The Piano Tuner

by Daniel Mason

  HOP BITTERS HOP BITTERS.

  THIS CHRISTMAS DAY, WHEN CHURCH BELLS CHIME,

  GIVE YOURSELF THE GIFT OF TIME—

  ROBINSON’S QUALITY WATCHES.

  Beneath the glow of the fountains around Nelson’s Column, he stopped to watch an organ-grinder, an Italian with a screeching monkey in a Napoleon hat, which hopped around the barrel organ, waving its arms while its master turned the crank. Around it, a group of children were clapping, torch-boys and chimney sweeps, rag collectors, and the children of costermongers. A policeman approached, his baton swinging. “Get home now, all of you, get that filthy animal out of here. Play your music in Lambeth, this is a place for gentlemen.” The group moved slowly away, protesting. Edgar turned. Another monkey, giant and grinning, groomed itself in a jeweled mirror, BROOKE’S SOAP MONKEY BRAND: THE MISSING LINK IN HOUSEHOLD CLEANLINESS. The billboard rolled past on the side of an omnibus. The busboy hollered for fares, Fitzroy Square, Hurry for Fitzroy Square. That is home, thought Edgar Drake, and he watched the omnibus pass.

  He left the square and pushed his way through the darkening swirl of merchants and carriages, following Cockspur Street as it funneled into the din of Haymarket, hands deep in his jacket now, regretting he hadn’t taken the omnibus. At the top of the street the buildings drew closer and darker as he entered the Narrows.

  He walked, not knowing exactly where he was, but only the general direction of his movement, past dark brick houses and fading painted terraces, past scattered bundled figures hurrying home, past shadow and shade and glints of light in the thin puddles that ran in veins between the cobbles, past weeping mansard rooftops and a rare lantern, perched and flickering, casting shadows of cobwebs in distorted magnification. He walked and then it was dark again and the streets narrowed, and he brought his shoulders closer. He did this because it was cold, and because the buildings did the same.

  The Narrows opened onto Oxford Street and the walk became lit and familiar. He passed the Oxford Music Hall and turned onto Newman, Cleveland, Howland Street, one, two blocks, then right, into a smaller lane, so small that it had been missed, much to the chagrin of its residents, by London’s most recent map.

  Number 14 Franklin Mews was the fourth in the terrace, a brick house virtually identical to those of Mr. Lillypenny, the flower seller, who lived at Number 12, and Mr. Bennett-Edwards, the upholsterer, at Number 16, each home sharing a common wall and brick facade. The entrance to the house was at street level. Beyond an iron gate, a short walkway spanned an open space between the street and the front door, down which a set of iron stairs descended to the basement, where Edgar kept his workshop. Flowerpots hung from the fence and outside the windows. Some held fading chrysanthemums, still blooming in the cold of autumn. Others were empty, half filled with soil, now dusted with mist that reflected the flicker of the lantern outside the door. Katherine must have left it burning, he thought.

  At the door, he fumbled with the keys, deliberate now in his attempt to delay his entry. He looked back out at the street. It was dark. The conversation at the War Office seemed distant, like a dream, and for a brief moment he thought that maybe it too would fade like a dream, that he couldn’t tell Katherine, not yet, while he doubted its reality. He felt his head jerk involuntarily, the nod again. The nod is all I have brought from the meeting.

  He opened the door and found Katherine waiting in the parlor, reading a newspaper by the soft glow of a single lamp. It was cold in the room and she wore a thin shawl of embroidered white wool over her shoulders. He closed the door softly, and stopped and hung his hat and jacket on the coatstand, saying nothing. There was no need to announce his late arrival with fanfare, he thought, better to slip in silently, Maybe then I can convince her I have been here some time already, although he knew he couldn’t, just as he knew that she was no longer reading.

  Across the room, Katherine continued to stare at the newspaper in her hands. It was the Illustrated London News, and later she would tell him that she was reading “Reception at the Metropole,” where the music of a new piano was described, although not its make, and certainly not its tuner. For another minute, she continued to flip through the journal. She said nothing, she was a woman of impeccable composure, and this was how best to deal with tardy husbands. Many of her friends were different. You are too easy with him, they often told her, but she shrugged them off, The day he comes home smelling of gin or cheap perfume, then I will be angry. Edgar is late because he is absorbed in his work, or because he gets lost walking home from a new assignment.

  “Good evening, Katherine,” he said.

  “Good evening, Edgar. You are almost two hours late.”

  He was used to the ritual, the innocent excuses, the explainings-away: I know, dear, dearest, I am sorry, I had to finish all the strings so I can retune them tomorrow, or This is a rushed commission, or I am being paid extra, or I got lost on the way home, the house is near Westminster, and I took the wrong tram, or I just wanted to play it, it was a rare 1835 model, Erard, beautiful of course, it belongs to the family of Mr. Vincento, the Italian tenor, or It belongs to Lady Neville, unique, 1827, I wish you could come and play it too. If he ever lied, it was only in exchanging one excuse for another. That it was a rushed contract, when really he had stopped to watch street players. That he took the wrong tram, when actually he had stayed late to play the piano of the Italian tenor. “I know, I am sorry, still working on the Farrell contract,” and this was enough, he saw her close the News, and he slid across the room to sit next to her, his heart racing, She knows something is different. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away, trying to hide a smile. “Edgar, you’re late, I overcooked the meat, stop that, don’t think you can keep me waiting and make it up to me with endearments.” She turned from him, and he slipped his arms around her waist.

  “I thought you would have finished that contract by now,” she said.

  “No, the piano is in lamentable shape, and Mrs. Farrell insists that I tune it to ‘Concert Quality.’” He raised his voice an octave to imitate the matron. Katherine laughed and he kissed her neck.

  “She says her little Roland will be the next Mozart.”

  “I know, she told me again today, even made me listen to the rascal play.”

  Katherine turned toward her husband. “You poor dear. I can’t be angry at you for long.” Edgar smiled, relaxing slightly. He looked at her as she tried to summon an expression of mock sternness. She is still so lovely, he thought. The golden curls that had so entranced him when he had first met her had faded somewhat, but she still wore her hair loose, and they became the same color again whenever she went in the sun. They had met when, as an apprentice tuner, he had repaired her family’s Broadwood upright. The piano hadn’t impressed him—it had been rebuilt with rather cheap parts—but the delicate hands that played it had, as had the softness of the figure that had sat beside him at the keyboard, the presence that stirred him even now. He leaned toward her, to kiss her again. “Stop it,” she giggled, “not now, and be careful of the sofa, this is new damask.”

  Edgar sat back. She is in a good mood, he thought, Perhaps I should tell her now. “I have a new contract,” he said.

  “You must read this report, Edgar,” said Katherine, smoothing out her dress and reaching for the News.

  “An 1840 Erard. It sounds as if it is in dreadful shape. It should pay wonderfully.”

  “Oh really,” standing, and walking to the dining table. She didn’t inquire who owned the piano, nor where it was, such were not questions often asked, as for the last eighteen years, the only answers had been Old Mrs. So-and-So and London’s Such-and-Such Street. Edgar was glad she didn’t ask, the rest would soon come, he was a man of patience, and not one to press his fortune, a practice which he knew led only to overtightened piano strings and angry wives. Also, he had just looked down at the copy of the Illustrated London News, where, below the story on the reception at the Metropole, was an article on “The Atrocities of the Dacoits,” writt
en by an officer in the “3rd Ghoorka Regiment.” It was a short piece, detailing a skirmish with bandits who had looted a friendly village, the usual fare about efforts at pacification in the colonies, and he wouldn’t have noticed it were it not for its title, “Sketches of Burmah.” He was familiar with the column—it ran almost weekly—but he had paid it little attention. Until now. He tore the article from the page and tucked the newspaper under a pile of magazines on the small table. She shouldn’t see this. From the dining room came the clink of silverware and the smell of boiled potatoes.

  The following morning, Edgar sat at a small table set for two as Katherine made tea and toast and set out jars of butter and jam. He was quiet, and as she moved through the kitchen, she filled the silence with talk of the endless autumn rain, of politics, news. “Did you hear, Edgar, of the omnibus accident yesterday? Of the reception for the German baron? Of the young mother in the East End who has been arrested for the murder of her children?”

  “No,” he answered. His mind wandered, distracted. “No, tell me.”

  “Horrible, absolutely horrible. Her husband—a coal hauler I think—found the children, two little boys and a little girl, curled together in their bed, and he told a constable, and they arrested the wife. The poor thing. The poor husband, he didn’t think she had done it—think of that, losing both your wife and children. And she says she only gave them a patent medicine to help them sleep. I think they should arrest the patent-medicine maker. I do believe her, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course, dear.” He held his cup to his mouth and breathed in the steam.

  “You are not listening,” Katherine said.

  “Of course I am; it is terrible,” and he was, he thought of the image of the three children, pale, like baby mice with unopened eyes.

  “Alas, I know I shouldn’t read such stories,” she said. “They bother me so. Let’s talk of something else. Will you finish the Farrell contract today?”

  “No, I think I will go later this week. At ten I have an appointment at the Mayfair home of an MP. A Broadwood grand, I don’t know what is wrong with it. And I have some work to finish in the shop before I leave.”

  “Do try to get home on time tonight. You know I hate waiting.”

  “I know.” He reached over and took her hand in his. An exaggerated effort, she thought, but dismissed it.

  Their servant, a young girl from Whitechapel, had returned home to tend to her mother, who was sick with consumption, so Katherine left the table and went upstairs to arrange the bedroom. She usually stayed at home during the day, to help with the chores, to receive house calls from Edgar’s clients, to arrange commissions, and to plan social affairs, a task which her husband, who had always found himself more comfortable among musical instruments, was more than happy to let her manage. They had no children, although not for want of trying. Indeed, their marriage had stayed quite amorous, a fact that sometimes surprised even Katherine when she watched her husband wander absentmindedly through the house. While at first this notable Absence-of-Child, as Katherine’s mother described it, had saddened the two of them, they had become accustomed to it, and Katherine often wondered if it had made them closer. Besides, Katherine at times admitted to her friends a certain relief, Edgar is enough to look after.

  When she had left the table, he finished his tea and descended the steep stairs to his basement workshop. He rarely worked at home. Transporting an instrument through the London streets could be disastrous, and it was much easier to take all his tools to his work. He kept the space primarily for his own projects. The few times he had actually brought a piano to his home, it had to be lowered by ropes down the open space between the street and his house. The shop itself was a small space with a low ceiling, a warren of dusty piano skeletons, tools that hung from the walls and ceilings like cuts in a butcher shop, fading schematics of pianos and portraits of pianists nailed to the walls. The room was dimly lit by a half window tucked beneath the ceiling. Discarded keys lined the shelves like rows of dentures. Katherine had once called it “the elephants’ graveyard,” and he had to ask if this was for the hulking rib cages of eviscerated grands or for the rolls of felt like hide, and she had answered, You are too poetic, I meant only for the ivory.

  Coming down the stairs, he almost tripped over a discarded action that was leaning against the wall. Beyond the difficulty of moving a piano, this was another reason he didn’t bring customers to his shop. For those accustomed to the shine of polished cases set in flowered parlors, it was always somewhat disconcerting to see an opened piano, to realize that something so mechanical could produce such a heavenly sound.

  Edgar made his way to a small desk and lit a lamp. The night before, he had hidden the packet given to him at the War Office beneath a musty stack of printed tuning specifications. He opened the envelope. There was a copy of the original letter sent by Fitzgerald, and a map, and a contract specifying his commission. There was also a printed briefing, given to him on the request of Doctor Carroll, titled in bold capitals, THE GENERAL HISTORY OF BURMA, WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE ANGLO-BURMESE WARS AND BRITISH ANNEXATIONS. He sat down and began to read.

  The history was familiar. He had known of the Anglo-Burmese wars, conflicts notable both for their brevity and for the considerable territorial gains wrested from the Burmese kings following each victory: the coastal states of Arakan and Tenasserim following the first war, Rangoon and Lower Burma following the second, Upper Burma and the Shan States following the third. And while the first two wars, which ended in 1826 and 1853, he had learned about at school, the third had been reported in the newspapers last year, as the final annexation was announced only in January. But beyond the general histories, most of the details were unfamiliar: that the second war began ostensibly over the kidnapping of two British sea captains, that the third stemmed in part from tensions following the refusal of British emissaries to remove their shoes on entering an audience with the Burmese king. There were other sections, including histories of the kings, a dizzying genealogy complicated by multiple wives and what appeared to be a rather common practice of murdering any relatives who might be pretenders to the throne. He was confused by new words, names with strange syllables he couldn’t pronounce, and he focused his attention mainly on the history of the most recent king, named Thibaw, who had been deposed and exiled to India after British troops seized Mandalay. He was, by the army’s account, a weak and ineffective leader, manipulated by his wife and mother-in-law, and his reign was marred by increasing lawlessness in the remoter districts, evidenced by a plague of attacks by armed bands of dacoits, a word for brigands that Edgar recognized from the article he had torn from the Illustrated London News.

  Above, he heard Katherine’s footsteps, and paused, ready to slip the papers back into their envelope. The steps stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “Edgar, it’s nearly ten,” she called.

  “Really! I must go!” He blew out the lamp and stuffed the papers back into the envelope, surprised at his own precaution. At the top of the stairs, Katherine met him with his coat and his toolbag.

  “I will be on time tonight, I promise,” he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves. He kissed her on her cheek and stepped out into the cold.

  He spent the remainder of the morning tuning the Broadwood grand of the member of Parliament, who thundered in the next room about the building of a new Hospital for the Genteel Insane. He finished early, he could have spent more time fine-tuning, but he had a feeling that it was rarely played. Besides, the acoustics in the drawing room were poor, and the politics of the MP distasteful.

  It was early afternoon when he left. The streets were full of people. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky, threatening rain. He elbowed his way through the crowds and crossed the street to skirt a team of laborers who tore at the cobblestones with picks, stalling traffic. Around the waiting carriages, newspaper hawkers and petty merchants clamored, and a pair of boys kicked a ball back and forth through the crowds, scattering whe
n it hit the side of a carriage. It began to drizzle.

  Edgar walked for several minutes, hoping to see an omnibus, but the drizzle turned to heavier rain. He took shelter in the doorway of a public house, its name etched in frosted glass, the backs of suited gentlemen and pink-powdered women pressing up against its windows, wiping silhouettes in the condensation. He tucked his collar higher around his neck and stared out at the rain. A pair of drivers left their carts across the street, half running with their jackets raised above their heads. Edgar stepped aside to let them pass, and as they entered the public house, the door swung open with the steaming smell of perfume and sweat and spilled gin. He could hear drunken singing. The door swung shut and he waited and watched the street. And thought again of the briefing.

  In school, he had never been very interested in history or politics, preferring the arts and, of course, music. If he had any, his political leanings tended to be toward Gladstone and the Liberals’ support for Home Rule, although this was hardly a conviction born out of serious contemplation. His distrust of military men was more visceral; he disliked the arrogance they carried forth to the colonies and back again. Moreover, he was uncomfortable with the popular portrayal of the Oriental as lazy and ineffectual. One only had to know the history of pianos, he would tell Katherine, to know this wasn’t true. The mathematics of equal temperament tuning had engaged thinkers from Galileo Galilei to Father Marin Mersenne, the author of the classic Harmonie universelle. And yet Edgar had learned that the correct figures were actually first published by a Chinese prince named Tsaiyu, a puzzling fact, as, from what he knew about Eastern music, the music of China, with its lack of harmonic emphasis, technically had no need for temperament. Of course, he rarely mentioned this in public. He didn’t like arguments, and he had enough experience to know that few could appreciate the technical beauty of such an innovation.

  The rain relented slightly and he left the shelter of the doorway. Soon he reached a larger road, where buses and cabs passed. It is still early, he thought, Katherine will be pleased.