The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [3]
This was not how Hannah had arranged this meeting in her imagination. She would not have had the clutter of her family around her, not at first, and she would have happened by at the right moment, or at least could have easily dissembled her preceding vigilance. She could have been a solitary, attractive girl of seventeen, a wood nymph even, discovered in her wandering. She stared along the road as far as she could: it turned sharply to the right a little way ahead and the forest cut off the view down the hill.Through the trees she felt them approaching, an event approaching.Who knew how significant it might prove to be? She should try to expect less; there was little chance it would match her hopes. But it might. Certainly, something was about to happen. People were about to arrive.
And then it was happening. The carriage from Woodford was approaching, trunks strapped to its roof, the horses bowing their way up the hill, the driver dabbing at their broad backs with his whip. Quickly, hoping not to be seen, Hannah pinched colour into her cheeks. Mrs Allen picked up Abigail and held her on her hip. Matthew Allen smoothed his whiskers with both hands, tugged his waistcoat down, and enriched the swell of his cravat.
As the carriage slowed beside them, the driver touching the brim of his hat, Matthew Allen stepped forward and opened the door. ‘Misters Tennyson,’ he said in his deeper, professional voice.‘Welcome to High Beach.’
A cough and a thank you was heard from the shadowy interior where long limbs were moving.
Hannah stood a little closer to her mother as the two brothers emerged.
The two Tennysons were tall, clean-shaven and darkly similar. They greeted the three females with courteous bows. Hannah felt close to saying something, but didn’t. She heard her mother say, ‘Gentlemen, welcome.’ One Tennyson mumbled a reply as they both stood blinking, shifting on their feet after the confinement of the carriage. Both began lighting pipes.
The trunks were unfastened and brought down by Dr Allen and one of the Tennysons. Both the Tennysons were handsome, one perhaps more sensitive in appearance than the other - would that be the poet or the melancholic? Hannah waited for them to speak some more. She wanted desperately to know which of these two men her interest should fall upon.
John woke up without any feeling down one side. He reached a hand up to his face to feel for the rough crusting of frost and drag it off, but there was none. So either he wasn’t outside or the weather was mild. He felt that the air wasn’t moving over him, wasn’t alive. He was inside, in a shut room.
He kept his eyes closed, floating there in his own inner darkness, wanting to delay the knowledge of which room he was in, although in truth he knew. But it might not be there, it might be the right room, with Patty first up from the bed and busy with the children.
He opened his eyes by fractions and saw a dark grey room. The imagined biting rime on his sky side was the old numbness from sleeping out years ago, not a real touch of the world, and he wasn’t home. There was the window, glowing dimly with wet autumn light. It showed its view of two trees bent by the wavery glass.
Below he could hear other inmates moving and the brisk voice of Mrs Allen. She would collect him shortly to accompany her across the garden to the doctor’s house for breakfast, him having been a good lad.
He lifted the blanket, swung his softening white feet onto the clean wood floor, and stood up, and immediately wanted to lie back down again and not lie back down again and go and not go anywhere and not be there and be home.
John spread butter thickly on his bread and bit. Those considered constitutionally able had cutlets to eat and sawed at their meat, including Charles Seymour, the aristocrat who wasn’t mad at all. He’d condescended to join them this morning. The doctor had listed his pedigree to the new man as though presenting a prize mastiff. There had been polite