Awakening

by Stevie Davies

  ‘Please think again, Beatrice,’ he says. ‘It can all be called off. Nothing is lost.’

  ‘I can’t, Gwilym, I can’t. And please don’t …’

  Round and round they wrangle. Someone passes by the door and pauses. Beatrice thinks of Papa. His spirit can rest now that she’s settled for the suitor he appointed. Chaos has reigned since his death but in a few days order will be restored. Somehow this propels her towards Will, as if someone had shoved her in the small of the back.

  Will’s goodbye kisses taste of his tears and remain on her face, an invisible coating. Salt and saliva. She cannot bring herself to wash them off but cries them away into her pillow.

  Four days before his wedding, the bridegroom, whose tour has resulted in scores of conversions, as if these were the days of the Wesleys and George Whitefield, hands Amy his elegant cloak and hat and says that, heretical as it may be to say so, he has no need to die to be in heaven. Then he collapses into a chair, exhausted, as well he might be. A writer in the Baptist Times, comparing Christian’s preaching style with that of his great mentor, Henry Ward Beecher, has described Pastor Ritter in action – sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms, discharging rockets of poetry, his cloak flying around like that of a Byronic hero.

  Later the household sleeps. The fire ebbs in the grate but the room remains baskingly warm. As Beatrice rests her side against Christian, it’s so quiet that she hears the boards creak as the house settles. Fatigued, she half-drowses.

  ‘Are you sure, now, dearest? Quite certain? Has the Father sanctified our path? It would be no dishonour to change your mind even at this last moment. The door is open.’ He folds his arms more strongly round her. ‘It is right to tell you that I have spoken to Mr Anwyl.’

  Beatrice struggles to rise. ‘Why? What have you said, Christian?’

  ‘Now don’t be alarmed, Liebling. I have always known that you have a special place in your heart for Mr Anwyl. And he for you. But Mr Anwyl himself explained that this was only a light-hearted friendship on both sides. His heart is given elsewhere.’

  Crucifying thought. Beatrice cannot master herself. Fast breathing; racing heart. It was none of Christian’s business to go checking up on her. No hope remains in the world, none, after her absurd tit-for-tat trifling with Will’s affections. A few small motions of her tongue would release Beatrice from this marriage to a man respected but not, or not yet, adored – feared rather, with a childhood shrinking. The man who places you on his knee: fear him. Beattie hates; Beattie loathes.

  ‘Mr Anwyl is bound in honour to my sister, Christian. And she to him. I hope and trust he’ll do the right thing. He is a fallible man.’

  ‘We are all that.’

  ‘Yes, but – please, Christian – Mr Anwyl is not – chosen by Providence for me. I’ve always sensed this and now I know it – so may we close the subject?’

  But can such a blemished creature really be a suitable husband for Anna? Beatrice has passed him on like the hand-me-downs of childhood, with their ingrained stains. Should one encourage Anna to bind herself for life to Will’s invincible shallowness? – Anna, whose physical and mental frailty makes childbirth a threat to her balance, perhaps to her life. Beatrice, summoning courage, has questioned Dr Quarles about this. But the physician rules emphatically otherwise. He has spoken to a Salisbury colleague specialising in those delicate complaints peculiar to females. The two physicians will call and – he promises – tactfully reassure the Pentecost sisters.

  *

  Accordingly, three days before the marriage, Drs Quarles and Palfrey appear.

  ‘Celibacy,’ remarks Dr Palfrey, no country physician but a gentleman of the world in a magenta silk waistcoat, ‘is, to be blunt, an unnatural condition. I speak as a medical man, Miss Pentecost and Miss Anna, a man of science.’ He takes a sip of coffee; replaces the cup on the saucer with finicking care and allows his broaching of this delicate theme to sink in. Everything about Dr Palfrey from fob watch to shoe-leather looks suave and costly. ‘I shall go so far as to say that celibacy is inherently damaging. Irrespective of gender. What’s bad for the gander is bad for the goose.’

  Anna observes Dr Palfrey’s ginger whiskers and considers what it might be like to have such a moustache, or any moustache at all. To sprout hair under your nose and prune and preen it before a mirror in the morning; to raise your hand in idle moments to twiddle its extremities.

  ‘And this is so, dear ladies, if one may put it thus, both biologically and theologically. Better, as the Apostle says, to marry than to burn.’

  I am not burning, thinks Anna. Except with wrath. You unctuous old goat. Go away.

  ‘Now the organs of Woman,’ Dr Palfrey continues, as if to the lowest form in the school, ‘are liable to distension by blood. Causing cramps, black moods, uncontrollable urges, so much so that the age of female puberty is known as the age of miniature insanity. Blockages are readily treated within marriage by the beneficent action of a husband’s attentions. Yet more curative will be the advent of what we might call a glorious little creature. But in the meantime, it would be as well, dear Miss Pentecost and Miss Anna, that you drink one or two glasses of good claret a day. Unless of course you practise Temperance?’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Beatrice. ‘Well, we are temperate, of course. In its true sense. But we have not espoused the Temperance Movement. We allow ourselves medicinal alcohol. From time to time. What I really wanted to know, Dr Palfrey, is whether bearing children would be dangerous, should one be in less than perfect health?’

  Anna wishes she could swallow the good claret now, this instant. You didn’t by any chance invite these quacks, Beatrice, did you, without telling me? She knows that look on her sister’s face: eyes wide and innocent, lips tensely pursed. Anna has slept little since the shock of Mr Thimbleby’s arrival. The prophecy of Patience Elias has been ringing in her ears: ‘Mr Thimbleby is coming for you.’ Why didn’t she run away with Miriam and Baines while she had the chance? That day, sick with terror, she backed into the corner and beckoned Joss to her, Joss who would never so betray Anna. Gentle Joss. And he’ll be here when the Ritters have left on their honeymoon. But would he fight off Ivor and Thimbleby if they came for her? She doesn’t think so. And he seems so preoccupied these days: it’s always Munby this and Munby that. And jaunts to London ‘on business’. Joss seems to exist in a bubble of private euphoria. In a crisis Joss would shake his head; he’d feebly remonstrate and passively surrender, in awe of Beatrice’s relentless willpower. He’d retreat to the kitchen and, taking the cat on his knee, would turn his plump palms to and from the range.

  Thimbleby and Ivor didn’t come for me, Anna reminds herself. They had other quarry. But how do I know that the second part of the prophecy isn’t true: ‘They’ll come for you after the wedding is all over?’ How can one be sure that Quarles with his shining moon-face, so greasily genial, isn’t preparing the ground even now, as he sits at their hearth, knees crossed, polishing with his palm the carved knob of his stick? When he smiles, his small china-blue eyes nearly disappear.

  What punitive enemas has Quarles in store; what cups to catch her blood? Seldom has Anna felt so alone.

  The fop Palfrey takes up the theme of the health benefits of matrimony for young ladies. One of his lady patients, he confides, was despaired of. Let us call her Jane. Prey to bouts of mania and so-called advanced views as a result of monthly irregularities, this lady would roll around on the hearthrug screaming. At times Jane was happy and gentle, at others wild and frantic, especially with her papa and her fiancé. The latter was an unassuming gentleman, whom – out of the blue – Jane attacked. She charged at him, with a view to pushing him out of the window. With preternatural strength. A diminutive person, standing hardly higher than one’s elbow, her onslaughts on her nearest and dearest were murderous. Against his family’s advice, the young gentleman insisted on proceeding with the wedding, from which day Jane was completely cured. She is now the mother of eight charming sons.
/>   Yes, the net has snared the moth. She is displayed under glass, an entomological pin through her breast.

  Anna adjusts her mask; sits with a listening inclination of the head and downcast eyes, nodding occasionally. I am more intelligent than these people. Than anyone in this room. I can outwit every last one of them. She constrains herself to think saintly thoughts, twisting them on vicious brambles of irony. Anna not only refrains from glowering but offers the visitors an expression like that of a Madonna. She manages not to seize the poker and smash it down on Quarles’s bald dome.

  *

  Christian absents himself, staying with the Montagus until the wedding day. Sarum House is awash with visitors, all bearing gifts – of inkstands, pebble bracelets, worked chair covers, cut-glass dishes. Twenty of Chauntsey’s saved poor sit round the Pentecost table tucking into plates of bread pudding, tarts, scones with jam and cream, washed down with gallons of tea. Beatrice, nerves twanging, catches Amy muttering to herself about the revolting table manners of yokels. Beatrice reproves her: ‘Yokels we shall all be in the New Jerusalem, Amy, don’t you agree? I wonder what our Master will think of our table manners then?’ She fails to catch Amy’s spluttered reply. The servant’s back is turned; her shoulders are shaking. Joss is – for goodness’ sake – helping Amy by piling plates on the draining board, his shoulders also shaking.

  *

  Dressed in her glory, Beatrice stands in the drawing room, the focus of all eyes, her head and shoulders covered in their grandmother’s intricate white lace veil. All is white or cream, from her shoes to her gown of highly worked muslin. She seems to tower above herself, gazing down from a great height. Anna, her bridesmaid, stands silently beside her, in white grenadine with pink trimming and sash, wearing a veil of pink tulle.

  It is time. Joss offers his brotherly arm.

  The weather has been unseasonably cold and an overnight frost has not melted; puddles are black with ice. Under the gunmetal sky, a snake of carpets, a causeway patchworked out of different shades of red, links Sarum House with the chapel. Slow, mincing steps must be taken: the causeway slides on the treachery of ice. Anna shuffles along behind. Before the chapel gate, Beatrice turns and opens her arms. Everything pauses; a mist of breath hangs suspended in the air. You are my sister, Beatrice thinks. What else matters? We are made out of one another. Everyone watches, waiting for time to flow on.

  What are the words? Finding none, Beatrice cranes forward to kiss her sister, the dry veil dividing mouth from mouth.

  As the procession enters the chapel, he is in her eye. His eclipsing presence is all Beatrice registers as she and Joss walk up the aisle through the rustling murmurs of smiling guests.

  Oh thank God. You’re here. Otherwise it would have been unbearable.

  She draws abreast. Her eye snags on the lashes of his eyes. In that expressive moment, nothing of his emotion is closed to Beatrice. They are naked to one another, as they will never again be in this mortal world. She flushes deeply and feels heat suffuse throat and breast. His look delays her and she twists in its hold, locked between Will and Joss, who, unconscious of a hitch, is carrying her forward. She feels the bridesmaid tread on the hem of her gown and start back. Will’s eye is a burr with hooks. Walking the fields around Chauntsey burrs snag on the soft stuff of your skirt and, when you pull them off, a patch of gauze strips away. An expensive dress is ruined. It hurts to snatch back her gaze. In a rush, abashed, Beatrice feels a ripped rag of her most intimate self stick to the body of Will.

  The bridegroom inclines his head fractionally. Mr Montagu’s smile is a beacon that lights the whole chapel. I call upon these persons here present to witness … the bridegroom smiles out of the corner of his eye, high above her … the gravity of my error.

  It is done. Tonight they will be one flesh. Hymeneal blood will soak Beatrice’s pristine nightdress and the sheet; after which sacrifice the couple will pray and sleep.

  Chapter 12

  Talk is all of the newly-weds on their bridal journey, until Mr Kyffin changes the subject. He arrests the tea-drinkers’ attention by remarking, ‘You know, my dears, I have lately been preoccupied with that cryptic promise in the Book of Isaiah. That Kings shall be thy nursing fathers and queens thy nursing mothers. Have you ever wondered about this mysterious verse and what the Prophet intended by it?’

  Teacups hover over saucers. Heads are faintly shaken. Morose Mr Anwyl, plagued by a heavy cold, explodes in a sneeze and shows no desire for theological debate. He sneezes again and the line of ladies seated within range of the spray of droplets leans sideways like grasses in a high wind.

  ‘No? No? None of you?’

  Mrs Kyffin, lately reconciled to her husband through the mediation of their devoted son Charlie, whispers, ‘Not now, dear.’ It’s no good. It has never been any good. Once a verse of the Scriptures has kindled his mind, the pastor burns to pass on the inspiration. Mrs Kyffin gives a little cough behind her hand. Mr Anwyl, red-eyed, sneezes again tremendously, this time into a handkerchief.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed, Will?’ asks Anna. It’s Will’s first visit since the wedding, after which they were both laid up. ‘You’re welcome to a bed. There’s one made up. Amy can take up a warming pan. You can’t possibly get home in this snow.’

  Will, sunk in misery, shakes his head and shivers. He mumbles, ‘Can’t stay. Reputation.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to bed and that’s that. There’s a fire in one of the rooms – just needs a bit of coaxing.’

  ‘No, can’t stay. Couldn’t bear it anyway.’

  ‘Don’t be lugubrious. I’ll get you something to drink.’

  Will sits crouched over the fire, as though he’d like to creep into it and be raked out next morning with the cinders. Anna throws on another log. She goes off to fetch warm brandy and when she returns, Mr Kyffin is discussing the enigma of male lactation in the Old Testament and how the nursing father is a type of Christ. And the milk from the Divine’s breast is more delicious and nourishing than either cow’s or goat’s milk, or, if one may mention a delicate topic, than the milk the human babe imbibes at his mother’s breast. For why should it be beyond the Creator to fashion a father able to suckle his beloved children? The shed blood of Jesus is a kind of milk for babes. And after all, it is a fact that males are equipped with nipples.

  The Father, who has created nothing in vain, would never have invented anything without a purpose. Mr Kyffin has heard it maintained by Mr Lee the analytical chemist that the male chest is the relic of an antecedent species, hermaphroditic or all-female. Of course this contradicts the Book of Genesis and therefore cannot be the case, as he has informed Mr Lee.

  Mrs Kyffin squirms sideways to appeal to her daughter with mute eyes and burning face. Ellen stares from the window at the black and white trees, as if envying the hungry birds in their branches. Mr Anwyl tosses back the brandy at one go and sighs while Mr Kyffin gives his mind to the remainder of Isaiah’s abstruse verse, which holds that the nursing fathers shall lick up the dust of the earth.

  ‘I think I’ll lie down after all,’ mumbles Will. ‘If it’s no trouble, Anna.’

  He leans on her arm as they mount the stairs; he’s been weeping on and off ever since Beatrice left, he confides. And now he’s caught this rotten cold.

  ‘Well, the cold will wean you off the weeping, won’t it? It’s a godsend. Come on, brace up. You’ve the Advent sermons to give. I’ll bring you an extra quilt. You’ll be right as rain in no time.’

  When Anna returns, Mr Kyffin has moved to a fresh topic. Mrs Kyffin has shrunk to half a lady.

  ‘I have news for you all. I’ve already confided this to the remnant of my congregation at Florian Street – the justified remnant, I should say. The saints who stood their ground against the forces of Hell and Prynne. And now I shall share it with you, dear friends.’

  Isaiah Minety, on a low stool at Mr Kyffin’s side, has brought in a stray kitten which he’s trying to feed with portio
ns of a doughnut, oblivious to the fleas running across the yellowish-white fur between eyes and nose. The kitten will soon be dead, Anna sees, drained of blood by its massive infestation. She stoops, kneels and takes the mangy creature onto her own lap. Holding the head in one palm, she pinches between finger and thumb the most obvious of the fleas; dabs the eyes with a wet cloth to release them from a glue of pus. The skull’s so frail: one could crush it in one’s fist. The puny neck is slack.

  ‘My dears,’ Mr Kyffin confides. ‘I have been given reason to believe that I shall never die! I am immortal.’

  He sits back in his chair, shyly, as if concerned for the effect his enviable revelation will have on his audience.

  The kitten quivers and gives up the ghost in Anna’s hands.

  In the quiet that succeeds Mr Kyffin’s announcement, she bundles the creature in a cloth and gets to her feet. Isaiah, more childlike than she has ever seen him, overflows with tears. Recently his disciples have deserted him, after visits by the magistrate to their parents, threatening fines. The followers have been soundly thrashed and put to bed without pudding. Promises have been extracted from them, with savage penalties attached.

  Isaiah follows Anna into the garden where he places the corpse in a small crate. No point in trying to dig a grave in this freeze.

  The boy lifts up his voice and prays to the Great Father of All to take the innocent kitten into his lap and to nurse it with Harry. By and by it seems that Harry is also being prayed to. Harry is asked to exert his influence with the Almighty, like the child saints of the Roman church. Anna huddles her cloak around her and surveys the chequerboard of the land under snow. The wilderness rears forward through the trees, foreshortened. Round the chestnut run prints of famishing birds. She cannot be sorry for the kitten, its spent life delivered from evil.

  But what is one to think of the creatures’ suffering? The magnitude of it can hardly be conceived or imagined. All mortals have been stretched on a common rack of pain, terminating in a common oblivion. In Salisbury Cathedral there’s a carving on the base of a pillar, a trinity of reptiles added by the recent restorers: a pig-faced gryphon cannibalising a fellow reptile, while its own long tail is being chewed by a third. Why did the restorers insinuate this group so unobtrusively low to the ground, like a telltale secret? She studies the kitten through the slats of the crate: here is a crucifixion by fleas, lives also God-given, and presumably themselves also capable of pain. The cold world throbs in a common agony. What is to be said about this; how can it be condoned?