CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE CONFESSION AND EXECUTION Of the Seven Prisoners suffering at TYBURN on Wednesday the 25th of October, 1676. VIZ. John Seabrooke, Arthur Minors, William Minors, Henry Graves, Richard Shaw, Katherine Picket, Samuel Warber. Giving a full and satisfactory Account of their Crimes, Behaviours, Discourses in Prison, and last Words (as neer as could be taken) at the place of Execution. Published for a Warning to all that read it, to avoid the like wicked Courses, which brought these poor people to this shameful End. With Allowance, 1676. London: Printed for D.M. 1676.
Did not people wilfully neglect all means of Grace, and abandon all considerations of their own Interest, and give themselves wholly up to the Perversities of Satan, one would never imagine, that after so many Monthly Examples as this City affords, of persons bringing themselves to shameful and untimely Ends, any should be so impiously bold as to follow the same Courses till they involve themselves in the like miserable Fate.
Samuel Warber barbarously murthered John Howard, to whom Warber owed a debt; whereupon his Intent turned to Hatred and Malice. In pursuance whereof, on the 20th of March last about 9 of the clock in the evening, he meets Howard in Shoe Lane and seizes upon him and holds him, and gives him a wound in the Neck. And having dispatch’d this Cruelty, left him dead, and went home. But it pleas’d God a Witness then declared who had murthered the man and duly proved the same at the Sessions; whereupon Warber was Condemned according to the Statute in that Case made and provided.
Before his Tryal, having an excellent hand at Limning, he had drawn most lively on the wall of his Chamber in Newgate, the Tyburn Tree. Since his Condemnation, he caused it to be underwrit with these lines.
My precious Lord, from all Transgressions free,
Who pleas’d, in tender pity unto me,
To undergo the Ignominious Tree,
I Suffer justly in my love for Thee.
My Lord, I take the Drop with two clos’d Eyes,
And from the Gibbet mount the glorious Skies.
When they were brought to the place of Execution (whither they were attended besides the people, with several Ministers) few of them spoke any thing considerable, unless to some particular Acquaintance; but by their Gestures seemed to pray secretly, and so were all Executed according to Sentence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Thursday was an L.S. Lowry painting: The Funeral, more blues and greys, a dark church silhouetted against a scrubby white sky. Mourners gather around a grave, watched by a family outside the cemetery, watched from the thin, black railings. Two figures walk away along the footpath, an adult and a child. The child looks back, over her shoulder, at the scene amongst the headstones. A reviewer called Lowry’s figures “struggling little creatures” but in The Funeral they cease their own struggles, just for a short while, and remember one whose struggle is over.
There were no gravestones in the garden of remembrance, just regiments of oblong plaques set on low, stone walls or along the edges of flower beds, visible but illegible from the car. The place was drained of colour, and the group of people leaving as we arrived were every bit as stiff and monochrome as Lowry would have painted them. Alison parked by the slouching, concrete chapel and asked if I wanted her to come with me.
“No,” I said, “but thank you. I’ll be fine. Are you all right to wait here?”
She reached behind her seat and produced a paperback copy of Moby-Dick with a battered, cardboard bookmark sticking out, about a third of the way from the end of the novel.
“I’ll be fine. Go round the back of this building and head through the archway in the wall. You’ll see another garden area where they keep the temporary crosses. I’ll be right here.”
I stepped out of the car and watched my breath rising, straight up on such a windless day. And maybe I would have been safe and warm inside but I was going for a walk.
The garden was small, but well tended. In spring and summer it must have blossomed into an uplifting space. It offered me only naked branches and soil: greys and blacks. Plywood crosses stood where grass turned to path and path turned to earth. The crosses were about eight inches tall and each one wore a typed label, wrapped in plastic and stuck to the wood with a silver staple. Sombre bouquets leaned against a few of them. Someone must have removed the older blooms because none of them seemed to have decayed, even during the current night-frosts. The flowers gave the place its only real colour, other than the insipid green of the lawn. I felt a twinge of guilt that I had not brought an offering, but Alison had told me that I need only visit for myself, that I was brave, that I was taking faltering, difficult steps to come to terms with loss, not to satisfy the expectations of anyone else. But then, maybe I needed to bring a gift. Some other day, I supposed. I sat on the grass.
The cross was just a clone of its companions, cleaner than some, dirtier than others. The label read, “Emily Pargiter,” and then one too many dates, and a code which represented the intended location of her final memorial, I guessed. The ground was damp. I could feel the chill rising but then everything went away: every sensation, every birdsong, every car and child and mother and father on the streets beyond the walls, all the paintings and artists and stories. And nothing came to fill the emptiness. No emotions rushed in to fill the abhorred vacuum. I was abandoned by whatever words I should have said, ululations I should have cried, tears I should have wept. I was a struggling little creature, but I was never going to emerge from my struggles whilst I remained there, within the lifeless garden.
There was nowhere to go. If I wanted to leave I had to wish myself back, somehow, and I did not know how. I closed my eyes to the mildewed light, stayed out of place, stayed with her, stayed. Until the tapping began. Slowly at first, quietly, without rhythm. Then a faster tempo, and each of the taps losing its direction as it blended with others, until all around was a cacophony and only then did the falling drops begin to carry their wetness to me, and with it the rest of the world. I opened my eyes.
Alison met me between the archway and the chapel, and walked beside me, sheltering us both with her umbrella. Neither of us spoke. Back in the car the world retreated behind misted windows.
“I’d like to go to Barbroke,” I said.
“Today? I mean, we can, but it’ll get dark soon after we arrive. But we can.”
“Please. I don’t want to be trouble. I think it’s the right thing to do. I need it. You said to do what I need.”
Alison put her hand on my knee.
“Of course. But I have to buy a sandwich on the way.”
She smiled at me and I smiled back, because smiling back did no harm. We left the crematorium, the gardens, the crosses and the plaques, and headed out to the west, towards Barbroke. Alison bought her sandwich and ate half of it as we drove, taking bites on the occasional straight stretches of country road where gear changes were unnecessary. We spoke, but without depth of meaning. I slept a little, not through tiredness but simply to shorten the journey. As we approached the village Alison began to bring me back to the then and there.
“Can I park at the house, or do we have to walk?” she asked.
“We’re not going to the house, just the church.”
“Can I park there? Do I need to find some change? I don’t really want you to have to walk. You’ll get soaked.”
“You worry too much.”
Alison shrugged.
“Someone’s got to,” she said. “So? Can I park?”
“There’s no car park, but there’s a long drive up to the house. The church is by the side of it. I’m sure you can park on the grass verge. You pay for entry farther on. We shouldn’t need any money.”
“Do you think the church will be open?”
I echoed her shrug.
“I think so. I hope so. They usually are. When I was here last time it was snowing. I hardly saw another soul. It was open then. It’ll be open.”
We turned into the avenue and stopped just before the stone arch. It was less impressive than I
remembered, seen from the car windows, no longer framed by snow. Alison eased the car onto the grass by the brick wall of the churchyard. No railings, but the gravestones seemed as black, the church as oppressive, as anything in Lowry’s Manchester.
“I’ll wait,” said Alison. She reached down and took the second half of the sandwich out of a crumpled paper bag by my feet. “I’m here if you need me.”
Inside, the church was unchanged. It probably never changed. It was darker, though. I could see, once my eyes became accustomed to the murk, but I searched for light switches. I gave up after a couple of minutes and walked over to the north aisle. I sat on the floor, resting on the end of the pew opposite Diana’s memorial, as I had done when I was staying at the cottage, on the day Emily had gone out into the snow.
Diana was my only real link. I had words from Penny, but everything visual, everything that gave me a tangible reality, had been taken, except for Diana. Diana was the constant, had always been the constant, even if her fixedness was obscured by Penny’s instability. I was there to clutch at what was left, to ensure that at least a fraction of the jigsaw remained complete. I was there for so many reasons. I was there for no reason at all.
Silence had encroached upon me in the crematorium garden. It had slithered in from the surroundings, down from the trees and across the ground. It had taken me before I even noticed its approach. In the church I had willingly stepped into it, into the hush, crossed a threshold to be an outsider for a while: a choice, a statement of control. So it came as a surprise, as I sat in the charcoal-grey, when the lights above me sparked into life and a voice called out, “Hello?”
The man in the doorway stood by the switches which had hidden from me. He was in his seventies or eighties, shortened by time and a slight hunch to his back. His clothes were almost entirely black. Only a dark green sweater broke ranks, and that was concealed, for the most part, beneath a long, heavy coat.
“Hello,” he repeated as I appeared from behind the pew. “I weren’t sure there were anyone here, but there were a car outside.”
“Hello,” I said, unsure how to continue, feeling unprepared for conversations with strangers. Still, it seemed rude to leave it at that so I tried, “Are you the vicar?”
The man in black ran a hand through his thinning hair and walked towards me.
“No,” he said. “I just take care of the place during the week. Open up. Lock the door at the end of the day. A sexton, really. Do I look like a vicar?”
“Well, you’re very black. Your clothes, they’re very black.”
“True. There is a vicar, though. I can call him if you need that sort of thing.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I was just looking around. And the tomb seemed beautiful. I just sort of sat down for a while. I can go if you need me to. I don’t want to be any trouble. If you need—”
He interrupted me.
“No. No, you’re fine. I can’t tell you much about the tomb that you can’t see just from looking. Diana Fitzpatrick. Eighteen hundred and ninety-two. She died young, same as her brother. That’s his tomb.” He pointed a slightly shaky finger towards Albert, at the far end of the aisle. “Shame, really.”
“Shame,” I agreed. “Do you mind if I sit down again?”
I sat down without waiting for his answer. He sat near me, on the next pew along, and introduced himself as Bill.
“I can’t join you on the floor, love. Not at my age,” said Bill. He pointed the same, shaky finger at Diana’s tomb. “Swinburne. Interesting choice.”
“Mmm,” I said, and nodded slightly to show that I, too, thought it an interesting choice, but did not have any particular desire to discuss it at length.
“It’s underlined in the book, so I’ve always thought that maybe it had something to do with her.”
I had no idea to which book he was referring, but I did know there was the Swinburne, and it could be the same one, and it could have stayed at Barbroke all these years, another loose thread to be pulled. I tried to remain calm.
“Oh? Do they still have the book at Barbroke, do you think?” I asked.
“At Barbroke? No. No, it’s here.”
“Here?”
“It’s in the sacristy.”
“Could I—”
“See it? Don’t see why not.”
Bill stood up and took a bunch of keys out of his pocket.
“Come on,” he said and waited while I clambered to my feet.
The sacristy was cramped and musty. Bill explained that it had become a glorified storeroom. The vicar kept his vestments with him, partly because he used them at several other parishes and partly because anything left in old, country churches tended to succumb to the cold, damp and mice. A second doorway, in the far wall, must have led to the churchyard, but the quantity and age of the cleaning products stored against the door suggested that it had not been opened in years. Against that same wall, underneath a diamond-paned window, stood a low, oak cupboard with a stack of red-bound hymn books balanced on top of it. Bill fumbled with his key-ring until he found the correct rusty, iron key. He knelt down, unlocked the cupboard doors and felt around, inside the darkness of the shelves. Twice he let out an “Aha!” and his hand reappeared holding a book, but on both occasions he frowned in disappointment and placed the volume on the floor. I sat down on a dusty chair. Finally he turned to me with a here-we-are and in his hand I saw gold lettering on a green spine.
“It were a little before my time,” said Bill, coughing as he raised himself from the ground and walked over to me, “but my understanding is that the daughter of the owner gave it to the vicar, sometime in the forties. Said her mother had wanted it to come back here. Well, it’s been here ever since. I’ll have a look if there’s anything else.”
He handed the book to me and went back to his search. At the top of the spine was the title, POEMS & BALLADS, and beneath, SWINBURNE. I turned the first few pages until I came to a dedication: “To my friend Edward Burne Jones these poems are affectionately and admiringly dedicated.” It was not the printed type which made me stop. I must have let out a sigh because Bill gave me a thumbs-up. I read the faded copperplate.
“Darling Olivia, For our time together. You said you would choose a poem but I took them back to Barbroke with me. Choose one now, even a single stanza, even a single line. Love, Your Thomas.”
Bill had returned to my side.
“Does it mean anything to you? Olivia? Thomas?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But I think you’re right that Diana underlined the words. Where are they?”
I continued, page by page. Bill held up one hymn book after another, shaking each of them, before returning for a final sweep of the cupboard. After some forty pages I found the lines from the tomb, the second stanza of “The Triumph of Time”, underlined, just as Bill had described. A few more page-turns brought another collection of lines, highlighted by a pencil stroke running down the left margin. In the white space at the bottom of the page was written, in Penny’s familiar hand, “For D. I hope you like the choice.” I read slowly, letting my finger run over each word.
I wish we were dead together to-day,
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
Out of the world’s way, out of the light,
Out of the ages of worldly weather,
Forgotten of all men altogether.
The rest of the book was unmarked. When I reached the last page I turned back to Penny’s choice and copied it down into a little red notebook which I had in my pocket. Bill was sitting beneath the window, waiting patiently. When I shut the poems away between their covers he stood and handed me a piece of card.
“I were looking for this. Thought it were glued in the back of the book but when I saw it weren’t there I figured it must’ve fallen out,” he said.
The card was pale green. In large, grandiose letters it proclaimed, “Collins & Son. Photographers. Oxfordshire”, and,
added in pencil, “New Year 88.” I turned it over and smiled at the two women, dressed in their evening gowns, still cold from their time in the Temple of Minerva.
Penny had returned as she had so recently departed. Standing beside her, Diana echoed the fluid beauty of marble, with none of the masculinity of Taylor’s oils. Yet Penny’s were the softer features: a delicate, oval face with dark eyes beneath gently curving brows, and the whole dominated by a wide smile that spoke of more than a reaction to a photographer’s request. Beneath the couple, in the margin of the print, I recognized Diana’s handwriting.
Bill busied himself with tidying the cupboard and I sat, gazing at the photograph. For me, Friedrich’s black-and-white Klosterfriedhof had always been the ghost of a vanished original, but the image in my hand possessed an authenticity which brought its own solace. When I was ready I carefully placed it into the book, which I handed back to Bill. I was shaking a little.
“Look,” he said, “this obviously means a lot to you. I can’t give you the book, but I don’t reckon anyone else will remember the photo. I bet the lady who left it didn’t know it were in there, to be honest. Here.”
He retrieved the picture from between the pages and offered it to me. I shook my head. In my moment with the two women, at Barbroke and in the sacristy, as the camera plate darkened and Bill restacked hymn books, I had come to understand that it was an end to our time together. I was ready to relinquish Penny to her Diana. And I discovered that I felt her departure less keenly than I had expected. There was, in her final passing, a rectitude which had played no part in more recent losses.
“No,” I replied. “They belong here.”
The door creaked open behind me. It was Alison, silent but showing her concern by the tilt of her head.
“Thank you, Bill,” I said. “Goodbye.”
He nodded slowly and, holding the Swinburne in one hand, started to rearrange the cleaning products in the doorway.
All the Perverse Angels Page 29