Appalled by the woman’s candour, aware that no word of demurral would answer, Louisa looked down on her unspeaking. Emilia wished only to be heard. She sought neither argument nor consolation. She was a woman alone, making as best she might a terrible virtue of her solitude. A time might come when she would regret these words, when she would hate Louisa for having heard them. But they must be heard. And in silence that passed no judgement, that neither condoned nor denied.
Louisa’s hands were very cold.
“You are wondering why I tell you this. It is because if I tell no one it will drive me mad, and I have no wish to be mad. That is why I must leave this place. There is nothing for me here, don’t you see? It is a wilderness. There are no people.” Emilia was breathing quickly now, almost panting. “I cannot even grieve over this child, for it would have kept me here. I didn’t want it… not here. It would have been my jailer.” She looked up at Louisa in appeal. “I have to get away from here, you see. It must be done. Not yet. Not quite yet. But soon.”
“Your husband,” Louisa said, “does he know of these feelings?”
Emilia narrowed her eyes. “He knows but he will not hear. He will not speak of it. He dare not. But it will happen… not quite yet but at the point where he will no longer hinder me with the pretence that he would have me stay. He must want me to go.”
Louisa was held by those urgent eyes, drawn more deeply than she would have wished into the darkness behind. “Can you be so sure that that will happen?”
“I shall make it happen.”
“And your husband. What shall become…”
Emilia silenced her with a raised finger. “That also is why I am telling you this. Edwin is a weak man. You will discover that for yourself, if you have not already done so. He will suffer, of course… as I have suffered… but he will not leave. Not at first. He will not feel able to leave, and so for a time he will strive to manage alone. He may even make a good appearance of doing so. And he will have the sympathy of the entire parish, of course. But eventually he will need help. He will need care. He will need to be told what he must do.” Emilia stared at Louisa. “You will think me a terrible woman. Perhaps I am. But I am not without feeling. And I meant what I said about you at the start of this. You may still be a child but you are the only person in this dreadful place who understands the meaning of care. You must promise that you will show it to him as you have done to me.”
Louisa was transfixed by the woman’s gaze. She felt as though a web had been thrown over her, the same web in which – however little he knew it – Edwin Frere was deeply entangled. As though to tighten it, a hand came to rest on hers. Cold as it was, Louisa could feel its power. She felt that all compassion must have passed from Emilia with the emptying of her womb except for this last residue that smouldered in the promise she exacted now. For a moment they were both looking at the gold band on Emilia’s wedding finger. Louisa was breathing very quickly. Something must be done to free her from this grip.
“Mrs Frere…” she began, “Emilia, I think it of the utmost importance that…”
“Promise me.”
“I cannot believe that…”
“It is true. Promise me. I implore you.” The grip tightened. “Promise me, or I shall have no peace.”
As she looked down into that face on which all tears had long since dried, Louisa had the deranging sensation that she was in the presence of a dying woman.
“Should it come to pass…”
“It will. There is no other way. It will come to pass.” And Louisa saw the finality of the woman’s will. It was quite absolute.
“Then I must promise.”
But the hand was still held.
“Edwin must know nothing of this. This confidence is sacred. You have accepted it.”
Confused, almost in tears, Louisa nodded.
Emilia sighed and released her grip. Her head relaxed back on the pillow. “Leave me now,” she said. “I must say my prayers.”
In a trance of dismay Louisa saw that the woman was very far from death; she was no longer ill; not even, as she had earlier been, unhappy. She was gathering her strength for the season of ice that must settle over Munding Rectory.
9
The Firing
Back at The Pightle, outside the magic circle of the Decoy Lodge, I woke to the Monday sound of rain. A fine drizzle dripped from the thatch eaves and brought the scent of the box hedge through the open window. When I switched on the radio a sober voice intoned the day’s bad news. I lay there trying to square what I heard with the new enthusiasm derived from Edward and Laura, for I’d left the Lodge around two in the morning, ready to set off with them the next day in search of the horizon.
The whisky had helped, of course, and something anarchic in me responded to Laura’s brightened mood. Edward had become sparkier and we laughed a lot. I remembered peeing with him under the stars, asking questions about the danger of translating a private spiritual vision into social action. After all, fanatic ayatollahs and born-again Christians eager for the Rapture set no encouraging example. He talked about those who had been fired by the spirit but had lost touch with the soul; about unassimilated shadows which foisted evil onto enemies rather than bringing responsibility back home; he talked of tightropes and sword-bridges and the narrow course between the clashing rocks. Then, fastening his zip, he said, “One must trust to that star in man which is the visionary imagination. It wants to live, to thrive. And the star” – he tipped his head in the general direction of the galaxies – “is the perfect symbol for the hope it brings because, like a star, it is glimpsed most clearly from the corner of the eye.”
Heady stuff, and to reject it outright with a condescending intellectual leer would have felt like a return trip down the chute into futility, but now, with the radio offering a bleaker view of things, I was less certain why I’d agreed so eagerly to meet him in the library of the Hall this morning.
Bob came by, his umbrella dripping at the door. Apparently he’d called the previous evening and been surprised I wasn’t there. He was just checking that I hadn’t left for good, was glad that I hadn’t, and was that real coffee he could smell?
I liked Bob. He was predictable but that contrasted happily with Edward’s slippery shifts of mood, and there was nothing abstract about either his neighbourliness or his politics. Both were a generous extension of human decency. For him, humanism and socialism were the logical development of that common sense which was his strength and, perhaps, his limitation. Now he was a retired countryman with time on his hands, looking for company. It felt churlish to tell him that I was in a hurry, that the coffee would have to be quick. In Munding nobody was in a hurry.
“I see,” he said when he learnt that I was meeting Edward. “That where you were last night?”
I nodded, placing a steaming mug before him. He sipped it hot, hummed his appreciation. “So have you found out what it is yet?”
I looked across at him, unconnected.
“His obsession.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“He is working on something. In fact, that’s why I’m meeting him. He thinks I might be able to lend a hand.”
“I see. The man he wouldn’t have a use for is now lending a hand.”
I’d forgotten that I’d said that, and was, in any case, already regretting the admission. I was also beginning to see why Edward had been loth to speak openly about his work. Incredulity in one’s listener is a great silencer, particularly when it verges on ridicule, and Bob was likely to prove a milder critic than I had been.
“May one ask what with?”
I had been thinking quickly. “Some historical research he’s doing.”
“I thought he didn’t believe in history.”
“It’s about the Agnew family. Some of Ralph’s ancestors.”
“Did they do something interesting then? Struck me as a dull lot by and large. On the wrong side in
the Civil War, profiteering from the Napoleonic Wars, dutifully sending two sons to get butchered in Flanders. Mindless gentry – with a single decent exception. One of them made a stand for repeal of the Corn Laws, which must have taken some guts in this neck of the woods.” Then Bob smiled as if in dawning realization. “Course, I suppose our friend might be interested in old Madcap Agnew. Kindred spirit there perhaps. Notorious boozer and womanizer.”
“I don’t think so.”
But Bob had warmed to the idea. “Your typical Regency rakehell, that one. Declared incompetent in the end and locked away. GPI.” Bob tapped his nose and added, “Syphilis to you. But hardly worth a book, I’d have thought.”
“That’s not what he’s doing.”
“Then what?”
How to answer? How to account for the improbable mating of a dream and – yes, Bob was probably right – an obsession. If I were to try to explain the little I understood about alchemy, it would run through my fingers like water. I would do no better with my dream. Though he had been a psychiatric nurse, Bob attached more value to medication and group therapy than to dream interpretation. He would have steered well clear of the wilder shores of analytic enquiry. He had been a sort of excellent Ambulance Brigade man in a world of psychological casualties, and was in no doubt that the cause of mental stress was largely social: people went mad in a mad world. So far, and no further, would he and Edward have agreed.
I said, “I’ll tell you when I understand it better myself.”
“Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. Which ancestor is it then?”
“Henry Agnew – mid-nineteenth century – and…”
“The Corn Laws man.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“What else is interesting about him?”
“He was… a poet.”
“Ah, I see. I didn’t know that. Was he any good?”
“I’m not sure.”
Again the dubious regard – it seemed I wasn’t sure of very much. “Nesbit needs help making up his mind?”
“There’s a lot of stuff to read. It’s still in manuscript.”
Lamer and lamer, but Bob was discreet enough not to press. Or perhaps he’d simply lost interest in the diversions of aesthetes. “I should have thought your time would be better spent studying the common people. The leisured classes have had more attention than they deserve. What about the poor beggars who were worked to death to feed them? Have you any idea what it was like round here in those days? Women and kids out in the fields till all hours, gleaning, stone-picking, hauling the wagons when they got bogged down. Life in this place” – a tilt of the head took in The Pightle – “must have been squalid. Short commons, endless insecurity, real fear of losing the roof over their heads, and all the best men cropped – packed off to Botany Bay for poaching. This was a real village once – none of your weekend cottages and retirement homes like mine. And England wasn’t very merry, I can tell you – not in the hungry Forties.” He sighed, shook his head gloomily. “The way things are going, we’ll be back there soon. Victorian values! Power and money with a bit of sanctimonious charity thrown in to square their consciences – that’s what your Victorian gentry cared about. Like this bloody government.”
Listening, I felt still more unsure of the meaning and relevance of Edward’s enterprise. Bob knocked back his coffee, and I was about to stand when he said, “Listen, Alex, I don’t know if I should say this to a poet, but there are some things a damn sight more urgent than the doggerel of a dead country squire. Have you heard the news lately?”
He took in my grimace and sniffed. “Makes you sick. I mean, how the devil did we let things get this way?” He looked up, not expecting an answer, but to fix me with his stare. “It’s our fault – my generation. Two bloody wars and we’re still content to snooze and let that lot get on with it. Gave our power away, you see, and there are always people ready to grab it. Time we woke up again. Are you in CND, Alex?”
“I’m not a joiner, Bob.”
“You should think about it. Bet you didn’t know, for instance, that there’s a nuclear siren right here in the village? In Munding, for God’s sake! Horrible little black box it is, bang over Mrs Jex’s head at the Post Office. A sort of gauge with a dial that shifts from red alert to black alert… to warn of fallout. Mrs Jex says it gives her nightmares. I mean, what’s she supposed to do if it goes off – waddle round the village telling us all to duck? It’s bloody madness. That’ll soon put a stop to Nesbit’s historical research… put a stop to history altogether.”
“He’s not blind to the facts, Bob.”
“But what’s he doing about them – card tricks?”
Casting about, I found only platitude. “It takes all sorts…”
Bob harrumphed but saw the quick glance at my watch. Sighing, he got up. He had tried. At the door he turned. “How’s the girl?”
“Laura? She’s fine.”
A searching moment indicated that it was my motives rather than her welfare that were under question.
The conversation had been unsettling in other ways. As I walked through the drizzle, I imagined showing up at Bob’s CND group and saying, “Don’t worry. It’s okay. If Edward and I can sort out the secret of the Hermetic Mystery your problems are over. It’s all a matter of Pelicans, you see…”
Only Bob, with his experience as a psychiatric nurse, would take me seriously.
No, what drew me to the Hall was personal. Profoundly personal. The aftermath, perhaps, of the panic-stricken self-absorption that had seized my life after Jess’s defection. The sense that something new was needed if I was to learn to breathe on empty air. Booze had not worked. Sex had not worked. Both had ended in the humiliation of that brawl at a dance and me taking a swing at a hapless policeman. It was that sense which had brought me to Munding, which had set me hunting the Green Man in the woods. It had been intensified by the mysterious directive of my dream, and by the provocative conversations with Edward. What I was doing now was no crazier – and no less crazy – than they, but I was not about to pretend that the future of the planet depended on my explorations. Only me – my future: Alex Darken taking another step in the daft jig of his life, pushed from the rear by his own dark dreams. No rationalist after all: a terminal romantic.
Ralph Agnew was standing in the porch of his estate office, talking to his gamekeeper, George Bales, a tall, booted man wearing a green nylon anorak ripped at the sleeve. I’d seen him in the Feathers, surly in his own corner of the Snug, not liked by, not liking, the other villagers. Had I known I was trespassing on his domain, I would never have entered the woods so lightly. He nodded as Ralph greeted me, touched the neb of his flat cap, and walked away.
“You’re looking for Edward, right?” Ralph said. “Expected you sooner. He’s up in the library already.”
“Bob Crossley called in – held me up.”
“No hurry, old chap. Those papers have been there for more than a century. Drop more dust won’t hurt. Glad you and Edward have hit it off. Had a feeling you might. Bit of a shaky start though?”
“He’s an unusual man.”
“A rum’n – that’s what they call him round here. Solid gold, though. Solid gold.”
“Aurum non vulgi.” I smiled.
Ralph narrowed his eyes at me, further dislocating the lopsided twist to his face. “Latin scholar, I hear.”
“Hardly that.”
“Not what Edward tells me. Anyway, you should be some help to him and he needs it. Frankly, what he’s up to… Well, it’s all Greek to me, but so long as it keeps him happy.” He glanced away, almost as though in embarrassment. I had the feeling of a patron drawn deeper than he would have liked into the unpredictable consequences of his generosity – a lonely figure, heir to the Agnew fortune and tradition, yet unmarried, childless, last of his line. Edward could not be typical of his friends, but I remembered that Clive had called him a friend to verse, and that he had read my work. There must be more to this country squire
than was disclosed by his clipped mannerisms and his habit of smiling each time he spoke, as though to ease his way through a dubious world. He looked at his watch. “Well, I have an appointment in Saxburgh, and Edward will be wondering where you are.” He leant towards me, confidential. “Take care of him, won’t you? He’s not nearly as tough as he makes out. Been through some bad times, you see.” The smile had gone. The corner of his lips twitched a little with a solemnity which suggested only a matter of some gravity would persuade him to venture this close to the personal. Then, before I could respond, he resumed the seigneurial stance. “You know your way up?”
I did, and to my disappointment, I found Edward alone in the library.
The Chymical Wedding Page 24