The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [72]
Dr Allen stepped out into it, raising his umbrella. He was late and hungry. He hadn’t eaten that morning. He hadn’t dared, what with the pain in his stomach and the lightest of meals causing violent expulsions. He lacked regularity. He lacked sleep. He lacked money.
A figure on the path, also under an umbrella.
‘Dr Allen,’ he shouted over the noise of the rain.
‘Yes.’ Dr Allen squinted at him, holding his collar.
‘You are Dr Allen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re the devil I want,’ he shouted.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Yes, you will.’
‘I’m sorry, are you a patient?’
‘How dare you!’
The rain drummed on the man’s umbrella, formed a falling fringe of drops in front of his glaring red face. Dr Allen suffered a sudden lurch of panic: the man was a creditor.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Please, come inside. We can’t talk like this out in the rain. I can hardly hear you.’
‘It takes you this long to invite me inside. Lead on, doctor, lead on.’
Whoever he was followed Matthew Allen into the vestibule, furled his umbrella and speared it into the stand.
‘I knew,’ he began, ‘that you ran a lax establishment, but I thought that at least you would know who was and was not a patient of yours.’
‘Many apologies for the confusion. Sincerely. If you would please follow me to my study. There we can talk.’
Allen set off swiftly towards his study, wanting to conceal whatever would follow, to bottle it. He opened the door and the man strode past him - past, frighteningly, the two sets of accounts laid side by side, but at which he did not glance.
‘What’s that?’ the man asked, pointing.
‘Oh, that. That’s an orrery. It’s the planets.’
‘Yes, yes. I know what it is. I’d forgotten the name.’
‘If I may explain,’ Allen said. ‘There have been difficulties, as I’ve acknowledged, of a mechanical nature, but as I have tried to make clear, the machine is now functioning perfectly . . .’
‘Machine? What are you talking about?’
‘The Pyroglyph. Excuse me, sir, you are . . .’
‘Excuse me, “your lordship” is the appropriate form of address for a viscount.’
‘For a viscount?’
‘Indeed. A viscount.’
Allen began to wonder if this were not, in fact, a patient, one of the new ones his wife had been dealing with. ‘I beg your pardon . . .’
‘So you will when I’ve finished with you. Do you really have no idea what is going on?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m a little unwell. The machine, the manufacture, the accounts take up a great deal of energy.’
‘Will you stop talking about your bloody machine.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t understand. Don’t know. My son is a patient, so to speak. Charles Seymour. His name is familiar, at least?’
‘Oh. Oh. Of course. I do beg your pardon, your lordship.’
‘As predicted. Would you summon him for me?’
‘If you so wish.’
‘I do wish it. I wish it very much, very much. But it can’t be done.You can’t do it. And once again I am appalled that you don’t know that you can’t.You can’t because he is not here. He has done exactly what I have been paying you to avoid. He has run off with that atrocious little whore.’
Spring
Morning.The door open. Stepping out into light, into the world carefully, one step at a time so as not to fall. Inhaling her small requirement of the boundless air. Leaves on the trees, green growth in the vegetable garden where the people quietly worked. Nothing came at her, nothing attacked. There were flowers and clouds. The day was gentle.
Forgiveness.This was what forgiveness felt like - given back to the world, freed into it, whole and restored. Without words her being resonated thanks as she stood there, closing her eyes slowly in the breeze and opening them again to see the Creation, the play of the infant Christ’s spirit in the subtle movement of life around her.
She saw the doctor’s youngest child and called out to her. The child started, clutched its hands together. Perhaps she had frightened her during her task, after the angel, when she had