Work Song - Ivan Doig [85]
My mind was whirring with the cost of a fat reference book of that sort, the kind of duplicate expenditure that would send Sandison through the roof. Fortunately, though, there were a lot of Gilberts in the world, and if I slipped merely the author’s last name and a reference like costumery in foreign lands into the general book budget, chances were our mutual bugaboo wouldn’t pay any attention to it.
“Mrs. Sandison, I think I can accommodate you.”
“Good. You haven’t disappointed me yet.” She pursed the smile of one weaned on a pickle, and turned to go.
“Now I have a favor to ask of you,” I halted her.
A pause. “And what would that be?”
“A dual favor, actually. I need to squeeze a new group into the meetings calendar. So, I would like your group to change its meeting night for the next several weeks, and to amalgamate with another group during that period.”
Dora Sandison looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Preposterous,” she snorted when she had regained enough breath for it. “We could not possibly—”
“The other group,” I sped on, “is the Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Literary and Social Circle. Your husband rather scoffs at them as junior aesthetes, but just between us, Mrs. Sandison, they would make ideal new adherents to Gilbert and Sullivan. Think of it: maidens and swains, already listening hard for the music that makes a heart go pit-a-pat. You’d be doing them a favor, really.”
The sniff of conspiracy had its effect on her. I swear, her nostrils widened a tiny bit with anticipation as she eyed me. “This might work to everyone’s benefit, am I to understand? Yours included?”
“Your understanding is pitch-perfect.”
She gave me the queen of smiles, as lofty as it was crafty. “You still have not disappointed me.” With that, she swept out of the library.
When I got back to the inventorying, Rabrab looked at me curiously and asked where I had been.
“Reinventing the calendar,” I said, mopping my brow.
“GOOD EVENING, FELLOW LYRISTS.”
Among the upturned faces as I took center stage in the auditorium only a faithful few showed any appreciation of my greeting. Rab sent back a warm conniving smile, and Jared grinned gamely. In the front row Hoop and Griff looked eager for whatever mischief the night might bring; Quinlan’s expression was similarly keen, but with a sardonic edge. Most of the others, union stalwarts coaxed by Jared and his council to represent their neighborhoods, showed curiosity at best, and at worst a variety of misgivings. These hardened miners had sifted into the library basement one by one or in pairs; several had brought their wives, weathered women in dark-dyed dresses usually worn to weddings, wakes, and funerals. Life on the Hill was written in the creased faces staring up at me in my blue serge, and I needed to tap into whatever inspiration I could find, without delay.
“Why the lyre, you may be wondering, as a fitting symbol for our musical quest?” I whirled to the blackboard I had rigged up on Miss Runyon’s story-hour tripod and sketched the flowing curves of the instrument, then chalked in the strings. “Poets and singers of ancient Greece took up the lyre to accompany their recitations, wisely enough. It is a civilized instrument that honors a song’s words without drowning the intonations out.”
“You draw a pretty picture,” Quinlan called out, “but come right down to it, Morgan my man, the thing is only a midget harp. How’s that going to compete with anything in the Little Red Songbook”—in back of him Jared pained up at those words—“where all you have to do is oil your tonsils a little and bawl out the verse?”
“Just the question I was hoping for, Quin. What the lyre gives us is the word we must