The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [13]
Crossing the lawn where George Laidlaw stood in a fever of mental arithmetic, where one idiot chased another but stopped at the sight of the approaching doctor, and the patients with the axe were again filling the barrow, John Clare approached.
‘John, John, how are you feeling today?’
‘Perfectly well, doctor, perfectly well. And that’s just it, you see.’
‘Is it now?’
‘I was wondering, you see, given how trustworthy I have been and so forth, if I might be allowed to join those who have a pass key.’
‘To ramble and rhyme?’ Of course, John Clare.There was a thought.
John winced at that, then nodded. ‘To walk. To botanise and so forth.’
‘You are still writing poems, aren’t you?’ Allen asked. ‘Those I read a little while ago I thought effusions of great beauty. And your reputation is surely not sunk to oblivion. When did you last seek publication?’
‘Such effusions, as you call them, rural effusions, are no longer to the public’s taste.’
‘Perhaps you would allow me to assay for you? I’d be happy to write to a few literary connections of mine for magazine publication.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything to come of it,’ said Clare, wary of the painful heat of hope that could flare inside him.
‘I’ll take it upon myself. It won’t be a trouble to you.’
‘I suppose there’s no harm . . .’
‘Excellent. Why not? Productions such as yours should not be confined to a dusty drawer in a hospital. I shall get you that key, if you’ll follow me.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’
John set off immediately with the key in his hand. Peter Wilkins smiled at John with his watery eyes and reached for his own key, but John lifted up his. Peter Wilkins straightened. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’ve a key. Good to see, John, good to see.’
John was embarrassed at this congratulation, but warmed at it anyway. He tried to mask its effect, responding with a bluff, countryish,‘And the weather’s fair.’
‘You have a good walk, now,’ the old man said after him. ‘It lifts me up to see it.’
John raised a hand in farewell as he struck out along the path, past the familiar forms of the nearby trees, out to the strangers that grew hidden for miles around. Ferns, dying back with the season, stood frazzled between them. There was no song, just a few notes seeping from overhead as he passed and the quiet birds warned each other. A blackbird, frisking through the fallen leaves, bounced up away from his feet, settled on a low branch and twittered alarm, staring fiercely back at him.
John studied the bird’s daffodil-yellow beak, sharp as tweezers, its neat handsome black head, and absorbed the stare from its glinting round eye. Doing so he heard a human shout. He walked on, away from the noise, but was deceived by the forest’s maze of echoes and came right upon one of the patients barefoot on moss and leaves, his shoes discarded, sweating and gesticulating. When he saw John he started towards him, his face raw with rage, but two attendants were with him. One sprang up from a log on which they were playing with a pack of old, bent cards, and raised his arms. The lunatic pretended not to see him, but stopped where he was.
‘Move on there,’ the attendant told John. It was Stockdale. ‘Move on. No harm done. Had a bit of a morning, that one. Don’t fret yourself.’ The other attendant, whom John didn’t quite recognise, smiled through his pipe smoke.
John hurried on, removing his hat, wiping out the brim dampened by sudden fear, and setting it firmly back on his head.
After some yards, he lifted his gaze from the loosely matted leaves, the prickly star-shapes of beech-nut shells, and the roots that ribbed the path. He looked up again and saw the glaring, hooked darkness of holly bushes, the long whips and shabby leaves of brambles beneath them. He picked a blackberry and ate it: so tart it made his palate itch.
He walked on. He found a rotting trunk covered in fungus, rippling lines of livid yellow Jew’s ears eating away at the softened wood. Listening