Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘Well, things change, don’t they?’ he said, his words very distinct, and I smelt brandy on his breath and caught a glint in his eye. ‘Circumstances change. One day I may be able to stand here, on her grave, and say “Well, you old bitch, what do you think of the mongrel now?” Oh, I had my fill of her condescension, of her kindness – she really did think she was being kind, you know. But one day I’ll really crow at her shade!’

  ‘Already you are here – son of the King,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, now! Now is nothing!’ We had strolled down the nave and now emerged into the sunlight. I could see not just his handsome face but the eyes too, the glint in which was not liveliness or humour, but seemed a light which spoke of obsession, of madness, quite marring the man’s beauty. ‘Now they talk, now they sneer. Not to our faces, not in the King’s presence. But go into the next room and you’ll hear them sneer. “The FitzClarences are getting above themselves.” “The FitzClarences are making hay while the sun shines.” That other German bitch – the widow of Kent – didn’t want her daughter to meet us, as if we were pitch which would defile her. Oh, the time will come! I’ll show her as well!’

  ‘You said the other night–’ I began, but he immediately drew himself up, as if surprised, and interrupted me.

  ‘Have I talked to you?’

  ‘Two nights ago. On the terrace.’

  He thought.

  ‘Are you one of the theatre people?’

  ‘Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. The composer.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘You said on the terrace that it was significant that your father did not marry the Queen until the year “eighteen”.’ A shadow crossed his eyes, consciousness that he had been a fool. But he said nothing and I was forced to go on. ‘Did you mean that he couldn’t marry her until your mother was dead? Or felt he couldn’t, perhaps?’

  There was a long silence. I had clearly lost my prey – I could almost see the deer running away towards the forest.

  ‘My meaning I leave up to you, Mr Mozart. Maybe there was no meaning in my words. I was a little drunk, was I not?’

  ‘In vino veritas,’ I said inanely.

  ‘Sometimes, Mr Mozart. But sometimes not truth, but a great deal of nonsense, as I’m sure you know. I am a cautious man, Mr Mozart. I take no steps I have not deeply thought out before times. Like my mother: she never took on a new role but she knew it inside out in advance – not just the words, but every movement, every look, every gesture. As to the future, we advance slowly, taking here a field, there a hill, now a village. Caution, Mr Mozart – that is our watchword!’

  That from the man who had demanded that his father make him Prince of Wales! I was about to frame some further questions when he swung away from me, and with long strides proceeded along the path around the Lower Ward and up towards the castle. As I watched his upright bearing and striking profile, seemingly made for the coinage, I suddenly remembered who that profile reminded me of. It was my dear old friend da Ponte, best of all collaborators, in the year he arrived in this God-forsaken country, when his only words of English were ‘women’, ‘wine’and ‘credit’, and when he was utterly besotted by the charms of the actress Dorothea Jordan.

  16. Child of Nature

  I followed George FitzClarence thoughtfully up to the castle. I was convinced now that he was a man of powerful passions and unstable mind, whose brooding on his supposed wrongs had unsettled him to the point of madness. I say supposed wrongs because, as the King had said, there were worse things than being the natural son of a member of the Royal Family. But such an argument could only be appreciated by a stable mind – by such a one as his sister’s, for example – and I was convinced that, from his early years, George FitzClarence had lovingly nursed and nourished his grievance. His comments on the Old Queen, though superficially understandable, had all the hallmarks of an old grudge, mentally mulled over and over until it had become a mania.

  But what I needed to know was: who was behind the man’s current obsessions and actions? That there was somebody was clear – that person had supplied him with a bogus wedding certificate or transcript of a church register. He was an instigator, not a lieutenant, and he was acting from motives so far unclear. That same person, I was sure, was still busily stoking the fires of the man’s obsession. Probably he had been at it that very morning. I remembered that he had come in from the town, and that he had had alcohol on his breath.

  When I arrived at the castle I took the unlikely step of asking to speak privately with Lord Howe, the Queen’s Chamberlain. I knew I was not merely persona non grata to him, but practically non-existent in a worldly sense. I had conceived what could optimistically be called a plan of action, and the only person I could think of who might have the sort of personality necessary to bring it off was that cold, rigid, forbidding man. From the fact that he scared me I drew the inference that he might scare others. He received me in his magnificent but chilly office (if such it might be called) deep in the bowels of the castle.

  ‘Lord Howe, I am sorry to disturb you,’ I opened, ‘but I am afraid I am in need of assistance.’ There was the slightest of nods, indicative of the fact that he was accustomed to demand service rather than have it demanded of him. Particularly by a jobbing musician. Indeed, for all I knew he may have thought I was about to demand assistance of a pecuniary nature. Particularly if he knew my reputation. I hastened on. ‘As you are aware, My Lord, the King has asked me to enquire into into a most delicate matter, which may shortly come to a to a climax, perhaps a resolution.’

  ‘Good,’ he enunciated, very tight-lipped.

  ‘To achieve this resolution, it may be necessary to use all the authority, the weight, of the Crown. Without, if that is possible, directly involving the King or Queen.’

  He thought about this for some time.

  ‘I see,’ he said at last, with the tiniest diminution of chill. ‘It is always best not to involve the Sovereign directly. That has always been my policy and practice. The purpose of a royal servant such as myself is to deflect criticism, to keep royal personages above vulgar argument. But is there –’ there was a sharp intake of breath, suggesting a distaste at having to ask for information from so manifestly inferior a being – ‘any additional reason for keeping Their Majesties at some distance in so far as concerns the resolution of this matter?’

  He was sharper than I had thought.

  ‘It is a question of the King’s natural affections,’ I said.

  He remembered our earlier conversation and saw the point at once.

  ‘I see. Go on.’

  ‘I need Your Lordship’s help in two ways. The first may seem small, but I feel Your Lordship’s authority within the castle may lead to success more quickly than any enquiry of my own could. I need to know where the man called Tom Garth or Captain Garth drinks, and if possible where he lodges, and I think the best way to find that out is to enquire from the footmen and the domestic staff here at the castle. In their off-duty hours they probably frequent the inns and taverns of Windsor.’

  He looked as if I had asked him to empty a privy, but after a moment’s thought he rang a little bell. The footman who came in was tall and young, and looked so like a young scion of the aristocracy that I wondered about his intelligence. However when Lord Howe, in a voice swimming with distaste, had succinctly set out what was required of him, the man nodded as if such things were all in a day’s work, and bowed himself out to set about it. Lord Howe turned back to me.

  ‘You mentioned two ways …?’

  ‘Yes. The second is that I would ask you, respectfully, to hold yourself in readiness, My Lord. I may have to ask you to represent what I called the authority of the Crown against this man Garth. It may be necessary to cow him to silence, it may be necessary to force him to leave the country. If all else fails, the authority of the Crown might be obliged to bribe the whole story out of him.’

  He nodded almost complacently.

  ‘I have been involved in such duties from
time to time. Before I became Chamberlain to Her present Majesty, of course. Such exercises of royal authority are usually successful. The Crown has powers, even in this levelling age, and I am always happy to exercise them. There is in this case a complicating factor–’

  I took his point at once.

  ‘Quite, My Lord. The man seems quite willing to use his … supposed origins. However, we will hope to find some way of rendering that factor useless to him.’

  His expression suggested he had had a chamber-pot emptied over him from an upstairs window.

  ‘Any more public comment on the matter would be most regrettable.’

  ‘True, My Lord. But we must use what weapons we can. The main purpose of our efforts must surely be to protect the Princess Victoria.’ This time he nodded with a frozen kind of enthusiasm. ‘Then Your Lordship will hold yourself in readiness?’

  He bowed almost imperceptibly, and waited for me to depart.

  When I had completed the trek back to the State Apartments luncheon was over and some of the castle guests were lounging about or pursuing their usual occupations of cards or billiards, while others seemed to be preparing for departure. I looked for the Princess Victoria, but since she was not to be found, nor any of her party, I presumed she was one of the latter group – her mother making her escape as early as possible with a sigh of relief, no doubt. I was just wondering what to do with myself when I was approached by the aristocratic young sprig of a footman, who had gone about the tasks set him most expeditiously.

  ‘Mr Mozart? I’ve got the information you require.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘The man Garth mostly tipples at the Five’Orseshoes, or failing that the Fox and Newt or the Duke of Marlborough. The general opinion is that he’s a dodgy cove.’

  ‘I suspect that the general opinion is correct.’

  ‘We’re not so sure about’is lodgings, but someone has’eard’im mention Mrs Lupton’s in Washing Alley. Lets rooms with meals as required to gentlemen, but not too gentlemanly ones, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘I do. I am very grateful to you.’

  ‘Take care, Mr Mozart. We don’t want anything’appening to you so there’s no more jolly music, do we?’

  His heart seemed to be in the right place, and he showed a welcome element of warmth in that chilly environment, so I thanked him heartily. I immediately set out for the St George’s Gate and the picturesque if dirty town of Windsor. I was not well acquainted with the place, but it is not large and I immediately set off in quest of the various hostelries the young man had mentioned. The Five Horseshoes I found easily – a large, bustling place built in my lifetime, but though I searched through its many rooms and snugs clutching a glass of gin and water for which I had very little use I could find no sign of Torn Garth. The Duke of Marlborough hardly measured up to the greatness of its namesake, being a tumbledown hovel from the Duke’s own time, but again there was no Tom Garth. However, when I spotted the Fox and Newt down a dull, dark lane I somehow knew I would find my man there, and I was right. He was down the far end of the bar, lounging against it with the ease of long familiarity, and surrounded by a little knot of cronies.

  ‘A bottle of your finest sherry, landlord,’ I said grandly, and took myself to a table in their vicinity.

  The men surrounding my quarry were a raffish-looking lot. Their clothes had once been good – probably when worn by someone else – but were now ill-fitting and far from clean. Some of their faces had not seen a razor in the last two or three days, and probably not even a face-cloth either. They smelt of sweat, tobacco and the stables, and several of them, Tom Garth included, were smoking long, curly pipes. Their talk was of horses and dogs – not so very different from Lord Errol’s conversation as far as the subject-matter was concerned, but decidedly different as to the tone. These men were low, and Tom Garth was diving down to meet them.

  I had to wait quite a while, and was well into my third glass of sherry, before the conversation turned away from the equine and the canine.

  ‘If you’re going to stake ten guineas on Morning Glory,’ said one of these rough rakes to Tom Garth, ‘then your fortunes are looking up.’

  Tom Garth looked pleased with himself, and tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘Maybe so, old cock, maybe so. The state of the pocket-book is looking distinctly healthy.’

  ‘Your distinguished family doing the decent thing?’

  Tom Garth puffed out his cheeks in disgust.

  ‘My distinguished family doesn’t want to know me. My distinguished family would very much rather I had never come into the world to embarrass their greatness with my very existence. Incumbrances born to men are one thing – particularly when the men reach what you might call the top of their profession. Incumbrances born to young ladies are quite another thing.’

  ‘There you’re being unfair, Tom,’ said another of them, in whom some flicker of the flame of loyalty seemed to burn. ‘The new head of the family seems a jolly old cove enough, and he invites you to the family’ome. That you told us. You can’t say the family don’t want to know you, can you?’

  ‘By “know” I mean do the generous thing, Jim,’ said Tom Garth, whose priorities, I had to admit, were not a hundred miles removed from my own. ‘Do the decent thing, come to that. Invitations are cheap and butter no parsnips. No, if I have a few guineas to lay on a decent prospect in the horseflesh line it has been gained by the sweat of my brow.’

  The talk, infuriatingly, now turned back to the turf. I meditated on Tom Garth’s accent, which was much better than the rest’s. He had the tones and grammar of an educated man. But they had slipped towards roughness, as if men of this type were the ones he nowadays most usually associated with. No wonder he had looked uneasy and out of place at the castle.

  I ordered a slice of goose pie with the usual trimmings and settled in for a long wait. I was on my fifth glass before the talk turned back to a topic of any interest to me. It was provoked by someone shaking his head and saying regretfully, ‘You ‘ve got to have the contacts.’

  ‘Too true, my boy,’ said Tom Garth. ‘You’ve got to have the contacts – both up and down.’

  ‘What do you mean, up and down?’

  ‘My philosophy of life,’ said Garth expansively, ‘gained from bitter experience, is never to be the initiator.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Never be the one who sets a nice little scheme in motion,’ the man explained, expansively. ‘That way if things go wrong it’s you who ends up carrying the can. I’ve tried that, and nearly came a frightful cropper. I could have not only carried the can but ended up in jug, like as not. No, the best trick is to make yourself useful to somebody. That way there’s someone there to shuffle the blame on to. As to down, well, my plan is always to employ professionals.’

  ‘Experts, like?’

  ‘Experts, Sam. People who really know what they’re doing. Take a case in point. Say, just for the sake of argument I wanted a letter written in someone’s else’s hand. Or say I wanted an official-looking form. Now, I could make a fist at things of that kind myself, no question. But would they stand up to close scrutiny?’

  ‘Not these days,’ said Sam sagely. ‘The authorities have become powerful sharp.’

  ‘They have,’ agreed Tom Garth. ‘More’s the pity. So if you want a job done, you go looking for the best man for the job – an expert imitator of the autography of other people.’ His audience nodded, but in a bemused way, as if unused to words of more than two syllables. ‘And when I find him, I give him exact and precise directions as to what he should do. I tell him what to do, but I don’t tell him why he’s doing it. Not his business, see? And when the job is done I pay him generously – or my principal does – and that is the end of the matter. Unless it were to happen that I should need him again, in which case I know where to go.’

  ‘Very wise,’ they collectively murmured. ‘That’s the way to go about things. Stands to reason.’

 
‘Likewise, if I wanted to nobble a horse – which God forbid, having too much respect for the noble beasts –’ he drew in a mouthful of smoke from his pipe and let it out in a satirical spiral, to appreciative chuckles from his audience – ‘I would never attempt to do the job myself, unless I fancied having my skull crushed by a hoof. I would find a man who’d done it before, and was willing to do it again with no questions asked. And when he’d done the job I’d pay him well. Generosity is the watchword in these dealings, if you don’t want falling-out among … gentlemen. My distinguished family once tried to buy me off. They didn’t do it … wholeheartedly enough. They may live to regret it.’

  He took from the pocket of his waistcoat a gold watch.

  ‘Fine ticker, Tom,’ said the man he called Sam.

  ‘Present from my … my father, on my going into the army. Not a profession for a man of independent ideas, Sam. That was my experience, anyway. No doubt the Duke of Wellington would disagree – one of my fellow-guests at the castle, though we didn’t manage to exchange ideas.’ He winked – the bar-room card. ‘Well, I must be off. Mother Lupton’s dinner-hour approaches, so my watch and my internal organisation tell me. With regret, my friends –’ he took his pipe from his mouth and gave a parody of a bow – ‘I must bid you good day.’

  And he took himself off towards the door. I had already put down my knife and fork over the half-eaten goose pie (as so often happens the goose seemed to have led a too long and too active life to be comfortable eating). I swilled down the sherry in my glass, leaving the dregs in the bottle, and got up in an unhurried way and followed him out of the Fox and Newt.

  When I emerged into the dreary lane it was situated in he was not to be seen, but once back at the road I saw he was taking the direction away from the castle. I could not follow him too fast – my years did not permit that, and in any case I had no intention of drawing his notice to me. He walked on quite unsuspiciously for two or three minutes, then turned into another mean side lane. When I reached it I saw it was Washing Alley, and saw a door shutting of a house some yards down it that was really two cottages put together. I paused, wondering what was best to do, and unwilling to lose track of my quarry. There was a small shop opposite advertising ‘Pies, Pasties and Fine Pork Sausages, prop. Mrs Beddowes’, and when I lounged towards it I saw that in addition to its counter it had two rough benches and tables. It seemed to be my day for pies. I walked in, feeling the incongruousness of my dress and the low pastry shop, and ordered a slice of cold pork pie from the harassed but good-natured woman behind the counter.