‘You cannot follow him when he lags two paces behind,’ I answered, half-guiltily, for I often lingered with Sam in the rear. We bided Sam’s time, for he held our courage as well as our purpose in his hand.
A week after the Middletown adventure we came to Perkins, a tiny town, with a tiny wooden one-roomed church, whose chaplain was a cousin of Tom’s. Tom was at his wits’ end and could think of nowhere else to turn, though we had scant hope of an audience in such a place. It was a weary walk. The glass had been rising all day and no coach ran to Perkins. The mail came only once a week, else we would have been among the postman’s deliveries. Our only transport was our own six feet, strung out along the road like the legs of some dragging insect, now close together, now staggering apart. We journeyed from Somerville, the nearest town, with our backs bent under all our gear. A heavy, weary walk in the drowning heat. We all felt we must soon go under. I am afraid that Sam and I looked a little unkindly on Tom, as the afternoon wore on through brimming flies and flat, dried cow-pats on the stony road. But Sam said nothing, and Tom and I laboured as much through his silence as through that rain-soaked air.
We arrived at sunset. The cross of the church stood dark as charred wood in the burning light. Like us, the atmosphere seemed oppressed by an intolerable burden, but ours was not so much a burden of weight as of distance, remoteness. Only Syme could maintain a sense of immensity in the face, or, rather, in the corners, of such obscurity, and he had withdrawn. Tom, for all his efficient bustle, lacked the gift of scale; and we both felt little better than tramps, shoes caked in dung, loafing through a village too small to deny us charity. Worse than tramps, indeed, unsupported by their easy purposelessness.
And a barn is what we got when we arrived. After a sustained banging on the door, Tom’s cousin greeted us. Jeb was a sour-faced, unpleasant young man, already running to fat, so unlike Tom. He reeked of early intimacy, like an ugly smell that he could not keep to himself. ‘I’ve only got a spare room, I’m sorry to say, Tom. The dogs must make do in the barn You don’t mind that, Phidy? There’s just the one bed, and that goes to the wizard. We must have you clean at least, if you speak to the congregation. Not like your fine cities, here, sir. Watch out for them, that’s all. Might ruffle your feathers, but won’t do any harm, sir, that’s my opinion.’ And he showed us the barn, thick with the smell of horses, comforting none the less, with their subterranean snufflings and stirrings. We pitched our bags on to the hay and came in to supper.
A comfortless meal, though God knows we had the hunger for it. Syme barely spoke, pinched and withdrawn into reflections like a tight corner. Tom and I picked and gnawed our way through cold beef and old cheese and left a litter of bones and dried fat on the dirty plates. Who could be hungry long in such heat or who could talk? Except for Jeb, who made the most of his stony companions, like a thistle on a rock. Called to the Church by family tradition, he had the worst of its professional airs without the least of its humility or faith. The air rang with the litany of his grievances.
‘The Maryland Chapter are a godless people,’ he droned between thick mouthfuls. ‘The Deacon at Somerville, between the two of us, Tom, never darkened his wife’s bed … If I were a different man, a word in someone’s ear, but it’s ever the way, the grasping inherit the …’ He was just the man to prick Sam’s anger in another mood. And he talked on, while the night pressed in around us and the lamplight smeared in the heavy air like fat. Sam kept his peace, though each minute Tom and I expected an eruption. I feared Sam’s disposition – his spirits hung drained and limp in that humid obscurity. Perhaps Jeb had his reasons for bitterness, but bitter he was, as rank as meat that has been hung too long.
Sam was to give a lecture that very night. Jeb had arranged for ‘the wizard’, as he called him, to speak in his little church. A large bill on the tall front doors announced the coming of ‘the great Baltimore Geonomist!’ I suspected the worst. The great geonomist had barely spoken all evening, was in a niggardly temper that granted nobody a thing. Even if he were in a fine monumental flow of spirits, I little doubted that Jeb’s flock would turn at best a deaf ear. At worst, he would have to make his way through a jungle of hard-fibred small-town prejudices and superstitions. There lay my true fear, for, if anything, Sam was in a hacking mood. I did not like to think of him wasting his energy and fury, knees bent in the mud, to pull up such hard, useless roots, probably with so little success. I feared we had the squalor of Middletown to do again.
Perkins, I soon saw, held a very different squalor. The small wooden church was filled with Perkins, Perkins was nowhere if not there, packed tight in that small, high space. The heavy air pressed low the hive of noise: the shuffle of feet on dusty wood, the call for someone’s child, the familiar voices of a school hall. It was an occasion. Young girls wore frocks a few years more grown than themselves and kept their hands to their sides and smoothed their fronts, in such an easily broken stiffness that my heart went out to them. Farmers wore their Sunday bests complete with cravats, under dirty, work-easy coats; took their ladies by their arms. Grandfathers sat stiff and proper and straight like the girls; and upset easily, unbent like them too. A few of the younger men grouped together, stuck their long legs under the pews in front, preparing to uphold the town’s church and dignity if they were ever questioned. They sat low in their seats, shoulder to shoulder, and glanced at the local girls. I feared them the most. This was too much of an occasion: there were to be no deaf ears turned that night. Syme rose up to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, fellow scientists, and brothers of the Church,’ he said with a sly look. Instantly my heart lightened. ‘I come to speak to you today with no uncertain purpose.’ It was a signal to us that tonight he was not in earnest, that tonight was free and would not be reckoned. ‘The ground is splitting, gentlemen, splitting beneath our feet. Can you not hear the yawning maw of Hell?’
And we did hear it, a terrible cracking at the joint of things, as though a great dog had sunk its teeth into a great bone. ‘You have come, no doubt, to hear a madman preach empty bubbles at ye; and indeed I have, for so slight is the shell beneath our feet that the fury of the Lord can shatter it with the touch of His finger’s tip. Listen to this fury and have ye doubted? Listen to this vengeance, children, and have ye sinned? Are we not bubbles clustered upon a bubble, and shall a breath destroy us?’
He preached Doomsday in good earnest now, a child’s Doomsday filled with an ark of creatures: huge subterranean eagles with wings as big as trees; massive thundering elephants, rearing tusks of heavenly gold moulded into trumpets; giant mice that scratch and paw and poke the earth above them, dislodging loose falls, little more than ash and moss to them, earthquakes and maelstroms to us. Each word solemn and sincere, each gesture of his hand heavy and impassioned, and on he talked and spoke not a word of truth.
The cool air grew suddenly sharp as crystal, and my heart leapt, and the rain fell, doom, pounding on the high sloped roofs, till we could scarce believe that outside those four walls there was any air to breathe. Oh the joy of that rain, as it thundered and blasted like Sam’s giant elephants. The little church felt tight as a ship surrounded by seas, falling seas. They pounded and pounded at us to get in, and Syme bellowed on. He held us spellbound, as delicately poised as the air before the rains came, and rose to a shout to be heard. ‘He shall tear down the walls and embankments we have set against him, batter our barricades – shall we not lie as Jonah lay in the ribs of the whale, shall we not cry out in the hollow of His Heart – for mercy and for faith?’
Goodness knows what it all meant. But Perkins sat stunned. No one knew what to think or say. The rain fell so loud that we half-doubted our ears. The very thought of raising a voice of protest against such combined torrents seemed an impiety. We sat as solemn as old ladies in a bawdy-house. Sam walked calmly through the congregation, through that noise as thick as walls, and with half a raised eyebrow summoned Tom and me to follow. Which we did, gravely, out of the tall wooden doo
r into the unbreathable rain. We raised our coat collars, hunched over together and hooted with a laughter that the wind snatched and the rain drowned. Syme put a wet arm around each of our wet necks and in such a companionable convoy we staggered to Jeb’s barn, flung open the door and flung ourselves laughing on a pile of damp hay. Jeb must have been dumbfounded.
We lay catching our breath happily for some time. I was at that pitch of nervous happiness when my love will go out to any manner of thing, so that I scarcely know it when it comes back. Tom said through thick breaths, ‘You should not have done that, Sam,’ and laughed.
I came in too quick, ‘No, that was unwise,’ laughing too.
Sam did not answer, but I could feel joy crowding against him like applause for having carried it off. I heard Tom’s voice through the grey, cold air. ‘They believed every word.’
‘Yes,’ I chorused. ‘That is, they thought you believed every word.’
‘Now was that not worth a little mockery, a touch of Symmesonia, perhaps?’ Sam asked, knowing our answer.
Sam was content where he was, did not feel the urge for Jeb’s spare bed, was happy to sleep among the dogs. The night stretched out before us like a summer day; none of us wanted to sleep. We wanted to talk. Our joy is a country of one, I said. But there is another joy, a traveller’s joy, as keen as the first, keener perhaps. I am not a Godly man, but who at such times can doubt that our first thought is love, our first desire understanding, for others and ourselves, a passion shared equally without begrudging? To have stumbled on such a night when Sam was among the company seemed to me as rare a piece of good luck, as undeserved, as seeing a comet or a king pass by.
It was the first time Sam spoke of his family to me – or, rather, in my presence. No, to me, for did I not measure the times his voice sought me and not Tom? No matter, there was enough and to spare that night. ‘That was a piece of my father’s chicanery,’ he said. ‘I inherited that much. Symmesonia revisited.’
Tom opened the door to see by. The bright rain fell hard as stones outside. He stuck his face out, upturned, screwed it against the rain as it spattered him. His tongue squirmed out between tight lips, searching for water. He had not a thought for us. Then he came back in and closed the heavy door. The barn was black again, and the snuffling horses seemed suddenly to advance upon our ears. ‘You inherited much more,’ Tom said, ‘and you know it.’
‘What else, Tom?’ Sam was contented with this talk, leaned back.
‘You have a father not a mother tongue.’
‘Only when I wish. Tonight could have been one of his flights. I hope we have no cause to regret it.’
Then, as young men will, we began to speak of our fathers.
‘Sam never regrets a thing, he says,’ Tom began. ‘But he does, you know, Phidy, remember that. You regret university, that is, leaving it so soon.’
‘I had my reasons,’ Sam said.
‘Of course, there are always reasons,’ Tom mocked, pressing his lips together. A minute passed and he began again. ‘Edward used to shower his daughter with gifts. Bubbles, he called her, name fit for a cat, don’t you think, not a girl? You don’t like it much either, Sam. He wouldn’t have her being petted.’
‘All those silly presents,’ Sam cut in, with fresh irritation, ‘bringing home something, sugar cane or gypsy rings, cheap things, you know, but they added up. To nothing, I said. I didn’t like the girl being spoiled, when Mother hadn’t a stitch to do her justice, gaunt thing that she was. Said so, too, brave boy, when I was fifteen. I WILL NOT HAVE YOU MAKE A POODLE OF MY SISTER. Funny way to say it, sure, but when Mother could barely move at night, what with stiffness and hunger, too. Would you credit it, poor thing? Wouldn’t eat. For her to see Bubbles petted over and bound with ribbons – it does the heart no good to think of it. She hated me for it, that’s the thing. Anne hated me for it. “POODLE OF MY SISTER,” I shouted, “WHEN YOU MAKE A BEAR OF MOTHER.” Pater turned his head like a shying horse; wouldn’t answer, stood there, head turned. I was in a towering rage.’
‘What set it off?’
‘A wedding dress. Pretty white lace – the bride died of consumption and her young man didn’t want to look at it. Almost gave it away and Pater brought it home for Bubbles. Much too big, of course, then. She looked like someone snowed her in and was beginning to melt, the child. But wasn’t it the darling of her heart? And Mother poking through her skin to look lovely and all you ever saw were bones. Not a new stitch to wear in a dozen years, not since Bubbles came out. Who beamed pleased as punch at the gift, while I worked into a towering rage. Then she froze in a corner and Father’s head dipped and turned like a horse’s, and Mother went purple, didn’t say a word, didn’t forgive me, either. Till later, but that’s another story.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I went to university …’
‘Where you belong,’ Tom cut in.
Sam ignored him. ‘Father got worse – began to get about town. There was nobody left to put the fear in him. Until Bubbles stumbles over him one day in flagrante – the vicar’s wife, as it happens. Didn’t that break her heart? She wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t eat for a week, holed up in her room, until I came home and talked her out of it, and when she stepped forth, in a plain dress, her hair poked out cut short and her neck shone bare. She never wore his finery again. Sea change.’
‘Your mother blamed you …’ Tom broke the silence.
‘“YOU BROUGHT THIS ON,” she said. God knows how; and she hated to see Bubbles petted regardless. Still, it was a shock to see the poor girl – cut back to the quick.’
‘Best thing for her, if you ask me,’ Tom said. ‘Married the butcher, fine man, honest, loving man.’
‘Pater raised her above her expectations. But then, he was only born for riches and never had any.’
‘You never returned to university?’ I asked.
‘Couldn’t bear to. Never took a degree. Went into the army – Benedict Smythe, old family friend, as they say, paid the commission. But that’s another story, bitter too. To spite my father, is the long and the short of it. And it did, I believe, at that.’
The noise of one bell tolling the half-hour made its way through the thick air, and Sam stopped talking. We now heard the runnels, streams and rivers the rain had made. They ran down the barn walls in a throaty burble, into a soapy swelling pool, clanking like heavy things. None of us wanted to sleep. We seemed to stand on tiptoe, anxious to speak – ‘May I, may I?’ – but too polite, good-intentioned, to proceed, until the silence grew and gave us a spreading sense of the night outside. What could have put us in such childish spirits, that grown men should feel the need to recount the stories of their boyhood and their fathers? Our bed among the horses, like a child’s summer quarters? Sam’s great irreverence of the evening, that slipped through cracks in the conversation like rain through the loose roof with little squirts of reminded pleasure? The great drumming noise? The sudden chill, which made us huddle in ourselves, solemn and respectful? Respectful of what – of the chance?
Tom broke the silence again. ‘You know my father, Sam, what do you think?’ Then he turned to me. ‘You do not.’ Tom had often puzzled me, a patient, secret, playful creature, easily upset and easily consoled – as it turned out, quite unlike his father, who was a preacher; a distant and correct man. ‘Jeb followed the family calling; only I strayed,’ Tom said, smiling. ‘I think my mother minded, but my father did not. He is the happiest man I have ever met.’
‘Just so,’ Sam answered, smiling. ‘He knows the propriety behind each thing – a perfect gentleman. He is spotless. In his manners at table – entertaining a lady – advising wealthy parishioners – conducting himself among the poor. Yet I scarcely know so improper a man. I believe (Tom, is this true?) that he has surrendered all faith in the scriptures – if he ever possessed any. But, like a well-made clock, the mechanism continues faultlessly – the rituals tick and chime at the appropriate moment He has a watchmaker’s delight in the
se things, I fancy. It is his only approachable delight.’
‘There is nothing like him,’ Tom agreed.
‘And your mother?’ I asked.
Sam answered again, ‘A perfect dear.’
‘She is,’ Tom said. ‘She was – a farmer’s daughter, one of my father’s flock.’
I met her later: a large, sensible, happy woman, scarce twenty when she married. She was perpetually puzzled at the good fortune of her match, like a girl who had found a plover’s egg and could not guess what it was. Happy and puzzled at once. She had a gift for noisy joy, an easy gait, ran often in the hurry of high spirits, or to catch a child in her arms and swing. Tricks with which Tom delighted me at my arrival, and could still delight me if he chose.
‘Have you a sister or brother?’ I asked.
‘A sister,’ Tom said and glanced laughingly at Sam, though I never knew why.
Sam and Tom seemed by then to have regained their ordinary good spirits, thawed, grown merely tired and contented. I had not and still sat frozen in perfect solemn joy. Or rather, not frozen at all, for I felt it then, yes then as the bell struck three through the thrashing, shredded rain, felt joy well within me, like a spring; swelling and growing clearer and closer from below, till it struck me sharp and I fell back in the hay as at a blow to release its power as it swept past me. I yawned to let its diminishing echoes escape. Who has not felt such intimations, such uncontrolled, almost unwanted, uprisings of delight, when a moment arrives in its full weight: item, a young man (myself), reclined (slightly cold) in a barn in Perkins, with, item two, Tom Jenkyns, now curled beneath his greatcoat with only an ear cocked, to listen to, item three, Sam Syme, perhaps the noblest, highest man I was ever to know; and, item four, youth, and, item five, the recollection of an evening’s prank; and, items six through twenty-seven, horses, and, item twenty-eight, splendid hope, and all so far from home. To all of which Tom replied, ‘It is late, Phidy. Perhaps we had best sleep.’
The Syme Papers Page 43
