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,” written 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.