The Quickening Maze (15 page)

‘No, no, you were playing beautifully.’ Her mother smiled.

‘Mr Tennyson,’ Hannah said, ‘what a pleasure to see you again.’ Suddenly she remembered to be afraid: had he told her father of her solitary visit to him all that time ago? There was no sign of it that she could see. Perhaps her father knew and didn’t mind. He was in one of his enthusiastic moods anyway, meeting everything headlong, with pleasure, his movements large and rapid. He looked delighted to have found her in the drawing room; he wore the warm, suffused, small-eyed smile of paternal pride. She was part of his achievement. To the benefit of her own desires, she would be shown off to their guest. ‘That was delightful, Hannah. Would you play us something else?’

‘If you are sure . . .’

‘Of course we are.’

Tennyson made a gruff noise of agreement.

‘Alfred, please take a seat.’

‘I shall call for tea,’ Eliza whispered and walked away. Hannah refused to meet her glance; she felt it needling at her forehead. She sat again and began another of the sonatas, but immediately thought of what was happening, who was listening: the tempo crumpled, notes clattered into one another. She shouted at herself in her mind to be calm, to play as usual, and even as she felt sweat prickling on her upper lip she regained control. She slowed through sweet phrases, held them up in display. She played on, only making further errors when her mother returned to the room with Fulton and Dora, and Tennyson lit his pipe. It was difficult also to look as well as possible while concentrating and knowing that her face had reddened in that awful flecked way it had. Through her closing bars the tea arrived. She played the final cadences with great vehemence and separation, then stood up feeble and helpless, her face slippery with sweat.

‘Wonderful,’ her father congratulated her.

‘Very eloquent,’ Tennyson said.

‘Really?’

He nodded, exhaling smoke from his nostrils. ‘Indeed,’ he said.

The word hotly pierced her. Eloquent! And from a poet. She must have touched his soul! She now sat triumphantly among them and looked at her warm fingers while Tennyson went on with the thought that all young ladies ought to be musical, that it brightens a home. He asked Eliza if she played.

‘Not as much as I used to, with so much to attend to. Dora plays also.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Matthew leaped in.‘And she will be brightening her own home soon. Dora is to marry in, what, just a couple of weeks now. I hope you will do us the honour of joining us for the wedding. The party will be here.’

‘Well, yes. Why not?’ Tennyson turned with courtesy to the silent Dora. ‘I would indeed be honoured.’ Such a thing, a lively and happy family. It was a pleasure for him to be among them. It was life as it ought to be lived, unlike his private, stagnant whatever you may call it.

The wedding, Hannah thought, would be ideal. What better, more conducive day could there be? It would happen! He had practically announced it himself. With her eloquent music, she would brighten his home.

Tea was taken while the conversation continued, light and cheerful and without hesitation.Tennyson ate a noticeable quantity of toasted tea bread and, slightly to Hannah’s dismay, relit his pipe while still chewing.

When tea was done, Matthew announced, ‘Ladies, if you will excuse us. Alfred, perhaps you would care to join me in my study. There’s something I’d rather like you to see. Fulton, you too.’

‘Certainly,’ Tennyson said, and, along with his host, rose and bowed to the ladies.

‘Good bye,’ Hannah said.

‘Good bye,’ he answered.‘And thank you once again for playing.’

With an arm held out in a curve around his shoulders, Matthew Allen edged around Tennyson and guided him to the door. Fulton followed them, satisfied at being invited to leave the irrelevant women behind.

‘Now, you may recall a conversation we had some time ago,’ Allen began, softly closing his study door behind them,‘in which I expressed a desire to broaden the scope of my activities once more.’

‘Indeed, I do. A most agreeable conversation.’

Allen smiled.‘Well, I believe that I have been inspired with just the sort of idea, one that is absolutely ripe for the moment, with truly remarkable prospects. Fulton, would you bring the drawings from my desk.’ Allen picked up a mineral sample, tossed and caught it as he spoke. ‘These are my designs. I am convinced that they represent the best of current thinking in these matters and, though it’s not my intention to flatter myself, may represent a significant advance. Certainly the scheme is in advance of anything currently operating.’

‘This is all very intriguing,’ Tennyson said, sitting up as he received from Fulton the pages. He peered closely at the first. ‘It’s a machine.’

‘Indeed. A machine,’ Allen repeated the word as if he’d come to love it. ‘A machine. A machine of my own devising.’

‘The Pyroglyph,’ Tennyson read. ‘Odd bit of Greek. Fire mark. Marking what?’

‘Wood. It is a wood carver,’ Fulton piped up. His father checked his interruption with a glance.

‘Precisely. A machine for the carving of wood. A Pyroglyph. Here,’ Allen stood beside Tennyson’s chair and pointed at the workings with his nugget of rock. ‘This is a tracer. It follows the design of a piece that is carved by hand, by a master craftsman. This arm connects it across to a drill piece that carves the design exactly onto a fresh piece of wood fixed in this tray. The craftsman’s carving is reproduced so precisely that it is impossible afterwards to tell the original from the copy. Here on this sheet, some designs.’ Tennyson looked down a page of curling leaves, diamonds, crosses, eggs and darts, cherubic faces. ‘The implications of this? Well, just think of them, think of all the homes in our growing cities unable to afford the work of guild craftsmen, now able to afford indistinguishable examples. There is, let us not forget, a moral enhancement that comes with living with fine design, in wood. It connects people to the natural world and to English history. And think of all the new churches also unable to afford teams of craftsmen to decorate them . . .’

Tennyson felt the surge of Allen’s articulacy passing into him. The doctor’s enthusiasm was positively galvanic.

‘Fulton, would you excuse us for a moment?’ The boy looked at his father as if to check that he really meant it and then, in the silence, left.

Now was the moment for Matthew, the crucial manoeuvre. He seemed to have Tennyson in a receptive state.

‘Now,’ he began again, ‘the project is in a very advanced state of realisation. I will shortly be investing all of my savings in the building of the Pyroglyph and purchase of its engine. However, that still leaves an amount of capital required for materials, premises and so forth.’ Tennyson did not seem to betray any dismay at the turn the conversation was taking. Allen pressed on. ‘So my hope is that you will consider investing in the scheme along with me. I already have a site selected. Everything, in fact, is primed and ready to go.’

‘It sounds most convincing,’Tennyson said.‘No doubt the market exists. The cities . . .’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure the market exists.’

‘And as it happens, I have money. We all do. An inheritance from my father.’ Money that could be active in his place, flowing through the world, returning increased. Tennyson could join with the doctor and himself become a man of enterprise, of energy.

‘Well, I would sincerely ask you to consider it.’

‘Consider it considered.’

‘You mean to say . . . ?’

‘Dr Allen, I would very much like to buy a share in the Pyroglyph.’ Tennyson held out his hand. Allen grasped and held, forgetting in his excitement to shake it.

‘That’s wonderful. Quite wonderful. I’m . . . I really am delighted. Now, shall we consider some sums?’

 

Mary’s mouth was tired. She felt as if she’d spoken for days, for weeks, her spit thickening to a paste, her tongue always lifting and falling to spread the Word. She had lost the ability to sleep. At most she experienced a quick splash of black in the depths of the night before waking again, already praying and speaking. As she walked, the world bulged towards her, close and particular, full of signs. She walked in her bright tunnel from person to person, from soul to soul. It led her now to the pond where John stood.

John stood and stared down at the widening hem of slime where in the heat the pond had shrunk down into itself. A thick smell to the heavy green water, a sexual stink. It looked oily, frog-coloured. He was about to crouch and see if he could see through its reflections to the creatures living within when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes? Who are you?’

‘My name is Mary.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘It is my name, given me by an angel of the Lord.’

‘Yes, but you look - I suppose we are - older. We couldn’t escape it, could we?’ He reached up and touched her face. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh.’ Mary smiled. She had his attention. She could see he was ready. The contact was deep and sincere. ‘I knew you’d come,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘But you’re thin.’

‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.

‘Let’s go somewhere, somewhere out of sight. We can hide, be free together.’

‘Listen . . .’

‘Ah!’ He startled her by crying out. ‘Why did you take so long?’

‘God’s will,’ she said. ‘We must not question it.’

‘Yes, yes. But it’s been so hard.’

She saw tears in his eyes. ‘I’m here now.’

‘Ah!’ he cried again. He picked up one of her hands and held it to the side of his face, comforting himself. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Before they find us.’

He kept hold of her hand and led her away. He hated to harry and assault her, but it was so urgent, they might have no time at all. He pulled her after him away from the house to the walled yard where the grass clippings were dumped and vegetable trash was left to compost. There he grabbed her into his arms and crushed her against him. She permitted this. She felt the thirst in his soul. She had been sent to help him. ‘It is the Lord that has sent me to you,’ she said.

‘Yes, yes. It must be.’

His hands now chased over her back, over her hair, her shoulders, her buttocks.

‘No,’ she started. ‘No, no.’

‘Yes. Finally. We’re together now. This is right.’ Was it right? Was this a sacrifice she had to make, the penance of life with her husband revisited upon her? She wished to be entirely an instrument of the Lord. Was this a way?

The man’s ardour was overwhelming. She found herself on her back on the moist grass, its odour of sweet rot. John lifted her skirt, tugged at her underthings. Her body belonged to the world, after all. It would fall, would decay. She closed her eyes. Her Silent Watcher kept vigil.

John pulled at his own buttons. He kissed her face, her eye, the hard bone in her cheek. He worked and found the place. ‘Mary,’ he said. ‘Mary.’

She kept her face screwed tightly shut, feeling his face bumping against her, his tears on her cheeks.

He rocked on the pulsing sensations, inhaling the grass, the gold day resting softly on his back. He pressed in. He was older - his belly made a soft barrier between them - and her bones were so sharp. He pressed down into her until it broke from him, the lightning that forked down into that darkness and branched and spread. He whimpered and hugged her to him. ‘Mary,’ he moaned and rolled off her. She tried to get up, but he held on to her, keeping her there, and she submitted, pressing her face into him instead, burrowing into the darkness of his neck. His head pressed into the musky, damp grass. He felt the warmth of her tears falling onto him. Her hair lay across his face, across his mouth. He looked up.Transparent flaws circulated in his vision. Two flies buzzed, battling together. Swifts screamed overhead in the glorious summer heights. ‘Mary,’ he said again in his happiness, slowly closing his eyes.

 

Tennyson’s money was quickly banked, premises were rented, quantities of oak, lime and hornbeam were ordered, and the Pyroglyph was put into construction. Matthew Allen walked among the screaming drills of the place where it was being born, enjoying all the wrenching power of manufacture. He’d had the exhilaration of new ideas before, ideas that had altered the shape of his life, established him in the world, but he’d never seen an idea being built, bodied forth in space, hammered together.

He hired two men, one thin with long capable fingers and fingertips so large his hands looked like a waterbird’s feet, and one square with slow pale eyes, both former hand-carvers for cabinet makers and both untalkative. The square man flexed his hands, staring at them, and asked in a manner that indicated his disapproval about the lack of apprentices. Dr Allen reassured him that operating the Pyroglyph would not require training to that standard or, happily, the same amount of labour. Once the patterns had been carved, the work would be light and pleasant.The date of their first day of employment was agreed and Allen was left alone in his empty workshop, enjoying the taut convexity of its silence, regarding the as-yet-unfired Maudsley engine. So much was on the brink of occurring. He locked the premises and went home to draw up further advertisements.

Matthew Allen’s powers of immersion were prodigious. Like a sea mammal, he disappeared down into his new element for hours. He surfaced, was loud and cheerful and hungry, and then vanished again. Fulton tried to follow him - this was work he would share and inherit, after all - but he often couldn’t find him. Eliza was occasionally irked that this should be happening so close to the wedding, but she did not complain; she knew it wouldn’t avail and anyway she was more than capable herself.

William Stockdale’s imperturbable strength and slow-moving control encouraged Allen to give him more and more of the regular running of the asylum, particularly at Leopard’s Hill Lodge. He admired, for example, how Stockdale dealt with John Clare, who now walked towards them down the long corridor.