Dead, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  That did rather seem to sum them up.

  ‘Now, you’ll be wanting a spot of refreshment, Mr Mozart,’ said another of the organisers.

  ‘That would certainly be welcome.’

  ‘Well, there’s the Fly and Toad, the Emperor of Russia and the Bull’s Head – they’re all within walking distance, and they all do a very good spread.’

  ‘I have heard good reports of the Bull’s Head,’ I said, and they nodded their heads and led the way there.

  The Bull’s Head turned out to be a handsome modern building in stone, most commodious in every respect. I could well believe it was the haunt of the artists and creative minds of the town, from the relaxed and congenial atmosphere in its bars, very different from the constrained and competitive feeling a tavern has when commercial and manufacturing men are its principal patrons. It was easy to pick out its landlady, for she had obviously bustled in from the concert a minute or two before, and was just come from the back where she had removed her coat. Now she was greeting other concertgoers from behind the bar.

  She was a handsome, ample woman, red of face, sturdy of arm, and she exuded friendliness and good cheer – my ideal of a landlady, especially when combined with a willingness to extend credit. And that, if the Bull’s Head was the resort of artists and writers, she must have been willing to do. She had a couple of young men with her behind the bar to enforce good order, but I did not imagine this was often a problem: her friendliness and firmness would together ensure that no one overstepped the mark. She kept her eye on the flow of people into the inn, and it was gratifying that when she saw us approaching the bar, and in particular myself, an expression of joyful surprise came over her face, and she could hardly express her pleasure.

  ‘Oh! Good Heavens! Mr Mozart! Well, I could never have hoped … Oh, my good sir, what pleasure you have given us tonight, what heavenly pleasure!’

  I must confess that, when I am received in this way, I wonder why I waste my days throwing my unregarded genius at the denizens of the capital. I made modest murmurs of demurral that were totally insincere, and made no objection when she insisted that I ate and drank that evening at her expense, as did all the gentlemen of the party, who had given Bradford the musical experience of a lifetime.

  ‘It was the concert of one’s dreams,’ she said, seeming to babble away in her happiness; ‘wonderful beyond our wildest expectations. And everybody in Bradford already, worshipped you as the man who made the beautiful arrangement of the Messiah!’

  ‘Bloody Messiah!’ I roared.

  I was conscious of a roomful of disapproving eyes fixed on me.

  ‘I was talking to our delightful landlady about a most unsatisfactory performance of that masterpiece,’ I lied hurriedly. ‘In, er, Chiswick, I seem to remember. They had no idea of how that wonderful piece should go. No doubt you perform it with a proper reverence up North.’

  ‘We do that,’ said one of the manufacturers complacently.

  I did not encourage further talk about Messiah. As the gentlemen of my party split up into groups, and my son went into earnest negotiations with a local mill-owner concerning music lessons for his daughters (‘Music’s not for boys, in my view, no disrespect intended, of course’) I managed to get the good lady to myself, and was soon on an excellent footing with her. Before long we were seated in front of plates of rare beef, with roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and horseradish sauce.

  ‘I am not a glutton,’ I said to my hostess, ‘but you certainly know how to feed a man.’

  ‘Get that into you, and then come back for more. My daughter says you’re not a hearty eater. To tell you the truth she thinks you’re vain about your figure.’

  I let that last slander go, since I was bemused by her earlier remark. I gaped at her dumbly.

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Mozart, I beg your pardon! I thought that was why you were here – thought Betty must have told you to come here if you were in Bradford.’

  ‘Betty? Then … then you are Mrs Ackroyd?’

  She winked at me.

  ‘Courtesy title. The nobility have them, so why shouldn’t ordinary folk? Everybody calls me that, but there’s never been a Mr Ackroyd. Saves a lot of questions and bother, and it looks better in a landlady who’s trying to run a respectable establishment.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I said, my mind racing through a variety of possibilities. ‘And of course it must have been better for little Betty not to be branded as—’

  ‘A bastard?’ She had lowered her voice, but was not embarrassed. ‘Well, as to that, everybody knew. Because the fact is, Lord Hertford is a great man in the West Riding, and not much that he does can remain secret.’ My mind stopped racing around and tried to come to terms with the astonishing truth as she went on: ‘But as to being branded, there was really a lot of prestige, having such a great man as a father. My Betty would sometimes queen it over the other children as a little girl, though I spanked that out of her.’

  ‘Was he fond of the child himself?’

  She screwed up her face.

  ‘My Lord? Oh, he’s not a great one for fondness, nor for children either. He could be amused by her prattle for ten minutes, but then he’d have her taken away. He does his duty by people, does Lord H, but it’s not often his emotions are involved.’

  ‘No, that’s my impression of the man.’

  ‘He’s patronising this opera season, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Lord Hertford has always been a—’ I was about to say ‘generous’ but substituted ‘discriminating patron of the musical theatre.’

  Mrs Ackroyd smiled, and bent foward confidentially.

  ‘Hot in bed and cold out of it – that’s Lord Hertford. And I’m one who knows him.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘And he’ll be a bit past the “bed” thing by now, I’d reckon.’

  ‘Certainly one hears no rumours around the theatres.’

  ‘What has replaced it, I wonder? Something always does, you know, when powerful lust fades away. Would it be wealth, perhaps? Or power?’

  ‘The two things rather go together,’ I said. ‘I think he and his wife are very interested in both of them.’

  ‘Then perhaps they are closer now than they ever were in my time. If rumour is true they both of them batten powerfully on the new King.’

  ‘Certainly they have done for years. But if London rumour is correct their time is drawing to a close.’

  She nodded, obviously enjoying this gossip about Great Ones she had known, in her time, more intimately than anyone. ‘Yes, I had heard that from Betty. King’s favourite is a thankless position, isn’t it? Anyone who loses favour is quickly out in the cold.’

  The relevance to her own position may have struck her. She bustled about to refill our plates and glasses, though I tried to stop her.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘You’re in Yorkshire, and you’ll eat as a Yorkshireman does.’

  When we had settled down over our victuals once more, I said:

  ‘As far as you are concerned Lord Hertford has exercised his power beneficently?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’d never say otherwise.’

  ‘And as far as Betty is concerned too?’

  ‘Certainly. Neither of us has any complaint.’

  ‘How did she get her musical education?’

  ‘Through His Lordship.’ She sat back in the inn’s settle.

  ‘Well, what happened was, I started noticing that she had what seemed to me a lovely voice, but being an ignorant woman I didn’t trust myself, so I took her along to our vicar, Mr Morgan. Being Welsh he’s very musical – and precious long-winded too, but maybe that’s from the same cause. Anyway, he’s a kindly person, and mostly never mentions my past history. Well, he heard her, and he said he’d never heard a voice like it, and he said: “Mrs Ackroyd, it’s your duty to get that voice trained.”’

  ‘He was right.’

  ‘Any road, I had a word with the steward from T
emple Newsam next time he came calling, as he regularly did on orders from Lord H., and he put in a word with his master and – well, to cut a long story short, when he was convinced that what we were saying was nothing less than the truth, he sent her to the best teacher in Bradford. He often made enquiries about her progress, and once sent word by the steward that he regarded the voice lessons as an excellent investment.’

  ‘A touch cold, but at least he was willing to stand by his investment.’

  ‘Oh, he was. He sent her on a tour of the Continent, so she would be ahead of other young singers in her knowledge of all the latest fashions and trends.’ Rossini. That’s what that meant. ‘Oh no, we’ve no complaints, Betty or I, about His Lordship.’

  ‘And now he is furthering her career in London?’

  ‘Exactly. What more could Betty have asked for? Of course I had my doubts about her setting off in life on her own so young, but it had to happen some time, and with a gift like that I would never have been able to keep her in Bradford.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you did right. I am a little surprised that Betty never told me that Lord Hertford is her father.’

  She laid down her knife and fork, and looked at me open-mouthed.

  ‘You mean you didn’t know? Oh Mr Mozart, I am ashamed! Here’s me rattling on about my private affairs convinced you already knew all about them!’

  ‘It’s been most interesting. I care deeply for Betty and for her talent. Is there any reason why she should have kept her parentage quiet?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Everybody knows here … I suppose, maybe, that making a fresh start in London, she thought it wasn’t everybody’s business to comment on her family background.’

  ‘Or possibly Lord Hertford asked her to keep it quiet?’

  ‘That’s possible. Him being such a party man, so much of a Tory, maybe he felt it would harm her career, particularly at the present time. If he did ask her she’d have agreed. She knows she’s much in his debt.’

  ‘For life itself.’

  ‘Oh yes, but children always forget that, don’t they?’

  ‘Not my own, I am happy to say,’ I said, nodding towards my dear son. ‘Does she feel any … love for him?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. How could she, when she never knew him all the time she was growing up, not to remember? But respect. It’s worked out a lot better with him and me and her than in some other cases.’

  ‘Oh? Other cases around here?’

  She smiled and drank a healthy swig of porter.

  ‘I never was the only one. Even in my time there were others.’

  ‘I heard about a lady friend in Leeds.’

  ‘That was who I was thinking about, where it didn’t work out so well, not by a long chalk. I never met her, but I’ve been told she was a very beautiful woman, and much more of a lady than I ever was. I think she managed things less well than I did, but, thinking about it, maybe there wasn’t much else she could do.’

  ‘Was it a different situation?’

  ‘It was. She was married, you see.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Married to a gentleman who was quite prosperous in the Manchester trade. Had a big shop in Briggate, and a very good class of customer. She was childless and interested in charitable work among the poor and homeless. When the liaison began – I don’t know how or when it started – he rented a small apartment on the outskirts of Leeds so they could be together whenever he pleased. As far as the husband was concerned she was about her charitable business – which very often she was, so there was not much danger of being found out. The husband himself was often away on business – buying, visiting mills and so on – so all in all she must have felt herself quite safe.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘She found herself in an interesting condition.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And of course being in her way a devout person she would not commit the sin of having an abortion, though there were plenty in Leeds could have helped her to one.’

  ‘She was married – was it a great problem?’

  ‘Oh, she herself was uncertain who the father was, but the likelihood was, since she and her husband had been childless for nearly ten years, that it was Lord Hertford. Now as you know Lord Hertford is a very dark man – dark hair, dark complexion, what they call saturnine.’

  ‘I remember when he was. He’s quite white of hair now.’

  ‘Of course he would be. I suppose it makes him look less forbidding. Now the husband was very fair of skin and blond of hair – something of the Viking there, I suppose, for many of his family were the same. So even before the birth she began dropping hints that her father was very dark of hair and complexion, though she herself was auburn.’

  ‘Was her father dead?’

  ‘No, he’d had a financial collapse and had taken himself and his family to the Continent, to Germany, where, they could live very respectably on very little. They’d been there for years, and Lord Hertford’s mistress, who was the eldest daughter, was the only one who had remained behind, being a teacher in a respectable school. Anyway, the boy was born, dark of hair and of skin, and the husband didn’t think twice, except to make the odd joke as fathers do. He was pleased as Punch and proud of the boy. He was a stern man, but quite good in his heart. Or perhaps I should say “just” – it’s not quite the same thing, is it?’

  I nodded my understanding.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The Peace of Amiens. People in England thought the wars were at an end and set out to travel on the Continent. Nobody there thought they were over, and many of the English took the opportunity to return home. So one day in 1802 there on the doorstep was her father, large as life and ginger of hair. And his family, ranging from the auburn to the flaming red. The husband was very stern, very controlled, but before a week had gone by he’d had the truth out of her.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He couldn’t bear the thought of living with someone who’d deceived him for so long. He wasn’t ungenerous – far from it in the circumstances. He set the father up in business in a small way in Dewsbury, and sent his wife off with them. But he kept the boy with him in Leeds.’

  ‘That was hard.’

  ‘Was it? Hard on the wife, perhaps, but not on the son. He believed in punishing the guilty, but not the innocent. He loved him as a son and brought him up as a son, and he had every advantage. His business later went into a bit of a decline, but he’s still alive, living in a modest way. No, I don’t criticise him, though there’s many do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He brought up the son to hate the father. I don’t know when he told him he was his father, but he told him Lord Hertford had betrayed his mother and he passed on his own bitter, bitter hatred to the boy. There’s some that say that’s unnatural.’

  ‘It’s certainly … unattractive.’

  She shook her head, unwilling to go along with that.

  ‘We’re good haters up here in Yorkshire. We have a saying around here: “Keep a stone in thy pocket seven year; turn it, and keep it seven year longer, that it may be ever ready to thine hand when thine enemy draws near.” He would have said he was the boy’s father in everything except an accident of nature, and he had a right to teach him to hate anyone who’d injured him.’

  ‘You obviously are on the man’s side.’

  ‘Oh, I am.’ She got up and began collecting up plates. ‘Though to be honest I sometimes thank my stars I was never married, particularly to someone as bitter and unbending as Mr Hartshead.’

  14. E Quello è Mio Padre

  The rest of my stay was uneventful, and was spent mainly in the happy home in Wakefield. On the journey back to London through the paddy fields of Lincolnshire I had much to meditate on: the happiness of the little family I had just left; the fact that I had invited to the first performance of my new opera Le Comari Allegre di Windsor not only my son, but his wife and children as well (how were they to be accommoda
ted?); and, most insistently, the facts I had learnt about the birth and backgrounds of Betty Ackroyd and Bradley Hartshead.

  I reviewed in my mind the facts. Both the young people were the bastard offspring of Lord Hertford. At some stage since coming to London – or possibly on the continent – they had joined forces, and this fact Betty had not told her mother, though obviously she had told her a good deal about me. The possibility that the pair had conceived a plot to discredit or ruin their natural father was surely a real one. I discounted any idea that that plot could have involved murder: I did not believe either of them capable of that, nor yet both together. But thinking back to the ineffectual figure of Jenny Bowles I did wonder if she had somehow blundered into her murder, if it had been almost unintentional, but brought about by her own inadequacy or muddleheadedness.

  I thought over what I knew about Bradley Hartshead – very much less than I knew about Betty. I had never seen him behave towards Lord Hertford with anything other than the impeccable courtesy which the man himself would enforce. But then I had not very often seen them together at all. I was beginning to rely on Hartshead as a sympathetic figure, an admirer of my music, and an extremely competent musician. I was thinking of him as a helper in the preparation of Le Comari Gaie di Windsor – yes, that would be better: gaie. I did not want to forego his assistance either because of opposition from Lord Hertford or because the young man did not want any association with his father. But then I had seen no suspicion of either emotion in either of the men.

  I wondered how things were going at the Queen’s trial. My son did not take a newspaper and I had been too busy and happy to borrow one. What was more, people had not been talking about it. Was this because interest was declining, or because people in the North regard doings in the South of the country with the sort of scorn they also pour on the doings of foreigners? I thought it probable that things were now nearing a conclusion and there was now no question of the King’s party changing their mind and producing Betty Ackroyd as ‘Jenny’. Did this mean that things would have calmed down and there was no longer any danger (if there ever had been any) to Davy? Pleasant though the lad’s company was in the apartment I had no desire to imprison him. Even if the danger had receded it might be advisable to send him back to Essex, or even up to the North, though not to anywhere within Lord Hertford’s sphere of influence. But the North is indeed another country, and I couldn’t see Davy working in one of the hellish mills there.