The Skull and the Nightingale

by Michael Irwin

  Later in the day I took a walk across the estate, trying to calculate where the week’s visit had taken me. Had I advanced my cause? Surely each fresh appearance at Flint Hill House strengthened my credentials as a prospective heir. Local people and servants now knew me well. Moreover, I had done all that my godfather had hoped for, and he had confided in me as never before. The balance of dependency must have shifted in my favor.

  Yet Gilbert now appeared darker, more perplexing, more dangerous. He had not suggested how much further our experiment was to proceed or when it should end. Indeed he did not seem to look beyond the experiment at all. He had said nothing concerning my future prospects and offered no quid pro quo for my new exertions. He might consider, not unreasonably, that he was already rewarding me handsomely enough. If that was the case, however, would I ever be more than a paid employee, a performing rake?

  The inquiries concerning the Ogdens I found hateful. It was as though my conflicting feelings toward Sarah were to be reduced to the level of my encounter with Mrs. Hurlock—that affair serving as an anticipatory parody or burlesque.

  As I continued in this train of thought, my walk took me into the woodland that bordered the estate, and I lost myself among the trees. I had not foreseen, as I might have done, that I would come face-to-face with Mrs. Hurlock.

  Without a word (for I could think of nothing to say) I embraced her and sprawled her down on a patch of grass. The lady reciprocated my attentions with passionate ardor. In minutes our procreative organs were exposed to the afternoon sunshine and we were mating strenuously. When the act was completed—to the evident satisfaction of both parties—Mrs. Hurlock hastily disengaged herself, saying, to my relief, “I must go! I must go! I will be late!” She hurried toward her house, having bestowed on me a farewell kiss.

  As I rose, with knees somewhat tremulous, to adjust and brush down my breeches, I was conscious of two reactions. One was that I had rarely achieved copulation at so small an expense of words. The other was that I had restored some little dignity to both Mrs. Hurlock and myself by plowing her again without my godfather’s knowledge. This had been honest fucking.

  I had hitherto had no feelings toward the lady, but as I came away I experienced some fellow feeling: we had both taken refuge from personal plights in the brief distraction of the physical act. Perhaps the woodland setting had sustained Mrs. Hurlock’s pastoral fantasies. In any case I fancied she would find it quietly pleasing to talk to her husband with another man’s seed inside her. As for me I would dine with my godfather proudly sticky from this unplanned gesture of independence.

  Chapter 13

  My journey back to London was such as to recall Hurlock’s complaints on his return from Warwickshire. The coach bucked, swayed, and shook along roads baked hard as stone by weeks without rain. I and my fellow passengers sweated intolerably as we were rocked from side to side. We breathed a stifling air, pungent with the odors of damp leather and overheated horses and men. Too peevish and dispirited to talk, we bounced together for mile upon mile without a word save for a grunt or curse at a particularly harsh jolt.

  Throughout the two days of wretched travel I pondered on what had passed at Fork Hill, my mind drifting in and out of brief spells of troubled sleep. Should I feel guilt, I asked myself again, at my conquest of Mrs. Hurlock? It seemed that three people had been gratified in their different ways by what had passed, and nobody harmed. But there had been something repugnant about displaying Mrs. Hurlock’s animal responses to Gilbert’s lascivious oversight. This had not been my intention, of course, but I had assented to do the same thing at second hand. It had been an ugly business. Was there not a danger that my godfather would have a truly tainting effect upon me—that my moral sense, such as it was, would be weakened? Without often considering such matters, I liked to think of myself as being in general of an amiable disposition—certainly neither callous nor cruel. But had I not pawned my moral independence to my godfather? Was I not contracted to do his bidding as hedonist and intriguer? To make matters worse he was now intent on presiding over my attempted seduction of Mrs. Ogden. Sarah was not in the same category as a Mrs. Hurlock or even a Kitty Brindley. Here a deeper morality, a private morality, was at issue. Somehow I would have to draw a line or to dissemble. Neither her deeper feelings nor my own should be exposed to Mr. Gilbert’s cold inspection.

  For all the discomfort of the journey, I was unprepared for what I found on arrival. It appeared that, as in some monstrous chemical experiment, the torrid weather had coated London with foulness. Kennels and gutters were bone-dry and clogged with sewage. There were piles of rubbish everywhere, fetid in the heat and swarming with flies. The stench was scarcely to be endured. Moreover, this corrupt air was so warm and lifeless as to seem unsustaining: my lungs strained to take in enough to rouse my body and mind.

  It was some relief to get back to Cathcart Street, where Anna, Mrs. Deacon’s little servant girl, brought me copious supplies of warm water. Having sluiced away the sweat and dirt of the journey and donned fresh clothes, I was physically easier, but there remained an underlying discomfort that I could not shake off. London had become repulsive, and I felt that even here I was controlled from Fork Hill, a puppet dangling from a taut string a hundred miles long.

  The asphyxiating weather and my heavy mood were to persist for several more days. It was a strange time, by most accounts London’s longest spell without rain in thirty years. To witness the effects of this drought I made myself walk abroad, if at a languid pace. It was observable that all the activities of the city had slowed down in the heat like a clock in need of winding. People stayed within doors, and many shops were closed. Few would venture near the overpowering stench of Smithfield or Billingsgate. Horses were patched with white lather and dogs lay panting on the cobbles with protruded tongues. The leaves on the trees hung limp, and the parks were queerly discolored, the grass parched to the consistency of thin white hair. London and all its inhabitants, human and animal, seemed alike ugly, surly, and dyspeptic.

  In a similar condition myself, I had conceived but a single useful idea—that I would make this spell of extraordinary weather my excuse for doing nothing, and would postpone my next letter to Mr. Gilbert accordingly. My performance with Mrs. Hurlock had surely entitled me to a respite. The letter when it was written could reasonably consist almost wholly of an account of the inertia suffusing the city. By the time I wrote a second time, I would have devised a plan to protect my privacy. The delay might also, perhaps, serve to lower the temperature of my godfather’s expectations. If my pursuit of Sarah was to be resumed—an undertaking for which the enervating heat had dulled my enthusiasm—I would report it slowly, in economical installments, recording overtures, tactics, and responses.

  My lassitude deepening, I abandoned walking and stayed within doors. The nights were as airless as the days: in bed I would set aside the covers yet remain too hot to sleep for more than a couple of hours—usually toward dawn. I lay sprawled as helpless and wretched as the dogs I had seen in the street. Even the calm Mrs. Deacon showed traces of perspiration on her forehead. Lazily reviving a former fancy, I reflected that if I was to be constrained to couple with an older woman, I would greatly prefer my landlady to Mrs. Hurlock. In my state of lethargy, however, even that impulse was no more than a spark.

  One afternoon, in a show of exceptional exertion, I succeeded in making an expedition to the house of Mr. Crocker. To arrive in a condition of reasonable decorum I made use of a chair, but still felt half suffocated by the journey. The unfortunate wretches who had borne my weight had suffered so badly in the heat that I overpaid them in proportion to their panting.

  Conscious as I was of Crocker’s physical difficulties, I should have anticipated that the visit was unlikely to be a success. As I entered I could see at a glance that progress had been made in the furnishing and decoration of the house, but I was to have little chance to study these changes. In the drawing room C
rocker, sprawled awkwardly astride his wooden boar, looked the more shapeless and dejected for the contrast with his snarling charger. He wore no wig, and had been wiping the perspiration from his face with a large handkerchief, which he waved feebly by way of greeting.

  “I am glad to see you, Dick,” he said in a weary voice. “At least I believe so. I am too spent to know exactly what I think or feel—if, indeed, anything. All my energies are trickling away in sweat. But I am a gentleman still and will procure for you a cooling drink made from limes.”

  This was brought and proved refreshing. Crocker himself had a great pitcher of the same beverage at his side, but he waved away my appreciative remarks.

  “It is momentarily agreeable on the tongue,” he said, “but it flows through me as through a great colander of flesh and emerges again all over my person.”

  “It is miserably hot,” I observed, “but—”

  “Stop!” groaned Crocker. “There can be no ‘but,’ this weather is not to be borne. The intolerable heat could kill me.”

  I tried to commiserate, but to little effect. Crocker listened moodily and took a long draft directly from his pitcher.

  “If there is a God,” he said, “He is an unjust and spiteful God. He creates me three times the size of a normal man and then broils me for his sport.”

  For some minutes we carried on a conversation of sorts, but then he raised a hand.

  “It is ungracious of me, Dick, but I think I must retire. I find myself a trifle giddy.”

  I could see that his face had become very white. He made to climb off the boar, but staggered heavily as he did so: I got to my feet just in time to intervene and prevent him from falling. It took all my strength to support his damp, drooping weight. He let out a wordless shout for assistance, and I was relieved to see two sturdy footmen hurry in. With some difficulty they assisted him to stumble across to a large settee, on which he fell back, gasping. One of the footmen loosened his shirt and the other put a wet cloth to his forehead. Crocker sat panting for some moments, his head bowed, but at length looked up and managed a smile.

  “You see how it is with me, Dick. I was not designed to live in tropical climes.”

  I offered a few consolatory phrases and then took my leave, dispirited, sorry for Crocker and discontented with myself. My journey in the chair had been so disagreeable that I decided on walking as the lesser evil, and trudged away light-headed. Wyvern Street led me into Margaret Street, and as I passed the Ogdens’ house I reflected that in all probability I was now within a few yards of Sarah. The thought detained me but briefly and stirred not a flicker of lust. I was not myself: the heat had half stifled me, body and brain.

  That evening Matt Cullen was shown up and sank gasping into a chair.

  “God help me, Dick. I can’t recall another such summer. A man cannot breathe.”

  We sat looking at one another, emptied of energy, and grinning stupidly at our common impotence. I sent out for a quantity of cold beer, which roused us sufficiently to get us talking, if at but half our customary velocity. Matt said that he had no news to communicate, the town having been so lowered by the heat during the period of my absence that nothing whatsoever had happened. Accordingly it fell to me to provide a detailed account of all that had passed at Fork Hill. As I told the story it sounded strange even to my own ears. Matt listened with his customary intentness, from time to time giving an incredulous shake of the head.

  “You should be grateful to Mr. Gilbert,” he said. “It is an indulgent godfather who steers his young charge to the brink of an available notch.”

  “An overripe one,” I demurred.

  “That is ungraciously said. By your own account it was in eminently usable condition. The old fellow did you a favor.”

  “Only in order to do himself a favor. Good God, Matt, he wanted Dame Hurlock plundered and her husband cuckolded, and commandeered my member to do the deed.”

  “Which it did very willingly and to its own gratification,” cried Matt. “In any case your patron has been rewarding you handsomely for your labors. All was carried out according to contract.”

  “And so I have reluctantly admitted to myself,” I conceded. “It was in the bond. But what say you to the old devil’s interference in my dealings with Sarah Ogden?”

  “I deplore this whimpering from a wholehearted whoremonger.” Matt sat up to rally his thoughts. “Here you are, resolved to lie with Ogden’s wife—a reprehensible intention, but let us set that consideration aside. Your tolerant and kindly godfather, so far from objecting, urges you on, pays you, and offers you any assistance in his power. To resent that intervention is to be a strangely fastidious seducer. You are in the absurd position of pleading the exquisite purity of your impure motive. Consider, Mr. Fenwick, pray consider. When the dissolute Cullen turns preacher, the evil in question must be grave indeed.”

  I tried to laugh but could not. What he had said was near the mark: I was in no position to argue. But somewhere, I still felt sure, there lurked a principle that I would have hoped to retrieve.

  “The truth is,” I said half truthfully, “that at the moment I find myself too hot and too weary and too irritable to care very deeply about Gilbert or Sarah or life itself. I am in the soft toils of apathy.”

  “I think I may be in the same plight,” said Matt. “Let us return to these grave topics when the weather has changed.”

  For some minutes we sat in unaccustomed silence, drinking beer, each occupied with his own thoughts. When Matt spoke again it was with unexpected seriousness.

  “We have drifted into a queer plight, you and I. There is Fenwick, enjoying a life of pleasure, but unhappily aware that he is his godfather’s plaything. Here is Cullen, paying court to a weary old nobleman who scarcely knows him. What has become of these promising young gentlemen? Have they no dignity? This cannot be the way to live.”

  “I have had such a thought many times,” said I, “but I could do nothing with it. Have you anything to propose?”

  “We could—” said Matt, and hesitated. “We could, if we had the will, leave this tainted island and travel to Virginia or the West Indies to seek our fortune. If we scraped together every guinea we possess . . .”

  I replied in the same vein, taking him seriously:

  “That would be possible. There are clothes and possessions that we might sell . . .”

  “We are young and healthy,” said Matt. “We are educated.”

  “More than that,” I added with sudden enthusiasm. “We might prove to have abilities which as yet we have never had a chance to exercise.”

  “True,” said Matt. “It might be that one of us is a natural cattle breeder.”

  It was at this point that we began to laugh.

  “What could be more likely?” said I. “And one of us will surely show a talent for growing sugar or cotton—”

  “Or timber,” suggested Matt.

  “The timber is already grown. We would have only to chop down the trees, cut them into slices, and sell the planks.”

  “Given all the building in the New World we would soon be rich men.”

  In this way what had been, for a few moments, all but a serious suggestion subsided into fatuities. Cullen and I sniggered away over the last of our beer, offering suggestions increasingly facetious on such topics as gold mining, cattle, Indians, slave girls, bearskins, and buffalo. Yet the humor was forced and the laughter was flat. We could not so easily dismiss the qualms we had acknowledged.

  A day or two later, feeling that I had procrastinated as long as I reasonably could, I wrote to my godfather, recounting the discomforts of the city and using the lassitude induced by the heat as my excuse for having nothing of personal interest to report. The letter concluded:

  I saw curious evidence, the other day, of the decline in energy that this weather has occasioned. Some poor rogue, in the stocks for I know
not what offense, was being but perfunctorily pelted. There was enough in the way of filth and rotten eggs and trickling blood to make him wretched and disfigure his features, but in truth he got off lightly, his assailants showing little relish for the sport and wandering away after a throw or two.

  I confess that I have found myself debilitated, physically and mentally. In the hot, noxious air I have experienced the sensation, as never before, of being one of a multitude huddled together, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, fornicating, defecating . . . I feel myself to be an animal among half a million others in a teeming, stinking warren. Perhaps it is not surprising that the unnatural conditions of these past few weeks should have conduced to unnatural thoughts. I recall your reference to meteorology. In this continual heat the whole body feels dilated, distended. Even one’s hands are visibly a little swollen. Is it wholly fanciful, then, to conceive that there may be, correspondingly, some minute temporary deformation of the mind that makes us see things awry or think about them confusedly?

  The weather must surely change soon. Look to receive a livelier letter from your godson when at last the city is cooled by a fall of rain.

  I am, &c.

  When the change did come it proved to be dramatic. One could smell it, or taste it, in advance. The air grew hotter yet and had a metallic tang to it. There were brief eddies of hot wind, accompanied by indeterminate creaks and shudderings. I was walking along the Strand when I first perceived these signs. They produced an almost instant reaction among pedestrians, street sellers, and even horses and dogs, as though all were moved to apprehension by a common animal instinct. When the first large drops of warm rain fell, the thoroughfares were already all but deserted. In moments the sky darkened dramatically. There came a sudden flicker of dazzling light, followed by a prolonged and rattling peal of thunder. Scurrying along, I reached the front door of my lodging just as the rain began to pelt down in earnest.