‘It was really Howard’s idea,’ the Automator explains afterwards. ‘And you know it makes sense whatever way you look at it.’ On the one hand, it gives the boys a chance to do something for their friend; on the other, it gets the concert up and running again, and also lends it that extra touch of gravitas, which it can definitely use now that it appears Father Furlong is going to pull through, in fact in some ways they were quite fortunate to have had Juster in the wings, so to speak, not to be crass about it but you take his meaning. The Automator’s hope is that the revamped concert will revitalize the moribund student body. ‘Give them something to get excited about. Take their minds off all this gloom.’
It seems to Howard that it will take a lot more than a Christmas concert to rouse the boys out of their present despond; he is surely not the only one hoping that Greg has bitten off more than he can chew. But the Acting Principal has a plan. He spends the day after the announcement sequestered in his office, making phone calls; the day after that, at a second special assembly, he delivers the news that RTÉ has agreed to broadcast live radio coverage of the event.
‘Historic occasion like that in the country’s most prestigious school, why wouldn’t they want to broadcast us?’ the Automator jokes afterwards, as his staff congratulate him on this coup. ‘Course, it didn’t hurt to have a couple of alums out there in Montrose, ready to twist the right arms.’
It appears the Automator knows the boys better than Howard gave him credit for. News of the concert – or, more specifically, the live radio coverage of it – creates a buzz on the corridors that hasn’t been heard for months. Any grievances the boys had are forgotten, the air of introversion and menace dissipates as quickly and mysteriously as it arrived; even students with no stake in the event (an ever-dwindling number, as the Automator invents a phalanx of new positions in Concert PR (stuffing envelopes) and Concert Tech Assist (sweeping the floor of the Sports Hall)) get caught up in the excitement. ‘A rising tide lifts all boats, Howard,’ the Automator comments approvingly. ‘That’s simple economics.’ The halls resound once more with rehearsing instruments, and it begins to look like ‘the Show’, as the Automator has taken to calling it, will not only turn the school’s annus horribilis around, but silence the Acting Principal’s enemies for good.
And then, with eight days remaining until the curtain rises, the concert’s musical director, Father Connie Laughton, arrives at the Automator’s door in tears.
A dainty man of a nervous disposition, Father Laughton detests discord above all things. He always climbs down before seriously disagreeing with anyone; he can’t dismiss the most disruptive student from his class without feeling sorry twenty seconds later and racing down the corridor to summon him back. As a result, his music appreciation courses are notoriously anarchic – in fact they make anarchy look like a slow day at the library – and yet, at the same time, they are marked by a kind of goodwill, and the priest always seems happy there, in the midst of the melee, humming along to a Field larghetto or a Chopin mazurka while paper planes, pencil cases, books and larger objects fly through the air around him.
Discord, though: that he cannot abide.
As musical director of Seabrook events for a number of years, Father Laughton is by now largely immune to bad playing. But what he was subjected to at this morning’s Quartet rehearsal – the egregious timbre, the proliferation of atonalities, the disregard for even the rudiments of timing – this was something else, this was something, it seemed to his ears, deliberate, a calculated and mindful assault on music itself; just to recall it now sets the teacup trembling in his hand. And when he realized that the perpetrator was none other than Ruprecht Van Doren! Ruprecht, his star student! Ruprecht, the one boy who actually seemed to understand music as he did, to recognize in its symmetry and plentitude a unique interpolation of perfection in our inconstant world! Well! Knowing the boy had had some difficulties lately, he withheld from comment as long as he could, but eventually – he was sorry, but he could not bear it, he simply could not bear it. He asked Ruprecht quite politely if he would mind sticking to the score as Pachelbel had written it.
‘And what did he say?’
‘He told me –’ the priest crimsons at the memory ‘– he told me to sit on it.’
‘He told you to sit on it? Those were his exact words?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Father Laughton dabs at his forehead fretfully. ‘I don’t see how I can – I can’t work with someone with that attitude, I simply can’t.’
‘Of course, Father, I quite understand,’ the Automator concurs. ‘Don’t you worry about it, I’ll take it in hand.’
The Automator has been aware, of course, of the staffroom chatter regarding the former favourite’s sudden decline. Until now, though, he has stayed his hand. Van Doren’s projected performance in next year’s state exams is calculated to lift the year’s average by four per cent; he, or his genius, must be allowed a certain leeway.
He invites Ruprecht to his office later that day and over tea and biscuits reminds him just how important the Quartet’s recital is to the concert. He reflects on the concert itself, a uniquely prestigious and historic event which is, let us not forget, to be broadcast live on national radio. He attempts bribery, offering to allow Ruprecht to keep his dorm room to himself, and then threats, ruminating on the positive effects it might have on one of the more troubled students, e.g. Lionel, to be roomed with one of the very gifted, e.g. Ruprecht. Finally he loses his temper and yells at him for five minutes straight. This meets with the same response as every other tactic.
‘He wouldn’t even speak! Kid sits there like a, like a blancmange –’ The Automator slumps, huffing and puffing over his desk, much as Dr Jekyll might have while metamorphosing into his fiendish alter ego.
Howard adjusts his collar. ‘Can’t they just play without him?’
‘It’s a quartet, for God’s sake, who ever heard of a quartet with only three musicians? And Van Doren’s the only one with any talent. Send out the other three as a trio – you’d be better off pumping the audience with sarin gas! Or just whacking them on the ears with a lump hammer!’ He kicks over his wastebasket, sending paper and apple cores across the floor; Brother Jonas scuttles from a corner instantly, like a domesticated spider, to tidy them up. ‘We need Van Doren, Howard. He’s what this whole concert is about – high-quality, timeless entertainment. And damn it –’ the bloodthirsty eye staring sightlessly at Brother Jonas, who is winkling stray staples from the fibrous turquoise carpet ‘– I’m damned if I’m going to let some little blimp defy me on a whim. No sir – if he wants a war, I’ll give him a war.’
The following lunchtime, the three uneponymous members of the Van Doren Quartet make a pilgrimage to Ruprecht’s room. No one answers their knock, and the door opens only grudgingly, the way blocked by doughnut boxes, Pepsi bottles, soiled underwear. Inside they find Ruprecht, on the first day of a three-day internal suspension, lying on his bed with his eyes closed. By the wardrobe the French horn slumps at a drunken angle, the bell full to the rim with Snickers wrappers. On the floor his next-door neighbour, Edward ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, sits glued to Ruprecht’s computer screen, watching an enormous purple dildo being plunged and re-plunged into a carefully depilated vulva.