Broken Harmony (3 page)

“I must regain my music,” Le Sac said. “I
will
regain it.”

“Mr Patterson,” Bedwalters began again, apparently oblivious to the street girl. “It is my understanding that you were present when certain books of music were abstracted from
the Long Room in Hoult’s tonight.”

“I was present when their loss was announced,” I said carefully. I was still trembling. I made an effort to be calm and pay attention to the matter in hand.

“I trust you are examining the rooms of everyone so present,” Mrs Foxton said sharply.

“If it is necessary, I will,” Bedwalters agreed.

Silence. Bedwalters regarded the doorknocker steadfastly; Le Sac glared at me. The street walker traced imaginary patterns on Bedwalters’ shoulder.

“I believe it is your decision, Mr Patterson,” said Mrs Foxton. “Will you let them up?”

“Oh – yes, certainly.” No other course of action seemed possible. After all, what harm could it do? The book of music was not in my room. The sooner they looked, the sooner
they would be gone and leave me to my aching head.

Mrs Foxton swung the door open. We all trooped in, Le Sac treading upon my heels and the girl entwining herself with Bedwalters. (Did Mrs Bedwalters know of the girl, I wondered?) The hallway
was dark and empty; when Mrs Foxton swung the door shut again, we were in blackness like a coalpit.

Bedwalters’s voice floated out of the darkness. “Are there no other tenants in the house?”

“Miners,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. (The irregularity of such men’s lives is known to all.)

“This is a reputable house,” Mrs Foxton snapped. “And will be as long as I own it.”

“Dead persons can own nothing!” Le Sac scoffed.

A light flared in the darkness. The street girl held up a candle and slipped a tinder box back into the recesses of her clothing. Bedwalters was blinking. Mrs Foxton lay like condensation across
the glass of a picture on the stairway. “Until my heir is discovered, this house is mine,” she said firmly.

Mrs Foxton’s ‘heir’ – a brother of a pious bent – sailed for Philadelphia some years before his sister’s death and has not yet been made aware of that event.
I explained as much to Bedwalters, glad to have something to distract my mind, although I made no mention of the popular belief that the brother is long dead without issue. Mrs Foxton had once, in
a rare incautious moment, referred to the fever that was prevalent on board ships bound for the colonies. She was a shrewd woman and had no doubt always intended to retain possession of her own
affairs, both before and after death.

We climbed the stairs, the street girl leading the way with her hand cupped about the candle to protect the flame. A thin grey twist of smoke drifted upwards into the darkness. My room is on the
third floor; in front of the door I set my body between the lock and my guests so I could palm the wedge that kept it closed without their noticing I had no key. As I released the wedge Le Sac
swept past me, heading straightway for the table upon which I customarily write.

“Mr Sac!” Bedwalters protested, shocked. But for once he did not get the obedience to which he was accustomed. Le Sac was apparently beyond reason. He leant upon the table to seize
up the nearest books (Corelli’s concertos). But the broken leg of the table gave way and threw all the papers and books into his lap; he toppled backwards, grabbed at the nearest support
– Bedwalters – and dragged him down too. They sat upon the floor, as the volumes slid one by one to the floor around them with great crashes. I started to laugh; they looked at me with
astonishment.

“I did remind you to repair that, Mr Patterson,” Mrs Foxton said from the door-hinge.

Le Sac rifled my books and papers, impatiently muttering over Bedwalters’ more sedate and polite searching. He even tore open my fiddle case – not, I believe, to see if I had hidden
anything there but to snort at the poor quality of the instrument. As it happens, it is a violin by Agutter, once of London before – alas! – he came home to this town to die; it is a
fine instrument, although mild in its manner of speaking. It does not, however, look very distinguished, and Le Sac had his snort.

He did not, however, have his music. He glared over Bedwalters’ shoulder into my cupboards, at my meagre stocks of food, of raven quills and of ruled paper. He flicked through my letters
– including the last letter from my mother (at which I nearly set upon him) – and insisted on Bedwalters turning over my mattress. When he was for pulling up the floorboards, however,
Bedwalters stopped him.

“I do not imagine any benefit from the exercise, sir. I have tramped upon all the boards and there are none loose.”

And down the stairs they went, one by one, the girl leading the way with her candle, Le Sac huddled in his greatcoat and muttering some nonsense in French, and Bedwalters bringing up the
rear.

“I shall see the visitors out,” Mrs Foxton said loudly – and then softly, so only I might hear, “while you get the boy out of the attic cupboard.”

4

CONCERTO FOR SOLO HARPSICHORD
Movement III

The boy was very ugly. He looked at me pleadingly from a face covered in red scabs that he had scratched; some were bleeding still. In the dim light of a candle, I could see
that he hugged a violin case to his thin chest and over the case, like some hairy animal, an old tow wig. His own hair was as threadbare as a child’s toy, stringy dark strands barely covering
his reddened scalp. And he smelt rancid.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. My head was pounding; I really did not wish to deal with Le Sac’s apprentice or any such matters now. What was the boy’s name?
Wilson, Wilkinson…no, Williams. “If you have run away from your master, you must know I cannot shelter you.”

“Turned off,” he said and burst into tears.

So much for my commendation of Le Sac’s generosity. I dragged the boy down the creaking stairs into my room, and told him to sit on the bed while I lit a branch of candles. By the time I
could pay attention to him again, he had stopped snivelling and was holding out a letter to me. I turned the crackling paper over – it was addressed to Jas. Williams on the Key. A chandler,
evidently. The seal that held the paper’s edges together was already broken.

It is, we are taught, impolite to read letters addressed to other people. There are times, however, when temptation overwhelms good principles, and I had been tried much that night. I unfolded
the stiff paper and read.

I glanced up at the boy. “I don’t suppose he gave you your premium back?”

“Him?” the boy said scornfully. “Give money away? Never!” I liked him better for that flash of spirit, but there was no doubt that his situation was unhappy. His father
had probably saved for years to pay his son’s apprentice premium. If Le Sac did not return the money, he might well be unable to find the sum a second time.

“Well,” Mrs Foxton said from the latch. “Hear the boy play.”

The boy jumped up eagerly and turned his back to open his violin case upon the bed. “What are you doing?” I whispered to the gleam on the tarnished metal. “I can’t afford
to take on an apprentice without a premium.”

“Hear him play,” she said again, then more loudly to the boy, “Come on, hurry up!”

I thought her sharpness might overset him again but he turned, face glowing, with his violin in hand – a small one as befitted his age (twelve? thirteen?). I saw the injury the accident
had caused; it had been the left arm broken and it had healed with an odd kind of twist; when he lifted his violin to his shoulder, it seemed to stick out from his body at an impractical angle.

Presumably Le Sac felt that this would always prevent him from playing well. But I disagreed; he played very tolerably. There was something to be desired in the expression of the slow melodies
and a great deal too much flamboyance in the fast passages – a certain carelessness, even – as might be expected from a pupil of Le Sac. But nothing that might not be mended.

“You could do very well with an apprentice,” Mrs Foxton murmured in my ear as I leant against the door jamb. “Three shillings and sixpence every time he plays in the band.
Train him up a bit and he might be fit enough for a solo – that would be five shillings a night. Then there are the dancing assemblies – three shillings sixpence a week in winter. He
could increase your present income by, oh, a third.”

Old habits die hard, or, in Mrs Foxton’s case, do not die at all. She had always been an excellent businesswoman. And she was right – even without a premium, the boy could prove
profitable. But what would Le Sac say? He had already accused me of stealing his books; would he not also accuse me of stealing his apprentice?

“Anyway,” Mrs Foxton said, “the boy’s father might well be able to afford a second premium. He’s a chandler, isn’t he? He’ll be coining money.
Ships’ merchants are all rogues.”

The late Mr Foxton had allegedly been a chandler, I recalled, in Sunderland-by-the-Sea. I say allegedly, because no one had ever proved there had been a late Mr Foxton, though no one had ever
said as much to his widow, alive or dead. But what really decided me was that vicious snort of Le Sac’s as he had looked upon my Agutter violin. I could not compete with him in the Concerts,
and even his nonsensical compositions were better than mine; but I could in this one thing do him a bad turn by doing someone else a good turn. Ignoble of me to think in such a way, I know, but Le
Sac irresistibly invited such thoughts.

So I agreed. I bedded the boy down on the floor with a blanket and next morning went down with him to his father’s shop. The Key was crowded with sailors, hauling coals on board the keels
anchored there, smoking vile-smelling tobacco and spitting into the water that slapped up against the river walls. In the chandler’s shop coils of rope and unlabelled sacks were piled high, a
dog panted from a heap of nets. I gagged, the moment I walked in, at the stink of tar and soap and piss.

The boy’s father was a good bargainer but he was anxious to be rid of a runt of a son who started heaving and wheezing when he came too close to the clouds of flour in the store. In the
end, I took a guinea from the fellow and he promised me five shillings every week for the boy’s food. I bore George (for that was his name) off to the nearest breeches shop and used part of
the guinea to buy him clothes decent enough to play in at the Concerts.

If I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have looked at the boy twice.

5

SONG FOR THREE VOICES

Sly Mr Ord was the first to remark on the matter, pouncing on me the moment I set foot in his house the next day (to instruct his grandson upon the harpsichord). I was feeling
somewhat better; I had decided that the strange events in Caroline Square the previous night had been a drunken delusion and determined not to think of the matter again. (What else
could
it
have been?)

Mr Ord’s fingers pinched my arm. “Naughty boy,” he scolded with the cosiest of chuckles, and wagged a finger. “Causing such uproar!”

“I, sir?”

He drew me to one side of the hall to prevent his footman hearing our conversation. “I’ve just come from
his
house. For my lesson, you know. Of course it would be more proper
if he came here but one must make allowances for Genius.”

“Of course,” I agreed, perfectly aware that Genius would unhesitatingly run to the house of the titled. Sly Mr Ord, unfortunately for his dignity, had made his money in trade.
“I take it, sir, that you refer to Monsieur le Sac?”

“Who else, who else? He has taken it very ill, you know.”

I thought of the boy I had left at home, assiduously copying music. My heart sank.

“He says you have stolen the boy.”

I looked into those sly eyes and understood – gratefully – that Mr Ord had made his money not by chance, but from shrewdness.

“Of course,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That is mere wild talk. But we must make allowances for the continental temperament. The French, you know.”

“Swiss,” I said before I could stop myself.

“Besides, the lad’s father says that Le Sac wrote him a letter repudiating the boy. And between you and me –” he prodded my arm with a plump finger – “the
father called the letter
disrespectful
. Of course one must also make allowances for the language problem, though why foreigners can never speak English when it’s so easy, I cannot
fathom.” He sighed. “Well, even Genius has its weaknesses. And Le Sac can hardly say you stole the boy when he had cast him off.”

“So I judged.”

“But I thought you would want to know the state of affairs,” said sly Mr Ord. In truth, he did not seem sly any longer. “You can be sure I have told my friends there is no
truth in the accusations. But…” He sighed again. “You had better not have done it, sir.”

I was concerned by the hints in his words that accusations had spread widely, but I murmured, “You are very kind, sir.”

Mr Ord shook his head so vehemently the flaps of his wig flew up and down. “I like you, Patterson. I would hire you myself, you know, to learn me my violin, for Le Sac gets a little
impatient from time to time. But, as I say, we have to make allowances for Genius.”

And, thanking heaven for the small mercy that I had not to struggle day upon day with Mr Ord’s propensity towards shakes and other ornaments, and feeling a twinge (but no more) of sympathy
for Le Sac who did, I proceeded to
shrewd
Mr Ord’s library and his eager, but heavy-handed, grandson.

Demsey caught me near mid-day at the door of Nellie’s coffee-house in the
Sandhill, as I was about to step inside for a pie. He slapped me on the back and shouted for the entire town to hear. “Well done, man. Well done!”

“Demsey –”

“I’ve not known a better trick!”

“I would not call it –”