Free The Song Before It Is Sung by Justin Cartwright Page B

where the brass clock
     on the wall ticks loudly. The lounge looks on to a small courtyard. Elizabeth Partridge, he has discovered, was married to
     an Irish peer who died nearly thirty years ago. He tries in the loud silence to imagine what it is like to be as old as she
     is, to have witnessed so much, the parade of ideas, absurd fashions, hopeful politicians, corrupt regimes, dictators, murderers,
     sexual encounters, musical styles, marriages, bereavement and above all the restless, insatiable appetite for happiness, for
     explanations, for fulfilment and also for art and beauty and music. Every generation uses and transforms what has gone before.
     As Eliot said - approximately — every generation takes what it needs from art. If you live for ninety years, you must lose
     faith in human judgement, so fickle, so self-regarding, so dangerous.
    He hears the lift lurching and coughing upwards. The doors open somewhere above and close clumsily and noisily. There is a
     moment of indecisive whirring as if it is gathering its elderly senses, and then it jolts into action again. The doors open
     and he can hear the porter making polite encouraging noises to someone. The young woman's voice now joins in.
    Into the lounge comes Elizabeth Partridge in a wheelchair, pushed by the porter. She sits in the chair with dignity, although
     age has cramped her so that she is curled, rolled, almost into a cochlear posture. The porter wheels her into place and helps
     her into a florally abundant armchair. Her face, heavily made up, has a mummified look, the porcelain appearance of time stopped,
     a broken clock, so that she can never get older and, with her carefully arranged woman-aviator's hair, will go to her grave
     in exactly this state. He thinks of her in the Kidron Valley, when she and von Gottberg were certainly having an affair, and
     he tries to imagine her tilting her head to look at him over her shoulder from under a large hat, her hair in shiny waves
     partly obscuring the view.
    'Ah, hello,' she says. 'You must be young Master Senior. Pass me the bag, Miss Trentham. Is the tea coming?'
    'Tea is on its way, Lady Dungannon.'
    'Sit down, my boy. Sit down. It's not a cocktail party, more's the pity.'
    She laughs and her laugh is so high and girlish that he is instantly charmed. As a small boy he liked older people, although
     his Aunt Dorothy with the bristly moles on her cheek repelled him when she kissed him.
    'Why, Conrad, did Elya choose you to be his biographer?'
    'He doesn't actually say biographer anywhere. I think he just wanted me to have his papers and look after them.'
    'Thank you,' she says to the young woman. 'We will be talking for a while. Did you say tea is on its way?'
    'Yes, it is, Lady Dungannon.'
    'Jolly good. In this folder I have all the letters from Elya and from Axel, as well as some other bits and pieces. But before
     I give them to you, I want to ask you to do one thing. I feel I can ask at my age.'
    She reaches across and places her hand on his wrist. It rests there with an avian lightness for a moment.
    'Yes.'
    'I want you to remember that Elya trusted you. He told me just before he died that you have some sensitivity.'
    Conrad feels that dangerous surge of childish gratification rising up in him.
    'To be honest, I don't know why he said that.'
    'He was an excellent judge of character.'
    The porter brings the tea. There is a long pause, some sighs, some clattering of bone china as he unloads his tray. Here,
     it is still a mark of civilisation to cut sandwiches very thin and to stack them in neat triangles. In the outside world
     people fill sandwiches and baguettes and bagels to bursting, but that is not the way here: watercress, cucumber and Cheddar
     are strictly confined. The tea comes in a pot with a matching jug of hot water and a strainer.
    'Would you pour, Conrad? My hands are a little shaky.'
    The ritual - perhaps it's the point of all rituals — draws them into a complicity. On her forehead