The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [59]
‘It’s this part here that’s the trouble.’
‘This frame.’
He nodded in his infuriatingly slow way and said no more, so that Matthew Allen had to ask, ‘And what is it that’s wrong with it?’
‘Being made of wood, even within the iron frame, it’s soft, too soft. It don’t hold it tight, and then because it’s loose . . .’
Matthew looked again at the product. The carving was scribbled, all jittery scratches and ragged gashes. The clean, deep design was lost. He looked down at it and in his rage felt the power that would have bitten down and carved it perfectly, the will that barged and bullocked inside him.
‘And they’re all like this.’
Again that slow blink.
‘Well?’
‘It’s this part here. They’s all going to come out the same. Course I could finish them by hand, tidy them up.’
‘No, no, no. Obviously that is not how we’re going to go on. The whole point, the whole scheme, is mechanical wood carving.’
The terror of risk was that while it charged Matthew Allen, had him skimming into the future with a harsh exhilaration that felt like delight, while it filled him at every moment with the sense of his own possibility and power, if it failed, if it failed all that rushing energy simply crashed like a carriage into a ditch and there was nothing, there was humiliation, debt, imprisonment, and all that he had defied would be all that there was.That was the risk. He threw the board across the room with sudden force so that his employee jerked back and, like a nervous old woman, placed a hand over his fluttering heart.
‘Damn it to hell!’ He calmed himself, running his hands down his beard. ‘Then this part of the machine must be remade in steel.That is all there is to it. Orders will be delayed. But there’s no alternative. Very well. Very well. I’ll get to it instanter.’
‘What shall I do? I can finish a few by hand.’
‘No, no. What did I say? No, you go home to your wife.’
The man smiled slyly. ‘I don’t have a wife.’
‘Then you can change your clothes and go out looking for one.’
‘Oh, I’ve had interested parties.Will I still get paid?’
‘Yes,’ Allen hissed. ‘Now go. Things are suspended here for two weeks at least, I imagine. I shall let you know.’
As he walked back to High Beach from Woodford, Matthew Allen composed in his head a letter to his customers of such persuasive excuse and finely phrased affirmations of the historical import of the enterprise, along with the irrefutable truth that revolutions are not made in single days, that he had restored his mood by the time Thomas Rawnsley appeared beside him on his horse. He greeted the younger man as one manufacturer to another. He even alluded to the day’s difficulties and was cheerfully condoled by Rawnsley, who knew all about such technical vicissitudes. Rawnsley, when asked, revealed that he was in fact riding towards the doctor’s residence to pay an impromptu call. He wished to offer a gift of apples from his garden. Would he find the doctor’s wife and daughter at home?
From her window, Hannah could see Charles Seymour prowling outside the grounds, swishing his stick from side to side. Boredom, a sane frustration, a continuous mild anger: Hannah thought he looked like a friend, someone whose life was as empty and miserable as her own. Clearly he needed company. She went downstairs to meet him. It didn’t matter now; she could meet whom she liked, and she was very bored.
When she did so, he raised a hand to lift his hat and found that he wasn’t wearing one. He smiled and mimed instead. Hannah gazed for a moment down at his shoes and smiled also.
‘Good day to you,’ he said.
‘Good day.’
She looked up at him again. He had a froth of fair hair and a smooth, beardless face that was colouring in the wind.
‘Chilly today,’ he said.
‘Indeed. The weather is from the north. My father says this aggravates the patients.’
‘But your shawl looks warm.’
‘It is.’
His imagining of her physical state was pleasing. It was gentlemanly, aristocratic,