by Peter Benson
When I reached the house, I slammed the back door behind me and did not care how much noise I made as I climbed the stairs. I met the cats outside Miss Watson’s room, and as I passed them they stood and arched their backs in alarm. “Go to sleep,” I whispered, and they scurried away, along the corridor and downstairs to the kitchen.
When I reached my room, I lay on the bed, watched the moonlight pool on the floor and listened to the night. I heard Miss Watson’s bed springs. I closed my eyes, but the dark raised a vision of the woman in Hunt’s house, so I opened them again and tried to keep them open for as long as I could. I do not know how long I managed – an hour, an hour and a half – but I fell asleep eventually and, when I woke up, dull sunlight was breaking through the window, and the chickens in the orchard were scratching at worms and making the lovely sounds busy chickens make.
In my second year at Edinburgh, Timothy and I decided to share rooms. Like my room at Belmont, these rooms had a view of an orchard, sunlight streamed in the windows and for a month we had an easy time. He had resolved some of his problems, his cynicism was on the wane, and he had decided to tell his father he would never be interested in working for the family firm, not at any time or cost. He was still drinking and smoking too much, but he had made a plan. He had abandoned the idea to write a novel: when he graduated he was going to “do some good in the world”. He did not know exactly how or where, but when he talked about it, his face lost its forlorn look and his back straightened.
We were not inseparable, but we were close, so when I got a call from the Royal Infirmary to say a Timothy Cash had been admitted with serious injuries, I abandoned an essay on the 1662 Act of Uniformity and walked to the hospital.
He had visited a public house where gown was not welcome, and after a few drinks had told someone that Edinburgh was full of people who did not know the difference between stupidity and sense. Taken outside, led into a side alley and beaten with fists, bottles and a bar stool, he had lost two pints of blood and suffered three broken ribs, a broken arm and a crack in his skull.
As I sat beside him and listened to the physicians confer, a nurse told me he was a lucky man. She mopped his brow and listened to his pulse. He did not look lucky. His head was swathed in bandages, his eyes were black, and as he slept, I resolved to make sure he straightened out and found new ways to express himself. I stayed with him for a couple of hours and went back to see him the next day. He was still in a bad way but was sitting up, and when I arrived he already had a pair of visitors. He introduced them as his mother and father. Polished and angry-looking people, they looked at me as if I was exactly the sort of person they did not want their son to know, and who was probably responsible for his current state. But when he explained I was his only friend, and if he had not met me he would have been the loneliest student in Edinburgh, they offered me grudging thanks. I fetched a chair, but before I could sit down, his father stood up and said they had important family matters to discuss. “Business…” he said, and I said “Of course”, as if I knew what he was talking about. Timothy looked at me, and although he did not say anything, his eyes shone with need and anguish. I hesitated and, as I did, his father held out his hand and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“Yes,” I said to him and, “I’ll call tomorrow” to Timothy, but when I went back in the morning, his bed was occupied by a small bald man with an enormous bandage over his left eye and his arm in a sling. A nurse told me Timothy had been moved to a private hospital in Canterbury.
“Canterbury?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The nurse did not know, so when I got home I finished my essay and handed it in with an apologetic note. I caught a railway train in the morning, and was in Dover by midnight.
My father was astonished to see me, and after admonishing me for waking him up, told me to help myself to cocoa and go to bed before I fell asleep on my feet. I did as I was told, and in the morning, after an awkward breakfast in a very cold kitchen, I went to see Timothy.
He was as astonished to see me as my father had been, and after rebuking himself for being weak and foolish, and saying some unkind things about his parents, he managed a smile and thanked me for visiting. “I don’t think I’ve had a real friend before,” he said, and for a moment I thought his face was going to collapse. It began to fail around the edges like a ridge of sand is washed clean by the tide, but he pulled back, sat up and flicked some crumbs off his blanket.
“You must have.”
He shook his head. “My father used to frighten them.”
“You should meet mine,” I said, and we laughed.
I stayed for half an hour, and we talked about fathers, university and drinking, and when I left I made him promise to come back to Edinburgh as soon as he was feeling well enough.
At the time, I remember thinking this was probably the last time I would see Timothy, so when I saw him a month later, I was surprised. He was emerging from a lecture hall, books under his arm with clear eyes, a neat haircut and a wide smile. I have no idea what had happened to him, or how, but when I spoke to him it was as though he had had a religious conversion and saw life as a pure challenge to a pure mind and a pure body. I offered to buy him a drink, but he turned me down, and laughed when I suggested a glass or two of port.
“I’m past all that,” he said, and there was not a trace of smugness in his voice, or doubt.
I waited for him to slip back to his old ways, but he did not. I waited for a message from a public house or a hospital, but it never came, and although we met each other a few times, the changed Timothy dedicated his final year to solid study, and while I worked inexorably towards my average degree, he found himself with a first and the unqualified approbation of his parents.
When I went down for breakfast, Miss Watson was waiting for me. She had a face like a storm, and her hair was sticking up like a twigs on a blown bush. She slammed the teapot down on the kitchen table and said, “Sometimes I wonder if you give other people a second thought.”
“Miss Watson,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Do you know what Professor Hunt does over there?”
“Why? What has that man got to do with the noise you were making last night? I had no idea what to think. I thought I was going to be attacked, and when you…”
“I visited him last night, and there’s no case of malaria in his house. Far from it…” I said, but then I stopped. Miss Watson was not going to believe a word I said. She shook her head.
“You visited him again? I don’t believe it.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that the sooner you’re away from here the better.”
“I’ll be leaving today,” I said. “I’ve a couple of hours’ work to do, and then I’m finished.”
She did not bat an eye.
“So…” I said, trying to be firm, “maybe you could tell me where I could hire a carriage.”
“A carriage?” Her scornful look could have melted iron.
“Yes.”
“I believe Mr Wilkinson has a dog cart, but whether it’s for hire, well…”
“And he lives where?”
“Raymond’s Farm. At the crossroads.”
“And he has a horse?”
“A cart without a horse would be of little use,” she said, but I ignored her sarcasm, stood up and returned to the library. I sat with the books, the portrait and the bust, and knew I had to be strong. I was trapped between reason and magic, Voltaire and someone I imagined was called Hunt, Belmont and a thatched house that probably did not exist. I tried to believe this, tried to force myself into a cupboard I could not lock, but I knew I was fooling myself. I knew what I had seen. I had not been dreaming. I was on solid ground, the solid ground of the strength of reason. So I went back to work, and by midday I had listed the last volumes and initialled the last index sheet. I filed my papers, tidied Buff-Orpington’s desk and stood in fr
ont of the bookcases for one last time.
When I arrived at Belmont, I had been overwhelmed by the collection, but now I did not care and, when I closed the library door for the last time, did not feel any sense of regret. My head was swamped and damp, agitated birds were picking at my brain. I went upstairs, packed my bags, left them in the hallway and walked away from the house, up the lane to the village. I found Mr Wilkinson of Raymond’s Farm. He had a look of complete desolation on his face. His sheep were dead, his cattle were ulcerated and hobbled, his crops were rotting in the desperate fields. He was sitting in his kitchen with a mug of cider at his elbow – I say kitchen, but with its dirt floor, empty cupboards and crooked table, it was more of a barn. The air was thick with a rank, dead smell, and clouds of flies swarmed over the filthy windows. A scrawny dog was lying on the floor. Too weak to lift its head towards me, let alone bark, it was suffering from terrible sores on its back. So when I offered a good sum for the hire of his horse and cart, with the promise I would leave it in the care of the drivers at Taunton railway station, he almost smiled, and thanked me with embarrassing intimacy, hugging and patting my back as though I was a long-lost son. “Just don’t drive him too hard,” he said. “He’s not as strong as he used to be.”
The bells fell silent. The bells rang again. My father lost his battle of the bells and spent the last period of his working life waging a more subtle war of attrition against the ecclesiastical authorities. They knew he was due to retire within a couple of years, so they humoured him and conceded a few minor points on floral displays. But while the bells rang in the tower above him, he felt he was being mocked. When I returned to Dover for the Christmas of my final year, the vicarage was freezing and there was no life in the place. No tirades against the mediocrities who had crawled their way to the top. No rage at the congregations who had turned their back on his church and flocked to the chapel down the road. And no attacks on the toothless academics who were teaching me nothing but nonsense. For the first time in my life, I thought he was beaten. His back was hunched, his eyes were washed and pale, and he looked as if he had lost six inches in height. On Christmas morning, I gave him a biography of Lord Nelson and he gave me a book of engravings of Scotland. Then he went out to take the morning carol service, and, as he left, he turned to me and said, “I have some news.”
“What news?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
I did not go to church, so I went down to the front and stood to watch the ships in the harbour. Gulls swooped and cried, weak waves lapped against the breakwaters, and when I walked back I was overwhelmed by a feeling of imminent loss. I do not know where this feeling came from, and when I reached St Michael’s I sat on the wall outside and listened to the last carol. I watched the congregation leave, nodded to a few people I knew from years ago, and then joined my father in the vestry.
As he hung his surplice in the wardrobe, he said, “This is my last Christmas here. I’m retiring in the spring.”
“I thought you had a few more years.”
“So did I, but I’ve decided to leave before I do something foolish.”
“Foolish?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think you know what I mean.” I looked into his eyes. He was being serious. Then he turned away, closed the wardrobe and left by the side door. I followed, and we walked back to the vicarage together, up the hill and around the corner.
When we got inside, I helped him with his coat and made him sit in the kitchen and took out a bottle of sherry. I poured two glasses and held mine up. “Happy Christmas, Father.”
He ran his finger round the top of the glass and allowed a smile to creep across his face. “Yes,” he said. “Happy Christmas, David,” and after we had chinked our glasses, he downed his in one gulp. He poured himself another, and while I stared wide-eyed at this display – I had never seen him drink more than half a glass of sherry at a sitting – he took a deep breath, stood up, paced the room twice, sat down again and told me the story of his life. I had not expected it or asked for it, and some of the things he said came as a shock, but once he had started he did not – or could not – stop.
He was born in Southampton. This much I already knew. His father worked in the docks, drank heavily, came home late and beat his mother. He had an elder brother and a younger sister, and they lived in a ruined house in the poorest quarter of the city.
My father did not do well at school. He refused to study and preferred to spend his time bullying other children, learning how to smoke and throwing stones at dogs. By the time he was sixteen, he was the leader of a gang of boys who terrorized his neighbours. By his own admission, he was fortunate to survive this period of his life unscathed and out of prison, for he pickpocketed, robbed houses and caused all manner of nuisance. Until one night, while lying in bed, a blinding light filled the room and Christ appeared in a cloud. The Son of God stretched out his arms, and while a host of cherubim and seraphim swarmed around his head, he called my father’s name – “George… George…” – and told him there was work to be done. So in the morning my father was a new man, glowing with the light of Christ and anxious to redeem himself.
He renounced his old friends, enrolled in night school and studied for the exams he had missed. By this time, his own father had drunk himself to death and his elder brother had moved out, so he took responsibility for his mother and younger sister, and took work in the docks.
He worked hard, studied harder, fell asleep at his desk, went to church every Sunday, and by the time he was twenty-one had been accepted by the Society of the Lord’s Sacred Mission to study for the Anglican priesthood. A celibate and monastic group, the Society were strict and taught my father well, and though he argued with them about some aspects of interpretation and teaching, when he left the mission it was with a heavy heart.
He worked as a curate in Northampton before his appointment as parish priest of St Michael’s in Dover. Within a year he had met my mother, and spent an anxious six months trying to come to terms with his attraction. Her name was Josephine Ray, she was pale and shy, and she worked in the Bishop’s office. She had a quiet faith and a gentle manner, and after months of prayer and meditation, he renounced his vow of celibacy and announced his intention to marry. Maybe this is where my father’s straightened life derailed itself and uncertainty – and guilt – started to creep back in. There are only so many changes one man can cope with, and maybe he took change to its limits, and maybe this is why my thoughts of him are so coloured by fear and worry.
The woods were quiet. A shower of rain had fallen, and the leaves and branches were dripping. The air was damp but not weak with it: it was tight like a fist. I stood the cart in front of Belmont, gave the horse a nosebag, and loaded my bags. Now I walked away from the house quickly, my head down, my feet quiet. When I reached the place where I had first met Professor Hunt, I stopped and sat beneath a beech tree. I leant against the trunk, closed my eyes, opened them again and felt an ant climbing up my arm. I brushed it off. Clouds were low and threatening. Flies buzzed in the air. I listened to my heart beat and watched the thatched house where she was kept. I watched the windows and I watched the weeds in the garden, and the hedge that snaked around the front. The overgrown apple trees. A broken-down shed. I watched until the front door opened and Hunt appeared.
He stood on the step, shaded his eyes and stared at the sun, then stared in my direction and patted his jacket pockets. He went back indoors and emerged a minute later with a walking stick. He crossed the drive, slashed his way through the garden and took one of the winding paths that crossed the fields. I left the shade of my tree and scuttled into the woods, headed back along the ridge and reached a point where the trees thinned into scrub and the land dipped towards the west.
I watched him for a couple of minutes. He stopped, bent down and stared at a flower. He picked it, held it to his nose and rolled it between his fingers before tossing it away. He turned his back to me and strolled in the opposite direction. When
he had disappeared, I stepped out of the woods, ran to a hedge, ducked down, waited, ran another fifty yards and stopped at a gateway. The gate was hanging off its hinges, and hundreds of lengths of string were draped over one of the posts. I stopped, listened and watched the house. It was quiet and still, the chimney smoking. I started running again, down the hill, over the low wall, through the back garden and up to the kitchen door.
I caught my breath and listened. I heard nothing. I tapped on the door and tried the handle, but it did not move. I waited a minute, but there was no answer, so I banged harder, crouched down and tried to look through the keyhole. I saw nothing, but a moment later I heard her calling.
“Help!”
“Hello!” I called.
“In here!”
I took a few steps back and aimed a kick at the door. It did not move. I kicked again. It cracked. One more kick and it splintered and swung open. I ran through the kitchen, tripped over a stool, stood in the hall and called “Hello!” again.
“I’m in here!” She was shouting from the room with the couch and the instruments. I had to kick another door to reach her, and when I saw her I retched. She was tied to the couch with leather straps. She turned her head towards me. Her cheeks were covered in tears. “You came…” she mumbled. Her voice had a crackle to it, ice cracking across a thawing lake, geese flying to breeding grounds, paint peeling off the hull of a beached boat. A fly buzzed and a window pane rattled.
I rushed to her and started to undo the straps around her ankles. The scales there were worn and sore, weeping yellow pus and blood. “Of course I did,” I said.
