His Last Fire (7 page)

M
AD

I
, Robert Sanders, with five years' schooling, was help-meet to Edward Gage. I accompanied him to southern Europe, Ottoman and Attic lands, India; collecting vessels, ritual objects, tiny carvings, stones, statues, shards; beautiful, strange. I learned how much straw, sacking, how many planks were required to box and transport what Edward bought. Dealt with removers, stowers, reliable carriers; learned about pack-horses and shipping routes. Evolved a method of communication in every language, though I spoke none. My brain grew balloon-like with knowledge. I developed a love for decorative knife-handles.

I'm a small man, not much to look at, but strong. There's nothing I cannot lift. For years people turned to me: my calm, certainty, they said. I've grown to believe it of myself. I surmount all difficulties. I'm never fazed. Edward was entirely dependent upon me.

We were constantly abroad. When home, he was morose, refused all social engagements. Sent me to conduct visiting scholars around the collection, dispense with them as soon as possible. He would catalogue and place the pieces we'd brought back, create new groupings, rearrange old categories; speak to no one but me. Wouldn't move from the library. He said he'd spent long periods there as a boy, dreaming; as a man he spent much longer periods, the regular domestic round dissolving under his detached stare. He slept, if he slept, on a couch in the extension he'd built to house the collection. He washed rarely, changed his linen less often, ate when I could persuade him.

I'd never travelled north with him. When I first arrived, I was sceptical of the tales about him and the Lappish women. I'm not impertinent; I wouldn't question him. Pieced together for myself all I needed to know.

He was ravished by Lapland. When young he'd read everything known, steeped himself in Schefferus's
History
of the place. Then, because of a stupid wager, he'd travelled there, come back with two reindeer and two Lappish women. Had learned more. The women went back. I could see he was haunted; understood from gentle intimations there was a child.

He sought to expel desolation through travel south, east, incessant buying. The collection became huge. Yet each return to his neglected estate reawoke the discord. Rejected in Lapland, he recreated it in Herefordshire. Knew it wasn't the place itself (that summer light could never come again, he said), but fusing knowledge, memories, precious objects, believed it was.

Come winter solstice he moved his couch to the north end of the collection room, its window tree-darkened, cases and drawers full of Lappish artefacts. Each day he read a portion of Schefferus, chanted repetitively. Made fires from a great pile of sticks, encouraging smoke into the room, begriming his face and hands. Sat for long hours unmoving in a space apparently cramped by shadowy bodies.

In summer he slept outside. Became lively. I helped rebuild the Lapp women's tent, its poles and material an infested heap at the back of a stable. He had clothes made from reindeer skins, the women's bedding. Ate fish mashed with boiled strawberries, dried meat shredded with a whalebone knife. Blood boiled in water to the consistency of hasty pudding. He persuaded known poachers to hunt game with him on his own land. The same men he'd paid for birds' eggs when they'd all been boys.

I knew that neighbours and servants were greatly entertained. Edward had always been unfathomable, people said. They listened eagerly for tales to enliven winter months.

It was poachers who told of prostration before trees, of rock ‘altars'. The runes drum with its jingling rings. Then everyone saw him daub the church doors with stick-like men and beasts and ran to restrain him. He was a tall man, fought them, struck out windmill arms, injured someone.

I'd seen the magistrate gawp and laugh behind his hand at other times. But his estate bordered Edward's. He felt embarrassment of class, dismissed the crime as lunacy, ordered confinement.

Opinions ran about like rats: madness was curable, a distemper of the body, like gout or asthma; it was caused by weather, such extremes of heat and cold these days; by too much rich food; too much inactivity in the library; too much travel in foreign lands.

‘Let him take Balm of Gilead daily,' someone instructed me. ‘I could not live without it,' he said in an exhalation of brandy, cardamom, Spanish fly. The servants were sure it was the Lappish women who'd addled his mind and body with their heathen ways. The things they'd seen and heard!

Edward had no family. The end of his line. Neighbours, worried by threat of anarchy, named a private asylum in London. I begged to keep him at home. Was ignored. Edward consented to what he thought was punishment.

The owner was Dr Foart.

‘Nowadays we use
management
for the insane,' he told me when I left Edward, exhausted, asleep.

‘What prison is this?' Edward had said, seeing comfortable, almost elegant furniture, a window without bars.

‘Neither beating, mechanical restraints, purges of white and black hellebore, nor spring blood-letting. Management not medicine. And
analysis
.' He tapped a newly-bound volume on the table in his fine study. His house for the reception of insane persons was advertised ‘in an excellent air, near the City, for persons of condition only'. Was once a manor house on the corner of Ashby Street. Painted, papered, superior.

Foart was modern. Quick-witted, scholarly. Prurient, bullying. I read the title: Alexander Crichton's
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement
.

‘I have attended his lectures at the Westminster Hospital, Mr Sanders.'

‘I know nothing of mad-doctors,' I said.

‘I need as many details of Edward Gage's life as you can give me for my analysis.'

‘A
sk him yourself, sir.'

‘You have been close to him. You have observed him intimately. What of his dealings with women? Is he a debaucher?'

‘Let me tell you about his great collection. I am familiar with most of it.'

There were no more than six patients. Although Foart's income was less with so few, his rates were high, five guineas a week. A small number meant a greater chance of cure. Meals were regular, cooked well. Inmates were clean, dressed by nine o'clock; at all meals sat together, conversed rationally.

Edward wouldn't leave his room, wouldn't eat until I persuaded him that appearance of conformity might release him sooner. I went with him to breakfast in a pale green dining-room, its painted panels hung with engravings of mob-capped beauties; large, brown oils of anonymous ancestors. Dr Foart sat at the head of a polished table with plentiful silverware, covered dishes. I stood opposite Edward and wrote down this conversation soon after.

‘Mr Gage, we are not quite a full house. But, let me introduce you to James Hadfield, soldier and latterly silversmith; Richard Broughton, preacher, yes, a famous preacher.'

He indicated next an old lady in archaic clothing. Tiny, concentrating on her plate. ‘Miss Addison, daughter of the famed writer and editor. And we yet await Mrs Bewdley. Edward Gage has a fine collection, I am told. Mr Sanders is with him temporarily.'

Edward acknowledged each barely. Hadfield groaned, put his hand to his head, began to push back his chair. Scarred across the eye, down one cheek, his expression was fearsome.

‘Don't go, Mr Hadfield,' Foart said. ‘He has suffered great wounds in the war, you know.'

‘Three hours in a ditch. Left for dead. Fought for King and Country. Fifteenth Light Dragoons.' I saw the regimental buttons on his waistcoat.

‘It cannot be done,' said Broughton, a smooth man, alight as if addressing an adoring crowd. ‘You cannot serve two masters, Hadfield.' Hadfield sat down, groaned again.

‘You cannot serve the King
and
the Lord God.' Broughton turned to Edward. ‘That's why I left the Royal Navy, Mr Gage. I was a lieutenant. They paid me off handsomely. Left me to do my work here in Babylon.'

‘Prisoner of the French,' Hadfield ground his teeth. ‘Persecuted. But I have not yet been sufficiently tried. I know what I have yet to endure.'

‘The angel never mentioned you to me, Hadfield. In that whole long and lovely address for which I was chosen, I never heard mention of your name. Not once.'

‘I have received a divine commission.'

‘
I
have received a divine commission.'

‘Gentlemen!' Foart said, looking up from his dish of kidneys.

‘A
h!' Broughton suddenly exclaimed. ‘It is she!' A woman of thirty entered the room, fashionably dressed, her gown gathered under the bosom, hair in the natural style. Smiling, steadying herself on the back of Edward's chair, she sat next to him.

Broughton continued: ‘I have been expecting you, heavenly lady! You have brought me love, happiness, riches! Descended from the clouds!'

Hadfield growled. ‘Said that yesterday, Broughton.'

Mrs Bewdley took pieces of buttered toast, giggled.

‘Mr Broughton, look through the window. It is a sunny day, the sky is cloudless. I have descended from my room by the staircase. Dr Foart, I am sorry to be late once more. The time I need to take the drops!' She murmured to Edward. ‘Four hundred drops of laudanum a day you know. There now, what do you think of that? But the time it takes to get it all down!' She smiled at him with the beauty of complete joy.

‘We shall reduce that number, Mrs Bewdley,' said Foart, looking hastily at me. ‘Management not medicine.'

‘Oh no, I don't think so, Doctor. Do you?' Edward didn't answer.

‘If you are
not
she, then I shall heal you, dear lady. For the Fall will come. It will come. It has only been postponed for a while. And I hear it. At night I hear it approaching Babylon. Dragging, dragging its great, scaly body. So,
dear
lady, I shall heal you before that dreadful day.'

‘You are so kind. But, really, Mr Broughton, I am not in need of healing. As to the Fall with which you threaten us daily, shall I weep or laugh? What say you, Miss Addison?' Mrs Bewdley beamed at the old lady, whose tongue captured crumbs from her tiny fingertips like a chameleon catching flies.

Miss Addison rolled her eyes. ‘Tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet's thoughts. An author might as well think of weaving the adventure of Aeneas and Hudibras into one poem, as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow.'

‘Stop her!' Hadfield urged under his breath at Miss Addison's relentless, tinkling monotone.

‘But the absurdity of these performances is so very visible that I shall not insist upon it.'

‘She knows her father's works by heart. Every word. Come Miss Addison,' said Dr Foart, ‘let me take you upstairs.'

Hadfield, Broughton and Mrs Bewdley fell on the remaining dishes. Edward signed to me and we left the room.

Foart had a botanic garden behind the asylum for the recreation of his patients. He had little success; they saw no point in taking on the work of their inferiors. After I left, Edward, shunning company, agreed to dig the ground, though he would eat the herbs, set traps for birds among the bushes. He told me how Foart found him there, absorbed. How he'd questioned him, elicited nothing. Persisted, broke his own declared intention not to use threats, mentioned the new electrical treatment for melancholy. Left Edward weeping.

Foart believed in the importance of forgetting. When he learned enough for his analysis he decided there was over-exertion of Edward's mental faculties with, he surmised, some disappointment of passion. He must forget Lapland! All objects and books that might remind him were forbidden. The subject must not be discussed. Not that anyone around the table was likely to raise it. Only metropolitan food was provided, dressed, devilled, fricasséed, jellied.

The pistols were Hadfield's. Although forbidden him, since he must forget his attempt on the life of the king, they'd easily been secreted by his old friend Mrs Mason. Hadfield was plotting escape with Broughton and Edward, who borrowed the firearms to practise the hold and feel of them.

I heard what happened from Edward and the doctor both. It seems that in following Crichton's
Inquiry
Foart must go through the exercise of
self-analysis
, to abstract his own mind from himself, place it before him, as it were, and examine it with freedom and impartiality. This he was doing when Edward burst upon him with two cocked pistols.

‘Where is my reindeer? You have stolen my little reindeer!'

‘Mr Gage, put down the pistols and let us talk together. You know there are no animals in the house. They are not allowed.'

‘You've taken my reindeer because you want me to forget.
Forget
, you say. I
cannot
,
will
not forget. It is in your clothing, the reindeer. You've stolen it. Take off your clothes!'

Foart was not within reach of his bell. He took off his well-cut coat. Edward waved a pistol at his stomach.

‘Empty the pockets!'

Foart pulled out paper scraps, coins, a box of snuff. He scoffed: ‘A reindeer in my pocket!'

‘Cameo. Rose-pink agate.' Tears welled. ‘You've hidden it in your clothing. Off! Off! Take everything off!'

Foart kicked off his shoes, stripped breeches, stockings, waistcoat, shirt, began to remove the undershirt when his servant stepped into the room behind Edward and snatched the pistols. They were unloaded.