Andrew Crumey - The Secret Knowledge

The family photographs in Mrs White’s comfortably furnished room are more prominent than the piano that serves as support for several of them. The anaesthetist is seen in various stages: nappies, school uniform, geeky graduate, nervous bridegroom. The daughter looks like a younger Mrs White, embracing her own children in sharp antipodean sunlight, declaring success to the world, though Mrs White herself has an old-fashioned modesty that is immediately comforting. Her lessons typically begin with tea and end with biscuits (“I mustn’t,” she always insists, taking a Hobnob from the china plate). Mrs White says she never had any ambitions to be a soloist, would have liked to have done more touring as a chamber musician but had two children to bring up and, well, had to make choices.

Paige has been asked to do one of the watery bits again, she’s got to get the fingering right otherwise that water’s going to pour out of her hands and make a puddle on the floor. All very well hacking away at the rocks but they’re mountains in the background, need to look at what’s in front. And Paige thinks of Julian Verrine, his invitation to what she supposes should be called a business lunch. Can’t help imagining herself on Classic FM bashing through crowd-pleasing double octaves and to hell with getting the trickles right. Definite star quality. Sean opens the newspaper and sees her looking glamorous in a full-page interview. Wishes he’d never hurt her.

Mrs White says they should take a short break because she can see that Paige is getting tired. Very important not to overstretch the tendons. She refills Paige’s teacup and says she’s had a letter from Sarah about the mission, Paige is never good at keeping up with soap-opera but knows from previous lessons that the daughter does some kind of religious work, Mrs White is a loyal church-goer and exudes a serenity that Paige envies though also doubts. All very well to have faith yet what if it’s false? Paige would never discuss it with her, but if the miscarriage came up she knows Mrs White would say it’s in heaven, the little cabbage stalk grew wings and became an angel, when really it never had any life except a potential one that got burned like old paper.

Paige declines a Jaffa Cake and asks, “Have you heard anything about Mr Conroy?”

Mrs White shakes her head earnestly.

“Is it true he’s gone missing?”

“So it would appear. Some fear the worst.”

“You mean harming himself?”

“He tried it before, you know, when he had a breakdown a few years ago. Such a common story, artists cracking under the strain. So easy to become isolated and obsessive. And it all started so well for him, I remember when people were seriously calling him a new Pollini. But that was a long time ago.”

“Beaten by his own demons.”

“He certainly made a fine job of sabotaging his career though who can say how things would have turned out otherwise? You know how heavily the odds are stacked against any kind of success, Paige. First there has to be complete mastery of technique, no one would question David’s, in his day he was astonishing. And sensitive interpretation, again he had it, even if his readings were a little clinical. Then luck, David got his break when John Ogden had to cancel a performance and they wanted a last-minute replacement. But once you’ve got an audience you have to hold on to it, and that means connecting. I don’t think David ever truly connected with the public. I think he despised them, because really he despised himself.”

Paige wants to know more but it’s time to resume work. Her mind keeps wandering and her playing is sub-standard, Mrs White can sense it and soon calls a halt.

“Perhaps you didn’t get enough sleep,” she says kindly.

Paige is thinking about the meeting with Julian Verrine, wondering what to wear. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, dear.”

“How good do you really think I am?”

Mrs White answers without hesitation. “You’ve got huge potential.”

“I’m not talking about that.” Potential, Paige knows, is something that gets incinerated. “I mean now.”

The teacher’s beneficence remains undimmed though her response is evasive. “There’s a difference between performing for one person in a room and a thousand in a concert hall.”

“I want to know if I can connect.”

“You need to do the other things first: technique, interpretation, projection.”

“I’m twenty years old, there are pianists younger than me giving Prom concerts.”

“Yes, and Liszt was touring when he was twelve, you missed your chance at being a child prodigy. But as a mature artist you’re not yet fully formed. A child could learn the part of King Lear, but would he understand it?”

“You’re saying I don’t have enough life experience?” Paige is thinking: if only you knew.

“Yes, I suppose that’s what I’m saying. If you’re asking me about show business then it doesn’t matter, the younger the better, as long as there are no wrong notes. A lot of concertgoers hear Beethoven no differently at fifty than they did when they were twenty so that’s all the more reason for it not to matter, they like to see someone young and pretty on stage doing something they can’t do but wish they could. Given the right PR you could probably have a career like that tomorrow, though it wouldn’t last long.”

Paige wants to ask Mrs White about Verrine, has she heard of him? She says nothing.

“We’re not going down that road,” Mrs White says with maternal firmness. “We do things the right way, college concerts and competitions, no jumping the queue.”

The teacher offers more tea and biscuits for consolation but what Paige reads in Mrs White’s words is a simple message: you’re not good enough. She asks, “Did Mr Conroy say anything about me?”

“David and I have never had much to say to each other about anything.”

“You don’t get on?”

“We all have our own kinds of artistic temperament. Put it this way, the reason why David never did chamber performances was that he couldn’t find players who’d put up with him. A soloist in everything.”

“I heard that his wife left him.”

Mrs White looks surprised. “Wife? He’s never been married.”

“Or his partner. He said she walked out on him. Not long before I started.”

“He’s always lived alone.”

“But he said it.”

“It simply isn’t true.”

“Then he lied to me?”

Mrs White sighs. “He has quite serious mental issues, you realise.”

“Delusions?”

“That’s what it sounds like. He’s always been very private but one thing I can say for certain is that no woman would ever have been able to live with David Conroy.”

Paige is stunned. She mentally replays her encounters with Conroy, instantly reinterprets them, knowing that nothing he said can be trusted. Her star quality is no longer definite, there is only roughness around the edges. She’s gripped by a sickening dizziness. What about Julian Verrine, has he also been deceived by Conroy’s fantasies? Paige wants to tell Mrs White but it’s too late, the teacher is looking at the clock, lifting the biscuit plate, smiling to indicate that time’s up and she has another appointment. With rising nausea Paige goes out and along the corridor, pushing between other students to reach the staircase, hurrying as she goes down to the entrance hall, her throat dry as stone, tears gathering. She’s beside the glass case with its celebration of the famous and the dead, the remembered few, the ones of whom it’s been decided that they mattered after all. She wants to smash the bloody thing.

She tries calling Ella but it goes onto voicemail and Paige hangs up, she starts texting then quickly deletes it. Who gives a shit what Conroy did or didn’t say, or what Mrs White thinks? You’ve got to believe in yourself as an artist, this is what Paige tells herself, though the voice she hears isn’t really hers, it’s the voice of someone she’d rather be, someone who could genuinely believe. The louder voice, her own, is saying: you’ve fucked it up, you should have listened to your parents. You’re good but not great. Do you really want to earn a living playing cocktail bars and wedding receptions?