The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [73]
‘Good day, Abigail. How are you?’
‘Good day.’
The child shifted as it stood, wriggling, lifting its hands to its head, looking around. Margaret felt she could almost see its large, clear soul, too big for the compact body.
‘It is lovely to see you.’
‘Are you better?’
‘The Lord protects, Abigail. The Lord protects. You can tell your father I forgive him. The Lord’s compassion, ’ she laughed, raising both hands, ‘is astounding.’
‘Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not crying. Am I? I won’t.’
‘Good.’ Abigail reached up and held her thin hand with her small, warm hand. ‘Will you do more sewing now?’
Matthew Allen struggled to detach her grip from his arm, but as he pulled she twisted her grip into his sleeve. It was the thundery weather that made them worse, the noise, the wind buffeting the windows and wrenching through the woods, all the trees flaring upright in weird light. She asked him, ‘Is it true? You won’t turn me out, will you?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Will you?’
There were tears in her eyes. He prised at her fingers. He felt another hand on him, on his shoulder, pulling. These hands he wrestled with, in his fatigue: he felt as though they might pull him open finally, spill him like a suitcase full of clothes. He shook himself like an animal and turned. It was John.
‘What is it?’
‘I must talk with you.’
‘Must you? Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let go of me, then.’
‘You won’t turn me out?’ she repeated.
‘No, we will not,’ Matthew almost shouted, removing her hand by the wrist. ‘Come to my study,’ he said to John. ‘I need, I . . . Let’s just go.’ He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
John walked behind the doctor and stared at the back of his neck, the way it emerged, delicate and narrow, from the stiff ring of his collar. The furrow down the middle of it. The sparks of fair hair. The resistance in it, the effort of will.
Matthew Allen unlocked the door and ushered John into a private red gloom of papers and piled books. John watched as he opened the curtains.
The doctor sat heavily on a chair. ‘So, what is it?’ He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips and checked them for sweat, then wiped them on his trousers.
‘It is my want of freedom,’ John began, standing stout and justified in the middle of the rug. ‘I must . . . you must . . . I must again be allowed beyond the confines of this place.’
‘John, you understand . . .’
‘Lord Radstock to you.’
‘What?’
John saw the doctor checked in his response, looking weary and helpless, and felt his advantage.
‘Well, there we are,’ the doctor muttered. ‘There we are.’
‘Where are we? I’m here, stifled here. I need liberty. I demand liberty.’
‘Do not shout. There’s no need.’
‘There is need. Look here, I had been intending not to tell you this, you little bottle imp, but if it comes to it, so be it.There are things happening here, violations . . .’
‘I said there’s no need to shout.’ Matthew Allen surged to his feet. ‘There is . . .’ He started coughing and couldn’t stop. John waited impatiently, but the fit took hold.The doctor’s eyes thickened in their sockets, spit flew onto his purpling lips. He held up a hand to indicate that it would pass. Eventually, in a few sputtering jerks, it relented. Allen moaned, breathed in carefully.
‘You are unwell.’
Allen laughed.‘I fear you may be correct.’To himself, his voice sounded faint. Something had shifted inside his ears.
‘And tired.’
‘Oh, yes. And tired.’
‘Then rest. Lie down. Lie down on your sofa.’
‘Yes, yes, I will.’
Matthew accepted. Why not? Everyone pulling at him, requiring his decisions. Let them decide for a change. John stood over him as he subsided groaning down onto the cushions. John then took the blanket draped over the sofa’s back rest and spread it as a coverlet over the doctor. Matthew Allen watched the broken poet’s comfortable fat face as he tucked the blanket under his side so that he was snugly wrapped, and remembered that the poor man was a father like himself. He had tended fevered children with presumably