The Virtuoso Read Online Free Page B

near the window. Everything I needed was here, I thought; I felt quite grown up. Then I wondered how it would look to a visitor—my little room. The sofa cushions looked discarded, neglected; I jumped from my seat and puffed them, then angled them along the back crease. Then I noticed the downy grey of the floorboards—I rolled up the rug, grabbed the dustpan and brush and, on my hands and knees, began sweeping. Lastly, the piano: I polished its wooden surfaces, restacked my piles of music, putting the Romantics on top, and chose a couple of impressive pieces—the Hammerklavier and the Liszt B minor—to leave open at the piano.
    When I was finished I sat down again at the table, looked about, and felt as though I might be seeing my little grey-walled room, with its small patch of sun that floated aimlessly across the floorboards, for the last time. It seemed that everything was poised, ready to spring up and away. I looked at the crocuses and noticed a small ant crawling over the lilac lip of one of the petals to be confronted by the saffron flame within the bell. For a moment I imagined myself looking back on this morning and it all feeling very far away, and I sensed a faint, bleating nostalgia. I thought about everything that had brought me to this point, everything that had passed since then —March 1940 when my father had first taken me to see Noël perform at the Queen’s Hall—and it felt as though my seemingly endless longing for this day had sucked away, in an instant, the last five and a half years.
    I was roused by Ma O’Grady’s knock at the door, telling me my aunt was on the phone to wish me a happy birthday. After taking her call I sat at the piano and began my practice. Starting at C, I played every scale—major, harmonic and melodic minor—climbing chromatically up the keyboard. I practised my technical work staccato, legato, in rhythms, lifting each finger towards the roof, marching them like soldiers, each note ringing shrilly about the room. Then I pulled out some pieces: Chopin études, the Schumann, and a Fantasie I had composed in themanner of Schubert—which I had secretly dedicated to Noël—in case I had the opportunity to play at the party. By the time I stopped it was already dark and I realised I hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
    Anton had told me the party began at eight. I arrived at Stamford Brook Station at ten minutes to, surprised to be early, as I had taken so long to get dressed that a mild panic had set in, almost preventing me from leaving my room. I had five decent shirts to choose from; I tried them all on several times but was unhappy with how I looked in each. The pale blue one made me look young and gormless; the white dinner shirt was too stiff; the striped one, too prosaic; the patterned one, too cloying; and the woollen one made me perspire. I was certain Noël would sum me up in a glance— that young boy’s been dressed by his mother— and have no interest in meeting me at all. Noël had such effortless poise; clothes hung on him so naturally—it was something that struck me every time I saw him. I’d once seen him walking around Covent Garden with a tall, horsy woman, presumably his mother, and I followed them for some time as they wandered in and out of bookshops and tailors. Even though he was simply strolling along in bags and an open-necked checked shirt, I remembered thinking that every hand gesture, every step, exuded such majesty and calm.
    I’d buttoned up the striped shirt and slipped into a jacket when I finally settled upon the blue, remembering that a girl at the Academy who was trying to impress me once remarked how this shirt brought out the colour ofmy eyes, ‘the shade of a Spanish ceramic glaze,’ she’d said. Then there was my hair, dead straight with an obstinate cowlick that hung forward in limp bands across my brow. The more I combed it, the more it bounced about mockingly. I tried to convince myself that whatever happened that evening