Broken Harmony

by Roz Southey

  Having arrived home late on the Monday evening, I slept later than usual upon the Tuesday and spent the morning teaching the daughters of Forster the carriage-maker. Forster himself, a lean man with flaming hair and cheeks, met me at the door of the house and slapped me on the back. “Never mind, Patterson, I know better than to believe such tales.” He meant to reassure me, I know, but he did not.

  Around lunchtime, I walked down to the Key for a bite at Nellie’s coffee-house, looking about me as I went in, looking for Demsey or any of the gentlemen who had dispensed with my services, to avoid the embarrassment of having to pass the time of day. I encountered only Lady Anne’s cool gaze as I made my way to a corner and called for a serving maid. Lady Anne returned her gaze to her paper.

  I drank ale, ate a chop and walked out again upon the Key in a thin chill sunshine that was tempered by a river breeze. As I reached the first of the coal barges bobbing at anchor, a merchant walked past me; I started, half-thinking I recognised him but no – it was not the fellow from the party I had seen. In heaven’s name, could I not get that incident out of my head? I had been drunk, that was all…

  “Mr Patterson!”

  Turning, I saw Lady Anne striding towards me with a masculine gait. The river breeze whipped her skirts about her legs and tangled her ringlets. As ever, she was unaccompanied by maid or footman, and had no hesitation in raising her voice in an unladylike manner.

  “Mr Patterson,” she said again as she came up to me. She was breathing heavily with exertion and her thin chest rose and fell quickly. Her cheeks were becomingly pink.

  “I have heard, sir, that you are accused of an assault last Thursday night upon Monsieur le Sac and his friend the dancing master.”

  “There is no truth in that accusation, my lady,” I said stiffly.

  She nodded. “So Monsieur le Sac has informed me.”

  “Le Sac?” I echoed incredulously.

  “He tells me that you came upon the brawl by chance, as indeed did he. These rumours are all the fault of that prancing peacock Nichols.” She looked at me shrewdly. “Mr Patterson, I have the greatest admiration for Monsieur le Sac’s musical gifts – he is, as you must know, my protégé. He is also, I assure you, an honest man, if somewhat vain and arrogant. He has,” she said, forestalling me as I would speak, “many amiable qualities.”

  I thought I detected a note of irony in her voice and did not know quite how to reply. “He has conceived a dislike for me.”

  “No less, I warrant, than you have for him. You are, after all, rivals.”

  “I had rather not be,” I said wearily. We shifted to allow a cart to pass. The wind blew the dry stink of coal towards us, and I thought I heard a spirit call from the water. “If we are talking of professional matters, my lady,” I said, “there can be no argument in the matter. Monsieur le Sac is a better performer than myself, although I flatter myself that I am the better composer.”

  She shrugged, the folds of her cloak whispering against the silk of her gown. “I can say nothing in favour of his compositions, certainly. They are meant to show off his gifts, nothing more.” To my astonishment she took my arm and leant upon it. “Come, Mr Patterson, let us walk and you may tell me exactly what occurred.”

  I hesitated but she was insistent, so as we strolled along towards the Printing Office I recounted my encounter with Nichols. Lady Anne was an excellent listener and I found myself oddly enjoying the tale. She laughed heartily when I hinted at Nichols’s injuries. “And Le Sac?”

  I told her of Le Sac’s arrival. “A pistol,” she pondered. “I suppose he bought it for his travels in the country. A post-boy was robbed on Gateshead Fell a week or so back.”

  “I heard the story.”

  “Well,” she said with greater decision in her voice. “I cannot allow you to be blamed so unjustly, Mr Patterson. Do you have any idea who was behind the attack? Was it merely thievery, or was there some deeper purpose?”

  “I cannot say, madam,” I said carefully. I turned to face her. “Forgive me, Lady Anne, but the last time we spoke on the subject of Monsieur le Sac you gave me to understand, in no uncertain terms –”

  She laughed; the wind caught her hair and drifted it back from her face. “Give it its true name, Mr Patterson. I was abominably rude to you, for which I apologise. I was in a foul temper that day. Can you forgive me?”

  I regarded her with some reserve. Her contrition seemed genuine, yet so had her animosity that day in Nellie’s coffee-house. Still, she appeared to be in earnest in wishing to help me and I would have been a fool to refuse her.

  “We must save your reputation at any rate,” she said, tapping me on the arm and sending me a darting, sparkling glance. “Come, Mr Patterson, let us turn about and take ourselves out of this cold gale. Walk me back to the coffee-house and I will see what I can do for you. I am a woman who likes to see justice done.”

  And all the way back to the coffee-house she kept me amused with outrageous tales of her late father, who had been a Justice of the Peace and prone to making distinctive judgments. Some of the stories carried with them a certain oddity, although in what respect I could not quite define; I took it she was merely spinning tales to cheer me.

  We parted outside the coffee-house; Lady Anne turned and drew her billowing cloak about her. The sunlight gleamed on the ringlets that fell across her shoulder.

  “You must drink tea with me, Mr Patterson. I have some new scores from… from a friend, and I think you would enjoy seeing them. The style is somewhat similar to your own work.”

  “I am most flattered, my lady.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said. “At four.”

  She was swift to keep her word. When I returned home a few hours later, I found another note awaiting me from Mr Heron. He had, he said, sent me word a few days ago under a misapprehension – had been grievously misinformed – offered regrets – hoped that Master Thomas would see me the following day. I was pleased both by the purport of the letter and by its manner of expressing its message; Claudius Heron was generous in the matter of admitting his fault. Which is more than one expects from most gentlemen.

  So I went to bed in a better frame of mind than when I got up, looking forward both to professional duties and a little social entertainment.

  9

  TRIO

  for two sopranos and a tenor

  Unlike Lady Anne’s other visitors, I came to her house in Caroline Square on foot. The early evening light was sufficient to show me the way to the shelter of the trees opposite the house. There I paused, enjoying the fragrance of the last roses and the freshness of damp earth. The air held a hint of rain; looking up, I saw darkening clouds to the east. I had not been in the square since that unsettling night of the concert; looking around now, I thought how ordinary it appeared. It had been night, of course, when I was last here, and uncertain lamplight and deep shadows can make a place seem threatening when in reality there is nothing to fear. Yet I still hesitated to cross that last stretch of road to the door of the house.

  “Good day to you, sir,” said a voice from the bushes. The voice sounded tipsy and, for a moment, I even fancied I smelt a whiff of ale. Then I realised I was hearing a spirit, speaking with the extreme politeness of the very drunk. “Can you tell me how I came here? For I do not have the least idea.”

  “Do you remember a carriage, perhaps?” I suggested, thinking he might have been the victim of an accident. I had no wish to linger but it is good policy to be polite to spirits. They have great power of doing harm if they choose, by the whispering of secrets. And, conversely, they have an equal power of doing good, as I had learnt the night of the attack upon Nichols.

  “Carriage? I wonder.” He hummed and hawed. “I remember the church. That’s it, ’twas Sunday and I remember the ladies and gents coming out of church. The big church.”

  “St Nicholas.”

  “That’s it! And there was that organist fellow, what’s his name?”

  It was hardly diff
icult to remember, I thought gloomily. Nichols at St Nicholas – the name had a depressing appropriateness. A drop of rain fell warm and fat upon my hand. “Nichols,” I said, tasting annoyance. “His brother’s a dancing master.”

  “No, no, that’s not the name.” He hiccupped. “Patterson! That’s it! Father was a town musician.”

  “You are quite mistaken,” I said. “Charles Patterson is no organist. Yet.”

  “Wrong, sir!” he cried in good humour. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

  “I would be the first to know if it was true,” I pointed out. “I am Patterson.”

  “Nay, sir, he’s a gentleman. He dresses well. Um…” He sounded doubtful now. “Yet when I look closer…”

  More drops of rain. I began to be afraid that my dress, whether it was that of a gentleman or not, would be ruined before I came to my engagement. “I assure you I know my own name.”

  “Got a brother,” he said with an air of triumph. “Makes stays.”

  I burst out laughing. “All my brothers and sisters died in their infancy, sir, and none of us were acquainted with any staymaker!”

  “I am right,” he said obstinately. “And then I turned to walk down this street and there was a cart and I stumbled and – and –” He started to sob; maudlin drunk, God help us, as well as dead. I bade him a polite goodbye and hurried through the thickening rain to the door.

  At the railings, the feelings took me again.

  I felt a shock like the buffeting of an icy gale, stumbled, flung out my hands. But they met only empty air. Daylight snapped into darkness. I fell, felt stone bruise my hands. Not again, please God, not again. Another scene was already forming in front of me – tall houses on an elegant street as before. But this time they did not stay in place; they were overlaid by the trees of the square. Darkness and light flared in my eyes as the two settings flickered and mingled, houses, trees, houses…

  I lay on my back, staring up at the trees of the gardens as, at last, the surroundings settled firmly into the reality of the square. Voices were shouting. Hands took hold of my shoulders. A footman stared at me from the house steps with amused contempt. Closer, a woman’s voice said, “Are you unwell, sir?”

  I looked into cool grey eyes. They belonged to a woman of perhaps forty, very finely but plainly dressed. Lady Anne’s cousin. Her dark blonde hair was dressed high upon her head; one gleaming ringlet hung down against the white skin of her neck.

  “Are you ill, sir?” she repeated.

  “A – a little dizzy.”

  “Come into the house.”

  So I made my entrance into the house where I had hoped to come so elegantly, on the arm of a supporting woman, attended by a knowing look from a footman who plainly thought me as drunk as the spirit in the gardens. He took my coat away to be brushed and brought it back a few minutes later together with a brandy requested by the lady. We sat in a withdrawing room, the lady looking on as I wretchedly shivered and trembled. Staring down at my hands, I saw a fine embedding of stones in the heel of my right hand.

  I struggled to be calm. The lady had no qualms about remaining alone with me, I noted, which made her as careless of convention as Lady Anne. She addressed me in matter-of-fact tones, as if nothing untoward had happened, although her gaze was steady and watchful. She was, I realised, allowing me time to gather my wits and compose myself.

  “We have not been introduced,” she said as I sipped the unwonted luxury of fine brandy. “I am Esther Jerdoun, Lady Anne’s cousin. And you are Mr Charles Patterson, music teacher.”

  She could not have summed up our social positions more nicely. Reddening, I sat on the edge of my chair and attempted an apology. She shook her head – a fine head with a clear profile outlined against the red-and-white-striped satin of her chair.

  “I am grateful for your help, Mrs Jerdoun,” I said, carefully according her the courtesy of the title as convention requires, though I did not know if she was married or no.

  She waved away my gratitude. “Lady Anne, I believe, invited you to look at some scores she has acquired. She has an extensive collection of music, although I am afraid I do not know the precise score to which she alluded. She is still at dinner with her friends.”

  I remembered that other dinner party I had glimpsed through the window, days before. “You do not eat with her, madam?”

  “I had a headache earlier in the evening and preferred to dine alone. If you are feeling recovered, Mr Patterson, perhaps you would care to see the library?”

  I was hardly certain I could stand, but I knew she was still pursuing her aim of putting me at my ease, and followed her from the room. She talked on quietly, pointing out the attractions of the house, not waiting for responses, not asking for any. I was grateful for her consideration and did my best to be interested.

  It was a very splendid house, decorated in the most fashionable (and no doubt expensive) style. Cherubs cavorted on plaster ceilings among swags of leaves and fruit, and looked down on cream wallpaper thinly striped with blue; chairs almost too delicate to sit upon stood beneath portraits of high-nosed ancestors; porcelain vases and vast bowls of fragrant potpourri stood upon marble tables. In the hall, a staircase swept up to the floors above; from a distant room came the sound of laughter.

  Mrs Jerdoun led me to the rear of the house, opening doors on to an echoing chill space. The walls were lined with bookcases; the polished wooden floor gleamed in the light of many candles. The only furniture – positioned under a tall window – was a closed harpsichord and its stool. I ran my fingers over the elegant beading along the lid’s edge.

  “I would open the instrument for you,” Mrs Jerdoun said apologetically, “but my cousin keeps the key. We found the servants would toy with it while we were out, and it goes out of tune so easily.”

  I nodded. “Do you play?”

  “Not at all. I have no patience for it. Nor for singing. I find such amusements trivial.”

  So much for music. Perhaps Mrs Jerdoun thought from my silence that she had offended me. “Forgive me for plain speaking but I am impatient with the hypocrisy indulged in by most women. Their great interest in music lasts only to the end of the marriage ceremony.”

  “I wonder anyone ever plays music,” I said with some asperity. “Ladies regard it as a means to show off their charms and catch a husband while gentlemen consider serious practice requires too much exertion and is therefore unbecoming.”

  “It is,” she said decisively. “It is a craft, and no gentleman should involve himself in anything so beneath his station.”

  “There is an element of craft in it, certainly – although a better word would be science. But it is also surely an Art.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Is it not Art, madam, to convey in one’s compositions the passions of the human soul – joy, grief, exaltation?”

  “Do you speak of Monsieur le Sac’s works?” she said dryly.

  “Hardly. But consider the acknowledged masters…”

  “I would prefer not to,” she said, moving away to snuff a candle that was guttering wildly. “Besides, I can acknowledge a man expert in his work without considering him an artist. The man who made these candles, for instance. He has produced an object that is of excellent quality, admirably suited for its purpose. But that is merely to say that he has learnt well when he was an apprentice and knows how to apply the techniques of his craft. It is the same with music.”

  I was intrigued and admiring. It is not usual to find a lady with such strong and well-expressed views. But this was an unusual household altogether; her cousin was not conventional in her manners, and as for the house itself…

  My hand trembled on the lid of the harpsichord. I cleared my throat, determined to banish thoughts of what had happened on my arrival. “But consider the music used in divine worship.”

  “A mere tool to sharpen our awareness of the words of the gospels. Though even there – ” She frowned in contemplation of the drift of smoke from the extinguishe
d candle. “Even there, it is fit only for the generality of people. Any man or woman of common sense can judge the truth or otherwise of God’s word without such aids.”

  The truth or otherwise. Did that suggest she doubted the word of God? We were approaching dangerous ground. I pointed out a second dying candle and we moved naturally on to consider the books around us. Mrs Jerdoun was proficient in both French and Italian, which I much envied her, my Italian being merely tolerable and my French greatly deficient. She seemed surprised that I knew any.

  She took down a book of engravings, of the ancient ruins in Rome, and in speculating upon the purpose of the remains I contrived to lay aside the remembrance of my unorthodox arrival. Mrs Jerdoun had visited the ruins and had interesting tales to tell; she was describing an ancient pillar when the doors were thrown open. In swept Lady Anne, in yellow satin and old gold lace, fanning herself and laughing at something one of her guests was saying. Ladies and gentlemen both together, elegant in bright colours, indolent in manner and tinkling in laughter. Even Mr Claudius Heron, a gentleman of about forty, in a light-buff-coloured suit which complemented his pale colouring (he too wears his own hair in defiance of fashion) raised a faint smile at the sally of a young lady. And from her privileged position at the head of the throng, her expression visible only to Mrs Jerdoun and myself, Lady Anne raised her eyebrows to the ceiling as if to say ‘Heaven help me!’

  She introduced me to her guests, an honour I had not anticipated. Mr Heron cast me a frowning look but acknowledged me civilly, if curtly. Upon Mrs Jerdoun remarking that we had been looking at the engravings of Rome, a general conversation began in which I was kindly included. Her ladyship’s guests were prepared, it was clear, to follow her lead and accept me, if not as an equal, at least as tolerably worthy of notice. Heron particularly was generous enough to convey his personal apologies for his misunderstanding of my encounter with Nichols.