MR BOTIBOL pushed his way through the revolving doors and emerged into the large foyer of the hotel. He took off his hat, and holding it in front of him with both hands, he advanced nervously a few paces, paused and stood looking around him, searching the faces of the lunchtime crowd. Several people turned and stared at him in mild astonishment, and he heard—or he thought he heard—at least one woman’s voice saying, “My dear, do look what’s just come in!”
At last he spotted Mr Clements sitting at a small table in the far corner, and he hurried over to him. Clements had seen him coming, and now, as he watched Mr Botibol threading his way cautiously between the tables and the people, walking on his toes in such a meek and self-effacing manner and clutching his hat before him with both hands, he thought how wretched it must be for any man to look as conspicuous and as odd as this Botibol. He resembled, to an extraordinary degree, an asparagus. His long narrow stalk did not appear to have any shoulders at all; it merely tapered upwards, growing gradually narrower and narrower until it came to a kind of point at the top of the small bald head. He was tightly encased in a shiny blue double-breasted suit, and this, for some curious reason, accentuated the illusion of a vegetable to a preposterous degree.
Clements stood up, they shook hands, and then at once, even before they had sat down again, Mr Botibol said, “I have decided, yes I have decided to accept the offer which you made to me before you left my office last night.”
For some days Clements had been negotiating, on behalf of clients, for the purchase of the firm known as Botibol & Co., of which Mr Botibol was sole owner, and the night before, Clements had made his first offer. This was merely an exploratory, much-too-low bid, a kind of signal to the seller that the buyers were seriously interested. And by God, thought Clements, the poor fool has gone and accepted it. He nodded gravely many times in an effort to hide his astonishment, and he said, “Good, good. I’m so glad to hear that, Mr Botibol.” Then he signalled a waiter and said, “Two large martinis.”
“No, please!” Mr Botibol lifted both hands in horrified protest.
“Come on,” Clements said. “This is an occasion.”
“I drink very little, and never, no never during the middle of the day.”
But Clements was in a gay mood now and he took no notice. He ordered the martinis and when they came along Mr Botibol was forced, by the banter and good-humour of the other, to drink to the deal which had just been concluded. Clements then spoke briefly about the drawing up and signing of documents, and when all that had been arranged, he called for two more cocktails. Again Mr Botibol protested, but not quite so vigorously this time, and Clements ordered the drinks and then he turned and smiled at the other man in a friendly way. “Well, Mr Botibol,” he said, “now that it’s all over, I suggest we have a pleasant non-business lunch together. What d’you say to that? And it’s on me.”
“As you wish, as you wish,” Mr Botibol answered without any enthusiasm. He had a small melancholy voice and a way of pronouncing each word separately and slowly, as though he was explaining something to a child.
When they went into the dining-room Clements ordered a bottle of Lafite 1912 and a couple of plump roast partridges to go with it. He had already calculated in his head the amount of his commission and he was feeling fine. He began to make bright conversation, switching smoothly from one subject to another in the hope of touching on something that might interest his guest. But it was no good. Mr Botibol appeared to be only half listening. Every now and then he inclined his small bald head a little to one side or the other and said, “Indeed.” When the wine came along Clements tried to have a talk about that.
“I am sure it is excellent,” Mr Botibol said, “but please give me only a drop.”
Clements told a funny story. When it was over, Mr Botibol regarded him solemnly for a few moments, then he said, “How amusing.” After that Clements kept his mouth shut and they ate in silence. Mr Botibol was drinking his wine and he didn’t seem to object when his host reached over and refilled his glass. By the time they had finished eating, Clements estimated privately that his guest had consumed at least three-quarters of the bottle.
“A cigar, Mr Botibol?”
“Oh no, thank you.”
“A little brandy?”
“No really. I am not accustomed..
Clements noticed that the man’s cheeks were slightly flushed and that his eyes had become bright and watery. Might as well get the old boy properly drunk while I’m about it, he thought, and to the waiter he said, “Two brandies.”
When the brandies arrived, Mr Botibol looked at his large glass suspiciously for a while, then he picked it up, took one quick birdlike sip and put it down again. “Mr Clements,” he said suddenly, “how I envy you.”
“Me? But why?”
“I will tell you, Mr Clements, I will tell you, if I may make so bold.” There was a nervous, mouselike quality in his voice which made it seem he was apologizing for everything he said.
“Please tell me,” Clements said.
“It is because to me you appear to have made such a success of your life.”
He’s going to get melancholy drunk, Clements thought. He’s one of the ones that gets melancholy and I can’t stand it. “Success,” he said, “I don’t see anything especially successful about me.”
“Oh yes, indeed. Your whole life, if I may say so, Mr Clements, appears to be such a pleasant and successful thing.”
“I’m a very ordinary person,” Clements said. He was trying to figure just how drunk the other really was.
“I believe,” said Mr Botibol, speaking slowly, separating each word carefully from the other, “I believe that the wine has gone a little to my head, but… ” He paused, searching for words. “… But I do want to ask you just one question.” He had poured some salt on to the tablecloth and he was shaping it into a little mountain with the tip of one finger.
“Mr Clements,” he said without looking up, “do you think that it is possible for a man to live to the age of fifty-two without ever during his whole life having experienced one single small success in anything that he has done?”
“My dear Mr Botibol,” Clements laughed, “everyone has his little successes from time to time, however small they may be.”
“Oh no,” Mr Botibol said gently. “You are wrong. I, for example, cannot remember having had a single success of any sort during my whole life.”
“Now come!” Clements said, smiling. “That can’t be true. Why only this morning you sold your business for a hundred thousand. I call that one hell of a success.”
“The business was left me by my father. When he died nine years ago, it was worth four times as much. Under my direction it has lost three-quarters of its value. You can hardly call that a success.”
Clements knew this was true. “Yes, yes, all right,” he said. “That may be so, but all the same you know as well as I do that every man alive has his quota of little successes. Not big ones maybe. But lots of little ones. I mean, after all, goddammit, even scoring a goal at school was a little success, a little triumph, at the time; or making some runs or learning to swim. One forgets about them, that’s all. One just forgets.”
“I never scored a goal,” Mr Botibol said. “And I never learned to swim.”
Clements threw up his hands and made exasperated noises. “Yes yes, I know, but don’t you see, don’t you see there are thousands, literally thousands of other things like… well like catching a good fish, or fixing the motor of the car, or pleasing someone with a present, or growing a decent row of French beans, or winning a little bet or… or… why hell, one can go on listing them for ever!”
“Perhaps you can, Mr Clements, but to the best of my knowledge, I have never done any of those things. That is what I am trying to tell you.”
Clements put down his brandy glass and stared with new interest at the remarkable shoulderless person who sat facing him. He was annoyed and he didn’t feel in the least sympathetic. The man didn’t inspire sympathy. He was a fool. He must be a fool. A tremendous and absolute fool. Clements had a sudden desire to embarrass the man as much as he could. “What about women, Mr Botibol?” There was no apology for the question in the tone of his voice.
“Women?”
“Yes women! Every man under the sun, even the most wretched filthy down-and-out tramp has some time or other had some sort of silly little success with… “Never!” cried Mr Botibol with sudden vigour. “No sir, never!”
I’m going to hit him, Clements told himself. I can’t stand this any longer and if I’m not careful I’m going to jump right up and hit him. “You mean you don’t like them?” he said.
“Oh dear me yes, of course. I like them. As a matter of fact I admire them very much, very much indeed. But I’m afraid… oh dear me I do not know how to say it… I am afraid that I do not seem to get along with them very well. I never have. Never. You see, Mr Clements, I look queer. I know I do. They stare at me, and often I see them laughing at me. I have never been able to get within… well, within striking distance of them, as you might say.” The trace of a smile, weak and infinitely sad, flickered around the corners of his mouth.
Clements had had enough. He mumbled something about how he was sure Mr Botibol was exaggerating the situation, then he glanced at his watch, called for the bill, and he said he was sorry but he would have to get back to the office.
They parted in the street outside the hotel and Mr Botibol took a cab back to his house. He opened the front door, went into the living-room and switched on the radio; then he sat down in a large leather chair, leaned back and closed his eyes. He didn’t feel exactly giddy, but there was a singing in his ears and his thoughts were coming and going more quickly than usual. That solicitor gave me too much wine, he told himself. I’ll stay here for a while and listen to some music and I expect I’ll go to sleep and after that I’ll feel better.
They were playing a symphony on the radio. Mr Botibol had always been a casual listener to symphony concerts and he knew enough to identify this as one of Beethoven’s. But now, as he lay back in his chair listening to the marvellous music, a new thought began to expand slowly within his tipsy mind. It wasn’t a dream because he was not asleep. It was a clear conscious thought and it was this: I am the composer of this music. I am a great composer. This is my latest symphony and this is the first performance. The huge hall is packed with people—critics, musicians and music-lovers from all over the country—and I am up there in front of the orchestra, conducting.
Mr Botibol could see the whole thing. He could see himself up on the rostrum dressed in a white tie and tails, and before him was the orchestra, the massed violins on his left, the violas in front, the cellos on his right, and back of them were all the woodwinds and bassoons and drums and cymbals, the players watching every moment of his baton with an intense, almost a fanatical reverence. Behind him, in the half-darkness of the huge hail, was row upon row of white enraptured faces, looking up towards him, listening with growing excitement as yet another new symphony by the greatest composer the world has ever seen unfolded itself majestically before them. Some of the audience were clenching their fists and digging their nails into the palms of their hands because the music was so beautiful that they could hardly stand it. Mr Botibol became so carried away by this exciting vision that he began to swing his arms in time with the music in the manner of a conductor. He found it was such fun doing this that he decided to stand up, facing the radio, in order to give himself more freedom of movement.
He stood there in the middle of the room, tall, thin and shoulderless, dressed in his tight blue double-breasted suit, his small bald head jerking from side to side as he waved his arms in the air. He knew the symphony well enough to be able occasionally to anticipate changes in tempo or volume, and when the music became loud and fast he beat the air so vigorously that he nearly knocked himself over, when it was soft and hushed, he leaned forward to quieten the players with gentle movements of his outstretched hands, and all the time he could feel the presence of the huge audience behind him, tense, immobile, listening. When at last the symphony swelled to its tremendous conclusion, Mr Botibol became more frenzied than ever and his face seemed to thrust itself round to one side in an agony of effort as he tried to force more and still more power from his orchestra during those final mighty chords.
Then it was over. The announcer was saying something, but Mr Botibol quickly switched off the radio and collapsed into his chair, blowing heavily.
“Phew!” he said aloud. “My goodness gracious me, what have I been doing!” Small globules of sweat were oozing out all over his face and forehead, trickling down his neck inside his collar. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped them away, and he lay there for a while, panting, exhausted, but exceedingly exhilarated.
“Well, I must say,” he gasped, still speaking aloud, “that was fun. I don’t know that I have ever had such fun before in all my life. My goodness, it was fun, it really was!” Almost at once he began to play with the idea of doing it again. But should he? Should he allow himself to do it again? There was no denying that now, in retrospect, he felt a little guilty about the whole business, and soon he began to wonder whether there wasn’t something downright immoral about it all. Letting himself go like that! And imagining he was a genius! It was wrong. He was sure other people didn’t do it. And what if Mason had come in the middle and seen him at it! That would have been terrible!
He reached for the paper and pretended to read it, but soon he was searching furtively among the radio programmes for the evening. He put his finger under a line which said ‘8.30 Symphony Concert. Brahms Symphony No .2’. He stared at it for a long time. The letters in the word ‘Brahms’ began to blur and recede, and gradually they disappeared altogether and were replaced by letters which spelt ‘Botibol’. Botibol’s Symphony No .2. It was printed quite clearly. He was reading it now, this moment. “Yes, yes,” he whispered. “First performance. The world is waiting to hear it. Will it be as great, they are asking, will it perhaps be greater than his earlier work? And the composer himself had been persuaded to conduct. He is shy and retiring, hardly ever appears in public, but on this occasion he has been persuaded..
Mr Botibol leaned forward in his chair and pressed the bell beside the fireplace. Mason, the butler, the only other person in the house, ancient, small and grave, appeared at the door.
“Er… Mason, have we any wine in the house?”
“Wine, sir?”
“Yes, wine.”
“Oh no, sir. We haven’t had any wine this fifteen or sixteen years. Your father, sir..
“I know, Mason, I know, but will you get some please. I want a bottle with my dinner.”
The butler was shaken. “Very well, sir, and what shall it be?”
“Claret, Mason. The best you can obtain. Get a case. Tell them to send it round at once.”
When he was alone again, he was momentarily appalled by the simple manner in which he had made his decision. Wine for dinner! Just like that! Well, yes, why not? Why ever not now he came to think of it? He was his own master. And anyway it was essential that he have wine. It seemed to have a good effect, a very good effect indeed. He wanted it and he was going to have it and to hell with Mason.
He rested for the remainder of the afternoon, and at seven-thirty Mason announced dinner. The bottle of wine was on the table and he began to drink it. He didn’t give a damn about the way Mason watched him as he refilled his glass. Three times he refilled it; then he left the table saying that he was not to be disturbed and returned to the living-room. There was quarter of an hour to wait. He could think of nothing now except the coming concert. He lay back in the chair and allowed his thoughts to wander deliciously towards eight-thirty. He was the great composer waiting impatiently in his dressing-room in the concert-hall. He could hear in the distance the murmur of excitement from the crowd as they settled themselves in their seats. He knew what they were saying to each other. Same sort of thing the newspapers had been saying for months. Botibol is a genius, greater, far greater than Beethoven or Bach or Brahms or Mozart or any of them. Each new work of his is more magnificent than the last. What will the next one be like? We can hardly wait to hear it! Oh yes, he knew what they were saying. He stood up and began to pace the room. It was nearly time now. He seized a pencil from the table to use as a baton, then he switched on the radio. The announcer had just finished the preliminaries and suddenly there was a burst of applause which meant that the conductor was coming on to the platform. The previous concert in the afternoon had been from gramophone records, but this one was the real thing. Mr Botibol turned around, faced the fireplace and bowed graciously from the waist. Then he turned back to the radio and lifted his baton. The clapping stopped. There was a moment’s silence. Someone in the audience coughed. Mr Botibol waited. The symphony began.
Once again, as he began to conduct, he could see clearly before him the whole orchestra and the faces of the players and even the expressions on their faces. Three of the violinists had grey hair. One of the cellists was very fat, another wore heavy brown-rimmed glasses, and there was a man in the second row playing a horn who had a twitch on one side of his face. But they were all magnificent. And so was the music. During certain impressive passages Mr Botibol experienced a feeling of exultation so powerful that it made him cry out for joy, and once during the Third Movement, a little shiver of ecstasy radiated spontaneously from his solar plexus and moved downward over the skin of his stomach like needles. But the thunderous applause and the cheering which came at the end of the symphony was the most splendid thing of all. He turned slowly towards the fireplace and bowed. The clapping continued and he went on bowing until at last the noise died away and the announcer’s voice jerked him suddenly back into the living-room. He switched off the radio and collapsed into his chair, exhausted but very happy.
As he lay there, smiling with pleasure, wiping his wet face, panting for breath, he was already making plans for his next performance. But why not do it properly? Why not convert one of the rooms into a sort of concert-hall and have a stage and row of chairs and do the thing properly? And have a gramophone so that one could perform at any time without having to rely on the radio programme. Yes by heavens, he would do it!
The next morning Mr Botibol arranged with a firm of decorators that the largest room in the house be converted into a miniature concert-hall. There was to be a raised stage at one end and the rest of the floor-space was to be filled with rows of red plush seats. “I’m going to have some little concerts here,” he told the man from the firm, and the man nodded and said that would be very nice. At the same time he ordered a radio shop to instal an expensive self-changing gramophone with two powerful amplifiers, one on the stage, the other at the back of the auditorium. When he had done this, he went off and bought all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies on gramophone records, and from a place which specialized in recorded sound effects he ordered several records of clapping and applauding by enthusiastic audiences. Finally he bought himself a conductor’s baton, a slim ivory stick which lay in a case lined with blue silk.
In eight days the room was ready. Everything was perfect; the red chairs, the aisle down the centre and even a little dais on the platform with a brass rail running round it for the conductor. Mr Botibol decided to give the first concert that evening after dinner.
At seven o’clock he went up to his bedroom and changed into white tie and tails. He felt marvellous. When he looked at himself in the mirror, the sight of his own grotesque shoulderless figure didn’t worry him in the least. A great composer, he thought, smiling, can look as he damn well pleases. People expect him to look peculiar. All the same he wished he had some hair on his head. He would have liked to let it grow rather long. He went downstairs to dinner, ate his food rapidly, drank half a bottle of wine and felt better still. “Don’t worry about me, Mason,” he said. “I’m not mad. I’m just enjoying myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I shan’t want you any more. Please see that I’m not disturbed.” Mr Botibol went from the dining-room into the miniature concert-hall. He took out the records of Beethoven’s First Symphony, but before putting them on the gramophone, he placed two other records with them. The one, which was to be played first of all, before the music began, was labelled ‘prolonged enthusiastic applause’. The other, which would come at the end of the symphony, was labelled ‘Sustained applause, clapping, cheering, shouts of encore’. By a simple mechanical device on the record changer, the gramophone people had arranged that the sound from the first and the last records—the applause—would come only from the loudspeaker in the auditorium. The sound from all the others—the music—would come from the speaker hidden among the chairs of the orchestra. When he had arranged the records in the concert order, he placed them on the machine but he didn’t switch on at once. Instead he turned out all the lights in the room except one small one which lit up the conductor’s dais and he sat down in the chair up on the stage, closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to wander into the usual delicious regions; the great composer, nervous, impatient, waiting to present his latest masterpiece, the audience assembling, the murmur of their excited talk, and so on. Having dreamed himself right into the part, he stood up, picked up his baton and switched on the gramophone.
A tremendous wave of clapping filled the room. Mr Botibol walked across the stage, mounted the dais, faced the audience and bowed. In the darkness he could just make out the faint outline of the seats on either side of the centre aisle, but he couldn’t see the faces of the people. They were making enough noise. What an ovation! Mr Botibol turned and faced the orchestra. The applause behind him died down. The next record dropped. The symphony began.
This time it was more thrilling than ever, and during the performance he registered any number of prickly sensations around his solar plexus. Once, when it suddenly occurred to him that the music was being broadcast all over the world, a sort of shiver ran right down the length of his spine. But by far the most exciting part was the applause which came at the end. They cheered and clapped and stamped and shouted encore! encore! encore! and he turned towards the darkened auditorium and bowed gravely to the left and right. Then he went off the stage, but they called him back. He bowed several more times and went off again, and again they, called him back. The audience had gone mad. They simply wouldn’t let him go. It was terrific. It was truly a terrific ovation.
Later, when he was resting in his chair in the other room, he was still enjoying it. He closed his eyes because he didn’t want anything to break the spell. He lay there and he felt like he was floating. It was really a most marvellous floating feeling, and when he went upstairs and undressed and got into bed, it was still with him.
The following evening he conducted Beethoven’s—or rather Botibol’s—Second Symphony, and they were just as mad about that one as the first. The next few nights he played one symphony a night, and at the end of nine evenings he had worked through all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies. It got more exciting every time because before each concert the audience kept saying, ‘He can’t do it again, not another masterpiece. It’s not humanly possible.’ But he did. They were all of them equally magnificent. The last symphony, the Ninth, was especially exciting because here the composer surprised and delighted everyone by suddenly providing a choral masterpiece. He had to conduct a huge choir as well as the orchestra itself, and Benjamino Gigli had flown over from Italy to take the tenor part. Enrico Pinza sang bass. At the end of it the audience shouted themselves hoarse. The whole musical world was on its feet cheering, and on all sides they were saying how you never could tell what wonderful things to expect next from this amazing person.
The composing, presenting and conducting of nine great symphonies in as many days is a fair achievement for any man, and it was not astonishing that it went a little to Mr Botibol’s head. He decided now that he would once again surprise his public. He would compose a mass of marvellous piano music and he himself would give the recitals. So early the next morning he set out for the show room of the people who sold Bechsteins and Steinways. He felt so brisk and fit that he walked all the way, and as he walked he hummed little snatches of new and lovely tunes for the piano. His head was full of them. All the time they kept coming to him and once, suddenly, he had the feeling the thousands of small notes, some white, some black, were cascading down a chute into his head through a hole in his head, and that his brain, his amazing musical brain, was receiving them as fast as they could come and unscrambling them and arranging them neatly in a certain order so that they made wondrous melodies. There were Nocturnes, there were Etudes and there were Waltzes, and soon, he told himself, soon he would give them all to a grateful and admiring world. When he arrived at the piano-shop, he pushed the door open and walked in with an air almost of confidence.. He had changed much in the last few days. Some of his nervousness had left him and he was no longer wholly preoccupied with what others thought of his appearance. “I want,” he said to the salesman, “a concert grand, but you must arrange it so that when the notes are struck, no sound is produced.”
The salesman leaned forward and raised his eyebrows.
“Could that be arranged?” Mr Botibol asked.
“Yes, sir, I think so, if you desire it. But might I inquire what you intend to use the instrument for?”
“If you want to know, I’m going to pretend I’m Chopin. I’m going to sit and play while a gramophone makes the music. It gives me a kick.” It came out, just like that, and Mr Botibol didn’t know what had made him say it. But it was done now and he had said it and that was that. In a way he felt relieved, because he had proved he didn’t mind telling people what he was doing. The man would probably answer what a jolly good idea. Or he might not. He might say well you ought to be locked up.
“So now you know,” Mr Botibol said.
The salesman laughed out loud. “Ha ha! Ha ha ha! That’s very good, sir. Very good indeed. Serves me right for asking silly questions.” He stopped suddenly in the middle of the laugh and looked hard at Mr Botibol. “Of course, sir, you probably know that we sell a simple noiseless keyboard specially for silent practising.”
“I want a concert grand,” Mr Botibol said. The salesman looked at him again.
Mr Botibol chose his piano and got out of the shop as quickly as possible. He went on to the store that sold gramophone records and there he ordered a quantity of albums containing recordings of all Chopin’s Nocturnes, Etudes and Waltzes, played by Arthur Rubinstein.
“My goodness, you are going to have a lovely time!”
Mr Botibol turned and saw standing beside him at the counter a squat, short-legged girl with a face as plain as a pudding.
“Yes,” he answered. “Oh yes, I am.” Normally he was strict about not speaking to females in public places, but this one had taken him by surprise.
“I love Chopin,” the girl said. She was holding a slim brown paper bag with string handles containing a single record she had just bought. “I like him better than any of the others.”
It was comforting to hear the voice of this girl after the way the piano salesman had laughed. Mr Botibol wanted to talk to her but he didn’t know what to say.
The girl said, “I like the Nocturnes best, they’re so soothing. Which are your favourites?”
Mr Botibol said, “Well… ” The girl looked up at him and she smiled pleasantly, trying to assist with his embarrassment. It was the smile that did it. He suddenly found himself saying, “Well now, perhaps, would you, I wonder… I mean I was wondering… ” She smiled again; she couldn’t help it this time. “What I mean is I would be glad if you would care to come along some time and listen to these records.”
“Why how nice of you.” She paused, wondering whether it was all right. “You really mean it?”
“Yes, I should be glad.”
She had lived long enough in the city to discover that old men, if they are dirty old men, do not bother about trying to pick up a girl as unattractive as herself. Only twice in her life had she been accosted in public and each time the man had been drunk. But this one wasn’t drunk. He was nervous and he was peculiar-looking, but he wasn’t drunk. Come to think of it, it was she who had started the conversation in the first place. “It would be lovely,” she said. “It really would. When could I come?”
Oh dear, Mr Botibol thought. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
“I could come tomorrow,” she went on. “It’s my afternoon off.”
“Well, yes, certainly,” he answered slowly. “Yes, of course. I’ll give you my card. Here it is.”
“A. W. Botibol,” she read aloud. “What a funny name. Mine’s Darlington . Miss L. Darlington. How d’you do, Mr Botibol.” She put out her hand for him to shake. “Oh I am looking forward to this! What time shall I come?”
“Any time,” he said. “Please come any time.”
“Three o’clock?”
“Yes. Three o’clock.”
“Lovely! I’ll be there.”
He watched her walk out of the shop, a squat, stumpy, thick-legged little person and my word, he thought, what have I done! He was amazed at himself. But he was not displeased. Then at once he started to worry about whether or not he should let her see his concert-hall. He worried still more when he realized that it was the only place in the house where there was a gramophone.
That evening he had no concert. Instead he sat in his chair brooding about Miss Darlington and what he should do when she arrived. The next morning they brought the piano, a fine Bechstein in dark mahogany which was carried in minus its legs and later assembled on the platform in the concert hall. It was an imposing instrument and when Mr Botibol opened it and pressed a note with his finger, it made no sound at all. He had originally intended to astonish the world with a recital of his first piano compositions—a set of Etudes—as soon as the piano arrived, but it was no good now. He was too worried about Miss Darlington and three o’clock. At lunch-time his trepidation had increased and he couldn’t eat. “Mason,” he said, “I’m, I’m expecting a young lady to call at three o’clock.”
“A what, sir?” the butler said.
“A young lady, Mason.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Show her into the sitting-room.”
“Yes, sir.”
Precisely at three he heard the bell ring. A few moments later Mason was showing her into the room. She came in, smiling, and Mr Botibol stood up and shook her hand. “My!” she exclaimed. “What a lovely house! I didn’t know I was calling on a millionaire!”
She settled her small plump body into a large armchair and Mr Botibol sat opposite. He didn’t know what to say. He felt terrible. But almost at once she began to talk and she chattered away gaily about this and that for a long time without stopping. Mostly it was about his house and the furniture and the carpets and about how nice it was of him to invite her because she didn’t have such an awful lot of excitement in her life. She worked hard all day and she shared a room with two other girls in a boarding-house and he could have no idea how thrilling it was for her to be here. Gradually Mr Botibol began to feel better. He sat there listening to the girl, rather liking her, nodding his bald head slowly up and down, and the more she talked, the more he liked her. She was gay and chatty, but underneath all that any fool could see that she was a lonely tired little thing. Even Mr Botibol could see that. He could see it very clearly indeed. It was at this point that he began to play with a daring and risky idea.
“Miss Darlington,” he said. “I’d like to show you something.” He led her out of the room straight to the little concert-hall. “Look,” he said.
She stopped just inside the door. “My goodness! Just look at that! A theatre! A real little theatre!” Then she saw the piano on the platform and the conductor’s dais with the brass rail running round it. “It’s for concerts!” she cried. “Do you really have concerts here! Oh, Mr Botibol, how exciting!”
“Do you like it?”
“Oh yes!”
“Come back into the other room and I’ll tell you about it.” Her enthusiasm had given him confidence and he wanted to get going. “Come back and listen while I tell you something funny.” And when they were seated in the sitting-room again, he began at once to tell her his story. He told the whole thing, right from the beginning, how one day, listening to a symphony, he had imagined himself to be the composer, how he had stood up and started to conduct, how he had got an immense pleasure out of it, how he had done it again with similar results and how finally he had built himself the concert-hall where already he had conducted nine symphonies. But he cheated a little bit in the telling. He said that the only real reason he did it was in order to obtain the maximum appreciation from the music. There was only one way to listen to music, he told her, only one way to make yourself listen to every single note and chord. You had to do two things at once. You had to imagine that you had composed it, and at the same time you had to imagine that the public were hearing it for the first time. “Do you think,” he said, “do you really think that any outsider has ever got half as great a thrill from a symphony as the composer himself when he first heard his work played by a full orchestra?”
“No,” she answered timidly. “Of course not.”
“Then become the composer! Steal his music! Take it away from him and give it to yourself!” He leaned back in his chair and for the first time she saw him smile. He had only just thought of this new complex explanation of his conduct, but to him it seemed a very good one and he smiled. “Well, what do you think, Miss Darlington?”
“I must say it’s very very interesting.” She was polite and puzzled but she was a long way away from him now.
“Would you like to try?”
“Oh no. Please.”
“I wish you would.”
“I’m afraid I don’t think I should be able to feel the same way as you do about it, Mr Botibol. I don’t think I have a strong enough imagination.”
She could see from his eyes he was disappointed. “But I’d love to sit in the audience and listen while you do it,” she added.
Then he leapt up from his chair. “I’ve got it!” he cried. “A piano concerto! You play the piano, I conduct. You the greatest pianist, the greatest in the world. First performance of my Piano Concerto No .1. You playing, me conducting. The greatest pianist and the greatest composer together for the first time. A tremendous occasion! The audience will go mad! There’ll be queueing all night outside the hall to get in. It’ll be broadcast around the world. It’ll, it’ll… ” Mr Botibol stopped. He stood behind the chair with both hands resting on the back of the chair and suddenly he looked embarrassed and a trifle sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I get worked up. You see how it is. Even the thought of another performance gets me worked up.” And then plaintively, “Would you, Miss Darlington , would you play a piano concerto with me?”
“It’s like children,” she said, but she smiled.
“No one will know. No one but us will know anything about it.”
“All right,” she said at last. “I’ll do it. I think I’m daft but just the same I’ll do it. It’ll be a bit of a lark.”
“Good!” Mr Botibol cried. “When? Tonight?”
“Oh well, I don’t..
“Yes,” he said eagerly. “Please. Make it tonight. Come back and have dinner here with me and we’ll give the concert afterwards.” Mr Botibol was excited again now. “We must make a few plans. Which is your favourite piano concerto, Miss Darlington?”
“Oh well, I should say Beethoven’s Emperor.”
“The Emperor it shall be. You will play it tonight. Come to dinner at seven. Evening dress. You must have evening dress for the concert.”
“I’ve got a dancing dress but I haven’t worn it for years.”
“You shall wear it tonight.” He paused and looked at her in silence for a moment, then quite gently, he said, “You’re not worried, Miss Darlington? Perhaps you would rather not do it. I’m afraid, I’m afraid I’ve let myself get rather carried away. I seem to have pushed you into this. And I know how stupid it must seem to you.” That’s better, she thought. That’s much better. Now I know it’s all right. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to it. But you frightened me a bit, taking it all so seriously.”
When she had gone, he waited for five minutes, then went out into the town to the gramophone shop and bought the records of the Emperor Concerto, conductor, Toscanini—soloist, Horowitz. He returned at once, told his astonished butler that there would be a guest for dinner, then went upstairs and changed into his tails.
She arrived at seven. She was wearing a long sleeveless dress made of some shiny green material and to Mr Botibol she did not look quite so plump or quite so plain as before. He took her straight in to dinner and in spite of the silent disapproving manner in which Mason prowled around the table, the meal went well. She protested gaily when Mr Botibol gave her a second glass of wine, but she didn’t refuse it. She chattered away almost without a stop throughout the three courses and Mr Botibol listened and nodded and kept refilling her glass as soon as it was half empty.
Afterwards, when they were seated in the living-room, Mr Botibol said, “Now Miss Darlington, now we begin to fall into our parts.” The wine, as usual, had made him happy, and the girl, who was even less used to it than the man, was not feeling so bad either. “You, Miss Darlington, are the great pianist. What is your first name, Miss Darlington?”
“Lucille,” she said. “The great pianist Lucille Darlington. I am the composer Botibol. We must talk and act and think as though we are pianist and composer.”
“What is your first name, Mr Botibol? What does the A stand for?”
“Angel,” he answered.
“Not Angel.”
“Yes,” he said irritably.
“Angel Botibol,” she murmured and she began to giggle. But she checked herself and said, “I think it’s a most unusual and distinguished name.”
“Are you ready, Miss Darlington?”
“Yes.”
Mr Botibol stood up and began pacing nervously up and down the room. He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly time to go on,” he said. “They tell me the place is packed. Not an empty seat anywhere. I always get nervous before a concert. Do you get nervous, Miss Darlington?”
“Oh yes, I do, always. Especially playing with you.”
“I think they’ll like it. I put everything I’ve got into this concerto, Miss Darlington. It nearly killed me composing it. I was ill for weeks afterwards.”
“Poor you,” she said.
“It’s time now,” he said. “The orchestra are all in their places. Come on.” He led her out and down the passage, then he made her wait outside the door of the concert-hall while he nipped in, arranged the lighting and switched on the gramophone. He came back and fetched her and as they walked on to the stage, the applause broke out. They both stood and bowed towards the darkened auditorium and the applause was vigorous and it went on for a long time. Then Mr Botibol mounted the dais and Miss Darlington took her seat at the piano. The applause died down. Mr Botibol held up his baton. The next record dropped and the Emperor Concerto began.
It was an astonishing affair. The thin stalk-like Mr Botibol, who had no shoulders, standing on the dais in his evening clothes waving his arms about in approximate time to the music; and the plump Miss Darlington in her shiny green dress seated at the keyboard of the enormous piano thumping the silent keys with both hands for all she was worth. She recognized the passages where the piano was meant to be silent, and on these occasions she folded her hands primly on her lap and stared straight ahead with a dreamy and enraptured expression on her face. Watching her, Mr Botibol thought that she was particularly wonderful in the slow solo passages of the Second Movement. She allowed her hands to drift smoothly and gently up and down the keys and she inclined her head first to one side, then to the other, and once she closed her eyes for a long time while she played. During the exciting last movement, Mr Botibol himself lost his balance and would have fallen off the platform had he not saved himself by clutching the brass rail. But in spite of everything, the concerto moved on majestically to its mighty conclusion. Then the real clapping came. Mr Botibol walked over and took Miss Darlington by the hand and led her to the edge of the platform, and there they stood, the two of them, bowing, and bowing, and bowing again as the clapping and the shouting of ‘encore’ continued. Four times they left the stage and came back, and then, the fifth time, Mr Botibol whispered, “It’s you they want. You take this one alone.”
“No,” she said. “It’s you. Please.” But he pushed her forward and she took her call, and came back and said, “Now you. They want you. Can’t you hear them shouting for you?” So Mr Botibol walked alone on to the stage, bowed gravely to right, left and centre and came off just as the clapping stopped altogether.
He led her straight back to the living-room. He was breathing fast and the sweat was pouring down all over his face. She too was a little breathless, and her cheeks were shining red.
“A tremendous performance, Miss Darlington. Allow me to congratulate you.”
“But what a concerto, Mr Botibol! What a superb concerto!”
“You played it perfectly, Miss Darlington. You have a real feeling for my music.” He was wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief. “And tomorrow we perform my Second Concerto.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Of course. Had you forgotten, Miss Darlington? We are booked to appear together for a whole week.”
“Oh… oh yes… I’m afraid I had forgotten that.”
“But it’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked anxiously. “After hearing you tonight I could not bear to have anyone else play my music.”
“I think it’s all right,” she said. “Yes, I think that’ll be all right.” She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “My heavens, it’s late! I must go! I’ll never get up in the morning to get to work!”
“To work?” Mr Botibol said. “To work?” Then slowly, reluctantly, he forced himself back to reality. “Ah yes, to work. Of course, you have to get to work.”
“I certainly do.”
“Where do you work, Miss Darlington?”
“Me? Well,” and now she hesitated a moment, looking at Mr Botibol. “As a matter of fact I work at the old Academy.”
“I hope it is pleasant work,” he said. “What Academy is that?”
“I teach the piano.”
Mr Botibol jumped as though someone had stuck him from behind with a hatpin. His mouth opened very wide.
“It’s quite all right,” she said, smiling. “I’ve always wanted to be Horowitz. And could I, do you think, could I please be Schnabel tomorrow?”