Sedition (32 page)

Harriet again. Mr. and Mrs. Frogmorton held their breath. Variation 11 began innocently enough, and it was difficult. That was the trouble. Through that painted pout, Harriet’s tongue appeared, and those hands still seemed capable of playing more than ivory keys. Harriet kept her eyes on the keyboard, demure but, so that tongue suggested, hardly innocent. Her legs, outlined by the fall of the ribbons to the side and down the middle, seemed far apart. And then, at the end, her tongue still poking through, she wrinkled her eyes at Monsieur and then at somebody in the audience.

Mrs. Frogmorton whipped around. Who? She could not see. “Archibald!” she whispered. Her palms were sweating now.

Onward. Everina was back at the keyboard, playing Variation 12 with gusto, shaking her shoulders at the little ornaments not, so her mother realized with horror, to assist in their execution but to advertise her embonpoint—the dress seemed lower cut than it had at the start. The embroidered flowers were rollicking as though drunk. Monsieur was again sitting next to her and Everina, working the pedals with all her might, manufactured a stage wink. One or two of the sons in the audience gave low guffaws. They had seen such winks before, and not in places their mothers would take them. Everina nodded to Monsieur to pick up the left hand. For the sake of the music, he did. Now free, Everina’s left hand ran up and down her own thigh, occasionally tipping toward somewhere more intimate. Those who could not see properly, strained. Those who could see had to look away. Mr. Drigg was one of them. Mrs. Drigg, who could only manage tiny, shallow breaths, drummed Mrs. Frogmorton’s shoulder. Mrs. Frogmorton could not turn around. She could not admit that something untoward was happening. It was not possible that it was. Their daughters were not in Paris, in the low quarter, playing banjos. They were in a saloon in Pall Mall playing Herr Bach’s holy music.

For a moment, as Alathea unfolded Variation 13, all seemed normal. She played only for Annie, glowing through the sarabande doublée with no pretense of detachment. On this public platform, ignoring the other girls, ignoring the audience, ignoring her father, Alathea spoke openly of a pure love, a real love, a love that acknowledged, albeit wistfully, a dependence Alathea could not, and no longer wanted, to deny. Annie’s silver core dissolved. It was no longer needed and she let it melt away without regret. The audience, though, was disappointed. After Alathea’s last performance, they had hoped for something with more spice. There was a bit of muttering. They felt cheated. Not Sawneyford. He was sickened. Like Annie, he heard Alathea clearly. The girl was parading her love to someone in this room who was not him. Had she no pity? Had she no love left for him, who had so much for her?

Georgiana beckoned to Monsieur. He was to help with Variation 14. He remained firmly on the black pianoforte stool. In a gesture so extraordinarily bold that her father exclaimed out loud, Georgiana abandoned her own stool, sat beside Monsieur, placed his hands on the keys, and gently forced him to begin. He began. Their hands crossed and Georgiana ensured that they sat closer and closer together. Monsieur could not move down or the lowest notes would fall off the end of the keyboard. Yet Georgiana was practically sitting on his knee. Worse, she kept looking at him, and her look was not just a look, it was a proposal. And the truly dreadful thing was that at this moment, in her white gown, the little brown mole beneath her hair known to him and him alone, Georgiana was absolutely delectable again.

In the audience, Brass was actually choking. “Hell and damnation, Elizabeth!” His wife was still rocking. These girls were, in a most uncanny way, running wild.

At the end of Variation 14, Monsieur pulled himself together and virtually shoved Georgiana from the pianoforte stool. He would play Variation 15, the fifth canon himself, on the brown pianoforte, and restore order. After that, Cantabile could retune the instruments while Monsieur had severe words with the girls. When they resumed, it would be like starting again. Variation 16 was, after all, an overture. Everything before would be forgotten. He turned his face into a stone and played Variation 15 with utter sobriety. The audience did not enjoy it—not, that is, until the girls rose and began to process around the pianofortes, stately (as far as Everina and Marianne could manage) and mesmeric. Monsieur, doing his best to restore the music’s more respectable wonders, pretended not to see them. The Driggs, Frogmortons, and Mr. Brass gripped their chairs. Surely this was the end. Mrs. Brass never stopped rocking.

It was not the end. Variation 15 had barely floated away when Marianne knocked Monsieur aside with a cheeky hip and rolled Variation 16’s opening chord. The audience cheered. Everina, suddenly jealous of the cheer, rushed to sit beside Marianne. At first, Marianne was cross. She could manage this variation on her own. She began the overture again, trying to push Everina out. Everina gave her a sly nudge. The audience whooped. Marianne’s mood altered. Sly met sly. The two girls pushed so close together that the buckles on their slippers clashed. Giggling—even Marianne had a giggle—they slid their slippers off. Two pairs of silkily stockinged feet were exposed to public view. When Georgiana and Harriet, seated at the black pianoforte, took over in perfect staccato, Everina and Marianne, slipperless, danced and flirted. Marianne’s wig came adrift. She righted it, almost.

And so it continued, Monsieur unable either to stop the girls or control them. When he tried to shut the pianoforte lids, they flipped them open. When he silently implored Cantabile to help, he was met with a cackle. Cantabile thought the girls were monsters, but he did not want this travesty to stop. His pianoforte was making clowns of them all and in less than half an hour, it would be his again.

Monsieur contemplated running away. All that prevented him was the knowledge that the girls would pursue and catch him and then the fathers would kill him. He sat or stood, played or did not play, he hardly knew which.

During Variation 18, Marianne and Everina were conspirators with a secret so naughty they challenged the audience to guess it. There were more guffaws. Georgiana, coming next, did not care about the audience. The nineteenth variation was for Monsieur, every note declaring Georgiana the model wife, gentle but glorious, undemanding but dedicated, externally soft with a core of white ivory. Georgiana shared secrets with Monsieur, her music said, and she did not care who knew.

Monsieur was supposed to play Variation 20 with Harriet, for it was fiendishly complicated, but Harriet set off on her own. It was a most inaccurate performance, leaving the pianoforte vibrating. Marianne and Everina, not waiting for the vibrations to die down, transformed the lament of Variation 21, the seventh canon, into alehouse sentimentality before picking up their skirts at the end and skipping back to their chairs. One of Marianne’s underarm pomanders loosened, dropped to the floor, and rolled away.

Variations 22, 23, and 24 turned into a game of “tag,” the girls pulling Monsieur down, then pushing him up. They were all getting hot, except for Alathea. Even Georgiana was pink. Marianne’s wig came entirely off her head and flapped down her back from a small rope. Her powder crumbled into a shoal of white pimples. Everina’s underarms were dark with spreading sweat. One of her stockings was laddered. Harriet’s lipstick was smudged to a bruise, but being more careful, she kept her turban intact and her shoes on. Monsieur, living a nightmare, pinned his hopes on the intense chromatic pathos of Variation 25. Nobody could pervert that.

Variation 25 was Alathea’s. She played it as Herr Bach intended except that the pathos was so sinuous and sensual, the audience might have been watching a very slow, very melancholy, and very indecent ballet. Cantabile did not know whether to laugh or scream. Sawneyford, a small lick of spittle on his lips, pulled out his pistol.

Momentarily bonded as sisters, Everina and Marianne had ideas beyond anything Alathea had suggested during practice. They whispered together, then set Monsieur between them for Variation 26. The stool proved too crowded for them to play. Perfect, though, to show off arms and calves as they leaned over him. Eventually they pushed him off the stool and treated the variation as a romp. Who cared about mistakes now? Marianne’s wig bounced and with her tongue right out she was a perfect bawdy house madame counting the evening’s takings. This was when her marriage prospects vanished and her real career began. Most of the men who eventually became her clients were sitting in the Allemonde saloon that evening.

The sight of Marianne sobered Harriet. There was a boundary that must not be crossed. She played Variation 27, the ninth canon, alone and without fault. I am not like these others, Thomas Buller, she said. Hear my left hand. Hear my right hand. Hear how I marry everything together. That’s what I will do for you.

Everina desperately wanted to steal Variation 28 from Alathea. All those patterned, synchronized demisemiquaver trills! She tried to play it. She failed. Alathea waited, then rose, as arranged. Not as arranged, she caught Georgiana’s arm. “Come,” she said. Georgiana, reckless, obeyed, so they sat together, the swan goddess and the diamond dagger. Every now and again, Georgiana threw her head back in joyous abandon and her goddess’s drapes shivered. When she got up from the stool, she flew over to Monsieur, eyes shining, and stood beside him, the music she had made ringing in their ears.

It had been clear since at least Variation 7 that Monsieur had been more than a music master, but only now did Frogmorton turn on his wife. “You said the music was holy. You said he was a eunuch.” He hurled both accusations through gritted teeth. “You
said
.”

“
He
said.” Mrs. Frogmorton found she could not stop blinking. It was the shock. She could think of nothing to say about the music, but as for the other: “He told me how. He told me when. Of all the tricks, Archibald!” She would have sagged had her clothes not made this impossible. Frogmorton, seeing that his uncowable wife was cowed, controlled himself. Arguments were for later. They must decide immediately what to do. It was far too late to stop the concert. They must let these ghastly variations run their course. Frogmorton clung to one hope: that the brilliance of the girls’ arrival might wipe out everything that had followed. He clung to that hope so hard it was a moment before he was aware that silence had fallen. He looked up. Four of the girls were sitting on their chairs. Monsieur was standing alone. Cantabile had stopped cackling. Alathea was back at the pianoforte. What now, thought Mr. Frogmorton. What new circus could there be?

Alathea raised her hands. Top G, G, A ornamented dotted quaver, to B, then that falling, falling. The aria again, exactly as it had been to start with. This was Alathea’s final miracle. After the mayhem, through sheer force of touch, desire, and focus, she recaptured the clarity, dignity, and purity of Herr Bach’s holy creation. She did not need to recapture the truth, for the music, from Variation 1 to Variation 30, had told nothing but the truth. Through the music, the girls had presented themselves exactly as they were. Alathea raised her eyes to the back of the hall. Annie moved into the aisle. Under her veil, she may have been smiling.

Sawneyford clapped his left hand over his left ear. Why was everything so loud? He must speak to Alathea. She must listen. He knew she was going to leave him and he could not allow it. Father and daughter. Lover and loved. Loved and lover. He saw Annie. He had no idea who she was. He moved out behind her and past her. She saw him and she saw the pistol.

Alathea also saw her father and the pistol. She played on. The men nearest the aisle began to rise, some expostulating and raising their arms, some pushing, some pulling their wives out of Sawneyford’s way. Nobody dared tackle him, not with the hammer cocked. Sawneyford reached the front. Alathea played on, the tender aria unhurried and unflinching. Sawneyford stood in front of her. Did he love her? Did he hate her? He could hardly tell. He only wanted her to stop playing. She played on. She had no fear of Sawneyford. Herr Bach’s aria would protect her. She knew it would. Her father would not shoot her. Despite what she had done to him, he had come to her and he had cried. The pistol was not for her. She knew it and he did too. She watched him angle the pistol so that the barrel was under his chin, pointing up through his head. Their eyes met, hers steady, knowing, encouraging—it’s the right thing, the decent thing, the best thing—his searching and clouded with despair. Still she played: G, G, A ornamented dotted quaver, to B, then that falling, falling, and rising to D, the perfect pattern again.

Annie was behind Sawneyford. She could not see much through her veil, but she saw him raise the pistol. She saw him wait. She saw his arm twitch. No! She flicked up her veil and launched herself at him. The pistol jerked, tilted, then went off with such a dull retort that at first Annie thought it had not gone off at all. But it had. The girls were screaming. Their parents were screaming. The room was an uproar of overturned chairs, and screaming, fleeing titles. Cantabile crouched under the brown pianoforte. Alathea was no longer playing, she was tipping forward, and Monsieur was no longer sitting at the black piano, he was already out the door.

The room emptied before the screaming stopped and in a very short time another sound was heard. It was laughter. Great peals of it, echoing down the street. The audience had come. They had been amazed. They had been amused. For a moment they had even been alarmed. All in all, it had been a splendid entertainment. Now they were going home. There would be no supper. There would be no weddings. The concert was well and truly over. Thomas Buller alone stood quietly in the void. When he saw his opportunity, he took Harriet’s hand and proposed.

TWENTY

On a dank and chilly morning two weeks later—Boxing Day, as it happens—we find Alderman Frogmorton, Mr. Brass, and Mr. Drigg walking solemnly behind a cart set for Kennington Common. Sawney Sawneyford is not with them. He is in Soho Square, nursing his daughter. That jerk, that tilt, propelled the pistol ball intended for his own brain forward and it is now lodged next to Alathea’s heart. The damage is containable, the surgeon says, if the ball remains exactly where it settled. Any movement or attempt to remove it will most likely be fatal. If Alathea wishes to live, she must remain still. Alathea does not wish to live. Her father wishes the opposite, and he controls the laudanum with which she is made too drowsy to resist.