by H. S. Cross
—I’m sorry, the Bishop said, smiling weakly. The spirit is willing, but the flesh …
—I’ve kept you up far too late, Morgan said, clearing the table. Your daughters will never forgive me.
—It’s none of their affair, the Bishop growled.
Morgan felt a flicker of pleasure at his vehemence. The Bishop tried unsteadily to stand, but Morgan was at his side, taking his arm. Slowly, they mounted the stairs, Morgan carrying a candle from the kitchen. The Bishop’s room lay down the corridor from Morgan’s. Morgan helped him inside and lit a lamp there for him. Someone had already drawn the drapes and turned down the bedclothes.
—Sir, do you…?
—I can manage to undress myself, thank you.
—Sorry, sir.
The Bishop softened:
—You’re the one due an apology. I’m afraid I haven’t done very well under this …
He clutched one of the bedposts.
—I’ll leave you, Morgan said.
46
He held the candle in one hand and the doorknob to St. Anne’s in the other. The corridor creaked. He startled at the sound of the hall clock chiming a half hour, but which? Darkness closed in, as if it would ooze its way across him and down his collar.
He was too old to be afraid of the night. He refused to give it satisfaction. He was going to open the door. That was what he was going to do. He was going to open the door, set the candle on the bedside table, strip off, get under the covers, close his eyes, and go instantly to sleep. His teeth could stay uncleaned. Could he wait until morning for the toilet? Perhaps not.
Downstairs, he used the cloakroom without allowing his gaze to fall upon the glass. Veronica always said you couldn’t see vampires in a looking glass, so you never knew, when you were surveying the room in one, say brushing your teeth, or, worse, covering your face in soap, whether a vampire was drifting up behind you, ready to sink its fangs—
He was in the cloakroom of a clerical household, on a summer’s night in the appallingly advanced year of 1926. If he couldn’t pull himself together here, he was a lost cause.
He decided that flushing the toilet would disturb the house (and summon demons from the basin, as Veronica always—enough!). He took the candle up the stairs, along the corridor, and over the threshold of St. Anne’s.
Someone had turned back the bedclothes. Droit lounged across them, shoes on feet, cigarette in hand, ashes piled upon the sheets.
Then he was back in the corridor, door closed. Candle wobbled, mind raced: Hiding place? Cloakroom, kitchen, conservatory—
—Come.
He gasped, his heart—but the Bishop stood beside him, taking the candle and leading him away from the door. He tried to protest, but his teeth chattered. Not the golden hook, but an attendant net?
The Bishop had leaned heavily on him earlier, but now the man pulled him with firm assurance. Inside the Bishop’s bedroom, the lamp still burned. A worn leather book lay open on the bed.
Words came from his still-chattering teeth: He didn’t want to disturb—he didn’t—St. Anne’s. (What had Fairclough told him to ask for instead?) Saint—he’d—shortly …
The Bishop showed him a divan:
—It’s lumpy, but you won’t be the first to have slept on it.
—Sir …
His protest died in the dark.
—Just tonight until we can arrange somewhere else for you.
The Bishop produced a flannel.
—Wash your hands and face. Your teeth will have to wait until morning.
He set the candle next to a basin filled with water. Morgan did as he was told. When he’d finished, the Bishop had placed pillow and blankets on the divan.
—Get undressed, the Bishop told him.
He stripped down to vest and pants and slipped beneath the scratchy blanket. The Bishop sat beside him, as his mother used to when she came to say good-night.
—I’ll hear your prayers, the Bishop said.
—I don’t …
The Bishop folded his hands and began to say the Our Father. He said every word as if he meant it, as if it never got old. Thy will be done seemed an indictment of every vanity and willfulness. When he reached the end, to the bit about evil, the room closed around them, dark darker, cold colder. Morgan’s eyes pricked.
—Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord.
Morgan waited for the darkness to obey. The Bishop moved his lips in some other silent words and concluded in the gestural manner Morgan had come to expect.
—Put your head on the pillow.
Then the Bishop’s hand was on his forehead, heavy and warm.
—Defend us from all dangers and mischiefs, and from the fear of them; that we may enjoy such refreshing sleep as may fit us for the duties of the coming day.
How could he endure another day like this? Wouldn’t it be better to die in his sleep?
—And grant us grace always to live in such a way that we may never be afraid to die; so that, living and dying, we may be thine, through the merits and satisfaction of thy Son Jesus Christ, in whose name we offer up these imperfect prayers.
His thumb scraped down Morgan’s forehead, then horizontally, as if placing a seal upon him. Morgan clenched his jaw.
—I’ll be here all night, the Bishop said. I’m a light sleeper. You’ve only to call.
He adjusted the blankets, snuffed out the candle, and turned the lamp down, though not entirely out. Morgan lay rigid beneath the rug, the divan indeed lumpy beneath him, but beneath both him and the divan, the Bishop’s floor stood still, supporting them as weakness drew in and drew him into sleep.
47
His mother was singing in the kitchen, a song in Irish he didn’t understand. She sliced bread fresh from the oven, the kind of bread only she made. He rushed in from the garden, threw his arms around her waist, and buried his face in her apron.
—You’ve come back!
He wanted nothing but to touch her and to climb into her lap, as he was doing. Nothing mattered anymore, not where she had been or why she had gone away or why she had come back, or even whether she was still angry with him. She was back and he would surrender everything to keep her.
What a transubstantial miracle for her to walk, breathe, bake, and feel warm beneath his arms, to smell like herself, to sound like herself, to be alive. It had seemed that the rift could never be mended, but now after so much time, it was.
Mr. Grieves sat on the other side of the table in his cold-water flat.
—They’re coming, he said. You’ll have to hurry.
But he was wearing only pajamas. How could he escape in bare feet?
—You’ll have to go as you are, Mr. Grieves said.
And that boy, Ripping Yarns, met him outside. They were coming down the road even now, he said, and even if Morgan went back for his clothes, all the windows would be locked, every door stopped with wax. They were outlaws, Rip said, but once they got away, they’d have no end of a jolly time.
And he was running back to the garden, stubbing his toe, pounding the door:
—Let me in, let me in! It’s a matter of rife and death!
Rip was at his neck like snow and Morgan was screaming until his throat hurt:
—Let me in! I’ve been a waif for twenty years!
Up stone stairs to the Hermes Balcony. Spaulding was waiting. He wasn’t dead after all.
—I never was, Spaulding said with a smile.
And he was touching Spaulding, his chest, his hands. He was warm, firm, alive. How the mistake had happened Morgan couldn’t guess, but none of that mattered because Spaulding was here now, and they had all the time in the world. They could finish what they’d begun. Spaulding would play rugby, and when summer came, he’d play cricket, and when it was Patron’s Day, he’d win the match instead of Morgan, which might be disappointing, but nothing compared to having Spaulding back. It was like being allowed to take an exam over; they tore up your first paper so you could swot properly
and get things right the second time.
Spaulding unbuttoned Morgan’s trousers:
—You know what sui generis means, don’t you?
Morgan did know, but he couldn’t think of it just then.
—It means pine box, Spaulding said.
* * *
Morgan lay rigid on a divan, heart racing, cold to the core. The blanket had fallen away. A light burned dimly.
Spaulding wasn’t alive. Not really. But he had seemed so vital. He had been warm.
What had he said about sui generis?
Morgan tried to reach for the blanket but froze. Sui generis didn’t mean pine box.
Something had been in his dream just now, in his very mind as he slept, and that something was not Spaulding.
Bugger off! Morgan thought in his loudest voice.
The cold sank deeper.
Bugger the hell off!
And the Bishop was at his side. He took the blanket from the floor and placed it over him. Lit the candle, sat down. Morgan shivered and kept shivering. The Bishop placed a hand on Morgan’s chest and began to recite the Our Father. With each word, heat flowed, through the blanket, rewarming his blood.
When he finished, Morgan was no longer shivering. He felt safe for the first time he could immediately recall. The Bishop tucked the blanket around him, and he felt a sudden and drowning desire to be the Bishop’s child, not a visitor, not a case, but his real child, like Dr. Sebastian and Elizabeth and Agnes and Lucy and even beautiful, bolshie Flora.
—Did your children sleep here when they had bad dreams?
The Bishop smiled faintly.
—Some of them did.
—Who else slept here?
—Oh, the Bishop said vaguely, I’ve slept there many a night when the bed wouldn’t do.
Morgan wasn’t sure what he meant, but he felt a curious lack of desire to ask questions. If he were indeed the Bishop’s child, adopted but real, then he wouldn’t need to question every single thing.
The Bishop gazed at him beside the flickering flame, as if he would watch until Morgan fell asleep again. But even if he did, Morgan realized sharply, nothing could defend him inside his dreams.
—Sir?
The word felt formal and twisted, not like the man beside him.
—What is it, Morgan?
—What does sui generis mean? I do know, but I can’t quite …
—Sui generis, of its own kind or species?
Morgan thought, but he couldn’t see what it had to do with Spaulding, or coffins.
—Where have you been hearing it? the Bishop asked with an infinite delicacy.
And so he tried to relate something of the dreams, but when he tried to describe the aftermath, the phenomenon of delayed terror and recognition, his explanation sounded like one of Veronica’s stories.
—It’s daft, he concluded. You get confused dreaming. I was probably afraid during the dream, not after.
—I don’t believe you’re confused at all. You’re seeing things more clearly than you have in some time. You didn’t believe that sui generis meant … what was it?
—Pine box.
Saying the words made him cold again.
—You’re supposed to be sorting me out, not letting me go off my dot.
—I can understand why you were shivering, the Bishop said, but there’s every sign of hope.
—Hope?
—You weren’t deceived. The attack failed.
A wave of relief, and an undertow—
—Attack?
The Bishop held his gaze.
—That’s an awfully dramatic metaphor for some bad dreams.
—It isn’t metaphor, the Bishop said.
Something poked his ribs. He sat up:
—And now you’re going to tell me a heap of theology, I suppose.
The Bishop said nothing.
—Well, Morgan said, whatever you say about all that teaching and healing and sacrificing, it didn’t help Spaulding. He’s still dead.
—He is.
—So what has he got to say to that, your spectacular Jesus?
The Bishop sighed, but not a sigh of impatience, more a sigh of pain:
—He suffered.
A ghost of a smile pregnant with compassion:
—And he is still suffering with us.
—Why do you have to make everything so abstract? Morgan snapped. And if you try to tell me she’s really alive, larking about like an angel somewhere, I’ll …
The Bishop caught his gaze, as if he’d left his trunk open and his tuck box unlocked.
—I mean …
—Your mother is dead, the Bishop said, as dead as the host in the valley of bones.
He wanted to argue until the Bishop forgot what he’d said. But the Bishop looked as if he’d finally seen the truth; he looked as if he thought Morgan knew what came next.
48
He fell asleep after all. He didn’t dream again. The Bishop sat beside him that night, and when Morgan woke, the Bishop was dressed, reading a book by the window. Morgan’s entire body hurt, as if he were a tyro set upon by the Fourth. His throat stung. His eyes ached.
—You’ll want a bath, the Bishop said.
He left the room and returned shortly to report that Mrs. Hallows was drawing one in the upper bathroom.
—Not the one in St. Anne’s. Don’t worry.
Relief at the news mixed with shame at his fear, which belonged to the night. In the light of morning with the sound of shears outside the window, he had no business on a divan in the Bishop’s bedroom. He wasn’t the Bishop’s child, and it had been wet to wish for it.
—I was thinking an outing today, the Bishop said. Could you manage that?
—I’m not an invalid, he croaked.
—I didn’t mean to suggest it. Very well, then, breakfast in half an hour. Chop-chop.
* * *
He bathed without incident. Breakfast passed in silence. They ate porridge, which Morgan found singularly satisfying. He had thought the Academy’s porridge had ruined the foodstuff for life, but he was mistaken. Perhaps if he could eat bowl upon bowl of it, with the summer honey Mrs. Hallows set out in a dish, it would soothe his throat and fortify the muscles in his eyes, which had so failed him lately.
They had not finished eating when the doorbell rang. Presently, Elizabeth breezed into the dining room, dispelling their silence and everything that had passed between them.
She chattered away to her father, bidding Morgan a simple Good morning. She did not like the pallor of her father’s cheeks, but she was relieved to hear that Mr. Rollins had promised to come by this morning. She hoped her father would mind his physician and, once the man had left, catch up on his resting.
Morgan’s chest sank in disappointment. He’d liked the sound of an outing. If the Bishop was going to rest, what would become of him all the long day?
—Come along, you, Elizabeth said, kissing her father on both cheeks. Yes, you.
Morgan looked up uncertainly.
—You can’t expect to monopolize my father. Besides—
Her tone softened:
—there’s something I need help with. And I was quite hoping you’d be able to do it.
49
Elizabeth—Mrs. Fairclough as he forced himself to think of her lest his tongue slip—drove a motorcar. He had never ridden in a motorcar with a woman behind the wheel. Mrs. Fairclough drove competently; at least she kept to the left, maintained a civilized speed, and applied the brakes without violence. The wind blew noisily in the windows, precluding conversation. They’d traveled a few miles when she brought the vehicle to a halt beside a green.
—Here we are.
Morgan decided he would adopt a policy of asking no questions. Demanding explanations merely advertised one’s ignorance and emphasized the authority people had over one. When someone wanted him to understand, someone could explain. Until then, he would drift.
Mrs. Fairclough led him across the green to a village sch
ool, whose mistress appeared to be Mrs. Fairclough’s bosom friend. The woman had charge of a crowd of little boys who spoke with country accents and wore no uniforms. They were in the midst of a spelling lesson, and the air crackled with pent-up boy energy. They seemed cheerful, but Morgan had the sense that fisticuffs could erupt at any moment, if only to relieve the tension.
Mrs. Fairclough was introducing him to the Dame:
—Wilberforce comes from the public school where my brother will be Headmaster next term.
The mention of her brother elicited excitement, as did the words public school. Then Mrs. Fairclough was speaking of cricket, and somehow she was giving them the impression that he, Morgan, knew everything there was to know of cricket, and not only knew it, but could and would impart it. Today.
The Dame was overjoyed by the suggestion, as were the boys. She rang the bell to signal their break, and Morgan had to accept the invitation to accompany them outdoors.
One of the older boys introduced himself as Kemp. Kemp proposed to show Morgan their equipment, which consisted of some battered stumps, two cricket bats, three balls, and two sets of pads lacking adequate straps. Some of the boys occupied themselves wrestling to the ground, but a group of five or six hovered near Morgan. He deduced that Kemp was their self-appointed leader. The boy possessed an intangible command, probably thanks to his nerve and his ease with words. Morgan realized that his own presence posed a challenge to Kemp’s rule, but having seized upon Morgan as his property, Kemp was attempting to neutralize the threat.
Kemp took charge of the match, sorting boys into sides and assigning the fielders positions and the batsmen an order. He hammered the stumps into the ground with a bat before Morgan could stop him, and then he took a ball and headed to the crease.
His bowling wasn’t disastrous. He had the line, and he had the length, but he had the same line and length every time. He’d assigned most of the smaller boys to the batting side, and they showed little flair. It didn’t help, Morgan thought, that Kemp berated them with a nearly ceaseless stream of advice. A few hit the ball, and the incompetence of the fielders allowed them twenty-six runs before Kemp bowled the side out.