THE DIARY I DIDN'T KEEP XXX

Ron Butlin

Good morning, Everyone!

Tommy here! While Ron has hung up his pen for the moment and gone off to frolic in the Swiss Alps, I've been toiling away in the Butlin archives for a gap-filler. A most unusual short story this, and raises the question: What on earth was he on when he wrote it? Anyway, the BBC was happy enough to broadcast it, not once, but twice. Firstly on Radio 3 and then as an excerpt on Radio 4's Pick of the Week.

Normal service will be resumed in a fortnight. Back to solid ground once more, back to me telling Ron to stick to the truth and nothing but. My truth, that is.

Nice meeting you all!

Cheers,

Tommy

MOZART TRIES OUT A MAJOR CAREER MOVE

As the first bicycle was not straddled until 1840 – by its inventor, the Scotsman Kirkpatrick Macmillan who lived near Dumfries – it is unlikely that WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-91) ever learned to ride one. Bearing in mind, however, that the bicycle is regarded by scientists as the most efficient machine ever devised (in terms of work input-output), Mozart would have been a natural. The notion of his mastering aerial cycling is, therefore, not unreasonable.

He played the viola, his favourite instrument, in playing-for-fun quartets on Sunday afternoons with three other major composers of the day, Haydn, Vanhal and Ditters (latterly, von Dittersdorf), at the home of Baron van Swieten, the diplomat. Ah, those were the days.

Wolfgang sat down, rolled a cigarette and began to make plans. A few moments ago he’d told his father he’d written his very last contredanse for the Archbishop and had had it with wigs, breeches and batons. He was going to be a private detective, a shamus. Leopold had said nothing, but turned on his heels and marched straight out the door. Which said it all.

The ex-composer blew a perfect smoke ring and gazed into it. Yes, surely there was more to life than sitting two places down from the cook at the servants’ table and grinding out endless cassations, divertimenti and serenades like some 18th-century muzak-monkey. Out of sheer habit a few minutes later, he found himself humming the possible opening bars of a new symphony. He decided to call it K183.

‘NO! NO! NO!’ he shouted aloud. He was going to be a private eye. Starting right now.

He stood up, wrenched off his wig and drop-kicked it across the room. No more symphonies for him, no more concertos, no more K numbers. But the more he tried to picture himself tracking down stashed loot, doing tail jobs, following a paper trail of numbered accounts to the Cayman Islands, discovering bodies in trunks and putting the squeeze on blackmailers - the more K183 just seemed to keep on coming: the exposition of first and second subjects, the development, recapitulation, coda. Perfect sonata form.

Meanwhile, darkness was falling. Soon crime would begin to stalk the streets of Salzburg. This was no time for thinking - he had to do something. Luckily enough, he’d caught a film-noir retrospective on cable recently and knew exactly what was needed.

The makeover took a few hours, but was worth the effort. He ditched the ancien-régime decor and went strictly retro: neon strip-lighting, Venetian blinds, a hat-stand, roll-top desk, swivel chair and filing cabinet. Lastly, he fitted a glass panel to his door and stencilled the words: W.A. MOZART - PRIVATE EYE. He laughed to himself: the Archbishop’s reception was going to be a few contredanses short that evening . . .

He had just sat down to roll another cigarette when he became aware of a silhouette darkening the glass panel. For nearly a full minute nothing more happened: someone was clearly having difficulty reading the gothic script. All at once, the door burst open and a man - brimmed hat, belted trench coat, bullet wound through the heart - fell into the room. He was carrying a bulky package.

The following Sunday, and for probably the very last time, Wolfgang made the journey to Vienna and the weekly get-together at Van Sweiten’s. It was good to be among friends once more. Haydn, Vanhal, and Ditters were hard-headed composers of the First Viennese School: they could be counted on to fulfil any contract, any commission: from sonatinas to symphonies, with or without a minuet, and same-day turnaround. Haydn had brought a new string quartet for them to play through; they examined some Bach fugues with a view to arranging them as string trios for the following week. They all had a good belly-laugh at the new-wave of galant composers who regarded fugues like these as old-fashioned. Old-fashioned? - they were timeless. As the afternoon wore on, Wolfgang realised how much he was going to miss this kind of friendly banter.

Finally, over the usual Chinese carry-out and wine, he told them about his new career. They were surprised. He moved quickly on to describe his new office furniture, his first dead client and the package which had proved to contain an assortment of tapes, CDs and accompanying promotion-packs. Then he selected a CD, invited them to fill their glasses, sit back, and listen.

'This is new-style modern music,' he quickly warned them. 'Very, very modern.'

Track One was short.

Afterwards there was a long, long silence. Wolfgang took this opportunity to hand round the sleeve-notes. Van Swieten, their faithful page-turner and host, hovered with his customary deference at the edge of their little circle as if the charge set up by their combined creativity might overload him. He was a modest man. After a nervous cough, he asked,

‘This Stockhausen. . . he is a great composer too, like you?’

‘Well,’ Wolfgang drawled in his newly acquired drawl, then opened one of the explanatory manifestos: ‘Says here that Stockhausen’s music is written for the Post-Apocalypse.’

‘Which one?’ Van Swieten paused, glancing into the future to tick off the French Revolution, various colonial and post-colonial genocides, Two World Wars, Vietnam, The Twin Towers . . . then he blinked as though to clear from his sight the horrors that were yet to come. He coughed again, ‘Let’s play some more Bach.’

But his well-meaning suggestion went unheard, drowned out by the opening discords of Track Two: a Boulez’ Piano Sonata. It was a compilation album.

*

Hours later, as Wolfgang was pedalling home to Salzburg through the darkness, he did his best to recapture something of his initial excitement at his new career. But no matter how hard he tried, the conclusion was always the same: if being a private eye meant putting up with the likes of Stockhausen, Boulez and Cage - then forget it.

The night was clear and cold. Within moments of setting off, he’d found himself composing to keep warm, continuing K183 at the point where he’d left it that fateful morning. Soon he was well into the last movement allegro. As the G minor allegro turned to molto vivace, he pedalled to keep up with it. Hard work, the road was anything but an autobahn, as every pothole and rut reminded him. But then, while he neared the fourth movement coda - his legs creating a brilliant Catherine-wheel effect with his shoe-buckles glittering in the moonlight - the strangest thing happened.

At first he thought he’d run into the back of some cart or coach travelling without its lights on, or else had hit a pothole and was about to take a header over the handlebars. But no. He was starting to rise into the air.

Then he rose higher, and higher.

Of course he had to keep pedalling. Having finished K183, he went straight on to K184. The Austrian countryside lay further and further below. Here and there a light showed in an isolated farmhouse; the dark patches were fields, the darker ones forest; everything as though engraved upon the sheen of moonlight. The road had all but disappeared. K184 completed, he quantum-leaped eighty-seven K numbers in one overwhelming burst of inspiration straight to the concerto in E flat, K271. A glimpse of the river unwinding below, like a thread of unpolished silver, had shown him the line of the entire piano part at a glance. This, set in the shifting orchestral tones of the darkened landscape, would guide him safely home.

Though riding a bike is a skill never forgotten, aerial cycling is trickier. So long as he kept pedalling out masterpiece after masterpiece, he felt he could stay aloft forever. Initial judders and overbalancings had been corrected and now he glided confidently through the night. All around was complete silence save for an occasional breath of wind, the pleasing rush of well-oiled chain over sprocket, the whirring spokes. His footwork powered him towards the development section.

The kilometres sped by, and so too did the K numbers. He continued his effortless way ever onwards and upwards. Ahead he could see the lights of Salzburg where he would have to drop speed and bring himself gradually down to land. In less than a quarter hour, he’d be wheeling his bike round to the stables next to the Archbishop’s palace. Then it would be off with the bicycle clips and back to scratching out contredanses.

Irritation took hold, and a sense of the injustice of it all. Forget his career move. It had been a washout. Forget Stockhausen. He pedalled harder than ever, and rose again. His new-found fluency and grace and elegance sent him soaring up high above the city and upward through more unwritten K’s. Finally, as had Giotto, he described an unbroken flow of mastery and precision in air. He had reached the slow movement of his piano sonata K280. He ceased pedalling. Yet, such was his perfection of poise and balance, that bicycle and rider remained as though weightless, tracing out a perfect circle high above the provincial capital. Gradually, stars visible and invisible fell under the spell of his supreme and wordless utterance. From nearest to farthest, constellations and galaxies, white dwarves and red giants gathered round him, rearranging themselves and the entire heavens in harmony with this perfectly created moment. For one brief instant, all creation was hushed - and affirmed.

When the last note could be sustained no longer and had faded once more into the infinite darkness, Wolfgang resumed pedalling. It had been a glorious moment, and it had passed. He shrugged, and smiled to himself: he knew there would be others. He was happy.

Dawn was breaking as he brought down his machine to land safely on the empty courtyard of the Archbishop's palace. There was no one around to hear the wheels scrunching the gravel as he made his way to the stables. Having put away his bicycle, he stood and watched first light come slanting over the fields and woods; it was bringing him new contredanses, new serenades and cassations. It was also bringing him a new day.

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