by Alix Nathan
He knows men do it, pull down houses, fire them. He’s heard about it in the Dog. Bands of men. Birmingham, them said. But he’ll do it himself. On his own. Them’ll praise him in the village. Not the fool them said he were.
Flames, big flames, tall as houses, lickin up chimneys.
He’s seen it. Houses on fire in Moreham when he were a boy. Hot ember began it. People and animals jumpin out of windows, screamin. Streams of rats, mice pourin out. Huddles stood and watched. Someone counted. Two souls missin. All but the end house burned to nothin. Two bodies in the cellar. Nails torn with clawin. In the cellar.
‘Aah. Aah!’ He bangs the table with his fists. His head.
‘How can I do it? Cannot get out. Must get out.’ He moans. Moans become howls, a dog baying.
No! He feels a surge of strength in his back, his shoulders, arms; he overturns the table at one go. Everything crashes off it. He heaves the armchair backwards and jumps on its back. Stuffing oozes. Hurls things at walls: candlesticks, jugs, boxes, lamps, roaring like a goaded bear. He runs to tear things down: glass shatters from pictures, the smashed looking glass. Plaster frames break; he stamps them to powder. Pulls, twists, yanks. Skeletal doors hang from bookcase hinges. Ripped books shower their shreds. Endpapers, boards bend under his boot soles. Pens crack like bones. His voice, mocking, squawks falsetto ‘pump with your feet!’ He levers off the hinges of the organ doors, pulls out pipes which ring metallic notes where he flings them, slams his forearms hard on the keyboard so that howling sounds crowd out at him. He takes the chair to kill it, the poker to stab, wreck, he wrenches wooden shards of the case with his hands, bloody with cuts, shouting, stamping, yelling, yowling, bellowing.
Suddenly crumples, falls. Exhausted. Great bulk on bed of splinters.
Sleeps.
Wakes to the creak of the dumb waiter. A meal descends. Half a roast fowl, bacon, peas. A salad. Redcurrant tart. Pint of porter.
* * *
—
POWYSS SUMMONED HANNAH. He saw from Jenkins’s expression that they all knew, had all heard. Had all listened. He used to look at Jenkins rarely. Now he read every word on his face.
‘I shall walk with Mrs Warlow in the garden.’
They might peer through the windows but at least they wouldn’t hear what was said.
August. Plum tree leaves are ragged.
Fox had written about the election which failed to unseat Pitt, despite all the work of his favourite radicals and their alliance with Whigs. He quoted his namesake Charles James Fox to whom he had listened on the hustings: ‘A more detestable government never existed in British History,’ Fox had declared. ‘It has destroyed more human beings in its foreign wars than Louis XIV; and attempted the lives of more innocent men at home than Henry VIII.’
Powyss felt as if he were reading about himself. He had heard only the end of Warlow’s rampage, but that was bad enough: the endless wrecking, the terrible baying of an animal in despair.
He had caused it.
‘Hannah. I shall free Warlow. Your husband.’ They walked apart beside long flower beds, where the child Polly had run her fingers, bent her head to sniff. Aster, coreopsis, phlox paniculata. Red and pink, late summer’s blood and flesh.
She stopped. He remembered the first time she came for the money, when she shrank back as if expecting a blow. How much she had changed since then! Yet always there’d been a strength in her and now resistance spoke in her silence.
‘I see you don’t want that, Hannah.’
‘No.’
‘We can speak freely. They’ll be watching but no one can hear us. No keyholes! He’s had a kind of fit, Hannah. It was extraordinary. He was smashing things, shouting, cursing.’
‘They did say.’
‘No doubt, but don’t tell me what they said. All I know is that he must be brought out. The experiment has gone wrong, Hannah. Perhaps it was wrong. I thought I could observe Warlow like I observe the growth of a plant. I wanted to see how he’d survive in certain conditions. I didn’t think he might become mad. I thought melancholy possible, but not this. Perhaps his explosion is only temporary. Yet who knows what destruction he has wrought? And were it to happen again it might be worse. I cannot be the man’s murderer, Hannah.’
She flinched, said nothing.
‘He must come out before it’s too late. He must return home and life will resume as it was.’
‘Life?’
He refused to think what her life had been before.
‘The agreement will be broken of course. He signed a contract. I cannot pay him £50 a year if he hasn’t stayed below for seven years. And I shall no longer support you. If I did, everyone else around about would make a claim.’
‘The children are well. They will be poor again.’ It was a cry.
‘And I have taken advantage of you, Hannah.’ Rudbeckia, black-eyed.
‘I am yours,’ she said, and it fired within his veins like laudanum.
They had reached the end of the flower garden, where a rose hedge, blooms long gone, led into the orchard, fleckered in shade. Out of the watchers’ vision. He clasped her to him and they held each other with the force of finality. He felt himself burn, sear, wanted her now, for her to be his.
And to master Warlow. Yes, to master the brute who owned her, who would take her back. To fuck her now would be to crush Warlow.
He pulled at her clothes to free her neck, her small breasts. Oh, he’d wanted this! On the ground, in long grass, his hands sought her skin, her limbs, found the surprising warmth of her birth-stretched belly. And, as he’d anticipated, she moved towards him, with him, searched for him, found, took him in and cried out with relief.
He was certain, pitiless. Dug his nails into earth. Groaned, himself, from the relief of it. At last, at last, his release before Warlow’s.
Then, in the orchard a crack. Something skirred. They heard a throated sound, a cough, a jeer. Broke apart as at a snake beneath them.
He drew her skirts down over her thin, reddened legs. Helped her up, wrapped her fallen shawl about her naked shoulders.
‘Quick, go home! That way.’ He indicated a gate in a far wall, watched her tremble and hold her clothes together with fingers he yet felt on his body, run towards the gate, through it, without looking back.
Stood, himself dazed, shaking, thwarted.
Turned his back on the sneering watcher, whose identity he guessed, and went to the hothouse. Ashen. Wretched.
He wanted a woman who was not his to have. Had wanted her all this time and now it was over. A woman of few words, serene as a tree new-found in a foreign land whose fruit he’d never taste again. Desire for her had grown, a convolvulus, winding, charming him with its strength, its fragile blue beauty, ineradicable. It had smothered all till he could think of nothing else.
And now!
Melon leaves shrivelled in the heat, their great growth over. He began to clear cucumber haulm. Stopped. Wrenched at the fleshy stalks. Frantic desire tore at reason. Yet he knew the experiment was ill conceived, the results blurred by his selfishness. He must cut it down, clear out the wayward growth.
The night’s expected storm was violent. Hailstones shattered the lower lights of several greenhouses. The valley flooded. His mother would have accepted the clear sign of punishment. But he abhorred superstition. If God exists he cares no more for us than a captain for the mice on his ship.
Still, he stood at the window watching the storm, listening to the distant destruction of glass. Saw lightning split an indigo sky.
Bowed his head to reason.
Tomorrow he would release Warlow at midday. Instruct Mrs Rentfree to pack two baskets with provisions for the family, instruct Price to find a month’s labour for Warlow until Kempton took him on again.
* * *
—
SHE TELLS HERSELF:
John will come back.
He says he have done wrong. Mr Powyss. But it is too late to think so now.
John will be angry when he do not get £50 a year. He will strike the boys, though not Margaret nor Polly, he will spare them, surely. I must keep out of his way.
The servants will talk. Tell John. They will say all manner of things. Especially now.
In the garden I could not tell him, though he wanted me to speak. I could not say. It is hard for me. He has given us money. I cannot ask for anything more.
I think I do love him.
Someone were watching us. That evil man I think. And so it were over when it had only begun.
He did say he will think of me always. But we cannot meet ever. I do think it be untrue then, what he say.
7
HE WAS WOKEN BY JENKINS COUGHING.
‘Mr Powyss. Sir.’
Powyss had fallen asleep in the chair by the library window. Instructions were needed about storm damage. And Warlow. A letter had arrived from Fox.
‘Return in an hour, Jenkins. No, I’ll breakfast later.’
Everything came back to him; he felt exhausted, sick. His coat smelled of sweat. Fury and fear surged in his gut. Such utter disorder, how it revolted him! Yesterday he had decided. How so easily? How at all? And why now had he given himself a mere hour?
Confusion drove him from the library and out of the house, unwashed, in his foul clothes, unseen as far as he knew. He avoided the hothouse and greenhouses where he was likely to encounter Price, whose snarls he couldn’t face. No doubt it was he who’d watched them in the orchard yesterday. All his refuges were useless. Labourers were in the gardens; a smirking maid might dash past at any moment.
He set off across the fields and up Cold Hill. The ground was dry and smelled of sun-baked sheep droppings. Berries of twisted hawthorn rusted; clusters of curling yellow leaves gathered beneath.
He walked without stopping, the strenuous movement seeming to consume his fear. Blood beating in his head kept out voices.
For a moment near the summit of the hill he thought he was being watched once more, turned and looked back: it was only the eyes of the house. Moreham House, small yet pleasing in its symmetry and ordered grounds; within it a fine collection of books, curiosities, scientific instruments and a crazed labourer, filthy and violent; a set of servants not to be trusted. And he the master, infatuated with that same labourer’s wife. Obsessed by her.
Clarity. He must find a solution. He climbed higher, higher, right onto the brow. Moreham was behind him out of sight. He crouched down among the whins, until his shins ached and he fell forward, his hands clutching at his head as if to crush the thoughts within.
I won’t give her up! I won’t. In his mind’s eye he saw her running from him through the gate in the wall. Felt still the ferocity of their coupling before it broke, again and again the heat of her skin under his hands, her bones against his. And she was glad, yes, glad!
Clarity! What had happened to reason? His ordered life, his run of experiments and minor achievements. I will not be thrown off course like this!
Yet, why must I have this woman when I could buy one tomorrow?
He removed his coat. There were no dwellings within sight. Hills spread away and were absorbed into sky. He saw clouds change, colours shift.
A cow bellowed in the distance. Or was it Warlow bellowing underground?
What was once resentment was now hatred. Warlow had lived with Hannah for years; Powyss had known her for so few. Warlow had maltreated her, aged her, beaten her, no longer deserved her.
And he had tasted Hannah. Knew he had to again. The longer Warlow remained below, the more he wanted her.
But surely this was a distortion? Perverted reason. Not reason at all. Warlow would have to be freed and he must stay away from the woman for her husband would certainly kill him.
And the experiment, what of that? He’d admitted to Hannah that it had gone wrong and perhaps it was wrong. The conditions below were ruined. The experiment itself was ruined. He had lost it all.
He sank down onto stones, his face scraping hard, woody stems; he pressed dry earth-dust, his fists clenched like a child in tantrum.
Silence rang in his ears. Birds were quiet at this time of year: not even the mew of a buzzard. His eyelids closed. He dozed, perhaps for minutes only, enough to cut his mind adrift.
And woke to a stroke of cold air.
Thirst. He cast around for the spring nearby, bent, drank and, standing again, felt black anger rush back into his blood. Now he must go home, must give orders that would leave him filled with loathing and despair.
He took up his coat against the chill, saw Fox’s crumpled letter about to fall from his pocket. Slit it open with his pocket knife.
I have been thinking about your Warlow, it said halfway down, after news of the latest government outrages.
Of course, the man doesn’t know what’s taken place.
As you will have perceived, I have had some doubts about your under-earth experiment. But of course it is not Warlow alone who is affected. Have you thought how his bruised children may hate you when you finally release him?
For you have raised them above their lowly state. Relieved Mrs Warlow of her slavery of fear. We certainly should attend to the rights of woman as to those of man. The spirit of God lives in each person (I still maintain that Unitarian belief), but in this case the advantages for six children and their mother far outweigh seven years of minor deprivation for their father. Greater good thus drowns out evil.
You once accused me of being your conscience, Powyss. But on balance I commend your experiment.
He read it twice. This was the glass through which Fox saw the situation, clear like a new-polished lens, trained on a species of animal life caught and presented to him by someone else. Fox’s sum was simple: the good done to a woman and six children was greater than the evil done to one man.
Fox’s voice was the cut of clean reason. He knew nothing of Powyss and Hannah. He needn’t know.
It was evening. A wind stirred the stunted plants at his feet. Concentration, tension had stiffened his limbs. He moved awkwardly, startling some sheep who ran away in a rush, then set off a different way back, penning a letter to Fox in his head as he strode down.
* * *
—
‘SAM SAYS THEY NEVER DID,’ Annie told Catherine in a hushed voice, proud of herself that she’d both extracted this indelicate information and actually pronounced it. She was preparing fruit; Catherine was rubbing butter into flour.
Catherine was cross. She didn’t like to be wrong.
‘How do he know?’
‘You said he were the one to know!’
Cook stomped out of the pantry.
‘Gossip, tattle! There’ll be pips and peel and maggots in the pies!’
They continued when she returned to the pantry with a bottle barely concealed under her apron. Did she really think they couldn’t see, didn’t already know perfectly well?
Annie bent over the apples. Sam had sharpened the knife so much she was worried there’d be blood in the pies, let alone maggots and peel.
‘Sam have looked at all the clothes. His drawers in particler,’ she added in a small voice.
‘Ooh! Annie!’
Annie was overcome with blushing and went out to the back kitchen ostensibly to fetch more fruit.
In fact, since John Warlow’s outburst Catherine had not been thinking about what the master did with Hannah. And she didn’t believe what Sam said. However, it was something to take to Abraham.
‘ ’Course they did. I know,’ he spat. ‘And do not say master, Catherine,’ he added tetchily.
‘Oh, and why not?’
‘Him’s no better nor us. Him’s more money but him’s born same as us.’
‘Not so! He were born in the big house whereas I were born in a hovel. And you, too, I should say.’
‘Him were a naked baby, just like us. Did not he that made me in the womb make him?’ he added lugubriously.
‘Abraham! I did think you despised religion!’
Price grunted with annoyance. He never felt embarrassment.
Catherine said: ‘That’s like when Tom Paine says men are all of one degree.’
Price ignored this; he was the expert on Paine. ‘Him’ll die same as us, will Powyss.’
So, she must remember to say Mr Powyss, not master, though Price himself omitted Mr as well.
‘Him have put John Warlow in a prison, isn’t it.’
‘No, Abraham. Warlow agreed to live down there. Think of the food and clothes he’s given. The money he’ll have when he comes out. It wasn’t a prison when Annie and I got it ready. You forget I have seen it down there. Everything you could wish for. All new. Better than anything you or I have. It’s an underground palace!’
‘Silly girl you, Catherine. He did try to excape, isn’t it. For him it’s a prison. Warlow is Powyss’s ex-per-i-ment. Powyss must let him out.’
Catherine knew he was right, of course. She and Price had not heard the worst of Warlow’s day of destruction, for they’d been busy aping Powyss and Hannah on Price’s floor. But she’d heard from the others and she had imagined. A great bear of a man who beat his children and his wife, laying about him, bringing everything down. All that lovely polished furniture. All those beautiful pictures.
‘And now him do fuck his wife!’
Catherine noted to herself that, from Hannah’s point of view, as far as that went Mr Powyss would certainly be preferable to John Warlow.
‘And I says nothing!’ Price groaned. ‘And I do his work!’ The corners of his mouth turned down and for a moment she thought he might cry.