morrow looked genuinely interested to learn more but his female minder interrupted to say they needed to go outside for a photo shoot and that was the end of the conversation. Instead Conroy had to continue it inside his own head, telling the departed Morrow that the book features a musician completely opposed to false reputation, the shallowness of mass taste and received opinion; a person living for art in a world that recognises only commercial value, therefore considered mad.

  Conroy sips his tea, thinks about unpacking. He used to keep a bag permanently ready for concert travel, these days he doesn’t need to. Eventually he lifts his case from the hall and takes it to the bedroom, some of the shirts have remained unworn and can be hung before he dumps the rest in the washing machine. He opens the wardrobe. Half the space inside is empty. Laura’s clothes are gone.

  First thought that hits him: we’ve been burgled. Next: why did she take all her clothes for a trip of a few days? Then at last the truth, at least twenty minutes before he finally accepts it, once he’s established that she’s removed not only her clothes but every item she owns, every ornament and photo, cleared herself completely out of his house, his life, told him unarguably that it’s over. And he realises that it was already over when he left for the tour, finished even before then. It was over from the first moment they met. Their entire relationship was between two people destined to part.

  Everything really happens long before it becomes fact; public knowledge is invariably the last to arise. How long was Laura planning her escape, when did she decide on the form of her exit? Conroy’s still asking himself the question hours later, the whisky bottle almost empty, something happening on television that he doesn’t feel the need to comprehend. This is how all things conclude: badly, without resolution. He knew it when he was stupidly trying to get off with that girl after his second recital, when he was lying on the hotel bed wondering what it would be like to be single again. He got his wish.

  Conroy re-reads Verrier’s note in hope of distraction, or perhaps because a handwritten letter – so rare a thing nowadays – is a kind of human contact we’ve largely forgotten. Right now, Verrier is Conroy’s drinking buddy, a connoisseur, not fooled by charlatans like Paul Morrow, he can see through that sham, it was Conroy he paid to hear. The audience at Tune Inn: a few dozen too slow to make it to Morrow’s sell-out. The kind of man she’d probably prefer to be sleeping with, maybe is.

  Art is human, it’s flawed. We make mistakes, hit wrong notes, and those great composers, they were human too, they wrote wrong notes, performers learn and repeat them. But there has to be the illusion of perfection, gleaming image of mass production and infinite reproducibility. His students at the college, he’s meant to get them to competition standard, meaning they should play like machines, he shows up at work next day having slept for two hours and he’s got to give lessons as usual, though all he wants is to tell them to go to hell.

  When he gets a call on his office line he assumes it’s Laura, grabs the receiver, skull throbbing, but it’s Verrier. “Did you get the score?”

  “I haven’t had time to play it.” Conroy’s hung-over, they aren’t buddies now, Verrier’s unwelcome urgency has too much salesmanship about it.

  “I look forward to hearing your opinion.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Student he sees later in the week, kid called Harry, he could be the next Paul Morrow, the hair and attitude are spot-on and who gives a damn about expression? They’re doing Chopin Études; Harry attacks the ‘Winter Wind’ like he’s a psycho with a hunting knife, sawing his way through the right-hand sextuplets. This is competition style, all right. The two of them discuss interpretation and Harry uses the term “take-home message”. What else do you expect from a generation taught to equate education with financial investment and personal debt? Conroy nods off in the middle of the next piece but is woken by a fortissimo fit for the Wembley Arena.

  “How was it?” Harry asks at the end, a puppy wanting a pat on the head.

  “You’ve clearly been practising.” This is what every teacher at every level says to every student who’s just dished up for them a plateful of musical vomit.

  “Thanks.”

  Four days of a life without Laura that began years ago, her number comes up as not recognised, she’s ditched her
mobile as well as her man, both equally outmoded. After Harry, Conroy has some free time and starts playing through the Klauer. This, too, he thinks, is a kind of farewell gesture, and like every artwork it’s a one-way message. Klauer bowed out and left no room for a response; all we’ve got is a half-empty wardrobe.

  Klauer’s a chameleon, the first movement gives nothing away, there are possible references or allusions, but no sense of who exactly he was, this mysterious fellow with his secret knowledge. Nor did Conroy ever really know Laura; it’s only when they surprise you that you find out your ignorance. We expect continuity, not paradox.

  The slow movement strikes him as more readily grasped, something operatic about it, though gradually Conroy understands what the peculiar scoring and implied colours really mean. This is an idea for a symphony; these are meant to be violins, horns, an oboe. The entire work is a skeleton, and it’s with this in mind that he repeats the movement, trying to guess which solo instrument is intended to be heard at the outset. In his mind a park, people in old-fashioned costume. A dull pop somewhere and a man falls to the ground. That’s all there is to it, the gap between life and death.

  In the afternoon he has a new student to see, a late starter on the course, must have transferred from somewhere else. When he arrives at the room she’s already waiting for him, small girl, sweet smile but can’t have much strength in those limbs. She says she’s called Paige. He opens the sound-proof door, gestures her inside and asks, “How long have you been playing?”

  “I started when I was four.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  She tells him a familiar story of lessons and grade exams, junior competitions and medals, a childhood dominated by a single lustrous project. Conroy always likes to know from the start what sort of influence the parents have had, he’s seen plenty of students glad to have escaped domestic domination and wanting to take it easy. But this girl seems motivated, managed to do well in her school subjects, had other options and chose music against her parents’ advice.