by Guy N Smith
Psalm 151 - Kindle Version 1.02
(c) Guy N Smith 2013
First Edition Published by Black Hill Books, August 2013
ISBN : 978-1-907846-75-5
Also Available as a Paperback Published by Black Hill Books, August 2013
ISBN : 978-1-907846-84-7
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Contents
Title
Part 1 - Summer
.. 1
.. 2
.. 3
.. 4
.. 5
.. 6
.. 7
.. 8
.. 9
.. 10
.. 11
.. 12
.. 13
.. 14
.. 15
Part 2 - Autumn
.. 16
.. 17
.. 18
.. 19
.. 20
.. 21
.. 22
.. 23
.. 24
.. 25
.. 26
.. 27
.. 28
About The Author
The End
1993 Lichfield Prize Shortlist Certificate
PART ONE
SUMMER
1
Herbert Poppleton boasted, not with an arrogance that hinted at superiority over his fellow men but with an undisguised pride, that in fifty-one years of marriage neither he nor his late wife, God rest her soul, had ever viewed each other unclothed. Theirs had been the perfect marriage, absolute fidelity, love and affection that had not paled over the years.
Her devotion had been unstinted. He remembered how, in 1956 when he was first appointed organist at Lichfield Cathedral, Maude had saved from her pittance of a housekeeping allowance in order that he might buy a suit that was equal to his status. Charcoal grey with pin stripes and a waistcoat that strained at the buttons; it still hung in his wardrobe, shiny and impregnated with mothballs. The buttons would no longer fasten; two had popped when he had tried it on in one of his frequent moods of sad nostalgia. Otherwise, he would have worn it on Sundays for evensong.
All his suits had to be made to measure; his unfortunate figure had never permitted him to buy one off the tailor’s rack. Short in stature, he had been 5ft 4in when he had achieved his degree in music, and doubtless he had shrunk since then. His body was ill proportioned; his large balding head was a burden to his narrow shoulders, his stomach has always protruded even though he had always eaten frugally, and his short legs gave him an almost dwarf-like appearance in contrast to his long arms. As a consolation, and he had no wish to criticise his maker, he thought that he might have been endowed with aristocratic features; he had no wish to be handsome.
Instead, his nose was bulbous, his eyes were small and buried in fleshy sockets, magnified hideously by the thick-lensed glasses, which he had been compelled to wear since childhood. A hair lip added a touch of grotesqueness. All of which combined to make him reclusive and short-tempered.
Yet he had always been loving and gentle with Maude. Hardly a cross word had been exchanged in over half a century. But he blamed himself for her death, the stroke that had snatched her from within a year of their retirement from cathedral duties.
He had had no option but to retire. With an organist at eighty the cathedral was looking for a younger man, any mistakes which he made whilst playing the organ were due to his failing eyesight and not to his musical skills. Stronger lenses and increased lighting had not helped. Far better, as Bishop Franklin had put it to him in that holy man’s inimitable way, to retire at one’s peak than to go into decline. No previous organist held such a record of never having missed a service for fifty years and it was unlikely that Poppleton’s impeccable and devoted service to the cathedral would ever be surpassed. He was a legend in his own lifetime; he would be remembered for posterity. In due course they would erect a plaque to his memory in the organ loft.
So Herbert had agreed to retire. It was the most difficult decision of his life. The Dean and Chapter were agreeable to himself and Maude remaining in their small house in Vicar’s Close for the rest of their days. It was a tempting offer. Herbert and Maude talked it over. This place had been their home since 1956, but to stay here in the shadow of the cathedral might prove distressing for Herbert; in summer when the west doors were left open the strains of the organ could be clearly heard. The music would not be Herbert’s, it would be stressful and hurtful, and a reminder that another had replaced him in the only role in life that he had ever wanted.
Herbert and Maude agreed that it would be best for them to leave Lichfield, never to return. Not even for memorial services. They contemplated a coastal retirement home, decided against it. Seaside resorts were bleak and lonely places during the winter months. Suppose one of them died. No, that was a long way off yet; they needed only each other, they did not need to cultivate outside friendships. They had no friends in the Close, only acquaintances. It would always be that way.
Herbert chose Malvern. Because of Elgar, principally. And Shaw had lived there, too. It would be a fitting place for one whose organ compositions and recitals had earned him such accolade in a cathedral city. He and Maude would be able to enjoy occasional walks in the hills and it was reputed that the water had cured many an ailment. Maude would benefit from that.
Maude died eleven months to the day when they moved to their small town house. That morning she showed no outward signs of feeling unwell; by afternoon she was dead.
Herbert was plagued by the belief that had they remained in their former home and its tranquil surrounds, she would have been alive today. The move had distressed her, but she had concealed her unhappiness from him as she had often done over minor things in the past. She had pined and died.
He decided against returning to Lichfield. At eighty-five, he surely had not much time left. He grieved in solitude, passed the days listening to Beethoven and Mozart recitals on the record player, which Maude had given to him as a wedding present. Sometimes, during the summer months, he took short walks up into the hills; the magnificent solitude gave him a sense of being close to Maude. He spoke with her the way he always used to, discussed Bach, his all-time favourite. He had never discovered whether or not Maude shared his love of the great composers; if she didn’t, then she certainly engaged upon intelligent discussions with him, and he loved her for her selflessness.
Today he felt closer than ever to his dearly departed wife. It was as though Maude walked at his side, the tip tapping of the silver-headed cane, which he had carried for five decades, her footsteps alongside his own.
That cane was as much a part of his image as the tightly fitting suit, the last one which Jackson, the city tailor, had made before he sold out to a nationwide chain of clothiers. The small highly polished stick had been found on one of the pews by Homer, the Head Verger, after a military memorial service. An officer’s without doubt, maybe a high-ranking one. Under normal circumstances it would have been handed in as lost property. Poppleton had told the Verger he would see to it; he had, and he had carried it in full view ever since. If the rightful owner had put in a claim, Herbert would have given it back to him. There had been no such claim and the organist was still minding it fifty years hence. It wasn’t like stealing, was it?
Just borrowing. All the same, its possession still pricked his conscience.
Maude might even have been walking with him today. It was hot, oppressive; the sweat beaded on his extensive forehead, trickled down into his eyes, made them smart and distorted his fading vision even more than usual. He did not mind because he had his wife alongside him, on parole from God.
Before long they would rest, find somewhere to sit down, talk about Bach and Mozart and the Lichfield years. Maude would enjoy that.
He was sure that there were people in close proximity, could just discern their outlines as if they stood in a fog or heat haze. Water splashed, gurgled.
Herbert knew where he was now, up by the spring that gushed out of the hillside through an iron pipe, filled and overflowed a stone trough. Icy cold pure water—there were always folk here filling containers from it, about the only thing that was free apart from the fresh air up here. Health-giving water that would possibly have cured Maude of her arthritis had she lived long enough to reap its benefits. One could buy it in bottles from the shops, of course, at some astronomical price. Herbert Poppleton’s pension hadn’t run to that. Again he felt a twinge of guilt. Had he made sacrifices in other areas and bought the spa water, then Maude might still be here.
But she was here.
Somebody spoke to him; he raised his cane in an acknowledgement. He was too breathless to reply, and he had no wish to indulge in idle conversation. Back in the old days in the Close he always spoke with his stick when the pupils from the Cathedral School waved to him. Sometimes he grunted an unintelligible reply. Some of the boys were choristers in the cathedral, he took them for choir practice every day in the Song School. He was very fond of them in contrast to his abrupt manner.
He would have to rest soon; his short legs ached their complaint. There was a bench seat just off the rough track; it commanded a panoramic view of the Worcestershire countryside. It was so elevated that once he had experienced a touch of vertigo. He would not today, though, because his vision was blurred and reduced. He had not even been able to discern the features of those people by the spring and they had only been a few yards away.
Nevertheless, a sit down would be most welcome.
It took him some time to find the seat; he had already passed it, realized it when the path ended abruptly in some gorse bushes, and retraced his steps. Miraculously on a day like today, it wasn’t occupied. He sighed his relief as he sank down on to its weather-beaten slats, closed his eyes momentarily. He was sure Maude was sitting alongside him. He was frightened to glance sideways in case she wasn’t, it would be cruel to disillusion himself.
He often talked aloud to himself, a habit that his long-suffering wife had endured over the years; she knew that he did not appreciate being disturbed in his ramblings. So he talked on now as he used to then; about the composers, his own compositions, the one which he had had published and never been paid for, but money was a small consideration where the arts were concerned.
He squinted out at the view but all he saw was a grey mist that reflected the bright sunshine and dazzled him.
He might have dozed, he could not be sure. All he knew was that he seemed to have been here for a very long time. He started, fumbled for his pocket watch. He always liked to be home by four, he had tea at 4.30. He was still governed by diocesan routine. Evensong was sung at 5.30, Monday to Friday. Rigid discipline still ruled his weekdays. Goodness, he ought to be going. It was 3.45 and it was a full forty-five minutes’ walk home from here.
That was when he realized that there was somebody else sitting on the bench beside him. A shape in a cataract fog, a form that huddled just the way Maude used to sit, leaning forward when her head drooped with drowsiness; she always slept sitting upright on the sofa.
It was Maude.
“Good afternoon, Mr Poppleton.”
It wasn’t Maude.
Disappointment. Disillusionment. The dream had become reality and that was cruel.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“It is Mr Poppleton, isn’t it?” A man’s voice, a baritone if he was a singer. Cultured. Not curious, because the question was only confirmation seeking, a means of introduction. The face was turned towards him but it was hidden in grey shadow, featureless.
“Yes, yes.” Impatience and annoyance. Herbert did not encourage conversation with strangers; if anybody spoke to him in the Italian restaurant where he dined on Sundays, he ignored them. But out here, amidst the rolling hills, that was more difficult. “Do I know you?”
“You did once, many years ago, but I could not be so presumptuous as to ask if you remember me. Hundreds of choirboys have passed through your hands, I’m sure. Suffice it to say that I know you and quite by chance we have met on a deserted hillside. I remember your wife, too.”
“She passed away eleven months after we moved out here.” Herbert’s voice was husky; he fumbled for his watch again. “Tea is at – 4:30. I can’t be late.”
“No, I’m sure you can’t,”– he gave a hint of a laugh –“but not to worry. My car’s only a hundred yards down the track; I can give you a lift back into town. I presume that you do live in town?”
“Yes. Along by the Winter Gardens.”
“A lovely position, I’m sure. I’m sorry to hear about your wife, I do recall her. She always wore a large hat and a veil. As schoolboys, we used to live in awe of her.”
“That was her,”– sadness again –“I’m glad you remember her. I’m sorry; I didn’t catch your name?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to you, sir. But I’ll never forget your playing in the cathedral; I wish I had a record or CD of it.”
“I’ve got one at home.” Poppleton hesitated. “They presented me with a tape of an organ recital I gave during the last Lichfield Festival. But I only have one copy. If on another occasion you would care to come along with the means to copy it, I would be only too happy. Two copies, in fact, because I don’t know how to do it. I’m thinking of trying but I’d hate to think of my precious original being damaged or lost.”
“That can be arranged.” The misty silhouetted head nodded, the face was surely smiling. “Now, we’d better make a move, I’d hate for you to be late for tea.”
Herbert allowed himself to be helped up onto his feet, leaned against the other whilst he got his balance, groped for his cane.
“I see you’ve still got the cane, sir. I remember how you threatened to give us six of the best with it that time when some of the boys made a slide in the snow down that sloping path to the Song School, and when you came along for choir practice at midday …”
“I don’t remember.” Herbert was suddenly abrupt. “Now I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but time is ticking on.”
“Just hold on to my arm, sir, the car’s only just down the track there.”
Poppleton tottered unsteadily even with his support. He wasn’t at all good on his legs these days, but he supposed you couldn’t ask a lot of them at eighty-five. He would not walk this far again.
“Here’s the car, sir. Now, if you just hold on here, I’ll go round and open the passenger door and help you in.”
It was a smallish car, a garish red; by the feel of the metal, it had been recently waxed. Herbert did not know what make it was, and he didn’t care; cars had never interested him. He sank down into the seat; there was plenty of room in which to stretch out his short legs.
“It’s very hot in here, doesn’t the window open?”
Habitual irritability, he had never tolerated discomfort or inconvenience.
“I’ll put it down for you,”– the other reached across him –“and you’d better put your seat belt on, too.”
Herbert did not like seat belts, either. They gave him the feeling of being a prisoner. Still, he must not be too ungrateful. He wondered who this fellow was, faces came and went in his memory; many of them he knew, but could not put a name to. If only he could see the face clearly. He turned his head but the other was looking away from him. It
didn’t matter.
“Do you still play, sir?” The engine stuttered into life, the chassis rattled ominously.
“A little. The piano; I don’t have access to an organ.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Anything less than the cathedral organ would be an insult to the great composers.”
“Of course.” The car reversed out onto the track, the gears grated.
“Evensong was always my favourite, sir.”
“Mine, too. And Mrs Poppleton’s, she always attended.”
“Do you ever play the Psalms, sir?” The question was direct, more than just idle conversation.
“Well, no, not on the piano. It would be pointless.”
“Not even Psalm 151, sir?”
That was when Herbert Poppleton almost fainted, seemed to slump back in his seat, his eyes closing.
“Did you hear what I said, sir?” The driver shouted as if he needed to make himself heard above the noise of the engine.
There was no reply.
The car bumped its way slowly down the steep, rutted road, passed a queue of people with polythene containers by the water trough. They glanced up, idly watched the vehicle until it was lost from view around a sharp bend. Some kind man had brought his aging father out for an afternoon ride in the hills, but the heatwave had proven too much for the old man, so they were going back home, or perhaps in search of a shady place to park up.
That was the last time Herbert Poppleton was seen alive.
2
The small bookshop smelled much the same as most second-hand bookshops: a dry mustiness that tickled the throat and irritated sensitive lungs, an aroma of long unopened tomes, a dusty atmosphere that was highlighted by a shaft of afternoon sunshine through the street window, illuminating an otherwise gloomy interior where the only lighting was a single unshaded 60-watt bulb suspended from the flaking ceiling.
The floor was uncarpeted so that browsers’ footsteps echoed, a failsafe in case the proprietor, lurking in some backroom, had failed to hear the harsh clang of the doorbell.
