by H. S. Cross
—Penitential suffering is precisely what you mean when you talk of being sorted out, by your father, by me. It’s a different kind of punishment altogether than the crude sanctions necessary to maintain civil society. It’s nothing to do with discouragement and everything to do with atonement.
—I thought that’s what he was supposed to have done, Morgan scoffed.
—Exactly.
—So what is your point?
The Bishop placed his hands, palms up, on the table:
—Follow me.
* * *
After a gooseberry fool, Mrs. Hallows cleared, and the Bishop announced his intention to retire, then, at half past seven in the evening.
—You may have a turn around the garden until eight, the Bishop told him, and afterwards, you may spend the evening in your bedroom as you’re so keen to be punished.
—But …
—Tomorrow we’ll make a start on your reading, but for tonight, you may borrow a book from the library if you wish.
Morgan felt unexpectedly ashamed in the face of the Bishop’s instructions. He had indeed brusquely demanded the Bishop get on with punishing him, but he didn’t expect to be sent to bed hours before dark, like a little boy, and yet benevolently be permitted to read, denied even the edge of outrage.
The Bishop came to stand beside him. As he’d done in the night, he placed his hand on Morgan’s head and repeated the words he’d said then. When he removed his hand, his voice was soft:
—You know where to find me. Don’t hesitate.
* * *
He stalked around the garden in a fury but came indoors at eight o’clock even though no one made him. Taking the book he’d used for the wretched lines, he went up to his dormitory, or his cell as he decided to call it. He removed shoes, jacket, collar, and tie and hurled himself across the bed. It sagged. The evening sunshine streamed in the window. He opened the book and perused its contents.
Had we but world enough, and time … He closed the cover. He knew that poem and would never forget it, but seeing it with his eyes might prove ruinous; it might transport him backwards in time, northwards in space, into a person he never wanted to inhabit again. Still, it pressed on him, the nearly irresistible urge to look, as if its lines could deliver the sensations he longed for but abhorred. Reading the verse would not materially conjure Bradley or the secret realm they occupied while obeying the poet’s command, yet he could feel with every nerve their closeness and pull … Your quaint honor turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust … His chest ached to breaking. His cock filled and stiffened. He threw the book across the room.
Droit would appear momentarily. He would lounge on the edge of the bed and use phrases from the verse to make scathing remarks about the Bishop. He would work Morgan into a frenzy of embarrassment. A frenzy of longing. A frenzy of grief.
He got up to leave the room but remembered the Bishop had told him to stay there. He’d said it was a punishment (hadn’t he?). Morgan was in his hands, and the man had decreed that he spend the evening in his cell.
The object above his bed reached into his cavities as it had earlier, stroking the ache, transforming the craving he felt for Silk into the odd, stiff hunger he had felt earlier for the perfect discipline the room had seemed to offer.
How did the other poem go, again? Like a usurp’d town … He’d copied the cursed thing out six times, thrice with each hand, but still he couldn’t remember. His memory was indeed hopeless. Perhaps he was aging before his time and would shortly fall into the blissful oblivion of the ancient.
He fetched the book from the floor and turned to the page of Donne that had nearly done him in two days before: take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free. The couplet in sonnets always kicked you in the guts. This one kicked through to the other side. Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
51
The days acquired a routine that began to settle him. Mornings with the boys, afternoons taking exercise and doing whatever tasks the Bishop had set him: reading, letter writing, composition. Sometimes the Bishop joined him for part of the afternoon, enlisting his help in the garden. In the evenings they had tea together, which might develop into an interview or be cut short by an early retirement.
Morgan took to discussing the boys with the Bishop, who referred to them as Morgan’s project. The school, it emerged, was a charity for the sons of seamen killed in the War. Most of their fathers had sailed from Southampton and died in the Mediterranean, the Bishop told him, their ships sunk by U-boats. The vicar of the village church and the vicar of a seamen’s church in Southampton had had a personal connection. The war had left so many widows that it was impossible to help them all, but through the efforts of these two vicars, the village had organized a subscription to give an improved primary education to these widows’ sons. Some families had, in the intervening years, moved closer to the village as employment permitted, but boys whose mothers still lived in Southampton were boarded out with local families during the school term.
Morgan asked about the boy they called Twist and why such a distinction ought to be made about him since they had all lost their fathers. The Bishop did not know the boy, but if, as the others claimed, he came from the orphans’ hospital and yet had a mother living, it could only mean she had surrendered him. He would certainly be accommodated during term in a local home. Why, Morgan asked, would he have come to the school and not stuck with whatever provisions the orphans’ hospital offered? The Bishop could only conclude that someone had taken a liking to him and raised a subscription for his maintenance. That or he was clever at something.
Morgan wrestled with the project, both technically and tactically. The boys liked his instruction, though they went in for enthusiasm more than discipline. But Morgan found the subterranean battles with Kemp and his lieutenants draining. Each night he relayed Kemp’s maneuver of the day and his own response. The Bishop listened, chiming in with a murmur that echoed an important point in Morgan’s monologue, or an unnoticed sympathy Morgan might choose to adopt, or a satisfaction with the outcome of a particular matter. When Morgan solicited his advice, the Bishop only occasionally gave it. More often, he opined that Morgan knew what he was about. Morgan did not think he knew what he was about, and the Bishop’s confidence struck him as supremely misplaced. Whatever he managed to get right with the boys, he considered luck or else the natural outcome of their efforts.
He had wanted to do something about their deplorable equipment, in particular the pads, which he deemed not fit for purpose, but acquiring new kit proved an ambition beyond the reach of man. In the end, he enlisted Mrs. Fairclough and her needle to fashion improvements to what they had. Furthermore, he judged it terrifically slack, not to mention fatal for morale, that not one of the boys had in his wardrobe a complete set of flannels, shoes, and shirt fit for cricket. He hadn’t hoped for caps, but to play in mufti struck Morgan as obscene. Mrs. Fairclough again came to the rescue. She could not produce cricket uniforms for twenty-seven boys, she said, but she could manufacture eleven caps for them to share as they came in and out of play.
When Parish Day arrived, Morgan’s boys took the pitch with a pride that exceeded their yellow-and-purple caps. They did not beat Croffs, but they scored respectably and did not allow the other side to wipe the floor with them. Morgan was particularly proud to see Twist hit a boundary, one of only three in the match. A lump formed in his throat as Twist took his six runs and received the uninhibited love of his fellows. When it was over, the vicar tormented Morgan with embarrassing compliments he didn’t deserve. It was all Morgan could do to stop himself interrupting the man to read him a lecture on the moral urgency of decent kit.
The boys clung to his person more ardently each day, and in the festive atmosphere after the match, Morgan learned that their term finished at the end of the week. They would be leaving the village and returning to Southampton, or Soton, as they called it. All of them professed despair at the thought of losing Morgan.
—But you’ll come back next term, won’t you? they asked. You can teach us football.
It was clear they referred to association football, a game dismissed at the Academy as vulgar, but regardless of Morgan’s views on soccer, he would not be there in September to teach it to them. They were so distraught when he confessed this that he was forced to backpedal, telling them that he was expected elsewhere, but that if fate was kind, they might see him again before they were very much older. They invited him to their prize-giving fete on the last day of term. The Bishop instructed him to go.
The Dame outdid herself producing a great number of prizes, most of them certificates she had lettered to honor things like Best Orthography, Most Improved Deportment, Most Selfless Citizen, Best Attendance (a three-way tie), as well as many named prizes, each of which carried a sixpence reward, something the boys considered a fortune. Morgan felt a surge of pride when Twist received the Joseph Raulph Ravencliff Butler Prize for Elocution.
—Who’s he? Morgan whispered to Mrs. Fairclough.
—The butcher.
Twist had been, according to the blackboard, on the program already, and after receiving the prize, he came to the front to recite his poem, which was by a lady poet and even in its brevity exerted a torque on Morgan’s mind. He couldn’t remember the words exactly afterwards, but he clung to a phrase: the truth’s superb surprise. He had received many surprises from the truth in his life, but none he would class superb. Did the poet intend it sarcastically?
After the program, many of the boys approached Morgan to introduce their mothers. Kemp did not, although Morgan saw him with a woman who seemed timid, the type to smile with half a cringe at everything in case it bit her. Twist did not have anybody with him. Morgan went and congratulated him on his reading and his prize.
—You won’t be back next term, will you? Twist asked.
Morgan considered repeating his equivocation, but Twist’s expression stopped him.
—I’m afraid not.
Twist nodded solemnly and offered his hand:
—Goodbye.
—Goodbye, Twist.
The boy withdrew his hand and turned away, but then, spinning back as if he’d forgotten something, he threw his arms around Morgan’s waist.
—Don’t go!
Morgan couldn’t speak. His hands hung useless in the air.
—It’s the best thing I’ve ever had, Twist cried. Please!
He was sobbing into Morgan’s jacket. Morgan looked around for help. His hands fell on the boy’s head, which only summoned fiercer tears. Finally, he managed to unwrap himself and, kneeling down, took out a handkerchief to wipe the boy’s face. He searched for something to say that would impart courage, but everything sounded hollow before he said it.
—Remember what I taught you.
Twist started to sniffle again. Morgan’s skin crawled from the inside. He stood up, clapped Twist on the back, and fled.
52
—I’ve spoken with your father, the Bishop told him over tea.
Morgan was finding it difficult to eat, and this announcement made him sharply queasy. The Bishop explained that arrangements had been made for Morgan to go up to London the next morning. His father would expect him in the afternoon.
—But … I’m not sorted out yet.
The Bishop’s mouth twitched in a way that had become familiar. Their chats had continued regularly but had not repeated the freakish agony of those first days. Morgan had even ceased to think of them as moral interviews. Life with the Bishop had come to seem ordinary, as if Morgan were a young relation spending summer weeks at the Rectory whilst getting on with his project at the village school.
They had spoken several times of Silk, of Spaulding and Alex, Nathan and Laurie, of Grieves, of Morgan’s father, and, when he could stand it, his mother. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the fortnight had been Droit’s absence. At first Morgan had expected him, but now, listening to the Bishop tell him he was to return to London, Morgan realized he hadn’t thought of Droit in some time.
—These things take time, the Bishop replied cryptically.
Would sorting him out take more time than the Bishop was at liberty to give? Or did he mean that Morgan’s case was too stubborn to resolve? Or that it had ceased to interest him? Alarm quickly gave way to shame at having taken advantage of the Bishop’s hospitality for so long. Who was he to grow comfortable there? The Bishop had already done him more favors than he could ever repay. How dare he feel … orphaned?
—I’ll organize my things.
—Mrs. Hallows will sort all that, the Bishop said.
They wanted to be rid of him that desperately.
Somehow he managed to carry on a light conversation, relating what details he could bear from the fete. As soon as possible, he pled exhaustion and fled to his room.
Outside the door, his throat clutched. If he went inside, he would lose his composure; what’s more, he sensed something sickening awaited him. He dashed into the room only long enough to retrieve a packet of cigarettes from the lining of his tuck box. Avoiding the Bishop, he escaped the house.
Down at the canal, he lit his first cigarette in more than a fortnight and inhaled to the bottom of his lungs. His veins opened. Blood flowed. He struck out down the towpath, raising his heart rate, stockpiling weapons against … whatever. By the time he returned to the Rectory, he was older, stronger, more capable.
Perched on the mooring, William smoked a cheroot. Morgan took his last cigarette from the pack.
—Got a light?
William, surprised in thought, felt for his matches. A smile squared his chin in a way that made Morgan feel someone had thrown a lance through his chest. He touched William’s hand as the flame touched his cigarette.
They smoked. Morgan deliberately failed to look away. He smoked down to the last sliver, so close it singed his lips. Cut grass clung to William’s trouser cuffs.
Morgan smiled. William flicked the end of his cheroot into the canal.
Morgan put his hands in his pockets. William put his hands in his pockets. They walked to the next footbridge. The grass there was overgrown, the Rectory far behind. William led him under the archway. Mind nettles was all he said.
His cock was astonishing.
Afterwards they had nothing to smoke. They lay under the footbridge and watched the light play on the water. Morgan’s head spun without the aid of drink. The air was warm, birdsong filled it, and the sun acted as though setting could not be rushed one cubit. Superb surprise, and a restoration of how things ought to be: languid, sated, so gorgeous one could weep.
* * *
The Bishop was sitting in the summerhouse when he returned.
—I thought you’d gone to bed, the man said.
—I took a walk.
The sun had dipped below the canal. The Bishop got unsteadily to his feet:
—I’ll make my goodbyes now. My son will collect you early.
—Dr. Sebastian? But I thought …
The Bishop looked as though he were making an effort to drag himself back from somewhere distant.
—I see I’ve left things out again. Term ended today, and as he’s going up to town tomorrow, he offered to accompany you.
—I can go myself.
—Nevertheless.
Gorgeousness had fled, and the sour bars closed again.
—Will you sit, the Bishop asked, and permit me to bless you?
Morgan wished to do no such thing, but he lowered himself into the chair the Bishop had abandoned. Then the Bishop’s hand was on his head, transmitting that horrible paternal rope, which had ensnared Morgan since his arrival. It was essential to pull himself together. Momentarily the man would release him. He had not to dwell on what was happening.
—Godspeed, Morgan.
—Thank you, sir.
A monstrously insufficient thing to say, but later when he’d recovered himself, he would write a letter thanking the man properly. Just now, such
things were beyond him.
The Bishop went to bed. Morgan went to the drawing room and poured himself a measure of whiskey.
Four fingers later, his composure returned. He didn’t fancy the bedroom, but he couldn’t sleep downstairs, not with Mrs. Hallows charged with waking him at who-knew-what hour. He filled the glass to the rim and took it along to fortify himself.
Droit fell into step beside him:
—Don’t panic. We’ll sort it out. Lucky the old scarab has decent whiskey.
—Yes, Morgan said, weaving slightly.
—Just leave it to me.
Morgan wasn’t sure what Droit wanted left to him, but it sounded reasonable to leave things to someone else. He threw back the rest of the whiskey, stripped, and dove under the covers, where a spinning oblivion took him.
53
The morning was so intolerably grim he almost felt grateful to the whiskey for distracting him. His head was like a bell at midday, and his eyes ached as though someone were squeezing them into too-small trousers. It was all he could do to shave, and even that did not proceed without incident. The arrival of Dr. Sebastian, chipper and well groomed, at six o’clock seemed incidental to the military operation required to haul Morgan’s body where he had to haul it.
Dr. Sebastian carried a small case and Morgan the string-wrapped box Mrs. Hallows had provided for the journey. They had a carriage to themselves, but by some miracle Dr. Sebastian did not insist on conversation, instead retreating behind his newspaper and leaving Morgan to close his eyes. He woke as they were pulling into Waterloo. His eyes screamed. His stomach lurched. There was no way he’d make it through the day.
Dr. Sebastian led him briskly from the station and into the cacophonous streets. Morgan felt a sliver of gratitude towards his hateful boater for blocking the sun from his eyes. After a harrowing march across bridge and park, they arrived at a facade in Pall Mall. It was a club. Dr. Sebastian’s club.
They repaired to the cloakroom, where they found flannels, soft white soap, cologne. After washing his face, combing his hair, and applying a zesty aftershave, Morgan began to feel less inhuman. Dr. Sebastian asked if he was hungry. Morgan was not.