by Jem Poster
‘Perhaps so.’ He looked across at Harris, then took me lightly by the arm.
‘I wonder if we might speak in private, Stannard?’
‘Just a moment, please. Could you deal with this, Harris? See if you can consolidate the area around the exposed edge. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
Banks walked me over to the porch and stopped with his back to the angle of the wall, out of the worst of the wind.
‘I’ve just been to see Jefford again,’ he said.
‘How is he?’
‘Much as he was yesterday afternoon. Still very unwell. But he was anxious that I should convey his gratitude for your generosity.’
I shrugged. ‘As long as he doesn’t imagine it to be boundless.’
‘You can be sure I’ve impressed that upon him.’
The tone of the remark seemed faintly offensive, but perhaps not calculatedly so. I let him continue.
‘There’s something else. Jefford gave me this.’ He held out the brass coffin-plate.
There was a moment of uneasy silence.
‘He said you’d asked him to dispose of it, but that he hadn’t liked to throw it away. At the same time he had an obscure sense that his accident might have been the result of what he thought of as wrongful possession of the object. He eventually resolved his dilemma by giving it to me.’
‘I hadn’t intended to burden the man. It’s a very small scrap of metal to have weighed so heavily upon him.’
‘With respect, Stannard, your instructions to Jefford suggest that you had already recognized it as something rather more than that. An object such as this has a certain potency. Whether we’re dealing with primitive superstition or with sophisticated forms of antiquarian curiosity, the fact is that many people find it difficult to jettison these fragments of their history.’
‘More’s the pity. What hope is there for the future while we remain encumbered by the debris of past ages? I’m not speaking of the great achievements of previous generations, of earlier civilizations; but these insignificant leavings …’
‘I’ve come to believe that nothing is insignificant. Everything around us resonates with meaning, whether we’re attuned to it or not. Holding this plaque in my hand, I have some sense of the anxiety Jefford appears to have experienced. But I also feel somehow privileged, as if the fragment were a means of access to a hidden world, a kind of key.’
He was leaning towards me with something of his pulpit manner; eager, animated, a shade too intense. I should have liked to return to my business, but felt compelled to respond.
‘A key of sorts, yes; but supposing you were now able to track down the coffin’s occupant in the parish register, what then? Access to what? Parentage perhaps, a date of birth, spinster of this parish or wife of this or that gentleman. The barest facts. And even supposing your researches were to take you further, what pettiness you’d be likely to lay bare, what numbing ordinariness. Most human lives are profoundly uninspired and uninspiring. We might rake them over for ever without discovering anything of value.’
‘Let me offer you this possibility, Stannard: that our blindness to the value of other lives is a curable condition. It is, moreover, the condition I most wish to cure, both in myself and in those to whom I minister. I should like to be able to celebrate those lives, in all their supposed ordinariness. I should like to be able to acknowledge – and to make you understand – the worth of each one of them.’
He was holding the plaque out towards me, his arm quivering slightly.
‘Take it,’ he said suddenly. ‘Take it.’
‘Really, Banks—’
‘Go on. Take it in your hand.’
It seemed easiest to comply. He stared into my face for a moment, his eyes searching mine. I shifted uneasily beneath his gaze.
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to—’
‘I want you to experience the active presence of the past, to know this object as it really is, charged with the energies of other lives. Your hand around it connects you with others: hands bearing down on the burin, engraving this date, these initials; hands tying the drawstring at the girl’s neck or smoothing the pillow around her head; in some shaded room, perhaps, a hand hammers home the two brass pins which hold – held – the plaque in place. And behind those hands, bodies and minds, lives of unimaginable complexity … Standing here yesterday, looking down on that poor blind face, I found myself, almost without thinking about it, reaching back across the years to encompass – yes, really to embrace – the living creature. It’s a desire for knowledge, of course, but so far beyond mere antiquarianism as to require another name. I understand it, quite simply, as a form of love.’
I was not inclined to regard Banks as entirely imperceptive, either of his own failings or those of others, but it occurred to me that he must be unable to see how close his particular brand of sentimental enthusiasm brought him to the boundaries of conventional decency. It was, I thought, one of the hazards of sequestration in a small rural parish; or perhaps the man’s superiors, recognizing certain tendencies or inadequacies in him, had deliberately placed him where he could do least harm. I handed back the plaque.
‘You have a vivid imagination, Banks. I’m afraid my own concerns must seem rather mundane to you, but they need to be attended to. Will you excuse me?’
‘Of course. But you may have to attend to your visitors first.’
I turned, following his glance. Harris was deep in conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized immediately.
‘What’s Starkey doing here?’
‘Checking on progress, I should imagine. But the timing’s unfortunate.’
Unfortunate indeed. Harris had begun to build up the soil around the exposed edge but had by no means completed his task, and I could see, as we approached, that the coffin was the centre of attention. Starkey assailed me at once, his voice high and querulous.
‘What’s this, Mr Stannard? What do you think you’re up to?’
‘As you know very well, I’m carrying out necessary repairs to the aisle wall. We’ve already had some discussion of the matter.’
‘Nothing was said about grave-robbing.’
‘Don’t be absurd. We’ve lifted the coffin simply because it was in the way. As soon as the work’s completed, we’ll replace it in its original position.’
‘That may be so, but in the meantime we’re here to see that the remains are treated with the respect due to them.’
‘You already knew about this?’
He looked into my face with a grimace which might have passed for a smile.
‘We know more than you might think, Mr Stannard.’
‘Then perhaps you know who was responsible for last night’s exploratory excavations in the spoil-heap.’
There was a long silence. When Starkey spoke again there was a new note in his voice, harsh and subtly threatening.
‘You shouldn’t have raised the coffin in the first place, Mr Stannard. Not without consulting with Jack.’
‘Jack? Who’s Jack?’ I felt my grasp of the situation slipping. Banks seemed to be about to speak, but before he could do so, Starkey’s companion stepped forward.
‘That’s me. Jack Elsham. What Mr Starkey says is right. You should have asked me before you opened the grave.’
He stood squarely in front of me, a dark, thick-set young man, rather red about the cheeks and throat. His stance was aggressive but a certain timidity in his eyes and a corresponding slackness in his full lips convinced me that I was in no immediate danger of assault.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I really don’t understand what this has to do with you.’
His gaze flickered like that of an actor who has forgotten his lines.
‘Jack’s mother was a Sutton,’ said Starkey. ‘One of three daughters. And Eleanor Sutton was her mother.’
‘Eleanor Sutton?’
‘E.S., Mr Stannard. Those were the initials on the coffin.’
‘Where did you get that information?’
He was working himself into a fury, his face contorted, his thin lips flecked with spittle. Banks raised a placatory hand.
‘It’s an unfortunate situation, Mr Starkey, and I understand your concern. But the most sensible course of action would be to allow Mr Stannard to complete this part of the job as quickly as possible. Any disruption to the works will simply delay the reinterment. In the meantime, please be assured that the remains will be treated as respectfully as circumstances allow.’
‘But they’ve not been treated as respectfully as they should have been, Mr Banks. How do you think Jack feels, knowing his grandmother lies out here above ground? How would you feel? Or you, Mr Stannard?’
He was leaning towards us, jabbing the air with an arthritic forefinger. I was struck again by something artificial in his manner, a kind of theatrical self-consciousness. It was time, I felt, to bring the ridiculous scene to a close, and I cut in quickly as he paused for breath or an answer. ‘Tell me, Mr Starkey, how old is your friend?’
Elsham gave a little start and looked at me with an air of bewilderment.
‘Me? I shall be twenty-four come February. What’s that to you?’
‘I’m interested in facts, Mr Elsham, and I have to say that the idea that the occupant of the coffin is your grandmother is – to say the least – highly implausible.’
I saw him stiffen, his throat and face flushing a deeper red.
‘Don’t tell me what’s what about my own family. Mr Starkey here can vouch for it: Eleanor Sutton was my grandmother.’
‘No doubt she was. But there’s no evidence that this is your grandmother’s body. On the contrary, the date of the burial suggests—’
‘I know nothing about any dates, but I know when a man’s calling me a liar.’
He screwed up his eyes and peered into my face, breathing heavily through his mouth, distinctly menacing now. It occurred to me that I might have misjudged his character. I took a pace backwards and, as I did so, Banks stepped nimbly between us and took my arm, steering me aside with the adroitness of a dancer.
‘Mr Stannard and I have business to discuss,’ he said. ‘If you have anything more to say, you’re welcome to call on me at home this afternoon.’
‘I’m not in need of protection,’ I said, shaking my arm free as he guided me back towards the porch.
‘Possibly not, and protection’s not exactly what I’m offering. I’m simply putting some ground between your anger and theirs.’
‘I’ve a right to be angry. These fellows descend on us with their spurious tale and their manufactured grievances. They abuse me, they disrupt our work. One of them comes within an ace of assaulting me. I’m angry, yes, and I see no particular reason to disguise it.’
Banks twisted round as the gate slammed back on its hinges. Elsham turned to us with an abrupt gesture which might have been intended as farewell, but Starkey strode out without a backward glance. Banks sighed.
‘Starkey’s a strange figure,’ he said, ‘and, in some respects at least, a rather unattractive one. He’s narrow-minded, manipulative and occasionally vindictive. But he has what he imagines to be the interests of the village at heart. As for Elsham, he’s a simple young man – something of a child really. A little hot-tempered, perhaps, but fundamentally sound. I think, too, that what you understandably refer to as a spurious tale may actually represent a kind of truth for these people.’
‘A kind of truth? What do you mean by that, Banks? Things are either true or they’re not. This grandmother business is a complete fiction, and you know it. Think about it. Elsham was born less than twenty-four years ago. His supposed grandmother was dead by 1792. That would mean that his mother – well, work it out for yourself. The dates don’t tally.’
‘Of course they don’t, but that’s not the point. Like any community – like any individual for that matter – this village constructs and reconstructs its history partly on the basis of interpretations which are, strictly speaking, erroneous. Fictions, if you like, but fictions to which we must nevertheless give some form of assent. I’m no more convinced than you are that the remains you’ve uncovered here are those of Eleanor Sutton, but I recognize the reality of Elsham’s sense of outrage.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by reality. The emotion is clearly not justified by the facts.’
‘The emotion is perhaps the essential fact, far more important than mere historical detail. The body you’ve brought to light is not simply itself – whatever that might be – but a focus for some of those unhoused passions which hunt through our lives for something – a person, an object, an event – to which they can attach themselves. I believe that we need to be particularly attentive to those passions. It’s arguable that they constitute the primary reality of our lives.’
‘Rather a suspect line of reasoning, if I may say so.’
‘I’m not sure that it’s a line of reasoning at all. I’m trying to articulate a half-glimpsed truth, and I can only approach that truth through a series of indirections. Let me tell you something. My father was a clergyman – far more eminent than I am – and a scholar of considerable distinction. I admired him extravagantly and wanted, from a very early age, to follow in his footsteps. And for some years I did so. Almost literally. Winchester and then Oxford where, like him, I gained something of a reputation as a meticulous and lucid exegete. There was talk of a fellowship.’
‘Is that what you wanted?’
‘The fellowship? Oh, yes. It was part of a carefully formulated plan; the first rung of the ladder.’
‘But you didn’t get it?’
‘I’m coming to that. One night I was studying late, working on an essay which linked the life of Christ – rather cleverly, it seemed to me at the time – with contemporary Jewish and Roman history. I was staring at the lamp, lost in thought, when the room … I’ve never found a satisfactory way of putting this: it was as though someone were turning up the wick, but turning it up to a point of impossible brilliance, so that the room and everything it contained blazed and shimmered around me. The desk, the inkwell, the books on the shelves, even my own hands, all seemed to be refining themselves out of existence, dissolving in an intensity of light which fell – but that’s wrong. It didn’t fall, because there was no external source. Everything burned with its own astonishing incandescence. But not exactly its own either, since the outlines separating one thing from another were attenuated almost to the point of invisibility … I’m afraid I’m missing the mark, as I always do when I try to explain this. I’m looking for words that don’t exist. It’s love, I remember saying to myself as the radiance began to fade; but the term seems hopelessly inadequate. I can shuffle the counters as I like – love, light, peace, fulfilment – but my phrases never vibrate with the incontrovertible rightness of the moment itself … I’m sorry, I’m boring you.’
‘Not at all. I’m rather cold, that’s all. Please go on.’
‘There’s not very much more to say, though the experience radically altered the pattern of my life. I continued with my studies, of course, reading as diligently as ever, often working late into the night as I had done from the beginning of my undergraduate days. I attended lectures, I sat my final examinations—’
‘But without distinguishing yourself?’
‘On the contrary. I did exactly what was expected of me. I got a first, as my tutors had predicted, and I was left in little doubt that the fellowship would foll
ow in due course. No, the alterations took place at a deeper level. I went to bed that night in what I can only describe as a state of luminous tranquillity, the light softer by that time but still flowing around and through me, sometimes smoothly, sometimes in slow, pulsing waves. I lay and watched it – listened to it too, if that makes sense, as though it were music, and with an apprehension so clear and complete that I seemed to be audience, player and instrument rolled into one. Sleep was out of the question, but I lay without fatigue or fretfulness, waiting for nothing, content simply to be – or, more than that, brimming with joy at the bare fact of my being. Needless to say, it didn’t last. Sometime around dawn I became aware that the experience was, in a certain sense, finished; but I also knew that my life would never be the same again.’
‘A kind of conversion?’
‘I suppose so. At least, I realized that certain avenues were now closed to me. What the experience revealed was the inadequacy of the life I’d mapped out for myself. In particular – and this is the point of my telling you the story – I came to see that the careful sifting of material evidence was irrelevant to the essential truth which had been so unexpectedly revealed to me, and that what I had felt during those few hours eclipsed every intellectual discovery I had ever made. That much was clear. But I had no sense of any practical alternative to the course I was now obliged to relinquish. I mean, there was no discernible route by which that truth might be approached again. I tried, of course. I would sit at my desk at the appropriate time, staring at the lamp, attempting to re-create the conditions which seemed to have given rise to the experience. But the vision had been a gift, not an achievement, and once I had recognized that, I was also forced to recognize the futility of my efforts to recapture it. Sit quietly, I said to myself at last; just sit quietly and wait.’
‘Which is what you’re doing in this backwater?’
‘I don’t consider it a backwater but yes, this is the place I’ve chosen to wait. No longer with any particular expectation, but not entirely without hope.’
There are forms of irreticence which make me uncomfortable and not, I think, without reason. If quasi-mystical experiences of this kind have any meaning at all, that meaning is, it seems to me, a private one, and I see a certain impropriety in making a display of such matters. It wasn’t quite clear to me whether Banks’s narrative had run its course or not, but I felt justified in steering the conversation towards firmer ground.
