Broken Harmony (15 page)

At last I understood. No seagulls made those unearthly noises but the spirits of drowned sailors, calling from the water for assistance, pleading to be lifted from the river, crying out for
rescue. Sailors who had fallen from the keels, or cast down by wreck, or thrown over by drink or malice or the impenetrable workings of fate. Each of them tormented, each crying for help.

I thought of following the collier. Behind the Printing Office, an alley twists round to the back of All Hallows Church; from there it climbs the hill to the more salubrious areas of Pilgrim
Street, where the smoke and stench would be far below. But I had told George to wait for me outside the office of Jenison’s agent, so we could collect the harpsichord key for another
practice. So, feeling my way with one hand on the wall of the house to my right, I edged forward into the smoke – and fell over a coil of rope into a pile of grimy empty baskets.

I lost my handkerchief when I fell, scrabbled among the baskets for it in vain, finally picked myself up and started off again without it. A mountain of ballast was piled up ahead of me; I was
forced to leave the wall to go round it and was immediately unsure of my direction. The shouting persisted all around me now, disorientating and unnerving. A blurred darkness loomed; cautiously I
went on and the smoke eddied and parted, and showed me a knot of seamen sprawled upon the cobbles, as if taking their ease in a meadow, smoking begrimed pipes phlegmatically.

“Watch your step,” one called to me. “Spirits are up.”

I went on, feeling for every step. In the darkness of the smoke ahead, I saw a still darker shape – the scarecrow-thin figure of the rector of St Nicholas, the Rev Moses Bell, standing at
the side of a huge upturned basket. He was lifting a hand in blessing and consolation, muttering prayers in tones that varied between compassion and fear. Beyond him, in billows of smoke, nuggets
of black soot seemed to drift, sometimes plainly visible, sometimes almost illusory.

The Rev Mr Bell saw me, raised his hands helplessly, murmured his endless prayers. I stumbled on into the mist. I knew that my way must be in a straight line along the Key, and so I kept a
straight line. Or so I thought until a voice spoke at my feet.

“Come you to join me, sir?”

I looked down and glimpsed a ripple of dark water barely inches in front of me. Another step, and I would have fallen into the river.

“If you’d just oblige me, sir –” Did the spirit have a Scotch accent? “If you would help me up. This place stinks like a shithouse.”

“I cannot,” I said. “There is nothing I can do.”

“Come, sir. Ain’t it our Christian duty to help them in need?”

“Yes, but –”

“It’s little enough I’m asking. Just a helping hand.”

“You cannot leave this place,” I blurted helplessly, wanting to help, wanting to flee. “You’re dead. A spirit.”

Silence. I heard the slap-slap of water against the Key and I thought
One day someone will say the same to me, and Dear God, let me never come to this
. I have never given much thought as
to where I would prefer my spirit to linger its hundred years or so beyond death; but, God, let it not be in the river, among the smoke and the lost souls, the sailors who babble in foreign tongues
and cry out for lost familiar scenes, the lunatics who fling themselves into the dark poisonous water and regret it at once as they sink deeper and deeper into death.

I heard a voice raised behind me and, edging round, saw Mr Bell gesticulating a yard or so away. I stumbled back to him and together we fumbled our way along the cobbles.

“Two or three times a year I am called to this unpleasant duty,” Bell said. “My predecessor, Mr Greggs – when I was a chaplain – told me not to worry over it. Tell
them you can do nothing, say a blessing or two and go home. But it goes against all I believe in, Patterson, to be so uncaring.”

“Yet there
is
nothing to be done,” I said. The wailing of the spirits, drifting all around us, was still unsettling me. The black specks in the smoke came so close I
instinctively tried to knock them away; looking down, I saw my sleeve speckled with black and did not know whether the marks were made by spirits or mere flecks of soot.

“There was one there…” Bell jerked his head. “He was murdered, pushed over the side of his ship. He knows who did it but the villain was never brought to justice; he ran
off to Bristol and sailed to Barbados, it seems. The spirit asked me when the villain was coming back. Do you know the worst of it, Patterson? The murderer sailed with the Quaker fellow,
Fox!”

Full seventy years must have passed since George Fox left England for Barbados. Seventy years in which to bemoan unfinished justice. It would, I reflected, be all the same in another seventy
years when the cheated spirit had faded beyond even a whisper in the wind and no one would know his story; but nevertheless the tale struck me cold. There must always be a lingering fear that one
day such a fate will befall oneself.

I hesitated but the need to ask was not to be denied. “You must get into every part of the town?” I said.

“Of course,” he said, surprised.

“I wondered –” There was no help for it; I plunged on. “If you had ever had a glimpse, however strange and unexpected, of – of another world…”

His face lit up with radiance and delight. “Indeed, Patterson, indeed I have. It is all that sustains me at times like this. The glimpses we are all vouchsafed of God’s heaven, of
the saints sitting at his right hand…”

With sinking heart, I realised that he was talking of something altogether different. Well, it had always been the faintest of hopes.

The Rev Mr Bell turned towards the Side to climb the hill and the smoke soon swallowed his dark figure. I felt my way along the walls of the Sandhill and found the Golden Fleece by the sound of
horse’s hooves and the chinking of harness. As I came to the arch into the inn, the stench of horse dung briefly choked me. A few yards further and I saw a hunched figure low to my right. A
quavering voice said, “Master?”

George was sat upon the lowest step of the stairs to the agent’s office, hugging himself in his fright. “I heard voices!”

“Just the spirits.”

“In the river? I hope I don’t die in the river.”

I stood, listening to the cries and shrieks still echoing from the pall of smoke around us. “Amen to that,” I said.

We climbed the steps to the agent’s. A lamp hanging above loomed out of the thinning smoke, shedding a miasma of oil and lavender from its guttering wick. Lavender bunches had been hung
outside the door at the top of the stairs and rustled as I brushed against them. I was about to open the door and go in when I heard voices.

“Why don’t we go in, master?” George said, his voice muffled through his hand cupped over his mouth against the smoke.

“Shhh.”

We bent our heads to listen. I felt guilty at setting a bad example to the boy but was unable to resist the temptation. For the voices – a trifle hoarse from the stench and the smoke
– were Jenison and Le Sac.

“I will not be refused,” Le Sac said.

“It is most unreasonable.” Jenison’s annoyance was evident in his voice. “The usual rate is ten shillings. That is more than adequate.”

“Fifteen,” Le Sac said peremptorily. “I will accept nothing less. It is the fee paid in London.”

“This is not London,” Jenison said. “Thank goodness. I flatter myself we have a better idea here of how much money is really worth. And fifteen shillings for one rehearsal and
a concert is asking a great deal, sir. You are already paid ten and I for one am of the opinion that
that
is generous.”

I struggled to stifle a cough – the damn oil and lavender were clogging my throat as much as the smoke. Le Sac was continuing.

“Ten shillings is nothing.”

“It is ten days’ wages for one of my labourers, sir.”

“Any man can shift stones or till the land. Is there another who can lead your band for you, and choose your music, and entertain you?”

A pause, before Jenison said, “I daresay Mr Patterson could have a good stab at it.”

George prodded me with glee but I was cursing. This could only increase Le Sac’s antagonism towards me.

“In any case,” Jenison went on, “we have to remember, sir, that music is not one of the necessities of life. Can you eat it, drink it, shelter under it? Oh, I grant you, it has
its uses, else I would not be one of the directors of the Concerts. It encourages trade in its way and provides an employment for the ladies who might otherwise be idle, and it gives a place a good
character when visitors find we are so respectable as to have a set of concerts. But it is not
necessary
, sir – it is a luxury. And to be spending fifteen shillings on a luxury when I
have the other performers to pay, and the room to hire, and the candles to buy, and all the rest of it – no, sir, you ask too much.”

“Then I will not play,” Le Sac said with an air of triumph. “See then how many people support your
luxury
.”

“They may do what they choose,” Jenison said. Le Sac had plainly forgotten that the music lovers had already paid their subscriptions and the money was safely in Jenison’s
pockets.

“You cannot do without me, sir!” Le Sac cried. “You saw last night how they adore me!”

“Well, if I cannot,” said Jenison, “I will happily do nothing at all. I would rather abandon the Concerts altogether than pander to a – a French –”

The door of the office was thrown open and Le Sac stalked out, head held high. We drew back quickly. He smiled coldly when he saw me and said something in French. As I have said before, my
knowledge of that language is abysmal but I gathered the general meaning of his remarks from his tone and the expression upon his face.

“Mr Patterson,” said Jenison from the office. “How opportunely come.”

So I came into the direction of the Concerts, for a while at least, since I was certain that either Le Sac or Jenison would give way within a few days. And I had no doubt that
Jenison saw me as someone he could control more easily than the Swiss. When I suggested I had works that might grace the Concerts (thinking of Lady Anne’s volume of pieces), he frowned as if
I was guilty of great presumption and was only mollified when I offered to send George’s copies of the volume to him, implying that his judgment was better than my own. (I vowed to slip one
of my own pieces in with the volume.) Demsey may be right in saying I know how to handle such men as Jenison, but it can be hard and dispiriting work.

Nevertheless, I was pleased when Jenison promised me seven shillings and sixpence for each concert day. With George’s three shillings and sixpence for playing as leader, each concert would
earn me as much as Le Sac’s despised fee. I hoped merely that they would not come to an agreement until the passing of at least one concert, so I could show what I could do and flatter the
gentlemen into thinking me the better bargain. At last one thing was turning in my favour.

I had reckoned without sly Mr Ord.

19

CANZONET

I would have been still better pleased had the concert been on its customary day. But it had been put off a day for the convenience of several of the gentlemen players who had
another engagement. I calmed my impatience, though not without difficulty.

In the morning, a reply to one of my letters came from Mr Hamilton, the publisher in Edinburgh. The letter was welcome in two respects. First, he sent me a list of twenty-six subscribers for my
music, which I carefully added to my ever-growing store. Second, most astonishingly, he told me he had seen Demsey.

I scanned the rest of the letter; it consisted of business matters only. What the devil was Demsey doing in Aberdeen? And at this time of year? Thomas Saint’s wife comes from Dundee, I
recalled, and she has often spoken of the winter gales and snows in that part of North Britain. Perhaps Demsey intended to set up there as a dancing master; but what call could there be for the
elegancies of life in such a god-forsaken spot?

I was pondering whether to go and quiz the good lady when George came in, clutching the latest edition of the
Courant
. Thomas Saint has evidently taken to publishing on Tuesdays as well
as on Saturday. George was looking puzzled.

“I saw Mr Ord, sir, and he asked if I’d read the paper yet. When I said I hadn’t, he bought me a copy.” He sounded both awed by such largesse and uneasy over the possible
cause of it.

I took the paper from him and scanned the front page; it was crowded as usual with advertisements. Did Le Sac plan another benefit, perhaps for the week of Signor Bitti’s return? It would
be too hard upon the heels of the first concert, but perhaps he wanted to convince Jenison of his popularity.

The faintest gleam of light slid between the hinges of the door. Mrs Foxton said, “The third page, sir, at the bottom of a column.”

I passed over the national news upon the second page and glanced at the local correspondence. An account of a high wind at Morpeth, tragic death at Sunderland, three drowned at Shields, the
Bishop’s return to Durham, births, marriages…

“Which column did you say, Mrs Foxton?”

“I know not. I saw Mr Phillips reading as he passed the window and noted how he had the paper folded. He seemed to find the matter amusing.”

My heart sank as I found the piece at last. It was a letter, printed in the smallest type Thomas Saint had, for it was a long letter and he had been hard put to to get it all in.