The First of July (2 page)

Frank Stanton, London,
July 1913

T
HERE ARE THREE RULES YOU
can swear by:

1. Never be late.
   
2. There is a system for everything.
   
3. You can say what you like about bicycles, but for a young man they are the way ahead.
   

When I arrived in London in 1910, I was nearly nineteen years old and a carpenter of sorts. I had had a falling-out with my old man, and it was pride that made me spend the little money I’d inherited from my dead mother on a third-class ticket from Totnes to London. That, and an advertisement I had read in a newspaper wrapped around a delivery of brass fittings.

I applied for a manual position in a shop:
“Shelves, counters, and general carpentry. Knowledge of fine woodwork an advantage,”
although in truth all I had knowledge of was building coffins. But shelves and coffins have more in common than most people know or, strangely, wish to. Both can be a work of art or something flimsy that cannot take weight and is fit only for gimcrack. I have known disasters to befall—in other hands than mine—even in the best of stores. You no more want the deceased to reappear through the bottom of a coffin as the obsequies are being read, than you do some young lady, leaning on a counter, to plunge head-first into a display of Belgian lace.

But Dad had trained me in fine work, and the coffin trade is a punctual trade and one that must adapt to whatever life, or death, brings. In my years of beveling and filleting, chamfering and mitering, I was never late for a customer, and I took that habit to London with me. In stories, London is a place where a man’s fortunes can change in a twinkling of an eye. There are no such tales told of Devon.

It was at Debenham and Freebody that my chance came. The new director, Mr. Frederick Richmond, found me working at 8:17
p.m.
I was recutting a piece of discarded timber that I could see need not be wasted. In coffins we had learned to improvise, refitting wood, and, although it was never pleasant, on some occasions also the deceased if they were of exceptional height. I told Mr. Richmond this (a need not to waste, not the other business) when he asked me a little about myself. I being honest and he being a board man, I told him about coffins.

Mr. Richmond said “No wonder you’ve got a feel for the work. We’ll move you on to counters.”

Great slabs of oak they were: wonderful grained wood from Kent.

“I expect you’ve handled plenty of oak in your sad business,” he said.

“Only for the likes of you, sir,” I said, and on seeing his face I added: “I mean gentry, sir.”

He looked pleased but puzzled, so I said “Oak, fine solid oak like your counters, is for the highest in the land.”

I didn’t say that mostly all the coffins I ever made was of elm or pine, and that my father had started me off on tiny little pieces for babies where weight counted for nothing and we used mostly offcuts.

So I worked on counters for a while, but that time flew by and the glaziers and gilders in the store were soon done; and just as I was thinking I’d have to find another job, Mr. Richmond returned. He says he’d be sorry to lose me and then, thinking, calls over this grave and sleek party: very upright, of middle age, everything black and white, even dark eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles.

“Mr. Hardy,” Mr. Richmond says. “Here’s the man I was talking to you about. Very punctual and reliable. It is highly unorthodox, but perhaps we can find a place on the shop floor for young Mr. —?”

“Stanton, Frank, sir,” said I. Embarrassed, not wanting to catch the superior person’s eye.

Mr. Hardy seemed cautiously pleased to have me. “You have an opportunity to rise that is granted to few,” he said. “I am sure you will repay our trust.”

So that’s how I became, in time, senior assistant in ladies’ gloves, traveling cases, umbrellas, and parasols. Also gentlemen’s straw hats and riding crops, although our ladies mostly go elsewhere for these—usually to where they are fitted for hunting clothes—but there is, as Mr. Hardy tells us often, always the lady who buys on impulse and can be persuaded by a riding crop with an ivory fox head and a sparkling stone for an eye. Not a
real
lady, Mr. Hardy says. But those who are new to the business of being a lady and still attracted by little novelties.

Systems are there to help us, not, as some of my colleagues believe, impede. For instance, I have two decisions to make:

1. Bicycles. When the time comes, should it be Rudge-Whitworth, Humber, or, as I am currently considering, the new Royal Enfield Duplex Girder? It is
   £
   8 15
   s
   ., although
   £
   9 17
   s
   . 6
   d
   . with an Armstrong three-speed gear. Some say the motorcyclist can get from A to B quicker than the bicyclist; but what will he hear, what will he see, how will he greet other cyclists as he passes them? On a motor-bicycle there is no mastery of machine. The engine does the work. A bicycle is man and machine in harmony. In time, the decision will be made for me by the amount of information and the balance in favor and, of course, my savings. Saving a regular amount from my wages, I estimate I shall purchase a bicycle in August 1914.
   
2. A wife. Having found a way to choose a bicycle, I feel the system for selection will be as useful for this equally important decision. I need a young woman who will help me in my profession. A girl who is not in a position where she might look down on my efforts but who wishes, as I do, to improve herself. I would like a pretty one, of course. I don’t aim for a young lady of fashion, just a decent young woman who seeks a good provider (once I have bought the bicycle). I need her healthy, as I could not take time off and have no money for her to be sickly and, in time, I should like a small family.
   

Regarding the selection of a wife, at present I have two on my list:

1. Florence
   , who works in millinery.
   For:
   She is, I think, a very fastidious young woman. I don’t think she is spoken for, although it is hard to be sure. If I had a bicycle, I could follow her home at a distance and be certain. She has a nice shape, healthy pink cheeks, fair hair, a pleasant way with customers; she is punctual, always looks smart; and Mr. Hardy once said “That young lady will rise.”
   Against:
   I saw her once dancing with three feather boas around her neck. It was five minutes to closing, but it betrayed a frivolous nature or perhaps just youth. She calls herself Flo, but I always think of her as Florence: it’s the name on Mr. Hardy’s lips and a more dignified name should she ever get to hold the book. She may not be much more than seventeen.
   
2. The young lady at the Institute at St. Pancras.
   She may be named Connie or possibly Nancy (it is hard to tell, as she is often with her friend and I do not know which is which). She gives out pamphlets on Friday evenings with a man called Isaac, who looks a bit like the gypsies in picture books, although with spectacles, but knows a great deal about international politics. Connie (or Nancy) seems quiet and is tall and has big eyes. I have heard her ask questions of a speaker and they have always been useful, well-thought-through inquiries. She shows care for her appearance even in straitened circumstances. I think she would be careful with money.
   

Still, there is no urgency to make a decision. Mr. Hardy would look very poorly on a marriage before I am twenty-three. Also, my lodgings at Lambeth are
quite
unsuitable for a wife, but while I am saving for the bicycle I cannot afford more commodious, not to say salubrious, lodgings.

What if Connie/Nancy is a Suffragist? (Because of the boas I do not think Florence would be.) Mr. Frederick Richmond has very strong views on political ladies. Very.

I have been very impressed by the knowledge it is possible to acquire in London if you put your mind to it. I have learned about wireless communication, Esperanto, the works of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, the poetry of Mr. Longfellow,
*
and the history of the railway. On Fridays the Institute offers a range of political talks. Isaac, for all that he is young, and the only employment he can find is sewing garments in a Spitalfields factory, began a most interesting discussion on conditions for workers in other countries. I had never known that in Russia they still had slaves. Afterward we had tea together. He is very earnest in all he does and spends hours in the Institute reading room, but in time I have come to think him a friend. I do not say much about all this in the store, as I do not think Mr. Richmond or Mr. Hardy would like such things.

I am an Internationalist. I bought a map of England and a map of Europe (1
s
. 8
d
.). Now, of a summer evening or on Sundays, I walk and walk. North, south, east, west I go. Sometimes I feel as if I am pushing London outward with each stride or swing of my arms. When I have my bicycle, I plan to go to the Surrey hills and to the Chilterns, south to the Sussex chalk downs and the English Channel, and east along the brown Thames. Then I shall gaze at the great continent of Europe. Then, one day, to France and the greatest cycle race known to man.

Benedict Chatto, Gloucester, July 1913

B
ENEDICT CHATTO SAT IN THE
cold gray choir of the cathedral, waiting. He heard the wheeze and subdued hum as the organ bellows were turned on, Theo, his friend and fellow music scholar, thumping in the loft as he finished some mechanical fiddling. Years ago, he and Theo, eight years old and choir schoolboys together, had been alike in character and musical ability. But Theo had become everything he, Benedict, was not. Theo had grown beyond him. Theo burned and shone; he had a gift where Benedict was competent and industrious; Theo was impulsive, Benedict was merely cautious; Theo had ready charm and wit, Benedict was reserved, and worried he was dull.

Suddenly, above him, music: a run of semiquavers in F-sharp and a sheet of indigo blue flared up—the painted pipes seeming to tremble with it. A yellow chord followed by blue again and then orange as Theo adjusted the flute stops. The piece was melodic but with the potential to explode: something was simmering underneath. Benedict smiled: Theo must be certain Dr. B was out of the building. It was Vierne: modern, innovative, and French; everything Dr. Brewer, their tutor, saw himself as holding out against.

When it came to music, Theo spoke of the organ as a kind of machine to be controlled. Ben liked to imagine it as something living. When he was a boy, he had thought of it as an animal at the heart of the cathedral, one that breathed through leathery lungs. The sheer peculiarity and force of the organ still thrilled him; when he played, he felt part of it. But he was never, would never be, as brilliant as Theo, who felt none of these things.

Benedict often thought the cathedral was more like a village than a place of quiet holiness. The bishop, the mostly absent landowner; congregations gossiping and haggling with God; King’s School boys giggling and pushing; the dean rushing about as if there were some structural or theological emergency that only he could resolve, his demeanor proclaiming that he was far too busy to talk. Dr. Brewer, head down, was oblivious to his surroundings, apparently oblivious to God or indeed anything except, intermittently, his organ pupils and, emerging from the bishop’s chilly palace from time to time, Mrs. Bradstock, the bishop’s wife, Lady of the Close. Her clipped conversation was punctuated by tiny writhings of her neck, and at her side and always in her sight the eighteen-year-old Agnes, the bishop’s porcelain doll of a daughter, the village virgin.

“Perfect,” Theo sighed, “pristine,” every time Agnes passed. “Look!” Theo had said as they watched her proceeding across the Close with her mother, throwing them a half-look over her shoulder. “Even her eyelashes are gold. Imagine your hand on her arm, the tiny dimples left when you let it go. Would she bruise, do you think?”

It seemed to Ben that his own part in all this was as the stranger who had lost his way. Yet he still found delight in the cathedral’s euphoric architecture, every inch of its stone decorated or pierced and, in buttresses upon buttresses, the suggestion of a massive failure of nerve. It was as if the builders had fortified it against divine caprice: thunderbolts or fires or high winds. Ben loved the human doubt of it all.

The gulls and pigeons were the bane of the Clerk of Works’ life. Visitors arriving in the Close often took him for a holy man, his brows furrowed like an ascetic, his eyes raised heavenward; but it was the birds and his plans of attack that preoccupied him. The pigeons damaged the stonework and covered it in filth, but the gulls destroyed the very dignity of the Close. They swooped down and assaulted passers-by or those leaving Morning Service. Things had come to a head in a recent St. Kyneburgh Day procession when one of them had fouled the mayor’s ceremonial hat. The mayor not being popular, the news had spread around the local public houses, and in no time at all there was a ditty being sung in the Pelican. Theo had noted down the rudimentary tune and then composed a set of variations on a theme. He was planning to play it at the following year’s service, he said.

“‘Fly, heavenly bird, and drop thy bounteous gifts.’ Do you think that’s a good title?” Theo had asked.

His beaming face was still a schoolboy’s, but it was not Benedict’s approval he was looking for then, because Novello had still been at Gloucester; this was when he had still been plain David Ivor Davies, before he left for Oxford and London and reinvented himself. He was in on the joke, leaning over Theo’s shoulder, adding some marking in pencil.

“We should have caught it,” he said, “and had it stuffed and placed on St. Edward’s shrine for pilgrims to honor.”

But the thing was, the music was good; Theo had made something beautiful out of a schoolboy joke.

Benedict looked dispassionately at Christ on the cross, wondering again why Christ’s terrible wounds did not touch him. He had promised himself not to experiment, but tentatively he touched his own side. Nothing. Beyond the Close stood a monument to Bishop Hooper, burned to death in 1555. It was as terrible a death as any martyr’s could be. Mary Tudor’s incompetent executioners had needed to rebuild the fire three times. The saintly bishop’s lower half had been consumed while his body was untouched above the waist. Toward the end, the man’s arm had dropped off while he still lived, his other arm stuck to his chest. Yet still he had commended himself to God.

Theo said that clearly Hooper had been long dead by the time his arm fell off, but Benedict had been haunted by Hooper’s death. He often walked by the very spot where Hooper had crackled and blistered, his legs bone and ash, his hair eventually bright with fire like a halo. He could imagine the smell, the blood like dripping molasses, the blackened lips still moving. Could there be anything for which
he
would die so horribly, Benedict wondered? He doubted even that his own father, an earnest Devonshire vicar, would choose such a public spectacle to defend his beliefs. His father was very keen on private faith, modest worship.

Years ago, Benedict had tried to explain to his father the entwining of colors and music. That, for him, D major was golden brown, A-flat almost magenta; that musical performances were as he imagined the Northern Lights to be. He had known immediately that this revelation was a mistake; from the anxiety that radiated out from his father’s face, he knew there was something shameful about it. His father had busied himself filling and lighting his pipe before lifting his eyes, very briefly, to Benedict’s.

“A gift from God,” he’d said. “A gift from God, undoubtedly. But better not tell your mother.” Benedict had, however, told his sister, Lettie, who touched his arm gently and looked at him with sympathy. For Lettie, the youngest and only other surviving child of the family, everything he did was special.

Benedict looked at the window, the rainbow of music moving between him and the glass rows of saints. He heard copper, which resolved in arcs of silver-white as Theo brought in the odd modal melody with his left hand. Some notes didn’t trigger colors, never had, and none manifested themselves in red, never had; but as the blue returned, his eyes sought the window of St. Catherine and St. John: surely these experiences were God-given? When he had doubts, when he had to search to find any faith at all behind the rituals he had known since childhood, he held on to the beauty he had taken quite for granted as a boy.

He had tried to talk about it to Theo a year or more ago, thinking perhaps that it was not something his father could understand, but that musicians were so accustomed to it that they rarely spoke of it.

“Colored music?” Theo had looked amused and, Benedict sensed, a bit wary, as if his friend might suddenly be going embarrassingly mad. “Like a magic-lantern show?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Benedict had said, as if it was indeed a joke, feeling relieved that he hadn’t mentioned the other thing: the physical pain he felt from injuries that were not his.

“But it does. It obviously does to you,” Theo said, slowly, his eyes narrowing very slightly. “You looked almost matter-of-fact about it as you spoke, and yet now you’re somehow surprised at my reaction.” He paused. “But is this—this thing—this aura or whatever you call it—do you call it anything?—in your mind, or is it outside you?”

Benedict shook his head. “No. It’s real. Real to me,” he corrected. “It’s always been like that.” Was it possible to love someone, yet not trust them, he thought with fear?

“And does it work the other way around? If you saw chrome yellow, would you hear C-sharp or whatever? Would Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
deliver you a riot of
Chansons d’Auvergne
?”

This time Benedict was able to smile. “Afraid not.”

“And it’s not like a fit?”

Benedict stiffened. “No. Nothing like it.”

Theo had put out his hand and squeezed his arm, leaving his hand there for a few seconds. “I’m not saying you’ve got some falling sickness,” he said, “or that you’re infected by some episcopal miasma from the crypt. In fact, it’s probably all very holy.” And then, and Benedict’s heart had sunk, “I won’t tell a soul. You’re a rum chap, but your secret’s safe with me.”

Benedict vowed never to mention it to anyone again. Perhaps it was from God; perhaps it was from the devil.

Theo’s brief foray into Vierne ended. He clattered about some more, and then Benedict could hear his footsteps on the wooden stairs. “Like it?” Theo said as he emerged. “A bit of green and purple for you.” There was only a hint of teasing in the comment. “I’m practicing it for the midweek recital.” He picked up the rest of his music. “Come on, let’s have a pint at the New Inn.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned back down the north aisle. Benedict, following, watched as Theo walked, oblivious, into the light cast by the stained glass, his face and hands, his white cuffs, moving through a wash of color.

As they passed through the screens into the nave, the Clerk of Works was there, staring at an elaborate tomb. His face was as creased by the extent of his responsibilities as was that of the pious occupant of the tomb, carved in relief. As they approached, he turned and Benedict felt pain in his right arm, a deep, almost nauseating ache, and he touched the rough tweed of his jacket. Mr. Henshall, the Clerk, was wearing a sling, his arm in plaster.

“Fell over a bit of timber a pair of useless apprentices left by the porch,” Henshall said. “What they were thinking of, if anything, who knows? I don’t know what to make of these boys, I really don’t. To break my arm in my own cathedral, well, it’s a shaming thing.”

Benedict let his arm drop gently. Nerves tingled. The pain made him giddy, but Theo sped up as they reached the west door.

“A drink in the New Inn, yes, but first to the docks,” he said. “There’s a very fine Dutch schooner in, used to be a barquentine but they cut her down. And I want to see old Camm’s
Agnes
and
The Crystal Palace
and
Kindly Light
taking on loads.”

Theo’s knowledge of ships and his intimacy with their masters, their journeys, and their cargoes both intrigued and disquieted Benedict. Theo kept a list of the week’s sailings and drank with captains and harbormasters down by the docks. Benedict had sometimes wondered if Theo gambled in the dock taverns. Recently he’d asked Benedict to lend him money. On the first occasion Benedict had handed over the paltry contents of his pocket, Theo raised a eyebrow at the handful of coins.

“It’s a mug’s game, this music,” he said. “I’ve a good mind to run away to sea. I could always take an accordion.”

A few weeks later, Theo asked whether Benedict had alms for a starving organist. Benedict had, painfully, said no. He had nothing. Theo made a joke of it and turned away before Benedict could explain that, unlike the first time, he’d simply had nothing to give; if he had, Theo could have taken it it all.