The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [24]
Oswald compressed his lips at that, embarrassed.‘No, I hadn’t meant . . .’
‘But if they are, I’m sure that would be even more interesting.’
‘Well . . .’
A hot spurt in Matthew’s chest: cringing in hiding, running, reprimands.What of that mess would Oswald drag out with his slow, relishing words? Perhaps the endless exclusions. Sandemanians required the congregation to be one in spirit, those who were not were required to leave. Matthew remembered the wooden meeting house at the moor’s edge, the blunted fervour of their voices inside as he wandered outside, exultant and ashamed. But that was the mess, perhaps, of every child’s life. He knew that from his patients’ unbosomings, and had heard much worse. It was Oswald’s pretence that Oswald had never been a child.
‘Hannah, really,’ her mother chastised.
‘Do we have to?’ Matthew asked, his eyes quick around the table.
‘Have no fear, younger brother, I shan’t divulge your darkest secrets.’
‘Oh, please do.’ Hannah clapped her hands.
‘No, no.Although there was one occasion . . . I recall that your father was always strong-willed and not, let us say, unspotted by the smaller sins.’
‘Who among us could claim to be?’ Matthew reasonably asked.
‘He had a teacher when he was small . . .’
‘Oh, I know what you’re about to say,’ Matthew interjected. ‘The man was a savage. I left every class bruised.’
‘And that being the case, it was natural that your father, being your father, would not leave his feelings unexpressed. Opportunity came when writing pattern letters.’
‘What are pattern letters?’ Abigail asked, holding her fork vertically on the table by her head like a tiny halberdier. Evidently she was listening with a keen degree of interest.
Oswald looked down at the infant seated there. A typically pointless and ill-disciplined defiance of convention to have at table with them a child who ought to be in the nursery.
‘It’s when you practise writing different kinds of letters that you would send to different people,’ Hannah explained.
‘This was a letter to a magistrate,’ Oswald resumed, ‘so you can imagine what followed.The letter implored the full weight of the law to be laid upon Mr Mathers for his violent and disorderly conduct.’
Eliza laughed. ‘I should think so. Beating poor Matthew.’
‘It availed naught, though.’ Matthew offered the postscript. ‘I remember his conduct for some weeks after was far from improved.’ He laughed along with the others, venting relief also that the anecdote hadn’t been very much worse. He met his brother’s gaze, which was warm but darkly eloquent with what had not been said. Even then Matthew found some recompense: he indicated with a finger where a pearl of fat hung from his brother’s moustache.
The damp had soaked into Oswald’s beard; it hung sparsely down, bedraggled plumage. Matthew ran a hand down the cold threads of his own beard, tugged it out at the chin.
‘And what are the trees here?’ Oswald asked with a vague encompassing wave.
‘Well, that there,’ Matthew replied, pointing with his stick at the thick dark cylinder of one, ‘is a hornbeam.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘Very hard wood. It’s being used now for machine parts. There’s a manufactury not too far from here.’
‘Is there? Is there?’
They followed the wet path round, treading the rotted black leaves, back towards Fairmead House. Matthew Allen spied ahead of them two very acceptable patients for them to run into: the Tennyson brothers. But what were they doing with their faces? They walked with hesitant short steps as though half-blind, despite having their hands clasped against their cheeks, their eyes pulled open as far as possible between spread fingers.
‘Good morning,’ Allen called to them. They looked at him at first with those huge squirming eyes like sea monsters, then dropped their hands.
‘What on earth . . .’ Oswald muttered to himself.
Matthew strode forward to meet them. ‘Do you mind if I enquire . . .’ he began jovially.
Alfred explained, unembarrassed, as silent Septimus loitered behind his shoulder. ‘It’s something we used to do as boys. I’d just reminded