The Bach Manuscript Read online

  Ben moved close to the cabinet to peer at the manuscript. The paper was splotched, faded and yellowed with age but the handwritten musical notation was almost entirely legible, apart from a curiously shaped, russety-coloured stain that covered part of the right bottom corner and obscured some of the last stave and a few notes. Written music notation was double-Dutch to Ben at the best of times, and this looked like a scrawl. The only part of it he could make out was the composer’s signature at the top of the front page, which made his eyebrows rise.

  J.S. Bach

  ‘Like a moth to the flame,’ Nick’s voice said behind him. Ben turned. Nick was returning with the coffee. The rich scent of some serious dark roast was already filling the room.

  ‘Everyone goes straight to that manuscript,’ Nick said, carrying the tray to a coffee table. ‘And they all ask me the same thing. What must it be worth, and aren’t I taking a massive risk not keeping such an obviously priceless relic locked up in a vault?’

  ‘So what’s it worth?’ Ben asked.

  Nick chuckled. After a dramatic pause he replied, ‘It’s worth precisely zero. Zilch. Don’t be taken in. It’s a fake.’

  Chapter 7

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ Ben said. ‘It looks real enough. But then, I’m hardly an expert.’

  Nick laughed as he set the things down on the coffee table and took a seat in a nearby armchair. ‘Join the club. I’m just a humble instrumentalist, not exactly one of your hardcore scholars or collectors who scour the earth ready to part with eye-wateringly vast sums for original manuscripts. I picked that up as a novelty for a few pennies in a crumbly old backstreet music shop in Prague when I was there for a concert last October. Believe me, if it was the genuine item, it’d probably be worth as much as this apartment and everything in it, plus that daft car outside. But it looks the part and is a great conversation piece among my musician pals. We’re a dull lot, I’m afraid.’

  Ben peered back through the glass at the manuscript. ‘I suppose that stain on it would lower its value, though. If it was the real thing, I mean.’

  ‘I amuse myself by telling gullible souls that Bach spilled coffee on the paper while he was composing. You should see their faces at the idea that the great man would actually do such a thing as sit at the keyboard with a steaming mug next to him, like any other human being.’

  ‘Is that what the stain is, coffee?’ Ben asked, peering at it. Through the glass, it was hard to tell.

  ‘That’s what it looks like to me,’ Nick said. ‘One thing I do know, old Johann Sebastian was nutty about the stuff. Of course, coffee was very much the craze across Europe at that time. He loved it so much that he even wrote a piece of music as a homage to it, a mini comic opera called the “Coffee Cantata”.’

  Ben glanced back at the stern face on the portrait. ‘He doesn’t strike me as the comic type.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let that austere front fool you,’ Nick said with a wave. ‘Bach loved nothing more than to have a good time, in all kinds of ways. He was the father of twenty-two children and he was extremely fond of his grub, not to mention wine and beer. He was sixty-three when he sat for that portrait, but he could still enjoy himself. I’m trying to remember how the “Coffee Cantata” goes. Oh, yes—’

  Nick recited:

  ‘Oh, how sweet coffee tastes,

  More delicious than a thousand kisses,

  Milder than muscatel wine.

  Coffee, I have to have coffee,

  And, if someone wants to pamper me,

  Ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!’

  ‘Sounds like he had it bad,’ Ben said. ‘Even I’m not that addicted to it, yet.’

  Nick smiled and pointed at the cups on the table. ‘I’m willing to bet you soon will be, once you try this. Come and drink it while it’s hot.’

  The coffee tasted as good as it smelled. Ben took it black, no sugar, the way coffee ought to be. He nodded his appreciation. ‘Now I am an expert in this department,’ he said. ‘And that’s no fake. It’s the real McCoy. Colombian?’

  ‘Brazilian Sierra Negra,’ Nick said, looking happy. ‘Something special, isn’t it? Better than the bilge water they serve in Hall, at any rate.’

  Ben drank some more, then shook his head, thinking back to the manuscript. ‘It’s a strange world where someone would go to the trouble of counterfeiting something like that.’

  ‘Welcome to the music world. You’d be amazed at the fakery that’s out there. Do you seriously imagine, for instance, that I could afford a real lock of Chopin’s hair? There’s only one validated example in existence, and that’s in a museum in Warsaw.’ Nick motioned towards the cabinet. ‘That one there was most likely put together from the sweepings off the floor of a pet-grooming parlour.’

  ‘That’s one way to make use of dog hair,’ Ben said, thinking of the state of the floor of the Le Val office after four German shepherds had been lying around in there. ‘I was thinking of stuffing pillows with it.’

  Nick smiled. ‘I should point out, however, that not everything I possess is phony. That harpsichord there, for example. Made by Jacob and Abraham Kirckman, London’s finest craftsmen of their day, circa 1775. Double manual, six hand stops, cabinet of oak, mahogany and tulipwood, all hand-inlaid. I had it professionally rebuilt six or seven years ago. Cost me an absolute bomb.’

  ‘You can see where the money went,’ Ben said.

  ‘And hear it. Listen.’ Nick jumped to his feet, went over to the harpsichord and dashed off a few fast, tinkling bars. ‘Scarlatti. Hear the quality of the sound?’

  ‘I have to say the piano appeals to me more. That’s an impressive Bosendörfer you have.’

  ‘And we had some fun dragging it up the stairs, I can tell you,’ Nick said. ‘You want to hear something?’

  ‘You don’t have to play for me.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Nick switched seats to the piano stool. With his back to the window, framed in the sunlight, he laid his hands on the keyboard and the room filled with the rich resonance of the grand piano. He played for a minute or so, while Ben watched and listened. The piece was slow and melancholic, yet majestic and powerful. The deep tones of the Bosendörfer projected a weight of emotion that throbbed through the soundspace around them and transported Nick off to another world as he sat there, swaying and rocking soulfully to the music he was playing.

  Ben said nothing until Nick stopped and sat back, smiling at him. ‘What was that?’ Ben asked.

  ‘“Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesus Christ”,’ Nick said in faultless German. ‘“I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ”. It’s a chorale prelude. Originally an organ piece, of course. They didn’t have pianos like this back when it was composed.’

  ‘Didn’t sound that old to me.’

  ‘Amazingly timeless, isn’t it? That’s what you get from the grand master. He was way ahead of his time.’ Nick nodded up at the portrait Ben had been looking at before.

  ‘Bach?’ Ben was surprised.

  ‘Johann Sebastian himself. Some of the real purists would say it was heresy even to play Bach on a modern-day piano, let alone commit sacrileges like use the sustain pedal with these old pieces.’ Nick shrugged. ‘I say, if it sounds good, why not?’

  ‘It did,’ Ben said. ‘Thank you for letting me hear it.’

  Nick came away from the piano and returned to his armchair to pour them some more coffee. It was only now that Ben noticed that he was wearing copper bracelets on both wrists. Nick sipped his coffee and then leaned back in the armchair, rubbing his hands as if they were hurting him. He caught Ben looking. ‘Spot of the old arthritis,’ Nick admitted. ‘Sign of the years creeping up on me, I suppose. Last thing a keyboard player needs is the curse of stiff fingers. Not so bad, now that spring is here.’

  ‘Does the copper help?’

  ‘A bit. But not as much as the special medication I use. The best in the world.’ Nick winked. Ben didn’t press him for details.

  They chatted for a while lo
nger, mostly about classical music and current affairs, of both of which Ben had little more than a passing knowledge. As midday approached, Nick frowned at his watch and said he ought to start getting things ready for the lunchtime buffet. Ben was ready to help out. A deal was a deal.

  While Nick busied himself gathering up the coffee dishes, he motioned in the vague direction of the kitchen and asked if Ben could start getting the food out of the fridge and laying it out on the side. Ben obligingly headed up the passage to find himself faced with four identical white doors, any of which could have been the kitchen. He tried one, but it was locked.

  ‘That’s the spare bedroom,’ Nick said, coming up behind him with the coffee tray. ‘Kitchen’s at the end.’

  ‘You keep your spare bedroom locked?’ Ben mused.

  ‘That’s where I keep my terrorist cache of explosives and weaponry,’ Nick said casually. ‘You’d never guess I was plotting the overthrow of western civilisation, would you?’

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ Ben replied with a smile.

  The kitchen was spacious, airy and well organised, with faux-marble worktops, a solid oak dining table and matching bespoke wall units. The two friends worked quietly and efficiently, to the strains of soft choral music playing from Nick’s hi-fi system. Male bonding had never been so gently domesticated as this. For Ben, it beat erecting an improvised jungle camp or circling the wagons in readiness for an enemy assault any day.

  As Nick washed up the coffee cups, Ben took the platters of food from the tall American-style fridge and set it on the side to peel off the cling film wrap. The sandwiches were exactingly cut into little triangles, crusts trimmed away, colour-segregated into white bread and wholemeal; one third tuna and mayonnaise, one third ham and pickle, and one third some sort of anaemic-looking paste. For the vegetarians, Nick explained. Ben pulled a face.

  Next they had to transfer tubs of stuffed olives, hummus and other dainty finger food from the delicatessen into bowls, which Ben found neatly stacked in a cupboard. Then came the drinks: wine glasses and a selection of reds and whites, some nice barrel tumblers and carafes of pressed fruit juice and lemoned mineral water for the non-drinkers. Ben didn’t think Nick had got in enough bottles of wine, but he made no comment. The whole thing was a little too precious for his tastes: he said nothing about that either.

  After that, the oak dining table had to be moved from the kitchen into the main room, and everything laid out nicely. Napkins, knives, forks, paper plates, and some straw coasters judiciously provided in case anyone did anything as horrible as set a glass down on top of one of the fine keyboard instruments. Most members of his social circle were far too cultivated to commit such a ghastly act, Nick explained, but you never knew. He told a horror story about some clumsy oaf who once elbowed a whole pitcher of Coke into the works of someone’s Steinway baby grand. Needless to say, that person was not invited today.

  ‘Dear me,’ Ben said, tutting. He had himself once broken into a music museum in Milan and there personally, deliberately, smashed the leg off a priceless historic pianoforte. A painful tale that he chose not to share with his friend at this moment, or any other. Ben had had his reasons for what he’d done, but something told him Nick might not understand.

  Soon afterwards the first of the guests began to arrive, and not long after that, the place was filling with the buzz of polite chatter and laughter. Nick had selected a different CD from the collection that filled an entire bookcase, and the choral music had given way to some kind of lively baroque stuff with booming cellos and crisp harpsichords.

  For Nick, completely in his element, the proceedings were just getting underway. For Ben, though, his visit to his friend’s apartment felt as though it was coming to an end. Even as the first introductions were being made, he was getting itchy feet to make his excuses and leave. But he didn’t want to appear rude. He’d stay just long enough to drink no more than two glasses of wine, munch a couple of sandwiches, pay his social dues, before telling Nick he had to make tracks.

  Everyone he spoke to was part of the Oxford classical music scene, in one way or another. Ben was introduced to an organ restorer, to the manager of the Holywell Music Room where Ben had once attended a Bartók string quartet recital, and to a bunch of others whose names and occupations escaped his mind seconds after he’d met them. One of the guests was a tall, slightly stooped, grey-haired university academic in a beige suit with a yellow bow tie, whom Nick greeted like a long-lost friend. ‘Ben, I’d like you to meet Adrian Graves. Adrian, this is Benedict Hope, an old chum from the House. He’s here for the reunion.’

  An old chum. The Nick Ben had known back then would never have used expressions like that.

  Handshakes, blether blether, yakkety yak, delighted to meet you, how fascinating, will you be at the concert, all the expected chit-chat. Ben smiled and nodded his way through the intros and gleaned that Graves was Nick’s former professor and a renowned musicologist and expert in ancient something-or-other, now semi-retired. Graves had brought along his wife, whose name was Cressida, or maybe Cynthia, or Camilla – three passes of small talk and boom, it was gone from Ben’s memory. He studiously avoided saying anything at all about himself, and trusted Nick to keep what little he knew under his hat. Which limited Ben’s options for interactivity even more than his painfully obvious lack of involvement with the local music scene.

  As more people turned up and the buzz of chatter stepped up a notch, Ben retreated to the edge of the crowd on the pretext of grabbing a second glass of red wine and another tuna sandwich. He resolved to drink his drink and be on his way.

  Being on the sidelines was more interesting to him. Ben was no psychologist, but he’d been engaged to one long enough to pick up a few pointers. Brooke believed that you could learn a huge amount about a person’s inner state of mind just by observing them, listening to their talk, noting the dynamics of their behaviour with others. Ben agreed with that idea. All his life he’d had an eye for noticing the small things that most people didn’t. And he’d noticed something about Professor Adrian Graves the instant they’d been introduced.

  Now Ben filled his last moments before leaving by watching him at a distance. What he saw confirmed his first impressions.

  Something seemed to be gnawing at Graves. He was restless, clearly preoccupied, his face busy, eyes darting here and there as he took frequent sips of wine and stood around looking edgy. As Nick went off to greet the latest arrivals Graves was left talking with his wife. Whatever she was saying to him, he didn’t seem to like it. His anxious face now flushed with irritation, he said something snappy to her that Ben didn’t catch over the ambient noise, banged his empty wine glass down on a sideboard and stalked pointedly away from her. The way stressed-out people do in uncomfortable social situations, he hovered about the periphery of the room alone, pretending to be engrossed in the paintings, peering at the instruments. In psychology terms, Brooke would have described Graves’ behaviour as a kind of displacement activity. Like yawning or fidgeting or developing a sudden fascination for a blank space on the wall when you’d much rather be somewhere else.

  As Ben watched, Graves wandered over to the display cabinet, where he spent a long time staring at Nick’s fake Bach manuscript as though completely captivated by the sight of it, coffee stain and all.

  Ben wondered what was up with the guy. It was mildly interesting to watch him. But not interesting enough to warrant sticking around to see more. If Ben and Brooke had still been together, she could happily have spent the rest of the afternoon speculating about what sort of Freudian malaise was at the root of Graves’ behaviour. Left to his own devices, Ben personally didn’t care all that much. He drained the last of his wine and then threaded his way through the crowd to where Nick was deep in animated conversation with a tall woman who looked like a skeleton in a black dress, a single olive on the plate in her hand.

  ‘Listen, Nick, I have to make a move,’ Ben said, gently interrupting.

 
; ‘So soon?’

  ‘Hope to catch you later, at the concert,’ Ben said. ‘But just in case we don’t get a chance to talk, here’s my card. I wrote my mobile number on the back.’

  Nick took the card, looking disappointed that Ben was going. They said their goodbyes. Ben wished him good luck for tonight. ‘Not that you need it.’ Then smiled at the skeleton lady, said a few nice-to-have-met-yous on his way out, and left the apartment.

  Out in the quiet, empty street, Ben breathed a sigh of relief as the claustrophobia of the noisy party quickly wore off. ‘Freedom at last,’ he muttered to himself. He stood for a moment, savouring the stillness and space around him.

  Maybe he’d been living in the countryside too long, he thought. ‘What do you think?’ he said to a pigeon that was perched on Nick’s Aston Martin.

  The pigeon stared at him, crapped on the car and then flew off.

  Chapter 8

  Long ago

  Sometimes it seemed to them as though the whole world was made up of nothing but words. Words, words, every day a storm of words, coming at you so hard and fast from all directions that you could barely digest the information in time for the next torrent. Lecture after lecture, until the voices appeared to merge into a babble of confusion that echoed around your head, enough to drive you crazy. Book after book, until the dots on the pages became meaningless and floated in front of your eyes and remained hovering there even in your dreams.

  Which was what made these moments all the sweeter and more magical. Moments of pure stillness, where you could just drift awhile, and share a silence with someone so close to you, and simply be.

  The wine they’d drunk earlier was cheap and rough, but neither of them cared. The night was warm, just the merest kiss of a gentle breeze through the dark cloister. She rested against his body with her arms wrapped around him, saying nothing, gazing into the deep black shadows, imagining that the glow of his cigarette was an orange star billions of light years away in a galaxy nobody knew about. Nobody but them.