Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Maybe she thought she’d better have them both where she can keep an eye on them,” said Madoc. “What else has been going on, Tad?”

  “A great deal that I don’t know about, I expect. There’s been, as I said, an atmosphere. Ill-will. Fighting. Not among the singers, they wouldn’t strain their throats screaming at each other. Anyway, singers are too involved with their own larynxes to think much about what goes on around them. It’s the orchestra. By fighting I don’t mean fisticuffs, look you, but insults and arguments much worse than the usual more or less amiable teasing and bickering that one always hears among musicians. Ochs was one of the worst. When I first took over the orchestra he was a good-natured clod, gross in his habits and worse in his language, but not a troublemaker like Rintoul. For the past week or so, Ochs had turned into a real curmudgeon, snapping and snarling and accusing his colleagues of dreadful deeds.”

  “With any justification?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. For one thing, his horn was switched.”

  Sir Emlyn leaned across the table. “Now mind you, son, this may not sound all that serious to you, but you must realize a musician’s instrument is virtually a part of himself; not only his means of livelihood but his treasure, his beloved, his constant companion. Unless he plays the harp or the piano, of course.”

  It wasn’t much of a joke, but Madoc did the best he could with it and his father plucked up the spirit to go on.

  “Anyway, there we were, ready to go onstage. Ochs opens his case and begins to yell. ‘Where’s my instrument?’ he’s yelling. ‘Who’s got my so-and-so instrument?’ His language was awful, I tell you. We had a terrible time shutting him up.”

  “There’s no chance he made a mistake?”

  “Madoc, would you mistake another woman for your wife? Of course the horn in the case was not his. We found out later that it belonged to a student who’d been rehearsing with the Youth Symphony. The kid had gone off with Ochs’s horn in all innocence and brought it back as soon as she realized there’d been a switch. Ochs insisted she’d taken his horn on purpose and there was a hell of a scene, even though anyone with half an eye could see the poor child was simply the victim of a tamned tirty trick.”

  Sir Emlyn’s Welsh accent had never altogether deserted him, and tended to get a bit out of hand in his rare moments of extreme agitation. “And that was not the worst,” he went on, abandoning all efforts to keep his consonants under control. “You would not know this, but brass players have to keep putting stuff on their lips. The pressure of the mouthpiece irritates the skin. They all have their favorite ointments, like the singers with their throat sprays and cough lozenges, bless them. Ochs swore by a certain patent remedy which is normally applied to a different part of the person and ideally adapted to the sort of coarse japery which is so popular among the brasses.”

  He coughed delicately. “Anyway, somebody got a tube of the stuff and injected it with red pepper juice or some tamned thing, and sneaked it into Ochs’s pocket. The next time Ochs salved his lips, he almost went crazy from the smarting. The stuff raised such blisters that he had to play the Saturday concert with a cotton wool mustache stuck to his upper lip. Now, was that a decent thing to do to a man who was already beginning to have trouble with his embouchure? And of course that ass Rintoul had to keep riding Ochs about how lucky he was that he hadn’t used the salve on the end it was intended for. Madoc, tell me the truth. Do you think Ochs’s death could have been due to some other beastly joke?”

  “Anything that beastly would hardly count as a joke, Tad. Do you have any idea who doctored the pile medicine?”

  “Well, naturally, I thought of Rintoul because he’s such a nasty rogue and your mother doesn’t like him either, but I couldn’t very well go accusing him without evidence, could I? He’d be just the kind to raise a big stink with the Musicians’ Union, and I don’t have to tell you how the director and the trustees would feel about that kind of trouble. Besides, I may be wrong. Rintoul himself found his mouthpiece stuffed with garlic the other day. Not that it wasn’t poetic justice. He always has a breath on him that would make a horse gag and God help the poor wretch who sits close to him. I’ll have to move Loye; she’s suffered enough. And people think all a conductor has to do is stand up there and wave a little stick!”

  He wrestled with his feelings a moment, then made his final plea. “Madoc, I’ve always thought I was a reasonably adequate disciplinarian. I’ve never had much trouble with an orchestra before, but this is beyond me. Even the orchestra manager has ratted on me. She’s supposed to have come down with some particularly horrid sort of flu, but I think it’s plain funk. She’d been looking pretty grim lately. So Lucy Shadd’s been trying to cope single-handed. Your mother’s helping all she can, but I’m stuck with the lot of them until after the festival. I simply don’t know what to do, Madoc. That’s why I sent for you, and that’s why I didn’t want Jenny here. I’d send your mother away if I thought she’d go, and that’s the first time in our married life I’ve wished my Sillie were somewhere I was not. You can see the state I’m in, son. Can you possibly help me out of this?”

  “What you’re asking is pretty much what I do for a living, Tad. I shouldn’t think we’d have too much trouble pinning down the joker, or jokers. It’s pretty well got to be one or more persons connected with the orchestra in one capacity or another, and it doesn’t look as if there’s any particularly subtle mind at work. Tell me more about “the dirty tricks.”

  What Sir Emlyn had to tell certainly was unsubtle. The so-called practical jokes had been mostly of the sorts that disgust rather than amuse. The string section hadn’t been bothered a great deal; the woodwinds had suffered minor harassments. It was the brasses who’d taken the brunt; the flutes, neither brass nor wind, had got it, too. Frieda Loye, like Wilhelm Ochs, had been a particular target.

  “Loye asks for it, I suppose.” Sir Emlyn sighed. “She’s such a stoic while she’s being teased, then she has those screaming fits later on. I blame myself very much for having put the poor woman in front of Rintoul tonight. I’d thought she’d be safe enough right under my nose. Fishline on his slide had simply not occurred to me.”

  “It wouldn’t have occurred to me, either, Tad. I’m sure you had far more than Frieda Loye’s nerves to think about. Not to worry you further, but what will you do for another French horn?”

  “That’s the least of my problems. There’ll be musicians enough around at the festival; we’ll be able to pick someone up. Well, son, I expect your mother will be looking for us. You brought some extra clothes with you, I hope?”

  “Yes, Jenny packed me a bag. Which reminds me, I want to give her a ring before we go. Is there a telephone I can use?”

  “Oh, we conductors are lords of the earth. They give us everything but peace of mind. Right over there in the corner, bach. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”

  “No, stick around and say hello. Jenny’d rather talk to you than me any time.”

  “You wouldn’t be trying to make me feel better?”

  Madoc was trying, and he was succeeding. He was only a little bit reluctant to turn the telephone over to his father once he’d got through explaining to his wife why she’d better not expect him for a few days. Then his father took over, then Annabelle got on the extension phone, then Lady Rhys came in to see what was keeping her menfolk, and they had a jolly interfamily round robin. Madoc had no idea who was going to get stuck with paying for this lengthy call and he didn’t much care. Sir Emlyn was looking a great deal less frazzled by the time they rang off; that was surely worth a few dollars of the orchestra’s expense money.

  “And now,” said Lady Rhys, “we really must get cracking. Lucy wants us all aboard the bus to the airport. We’ve already kept her waiting, I’m afraid, but it was worth it. Your Jenny is such an absolute love, Madoc! If only Dafydd could find himself another one like her.”

  Another woman like the former Janet Wadman, assuming there ever could be one, would have more
sense than to get herself tangled up with Dafydd, Madoc thought. However, he wasn’t going to jeopardize his recent promotion to fair-haired boy by saying so. He went to pick up his unpretentious suitcase, discovered Mrs. Shadd had already organized a flunky to carry it out for him, and reconciled himself with no great difficulty to acting the undistinguished son of a V.I.P.

  There were fewer than twenty of them on the bus. Madoc didn’t know who they all were but he couldn’t see where there’d be much chance for getting in any detection here, so he settled himself for a brief nap. Early in his career, he’d learned the invaluable knack of grabbing a few winks when an opportunity presented itself. Hence he was among the most alert members of the party when they boarded the aircraft.

  This was not a big plane, there were barely enough seats for their party; but it was a customized Grumman, lent for the occasion by a very rich patron of the orchestra. The regular passengers’ seats were comfortably padded armchairs, one on each side of the aisle. The four chairs in the tiny forward cabin were real lounge chairs on swivel bases, with headrests that popped up and footrests that popped out when the sitter leaned back. He and his parents got three of these, naturally.

  The fourth went to the concertmaster, an incredibly distinguished-looking Frenchman of fifty or so with one dramatic white streak in his black hair. Monsieur Houdon made one or two agreeable remarks to the Rhyses, then settled down with the score of a Beethoven violin concerto of which he’d be playing the solo parts during the upcoming festival. From then on, he rehearsed his music on an imaginary instrument, no doubt with surpassing skill, all the time he wasn’t stopping to eat or drink.

  Madoc had at first thought Lucy Shadd might be planning to take that seat for herself, but it didn’t look as though the director of operations intended to do any sitting whatever. They were hardly airborne before she was around with a tray of champagne in plastic goblets. This was a gift from another generous patron, she informed everybody up and down the aisle. Then she served out assorted sandwiches, then coffee with or without caffeine as desired, then little pastries and cakes, then fruit and cheese, then liqueurs. Finally she came again with a vast box of incredibly expensive chocolates, still another gift from yet a different patron whose name Madoc didn’t bother to catch since none of the chocolates appeared to be stuffed with arsenic. After the chocolates, she distributed damp, hot finger towels and blankets and pillows to all who wanted them. At long last, she sat down in the front seat of the rear section and put her feet up.

  They were taking a more northerly route than had been planned. This, the co-pilot had explained over the public address system somewhere between the champagne and the pastries, was on account of some turbulence that had unexpectedly manifested itself to the south of them. Their plane, though a good plane and a safe plane, was not a new plane, a large plane, or a powerful enough plane to climb above the weather. It wasn’t a fast plane, either, as planes went these days. They still had a few hours’ flying time, and the altered route would delay them still further.

  Madoc didn’t care. The chair was comfortable, the food had been more than ample, the passengers behind him had either quieted down or couldn’t be heard above the roar of the engines. His mother and father, experienced troupers that they were, had already nodded off with their heads on their headrests and their shoeless feet on their footrests. He was thinking seriously of following their excellent example when he became aware that the turbulence was no longer to the south of them.

  The co-pilot came on again. “Sorry folks, we thought we’d be able to give you a smooth ride by changing course, but it looks as if the storm’s caught up with us. We may be experiencing some real roughness for a little while.”

  He was absolutely right. The roughness they were experiencing was like no tossing around any of them had been through before. The co-pilot was still jovial. “Hope you’ve all got your seat belts securely fastened, folks. Better return your seats to the upright position and make sure your tray tables are put away and locked. We’ll be out of this in a—”

  The plane dropped what felt like a thousand feet straight down, and then began to buck. Madoc could feel the belt cutting into his stomach as his body was hurled clear of the seat. It was like being inside a crazy-mad brahma bull. He could hear the engines straining for altitude. They were going up, higher, higher—now they were dropping, hitting, lurching like a car in a skid on the side of a cliff. The lights went out. The engines cut off. The co-pilot said, quite clearly in the sudden stillness, “Jesus!”

  “Everybody fasten your seat belts, quick. Put your head on your knees and your arms around your head. Sorry, but I guess we’re going down.”

  Madoc couldn’t see his parents, but he knew they’d be hunched over as bidden; Tad in his shabby tweeds, Mum still in her black satin and diamonds because she’d been too busy to change before the luggage was sent off. They’d have their arms around each other, he thought. He smiled over at them through the blackness, tucked down his head, sent a great wave of love to Janet, and waited.

  They landed quite gently, all things considered. It was still pitch dark, and a few people were screaming. Madoc pulled out his little pocket flashlight and flicked it on.

  His parents were all right, blinking at him and trying to smile, still with their arms entwined. Jacques-Marie Houdon sat up, nodded, and played something on his imaginary violin. Mrs. Shadd looked not only terrified but outraged that her schedule had been disrupted. Madoc got rather shakily to his feet and walked the few steps to the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot were sitting there like a pair of statues, both of them stark white in the faces, both of them with their eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. Madoc was the one who managed to speak.

  “Nice job, you two. My father has some brandy in his briefcase.”

  That joggled them back to life. They all three started to laugh. It was the funniest thing that had ever happened. The pilot reached down beside him and picked up an emergency lantern. The co-pilot lifted a sliding door on the wall and hauled out half a dozen ordinary flashlights. Still giggling, Madoc took five of the flashlights along with his own, switched on a couple, and went back into the cabin.

  “Here, Tad, have a light. Could you spare a little of your brandy for the pilots?”

  “Give me that torch. I’ll take it to them. There’s plenty of brandy.” Now that she had something to do, Lucy Shadd was calm enough. She unscrambled herself from her seat belt and began to bustle.

  “Just as well.” Sir Emlyn was smiling his gentle, familiar smile. “I was planning to finish off that brandy myself. Straight from the bottle. Eh Sillie? Care to join me?”

  “Oh, you dreadful man!” Lady Rhys was laughing, adoring.

  Madoc went along into the main cabin. “All right, folks, it’s safe to come up. We’re on the ground. I don’t know where and we don’t seem to have any electricity, but we’re all in one piece, aren’t we?”

  “You mean we don’t get to play ‘Nearer My God To Thee’?” That was, oddly enough, Frieda Loye, looking quite cocky and pleased with her own joke, such as it was. So was everybody else. Laugh and the world laughs with you, Madoc thought. Thank God there’d be no weeping alone this time around. They were all climbing up from between the seats, checking their instruments, counting their fingers. First things first.

  Lady Rhys was out in the aisle now, helping Lucy Shadd carry around the drinks. Sir Emlyn was sitting quietly in his armchair, leafing through his scores and sipping at his brandy. Madoc distributed the rest of the flashlights at strategic points and went forward again to the cockpit.

  “Any idea where we are, gentlemen?”

  “If you’re looking for a simple yes or no, the answer’s no,” said the pilot. “I don’t know what the Christ we ran into, but it tossed us clear to hell and gone and knocked out our whole damned electrical system. I suppose that’s why the engines quit. Unless they fell off, which is also possible. The radio’s not working, nothing’s working up here except my wristw
atch, and that’s probably wrong because I don’t know which time zone we’re in. We’d been flying on instruments through solid overcast for quite a while, which you probably didn’t realize.”

  “My God! How did you find the ground?”

  “I think it must have been angels,” the pilot replied in all seriousness. “When the engines cut out and the lights went off, the clouds broke and the moon came out just long enough for me to spot a smooth open strip. We’d dropped out of the turbulence into a nice, steady tailwind, so we just glided in. Angels are the only reasonable explanation.”

  He was probably right, Madoc thought. “Why don’t we open the door and see if they’re still around?”

  “Great idea. God, I’m wobbly.”

  “I’ll get the door, Mac,” said the co-pilot. “You brought us down. Here, drink the rest of this brandy.”

  Together, he and Madoc got the cockpit door open and the steps lowered. It was cold, almost bitter. That tailwind was really going after the clouds now. The moon wasn’t at the full, but it was casting enough light to show them a landscape straight out of a Lex Laramie novel. Behind the aircraft was only open plain; in front were the Deadeye Saloon and the Miners’ Rest Hotel, both of them shut tighter than a drugstore cowboy’s Levis.

  The co-pilot snorted. “Boy, our luck’s really holding. We’ve hit a ghost town. This place is dead as a doornail.”

  “It’s dead all right,” Madoc agreed, “but I’m not sure it’s a genuine ghost town. Looks a bit slick for that, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hell, yes, now that you mention it. This is probably just a movie set, a lot of false fronts with nothing behind ’em. The Hollywood guys are doing a lot of their filming in Canada nowadays, you know. Come on, we might as well know the worst.”

  “Perhaps we’d better put on our jackets first, and close the plane door,” Madoc suggested. “The cabin will cool down fast enough without our wasting what heat there is.”

  And the plane might be the only shelter they’d have for who knew how long a time? Madoc wished the co-pilot hadn’t mentioned a movie set. As they got closer, that was exactly what the place suggested.