by Alix Nathan
The others had jumped out of the cistern when he wasn’t looking. Got lost in dark corners. Didn’t write that he found one dead. Dried out. Flat, black frog shape. Took it to the table, peered at it under oil light. Tiny, dried webs and sinews. Broke to bits under his claw nails. He moaned and beat his head with his fists.
* * *
—
‘AH, GOOD MORNING Mrs Warlow, Hannah.’ Powyss was standing halfway down the long room, ostensibly searching for a book.
His own awkwardness was matched by hers. He wouldn’t keep her long, today, but he must remind her. His Lateral Effects notebook was open before him, with the names and ages of all the children, the dates of each meeting with Mrs Warlow and the amounts paid over to her. There was almost nothing written under ‘Comments’.
‘The new term will begin soon. I hope to hear that all the children are at school.’
‘Polly be too young.’
‘Except for Polly, then.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want only what is best for you and your children.’
‘Sir.’
He held the money out to her and, as she took it, grasped her hand with both of his by way of insistence. She pulled away, perhaps thinking to hold on to the money, that he had changed his mind and would take the money again, and the back of his hand brushed against her breast.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I’ll call…’ but she rushed out before he’d had a chance to ring for Jenkins.
All he’d meant was to urge and even, perhaps, compel her to do as he said. He thought of the whores in Jermyn Street, tucking the new bank notes into their bodices as their breasts tumbled out. Their pert smiles. Yet now he couldn’t forget that he’d touched this woman.
3
CATHERINE CROFT found it hard to rise early. She resented getting up before everyone else, had lost one past employment through oversleeping. Once up, however, she set about lighting fires, boiling water in the copper and opening shutters without thought, her mind still swimming in the night’s vivid dreams.
The new housemaid, Annie Tayler, was young and very pretty. Everyone was alert to the girl’s presence, she thought, even Mr Powyss, on the rare occasions when they encountered him. For a while Catherine was put out. She was twenty-nine, unmarried and her nose was too big. Combined with dark-ringed eyes, heavy eyebrows and straight, black hair, she reminded one of a determined rook. And however much she pinched her cheeks and made mouths at herself in the looking glass she knew she’d never be described as comely.
For a housemaid she was unusually well educated, however, and could easily answer back when Joseph Jenkins reprimanded her, even if it wasn’t a housemaid’s place to be other than obedient to the butler. When Catherine was young her schoolteacher, not yet worn down, had noticed her spark, encouraged her, lent her books, even bribed her mother to let her stay on for a term. With such an example, Catherine had longed for nothing more than to become a teacher herself and move to the town, but her siblings grew in number to such an extent that she’d had to leave home and find work long before she’d wanted to.
She soon realised the pointlessness of envying Annie her looks; was compensated, too, by her higher status, much more by her own superior intelligence. She taught Annie with a briskness and rapidity of speech that made the younger woman gape. They scrubbed floorboards together with soap and sand and hot water; rubbed grates and fire irons with oil, brick dust and scouring paper; dusted, brushed.
‘If we were witches we’d never be in want of brooms, Annie. I’m certain witches were only maids who brushed carpets, stoves, bannisters all day and blackened themselves with Servant’s Friend.’
Annie giggled, learning quickly that that was the best response to Catherine’s odd remarks. Catherine would nudge her heavily at Cook’s continuous gin and water sipping and thrill her as they turned back Mr Powyss’s sheets.
‘This is the only company he’ll ever have,’ she said, thrusting the warming pan down the bed. ‘Never taken a woman to bed, they say. Prefers vegetables.’
But now there was Warlow and Annie was shocked.
‘Ooh, I’d hate all the dark down there.’
‘He’s got candles and lamps. He’s not in the dark except when he wants to be. He’ll get a lot of money, you silly thing. Think of it!’
‘Him’ll be lonely. I’d be so lonely.’
‘Remember all the stuff he’s got down there. That bed we polished up. Elegant furniture, pictures, a bath. Organ! All those books!’
‘Books,’ Annie said with horror.
‘He even gets his pot emptied. Thank the Lord it’s Samuel has to carry it to the cesspool, not us!’ Shudder from Annie.
‘And his food is the same as Mr Powyss’s. We don’t get so well fed. He lives in luxury, Annie.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
She became gloomy, stopped giggling. Catherine began to find her a trial and divided up many of the tasks so they didn’t have to work together so much. Of course Annie had a point. While Catherine longed to possess the glass cabinet and brass bed, the books and chamber organ above all, she’d hate to live in the dark beneath the earth. What was Mr Powyss’s experiment for? But Warlow had agreed to it, would do well from it in the end.
Meanwhile, Annie would sigh at the other side of the room and mutter ‘poor man’ over and over again.
And then the cook, Mrs Frances Rentfree, who observed more than anyone suspected, caught her tiptoeing down the stairs towards the lower cellars, hauled her back and sent the weeping girl to Jenkins.
Joseph Jenkins was briefly warmed by having such a pretty girl whimpering in his power. But he pulled himself together, lectured her harshly about getting bees in her bonnet, reminded her that any business of the master’s should never be her concern even if it did involve the servants or other working people.
Catherine was appalled at the prospect of being bored by Annie’s gloom for the seven years that Warlow would be below. They shared an attic room: Annie might pout all evening and sniff all night. So she reverted to jokes and diversions to educate Annie about human nature. Before long they were laughing in corners and trying Jenkins’s patience in the way, according to his experience, maids often did if they were under thirty-two years old.
* * *
—
HE READ Fox’s latest letter with the familiar mixture of mild curiosity and irritation. Had he finished the sixpenny Rights of Man he’d sent him? It still lay uncut under a pile of papers on the floor of the library. They’d guillotined the king in Paris and now, in November, the queen. Did Fox really think he never saw a newspaper just because he lived so far from the capital?
Hampstead, 21 November 1793
Or as the French Republic would now have it, 1st Frimaire
Dear Powyss,
I was reminded of Mr Warlow by the strange case of how some robbers treated a bank clerk after having removed a considerable amount of money from his pocket book. He was fastened to a plank with strong chains which were themselves fastened to the iron grating of a copper. However, within his reach they left a large mug of water, a bottle of brandy, some porter and a quantity of ham and bread, and a rug by his side. Such humanity!
But I joke, as you know, for of course you neither use chains nor relieve Warlow of his money. Quite the contrary. In this test of yours, should what Warlow endures be called humane suffering? You’ll reply that if there is suffering (since you have provided so much comfort) it is for a higher purpose.
No doubt that is what they’re saying in Paris this year, having done away with their king and now the queen (for whom a great mass was held in the Spanish Ambassador’s chapel in Manchester Square and another in Winchester). You will rightly object to my saying this, and yet there is something in it.
Then came the wagging finger.
Do you remember h
ow I once accused you, together with all gardeners and horticulturalists, of amorality? For you have no moral decisions to make about your plants, no dilemmas of conscience. You act with impunity. No bodies are hurt, no souls destroyed!
Now with your new experiment you have entered the moral world. Powyss, you must weigh your actions with care.
What did he mean? He’d thought out the Investigation with the greatest care! And as far as Warlow was concerned everything was in order, there were no further actions to be taken.
Mrs Warlow? Well, he fancied the awkwardness with the woman gradually seemed to be going. He made sure a basket of Ashmead’s Kernels was taken to her and the Warlow children in time for Christmas, together with a bottle of Jenkins’s elderberry wine. Though she still looked down whenever he addressed her during those brief weekly meetings, he strongly sensed her eyes upon him when his back was turned, or when he was searching through a drawer. The Bellissime d’Hiver pears would not be ready for a month, but when they were he’d give her a box of them himself and perhaps with such a gift he’d compel her to look at him.
* * *
—
LATER, she says to herself: No. He be not like other masters. By now he would have forced me.
He did not mean to touch me for I am thin. A man do not like a thin woman. John did often tell me so.
Mother were comely they did say. More so nor I. Why Kempton did let us stay when she were widowed, couldn’t pay the rent.
She did thrive on suckling. Were lucky with her bairns, until the illness took so many so sudden. Poor Mother.
I have buried six, as many as do live.
No, he do not want me. I were wrong to think he would take back the money. He is not like John. Nor Kempton.
But always he do want to make me do as he say. I think he will tell me not to come again and that be best.
D sember end
It have not snod I no that from the gratin no sno hav falln down it did sno wen I cum in Aperl
He’s become used to the journal. It passes time. He asks them to send a slip of paper with the new month when it changes. So, December.
Once, time were stretches of work. Stop to eat and drink. Another stretch. Orders from Kempton: plough Riddings End. Harness up. Walk horses across the common, up the lane. Plough half an acre of clay, him steerin, Dick whippin. Bread, bottle of cold tea. Plough another half. Horses back, brush ’em down, sackin over, keep off chill, hay to trough, water, lock ’em in, report to Kempton. December’d be diggin snow. Dig out sheep, dig out pigs. Home. Tiredness blotted with cider, bread, bit of bacon if she’s got any. Up again, daybreak. Hannah fussin the water to boil.
No work now. No day’s orders. Kempton’d find other men.
Not tired. Tries yawning, can’t. Keeping fire in is his work.
Not hungry. Stokes fire again. Meals descend. He rings the bell, hauls up greasy plates. Full pisspot. Distant clatter somewhere other side of the nailed door. Muffled thumps way above.
Powyss told him to write the journal. Each day. Not done it each day. But sometimes he does. Sits at the table, opens the book, grasps a pen, throws it down. Nails dig into his palm when he holds it.
I hav bit of my nales
He writes this guiltily. But it’s not cuttin, is it!
Or I cannt writ
it wer Cri CHRISMUS Mr POISS did send mor beer.
Verri good Beaf Mins Pye
He experiments with capital letters. One day he opens a book, finds a picture like the man above the fire. Strange clothes, animal skin most like. No shoes. Two guns, sword. Hat like a church steeple. Opposite is writing in capitals:
THE
L I F E
AND
STR ANGE SUR PRI SURPRIZIN
AD VENT ADVENT URES ADVENTURES
OF
RO INSON CR U SOE
Of YORK MA RIN ER MARINER
Thinks he’ll use letters like that. The book’s a journal, sure to. Of this man Robinson. Thinks he’ll read more another day.
No snow but it’ll come. And cold comes down the shaft. He thinks of the children squeezing round the fire. Pushing each other till he whacks ’em back. Down here he’s got the whole fire to himself.
Then all of a sudden he wants to be at home. Wants to fuck Hannah quick and hard while the children toss in the other bed. Make her not try to get away. Feels sorry for himself. Just like that. All of a sudden.
* * *
—
POWYSS WOULD ATTEND CHURCH reluctantly at Christmas, but never invited the parson or anyone else to a meal on either of the two days. He always ate and drank more than usual because Mrs Rentfree would not tolerate cooking for a ‘heathen’. ‘If I cannot make Christmas food at Christmastide I might just as well give up the ghost,’ she said every year, and insisted on a goose as well as beef and ham, a great mince pie, a spiced pudding, junkets and cider cake. Powyss didn’t protest, and felt that the servants, though they were few in number, must be allowed their celebration. After he had eaten, they would gorge on Mrs Rentfree’s feast, and drink primrose and dandelion wine until they were red and merry. Late into the night, after Powyss had gone to bed, they would dance to Catherine’s spinet, bob for apples, play Snapdragon and, when Cook was sufficiently inebriated and snoring, Pop.
This was the first Christmas that Powyss hadn’t gone to church at all. The experiment was sharpening his reason, he told himself. Excellent! For years, without belief, he had attended Moreham church at Christmas and Easter as a regrettable duty he thought he couldn’t abandon. It was hypocrisy. He would no longer do it.
Instead he planned a day of reading on practical matters. He would check through The Gardeners Daily Assistant to see if it was a suitable reference for his master gardener Price, who, he feared, had little reading, and assess for himself Winter’s New and Compendious System of Husbandry, of which he’d read a most crushing review. After that he’d spend a couple of hours with Adams’s Essays on the Microscope, which he’d purchased with his own instrument. Insect transformations particularly fascinated him, though this was not a good time of year to find specimens. He must content himself with a Peacock butterfly drawn to the warmth of his winter candle from hopeless hibernation.
To continue working his way through Gibbon, volumes IV to VI, would bring the day to an end, he thought, but after an enormous dinner he fell to drowsing and, whenever he woke he struggled not to hear the muffled merriment, wondered if below, Warlow was trying not to hear sounds that, he realised, might creep down through the lift shaft. Probably the man was asleep after so much food, extra beer and some of Jenkins’s sweet wine. In which case that would be scarcely different from all other Christmases, through which he knew the village drank itself dry from the 25th till the 27th of December.
As a young boy Herbert Powyss had not much enjoyed Christmas. He’d recognised his father’s bluster when landed neighbours came, had sensed its falseness, how sometimes his father said the wrong thing. He’d noticed the flash of supposedly discreet glances between guests. And been aware, too, of his sickly mother’s anxiety at the social demands, her reluctance to celebrate. Events like these and at other times during the year had taught him to dread society.
He had always failed to respond satisfactorily to his mother’s piety. At twelve he’d doubted the virgin birth, at fourteen the existence of the all-seeing God worshipped with such tedium for hours each Sunday. What boy with solitary tendencies could stand the existence of an All-Knowing, All-Prying? He kept these views to himself for as long as he could. When his mother, ailing for as long as he could remember, died soon after his fifteenth birthday, he neither expected to meet her again in spirit form nor believed that the presence of the parson at her bedside during her last illness could have given her more than superficial comfort. He mourned h
er, missed her. Missed the rare sunburst of praise, even her aloofness fraught with disappointment.
He glanced up at her portrait above the fireplace. It was a Reynolds, commissioned at the peak of his father’s wealth, and from which, even before his father had died though not before his mother’s death, the paint had crumbled and fallen off in flakes. The red pigment had given out particularly fast: his mother’s ghostly white face gazed vaguely from an ever-blackening background.
No, Christmas was for others to celebrate.
* * *
—
BOOK’S TOO HARD. About the man Robinson. He raises his head from the table, candle’s spitting to an end. Must’ve fallen asleep. Around him empty plates, jug, journal. He pushes them away.
Morning, is it? Night? Not Christmas no more – he drank all that. What’d he do at home when them’d eaten all his wages? Axe timber for Pulverbatch. Sick with drinking all them days, fingers numb. Same for the others. Wages cut when them didn’t get on fast enough. Damned Pulverbatch. Damned Kempton.
He lights a new fire. Checks the grating: still no snow.
They’m axin, now, sure to. No, he tells himself, wishing to be there, no, I work here now. Fifty pound a year I gets. Fifty pound for writin.
He lights the oil lamp. Write journal later, after the next meal, he promises himself. Tamps tobacco into a pipe. Closes the Robinson book. Too hard. Schoolmaster never give us them words. There’s more books in the case with the glass. He dreads them but makes himself open up the delicate doors. The first book he pulls out is words, all words. And the second. Rage begins like a pain in the jaw.
Then there’s pictures. Animals. Look at that! – horses, cows, bulls, goats, sheep!
He pores over it. There’s stoats, cats, bears. Dogs, hares, squirrels, beaver. There’s animals they’ve made up – horse with stripes, bull with hair all over. THE BLACK TI GER. Glaring, about to bite. Can’t get that out of his head. He reads the names, not the other words. Likes best the little scenes – the horse in the ferry boat, dog swimming behind. Boy riding a goat. Crow threatening a frog. Man shitting in bushes behind a wall, smoking his pipe, woman holding her nose.
