Miss Hargreaves

by Frank Baker

  I went to father’s study. It’s a wonderful room on the second floor, with a window looking along the back garden and up Candole Street where the Happy Union is. At the top of the hill you can see the Cathedral. Sometimes father lies on the sofa under the sill with the window open, and plays tunes on his violin to the spire. ‘She’s a lady, that spire,’ he says, ‘well bred; a proper lady.’ And you feel he’s right; particularly when you remember the Cathedral is under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin.

  There are hundreds of books in the room; in bookshelves and stacked in piles on the floor. A large table in the middle is full of magazines, ink bottles, microscope slides, old cups of coffee, glasses, music, and tobacco tins. A black Bord piano crosses the corner by the window. It’s an ancient little piano, very far-away and pleasing in tone; the sort of piano you might hear playing from under the sea, if you know what I mean. A haunted piano, altogether. There’s a picture above it of the Three Magi coming in procession to the Manger; by a chap called Dierich Bouts it is; very old, Flemish, full of colour, queerly like counterpoint. Bouts and Bord have always gone together for as long as I can remember; father says they’re married. It’s a funny thing, once, when the picture had to be taken away to have a new glass put in, the piano got terribly out of tune and some of the notes stuck. They’re very fond of each other, clearly.

  When I came in that evening he was sawing away at the rondo from the Kreutzer. A lamp was balanced perilously on some music on top of the piano. Father didn’t stop. I sank into a chair, feeling very tired and muddle-headed.

  Presently father laid down his bow and, finding an old hairpin of mother’s, started to clean out his cigarette holder.

  ‘Hullo, boy,’ he said, ‘come and play with me.’

  ‘Too tired, Dad. I’ve been having supper with Miss Hargreaves.’

  He nodded as though he’d known her all his life. Nothing ever surprises father; he can’t even surprise himself.

  ‘She bring her oboe?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know what makes you think she plays the oboe,’ I said.

  ‘Well, come and try the slow movement of this Delius. It’s a bit soggy, but it’s got heart.’

  ‘I’m very worried, Dad. I’m honestly wondering whether I oughtn’t to see a doctor or something. I asked her how “Agatha” was–just making up the name on the Spur of the Moment, see?’

  ‘I warned you years ago about that Spur, my boy.’

  ‘And all she said was, “sinking”. Like that. It was amazing. What do you think it means?’

  ‘Delius is all right for a change; like going on to pudding after the joint. But you can’t live on puddings. Take the Elgar concerto–as a concerto you can’t beat it. Have an apple?’

  ‘Do you think “Agatha’s” a monkey? Oh, by the way, she stopped and actually spoke to the Dean. He was furious, glared at me. That horrible bird of hers screamed the Venite at him. He didn’t like it, you could see that.’

  ‘Monkeys like music,’ he remarked, rolling himself a cigarette. ‘If she plays the harp, as you suggest, probably she’s got a monkey.’

  ‘Do you suppose I’ve suffered some ghastly lapse of memory? I mean, I might have met her years ago, at Bournemouth.’

  ‘Memory’s a funny thing.’ He twisted his moustache and a reminiscent light came into his grey eyes. ‘I had a beard once. Before you were born, that was. Well, one night I shaved it off–or I suppose I did. Yet, to this day, I could swear I was trimming the veronica hedge in your grandfather’s garden. He liked veronica very much, and I must say, one way and another, it does make good hedging.’

  ‘I suppose Marjorie’ll be furious with me for cutting the dance. Well, I can’t help it.’

  ‘Shall be glad to see her. Tell her to come round to the shop. By the way, who are you talking about? Agatha who?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Miss Hargreaves.’

  ‘Hargreaves? Oh. Ah. Yes. The woman you met at the Three Choirs Festival, you mean?’

  ‘Oh, anything you like,’ I sighed.

  ‘It’s astonishing what a number of interesting folk one does meet at that Festival,’ he went on, tuning his G string as he spoke. ‘I saw Tennyson there once, skulking behind a pillar and fumbling about in his beard. He dropped a bit of paper and I picked it up. There were only three words on it; I’ve got it somewhere in the shop. Remind me to look for it some time. Valuable, really.’

  He started to play a tune he had composed for the G string.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘put in your accompaniment, then I’ll give you some whisky.’

  I went over to the piano and drifted in a few chords under his melody. It was a sort of saraband, very grave, soothing, yet–somehow–that particular evening, curiously disturbing. It was never quite the same each fresh time he played it. He’d never written it out. Towards the middle he invariably improvised something new. So my accompaniment had to be prepared for any modulation he might make, while the skeleton of the music remained always the same.

  When we had finished, I sat for a long time looking up at the Three Magi and wondering, as I always did, whether any of them had moved while the music had been going on.

  Father sighed, rather uneasily I thought, and looked out at the sign of the Happy Union–an old man and an old woman–swaying in the breeze from the red-bricked wall of the house.

  ‘Can’t help thinking,’ he murmured, ‘that the most lovely music is never written down. Like speech, like something said and soon forgotten, but still alive. You accompanied well, my boy; you’ve got real creative power, you know. Only, like me, you can’t be bothered to control what you create. Well, perhaps we’re not meant to; perhaps what we create ought to control us.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ I said. And I thought of Miss Hargreaves, perhaps at this moment playing her harp to Dr Pepusch. ‘I don’t like it at all. I–’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Shaved it off. When I looked in the glass next morning, it had gone. Well, of course it had gone. You can’t shave off a seven-inch beard and expect to see it on your chin next morning. But I never remember, and to this day I’ll swear I was trimming your grandfather’s veronica hedge.’

  In my bedroom that night I sat up late, going through a lot of old diaries. There were a good many entries I couldn’t make head or tail of, such as: ‘Pall Mall ancients. Shove-’apenny sorrow.’ But there wasn’t anything that I could remotely connect with Miss Hargreaves. I gave it all up and went to bed.

  4

  TWICE a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, I go to the Cathedral before breakfast to practise the organ. I always enjoy these early mornings alone up in the loft, particularly in winter when it’s still dark and I and the bedesman who stokes up the stoves are the only people in the building.

  Next day was one of my practice mornings. Before seven I was riding my bicycle up the High Street towards the Close. As I passed the Swan I glanced apprehensively up to the windows of a room on the first floor. Had all the events of yesterday, I asked myself, been a dream? I rode on quickly, trying to put the whole queer business at the back of my mind.

  Going into the Cathedral by the little south door, I crossed the transept. It was a grey, gloomy morning; I felt rather depressed. Passing over the nave dais, I unlocked the gate to the north transept, left it open, and climbed the narrow, dark spiral stairway to the loft. The moment I saw the console, I felt better; I felt as though I had returned to an old friend, for ever faithful, of infinite variety of mood. ‘Dear old Willis,’ I murmured, gazing at his four silent manuals and smoothing my fingers tenderly over the yellowed keys. Switching on the current, I got out my music.

  I had three-quarters of an hour before me, alone with the organ. Shortly before eight I would have to stop, as there was always a celebration of the Holy Communion in one of the chapels. Dr Carless did not allow me the use of any heavy work; I was expected to confine myself to the Great flue-work and, if I wanted a crescendo, the Full Swell. I never had found it easy to stick
to this. A great organ is intoxicating; set yourself before one and see. Sometimes I had fallen to temptation, getting drunk on Great Reeds, disorderly on Solo Tubas, and ready to deal with all the miserably sober organists in the Royal College of them so long as I had the help of the Pedal Bombards.

  I started on a Mendelssohn sonata, a soft movement, tricky stuff with a pizzicato pedal. Feeling complacent about my performance, I decided to go on to the third movement, a very flamboyant affair, brisk and battlish, in three-four. ‘Damn Carless!’ I muttered as the movement went on. I dragged out the four Opens on the Great and coupled the Full Swell; I opened the box and gave the Reeds their head. Sound soared above me, battering the immense Norman piers of the transepts. Within four bars of the end I read, printed in the copy, ‘add Great Reeds’. Who could have disobeyed such an order? With a quick movement of my left hand over to the Great stop-board, I snatched out a handful of reeds–easy as plucking grass–Trumpet, Double Trumpet, Posaune and Clarion. Mixtures and mutations shot out almost without a hint. My right foot charged down on the Full Pedal composition. It was like accelerating to eighty on Salisbury Plain. Out shot the Bombards and the Ophicleide; a second later a sound like thunder filled the nave. My eyes strayed towards the Solo Tubas; somehow I resisted them and closed the movement on the Full Great and Swell, lifting my hands quickly from the final chord so that I might hear it rolling and rumbling about the nave and trembling in all the windows.

  What a sound! Elated, I listened to it dying away like a tornado, chasing itself in and out of every arch and window in the building, up to the clerestories, until it was carried away to the very tip of the spire, out to the meadows, and so for ever lost to the ear.

  Yes–but what was that I also heard? Faintly, far below, somebody clapping–somebody crying out: ‘Bravo! Oh, bravo!’

  Then footsteps on the spiral stairway, nearer and nearer, till they reached the top and the door opened.

  ‘Oh, splendid, Norman! Splendid! What sound compares to that of a mighty organ? Perhaps you remember my sonnet; it appeared, I think, in Wayside Bundle:

  ‘Roll out, ye thunderous diapasons, roll,

  And sound the battle-cry, ye roaring reeds–

  and so on. But come, dear; play some more.’

  Her face wreathed in a happy smile, she stood before me in the low little doorway.

  ‘Oh, really Miss Hargreaves–’ I protested. ‘You–you–’

  ‘Well, dear? Well?’

  I was speechless. She slid on to the seat beside me.

  ‘You ought not to come up here,’ I said. ‘It’s not allowed.’

  ‘Tush! Fie! Play a hymn!’

  ‘A hymn?’

  ‘Yes. Let us have “Hark, hark my soul”. And do the bells in the third verse. It is so hard nowadays to get anybody to make the bells in the third verse; they tell me it is old-fashioned to expect it. But no matter. I stick to the old things and I always will. Come, now!’

  ‘Well, I’d much rather play you a Bach fugue. I can do the great G minor, if you like. You know. High diddle-diddle-dee; high diddle-diddle-dee–’

  ‘No! No!’ Her manner grew peremptory. ‘I do not care for Bach at this time of day. No! No! “Hark, hark my soul.” Come, here it is. Number 223.’

  She placed the hymn before me. Fumbling about in her bag, she found her spectacles and adjusted them. Disagreeably, I started to play.

  ‘Oh, slower, slower!’ Her hand fell on my left elbow, checking the breakneck speed that I, in my displeasure, had commenced. ‘Still slower,’ she commanded.

  ‘You’re digging into my arm,’ I complained petulantly. ‘I can’t play if you dig into my arm like that.’

  ‘Slower,’ she said. ‘How can my soul hark at that pace?’

  I dropped into an absurdly funereal speed, thinking it would annoy her.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘That’s better.’

  At the end of the verse I stopped and turned over the pages of a Bach volume.

  ‘Go on!’ she said in surprise.

  ‘What? Every verse?’

  ‘Of course. A little louder now. Then go soft when you come to “Angels of Jesus”.’ She started to sing in a reedy, quavery voice. ‘“Angels of Jesus”, softer, “Angels of Light”; now louder–more buzz, more buzz! “Singing to we-el-come the pilgrims of the night”.’

  So we reached verse three with its celebrated ‘Far, far away like bells at evening pealing’.

  ‘Now make the bells,’ she said.

  I looked at the stops and considered how best to make them. Campanology has never been much in my line. ‘Hurry up!’ she said impatiently. I pondered. Nobody had ever asked me to make the bells before; it was a supreme test of my musicianship. Finally I decided to play the tune softly on the Choir, accompanying it with a quick downward E major scale on the Solo, using a very stringy Gamba, Harmonic Flute and a two-foot Piccolo, to get a tangy bell effect. It was fairly successful, though I got awfully tied up towards the end. Anyhow, it pleased Miss Hargreaves, who clapped vigorously when I had finished.

  ‘Charming! Charming! Now the next verse. Louder now. Let me hear the Diapasons.’

  After what seemed an eternity we came to the end. I closed the book firmly.

  ‘Oh, more!’ she cried. ‘Unless you can remember Handel’s Ombra mai fu?’

  ‘You mean the Largo in G?’

  ‘Precisely!’

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose I can remember it.’

  Disgruntled, I started to play. I don’t think anybody else in the world would get me to do Handel’s Largo at seven-thirty in the morning. As I played, Miss Hargreaves left the seat and wandered along the loft until she was over the chancel screen. Here she stood, looking down the nave. I watched her, and thinking of her my fingers strayed–all too idly–till I had lost the thread of the music.

  ‘No–no,’ she cried out impatiently. She hummed it as it should go.

  ‘All right,’ I growled angrily. When you’re trying to remember a thing, nothing is more exasperating than people who hum you it as it should go. ‘I can do it.’ But the more I tried, the less I could do it. For some reason the wretched thing had gone completely out of my head.

  Miss Hargreaves tottered quickly back to the seat.

  ‘Move–move,’ she commanded, pushing me aside imperiously. ‘I can remember it. You do the stops; and the pedals. Oh, dear, how far away the seat is! Hold me! I shall slip off. Hold me!’

  Very soon my petulance gave way to admiration. I don’t know about you, but if a person’s a good musician I can forgive them anything. And Miss Hargreaves was a good musician. I forgot all about last night. You may say that anyone could play Handel’s Largo. You’re quite wrong. Anyone can sentimentalize over it. But Miss Hargreaves made you feel you were hearing it for the first time; to her, obviously, the hackneyed Handelian cadences had never grown stale.

  ‘I want more organ,’ she murmured, gazing dreamily at the stops, her stiff little fingers working up and down as though in each one of them lay imprisoned a chord that had, with infinite care and love, to be given its freedom. ‘Give me more buzz more buzz!’ she commanded. I coupled the Full Buzz of the Swell. ‘Fine!’ she said. ‘Open the box, dear; open the box.’ I fumbled about with my foot for the Swell pedal and pressed it down. About six inches away from the pedal-board her black shoes swayed helplessly.

  ‘Hold me!’ she cried suddenly. ‘I’m slipping.’

  She was approaching the climax. ‘La-la-la la-la-l’la, la-la-LAH-l’ Lah–’ she sang jubilantly. ‘More buzz! The Tubas, dear! And why don’t you put the pedal part in?’

  The sound swelled out. I wouldn’t give her the Tubas; I didn’t see why she should have them, as I hadn’t just now. I allowed her the Full Great; the performance was worthy of that. Fascinated, I watched her, sitting almost on the edge of the leather seat, her short arms stretched right out to the Great keyboard, her little face beaming seraphically, and the chains round her neck jangling to and fro as she nodded her head to the
beat of the music.

  The last chord died away. ‘There!’ she said. ‘I am quite exhausted. Now you play, dear. Another hymn. Let us have “For all the Saints”.’

  ‘We can’t go all through that, Miss Hargreaves. We simply can’t.’

  ‘The last two verses, then. “But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day.” Oh, the old tune, I beg of you! None of these dreadful modern tunes! Grosvenor always sang Barnby. Barnby for me! Come on. Plenty of organ.’

  I started on one of the Great Diapasons.

  ‘Oh, more–more–’ she cried almost angrily. She stretched rudely across me and grabbed a handful of stops; amongst them were the Great Reeds. ‘Still more,’ she demanded. ‘The King of glory how can He pass without Tubas? More–more!’

  The sound rocked about the roof. Infected by her extraordinary enthusiasm, I suddenly realized how magnificent this old Victorian tune was. When we came to the last verse, Miss Hargreaves was singing at the top of a voice which you wouldn’t believe had a top. Throwing all restraint aside now, I unleashed the Solo Tubas and harnessed them to the Great and Pedal.

  ‘Bombards –Bombards,’ she shouted above the glorious din.

  I released them. Loading the organ with its full charge, I shot out the last line of the hymn; drunk with sound I raised my head and sang.

  ‘Everything–everything,’ she was crying. Her hand snitched out a lonely Choir Lieblich that had been forgotten.

  ‘That won’t be heard,’ I bawled.

  ‘No matter. We might as well have it.’

  The last cadence approached. There was a padding of rubber soles up the stairs. The door was hurled open. The Precentor stood there, his fat, red face sweating with anger.

  ‘For heaven’s sake stop this din, Huntley. Do you realize that Canon Auty is waiting to celebrate Holy Communion?’

  ‘I’m–I’m awfully sorry, Mr Blow. I didn’t know the time.’

  ‘Why can’t you look at your watch?’