Airs and Graces
Page 27
Balfour turned. I couldn’t see his face, but he seemed to clutch the coins even tighter. I had a sudden panic: we should have retrieved the bag earlier, put some papers in it to look like letters – if one of the women looked now they’d know this was a trick.
But I remembered Mrs Fletcher’s expression as she passed the chapel. She already knew . . .
Alice danced forward. ‘Dear John, thank you so much. It’s so kind of you to give us those letters back.’
‘Alice!’ Mrs Fletcher said sharply. ‘Go back! Now.’
Alice paused, laid a hand on her arm, smiled up at her mischievously. ‘Dear Alice, you always treat me like a child. I’ve told you – I can look after myself.’
‘No,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘You cannot. Go back!’
Alice ignored her, darted at Balfour. He let the bag go without protest. I heard the breath sigh out of him.
‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘This is a trap.’
Kane cursed. We both leapt forward at the same time, and both, like idiots, went for Alice. We collided; thrown off balance, I slipped in the snow and went down. Alice shrieked, Mrs Fletcher shouted and Balfour went off like a hare.
There was chaos. Someone yelled. Watchmen ran from every direction and piled into Balfour; he crashed to the ground under their weight, struggling wildly. Kane headed for Mrs Fletcher, seized her—
Alice stepped backwards, staring wildly. I tried to scramble up, but my feet went out from under me again. Alice retreated, clutching the bag of coins. The panic was gone from her face, and she was looking around in a calculating way. Frightened but in control. And the shimmering started again.
She was going, abandoning Mrs Fletcher. And Mrs Fletcher was calling to her to do it. Kane saw it too; he tried to disentangle himself from Mrs Fletcher but she clung on to him. She was sacrificing herself, letting Alice get away, and the girl wasn’t arguing in the least. She was even smiling as she went.
I struggled to my feet. Mrs Fletcher shouted, pushed at Kane. He fell. Mrs Fletcher barged straight into me, just as I reached Alice. I stumbled, hit the ground again with a crash that knocked the breath out of me.
The shimmer took both women . . .
Someone was at my side. I looked up into Fowler’s white, strained face. He said nothing. He was aiming at the shimmer, at the thinning figures of the women. He fired a single shot. I saw one of the women sag and fall.
The shimmer faded. There was nothing but an empty street.
The watchmen hauled Balfour out of the snow, looking exceedingly pleased with themselves. They started to look round for the women, demanding to know what had happened. McLintoch limped up, out of breath and cursing. Kane was staring, shaking his head, already beginning to disbelieve what he’d seen.
I dragged myself to my feet and took hold of Fowler’s arm.
‘I killed her,’ he said, swaying. ‘She killed Ned and I killed her. Only fair. She killed Ned. For no reason.’
I took the pistol from his loose grasp. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You killed her.’
There was no body, and therefore no prosecution to face. I’d tell everyone the women had run off, persuade Kane he’d been imagining things – he was already halfway convinced anyway, going off with watchmen to search the surrounding streets. Fowler could go home in safety.
And I wouldn’t tell him I thought he’d killed the wrong woman.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Every effort has been made to be geographically accurate in a depiction of Charles Patterson’s Newcastle. In the 1730s, Newcastle upon Tyne was a town of around 16,000 people, hemmed in by old walls, and centred on the Quay where ships moored to carry away the coal and glass on which the town depended. The single bridge across the Tyne, linking Newcastle with its southern neighbour, Gateshead, was lined with houses and shops, a chapel and even a small prison; from the Quay, the streets climbed the hills to the more genteel, and cleaner, areas around Westgate and Northumberland Street. Daniel Defoe liked the place when he visited in 1720, but remarked unfavourably on the fogs and the smells that came drifting up the river. Places such as Westgate, High Bridge, the Sandhill and the Side did (and still do) all exist, although I have added a few alleys here and there to enable Patterson and his friends to take short cuts where necessary, and invented a stylish location for Esther’s house, Caroline Square.
Musically, Charles Patterson lives in an atmosphere that the residents of Newcastle in the 1730s would have recognized instantly. The town had one of the most active musical scenes in England, after London, Bath and Oxford. From 1735, inhabitants could hear music in a weekly series of winter concerts (and occasionally during the summer too), listen to music in church (plain simple music if you went to St Nicholas, much more elaborate and ‘popular’ music at All Hallows), attend the dancing assemblies in winter, and listen to the fiddlers, pipers and ballad singers in the street. Nationally and internationally famous soloists often visited but sadly, there is no evidence to support the story that the most celebrated musician of the period, Mr George Frideric Handel, ever visited Newcastle.
A number of real people fleetingly appear in Charles Patterson’s world. Solomon Strolger, organist of All Hallows for 53 years, is one, as is another organist, James Hesletine of Durham Cathedral. Thomas Mountier, the bass singer in Broken Harmony, was a singing man at the Cathedral for a short while until drink intervened; James Fleming had a stationer’s shop on the Tyne Bridge. The Jenisons and Ords were real families with a particular interest in music but the specific individuals who appear in these books are fictional. The Gregsons are also fictional; Samuel’s profession of upholsterer was what we would nowadays call an interior designer – he would have dealt with all aspects of decoration, including painting and wallpapering as well as furnishings.
There were indeed new Assembly Rooms in the Groat Market in the late 1730s although, as Patterson points out, they were designed for dancing, and far from ideal for concert-giving; there is no evidence, however, that a London architect was brought in to design them. Esther’s comment about stylish new rooms in York refers to the Assembly Rooms in Blake Street, which still survive and give some idea of what the Newcastle Rooms might have looked like.
The relationship between London and regional cities such as Newcastle was always fraught with ambiguities. The inhabitants of Newcastle prided themselves on being up-to-date with the latest fashions, and boasted of obtaining new publications, new entertainments and popular performers from the capital with great speed. At the same time they could affect a snobbish disdain for anyone who suggested that London was in any way superior to Newcastle, and Defoe himself, a man who was hard to please, admitted that the Tyne Bridge was almost as impressive as London Bridge. Alas, the bridge came to a sorry end, washed away in dramatic floods in 1771.
Charles Patterson is entirely fictional, but the difficulties he finds in making a living would have been entirely familiar to musicians of the time. If he has an alter ego, it would be Charles Avison, a Newcastle-born musician and composer who was extremely well-known in his time and who dragged himself up by his own efforts from obscurity to wealth and respect. If Patterson’s career follows the same path, he will be extremely happy.