The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  Before she could protest he started shouting. The preacher’s voice, raised, filled the modest chamber to the very corners.

  ‘“What?”’ he said. ‘“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price…therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”’

  Sarah watched as his rock-face shimmered and dissolved into a mess of creases. His distresses were unbearable to her, most especially when she could not divine the cause. She wanted to fly to him, but could not will her trembling body to move.

  ‘All,’ he said, ‘all is held accountable to God! And yet look at me…! Little strength in my legs…my trembling hands, my vision so cloudy at times, I can’t even read any more…and my lungs! My lungs rattle. Do you hear them? What good am I?’ Lambert wailed. ‘Of what use? A bishop-bird! Well housed, better fed, and higher-priced, that utters no note to speak of to redeem his keep. Jamrach himself could not sell me now!’

  Even in the midst of his abject misery he could force her to smile –

  ‘“But they’re the fashion, sir,” says he, knowing full well how every fashion shall pass away!’

  – and kill that same joy in an instant.

  With an offhand gesture Lambert cast aside these mortal thoughts.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘My mind is weak and slow.’

  She took up his hand: it was hot. ‘Every word disproves it,’ she said.

  His hand grasped hers back firmly, and gave it a shake.

  Sarah watched, fascinated, his great cable veins at work. He had a strangler’s hands. She admired them a little, even as she feared them, and then felt sorry either way. Their skin was puckered, blotched and discoloured, and in places the flesh gathered in tight folds. All of the force they had once contained was gradually shrinking away.

  Lambert’s first love was for cricket. Often throughout his life it had provided a refuge, in some sense, from reality. After a protracted illness – his health, in old age, shattered beyond recovery – there was no longer any escaping the inevitability of death: not even here.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘my darling…all things must pass…’

  He spoke of her mother, of course. She knew that.

  ‘Hush,’ she said, ‘do not speak of it.’ She would dearly love to hear him talk about her, but not at such a cost to himself.

  Lambert rewarded his daughter’s bravery with a bravery of his own. He insisted. ‘All things,’ he said, ‘must pass.’

  ‘If…if it is God’s will,’ she tremored.

  Lambert’s other hand closed around theirs both. ‘It is God’s plan,’ he said.

  No charcoal and no chalk; the innocent radiance earlier transforming her father’s face had been wiped out.

  She searched through the newspaper for something else to read out – almost anything would be suitable – but on hearing the rustling pages Lambert raised an imploring hand. He was too morose even to speak. Sarah glanced up, and saw that his eyes were closed. She understood.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she quavered. ‘I have business at the library.’

  Sarah waited for a counter-command that never came. Putting down the newspaper, she made ready to leave.

  ‘Are you sure there is nothing I can get you?’ she said.

  He nodded, faintly.

  She could not leave him. She must leave him.

  ‘Mary…’

  His eyes flicked immediately open: Lambert was many things, but he was no fool. ‘You have this month’s rent money for the good Dr Epps?’ he asked. ‘It is due Monday.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Well, then…’

  His eyelids closed again. He no more wanted the subject of their financial straits raised than she did. Sarah allowed herself a gasp of relief – but only once his bedroom door was shut, and she stood alone at the top of the landing.

  Charles Lawrence strode into the Richmond clubhouse in full gear.

  ‘We’re almost ready for the off!’ he called – only to face William South Norton, alone. ‘Is he here?’ said Lawrence bluntly.

  South Norton pointed to the opposite doorway. ‘The king,’ he said, ‘is in the counting house.’

  The look engendered on the team captain’s face was priceless. William South Norton realised his mistake.

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘You thought I meant old Cole-face, didn’t you? I’m afraid not.’ South Norton made the sound of gathering spit, and mimed the anointing of his thumb. This he applied to his trouser front, at the groin. ‘Him, we made a freeman of.’

  Overgrown public schoolboy! Lawrence pushed past him. He made his way to where Bill Hayman sat at a desk in the outer office. ‘We are ready,’ he announced.

  ‘Hi yo, Charley,’ said Hayman, not looking up. ‘Coping?’

  ‘We’ll be glad of the rest, tomorrow.’

  Hayman hummed. ‘Just going over the ledger for Graham,’ he said, marking up a column.

  Lawrence cleared his throat, ready to speak. ‘I’m not happy about – ’

  ‘You realise,’ Hayman interrupted, turning the foolscap file around, ‘we’re well on our way to making our first thousand?’

  ‘What?’ said Lawrence.

  ‘Receipts are already there,’ Bill Hayman said, ‘just about. But look at our surplus!’

  Lawrence looked. The Oval had brought them over 600 pounds, outlay accounting for around half of it. Maidstone had made just 35, again halved by their not inconsiderable expenses. Still, 300 pounds for a week’s work was not to be sniffed at.

  ‘And this week,’ said Hayman, ‘the odds have improved! Less than half off nearly 200 from Gravesend, even with the bedding fiasco. And we look to do as well here!’ He patted the lid of their moneybox with a broad smile. ‘Whisper it… over 500 pounds!’ gloated Hayman. ‘The future of our tour seems assured.’

  He laid a friendly hand on Lawrence’s shoulder.

  ‘Perhaps ours,’ he said, ‘is the only little corner of Empire wisely governed just now.’

  On her way to the library, Sarah stopped at the Post Office opposite to enquire after the receipt of any mail; but there was none.

  She recovered the manuscript from the previous evening’s place of concealment, tucked inside Our Friends in Hell, or Fellowship Among the Lost. A member of the library staff sprang to intercept her.

  ‘Oh!’ said Sarah. ‘You made me jump!’

  She felt hugely relieved to see that it was her co-conspirator in the affair, the junior assistant, Benjamin J. Jeffery.

  ‘Miss,’ he stammered, ‘Miss Larkin, I take it you have seen the notice of closure.’

  She had not. With a sweep of his arm, he indicated the nearest example; she could clearly see that copies had been liberally posted around and about the shelf units. He summarised the essential details, chancing once or twice to let his eyes alight on the offending article, clutched in her hands.

  Within earshot of the superintendent, they were obliged to communicate in a sort of code.

  Sarah’s heart fluttered in a slight panic. She had been vaguely aware that May’s scheduled closure had not occurred. Postponed by Museum authorities, it was rescheduled for the week beginning the 22nd of June, a fortnight hence.

  Playing Lionheart to his Blondel, she spoke softly.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. She laid one slender palm across the top of Bruce’s manuscript. Her voice shrank further, to barely above a whisper. ‘I hope to be done with it sooner. I just need a few more days.’

  This, evidently, was not the answer he had hoped for. Mr Jeffery’s eyes conveyed all that he wished to say, eloquently enough. His life was in her hands.

  He spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘Just so long,’ he said, ‘as you know.’

  A lady-like cough from somewhere behind her, and he walked on abruptly, without another word. Sarah lingered a moment before turning.

  A lady stood by the far ex
it doors, as helplessly as a cow at a gate. Instead of her raising her hand to the door, manners decreed that a gentleman must perform the operation, even had he a hundred-yard walk to do so.

  Sarah took up her station for the day.

  Brippoki clings to the undersides of eaves. He shelters in the darkest doorways, and deepest pools of shadow. Pale and ghostly shapes, endlessly parading, shimmer through the streets in sunshine.

  In the cold light of day, parts of the city are so different as to be unrecognisable. He better understands the city by starlight, or moonlight. At the height of noon, features familiar from his Dreaming, double-exposed, rapidly fade – leaving only discrepancies: strange, monumental eruptions, insistent crowds.

  Blinking, Brippoki stumbles, less sure in his movements for being unsure of his whereabouts. His Truth is mixed with falsehood, to the point where they are hard to tell apart.

  Over the course of the recent week Sarah had been working ahead on her transcript, only in increments, but far enough to sow seeds of doubt.

  The convenience of some of the names made them read almost like those in a novel. There was Luker, for instance, as in ‘filthy lucre’ – but also, perhaps, Lucifer.

  Fiction was never so strange as the truth, supposedly, but it crossed her mind that the entire story might be just a fabrication, a fabulous invention. From the heaven-sent flock of birds to crossing paths with a shepherd boy, Bruce presented pious imagery neat as a pin. Running in remote and silent woods, through the dark night, in the wintertime, he was Blake’s Bard, ‘That walk’d among the ancient trees’. Martyred, naked, on thorns – ‘Our legs and feet was tore’ – Sarah wondered at the power of his visions in the wilderness, the immaculate imagery they conjured: exceeding Popish raptures, all of the self-torturing punishments so beloved of Catholicism. Bruce was obviously a capable-enough storyteller, even something of a dramatist, to judge from recent notes. Yet, if his own identity were suddenly open to question, the Life, perhaps even the man himself, could be an elaborate fake; like Ossian, like Chatterton’s works of Thomas Rowley.

  For her own satisfaction Sarah felt she needed verification of some sort, one piece of hard evidence that could establish as fact the narrative lately overtaking their lives.

  An alarm sounded. It was almost six o’clock. The entire readership within the library grumbled and prepared to end their studies for another day.

  Sarah took up the blotter. Prior to closing up the notebook, she gently massaged her most recent lines. The text of the manuscript had become complicated, the most recent section having morphed into something of a playlet, fraught with unpunctuated dialogue that needed to be picked apart and carefully attributed.

  Sarah went gliding amongst the shelves, seeking another hidey-hold for her precious cargo. She found what she adjudged a suitable haven, nestled up against another, eminently obscure title, Public Performances of the Dead by George Jacob Holyoake.

  ~

  Saturday is payday for the workers of London. As evening advances, the streets throng ever deeper with itinerant market stalls and the eager shoppers who attend them. The barrows offer up ‘’ot taters’ and sheep’s trotters, fresh bread, milk and other sundries; every delight, in fact, on which it is possible to spend a week’s wages. Spirits are high. Many of the men are paid from tables arranged at the public houses, and wives will be lucky if they do not drink their earnings away.

  As natural light wanes, the gas taps and candles are lit. The streets flare up, self-generating gas-lamps giving off a fierce and intense white light. Vendors make sure to situate their stalls underneath them, the better to set off their wares. Strung out either side of long streets busy with amusement, the markets take on a fairground air.

  Brippoki stands snake-charmed by tendrils of smoke that rise and curl in the cooling air. They come from the red flame of an old-fashioned grease lamp, set smack in the middle of a pickled whelk stand. He looks across a spread of silver herring, glittering by candlelight. The saliva is so thick in his mouth that he has to turn away.

  Weaving, in a daze, he has once again wandered the whole day through.

  Coloured lights bounce and strobe, pink, and red, and yellow. Brippoki closes his eyes and jerks his head, side to side, until their after-images judder to a halt. Spectres promenade twilight’s unearthly beauty. They grin, their trails glowing green and blue, fading to purple as they pass. He thinks of the Great Serpent’s gullet, and the forlorn creatures there. These are different, more like the coral-dressed mer-people that walked the river’s depths, only closer now, and brighter still. They are fireflies, and dancing lightning bugs. Their laughter and squeals of drunken delight echo, as if from afar.

  This weak yellow sun is incapable of baking his brain; Brippoki reckons himself to have slipped sidelong, into the Dreaming – when he is only faint from hunger.

  Brippoki arrived a little earlier than usual, just as Sarah was finishing her supper. She had begun to leave a window open on the first floor, their tacit agreement being that this was all round the best way for him to perform his subtle entrances and exits – such an arrangement as one might have for a tame bird, or half-domesticated cat.

  He saw that she was still eating. Brippoki casually reached out of the window to retrieve something from an adjoining sill – something unspeakable.

  ‘I join you,’ he grinned.

  It was a piece of meat, charred and blackened, and, from the gamy smell, more than a few days old. Declining to sit on a chair, he squatted on the floor and began gnawing at the gross object, lips smacking in contentment.

  ‘Dat putjikata proper good tucker, my word!’

  Very much his word; Sarah hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant.

  ‘Where…’ she hated to ask ‘…did you get that?’

  Brippoki wiped the back of his hand across his greased lip and pointed up, towards the roof. His eyebrows danced a jig.

  The meat was definitely off. She remembered, two or three nights before, as he was leaving, the sound of a strangulated yowl…

  Putjikata.

  Sarah pushed aside the plateful of leftovers, unable to finish her meal. She promptly cleared away the supper table, ready for them to reconvene with the text of George, né Joseph, Bruce – if Bruce he was.

  He wandered the wilderness like a pilgrim. As the attributes of civilisation were stripped away, so he seemed to gain in spiritual awareness. The ‘wicked, wicked wretch’ was preparing to make his peace with God.

  Brippoki chewed on a piece of stick tobacco, having stirred it first amongst the fine white ash in the fireplace. He refused his usual chair, preferring instead to stay on the floor. That made it seem all the more like story time in the nursery – only what a curious fable, and curiouser child.

  Sarah stared at the pages ahead. She barely knew how to begin.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Saturday the 6th of June, 1868

  DOUBLE LIVES

  ‘Then ev’n my buried Ashes such a snare

  Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air, As not a

  True-believer passing by

  But shall be overtaken unaware.’

  ~ Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

  Sarah took a deep breath.

  In a short time after, I met a boy who was minding sheep. The child was much terrified, but I soon consoled him. He then gave me every information that I wanted, and directed me a nigh way for crossing the river that led through the village, which was my intent.

  I went on in a most cheerful manner, and in a few hours came to the riverside, where I met a man who asked me my business. I told him I was going to banish myself from all society of mankind, and trust to the mercy of God in the wilderness.

  He then insisted I should go into his house which stood close by. I consented, and as I walked by the side of him, I perceived that his heart was full of grief, pitying me, for the tears from his eyes rolled down his cheeks rapidly. This moved me. I replied:

  – Friend, you are but a stranger to m
e. Therefore think not of my troubles. You see I don’t fret for myself.

  A good reason why, my heart was so full of grief, it would hold no more, and my soul was so light with faith in God that I dared every insect on the Earth to touch a hair of my head.

  I entered his house. No brother could ever have treated me better, and he insisted that he would so do everything that lay in his power to save my life. I remained with him three weeks, during which time I related to him all my pedigree. And he, in return, every Saturday would bring me news what report was flying through the country about me.

  The first Saturday when he came home from the green hills, he told me that there was a proclamation, for all persons that had absconded from the law to surrender themselves up, or in three days they would be outlawed. And he also told me that he had met with Hobbes, who informed him that Farr had written a private letter to a Colonel Fairfax concerning it, and by the answer of the said letter he was sure that if I would go to Colonel Fairfax with him I should not die. And, if I consented, that night I was to go with him to Hobbes’ house. I immediately despatched him with the answer, to tell Farr that if he chose to trust his life to a rotten staff, I would not.

  The next Saturday he again went to the green hills to draw his ration from His Majesty’s stores, and at his return he gave me a full account of the death of all my companions. For they had given themselves up to the law and were hanged.

  The third Saturday, he told me that there was a most desperate outcry about me. But he had good news to tell me. That was, he met a man that day who knowed me in England, and that he also would do all that lay in his power to save my life. I asked him the man’s name. He told me Thomas Dargane.

  I then thanked him for all his faithful kindness to me, for that night I should leave him and go to Dargane, for I well recollected him. And that night I with my friend went to the house of Dargane. Here I took leave of Charles Bell, who was my friend. I then remained with Dargane for some considerable time, during which time there was diverse of robberies, all of which I was accused. Nay at last there was a murder committed on the road that was also linked to me, although it was 40 miles from the River Oxbury that the murder was committed.