Short story (1647 words plus*)
*Editing note: Apart from hubris my most serious fault when writing fiction is over-compression. Blame my former trade. This story was no exception and excessive cutting led to some incoherence. The latter paras have been expanded in the hope of greater clarity.
GIVEN the presbytery’s gaunt interior, the view down to the crowded marina was definitely a distraction, a possible text for one of Fr. Rivière’s more insidious homilies about the trivia of wealth. But might music also be thought trivial, mere decoration for the saving of souls? Wycombe, on tenterhooks, must wait and see.
“Ah, Monsieur Wi – comb.”
Wycombe was long used to the French version of his surname and its evocation of the cemetery. What always surprised him was that Fr. Rivière was still in his thirties. His seriousnesss, gloom even, was that of someone far older with all the years necessary to be disappointed by the world.
The priest pointed towards an unyielding wooden chair, sculpted for discomfort and too large for its surroundings like the majority of French furniture. “You are here to talk about your wife. The nature of eternal peace, no doubt. Should we spend a moment’s contemplation of Marie who died a good Catholic.”
Already sitting, Wycombe bowed his head instead of stumbling to his feet. Clasped his hands together. The priest whispered inaudibly, possibly in Latin though that seemed unlikely. The church’s attitude towards languages frequently confused Wycombe.
Fr Rivière’s moment lasted exactly sixty seconds. When he looked up his rosy face was betrayed by its lack of expectation. He murmured, “As I said, a good Catholic. Generous too.”
Marie’s will had included a sum to pay for an improved watering system for the beds of flowers surrounding the church. The sheer pragmatism of that jibbed with the subject Wycombe must now raise. He began, crablike.
“Marie thought a good deal about your church, Father.”
The priest’s face remained impassive as if Wycombe had not spoken. Perhaps the words weren’t sufficiently stirring.
“A source of great spiritual comfort to her.”
Fr. Rivière shrugged at this as truism.
Wycombe spoke more quickly. “She had a great love of the choir, you know. Felt it enhanced the Word of God.” Unable to recall an exact translation of “enhanced” he substituted “added to”, possibly risking a charge of casual heresy. Wycombe could say things in French that would have been impossible in English. Grandiose concepts, emotional matters.
Fr. Rivière’s eyebrows rose. “You wish to discuss the choir, then?”
“You have an excellent choir.”
“Indeed.”
Wycombe spoke almost confidentially, upheld by a week’s research. “And if I’m not mistaken, your church supports an older, more rigorous view of how a choir should be employed during Mass.”
Fr. Rivière leant forward slightly.
Wycombe said, “It was Pope Pius X who recommended...”
“The Holy Father believed music was God’s gift and should be used accordingly.”
“Which the present-day secular world might not understand.”
“There is biblical precedent. Ideally choirs should consist only of men. Today’s fashions about gender are meaningless.”
“Men, as in Solesmes, the monastery...”
Fr. Rivière’s eyes gleamed. “The celibate example.”
“Pius X also believed that the congregation should – in a perfect world – rehearse the Gregorian Chant with the choir.”
But now Wycombe had gone too far, causing the priest to slump back. “The Holy Father may have been too visionary for that period, so soon after the war. We have not succeeded with the laity.” He cleared his throat to despatch failure. “But monsieur you have some comment...”
Wycombe straightened up. “Father, I sing. Immodestly I may say I sing well.” That at least was true; now came the lie. “It was Marie’s wish I should offer my services to the choir. That I should help your choir glorify God.”
Doubt invaded the rosy cheeks. “Your wife was French. But you are...”
“I have recorded choral music in England, worked with sound studios in London. Small expert groups of singers - works by Byrd and Tallis.”
Conscious, of course, that these distant foreign names were not Fauré, Duruflé, Messiaen. Time to mention money even if that too was a lie; money which did not actually exist. “Recording is expensive, of course. But the church’s name can benefit; the recordings can reach out to a wider congregation. And my wife, my blessed wife, made allocations for...”
“Ah, yes.” Fr. Rivière’s voice took on a yearning note. “But your faith, monsieur. You are not I suppose...”
“My wife hoped I would take instruction.” The biggest lie of all.
“Ah!”
The silence lasted minutes and was excruciating. Wycombe discovered his hands were still clasped and slowly unhooked them. Fr. Rivière stared blankly toward the window through which he could have seen the marina harbouring the playthings of the rich. Wycombe had never been rich but in the parlance of south-east England had been comfortably off. Silently he cursed the circumstances of Marie’s birth, his willingness to move to a more splendid residence but in a country not his own, and the restricted life he now lived.
“Father, I must sing,” he said clearly, unequivocally.
After the lies it was a relief to tell the truth, even though he was now discarding subversion and depending on the priest’s mercy. “I believe that my need is Heaven-sent; that with goodwill it can be converted into a hymn of God’s love.”
The priest bestirred himself. “The instruction, Monsieur... It might be delicate. It might be seen as cause and effect. I must also speak to our choralist, he may wish to advise me.”
THE KITCHEN had the most responsive acoustics. He sang Schubert’s Fruhlingsglaube, started on the picture aria from Magic Flute but did not finish it. Recalling the lies he had told he turned superstitiously to Bach and challenged himself with tricky recitative from Ein fest’ Burg. Knowing, of course, these three works were all in German and German was a luxury he might have to renounce if Saint-Nicolas de l’Estuaire opened its doors to him. The sounds bounced back from the tiled walls, hard and true but lacking heart. Marie was no longer there to suggest a stronger ellision within “Er hilft uns frei...”
As a further act of superstition he phoned the agency in Brest where the house was listed. He was told yet again the market was
plutot calme. The last enquiry had been weeks ago and had confirmed the price he was asking would always be the sticking point. But reducing the price here in Brittany would condemn him to nothing better than a semi in somewhere horrible like Staines. Very close to London Airport.
It hadn’t always been like this. Earlier there’d been money for trips back to Teddington for recording sessions. Even to pay for a high-level voice coach in Rennes.
What’s more he’d sung here in Brittany. Marie, born in Paris, had had a talent for rural friendship. There’d been gentle parties where he’d entertained with a hired accompanist and well-chosen programmes. He’d known enough to choose indigenous works - student fragments by Bizet and Ravel, modern words for Charpentier with a bit of Piaf thrown in here and there. A happy old age beckoned.
Then the melanoma had intervened, savagely and swiftly. The health facilities had been superb but powerless. And money had gone on transport, a desperate holiday in the Alpes Maritime, luxuries intended to deflect Marie’s mind from what lay ahead. Finally a funeral with black plumes and a horse-drawn carriage. Wine, of the sort Wycombe preferred, was down to two bottles a month.
The overgrown garden would have saddened Marie and he hurried back indoors. Drank the last of the cognac from a decanter that would forever remain empty. Sang a dozen chromatic scales in the kitchen to drive out reflection.
WEEKS passed before the choralist got in touch and the audition was held in the church hall where girls practised basketball at the far end. At great expense Wycombe had familiarised himself with Gregorian Chant material; now, bemused, he was asked to render demisemiquaver vocalise that ran through all the intervals, sounds that the Solesmes monks might never have heard.
As a final sop he was asked to sight-read a folk-song arrangement written by Poulenc, surely while still in his teens. M. Saulnier, the choralist, stared up from the keyboard, tending to increase the tempo throughout, the overhead lights flashing from his unnerving rimless glasses.
It was quickly over. M. Saulnier smiled thinly. “You have a fine voice, monsieur. But you are of course an Anglo-Saxon tenor.”
"By which I take it you mean I'm not French. That I don't do the... I'm sorry, the French word escapes me."
"Tell me in your own language, then," said M. Saulnier, speaking English for the first time.
"Warble."
Again the thin smile. "A charming word, monsieur. Usually your fellow citizens prefer something more pejorative."
He'd walked to the church hall in mild weather, now the wind had a sharp sting to it. Going home held no attraction, the house was empty, perhaps hollow. Down below lay the marina with its flash, white-walled
capitainerie. Ironic that Fr.
Rivière hadn't had to confront Wycombe's religiosity, that a small stitch-up had sufficed. He felt the need to do something un-French and took the cliff steps downwards.
Huge windows dominated the building's new extension. Wycombe could just see the bows of the tiny single-berth cruiser he and Marie had bought almost a decade ago. A pouting receptionist had just reminded him that mooring fees were overdue and he had countered by asking for a weather forecast. “Heavy rain at midday, winds 50 kph from the west, strengthening in the afternoon.” A lively prospect.
A drink at the bar first? Cognac to compensate for the empty decanter? Wycombe stood in the foyer, indeterminate. The woman receptionist – quite attractive now she had lost her pout – turned to examine Wycombe more closely. “Monsieur is not thinking of going out?”
He was still wearing the suit he had chosen for the audition. With its sombre tie. If he craned his head to the right he'd have been granted a distant view of the presbytery. He imagined Fr. Rivière looking down grimly, sensing Wycombe's indecision, expecting another of the pastoral disappointments mankind had furnished throughout his short life..
Mind afloat he glanced at the receptionist’s name brooch. “Tell me Janine, have you ever heard of Kindertotenlieder?”
“But of course, monsieur. The "dead baby songs" - such a grim title. Mahler.”
“You know them!”
“There is more to France than Jacques Brel, monsieur. I have two recordings but I ration their use. They are sad, unbearably sad.”
A young woman working in this heartless structure who knew about sadness. On impulse and softly, so that no one but Janine could hear, he sang the opening line,“Nun will die Sonn' so hell aufgeh'n...”
Unbelievably she hummed the next line.
Tears flowed wetly and he refused to wipe them away. Laughed shakily, “Thank you, Janine. In answer to your question: no I am not going out. These are not the right clothes, are they?”
