Lovely War(19)

Hazel watched the flood of humanity streaming in. She commented on the size of the grand piano and the number of seats for the orchestra. She was never dull, never bored. Always alert and interested. He thought of all he’d said on the train. He’d never spoken at such length to a girl who wasn’t a relative. He could talk to Hazel all day, all year, for a lifetime, forever.

Hazel gestured to the music hall. “How would you like to have built this little place?”

“Little!” He looked about the vast room. “Designing it would’ve been fun,” he said. “All that weight to support, and no columns to block the view. But I wouldn’t be one of the chaps on the scaffolding, plastering ceilings. Not for the Crown Jewels.”

She laughed. “I don’t like heights much, either,” she said, “but for the Crown Jewels, I think I’d give ceiling plastering a try.”

“You’re braver than I am.” He grinned. “You should be the one going off to the war.”

She sat up at this. “Do you know? Sometimes I wish I were.” She saw his surprised face. “I don’t mean fight in the trenches. I don’t think I’d be cut out for that.” She smiled. “I knew some girls in school who would give Jerry an awfully stout whack in the shins, given the chance. But not me. And I’d make a terrible nurse. All that blood! I’d be sick on the operating table.”

James tried not to laugh.

“But I do wish I could do something to help. Not just sit at home practicing audition pieces while the boys are over there, dying.”

The lights dimmed. The roar of the crowd settled to something like a rumbling purr.

James leaned in closer and spoke into her ear. “Keeping the world safe for people to practice their audition pieces seems like the one good reason to fight this war. If music stops, and art ceases, and beauty fades, what have we then?”

He watched her long lashes open and shut. This beauty before him would never fade.

(It’s one of my most useful little lies.)

In the dim hall, lit only by stage lights, their copper-colored faces searched each other.

Kiss her. Do it.

The musicians began tuning their instruments. The spell broke. A master of ceremonies welcomed everyone and announced the program. Then the conductor, a Mr. Landon Ronald, took the stage, and the orchestra rose. Applause filled the Royal Albert. Mr. Ronald bowed, the orchestra sat, and the great hall sank into silence.

Then, the music began.

James and Hazel closed their eyes and let the music wash over them. Sonorous brass in slow, solemn chords. Woodwinds chasing one another in lilting ribbons of sound, swirling around the balconies. Then brass and winds together. A marcher and a dancer. A soldier and a piano girl.

Hazel pulled pulsing sound into her lungs. Beside her, a grave-eyed young man made the air crackle around him. She made a wish. Let tonight never end. Let the music play on and on.

James had attended concerts but nothing like this. The sound, surrounding him, passing through his body. Each tone, so alive, so pure, so mighty.

Hazel glanced sidelong at him, and saw him breathe in time with the music. She saw tears well at the rims of his dark eyes.

This one, she decided. This lad, for me.

And it was done.





APHRODITE


     Concert, Continued—November 25, 1917





THE PIANO SOLOIST, a Miss Adela Verne, played her first solo, a Hungarian fantasy by Liszt. To James’s mind, Miss Verne played as masterfully as any man might. He’d hoped Hazel would be especially interested to see a woman pianist in the solo role.

Catching Hazel’s eye, he pointed down to the stage. “How would you like to perform for this crowd on that piano?”

She smiled. “There you are with that question again.”

He leaned closer. “What color gown would you wear?”

She gave him a funny look. “Black, of course. Pianists aren’t opera singers.”

“So you’d do it, then?”

“I’m nowhere near as talented as you seem to think.” She smiled. “I’m just a girl, like countless others, who plays the piano.”

James watched her long, slender fingers on her lap. “But after conservatory studies?”

She shrugged. “If I want to end up on that stage, a conservatory is essential.” The statement was very much an if. “My parents work so hard, and sacrifice so much, for me to have lessons we really shouldn’t be able to afford.” She gazed at the grand piano onstage. “They have such hopes for me. I owe them everything.”

He couldn’t pinpoint the source of her reluctance, so he said nothing.

She thought a moment. “If I could come here alone in the middle of the night,” she said, “and shine just one spotlight on that piano, and play for the darkness, I’d like that very much.”

James watched her curiously. “Alone?”

She nodded. “Think how romantic, to play in the dark, with only this great hall, that has heard so much, for an audience.” She rubbed her arms. “It gives me goose bumps.”

“Why no people?”

Mr. Landon Ronald made yet another entrance to loud applause.

“People get in the way.”

He lowered his voice as the conductor raised his baton.