“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.

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.

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