The Glass Harmonica, page 15
There was the usual delay, and it was extended by a pompous speech by the curate of St. John’s, who rambled on and on about the role of the church as musical patron, quoting Papa Haydn and Johann Bach. At last, when she thought even her vow of patience would be worn through, the moment arrived for her to play. She had brought a dampened small towel with her, and she carefully wiped her fingers one last time before she rose to stand beside the armonica.
Mr. Franklin was mercifully brief in his introduction. Soon Eilish was seated on her little stool, her feet on the treadle, her fingers poised above the spinning crystal cups.
She repeated her program of the first concert, feeling confident because she had performed it before. She played “Barb’ry Allen” and “Highland Laddie” and the other familiar songs. There was a fair amount of conversation throughout her performance, but Eilish Eam, street musician, was used to that. When she played “Eileen Aroon,” there was a little flurry of activity in one of the middle rows. Eilish glanced up, and saw that one of the ladies had apparently fainted, and was being revived with smelling salts. This was not unusual, either.
Eilish renewed her concentration. Nothing must distract her. In moments of relative quiet, she was struck by the dynamic quality of the sound in the spacious church. Each tone flew upward into the high, curving ceiling, and returned enhanced, haloed, to her ears. It was as if the very angels listened and approved her music. Her slender bosom swelled with elation. This was music—real music. And surely, from the vault of heaven, her da was watching and listening.
She paused briefly to wipe her fingers once more, and to surreptitiously clean the glasses. She saw Franklin watching this procedure with a small frown. She gave him an impish smile. His brows flew up, but his eyes crinkled and his lips twitched as if he would laugh.
For her last piece, Eilish played one of the melodies of Mr. Handel, which her da had learned from Mr. Pockeridge. Sweetly, spinning out the notes, the armonica sang the melody of “O Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?” It was a slow tune, simple and pure, and the glasses sang it as if the great composer had meant it just for them. The audience recognized the melody, and favored it with a collective sigh. When it was finished, and the applause begun, Eilish allowed herself a quick glance from beneath her eyelids at Mr. Franklin. She saw him smiling, pleased, and she felt a rush of satisfaction. Whatever happened now, whatever the rest of the evening might bring, this moment was worth all of it, all the illness and embarrassment and hard work of the past months.
This time Eilish understood her role. She curtsied once, twice, and then moved quickly away, leaving the armonica to Franklin. She went to sit at the back of the church, in the darkest and emptiest of the pews. Only Peter sat there, and she took a seat next to him. As Franklin gave his little lecture on the properties and construction of the armonica, she listened, her heart pounding with excitement and, at last, joy at the success of her performance. Peter nodded to her, his eyes flashing white, his dark cheeks creasing. She leaned back against the hard pew and wrapped her arms about herself, wishing she could hold in this feeling of exhilaration, this thrill of accomplishment, to savor it over and over again. She felt as if this—exactly this sensation—was what she had been born for.
There was an intermission, during which the assembly got up and moved about the church, admiring the architectural details, talking together. Not a few people went to the armonica, and Eilish knew their hands were on it, their greasy fingers smudging her glasses. She told herself it didn’t matter, she could clean the cups in the morning. If only they wouldn’t break one!
After perhaps half an hour had passed, the assembly seated itself once again. Eilish relaxed next to Peter. Her work for the evening was completed, and she looked forward to hearing this new, strange instrument, the pianoforte. Mr. Franklin had told her that though the first ones had been built on the Continent, some fifty years before, a few emigrant Saxons were building them now in London, and this was to be a rare treat. The pianoforte was rumored to be the next rage. Miss Marianne Davies, well-known as a harpsichordist, would be the performer.
Marianne Davies was young, though not so young as Eilish. She was dark, and small, dressed in an elegant silver satin gown with a tiny waist and fitted bodice, her small breasts thrust up by her stays to make delectable mounds above the décolletage. Her skin was a smooth pale brown, her fingers slight, her arms quite bare. Eilish stared at her. Suddenly her own fine dress became drab and ordinary, the kind of dress worn only by persons of the working classes. She understood, her heart chilling, that next to Marianne Davies she must seem like just what she was—an Irish orphan from Seven Dials.
And then Marianne Davies began to play the pianoforte.
As the instrument was new, Miss Davies played the repertoire of the harpsichord, Bach, Scarlatti, and of course Handel. The sonority of the big instrument, the clarity of its upper tones, the full-throated depth of its lower tones, filled the church to bursting. All conversation ceased the moment the music began, but Eilish didn’t notice that. She was overcome by the beauty of Marianne Davies’s music.
Eilish didn’t know how it could be, that she could hear so many different melodies in one piece of music, and yet hear them all as part of a whole. She only knew that the limpid lines of Bach, the crisp and agile passages of Scarlatti, the simple emotions of Handel, were lovely beyond bearing. Miss Davies played as if without effort, her well-schooled fingers moving almost invisibly over the ivory keys. There was applause between her offerings, but not from Eilish. Eilish froze, holding her breath, waiting, yearning for the next piece. And the next. And, at the end of the final selection, she was shocked to find her cheeks wet with tears.
Candles were being lighted in sconces around the church as the assembly rose to take their leave. Eilish sat on, wiping her face, trembling with emotion. Peter bent down to her.
“Miss? What is it, miss? Are you unwell?”
Eilish looked up into his dark, kindly face. It seemed the most beautiful she had ever beheld. “Oh, no, Peter, no!” she cried. “It was just—’twas so utterly, so perfectly—perfect! Have you ever—have you ever in your life? So wonderful! Oh, if only I could learn to play like that!”
And at the thought, more tears welled and her throat closed tight. She turned away from Peter, from the ladies and gentlemen passing by her on their way out of St. John’s as if she was—no, because she was—only a servant.
No, she thought. I could never learn to play like that. No one would teach me. Not Raffer Eam’s daughter. Not a penniless Irish orphan from Seven Dials.
17
London, May 2018
THE Atheneum of Ancient Music never played Zeitler or Rushton, or any music later than early nineteenth century. Erin had been engaged for an all eighteenth-century program. They would play the Mozart quartet, of course, and the little solo Adagio in C minor, the Naumann Quartet for Strings and Glass Harmonica, and the Reichardt. The rest of the program was Handel and Haydn, only strings and winds and brass.
The first day of rehearsal they ran through all the glass harmonica pieces in the morning. The orchestra’s Baroque style was faultless. Tempi were easy, ornaments were in agreement. There was almost nothing to change. Erin found herself released for the day before one o’clock.
“I’d like to walk,” she said, as she and Mal emerged from St. John’s. The early morning mist had burned away in the mild sunshine, and the atrium columns glowed an opalescent white.
“Well, a short one,” Mal said. “I need to get back, make some calls.”
“I meant, alone,” Erin said. At Mal’s frown she added quickly, “Really, Mal. You go back to the hotel. Look, it’s the middle of the day. All kinds of people around.”
It was true. The Footstool, the little café below St. John’s, had a steady stream of customers, and the square was full of people enjoying the sun. Many wore the same reff T-shirts Erin and Charlie wore, and the thick rubber sandals that were popular at home. They carried the ubiquitous denim jackets and they cut their hair to look as ragged as possible, short or long or very long. Some wore remnants of native costumes over jeans. A babel of languages drifted past, Asian, African, Middle Eastern.
Mal said, “I’ll worry about you, out on your own. I promised your mother . . .”
Erin touched his arm. “I know, Mal, but I was a kid then. I’m a grownup now. I’ll be okay. Just a bit of time alone. Some exercise.”
“Where are you going?”
She gestured vaguely east. “The Gardens, the river. Just a walk.”
The tall black taxicab Mal had ordered pulled into the Square and the cabbie jumped out to open the door. “Go on,” Erin repeated. “I’ll be back for tea, okay? Don’t worry.”
Looking glum, Mal climbed in the cab. He gave a small, tired wave as it pulled away.
Erin waved back, trying not to look relieved. She slung her sweater over one shoulder and strode out into the Square. She crossed Millbank Road in an enclosed pedestrian overpass, and turned left, walking quickly until she reached the path into the Victoria Tower Gardens. There she slowed her pace, ambling northward. Old-fashioned dogroses and cow lilies flanked the path, and above them stretched banks of daisies and marigolds and rich yellow forsythia. Erin turned in a circle, her face lifted to the English sunshine. She inhaled the complex perfumes, exhilarated by the very Englishness of the flowers. Off to her right, through the light shrubbery, the Thames sparkled darkly green, cleaner than it had been in centuries. The breeze from the water carried a rivery tang. Shallow river barges, molded hulls painted scarlet and azure and emerald, paraded up and down the river, ferrying passengers from one end of London to the other. Union Jack pennants snapped an idiosyncratic rhythm to the melody of the water.
The breeze freshened, and Erin shrugged into her sweater and pushed her hair back with her fingers. She walked past the Millennium Obelisk, its pediment lapped by shallow waves, approaching the Victoria Tower pier just as a red barge docked and a dozen or so people disembarked. On an impulse, she pulled out her multicard and thrust it into the scanner. She followed several other passengers aboard.
She sat in the bow, her sandaled feet propped on the bulwarks, the collar of her sweater turned up against the wind. She didn’t know which way the barge was traveling, but she didn’t much care. It was lovely to sit and watch London slide by. It was rather like looking into a viewwindow, though there were lapses—cars of different periods, architecture ranging from Gothic to classical to contemp. And, too, the people in this scene weren’t actors, clean and well-fed and healthy. London had not succeeded in corralling its homeless and indigent, moving them out of the city. The socialism entrenched in Britain in the twentieth century had not given way in the twenty-first. American democracy had been less constraining.
But such thoughts were too serious for the sweetness of the day. Two gulls weaved back and forth above the barge, calling to each other in a tritone pattern—awk,awk,awk,awk. Erin laughed up at them, stretching out her arms, exulting in her youth, her strength, her independence.
The barge carried her all the way to the Tower and back again. It was a slow trip, with many stops, many exchanges of passengers. Erin lost track of time, and she lost count of the piers. There were so many, dotting the embankments on both sides, all flying the colorful barge flags. It didn’t seem to matter which was which, or where she was. She thought of the hour only when she began to get hungry. Her eyes were sun-dazzled, her cheeks wind-stung. She saw the shrubbery of what she thought was Victoria Tower Gardens, and she left the barge.
As she stepped up onto the pier, she glanced about in confusion. Nothing was familiar. She must have mistaken the stop. She looked about for assistance.
A uniformed woman nodded at her approach. “May I help you, madam?”
Erin said with a little laugh, “Oh, yes, please. I guess I’m on the wrong pier.”
“Yes, madam,” the woman said, with an air of having said the words a hundred times. “This is Westminster Pier. Which did you want?”
“Uh—Victoria Tower Gardens, I think. Closest to Smith Square?”
The woman looked more closely at Erin. “Yes, miss. You’ve left your boat too soon.” She pointed to the south. “Do you see the four spires there, off in the distance? That’s St. John’s, in Smith Square. It’s just up Bridge Road, here, and down Millbank Road. Bit of a walk, of course, two kilometers or more. You could wait for another boat.”
Erin followed the pointing finger. In the near distance was an ornate Victorian monument, the usual horses and carriage and writhing figures. Beyond that rose the roofs of Parliament and the tall column of Big Ben. If she stood on tiptoe, she could just see the towers of St. John’s in the distance, slim rectangles of blue sky visible through its slotted spires. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll just walk down Millbank and catch a cab.”
“Very good, miss.”
Erin skirted the ugly monument and mounted a short ramp to the street. She looked right, toward Millbank Road. To her left an old bridge, renovated and widened, spanned the Thames.
A walkway had been added to the bridge, and a steady stream of pedestrians crossed back and forth over the river. Erin glanced toward the hurrying people, and then looked again. One of them—a woman, or a girl—stood unmoving, bent over the railing as if looking for something in the swirling water below. Erin froze, staggered by a shock of recognition.
The girl was small, dressed in an oddly long, full skirt and a flowing overcoat. Curling tendrils of dark hair lifted in the wind to flutter about her face. She turned her head in Erin’s direction, and sunlight glimmered on one white cheek.
Erin’s intake of breath dried her throat. She knew that figure. She knew the face, and the hair. It wasn’t possible—was it? What was she—Erin’s wraith—doing here?
A traffic light changed, and several cars rushed past while Erin stared. Her eyes stung with sunshine and wind, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her forehead throbbed, and her heart pounded. The face was so pale, the eyes huge. The girl put a hand up to push back her hair, and Erin saw how thin, how fragile, her hand was. She realized her own hand was up, holding her blond fringe out of her eyes. For a long, time-stopping instant, their eyes locked. Erin almost called out, Who are you? Why do I see you? What does it mean?
There was a moment of stillness, the cars stopped at the light, the wind drowning all other sounds. Hardly knowing where she put her feet, Erin plunged across Bridge Street.
People were in her way, blocking her path, slowing her down. She shouldered through them, murmuring excuses, driven by a need to hurry, to see, to discover. The girl had been perhaps a quarter of the way along the span, standing quite still, just—just there! Erin worked her way to the spot, and stood panting, frantically looking about. She looked left and right, she stood on tiptoe to see to the ends of the bridge. She even bent to look over the railing, down into the moving green water. Nothing. The girl had gone. But where? How could she have disappeared so quickly? That coat, the long skirt—she could hardly blend in with the jeans and reff clothes of the crowd.
Erin’s head whirled. She turned her back on the river, leaned against the railing. The girl hadn’t disappeared. She hadn’t been there at all.
The crowd of people, walking in twos and threes, pressed on. Erin gripped the railing behind her with both hands, and closed her eyes against the reeling dizziness. When it subsided somewhat, she opened her eyes again, and turned to look out over the water. She looked down at her hands on the railing, her own small, white, slender fingers. Something about them filled her with a nameless, helpless grief. Her chest and throat ached as if she had been weeping, and real tears sprang to her eyes. Tears for whom? For what?
She stood still, letting the tears flow. It was the strangest feeling, weeping that way, yet not knowing why. It was as if someone else’s tears were falling from her own eyes. After a time, the tears ceased, but still she stared down into the river, wondering. When she lifted her head at last, she caught a whiff of something on the breeze, some sharp, spicy scent, gone before she could name it. She shook her head sharply, and dried her cheeks with her hands. Several people were watching her with concern, and Erin forced herself to move, to walk off the bridge, go down into Bridge Street. A taxi came along, and she hailed it.
She slid her multicard into the scanner. “Victoria Inn, please,” she said. The taxi drove around Parliament Square and up Victoria Street, turning west toward Belgrave, while Erin stared blindly out the window, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
She couldn’t go on this way. She would have to go back to Seattle. She would have to enlist the help of Gene Berrick, whether she liked him or not. She knew of no one else who could help her put a name to these bizarre experiences. And if she went on having visions, without understanding them, she would go mad.
That is, she told herself, if she hadn’t already gone right out of her mind.
THEIR rooms at the Victoria Inn were adjacent. Mal had ordered tea, a meal he never missed when they were in England. Erin washed her face and hands, and took time combing her hair, collecting herself, before she knocked on their connecting door and went through.
Mal was seated at the desk, using an audio-only phone. He waved his hand at the rolling cart that held a teapot in an old-fashioned cozy, a plate of cookies—no, biscuits, Erin reminded herself—and sandwiches. It was an ordinary and comforting little scene, and Erin’s anxiety receded as she moved into it. Little pots of this and that filled the tray, and she went to lift the lids and peek in at the contents. She was really hungry now.
Mal said into the phone, rather testily, “Well, I think you’re making a mistake. At least think it over. Let me call you next week. It’s a great new piece—I’ll get Charlie and Erin to send you a recording when they’re ready.” He listened to a few more words, and said goodbye. He put the phone down, and turned a dour face to Erin.
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