Broken Harmony Read Online Free PDF Page B

certainly. And I am not Italian enough.”
    He cackled. “Change your name. Call yourself Carlo something or other and you will make your fortune.”
    Teaching can be tedious and it can be exhilarating. With pupils like Elizabeth Saint, it is merely a tolerable way to earn a living. She is assiduous, listens carefully to what I say and
executes everything exactly as I require. The sun through the garden window was warm on my back, and roses bloomed on bushes that autumn had almost stripped bare of leaves. From time to time I put
my hand on the wood of the new harpsichord to assure myself it was not too warm in the sunshine. We were chaperoned, of course. Her older, widowed sister yawned in a corner; the governess sat at
the table and copied out sums for her pupil’s later solving. And I murmured and encouraged and corrected while my mind puzzled over the merchant I had recognised on the Key and the events of
the previous evening. I came to no conclusions.
    It was dark when I came to the front door again and looked out on the evening. The chill in the air nipped at my nose and hands, and I pulled my coat close and shivered. Suddenly the air tingled
and the maid that had opened the door for me yelped and jerked back.
    “Go, go, shoo, shoo,” said the uncle, and the girl fled indignantly. “Master Patterson, don’t go yet. Stay awhile.”
    “I have another lesson to give at the other end of town.”
    “Then go out through the garden.”
    “And clamber the hill past Butcher Bank? I would come to my pupils stinking of offal!”
    “I warn you, Master Patterson,” he said. “Do not go yet.”
    Perhaps I was influenced by his tone of voice – the same tone he had used when I was five years old and intent upon escaping my father’s instruction. (Papa was not a good teacher.) I
was tired, weary with teaching and with constant speculation on that other matter. “I must go,” I said and stepped out into the alley.
    I regretted my impulsiveness almost as soon as I reached the Key. In darkness, the Key has a different character, a reeling and rolling and dancing character, a singing and shouting and
whistling nature, all accompanied by the loud good humour that can change to violence in an instant. I remembered that so-effective message system the spirits use and wondered if the old uncle had
heard something that had alarmed him. Just like him not to tell me, to expect me to do as I was told as if I were still a child. But then, I had not given him much time to explain.
    I hurried along, seeing my way by lanterns that guttered at the doors of brothels and taverns, dodging the sailors that leant towards me with breath stinking of sour ale. The wind had changed
and was bringing the smoke of the coal-pits and the salt works in billowing clouds stinking with sulphur that clung in my throat and made me cough. The smoke collected here along the river; higher
up in the town, in the gardens of Westgate and of Northumberland Street where the richer sort live, there would be hardly a trace of it. And Caroline Square would surely hold no whiff of corruption
at all.
    I turned to climb the Side, that narrow winding street that leads up to Amen Corner and the church of St Nicholas. The organist there is half-dead and half-drunk and so deeply in debt he will
never be able to recover. I have long hoped for his dismissal and the ensuing election for the post. I flatter myself that no one in this town can match me on the keyboard and the forty pounds per
annum paid by the Town Corporation would allow me to rent a larger room. Except that the organist, Mr Nichols – for he is elder brother to a certain dancing master – lingers and lingers
beyond reason. I was feeling angry, resentful, ungenerous.
    The Side, like all streets, should have lanterns outside every private establishment; but many men are careless of civic duties, others have no money and, here at least, one or two have gone out
of business and removed themselves,