The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [83]
He kept going. It was hard to walk in a straight line. Around him the town of Stilton arose. Half-way through it, he rested on a gravel causeway and heard a young woman’s voice say, ‘Poor creature.’ An older woman’s voice answered, ‘Oh, he shams.’ He got up then and as he staggered to his feet the old woman said, ‘Oh, no he don’t.’ He didn’t look back to see them. He walked on.
At the other end of town he gathered his strength to ask a young woman, ‘Is this the right road for Peterborough?’‘Yes,’ she said.‘This is the Peterborough road.’ Home. He was almost home. He rubbed the tears from his nose.
Just outside Peterborough, a man and a woman in a cart called to him. They were old neighbours from his infancy’s village of Helpston. They’d recognised him. He bent over and held his knees and called to them that he hadn’t eaten or drunk since he’d left London. They found fivepence between them and threw it down. He picked it up from the road, thanking them, waving his ruined hat as they drove away.
A small pub by a bridge over a noisy stream. Inside, the fivepence became twopence of bread and cheese and two half-pints. He dozed as he chewed, struggling to keep his eyes open, but in a little while the food had dispersed into him as strength. Starting to walk again, the pain from his torn feet was sharpened by the rest, but he was too near home now to sit down on the road - he would have been ashamed to do it lest he be seen by people he knew.
Peterborough. Streets. Windows. People. Horses. Peterborough dwindling behind him. Then Walton. Then Werrington. A few miles only to go. A cart stopped beside him. It carried a man, a woman and a boy. ‘Get in,’ they told him, but he refused; he was so close, they needn’t bother for him. But the woman kept insisting with a passion that made him suspect she was drunk or mad. ‘It’s Patty,’ she said. ‘It’s Patty, your wife. Get in.’ They hauled him up onto the cart and he lay on his back to be carried the final miles home. He stared up at the clouds that moved with them. He felt the rough pressure of Patty’s kisses on his face. ‘John,’ Patty said. ‘Poor John. You’re almost home. You’re here.’ He’d made it. It was all behind him. Patty wiped the dirt from his face with her heavy clean hand. She stroked his head. His legs twitched. He turned his face into the smell of her. He licked his cracked lips. ‘Patty,’ he whispered. ‘Patty.’
‘That’s right. Almost home.’
‘Mary.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Of the many books and journals consulted for this novel, I would like to acknowledge particularly Jonathan Bate’s John Clare, Roger Sales’ John Clare: A Literary Life, Robert Bernard Martin’s Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, and Pamela Faithfull’s PhD thesis Matthew Allen MD, chemical philosopher, phrenologist, pedagogue and mad-doctor, 1783-1845. Readers of these historical works will know that in shaping this material as fiction I have taken a number of liberties, compressing events that occurred over several years into the space of seven seasons and ignoring some significant individuals while inventing others.