The Quickening Maze (8 page)

 

The worldliness of Matthew and his family was confirmed in detail to Oswald when they were all gathered round the dinner table. Both of the elder daughters wore lace shawls, had lace handkerchiefs, and wore brooches. Even the stolid, sensible son (whom Matthew had described as industrious and dutiful and therefore - here he poured on the warm oil of flattery - resembling himself, Oswald) appeared to have ivory buttons adorning his waistcoat. Oswald did not know which suspicion he favoured, or which was worse: that his brother was successful enough to finance an extravagant home life or that he was again running up debts. Perhaps he would ask for money - Oswald rather expected that - and to that request could come only one answer. A man who has been imprisoned for debt, no matter how long ago, should have learned to live more circumspectly, more within his bounds.

Oswald declined a refilling of his wine glass by covering it with a swift hand. The movement was sharp and attracted attention. He thought that sufficient comment. Matthew suspected that he drank more freely in other company and saw rhetoric in his brother’s stiff comportment. James, Dora’s betrothed, did drink wine - Matthew Allen watched him doing so - drank it with the quiet commitment of a frightened, shy man, grasping the bottle whenever it was near. Really his lack of spirit was disappointing. He hoped Oswald wasn’t watching too closely this dull new addition to the family. He decided to distract him by forcing him to compliment his wife.

‘Most delicious,’ he said.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Oswald chimed in on cue, but adulterated his praise. ‘What is it precisely?’

‘Boiled fowls,’ she answered brightly. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. If I’d known you were coming, perhaps we could have produced more of a banquet.’

‘Oh, no doubt, but really there is no need on my account.’

‘Abigail, do sit up and chew properly.’

‘So, Uncle Oswald,’ Hannah began, deciding in her boredom to break the crust of tedious adult conversation, ‘you must have many stories of Father when he was young.’

‘Ah, well,’ he dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, ‘there is such a thing as discretion and familial loyalty.’

‘I hadn’t mean anything shameful.’

Oswald compressed his lips at that, embarrassed.‘No, I hadn’t meant . . .’

‘But if they are, I’m sure that would be even more interesting.’

‘Well . . .’

A hot spurt in Matthew’s chest: cringing in hiding, running, reprimands.What of that mess would Oswald drag out with his slow, relishing words? Perhaps the endless exclusions. Sandemanians required the congregation to be one in spirit, those who were not were required to leave. Matthew remembered the wooden meeting house at the moor’s edge, the blunted fervour of their voices inside as he wandered outside, exultant and ashamed. But that was the mess, perhaps, of every child’s life. He knew that from his patients’ unbosomings, and had heard much worse. It was Oswald’s pretence that Oswald had never been a child.

‘Hannah, really,’ her mother chastised.

‘Do we have to?’ Matthew asked, his eyes quick around the table.

‘Have no fear, younger brother, I shan’t divulge your darkest secrets.’

‘Oh, please do.’ Hannah clapped her hands.

‘No, no.Although there was one occasion . . . I recall that your father was always strong-willed and not, let us say, unspotted by the smaller sins.’

‘Who among us could claim to be?’ Matthew reasonably asked.

‘He had a teacher when he was small . . .’

‘Oh, I know what you’re about to say,’ Matthew interjected. ‘The man was a savage. I left every class bruised.’

‘And that being the case, it was natural that your father, being your father, would not leave his feelings unexpressed. Opportunity came when writing pattern letters.’

‘What are pattern letters?’ Abigail asked, holding her fork vertically on the table by her head like a tiny halberdier. Evidently she was listening with a keen degree of interest.

Oswald looked down at the infant seated there. A typically pointless and ill-disciplined defiance of convention to have at table with them a child who ought to be in the nursery.

‘It’s when you practise writing different kinds of letters that you would send to different people,’ Hannah explained.

‘This was a letter to a magistrate,’ Oswald resumed, ‘so you can imagine what followed.The letter implored the full weight of the law to be laid upon Mr Mathers for his violent and disorderly conduct.’

Eliza laughed. ‘I should think so. Beating poor Matthew.’

‘It availed naught, though.’ Matthew offered the postscript. ‘I remember his conduct for some weeks after was far from improved.’ He laughed along with the others, venting relief also that the anecdote hadn’t been very much worse. He met his brother’s gaze, which was warm but darkly eloquent with what had not been said. Even then Matthew found some recompense: he indicated with a finger where a pearl of fat hung from his brother’s moustache.

 

The damp had soaked into Oswald’s beard; it hung sparsely down, bedraggled plumage. Matthew ran a hand down the cold threads of his own beard, tugged it out at the chin.

‘And what are the trees here?’ Oswald asked with a vague encompassing wave.

‘Well, that there,’ Matthew replied, pointing with his stick at the thick dark cylinder of one, ‘is a hornbeam.’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Very hard wood. It’s being used now for machine parts. There’s a manufactury not too far from here.’

‘Is there? Is there?’

They followed the wet path round, treading the rotted black leaves, back towards Fairmead House. Matthew Allen spied ahead of them two very acceptable patients for them to run into: the Tennyson brothers. But what were they doing with their faces? They walked with hesitant short steps as though half-blind, despite having their hands clasped against their cheeks, their eyes pulled open as far as possible between spread fingers.

‘Good morning,’ Allen called to them. They looked at him at first with those huge squirming eyes like sea monsters, then dropped their hands.

‘What on earth . . .’ Oswald muttered to himself.

Matthew strode forward to meet them. ‘Do you mind if I enquire . . .’ he began jovially.

Alfred explained, unembarrassed, as silent Septimus loitered behind his shoulder. ‘It’s something we used to do as boys. I’d just reminded Sep of it.’

‘To help you see better?’

‘Precisely.’

‘And does it?’

‘Good morning,’ Alfred said to Oswald, who had arrived and stood, arms folded. ‘It does mean that you can’t not see. In so far as you ever can.’

‘I see. Hunting that Grand Agent.’ Allen smiled, although Alfred hung his head a little shyly at that. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to introduce my brother, Mr Oswald Allen. Oswald, this is Alfred and Septimus Tennyson.’

‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.’

Alfred Tennyson raised his hand, compelling Oswald to unfold his arms and shake hands with the tall, peculiar brothers. Afterwards he clasped his hands behind his back and stood surveyingly, a visiting dignitary.

‘And how are you feeling today, Septimus? You look in better spirits.’

Before Septimus could answer, a wood pigeon clattered out of the tree above their heads. Septimus cringed at the noise, then smiled. He made a gesture, softly raising his hands and floating them apart, half-apology, half-explanation. But Matthew waited him out, required that he should talk. Septimus looked again at the tattered leaves around his feet and said in a whisper, tangentially but positively, ‘I like the winter.’

‘Very good.Well, good day to you both. I shall leave you to your excursion.’

Walking on into the asylum grounds, Matthew explained to his brother whom they had just met, but not before Oswald had asked, ‘What on earth were they doing with their faces?’

‘They explained, didn’t they? Or were you still catching up?’ Matthew glanced at Oswald’s worried face and felt, oddly, a flush of affection for him. Oswald was always frightened, scared and strict. Even as a little boy he was serious and orderly; alarmed by their father’s ringing voice and fervour, he lived quietly within a set of reassuring rules of his own devising. Matthew pictured him as a child: combed head, woollen suit, the dark nervous gaze mutely requesting calm, peace, things done properly, and found the picture endearing.

‘They’re the Tennysons,’ he went on.‘A Lincolnshire family. And quite a family. My word, the things I’ve been hearing from Septimus. Opium. Spirits. A menagerie also. A monkey. Owls. Innumerable dogs. They’re nobility somewhere along the line, in part degenerate. The brother Alfred is a poet, starting to elbow his way into the world. Great things are predicted by some, mostly his friends from Cambridge. It’s a shame you won’t be staying for longer.There’s a literary evening I frequent in Bedford Square.’

Oswald had not particularly listened, hearing only the little missiles of ‘nobility’, ‘Cambridge’, ‘Bedford Square’.

‘Yes, yes. Well, there we are.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m very pleased for you that you are acquainted with the minor nobility. You must be very proud.’

‘Oswald, really. Septimus is a patient.’

‘Of course. Of course.’ Oswald stopped, looked up into his brother’s face. ‘Another opportunity for your dreadful pride. Another chance for you to humiliate me.’

‘Oswald, what on earth are you talking about?’

‘Don’t play that game with me, Matthew.’ Oswald was shouting now, his face white and spiteful. ‘You may have established yourself in this respectable situation, the good doctor, but don’t forget that I know who you are. No doubt you have contracted sizeable debts to create all this. Just know that you won’t get a penny out of me.’

Oswald was as boring as the mad, with one thought choking him, controlling him, blaring out of him. Matthew tried to remain dispassionate, tried to chuckle even, but it was difficult. His brother’s face was so familiar, so powerful, and his words once again loosened his past into this place, and Matthew was so tired of the mad.

‘Yes. Don’t forget that I know who you are. Literary evenings in Bedford Square! Matthew Allen. I’m sure your new friends would be intrigued by the history of your debts, your imprisonments.’

That was too much. Matthew grabbed at his brother’s lapels. Oswald skidded back on the wet path, but Matthew held him upright, his fingertips bending painfully under the thick cloth. ‘Just you . . . just you . . .’ Matthew’s vision of the moment was strangely glazed. There, at the end of his arms, was his brother’s face, so familiar but thickened with age, he saw. He heard his own breathing, the soft crackling of twigs underfoot. He heard his son Fulton saying, ‘Father.’ Matthew dropped Oswald quickly back onto the flats of his feet. Fulton approached. As he did so, Oswald, as in victory, smiled.

‘Father, you’re wanted back at the house.’

 

Matthew Allen lay and felt his weight entirely sustained, his head sunk in the pillow, his four limbs dead still, washed up there like driftwood. Bed was always a pleasure, an island he reached after the variable inevitable storms of a day spent with the mad, their frantic, tunnelling logic, their sorrow, their hopelessness and aggression and indecencies. No muscles had to work to keep him there. The lamps hissed quietly. Beside him on the pillow was the familiar peaceful landscape of Eliza’s face: soft, straight eyebrows, fine nostrils, the neat volute that ran down from them to the large, warm, mobile mouth. With her hair pinned, her nightcap on, her face at bedtime was presented with a kind of ceremonial or surgical simplicity that could strike him as funny. It was the cap particularly that made her look cute, childish or comically ecclesiastical. Her haughty, lordly, stern expression when asleep could also amuse him.

‘What are you peering at?’ she asked.

‘Only you. Can’t a man peer at his wife?’

‘Why? Do I look . . . is there something?’

‘No, no. You look very nice.’

‘Oh well, then. He’ll be gone tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, he will.’

‘And he hasn’t been so terrible.’

‘Oh, yes, he has. I can’t wait to pack him off. Spiteful, resentful man.’

‘Really?’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘So what is there to tell me?’

‘Nothing. There’s nothing to tell you, nothing that needs to be told.’

‘Well, I’m sorry he’s been horrid.’

‘Not that he can help it.’

‘Poor battered old cat,’ she said. She petted his head, lay softly against his side.

‘Mm. That’s nice.’

‘Yes,’ she said pouting.

Matthew reached a hand down and laid it on the warm width of her thigh. The flesh was so smooth under the sliding soft fabric. ‘Very soothing.’

 

Oswald Allen’s farewell was surprisingly gracious. He handed out sixpences to the children, even though only Abigail was young enough to be delighted. He thanked Eliza for the hospitality of her home and invited them all to visit in York.

Matthew and Eliza walked him to the station - again he insisted that they should not get a carriage for him - and during that walk the silences did lengthen uncomfortably. But Oswald could act as though absorbed in details of the scene, the motionless cold cattle, the ponds and their withered reeds, the passers-by.

Seated in his carriage, he raised a gloved hand to wave. The glove was buttoned at the side, his coat buttoned at the front, his collar firm beneath his chin. Matthew felt he had him strait-jacketed and safely stowed for transportation. In profile, Oswald opened a small volume, presumably devotional, and began to read.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Matthew to himself. ‘Off you go.’ The train hissed, clanked, and its four carriages rumbled away towards London. The platform filled with steam. Like a genie in a cloud, Oswald was gone.

‘I don’t expect we will see him again for some time.’