by Alix Nathan
Fortunately, there were many unexplained spaces within both cellar levels: the house’s medieval roots. Between the holes bored in the floor at the end of the library and the ceiling of Warlow’s cellar two floors down, Powyss inserted a copper tube, of thirteen feet and four inches in length, made to his precise specifications in Birmingham. It ran through a dark space behind a pantry wall and was not likely to be seen by anyone. Each end was secured by a cork collar and furnished with a discreet funnel as an acoustic aid. Around the funnel in Warlow’s ceiling were decorative plaster fruits and leaves, the better to distract attention from it. In Powyss’s library, the end was similarly fixed with cork into a broad floorboard. Over it he placed a pile of papers which he could easily shift aside. When he wanted to listen he knelt in comfort on his favourite Ottoman prayer rug.
* * *
—
WARM. Bed is soft and warm. No crackling straw in the mattress, no sacking. No twigs sticking into your back. He’s never slept in a bed like this. He squirms his body down into it. Head sinks into feathers. Down into down. He could stay in it forever. Could stay in it all day. Is it day? Clock strikes. Again he forgets to count. Utter darkness. Blinks. Black. Blinks. Still black.
Could be day. It’ll always be dark here unless I makes it light. He feels for the tinderbox by the bed, lights a candle. Sticks out his feet and it’s cold though he’s still wearing his clothes. Only took off his coat when he got into bed. Puts on his clogs, pulls a blanket round him.
Must be daylight somewhere. How else tell the time of day? Clocks are useless.
Fire is out. No daylight anywhere. Oil lamp went out. Fiddle with that later.
Got to be daylight somewhere. He knows there isn’t. Can’t be. Two floors down. No windows.
But one wall’s on the outside of the house. Which is it? Which? He struggles to think what this means. Maybe there’s holes in the wall like at home. Which wall? Which?
He takes the candle with one hand, runs the other hand along the walls, corners. Touching, knocking with his knuckles for hollowness. Stone, stone. Solid. Not like his house, ribs of wattle sticking through daub. From one room to another he goes. What’s outside the wall? Nothing but earth out there, is it?
Fear snatches at his throat, his gut. Closed in. Closed up. He starts again. Feeling with big rough fingers. Peering behind the candle flame, especially corners near ceilings. Near the fire there’s paper on walls. He touches plaster on others. His fingers grope under pictures. Gently. Don’t let them fall and smash.
Into the small room again. Around the bath. Walls thick stone. Can’t be. Must be. Can’t be.
Sudden cold. He holds the candle to it. Flame flutters. Grating halfway down near the cistern. There! Curled ironwork flakes at his touch. Behind: narrow brick-lined shaft that goes up out of sight.
A cut of air slants down. He breathes it. Smells rust, leaf mould, morning.
2
A KNOCK signalled the butler Jenkins, who announced Mrs Warlow coming to collect her money, as she had every Monday for the last few weeks.
He had been taken aback by her first appearance. He’d seen poverty of course, though not often, since he rarely went beyond the walls of his garden. Beggars cluttered London streets, but he’d never looked at them this closely. He made sure his servants were well fed and paid; every five years he made enquiries of other landowners, then paid slightly more. Fox was informative, too. Powyss reasoned that if they had sufficient food and wages they’d cause no trouble and he’d not waste time thinking about them.
Mrs Warlow was small, hostile, her clothes threadbare, torn, muddied.
She’d stood where he told her, by his desk, refusing to look at him, her arms clasped about her body.
‘You have nothing to fear, Mrs Warlow. Your husband has everything he needs and can ask for anything else he might want. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You must come for this money each week and use it for food and clothing. If it is more than you have been used to, then no doubt the cobbler will benefit!’
She wouldn’t smile. Had taken the money, walked rapidly down the room, been unable to open the door. He’d followed her over and she, in a shocking movement, shrank back, as if expecting a blow. He’d opened the door and called Jenkins to see her out.
Here was something he’d not anticipated, something he could neither brush aside, nor immediately forget. He hadn’t expected to be concerned, only to give orders and record. He’d gone straight out to the hothouse, his place of relief. Where life demonstrated its resilience, where no pain was experienced, where death had no power to shock. Flowers died, fruit dropped. You began again.
The second week was no better. He contemplated sending Samuel with the money in future, but no, there was something he couldn’t quite relinquish. Her look, never once direct, was yet startling. The colour of her eyes, he thought, but how hard it was to see them!
Since then he’d become used to her manner and noted at least less pallor, even a slight fleshing out in her face. Surely she and her children must eat more with the money he gave her and with Warlow not at home? He struggled to think about their previous life. Warlow, out in the fields all day, probably ate like a pig when he returned, and drank his wages in the Dog and Duck. How, then, had they lived? He’d never been interested in, let alone troubled by, someone’s appearance before. Perhaps it was like watching a seedling, searching for signs of sprout or wilt, hoping for sturdiness.
Still she wouldn’t look at him.
‘How are you, Mrs Warlow?’
‘Well, sir.’
‘And your children?’
‘Well.’
‘Tell me something of them.’
She didn’t reply; didn’t know what he wanted.
‘Tell me about your oldest child.’
‘Jack.’
‘What age is he?’
‘Twelve year.’
‘Is he a good boy?’
‘Fair. He do scare crows with David and little John. For Mr Kempton.’
It was the most he’d heard her speak.
‘And your youngest?’
‘Mary.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Three year old. We do call her Polly.’
‘Ah.’
In truth Powyss cared little about these children, just wanted Mrs Warlow to face him rather than the floor. This experience of apparently intimidating her was unpleasant. He gave her the money and walked to the door with her, opening it, calling out to Jenkins.
He went over to the north window. When he redesigned this room for his library, books filled the east side and windows were added at the north end and on the west side. Thus he greatly increased the light and could also watch the changing state of the weather. As his bedroom faced east, he began to read the sky when he rose and continued through the three windows of the library as the day progressed.
The great south window presented garden, fields and hills, the west the kitchen garden and trees beyond its wall. The north overlooked the back of the house. He watched Mrs Warlow hurry away from the door of the back kitchen.
* * *
—
SHE SAYS TO HERSELF: I think on Mother. Got with child. Masters always take what they want.
It will be the same.
I shall scream out though it do no good.
* * *
—
HE’S GLAD OF THE PORTER. Has tobacco now. Thinks he’ll ask for more beer. His notes work.
Pleas sen ter bacca
PlaesJohn Warlow
And there it was a few days later in a jar with four clay pipes.
Night is hard. He knows when it’s morning because breakfast comes juddering down. Though what time that is he doesn’t know. Past daybreak. He goes to the grating, smells daw
n up the shaft well before the food comes.
Days are ruled by the waiter thing. Food down, plates up. Empty wood box, full pisspot up, kindling, clean pisspot down. Jingle bell, up. Down. Jingle bell, up. Down.
At night nothing. Home is noisy at night. Children stir, snivel, kick, whimper, cry in the other bed; Hannah moans in her sleep. Cats and owls screech. Rats scratch, running over their heads in and out of roof holes. Wind blows through broken panes, rain pisses into buckets. He’ll never mend it, Kempton. Fall down around them first it will. Damned Kempton.
He’s had three meals. It’s evening. A day gone. He smokes till the fire dies. Ashes sift, soundless. It’s night. Quiet. There’s only ticking, ticking.
He’s already stopped the chiming, like Powyss said. But it ticks. Tick, tick. Nothing else sounds. Not even distant thumps like in the day. Nothing. Tick, tick. Damn clock! He takes a stick of kindling, opens the glass, jams it under the big hand. Which comes off. Damned infernold clock! Can’t read the time anyway. Tick, tick, tick. He unlatches a door in the side. Stop it somehow. Reaches in. Heavy pendulum slips off its perch, crashes through the thin wooden base onto the floor. Tickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick. Stops.
His head ticks in the silence. Ticktickticktick. No! Damned infernold ticking! Must hear something else. He stumbles to the grating by the cistern. Something up there. Yes. Listen. Listen to the life he’s given up. Up there, far away, a dog howls. Moreham dog. Howl! Howl away the ticking!
He stands, shivering. Stillness comes down the shaft. Cold tells of frost. He imagines the cracked crust of frozen earth beneath his wooden sole.
So far below. He’s much lower than turnips, potatoes. Lower than moles and rabbits. Foxes. Brocks. Down where there’s tree roots. Lower.
* * *
—
POWYSS STOOD at his newly made cabinet with the sloping top. He was extremely pleased with this piece of furniture which contained ten thin, wide drawers built to his own design in which to keep his plans for the house and gardens. Now the top three drawers were given over to the folders of labelled and dated notes on Warlow.
To stand at it, write, think, was satisfying. Precise measurements had been taken to enable him to lean on his elbows without incurring pain in his back. It faced into the room so that he would not be distracted by the scene through the great south window.
The library was fine, the shelves well stocked with classical authors, poetry, natural philosophy and the usual run of Annual Registers. The room was long, light, perfectly proportioned, but by no means elaborate. Although its ceiling sported a regular pattern of interlaced plaster octagons, hexagons and rectangles, he’d eschewed the endless pilasters and busts and urns in niches typical of the grander houses, where so much space was given to the demonstration of taste that little room was left for books.
From where he stood he could survey his books and engravings, his precious Apulian vases, marble bust of Aesculapius, the brass praefericulum for holding incense used in sacrifices, lumps of lava pocketed at the foot of Vesuvius. Three Dutch still lifes, bought for their wonderful similitude to fruit and flowers that he grows, not their moral. The set of globes made for him in London, the one of the world, the other celestial. He intended to obtain a small, portable telescope to observe comets and meteor showers, one that slotted into a six-inch brass column on a base that was also its box.
A copy of the advertisement for the experiment still lay on his cabinet.
Warlow had been the only man to respond. In a burst of lucidity he’d said he cared not for human faces, would be glad to be shot of them.
‘Do you think you will be glad for seven years, Warlow?’
‘I do think I shall.’
‘And will you not be troubled by long nails and hair and beard?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have a family, Warlow?’
‘Six childer.’
‘You’re a labouring man. Who employs you?’
‘Mr Kempton mostly. Pulverbatch at harvest. I do take what I can.’
‘You’ll have no need to find work ever again if you stay the course. And you needn’t worry about the war either. They can’t possibly take you for a soldier. Nor your sons for sailors. I’ll see to it. Not that they’d trouble to press this far from the sea.
‘I shall take responsibility for the upkeep of all your family while you’re here. I believe you have a wife living?’
‘Yes. Her do weed the corn for Mr Kempton at sarclin time. Helps the wash. And gleanin.’
‘She need not do that either. She can attend to her children.’
Thinking back to that interview Powyss recalls how Warlow didn’t mention his wife until asked. He thinks of them both now, a Jack Spratt couple if ever there were one: Warlow a great, brawny man, too big to be of Welsh stock, rock-boned, his features crude; Mrs Warlow small in stature, overburdened, cowed. Jenkins, unasked, had intimated that Warlow beat his children. There could be little doubt he beat his wife, too. Perhaps it was better that they were apart; they hardly needed more children.
Mrs Warlow disturbed him somewhat, but he could help her with money. Her life would surely improve and then he’d no longer be troubled by her.
As for Warlow himself, Powyss was conscious that at the far end of this room, more than twenty feet down, the man could be standing right now, like himself, thinking, wondering. He hoped, rather, that he was sitting at the table writing his journal. Warlow’s own written record was to play a major part in his paper.
How curious that someone should be so near in the room where he felt so agreeably far from others. Did it make a difference to his own sense of solitariness, he wondered? Knowing that someone else was also leading a solitary life, unseen, almost awoke a fellow feeling in him. That Warlow was there below unexpectedly enriched his treasured aloneness. It was as if he saw his reflection in a pool, quiet, unmoving. And yet of course Warlow was as different from him as could be: a great bovine creature. Well, as long as he did what he’d been asked to do then it didn’t matter.
He went to the end of the room with his notebook and pen, shifted the pile of papers, knelt and listened. Not a sound for fifteen minutes. He would try again in an hour. But he could smell smoke. He closed his eyes to concentrate. Lamp-oil smoke. And sweet, aromatic tobacco. He’d asked Fox’s advice, ordered a quality Warlow had probably never encountered before. There’d been no complaint.
* * *
—
BITES ON THE PIPE END. Scratches his beard. Which doesn’t itch any more but he does it all the same.
He’s struggling with the journal. Trouble is, he doesn’t know the date now the clock’s stopped. It told the day! But no, it didn’t tell the month.
He knows the year. There’s 1 7 9 3 in gold numbers on the spine. He runs his fingertips over them. Knows it were April when he came down. He reads what he wrote on the first page:
Aperl 1793
He tried to think of school then, didn’t he. What did them write in school? Must have writ somethin. Went for three years. Then father were gone. Ground opened in the flood, horse fell in. Cart toppled on him, loaded with bales.
Crow scarin for him and his brothers after that. Dug ditches, hauled logs for their keep.
What did them write in school? Name of course.
J o hn War lo w
What then?
I am4 3 yer owd
I do liv in Moram
No! He remembers the joke – more ham. Morham. Only they never got any ham.
Now I do liv in Mr Powis seller. I hav plen t to eat and smok.
That’s days ago. He’s proud of it. Done no writin since long afore. It’s not work. Him calls it work! All the same, he puffs as much as when he’s scythin down nettles. Think of the load of nettles he’d cut in the time it takes
to write!
Can’t be April no more. He smells less rain at the grating. But it’s not warm. Each day he goes to sniff the outside world. Soil’s still damp, he can tell. There are old leaves the other side, at the bottom of the shaft. He pokes them out with a fork. Thin, dry, been blowin down for years, sure to. Now there’s spots of blossom dropped through onto the ground.
May
I did see a frog yes t daye he cum down bhine the gratin. I did pot him in the sis tern.
He pauses, sucks on the empty pipe. Looks with pleasure at the last word – sis tern.
Rewards himself by filling the bowl with a good pinch from the jar and lighting it. Good tobacco.
He’d been about to kill the frog. Stamp on it with his clog. His fingers were covered in ink from writing; sand spilled all over the diary. He’d plunged his hand into the cistern and the frog jumped out, hopped off. He’d bawled at it. Gone after it. When suddenly, ‘I did think no, didn’t I?’ He’s begun to talk to himself. Tries to explain this. Thinks he’d have wrung a crow’s neck in a trice; hung it from the ceiling. Crows is devil’s birds.
