The First of July(18)

He tried to believe that his dread was entirely a matter of losing a friend’s everyday companionship; but as Benedict looked at Novello, now whispering in Theo’s ear, hat brim to hat brim, shoulder to shoulder, Novello’s bright blazer against the sturdy tweed of Theo’s Norfolk jacket, he considered, bleakly, whether he had earned Theo’s friendship simply because in Gloucester there was nobody better.

London was sticky: noisier and more chaotic than Benedict remembered it. The noises of the city ignited tiny flashes of color, like sparks from an anvil.

Near their lodgings, the newspaper boys were shouting about the murder of a European duke. Theo borrowed a halfpenny and bought an Express. He pored over it as they waited for the bus.

“Stuffy-looking chap. They all look the same in Austria and Germany, don’t they? But the emperor’s heir?” Theo whistled. “Nasty. The Austrians are acting very threatening.”

“Anything about our reaction?”

“Nothing much. Still, one way or another, sooner or later, we’re heading for trouble somewhere. Dreadnoughts, maneuvers, sabers rattling like tin cans on a string—of course we are. All those antique admirals are in a frenzy of longing, dusting off their uniforms. Terrible smell of mothballs downwind of Whitehall.”

Benedict never knew when Theo was joking, or so Theo had often told him. But this time, behind the light-hearted tone, Theo seemed both serious and excited.

“It wouldn’t make any difference to us, though, would it?” Benedict said, as they walked slowly along Welbeck Street, and wondered if he wished it might.

“You’re such a chump sometimes,” Theo said, with a note of irritation. “Of course it would. You’d be girded in a Sam Browne, pips on your cuff, armed and polished to the teeth, not nipping off to play evensong at St. Elfrida’s in your drooping gown.”

“But I don’t know the first thing about soldiering. My people were always church.” Realizing he was sounding like an idiot, Benedict ran on: “I get seasick, I’m a rotten shot, and, anyway, I need spectacles to see into the distance.”

“I don’t think not seeing into the distance is very crucial,” Theo said. “In fact, it could be a distinct advantage.”

Each day in London, they had an indifferent high tea and took in a concert. The first evening they heard George Butterworth’s The Banks of Green Willow, which Dr. Brewer pronounced first-class, having “escaped the tyranny of the modern.” The following day, it was a crowded organ recital at Temple Church, and the third was a concert that Brewer evidently anticipated with dread. It was only the insistence of his friend Mr. Alcock, a professor at the Royal College, that saw them seated at the Bechstein Hall waiting for the Russian soloist. Theo shifted about restlessly and Alcock’s long fingers tapped on the arm of his seat. The composer, a small, ferrety-looking man named Alexander Scriabin, was playing his own work. Benedict knew of him but had not heard any performance of his work. The program notes said he wrote for music and color; Benedict read them, wondering, hoping; it was the first time he had ever heard of a musician exploring such ideas.

The Russian bounded up the steps, bowed abruptly, sat down, ignoring the applause, closed his eyes for a few seconds, and started to play. Tangerine, then blue, filled Benedict’s mind, consuming him. Then it was deep purple; the colors rippled outward—like butchers’ tripe, he thought—and then broke into fragments as another wave built. He closed his eyes a few times, but the chords of color continued and filled the space: not a strange phenomenon created by his overactive imagination, just there.

Benedict was not special; he was a very ordinary man, yet he knew Dr. Brewer would balk at such perceptions in a professional musician. There was an intellectual understanding of music; there was the aptitude and coordination that drew an individual to the organ; there was discipline, which might make a man succeed in his endeavors; even a constrained emotional response and, occasionally, natural genius, such as Theo’s; but music was music. Performed for the ears. Now here was someone who knew better.

Helical columns of green and gold-brown rose in front of him; the piece was so strange, so beautiful; every time the Russian touched a note, he created visual as well as sound harmonies. The sensations Benedict had experienced at five or six in his father’s church, with Miss Bradshaw playing the tiny parish organ, were what had bound him forever to the instrument long before he knew of the possible size and scope of it, long before he knew that he was different. Listening now, he felt overwhelmed with joy.

That evening, as they walked back to their lodgings, all he wanted to talk of was the music and Scriabin, but Theo could think only of war and Agnes.