Sedition (14 page)

The vibrations confused the bats. They did not want to go out. They could not stay here. Finally, they seethed through the broken glass, whirled around the square’s lime trees, and settled unhappily among the new leaves, causing playing children to shriek and flee, nannies shrieking and fleeing after them. When the room was empty, Alathea jumped from the pianoforte and slammed the shutters shut. All the candles had blown out in the stramash and the fire was very low. Everything was obscured. Alathea made her way back to the harpsichord and touched Annie, who screamed again. “They’re gone,” Alathea said.

Annie crouched, her skirt still over her head. Alathea climbed onto the stool beside her, out of reach of scurrying spiders. Annie shuddered. “I should never have suggested it. I didn’t realize. I didn’t think.”

“Ssssh.” Alathea shuddered too. “I didn’t think either.”

“Do you suppose they’re in every room?”

“I suppose so,” Alathea said, folding her skirts around her legs.

“How can you bear to live here?” Annie asked.

“We don’t live here,” Alathea said. Her arms were sticky with torn cobweb. “Uggh. Horrible.”

Annie slowly let her skirt down. “You have another house?” She tried not to peer into the darkness above or below.

“I mean we don’t live anywhere. This place is simply a shelter. Protection from the weather.” Alathea scraped her fingers over her skull, dreading to find something trapped in her hair. “I live inside my skin. It suits me well unless it’s invaded by bats or spiders. I suppose my father does the same. I’m going to relight some candles from the fire. You stay here.”

“We have a house,” said Annie, peering after Alathea’s shadow. She did not want, not for a second, to feel alone in here. “It’s my father’s home, and my mother’s, so I suppose mine too, but I feel more at home here than I ever feel at Tyburn.”

“Even with the bats and spiders?”

“It’s not the place,” Annie said, in a burst. “It’s you.”

This was the first explicit declaration. It hung in the air. Alathea lit five candles. Treading carefully, she placed them on the instruments. “We need brushes, cloths, and water,” she said. “All the keys will be filthy. We’ll have to swill the floor.” She left Annie alone. Annie did not move a muscle. Alathea returned with buckets. She left Annie alone again. She brought more lamps.

“Should we pull down the dust sheets?” Annie asked.

“We’ll do only what’s necessary,” Alathea answered. “I’m not going to touch the curtains. That one can stay open.”

Annie took a brush and they cleaned in silence, sweeping and swilling the floor, dusting the instruments and stools and shaking out the music. Occasionally there was a flutter from above. Not all the bats had taken to the skies. The girls shrank down. The fire was dampened enough for a small group of bats to scud up the chimney.

When the cleaning was over and with Annie’s declaration still hanging, the girls settled themselves with Handel and studded the room with music once more. The flurries of the bats had disturbed the cornice work. It was flaking. Before the sonata was finished, the girls were white with it. “I believe this house will fall down,” Alathea said as she wiped Annie’s face.

“We’ll find shelter elsewhere.” Annie wiped Alathea’s face. Alathea clutched her arm. “Listen,” said Alathea, an edge in her voice. A warning. A distance. Annie shrank. She should have said nothing. She was about to lose everything.

Alathea gave her a little shake. “We mustn’t become dependent,” she said. “Never, ever, dependent. Not on each other. Not on anybody. We can depend only on music. Do you see? Being dependent on any other person lets them get right inside you, like a worm wriggling into your core. If you depend only on yourself, there’s no worm. You’re intact, completely whole. You do see, don’t you.”

Annie did not see. Alathea’s sense of being intact sounded like being alone, and being alone was not powerfulness or wormlessness, it was loneliness. When Annie thought of being intact, she thought of herself and Alathea attached together, dependent only on each other, the two of them an unassailable circle. She was not Alathea. She knew nothing of the treacheries of Alathea’s life, the what should be and was not, the what was and should not be. The result of Alathea’s warning was that Annie’s heart sank beyond her boots. What a fool she was, she thought. This ballroom life had come quickly and it would vanish as quickly. Alathea did not want her, or need her. This could all stop the same way it started: on Alathea’s whim. Annie felt she must leave while her legs would still carry her. She tried to get up.

Alathea pinned her down. “You must see.” Alathea knew her voice sounded different from normal. It pleaded, almost begged. She did not like it, but she had to go on. “If you aren’t dependent, all your strength is your own.” She set her jaw. “If you don’t depend and aren’t depended on, you can never disappoint. How can you disappoint somebody if you’re not attached to them and they’re not attached to you?”

“But what about—” Annie couldn’t bring herself to cry out “love.”

“What about love?” Alathea gave Annie’s shoulders a little shake. “Love’s perfectly possible. We can be together but apart; we can be in love, without being dependent. That’s how to be happy. I know it.” Alathea pressed her palms on Annie’s cheeks, as if her convictions were stamps. “Most people don’t understand, so they’re never happy, not really. They’re too frightened of being lost or betrayed or hurt in some way. Let’s not be frightened, or lost or betrayed or hurt. Let’s not even entertain the possibility. We can be truly happy. Do you know why?” A bit of cornice work floated down. “Because we’re rare.”

“I don’t know!” This burst from Annie despite herself. “I don’t feel rare.”

“We’re bound together by music but we can play separately as well. What use would we be if we couldn’t? Attached yet detached. It’s what everybody would be if only they could. And we can.”

Alathea was almost crushing Annie’s jaw. Annie’s lip was halfway up Alathea’s nose. Annie caught Alathea’s wrists and pulled them away. She did not want life to be the same as music, but there was something worse: the threatened loss of the happiness she found in this shrouded house of bats and spiders. She could not lose it. She laced her hands behind Alathea’s neck. She imagined a core forming and a slow tongue of molten silver folding around this core, encasing it. The tongue met around the middle, its soft edges soldering and hardening into a silver shell with no seam, no wrinkle, no escape hatch. She imagined the same in Alathea, in gold. She drew their faces together. Alathea bared her teeth. Annie bared hers. Their teeth clashed, enamel on enamel. Their hands were at each other. There was tearing of cloth, and in this moment of supreme untenderness, with a few baffled bats above and homeless spiders below, detachment bound them together.

Annie remained in Soho Square very late. When, finally, she left, her silver armor molded and bolted, welded and polished, she stalked through the night streets like a queen. Had her father remained up to ask where on earth she had been, she might have killed him.

NINE

Out of respect for Monsieur, Mrs. Frogmorton had kept his secret. Nevertheless, as summer waxed, she quietly abandoned her chaperoning for her closet and warming stove—it was always chilly in Manchester Square. There came a day when, with the cook to pacify and an upstairs maid to chide, she openly left Monsieur to it. Nobody remarked. Everybody was used to him. He was no more than furniture. Mrs. Frogmorton thought she would tell the alderman of Monsieur’s mishap soon, and Mrs. Drigg and Mrs. Brass. She did not wish to be thought careless of her chaperoning duties but there was no particular hurry and she did not wish Monsieur to think her a blabbermouth.

Monsieur had used the time it took for Mrs. Frogmorton to loosen her grip to good effect, warming his seductions every day—a touch here, a flirtatious remark there, no pushing or shoving. When not in the room, Mrs. Frogmorton usually left the door open. In due course, he would close it and she would not notice.

There were irritations. At the beginning of July, Mrs. Frogmorton told him that the concert would not take place until late in the year. The delay was something to do with the room they wanted, some reluctant duke, some squeamish earl—whatever it was, it irked Monsieur. Why not have the concert in Manchester Square? La Frog was implacable about that. Manchester Square had no saloon and the dining room was too small for the supper. (In fact, Mrs. Frogmorton was suddenly nervous of the quality of her furniture and plate.) There was a row. Mrs. Frogmorton told Monsieur that he could leave if he wanted. There would be other teachers. Monsieur replied that Mrs. Frogmorton must understand that he had other calls on his time.

The row was pointless and Monsieur knew it. He did not want to leave. What, after all, awaited him in Paris? Blood; shouting; flag waving. And he would never rescind his decision to cut himself off from his childhood home. Anyway, the weather in London was lovely. The plantings in the middle of Manchester Square had flourished into syringa and roses, with jessamine following on and the promise of peaches and cherries. London seemed generous, happy, even. His berth at Cantabile’s was tolerable enough. And there was Alathea. Or sometimes Alathea. She seemed to be playing a different game now. Nevertheless, she could still surprise and the surprise was worth the wait. The row blew away. Mrs. Frogmorton was pleased to note that Monsieur was very gracious when they next met.

Now that he had an accurate idea of the girls’ capabilities, Monsieur divided up Herr Bach’s variations. For Marianne’s and Everina’s sakes, two pianofortes would be required for the concert so that he or one of the other girls could play the left hand and they only had to manage the right. His insistence on exercises was bearing fruit. Techniques had improved, fingers grown more dexterous, touch more secure, pedaling less arbitrary. Last week, after giving each girl their allocation of the
Clavier Übung
score, he had prevailed on Cantabile to send an inferior pianoforte to the Driggs at Stratton Street for the girls to practice together. Already, they were reasonably familiar with the form of the work, though the variations’ difficulty was a matter of constant exclamation and complaint by Everina and Marianne. Despite improvements, for all except Alathea, at whose musical ability he continued to marvel, Monsieur regretted the music he had suggested. It had been no part of the plan for the girls to make musical fools of themselves, or of Herr Bach. So there was one good thing about the delay: musically speaking, particularly for Marianne and Everina, more time was beneficial.

In Manchester Square, the Frogmortons were delighted with the blooming Harriet. In Stratton Street, the Driggs endured either furious sulks or giggling good humor from Marianne and Everina, but whatever the girls’ moods, Mrs. Drigg’s daily headaches and the grumbles of the neighbors were testament to the dreadful drumming of practice. In Covent Garden, Georgiana Brass began to speak, occasionally, at dinner, and at the Sunday tea in mid-July to celebrate the start of a three-week holiday (Mrs. Frogmorton’s proposal, not Monsieur’s), she had even eaten a tiny cake. The following morning she asked for new clothes, which caused Mr. Brass to remark to his new mistress (his long-standing French
belle amie
had been thrown over for a sulky Russian Jewess) that his daughter might make a decent wife after all. The Jewess shrugged. She had no interest in Georgiana. Mrs. Brass, meanwhile, wondered whether she should take up the pianoforte herself.

On the morning of that Sunday tea, Monsieur met with all the mothers in the Manchester Square drawing room to report on progress. No refreshments were served: Monsieur should not imagine this was a social occasion. Mrs. Frogmorton had the drapes thrown back to give the room an airing. If she hoped the room would be transformed by the sun, she was disappointed. The green was still too green, the brown too brown, and the armor too ridiculous. Mrs. Drigg was reminded of a funeral parlor. “What a good room this is, Grace, so bright and cheerful. I’ve always thought so,” she said, tiptoeing to the pianoforte and inspecting it as she might have inspected an incendiary device. Mrs. Brass sat on the stool and touched four notes: A, B, C-sharp, A. Was that the start of a nursery rhyme?

“Elizabeth?”

Mrs. Brass drifted up and sat where directed. Frilly yapped at Monsieur’s sudden appearance, making the women jump. “Goodness, Monsieur!” said Mrs. Frogmorton. “Where were you hiding?”

“Madame Frogmorton? Mesdames?” Monsieur tried to catch the women’s expressions before they had time to adjust their faces, to see whether La Frog had revealed his secret to her friends. What woman could resist? He searched for a tightening of lips, a hint of teeth set in sympathetic disgust. Nothing. He was surprised, then annoyed. He meant nothing to these women, not even gossip. A rage took hold of him.

Mrs. Frogmorton quieted Frilly. Mrs. Drigg sat down. “Now,” Mrs. Frogmorton said.

“The girls make progress.” Monsieur snapped his fingers.

“Come,” Mrs. Drigg urged. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“The girls improve.”

“Monsieur!” Mrs. Frogmorton was hurt. Her husband paid this man on time. He had decent dinners between lessons and was never kept late. She had kept his secret. Yet today he seemed disagreeably French, tilting his head and glaring. An English music master would have stood hat in hand and praised his charges, as mothers had every right to expect. “We wish to know
how
they improve,” she said. “We wish for details.”

Monsieur’s voice was sharp as a needle. “The mademoiselles capture the capriccio and the cavatina, the gigue and the fugue, the overture and the canon. They master the appoggiatura, the acciaccatura, the inverted mordent, the trill with inversions and subversions and occasional perversions—oh, and the shake.”

“The what?” Mrs. Frogmorton really was trying to follow.

“The shake,” repeated Monsieur. “The shake, madame. The shake. Of course they learn the shake.” He walked back and forth. “They also know of portar la voce, accento, tremolo, esclamazione”—he threw his fingers up like knives—“and all manner of cadences, deceptive, receptive, unfinished, finished—no, no—I beg pardon,
nearly
finished. Then there is the staccato, the legato, the bragatto, the ragatto”—he saw a twitch of the lip from Mrs. Brass. He paused. Ah, that one. She knew a flight of fancy when she heard it. He curbed his flourishes.