The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [76]
‘What is this I hear?’ Tennyson shouted. ‘What is this I hear?’
‘I don’t know,’ Matthew Allen answered. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me.’
‘I most certainly will.’Tennyson stood with his chin raised, head tilted, his hands in his hair, glaring down at the doctor. He was barely in control of himself, rage had so broken up his stillness, filled him with unfamiliar quickness and ferocity. He spoke with precision to keep it under control, holding on to his hair. ‘I have just spoken to my brother. He informed me, with some reluctance, as one with a horror of unnecessary suffering and disturbance, that some time ago you asked him for money, when all along it had been made perfectly clear to you that Septimus would not invest in your scheme.’
‘That is true. I did offer him the opportunity to involve some funds in our scheme in expectation of future . . .’
‘Because you were short of money. Because your imbecile machine is not making money. Meanwhile I am receiving letters from other members of my family anxiously enquiring after the dividends that should now be being paid.And from you there comes nothing, and more nothing.’
‘Please be calm.Allow me to show you my accounts.’ Now was the time for them, finally, after all the scrupulous work. Allen picked up the ledger and stepped towards the irate poet. Tennyson grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back.
‘Enough talkee, talkee, as the niggers say. I don’t want to see your numbers. I want the first dividend to be paid. I have trusted you.You are into my family for eight thousand pounds and now you ask Septimus for a thousand more?’Tennyson was very strong. Allen, now hollowed by illness, hung from Tennyson’s hand as the big, dirty, wide-mouthed face bore down on him. He almost liked it, the cringe of fear in his genitals. He wanted to lean into the blast of his rage, to be purified by it, to be destroyed. ‘My father is dead,’ Tennyson was saying. ‘What we have invested is our inheritance and we appear to be losing it. For months you have flannelled and promised.’
‘Family money. That family that weighs you down. You might be grateful.’
‘What business is that of yours?’
‘You will get your money back and many times more. It just needs a little time.’
‘I thought you were out of the run of common men, not one of the herd. I trusted you. But evidently you are one of the herd, mutton-headed. Greasy and commercial and incapable.’
‘I’m not. Please let me go.’
‘Mercantile in spirit. Petty. A swindler.’ Tennyson shook the man with both hands. Allen clasped the ledger to his chest, his eyelids fluttering in the big man’s breath. ‘I’ll not let you ruin me, Matthew Allen. You will make good your debts to me, to all of us. Why, why have you done this?’
‘I haven’t. I won’t. I am your friend. Here, yes, here’s an idea: life insurance, on me, as an absolute guarantee.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of moneys returning to you.’
‘For which I’ll need you dead?’
Crusoe began to consider his position and the circumstances he was reduced to on the island. For clarity, he set good against evil like debtor and creditor, scribbling in his notebook, the pages crinkled by dried sea water.
Evil: I am without defence, or means to resist any violence of madman or sane man or beast.
Good: I am a hardy fighter of great reputation and can answer for myself with my fists.
Evil: Since my shipwreck I have been denied the love of my wives, the satisfaction of manly desire, the smiles of my children.
Good: There is good provender. Food requires little foraging.
Evil: I am all alone.
Evil: I am not where I should be, not in my home.
Evil: I am tormented by memories and phantasies and spells of insensibility.
Evil: My verses languish unread and unheard by any man.
Good: Nature is my mother and is here as elsewhere, although she wears a strange face so far from the scenes I love.
Evil: I want my Mary.