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
