The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [106]
Nick could see the far curve of the front row, with Lady Partridge at the end, next to Bertrand Ouradi and his wife, and then Wani, in steep profile against the raised piano lid. Catherine, just behind them, was leaning on her boyfriend Jasper's shoulder, and Polly Tompkins was casually squashing against Jasper from the other side. Then there was Morgan, a steely young woman from Central Office whom Polly had brought along as if no one would be surprised. To see Nina herself Nick had to crane round the big white bonce of Norman Kent, who was as sensitive to music as he was to conservatives, and kept shifting in his seat. His frayed denim jacket collar made its own effect among a dozen grades of pinstripe. Penny was sitting beside him, and pressing against him to calm him and to thank him for coming. Nick wondered what he thought of Nina, he wondered what he thought of her himself, too assailed by the sound, by the astounding phenomenon of it, to know if she was really any good. Here came the opening again, the admonitory rumble, the reckless, accurate leap. She had clearly been ferociously schooled, she was like those implacable little gymnasts who sprang out from behind the Iron Curtain, curling and vaulting along the keyboard. As the sadly questioning middle section gathered weight, she put on a fearless turn of speed. She gestured very hard at her effects, and made you doubt she knew their cause. For, the programme sheet Nick had rifled some old sleeve notes, to give a professional look to things, and he had put in Schumann's description of the B-flat minor Scherzo as "overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt." He played the words through to himself as he gazed across the rows at his lover's head.
When the Chopin had finished, Nina bowed and rushed out, and Nick saw her on the landing again, waiting in fact like someone about to jump, too young and high-minded to care very much for applause, or to know what to do with it. Gerald was clapping in the loud, steady, hollow way he had. One or two people stood up, the man from the Cabinet Office took in the next item on the agenda, and the lady behind Nick said, "No, sadly we're at Badminton that weekend."
It was a couple of Schubert Impromptus that followed, the C minor and the stream-like E-flat major, which requires such unfaltering evenness of touch. Nick had heard her play through the very beginning of it a dozen times, until he was screaming at her in his head to go on. Well, now she did, watching her own hands busying up and down the keyboard as if they were astonishing automata that she had wound up and set in motion, in perfect synchrony, to produce this silvery flow of sound. She made it seem a bit like an exercise, but you could tell, if you listened, that the piece was life itself, in its momentum and its evanescence. The modulations in it were like instants of dizziness. Nick felt she played the B minor middle section too abruptly, so that the visionary coherence of the thing was spoiled.
He found himself staring at Gerald's mother and Wani's father, who made a funny pair. Bertrand was sitting there in the lustrous housing of his suit, very still, in respect for the tedious protocol of the event, with only his thin black moustache to betray his impatience as he pursed and flexed his lips in unconscious little kisses. Beside him Lady Partridge, her head tilted up, her face a mask of blusher and brown powder, like someone just back from a skiing holiday, was also