The Quickening Maze (7 page)

Hannah ignored her father’s words, looked past the tails of his coat, his hands floating from the sides of the lectern to pat his pages square, to where the Tennysons were sitting. Alfred Tennyson’s face was pensive, brooding - how else would it be? - but she couldn’t keep her eyes on him.To his right, his brother’s face seemed as set as a death mask, his eyes lightly closed, but down his cheeks ran tears. Eventually she saw him part his sore lips to inhale. Without opening his eyes he dried his cheeks with a handkerchief. As he then wavered to his feet with the rest, Hannah realised it was time to sing again.

Tennyson stood and sang as all of the afflicted opened their valves to God. The sermon had been decent, in his estimation, clearer and more clearly delivered than those of his own deceased father, more generously and compassionately addressed to his congregation. Afterwards, as the patients handed their hymnals to the attendants and began to leave, and Septimus hobbled away,Tennyson approached the doctor to offer his compliments. Hannah saw him do this and hurried to her father’s side.

Tennyson took Allen’s hand and shook it. ‘I thought that sermon fine,’ he said.

‘I’m pleased at that,’ Allen replied.

‘It was excellent,’ Hannah chipped in.

Allen turned with some surprise at this interjection from his unusually interested daughter, smiled indulgently and grasped her shoulder. Hannah stiffened at this contact and looked down, feeling painfully thwarted by only being able to appear as a child to them. But instantly she decided that to take the part of a pretty and devoted daughter was her most winning option, so again she surprised Allen by patting the back of his hand in response.

As this family interchange was happening,Tennyson was distracted by the approach of another man. He smiled,Tennyson saw as he neared, and his head lightly trembled. He took the doctor’s hand in both of his own and shook it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you again.’ After he had turned away, Allen explained to Tennyson who he was, how he suffered from the National Debt, and how these prayers were his only respite. Tennyson watched the man’s retreating back, his gait tightening the further away he was from this remarkably effective doctor.

Margaret stood in the dead of the world and looked down at the stopped fish under their dirty window of ice. In the black forks of the trees hard snow was pock-marked by later rain. Crows, folded tightly into themselves, clasped branches that plunged in the wind. Voices of other patients reached her there, the sound dulled by the covered winter surfaces like the clapping of gloved hands.

She liked the pinch of absence, the hollow air, reminiscent of the real absence. She wanted to stay out there, to hang on her branch in the world until the cold had burned down to her bones. She could leave her whitened bones scattered on the snow and depart like light. Whitened bones.
A whited sepulchre.
The phrase came to her. Was it aimed at her? Is that why she’d thought of it? Habitually, she tested every bit of scripture that came to her for immediate significance. The whited sepulchre was the Pharisee, according to Him, who appears beautiful, but inside is full of
dead men’s bones and all uncleanness
. But isn’t that every human creature? And what if the uncleanness had been her husband’s, had been daubed on her, slapped on, smeared across her face? What use was always asking questions? As though thought was in any way helpful. Nothing could be argued into being. Whatever was, was. The only useful thing was to be unclouded by thoughts, to be in nothing. To be nothing. To be as empty as the cold. And to wait.

Again she was denied this. She heard the crunch of footsteps behind her and waited for them to diminish away, but they grew louder. She turned. Footprints ran everywhere across the buried lawn like blue stitches.The sky was grey, darker than the ground: dreamlight: a steady stormlight. At the head of new lines of footprints were Clara the witch and Simon the idiot who dawdled after her, kicking up spurts of ice.

Margaret stared at Clara, at the large lips that didn’t quite fit together, at the unpinned hair that draggled over her shoulders. Clara obviously thought of herself as sensual with a rolling walk, a flaunt in it, but she wasn’t. Her figure was ordinary, her face unexceptional, blander and healthier than her mind. ‘Good morning, Mary,’ she smiled. Calling Margaret Mary was a spiteful joke of hers. Margaret said nothing. ‘Not going to say anything, are you?’ Margaret stared.‘Devils eaten your words?’ Scratching his thighs through his pockets, the idiot asked, ‘What devils?’

‘I told you before.’

Margaret looked at them for a moment more, then turned back to the pond.

Their voices said more words, finally the hard separate ones of insult. But they were mistaken in thinking they could disturb Margaret’s concentration.

An hour or so later she heard more footsteps coming towards her. This time hands landed on her shoulders. She was pivoted around to find herself looking into the doctor’s face. He said, ‘Margaret, you’re freezing. How long have you been out here?’ He chafed her hands between his. ‘You’re shivering.’ She was - that flashing and shuddering was shivering. ‘Come inside.’ With an arm across the bones of her shoulders, he shepherded her into Fairmead House and a fire.

In its thick, disappointing heat she gradually stopped shaking. Hot tea was forced into her, causing pain to the chilled stones of her teeth. The liquid billowed inside her, swelled her. She closed her eyes, let the doctor’s words bump like moths against her, and drifted into sleep.

 

Eliza Allen opened the door to someone whose face was familiar but unplaceable. The face had evidently been out in the cold for some time, the skin grey and granular. The man blew a fog of warm breath around his hands. He smiled.

‘Do you not recognise me, Eliza?’

With the voice, the accent, she did. ‘Of course I do. It’s Oswald. Come in, come in. I had no idea you were in the area. Matthew hadn’t mentioned to me . . .’

‘Because he doesn’t know. I thought I’d surprise you.’

‘And you have. Come in. Do.’

Oswald stooped to pick up a bag. Presumably he was expecting to stay. When he was upright again a noise startled him. Eliza saw his body for a moment lose organisation. He half-crouched, knees bent, and raised a hand. His gaze locked with hers. ‘One of the patients?’ he whispered.

‘No, no,’ she reassured him.‘That was a dog barking, surely.’

‘Of course.’

Inside, she relieved him of his coat and hat. By the fire his face flushed, his eyes reddened and filmed. He looked tired.

‘Do sit down.’ She indicated the chair.

He did so, crossing his legs and tucking his clasped hands down the side of one thigh in his peculiar fashion, wearing his arms like a sash. By now he was very recognisable. ‘I shall fetch tea. You must need it after your journey.’

‘Most kind.’

She hurried out. Finding Dora in the second drawing room, she instructed her to put down whatever it was and go and tell her father that his brother had suddenly materialised. ‘Father’s in his study,’ Dora replied.

‘Then it won’t take you a moment.’

Eliza returned with a tray of tea things just as her husband launched himself into the room.

‘Oswald, I had no idea.’

‘I didn’t give you any idea,’ his brother smiled. ‘And I’m delighted to see you too.’

Matthew blended a smile and a frown to indicate fondly that the implication was foolish. ‘I’m pleased to see you, too, of course.Your journey was comfortable?’

‘Perfectly agreeable, at least so far as these things are. And I rounded it off with a pleasant walk from Woodford.’

‘You walked up? Carrying your bag? You could have hired a cab, you know. Mr Mason is known around the station to take people.’

‘Oh, no. Thrift, Horatio, thrift.’

Horatio? That meant
Hamlet
. Oswald was reminding Matthew of the cultured company he kept in York, that not only in London was there literary conversation to be had.Typical of him to arrive stealthily like this, unannounced, and full of messages about himself, all his little flags flying.

Matthew Allen, flustered, forgot the tongs and picked up a lump of sugar with his fingertips, dropping it with a small splash into his tea. ‘It’s a surprising time for you to visit,’ he said, ‘by which I mean for an apothecary. Are you not now besieged by the winter ailments?’

‘Fortunately, yes,’ Oswald laughed. ‘But I have left the shop in good hands. I have an apprentice and two others at the moment.’ More impressive news about himself. ‘I keep my hours at the shop to a minimum now that I’m able, and so have more time for my benevolent activities and so forth.’

‘Oh, very good.’ Matthew gulped his tea.

‘You could have been joined with me in that, had you not chosen another course.’ Oswald smiled. ‘But we needn’t go into that.’

Matthew smiled.‘Ah, but I did choose another course.’ He would not be drawn again into this conversation. Indeed he saw an opportunity for a moment’s triumph and couldn’t resist, relishing the plural he was able to deploy.‘I shall give you a tour of the buildings, my alternative course, later before we install you in a room.’

Dr Allen savoured his time at the lectern during evening prayers as a period when he was unopposed, central and secure. He chose to read his brother’s expression - downcast eyes, thoughtfully lengthened lips - as simple absorption even though he knew he would not approve. Oswald’s face instead insisted on his own distinct piety. He did not hesitate to begin his criticism after the service was concluded. With patients still ambling out and George Laidlaw having offered again his heartfelt thanks, at which Oswald smiled, apparently bemused, he began: ‘It’s a long way from anything our father would recognise, Matthew.’

‘It is indeed. As I suppose we are, or I am.’

‘Hm.’ Oswald nodded. ‘Father would not have approved such Latitudinarianism.’

‘Of course. But you see, needs must. I’m preaching for a very mixed congregation, and not only denominationally, if it comes to that.’

‘He would maintain that there are differences between sects and that he’d brought us up in the true dogma. I mean to say, the point is simple. How can the truth be graspable by churches that we know to be in error?’

‘Oswald, even if I wanted to I could not make this institution Sandemanian. For one thing, our little church would require a great deal of explanation to those whose intellectual faculties are in many cases already strained to breaking point. And the need for the congregation’s unity of mind - it’s hardly a practicable aim with a congregation of the insane and the idiot.’

‘And indeed you yourself rarely managed it.’

‘Indeed.’ Matthew Allen looked down at his brother, some years older, some inches shorter, and still trying to rule in their father’s place. ‘I was excluded often enough. So there, you see,’ he attempted to laugh. ‘I was not a good enough Sandemanian to be worthy to attempt to create a community here.’

Oswald did not laugh. ‘You were always too soft in spirit and too distracted by the world. It didn’t suit you to be part of an isolated church, unknown to society, and lacking all ornament. You didn’t like the poverty, the hardship . . .’

‘Really, Oswald, must we discuss this? I thought we very much had some time ago.And I see enough hardship here among my patients, often without seeing to what end it serves.’

Oswald snorted. ‘A different meaning of hardship, surely. I remember your disgust at father’s funeral because of its simplicity.Yes, maybe simplicity is closer to my meaning.’

That was true enough. Matthew Allen remembered the scene with discomfort - the bare hills dotted all over with the little wet tubes of sheep turds, the animals’ loud bleats carried to the mourners on the slanting wind, the ugly, parted ground, and hardly a word said, and no headstone.‘It’s true, it always seemed to me to be . . . harsher than necessary. I would have paid for a headstone, at least for something to mark the place. To lie unmarked . . .’

‘God knows the place.’

‘I know He does. But men live among men. The social virtues are virtues.’

‘Worldly concerns.’

‘Yes, I know that’s what you think. I believe our positions are quite well established.’

‘Established, indeed. I know how you crave respectability. It is understandable, given what you’ve been, where you’ve been.’

‘What I have been has no place here . . .’ Matthew heard his own voice raised and stopped himself. It was so tiring talking to Oswald, who scoured Matthew’s words for weakness, for the double meanings that betrayed his sin. He was now, as always, seeking some kind of victory that Matthew had learned he could withhold from him simply by remaining genial, cheerful, apparently unconcerned. If he appeared not to be on the battlefield, how could he lose the battle? ‘Perhaps some other topic over dinner,’ he said, clapping his brother on the back.