Awakening (39 page)

The pastors shake hands cordially with the welcoming party. Idris Jones of Bedwellty scarcely seems his usual ebullient self, loquacity quenched maybe in the company of the matchless Mr Spurgeon.

No sooner has he alighted on the platform of Salisbury Station than Mr Spurgeon is recognized, perhaps by folk who've attended his services at the newly built and stupendous Metropolitan Tabernacle. The word goes round. Over there. Spurgeon! What, that little roly poly youth? The same. Railwaymen, doffing their caps, mill around him and Beatrice is aware of a lady passenger sidling up to touch his coat.

Mr Spurgeon, aware of the approach, wheels round. She takes a step back, flustered and apologetic.

‘My dear lady,' he says. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘Oh – beg your pardon, sir, but my boy – he's sick. Over there with his Papa. We're going to the spa hoping for a cure, though the doctor says it's too late and we should give up our hope and save our money to bury him.'

‘The golden-haired little chap?'

‘I'm afraid he's red-haired, sir.'

‘No, no,
golden.
Eighteen
carrot
!
– ah ha! At least that's brought a smile to your lips, and what are pastors for? No earthly use in them if they can't do that. Bring the lad here and I will speak to him. But, you know, I'm no miracle-worker. Don't mistake me for my Master. Hope is a precious thing; there's no putting a price on hope; we have to hope – but let us place our hope in our Jesus.
He
will not let us down. Is your boy in pain?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘That's a blessing. And you must take it as such.'

The pale, freckled boy is carried across in his father's arms. Beatrice, close to the puny five-year-old, suffers a reeling blow. He's a collection of bones. The boy has never walked. And now cannot eat, scarcely drinks. Beatrice looks up at her husband. His hand cups her elbow and squeezes.

‘My dear little fellow – what is your name, darling?'

The boy stares from his pale green eyes. The mother asks for a blessing on Bertie and Mr Spurgeon places his hand on the child's forehead. He nods to the father to pass him the lad. He will hold the bag of bones and bless it. The child is transferred to his arms. No weight at all.

A hush spreads through the station. The mother and father fall to their knees on the platform amongst heaps of luggage and mail bags. It's a biblical scene. Mr Clifford and Mr Jones are down on their knees. Beatrice finds herself sinking down beside her husband, her mourning gown billowing into the dirt. The station master is down; porters and railwaymen follow. The impulse spreads amongst the passengers; first-class passengers kneel, removing their top hats. Ladies in crinolines stand, hands clasped, eyes closed.

Mr Spurgeon's voice is a rich instrument. Its trumpet-call penetrates every corner. The father and mother weep. The weeping spreads through the station. The child hangs limp and open-mouthed in Mr Spurgeon's arms. As he prays, Beatrice feels that Jesus stands beside him. It must have been like this in the Holy Land, she thinks, at Bethesda or Galilee in the time of miracles.

The minister finishes. Opening her eyes, Beatrice sees the unremarkable, thickset man with his large head, protruding teeth slightly crossed, his eyes which don't quite match, shorter in stature than Anna: transfigured.

The boy is restored to his father's arms. With stammering thanks that are waved away, the parents vanish into the crowd, more reconciled perhaps, quieter in themselves for the journey ahead.

Assembled in the carriage, the mood changes. Good cheer prevails as Mr Spurgeon tells stories against himself and teases Mr Clifford about his appetite for education. ‘So John is looking to study for his doctorate! Doctorate! I wouldn't give you tuppence for a bushel of 'em! I've all the doctorates I need here.' He slaps the wide pocket where he keeps his New Testament. ‘I hear you've just graduated with a B.Sc. in Geology and Palaeontology. Did Jesus sit at the feet of the Pharisees and study for his Bachelor of Mouldy Rocks and Fossils? Fiddle-faddle! Jesus taught
them
,
or would have, if they'd just pinned back their lugs.'

Mr Clifford, smiling, refuses to take the bait. We must all be educated, he insists: the poor as well the rich. As for his mouldy fossils, his optimism sees no antagonism between the competition of species for survival and the possible progress of the human race.

‘Would you perhaps speak to my sister if you have a chance, Mr Clifford?' Beatrice asks as they enter the garden of Sarum House. ‘Speak to her about your studies. I feel she would enjoy – benefit from – a conversation with you.'

‘It will be a pleasure. I remember Miss Anna very well. A remarkable young woman.'

‘She is in some turmoil of mind, I fear.' Beatrice says no more, leaving Mr Clifford to make his own assessment.

Amongst these distinguished gentlemen, Beatrice feels as she did in Papa's day, as if she's eating with angels, the greediest creatures in the universe. They can empty whole pantries at a sitting. It's not until after tea is served and before supper preparations begin that she can snatch half an hour with her husband while the house is temporarily quiet except for Amy's tramping up and downstairs with hot water for the beardless ones to shave.

Glancing out of the window, Beatrice is comforted to see her sister walking in the garden with Mr Clifford, deep in talk.

‘What kind of married life is this for you?' asks Christian. She is tying his necktie for him, hands all of a tremble. ‘I'm ashamed to leave you alone for such long periods. Do you ever regret marrying an evangelist?' He places his hands on her shoulders and bends to study her face. ‘I have so much to occupy me of my Master's work while you –'

‘I'm well occupied, dear. I knew from the beginning how it would be. But yes, I've missed your steadying hand.' Should she confide in him now? Or keep the question of his sister-in-law's waywardness until they have time and privacy? What a relief it will be to turn over the whole burden to Christian. He'll doubtless be shocked and perhaps critical of the way his wife has handled the situation.

‘I believe our work is bearing fruit,' he says and begins to tell of a family in Bristol with whom he periodically lodges, the Leytons: Mrs Leyton is a widow who has felt a call of her own to the ministry but –
mirabile dictu! –
so has her twelve-year-old daughter, whom he personally baptised. Ruth is a promising child with whom Christian has sat many an evening in deep and earnest conversation. Unless her fire burns itself out, the name of Ruth Leyton will be heard in the future.

‘But surely – a woman – a young girl – you cannot approve of female ministers?'

‘There are precedents, Beatrice. The Quakers, the early Methodists. In America I met remarkable women preachers. There are Gospel precedents: in the Gospel of John, of course, we read of the preaching Woman of Samaria.'

Beatrice bursts in with, ‘We are not Methodists and this is not America, Christian. Their ways are not ours.'

‘Good things come from America, Beatrice, do they not? Not least amongst them is Revival – and the war against slavery. And who knows what women may be called to do in the next generation? The women who are children now will see a new world. Ruth Leyton, I find, understands these matters with a more than childlike grasp. And yet she is modest and biddable. You'd be impressed, dear. And, Beatrice, I hope we may welcome the Leytons to Sarum House so that you can get to know them.'

‘Of course, Christian. If that is your wish.'

‘I know you will find them delightful.'

‘Very delightful, I'm sure.' The pastoral relationship is fraught with intimate temptations. Beatrice would never have thought Christian, towering above them all in his purity, would have been susceptible.

‘I know what you're thinking,' he says.

You always do – or you think you do, she doesn't say.

‘I am impervious to all charms but those of my dearest wife.'

Beatrice cannot help laughing aloud at the pompous formula. Christian suppresses a look of irritation or apprehension, she can't tell which. He begins to speak of a lady in Indianapolis who threw her lovely arms round Mr Beecher's neck and cried, ‘Oh, Mr Beecher, save me!' Beecher's grave and correct reply was, ‘You must look to a higher power.' The pastor removed her hands from his neck and fell on his knees: ‘Let us pray.'

‘Love, of course,' Christian says, ‘is always good. I love many souls. I seek to love
all
souls. You would not limit that? But I stand as straight as a poplar for any sin of the flesh. At the same time, you cannot doubt me, Beatrice?'

‘Of course not. But is it wise …?'

‘Come, darling, we have a few minutes,' he says, taking her hand. ‘Let's talk, really talk. Sit on my knee by the fire as we always used to do, since you were … so high.'

Beattie hates
,
Beattie loathes.

She sees in her mind's eye a twelve-year-old with hectic eyes and flaming face in the lap of a grown man, being rocked, being sung and preached to. The name of the girl was Beatrice Pentecost and is now Ruth Leyton.

When her husband sits down and pats his lap, Beatrice makes no move to join him but stands beside her husband in the firelight, one hand on his shoulder. There's a moment's tense silence. Then Christian says, surprisingly, ‘I dreamed of him, Beatrice. Our boy.' He turns aside and his voice chokes; he seems unable to trust himself to speak his son's name.

‘What did you dream?'

‘We were all three in the garden. Luke was in your arms. But he began to, I don't know, dissolve – slowly – until I could see right through him. But you still held him – cradled – he just melted – he melted back into you. Finally he couldn't be seen at all. I said to you, “Oh Beatrice, he has gone. Can't you see he's gone?”
But I looked into your face, darling, and I saw.'

‘What did you see?'

‘He was in you. I see him now. He'll always be in you. But there was something about the dream – that left God out – that placed the human mother above the divine Father – or so I thought on waking – and I trembled. But then I thought, Might the Father be in the human mother?'

Never mind the Leytons. Never mind any of it. We have had a child together; we've lost a child together. Tears run down their faces and mingle.
For he is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition.
Beatrice glimpses what she rarely has before: the father's likeness to the son.

Already Christian's drying his face and settling its expression. He reaches for his slouch hat.

*

Mr Clifford does not mock Anna as she leads him through the wilderness to the mound. He listens with that unique sympathy of his. ‘It was your sanctuary, Anna. Your refuge.'

‘Warmth seemed to come up from it – a motherly kind of warmth. All sorts of little games I played here and I wrote books about them. Tiny books a few inches across. I could show you. Recently I opened the box I kept them in. Not just stories but descriptions of the creatures on the mound and the plants and what was happening to them – what I saw and observed – a sense of those lives entangled there, all struggling and entwined. And I'd dig. I'd excavate. Does that sound heathen?'

‘It sounds human, Anna. It sounds – if I have caught your drift – filial.'

That sticks in Anna's mind when he's gone indoors. He saw that the beloved was down there in the earth, the beautiful and terrible earth. Anna finds a trowel and lays back the turf. Her fingers scrabble in the soil till she uncovers and lifts the lid of the earthenware pot she buried there so many years ago. Anna reaches in to pluck out her treasures one by one. A leaf-shaped arrowhead. A tiny silver bell. An amber bead. A bone comb. Green tesserae. Anna sits cross-legged with the hoard spread in her lap, weighing each object in her palm, turning it to the light.

The treasures return to their urn; the urn to the earth.

*

Isaiah Minety prepares to preach the sermon of his young life, making his mark on the great visitors from the capital. It was at a similar age that Mr Spurgeon's star began to rise from low origins: the oracular, button-nosed boy-preacher of the Fens attracted the scoffs of worldlings. He'd been ministering since he was a toddling child, perched on a hayrick to address an infant congregation.

Why not therefore the baker's boy of West Grimstead? Perhaps it's for Mr Spurgeon to single out Isaiah for a special prophecy?

But will he? There cannot be a surplus of prodigies in the Baptist fold. London does not possess enough Surrey Chapels or Exeter Halls to hold them. Mr Spurgeon, having outlived his reputation for extreme youth, will hardly be on the lookout for up-and-coming lads to ape his glory, Anna thinks as she arranges Isaiah's necktie and dusts down his lapels. And besides, Mr Spurgeon is surely likely to take exception to Isaiah's growing tendency to preach something that sounds like the doctrine of universal forgiveness.