Coram Boy

When Meshak had ‘dead’ days he would lie for hours, stiff as a board, with open eyes but not seeing anything in this world. Otis gave him such a beating for his ‘stupidity’, but nothing would rouse him, even when his father kicked him and tried to beat him into activity. Gradually, even Otis had to accept that Meshak had dead days and leave him to it, especially when Mrs Peebles told him his boy had fits and that he should leave well alone. What no one knew was that Meshak stepped out of his body and into a paradise where he would meet his Gloucester angel. She would lead him through beautiful gardens of lawns and flowers and playing fountains, and sometimes show him his mother. Somehow, he was never able to touch her or talk to her, but he would see her from a distance, smiling and being happy. Once she waved at him with such sweetness, and he called out, ‘Why can’t I be with you?’ and she said, ‘Because you’re not dead.’ He would have tried to be dead then and there, but the Gloucester angel would lead him away and say, ‘Not yet, Meshak.’

Today, as he looked at his angel, he didn’t lie dead. The choir was rehearsing and he always loved hearing the singing. He edged further down the nave, wanting to be closer. Beyond the wooden carved Kent screen, in the chancel, men and boys stood in their stalls. He peered round, catching glimpses of their faces in the flickering candlelight as they concentrated on bits of paper held in their hands, with wriggly symbols which they translated into music. Tears welled in his great sloppy eyes. Music always affected him. He wished he could sing as they did. He opened his mouth. A frightful squawk came out. Some boys looked up and giggled.

‘Hey, you! Go on, get out of here and take that hound with you!’ A cleric came flapping down the aisle like some clumsy bird, waving his hands at them. He was always on the lookout for vagrants, who would endeavour to sneak into the church out of the cold rain for the night. Meshak and Jester ran out, little as ants beneath the huge flying buttresses and stone walls rising high as the walls of a canyon. They scuttled away across the great paved entrance and out into the mud and mire and filth of the city streets.

Chapter Four

Thomas and Alexander

The cathedral bells chimed. ‘Home, home, tomorrow we go home,’ the boy choristers murmured excitedly.

Thomas and Alexander shuffled in their stalls in line with the other boy trebles. They nudged and pushed and exchanged boyish insults, while the lay clerks, older men – the tenors and basses – cuffed their ears and told them to mind themselves.

‘Ummum, now boysum . . . we’llum sing through psalmum 48 . . . Sssh . . . ’ Dr Smith, the choirmaster, rapped the lectern fiercely with his baton. The great organ boomed out the opening chords of an anthem by their old organist, William Hines. The boys, with eyes fixed on the choirmaster, opened wide their mouths and sang with piercing sweetness.

Treble voices rang round the great cavernous cathedral. The candles flickered softly in the evening light, which barely penetrated the cathedral. They had been up since five, working to earn their keep by scrubbing floors, digging vegetables, feeding the livestock and cleaning out the sheds and stables in the cathedral close. Now they were yawning but excited, wanting to sleep so that the next day came quicker.

Alexander’s voice soared above the others as he took the solo – always causing a shiver of wonder at its purity. When he hit the very highest note, it cracked slightly. Thomas felt his friend shudder beside him, though Alexander didn’t falter and continued strongly to the end. Everyone knew that, no matter how glorious the treble voice, the time would come when it would break. And no one – but no one – could prophesy which boy could make the transition and become an equally good tenor or bass.

Alexander’s face was pale as he concentrated on producing a clear sound.

He had already begun to confide his fears to Thomas. ‘Once my voice has broken, that will be the end of my musical life,’ he had said with anguish.

‘But that’s not possible,’ Thomas had exclaimed. ‘Surely, you will play and compose. You’re not just a singer, you are a musician!’ Thomas glanced up at Alexander who, at fourteen, was tall now – almost manly. He wasn’t handsome in the normal way; he had thick, dark-brown, curly hair which fell round a broad-boned face, heavy lips, a protruding brow and eyes which, though blue, could look almost black and gave him a dazed, inverted look, as if he lived more inside himself than outside. Thomas noted the faintest shadow round his jaw and above his lip, and knew that his friend would not sing as a treble much beyond Christmas. But Thomas couldn’t understand how that would be the end of his life in the cathedral. Surely the cathedral wouldn’t want to lose him, and Alexander would teach, conduct and continue to compose as other gifted pupils had done when their voices broke?

But Alexander was gloomy and just said, ‘My father forbids it.’

‘Home, home, home.’ It sounded like the low buzz of honey bees. It was August and for a whole month there would only be ‘said’ service instead of ‘sung’ so that the boys could go back to their farms and help with the reaping and hay-making. Not since they became choristers had the boys been at home for Easter or Christmas Day, because that was when their music was most needed.

Alexander nudged Thomas in the ribs. ‘At last you’re coming to Ashbrook. At last you’ll see my dog Bessie and my new wolfhound pup Zanzibar – well not a pup any more. Isobel writes to say he’s nearly full size and very naughty. I hope he’ll know me and react to my commands . . . We’ll go shooting with him – yes?’

‘Ummum now, boysum . . . we’llum sing through psalmum 48 again.’

Thomas was saved from having to try to look enthusiastic when inside he was uneasy about his forthcoming visit to Alexander’s house. It would be the first time that he had ever left the city of Gloucester. Most of the other boys came from all corners of the county, one as far away as Dursley and others from Wotton-under-Edge, Bibury, Minchinhampton or Cirencester. Thomas had been born near Gloucester docks, and the first time he had ever been away from home was when he became a chorister and came to live in the cathedral. With the cathedral being barely a stone’s throw away from the docks, it hardly felt like leaving home, for Thomas was often able to escape to see his mother and father and all his brothers and sisters. So he was full of apprehension at the prospect of leaving the city for the very first time. But more than that, he was nervous about going to the home of a boy the others called a ‘gentleman’. He wasn’t sure that he had ever met a gentleman, although he could recognise a gentleman if he saw him on the street by the cut of his clothes and the deference with which he was treated. They were people far removed from him, who rode round in carriages and lived in remote big houses which he had only heard about, but never seen. He knew that the clergy at the cathedral were gentlemen but, somehow, enveloped in their clerical robes that was different. What would it be like to go to the home of a gentleman, be under the same roof as a gentleman – especially someone like Alexander?

It was five years now since he joined as a new chorister aged eight. Alexander had already been a scholar for a year. Only slightly older, it was Alexander who had been put in charge of him and ordered to show him the ropes. A dour and unsmiling boy, he had dutifully led Thomas round the cathedral precincts, showing him the schoolroom and the song room where they learnt their music, and Miller’s Green, the schoolmaster’s house. He told him where he could and could not go, where they practised, where they worked, ate, slept and studied, the times of the services and practices. But once the tour was over and they were back in the schoolroom with the other boys, Alexander seemed to relinquish his responsibility for him.

It was in the schoolroom that they slept, on thin mattresses on the floor and lining the walls, and Thomas would never forget that first night. The boys had jumped on him. Not Alexander – he had disappeared – but the others. Then had followed a few hours when he was sure he was going to die. They had held his legs and tipped him head first out of the window; they had dunked his head in the piss pot; they bundled him out of the room and into areas of the cathedral he had never been; they had pushed him up steep spiral steps till they reached the tower, and there they made him stand, blindfolded on the parapet, knowing that one false step could cause him to plunge to his death. The next night and the next, there were more trials and tribulations. Where was Alexander, his supposed protector? he wondered bitterly. He was never around during this torture, either to take part or intercede for him.

Thomas was so miserable that it was almost in his mind to run away back home. After all, it hadn’t been his idea to be a chorister. He would have been quite content to follow his father’s trade as a ship’s carpenter. He was only there because someone heard him singing in a tavern and urged his father to let the boy try for a scholarship as a chorister at the cathedral. But then he thought of all the high hopes his mother had placed on him, and how humiliated his father would be if he got to hear that his own son couldn’t put up with the tauntings of a bunch of choir boys. So somehow he got through each day and each night, having no notion of when it would end and who, in the end, would be his friend or his enemy.

It all changed suddenly. One night, Thomas was hanging by a rope, upside down from the beam, when he became aware of Alexander watching from a corner. He lounged against one of the wooden posts as if he were carved out of it, half in shadow, his face chiselled into a mask. Only his eyes glimmered darkly. He did nothing while two, three times, the boys twisted the rope then let it go, so that he spun fiercely like a top, helpless, dizzy, sick, while the boys laughed uproariously. Alexander’s movement was unexpected. Even his torturers paused and turned. As if to show he was one of the lads, Alexander came forward. He grabbed Thomas’s wrist and roughly tied one of the knots but, while doing so, he whispered in his ear, ‘Make them laugh. If you can make them laugh, they’ll never trouble you again.’

Thomas spiralled slowly from the beam as Alexander retreated to the shadows once more. ‘Make them laugh!’ They were the first words that had been spoken in kindness to him since he arrived. Another boy stepped forward. He was about to start the twisting of the rope all over again, when Thomas mimicked:

‘Err . . . rrum . . . now then . . . errum . . . boys . . . errum . . . let usum turn . . . errum to psalmumm 48 . . . errum . . . ’ he said from upside down in a voice exactly like Dr Smith, the choirmaster.

The boy stopped short. The others looked at each other in amazement, and even checked to be sure it wasn’t in fact Dr Smith, and then they burst out laughing. ‘More, more!’ they demanded. Despite being swung and prodded and spun round and round, still dangling from the beam, Thomas managed to scramble through his repertoire of jokes and rhymes and imitations.

As Alexander predicted, they cut him down, still laughing. But his ordeal wasn’t quite over – perhaps they were having too much fun. They stood him on top of the bookcase and told him to sing. So Thomas sang; he sang all the songs he had ever sung in taverns and inns to make extra pennies for the family; the sea shanties, the mummers’ and morris songs, and foreign songs he’d picked up from sailors and travellers in the inns round the docks, imitating the characters and their accents, which had the boys splitting their sides. Finally, when he felt he had got them sufficiently on his side, he leapt down from the bookcase and went into a dance, accompanying himself with foot-tapping and thigh-slapping. And he even found a pair of spoons which he then played with incredible skill, to everyone’s amazement. Soon all the boys were also foot-tapping and thigh-slapping and making such a rumpus that Mrs Renshaw, the matron, came hurrying in to put a stop to it.

Later, lying on their mattresses side by side in the darkness, instead of dropping wet toads on his face or inserting wriggling spiders into his bed, the boys begged him for more imitations of Dr Smith and the Bishop. He duly obliged, and added Mrs Renshaw to the list, which had everybody giggling and sniggering in the darkness until, gradually, all but Thomas himself subsided into sleep. He lay long into the night, staring into the darkness, wondering if at last his troubles were at an end. They were as far as teasing was concerned; from then on, Thomas was not only accepted but he became the most popular of boys, at least with all except Alexander.

Alexander was a loner and didn’t seem to want any close friends. He often disappeared for hours at a time, and if discovered it was usually at the schoolroom virginals with his nose in a musical score or scribbling on a page of manuscript, much to the scorn of the other boys. In the school it wasn’t always good to be different. Most boys, wearing as they did their uniform jacket and tails and mortar board in school, or the black cassock and white ruffs for cathedral services, managed to seem like a single organism. They conformed to a group mind and a group purpose – except Alexander. He didn’t care. He didn’t try to conform or attempt to be one of them. Where they spoke with the same soft, broad, Gloucestershire dialect, he spoke like a gentleman; where the other boys got up to larks and laughed at the same jokes, he would be standing apart, watching but not joining in; and though they slept side by side, ate together, practised together and studied together, he was never quite one of them, and they referred to him as ‘Gentleman Alex’.

It was not just because he seemed a gentleman that made Alexander different. Although the boys joked about him, they never laid a finger on him and Thomas soon realised they respected him after all, for no one doubted that Alexander had the finest voice of them all and, more than that, was the most musically gifted. Even the bishop treated him with awe and called him ‘our little genius’. Not only did Alexander have the voice of an angel, but he played the harpsichord and virginals precociously well and had composed obsessively from the age of six. His anthems and choral pieces were often sung at services and concerts.

At first, Thomas was disappointed to find himself ordered to sit next to this surly, uncommunicative boy in the schoolroom. Strange that Alexander, who had advised Thomas to make the boys laugh, seemed impervious to jokes and wise-cracking. When Thomas tried to get even a smile out of his companion, his attempt was received with a blank uncomprehending stare. But Thomas was gifted at algebra, and when he saw Alexander drifting helplessly over a calculation, he offered to help him. Alexander grudgingly accepted his assistance and, in due course, reciprocated by helping Thomas with Latin, Greek and French. Then, when Thomas took up the violin, he soon showed himself to be such a skilful performer, Alexander began writing pieces for him. Without realising it, they had become friends.

It was a strange friendship. No two boys were more unlike each other: Alexander introverted and gloomy, Thomas popular and sociable; Alexander able to enchant people with his voice, Thomas to make them laugh. But the difference which troubled Thomas the most was their difference in class and status and when, with each summer, Alexander began to invite Thomas to spend the holidays with him, Thomas always found excuses. Until now. Perhaps it was because Alexander was so sunk in the depths of depression as August approached, so certain that the life he loved was coming to an end, that Thomas agreed to spend the summer at Ashbrook.

The vaulting rang with the sounds of the opening chords of an anthem. The great sound of the organ resonated among the vaultings. The choirmaster’s raised hand demanded attention and, at his stroke, the choristers’ voices burst into song like a dawn chorus.

‘Tommy!’ a voice hissed from behind the pillar. A small bare-footed girl peered round shyly, carrying a bundle in her apron. ‘Our mam’s sent some clothes for you. Wants for you to look like a gentleman.’ She giggled at the thought.

Thomas peeled away from the choir, embarrassed. He pulled his little sister out of sight. ‘What are you doing here, Lizzie?’ he asked roughly.

‘Mam wanted you to be dressed proper for going away. She sent you these.’ Lizzie thrust a bundle into his arms, wrapped in a piece of sail cloth.

Thomas wondered how his mother could possibly afford to send anything decent that he could wear. He had intended going in the clothes provided by the cathedral: his choir school breeches, stockings and tailed jacket.

He prised open a corner and peeped inside. There was a jacket and breeches made of sturdy broadcloth, a shirt of not too coarse a cotton and a woven waistcoat. He looked up, puzzled. ‘How did she come by these?’

Lizzie giggled again. ‘They were our uncle Martin’s clothes. You don’t mind, do you? Mam thought you would fit them now – being as how you’re the same age he was when he died.’

‘Thanks, Liz,’ he dropped a kiss on her bonneted head. ‘Thank Ma for me, and tell her I’ll take care of the clothes. Now, go – or you’ll get me into trouble.’

‘Tommy – are you going to be a gentleman?’ teased Lizzie. ‘You will come home and tell us all about it, won’t you? You’ll never be too grand for us, will you?’

‘Shoo – you silly little goose,’ laughed Thomas, and pushed her off. ‘And don’t forget to give our mam a big kiss from me,’ he called after her.

‘Mother has promised us a feast to make up for Christmas and Easter,’ Alexander told Thomas. ‘We will eat duck, roast lamb and Easter almond and simnel cake. We’ll eat ourselves silly to make up for all that eel pie, stewed fish and vegetable broth we get day in day out.’ Suddenly the talk was of food as the boys packed their bags and put on their walking boots. Those who didn’t live in the city were preparing to walk up to ten or fifteen miles home. Thomas was getting ready to do the same when word came to Alexander that the Ashbrook carriage was here and that John Millman, the head groom, was waiting.

‘We’re going by carriage?’ murmured Thomas with awe. Silently, he followed Alexander out into the close where a two-horse carriage was waiting. The shiny dark green painted body of the carriage had a coat of arms with the letter A in gold, swirling round the symbol of a white swan.

There were warm greetings as the boys emerged. Alexander shook the groom’s hand warmly and introduced him to Thomas. ‘This fellow, John, is my dearest friend, so I hope you’ll look out for him and show him the ropes if he seems lost.’ John Millman nodded courteously and opened the carriage door to reveal Mrs Lynch, swathed and bonneted, looking more matronly, and her face quite free of rouge. She smiled ingratiatingly and struggled to get out in deference to the young master.

‘Stay, stay, Mrs Lynch. Don’t disturb yourself. We’ll sit up with John. I hope you don’t mind just having our bags for company – oh, and this is my friend Thomas Ledbury. I trust you have prepared his chamber and will make him comfortable.’

‘We have been making preparations for his arrival ever since we heard you were coming home with a friend,’ replied Mrs Lynch reassuringly. She nodded briefly in response to Thomas’s polite but dream-like bow. In a daze, Thomas followed Alexander, clambering up on to the driver’s seat next to John, who flicked the pair of black horses with his whip and set off along the road beyond the city walls towards the hills. Behind them, laughing and chortling and yelling cheerful abuse, several of the choristers chased behind and leapt on to the back bar of the carriage for a lift part of the way. One by one, at different junctures, the boys fell away with shouts of, ‘See you in September,’ and soon the carriage was out on the open road, lurching through the ruts and ridges and mudpools left by the bad weather of the night before, towards the hills and Ashbrook.

They didn’t speak much, though every now and then Thomas couldn’t resist calling out, ‘Hey, look at that!’ Or, ‘Did you see that?’ The raucous sounds and smells of the city gave way to the more harmonious and gentle tones of the countryside. He listened and watched enchanted: stone-pickers and farm labourers – men, women and children – moved down the furrows of newly ploughed fields, calling to each other and singing together as they tossed in the seed – barley or millet, wheat or rye. Wheatear, chiffchaff and swallows who, in the winter, emigrated to warm lands where oranges grow dived and swooped, as if delighted to see the folds of Cotswold hills rising and falling from valley to valley and upland to high common. Long shadows of beeches streaming with sunlight slatted the wold and ribbons of stone walls, now gold, now silver, meandered through light and shade down the meadows, dividing flocks of snowy sheep from grazing cattle.

Thomas wondered what Alexander was thinking; he sat so silently, not looking round, impervious to the countryside as they rumbled through. Only once did he turn and gaze back intently at the city walls, as if he couldn’t bear to leave the cathedral behind him. Then he looked forward again, his head dropping to his chest, humming under his breath, his brain unable to contain all the melodies which flowed from it.

‘This will be the first time you’ll be meeting Mrs Milcote and her daughter, I take it, Master Alexander?’ Mrs Lynch’s overly high voice broke through their thoughts as she leant out of the carriage window. ‘She’s a pretty young thing, and there’s no mistaking . . . ’

‘Who?’ retorted Alexander tartly. ‘The mother or the daughter?’

‘Ooooh, you are become quite a wag, sir, if you don’t mind me saying,’ tittered Mrs Lynch. ‘Why, the young lady, to be sure – Miss Milcote. She and your sister have become quite bosom friends.’

‘Hmmm . . . ’ Alexander grunted and glanced at Thomas with a bemused look.

Thomas grinned and shrugged. ‘Nowummm . . . ummum . . . Look here . . . ummum, Alexander me boy . . . ummum . . . about young ladies . . . ummmummmumm . . . ’

Alexander laughed. To make him laugh was always a triumph and Thomas laughed too.

They left the soft lowlands and the road began to climb up and up into a dark wilderness of dense woods. Thomas shivered with apprehension as they seemed to leave civilisation behind them. The road became rougher and narrower. The trees loomed over them as if they would swallow them up. No wonder he had heard such stories of wild brigands roaming the hills.

Ahead, a coarse voice swore and cajoled. John reined in the horses. A wagon was half up on the bank trying to get out of a deep rut and a train of pack mules snorted and attempted to munch the hedgerow as they waited. A large, red-headed boy was trying to push the wagon from behind as, in front, a man on foot cursed and shouted and whipped the lead mule impatiently, then ran round and laid the whip across the back of the boy as well.

‘Oi, Otis,’ John yelled to the man. ‘Be that you blocking the way? Shall us give you a hand?’

A stream of expletives preceded Otis shouting, ‘We’ll abandon the wagon at the Borham barn,’ he shouted. ‘No good trying to get the darn thing up into the hills till the road’s drier. But if you’d be so good as to help my boy with giving it a shove to get us going, I would be greatly indebted.’

John jumped down, followed instantly by Thomas and Alexander. They joined Meshak in putting their shoulders to the wagon, while Mrs Lynch leant out of the carriage window calling out encouragement. The huge wheels crunched into motion, creaking and groaning, and, with a jerk which nearly sent them tumbling face down, was suddenly free.

‘We’ll not be in your way for long now, John!’ shouted Otis, climbing up on to the wagon. ‘The barn is just beyond the corner.’ Thomas and Alexander stood in the road, brushing themselves down. For a moment, Otis towered over them. With an exaggerated sweeping bow he said mockingly, ‘Good day to you, young master, and my thanks for your help.’