Death of a Delft Blue

CHAPTER THREE

Scottish Air on a Barrel-Organ

‘I’ve heard them lilting at our ewe-milking,

Lasses a’lilting before dawn o’ day;

But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning,

The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.’

Jane Elliot

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Well!’ said Laura when she and Dame Beatrice were again in their own hotel. ‘I wonder what it would have been like if ghastly old Rebekah and her daughter hadn’t gatecrashed the party?’

‘But I don’t think they did gate-crash it, child. I think somebody invited them. How else could they have known that the dinner was to take place? They had come from England, remember. Besides, I liked Rebekah. There is always something to be said for those who call a spade a damned shovel.’

‘The daughter didn’t seem to think they would be welcomed, anyhow, and I don’t believe they were. Who would have invited them?’

‘Professor Derde and Professor Sweyn, presumably. It was their party. I should imagine that Rebekah and her daughter came over with Bernardo especially for the dinner.’

‘Lord Byron set the cat among the pigeons with his last announcement, didn’t he? I could hear the bird flapping its wings, especially where young Florian was concerned.’

‘Yes, indeed, if I understand your metaphor aright. What did you make of the professors?’

‘Nice, but dull. Foreigners get very solemn and informative, I always think, don’t you?’

‘The Dutch and the Germans are often clumsy riders when they mount their hobby-horses, but then, so are some of the English. By the way, your reference to the bird flapping its wings makes me wonder whether any member of the family (including the two young people themselves) is really happy about Mr Bernardo’s announcement of the engagement.’

‘Money comes into it, I suppose. It’s going to be a marriage of convenience to keep all the lolly together. If it isn’t a vulgar speculation, (although I’m pretty certain it is), I wonder how much the respective grandmothers have to leave? We know Grandmother Colwyn-Welch’s money is in bulbs, but we don’t know anything about Grandmother Rebekah, beyond the fact that she takes empty pea-shucks back to the greengrocer. I wish I had that sort of nerve.’

‘There remains, of course, old Mr Bernard van Zestien. I wonder whether he knows of the engagement?’

‘Almost bound to, I should think. After all, Binnie is not only his grandniece; she and her brother live with him.’

‘Did you form any impression of the brother?’

‘Not much of one, except that he’s handsome and vulpine. I was pretty well tied up with the rune-stones, you know. What did he have to talk about?’

‘Modern painting and modern poetry. He heartily despises both, to the distress of his aunt Opal, who is a devotee, it seems, of the poets who were writing at the beginning of, or during, the 1914 war. According to Florian, however, the only painter of note was Rubens, (he drew a spirited picture of a voluptuous lady on the tablecloth), and the only poets were Spanish ones. He quoted, at some length, from the sixteenth-century poet Garcilaso de la Vega — in Spanish, of course. Opal begged him to translate, but he did not.’

‘Loathsome little brute! But I suppose they all like to show off at that age. This sketching on the tablecloth appears to be a bit of a family foible. From Professor Sweyn I got the runic alphabet from the second century onwards, and an extremely romantic picture of the Devil all done in a kind of strapwork, as though his limbs and things were long tongues. What about the aunts?’

‘Aunt Petra Rose was almost without utterance and ate little, and Aunt Ruby Colwyn-Welch, also almost speechless, obviously preferred the pleasures of the table to the more refined commitments of civilised intercourse. Her sister’s remarks I have, to some extent, described.’

‘Well and truly under their mother’s thumb, from what I saw of them.’

‘They live a very secluded life, I imagine. I got Professor Derde to talk about the Aztecs, and, in the family tradition, he sketched on the tablecloth the god Quetzalcoatl in his symbolic form of a feathered snake.’

‘Why pick on him, I wonder? Quetzalcoatl, I mean.’

‘He is the god of learning and of the priesthood.’

‘Oh, I see. By the way, how much longer are we staying in Amsterdam?’

‘We still have the Rijksmuseum to visit. Then we can go on to Maastricht and Valkenburg, unless you wish to spend more time at Zandvoort.’

‘No, I’ve had plenty of swimming. If there’s time at the end, I would rather like Delft, though.’

‘Good. We leave Amsterdam, then, the day after tomorrow.’

At breakfast on the following morning a note was brought to Dame Beatrice. She read it and passed it over to Laura.

‘Hired a barrel-organ? And will we walk along the banks of the Herengracht Canal until we reach Wester Kerk and Raadhuis Straat, there to be prepared to listen lo a piece of music which will bring nostalgia to Mrs Gavin?’ said Laura, incredulity in her voice. ‘Some assignment! Has it any bearing on last night’s dinner-party, do you suppose?’

‘As it is signed by Binnie, whose engagement may not be to the family’s taste or in its interests, I well think that it might.’

‘An excuse to see you again, I should imagine,’ said Laura. ‘And, if I may offer the remark without giving offence, I can’t see the reason for it. Nobody’s been murdered, I take it?’

‘It seems less than likely. Nevertheless, I suggest that we fall in with the young woman’s wishes and…’

‘Make tracks for the Herengracht Canal? Excellent. I should like the opportunity of playing a barrel-organ, especially in public. It will be quite an experience, and something to tell Hamish, who is quite sickeningly toffee-nosed these days since he went into long trousers and learned the small guitar. What do we do? Take a cab and then walk the rest of the way?’

‘I think so. We can drive along the Amstel past the Grand Theatre and as far as the Dam, I hope. Raadhuis Straat is a broad turning near the post-office. When we have finished breakfast, perhaps you can suggest to the hall porter that we should like to hire a vehicle.’

The barrel-organ turned out to be only nominally in the possession of Binnie and her brother. Its owners were jealously guarding it, taking it in turns to supervise the musical renderings and shake the collecting box.

Binnie greeted Dame Beatrice and Laura rapturously. Florian met them with gracefulness but also with some reserve. Both abandoned the barrel-organ to its owners in order to talk to the newcomers.

‘This is marvellous! So glad you could come!’ cried Binnie. ‘We did want Mrs Gavin to hear this particular tune. I’m partly Scottish myself, you see. Bernie hasn’t that advantage, I’m afraid. Oh, but I mustn’t talk about Bernie in front of Florian. He doesn’t like him.’

Florian grunted and dug his heel into a patch of oil in the roadway.

‘I wonder why they can’t keep the streets clean?’ he said. Binnie gave a little scream, and told him that Holland was the cleanest country in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of Switzerland, although even of that she was not too sure. ‘Now, listen!’ she added, with dramatic emphasis. ‘I know the order of these tunes by heart, and I’m certain Mrs Gavin’s one comes after the one they’re playing now.’

A lively dance tune came to an end. The man with the collecting box made his rounds among the crowd which the sounds of the street-organ had caused to gather at the corner of Raadhuis Straat. Then Florian returned to the instrument and took over the iron wheel, two feet in diameter, which brought to life the concordance of pipes, drums and cymbals behind the mechanical figures which beat time or affected to play the instruments. These last made up the orchestra hidden behind the carved and painted forefront of the barrel-organ.

It seemed to Laura to be hard and concentrated work to turn the wheel and Florian soon abandoned the effort. Laura was wondering how her own wrists and muscles would stand the strain — since she was anxious to try her strength and skill — when the doleful tune of The Lament for Flodden greeted the alien air of the city.

Laura began to hum, reminding herself, as she did so, of Jane Elliot’s simple words of mourning for young fellows taken from the lanes and the sheep-folds to fight on the Scottish Border. There was sorrow, too, and pity and understanding for the girls they had left behind them — the girls who would never again hear jesting and be teased, coaxed and wooed; who would never again play hide-and-seek among the haystacks with their bucolic swains.

It was all as anachronistic, in its way, thought Laura, as was Caesar’s nightgown — not Elizabethan this time, though, but full of false although charming eighteenth-century sentiment — and yet, as she listened to the tune’s dying fall, she was filled with a sense of unease.

We’ll hear nae mair lilting at our ewe-milking;

Women and bairns are heartless and wae;

Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning—

The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.

‘Isn’t it smashing?’ said Binnie, when the tune had died. ‘I thought it would be just the thing for you, Mrs Gavin. You do like it — don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Laura replied, hardly knowing what else to say.

‘Did you know that Florian is going to stay with Grandmamma Binnen? It’s for his bust, and she’s delighted, I expect. He’ll be rather a relief after the two dim aunts. Opal and Ruby are rather dreadful, didn’t you think?’

‘They are more than dreadful,’ said Florian. ‘They are positively sinister. Opal, in particular, gives me the creeps. Fat people often do. Julius Caesar was mistaken. Lean and hungry men are to be trusted. Fat, sleek-headed ones are not reliable, no matter how well they sleep at night. What say you, Mrs Gavin?’

‘I have had no opportunity to form a judgment,’ said Laura shortly. She would as soon have attended a session of the Black Mass in the form of a believer as to have criticised her own relatives to comparative strangers. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her employer in earnest conversation with the proprietors of the street-organ.

‘An odd encounter,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they had returned to their hotel for lunch.

‘I don’t know which of them, Binnie or Florian, I think the more gosh-awful,’ said Laura. ‘By the way, how did the organ-grinders get hold of that tune? I noticed you were talking to them.’

‘They told me that it had been in their repertoire for many years.’

Laura observed that it must have had something to do with the war. Purposely she left this reference extremely vague, but when she and Dame Beatrice were at lunch, she observed,

‘Did it strike you that there was more in that invitation this morning than met the eye?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ Dame Beatrice replied.

‘How did you like the tune?’

‘The Flowers of the Forest? Your son, our dear Hamish, sings it, I remember, accompanying himself on his guitar.’

‘I know. He sings out of tune. Anyway, a guitar is a most unsuitable instrument for Scottish airs. Still, I suppose… Auld Lang Syne, and all that, apart… I’m just as pleased he doesn’t want to learn the bagpipes. The piano and the organ, plus this ghastly guitar, are more than enough in one family.’

‘I knew a young man,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘who was similarly placed to Kipling’s hero of the “choose between me and your cigar” fame. You remember the poem, perhaps? Well, in the case I am quoting, the young man was asked to choose between his young woman and his bagpipes. She said the pipes made her feel ill.’

‘And which did he choose?’

‘Unhesitatingly he chose the bagpipes. You would care to hazard a guess as to the outcome of this possibly doleful story?’

‘Oh, yes. He got his own way and the girl as well. She had to put up with the bagpipes because she wanted the toy.’

‘You speak with an authoritative note which compels my admiration and respect.’

‘Oh, well, you’re not the only psychologist among those present,’ said Laura, squinting modestly down her nose. ‘You should read the women’s magazines. That’s where I pick up my tips on feminine psychology, and I may say that they always work out.’

‘Dear me! What a mine of information I seem to have missed! Tell me more.’

‘No, no. You tell me what the organ-grinders said.’

‘Their ability to speak English was surprisingly limited, judging by my experience of most of the Netherlanders we have met, but I understood them to say that they had no idea how the tune had come to be part of their instrument’s stock-in-trade. They do not like the air. They prefer gay tunes, but some of the foreign tourists like this one, so I was told.’

‘Must be the Scottish tourists, I should think.’

‘True,’ said Dame Beatrice; but she spoke in an absent-minded manner and Laura realised that her thoughts were elsewhere. This was proved when she added, ‘Extreme wealth, in some cases, may exercise a subversive influence on its owners.’

‘All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but the power of money corrupts absolutelier than any other power, you think? commented Laura. ‘Doesn’t always work out that way, though, does it? Look at Lord Nuffield.’

‘Ah, but he seems to have been more interested in motor cars than in money. I cannot see him as a case in point.’

‘Talking of money,’ said Laura, after a pause, ‘what about Grandmother Rebekah? She seemed the most gosh-awful old girl, I thought, and crude, at that, but I noticed you didn’t agree.’

‘She is loyal, out-spoken, vulgar and dependable, dear child, I imagine. But Time will show. That is, if we ever meet Mrs Rose again.’

‘As you say. What did you make of the other grandmother?’

‘Mrs Colwyn-Welch? If there is such a thing as a typical Dutchwoman, I think it is she.’

‘No, but what did you make of her?’

‘I think she keeps those middle-aged daughters on too tight a rein.’

‘I wish I knew why the tunes on that barrel-organ included The Lament for Flodden,’ said Laura. ‘It doesn’t make sense. The French might be interested, but why the Dutch?’

‘Perhaps we have been warned,’ said Dame Beatrice, with mock solemnity.