Pieces of Light
Page 54
You will already be on to it, I am sure, dear Edward. I was a little slow, I’m afraid. Mr Hargreaves had not come into my thoughts since young Quiri claimed he had seen him lurking in the shadows behind my hospital hut one evening, some months back. We locked everything up for a while, after that, but have by now returned to our easy bush ways.
Tarbuck groaned when I mentioned the man’s name; Grace had fluttered about him, tending to his various needs, like a moth around a candle. He had remained surly and charming, in equal quantities, all the way back. Tarbuck had retired early each night on the boat, exhausted by the long trip up-river, and suffering from a mild recurrence of his malaria. Whenever he woke up, he would hear voices. These were the voices of the other two, coming to him on the night air as they talked under the stars (figuratively speaking – it rained buckets).
I cannot explain to you, Edward, if it needs explaining, why a young girl like Grace should fall into the arms of such an ill-looking, weak-minded rotter. At least he was not dull and pimply and pure. Perhaps his rottenness was the result of his drinking too deeply of that beef-tea natural wisdom of yours, let alone the fermented variety.
Whatever, I am left holding his baby. (Or the ayah mostly is. I struggle to feel some maternal affection for it. This will come, I am sure.)
James and I feel partially responsible, of course. We treated the whole matter wrongly. We should have warned Grace, or packed Hargreaves off in a canoe, earlier – and so on and so forth. James is really quite content, of course. He has a son, now. Tarbuck hardly blames the child but has difficulties in even looking at it. Time will bring him round: it is the sole souvenir of his own child.
However, I fear that Grace’s physical wanness was no match for her lover’s vitalities: her pale features have not so far appeared in the infant face. His, however, strike me from the cot each day, with more and more force. Thank God the little creature has two good, bright eyes. After James had broken the lens in those smeared spectacles and revealed an eyeball of singular glitteriness, I have always seen Hargreaves as part-blind. The thought that I might be literally haunted by that one-eyed visage every day makes me shudder.
Meanwhile, you must grow used to thinking of yourself as Uncle, and Joy as Aunt. I hope you do not think that a trivial responsibility, or in any way irksome. James and I have both agreed that the little chap cannot stay long in this feverish climate. Apart, perhaps, from a few plucky youngsters bearing it up on some of the Mission Stations, I am certain that he is the only white child in the whole of equatorial Africa. I think he might, by being born out here, become as immune to certain rigours as the native. But one cannot educate a child off natural wisdom for ever, Edward.
Oh – I almost forgot. His name is Hugh. His middle name is yours. I hope you don’t mind.
Please do write, and more kindly, to your sister.
With love and deep affection,
Charlotte
P.S. We plan to treat the boy as our own, and have instructed the servants not to speak of his origins, under pain of instant dismissal. Tarbuck is agreed. If – and when – the moment comes, I might well use these letters as proof. Please do not destroy them, though I have copies. And if anything were to happen to us here (God forbid), they at least provide the gist.
Acknowledgements
Among the many who have helped me with this book, I am particularly grateful to the following for their help and advice: John Lucas, Jenny and Nick Moore Morris, my editor Robin Robertson, Philip Stevens, Margot Venus, Richard Wistreich, Paul Wright, and my children Joshua, Sacha and Anastasia for reminding me how the young see things.
With a special thanks to my wife Jo Wistreich, whose unerring eye, sure judgement, and long-suffering support have guided this book from start to finish. Also to Niek Miedema and my agent Bill Hamilton for critical support at critical moments throughout.
For the methodology of seventeenth-century acting and its link with ancient medicine, I am deeply indebted to the first chapter of The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting, by Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1993). For the lines from Patrice Kayo’s poem ‘The Song of the Initiate’, I am grateful to the Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier (Penguin, 1984). Other books that have travelled with me all the way: Prehistoric Britain by Jacquetta Hawkes (Pelican, 1943), Four Guineas: A Journey through West Africa by Elspeth Huxley (Chatto & Windus, 1954), African Creeks I Have Been Up by Sue Spencer (David McKay, New York, 1963), La Puissance du Sacré: l’Homme, la Nature et l’Art en Afrique Noir by Clémentine Faik-Nzuji (Maisonneuve et Larose, 1993), The History of the British Countryside by Oliver Rackham (J.M. Dent, 1986), English Downland by H.J. Massingham (Batsford, 1936).
Adam Thorpe
ULVERTON
‘A masterpiece’
Sunday Times
‘If you believe that English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe . . . Tender, precise, tragicomic and unsentimental, it draws the reader into its task of reconstructing the unrecorded history of England. And sometimes you forget that it is a novel, and believe for a moment that you are really hearing the voice of the dead’
Hilary Mantel, Independent on Sunday
‘From its first page, you’re aware that you are in the presence of a writer with exceptional gifts. By the final one, you know he has used them to create a masterpiece’
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
‘The most interesting first novel I have read these last years . . . We aren’t used to the many deep matters Thorpe touches on, nor to such a thorough grasp of the complex nature of our rural past, and through it, of all existence itself . . . Suddenly English lives again’
John Fowles, Guardian
‘These stories sing like psalms, robust and vibrant – a poet’s novel and a celebration that no social historian would dare attempt’
Nicholas Wollaston, Observer
‘One of the great British fictional works of our time’
LA Times
Adam Thorpe
STILL
‘Original and impossibly vivid ... A great, hilarious, demanding sprawl of a book’
Guardian
‘This is a prodigiously rich and allusive book . . . We haven’t been exposed to such a Rabelaisian gusto of language, such an endless jacuzzi of slang, film-crew jargon and erudition since Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake: so much quirky humour since Tristram Shandy . . . if you want to claim that you have lived through this century, and you think you “understand” its peculiar English seas, its psychological immensities – not least those of self-deception – here is your book’
John Fowles, Spectator
Complex and playful, joyous and devastating, something as downright relevant as the tip of your nose . . . Still is acutally a film in fiction. It’s as bright and disjointed as The Waste Land’
Observer
‘Enduring, effervescent . . . A masterpiece of slipstreaming, sinuous prose’
Scotland on Sunday
‘Still is a much-needed reminder that the novel still offers possibilities which have barely been glanced at after more than three hundred years of practice’
Literary Review
‘A modernist’s treat . . . profane, poetic, pompous and hilarious’
Time Out
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