Such a mist had rolled in from the estuary that Johnny could scarcely read the shop fronts as they rattled past in the carriage. A few bow windows loomed from the greyish brown here and there, but Lumps of Delight's beautiful display was, to his great disappointment, invisible.
"I cannot even see the spire," he said, turning to his sister.
She had rallied somewhat by the end of the summer, but had never quite regained her strength or colour after the baby's birth. She spent a lot of time on the chaise-longue in the parlour, listening to Ned's anguished cries drift down from the nursery. Perhaps, Johnny had suggested, whilst sitting on the rug playing with the chessmen, Ned didn't like his nursemaid. But that had made Meg cry, and he had no wish to talk about that baby anyway.
He had spent most of the late summer and early autumn in Martha's company, becoming a sort of honorary servant, helping her with her tasks. If he was not with Martha, he was at the piano or in the garden with his kitten.
He could be found anywhere the baby and Meg were not.
It was peaceful now that Captain Drood had gone away, true enough, but it was a little too much so. And Meg was so lifeless and said so little. It was as if she neither saw nor heard him, much of the time.
"No," she murmured, but he knew she had not listened to what he had said and was merely mouthing a sound. Her eyes were fixed ahead of her and she did not look through the window at all.
When the coachman pulled up by the cathedral gatehouse, Johnny only knew where they were by the clopping and neighing of horses at the nearby livery stables.
"Which way is it?" he asked Meg, who took his hand and drew him under the arch.
"I think, this way," she said vaguely. "I don't know it well, but the letter said the song school was…to the right? I think it must be along this path."
They walked across the graveyard, Johnny feeling that the dead souls might at any moment rise from their graves and lunge at them through the fog. The high wall of the cathedral with its great gloomy arched windows was visible now, albeit partially.
"If Captain Drood was to be killed out there in Egypt," he said, perfectly conversationally, "then I could stay with you."
"Johnny, don't. Besides, you should go to school. You're a clever boy. They will teach you more here than I ever could. Oh, I think it is those buildings over there, on the other side of that courtyard."
"What buildings?"
But as they came nearer, a grey stone edifice emerged by slow degrees, revealing first a clock tower, then a quantity of long rectangular windows, then a large arched door. The place looked like a cloister and, indeed, Johnny was to learn that it had been at one time the home of monks.
Meg let him pull the bell rope and listen to the rusty clangour that resulted.
A pinch-faced maid answered and made them sit on a bench in the vestibule while she went to find Dr Cross.
It was not an inspiriting name, Johnny reflected. Dr Cross was sure to be a crabbed and mean old man who beat the choristers and starved them. A burst of violin, rather atrociously played, interrupted this reverie and reminded him that this house was full of boys like himself, or a little older. He wanted to leave Meg on the bench and look into the rooms, to see what this place was.
Apart from very, very cold. He was shivering when the maid returned and bade them, rather sourly, to follow her.
They were shown into a large room, dank and old and lit by the grudging flicker of a pair of candles on the piano in the far corner.
A man sat at a desk beneath the window, but when he saw them, he rose and approached, smiling quite kindly. He didn't look cross. He was a bespectacled man in clerical black, his thin grey hair plastered down. He had an air of gentle amiability and he shook Johnny's hand just as readily as he took Meg's.
"You must be Mrs Drood and master Jasper," he said.
Johnny nodded while Meg muttered some words of assent.
"Well, well, sit down, please. Jenny, perhaps you could bring us some refreshment?"
They sat on the other side of the desk, Johnny looking around the cavernous room, at its rows of forms and shelves upon shelves of manuscripts.
"This is the rehearsal room," Dr Cross told him. "If you join us, you'll be spending lots of time in here. It's usually less gloomy than this – when it isn't foggy, that big window lets in a great deal of light."
He turned to Meg.
"I mentioned when I wrote that it isn't usual to try a boy out at this time of year. Generally speaking, we will audition boys in January to start in the Michaelmas term. But I do take due consideration of your circumstances and if, as you claim, the boy is gifted, we will bend our rule."
"So he can start after Christmas?"
"After the January holiday," he cautioned. "Christmas is a busy time for the boys."
"Of course. In January then."
"If he passes."
"Oh, he will."
"Ah, Jenny." The maid set a tray of warm drinks with seed cake down on the desk. "Thank you. Mrs Drood, before we look at young Johnny's capabilities, I just wanted to clarify what you wrote me about the child's situation. He has recently celebrated his seventh birthday?"
"A fortnight since."
"And your parents live in London?"
"Yes."
"And I believe your father is a member of the chapter at St Paul's?"
"Yes, that is so."
"I'm surprised that he didn't think of sending young Johnny there."
Meg took refuge in her teacup.
"He doesn't want him growing up in London," she said.
"Well," said Dr Cross, nodding sagely, "the stories one hears about the welfare of the choristers there do give one pause. He will certainly be better cared for here."
"I am pleased to hear it."
"You have stated that, if accepted to the choir, you wish young Jasper to spend all holidays at the school?"
"By my husband's request."
"An unusual one. We will generally only allow this for boys whose families are overseas, or who are wards."
"My husband will pay well, if it can be managed."
"And your parents?"
"They will not take him."
There was a long silence before Dr Cross said, "I see."
There was more of warmth in his voice when he said, "Come, then, master Jasper, let us hear you at the piano. No, no, I will play. You will stand beside me and sing."
"I can play."
"Well, you shall show me – but first I must hear you sing. This scale, if you please."
Johnny felt his nerves fade away as he repeated the sequences and patterns of notes at the choirmaster's behest. He was able to reach all but the very highest of them and then, when he sang the piece he had prepared, he felt sure that the choirmaster was favourably impressed.
"Excellent, master Jasper, a most pleasing tone – and you are able to sight read, I assume?"
"I am, sir."
"Perhaps you could play a little tune for me now."
Johnny revelled in the opportunity to show what he was capable of, basking in the positive attention of the choirmaster.
"Goodness me, you have never had lessons, I suppose?" said Dr Cross as the last note faded.
"Oh. Well, no, I have taught myself," he said, crestfallen at the man's instant and correct assumption.
"I thought as much. Well, there is much to unlearn in your fingering and the technical aspects of your playing, but you are clearly a young musician in the making. I should be very pleased to have a part in your development."
"So he can come to the choir school?" interrupted Meg, a hand clasped anxiously to her bosom.
"If he is willing." Dr Cross smiled at Johnny, who twitched his lips up in return. "I will need to discuss the matter with the school's headmaster, Mr Linney, and minute it for the Dean and Chapter's approval, but I can see no reason for any objection. And if there should be such, I shall speak strongly in his favour."
"Oh, thank you, thank you, you cannot think…" Meg was breathless and flushed. "For if not here, then I would have had to send him out of Cloisterham and I could not bear…" She made an effort to collect herself, shutting her eyes, then held out her hand. "Come, Johnny. Let us go now. We have taken quite enough of Dr Cross's time."
"Oh, not at all. You will receive a letter and all the particulars, all being well, before the month's end."
"Say thank you to Dr Cross, Johnny, you must say thank you."
"I…"
"No, no, no need. Please, it was no trouble at all. I look forward to welcoming you back in January."
Johnny, still rather stunned at the thought that he was to join that angelic choir in frocks he had both admired and ridiculed, allowed himself to be dragged out of the room by Meg, looking backwards at the piano and Dr Cross and the darkening space between them as he crossed its threshold.
"Thank heaven, thank heaven," muttered Meg, ushering them both back into the thick fog. It was less smoky, less apt to choke here in the wider precincts of the cathedral, but by the time they reached the gatehouse it had turned browner and hit the back of Johnny's throat like Captain Drood's pipe smoke, harsh and cough-inducing.
"But what you said about the holidays," he said, once he was in the carriage and no longer wheezing. "Am I never to see you again? And where shall I stay?"
"Of course you will see me again, of course you will. I will visit on every half holiday. I'll bring Ned too. The Captain says I'm not to, but what will he know, all the way over there in Egypt?"
"Why does the Captain hate me so?"
"He doesn't. He doesn't hate you, Johnny. It's me he hates. He does it to hurt me."
To Johnny's horror, Meg began to cry, a fast-flowing kind of crying like the bursting of a dam. There was to be no stemming the flood, and all he could do was sit in his corner and watch her, his eyes wide and fists clenched tight, until the carriage delivered them to The Lindens.
"We could run away," he said, once they were inside and removing their outdoor clothes. "You and me. And Ned, I suppose. But it's hard to run away with a baby."
"Yes, love. Much too hard."
She had stopped crying, but then she simply lapsed once more into that strange exhausted half-life, staring at walls for weeks on end until Captain Drood came home for Christmas.
It was at once both better and worse than the Christmas before.
Captain Drood would not suffer to have Johnny in his sight, so he spent his time with the servants. He was given pastry trimmings to make mincemeat tarts with and he helped the gardener to fashion the holly wreath for the front door. He followed Martha all over the house and when Christmas Eve came, they let him have a glass of mulled punch and laughed when it filled him brimful of spirit and good humour. They were more appreciative of his carolling than the family upstairs had been, too. If he sang The Holly and the Ivy once, he sang it a thousand times.
"Proper little nightingale, ain't he?" said Martha, with a proud glow, as if he were her own son.
How would that be, to be Martha's son? No great future but a comfortable back-kitchen life and days spent out of doors mending carriage wheels or fishing in the river. He thought he might take to it.
His stocking this year was a darned old sock hung on the kitchen chimneypiece and he ate the family's Christmas dinner leftovers with relish, not minding the cold gravy nor the poorest trimmings of the bird.
As the light failed and the servants sat yawning and telling old jokes and stories in the dreamy interval between lunch and supper, Meg crept into the kitchen and beckoned Johnny out.
He had been playing by the fireside with his kitten, feeding it goose fat from a saucer, and was not at his cleanest or tidiest, but Meg embraced him nonetheless, then clicked her tongue at the smuts on her dress.
"They let you run wild down there," she said.
"It is because of you and Captain Drood that I am not upstairs," he pointed out and she sighed.
"I'm sorry. I have brought you your present."
"A present for me?"
He took the square-shaped parcel and tore it open, feeling that its weight and size presaged a book, but no. It was a leather case which, when opened at the clasp, revealed a brass fob watch and chain nestling in velvet.
"It is a man's watch," he said, looking up at Meg with an expression of vague confusion.
"You will never be late for choir practice, you see," she said. "Do you like it? I had it engraved."
He opened the lid and saw inscribed on the interior: 'To J.J., Ever in my affections, M.D.' He weighed it in his hand, enjoying the solid, grown-up feel of it. He had a man's watch. He was of man's estate.
"You will make me so proud, Johnny," she said. "When I come and watch you sing. For I will, often."
"The baby will cry," said Johnny dully, hearing the beginnings of a wail from up the stairs.
"I won't bring him."
"And you will visit? On half holidays?"
"At every opportunity."
The voice of Captain Drood growled above them. "Damn the woman, why is she never to be found when the boy cries? Confound her."
"I must go," she whispered. "Happy Christmas, my love."
Christmas and New Year were indifferently enjoyable, he supposed, but the week after the New Year – ah, that was a season of joy.
Captain Drood returned to Egypt at Epiphany, and Johnny spent ten glorious days above stairs. In that time, Meg scarcely left his side, suddenly so fiercely affectionate that he hardly recognised her.
The baby lay kicking and gurgling in his basket on the rug while he and Meg read together, played the piano and sang together, stroked the kitten and teased it with wool from Meg's work basket, ate every meal à deux and even fell asleep after dinner, Johnny's head in his sister's lap, her thin fingers raking gently through his dark curls.
Why had she not been like this at Aunt Hetty's? The question ran through his head a dozen times a day – not with acrimony, for he was too busy enjoying his unexpected moment in the sun to ruin it with hard realism, but with genuine bemusement. He had often felt that she hated him, back in those far-off days, had rather begun to assume it, until Captain Drood had shown him what real hatred was.
Only one cloud blotted his horizon. With each day, the choir school grew larger and more distinct in his imagination, from a tiny, blurred miniature to a looming presence of great grey stone, casting its shadow over every moment he spent with his newly-loving sister.
"Must I go?" he asked, the evening before. "I do not know how to make friends. I do not like boys."
"Ridiculous, Johnny, of course you will make friends. They are nice boys from good homes. You will be a favourite, I am sure."
"I am never a favourite. I will be lonely."
"Stop it, Johnny. Plenty of people like you. Martha likes you. And Rosa Bud – she quite dotes on you. She has promised to come with me to hear you sing in the cathedral on feast days."
"Has she?" He brightened for a moment, then fell back into gloom. "Captain Drood needn't know if I don't go. He is in Egypt. Who will tell him?"
"Plenty of people. And then he will cast me out."
"Why?"
"Oh, Johnny, why? I can't answer that."
He felt the beginnings of tears, although he had worked so hard on concealing his emotions, especially since Captain Drood had taken to mocking them.
"I will never see you," he said.
"Of course you will," said Meg, with growing impatience. But there was more to it than that. She could not look at him.
"Meg, please let me stay, please. Don't send me away."
She stood and half-ran from the room, calling for Edwin's nurse to take the baby to bed.
He lay in his room that night, having had no goodnight from Meg, trying to imagine how tomorrow night's ceiling would differ from this one. And whom would he share his room with? And what sounds would he hear? Not the low chatter of the menservants smoking their pipes in the kitchen garden, nor the sound of his cat fighting intruders by the far trees. His cat. He wept into his pillow at the thought of leaving it.
The door opened soundlessly while he was thus occupied, so he didn't know that Meg had come in until she sat on his bedside and put her hand on his shaking shoulders.
She said nothing, and neither did he, but they lay side by side, he in his nightshirt, she fully clothed, until the day broke.
He kept dry eyes when he said goodbye to the servants, to Martha, even to his cat. Now it was time to face the world as a man, with a man's watch in his pocket and no skirts to run into and hide from the worst life had to offer him.
There could be no more tears. What was the use? And so he didn't cry, even when he turned around to see his sister at the gate, one of baby Ned's fat paws in hers, waving him into exile.
