Gaudete

by Ted Hughes

  Enriching the conflagration, angering the flames

  That claw for the sky,

  Hooking upwards, clenching about the Cathedral

  Like talons

  Of a giant dragonish gripe.

  As if the Cathedral

  Were being crushed in the upreaching foot

  Of an immense upside down griffon

  Which is falling

  Into a crater of black smoke

  The griffon being aflame,

  Beating deeper and deeper,

  A star of struggling rays,

  A glowing spot

  Muffled away

  By the banging –

  Till only a hard banging remains.

  Lumb

  Lies unconscious on the carpet, face crawling with sweat

  In front of the burned-out fire.

  Maud

  Striped with the dove’s blood, which has now dried,

  Lies face upwards on the bare boards

  Of the room beneath, still gripping

  The blood-rag of the bird.

  Her eyes flicker open.

  She listens

  To the banging on the door downstairs.

  Felicity

  For a moment can make nothing of the blood-smeared brow, cheekbones and throat in the crack of the door opened three inches.

  Maud studies the weak pretty face, which is trying to interpret her sheet-draped nakedness, as the door widens.

  Felicity has to speak to Mr Lumb. Very urgent. Maud’s smile seems to understand, as she steps back and lets the tear-flurried face surge past her with its agitation.

  So it is that Lumb, opening his eyes, finds Felicity staring down at him.

  He springs up. He is cleansed and renewed.

  His arms close round her, as if joyfully.

  At once she is crying freely.

  She feels his embrace is safety and assurance.

  She tells him everything

  About that picture and about Garten.

  Already she can hardly believe any of it.

  She prays it was faked.

  She begs him to tell her it was faked.

  He tells her it was faked.

  His laugh frightens her, but she grasps it as more

  reassurance.

  She tells him she has put her suitcase in the back of his car, just as they said. She wants to leave now, this moment. Why can’t he just cancel that meeting tonight.

  He kisses her, overpowering her with his kisses and easy

  smiles.

  He starts to unzip her dress.

  She stops him with hard fingers.

  She wants him to save it

  Till they have escaped right away from all this and from

  everybody.

  Till they are alone together, absolutely together.

  Why can’t they go now?

  When he will not be stopped,

  Explaining without explanation that he cannot cancel the

  meeting

  Because he simply cannot

  She suddenly announces

  That she is coming to the meeting, too,

  So she can see for herself,

  So she can be completely sure

  That the rumour about those meetings is a lie.

  That will prove everything to her.

  And she needs it to be proved.

  She is suddenly strong.

  She realises she is strong.

  She adds something else:

  She is never going home again.

  Lumb

  Gazes blankly toward a reassessment

  Impossibly beyond him. Two worlds,

  Like two strange dogs circling each other.

  The door opens, and Maud stands there. Lumb asks Maud to look after Felicity and prepare her for the meeting. And to instruct her. They will introduce her to the Institute.

  Felicity

  Looking at Maud, and looking again at Lumb

  Reasons herself scramblingly

  Out of the sudden terror

  The light electrical gust

  That grabs at her, to rush her

  Away from this house,

  Away from these two –

  She takes firmer hold of her new initiative.

  She goes out with Maud.

  Holroyd

  Though it is after five, is in his cattle yard with his man and the vet. They are sawing the horns off a young bull. Its hooves slam, its muscular half ton convulses, like a fist, racketing the locked steel bars of the crush, as the three men strain, two of them levering the head far over to one side, and Holroyd, his full weight leaning backward, sawing with a wire.

  Seeing his wife climb into her car, and knowing where she is going, Holroyd shuts his mind from her, grimacing like a face in the dentist’s chair, as he concentrates on the rip of the wire, the angle of his double punching pull, and the ammonia smoke of the horn burn.

  The bull roars long and horribly, like a tiger. The horn pulls loosely over and off, heavy. Nimbly the vet tweezers for the cut end of the vein, that showers him with a rigid thread of blood. He twirls the tissue to a knot. He sprays smoking purple antiseptic into the blood-streaming skull-crater, while Holroyd stands back, crimsoned and panting.

  But now as they grip the bull’s nose-ring, and lunge into wrestling and levering the surviving horn upwards, Garten appears beside Holroyd.

  Garten is an agricultural pest.

  But he is coming closer, not answering Holroyd’s query.

  He is holding out the photograph, like a peace-offering.

  Holroyd has taken it, lifts it.

  In spite of himself, his eyes are fascinated.

  His mystification narrows.

  He is wondering why Garten presents him with this

  questionable picture.

  The horn stands ready for the wire, which dangles in curls from Holroyd’s preoccupied hand. The two men, with locked joints, and full strength at full strain, have pinned the dangerous weight. The bull’s gruelling roar vibrates the concrete of the yard beneath their boots. Garten is saying something.

  Holroyd’s dignity has stiffened. A big florid man, with handsome brown eyes and silver curls.

  He glances at Garten, flushed and stormy and full of hatred. He responds to nothing Garten says, and hands him back the photograph as if it were of no interest.

  He returns to his bull. The animal’s uplooking eye squirms like a live eye in a pan. It emits a yodelling weird roar, like a steel roof being ripped by a power saw, as the wire bites.

  Estridge

  Is looking right through the photograph to his unburied daughter and the stump-raw amputation of that morning’s event.

  He is sharply aware of his age. The recurrent idea to kill Lumb keeps foundering in the proliferating concerns for what ought rightly to be done, in a civic and rational manner. Apart from taking council with Hagen.

  And what is this other strange tale, this new religion? Something diabolical, concocted, filthy, very possible. A lecherous priest and a gaggle of spoofed women. Hysterical bored country wives. Credulous unfortunate females.

  Evans is giving his simple statement. Evans, it seems, intends to walk into the church basement tonight and see what’s going on at the W. I. meeting. Anybody else will be welcome. But nobody must think they’re going to restrain him, when he meets Mr Lumb.

  Looking at Evans’ dangerous, thick-set face, Estridge feels the draughty lack of his uniform. He feels the sheer-fall possibilities of being left out. But mostly he feels age, the wrinkle-crisp caul of the life-husk, an inert scratch-numb detachment. It would be so easy now to do nothing.

  But then the sudden raving fantasy comes

  Like a lump of insane music

  Pulping Lumb’s skull with an axe

  And Estridge’s heart bounds again and flutters.

  Estridge and Evans

  Drive into the gravelled court behind Hagen’s house, circling the old well which is surmounted by a looted Silenus, decorated wi
th fantails. Mrs Hagen, negotiating the grass-verge, drives out past them without a glance.

  Hagen’s man is holding a tall bay mare by a snaffle. Hagen, leaning his chest against a steel gate, watches the slender sooty stallion descending from its horsebox, on powerful springs, restrained by an insect-thin manager.

  The too-heavy clay of Hagen’s face is sagging as the day lengthens. His eyes are fixed in a spiritless nicotine-yellow dullness. Estridge, coming beside him, hands him the photograph without a word, casually as a cigarette.

  Then stands watching the flashing ballet of the two horses, as they touch noses and flare tails, like great fish, like yachts.

  Hagen, absorbing the photograph, massages his brow between thumb and forefinger, as if resting. The stallion whinnies, a squealing barrel-echoing snigger, as he feels his power swell, glitteringly, in the odours of the mare.

  Hagen is contemplating the photograph, which seems very satisfactory, as if it were a just-completed jigsaw. He lifts his brow, to raise his head slightly, letting his whale’s eye, small and cold, rest on Estridge. He is thinking: so it is proved, and now they want me to do something about it.

  Taking his old friend’s arm, he leads him toward the house, as if to impart something even worse. Their old wars go with them, cleaned and simplified, under the glare sunlight.

  Evans, a grin stuck on his face, watches the stallion sprawling on the high mare, like a drunk on a table.

  Estridge’s shout interrupts.

  Garten

  Leans his bicycle on a low wall, between Westlake’s car and Dunworth’s, and goes straight into the house. He pauses, surrounded, as by sudden guards, by all that polished modernity, the positioned furniture, in ultra colour, designed by Dunworth himself, like the demortalised organs of a body.

  Through and beyond, framed against the panoramic feature window, he sees the two men sitting, a whisky bottle between them on a low table, and glasses in their hands.

  Dunworth is discussing killing himself, which is what he seems to consider appropriate. Westlake does not say what he thinks. He makes provisional noises.

  Their sentences

  Falter and evaporate.

  Bottomless silence drinks their ideas.

  They are trying to imagine logicality.

  Neither can quite feel the seriousness of their own words

  or of the others.

  They stare out, like yarded beasts, across the blue-

  layered monotony of the distance,

  And sip.

  They feel gently around in the illusory emptiness of these

  minutes,

  Which are passing with such crowded rapidity.

  They are quietly aghast

  At the certainty that sooner or later they will have to move

  Westlake is afraid that when he moves he will do

  something barbarous, disproportionate, insane.

  Dunworth is afraid that if he is left alone he might well

  kill himself in a light-minded effort to be sincere.

  Westlake hunches hooded in tortoised concentration,

  behind his dark-rimmed spectacles.

  Dunworth’s face is exposed and woebegone, like a

  beggarwoman’s at a crossroads.

  Garten introduces the photograph.

  With one glance Dunworth has seen too much. Now he only wants to escape right away, fast enough and far enough for all this to disappear in slipstream and exhaust. He wants to lie down and sleep for fifty years in some utterly different landscape, and wake up in another age.

  Westlake stares into the photograph as into a culture under a microscope.

  Dunworth paces about the room. He can feel the whole day slipping like some horrible landslide, towards a brink. Everything is on the move, everything inside this house is on its way to the brink, the house itself, everything in the garden and those trees, it’s all on the slide. Even the clouds. The whole day. And himself in the middle of it, helpless.

  His skin panics with hot and cold draughts

  As Westlake stands up.

  Women

  Are assembling in the church basement.

  Mrs Davies is in charge of refreshments. Mrs Evans follows her instructions. Dainty triangular sandwiches, prettily stacked. Tinned salmon, liver paste, cucumber, lettuce and tomato.

  A hushed animation, sombre and uneasy.

  Something is wrong and everybody is aware of it.

  It is not only the gossip funeral for Janet Estridge.

  Mrs Davies peels a blue razor blade from its wrapper.

  The glans of a withered fungus

  Receives its edge, and releases slices

  Into each of three sandwiches.

  Mrs Davies sets these apart.

  Mrs Evans is pouring a milky liquid from a medicine

  bottle into the tea-urn.

  The loudspeakers cough and clear their throats at the

  corners of the ceiling.

  Betty has put a tape on the stereo.

  Suddenly the women are engulfed

  Under archaic music of pipes and drums,

  An inane cycle of music, hoarse and metallic.

  Mrs Davies is setting out cigarettes of her own blend.

  Plates of sandwiches circulate and trays of cups of tea.

  The birdlike agitation of women, fussy, tense, watchful,

  thins

  As the music works behind their faces

  And a preoccupation deepens.

  A snaking coil of smoke materialises.

  Already their eyes are glazed like young cattle.

  They are waiting for the first shiver of power.

  Something is obstructing it.

  A difficulty, the power will not flow.

  The music is tangling with some obstacle.

  Everybody is here, except Maud. And the Master.

  Jennifer

  Knows more and more clearly that she should not have

  come.

  Mrs Evans shuts herself up in busyness.

  Women in groups wait nervously for things to warm up.

  Mrs Dunworth sits with the doctor’s wife and Mrs Hagen

  A little apart,

  Like three asked to stay behind after the doctor’s tests –

  All are quiet with something like fear –

  Nearly a definite prickle of fear.

  Like passengers in an aircraft, just as it lifts off the

  runway,

  Hearing a peculiar note in the engine.

  Betty turns the music up purposefully.

  Maud

  Is ready.

  Black lace in her hair,

  But under her black shawl

  A long dress of white satin, a bridal dress, flashes as she

  moves.

  Felicity is sitting with brilliant eyes, at the kitchen table.

  The drink Maud served her

  Has made her ears ring. Her lips feel numb.

  Her fingertips feel enormous.

  She is waiting to be conducted to the meeting

  And sits watching Maud fixedly.

  It occurs to her

  That Maud’s regalia is some special craziness

  Connected to her dumbness.

  Lumb promises to follow within minutes.

  Felicity appeals with a last look.

  Words seem suddenly too big, they refuse to shape in her

  mouth.

  She interprets his look as reassurance.

  Actually his face is impenetrable.

  Now as Felicity follows Maud out

  She takes a deep breath, and for a moment has to pause

  For the sudden smouldering fire under her midriff.

  She sees the church.

  It looks like an evil black shape painted on a wall.

  Simultaneously she remembers that she left no note for

  her grandfather.

  She is heavily aware of her lips, lying together as if they

  were swollen

  And of the in
ner surface of her thighs brushing together,

  as she follows Maud.

  She feels Maud’s madness in that processional stately

  walk, flashing whiteness,

  As they go among the graves.

  Lumb

  Is cramming books into a trunk.

  He crams in clothing.

  Among the clothing

  He nests, with hurried care,

  His magical apparatus.

  He lifts the stone woman from the mantel

  And settles her snugly among underclothes.

  He searches in the box, in the drawer –

  Something is missing. His dagger is missing. His weapon

  of weapons.

  He scrabbles, he unearths – vainly. He listens.

  He knows

  It is not in this room.

  Maud

  Enters the church basement, pausing impressively

  Like a slightly tipsy actress.

  Maud is impressive in her get-up – and frightening.

  Felicity is frightened

  Seeing so many confusedly familiar faces

  Looking unfamiliar

  As if police held her.

  She meets Mrs Davies’ mystified savage look

  But it is Mrs Davies’ welcoming smile,

  Her surprise of affection.

  It is Mrs Davies’ arm round her shoulder

  Guiding her among the confusion of women, the harsh

  music, and all the movement of hands and faces

  Which numb her every second more deeply.

  Vaguely she looks round for Maud.

  Maud is already poised motionless at the corner of the

  rectory.

  She is watching Lumb.