The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [80]
Hannah widened her eyes as her heart beat heavily at these words. Sighing and kissing at last. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘you may,’ and held out her right hand.
Thomas Rawnsley reached for it with both of his own, and without saying anything turned it over and unbuttoned her glove. This too must have been part of the dream. She watched as he gently pulled the glove from her hand, held it still upturned in his own, bent forward, and with a warm crush of breath and beard against her skin, kissed her palm, then closed her fingers over the kiss as though he had given her a coin.
He smoked as he piled his books. He puffed with small pursings of his lips and read the spines. Purgatorio. He hadn’t got up enough Italian to read Dante. Of course he hadn’t. He never would. He would return to Somersby and would fail to do so there also, sinking into the place to dissolve, as smoke merges upwards into the air. The family shadows would surround him, their black blood would continue to circulate in his veins. There was no escape. He was the equal of any English poet, but he took with him a wallet that contained half-finished things only and had new ones about Arthur in his throat, but none of that made a difference. Eventually, if they were published, the critics would decry them again and there would be no Hallam to rise to his defence. No, he returned with nothing. He’d tried the world, tried enterprise, and now was bankrupt, his money gone into the mad doctor’s mad scheme. It was a humiliation. Worse, he had to return to the family home and live narrowly. He’d believed the doctor’s delusions, he’d written some poems and that was that. He remained the same stale person. He would finish packing up his books.The servants would straighten the place after him, pluck out the creases he had made. He would go back to Somersby to smoke and dwindle and, when his spirits allowed, to begin the poem about Arthur.
Hannah did not listen to what her father was saying. Seated beside her at the organ, her mother did. Head dropped forward, Eliza stared at the red, curled fingers in her lap. Hannah had discovered her sitting alone like this a few times recently. The posture tightened her mother’s narrow shoulders, made her look girlish and chastised. And then quickly she would be up and active again.
Hannah stared vaguely at the stops of the organ, bone-white, labelled with their voices, a litany that ran jingling through her mind whenever she sat there to turn the pages: Clarion. Bombard. Contra Posaune. Mixture. Gemshorn. Dulciana. Trumpet. It did so now, although not in the usual infuriating way it usually did, but happily, like birdsong in the background as she thought about the letter from Thomas Rawnsley in her dressing table, his promises, her future.
‘Affliction separates man from man,’ Dr Allen said. His hands gripped the sides of the lectern. He looked down at the mad and told them, ‘That is part of its purpose. It is sent us from God to force us to resort to Him, to see that He is our one true refuge, to lead us from the unreliable inconstancy of our fellow men to the sanctuary of Christ.’
Margaret stared at the speaking man. The red in his eyes was a giveaway: they had made their habitation within him as well. But he needn’t fear. She ought to tell him that. Even if they destroyed his mortal body, he need not fear.All would be well. It had been vouchsafed. It was near at hand. Her own release was only the beginning. The joy of it burned inside her.
Hannah was startled out of her thoughts when her mother’s hands flew up and started shaping themselves over the keys. Behind them the variable voices jostled together.
William Stockdale oversaw the patients’ departure.
George Laidlaw once again fervently shook the doctor’s hand.‘Thank you,’ he said.‘Thank you. I cannot tell you what comfort you give.’
‘I am glad of it,’ Allen said, gathering his papers, and George Laidlaw reluctantly hobbled away to his endless guilty calculations