by Janet Ellis
Behind me the great door of the church is opened violently, crashing against the wall and shaking its locks and bolts. The vicar runs in, stopping in his tracks when he sees me. His collar is loose and flapping. He wrings his hands. ‘Most dreadful!’ he exclaims.
I get to my feet. ‘Sir, you look as though all the horrors of the world pursue you.’
‘Only one, but the worst.’ He sinks down. He tries to speak several times, but buries his head in his hands instead. Finally, he turns to me. ‘A small boy, no more than ten, I would say, appears to have fallen from the bell tower.’
From my vantage point standing over him, I examine the top of his head. A ring of hair surrounds a patch of pale, bare skin, like a clearing in the forest. As before, when my father wept to tell me of Dr Edwards’ departure, I am deliberating what my next sentence should be. I choose: ‘Is he dead?’
The vicar looks startled. ‘Oh, Mistress Jaccob. The tower is very high. Of course, there is no reason why you should know how far he fell, but suffice it to say he is . . . quite dead.’
‘Will he be buried here?’ I ask, conversationally. This man was not related to the boy, after all, he should not mind such a practical enquiry.
‘I do not even know who he is!’ The vicar rises abruptly. ‘There is a great deal to be done before anyone can think of funerals.’ Who he was, I think, but I hold my tongue. ‘His family must be found and informed.’ The vicar commences his hand-wringing again.
That will take some searching, I imagine. He would appear to have lived a solitary life. Perhaps a few folk might notice that they have not seen him for a while, but they will most likely think it briefly and not even say it aloud to anyone. The waters will close over his head and any ripples fade quickly enough. It will soon be almost as if he were never here.
‘Does he lie outside still?’
At this, the vicar gives me a curious glance, as if I were suddenly not the person he thought he had been speaking to. ‘He does, poor child. He is covered. With my cloak,’ he adds. He continues to look hard at me. ‘Did you see him come in?’
The church holds its breath for my answer.
‘I did not. I was on my knees. My dear grandmother is recently . . . departed. I came here to pray for her.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he exhales, reminded of the purpose of the building.
‘There were some others here,’ I offer. ‘But we did not converse.’
He reassembles himself as a man of the church, adjusting his collar and straightening his shoulders. ‘I trust you found comfort,’ he says, though the unkind world pulls at his sleeve, wanting to question his certainty of God’s presence in the face of such unfairness.
‘As I always do,’ I say, bowing my head. If I am not too late, there is another death and funeral I am interested in.
‘I shall see you on the morrow, in happier circumstances.’ He extends his arm to me.
As I did before, I shrink away. I am too-reminded of dead flesh by his living hand. Besides, I fear my hasty ablutions have not quite erased the dirt there, so I put my hands in my shawl, out of reach. I had quite forgotten the christening, but I have no interest in it now that I’m reminded. Pretending to bill and coo over that baby would not suit my mood.
* * *
Only a few stragglers stand about near the fresh mound of Dr Edwards’ grave; my father is not among them. They converse in brisk, loud tones and are making plans for the evening. The reason for their gathering is quite forgotten – they are even turned away from him.
Apart from this robust circle stands a girl. She weeps with her head bowed and her large shoulders heave up and down. I stand beside her – she is of a substantial build and serves as a windbreak as well as a companion. In time, she may question my presence with the customary chitchat of the bereaved, but for now she keeps her face buried as efficiently in her handkerchief as Dr Edwards is concealed underground.
When she eventually acknowledges me, giving me the small, brave smile of shared loss, I see that she is quite the ugliest creature I have seen in a long while. I gasp but, fortunately, her spluttering is loud enough to drown out any other noise. Her skin is florid: dark veins snake in large numbers across her already red face and even her forehead is loudly pink. But had she a porcelain complexion, her features would deny her any chance of beauty. Her eyes are set very close together – only the unusually protruding bridge of her nose keeps them apart. Her thin mouth fights for occupation of her large chin. There are two sharp indentations on either side of her nose, as if her Maker pushed his fingers there while she was still soft.
‘He was a good man,’ I say, concentrating on the heap of dirt that marks him, to avoid inspecting her further.
‘Did you know him well?’ She stops crying, mopping her eyes then pushing the sodden rag up her sleeve. She seems grateful to be able to share her grief.
‘For a little while I saw him often. He was my tutor when I was a child.’
‘He has, or I should say, he had, not had any pupils for a while, I think,’ she says, sniffing loudly. ‘Latterly, he rather doubted himself. His memory had begun to fail.’
This is a revelation. I think of the boy, his last student, left confident that he could read after only a little tuition. Dr Edwards gave no sign of a man in turmoil. He accepted my invitation to resume our lessons easily enough. If he hesitated, it was surely only in anticipation of my father’s wrath. Who is this woman who can speak for Dr Edwards’ state of mind?
‘And were you a friend to him?’ I do not want to look her full in the face when I speak to her. I feel truly sorry she must venture daily in the world with such an affliction, her appearance is so disconcerting.
‘More than a friend, I suppose. Although I would have relished his friendship, for he had the most marvellous mind and possessed a rare degree of loyalty. I am his daughter.’
How I keep from expostulating, I do not know. As the snail shell cracks to reveal its viscous contents, so this information spills stickily from her. I stare at the earth where he is buried as if I could summon him to explain himself. I’d like to drag him from his hole and scoop the dirt from his mouth so he could speak. There were better confessions he could have made to me than all that nonsense about dolls, weren’t there? Does he leave a widow?
‘Where is your mother?’ It is best to be bald with the enquiry. I look across to where the other mourners cluster. ‘I thought he lived alone.’ There was certainly no indication of a woman’s hand in his hovel of a room. ‘I was only a child when he taught me, but he never mentioned a wife.’
‘They were not . . .’ she leans in to whisper, ‘ . . . married.’ She pauses to see if I am shocked and I nod to encourage her both that I am not and that she should continue. ‘They never even shared a house. My mother told me she had shouted through his open window to tell him that she carried his child, and he yelled back that he would provide for me, in return. With the regular stipend came letters to me and, when I was old enough, I wrote back to him.’
I want to laugh at the naked absence of romance or poetry in the tale. The girl would appear to be of the same years as I. Surely he was reminded of his epistolary child whenever he saw me? However more deserved does Dr Edwards’ fate seem now.
‘My mother was an unhappy woman. I’m afraid she drank to alleviate her sadness. She died many years ago.’ That is more like it. Only a rolling drunkard would lie down easily under him.
I touch her arm in condolence. ‘I am sorry you have lost him, then. I am especially saddened by the manner of his death.’
At this she weeps. ‘How did you hear of it?’ She grabs her kerchief again and turns it over to find a dry corner. ‘He must have suffered so!’
‘My father told me. They kept company sometimes. He always spoke well of him.’ In this instance, the posthumous eulogy my father spoke only once will have to stand for ‘often’.
‘I have not seen him for many years. His letters were so beautiful, I shall miss them very much! !’ She breathes in deeply. ‘He would not see me. I think he was ashamed – although whether of himself or of me, I could not say.’ She sighs and I cannot tell if she alludes to her bastard state or her physiognomy. There is much to bewail about both. She turns to me with an eager expression. ‘Did you call on him frequently? Did he live well?’
I balance her happiness on the palm of my hand, as though I toss a coin. If it lands truth-side up she leaves miserable. The other way is a happy falsehood. I am not given to spontaneous acts of charity, neither is speaking well of Dr Edwards my due, but I wish this unhappy girl no more ill than the world has doled out already.
‘I have not encountered Dr – your father – since I was a small child. He was always extremely dapper then. Very smartly turned out, that I do recall.’ She smiles happily at this spruce and spry vision of her father. How strangely easy it is to lie. Like a parasite on its host, my falsehoods take their nourishment from being believed and gain more strength.
‘He was inspiring,’ I say, ‘and scarcely a day goes by without me remembering what he taught me.’
‘Thank you for coming,’ is all she says, but her tears have dried. She turns away from me and regards his grave with solemn zeal.
How little each plot begins to describe their owner. The boy will soon lie under just such a pile of turned earth as Dr Edwards does, with no sign either of his living vigour or size.
Thus dismissed, I can leave. I ought to go home. I have a christening to talk my way out of.
Chapter 23
The streets are strangely emptied, as sometimes happens, as though everyone but me has been ordered inside by curfew. Once or twice though, I have the sensation of being observed, but I will not humour it by turning round. I am happy rifling in the store cupboard of my head, counting and sorting and planning.
Dr Edwards and the boy were gone as easily as flicking crumbs from a sleeve, but Margaret clings as closely as ivy. Do not let it be that she keeps her grip tight with Fub’s help. My nostrils fill with acrid smoke: someone is burning a rank lump of meat over a brazier. I still have the stench about me when I get to Meek Street. I sniff at the cloth of my shawl and, sure enough, the smell already seems to be woven into the material. The last time I saw him, Fub was revolted by the reek of me. He won’t be enchanted now, either, will he?
I am still disconcerted by how vague Fub’s face is to me when I try and conjure it. I cannot summon my desire for him either. It would be easier to recall a dream and they are slippery things. This is ill-timed, when I have gone so far in removing obstacles to our being together. With a great effort of will, I succeed in remembering his fingers going in, thinking of how he licked them to make their journey easier. Before long I have a pleasant, heavy sensation where they went. I will see his face soon enough, to complete the picture.
I hesitate to go in, lest the Leveners line up inside, stupid as cattle in their pen.
Fub is at the counter, working away at something as he did when I first saw him here. He is alone. I stare at him, wondering why I am not immediately glad to see him. It is as if I carry my feelings in a glass case and I dare not try and touch them, lest it shatters in my hands.
When he sees me, he bursts out laughing. ‘You look as angry as if you had a storm cloud over your head while everyone else enjoyed sunshine! You have soot on you.’ He gestures to his own nose to show me where I’m smudged. ‘My hands are bloody, else I’d wipe your dirty face.’ I must have failed, as I had feared, to clean off the grime. He gives me a cloth, already stiff with gore.
‘I need water,’ I say, ‘to do this properly.’
He pauses. Thoughts cross his face like scudding clouds. ‘Upstairs,’ he says, then he walks from the shop, not looking to see if I follow. I do.
I almost have to duck my head under the lintel of the doorway beyond the slaughter yard. A neat parlour gives way to a tiny hall; anyone passing another here would either have to squeeze in tight or give way. It must be a struggle for that man-mountain Levener to walk through. An assortment of hats hang on hooks on the wall. He must fell them like a scythe winnowing corn, every time he brushes past them. Ahead of us, a narrow, steep flight of steps bends away and out of sight. All these places are diminutive in scale. I do not see one room where I could even stretch my arms wide without almost touching both sides. The walls are bare. Not a single picture, nor an ornament of any sort, breaks their plain surfaces.
Fub himself is too big for the corridor and, when we get to his room, he dwarfs the little cabinet and tiny bed, the only furniture he has. There is not even a glass to see yourself in. He does at least have a jug and basin and he pours some water for me. Rejecting the half-bloodied cloth he offers, I dip the edge of my shawl and moisten my face. Without a mirror, Fub has to reflect back to me whether or not I am successful.
He lets me wipe away at myself a good while before he pronounces: ‘Clean!’ and I can stop. He stares at me for what seems just as long afterwards, without speaking. I am in no mood to start a conversation.
‘Anne,’ he begins, but then he stares again. ‘There is no one in the house.’ He raises his eyebrows at me and gestures, indicating his bed with an extravagant sweep of his arm.
‘Are you wooing me?’ I say. ‘Then I had better warn you that I am not so easy as to lie down just because you pointed to your bed.’
Then he kisses me and proves me wrong – I am very quick to lie down after all. There follows an episode of putting and taking and sighing and moaning, both reassuringly the same, and delightfully different, as before.
* * *
Looking at him afterwards, his face so close I can see the shadows of his lashes on his cheek and the reddened insides of his nose, I am as full as if I’d feasted and I am calm without wanting sleep.
‘When we are together always, we shall have a bed as big as France!’ I say, happily.
Fub groans and puts one hand over my mouth. ‘Shush your chatter,’ he says, ‘do not spoil this for talk of an impossibility.’
I feel a tiny shard of fear, thin as an icicle and twice as cold, start in my stomach and reach sharply up to my heart. ‘Don’t say it is impossible,’ I chide, but it is too late. He props himself up on one elbow to look at me and his face is as serious as if he had bad news to impart.
‘We cannot be together, Anne. You know that.’ He softens what he says when he sees my expression. ‘I thought you knew. I did not think you were enough of a child to believe in fairy stories. I cannot be your prince just because you kissed me.’
‘I love you,’ I say, ‘that is magic enough.’ I wait for him to agree, but instead he sighs. We are players in different scenes, each holding a script the other does not recognise.
‘You cannot eat magic.’ Fub sounds weary at having to explain. ‘Or pay bills with it. Your family would cut you off without a penny and I’d lose my living, that is the truth.’
Can Fub not see how resourceful I am, how I could provide for both of us with my wits? I can prove my love and my cunning.
‘Fub,’ I say, holding his gaze. ‘Dr Edwards is dead.’
He frowns, waiting for an explanation.
‘He was murdered. Stabbed to death,’ I continue. ‘So he cannot inform my father about us. That is one problem less, isn’t it?’
‘Wait.’ Fub sits upright, putting his bare feet on the floor with a heavy slap. He leans his elbows on his thighs and begins rubbing his temples with his fingertips. ‘You do not know who killed him, or how or when he died, do you? He may already have spoken about us. Or written it down like a confession.’ He circles his fingers on his forehead all the more.
I am not so sure of myself now. Why does he throw these strange ideas like scattered pins in my path? He must need to have it spelled out, to erase all doubt before he can celebrate.
&nb
sp; ‘Fub, I killed him.’
He looks momentarily aghast, as though I’d winded him. Then he gets his breath back and laughs. ‘Oh.’ He shakes his head, then swallows. ‘Anne!’ He squeezes my shoulders, as if we were jesting friends. ‘You are a doll! I believed you, almost, for a moment.’ He works his jaw; he is curious. ‘How did he really die, then? Run over by a carriage? Did his heart give out? I would not be surprised, it must have had a great deal of work to do, to get blood round that gross body.’
I thought he would react with glee, that he might swing me up in his arms and call me his clever little darling. Tears of wounded pride spring to my eyes. Looking at him as he describes to himself the possible ways Dr Edwards departed this life, I realise that even if I gave him chapter and verse of my killing, he’d pat my head and say ‘Of course!’ all the while thinking I was only a mistress of invention. If I added the exit of Adam at my hand to my catalogue, he’d slap his thighs in mirth.
‘But you gave me a knife,’ I say.
He smiles, still enjoying the joke. ‘Oh, that is very good.’ He blows air out of his cheeks, regarding me like a performing animal that has just tried a new trick. ‘Very good.’
‘Perhaps I could prove I did it,’ I say,’ With another murder.’
‘Anne, enough. We are playmates, you and I. We mustn’t question the future, we shouldn’t ask anything of each other. That way, we can have our fun,’ he smooths the bedcover as he speaks, ‘and nobody suffers.’
‘Margaret could suffer,’ I say quietly.
Fub flinches as if I’d whipped him. He grabs my wrist. He is not playful any more. ‘Stop it!’ he says, holding me harder, ‘I know that you are young, that you say things you do not mean because you do not know their power. But hear this: I do not love Margaret. I love you. That is how it is for the present. But I cannot love you always and, who knows, I might have to love her in the future.’
I wish I was hard as stone, so that his words would bounce off me. Instead I am soft and porous as moss.
