A Traitor to Memory

I was experiencing heading there that night. Only that night I'd been alone because I'd come directly from Chalcot Square.

I'm walking along the street, and I haven't a clue what's in store for me. I'm nervous, but not more than usual before a performance. I've mentioned that, haven't I? My nerves? Funny, I can't remember having nerves when I ought to have had them: performing in public the very first time as a six-year-old, performing several times thereafter as a seven-year-old, playing for Perlman, meeting Menuhin … What was it about me, then? How was I so capable of taking things in my stride? I lost that na?ve confidence somewhere along the line. So this night on the way to Wigmore Hall is no different to all those other nights I've lived through, and my expectation is that the nervous anticipation that precedes this concert will pass as it usually does, the moment I lift the Guarneri and the bow.

I walk along, and I think about the music, revisiting it in my head as I usually do. I haven't had a flawless rehearsal of this piece—never have had one—but I'm telling myself that muscle memory will guide my playing past the sections that have given me difficulty.

Particular sections? you ask. The same sections each time?

No. That's what's always been so peculiar about The Archduke. I never know which part of the piece is going to trip me up. It's been a field not cleared of landmines, and no matter how slowly I've progressed over the rough terrain, I've always managed to encounter an explosive.

So I move along the street, dimly hear the after-work crowd at one of the pubs I pass, and think about my music. My fingers actually find the notes, although I carry the Guarneri in its case, and in doing this, they somewhat calm my anxiety, which I mistakenly take as a sign that all will be well.

I arrive ninety minutes early. Just before I round the corner to access the artists' entrance behind the concert hall, I can see up ahead extending over the pavement the covered-glass entry of the hall itself, peopled at this moment only by pedestrians hurrying home from work. I run through the first ten measures of the Allegro. I tell myself what a simple good thing it is, really, to play music with two friends like Beth and Sherrill. I have no idea of what will happen to me in those ninety minutes that are left of my career. I am, if you will, an innocent lamb on his way to be slaughtered, without a sense of peril and somehow lacking the ability to scent blood in the air.

On the way to the hall with Dad, I recalled all this. But there was no real immediacy to my trepidation because I knew already how the next few minutes would play out.

As I did that night, we rounded the corner into Welbeck Street. We hadn't spoken since emerging from the underground car park. I took Dad's silence to mean grim determination. He probably took mine as acquiescence to the plan instead of resignation to what I knew would be the outcome.

At Welbeck Way, we turned again, walking towards the red double doors above which the words artistes entrance are hewn into the stone pediment. I was thinking about the fact that Dad hadn't pondered his plan quite through. There would probably be people in the ticket booth at the front of the hall, but at this time of day the artists' entrance would be locked with no one near it to open it should we knock. So if Dad really wanted me to relive that night of The Archduke, he was going at it wrong, and he was about to be thwarted.

I was on the point of telling him this when my steps faltered, Dr. Rose. First they faltered, then they stopped altogether, and nothing on earth could have prompted me to continue walking.

Dad took my arm and said, “You won't get anywhere by running away, Gideon.”





He thought I was afraid, of course, overcome by anxiety, and unwilling to place myself into the jeopardy that the music ostensibly represented. But it wasn't fear that paralysed me. It was what I saw right in front of me, what I couldn't believe I hadn't been able to dredge out of my mind before this moment, despite the number of times that I had played at Wigmore Hall in the past.

The blue door, Dr. Rose. The same blue door that has flashed periodically in my memory and in my dreams. It stands at the top of a flight of ten stairs, right next to the artists' entrance for Wigmore Hall.

1 November, 10:00 P.M.