Swiftly: A Novel (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  His belly was filled with metal.

  Eleanor felt the urge to call out, to shout she knew not what, but she managed to rein herself back, to preserve her composure. Her husband was dead now, after all. There was no point in becoming hysterical. She couldn’t stay here. The little doll-like figures, standing quietly all over the floor, were obnoxious to her, horrible to contemplate, terrible. She could not stand it. She had images of them swarming over her body in her mind; swarming all over her body, climbing into her every crevice, scuttling over her face.

  She turned, and hurried back up the stairway, into Burton’s office, shutting the door behind her. There was no lock on the door, but she sat herself in the chair with her legs against it. She sat for a long time, her mind circling and recircling the events she had witnessed. Eventually she dozed.

  When she woke, stiff from her upright posture, she wondered if everything that had passed had been a sort of phantasm. The memory seemed friable. It crumbled like old sandstone. Had it really happened?

  And yet here she was, in her husband’s chair, with her feet against the door. She got unsteadily to her feet and stretched. The lamp had burnt itself dry, but daylight was coming through the window. With a deliberate motion she pulled the door open.

  She stepped through. The workplace was bright with early light, and empty of the little people. It was on this same landing that she had gripped the rail so hard it had hurt her knuckles. The workshop was laid out below her, morning light falling onto it through the skylights. There was the cauldron, cold now. There were the workbenches, the cages.

  She came down the stairs as if floating. None of it had been real. As she descended she was, vaguely, building an alternative narrative. She had come looking for her husband, but he had not been in his office. Yes. So she had settled down in his chair to wait for his return. She had fallen asleep, and had experienced a strange and violent dream. Now she was going to walk out into the fresh air of a London morning, and return to her house. At the bottom of the stairway she examined the floorboards. They were scuffed, marked with scorches and scratches, but that could have been from any of the working days of the place. There were myriad little pearls and teardrops of metal, tiny ones, lodged in between the planks themselves; little solidified splashes of metal. She wandered along to the corner and its alcove. The trapdoor that gave access to the river beneath was closed.

  She turned and walked, slowly, past the Lilliputian cages. There was no motion inside them, but perhaps the little people were asleep, hidden in their cubbies.

  At the main entrance she pulled the heavy latch with a careful slowness, and eased the big door open. The nightwatchman was slumped in the corner of his booth, wrapped in a tartan blanket. His eyes were clenched tightly; his snores assumed spectral, cloudy form from his open mouth, like smoke from an invisible pipe. Eleanor crept past him, made a catlike way up the street.

  The air was very cold, needle-sharp. Her own puff haunted her face. Two spikes of chill reached up the sinuses of her face as she breathed. Dawn frost dulled and matted the cobbles, making her footsteps precarious. Only at the turn of the road, when she emerged into the sunshine and the morning traffic and bustle of the Strand, did she feel that she was returning to the world. People around her again. For she had the sensation that she had spent the night in some fairy-tale realm, some dire subterranean kingdom like a heroine from a Grimm’s tale. Now the clatter of a milk-cart along the road was more real to her than anything that had happened since the previous midnight.

  There were no cabs to be had at that hour, so she crossed London on foot once again to make her way back to Gower Street. The under-butler was, at least, still awake. He let his mistress into the house, and roused the maid, who made hot chocolate and brought it up to her room. Eleanor sat by one of the bedroom windows, watching the increasing volume of traffic as the morning progressed with studious attention. She was, equally studiously, not thinking about the previous night’s events.

  But she must tell somebody. She could not keep it in. The possibilities revolved and revolved in her mind. She decided at luncheon that it would be a mistake to inform the authorities. Quite apart from the awkwardness of having to spin so bizarre a tale to a policeman or a militiaman, there was the thought - she did not know how founded in Law it might be - that the truth would deprive her of her inheritance. She had stood by and done nothing. Was she not, somehow, an accessory? But if nobody were to know, her husband’s disappearance would not be connected with her. She could play the innocent.

  None of it was real, anyway. The whole edifice of the cosmos seemed dreamy, seemed insubstantial to Eleanor’s listless eyes.

  As the two of them sat down to supper together, her Mamma offered some comment at the non-appearance of Burton. ‘Is he not to join us for supper again?’ she said, querulously. ‘He has absented himself two nights running.’

  Eleanor dismissed the maid and butler, going over to the door after they were gone to fasten it shut. ‘Mamma,’ she said, coming back to her mother and kneeling on the floor at her feet. ‘Mamma.’

  ‘Gracious,’ said her mother, looking down unsteadily. She had been drinking already that day. ‘What can this mean? My own daughter kneeling at my feet.’

  ‘Burton will never come back.’

  ‘My own daughter kneeling at my feet,’ Mamma repeated, more slowly.

  ‘Listen carefully to what I say, Mamma. Burton will never come back. Never.’

  Mamma’s trembling hand reached for the red cone of the filled wine glass. ‘Never come back, you say.’

  ‘That’s right, Mamma. We shall never see him again.’

  The older woman took a long swig of wine, and said in a very small voice: ‘What can this mean?’

  ‘You must promise, Mamma,’ said Eleanor hurriedly, ‘that you will tell nobody. Nobody must know. But you must understand that this is a wonderful thing to happen in our lives. Burton’s money is ours. You must understand we can live here until the inheritance is assured, and then we are free. Free and rich.’

  ‘My own daughter,’ said Mamma, as if to an invisible interlocutor. ‘How she teases me.’

  ‘I am not teasing, mamma,’ said Eleanor, earnestly, squeezing her mother’s knees. ‘Last night at the manufactory I saw the little people, the Lilliputian people, rise up against him.’ She did not say that she had released them from their cages in the first place. ‘They tied him up and . . . drowned him in the river.’

  With a little scream, Mamma pushed the chair back and dropped to her knees, bringing her down to a level with her daughter. ‘Don’t say so!’

  ‘Think, Mamma, think, and stay calm. Think that this makes us rich, and that we are no longer beholden to Burton.’

  Her mother’s eyes were wide. ‘You are sure he is dead?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘And the little people, they killed him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked closely at her daughter, and then, with a girlish, almost insouciant toss of her head, she clambered back into her chair. ‘Well well,’ she said, draining the rest of her glass of wine. ‘Well well.’

  Eleanor, faced with her mother’s equanimity, began - to her own astonishment - to cry. She got to her feet hurriedly and hid her face. She did not feel the grief; if anything she felt a fury at herself for the loss of control. And yet here were the tears! Some part of her that was beyond being reasoned with or intellectualised believed that she had herself murdered Burton: believed that her own spirit had called those tiny creatures into existence, and that her own anima had effected its violent revenge upon the man. Her guilt was more than a passive thing. And in later time - sooner than her rational calculation estimated - it was to make a deeper trouble for her.

  This was the evening of the 6th November. The events in the workshop had happened on the night of the 5th and the early hours of the 6th.

  Pannell came to call on them in the Gower Street house on the afternoon of the 11th to tell them - his seamy, sw
eaty face collapsed with fear - that Burton had vanished. The police had searched for him; notices were in the newspapers; but nobody knew where he could be. Mamma made melodrama out of the role of a woman receiving news as an unlooked-for blow: wailing and throwing her hands in the air. Eleanor adopted a stony expression.

  The day after, Pannell returned, with an inspector of police. Burton had still not emerged. An extensive survey of the premises, and surrounding properties, had been undertaken. Mamma cried. Eleanor thought it best to preserve her stony face.

  The days stretched on. Eleanor had found a cubbyhole, somewhere deep in her consciousness, for her feelings of guilt. She knew they were still there, somewhere out of sight, coal in her mind’s cellar, but the feelings did not trouble her immediately. There was the longer-term question of how she might deal with that, but for now she found herself slipping closer and closer to her desired goal. She told the Inspector that she had visited her husband on the night of the 5th - the nightwatchman would confirm as much. She had found him in good spirits, she said, working at papers, and had left him. At what time? At a little after one. The nightwatchman had been asleep, Eleanor added. I noticed that on my way out. He swears he was not, said the Inspector. Swears not. And I, insisted Eleanor, bridling a little in a gentlewoman’s proper style, I swear he was. I’m sure you’re right, Ma’am, said the Inspector. Of course the fellow would not confess to sleeping on the job. But your husband was in good spirits when you left him? Yes, Inspector.

  The Lilliputians had vanished.

  Pannell, interrogated by Eleanor the following day, confirmed that a great deal of cash-value had vanished with them. We’re ruined, screeched Mamma. Ruined! We’re destitute! No Ma’am, said Pannell, hurriedly. No, no no. New Lilliputians can be bought as necessary capital outlay, and the value of Burton’s assets and other holdings was still very considerable. Seventeen thousand in consolidated bonds, Pannell said. Seventeen thousand in consols, repeated Mamma in a calculating voice. Yes Ma’am, said Pannell. And the factory is an asset indeed.

  Not ruined? asked Mamma.

  Certainly not, Madam, said Pannell. Quite the reverse.

  The week wore on, and Eleanor found herself cautiously - tentatively - looking forward to what the future might bring. Eventually she would be declared the legal heir. It might be years; but until that time she and her mother might enjoy a materially improved existence. And eventually it would all be hers. Her future was assured. Wealth.

  She wondered whether she ought to pray to God to thank him for this twist in her fate. Or would that be in itself a shocking thing to do - to thank God for a murder, for an insurrection? God did not require such thanks, surely. Or was this the true nature of God? Was God a Thug, relishing murder and death? Possibly. Besides, Eleanor thought, if not thank him for ill-chance, why thank him for the good? God was large enough to account for all fates, and not merely the pleasant ones.

  On the 19th day of that same month, French forces landed on the Kentish coast. Consols were written off by the government. A week later French soldiers were marching up the Mall. A week after that, an official of the new Government of Occupation called at the house, informing Eleanor and her Mamma that the manufactory was being confiscated by the Government of Greater France. Mamma wept, protested, fruitlessly begged and exhorted. Eleanor treated the Frenchman to a display of the most distant and coldest English politeness.

  That night she drank more than her mother. She spoke aloud, to herself rather than in conversation: ‘As like thank Him for the bad as the good. As like rail against Him for the good as for the bad.’ ‘What are you saying, my love?’ Mamma had asked, in a frightened voice. ‘What are you saying?’ ‘We are insects to God,’ said Eleanor, with a sudden intense emphasis. ‘He sees insects and he sees us. He is so gigantic that to His eye all we crawling miniature things are the same. As flies to wanton boys,’ she added earnestly, but she could not remember how the quotation continued, or even from where she was quoting.

  This time it was Mamma who began to cry. The sound of her mother’s distress was grating and unpleasant to Eleanor. ‘Hush, Mamma,’ she said, without tenderness. ‘Hush.’

  Alone together that evening (for all the servants save the butler had deserted the house and fled the city; and the butler had been pressed for roadwork by the French) - alone together, Mamma kept repeating the phrase: ‘It was all for nothing, his death for nothing, it was all for nothing.’

  ‘For nothing,’ repeated Eleanor, almost triumphantly.

  She wanted to reassure her mother, to tell her that they were no worse off than they had been - better off, for they still had the house in Gower Street. But the words refused to come. She knew in her heart that she was indeed worse off, greatly worse off.

  She received a letter from Count Baron Idigon von Leloffel. It read:The French authorities have me under arrest, my dear lady, as it seems the ancient friendship between the two Saxon nations of England and the Germanies is viewed with suspicion by the new occupying power. I have been permitted to write to you, to ask you for certain monies - you will, I am sure, forgive the vulgarity of so direct an approach; but without fiscal security the French will not permit me to walk at my liberty. My parole does not satisfy them. Dear lady, for the sum - small to you - of two hundred pounds, I would have the pleasure of attending upon you. I have long been desirous of continuing our conversations. I feel sure that new horizons await our friendship. Leloffel.

  Postscriptum. I offer my condolences on the death of your former husband. But - of course - any such moth who dared approach the flame of your beauty could not have expected a lengthy life.

  His intentions were clear. Eleanor had no money to give him, unless she mortgaged her house, which was of course out of the question. She had no money to give him and for some reason this caused her a sharp pain in her forehead. It felt almost like shame.

  She wrote a brief reply, and went to bed. But she could not sleep, however much she prayed for repose. Thinking of the letter brought tears to her eyes, although she did not know why. When she reread the document, and read it another time, she winced at the last sentence of the postscript, for, she told herself, only at that point did the nobleman abase himself. It was too crudely flattering a sentiment. It did not sit aright with the eidolon of Leloffel she had in her mind. He ought not to have stooped, she told herself. It pained her that he had stooped.

  And the pain was genuine. It spread across her temples, and round to the back of her skull, like a hoop of suffering. She closed the curtains and tried to sleep, but could not.

  That evening she received a second letter from Leloffel. Its hand was less perfectly formed, the lines slanting down, the letters compressing in the haste of their scribbling. Instead of writing paper, it had been penned on the reverse of a handbill, torn in half, but offering financial inducements to any Briton who enrolled in a new organisation, Les Amis de la France. Eleanor handled the paper, turning it over and over, before summoning the courage to read the note.

  Madam - your reply has been delivered to me. I must beg you to - must insist you reconsider. I must insist, Madam. You cannot resist my appeal to our fellow breeding. Though a Jew, your father was of the noblest blood. My ancestors led their people against the Romans. They rode at the right hand of Charlemagne. It is most literally intolerable - intolerable - for a person of my birth to be confined by such people as now have me under their lock and their key. They are such little people, Madam, these jailers and soldiermen, such little people. It is contrary to natural justice they confine one such as I. Be assured, were our positions reversed, I would work every sinew to release you. And when the open-sesame is a matter so small, a matter only of ten score pounds, I will not believe-I choose not to believe - that you will deny me. L.

  Eleanor was not sure what it was about this second note that compelled her to dress and leave the house, but there was something in it. They are such little people, Leloffel wrote, of his gaolers. The phrase chattered in her head like
clockwork. She walked to the first banker’s office she found, and went in. The sunlight was bright and cold through the main office windows as she sat, her hands in her lap. She could barely see the banker himself, and had some difficulty in explaining her circumstances. Two hundred pounds, she said. A mortgage upon my house, she said. To release a man imprisoned by the French.

  ‘This man,’ asked the banker, his face blurred and shadowed as he sat there, with the sunlight hard behind him, ‘is he a relative, Ma’am?’

  No, she replied, no relative. There was an odour of apples somewhere in the room. The floor was rough-planed wooden planks. The whole western wall was washed with light. ‘Not a relative, but,’ she added, hoping to elucidate, but she did not complete the sentence. In her head was a free-floating quotation, from the Bible although she could not recall exactly where, about migrating birds, the stork in heaven knoweth the time of their coming.

  ‘Do you understand, Ma’am,’ the faceless banker said, leaning a little forward at his desk, ‘that in the present occasion - during the military uncertainties of these days - the amount of money our institution might loan upon a property, even so substantial a property as your own, must be reduced? In more peaceful times, we might offer better terms. But in the current climate—’