The Quickening Maze Part 18

Hannah felt all their eyes on her and blushed painfully. Why did he have to announce it and make this public show? Now her mother and brother were getting up to leave them alone, as though she were about to be examined by a doctor and required privacy.

'We shall leave you two alone, then,' her mother said.

Hannah glanced up and met her mother's gaze. She had her tongue tip between her teeth in that idiotic expression. Hannah looked down again quickly, clenched her teeth, felt her lips harden into a line.

The door closed behind them.The room was silent. They were alone.

'Well,' Rawnsley began, and stopped. He placed one hand emphatically on the table as though about to begin again, but didn't. He drummed his fingers.

Why did he have to do this now? Why not when he was more alive and engaging? He could be, she knew that. Instead, he looked in Hannah's direction, but not at her, and drummed his fingers. Eventually he said, 'Why don't we go for a walk? It would be nice to be outside, don't you think?'

'Yes, it would.'

So now they too went out and left the room empty. The fact that n.o.body was now in the room felt like another awkwardness to Hannah, although she couldn't have said why. She thought of its silence and empty stillness as they went into the hall.

Thomas Rawnsley helped her into her coat, waited while she b.u.t.toned her gloves.

The breeze was cool, but not strong. There were small leaves on half of the trees and clouds in the sky. An ordinary day. It gave no sign that anything special, any event, was occurring.

Rawnsley, clasping his hands in the small of his back, led away from the house. Then at a certain distance, perhaps with a particular view onto the lane and forest in mind, he stopped.

'You know that I have come to admire you very much, Hannah,' he began.

'Of course,' she snapped back. 'The flowers. The visits.'

He shook his head, as if interrupted, muttering to himself. He started again. 'You know that I have come to admire you very much, Hannah.' Hannah could see that he had it all rehea.r.s.ed in his mind, this spot, these words, and that his seriousness, his apparent lack of pleasure, was because he wanted it very much to happen in exactly the right way. She had the power, evidently, to conform to his dream, to allow his imaginings to be realised. She, who'd wasted so many of her own fantasies, could grant him that, and suddenly she very much wanted to.

'I would like your permission to ask your father for his permission,' he blinked, as if unsure whether the sentence made sense,'for his permission to ask for your hand in marriage.'

'Yes.'

'Hannah.Would you consent to becoming my wife?'

Hannah smiled, answering honestly, 'I would.'

'Ah!' he smiled, raised two fists, then controlled himself. Apparently the business was unfinished, there was more of his dream to accomplish. 'May I . . . may I kiss your hand?'

Hannah widened her eyes as her heart beat heavily at these words. Sighing and kissing at last. 'Yes,' she whispered, 'you may,' and held out her right hand.

Thomas Rawnsley reached for it with both of his own, and without saying anything turned it over and unb.u.t.toned her glove. This too must have been part of the dream. She watched as he gently pulled the glove from her hand, held it still upturned in his own, bent forward, and with a warm crush of breath and beard against her skin, kissed her palm, then closed her fingers over the kiss as though he had given her a coin.

He smoked as he piled his books. He puffed with small pursings of his lips and read the spines. Purgatorio Purgatorio. He hadn't got up enough Italian to read Dante. Of course he hadn't. He never would. He would return to Somersby and would fail to do so there also, sinking into the place to dissolve, as smoke merges upwards into the air. The family shadows would surround him, their black blood would continue to circulate in his veins. There was no escape. He was the equal of any English poet, but he took with him a wallet that contained half-finished things only and had new ones about Arthur in his throat, but none of that made a difference. Eventually, if they were published, the critics would decry them again and there would be no Hallam to rise to his defence. No, he returned with nothing. He'd tried the world, tried enterprise, and now was bankrupt, his money gone into the mad doctor's mad scheme. It was a humiliation. Worse, he had to return to the family home and live narrowly. He'd believed the doctor's delusions, he'd written some poems and that was that. He remained the same stale person. He would finish packing up his books.The servants would straighten the place after him, pluck out the creases he had made. He would go back to Somersby to smoke and dwindle and, when his spirits allowed, to begin the poem about Arthur.

Hannah did not listen to what her father was saying. Seated beside her at the organ, her mother did. Head dropped forward, Eliza stared at the red, curled fingers in her lap. Hannah had discovered her sitting alone like this a few times recently. The posture tightened her mother's narrow shoulders, made her look girlish and chastised. And then quickly she would be up and active again.

Hannah stared vaguely at the stops of the organ, bone-white, labelled with their voices, a litany that ran jingling through her mind whenever she sat there to turn the pages: Clarion. Bombard. Contra Posaune. Mixture. Gemshorn. Dulciana. Trumpet. It did so now, although not in the usual infuriating way it usually did, but happily, like birdsong in the background as she thought about the letter from Thomas Rawnsley in her dressing table, his promises, her future.

'Affliction separates man from man,' Dr Allen said. His hands gripped the sides of the lectern. He looked down at the mad and told them, 'That is part of its purpose. It is sent us from G.o.d to force us to resort to Him, to see that He is our one true refuge, to lead us from the unreliable inconstancy of our fellow men to the sanctuary of Christ.'

Margaret stared at the speaking man. The red in his eyes was a giveaway: they had made their habitation within him as well. But he needn't fear. She ought to tell him that. Even if they destroyed his mortal body, he need not fear.All would be well. It had been vouchsafed. It was near at hand. Her own release was only the beginning. The joy of it burned inside her.

Hannah was startled out of her thoughts when her mother's hands flew up and started shaping themselves over the keys. Behind them the variable voices jostled together.

William Stockdale oversaw the patients' departure.

George Laidlaw once again fervently shook the doctor's hand.'Thank you,' he said.'Thank you. I cannot tell you what comfort you give.'

'I am glad of it,' Allen said, gathering his papers, and George Laidlaw reluctantly hobbled away to his endless guilty calculations of the National Debt.

Away, towards home, at last, at last, he walked. He touched his hat to Peter Wilkins who, opening the gate for him, tilted his intricate face in acknowledgement. He walked out onto the path, into the forest. When he got to the place they were gone, as they said they might be. The vardas were gone, the horses. They had kicked loose stuff of the forest floor over the soft scorched heap of the fire. A wide-brimmed hat lay on the ground. It shuddered in a breeze not quite strong enough to lift it. It provoked a melancholy emotion, looking at that hat, but he had no time for it. There were no signs, no ribbons tied to anything he could see. Friendly and lawless and unreliable, they'd upped and gone. He crouched for a moment, read north from the shadows and the green side of the trees, and set off. Flickering shadows, the endlessly breaking fence of trees. He just had to keep walking, boring through, shouldering the distance with the low grunting strength of a badger, and he would get there, he would be home and free, with Mary. He was right, at least partly: Mary was dead, but he would get back and find his wife, his home, his life, and would stay there for a short time until his mind broke and he was again unmanageable. He would be taken then to Northampton Lunatic Asylum, which he would never leave. The remaining twenty-three years of his life would be spent inside those walls. He would die there, no longer a poet, obscure and incarcerated.

He left the forest, the doctor, the other patients, Stockdale's tortures behind him. He broke through the incessant rus.h.i.+ng sound of the trees into silence. A day. A breeze blew softly against him. He had to choose a road for Enfield and took the wrong one. He asked at a public house and was set on the right way. After Enfield it was the Great York Road, walking north until dark.

At dusk, he was staggering. He should have taken food, water at least, but that would have looked suspect. His knees were weak with sharp pains at their centres. He saw a paddock with a pond and a yard beyond it. He scaled the rotting fence, walked a wide margin around the pond for fear of falling in and drowning, and crept into the yard. Inside he found a fine bed of baled clover, six feet by six. He lay on it, the motion of the walk fading out of his exhausted limbs. He kept drifting down onto the bed like a bird landing from a height, kept sinking down onto it. He slept uneasily and dreamed that Mary lay by his side, but was taken from him. He awoke still in darkness and alone. He thought he'd heard someone say 'Mary,' but when he searched the place there was n.o.body there. He looked up at the stars to find the pole star. He lay down again with his head pointing towards it so he would know the direction to walk immediately that he woke again.

He awoke in daylight and late, with the mist burned away and the dew drying, but nevertheless he hadn't been seen. He thanked G.o.d and got back onto the road.

Walking, head down, ignoring the occasional carts, counting milestones he pa.s.sed. Soon he would have to drink something, to eat, would have to find a way to eat.

He removed his boots to shake out the gravel that was cutting him, the soles now worn down to paper and starting to tear. Pa.s.sing the other way, towards London, a man on horseback said, 'Here's another of the broken-down haymakers,' and threw down a penny. It sparkled on the path. John picked it up and called thanks after him. He exchanged the coin for half a pint in a pub called The Plough, finding refuge there from a heavy shower that pelted the thick, uneven gla.s.s of the pub's windows.

Setting off again, he seemed to pa.s.s milestones very quickly, but by nightfall they had been stretched by hunger and exhaustion further and further apart. He stopped in a village and decided to call at a house to get a light for his pipe, having no matches, and there find the parson to fall upon his charity. An old woman allowed him into the parlour where a young girl sat making lace over a cus.h.i.+on and a gentleman smoked and stared. He asked them the way to the parson's house, but they wouldn't answer.Was his voice making a sound at all? He certainly heard it. The old woman brought him a lit taper. He sucked the flame in, growing light-headed. The girl said something with her head lowered. The man smiled.

On the road again, he found a countryman, chatty and amenable, on his way to catch a coach, who told him the parson lived a long way off, too far to walk. John asked if there was shelter nearby, a barn maybe, with dry straw.The man told him The Ram Inn would do and said to follow him. John didn't make it far, however, before he had to rest on a pile of flint. His stomach was burningly empty, his legs refusing. The man was kind and lingered, but when he heard the church bells hastened after his coach.

John walked on, but couldn't find the inn. He lay down to rest in the shade of a row of elms, but the wind blew through them and prevented sleep. He got up in the dusk to find somewhere better. The odd houses s.p.a.ced along the road were lit up within, snug and separate.

Finally he came to The Ram but, having no money, did not go in. There was a shed that leaned against one end of it, but with people pa.s.sing he didn't dare try and sneak in. Instead, he walked. The road was dark and darker still where trees overshadowed, thras.h.i.+ng softly in the wind.

He came to a crossing of two turnpikes and in his exhaustion could not calculate which way was north and which south. He chose by not choosing, by starting to walk, and soon became sure he had made an error and was heading back the way he had come, heading back to it all, to Fairmead House, to Leopard's Hill Lodge and the dark forest. He heard himself whimpering with the misery, almost too feeble to keep walking, shuffling forward in the dark. He almost felt he was not moving at all, lifting his feet up and down in infinite darkness. Eventually a light hung in the air, dipping and rising with his steps. A tollgate. His eyes cringed at its fierce brightness when he got to the door and knocked. A man emerged with a candle, peering and unfriendly, the candle's flame streaming sideways. John asked if he was heading north. 'After that gate you are,' the man said and shut his door.

New strength flowed into John. As he walked he hummed an old song, 'Highland Mary'. Singing her name. Getting closer.

His strength guttering out again. When he found a house by the road with a large porch, he crept in and lay down. He found it long enough to lie with his knotted legs straight out. He reminded himself to wake before the inhabitants did. He rested himself against the warmth of the place, like a child against its mother. All the inhabitants were asleep. He could hear their snores, the creak of straw mattresses.

He woke up at dawn feeling strong. The west was white and blue. Overhead, into the east, a cobbled road of bright rose clouds. He blessed his two wives, his daughter Queen Victoria, and set off again.

After some miles, he rested by an estate wall. From its lodge gate emerged a tall gypsy woman. He asked her where he was and she told him. She had an honest, handsome face.They walked together to the next town and she sang under her breath. She told him to put something inside his hat to hold the crown up. 'You'll be noticed,' she said. When she left him to take her separate way she told him of a shortcut via a church, but he didn't dare take it for fear, in his starvation and fatigue, of getting confused and losing his way.

Around him the world weakened, started vanis.h.i.+ng. There was only the beat of pain from his feet, his hunger, his hands heavy and throbbing by his side. A d.y.k.e ran along a roadside field. He stumbled in to get some sleep. He woke and found himself wet down one side. He got up and carried on into darkness, into night, into dimensionless dark.

In the morning he had an idea. He got onto his hands and knees and began eating the damp gra.s.s. Sweet and plain, it was not unlike bread. There was something else he could eat, he realised, and pulled the tobacco from his pocket and chewed as he walked, drinking down the bitter saliva, eventually swallowing the whole thing down.

He kept going. It was hard to walk in a straight line. Around him the town of Stilton arose. Half-way through it, he rested on a gravel causeway and heard a young woman's voice say, 'Poor creature.' An older woman's voice answered, 'Oh, he shams.' He got up then and as he staggered to his feet the old woman said, 'Oh, no he don't.' He didn't look back to see them. He walked on.

At the other end of town he gathered his strength to ask a young woman, 'Is this the right road for Peterborough?''Yes,' she said.'This is the Peterborough road.' Home. He was almost home. He rubbed the tears from his nose.

Just outside Peterborough, a man and a woman in a cart called to him. They were old neighbours from his infancy's village of Helpston. They'd recognised him. He bent over and held his knees and called to them that he hadn't eaten or drunk since he'd left London. They found fivepence between them and threw it down. He picked it up from the road, thanking them, waving his ruined hat as they drove away.

A small pub by a bridge over a noisy stream. Inside, the fivepence became twopence of bread and cheese and two half-pints. He dozed as he chewed, struggling to keep his eyes open, but in a little while the food had dispersed into him as strength. Starting to walk again, the pain from his torn feet was sharpened by the rest, but he was too near home now to sit down on the road - he would have been ashamed to do it lest he be seen by people he knew.

Peterborough. Streets. Windows. People. Horses. Peterborough dwindling behind him. Then Walton. Then Werrington. A few miles only to go. A cart stopped beside him. It carried a man, a woman and a boy. 'Get in,' they told him, but he refused; he was so close, they needn't bother for him. But the woman kept insisting with a pa.s.sion that made him suspect she was drunk or mad. 'It's Patty,' she said. 'It's Patty, your wife. Get in.' They hauled him up onto the cart and he lay on his back to be carried the final miles home. He stared up at the clouds that moved with them. He felt the rough pressure of Patty's kisses on his face. 'John,' Patty said. 'Poor John. You're almost home. You're here.' He'd made it. It was all behind him. Patty wiped the dirt from his face with her heavy clean hand. She stroked his head. His legs twitched. He turned his face into the smell of her. He licked his cracked lips. 'Patty,' he whispered. 'Patty.'

'That's right. Almost home.'

'Mary.'

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Of the many books and journals consulted for this novel, I would like to acknowledge particularly Jonathan Bate's John Clare John Clare, Roger Sales' John Clare: A Literary Life John Clare: A Literary Life, Robert Bernard Martin's Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, and Pamela Faithfull's PhD thesis Matthew Allen MD, chemical philosopher, phrenologist, pedagogue and mad-doctor, 1783-1845 Matthew Allen MD, chemical philosopher, phrenologist, pedagogue and mad-doctor, 1783-1845. Readers of these historical works will know that in shaping this material as fiction I have taken a number of liberties, compressing events that occurred over several years into the s.p.a.ce of seven seasons and ignoring some significant individuals while inventing others.