Rustication (27 page)

Suddenly I found myself outside Boddington’s office. I don’t know how long I lingered, leaning against a doorpost nearby.

He came out at last and I stood in his way and spoke his name. He looked green when he saw me. I said:
I have to speak to you. You can’t keep hiding behind your clerk
. He smiled—smiled!—and said he had no idea what I meant and he had heard I had called while he was out and it would suit him better if I could come back another day. I said I was sure it would but it suited
me
to see him now and he said
Very well
and turned and led me upstairs. There was nobody in the house but the two of us. We went into his office. The fire had been smothered and the room was cold.

He started asking about the health of my mother and sister and I could see that he was making every effort to disarm me. I told him bluntly that I wanted to talk about my mother’s affairs. How was it that everything had vanished: the furniture, the investments, the pension? He said in his lawyerly fashion that without my mother’s permission he could tell me only what was publicly known: That my father’s estate had been declared bankrupt on the motion of his creditors, of whom the principal one was the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral. All his assets had been seized.

I said I could not understand how everything could have gone and I wanted to see full accounts. Instead of becoming indignant as an honest man surely would have, he smiled and told me he would have a copy posted to my mother the very next day and it would be for her to show it to me if she chose to.

Then he starting trotting out homilies about how he knew how hard it was to be my age—how could he remember that far back! He talked of his own son Tobias and compared him with me: Tobias had lost his mother just as I had my father. How dare he make any comparison between us! Tobias is a bousy wastrel and good-for-nothing.

I was not going to let him off so lightly. I told him I wanted to know about the Chancery suit that he had sold. Why had he obtained so little for it?

He gave the same answer:
Only your mother can tell you about it
.

I said:
It was your fault. You encouraged her to make her doomed claim. You just wanted her to run up expenses and fatten your fees
.

He didn’t like that. He flushed and said:
We will discuss it no longer
. With those words he rose and unceremoniously ushered me out to the stairs.

When we reached the front-door I passed into the street without a farewell.

The fog had thickened and it was now dark and I had great difficulty finding my way even though I know the streets so well. I followed the rising ground since I knew where it would lead me. As I went up and up my footsteps rang on the rounded cobbles that were wet and slippery with dew. Somehow I found myself near the Castle. The town lay at my feet but I could see nothing but a wall of grey mist.

I decided to go down Hill Street. By now I could make progress only by feeling my way along the walls or scraping my foot along the kerbstone to find the edge of the pavement. Like a blind man I used my hands and followed the railings and as I descended the street I became aware that there were footsteps behind me. I could not tell how close. When I stopped they seemed to stop. The person was tagging me, was staying behind me and not passing me. I became sure he meant harm to me. I turned and called out
Ho there!

Silence. I continued and I came to an entrance with steps where the railings rose into an arch. I reached up. I felt the snuffer—that damned boar’s head.

I waited there. I could detect nothing above the hiss and tumble of the water passing under the bridge at the bottom of the street.

I don’t know how much time had passed—a couple of minutes, half an hour—when I heard the footsteps again—at least, they seemed the same. I called out and there was no response but I saw a movement and assumed the man was attacking me and I hit out where I believed him to be but my fist struck empty air.

A sound came from another direction and I ran at it and I hit someone or something with my shoulder. It seemed harder than a body should have been. The pain made me mad with rage. I heard steps some yards away and rushed at the source of the sound and this time I encountered a person—we buffeted into each other striking shoulder to shoulder—and I swung my fist and it met something and there was a choked exclamation.

I was sure it was my enemy and I gripped him and held onto him by the coat and hit him again and then again though we were so close that my blows were ineffectual. I thrust him from me intending to aim my fist at him but he vanished into the mist. I heard a sound of metal hitting stone and I thought he had dropped a knife or a gun. I was determined to stand my ground and I remained listening for at least three or four minutes. There was nothing. I wondered if he were crouching a few yards from me waiting for me to go. Or to turn my back and then he would retrieve the weapon and strike at me or shoot. There was complete silence. Nothing but the rustling of the water.

After a while I began to walk slowly and quietly towards the High Street. I was sure there were footsteps behind me. Someone was following me once again. Every time I stopped, he stopped. Whenever I looked round, he halted and pressed himself into the shadows. I joined the crowded streets in the centre and wove my way through the throng and must have thrown him off.

I passed through the town. Once I was away from those streets and out in the hollow of the valley, the mist thinned and I was able to quicken my pace.

I don’t regret it. I hope I hurt him. It is an outrage that he walks the same earth as I, that I have to breathe air polluted by him. Such creatures should not live: He was born to wealth and privilege and he has thrown aside the obligations that went with them and squanders his money on gambling and whoring.

Yet it is not
his
wickedness that disturbs me. Nor even the vile pandaring of Bartlemew. What shocks me is to learn of something evil in one who has been so near to me all my life. My father was always secretive. Now I’m starting to uncover his nakedness. I understand now why the Precentor made such efforts to keep him from the choristers. Has everyone in the diocese known these things about my father but I? Is that why Mother and Effie and I have been shunned or have received pitying looks or at best been patronised by those kind enough to overlook the sins of the father? And once the Precentor had closed the door to him, Bartlemew’s role was to introduce him to The Dolphin and supply him with fresh meat from the Choir.

It was a long weary walk home though I accepted a ride on a cart for some of the way. I reached the house late at night. I could see from the darkness of the windows that nobody had waited up for me. I came into the parlour where there was a fire still alight though it was dying and I started writing in this journal while the wind sighed restlessly and moaned down the chimney-flue. From somewhere came strange noises that seemed to be human voices wailing in the distance. In broad daylight I would not have been concerned but sitting alone at night, the only person awake in the house and perhaps for half a mile around, I felt very uneasy.

Suddenly there was a scrabbling noise and a whirring sound. I was really scared now. I thought of all the wicked things that had happened in that house—the murdered lover and the burning of the baby—and wondered if the restless spirits of those who had suffered were still haunting the place.

And then I even found myself wondering if the maimings of beasts were not being carried out by any human but were supernatural manifestations of anger—perhaps directed against me for what I had done to Edmund or had failed to do.

Then I realised that what had frightened me was merely the wind, for the chimney was acting like a vast stone flute. The sound of scratching was perhaps caused by something that had blown down it and become lodged.

But no sooner had I comforted myself with that thought than I heard from somewhere inside the house a slow shuffling noise. The strangest ideas passed through my mind.

Suddenly an apparition came round the door: a haggard ashen face with grey hair. I did not recognise it for a moment. It was Mother. In that instant I had a vision of her as she will look when she is dead: her face collapsed, cheeks sunken, eyes hollowed out.

So strong was this impression that I started when she spoke:
Richard, why are your clothes torn and blood-stained?

I hadn’t realised they were. I told her I had lost my way in a dense fog on the road back from town and had fallen into a ditch beside the carriageway.

She kept her unsteady gaze on me as if she did not believe me. Then she said:
Is that the truth? People tell me they’ve seen you late at night in places you had no business to be. Heaven only knows what you were doing
. She put her hand on the sopha to guide herself and then almost fell into it. She stared at me and blinked several times. She said:
There is something very serious that I have to talk to you about. It has been reported to me that you have been making a nuisance of yourself. In relation to young women
.

Who told you that?

Everyone is talking about you. You chased Miss Fourdrinier and terrified her. You’ve frightened the Quance girls. And just yesterday you were grossly offensive to Lucy Lloyd and then in the evening you forced your way into Mrs Paytress’s house
.

Mother, you can’t believe these grotesque stories
.

You prowl around at night getting up to heaven alone knows what kind of nastiness. Now you come home covered in blood. What should I believe?

I tried to speak but she held up her hand.

I had a letter from Thomas this morning. He’s told me the most dreadful thing about what happened to make the College dismiss you. That a young man died. A friend of yours. And you were in some way involved
.

Here it came. I just nodded.

She said:
How did he die? Who was he?

I said:
Didn’t Uncle Thomas tell you?

Don’t be impertinent. I asked you a question
.

Two questions, Mother. But I think we should talk about it in the morning
.

She said:
You’ve been deceiving me, Richard. Thomas has informed me that your offence is so grave that the College would never have taken you back even if he were prepared to go on paying for you
.

When I made no response she leaned forward and said:
You don’t know what you’ve done to me. When I saw the Quances and the Lloyds looking down their noses at me I was able to say to myself, at least I have a son at Cambridge who will soon have his degree and be making his way in the world
.
Now I learn that you’ve been lying about that
. She began sobbing and coughing at the same time.
You’re a broken reed, Richard
. She rose to her feet and then had to hold out her hands and grip the back of a chair to keep herself from falling.
All the hopes I had—that I would be able to hold my head up again and your sister take her rightful place in the world—became impossible as soon as the College rusticated you. Well, I wash my hands of you
.
I no longer care what you do
.

Yet she said that with tears running down her cheeks.

Your sister and I must look elsewhere for support whatever the consequences. And you will leave this house as soon as possible
.

She then shuffled out of the room.

Memorandum:
OPENING
BAL
:
4s. 7½d
. R
ECT
: (from Mother)
3s
. E
XP
: Dinner (
1s. 2d
.) and what I drank at The Dolphin (
9d
.) T
OTAL
EXP
:
1s. 11d
. F
INAL
GROSS
BAL
: 5
s. 8½d
. (of which I owe Mother:
1s. 1d
.). F
INAL
NET
BAL
:
4s. 7½d
.

· · ·

11 o’clock.

I came down for breakfast very late and Mother hardly spoke to me. She looked wan and haggard. I wonder how much of last night she remembers. Effie had gone to the village early and Mother and I were sitting in silence in the parlour (sewing and reading respectively) when she came back. She came bounding in, full of some gossip she had heard in the shop. This is what she told us: That oppressed little being, Sukey, who helps Mrs Darnton in that evil den of spitefulness, was passing the house of Mrs Paytress very early yesterday morning when she noticed a carriage pulled up at the door. She stopped to look and in the light from the lamps saw the mistress of the house emerge carrying a child in her arms. It was about five or six years of age and she was unable to see if it was a boy or a girl.

The vehicle overtook her a few minutes later going at a great rate towards Thurchester. (So that was the carriage that passed me yesterday morning!) It was now being given out that Mrs Paytress was not intending ever to return. She has left most of her servants in the house and they are packing up and will reveal nothing in response to questions.