Awakening (34 page)

‘There will be other babies.' It's the sin against the Spirit to say so. Beatrice would have died for Luke, killed for him.

Her husband urges, ‘Our children are only lent to us, we know this, my treasure, and we should not mourn to excess but instead be thankful for the love we shared with our darling – and we are grateful, are we not? And we know that God has rescued him to a fuller, deeper love.'

It is very chilling to hear these words.
Beattie hates
,
Beattie loathes.

The crows mass over the garden to peck out Luke's eyes. This is what they do to the living lambs in the fields. The shepherd must be vigilant. He must never doze. Beatrice has lost the power to sleep – and then suddenly (when they have tricked her into swallowing a narcotic drug) she does plunge headlong into an unconsciousness so black it's like being buried alive. When she awakens, Anna's head is on the pillow face-to-face with her. They look into one another's eyes.

Where is he? Where? Anna's eyes are so puffy and red that they look half-closed.

What if he awakens underground and finds himself in the dark? Nobody there to comfort and reassure him.

He won't.

So they say. But they cannot be sure. It has been known for the dead not to be dead. They sit up and rub their eyes and yawn. They say, I've had such a funny dream. I flew down a dark tunnel and at the end there was a light and in the light stood my mother and father with open arms. I didn't want to wake up. But why are you people all in black?

It's the day of the funeral. Christian carries the box. Mr Montagu, Mr Jones, Mr Elias and Mr Anwyl gather round the open grave. Five black ministers: each lets fall his handful of soil. A mother of course may not attend; nor may an aunt. Why not? No point in asking. Beatrice used to understand but has forgotten the explanation. I brought him into this world. You take him away from me. From Beatrice's bedroom window she and Anna have a full view of the chapel yard.

A glass shatters in Beatrice's hand. The blood runs down. She feels no pain. Look, you've cut your poor wrist, darling, let me bind it up.

‘Don't fuss her, it was an accident,' says Anna to Amy. When Anna has dressed the wound, she sits and holds Beatrice's uninjured hand. For hours and hours. Both have lost weight: they're shadows of the original Pentecost girls. Loveday sends in Patience with a pot of nettle and spinach soup to build the sisters up – and some seed-bread. The soup tastes surprisingly good. There's not much you can do to spoil nettles, is there, Anna observes. Beatrice gives a weak smile. How come I can enjoy the taste of anything when he is in the earth? Inwardly lashing herself, she lays down her spoon. Gasping for air, Beatrice throws up the sash and hears Mr Elias over the road at the piano. The music's wordless sympathy steals into her spirit and calls forth the helpful tears.

She lies down. Doesn't think she slept but perhaps she did, since she never heard him come into the room – the only one who might be able to comfort her.

Will says, ‘Dearest – I have picked these.' Wild flowers, jewel colours, particularly the speedwell blue. Where did he find them at the dark end of the year? He must have walked for miles around their old haunts. Will reminds her, ‘He loved flowers, didn't he, our little Luke? I remember him with the daffodils. Would you like to take him these? I loved your boy as my own. You know I did. And so did Annie, even more so. I can only take comfort from the thought that Luke is with Jesus now.'

Her old affection for Will was not mistaken: there's something of God in him. Yes, she'll get up, Beatrice says, and come downstairs. Wait for me outside the door, I'll go down with you.

Will and Anna, one either side, accompany Beatrice to the graveyard. It seems a terribly long way, though it's only over the road. Her husband always treated their son as an infant theology student. Did he, though? Is that fair? She can't judge. Christian walks beside them, with his pale, beautiful face like that of a waxwork.

Luke was sweating, he couldn't take his food, he was dying and I didn't notice. How could I not notice? What kind of mother am I after all?

Will and Mr Elias sing together
‘
Iesu Mawr
'
.
Desolation dipped in honey.

‘Our lamb is safe now,' Christian says. He speaks too loudly, as if to a mass meeting, offering rigid consolation by the book, not from the heart. ‘My love,
try to be consoled. We shall see him on the final day. And, oh, thank God for this mercy. It's just a matter of waiting.'

Mercy? Beatrice looks at her husband with disdain. Can't he do better than that? God's mercy? It's a crumb that wouldn't feed a sparrow. But she does not dissent. It's what Beatrice has been taught and always thought she believed. The words still mean something but seem to exist outside her hurt.

Will reads from St Matthew's Gospel:
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.

Beatrice sees many opportunities to join Luke. A rope, a knife, a shard of glass, rat poison, the River Avon. She sees a use for Salisbury Cathedral, if one could just reach the tower. But God has barricaded all doors. Should she take this route, the Almighty will never allow her near Luke again.

Damn Him. Damn God. How does He differ from Moloch, the child-murderer?

Beatrice falls to her knees to beg God's pardon. He will have overheard her blasphemy and the recording angel will have taken note. The universe is a vast collodion camera that captures every transgression and stores the record for eternity. The light that shone on every misdeed is caught and preserved as an authentic remnant. Do not let this stand against me in the sum of my sins. Which are great.

But human sin is nothing, surely, compared with the carnage the Creator has unleashed on the Creation. The secret voice of heresy persists inside her head. I'm becoming Anna, Beatrice thinks. Don't tell her, she'll gloat. And while it's all inside my head, it may perhaps count as temptation rather than as sin. God condemned and cursed Eve and Adam and every generation of their children: ‘You've eaten forbidden fruit; get out of my garden; go and rot. The land you till will be full of thorns. Your offspring will be born in sorrow. And all creatures will fall with you.' Would I, a human mother, have punished
my
children's small fault of curiosity with a world of pain and death? And teased them by appearing in a burning bush or intervening in a whale's stomach? And now, to cap it all, the Creator may be preparing to annihilate me for thinking this thought.

‘Will you come out for a walk with me?' asks her sister. Beatrice stands up and allows a cloak to be spread over her shoulders. ‘You're so pale. The trees are glorious. Come and see.'

The chestnut has turned ginger and copper and the earth around it is stained with the same rustling colours. Conkers are glossy on the lawn. Over towards Fighelbourn the woods redden.

‘Mrs Kyffin has written to say she'll visit tomorrow, dear. It will be good to see her.'

‘Will it?'

‘Her sister will bring her to visit Charlie and they'll come on from his lodgings. She says she has a message for you.'

*

‘Great changes are taking place,' says Mrs Kyffin, setting down her teacup as Mrs Elias hands round scones. ‘Did you bake them yourself, Loveday? They are an interesting shape – rustic. Ellen will enjoy one, I'm sure.' Ellen shakes her head, before accepting one with an expression of despair. ‘Undreamt-of changes are afoot in the spirit world. But do not be apprehensive. We have promises.'

Gone is Antigone's attitude of perplexed defeat. Her bearing is upright and her figure has filled out; there's a new serenity in her expression.

‘Previously existing relations between men and angels,' she goes on, ‘appear to be in transition.'

‘
Mother
,' begs Charlie. ‘Don't.'

‘Charles of course is much bound up in his chemistry studies – and various newfangled ideas of a not entirely savoury nature,' Antigone explains. ‘But he will soon see the error of his ways. His employer is a follower of the monkey studies so popular amongst a certain section of the scientific community. I can see the look on your face, Charlie – well, I'm sure you can agree at least that yours is, in any case, a different
field
of science to ours. He hasn't
seen
what we in Bradford on Avon have seen. In the light of this vision, as my dear pastor says, this world dissolves to mist.'

A pause. ‘That is a very poetical turn of phrase, Antigone,' observes Mrs Elias. ‘What does it mean?'

‘Mother and Aunt Sarah have joined a new church. And I am not pursuing
monkey studies
.'

Flushed, Charlie tugs at his collar as if choking. Catching Anna's eye, he gives a small shrug. Anna wonders how much time the filial boy is actually giving to his chemical studies, for she hears that not only does he associate himself with Mr Lee's evolutionary theories but he has taken to following Mr Prynne around Salisbury, saying not a word when challenged. Prowling after Prynne, Charlie observes his every movement. Whenever Mr Prynne looks round, Charlie Kyffin is there, stock-still, like a child playing ‘Freeze'.

We've all gone mad with grief, Anna thinks. The loss of Luke lodges in her like a swallowed stone. She shares her sister's desolation. One thing gives her hope: the wall of separation is down between the two of them. For this reason Anna is keeping a new secret. She cannot tell Beatrice that she thinks she herself may be expecting a child. She has said nothing to Will. And, after all, she may be wrong.

Antigone says, ‘Yes, a new church, though we prefer to think of it as an old church, in the sense of the original, the primitive church – the Magnetic Church of Jesus.'

When Charlie opens his mouth, his mother raises her hand and passes on swiftly to define the church as a laboratory; revelation as a science. Let the soul be constituted of magnetic fluid. Let Divine influence be the magnet. Let the magnetic influence be passed on, its power drawing others to the chain.

‘You of all people know how abject I was. Lost.' Antigone's body sags in her chair. ‘All of you here saw me, a broken creature. But now – !' She sits upright. ‘The healing galvanism passes through me. The wounded soul, through Christ's magnetic influence, becomes the healer. We are nothing. As female vessels we are less than nothing. He is everything.'

Ellen squirms. At school she has learned, along with piano, watercolours, use of the abacus and the rudiments of French, the manners acceptable in the polite world. To succeed as a governess when she grows up, she'll need to observe these scrupulously. Out of petticoats now, the fatherless girl is dressed as a miniature adult. She sits to attention as her corset dictates, shoulders tensely raised, nibbling fragments of dessicated scone.

Anna dollops raspberry jam onto the side of Ellen's plate and winks. Too decorous to return the wink, the girl gratefully spreads the jam on the scone and makes better progress.

The baby's silence pervades Sarum House.

Luke was never a crying baby so this hardly marks a radical change. It's as if they're all on tenterhooks, waiting for him to awaken. How the silence must ring in the mother's ears. When Anna cannot attend Beatrice, Will often goes in and sits with his sister-in-law. Taking her hand, he speaks to her of the simple, ordinary things going on in the world outside the room. Through the gap between door and jamb, Anna sees her sister looking at him with burning eyes but whether she's registering Will's words is unclear. He says he feels as if Beatrice is always about to say something but gives up at the last minute. Christian's away in Ireland and Beatrice hardly seems to miss him. His letters are left lying on the table unread.

‘Anna, dear, where is your sister?' asks Mrs Kyffin. ‘I have a message for her.'

Anna knocks: no answer. She peeps round the door. Beatrice, sitting on her bed, hands in lap, looks up as if drugged: ‘Yes?'

‘Antigone is here to see you, dear.'

‘Oh, is she? Do I have to see her?'

‘Of course you don't
have
to, dearest.'

But Mrs Kyffin is already in the room and occupies a fair amount of its space with her crinoline. The acolytes of the Reverend Mr Rayne seem unexpectedly fashion-conscious. ‘Now, how are you? Do you eat and drink properly? Does she, Anna? Nourishment is of the essence at these times of crisis – as I should know. And what a poor example I set with my whining and drooping. Now, dearest, tell me –' She takes Beatrice's hand in both of hers. ‘Are you tempted?'

‘Tempted?'

‘To despair?'

Beatrice's expression as she turns away answers for her. A guilty, sardonic look that says, Do not look into my heart for you will find there a cesspool. I killed my son with my neglect. But God foreknew it and failed to intervene. He may have warned me but, if so, I didn't receive the telegraph. Faith? Oh yes, I have faith but faith in the divine mercy? Anna reads the stricken look and her heart goes out to Beatrice. She has been somewhere near the bad place where her sister now finds herself – but never in exactly the same abyss. One never is and that's why no one can reach through to heal another's grief.