The Tooth Tattoo(66)

‘How did you meet him?’

‘Ivan? In the Liverpool Philharmonic. I was temping for a month, but he was the leader. Very solemn, very earnest. I didn’t think we’d get along at all, and I was gobsmacked to be asked, but desperate enough to give it a try. Ivan is all right, a bit pompous, only it’s not self-conceit. That would be death to any ensemble. He respects the music and his tone quality harmonised with mine from the beginning. That’s as vital as technical ability.’

‘I expect if he gets too serious you know how to bring him down to earth?’

‘I do my best. He doesn’t lack emotion. You hear that in his playing. He just finds it difficult to express his feelings in everyday life. We were talking about Japan just now. Ivan used to visit the geisha houses and I always thought that was a perfect arrangement for him, very proper, with clear rules, just like the chess he plays. He’d be waited on and entertained by these gorgeous young women. No hanky-panky at all. Hints of it all around, but the rituals forbid it. He felt secure. He doesn’t like surprises.’

‘How does he deal with all the success?’

‘Of the quartet? He doesn’t let it go to his head.’

‘The groupies?’

‘You’re on about them again? Listen, Ivan’s not a young man. If he was in danger of making a fool of himself, which isn’t likely, I’d tell him. I keep my boys in order.’

Diamond believed her. He was getting a useful insight into how the group functioned. ‘Getting back to the time when the quartet was formed, how did you find the others?’

‘We needed a second violin and a violist. Ivan knew of a Ukrainian called Yuriy and I remembered Harry from a summer school I did at Dartington. Two totally different personalities. Yuriy was a bear of a man. You’d expect him to have been a percussionist, but he was a red-hot fiddle player. I think there was gipsy blood in him. He’d launch into gipsy music in the middle of a rehearsal discussion just for a laugh, or to take the heat out of an argument, and it always worked. He was great company and a good influence on Ivan, but he did over-indulge with the vodka. I think he got lonely. He had a wife back in the Ukraine and they’d separated on some understanding that they’d stay in touch. Eventually he went back to her. Happy ending for her – I think – and not so happy for us.’

‘And Harry?’

She sighed and shook her head slowly. ‘Poor, benighted Harry. He was my recommendation, so I still feel responsible. A gifted violist, no question. He adored the instrument and talked it up at every opportunity, which made him an easy target for viola jokes, of which there are many. He was with us a long time, but I never felt I got to know him as well as I wished. On tour, he’d clear off and not say a word about where he was going. We all did our own thing. I hit the shops, Yuriy the bars and Ivan the local chess club.’

‘Or the geisha house.’

‘When possible. You don’t find many of those on the average tour.’

‘So where do you think Harry went?’ he prompted her.

‘None of us knew and he didn’t encourage us to ask. He’d be back for rehearsals and play divinely, so we had no reason to complain until the day he didn’t show up.’

‘Don’t you have any theories?’

‘Got into bad company, I suppose, but whether it was of his making or theirs, I don’t know. We were in Budapest at the time. He must have had his viola with him, because it wasn’t found at the hotel. It was a Maggini worth probably two hundred thousand pounds, and it didn’t belong to him. He had it on extended loan from some rich patron. This happens. We poor beggars can’t afford instruments of that quality and the owners buy them as investments and want them played. Harry vanished and we found some dreadful stand-in from a local orchestra. We sounded like four cats stranded in the Battersea Dogs’ Home. For months after that we were a lost cause. Couldn’t fulfil our bookings. We didn’t know if Harry would suddenly reappear. It would have been easier if he’d just put a gun to his head. At least we could have looked for a replacement.’

‘In the end, that’s what you did.’

She pulled a face. ‘With mixed results. A series of violists who weren’t up to it musically. There’s a treacly, sentimental tone – a lingering in the action of the slide – that is death to any quartet. We heard it from the first guy and told him in the nicest way to look for another job. The next stand-in was a woman whose fingering was sloppy. She couldn’t sustain the vibrato and it ruined our tone quality. I think she didn’t have the expressive feeling within herself. When we asked her to make the sound continuous it was worse, forced and insincere. God knows, we tried and she did, too, but it was obvious it would never work. She knew it. She walked.’