The Piano Tuner (3 page)

He left the square and pushed his way through the darkening swirl
of merchants and carriages, following Cockspur Street as it funneled into the
din of Haymarket, hands deep in his jacket now, regretting he hadn’t
taken the omnibus. At the top of the street the buildings drew closer and
darker as he entered the Narrows.

He walked, not knowing exactly where
he was, but only the general direction of his movement, past dark brick houses
and fading painted terraces, past scattered bundled figures hurrying home, past
shadow and shade and glints of light in the thin puddles that ran in veins
between the cobbles, past weeping mansard rooftops and a rare lantern, perched
and flickering, casting shadows of cobwebs in distorted magnification. He
walked and then it was dark again and the streets narrowed, and he brought his
shoulders closer. He did this because it was cold, and because the buildings
did the same.

The Narrows opened onto Oxford Street and the walk
became lit and familiar. He passed the Oxford Music Hall and turned onto
Newman, Cleveland, Howland Street, one, two blocks, then right, into a smaller
lane, so small that it had been missed, much to the chagrin of its residents,
by London’s most recent map.

Number 14 Franklin Mews was the
fourth in the terrace, a brick house virtually identical to those of Mr.
Lillypenny, the flower seller, who lived at Number 12, and Mr. Bennett-Edwards,
the upholsterer, at Number 16, each home sharing a common wall and brick
facade. The entrance to the house was at street level. Beyond an iron gate, a
short walkway spanned an open space between the street and the front door, down
which a set of iron stairs descended to the basement, where Edgar kept his
workshop. Flowerpots hung from the fence and outside the windows. Some held
fading chrysanthemums, still blooming in the cold of autumn. Others were empty,
half filled with soil, now dusted with mist that reflected the flicker of the
lantern outside the door. Katherine must have left it burning, he thought.

At the door, he fumbled with the keys, deliberate now in his attempt to
delay his entry. He looked back out at the street. It was dark. The
conversation at the War Office seemed distant, like a dream, and for a brief
moment he thought that maybe it too would fade like a dream, that he
couldn’t tell Katherine, not yet, while he doubted its reality. He felt
his head jerk involuntarily, the nod again. The nod is all I have brought from
the meeting.

He opened the door and found Katherine waiting in the
parlor, reading a newspaper by the soft glow of a single lamp. It was cold in
the room and she wore a thin shawl of embroidered white wool over her
shoulders. He closed the door softly, and stopped and hung his hat and jacket
on the coatstand, saying nothing. There was no need to announce his late
arrival with fanfare, he thought, better to slip in silently, Maybe then I can
convince her I have been here some time already, although he knew he
couldn’t, just as he knew that she was no longer reading.

Across
the room, Katherine continued to stare at the newspaper in her hands. It was
the
Illustrated London News,
and later she would tell him that she was
reading “Reception at the Metropole,” where the music of a new
piano was described, although not its make, and certainly not its tuner. For
another minute, she continued to flip through the journal. She said nothing,
she was a woman of impeccable composure, and this was how best to deal with
tardy husbands. Many of her friends were different. You are too easy with him,
they often told her, but she shrugged them off, The day he comes home smelling
of gin or cheap perfume, then I will be angry. Edgar is late because he is
absorbed in his work, or because he gets lost walking home from a new
assignment.

“Good evening, Katherine,” he said.

“Good evening, Edgar. You are almost two hours late.”

He was used to the ritual, the innocent excuses, the explainings-away: I
know, dear, dearest, I am sorry, I had to finish all the strings so I can
retune them tomorrow, or This is a rushed commission, or I am being paid extra,
or I got lost on the way home, the house is near Westminster, and I took the
wrong tram, or I just wanted to play it, it was a rare 1835 model, Erard,
beautiful of course, it belongs to the family of Mr. Vincento, the Italian
tenor, or It belongs to Lady Neville, unique, 1827, I wish you could come and
play it too. If he ever lied, it was only in exchanging one excuse for another.
That it was a rushed contract, when really he had stopped to watch street
players. That he took the wrong tram, when actually he had stayed late to play
the piano of the Italian tenor. “I know, I am sorry, still working on the
Farrell contract,” and this was enough, he saw her close the
News,
and he slid across the room to sit next to her, his heart racing, She
knows something is different. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away,
trying to hide a smile. “Edgar, you’re late, I overcooked the meat,
stop that, don’t think you can keep me waiting and make it up to me with
endearments.” She turned from him, and he slipped his arms around her
waist.

“I thought you would have finished that contract by
now,” she said.

“No, the piano is in lamentable shape, and
Mrs. Farrell insists that I tune it to ‘Concert Quality.’” He
raised his voice an octave to imitate the matron. Katherine laughed and he
kissed her neck.

“She says her little Roland will be the next
Mozart.”

“I know, she told me again today, even made me
listen to the rascal play.”

Katherine turned toward her husband.
“You poor dear. I can’t be angry at you for long.” Edgar
smiled, relaxing slightly. He looked at her as she tried to summon an
expression of mock sternness. She is still so lovely, he thought. The golden
curls that had so entranced him when he had first met her had faded somewhat,
but she still wore her hair loose, and they became the same color again
whenever she went in the sun. They had met when, as an apprentice tuner, he had
repaired her family’s Broadwood upright. The piano hadn’t impressed
him—it had been rebuilt with rather cheap parts—but the delicate
hands that played it had, as had the softness of the figure that had sat beside
him at the keyboard, the presence that stirred him even now. He leaned toward
her, to kiss her again. “Stop it,” she giggled, “not now, and
be careful of the sofa, this is new damask.”

Edgar sat back. She
is in a good mood, he thought, Perhaps I should tell her now. “I have a
new contract,” he said.

“You must read this report,
Edgar,” said Katherine, smoothing out her dress and reaching for the
News.

“An 1840 Erard. It sounds as if it is in dreadful
shape. It should pay wonderfully.”

“Oh really,”
standing, and walking to the dining table. She didn’t inquire who owned
the piano, nor where it was, such were not questions often asked, as for the
last eighteen years, the only answers had been Old Mrs. So-and-So and
London’s Such-and-Such Street. Edgar was glad she didn’t ask, the
rest would soon come, he was a man of patience, and not one to press his
fortune, a practice which he knew led only to overtightened piano strings and
angry wives. Also, he had just looked down at the copy of the
Illustrated
London News,
where, below the story on the reception at the Metropole, was
an article on “The Atrocities of the Dacoits,” written by an
officer in the “3rd Ghoorka Regiment.” It was a short piece,
detailing a skirmish with bandits who had looted a friendly village, the usual
fare about efforts at pacification in the colonies, and he wouldn’t have
noticed it were it not for its title, “Sketches of Burmah.” He was
familiar with the column—it ran almost weekly—but he had paid it
little attention. Until now. He tore the article from the page and tucked the
newspaper under a pile of magazines on the small table. She shouldn’t see
this. From the dining room came the clink of silverware and the smell of boiled
potatoes.

The following morning, Edgar sat at a small
table set for two as Katherine made tea and toast and set out jars of butter
and jam. He was quiet, and as she moved through the kitchen, she filled the
silence with talk of the endless autumn rain, of politics, news. “Did you
hear, Edgar, of the omnibus accident yesterday? Of the reception for the German
baron? Of the young mother in the East End who has been arrested for the murder
of her children?”

“No,” he answered. His mind
wandered, distracted. “No, tell me.”

“Horrible,
absolutely horrible. Her husband—a coal hauler I think—found the
children, two little boys and a little girl, curled together in their bed, and
he told a constable, and they arrested the wife. The poor thing. The poor
husband, he didn’t think she had done it—think of that, losing both
your wife and children. And she says she only gave them a patent medicine to
help them sleep.
I
think they should arrest the patent-medicine maker.
I do believe her, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,
dear.” He held his cup to his mouth and breathed in the steam.

“You are not listening,” Katherine said.

“Of
course I am; it is terrible,” and he was, he thought of the image of the
three children, pale, like baby mice with unopened eyes.

“Alas,
I know I shouldn’t read such stories,” she said. “They bother
me so. Let’s talk of something else. Will you finish the Farrell contract
today?”

“No, I think I will go later this week. At ten I
have an appointment at the Mayfair home of an MP. A Broadwood grand, I
don’t know what is wrong with it. And I have some work to finish in the
shop before I leave.”

“Do try to get home on time tonight.
You know I hate waiting.”

“I know.” He reached over
and took her hand in his. An exaggerated effort, she thought, but dismissed
it.

Their servant, a young girl from Whitechapel, had
returned home to tend to her mother, who was sick with consumption, so
Katherine left the table and went upstairs to arrange the bedroom. She usually
stayed at home during the day, to help with the chores, to receive house calls
from Edgar’s clients, to arrange commissions, and to plan social affairs,
a task which her husband, who had always found himself more comfortable among
musical instruments, was more than happy to let her manage. They had no
children, although not for want of trying. Indeed, their marriage had stayed
quite amorous, a fact that sometimes surprised even Katherine when she watched
her husband wander absentmindedly through the house. While at first this
notable Absence-of-Child, as Katherine’s mother described it, had
saddened the two of them, they had become accustomed to it, and Katherine often
wondered if it had made them closer. Besides, Katherine at times admitted to
her friends a certain relief, Edgar is enough to look after.

When she
had left the table, he finished his tea and descended the steep stairs to his
basement workshop. He rarely worked at home. Transporting an instrument through
the London streets could be disastrous, and it was much easier to take all his
tools to his work. He kept the space primarily for his own projects. The few
times he had actually brought a piano to his home, it had to be lowered by
ropes down the open space between the street and his house. The shop itself was
a small space with a low ceiling, a warren of dusty piano skeletons, tools that
hung from the walls and ceilings like cuts in a butcher shop, fading schematics
of pianos and portraits of pianists nailed to the walls. The room was dimly lit
by a half window tucked beneath the ceiling. Discarded keys lined the shelves
like rows of dentures. Katherine had once called it “the elephants’
graveyard,” and he had to ask if this was for the hulking rib cages of
eviscerated grands or for the rolls of felt like hide, and she had answered,
You are too poetic, I meant only for the ivory.

Coming down the stairs,
he almost tripped over a discarded action that was leaning against the wall.
Beyond the difficulty of moving a piano, this was another reason he
didn’t bring customers to his shop. For those accustomed to the shine of
polished cases set in flowered parlors, it was always somewhat disconcerting to
see an opened piano, to realize that something so mechanical could produce such
a heavenly sound.

Edgar made his way to a small desk and lit a lamp.
The night before, he had hidden the packet given to him at the War Office
beneath a musty stack of printed tuning specifications. He opened the envelope.
There was a copy of the original letter sent by Fitzgerald, and a map, and a
contract specifying his commission. There was also a printed briefing, given to
him on the request of Doctor Carroll, titled in bold capitals,
THE
GENERAL HISTORY OF BURMA
,
WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE
ANGLO
-
BURMESE WARS AND BRITISH ANNEXATIONS
. He sat down
and began to read.

The history was familiar. He had known of the
Anglo-Burmese wars, conflicts notable both for their brevity and for the
considerable territorial gains wrested from the Burmese kings following each
victory: the coastal states of Arakan and Tenasserim following the first war,
Rangoon and Lower Burma following the second, Upper Burma and the Shan States
following the third. And while the first two wars, which ended in 1826 and
1853, he had learned about at school, the third had been reported in the
newspapers last year, as the final annexation was announced only in January.
But beyond the general histories, most of the details were unfamiliar: that the
second war began ostensibly over the kidnapping of two British sea captains,
that the third stemmed in part from tensions following the refusal of British
emissaries to remove their shoes on entering an audience with the Burmese king.
There were other sections, including histories of the kings, a dizzying
genealogy complicated by multiple wives and what appeared to be a rather common
practice of murdering any relatives who might be pretenders to the throne. He
was confused by new words, names with strange syllables he couldn’t
pronounce, and he focused his attention mainly on the history of the most
recent king, named Thibaw, who had been deposed and exiled to India after
British troops seized Mandalay. He was, by the army’s account, a weak and
ineffective leader, manipulated by his wife and mother-in-law, and his reign
was marred by increasing lawlessness in the remoter districts, evidenced by a
plague of attacks by armed bands of
dacoits,
a word for brigands that
Edgar recognized from the article he had torn from the
Illustrated London
News.