Music at Long Verney Read online

  “Candles,” he said. “I was just in time to get the last two packets at Gay’s.”

  “Candles,” repeated Mr Edom, his voice sounding a little wan after all he’d been through. “Candles. What a good idea.”

  “The moment the light went off, I thought to myself, Now’s the time to sell candlesticks!”

  It was another of those impulses of good will. Except for that inrush of cold air, nothing was likely to come of it; if those who sat in darkness had candles, they would stick them in bottles rather than go out to buy candlesticks. But the deed was done, so, repressing a “Down, Ponto!”, Mr Edom said again, “What a good idea,” and added that it was lucky Beales hadn’t taken the candelabrum. By the light of one candle, two candles, they assembled seventeen candleholders of various kinds and values, stuck candles in, and lit them. At first these were grouped together. The effect was dissatisfying, so they began to disperse them about the room, standing back to judge the effect, having better ideas, trying experiments, giving a rub-up here and there. All this took some time, and was animating; and when everything was arranged to their joint satisfaction, and two long-nosed candle scissors in their gadrooned trays laid ready for use on the sofa table, they sat down and agreed how nice it all looked, and what a pity it was people didn’t sit oftener by candlelight – it was so restful. And if at that point Mr Collins’ imagined customers had stormed in to buy candlesticks, they would have been unwelcome.

  For in the diffused candlelight, everything had become mysteriously beautiful and enriched. The polished surfaces reflected the little flames with an intensification of their various colours – amber in satinwood, audit ale in mahogany, dragon’s blood in tortoise shell. Glass flashed, silver asserted its contours, a tapestry bloomed into life. The depth of the room seemed to be asleep. The candlelight was an acceptance of darkness; the hideous daylight beyond the window was a blue dusk, the driven snow a flicker of mayflies. Mr Edom sat gazing at his assembled wares. For all his knowledge of them, for all his connoisseurship, he had never realised their beauty before, nor their quality of character. The candlelight had freed them from being wares in an antique shop. They were back at home in it; they basked in the light of their best days; they were possessions, serene inmates of a household. He has more feeling than I give him credit for, thought Mr Collins, studying his employer’s face and the candlelight’s new reading of its wrinkles. They sat in silence. At intervals, Mr Collins would get up and trim a candlewick, just for the pleasure of doing so.

  The door was opened. The candle flames streamed sideways; Mr Edom stiffened. But it was Major Barnard who came in, saying, “I don’t want to disturb you, but may I come in for a bit? It looks so cosy from outside, and so uncommonly pretty. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen your things looking so pretty before.” And he sat down as a friend does, and presently snuffed the air with pleasure, and remarked how agreeable the smell of candle wax is, and that it was a pity people didn’t use them more often. “Warm, too,” he went on. “At least it seems warm to me. But perhaps that’s just by contrast.”

  “Candles do give out heat,” said Mr Collins. “It can be quite noticeable.” He broke off, but the other two waited for him to go on. “When I was a boy,” he went on, “I was sent to live with my London uncle. My parents had quarrelled, you see, and the home was broken up. We were all sent off to different relations – anyone who’d take us – and I went to this uncle, to mix in with my cousins. It was the Christmas holidays, and I thought it would be wonderful, to be in London with so much going on. But it wasn’t. They lived in Lambeth, and there wasn’t much going on in Lambeth. So I took to going out by myself. I used to go across the river, and look into Gamage’s windows and think what I’d buy out of them. Or to Liverpool Street Station, and fancy what train I’d take to where. But this particular day – it was biting cold; I’ll never forget the wind over Blackfriars Bridge – I hadn’t the heart to go so far, so I went into a church. It had a lot of things to look at – carved wood and gilding and flowers in vases; it even had a grand piano. But what caught my eye was an iron stand with sockets for candles, and three or four candles burning, and a tray with dozens more, and a notice saying ‘Candles Twopence’. Well, I could afford two. And I began to feel a bit warmer when they had got going. But by then the others were beginning to burn down. I knew you lit candles for dead souls – I was inclined to be religious then –”

  “One is at that age,” said Major Barnard.

  “– so I set to and thought of every dead person I knew of, or had heard of; and in no time I had every one of those candles alight. It was glorious. As good as a coal fire.”

  “Not bad for fourpence,” said Mr Edom.

  “Don’t suppose the boy had any more money,” said Major Barnard.

  “Threepence halfpenny, and I put that in. In the new year I was fetched away by my grandmother in Belfast, and I didn’t have a chance to go back till 1945. The church had been burned out – a Wren church, too. The roof was gone; it was all boarded up. But there was a collecting box for rebuilding, so I paid in the end.”

  Overcome by embarrassment, Mr Collins got up and trimmed every candle. When he recovered himself, Mr Edom and Major Barnard were telling each other when and where they had been coldest. Mr Edom had also been coldest in his boyhood. Major Barnard had never really known what cold was till he was a young man and got caught in a blizzard on Schiehallion. “Where’s that?” asked Mr Collins, and was told it is in the Highlands. Mr Edom nodded gravely. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “I never go out for anything you might call a walk without taking a bar of chocolate with me. Which reminds me –”

  Taking up a bedroom candlestick, he disappeared into his office and returned with a bottle of brandy. He put this down on the sofa table, selected three wine glasses – not from the Waterford set but from the next best – and filled them. “To our host,” said Major Barnard.

  “Good luck to him,” said Mr Collins. Mr Edom bowed, and let a polite interval pass before he drank himself.

  “All this is uncommonly pleasant,” observed Major Barnard. “I really don’t know when I’ve spent a more agreeable afternoon. I suppose you would still call it afternoon, though from the look of things outside it might as well – What’s that?”

  That was a shape plastered to the windowpane. Black and shiny, with a pinched face and eyes reflecting the light within, it looked like some kind of portentously large bat. It was in fact a small boy in an oilskin cape too large for him.

  “It’s a boy,” said Major Barnard. “We can’t leave him outside, you know. Come in, boy.”

  Major Barnard was still under the influence of Mr Collins’ story, told in that flat cheap accent, with the echo of a child’s lonely defiance still hanging about it, or he would not have made so free with his host’s hospitality. His mind misgave him at the boy’s first words, which were “Don’t mind if I do.” This was one of those alarming new children, born into a nuclear age and scornful of everything not potentially destructive.

  “Why have you got those lights on, all over the place like that? Nobody else has.”

  “They’re candles,” Mr Collins said. “Haven’t you ever seen candles before?”

  “No. Do they run off a battery?”

  “They burn by themselves. With a wick, like an oil lamp; but instead of floating in oil the wick is fed by the wax melting round it.” Mr Collins saw his explanations quite disregarded. “Look,” he said, proffering a candle. “Blow this one out, not too hard, just a puff, and I’ll light it again.” The boy drew back, compressing his lips. Mr Collins blew out the candle and relit it.

  “Do you have to do all that?” said the boy. “Matches, and all. Haven’t you got a lighter?”

  “Matches are tidier,” said Mr Edom. “If you use a lighter, it makes the wax run, and spoils the look of the candle.”

  “I don’t see why that matters, if the wax melts anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t suppose you did.” Mr Edom’s
voice was glassily urbane, and the boy instantly subsided. Major Barnard seized the advantage. “Why aren’t you at home, boy? This is no weather to be out in.”

  “Going to visit my Gran. She’s old-fashioned. She’s got a coal fire.” To cancel the disgracing admission, he went on, “And a canary bird. And a horn gramophone. And a hand sewing machine. And the works of William Shakespeare. And a cataract. And – Hi!” The electricity had come on. Everything looking as usual looked as if it had been flayed. “That’s more like it!” shouted the boy. “No bloody Gran now!” He was off like a bird out of its cage.

  Major Barnard, turning to Mr Edom, said, “I’m sorry about that. Not a very nice boy.”

  “Ignorant,” Mr Edom replied.

  Mr Collins was going to and fro putting out the candles. A sweet smoke hung on the air and was like a sigh. He carried the candlesticks to the back of the shop, removed the candles, laid them on a sheet of brown paper, and began to chip the cooling wax off the sconces with his nail.

  “Leave them till tomorrow, George. We’ll be off now. There’s nothing to stay for,” said Mr Edom.

  Major Barnard gathered up the tiger skin and smoothed it. “Where does this –”

  The lighting staggered, and went off.

  Major Barnard produced his pocket torch. By its beam Mr Edom put the valuables away in the safe, locked his office desk, turned off the switches, set the alarm. They went out together, exclaiming at the depth of the snow. But the storm was over. Mr Edom and his assistant went their ways, Major Barnard went his, thinking how pretty the candles had been, and of their warmth still gently dying in the darkness.

  Furnivall’s Hoopoe

  WHEN MRS OTTER came into the Abbey Antique Galleries that morning, Mr Edom, the proprietor, saw with concern that her hat was straight, her hair tidy, her handbag clasped. Something must be very wrong.

  “Oh, Mr Edom, I am so thankful to get you to myself.” She broke off, trying to recover her breath. “You know, it’s my positive belief that St John Street gets steeper every day. I should not be in the least surprised to find myself picking edelweiss there. Not that I like edelweiss; it’s such a cold-hearted flower, though it meant a great deal to our great-grandparents, plunging into crevasses to snatch it for their Louisas. I’m sure it can’t be only my increasing years which make me so out of breath by the time I get here – though at the moment I am feeling dreadfully old.”

  She sat down, holding her bag upright on her knee like a person applying for a situation. Her glance strayed over the Dresden shepherd playing the flute to his dog, the pewter tankards on the mule chest, the Nailsea birds poised on their crystal branch, the wig stand, the three Portuguese reliquaries, the satinwood bonheur-du-jour as though in one or other of these she might find reassurance. But nothing supplied it, and the glance returned to Mr Edom and rested on him so disconsolately that he began to feel that he too must fail her.

  “The trouble is, all your things are so beautiful, so tip-top. I’ve got nothing you could conceivably want.”

  Remembrance of past transactions with Mrs Otter told him that this might well be true. At the far end of the room, the reflection of Mr Collins’ face, encompassed by the blue plaster bows of a rococo mirror, repeated the same tale, and in sterner accents. He had bought a great deal of rubbish from the dear lady. On the other hand, she had sometimes brought off a winner.

  “Don’t say that, Mrs Otter. Have you forgotten those duelling pistols you found in the attic which Mrs Vibart carried off for her collection? George sold her two of his kittens at the same time.” This should settle George Collins.

  “Yes, wasn’t it glorious? But I have no more duelling pistols. Nothing but assegais and baby clothes.”

  And he’ll buy them, thought Mr Collins. Undoubtedly there must be something about Mrs Otter, since Mr Edom felt whatever it was so strongly. For himself, Mr Collins felt nothing except a loyal resignation. He went on looking in a bible of china marks for TBZ, with “Patmos” in a crowned lozenge.

  Mrs Otter enlarged. “All the same, I think I’m going to ask you to come and look, just in case you should find something I’ve missed. You see, the pistol money went to my idiot boy to help buy an enormous Edwardian car because he wanted to drive to Brighton. Well, that was all right, and he was towed back, and when it was repaired he took it out to show to a friend who rather thought of buying it, which would have paid for the repairs, which had come to more than he expected, because apparently when you have an Edwardian car its inside bits are period pieces too. So he was on his way to the friend, who shares a flat in Chelsea, when he saw another friend who was marching in a peaceful demonstration or perhaps it was a counter-demonstration – anyway, it was peaceful – and the friend said join in, so Toby joined in, going as slow as he could and then waiting for them to catch up, and it gave new life to the demonstration, and whole busloads cheered, and everything was perfectly all right till they got to the Embassy; but by then the car had overheated from going so slow, and it skidded and rushed halfway up the Embassy steps. No-one was hurt, but the Embassy people were very prim about it, and Toby was arrested; and as his license is endorsed up to the hilt he’ll either have to pay a fine or go to prison. Personally, I would welcome a term in prison, prison sounds so calm. But the young don’t want calm.”

  “It will be a pleasure,” said Mr Edom, putting his foot firmly on the further end of Mrs Otter’s statement. “I’ll come at once, if that would be convenient.”

  “Perhaps not quite at once. I ought to do a little tidying first.”

  “Shall we say, this afternoon, at three?”

  “At quarter to four. Then I can give you tea.” She was already looking more like herself. Her hat had drifted to the back of her head and a ringlet had escaped and hung engagingly over her nose.

  It is the doom of man to love what he is not constructed for. Mrs Otter was too often tipsy. She dressed like a tinker, and if by chance she was driven into respectable new clothes she instantly got them into bad ways. Her reactions were incalculable. She combined being vague with being arbitrary. In terms of cabinet-making, silverware, ceramics, Mr Edom would never have admitted her into his Galleries. But from the hour he first set eyes on her (a horse had fallen down in St John Street and she was sitting on its head), he had loved her against all his principles, and fatalistically, as fathers love. So – but without impediment of principles – did every errand boy, every street hawker, and all the town’s crusted bad characters. He wasn’t much among so many, and probably at their various times they had all had tea with her. But today it was his turn.

  Her Lapsang Souchong was exquisite, but he felt a traitor as he drank it. There was treachery in allowing her to foist such rubbish on him: alphabet mugs without handles, souvenirs from Jerusalem, that hatbox with associations (he had avoided it till now, but it had got him at last); worst of all, ruins of what had once been splendours. He was packing the sorry assortment in the hatbox when she remembered what it was she had been meaning to say ever since he arrived: Would he like a scrap screen?

  The scrap screen was in her bedroom. Its eight-fold span glorified half a wall with the colours of a hothouse, the richness of a plum pudding, the glow and multiplicity of the Last Judgment window in the Minster. And even to his trained and anxious eye it seemed in quite remarkably good condition. Mistaking his silence, she said propitiatingly, “It’s done on the other side too. But it’s not so lively, as by then they had to fall back on engravings.”

  “Who were ‘they’, Mrs Otter?”

  “My first husband’s great-aunts. Eight of them, and each did a leaf. They lived in a rectory in north Norfolk and were always in quarantine for something or other. Would you like to see the other side?”

  He answered that he would take the other side on trust and send packers and a van in the morning. Meanwhile, he would put a cheque in the post – a provisional cheque – for he hoped to do considerably better.

  He was so elated by the prospect of enrichin
g Mrs Otter that not till he was on the threshold of the Galleries and saw Mr Collins at the telephone did he remember that he did not go in for large Victoriana.

  “That was Mr Grimshaw,” said Mr Collins, putting back the receiver.

  “Domes, I suppose?” Mr Grimshaw was the curator of the stuffed birds in the town museum.

  “I told him you had no unoccupied domes, but he saw the dome of the Nailsea birds through the window, and he’s coming tomorrow to measure it and make an offer.”

  “He can offer,” said Mr Edom.

  “And Mrs Harington may be coming too. She wants to try if the harp stool is comfortable.”

  “Quite a party.”

  “Why, who else?”

  “Mrs Otter’s scrap screen. We must think about placing it. It’s six foot high, and to be seen to advantage it will need twelve-foot-by-four-foot floor space.”

  Forty minutes later Mr Collins, putting on his coat again, remarked that Mr Edom ought to have been a general.

  The van came punctually next morning. Mrs Otter came too, sitting beside the driver and holding the hatbox. The screen was carried in. Freed from its wrappings and expanded in its resting place, it looked imposingly spectacular and totally out of keeping with its surroundings. But Mr Grimshaw, single-hearted in his devotion to British birds and their post-mortem preservation, walked in without paying it the slightest attention.