Awakening

by Stevie Davies

  The pony’s hooves leave a dark trail in the grass. As Anna glances back the way they’ve come, she spots – surely – Joss sitting in the bay of the parlour window. The back of his head. Whatever’s Joss doing up at this time? Amy will be laying the fire in there. Was he seated there silently as she rushed through? Slug-a-bed Joss, so slow to rouse in the morning? Taugenichts, Lore called him fondly: Good-for-nothing, in jest, for there was no harm in Joss, Lore insisted, none in the world, he was more innocent than anyone in this house. Perhaps Joss couldn’t sleep.

  Something tugs at Anna’s mind. To do with Joss. Still waters.

  So long since she rode. Walking Spirit out into the lane, past farm workers with cart horses, Anna moves to a canter so as not to get shaken to death by the trot in the side-saddle. She presses into the saddle; the body doesn’t forget its knowledge. An elegant rider Anna always used to be, and fearless. Too fearless, Papa used to say: ‘You’ll come a cropper.’ Of course she was thrown several times but Anna would remount immediately, keeping the telltale bruises to herself. She could not forfeit the pleasure of it, the freedom, the sensuous contact with the creature.

  She enjoys the bulk of Spirit’s body against her thighs, swaying and circling in the canter – the intimate contact between one life and another, the rider’s mastery. There’s always the element of risk, for full skirts can so easily entangle with the pommel and break the backs of riders.

  On the downs Anna gives Spirit his head and is quickly gasping for breath, muscles burning as she holds her seat. But there’s a moment when you pass through exhaustion to what lies on the far side of effort – a sensation of gliding, or stasis even. It’s as if she and Spirit weren’t moving: no, they are still and the green world races past. They flow and an early morning shadow flows alongside, stretching half a mile.

  Anna dismounts at the Endless Pit, the opening of a deep hole in the chalk. The gentle, rolling landscape of the Chase contains ancient earthworks and barrows and tumps encircled by ditches. This is the mouth of the underworld, said Lore: an opening into our mother the earth, a sacred country. Does it disquiet you, Anna, she asked, to think that we are always treading on the heads of the dead? They picked up a bone pin at the Endless Pit and several flint tools. The land shelves beneath Anna’s feet so steeply that she feels off balance, as if the hole were sucking her down. She lays her cheek against Spirit’s shoulder, taking in the scent of sweat and leather as he crops grass. Years ago the mare Lore rode sickened and died but Spirit has plenty of life in him yet.

  It has to be enough, living in the here and now. Let Lore go, she tells herself. She’ll drag you down into the underworld. The places that remember her are reminders of absence. She had your soul and you gave it willingly but take it back now. It seems a brutal thought and Anna’s tempted to feel guilty. Why would I be angry with Lore? But I am. It rears up in her while the pony bends peacefully to the grass.

  I was angry with you for abandoning me.

  The dying: there comes a moment when their eyes become remote. You’re crouching beside them, loving them, you’d do anything for them: they just turn their backs. I’ve had enough of you now. I’m going off duty and I’m not coming back. You’ll not see me again after this. The moment when Lore turned her eyes to the wall, away from Anna and Magdalena, has gnawed at Anna ever since, for she read in that gesture a capitulation. Gratefully, Lore laid down the burden of consciousness. She sighed deeply, it seemed with relief, putting out from shore, as if to say, I’m done with you now, I couldn’t care less, stop bothering me with your distress and demands.

  One of the last things Lore said was, ‘I am going into the friendly dark.’

  Up to that moment she’d been nervous of the dark. There must always be candles, even when she slept, a wasteful expense. A room with no candles she could not enter.

  A flock of birds dithers this way and that on the skyline as if collecting its thoughts, skittering in an ellipse, a spiral. Anna takes from the saddlebag an apple for herself and one for Spirit. The pony’s tongue rasps against palm and wrist and Anna shivers deliciously.

  Mourning must have … not quite an end, but a completion.

  Then there’s Will. Anna, yes, loves him. Didn’t I always? It’s in some ways an uncomplicated affection. For years she’s been the one he came to when Beatrice repulsed him, knowing that the younger sister wouldn’t salve the wound with lies but speak an astringent truth. Since their engagement, they’ve walked and talked with an easy intimacy that may grow into something deeper. I can bend him to my will, Anna thinks. But only if I can shake myself free. And if he’s free of his obsession with Beatrice.

  Goodbye to you, Lore. I’m going to seal you up in the Endless Pit.

  I’ll mourn the loss of my mourning, Anna acknowledges. Even so, no more of it. I’m young, with all my life ahead of me.

  All the while she knows that Lore will fight to keep her. The Lore in her mind, a creature that hangs on blindly with hooks and suckers, will not give up. Anna heaves herself up onto Spirit’s back; keeps to a walking pace for she’s weary and already has a premonition of tomorrow’s aching muscles. She’ll be hobbling around like an old woman. Worth it, though. Their shadow has shrunk. Even without the tampering by Quarles, she would have felt trepidation. How to love Will as a husband when it’s as a brother that she’s always seen him?

  Can I love a man? In that way? Max couldn’t; Eleanor can’t.

  Chapter 15

  Will must be seen as a brother now. He comes and goes in nearly his old easy way and once more makes Sarum House his second home. His first home perhaps, for the Fighelbourn lodgings are cramped and drab. Although nothing has been said, there’s a greater ease and kindness between the two of them. They’ve resumed something of their old jesting banter, in a minor key. And yes, Beatrice’s heart quakes frequently, as now, observing the two of them walking in the garden, Will’s arm in Anna’s, their heads inclining to one another. She knows how it feels to link arms with Will and feel his hand on yours, stroking it as you walk. Accept it she must. Make the best of it. For she wants the Anwyls to live here with her; they must be courted. They bend to the orphaned lambs, Will’s palm on Anna’s shoulder.

  Twisting his head, he looks back to the house: does he sense that she watches him?

  Beatrice turns to her husband; smiles.

  ‘They are happy, aren’t they?’ she says, voice steady, face unclouded.

  ‘I’m sure they are. But not as happy as the two of us. Except that I am so often away. I’m sorry about that, dear. Especially now, when you’re unwell.’

  ‘I am well though, Christian. Flourishing. Truly. And, you know, I’m a minister’s daughter. I understand the priorities.’

  ‘Our Saviour helps and supports you. He is with you while I cannot be.’

  ‘Of course He is.’

  But her well-being has little to do with her faith. For all the while Beatrice knows that Christian’s absences are a condition of her happiness. Not that she wills him to be gone. When he’s due to leave she dissolves in tears, clinging to his hand as he leaves their bed in the dawn light. Then she awaits the letters. Beatrice has fallen in love with Christian less through his attentions to her than through his letters, his marvellous letters. His handsome Germanic script, with its frequent enigmas, keeps her guessing. Some words seem at first indecipherable. Others she construes wrongly, as it turns out, and the mistakes somehow colour the correct interpretation even after the riddle is solved.

  Beatrice has learned better how to receive her husband’s passion. Happily the act does not go on for long. He is courteous and kind and thanks her afterwards. Is he disappointed, to have waited all these years to mate with what she sometimes tells herself must seem a log? If so, he doesn’t betray his disappointment. Now that the baby is inside her, he holds back. That’s the best of it. She enjoys the caressive intimacies he offers.

  In Christian’s absence she’s once more her own master. No sooner is Mrs Ritter’s husb
and out of the door than Miss Pentecost rises from her grave. Sickness and inertia lift. Beatrice awakens, bored with the meaningless patterns on the bedroom wall, the dull view from the window. She bounds downstairs, to gobble bacon, egg and sausage, with fresh bread spread with lashings of butter. Never has food smelt or tasted so good. Grease all round her mouth, Beatrice sops up spilt yolk with a crust, to her sister’s astonishment.

  Then she waits to throw it up. And doesn’t. Beatrice puts on flesh; her hair grows lustrous and her face, rounding out, becomes bonny. In the mirror she sees a glowing woman in a state of surprised euphoria; the years have fallen away.

  Anna and Will must live at Sarum House. Everything will be done to ensure this; nothing to endanger it.

  Poor Mr Kyffin’s funeral is held in pelting rain at the chapel at Fighelbourn, since Prynne and the Prynnites have locked the Kyffinite congregation out of Florian Street. Mr Prynne has personally crossed their names off the membership list. While this tumult continues unabated, the dead man has to be buried. Mr Montagu, conducting the service, contributes the briefest of brief obituaries to the Baptist Journal: ‘The Revd John M. C. Kyffin, late pastor of Florian Street, Salisbury, died in the forty-seventh year of his age. He laboured for the good of his flock. Well loved and loving.’

  Mrs Kyffin writes from Bradford on Avon that she cannot help but feel injured by this brevity. Other ministers are accorded three pages honouring their godly works. Was Mr Kyffin unworthy of more than thirty-two words? But she reminds herself that Love is all the law and the prophets. Antigone enjoys the company of her young nieces. Most of the time. Her room looks over the vegetable garden. Her closest companion is a kitten. Her daughter Ellen is at school in Kensington, training to be a governess. Charlie is studying to become an analytical chemist, apprenticed to Mr Lee, the freethinking disciple of Mr Darwin. But Antigone assures herself that her son’s mind will remain untainted by these errors. Charlie’s face flames with eczema and he refers to Prynne as an assassin, alluding approvingly to Jael’s hammer in the Book of Judges, the lady who drove a nail into the infidel’s skull.

  Beatrice sits with her knitting in her lap while the others discuss the situation. She’s constructing dainty boots for her little boy. Will his feet really be so small? She’s sure it’s a boy she’s carrying. She smiles gently, without needing to assert herself. Anna is also knitting for Baby, and so is Mrs Elias, though the logic of Loveday’s garment is cryptic: it’s a sweet little jacket, she says, as they will shortly see. The fingers of young Patience Elias have contributed something to its grubby asymmetries.

  And now, while they’re discussing the coming Awakening, the miracle occurs.

  To no one but Beatrice, seated there by the open window, a friendly company on one side and birdsong on the other. There’s a faint flutter in her womb. A creature with softest wings, a being made of light called forth from the darkness, makes itself known. The needles fall from her hands. She sits upright, listening. And the Spirit of God moved upon the waters.

  Life acquaints Beatrice with its presence. Life speaks to her, confiding, ‘Wait, I am coming. Only for you.’ She listens again. No. Now there’s nothing. No movement at all and perhaps she imagined it, though she doesn’t think so.

  ‘What date is the happy day, Anna?’ asks their guest, Mr Idris Jones of Bedwellty. Two of his sons sit at the table demolishing a seed cake. They have strange coxcomb-like hairstyles and address one another in Welsh. The middle son is busy with a revival on the island of Ynys Môn. Their talk, in so far as it can be construed, is all of bringing the Welsh Revival over the border. To Liverpool, home of thousands of Welsh chapel-goers, to Shrewsbury, to Ludlow and the border towns, Welsh evangelists will carry the sacred coals. All England will be alight, then Scotland, then the Reformed Churches of France.

  With God’s help, the continent of Europe will fall to the new Puritanism. This is the day, the happy day. The Spirit has no limits. Swiss missionaries will convert Russia and Turkey.

  And it comes again. The mothy fluttering. Today, thinks Beatrice. Today is the happy day.

  She beams, straight into the eyes of Will Anwyl – who colours up, disconcerted, and is caught on a hook Beatrice had no intention of baiting. The smile was not designed for him or for anyone in the room, come to that. But Will is smitten. Well, let him wonder. Let them all get on with their business in their petty antechamber to life. For everything Beatrice has ever desired is here within the compass of her own person.

  Quickening. Awakening.

  Chapter 16

  The Holy Spirit landed first in Wales, from America.

  This is how Mr Jones of Bedwellty phrases it to the Chauntsey congregation. Beatrice, absorbed in the wonder of her own ripening, attends with only half an ear. Mr Jones is proud, he tells them, to be the bearer of this news – modestly proud – or in truth not proud at all, humble rather – for Christ’s is the glory. The elders of the Cymric churches have seen revival at least fifteen times in the past century, most recently in South Wales during the cholera epidemic of ’49. When the Welsh leaders heard of the new American Awakening, they prayed: ‘Quicken us again, Lord, here in Wales!’ One hundred thousand spectacular conversions have been achieved in his homeland at the last count.

  Mr Jones has left dear Mr Anwyl and his bride in Aberystwyth. Fishing, he says, I left Mr and Mrs Anwyl fishing! They are fishers of men. Even now they are walking by the seaside netting fishermen and sailors. This doesn’t sound much like Anna to Beatrice. Granted that marriage does incalculable things to the soul, she’ll wait and see before applauding.

  Change is coming, Mr Jones says. Be ready, Wiltshire! At Frongoch Lead Mine miners sank to their knees at six in the morning and rose at two in the afternoon: no lead was extracted that day. At Trefeca College the young ministers-to-be sang all night, repeating one hymn over and over. These radiantly touched pioneer spirits, Mr Jones has no doubt, will bring their spark, their hwyl, to English altars. And thence to India, Africa, China, the world.

  Mr Jones moves on from Chauntsey and preaches outside the locked door of Florian Street Church to Mr Kyffin’s congregation and several local reporters. Beatrice and Joss perch on the wall to participate. She can see little from here but she can hear. From within comes the sound of the Prynnites, bawling their way through the Baptist Hymnal. Mr Jones is more than equal to this. He enjoys preaching in the open air. Nearer to Him, he says, gesturing towards the cloudless sky. The congregation swells until the churchyard cannot hold them all. They spill onto pavements and climb trees. And now the graves and pavements and trees are singing: not only Baptists and Congregationalists but Wesleyans, Unitarians, Calvinistic Methodists, evangelical Anglicans.

  In his sermon, Mr Jones describes Mr Gwilym Anwyl’s visit to his home village and the surrounding hills, taking his bride, together with Isaiah Minety. The boy speaks to the Welsh of his friend and pastor John Kyffin, now with God, and how Mr Kyffin had been a bruised reed but never a broken one, how it had been given to this saintly man to foresee the Revival, and lastly Isaiah tells of Little Harry, who died of a cough and saw angels. And how Harry dreamed that he went out into the fields with a butterfly net and caught, not butterflies, but winged spirits.

  Mr Jones has seen the effect of the child-preacher’s powers with his own eyes; otherwise he’d hardly have credited it. Isaiah’s hearers become prophets; folk begin to sing, weep, pray as the Spirit takes them. The boy has latterly grown quiet as the result of a sore throat.

  And this, says Mr Jones of Bedwellty to the hundreds outside Florian Street, will be coming to Wiltshire. Let us prepare our hearts to receive the seed. And let usurpers tremble.

  *

  ‘There it is, cariad. There!’

  They’re in mountainous country miles out of Aberystwyth. At first she sees nothing but rough pasture, stunted trees, a couple of huts. Her husband leads Anna to the broken door of the nearer hut and tramples a path through nettles, striking them back with a stick. Inside is a
single room with a dirt floor and a collapsed chimney. One small window. A stench. Here all the washing, cooking, baking, weaving was done; here her husband’s parents and six children lived and slept, their few possessions tucked into corners; from the rafters hung dried fish, salted meat and bacon. The walls are black with soot and birds have nested in the chimney. Here Will was born; here he saw his pauper Tad die of consumption; here his Mam gave up the ghost two years later of the same disease, followed by three of Will’s five brothers and sisters. And then the pastor took Will under his wing.

  ‘Mr Owen’s cottage was no palace,’ Will says, as they come out. ‘There it is, adjoining the chapel. More like a shack than a house – it’s used as a stable now. It had a few pieces of furniture, a couple of chairs and a bed supported by stone slabs. The roof was so low that Mr Owen could barely stand upright. A big man he was, mind – and looked a bit of a brute if you didn’t know him. But to me, Annie, it was a rich and lovely place. Always plenty to eat and drink – no whippings – always a good fire in the grate – and books. Mr Owen taught me English. Mrs Owen was a second mother. She had no children of her own. I owe them everything. If only I could introduce you to them.’

  Anna puts her hand in her husband’s as they circle the chapel to the graveyard. Chauntsey has never really comprehended Will, she sees that. His frivolity and flirting are in part an adaptation to a foreign culture. Here he’s respected for his genial warmth. Not that he won’t revert when they return home: how can he not? – unless whatever happiness he can find in Anna can persuade him that he belongs. In Aberystwyth Anna is ‘the Englishwoman’, the Saesnes.

  The Owens’ tombstone has not been allowed to moss over. Whoever attends to it has left daffodils in a clay pot. The Welsh inscription Anna cannot construe for herself. She stands back as Will kneels. The song of building birds cascades around them.