Millicent stared up from the mattress, the darkness in her eyes even deeper than the room. ‘I only wish to live in peace. We are here for the moment, in my father’s house and with you as his charge. Enough of your complaining.’
‘You don’t want a fire in your bedroom? A roll of lace to sew as you please? A carriage to ride to church?’
‘What, are you a gentleman now! Riding to church!’ Millicent laughed, her belly shaking and William jiggling with it.
‘Don’t be a-laughing at me.’
‘Hahaha. Arriving in a coach!’
There was a banging on the floor from her sisters below, a protestation for quiet.
‘A coach,’ continued she, whispering. ‘Church is only fifty yards down the road. Hahaha.’
The following day, as I set to firing the coals, Master Dampier strode inside the room and hit me about the shoulders with his cane. ‘Why is the fire not kindled?’
‘I am setting it now, sir.’
‘It is near seven of the clock,’ said he, knocking me once on the top of my head.
I stood to be as tall as I could, still a long way beneath him. ‘Can you not see I am presently kindling the coals?’
Master Dampier grimaced, pointing the steel tip of his cane at my face.
‘I object to the treatment, sir,’ said I, grabbing the tip so he couldn’t strike me more. ‘I am now a father, no less.’
‘Lives under my roof, eats my food,’ growled he.
‘If you do not wish me to eat your food or live in your house,’ replied I, growing bolder, ‘then release me from my servitude.’
Master Dampier’s eyes widened as I’d never seen, his nostrils a-flaring into cavities spacious enough for two cherries.
‘Release you? So my daughter and grandson will have no home?’
‘I will provide for my family.’
Master Dampier was now shaking with rage, a small trail of saliva trickling from the corner of his withered mouth. I still held his cane with one hand.
‘You have become a blight upon this family,’ said he, kicking my shin. ‘Now set the fire.’
I held his eye a moment longer, then released his cane and set to work, bending on my hands and knees to blow upon the embers. Master Dampier’s mutterings grew louder behind me, calling me a Damned Sodomite and Accursed Amalekite. I was still bent to the hearthstone, when I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head. I winced, clutching the wound. Then, before I had a moment to protect myself, Master Dampier raised his boot and stomped upon my head. A bluntness buzzed about me and I fell into the fire. I saw swirls of orange and red, and then a white nothingness. Blood filled my mouth and trickled down my neck.
‘To disrespect one’s master is to disrespect Our Lord,’ bellowed he. ‘You will work out your years or you will go to prison.’
‘I cannot see,’ yelled I.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame,’ replied my master. I heard the workshop door open as he stepped into the house for breakfast.
I stumbled about, my hands outstretched, finding my way to a bucket of water, splashing my eyes that could still not make a likeness of the room. I collapsed in my place, making peace with my future as a blind man; my only satisfaction being the burden I would now be to the Dampiers. I lay there, rubbing my unseeing eyes, fantasising of demanding tea and cake from bed while old Master Dampier worked in solitude below.
Six hours later a semblance of reality – like looking through a smudged spyglass held not quite to the eye – began returning to my eyes. I found my greatcoat, placed it over my shoulders and staggered towards High Street to locate the offices of Mr Makepeace Sterling, attorney at law, whom I required to sue for damages. I sat across his enormous desk, stacked with books and papers that bathed in a red glow from a flower-patterned window.
‘Explain the circumstances under which you were kicked,’ said he, holding a lens to his left eye and picking up his quill.
I explained him the circumstances, not speaking the slightest untruth or hyperbole, for what hyperbole did I need, exhibiting to him the cuts to my mouth and the burns around my eyes.
‘It would be my pleasure to advise you in the matter,’ said he, after scratching at length on his page. ‘My fee is based on time spent, being ten shillings per hour.’
‘Per hour!’ exclaimed I.
‘Per hour, yes,’ repeated he. ‘Or part thereof.’
‘I will go then to the Justice myself.’
‘Young Mr Wild,’ said Makepeace Sterling, removing the monocle and lighting his pipe, leaning back in his calfskin-upholstered chair, the chair reclining with him (both he and the chair going on angle together!). ‘Being only an adolescent I will give you the following advice, gratis. Under the deposition you spake, I expect the Justice will not rule in your favour, you being indentured and attempting to break contract. To disobey one’s master is a much greater offence than the beating of his charge.’
‘He blinded me, sir,’ begged I.
‘Do you see this page?’ He held up an irregular piece.
‘Aye, what of it?’
‘Well then, you aren’t blinded.’ He coughed a mouthful of smoke towards me. ‘Go back to your work, and avoid yourself the prison.’
WILD
Death begins, I forge a Philosophy, return whence I came
1700
I made a meandering route home, passing by the house of my mother, the panes of which were alight, then by the tree at which Millicent and I stole kisses most illegal, and finally resting at the bed of a river, drinking its crystal waters in the purple twilight and listening to the running of the stream, it a symbol of determination still in the world, still in me. Night enclosed itself all about until there was a pure darkness, a pure solitude that told me of the injustice at the very seat of my life, the meanness in the world, and its indifference to my efforts. It was the first true understanding of my battle pitted against a great foe – all of humanity and all of God’s hostility – this battle being commonly known as life or better represented by the word portion; life hardly being something whole, more a crumb from an inedible cake much larger.
It must have been near eight of the clock when I stood up from my place at the riverbed, slowly making my way through the woods, listening to my boots crunch twigs underfoot, and imagining Millicent’s concern for my whereabouts and a discussion between the whole Dampier family regarding my better treatment, but these of course were only imaginings, for when I returned home there was no family awaiting me, no lights were kindled, not a sound about the place as I stepped upstairs and into our room. I undressed and enveloped myself in the bed with William and Millicent, who stirred briefly, grumbling something about my absence, and then fell to sleep again, as did I, to the sound of William softly suckling on his mother’s nipple.
I was awaked by the cursing of my wife.
‘You’ve murdered our son,’ she was shouting.
‘You’re dreaming, Milli,’ said I, softly.
The sun was near up, a triangle of satisfying orange projected on our ceiling. William slept soundly, nuzzled into my side. Millicent’s eyes were icily upon me, her face goose white.
‘It is your fault,’ said she.
‘Calm yourself,’ replied I, reaching out to touch her forehead, which was moist and a mixture of hot and cold. ‘You are in a delirium.’
‘Away!’ screamed she.
I placed my feet on the cold boards and took up my stockings, no longer willing to console a madwoman. Millicent stared at the ceiling. The crooked tip of her nose was red and wet. ‘I will call for the priest.’
‘Enough of your vapours!’
‘Don’t you see,’ said Millicent, glowering with quiet hatred. ‘Touch his face.’
‘Touch his face,’ repeated I, moving my hand to the sleeping baby’s face and laying two fingertips to his cheek, which was very cold indeed. My hand recoiled.
‘You were sleeping atop him,’ said Millicent, her voice as cold as her dead son’s cheeks. �
��You suffocated him.’
I durst not speak, looking at the child that had never been so still, its face now to me a marble relief, a thing representative of life, not embodied of it. Only the week before he’d spoke his first word – ‘muh’ – when wanting more cream.
‘Had you not disobeyed my father, had you not wandered around town all night, getting yourself drunk, or whatever tomfoolery you were up to, you might not have been in such a stupor … such a stupor as to lie directly on your sleeping son.’
‘He was nursing when I returned home,’ said I. ‘I hadn’t taken of one dram. If there is anyone to blame it is your father.’
‘Father feeds us, houses us, clothes us. It is you –’
‘Say one more word of my guilt,’ interrupted I, my anger quickly rising to an unfamiliar pitch, ‘and I shall take leave of this house and never return.’
‘You can deny it all you like, I saw with my own –’
I took a water jug and threw it against the wall. Millicent cowered as water splashed about the room. I watched it collect into channels along the mortar, then gather into a puddle. That water was much like the Dampiers, I thought, always sticking together.
I gathered what belongings I could conveniently fit into my hessian satchel while Millicent silently observed. My dead William’s face was turned into the pillow with his arms swaddled by his side, like a butterfly that would never break from its chrysalis.
‘Have you nothing more to say,’ I asked of Millicent.
‘So you plan to leave,’ confirmed she.
‘I will not work another day under your father.’
‘And your wife?’ spoke Millicent, her eyes now on the curtains not yet open.
‘My wife can choose between her husband and her father,’ said I, with resolution.
‘You have no house for us to live, no money. And you would be a criminal, besides.’
‘Mark my words,’ replied I. ‘For I say the following with all the commitment I am able, and I say it only once. If you come with me, I will provide for you a life very rich. For I will not let my fate be that of my father, creating ladders that have no climbers, nor will I be set in my ways like your father, pinching his pennies like a Jew, nor will I even be like the gentleman-attorney Sterling, who makes money according to the hours he spends. For I have a determination, a determination set deep in me. I will not be used nor trodden!’
Millicent’s eyes were unmoved, the sun now at full pitch against the curtains, dust frolicking about in its glow. At her blankness, my heart softened.
‘Millicent. Prithee. Last night I was in the forest where we first kissed. I sat there, waiting for my eyes to recover from the burns I suffered from your father. There I sat unto late, listening to river waters converge and run, thinking about my plot, our plot. In fact, I see this …’ I gestured to the now-deceased William. The flow of my words channelled with great force. ‘… this travesty as further evidence to my point. For I have formed a Philosophy. But not one of those philosophies spake by men in coffeehouses with no application. I have formed a Philosophy that will now be the direction under which I shall live. Nay, call me a heathen, believing in a direction my own, but I will tell you now, that if one solely follows the instruction of one’s father or the demands of one’s master, or the protestations of one’s mother, one is only a twig cast into the river, flowing with the trends of every other leaf or twig and doomed to flow into the sea with no way of turning back. I have a mind now to go against this tide. For I have heard of common men who have risen to be kings and I assure you, such men didn’t achieve this by letting their master beat them near blind, nor by sleeping beneath a meat!’
’Twas here I stopped my monologue, the longest I ever spake, for effect drawing the curtains and letting in the light to our future.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Millicent, after a lengthy silence. ‘You intend to become King?’
‘I will become as much of a king as I so desire, and you can scoff to your heart’s content, but listen to me carefully, you are either with me or against me. And if it so be your wish to stay here with Master Dampier then I shall consider you my enemy not my wife and all our contracts annulled, and you may marry again as you please, me being dead to you and you to me, and I guarantee you a day will come when you will wish yourself otherwise.’
Silence filled the room.
‘Enjoy your river,’ said she, after a moment. ‘Or whatever the fuck you’re talking about.’
‘Aye,’ replied I, shouldering my satchel.
It was in this manner that I left the Dampier house for the final time, never to return, my dear dead son wrapped in blankets and gone from the world. Equally my wife, for she too was dead to me, a girl who I had briefly and fervently loved, her crooked features and towering person a handsome pleasure to my eyes and her quick wit a pleasure to my heart; now turned a thing of bittersweet reminiscence. My Philosophy – to rise against opposition – now formed, but with no plan or strategy to enact it, I set towards the only place I knew viz. my father’s home, not more than twenty minutes’ walk.
‘What did I tell you,’ said Father, looking at the satchel upon my shoulder. I paused in the small doorway. Mother looked at me from the block, a knife mid-air.
‘I’ll be staying here but briefly.’
‘Your bed is still there. Mind the lamb.’
The salted meat turned in its place, the strap creaking.
‘What about your indenture?’ asked Father.
‘I have been legally released. Here is the contract.’ I held up a piece of paper, which was actually an order for nine bronze buckles.
‘And what is your intention now?’ asked he.
‘I have designs.’
‘Do these designs include your darling wife and son?’
‘Mr Makepeace Sterling is preparing our divorce.’
‘How are you going to afford a divorce? Let alone a lawyer?’
‘I have funds,’ said I, lowering my satchel beneath the lamb.
‘Not for long!’
‘I have a …’ replied I, intending to set out my Philosophy to Father.
‘You have a what?’ jeered Father. ‘An incy wincy David’s dick?’
‘Nothing. It matters not.’
‘And what of your son?’ asked my mother.
‘He died in his sleep.’
‘It is better to die early than grow malformed,’ answered my mother, beheading some carrots.
‘Aye,’ granted I.
I took up my position under the lamb, interlacing my fingers beneath my head and watching Father slide his stockinged feet into his pumps, all dull and scuffed, then picking up his box of tools.
‘Have you made any inventions of late?’ asked I.
‘Inventions?’
‘Such as your ladder.’
‘I make nothing, except what will provide me sure income.’
He let himself out, the sound of his pumps over the cobbled stones like an unsure horse, a lonely sound to my ears if ever there was, it suggesting to me both the length and purposelessness of man’s life.
‘Mother,’ spoke I, my tone ruminant. ‘I have formed a Philosophy.’
‘A Philosophy?’
‘Yes, a creed, so to speak.’
‘And what is this creed?’
‘You will not mock me?’
‘I will not mock you, but I can’t promise to like what I hear.’
‘Aye,’ responded I, nodding to myself as she busied herself at the washing bucket.
I sat, crossed my legs and held a fist below my chin to indicate the rigour of my creed.
‘I don’t have all day,’ said Mother. ‘Have you got the vapours?’
‘The opposite of vapours, Mother, the opposite. I have a determination.’
‘A determination towards what?’
‘I am yet to figure that out.’
‘And is this “determination” also part of your “Philosophy”?’
‘You said y
ou would not mock me.’
‘That was always your problem, too sensitive.’
‘Maybe. But did you ever wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have been the subject of insults? Just because I was short in stature and not inclined to hunting or lancing. It’s no reason to be gibed, nor is it reason for my bed to be the hanging place of meat, nor is it reason for Master Dampier to blind me.’
‘Jonathan,’ condescended she, ‘I think you have the vapours.’
‘I already told you! I don’t have the vapours!’
‘Suffering Jesus, calm yourself.’
‘You are either with me or against me, which position do you take?’
‘What demon has entered you? I am your mother.’
‘For it has already been displayed clear enough that I will have no help from anyone, not from my master, my father, nor my own wife. Not even from “God”, who has taken my son from me.’
‘Don’t blaspheme in my house,’ said Mother.
‘Is it not true? How often have you prayed for a fortune and received nothing?’
‘You cannot blame The Lord for not supplying every man with a fortune.’
‘He didn’t even give you that comb you prayed for. The peacock one from Mr Caldwaller’s.’
‘I did not pray for that.’
‘I heard you praying for it. “Please God, it’s such a handsome comb,” you said.’
Mother screwed her lips together. ‘Don’t blaspheme in this house!’
‘I will not be a party to it!’
‘A party to what? You make no sense!’
‘A party to this …’ I took pause, searching the great worms of my brain for terminology, but could find none. ‘A party to this stupid Wolverhampton existence.’
‘If life is so unfair,’ replied Mother, the volume of her voice growing, ‘take leave from us, divorce your family as you have your wife. You will soon learn that you can’t run from every hardship. You have to face each one in its turn.’
‘It is one thing to face hardship, it is another to accept it like you and Father. The way you –’
‘The way what?’
‘It matters not.’
‘Say it!’
Wild Page 4
