The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [75]
If Oswald did grant him a loan, then surely all would be well. The machine was now, more or less, working as it should. It had been a delay only; his inspiration, his enterprise was sound. More than that, it was brilliant. He knew he was brilliant. And his brother knew it too.
He looked at the wooden fittings of the carriage’s interior. How were those contracts secured? Who was a wealthy man because of them? He should approach the rail companies himself. Just think of it: ticket offices, waiting rooms, lavatories - the railways teemed with places his wood carving could adorn. Oswald should be told that. Oswald was a fool. He too could be wealthy if only he could bring himself to admit his younger brother’s brilliance.
‘If you wouldn’t mind. Your leg.’
A lady in the carriage, reading trash, had found the fidgeting of Dr Allen’s leg irksome.
‘I do beg your pardon.’ He would have liked to treat her to a few days in the dark room, an ice bath, a clyster. Bloody hussy!
He would arrive at his brother’s shop unannounced, just as his brother had arrived at High Beach. This avoided being told by letter in advance that the journey was useless and accorded Matthew the advantage of a personal appeal.
By the time the train had stumbled into York, Matthew was tired, his mood had so quickly and so violently varied from the exultant to the enraged. And the sight of York made him feel sick, a town in which he had not distinguished himself, had made no reputation, had been imprisoned, and where people might remember him.
He smoothed his beard, his clothes, clasped his leather portfolio, and thrust himself out into its streets, walking quickly. As he lunged towards his target, he recited to himself the things that he should say, impressing himself once more with his commercial insight, his fragile but arguably quite real success.
Was that? No. He hurried past the man and turned into the street of his brother’s shop.Through the reflections on the glass, behind the ranked jars of pastilles, the bottles of Oswald’s useless tonics that compromised the prestige of Allen’s name, he glimpsed his brother’s bald head moving. He wiped his palms on his trousers, grasped the door knob, and woke the shop’s hysterical little bell with his entrance.
Oswald looked up, looked at him as Matthew struggled to smile, looked directly into his eyes and saw in his brotherly, intimate, presumptuous way Matthew’s purpose. He looked away and as he turned jars on the counter to align their labels precisely outwards said, ‘My renowned, respectable brother. But I have no fatted calf for your return . . .’
‘Oswald.’
‘I told you some time ago.’
‘Please, a moment.’
‘There is nothing I can do.’
‘No, no. It is good news really that I have . . .’
‘There is nothing . . .’
Matthew slapped the counter. He shocked himself with the noise and stared down at his bright shoes.
‘I have come a long way . . .’
‘There is nothing I can do.’
‘You’d send me to prison.’
‘I’m not sending you anywhere. There is nothing I can do.’
Matthew sat back in his chair, his book of imaginary numbers open before him. His eyes rested, unseeing, on the orrery by the window. He sank into a feeling of humiliation. It had an unclean warmth, like pissed-into bath water.The orrery slowly grew into his sight. When he noticed it, his thoughts swam away into philosophy.Those small globes on the end of the arms suspended in the vastness of space, in a total silence, and life, as far as man knew, on only one of those small globes, a mere dust adhering to its surface, and to what end? He achieved a deeply peaceful dejection, a sad smile on his face, thinking of man’s short squirming frenzy before entering the silence. He knew that chaos, that consequences would soon follow, so he took a careful pleasure in this time alone in his study,