The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [27]
Snow. Fresh snow that covered the gaps in the old snow and shone evenly everywhere. Abigail squinted at the hard bounce of bright light, breathed the sparkling, almost painful air. She ran a little way to stamp her footprints, looked back at them, continued onto the lawn, which gave way differently under her so that she stumbled, whitening her knees and mittens. She tasted the snow on her palms: a nothing taste, but full of an unnameable big thing, full of distance, full of the sky. Quickly it soaked through the wool and chilled her skin. She rubbed her hands on her coat and set off running again - she’d remembered the water pump by Fairmead House.
Yes, there were! There were icicles hanging from its nose.They were smooth at the top and tapered down, with bulges, like a pea pod, to a stopped drop round as a glass bead. She snapped one off and sucked it, holding it along her tongue until she could drink its melt.
The idiot Simon found her there. He looked padded and enormous in his coat, gloves and hat pulled down tight. Abigail showed him the icicles and he snapped one off as well. It darted out of his grasp and he had to pick it up from the snow to eat it. ‘Cold,’ he said.
‘Shall we make a snowman?’ Abigail asked.
Simon shook his head.
‘Oh, please. Oh, please.’
Simon shook his head again. ‘Do a cat,’ he said.
So together they rolled two balls that peeled up the snow from the ground, one big and one small. Simon set the small one on top of the larger. With soaked hands that itched and tingled and that she shook when they were too cold, Abigail helped to make the triangular ears to put on top. But then Simon wouldn’t let her do any more; he had to be in charge of everything. He tried to put the last three icicles in for whiskers, but that was uneven and anyway they stuck straight out and, after pauses, dropped off. Abigail didn’t think it looked much like a cat in the end, more like a snowman with silly ears.
When Matthew Allen had the idea he stood up out of his chair. Was it workable? Of course it was workable. Hadn’t he read of similar? All the elements of it were there, scattered through journals and treatises and out in the world, before his very eyes, hidden in plain sight. All of a sudden they had flown together in his mind, bolted together in this singular, hotly alloyed, all-solving thought. His body clenched with excitement, as though gripping the thought inside him so as not to lose it. Then he applauded the ramifications, the social aspect, the spiritual, the financial, the end to boredom, actually clapped his hands. Yes, indeed. He couldn’t possibly keep still, so skipped off for a walk.Without hat or coat he left his study and stepped out into the white morning.
The world was sharply displayed. Frost on the lawn, each and every blade of grass, each single one of them crusted with crystals. It creaked underfoot, fracturing. He pressed down, crushed and dissolved the ice with each step and left behind footprints - he looked back at them - of mineral green, of wet malachite. He rubbed his hands and laughed as he walked. There they were, the trees, beautiful friends, out there all this time, waiting to receive him. Ranks of lean footmen, they awaited his instructions. Their leafless twigs bounced responsively in the wind in front of a scratched, white sky. In one of them small birds, titmice, swapped their places, switching back and forth, then flew off together in a pretty wave of panic. His eye followed them and saw a hunched, short figure walking towards him from Fairmead House. He knew that gait, the weight carried low around the hips, the strides balanced and forthright, the shoulders held tensely up to carry the burdensome head. John Clare.
John approached the doctor who looked remarkably animated, without overcoat or hat, dancing on the spot to keep warm, blowing warmth over his hands and intermittently smiling. Perhaps he had the good