A Maggot - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  'Oh my poor Dick. Poor Dick.'

  He does not answer, seems once again frozen. She continues slowly to stroke his hair and pat it for a minute or more, in the silence. At last she gently pushes him away, and stands, though only to turn to her opened bundle and from it to unroll an oyster-pink gown and petticoat, which she smoothes out flat, as if preparing to put them on. Still he kneels, with his head bowed, it might seem in some kind of submission or supplication. The candle on the floor lights something that suggests neither, and at which he stares down, as hypnotized by it as he has been by her face; and that both his hands clutch, as a drowning man a branch, though they do not move. The top of his breeches have been torn aside, and what he clutches is no branch, but a large, naked and erect penis. The young woman shows no shock or outrage when she realizes this obscenity, though her hands are arrested in their smoothing. She goes quietly to the top of her truckle-bed, where the violets still lie strewn on the rough pillow; gathers them up, and returns to where he kneels, to toss them, it seems casually, almost mockingly under the down-turned face and across the hands and the monstrous blood-filled glans.

  His face jerks up as in an agony at the painted one above, and they stare for a moment into each other's eyes. She steps round him and unlatches the door and stands holding it open, for poor Dick to leave; at which, clutching his opened breeches, he struggles clumsily to his feet and without looking at her, and still in obscene disarray, lurches through the open door. She steps into the doorway, it seems to give him light down the dark stairway to the landing below. Some draught threatens to extinguish the candle, and she draws back, shielding the guttering flame, like a figure from a Chardin painting, and closes the door with her back. She leans against it, and stares down at the pink brocaded clothes on the truckle-bed. There is no one to see she has tears in her eyes, besides the belladonna.

  * * *

  Dick had been, during his absence upstairs, briefly a subject of conversation at the long table in the inn kitchen. Such kitchens were once semi-public and as much the centre of the inn's life, for the humbler traveller or the servants of grander ones, as the equivalent room in the old farmhouse. If not finer, the food eaten there - and no doubt the company - was certainly warmer than in the more public parlours or private chambers. The inn servants welcomed the gossip, news and entertainment brought by strangers of their own approximate class and kind. The undisputed king of the Black Hart's kitchen, that evening, and from the moment he had stamped through the door from the stableyard, cutlass and cased blunderbuss under one arm, and managed, in one comprehensive removal of his hat and sweep of his eyes, to ogle kitchen maids, cook and Dorcas the inn maid, had been he of the scarlet coat, soon self-announced as Sergeant Farthing.

  He was, it equally soon seemed, of that ancient type- as ancient as the human race, or certainly as human war - the Roman comedians dubbed the miles gloriosus; the military boaster, or eternal bag of bullshit. Even to be a modest soldier was no recommendation in eighteenth-century England. The monarchs and their ministers might argue the need for a standing army; to everyone else soldiers seemed an accursed nuisance (and insult, when they were foreign mercenaries), an intolerable expense both upon the nation and whatever particular and unfortunate place they were quartered in. Farthing appeared oblivious to this, and immoderately confident of his own credentials: how he was (despite his present dress) an ex-sergeant of marines, how as a drummer boy he had been on Byng's flagship during the glorious engagement of Cape Passaro in 't8, where the Spaniards were given such a drubbing; had been commended for his courage by Admiral Byng himself (not the one to be filled with Portsmouth lead in 1757 to encourage the others, but his father), though 'no bigger than that lad' ... the potboy. He had a way of fixing attention; and not letting it go, once it was fixed. There was certainly no one in that kitchen to challenge such a self-proclaimed man of war, and of the outer world. He had in addition a bold eye for his female listeners, since like all his kind he knew very well that half the trick of getting an audience into the palm of one's hand is flattering them. He also ate and drank copiously, and praised each drop and mouthful; perhaps the most truthful sentence he spoke was when he said he knew good cider when he tasted it.

  Of course he was questioned in return, as to the present journey. The younger gentleman and his uncle were riding, it seemed, to pay court to a lady who was respectively their aunt and their sister: a lady as rich as a supercargo, old and ailing besides, who lived at Bideford or thereabout; who had never married, but inherited lands and property fit for a duchess. Various winks and nose-taps glossed this already sufficiently explicit information: the young gentleman, it was hinted, had not always in the past been a model of assiduity, and lay even now in debt. The wench upstairs was a London lady's maid, destined for the aunt's service, while he, Timothy Farthing, had come as a service to the uncle, with whom he had been long acquainted and who was of nervous disposition as regards highwaymen, footpads and almost any other human face met more than a mile from St Paul's. Though he said it himself, they had travelled thus far under his vigilant eye as safe as with a company of foot.

  And this uncle? He was a man of means, a substantial merchant in the City of London, however with children of his own to provide for. His brother, the younger gentleman's father, had died improvidently some years before, and the uncle stood as his nephew's effective guardian and mentor.

  Only once had he broken off during all this discourse or quasi-monologue; and that was when Dick had come from the stables and stood, as if lost; uncomprehending, unsmiling, in the doorway. Farthing had bunched fingers to his mouth and pointed to an empty place on the far side of the table, then winked at Puddicombe, the landlord.

  'Hears naught, says naught. Born deaf and mute, Master Thomas. And simple into the bargain. But a good fellow. My younger gentleman's servant, despite his clothes. Sit you down, Dick. Eat your share, we've met none so good as this on our way. Now where was I?'

  How as you came on the Spainer's tail,' ventured the potboy.

  Now and again, while the silent servant ate, Farthing did appeal to him. 'Isn't that so, Dick?' Or, 'Ecod, Dick could tell more if he had a tongue - or a mind to wield it.'

  It was not that these appeals were answered, indeed Dick seemed oblivious to them, even when his vacant blue eyes were on Farthing and he was being addressed; yet his companion seemingly wanted to show avuncularity among all his other virtues. The eyes of the maids, however, did wander the deaf-mute's way more and more frequently; perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was a kind of wistfulness, that so well-proportioned and fundamentally attractive a young male face, for all its expressionlessness and lack of humour, should belong to such a pitiful creature mentally.

  There had been one other interruption: the 'wench upstairs' had appeared in the inner doorway towards the end of the supper, bearing a tray with the remains of her own, and beckoned to the inn maid Dorcas, who rose to speak there with her. Some low words were exchanged between them, and Dorcas looked round at the deaf-mute. Farthing would have had the newcomer join them, but she declined, and pertly.

  'I have heard all your bloodthirsty tales, I thank you.'

  The little curtsey she gave as she retreated was almost as much a snub as her words. The ex-sergeant touched up his right moustache and sought sympathy from the landlord.

  'There's London for you, Master Thomas. I'll warrant you that girl was as pleasant and fresh of face as yon Dorcas a few years ago. Now the chit's all Frenchified airs, like her name, that I'll warrant she never was born with. She'd be all pale civility, nice as a nun's hen, as the saying goes.' He put on an affected voice. 'Would the man I love best were here, that I might treat him like a dog. So's her kind. I tell you, you'd have ten times more a better treating from her mistress than a maid like Louise. Louise, what name is that for an Englishwoman, I ask you, sir. Isn't it so, Dick?'

  Dick stared and said nothing.

  'Poor Dick. He has her mincing manners up with him all day long. Do
n't you, lad?' He went through a pantomine, cocking his thumb towards the door through which the mincing manners had Just departed, then mimicking by means of forked fingers two people riding together. Finally he pushed up his nose and once more cocked his thumb at the door. The deaf-mute still stared blankly back at him. Farthing winked at the landlord. 'I' faith, I know blocks of wood with more wit.'

  However, a little later, when he saw Dorcas filling the brass jug from the copper in which it had heated, since that had evidently been the matter discussed with the girl upstairs, the deaf-mute stood and waited to take it; and again at the door, where the maid handed him an earthenware bowl from a dresser. He even nodded, in some token of thanks for her help; but she turned to Farthing as if in doubt.

  'Doth 'er know where to take 'un, then?'

  'Aye. Let him be.' He closed an eye, and tapped it with a finger. 'Eyes like a falcon, has Dick. Why, he sees through walls.'

  'Never.'

  'He must, my love. Leastways I never met a man so fond of staring at 'em.' And he winked again, to make clear he was joking.

  Mr Puddicombe advanced the opinion that this was a strange case for a gentleman's servant - how could a master use one who understood so little? How command, and make him fetch?

  Farthing glanced towards the door and leant forward confidentially.

  'I'll tell you this, Master Thomas. The master's a match for his man. I never met a gentleman spoke less. 'Tis his humour, his uncle warned me thus. So be it, I take no offence.' He pointed a finger at the landlord's face. 'But mark my words, he'll speak with Dick.'

  'How so?'

  'By ciphers, sir.'

  'And what might they be?'

  Farthing leant back, then tapped his chest with a finger and raised a clenched fist. His audience stared, as blankly as the deaf-mute. The gestures were repeated, then glossed.

  'Bring me ... punch.'

  Dorcas put her hand over her mouth. Farthing tapped his own shoulder, then raised one open hand and the forefinger of the other. Again he waited, then deciphered.

  'Wake me, six of the clock prompt.'

  Now he extended a palm and put his other hand, clenched, upon it; touched himself; cupped his hands against his breasts; raised four fingers. The same fascinated faces waited for an explanation..

  'Wait - a play upon words, do you not take it, a weight in a balance - wait on me at the lady's house at four o'clock.'

  Mr Puddicombe nodded a shade uncertainly. 'I grasp it.'

  'I could give you ten times more. A hundred times. Our Dick is not the fool he looks. I'll tell you something more, sir. Between ourselves.' Once again he looked to the door, and dropped his voice. 'This yesternight I must share a bed with him at Taunton, we could find no better place. I wake, I know not why, in the middle of the night. I find my bed-partner gone, slipped away as I slept. I think not too much on that, he must to the vaults, the more room for me, and would sleep again. Whereupon I hear a sound, Master Thomas, as of one talking in his sleep. No words, but a hum in the throat. So.' And he hummed as he had described, paused, then hummed again. 'I look. And there I see the fellow in his shirt, and on his knees, as it might be praying, by the window. But not as a Christian, to our Lord. Nay. To the moon, sir, that shone bright on where he was. And he stood, sir, and pressed to the glass, still making his sounds, as if he would fly up to where he gazed. And I thought, Tim, thou'st faced the Spanish cannon, thou'st given the ruff of the drum, thou'st seen death and desperate men more times than thou canst tell, but, rat or rot me, none like this. 'Twas clear as day he was in a lunatick fit, and might at any moment turn and spring and tear me limb from limb.' He paused, for effect, and surveyed the table. 'I tell you, my good people, no jest, I would not pass another hour like that for a hundred pound. Ecod, no, nor for a thousand.'

  'Could you not seize him?'

  Farthing allowed a knowing smile to cross his features.

  'I take it you were never at Bedlam, sir. Why, I've seen one there, a fellow you'd spit upon for a starving beggar in his quiet hours, throw off ten stout lads in his passions. Your lunatick's a tiger when the moon is on him, Master Thomas. 'Sdeath, he'll out-hector Hector himself, as the saying is. Finds the rage and strength of twenty. And mark, Dick's no weakling, even in his settled mind.'

  'What did you then?'

  I lay as dead, sir, with this hand on the hilt of my blade beside my bed. A weaker spirit might have cried for help. But I give myself the credit of keeping my head, Master Thomas. I braved it out.'

  'And what happened?'

  'Why, the fit passed, sir. He comes once more to the bed, gets in. He starts snoring. But not I, oh no, 'fore George not I. Tim Farthing knows his duty. Ne'er a wink all night, my blade at the ready, sat in a chair where I could swash him down if the fit came on again or worse. I tell you no lie, my friends, had he but woke a second, he should have been carbonadoed in a trice, by Heaven he should. I reported all to Mr Brown next morning. And he said he would speak to his nephew. Who seemed not troubled, and said Dick was strange, but would do no harm, I was to take no account.' He leant back, and touched his moustache. 'I keep my own counsel on that, Master Thomas.'

  'I should think so, verily.'

  'And my blunderbush to hand.' His eyes sought Dorcas's face. 'No need to fright yourself, my dear. Farthing's on watch. He'll do no harm here.' The girl's eyes lifted involuntarily towards the ceiling. 'Nor up there, neither.'

  "Tis only three stairs.'

  Farthing leant back and folded his arms, then put his tongue in his cheek. 'By hap she finds him work to do?'

  The girl was puzzled. 'What work would that be then?'

  'Work no man finds work, my innocent.' He leered, and the girl, at last understanding what he would say, raised a hand to her mouth. Farthing transferred his eyes to the master. 'I tell you, London's an evil place, Master Thomas. The maid but apes the mistress there. Ne'er rests content, the hussy, till she's decked out in her shameless sacks and trollopees. If my lady has her lusty lackey, why shouldn't I, says she. Spurn the poor brute by day, and have him to my bed each night.'

  Prithee no more, Mr Farthing. If my good wife were here... '

  'Amen, sir. I should not speak of it, were the fellow not lecherous as a Barbary ape. Let your maids be warned. He came on one in the stable on our road here ... happily I passed and prevented the rogue. Enough's enough. He knows no better, he thinks all women as lascivious as Eve, God forgive him. As eager to raise their petticoats as he to unbreech.'

  'I wonder his master don't give him a good flogging.'

  'And well you may, sir. Well you may. No more of it. A word to the wise, as the saying goes.'

  They passed then to other matters; but when, some ten minutes later, the deaf-mute re-appeared, it was as if a draught of cold air had entered the room. He seemed as expressionless as ever, looked at no one, regained his place. One by one all there covertly glanced at him, as if searching for some flush, some outward sign of his sin. However, he stared down with his blue eyes at the old table just beyond his plate, blankly awaiting some further humiliation.

  * * *

  'Well powdered, I trust?'

  'His flock, his lodgings, his vestry, his churchwardens, I have had damnation on them all, anathema singular and plural. You are invited to dine tomorrow to hear the recitation over again. I ventured to decline on your behalf.'

  'And no inquiry?'

  'Beyond civility, and barely that. The gentleman has only one profound object of interest in life. It does not comprehend the affairs of others.'

  'You have had a poor last audience for your talents. My apologies.' The actor, who stood planted on the opposite side of the fire from where Mr Bartholomew sat with his papers, stared heavily at him, as if not to be fobbed off by this lighter mood.

  'Come, my dear Lacy. My word to you stands. I mean no evil, I do no evil. No one shall, or could blame you for your part.'

  'But your purpose is not what you led me to believe, Mr Bartholomew. Is it not s
o? No, I must speak now. I have no doubt you mean well to me in all your concealings. But I must doubt whether you mean well to yourself.'

  'Do we say a poet lies when he speaks of meeting the Muses?'

  'We know what he intends to convey by that figure.'

  'But do we say he lies?'

  'No.'

  Then in that sense I have not lied to you. I go to meet one I desire to know, and respect, as much as I would a bride - or my Muse indeed, were I a poet; before whom I am as Dick before myself, nay, more lacking still. And whom I have been hitherto prevented from seeing as much as by a jealous guardian. I may have deceived you in the letter. But not in the spirit.'

  The actor's eyes glanced at the papers.

  'I am bound to ask why a meeting with a learned stranger has to be conducted in such very great secrecy, and in this remote place, if the purpose be wholly innocent.'

  Mr Bartholomew leant back in his chair, this time with a distinctly sardonic smile.

  'Perhaps I am one of those seditious northern jacks? Another Bolingbroke? These papers here are all in cipher. If not in plain French or Spanish. I go to plot with some emissary of James Stuart.'

  For a moment the actor seemed confused, as if his secret thought had been read. 'My blood chills, sir.'

  'Look. They are indeed in a cipher of a kind.'

  He held out the sheet of paper he had been reading, which Lacy took. After a few moments the actor looked up.

  'I can make nothing of it.'

  'Necromantical, think you not? I am here to creep into the woods and meet some disciple of the Witch of Endor. To exchange my eternal soul against the secrets of the other world. How does that cap fit?'

  The actor passed the paper back to him.