A Mixture of Frailties tst-3 Page 12

  “You see! I was right. In your heart of hearts you think of singing as a form of power: and you’ve got more common sense in your heart of hearts than you have on that smarmy little tongue of yours. You’re right; singing is a form of power—power of different kinds. Singing as a form of sexual allurement—there’s nothing wrong with that. Very natural, indeed: every real man responds to the woman with the golden, squalling, cat-like note, and every real woman longs to hurl herself at the cock-a-doodling tenor or the bellowing bass. Part of Nature’s Great Plan. But sex-shouting’s a trap, too. At fifty, your golden squall becomes a bad joke. What then? Teaching? If you’re not born to it—and few of the sex-shouters are—it’s a dog’s life; pupils are fatheads, most of ‘em. Are you trying for—well, when you’re trained—a possible twenty-five years of that kind of glory? Because it is glory, you know—real glory.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Not refined enough? Well, there’s another kind of singing. The technique is the same, but the end is different. It depends on what you have in your head and your imagination; it means being a kind of bard, who reveals the life that lies in a great music and poetry. You use your voice to give delight. That’s what music used to be for, you know—to capture the beauty and delight that people found in life. But then the Romantics came along and turned it all upside down; they made music a way of churning up emotions in people that they hadn’t felt before. Music ceased to be a distilment of life and became, for a lot of people, a substitute for life—a substitute for a sea-voyage, or the ecstasies of sainthood, or being raped by a cannibal king, or even for an hour with a psychoanalyst or a good movement of the bowels. And a whole class of people arose who thought themselves music-lovers, but who were really sensation-lovers. Not that I’m a hundred per cent against the Romantics—just against the people who think that Romanticism is all there is of music. Well, there are the two kinds of singing. The sexual singer is, in pretty nearly all respects, the greater of the two, just as a mountain torrent is necessarily a greater force than the most beautiful of fountains: when she sings, she’s a potent enchantress, and the music is merely the broomstick on which she flies. With the bardic singer, the music comes first, and self quite a long way second. Now: which sort of singing appeals to you?”

  “Oh, the second, of course. The—bardic kind.”

  “If you really mean that, I think the less of you for it. Far better to set out aiming as high as you can, and killing yourself to be one of the big, adored, sexy squallers. It argues more real vitality and gumption in you. Still, I don’t trust you to know what you want. You’re too full of a desire to please—not to please me, but to please your family, or your schoolteachers, or those people—the What’s Its Name Trust—who are paying the shot for you. Those people never want you to have great ambitions or strong, consuming passions. They want you to be refined—which means predictable, stable, controlled, always choosing the smallest cake on the plate, never breaking wind audibly, being a good loser—in a word, dead. I admit that the world couldn’t function properly without its legions of nice, refined, passionless living dead, but there is no room for them in the arts. So we’ll see what you are after you’ve had a few months of work. At the moment you’re just a nice girl with pots of money to spend on training. So let’s get to work.”

  “You’ll let me study with you, then?”

  “Not for a while. Not till we find out what your politics are.”

  “Politics?”

  “Haven’t you any politics?”

  “Well, Dad’s a good union man, of course, so he always votes Conservative; he says the working man can get most out of them.”

  “Sorry. Just a bad joke of mine. Let me give you a short talk on politics, and then you’ll have to go. There are, the world over, only two important political parties—the people who are for life, and the people who are against it. Most people are born one or the other, though there are a few here and there who change their coats. You know about Eros and Thanatos? No, I didn’t really suppose you did. Well, I’m an Eros man myself, and most people who are any good for anything, in the arts or wherever, belong to the Eros party. But there are Thanatossers everywhere—the Permanent Opposition. The very worst Thanatossers are those who pretend to be Eros men; you can sometimes spot them because they blather about the purpose of art being to lift people up out of the mire, and refine them and make them use lace hankies—to castrate them, in fact. You’ve obviously been in contact with a lot of these crypto-Thanatossers—probably educated by them, insofar as you have been educated at all. But there’s a chance that you may be on the Eros side; there’s something about you now and then which suggests it.”

  Sir Benedict had risen, and was pushing papers into a briefcase. He rummaged on the top of his piano, and found a box containing some conductor’s batons, and he put this in the case also.

  “I’ll get in touch with you from time to time to see how things are going and if your political colour has begun to show. Our first big problem is that you don’t appear to know anything except how to read music and play the piano. I’ll arrange some language lessons for you. And we must get your voice out from under wraps. You’re all buttoned up, vocally and spiritually. I’m going to send you for a few months to the very best vocal coach in London—old Murtagh. He’s a real artist, by the way, so take a good look at him. He’ll unbutton you! He’ll get a good healthy yell out of you if anybody can! Yes, I’ll start you next Monday with Murtagh Molloy.”

  Five

  1

  “You’ve the bar’l of a singer,” said Mr Molloy, giving Monica’s waist a squeeze which was certainly intended to be professional, but which had a strong hint of larkiness about it, too. He had been feeling her diaphragm with his stubby, nicotine-stained fingers, blowing out sour clouds of cigarette smoke meanwhile. Suddenly he drew her arms about his waist. “Feel this,” said he, and Monica felt his bulging, rubbery abdomen spring into embarrassing life under her hands. “That’s the way to do it,” said Murtagh Molloy, winking and lighting another cigarette.

  This was going to take some getting used to, thought Monica. Sir Benedict had said that Molloy was the best singing coach in London, and she had expected someone comparable to himself; someone surprising, perhaps, but distinguished. Had not Domdaniel described him as an artist, an Eros-man? But here, on the second floor of a house in Coram Square, was a stumpy Irishman, bald and fifty if he was a day, who bade her feel his stomach, and talked about singing as if it were wrestling. Murtagh Molloy was a long way from the daemonic von Francius in The First Violin.

  “Ben wants me to do what I can for you,” said Mr Molloy, “and I’ll do it because he’s an old friend. But I’ll be frank; if you don’t come across with the goods—out you’ll go. I won’t waste time on duds, and it’s not everyone I can teach anyhow. You’ve got to be simpatico—d’you know simpatico? Means we’ve got to get along. I worked with a dozen teachers when I was young. I even had a few lessons with ffrangcon-Davies in his last years. You wouldn’t know anything about him; a great, great artist. Why, I even worked for a while with William Shakespeare—ah, I thought that’d make your eyes bug—not the poet, of course, but the singing teacher—died, oh, it must be more than twenty years ago. But the greatest of them all was Harry Plunket Greene. You’ve heard of him? No? He was in Canada often. Worked with him off and on for years. Well, the point is, I was simpatico with ‘em all, and that’s why they could teach me, and that’s why I could learn from them. If you’re simpatico you can get down to business without a lot of palaver; hard words don’t hurt, and praise doesn’t puff y’up—makes you humble. Now, let’s hear you sing something. What’ve you there?”

  “I’ve got a terrible cold,” said Monica, apologetically.

  “You don’t have to tell me that. But Plunket Greene used to say that all a singer needed was two teeth and a sigh. D’you get that? Something t’articulate with, and a wisp o’breath. What’s that? Old Tosti’s Good-Bye
! That’ll do fine.”

  Monica fought down her fears as well as she could, and sang. To her surprise, she sang rather well, Molloy accompanied her with a delicacy and helpfulness which she had not expected from the blunt, punching manner of his speech. But a greater surprise was to follow.

  “Would you believe I once heard old Tosti play for Melba when she sang that?” said Molloy. “Long, long ago, but I recall it very well. I’ll give you an idea.”

  He sang the song himself. It was unlike any singing Monica had ever heard, for although his voice was unremarkable in tone, and he sang without a hint of exaggeration or histrionics, it became as he sang the most compelling and revealing of sounds. The song invaded and possessed her as it had never done in all the time she had known it. Her own rendition, moulded by Aunt Ellen, was carefully phrased and built up emotionally until, she flattered herself, the final repetitions of “Good-bye” provided a fine and satisfying climax. But as Molloy sang the song there seemed to be no calculation of this kind, and the phrasing was hardly apparent. Yet the whole song was sung with a poignancy of regret which was the most powerful emotion that Monica had ever heard expressed in music. “It’s unbearably sad when you really understand it,” Aunt Ellen had said, thinking of her dead lover, and Monica had striven to re-create that sadness herself; sometimes she had succeeded, until the sob mounting in her throat brought on a prickling of the eyes, and then a fullness in the nose which ruined the singing. But that was real feeling, wasn’t it? And that was what made great music, surely? Yet here was Murtagh Molloy, apparently as cool as a cucumber, giving rise to a sadness in her which swept far beyond anything she could associate with Aunt Ellen and the dead schoolteacher. This was the sadness of all the world’s parting lovers, of all the autumns since the beginning of time, of death and the sweetness of death. Monica was moved, not to tears, but to a deep and solemn joy. This, then, was the bardic singing of which Domdaniel had spoken.

  “I surprised you, did I?” Molloy was looking intently at her. He winked, and picked up what was left of his cigarette from the end of the keyboard. “When you came in here you thought I couldn’t sing because I didn’t look like it. Well, it’s a long study, girl, and while I was at it me beauty went on me. Now, how do you think my performance compared with yours?

  “Ah, now, don’t blush; I shouldn’t have asked you. But you see the difference, don’t you? You were dipping your bucket into a shallow well and I was dipping mine into a deep one. No, no, not experience; I’ve had no more experience than most men. But I know what to do with mine, and I know how to get at it. Your song was all careful little effects. Well, good enough. But mine had one powerful effect. It had the proper muhd.”

  Monica was now sufficiently accustomed to Molloy’s way of speaking to recognize that this was his way of saying “mood”.

  “The muhd’s everything. Get it, and you’ll get the rest. If you don’t get it, all the fiorituri and exercises in agility and legato in the world’ll be powerless to make a good singer of you. The muhd’s at the root of all. And that’s what I teach my beginners, and my advanced pupils, and some who’ve gone out into the world and made big names, but who come back now and again for a brush-up or some help with special problems. And mostly it all boils down to the muhd.

  “That’s what I’ll teach you. You’d better come five days a week for a while. Ben says money’s no object in your case, praise God! I think we’ll get on—simpatico. And the muhd’ll do wonders for you. Actually makes physical changes, in a lot o’ people. Funny thing, I’ve known it to clear up terrible cases o’ halitosis almost overnight. Not that that’s your trouble. But you’re stiff as a new boot and you’ve an awful Canadian accent as I suppose you know. It banishes regional accents completely.”

  As Monica ran down the stairs and out into Coram Square it did not occur to her to wonder why the muhd had not banished Molloy’s very marked Irish accent. And in justice to him, it must be said that it was greatly diminished when he sang. She knew only that she was where she wanted to be, in the hands of a great teacher. She would master the secrets of the muhd. She would be a bardic singer like Murtagh Molloy. And if it involved having her waist hugged, and hugging his stomach in return—let it be so.

  2

  In the months of hard work which followed, Monica’s enthusiasm never failed. Even during the preliminary six weeks when Molloy would not allow her to sing at all, in any sense which she understood, she was obedient. For an hour a day, five days a week, she stood before him, striving as best she might to follow his instructions.

  “Feet a little apart. Let your neck go back as far as it will—no, don’t move it, think it and let it go back itself. Now, think your head forward and up without losing the idea of your neck going back. Now you’re poised. Get the muhd, now—this time it’ll be joy. Think o’ joy, and feel joy. Open your lungs and let joy pour in—no, don’t suck breath, just let it go in by itself. Now, with your muhd chosen, say “Ah”, and let me hear joy.—Christmas! D’you call that joy! Maybe that’s the joy of an orphan mouse on a rainy Monday, but I want the real, living joy of a young girl with her health and strength. Again—Ah, your jaw’s tense. Get your neck free; think it free, and your head forward and up, and your jaw can’t tense. Come on, now, try it again.”

  It was a technique for learning to command emotion—or, as Molloy preferred to call it, muhd. It became apparent to Monica that her range of emotion was small, and her ability to manifest it in sound, infinitesimal. This was dismaying, because she had been used to thinking of herself as a girl with plenty of emotional range; she could feel so much. But Molloy had his own way of extending the range of feeling and expression in his pupils.

  “Your emotional muscles are weak, and what y’have are stiff. D’you go to the theatre? Well, you should. In fact, you must. Go to the Old Vic; go to any Shakespeare—any big stuff at all. Watch the actors. Working like dogs, when they’re any good. Muhd, muhd, muhd, all the time; lightning changes, and subtleties like shot silk, winking and showing up new colours every second. Without a command o’ muhd the work’d kill ‘em. But it doesn’t; they thrive on it. Never sick, and live to massive ages. And why? Because muhd’s life, that’s why. D’you know the Seven Ages o’ Man, in As You Like It? Well, here, take this book and get it by rote for tomorra.”

  Work on the Seven Ages of Man became, under Molloy’s enthusiastic direction, a riot of muhd.

  “We start off calmly—the philosophic vein.” Molloy’s face was suffused with an appearance of weighty thought, and his stumpy frame took on the characteristic pose of those statues of nineteenth-century statesmen, to be seen in municipal parks—one foot advanced, and a hand outstretched as though quelling the applause of an audience.

  All th’ world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players.

  They have their exits and their entrances.

  And one man in his time plays many parts.

  His acts being seven ages.

  Here Molloy underwent a startling metamorphosis; with knees bent, swaying gently from side to side, he hugged an imaginary baby to his ashy waistcoat.

  At first the infant,

  Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

  “Ah, the wee soul!” said he, then like lightning banished the infant, and put on an expression which suggested a sick chimpanzee.

  Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

  And shining morning face, creeping like snail

  Unwillingly to school.

  The chimpanzee gave place to something very airy, with hands clasped over its heart.

  And then the lover,

  Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

  Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

  Working on these lines, Molloy breathed the muhd of the soldier, the justice, and the Pantaloon—this last such a picture of trembling, piping eld as even the Comédie Française has never attempted. And his final portrait of dissolution—

  Sans eyes, sa
ns teeth, sans taste—sans everything—

  seemed to couple senility with the last ravages of paresis in a manner truly frightening.

  It was not ham acting. It was something more alarming than that. Into each of these shopworn cliches of pantomime Molloy injected a charge of vitality which gave it a shocking truth. Vocally his performance was powerful, if in bad taste; physically it was rowdy and grotesque; but his meaning was palpable. To Monica it was a revelation; she had never seen anyone carry on like that before. She admired, and loyally fought down the embarrassment which rose in her. She was quite sure, however, that she could never do it herself.

  Such resistance was like catnip to Molloy. Part of his profession was to prove to people that they could do what they believed to be outside their powers. Monica was put to work, exhorted, bullied and cajoled until, in a week or two she could cradle the baby, whine, sigh, roar, dogmatize (stroking an imaginary beard), shake like the Pantaloon, and at last, with eyes closed and hands hanging limp like the paws of a poisoned dog, await the stroke of death. Compared with Molloy’s Protean performance hers was the merest shadow, but it was far beyond anything that she had ever dreamed she might achieve.

  “Now we’re beginning to get somewhere,” said Molloy on the day when, at the third time of repetition, Monica had excelled herself. “Y’know, between ourselves, the stage people are always after me. A lot o’ them come for lessons, y’see, and they say, ‘Murty, you’re a born director, and there’s a dearth of ‘em; how about it?’ But I say, ‘Boys, if it was only a question of speech, I’d do it like a shot, but I’ve no talent for the tableau side o’ the thing. I’ve th’ear, but I lack th’eye’.”

  This was the process of vocal and spiritual unbuttoning which Sir Benedict Domdaniel had said would be accomplished by Murtagh Molloy. From the Seven Ages of Man they progressed to the First Chorus from Henry V, and at the beginning of each lesson Molloy would say—”Right; now let’s have it—O for a Muse afar!” Obediently Monica would set her feet apart, poise her head on her neck, breathe a muhd commensurate with England’s martial glory and declaim—