Free Outbreak of Love by Martin Boyd Page A

which he did not enjoy. Although in the family he posed as the authority on everything European, with recent arrivals from Europe, which he had not seen since his twenties, he was shy and oddly deferential, feeling that the world had grown beyond the knowledge which he affected. Though he was fifty years older than myself he had just as ardent a longing to be with the twins, who to their disgust found there was no room for them in the front row, though Josie was there beside John Wyckham, to them a reversal of natural order. I sat with them on three hard chairs against the wall.
    â€œNow that Captain Wyckham’s gone off with a milkmaid, we’ll have to fall back on you,” said Anthea.
    â€œYou can fall as hard as you like,” I replied enthusiastically.
    â€œThe intention is good but the expression unfortunate,” said Cynthia, with whom one felt that one was the subject of a perpetual book review.
    â€œHush!” said Anthea.
    Wolfie had seated himself at the piano and, with a quaint affectation of being unselfconscious, was rolling his eyes at the ceiling. Elsie Radcliffe was standing, facing the audience, and had begun to speak.
    â€œLady Pringle has very kindly offered to give a little talk before each of the preludes,” she said, “to explain to those of us who are not very musical what we should listen for. Mr von Flugel is too modest to do this himself.” This was quite untrue, but Diana was afraid that Wolfie’s peculiar idiom might turn his explanation into a comic entertainment. There was a little polite laughter and applause and Lady Pringle crossed to the piano.
    She was the wife of a professor at the University, but had come to Australia as governess to the children of a former governor. She had a flute-like and extremely cultivated voice in which she explained the meaning of Wolfie’s music, but inadequately, as she had no idea of its source of inspiration.
    â€œI want you to forget,” she said, “that you are in Mrs Radcliffe’s delightful ballroom, and to imagine that you are in some woodland on a spring morning, perhaps in a forest in my beloved Bavaria, or even in one of those strange sad glades of saplings above the river at Warrandyte.”
    The twins looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. This was their first intimation that Bavaria was Lady Pringle’s beloved and that the saplings were sad.
    Wolfie was only to play three of his sequence of preludes, as Elsie Radcliffe did not want to give her guests too much of what might be above their heads. Her great social success was due not only to her husband’s wealth and that she instinctively chose her friends amongst pleasant people, but to the fact that the main purpose of all her entertainment was enjoyment, whereas the entertainment given by women like Aunt Baba was to increase their own importance. People came away from parties at Elsie’s house, not merely with the satisfaction of having been somewhere very “smart”, but exclaiming: “Wasn’t it fun?”
    Wolfie’s first prelude did seem to evoke woodlands in spring-time, with young lovers and mysterious clouds of blossom. Even the non-musical thought it pretty and there was adequate clapping.
    â€œIt’s derivative, of course,” said Cynthia. “It has all been done before, but I should say that it is quite competent —Debussy and water.”
    â€œDebussy engloutie ,” said Anthea.
    I had heard Arthur say that Debussy was influenced by Wagner. I trotted this out. “So you see,” I said, “if Uncle Wolfie is influenced by Debussy he is on the right lines.”
    This intelligent view coming from myself irritated Cynthia, who said: “How is Mr von Flugel your uncle?”
    Lady Pringle stood up and said that the next prelude suggested evening in the woods, with the saplings drooping under a gentle shower of rain. Wolfie played this melancholy little nocturne and