The Quickening Maze (16 page)

Stockdale looked down at the addled peasant who attempted to fix him with his pale eyes. He explained who he was - Shakespeare - and that he spoke seven languages. He boasted and then suddenly was angry. ‘Where’s Mary?’ he demanded. ‘What have you done to her? She came for me and now she’s gone.’

Matthew Allen interrupted him. ‘John, John, wait. Mary has not been here.You desire her so much that you’ve imagined it. Do you understand?’

John turned to him with no understanding in his expression. ‘I didn’t imagine it. It was too real. It was real. What have you done with her?’

‘We haven’t done anything with her,’ Stockdale said. ‘She hasn’t been here.’ He stood over the man, gripped his shoulder. ‘She hasn’t been here. Do you hear? Do you hear?’

‘Don’t . . .’

Stockdale shook him gently. ‘She has not been here. She has not been here. Do you hear?’

‘I . . .’

‘You see, you do understand.’

‘Let go.’

‘You do understand.’

‘I understand.’

Afterwards, Stockdale confided. ‘It’s not force, but a physical impression. It commands their attention, doctor.’

 

At home, Allen rushed upon little Abigail and grabbed her up into his arms, gnawing on her belly. She kicked and exulted. He dropped her down. ‘Oof,’ he said. ‘You’re growing too big for such things. Now, ladies,’ he addressed his wife and daughters.‘New dresses have been ordered, as requested.They will arrive tomorrow, I understand, easily in time for the wedding.’

‘Will they?’ Hannah swallowed against the pain in her throat. ‘What has been ordered?’

‘I’m sure they will satisfy. Your mother made the selection, from magazines.’

‘Indeed, I did,’ Eliza said.

Hannah fervently hoped that her dress would be of the right shade, something with twilight in it, with distance and poetry. She swallowed again. Her throat was sore. A scratching dryness kept tunnelling down inside and she had to swallow to soothe it. Her bones felt heavy, her vision heavy also. She looked around in slow swerves. She was falling ill. She would be ill for the wedding. The moment she admitted it, she sneezed and afterwards groaned, her head ringing.

Dora looked disapproving. ‘I hope you’re not planning to be ill for my wedding.You should leave, Hannah. We can’t any of us catch it from you.’

 

‘It might have been Arthur and Emily getting married. If you squint it almost looks like them. He has the same brow, I think.’

‘Declarations in the yellow drawing room,’ Septimus answered.

‘And then he would have been our brother. The dear endeared.’

‘Might have been. Would have been. Enough of the conditional mood. Only the possible happens.’

‘Only the possible happens? Can that be true?’

‘Take it or leave it. What difference?’

‘I can’t bear it, you know, sometimes, I can’t . . . bear it.’

‘Yes.’ Septimus fell silent and waited for the profound moment to blur and dissipate. Then he said gently, when his thoughts had moved on, ‘He was good for her, certainly, roused her from her sickbed.’

‘And now she will marry that garrulous midshipman. What a falling off was there.’

‘Are you playing Hamlet? Arthur was wonderful. It is unlikely that our sister would find someone as wonderful again. She hasn’t.’

‘You’re being very rational.’

‘I’m too tired to be anything else.’

The two Tennysons with their wine bowed at new guests. Hannah watched them do it. She was ill. She stood in her stiff new dress, which was too brightly blue, with aching knees and elbows, patting the sweat from her forehead and upper lip with a lace handkerchief. Around her the wedding party shifted and droned. She stared thickly at Dora and James seated at their little table with spiced cake and wine, receiving the compliments of standing guests. They looked isolated there, immobile and cut off and child-like, being shorter than their guests. To Hannah it seemed a humiliating position to be in, made worse by Dora’s unsuitability for the ringlets she wore. They were left out of the party. Everyone else knew their business and were freely able to enjoy themselves. Perhaps she would have felt differently if they had looked happier. But they weren’t laughing or gay at all. They spoke only when spoken to.They didn’t hold hands. Hannah turned to Annabella to comment on this, but found instead her uncle Oswald and his small brown wife.

‘Good day to you,’ he said. ‘Your father has made a splendid occasion of it.’

Hannah swallowed and answered.‘Indeed.’ She could hear her father’s loud laugh in the background, his public laugh, theatrical and rhythmic, not at all similar to the sound of his real amusement.

‘Such fine wine,’ Oswald said, holding up his glinting glass of Madeira. In her illness, Hannah found its swaying jewel colour very absorbing to look at. He lowered it again.

‘Well, you know Father,’ she said.

‘Yes, I do. No expense spared.’

‘Such a lovely dress,’ Mrs Allen said, reaching out and touching the crisp bulk of Hannah’s sleeve.

‘Thank you.’ Hannah patted her forehead again with her handkerchief.

‘Are you quite well?’ Oswald asked.

‘Not quite.’

‘Your father should have said something, I could have brought a tonic.’

‘Oh, Annabella, there you are.’

‘Yes, here I am.’

‘Uncle Oswald, allow me to introduce my friend, Annabella. Annabella, this is my uncle and aunt.’

‘Very pleased to meet you.’ She curtsied.

‘And you,’ Oswald bowed. His wife dipped slightly, whilst sipping.

‘Will you excuse us, Uncle?’

‘Of course.’

Hannah and Annabella walked apart with linked arms.

‘I feel dreadful,’ Hannah said.

‘You’re very warm.’

‘This sun is too bright.’

‘But is he here?’

Hannah tried to look into her friend’s eager face, but her white dress was such a mass of blooming light that was too much for her. She wiped her face. ‘Yes. Haven’t you seen him with his brother? They’re so much taller than everybody else.’

‘Which one is he?’

‘What? He’s him. The handsomer one. The hair.’

‘Oh, yes. He is dark, as you said.’

Hannah felt a throb of fear at what she had to do and was almost too weak to withstand it. It was now, it was today, in this place that she would talk to him. She had to gather the strength to do it.

‘Shall we go over to them?’ Annabella asked.

‘I suppose,’ Hannah answered, but was saved by the arrival of her father. He took Annabella’s hand and held it out to the side, admiring her with a smile.

‘How lovely,’ he said. ‘You must come and meet the other guests. I think more or less everybody has come. The Carlyles have sent their regrets, but there we are. Come. You too, Hannah.’

Hannah followed after them. She watched where he stood without looking at him, as an animal knows where the farmer stands.

Boxer Byron heard the voices and hobbled towards them on his sore club foot. He saw them, he saw what they were doing, making a travesty of living love. He could see the couple, bound together felon-like with the harsh bindings of the law, seated among the people who had taken Mary from him. He quickened towards them, rolling his shoulder as he limped.

There were attendants between Fairmead House and their garden, he saw, to keep him away, so he stood at a distance and watched, waiting until one was distracted. A little girl child ran up to one and gave him cake. The man followed after her for a few yards. Byron hurried through the gap.

He barged into the drifting people and sought the doctor, declaring so. The doctor made himself known.

‘Where’s Mary?’ he demanded.

‘John,’ the doctor said. ‘You should not be here.’

‘Where’s Mary?’

‘Now is not the time or place. You will have to leave. This is my daughter’s wedding day.’ He beckoned to an attendant.

‘Your daughter? And mine is Vicky, your queen. So what do you have to say to that? I demand your obedience.’

‘John, you have to leave.’

‘Under what compulsion? Obey me.Where’s Mary?’

‘John . . .’

Byron saw the dead no in the doctor’s face, the shut door, and tried to punch it. He missed. The doctor stepped forward and tried to hug the poet’s arms to his sides while the people stared. Byron worked an arm free. From someone’s plate he grabbed up a piece of cake and in his rage crushed it so that its currants and sweet paste fell from between his fingers. He tried to fling the rest into the doctor’s face and wipe his fingers onto his smug expression. The doctor shut his eyes and leaned back. Then William Stockdale was upon them. He grabbed Byron’s arms and lifted him for a moment entirely off the ground. He set him down and yanked an arm up the poet’s back, twisting his bones.

‘Please take him away.’

‘Happily, doctor.’

‘To Leopard’s Hill Lodge . . . simply deteriorating and deteriorating . . .’ Smoothing his clothes, he turned to his guests, avoiding Dora’s hard stare. ‘Nothing to fear,’ he said. ‘Nothing to fear.’

Charles Seymour stood apart with the self-assurance of rank. He leaned back after the commotion had subsided, head cocked on one side, idly spiralling the wine in his glass and smiling faintly at the other guests. Hannah was despatched by her father, who had assiduously courted his presence, to speak to him. Annabella also he encouraged to converse with the young heir. No doubt, he told her with crude gallantry, she could charm him. Hannah was annoyed. She had failed to talk to Tennyson and the minutes were dribbling away. Also, she was no longer feeling even nearly fresh or attractive. She must have looked damp, pale, half-blind, fussing with her handkerchief and squinting. Then, as they made towards Charles Seymour, Tennyson passed closely by, and Hannah, falling now into the crater of the moment, said, ‘Mr Tennyson.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘Good day to you.’

Annabella squeezed Hannah’s arm, and did so again until Hannah understood.

‘Allow me to introduce my friend,’ Hannah said. ‘Miss Annabella Simpson. Mr Alfred Tennyson.’

Annabella curtsied in her graceful way, lowering her chin as she sank down, then raising her countenance upwards as she straightened, softly smiling. ‘Indeed,’ Tennyson said, and advanced his face close to hers so as to see her clearly. He spluttered with an embarrassed laugh. Then he stood tall and said, ‘And what sort of creature are you - nymph or dryad?’

Annabella giggled. ‘I’m afraid I am merely mortal.’ ‘To judge from your appearance, it seemed in order to ask. Beautiful day, no?’

Of course, of course. Hannah wiped her forehead. She let them talk on for a moment more, then pinched Annabella’s arm. Annabella turned and looked into her friend’s red eyes and understood.

‘If you would excuse me,’ she said, ‘I must go and speak to Mrs Allen. I haven’t done so yet. She must think me terribly rude.’

‘By all means.’ Tennyson bowed.

Hannah smiled. It was over, she knew. It was already over. The failure was outside of her body. It was already there, in the green and sunlit day. And it had always been there. In every thought she’d had about him, or just behind it, was the emptiness, the hollow-ness, the knowledge that she was wrong, that it wasn’t true, that it wouldn’t happen. The realisation came as a great liberation. Weeks and months of prayer and hope suddenly evacuated from her. She could say anything and her words would just be air, unavailing as a fragrance. She might as well tell the truth. Sweating and faint, she was nevertheless calm. The world was thin around her, bright and threadbare, and she spoke out loud what she actually thought.

‘Mr Tennyson,’ she began.

‘Yes?’

‘For a long time now I have wished to say something, to know something.’

‘Is that so?’

‘It is. You see, I have developed a great admiration for you.Well, it’s more than that. I’m enamoured, might be a good word. And I was hoping that this admiration might be mutual, that you might perhaps consider me as a possible wife, a plausible wife.’ She laughed at the phrase.

‘I see.’

‘Yes. Absurd, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s very unconventional, but then I thought you aren’t conventional. Also, I have a fever.’

‘I see.’

They stood there together with the people moving around them. Tennyson said nothing for a long time. He exuded his familiar, thick silence, then said, ‘I’m very honoured, of course . . .’

‘Of course,’ Hannah laughed.

‘But . . .’

‘Please don’t feel you have to finish that sentence. I’ve been most tiresome. If you would excuse me. I’m very sorry.’

Hannah smiled and turned and hurried into the house to be sick.

Annabella found her when eventually she returned to the garden. ‘Well?’

‘No, not well.’

‘Frankly, I think you’ll live to be relieved. I mean to say, are all poets so dirty? Did you see his ears?’

‘I wasn’t especially looking at his ears.’

‘A lucky escape. You can think of it thus.’

‘Oh, I will. Who wants to be married to such ears?’

Annabella’s disrespect was typical and did not at that moment upset Hannah, although later it would remain in her thoughts. Annabella’s beauty fronted for her; behind it she was disloyal, satirical, and nobody knew. ‘Nymph or dryad?’ She tried to mimic his Lincolnshire accent. ‘Nymph or dryad?’

Posthumous to hope, Hannah felt quite empty apart from the seethe of her sickness sensations. The one effort she still had to expend was to make sure she was always where Tennyson was not. And soon the day would be over. Days ended, like everything else. She chatted as best as she could with other guests and allowed her damp hand to be kissed when her father introduced her to the brightly dressed Thomas Rawnsley, who made machines or something else and lots of money. It was only later, when she was alone in her bed, that she cried and cried.