The Silent Boy (12 page)

‘Of course, my lord,’ Gohlis said, and swiftly lowered his eyes. A moment later he begged permission to withdraw, so that he might make up the medicine.

When the three of them were alone, Savill said, ‘Forgive me for raising the subject, my lord, but we have business to discuss.’

‘Of course we do.’ Both the words and the tone were obliging but somehow the Count contrived to suggest that Savill had committed a breach of good manners, for which of course he was forgiven. ‘But it’s growing late,’ he went on, ‘and we’re all tired. You especially, sir, no doubt after your terrible journey. We shall leave it until the morning when we are fresh.’

He spoke pleasantly enough but he left no room for manoeuvre.

At that moment there was a knock on the door. Joseph entered with a letter on a salver, which he handed to Fournier with a murmur of apology.

The latter broke the seal and skimmed its contents. With a snicker of laughter he tossed the letter on the table.

‘Something amusing?’ the Count asked. ‘Can it be shared? Or is it a private pleasure?’

‘The letter is from the Vicar – Mr Horton.’

‘He will not call on us,’ the Count said to Savill. ‘I fear he disapproves of us.’

Fournier smiled. ‘But this is different. It is by way of a professional matter.’

During the evening, the wind freshened, bringing draughts throughout the old house with its warped doors and creaking floorboards, and sending flurries of rain to beat against the windows.

They met again for supper. Afterwards the Count retired early to write letters. Savill sat with Fournier and Gohlis in a small parlour with a smoking fire.

The doctor had given Savill a dose of medicine – four drops in a glass of warmed water flavoured with brandy. Within half an hour, he felt better than he had for weeks. The toothache subsided and a sense of well-being spread throughout his mind and body. The medicine’s benevolent glow allowed him to ignore the faint – and surely unjustified – fear that he might have been unwise to trust himself to the ministrations of the Count’s personal physician.

‘The man who understands pharmacology,’ Gohlis said when Savill thanked him, ‘understands human happiness.’

‘Then it’s regrettable that pharmacology does not provide a drug to cure the dumb,’ Fournier said.

‘Not yet, sir,’ the doctor said eagerly. ‘But we make great strides every day. We have come a long way since poor Dr Ammam, who ministered to the dumb in the last century. He believed that to be mute was to be spiritually null, since man needs to be able to speak, for otherwise he does not resemble God the creator and God the son.’

‘It’s curious that the Ancients touch so rarely on the subject,’ Fournier said. ‘The affliction of being dumb, that is. The blind often have a heroic stature ascribed to them – consider Oedipus, for example. Or they have a peculiar wisdom, as Tiresias does. Even Samson, one might argue, does not attain his full moral stature until he has been blinded.’

‘Perhaps the Ancients sensed a truth that Science is now confirming,’ Gohlis said. ‘Mutes are often brutish creatures, less than human. Buffon mentions a case in his
Histoire Naturelle
of a young man born mute who learned to speak suddenly when he was twenty-four years of age. Despite having been trained in the outward observances of religion, he was found to have no conception of the soul or of salvation.’

Fournier smiled. ‘Is having no conception of the soul necessarily a sign of being less than human? One might even say it is a sign of a superior type of humanity. A type that transcends a need for a personal god.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Gohlis was growing heated. ‘But in this case, it seems, the young man’s external piety concealed the mental faculties of a mere animal. And this is but one case among many. Herder records the story of a dumb boy who watched a butcher killing a pig and then promptly killed his brother, in the same way, for the simple pleasure of imitation. He felt no remorse whatsoever.’

‘But surely Charles has not always been dumb?’ Savill said. ‘Only for a few weeks.’

‘True, sir. But how long will the condition last, that is the question, and what will be its effects? Speech, it seems, is the wellspring of civilization, of our moral and intellectual life. Why, when I was last in Königsberg, I heard Professor Kant remark that the dumb can never attain the faculty of Reason itself, but at best a mere analogy of it.’

‘Then what treatment do you recommend, sir?’ Savill asked.

‘The continuation of what we have been following: a strict regimen, together with the occasional short, sharp shock to the system.’

‘Why?’

‘The shock, sir?’ Gohlis said. ‘Because it was the shock of his mother’s death that rendered him mute. Consider the mind and body as a complex mechanism – a sort of clock, if you will. Just as a clock may stop if it receives a jar or knock, so it may start again if it suffers another.’

‘But now,’ Fournier said, almost purring with pleasure, ‘just by way of contrast, we shall see how the Vicar proposes to treat it.’

‘The Vicar, sir,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘What has he to do with this?’

Fournier smiled. ‘You recall the letter I received while we were at table? Mr Horton is a clergyman who tends towards the Evangelical persuasion. He has a charming faith in the simple power of prayer to make the dumb burst into speech. In short, my dear sir, he desires to cure Charles with a miracle.’

From the safety of the darkened second-floor landing, Charles watches the gentlemen leaving the dining room. Their shadows leap across the floor. One of the gentlemen is the stranger.

Charles knows that the visitor is English; his name is Savill and he is come on business. The servants don’t like him being here because it means more work for them.

It is completely dark now. Charles crosses the landing and goes down the back stairs, which come out between the kitchen and the servants’ hall. He knows these stairs well. He has counted them many times, so the number of stairs is a fact that can never be doubted. He does not need to take a candle but feels his way with his hands.

The corridor at the bottom is dimly lit. The door of the servants’ hall is open. Standing at the foot of the stairs, Charles listens.

Joseph is talking to one of the maids. Charles understands most words he hears in English now.

‘That man,’ the footman is saying, ‘grim-faced devil, ain’t he, with that scar? Like walking death.’

‘Oh, Joseph,’ says Mary Ann. ‘Get on with you.’

‘Know what I think? He’s come for the Frog bastard.’

Sometimes they stare warily at Charles as if fearing that he might bite them if they let their guard down. He doesn’t belong with them, he doesn’t belong with the gentry, he doesn’t belong with the animals. He doesn’t belong with anyone. He belongs in a category all of his own.

‘What’s he want him for?’ Mary Ann says in her slow, thick voice like the cream in the dairy. ‘The boy’s an idiot.’

‘Damned if I know,’ Joseph says. ‘But that’s gentry for you. And foreigners makes it worse.’

When Charles sleeps at last, the nightmares come, as he knew they would. He sees the blood dripping like gentle red rain.

Say nothing.

The whisper sounds in his head like the wind under the door.

And then he hears it again.
Tip-tap.
Like cracking a walnut.

Not a word.

Nightmares have this to be said for them: they wake you up.

He’s screaming but nobody comes. But at least he is awake. The nightmare is reluctant to leave him. Gradually its hold on him loosens. He cries for a while, almost for the sake of something to do, something to fill the silent darkness.

At last the pressure on his bladder forces him to leave the warmth of the bed and pull out the chamber pot from under the bed where, when he was a baby, he had believed that nightmares lived.

So this nightmare has a silver lining of sorts. The bed stays dry.

This is the best time. Shortly after dawn, before anyone else is up except the servants.

The air is very clear, the colours of the distant hills are crisp and clean. The shadows are long and cold.

His footprints make ragged marks in the scythed grass, darker patches on the shining patina of moisture. In the pleasure grounds, he has to be wary, but it is easy to slip about unnoticed now he knows his way. He stays within the paling that encircles them – it would not do to risk the unknown terrors of the village and the fields around. He has never lived much in the country and he is afraid of cows, pigs, donkeys, dogs and much else he might reasonably expect to find there.

The gardener and his boy are cutting down a dead tree at the other end of the drive. So it is safe to go to the Garden of Neptune. The dew is heavier here because the garden is below the level of the surrounding land. The walls around it retain the cold and damp rather than the warmth.

Charles walks the paths, counting his steps. Counting fills his mind and quietens it. Moreover, in this world where so much has changed, and is changing, it is important to make sure that at least something remains unaltered: and the length and breadth of this garden is as good a place to start as any.

When he has finished his counting, he says to Louis, who has been pacing beside him, ‘See, it is just the same as it was before.’ And Louis agrees with him, for he was counting too.

They sit on the wall that surrounds the pool at the centre of the garden. Neptune stands above them. If only he had had his trident when the gardener’s boy tried to drown him. The sea god could have dropped it on the boy’s head and the prongs would have dug into his brain.

Charles imagines how the gardener’s boy would look if his face were covered with blood. His mouth would be open and gushing more blood like a fountain. His hair would then be the colour of blood rather than the colour of rust.

The creak of the gate.

Joseph is coming into the garden from the side nearest the house. ‘Why the devil are you hiding away here?’ the footman says.

Louis has gone.

‘You are wanted in the dining room. Look sharp.’

Charles follows Joseph, avoiding his footsteps in the dew but counting them as he walks.

‘It’s that Mr Savill,’ Joseph says over his shoulder, talking to himself as much as to Charles. ‘They want to show you to him. Give him a laugh, eh? Looks like he needs it. Mr Fournier’s been telling him all about you.’

The footman makes a patriotic point of anglicizing the names of all the foreigners. It is always Mr Fournier or Mr Saul, never some mangled form of Monsieur.

‘Maybe he’ll take you away. After all, you’re not much use to man or beast here. Or maybe he’ll just tan your hide hard enough to make you speak. That’s what I’d do, given half a chance.’

Charles wonders why the visitor should want to see him, why there is even a possibility that he might take Charles away.

A dark tide of panic rises, filling his throat, making it hard to breathe. Here there is at least something that belongs to his old life, that belongs to the old days when everything was all right, when his mother was alive and they lived in the apartment in the Rue de Grenelle.

Monsieur Fournier and the Englishman are still sitting at the dining-room table, though all trace of their breakfast has been cleared away. Mr Savill looks cross. Something has irritated him. Perhaps it is Charles.

Mr Savill is solidly built and has strongly marked features. But what you really notice is the long scar from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.

‘Ah, my boy,’ says Fournier in French. ‘Good morning. Come here.’ He dismisses Joseph with a nod and turns to the Englishman. ‘And now, sir, allow me to present Charles.’ He turns back and smiles, for Fournier smiles a great deal, even at Charles. ‘This is Mr Savill.’

Charles takes a step backwards. Mr Savill stares at him. Charles shrivels under the gaze.

‘Come, Charles,’ Fournier says, in English this time. ‘Make your bow.’

Charles bows as his mother taught him, low and sweeping as she said the gentlemen did at Versailles as the King passed by. When he was little and he bowed to her like that, his mother would clap her hands. Once she gave him a grape coated with sugar.

Mr Savill inclines his head in acknowledgement. Charles thinks his manner lacks entirely the distinction of a French gentleman. He is rough and clumsy. He is dressed like a tradesman or a lawyer.

‘Oh!’ his mother would say when talking of men like this, ‘but he is such an oaf!’

‘I am part of your English family,’ Mr Savill says slowly, also in English. He pauses. ‘Do you understand what I say?’

Charles stares at the wall behind Mr Savill’s head at a particular stripe in the wallpaper that runs through a small brown stain where the damp comes through the wall.

‘Do you understand?’ Mr Savill repeats. ‘Nod your head if you do.’

Mr Savill waits a moment and then repeats the question in French, which is perfectly comprehensible though his accent is quite barbarous, worse than Dr Gohlis’s.

‘Nod if you understand me,’ Mr Savill says once more.

Charles sees the trap before him: he knows that it is possible to coax answers without words, and that these may do just as much harm as answers with words. He lets his eyes drift up to the cornice of the room. He senses the attention of the two men on him, feels the weight of it, feels the pressure of their impatience.

Time passes. The weight lifts, the pressure relaxes.

‘So,’ Fournier says in his normal voice. ‘There you have it, sir. A neat philosophical conundrum, as the doctor puts it. But undeniably inconvenient for the rest of us.’

‘And indeed for Charles himself,’ says Mr Savill, his face twisting, as if with pain.

‘Let us have fresh coffee,’ Fournier says. ‘Ring for the servant, Charles. Then you may leave us, but do not go far away.’

The boy does as he is told. As he is leaving the room, he looks back. They are watching him, Monsieur Fournier and Mr Savill, and he wonders what they see.