The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [44]
‘I saw Mr Tennyson the other day,’ she announced, not at all childish.
‘Indeed?’ Annabella raised her eyebrows.
‘Yes, I did. We had a most pleasant conversation.’
‘Did you? Hannah, why haven’t you told me about this? No, you need to pinch it there and there.’
‘Can’t,’ Abigail complained. ‘You do it.’
‘But it’s on my fingers.’
‘You ought to be careful with your pleasant conversations, ’ Dora warned. ‘You don’t want to be taken lightly.’
‘Why would I be taken in any way? We met in the lane. We spoke.’
‘Hmm.’ Dora examined her stitches.
‘Has he heard you play the piano?’ Annabella asked.
‘Yes. That would be bound to induce a proposal,’ Dora said.
‘No, he hasn’t. How could we arrange that? Take no notice of Dora. She is merely disappointed that her proposal has already come and it was from James.’
‘I would be very happy with such a proposal,’ Annabella said appeasingly.
‘Neither opinion terribly interests me,’ Dora said, smoothing the edges of a napkin.
‘Here.’ Annabella hooked her fingers through the thread, pinched and lifted from Abigail’s fingers a neat crossed frame.
‘Knock, knock,’ said a voice. A loose bunch of wild-flowers appeared beside the door frame, then, smiling beside them, the face of James. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘There are lots of you.’
‘Don’t be frightened,’ Hannah said. ‘Come in.’
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ Dora chastised.‘I’ll put those in water.’ She got up, took the flowers from him, received with demurely downcast eyes his kiss on her cheek, and left.
‘So,’ he said when she was gone.
‘Do sit down,’ Hannah said.
He nodded and sat with a breathy smile in Annabella’s direction, squinting as though her beauty were sunlight full on his face. He bent forward and patted Abigail on the shoulder; she looked at him and turned away.
‘Those are your linens,’ Hannah said.
‘Are they?’ he asked and bent forward to touch them.
The sight made Hannah shudder. It was precisely what had to be avoided: the life with linens, the dreary, comfortable, tepid life. She said suddenly, almost to punish him,‘And will you be happy, married to Dora?’
‘I . . . I . . . well, what a question. Of course I will. Mutual regard, a marriage founded on warm mutual regard . . .’
‘I thought so,’ Hannah cut him off. ‘I’m sure that you will.’
Dora returned with the flowers in a jug. ‘There,’ she said. ‘James, you look very warm. Are you ailing?’
Hannah snorted.
‘Is Hannah being impolite?’
‘Impolite is a very strong word.’
‘I thought so. Hannah, why are you not capable of being just ordinarily civil?’
‘I am civil. You weren’t even here.’
‘Evidently. If I had been, perhaps you would have behaved in a less . . .’
‘Less? Less what?’
Abigail cringed close against Annabella’s skirt, holding the fabric with one hand.
‘Or perhaps if you hadn’t been here . . .’
‘Oh, that’s fine. That’s really fine. I shan’t be here.’ Hannah stood up and fled the room. Annabella, in the pained silence, fitted the cat’s cradle again around Abigail’s fingers, then got up and followed.
‘Look at that,’ Matthew Allen said to his son. ‘Marvellous.’ He bent forward with his hands on his knees, peering.
‘It’s a Maudsley,’ Thomas Rawnsley told him.
‘Oh, I know, I know. I’ve studied all the designs. It’s simply that I haven’t really seen a table engine working before.’
The hypnosis of its movement, silent, balanced, rhythmical.The viscous thrusting of its arms, well oiled. And the turning of the triangular centrifugal governor at the top, back and forth, like a girl hearing her name and turning towards him, saying Yes? Yes? Yes?
‘This type of engine,’ Rawnsley said, ‘would probably suit your purposes as well as mine. I use charcoal, which is of course abundant here with the forest.’
‘That I have already decided,’ Allen told him,‘having studied all available specifications. But I haven’t yet told my son what my purposes are.’
‘It’s true, he hasn’t,’ Fulton confirmed, wincing as the man working the drill filled the air with its screaming. ‘So what is it?’ he asked his father.
‘Look around you. All the materials are here.’
Fulton did