BooksBarbecue
Back Ghost Variations Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. Prologue
  9. 16 February 1938
  10. Part I
  11. Chapter 1
  12. Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3
  14. Chapter 4
  15. Chapter 5
  16. Chapter 6
  17. Chapter 7
  18. Chapter 8
  19. Chapter 9
  20. Part II
  21. Chapter 10
  22. Chapter 11
  23. Chapter 12
  24. Chapter 13
  25. Chapter 14
  26. Chapter 15
  27. Chapter 16
  28. Chapter 17
  29. Chapter 18
  30. Chapter 19
  31. Chapter 20
  32. 1
  33. 2
  34. 3
  35. 4

Now that he was laid out under the sheet, the silent room seemed frozen, as if dead itself. He lay face up, eyes closed, arms straight by his sides, his features unchanged and now unchangeable.

Yesterday he was speaking to her, listening to her play, asking her for music. Today: a shell, its pearl gone for ever.

And there was the rub. Adila and Erik would declare that the soul lives on – it’s still here somewhere, and can be contacted, and can speak through the glass or automatic writing. It is one with the universe; perhaps it waits to be reborn. Jelly, try as she might, couldn’t feel that supposed truth. She listened and listened, yet could hear no comforting whisper in her inner ear and feel no caress of a ghost bidding her farewell. Only silence and stillness. The rain was back; through the window she could see the sheen of dampness on nearby roofs. What if, after all, there were nothing? No spirits moving the glass, no advice from messengers in the beyond; only a delusion at best, a fraud at worst. What price then Erik’s certainty, Adila’s devotion, the strange word of ‘Schumann’?

Part of her had wanted to be there when the moment came and life turned to afterlife: to hold him as he faced the ultimate mystery. Now she was glad she had arrived too late. Despite everything, was this the reality? Stillness – silence – peace?

When Tovey came in, Jelly was kneeling by the bed, her cheek resting on the folded blanket. For once, she was not crying.

‘Come along, my dear. Come on out now. There’s coffee for you downstairs.’ He helped her to her feet.

‘I feel as if I’ve looked over a cliff,’ Jelly whispered – she couldn’t get her voice to work. ‘And seen something… something empty and… blank.’

‘Hush, Jelly. His suffering is over now. There’s nothing more we can do.’

George was waiting with the coffee in the lounge; she held out motherly arms and embraced Jelly. Beside her, the clock’s pendulum continued to swing.

Part II

1935–38

Chapter 10

After his visit to Britain in 1933 to hear Jelly play the not-really-Mozart concerto, Ulli went back to Mainz with his mind out of kilter. He slipped back into routine. He corrected proofs, wrote letters and sometimes, in the hall of the Schott’s building, paused to gaze at Wagner’s bust. Wagner, composer of Tristan und Isolde, should have known a thing or two about loving someone you shouldn’t.