The Quickening Maze (21 page)

‘I know that you can have anyone you want to have. You know you’re beautiful.You don’t have to try and pretend: oh, no, I’m just a plain simple comfortable girl.’

‘Why are you saying this?’

‘Because.’

Hannah didn’t know quite why. She was much angrier than she could have anticipated. Annabella’s beauty was not fair; it pulled the world towards her, drew in her future without effort, and Hannah was sick of pretending it wasn’t there. It was as though she were conniving in her own betrayal, knowing that Annabella would safely, lightly, contemptuously surpass her at any moment she chose. They could not be real friends, Hannah decided at that moment, because they were not equals.

Nor was she given time, in fact, to change her mind. There was a knock at the door. It was opened by Fulton. He bowed with flirtatious gallantry to Annabella and said with a smirk to his sister, ‘You have a visitor.’

‘He did call me nymph,’ Annabella called after her as she left. ‘Did your poet call you that?’

At the bottom of the stairs, Hannah found Thomas Rawnsley. Waiting outside were two horses. Hannah was invited to ride the good-natured grey. He stood behind her as she climbed onto a new two-pommelled saddle, the leather glossy and uncracked and smelling of the workshop.

‘So where shall we ride then?’

He looked startled, almost hurt.‘Nowhere in particular. Just through the woods. The air and so forth. I thought you might enjoy it.’

This had become a very agitating day. After so much panting and wishing and waiting and sighing, after so much nothing at all, life was finally happening, but not at all as she’d imagined. Firstly, an argument with Annabella and now, to escape from her, this ride. For much of the time she thought of the argument with clenchings of alternating regret and determination. Thomas Rawnsley rarely interrupted her.Although his intent was now overt, unquestionable, he did not seem to be making an effort to entertain her into an affection for him. He was not charming or expansive. He was not free and light like Charles Seymour. Nor did he have the profound, productive quiet of Tennyson. He was literal, direct and uncomfortable. His courtship (which this was, it seemed) was sullen and congested. Apparently it pained him. It was serious. Unlike the poet or aristocrat, he worked. It had made him rich, but the wealth sat on him like a garland, brittle and separate. Really, he was the work. His name suggested it. Rawnsley. Rawnsley. Hannah didn’t like that dragging long first vowel. What did it remind her of? Tawny. Brawny. Yes, brawn: the meat. Still, his clothes were beautiful, his possessions - his gloves, these horses - pristine. It was interesting, at least theoretically, to think that his wife would be similarly outfitted, sealed inside that wealth, sleek and secure and widely acknowledged.

The forest was darkening. Winter was not far off. The black fallen leaves, plastered down by heavy rain, were silvered here and there with frost.The tree trunks were wet. They passed the hooked, blustery shine of a holly. Good snail weather. Their reins creaked. The bits clicked in the horses’ mouths as they breathed large clouds. Hannah felt sorry for Rawnsley when his horse manured. He seemed visibly embarrassed by it, staring, stiff-necked, into the distance, as though he himself had done it.

The quiet was very calming. It was pleasant not talking. After a while Rawnsley said, ‘Would you allow me to show you something?’

‘Of course. I’m intrigued,’ she said politely.

They plodded on along soft paths until Thomas Rawnsley halted them. He turned with bright eyes and a finger pressed to his lips. Hannah’s day continued to work its elaborate stage machinery with another peculiar revelation. What Rawnsley then pointed to through the trees, and clearly in some way delighted him, was a gypsy camp. A fizzing, wet fire, dogs and horses and caravans, that unbounded, illicit life she had been taught always to avoid. They would steal from her. They might even steal her. The sight of them, at a safe distance and while she was protected beside Rawnsley, filled her with a lovely, crisp-edged fear and pleasure. She smiled at Rawnsley, who smiled back. They sat on their shifting horses and stared a moment longer, then rode quietly away.

The bishop’s chair was a church in itself: high-backed, winged, with projecting arms bearing candlesticks to afford illumination for reading and a shelf in its side for books. A small table with a lamp and gleaming spectacles stood close to this edifice.

Matthew Allen’s chair, set across the patterned rug at the other end of the fireplace’s breadth of stone, was less grand, but nevertheless deep and supportive. Not that he was getting the benefit of it. His body was still rocking with the ghostly motions of his long journey, the train and jouncing carriage, and he was not at all relaxed. He gripped the armrests and smiled.

The bishop had a kind and dignified face, of the grand and passionless type of piety. His pale eyes were set in large orbits, his lips were full and set back beneath a long, arched, nacreous nose. His sideburns were a rich white trim. He looked well fed, well kempt. The cracked brown portraits of previous bishops Matthew Allen had passed on his way through the palace had included many harder, more austere faces set on stiff ruffs.

The palace inspired violent emotions in Dr Allen. He felt goaded by the fierce, thin ghost of his father, could hear his voice pouring scorn on the complacent wealth of the established church, its spiritual torpitude. The relentless Sandemanian would not have admired the large cross of chased silver on the mantel shelf, or the painting of Christ that was in the line of Matthew’s gaze: a varnished, dark Italianate Jesus, head bowed, with strong, sensual shoulders and the doleful dark eyes of a deer. His father’s Christ had been like himself: lean, definite, endlessly imparting the truth, presumably with the same spittle-flecked lips and reddened throat. He was a narrow lever inserted into ancient Palestine to turn the whole world over. Nothing here was turning over. Everything was still, solid, polished and would outlast the flesh of the two men now seated there.

The palace reminded him also of university and provoked both a passionate recoil and a desire to stay there, to be welcomed. His debts had forced him from university. After that had come a shop and evening classes. If the bishop agreed to more time for the manufacture, Allen would love the place and belong there. If not, he would know he had been right about it all along.

When a servant entered bearing tea, Allen bent forward in his seat. The servant was instructed to pour immediately because, unfortunately, the bishop hadn’t much time.Allen watched as the bishop’s tea was poured through a strainer into the porcelain cup and a short ribbon of milk was added. He accepted the same service for himself, the calming, intimate, impersonal ritual, like a visit to the barber, and felt afterwards cleaner, better equipped to continue the conversation.

‘So, I am sure you understand, your grace, that these technical difficulties represent an entirely surmountable obstacle. I am perfectly confident that I will be able to inform you that I can supply the carvings required in one or two months.’

The bishop, blowing on his tea, answered, ‘That is good news. I have seven churches in my diocese, doctor, that as you know are awaiting their fittings. In this part of the North Country, with the new industrial parishes, we have great need of them.’

‘And they will be supplied.’

‘In one month?’

‘In one or two months.’

‘In one month?’

‘Assuming that the technical difficulties are . . . the required refitting has occurred . . . the part of the machine that needs replacement has been replaced, replaced, then yes, in one month.’

‘I’m afraid I heard rather a lot of dependent clauses in that sentence.’

Matthew Allen moved his teacup from hand to hand. ‘I cannot guarantee that everything will be ready in one month.’

‘That is disappointing. I had hoped to be able to rely on you and conclude our work together, but given this delay I am sure you will understand if we approach an established workshop.’

‘I can fulfil the order.’

‘Not in time. You have just said that you cannot. I’m sorry, I have no wish to argue with you. Can you guarantee delivery in one month’s time?’ The bishop regarded Allen with raised eyebrows, the fine ridge of his nose lengthened and shining.

‘No.’

‘Very well, then. That is a disappointment. Now, if you will excuse me.’

‘But we have a contract.’

‘I hope you are not intending to haggle with me like an Israelite merchant. I believe we had an agreement and not a contract, as a matter of fact. I am very sorry that this journey has been wasted for you, and I do wish you success in the future for your enterprise. As you have explained it to me, I cannot see how you would not succeed. Now, if you would excuse me.’

The bishop rose from his elaborate chair and Matthew Allen stood also, as was required. Holding his teacup in both hands, with nowhere to set it down, he bowed to the bishop as he left the room.

 

With her father still away, her mother gone with all the servants to deal with the laundry in Fairmead House, it was Hannah herself who opened the door to Thomas Rawnsley. He looked startled at the sight of her, flinched a little more upright, but cleverly melded the motion with the sweeping off of his hat.

‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘These . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘These roses . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, they’re for you, aren’t they?’

 

In his room at the inn, Matthew Allen stood in his shirtsleeves by the window, looking down at the rain spluttering on the cobbles of the courtyard, the maids hurrying from door to door.The dark-beamed ceiling was low over his head. Brandy had softened him. He stood in this box and thought. The money coming in and the money going out.The demands for dividends and the orders placed. They were colliding. He was being crushed between two columns of a ledger. The hope and air were being crushed out of him. He drank more and decided that, being realistic, the whole thing was over and they would lose everything. People did not know what it meant to lose everything, but he did. He’d been in a debtors’ prison, between dark walls, denied the liberty to act, made an infant, an inmate, between dark walls. To have to beg money to start over - who would dream of lending him money now, after this? There was no light. He was crushed.

He wondered if it was possible to kill yourself by drinking a whole bottle of brandy in one go and decided to try. He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped his head back and drank, watching big bubbles flip up to its base. He shouted as he thumped the bottle down on the table and wiped his eyes, burping a sickening hot vapour. ‘Not enough,’ he moaned. It would take three or four. ‘Not enough. Or. Or.’ He stumbled over to the mirror, catching the wall with an outstretched hand, and stared at his face, his wet, scorched lips and hard, hostile eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no, no, no. Not yet. Not yet. Can be done. Bloody. By me. Don’t die, old fellow. Here’s what . . . what’ll . . .’ He walked erect, then fell forwards onto his bed, reaching for his portfolio, for pen and paper, to write to Tennyson.

He lay there, with the room circling slowly around him and phrases forming in his mind. ‘Immense,’ he said out loud. ‘Immense.’ He sat up and wrote.

Tennyson sat by his fire sinking into the grief that will make him famous. When the grief was total and full of questions, full of words, was a world itself, when he’d written it, when the young queen’s young husband had died and she’d let it be known that Tennyson’s poem was the great assuagement and elaboration of her own grief, then Tennyson will be laureate, will be rich, will be one of the great men of the age, known and praised throughout the Empire. He will meet the queen at her residence on the Isle of Wight. Before he goes, his wife will brush the sand from his boots, brush his clothes and his hair.Then he will find himself standing by a fireplace, hearing a door open and turning to see his queen enter, or half-see it. His eyes will be even weaker and they will fill instantly with tears of admiration and joy. ‘I am like your lonely Mariana now,’ the queen will say to him, and Tennyson, not knowing what to say, will blurt, ‘What a king Prince Albert would have made.’ He will fear having spoken grossly, but she will nod and agree. Tennyson will feel an understanding there between them in that room, a mingling of lonely, frail, slow spirits like the merging of clouds. But at present it was simply grief, coarse and brackish and tiring. It did not feel like success. It did not feel like an illuminated future. It felt like loneliness and a slowly throbbing rage and confusion.

He had not lit the lamps and in the gloom of the early winter evening his long fingernails shone with the fire’s red, a warmer red than the sunset’s crimson, which, if he turned, he could see broken by tree shapes, blotting the surface of the frozen pond. Gules, he thought, all gules. That heraldic blood-red. That was something. His mind moved towards it. On the forest floor the shattered lances. The shattered lances lay on the hoof-churned mud. An ancient English wood where knights had ridden, where Queen Elizabeth hunted, where Shakespeare rode, according to the doctor’s daughter, to play out his Dream in an aristocrat’s hall. Twilight in that place, soft decay, the soft sun finding some scattered remains. There was something there: an English epic, a return of Arthur. An English Homer. Blood and battle and manliness and the machine of fate. He could hear its music, ringing, metallic and deep with inward echoings. His mind approached it, felt along the flank of this thing. It would be worth the attempt, if he ever had the strength. The logs hissed and smoked. The forest outside was again dreary, darkening, factual. There was nobody there.