Music at Long Verney (15 page)

The force of the wind hurried them down the street under a darkening sky. More snow was imminent. Before they had finished their meal, people were crowding in, badged with snow and talking in loud voices, as people do who come indoors after contending with rough weather. Mr Edom said they would wait for the worst to go over, and ordered two glasses of port.

Against the wind, they struggled back through a scene that was unrecognisably hushed, unrecognisably noisy. One or two cars with their headlights on groped by; others were at a standstill. The air resounded with rattles and jangles and the screeching of overhead wires. They entered the shop, and it was as if they had never felt warmth before. When Mr Edom had recovered his breath, he said conversationally, “Well, that was quite disagreeable.” This came out pretty much as he intended, but even so, his teeth chattered and he felt an inclination to hold on to the nearest solid piece of furniture. Mr Collins stood by the door and dripped.

There were times – this was one of them – when Mr Edom could have wished his assistant hadn't got such long legs. When long legs are not actively engaged, they give an impression of standing about – which doesn't do. Still less does it do if they attract attention by rushing about on impulses of helpfulness and good will. In the antique trade, one should aim at being functional: an existence aloofly yet watchfully there, ready to come forward if required, meanwhile in reserve, partially obscured by a
bonheur-du-jour,
perhaps, or looking out of the window; but always unobtrusive as an angler, with legs fading into the landscape until called for, and with good will – if that article cannot be discarded – directed impersonally towards men but never to particular customers. Customers don't like good will; it makes them feel inferior. Similarly, it does not do to look pleased when something has been sold. It is for the
customer to look pleased; the vendor's part is to acquiesce – as with cheeks and kisses. But for all that, George, smiling like a Cheshire cat and with his good will constantly needing to be checked with a “Down, Ponto!”, was no fool; and when it came to handling things he was as deft and reliable as a retriever dog.

While these thoughts were going through his mind, Mr Edom, though he did not know it, was also smiling – not because of the mitigating merits of his assistant but because his feet were beginning to get warm. They seemed to be doing so at a distance and independently of him, but the development pleased him – as though they were beings far removed and no real relations of his, yet he felt a disinterested satisfaction at their well-being.

“Beginning to thaw, George?” he inquired.

Before Mr Collins could reply, the lights went out. In the houses opposite, the lights had also gone out. Only the two electric fires retained a fading glare. While Mr Edom was still finding words to say what he thought of the Electricity Board, Mr Collins struggled into his wet overcoat and rushed from the shop.

Mr Edom wrapped himself in a tiger skin and sat down in the bergère to conserve his vital heat – what there was of it. The glow faded from his feet as it had done from the two electric heaters. He wished he had not decided against oil heating. He wished his assistant had not gone mad. Dementia seemed a kinder supposition than heartless desertion: one should not think the worst of a man until one is categorically forced to. The room seemed to congeal about him like black ice. The wind kept up a steady screech. Looking out of his darkened box at the darkened housefronts opposite, he watched the driven snow horizontally twirling past, like the ghost of an unending rope. He rearranged the tiger skin, which was a poor fit. It was all very well to be charitable and suppose that Collins had gone mad, but it couldn't stop there: madness involves more than
charitable suppositions. Someone would have to bear witness as to when he went mad, and how, and if he had previously shown signs of doing so. As a first step, he would have to telephone the police. At the thought of squandering his last illusion of keeping warm, Mr Edom groaned. He began to founder in the cold of the room, the black ice was closing over his head, when the room became immeasurably colder. Mr Collins had come in. His expression was elated; he positively appeared to glow. (Madmen, Mr Edom had read, are often insensible to extremes of heat or cold; they live by the raging of their blood.) Under each arm he held a parcel.

“Candles,” he said. “I was just in time to get the last two packets at Gay's.”

“Candles,” repeated Mr Edom, his voice sounding a little wan after all he'd been through. “Candles. What a good idea.”

“The moment the light went off, I thought to myself, Now's the time to sell candlesticks!”

It was another of those impulses of good will. Except for that inrush of cold air, nothing was likely to come of it; if those who sat in darkness had candles, they would stick them in bottles rather than go out to buy candlesticks. But the deed was done, so, repressing a “Down, Ponto!”, Mr Edom said again, “What a good idea,” and added that it was lucky Beales hadn't taken the candelabrum. By the light of one candle, two candles, they assembled seventeen candleholders of various kinds and values, stuck candles in, and lit them. At first these were grouped together. The effect was dissatisfying, so they began to disperse them about the room, standing back to judge the effect, having better ideas, trying experiments, giving a rub-up here and there. All this took some time, and was animating; and when everything was arranged to their joint satisfaction, and two long-nosed candle scissors in their gadrooned trays laid ready for use on the sofa table, they sat down and agreed
how nice it all looked, and what a pity it was people didn't sit oftener by candlelight – it was so restful. And if at that point Mr Collins' imagined customers had stormed in to buy candlesticks, they would have been unwelcome.

For in the diffused candlelight, everything had become mysteriously beautiful and enriched. The polished surfaces reflected the little flames with an intensification of their various colours – amber in satinwood, audit ale in mahogany, dragon's blood in tortoise shell. Glass flashed, silver asserted its contours, a tapestry bloomed into life. The depth of the room seemed to be asleep. The candlelight was an acceptance of darkness; the hideous daylight beyond the window was a blue dusk, the driven snow a flicker of mayflies. Mr Edom sat gazing at his assembled wares. For all his knowledge of them, for all his connoisseurship, he had never realised their beauty before, nor their quality of character. The candlelight had freed them from being wares in an antique shop. They were back at home in it; they basked in the light of their best days; they were possessions, serene inmates of a household. He has more feeling than I give him credit for, thought Mr Collins, studying his employer's face and the candlelight's new reading of its wrinkles. They sat in silence. At intervals, Mr Collins would get up and trim a candlewick, just for the pleasure of doing so.

The door was opened. The candle flames streamed sideways; Mr Edom stiffened. But it was Major Barnard who came in, saying, “I don't want to disturb you, but may I come in for a bit? It looks so cosy from outside, and so uncommonly pretty. I don't know that I've ever seen your things looking so pretty before.” And he sat down as a friend does, and presently snuffed the air with pleasure, and remarked how agreeable the smell of candle wax is, and that it was a pity people didn't use them more often. “Warm, too,” he went on. “At least it seems warm to me. But perhaps that's just by contrast.”

“Candles do give out heat,” said Mr Collins. “It can be quite noticeable.” He broke off, but the other two waited for him to go on. “When I was a boy,” he went on, “I was sent to live with my London uncle. My parents had quarrelled, you see, and the home was broken up. We were all sent off to different relations – anyone who'd take us – and I went to this uncle, to mix in with my cousins. It was the Christmas holidays, and I thought it would be wonderful, to be in London with so much going on. But it wasn't. They lived in Lambeth, and there wasn't much going on in Lambeth. So I took to going out by myself. I used to go across the river, and look into Gamage's windows and think what I'd buy out of them. Or to Liverpool Street Station, and fancy what train I'd take to where. But this particular day – it was biting cold; I'll never forget the wind over Blackfriars Bridge – I hadn't the heart to go so far, so I went into a church. It had a lot of things to look at – carved wood and gilding and flowers in vases; it even had a grand piano. But what caught my eye was an iron stand with sockets for candles, and three or four candles burning, and a tray with dozens more, and a notice saying ‘Candles Twopence'. Well, I could afford two. And I began to feel a bit warmer when they had got going. But by then the others were beginning to burn down. I knew you lit candles for dead souls – I was inclined to be religious then –”

“One is at that age,” said Major Barnard.

“– so I set to and thought of every dead person I knew of, or had heard of; and in no time I had every one of those candles alight. It was glorious. As good as a coal fire.”

“Not bad for fourpence,” said Mr Edom.

“Don't suppose the boy had any more money,” said Major Barnard.

“Threepence halfpenny, and I put that in. In the new year I was fetched away by my grandmother in Belfast, and I didn't have a chance to go back till 1945. The church had been burned
out – a Wren church, too. The roof was gone; it was all boarded up. But there was a collecting box for rebuilding, so I paid in the end.”

Overcome by embarrassment, Mr Collins got up and trimmed every candle. When he recovered himself, Mr Edom and Major Barnard were telling each other when and where they had been coldest. Mr Edom had also been coldest in his boyhood. Major Barnard had never really known what cold was till he was a young man and got caught in a blizzard on Schiehallion. “Where's that?” asked Mr Collins, and was told it is in the Highlands. Mr Edom nodded gravely. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “I never go out for anything you might call a walk without taking a bar of chocolate with me. Which reminds me –”

Taking up a bedroom candlestick, he disappeared into his office and returned with a bottle of brandy. He put this down on the sofa table, selected three wine glasses – not from the Waterford set but from the next best – and filled them. “To our host,” said Major Barnard.

“Good luck to him,” said Mr Collins. Mr Edom bowed, and let a polite interval pass before he drank himself.

“All this is uncommonly pleasant,” observed Major Barnard. “I really don't know when I've spent a more agreeable afternoon. I suppose you would still call it afternoon, though from the look of things outside it might as well – What's that?”

That was a shape plastered to the windowpane. Black and shiny, with a pinched face and eyes reflecting the light within, it looked like some kind of portentously large bat. It was in fact a small boy in an oilskin cape too large for him.

“It's a boy,” said Major Barnard. “We can't leave him outside, you know. Come in, boy.”

Major Barnard was still under the influence of Mr Collins' story, told in that flat cheap accent, with the echo of a child's lonely defiance still hanging about it, or he would not have
made so free with his host's hospitality. His mind misgave him at the boy's first words, which were “Don't mind if I do.” This was one of those alarming new children, born into a nuclear age and scornful of everything not potentially destructive.

“Why have you got those lights on, all over the place like that? Nobody else has.”

“They're candles,” Mr Collins said. “Haven't you ever seen candles before?”

“No. Do they run off a battery?”

“They burn by themselves. With a wick, like an oil lamp; but instead of floating in oil the wick is fed by the wax melting round it.” Mr Collins saw his explanations quite disregarded. “Look,” he said, proffering a candle. “Blow this one out, not too hard, just a puff, and I'll light it again.” The boy drew back, compressing his lips. Mr Collins blew out the candle and relit it.

“Do you have to do all that?” said the boy. “Matches, and all. Haven't you got a lighter?”

“Matches are tidier,” said Mr Edom. “If you use a lighter, it makes the wax run, and spoils the look of the candle.”

“I don't see why that matters, if the wax melts anyway.”

“I wouldn't suppose you did.” Mr Edom's voice was glassily urbane, and the boy instantly subsided. Major Barnard seized the advantage. “Why aren't you at home, boy? This is no weather to be out in.”

“Going to visit my Gran. She's old-fashioned. She's got a coal fire.” To cancel the disgracing admission, he went on, “And a canary bird. And a horn gramophone. And a hand sewing machine. And the works of William Shakespeare. And a cataract. And – Hi!” The electricity had come on. Everything looking as usual looked as if it had been flayed. “That's more like it!” shouted the boy. “No bloody Gran now!” He was off like a bird out of its cage.

Major Barnard, turning to Mr Edom, said, “I'm sorry about that. Not a very nice boy.”

“Ignorant,” Mr Edom replied.

Mr Collins was going to and fro putting out the candles. A sweet smoke hung on the air and was like a sigh. He carried the candlesticks to the back of the shop, removed the candles, laid them on a sheet of brown paper, and began to chip the cooling wax off the sconces with his nail.

“Leave them till tomorrow, George. We'll be off now. There's nothing to stay for,” said Mr Edom.

Major Barnard gathered up the tiger skin and smoothed it. “Where does this –”

The lighting staggered, and went off.

Major Barnard produced his pocket torch. By its beam Mr Edom put the valuables away in the safe, locked his office desk, turned off the switches, set the alarm. They went out together, exclaiming at the depth of the snow. But the storm was over. Mr Edom and his assistant went their ways, Major Barnard went his, thinking how pretty the candles had been, and of their warmth still gently dying in the darkness.