The Warlow Experiment

by Alix Nathan

  Annie blushed and wouldn’t. Then she held the watch to her ear, shook it, listened again.

  ‘Still not going?’

  ‘No. When I shall save enough I shall take it to the watchmaker.’

  ‘There’s no watchmaker for miles about here.’

  No reply. This dialogue had taken place many times and always ended there. Annie began to count her coins.

  ‘Now what does Samuel say, Annie?’

  Over the months Annie had made some progress with Samuel. He admitted to liking her and would sometimes plunge out of the blacking room off the corridor that led to the back kitchen and kiss her fiercely, anxiously. What he really wanted was to take her into the knife room where, in his leather apron, he rubbed knife blades with bath brick and powdered limestone. His own room.

  His family had been poor tenants in London. When he was twelve, the old, neglected house in which they were crammed collapsed, as such places did periodically. Samuel was squatting in the jakes over the yard. Neighbours and passers-by scrabbled through the rubble looking for survivors, laid out Samuel’s parents and siblings in the road, dusted white like ghosts.

  From an orphanage patronised by Valentine Tharpe he arrived in Moreham, where loyalty to Powyss was the greatest certainty he’d known. Now there was Annie to think about. However, he wasn’t completely sure what he’d do with her once he did get her into his room and in any case knew she’d not abide the knives, had already complained of the violence with which he embraced her.

  ‘Sam says nothing.’

  ‘Annie, that will not do. I’m certain he knows everything about the master and Hannah Warlow. He lays out the master’s clothes, is the only one allowed to dust his precious vases and that.’

  ‘He will not tell against him. I do think he do worship the master.’

  ‘You must make him tell. Resist him, then relent only when he’s told you something.’

  ‘I do scoff at him all the time for he is so eager. He do pinch my arms so.’

  ‘Don’t scoff at him! That’s not the way. Let him kiss you and put his hand about you. And you do the same to him. Then stop suddenly and promise to resume when he tells you.’

  Annie held a shift against her face in embarrassment, rubbed the skin prickling up and down her arms.

  ‘He is callow. You must teach him.’ Annie was further shocked by what she heard as ‘tallow’.

  And when Catherine said: ‘Or we shall need to take matters into our own hands’, Annie thought she meant all three of them tangled up together in the blacking room.

  Hampstead, Ides of March, 1796

  Dear Powyss,

  Whilst I am entirely thankful for a Christmas greatly improved by quantities of apples, pears and slices of damson cheese from Moreham (for nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati), I am sorry to have received nothing in writing from you. How fares your testing of the old mole?

  I live in hope that you are not dismayed by my friendship with Mrs Clarke and make bold to assume that your silence is as fruitful as was my Christmas.

  Powyss yawned and walked to the window in the hope of catching sight of Hannah. It wasn’t Monday and he dared not ask her to come more often. He knew the servants suspected something. In one sense he didn’t care what they thought, but in another he dreaded the disorder, the contumacy that might ensue. But Hannah might walk along the lane beyond the garden wall towards the village and he might glimpse her.

  Would she? He had no idea of her life, what she did and when she did it. Preferred not to know. He wanted to have her here among his best possessions, exotic, unexpected, to touch, to hold at any time of day. In her sordid daily life she might seem different, might disappoint him.

  In the distant Marches you hardly will have noticed the repression we now endure in the capital since the absurd stone-throwing at the King’s coach last year which was without a doubt the result of ministerial conspiracy; I am in good company believing that. The worst cases of repression to my mind are the fining and imprisoning of booksellers whose livelihoods are ruined by the new bills.

  With disgust Fox added that the Prince of Wales’s debts had just been liquidated to the tune of £50,997.10s. And the people cry for bread!

  Finally, to Powyss’s astonishment, he announced that he’d left the Unitarian church, partly under the influence of the agnostic Mrs Clarke. He now regarded himself as a simple Deist like Paine and accordingly enclosed both parts of Paine’s new work, Age of Reason.

  Good Lord, how the man was breaking out, Powyss thought! He added the two volumes to one of several piles of unread books on the floor before returning to his place at the window. Perhaps Fox’s church had expelled him for his adultery with Mrs Clarke, he wondered vaguely.

  He didn’t see Hannah that day.

  * * *

  —

  HE LAYS OUT THE JOURNALS to count the years: 1793 1794 1795 in a line, then 1796, the new one, underneath the others. Not writ in it. Not writ much in any except the first.

  He knows it was April a while ago. He got extra tobacco and a note written with loops and curls:

  Congratulations John Warlow! You have lived for 3 Years

  Underground!

  Joseph Jenkins, April 1796

  Suddenly by itself came a plate of gooseberry jam tarts with no note. He suspects Annie. Thinks of her fingers pressing the pastry. Imagines her licking jam from her lips, her chin; her tongue darting in and out. He bites up the tarts.

  There’s frogs again, which pleases him. He had a stroke of genius in the winter. Once he’d seen a thing at a fair: not spectacles, but a glass on a handle. He writes:

  plees send   glas   it do mak thins big er

  It comes after many days. In a box. Magnifying Glass. He touches the velvet on which it lies. Takes it out, holds the glass up to his eye. A blur. Looks down. More blur. He holds it at arm’s length and sees:

  M a g  ni fy ing  Glass

  Then tries the journal. Blur. But then:

  1  7   9  6

  And a claw – his great, yellowed nail. Curved, a beak. Huge fingertips sooty from candle nats. Skin like wood grain. The weave of his cuff, grey-edged, spotted with meat grease; big stitches of his sleeve: ropes, like a field of ropes.

  Fly bodies red-staining the tablecloth. Legs. Wings. Tiny hairs. Others not flattened shining blue, green. Drops one into the spider’s web over the mantel. Waits, glass in hand, waits till at last the spider darts and grabs, and he goes too close and the glass is sticky with web.

  For days he peers at everything. Everything is lines. Neat like on fish skin (still they send it down!). Paper is lines. First, it’s rough like short grass. Then you see it’s lines. Some things is dots. Bread is dots and holes. Wood is scratches, scratches and lines. His skin is scratches and lines; this way and that they go, criss-cross. He stares for hours at his hand. Pushes the skin on the back of it and it’s like ripples on a pond.

  He roots out the animals book. Cows all stripes, bear wavy strips. THE OLD ENG LISH HOUND. And the terrible bat. He dares. Shuts the book quick, stuffs it back in the cupboard.

  Little grey lines all over the man Robinson. The book’s spine cracked black like a burned beam.

  Takes the glass to the fruit picture. No good. Can’t see no worm inside. Bad bit’s not soft.

  He thinks he’ll look at a frog. Builds a pen of books to keep it. In it goes, but jumps out before he can look. He makes the sides higher. Then it’s too dark in the pen to see it. Cradled in his fingers, he lowers it to the floor, takes a candle, heaves himself down to where the creature sits. Its sides blowing in and out, panting. He reaches for the glass and the frog hops off under the cistern.

  He wants to see it close. Especially he wants to see its feet, its face. Its slow eyes.

  * * *

 
—

  CATHERINE FOUND an opportunity one Saturday when Mr Powyss was out riding, a rare enough occurrence. It was a fine afternoon; he’d have plenty to inspect in the orchard and glasshouses. It was not yet time to go to the kitchen. She and Annie were sweeping the hallway.

  Broom in hand she knocked at the library door for form’s sake, poked her head round, beckoned to Annie then pushed the hesitating girl before her.

  They stood inside the door, unsure which way to go. Although lighting the fire on cold mornings and brushing the carpets were their tasks, they were not allowed to touch any objects in the room. Only Samuel had that job.

  ‘Why he thinks Samuel’s more delicate-fingered than us I don’t know,’ Catherine whispered. ‘Just because he’s a footman and we’re only housemaids. Look, I heard they go in here.’ She darted to the instrument room.

  ‘Come on, Annie.’ But the girl could only stare in terror and fascination as Catherine inspected the upholstered seats of the two chairs.

  ‘No stains. She must have used scouring-drops after. That’s a telescope on the table I do think, but there’s not a thing else, look. No bits of dead butterflies and beetles and spiders like Jenkins said there were.’

  ‘Oh Catherine, quick, afore he come back!’ Annie said in terror at the spiders.

  ‘We can always be cleaning, silly.’

  ‘There be nothing here. Come away!’

  ‘Nothing means he did clear the table to make room for them on it.’

  ‘Oh!’ Annie drew a shocked breath.

  ‘But nothing there either. They must have wiped it clean. That’s it, yes. Ah but look here.’

  She ran back into the main room. ‘On the floor here. These papers in fallen heaps. There now. I’ll push them away.’ She was on her knees searching back and forth. ‘But this rug has so many squares and lines and squiggles I can’t see the marks!’

  ‘Quick! Someone’s coming, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Nonsense! Look at these stains. Come over here.’ Annie darted over, darted back.

  But Catherine was sure she had enough evidence now. They tiptoed to the door. Annie ran out and Catherine took one last look. Yes. That’s where they lay. Just like her and Abraham on the mat before the fire. Who could blame them?

  * * *

  —

  SHE RAN STRAIGHT TO ABRAHAM, leaving Annie to pod peas in the kitchen and hope Cook wouldn’t bother about her absence for a bit. Price was delighted by Catherine’s description of her invasion of Powyss’s library.

  ‘Clever puss!’ he said.

  Her account was not kind to Annie and made Price laugh hoarsely. She enjoyed that for he rarely smiled, while she would find amusement wherever she could.

  ‘Show how you did inspect the carpet,’ he said, and when she got down on her hands and knees and gave a comic rendering of herself he pounced on her and shoved her over onto her back.

  ‘I be Mr Powyss!’ he said, of a sudden, pulling his mouth down into a ridiculously serious expression.

  ‘Oh and I am poor Hannah Warlow, even though my mother were a lady’s maid,’ Catherine squeaked merrily.

  ‘Her were no lady, isn’t it. I am Mr Powyss your master. And you pulls up your shift, isn’t it,’ he said, frowning and pulling open his breeches.

  ‘Oh, oh. Mr Powyss. Oh. I am all pale and sad and all I can do is pull up my shift for you!’ And she cackled and he fucked her quickly, she having to get back to dress the fowls.

  ‘Adultery, isn’t it?’ Price said.

  ‘What we do?’

  ‘No. Them.’

  ‘Why yes. But he is master and she is nobody; he can do what he will.’

  ‘Her’s a married woman. It is a sin. A sin in the church court.’

  ‘Will you go and report him then, Abraham?’

  ‘I have heard them do pro-se-cute for adultery. And in-con-tinence, too, it is called. No, there’s better ways for us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean your writing, clever puss. Us’ll write him a letter, isn’t it. Tell him us knows what him does and us’ll tell soon enough.’

  ‘Not a letter from me!’

  ‘Anon-y-mous, silly woman. And you do disguise your hand. Tomorrow I’ll get more paper from the club. I’ll say it, you’ll write. And you’ll lay it on his desk in the morning while him’s still abed.’

  * * *

  —

  HE’S BACK to thinking about Mary again. When father beat them she’d get him behind her. He never beat her with his knobbed stick. Once Joe ducked. It caught his head, stunned him. Thought him were dead, but no.

  ‘My rod of iron!’ Father’d roar. ‘Even as I received of my father!’ That be the Bible. Someone finds the stick under the cart when it topples. Not broken. Not like him, crushed flat.

  With him gone they work for Kempton. Kempton’s father, Old Kempton. Up before crows wake. Runnin, he this side, Joe the other, flappin arms. Crows themselves. Hoarse with shoutin. ’Cept crows don’t go hoarse. At day’s end, Joe runs ahead, is gone. Mary’s twilight shape limps towards him.

  ‘Art cold?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Art hungry?’ Takes somethin from her apron, holds out her hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  Nob of bread. Better than all this from up there! Gentleman’s dinner.

  ‘Don’t tell.’ Her voice is low. It’s their secret, just them. ‘Don’t tell Mother.’

  His eyes fill. He covers them with his hands and sobs. Mary! Grinds his palms into his eye sockets.

  There’s murmuring. Close to him. He’s a boy. And there she is, talking in her low voice.

  ‘Don’t tell, John. Say nothin.’

  ‘Say nothin,’ he promises.

  John Warlow 9 yers owd

  Murmuring. He hears her.

  It be undertide. Dark. Can’t hardly see her face.

  Feels her arm round his shoulders. She hugs him to her hip; his arm rests on her waist, not long enough to go round it. She murmurs to him. They walk. Slowly, slowly. He rocks up and down with her limp. Smells the damp roughness of her skirt. Always thinking don’t get home yet. Walk slowly. Up and down.

  Come back! Come back! Mary, here’s my hand!

  Murmuring. Murmuring.

  But it’s two voices. Two! His head jerks up. He listens. Two women’s voices. He’s been dreaming.

  Feet run. A door closes. Above! Voices came through the ceilin. But he’s two floors down! How? What’s up there?

  One candle’s alight. Lamp’d be better, but look now. Find out now. Can’t see much. Must be hole in the ceilin, must be. Climbs on the chair, the table, reaches up. Feels with big hands, black from no washing, dried scabs. Beams, crumbled plaster, lath. He yelps as a splinter jabs into his flesh. His hands run over plaster lumps – fruits and leaves.

  Then metal. Metal hole in the middle of the fruits. He puts a finger in it. Nail clacks against metal.

  He clambers down heavily for a broom. Climbs back. Panting. Thrusts the handle into the hole. Up it goes, up till there’s nothing but bristles in his hand.

  That’s it! Pipe in the ceilin.

  Why?

  His pulse, his wits race. Powyss! Watching me through the hole. Spyin! Shove the broomstick in his eye! But no, what’d him see? Hole’s too small. Couldn’t see. That’s not it.

  Powyss hears him through this hole! I heard them. Them hears me. Powyss put it to listen to me! Damned Powyss. Listenin. All this time.

  Powyss! Damned infernold dog! Powyss hears everythin. Hears him scrape the ashes, scrape the plate, scrape the pen on the page. Hears him eatin, fartin, scratchin, groanin, cursin, shittin. Damn him!

  Heard him sob just now, did he? And the women? Listenin to him sob with two women, were he?

  ‘Damn you, Pow
yss! Damn you! I knows you’re there!’ he bawls up at the ceiling.

  No sound. Nothing. He puts his ear to the hole but there’s nothing.

  ‘Damned dog, Powyss! Him shuts me down here. Never says him’d be listenin, spyin.’ He gets off the table.

  ‘Powyss! You said…what were it? Science you said it were for science, you said,’ he shouts. ‘What’s that mean, Powyss? Science, what’s that?’ Waits. No answer.

  ‘It mean, it mean No Freedom. Yes yes. No Freedom it mean. That’s what.’ Phrases remembered from the Dog bubble up like gas.

  He yells: ‘Them as have money takes all. Takes bread from mouths. Damn to Powyss! Damn infernold dog! Damn to the government! Damn to the king!’

  He stalks about the room restlessly clenching, unclenching his fists, can’t be still, shouting, bawling, searching for something, something. Then he understands. Yes. He is like the others even down here. Yes. That’s it. The others stirrin up before he came below. The others grumblin in the Dog. More and more. Men scrawlin on the market cross. Liberty. That’s it. And that other word. Men shoutin, thumpin the table. Once them did shoot at an effigy. Who were that? Them say them chops heads off in France.

  He tires. Throat hurts from the bawling. But he can’t stop seeing Powyss in his fine black velvet coat. Listening through the hole at every moment. Smiling. Proud. Of all this!

  He snatches up the shovel, whacks it on the table bang bang bang bang bang break! – but it doesn’t. Flings it across the room. Then the tongs against the iron fireplace clang onto the hearth. He waits, listens for a moment, but nothing stirs. Nothing up there. So he heaps coal out on the floor and slams the scuttle with both hands hard against the grate, the mantel, smashes the man in the skins. Let him hear that!

  ‘I knows you’re up there!’ Quiet. No one’s listenin, are they?

  But wait. He’s got fire. He can fire the house. Tonight, when Powyss has gone to bed. He’ll stuff paper in the hole. No, strips of linen’s better; he’s already ripped a shirt for a length to tie his hair. Smear that butter on ’em – that’s good. Push ’em into the pipe. Light a spark. Blow the bellows! Them’ll catch fire, up the pipe, to boards, carpets, furniture. Whole house!