A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [140]
Andrew told me that probably Maurice—the Badger—would have been forced to take the old man in to live with him at Gilderwood upon his return from southwestern Ontario. Then, not much later, he likely commissioned a series of murals from his father for the great downstairs hall. Perhaps he hadn’t really wanted the paintings but had hoped that his father’s melancholy would abate if he gave him something useful to do.
Branwell’s melancholy had not, however, abated and evidence of this fact was painted on the walls of the central hallway of the house. The dusky, fortified European cities were reproduced there, or at least some of them, as were the sins of the artist’s son, in a horrifying array of colours. A variety of animals decked out like Maurice himself, in the usual parliamentary garb of frock coat and top hat, were depicted writhing in the flames of hell as punishment for their sins. A well-dressed horse, for instance, was being broken on the wheel, a huge yellow frog in a top hat was being plunged by a demon into a cauldron of boiling oil, and a great red bear in a waistcoat and pocketwatch was being dismembered alive. There was absolutely no trace of the distant blue landscapes of his early works, some of which can still be seen in the odd old house in the County.
When Branwell began this Allegory of Bad Government (a parody of the name of a Sienese fresco he had read about), T.J., delighted by the various animals in the piece, had been permitted to assist, and had spent some days colouring a waistcoat or a top hat. Minister Badger Woodman, as he was now famously called, had apparently wondered about the subject of the mural his father was painting in the front hall, but, having a literal mind, was completely unable to interpret the symbolism that Branwell was striving so diligently to convey. Caroline, beyond commenting on the suitability or lack of suitability of the colours, would have given the mural barely a glance. Subjects other than herself did not interest her.
Branwell had not heard from Ghost in more than two years. It was now the end of one appalling century and the beginning of another, though looking at the serene view from that hill, it would have been almost impossible to believe that entire ecosystems had been eliminated never to return, and that in Europe, home of all those defensive and defended cities that had so disturbed Branwell years before, various leaders were preparing to embark on a series of wars more horrifying than anything the young Branwell could have imagined in the attic of Les Invalides and, in fact, more horrifying than anything he could think of while standing on the edge of a hill, the panorama from which resembled more than anything the beautiful turquoise landscape he had carried with him for most of his adult life.
August is the month of lightning on the Great Lake Ontario and the shores that surround it. Often, one can stand at the lake’s edge in the evening and watch sheet lightning move like a distant beautiful war along the seam of the horizon where water touches sky. But it is the other kind of lightning I am referring to, the kind that is built from heat and moisture, the kind that is a companion to storm. In some ways, this kind of lightning is like the approach of someone significant in your life: a friend, a lover, an enemy. You see the lightning, then you count out the beat of the distance until the thunder comes. Julia says that it is the interval between thunder and lightning that is the closest she comes to being able to see weather. When the interval closes, the meeting takes place and the lightning strikes.
No one in the large house was hearing thunder or listening to intervals, as all were soundly asleep. Ghost, however, galloping on a white horse down the King’s Highway toward the village beneath Gilderwood Hill, was measuring the distance of the storm on the one hand, and the distance he must cover on the other. He knew what was going