“Well, Monny, you’re surely the last person to ask that, considering how he behaved toward you at Christmas. I’ve been doing a bit of research on him. Reading Lantern. Dreadful muck, most of it. Who’s this twit Tuke? I mean, how second-rate can you get? But Giles’ stuff is very good—very good, that’s to say, considering how old hat all that sort of thing is now.”

“Old hat? You think it’s old-fashioned?”

“Monny, it’s not as good as old-fashioned. It’s just plain out-of-date. All that preciosity belongs to the ‘twenties. The modern line for little mags and reviews is frightful dyspeptic anger and working-class indignation and despair and shameless gut-flopping self-pity—real Badly Behaved Child stuff. Lantern belongs to a much earlier, more romantic time, the Wicked Twenties, when every Englishman of the intelligentsia was ashamed of himself because he wasn’t a Frenchman; it belongs to the era when chaps boozed on absinthe, when they could get it, and wished they had the guts to take drugs. No, Lantern’s an oddity; I suppose there’s a public for it among chronic harkers-back and hankerers-after, but it is not going to attract anything really first-rate. Except for Giles. He can really write. Of course outsmarting the critics is always good fun, and popular, too. Nobody likes critics, and I seriously doubt if there is an artist of any kind worth his salt anywhere who wouldn’t poison every critic if he could. I mean, why not? You create something—it’s your baby. Then along comes some chap, quite uninvited, and points out to the world what a puny, rickety little shrimp it is. Of course you want to kill him. Critic-baiting is very good fun, and they’re easy game. But Giles does it in a rather old-fashioned style, all the same. He’s a man of the ‘twenties. A Satanic genius, as I said.”

“You mean he poses?”

“Certainly. Don’t we all? He just does it a bit more obviously and consistently than most.”

“You’re quite wrong, Johnny. His music isn’t a pose. It’s very fine. And that’s not just my own opinion.”

“Oh, quite. I don’t deny it for an instant. You saw what Aspinwall said about his broadcast piece? When Aspinwall takes him seriously, it’s important. Aspinwall is one critic that Giles can’t make a fool of. But that’s what’s so silly about Giles; he’s obviously a real genius—whether first, second or third-rate I don’t know, but certainly more than just a competent chap. But he has to act the genius, as well. And the way he plays the role isn’t the modern way. And maybe he isn’t play-acting. Ceinwen says that all that bad temper and sardonic laughter and nonsense is quite natural to him. It would be hard luck to look like a fake when you were simply being yourself, wouldn’t it?”

“You’ve been seeing Ceinwen?”

“Not seeing. Writing. But I am going to see her in the Easter vacation. Her father has asked me to stay for a bit.”

“Is it serious, Johnny?”

“Yes, it is, really. But I don’t know—I can’t imagine her in Louisiana, standing with her back against the wall of the family shoe factory.”

Monica found herself in the role of confidante, and being young she had little patience with it, unless she were given an opportunity to confide in return. It was over the coffee that she told Ripon about herself and Giles, and said a little about the religious scruple which was troubling her. His reply had that clarity, objectivity and reasonableness which is possible only to advisers who have completely missed the point.

“If it makes you unhappy, break it off. You’re a charmer, you know, Monny, in your quiet way; it’s a quality you have of looking as if you could say a devil of a lot if you chose, but had decided not to—a kind of controlled awareness; so you don’t have to behave as if Giles was the only pebble on the beach. You’ll have dozens of chaps after you. What if he is a genius? Being a genius doesn’t excuse being a bastard. Not that we should be too hard on him. I mean, how would you like to be the son of Dolly Hopkin-Griffiths, who doesn’t know one note from another, and wants you to settle down to honest work? And I’m sure he hates old Griff, though Ceinwen says not. But it’s a Hamlet situation, as I told you at Christmas. And what he’s taking out on you is his resentment against Dolly, for being unfaithful to Daddy.

“But the religious business—I’d pay it no mind, if I were you. You’re an artist, Monny. You’ll have to shake off that Fundamentalist stuff. If you are of a religious temperament, be religious like old Bach, not like a grocer with a hundred thousand recollections of short-weight chewing at his vestigial conscience. No, no; live in the large, Monny; dare greatly; sin nobly.” Johnny had finished the bottle of hock, and was shouting a little.

No, Johnny simply did not understand. Be religious like old Bach! As the afternoon session of the Passion got under way the religion of old Bach seemed more than Monica could bear. The pathos of the Prologue to the Second Part worked searchingly within her, as the voice of the contralto soloist (Miss Emmie Heinkl, herself, if the truth were known, the mistress of a director of the Midland Bank) repeated—

Quickly followed the recitative in the Court of Caiaphas, then the chorale begging for defence against evil, and then—Christ’s Silence Before Caiaphas, and the False Witnesses! She could not stand; she could not sing; she was unworthy, and what might be forgiven in others could never be forgiven in her! Terror seized her. She must not sing; she was unworthy!

But when the moment came she stood, she sang—and sang well—and sat again. For the remainder of the Passion her head throbbed, she was in misery, and she feared that she might burst into tears.

She was surprised when, after the performance, Sir Benedict offered her a seat in his car for the drive back to London; she was still more surprised to find that no one else was to drive with them.

“You were very nervous,” said he, as they sped toward Abingdon.

“I didn’t think I could utter.”

“But you did. That’s Molloy’s training. That’s being a pro.”

“I was afraid of the music.”

“Well you might be. So was I.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. Not of the choir or the orchestra, or anything like that, of course. But I never conduct the Passion or the B Minor without a sensation that the old Cantor is listening. It’s not the kind of thing I readily admit to, because if publicity people got hold of it, the result could be very sticky. But I’m telling it to you, because this was your first public performance of any consequence, and I think it may be helpful to you. Don’t make sloppy nonsense of it, but remember, sometimes, when you sing, that if the composer were listening you’d want him to be satisfied with you. Don’t presume to guess what his answer might be. Don’t conjure up silly visions of him nodding his peruke and saying ‘Well done!’ But use it as an exercise in humility. That’s what all of us who perform in public must pray for at dawn, at high noon, and at sunset—humility.”

“It was humility that nearly finished me today. Sir Benedict, may I ask you a very personal question? I don’t mean to be impertinent, but I truly want to know.”

“Yes?”

“With the Passion, does it make a very great difference to you—not being a Christian?”

“Ah, I gather that the widespread notion that I am a Jew has reached you. As a matter of fact, I’m the second generation of my family to be baptized and safe in the respectable bosom of the Church of England—just like that eminently respectable fellow Mendelssohn. But to speak honestly, I’m nothing very much at all, which is reprehensible on all counts. Theologians and philosophers are terribly down on people who are nothing at all. But I find it’s the only thing that fits my work. I tackle the Passion like a Christian—quite sincerely; but I don’t carry it over into my fortunately rare assaults on Also Sprach Zarathustra. One’s personal beliefs are peripheral, really, if one is an interpreter of other men’s work; Bach was devout, but it is far more important for me to understand the quality of his devotion than to share it.”