by Alix Nathan
But gardeners looked to spring: Fox had taken to gardening his small plot in Hampstead ever more earnestly. After some nonsense about ‘the fellow in the cellarage’, he wrote:
I should like your advice on Helianthus atrorubens and Dodecatheon meadia. I have recently purchased seeds of both. No doubt you will scorn the reasons for my choice but shooting stars and sunflowers suit my present mood. Both originate from America of course and I am told that the Dodecatheon will fire off in the spring and then lie dormant while the Helianthus gazes forward with its striking dark eye. Have you grown these plants and do you think they will survive in my modest garden and in soil I have only recently begun to cultivate? Of course the temperatures are higher here, being both more south and east than Moreham.
As usual he left the main point of his letter till last, but this time it wasn’t a criticism of Powyss; if anything he seemed to expect Powyss to wag the finger at him.
I am daily encouraged in my gardening enthusiasm by Mrs Clarke who is very fond of flowers and who has also accompanied me on buying expeditions to Chelsea. As spring matures we intend to visit Kew, I with my notebook. Mrs Clarke and I have come to an understanding. I might say that our friendship has become a strong plant. Yet of course she is not a free woman and her husband languishes, though she visits him whenever she is allowed. Her children are schooled nearby. My frequent meetings with them have resulted in a fine mutual affection.
Fox wanted the opinion of his friend, Powyss, as ‘a confirmed bachelor and freethinker’.
How extraordinary! A man so steadfast in his moral position, so certain in his faith. Powyss supposed he’d have to reply, on both matters, to respond to a new hesitancy in Fox, whose authority appeared to be wavering.
For years now he’d felt an inferiority in his friendship with Fox. Of course he knew a great deal about plants and trees, could boast of all the improvements he’d made at Moreham. But Fox wrote of higher things, of government and God. He was a man who knew his own mind, was steady in his beliefs. Once, Powyss had written to Fox that in his letters he felt like a papist confessing trivial sins to my confessor. And Fox, amused, had played that role exuberantly and paradoxically, from his Unitarian viewpoint.
Now this imbalance had reversed. Fox asked whether Powyss thought a good act could have bad consequences. Clearly he was worrying about his position with Mrs Clarke, but he was certainly also thinking of the Warlow experiment.
Months before, Powyss had begun a letter but put it away. He brought it out again. Perhaps he should send it. It was a reply to a question of Fox’s about the Investigation.
Do I see my experiment as an act of pure goodness? No. Experiments are neutral, they lack a moral dimension. Acts of pure goodness are for God alone, if there is a God. I suppose that we do good as far as we are able. My experiment began as science, though I admit it now answers to science and to charity.
He made a move to strike out this complacency, but left it for the moment. It couldn’t help Fox in his dilemma, which, remarkably, was so close to his own.
Your question as to whether a good act could have bad consequences does not apply to my experiment, since, as I say, experiments are neutral. Of course ill could come out of a good act, though surely it would be inadvertent. No one can intend both good and ill. That defies logic as of course you know.
This wouldn’t help Fox either. He probably hadn’t intended to start something with Mrs Clarke, but rather had merely wanted to help her and her children while her husband was in prison.
He chewed on his pen and gazed through his window. In the lower reaches of the hills stood ewes fat with unborn lambs. Mist hung over the tops.
He would not tell Fox about Hannah. He was not obliged to respond in kind to Fox’s confession despite some similarity in their situations. Indeed he was not obliged to reply at all.
He’d certainly not reached that sort of ‘understanding’ with Hannah. Instead, he longed for her with a desperate thirst. There was reluctance still; she held herself back from her own not quite hidden desire. He longed to crush her to him, to absorb her, to fuck her till she was his. But must not. That’s how it was. It would be wrong to take advantage of a woman whose husband could not prevent it. Even such a woman, such a husband. Most importantly, the experiment would be jeopardised if he did.
At the very beginning she’d probably been merely glad of the money, perhaps awed by his books, the long room with its grand windows. But she’d distrusted him, resisted. Then, gradually, he thought that like a plant she’d become acclimatised. He began to perceive something of what she had endured. So many births, no doubt deaths. Poverty. Warlow, big, wilful, barely articulate, his movements propelled by bulk. Unlikely that kindness was a quality Warlow knew, so that she had turned to it like light, her arms, tendrils, reaching up for life.
His upbringing told him what he did was wrong. His reason argued that, on the contrary, kindness was a virtue, though kindness was by no means all he had in mind. He sensed she would accept whatever he had in mind.
Whenever he’d wanted a woman he’d been able to purchase her. Always it was a transaction, though sometimes he hadn’t desired those he’d bought. He gave Hannah money, certainly, but didn’t think it was the same.
Desire pulled against a certain tenderness for her. He was entranced by this woman who was so different from the impertinent girls he paid to remove his breeches, lick him erect, smother him with their breasts. She’d be laughed out of Jermyn Street were she to appear there, and yet how inferior to her they all were!
He thrust the letter to Fox in a drawer and went out. This utter confusion of mind was intolerable. He paced the flower garden and woods, stood rooted in the hothouse, staring, not seeing. And became alert to danger when he suddenly recalled the irony in Price’s tone, the secret smile of the maid Catherine.
Back in his library, he willed the distance between him and the man beneath to increase. Two floors down was as deep as the middle of the earth. He stopped using the listening tube. In any case he heard so little. The pile of papers placed to cover it lay to one side. Uncut books, unread pamphlets stood about the long, light room, unnoticed.
* * *
—
ABRAHAM PRICE wanted Catherine to write a bill to tie onto the market cross in Moreham. Actually, what he really wanted was to stick a bill on the church door, but he knew the time for such acts was yet to come.
‘Come now, clever puss! Ink, paper and pen’s here. Write big letters. People must see the words easy, isn’t it.’
‘But I’m not used to writing in great big letters.’
‘Try now. Liberty. Write Liberty.’ Her spelling was good: she wrote it slowly, the letters decreasing in size as they moved across the page. Underneath came Equality.
‘Now,’ Price said, ‘write Fr-ter-nity.’
‘I don’t know that. What does it mean?’
‘It do mean brothers.’
‘What have brothers to do with equality and liberty?’ She remembered all her brothers – the unfairness of her life as a girl, even if they did get beaten.
‘It do mean us are all brothers.’
‘Oh. Even you and me?’ She glanced at him under her eyebrows. Humour, she was beginning to realise, was not one of Abraham’s strengths.
‘Yes. O’course.’ But Frternity went off the page. She began again and again but there was never enough room left on the paper for everything else he wanted written.
The arrangement between them was this: she helped him improve his very limited reading. Books and pamphlets were sent by the London Corresponding Society to the Moreham Disputing Club which, so far, had not been closed by the magistrates. And occasionally she wrote a letter to his mother for him (someone would read it for her back home, he said). He instructed Catherine in the latest radical thinking and inspired her with his rhetoric and fiery eye. Ideas flamed u
p in her head like dry kindling. Young Caleb, the cobbler’s son, was sometimes present after the club meetings (which ended with the singing of the last verse of Paine’s ‘Liberty Tree’), but the reading lessons were always unattended and Price’s undoubted progress was regularly matched by advances by hand within Catherine’s bodice. These she found extremely pleasant and not at all brotherly, but she always insisted he read two whole pages first. Then of course she must return soon since Annie might be lonely in their attic room and would certainly talk if she stayed out long.
There had been an extraordinary cold spell, mid-June. It was reckoned 120 sheep, just shorn, died in fields around Moreham. Catherine, caught in a sudden hailstorm on her way to Price’s cottage, dried her hair and shook with cold. With his encouragement she removed her soaked stockings and he rubbed her feet and ankles, her calves, knees. Clamped her thighs with his gardener’s hands.
But though she felt her will weaken, Price would not forget his other goal – to read all of Paine’s Rights of Man without help. So, for an hour or so the balance changed while he submitted to her. And her sallowness reddened in the pleasure of the task. How much more satisfying to teach this irascible man with his sunburned face and seedsman’s fingers than instruct pouting Annie the correct way to melt leaf gelatine.
Some weeks later summer righted itself. Heat reclaimed intentions. Heat drove the street in London. Price’s connections brought him news of riots in Charing Cross. With increasing passion he told Catherine how the people smashed Pitt’s windows in Downing Street, dismantled a recruiting house near the Obelisk.
‘Them sent the horseguards and trampled them.’
‘Oh, oh! Were they killed?’
‘Some smashed, some killed. But more men come next day and them did gut the crimping house like a fish, isn’t it. Bones, innards, them drags everything out. Piles up the furniture, every stick. Heaps and heaps it up and lights a spark and burns it all in one great big fire! Mag-ni-fi-cent!’ He grasped her to him, and by splendid analogy, in minutes demolished her thin resistance to his other cause.
* * *
—
YESTERDAY HE PUKED. Went to bed cold, soaked with sweat. Slept and slept.
Now he feels good. Needs a piss but pot’s full of puke. Fires out so he pisses into that. Opens the lift door. Flies crawl over his untouched meal from yesterday. Piles the dishes to make room for the pot. Rings bell. Hauls up.
Down comes a clean pot, a small box and a note:
Mix spoonful Rothwell’s pouder in water.
Will we send for Surgeon?
No he begins. But there’s almost no ink. Spilled it before, didn’t he. Nib scratches into the paper:
I am hungr e incs dri send mor pleas
First, breakfast descends. Then a clean shirt, ink bottle, sheafs of paper.
He scrapes out the ashes, makes up a new fire. Today he’ll not think about Mary. Her’s a shadow anyway. Can’t see her when he closes his eyes. Her face. What did her look like? What colour were her hair? Her eyes? Her were there before dawn, at dusk. Always dark. He tries to make the picture in his head clearer but can’t. Fades all the time. Just her smiling left. Come a day her face’ll be blank.
Mustn’t get gloomy. Remember that miller. Miserable man, never laughed, never smiled. Drank though. One day he were gone. They found a note: Jacob Cole lies in the mill-dam. Writ it hisself afore. Sat, smoked a pipe and writ it. Then drownded hisself.
Opens the other book. Not the animals. Hates the baboons. Worse is The Ter nate Bat. Wings like cloaks, skeleton arms, teeth, claws. He puts it in the back of a cupboard behind candle boxes so it can’t get out.
Rob inson Cru soe. Did he get fifty pound a year? Stares hard at the man. Must have been cold with no boots.
Who lived eig eigh oh yes eight and twenty years all alone
Ah! And him’s only to live seven. And not yet that much! Those words were not hard. Read more:
all alone (Yes!) in an un in hab habit habit ed unin habit
ed (what’s that?) is land island on the Coast of AM ERICA,
near the Mouth of the Great River of OR OO NO QUE
Makes no sense.
ORO ONO
He gives up. Flicks through for more pictures. None. Will Powyss write a book about him? Is that what him meant? When I write it up, send it to the something, him said.
He holds the book open with one hand. Copies into the journal:
THE
LIFE
AND STRANG SUR PRIZIN ADVENT URES
OF
JOHN
WARLOW OF MOR HAM PLOW MAN
He draws a man. Crosses it out. No good. Takes the candle to the glass to look. Eyes, yes. Nose. The rest is beard, hair all round his face. Where’s his mouth? Can’t see the faces he pulls. Sticks out his tongue to find his mouth.
Back to the paper. He draws a bigger circle, two little ones for eyes, another for nose. Scribbles hair all over. Doesn’t look good next to the picture in the book.
Starts again on a new page. Gives himself a body; tries for a linen shirt. The Robinson man looks like a sort of gentleman in his suit of skins, his guns and sword. The Warlow man holds a candle. Around him he shades in blackness, more and more blackness.
* * *
—
LATE SUMMER brought great quantities of fruit. The labourers turned their hands to picking, then pruning under Price’s guidance. Baskets of plums were lugged to the kitchen to be bottled, turned into pies and jam. Damsons were simmered for hours, sieved, simmered again for more hours, solidified on saucers, compressed: damson cheese. Apples were laid out on slatted trays to last two seasons in the pantry or packed into boxes with pears to send to Hampstead. The more fruit Powyss sent to Fox the less he felt obliged to write. The letter he began in February still lay in a drawer.
Strolling beside the herbaceous bed he met Margaret and Polly. He’d seen them from the window occasionally, the younger bending and poking among the flowers, brushing them for their scent, the older pulling her away.
He was surprised they didn’t run off. The older one wouldn’t look at him, a heavy-featured girl, perhaps resembling Warlow. He was hard-pushed to remember what Warlow looked like. Hannah said the girl was motherly.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
The older child bobbed a kind of curtsey, looking down.
‘Be you Mr Powyss,’ the little one asked him. Her face was round, placid, slightly curious. He saw Hannah in her, fled the thought.
‘Yes, I am. You are Polly. And you are…?’
‘Margaret.’
‘Margaret, yes. Which flowers do you like, Polly?’ He was drawn to her.
‘Them big white flowers. I likes them.’
‘Eucomis autumnalis.’
They stared at him.
‘Spikes of pineapple flower. Look closely. What do you see?’
‘Stars. White stars.’
‘Yes.’
Margaret, resenting his lack of interest in her, bobbed another curtsey and pulled Polly away.
He walked on. The espaliered Catherine pear had failed again, its leaves curled and blotchy, its fruit small, dropping before their time. He thought he’d try a Grosse Mignonne instead. But whenever he began to make up his mind to write to Loddiges Nursery the thought seemed to slide past and out of his head.
Into the denuded orchard. A labourer up a ladder was receiving Price’s barked commands. Price was too keen to cut.
‘Go easy with the knife, Price.’
Price’s reply was obscure. ‘Rather axe the root would you, Mr Powyss, sir?’
‘Certainly not. What can you mean?’
‘You’d axe the Tree of Liberty.’
He’d suspected Price of revolutio
nary tendencies for some time. It was one thing to read such language in Fox’s letters, quite another to hear it from a man in his employ. There’d been a strong indication a while before when he made it clear to Price that he was a lodger in his cottage not a householder, that as he didn’t pay rates he had no vote.
‘Ah!’ Price said. ‘But I’ve a hearth on which I boil my pot, isn’t it, and my own door.’
Powyss had to hasten to the law. There he found a quibble, surely not worthy of him but usable all the same.
‘Now, Price. Although it’s true that you do indeed have access to the cottage without having to go through another property, it’s nevertheless not access from the street, since the cottage opens onto the stable yard.’
Price growled at this, walked away and Powyss had thought no more of it; but since then there’d been these odd remarks and he sensed a festering.
‘But this isn’t the tree of liberty,’ he now said. ‘And if it were, you’d surely not want to cut it back to this extent, Price. Plums need little pruning; and apples, well, it’s almost autumn now, not winter; they need little and careful cutting. I hardly need tell you!’
‘Growth is stronger after the knife,’ Price replied darkly and Powyss walked off.
* * *
—
CATHERINE WAS READING ALOUD to Cook and Annie. Samuel hovered in and out of the doorway, biting his nails.
“On the occasion of his majesty’s going to the House of Lords, the Mall and the Parade of St James’s Park and Parliament Street were completely choked up with spectators. They at least amounted to two hundred thousand.
‘ “The earl of Chatham, duke of Gloucester, et cetera, were hissed, and the duke of Portland was very much hooted.” ’
‘What’s this?’ Jenkins walked in and sat down. ‘Begin again, miss.’
‘Oh, it’s the king going to the lords, Mr Jenkins. Thousands of spectators hissing and hooting.’