The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [49]
John stood and stared down at the widening hem of slime where in the heat the pond had shrunk down into itself. A thick smell to the heavy green water, a sexual stink. It looked oily, frog-coloured. He was about to crouch and see if he could see through its reflections to the creatures living within when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes? Who are you?’
‘My name is Mary.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘It is my name, given me by an angel of the Lord.’
‘Yes, but you look - I suppose we are - older. We couldn’t escape it, could we?’ He reached up and touched her face. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh.’ Mary smiled. She had his attention. She could see he was ready. The contact was deep and sincere. ‘I knew you’d come,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘But you’re thin.’
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.
‘Let’s go somewhere, somewhere out of sight. We can hide, be free together.’
‘Listen . . .’
‘Ah!’ He startled her by crying out. ‘Why did you take so long?’
‘God’s will,’ she said. ‘We must not question it.’
‘Yes, yes. But it’s been so hard.’
She saw tears in his eyes. ‘I’m here now.’
‘Ah!’ he cried again. He picked up one of her hands and held it to the side of his face, comforting himself. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Before they find us.’
He kept hold of her hand and led her away. He hated to harry and assault her, but it was so urgent, they might have no time at all. He pulled her after him away from the house to the walled yard where the grass clippings were dumped and vegetable trash was left to compost. There he grabbed her into his arms and crushed her against him. She permitted this. She felt the thirst in his soul. She had been sent to help him. ‘It is the Lord that has sent me to you,’ she said.
‘Yes, yes. It must be.’
His hands now chased over her back, over her hair, her shoulders, her buttocks.
‘No,’ she started. ‘No, no.’
‘Yes. Finally. We’re together now. This is right.’ Was it right? Was this a sacrifice she had to make, the penance of life with her husband revisited upon her? She wished to be entirely an instrument of the Lord. Was this a way?
The man’s ardour was overwhelming. She found herself on her back on the moist grass, its odour of sweet rot. John lifted her skirt, tugged at her underthings. Her body belonged to the world, after all. It would fall, would decay. She closed her eyes. Her Silent Watcher kept vigil.
John pulled at his own buttons. He kissed her face, her eye, the hard bone in her cheek. He worked and found the place. ‘Mary,’ he said. ‘Mary.’
She kept her face screwed tightly shut, feeling his face bumping against her, his tears on her cheeks.
He rocked on the pulsing sensations, inhaling the grass, the gold day resting softly on his back. He pressed in. He was older - his belly made a soft barrier between them - and her bones were so sharp. He pressed down into her until it broke from him, the lightning that forked down into that darkness and branched and spread. He whimpered and hugged her to him. ‘Mary,’ he moaned and rolled off her. She tried to get up, but he held on to her, keeping her there, and she submitted, pressing her face into him instead, burrowing into the darkness of his neck. His head pressed into the musky, damp grass. He felt the warmth of her tears falling onto him. Her hair lay across his face, across his mouth. He looked up.Transparent flaws circulated in his vision. Two flies buzzed, battling together. Swifts screamed overhead in the glorious summer heights. ‘Mary,’ he said again in his happiness, slowly closing his eyes.
Tennyson’s money was quickly banked, premises were rented, quantities of oak, lime and hornbeam were ordered, and the Pyroglyph was put into construction. Matthew Allen walked among the screaming drills of the place where it was being born, enjoying all the wrenching power of manufacture. He’d had the exhilaration of new ideas before, ideas that had altered the shape of his life, established him in the world, but he’d never seen an idea being built, bodied forth in space, hammered together.
He hired two