by Balefanio
Soon after Rebecca had brought me my broth I heard him banging down the stairs. By that time, I had grasped that whereas I was either asleep or awake, Ferris passed some time in twilight before and after sleep, a kind of living ghost, and it was thus that I had seen him - eyes open, mind shut - that night with Nathan. He was clumsy in the mornings and had once fallen down the stairwell, crying out with the fright of it. Now he trod heavily and scuffed the door open with his foot.
'Good day, Rupert,' he said, and shambled away.
I called, 'Ferris? Will you not take anything?'
He came back, sheepish, saying, 'Be so good as to ask Becs for a bit of bread,'before disappearing again.
'Ferris! Come back!'
In the end I followed him downstairs. He was in the back room, shivering in his shirtsleeves.
'Would you help me get this clear, Jacob?'
I saw a machine half buried in firewood, broken crates and soiled ends of cloth. These we pulled off, and I saw that it was a press. I had only seen them in pictures before. At once I felt my ignorance, for I could not even guess which part of it to hold.
Ferris noticed my look. 'You'd like to learn?'
'Very much.' I walked around it trying to see how the different pieces went together. Ferris found a skin bag and inside it a clout which he stroked over the metal parts, sighing to find so many rust spots. The stink of pig grease filled the room.
'It's too damp,' he remarked, 'but there's nowhere else. Look here,' and he pulled up a greenish stack of paper. I took the mouldering mass in my hands and read, On the True Brotherhood of Men. As I opened it the top sheet of the pamphlet flipped away and went whirling to the floor. Inside I read an address to the Members of Parliament exhorting them to grant every poor man or woman a cottage, pig and cow and four acres of land. It was dated 1643, and signed A Friend to England's Freedom.
Ferris laughed. 'You didn't believe me, eh? But come, I'm starving hungry,' and he led me upstairs again.
Rebecca brought in some rolls for both of us and a jug of beer. I said, "Thank you,' and tried not to look at her. Ferris chattered on like a natural, holding his roll in a napkin so as not to get pig's grease on it.
'Won't you wash your hands?' I hinted.
'O it's not worth it, I'll be back there directly - we can get sowing by the spring, if there be enough of us, that means starting now and selling them from the house, but wait, there's a bookseller at Paul's takes pamphlets—'
He dropped crumbs on the table, picked them up with the point of his tongue. Rebecca stared at him and he began to snort with laughter, spraying the bread out again. 'You'll not tell Aunt, will you Becs? What a pig I was? Jacob's no pig, is he Becs?'
The girl flushed and walked out.
'What ails her?' cried Ferris.
'What is become of your discernment?'I asked hotly. I was embarrassed for the girl, and for myself.
'What, you and Becs—!' He was merry in disbelief, but then he saw my face and stopped. We stared at one another, and I thought there was displeasure in the look he gave me.
After this the rest of the day held something of an edge. I relished it notwithstanding, for it was new to me to celebrate Nativity and not Christmas, and to be a guest instead of waiting on others. I helped Aunt, was especially kind to Rebecca (though this might not be wisdom, still the girl's blushes merited gentleness) and made small talk with neighbours who came to give the compliments of the season, viz. to gossip. I learnt that Mister Cooper was selling up, perhaps weary of dodging Ferris in the street. Not a single visitor arrived drunk, and I wondered if the Roches could have recognised the religious feast at all.
Ferris mostly avoided the company. He scrabbled about in the back room, coming out covered with grease. From time to time he would look in, bow and smile, but decline to shake hands on account of being 'all over muck'. The visitors seemed a little offended, and indeed I think I would have been, in their place. They departed with
much dignity, sighing out their wishes that the young master might live to be the man his uncle was.
"They have never understood him,' his aunt said. 'Up and down! Up and down!'she went on, as his feet shook the stairs.
Ferris was straightway back again, wiping his hands on a linen napkin. 'The press is not too stiff—'
'Christopher!'His aunt snatched the cloth from him.
'O, I'll make good whatever I spoil. Let's kiss and be friends,' and he hugged her to him in a bear dance. Then, without a word to me, he was out of the door again.
'Did you ever see such maggots!'But she was laughing. 'He hardly knows we're here,' she said. 'He was just this way as a child, charging about ...'
She was delighted to see him less melancholy, let the neighbours say what they would.
My own feelings were not so happy. There is a very particular way that a man looks upon another who has just disgusted him. He feels the eruption of hatred from within, and you may even see him place his hand on heart or belly as if to support the body against the scalding of the spirit. Yet at the same time no movement, paling or even breath of the other escapes notice, and the loathed object is seen vilely revealed as if on the Day of Judgement. I had shivered at Ferris's expression when I tried to drive away his friends, for he had looked at me as if my whole life lay open to him and he found it an ugly spectacle. I had also received other kinds of looks: Caro's promise of herself, Nat's stupid gratitude, the crooked smile Ferris had worn when I gave him the Loyaute glass, even the dog's gaze that Rebecca fixed on me while I was eating. None of these served as preparation for the way that Ferris left without seeing me. I was become nothing but the audience to his play, and had not felt so discounted since I jumped to the orders of Mervyn Roche.
Aunt looked over at me sitting by the fire and seated herself nearby. 'It won't last,' she said. 'He'll weary himself
'Why is he so— so—?'
'O, because it's Nativity tomorrow, I guess. It's a cruel season for a man who's lost his wife. He's killing the hours.'
'Will he really use the press?'
'Why not? He knows how. Go down to him if you wish; I have Becs for company.'
I stayed where I was. If he asked me to help, I would gladly do so, but I would not he ready to his hand. A tool can be used, a man must be asked.
We had supper: boiled salt pork, pickled cabbage and cider followed by stewed apple. Ferris scarce spoke, and when Rebecca put the dish of apples on the table he jumped. Since he did not serve himself, Aunt set out some fruit for him. 'These apples have kept well,' she said to me. 'They are our own, from the courtyard.'
'Ginger,' murmured Ferris.
I watched him eat. His face was heated, perhaps from the spice, and he lifted the apple absently to his lips. His eyes were not on us but on the future. Before Aunt or myself had half finished, he dropped his spoon clack into the dish and rose to leave.
'Will you not stay and talk with us?' his aunt demanded. 'It is almost Nativity.'
'When will the press be ready?' I asked cunningly.
He sat down again. 'It is not too rusted. I've got all the letters cleaned and polished. You can be my crophead prentice.'
'To do what?'
'O, set up the type. You'll learn to read backwards.'
'I meant, what are we going to print?'
'I told you! To draw like-minded men together — women too—'
Aunt's face darkened. 'What, Christopher, are you still talking of leaving here?'
'I have to, Aunt, it's all I've wanted since I joined the army. The New Jerusalem.'
I sighed and covered my eyes.
Ferris stamped back down the stairs to his press.
'You know,' I said to Aunt, 'if he wishes to break virgin ground, he should be at it now. Better wait another year and plough in good time.'
She chewed on a thumbnail. 'He can't wait to leave me.'
'I've never seen him like this,' I told her. 'He's not the same man.'
'That's what it d
oes.'
'Excitement?'
'Drink.'
I stared at her.
'Couldn't you smell it on him?'
We went down together. He was bending over the machine as I had once seen him crouch over a pot of beans, and made a feint of not seeing us. That was like the army too, when I waited by the fire for him. So much of a man is wasted, I thought, wasted on the watch for that look which says, Welcome, at last.
The empty bottle was lying just inside the door, and a freshly opened one under the press. Aunt seized it straight off. 'You're never going to finish this?'
He stood up as if he would bandy words with her, but she at once cut in, as if speaking to a young boy. 'You'll hurt yourself fooling with a press drunk.'
'I know what I do,' Ferris said.
She took both bottles away without further talk. Her nephew sat down on the dirty floor and sighed.
'Why don't you leave it until after the holiday?' I coaxed him. 'Two days is nothing.'
'I want to get started.'
'Yes, but two days?'
'I want—' and then he choked. I thought, Out it comes, but he was not sick of the drink. He seemed to be crying. I stepped towards him and he turned away from me.
'Why don't you go to bed?' I asked. 'I'll get Rebecca to put the warming pan in for you.'
He shook his head.
'Your aunt fears for you, Ferris.'
At this he turned to me, blinking. The tears, if tears there had been, were already dried. I led him back to the upstairs room, he kicking the stairtreads as we went, I wondering if this would now be the pattern of our life. He swayed into a chair and sat quietly by the fire while the bed was being warmed.
Are you sick at all?'
'No. Now sneck up! You're worse than Aunt.'
I dropped the hand I had offered to him and when the girl came to say the bed was heated, I let him fumble his way up the next flight of stairs alone.
'How did he get like that?' Rebecca asked me, hearing him thud on the boards above us. A slam informed us he had dropped onto the bed if not beneath the coverlet.
I shrugged. "The usual way. Best keep the cellar locked.'
'What, will he go on like it?'
'How should I know?'
She took a long look at my countenance and went, 'Pfui!' evidently taking me for an unfeeling friend. If only I were Nathan, who in pain shows so soft and tender: misery only renders my face more rigid. And yet just then I could have wept and had she but given me one word of kindness I would have put my head on her breast like a babe. God alone knows what might have been the sequel, so perhaps He hardened her heart against me. Aunt came back from the cellar and I told her Ferris was abed.
'He's not taken so much, only the bottles we found,' she said. 'Here, help me finish it.' She banged down the opened bottle, and two goblets, in front of me.
It was good wine, and I said so. She told me it was from Ferris's own cellar. "The wines weren't sold off, he gave them to me.'
'So can you lock them from him?'
'Whether I can or not, I have done so.'
We sat drinking and watching the fire, and O, the gentle song of comfort the drink set up in my soul, Suffer no more, so that I very well understood its charm. My eyes began to feel sore and red as if I had been in a smoky tavern.
'Will you go with him into the country?' Aunt asked me.
'If need be. He'll never make a farmer.'
'I don't know,' she said. 'He seems to get no further forward here. If he is going to drink, then best he go.'
The sand of her cheeks glistened. I gently pressed my palm onto her fingers, all knotty with their stiff bones and raised veins: the coarse, honest fingers of one who has always worked. That razor, pity, began
chivvying in my breast. And as always, I felt myself a poor comforter. After a while I kissed the sad hand and walked up to bed. The stairs were unsteady beneath my feet, and in my room I felt the walls drag after me as I turned about.
I was fighting for my life with a cruel yellow beast somehow got into my chamber. It ran over the walls and across the ceiling, talons skittering, and its cry was the savage mating call of cats on a summer night. I knew it for an emissary of the Devil, waiting for me to sleep in order to smother me. At last I griped it by the tail, and having forced it to the window, dropped it out there. I saw it shatter to powder on the cobbles, but turning back to my bed I found someone in it, evidently dead, for all was bound up tightly in cerements, even the features. I was now grown young and called out for my mother but Caro came in instead, dressed in her bridal gown, and said that the dead man was Zebedee. I knew at once he was all corruption under the graveclothes. She began to unwrap the face, continuing though I screamed at her to stop. I covered my own face so as not to see. Then Isaiah (who like Caro was of full mature size though I seemed much smaller) came up behind me and, with a strength he never possessed in life, tore my protecting hands from my eyes and forced me over to the bed saying Zeb had been killed in a weapons drill. Still I kept my eyes shut but soon felt his fingers plucking at them and screamed for Mother and Father and his nails now began to dig as if they would blind me and when I next tried to scream my tongue was dry and stilled so that I could hear that there came a rustling from the bed—
I was greased with sweat. There were stabbing pains in my chest; I put my hand over it to feel the heart punch against my ribs and I thought, a man may well die from a dream. The candle was lit and this sent a flash of fear through me until I understood that I had forgotten to snuff it. The back of my neck was awash; I turned over the bolster to find a dry place.
When I finally lay still and assured that I was awake, I caught some little noise in the room. I at once thought of the cat-beast, for
there was something of a whimpering sound to it. I glanced round and even under the bed: no cat there. Then it came again and I realised it was from the next chamber, where Ferris slept. It grew louder, and I knew it, now. Though preached against as the sin of Onan, unnatural and a filthy vice, it was heard everywhere we had made camp; to wake any night was to catch the rustling and some man's quick furtive breathing. Russ had called it the lullaby of the army ... Ferris was now groaning, must be greatly carried away. I wondered if he would end by waking Aunt. Despite myself I smiled at that thought. And then came a thought which splintered my smile. The maid slept by herself in an attic room. I recalled his laughter, picking up the crumbs with his tongue, calling her 'Becs' and making her his witness that he was a pig, while I was not - his quickly masked displeasure at my hint that she liked me. All of a piece.
That he could play the widower by day and do thus at night! I was glad of the candle now. The latch of my door lifted sweetly, sweetly, and as I stepped out into the corridor his noise seemed so loud I was amazed to be the only one roused by it. His own door - O, the heed-lessness of lust! - was open, standing in a gilded frame of candlelight. I extinguished my flame and crept forward. The door yielded to me silently and I saw a woman's dress lying over the chest in the corner. Judas! I thought. I sprang to the bed and ripped back the hangings and covers. His candle flared to show me Ferris, alone, his head partly framed by a heap of linen. I recognised the white cloth as Joanna's nightgown. Her widower lay, face pressed to its soft folds, his cheek smeared and shining. When he looked up at me, it was with eyes desolate and defenceless. I heard him fight to calm his breath, unable to speak or look anger, but only because he was too brutally torn from his grief.
Ready to cry out in horror at my vile mistake, I dabbed at his face with the shift, pulled the coverlet back over him and blew out the candle. Then I sat silent and unmoving on the edge of the bed, confounded, waiting for him to sit up and tell me to leave his house. My face burnt in the dark.
Ferris did not move. It even seemed to me that his breathing grew quieter. I began to hope that the sudden darkening of the room would
send him off to sleep. Come the morning, he might believe it all a dream. But no, he had been awake
, pressing her shift — pressing her — close to him in his lonely bed as he must have done every night since we came to London.
I have no idea how long I stayed there. Sobs rose in my own breast, so that keeping them down was a strangulation. I bit my hand to get mastery over myself. At last his breathing lightened, and sounded as if he might be going off, when there came a clicking from his throat. He might wish to speak to me. Most delicately did I raise myself from the bed and go to stand over him. I peeled back the coverlet. It felt cold and slippery on the outside, hot and dragging where he had wept into the underside of it. Without the candle I had so foolishly extinguished I could not tell if I was exposing a sleeping face or one which looked up through the darkness and could distinguish me. At once a very Flood of tears rose on me. Like Izzy had he befriended me, like Izzy had he paid for it. The more I tried to battle back my crying the worse it came on: I hiccupped and forced my breath. At length there came a sigh, and a rustling from the bed. I lay down on top of the coverlet and brought my face level with his.
'Forgive me. I'm the Fool of Fools—'
I could not say it. Speech rose in me but was dammed at the throat. Atonement. I craned forwards in the dark until I could press my streaming face on his as I used to with Izzy. The scent of sleeping flesh, of hair and neck, came up to me; his face was blubbered and slippery, warm under the cooling salt. His nose hurt my cheek; there was a smell of wine on him. A cluck rose from his throat as if he would start sobbing again. 'Hush,' I said. I licked his tears away, in the dark. For atonement. And so it happened that while drinking the tears I licked some from his mouth, which was open and tasted of sour wine and salt. Wet hair trailed on my neck. He mumbled something. Hush. I pressed on his lips to quiet him, pushing deeper, tasting his spittle. I wanted to lie still with him and let him know he was as welcome to me as myself, burrowing into him in the safety of the darkness.
There was a gasp; he pulled away and the kindness of our mouths was ended. I froze in the darkness, a child torn from the nipple,
one great ache of loss, Let me, let me. His breath faded against my lips.
