by Jem Poster
‘You do mean well by me, don’t you, Mr Stannard?’
It was the first time I had heard her speak my name. The form of address seemed, in the circumstances, faintly absurd, yet I found myself peculiarly resistant to the idea that she might address me with greater familiarity.
‘Mean well?’
‘I need to know you’ll make it right for me.’
There was a long silence. I felt her breath come and go against the chilled skin of my cheek.
‘I don’t want to lose you,’ she said, her voice quavering and breaking suddenly like a tearful child’s. ‘If I lost you—’
‘Why should you lose me?’
It did not, I have since reflected, speak particularly well for the girl’s character that she should have proceeded as she did on the basis of such ambiguous reassurance. She pressed close again, drawing me down, searching my face with her fingertips, with her damp mouth. Then she grasped my wrist and, with a movement at once delicate and deliberate, returned my hand to its place against her breast.
I find it difficult to account for what followed. It would be unreasonable, of course, to deny my own complicity in the act but I was, I feel justified in saying, an unwilling accomplice, caught up in a whirl of events I was barely able to comprehend, let alone control. I might, and indeed to some extent must, blame the girl – her soft hand questing, coaxing, guiding, her lips moving against my cheek, framing with a brutal, unfeminine directness ideas so unthinkable, so irresistible, that I could scarcely believe I was not dreaming. But a moment later she herself was stretched out helpless in the grip of the thing, her head thrown back among the dead leaves, one arm flung up and outwards, her long throat vulnerably exposed; and through it all, those tender obscenities, punctuated by sighs, by childlike sobs and whimpers, until her whole body suddenly hardened and arched backward like an epileptic’s and I was lost – we were lost – in a storm of illimitable sensation, our voices crying out, torn from us, it seemed to me, and hurled into the surrounding darkness.
The wind had risen, and now the rain began to fall more heavily, slanting in from the north-west. I tried to disengage myself, but she held me to her, bearing down with her right hand on the small of my back. She was shuddering violently, her breathing hoarse and irregular. I lay still, listening to the hush of the rain, my hands braced against the wet earth.
Little by little her hold slackened, allowing me to draw away. I raised myself slowly. And kneeling there in the dark between her splayed legs, I conceived the scene as I could not possibly have seen it, as if from a little distance, a sorry tableau illustrating man’s subjection to the flesh: the woman supine on her own hoisted skirts, her white skin smirched with woodland muck; and myself before her, head bowed in an attitude simultaneously suggestive of ungodly worship and insupportable shame. I scrambled up, tugging feverishly at my disordered clothing, and backed away from her.
‘Where are you going?’ Her voice was raw, touched with panic.
‘We can’t stay here.’
‘Please—’
I could just make her out, sitting now and leaning forward between her own bent knees. I think one hand was extended towards me but I made no answering movement, and she struggled to her feet unaided. I began to pick my way across the rough ground, making for the footpath.
‘Wait for me.’
She stumbled to my side and laid hold of my arm. It was, I can see now, neither tactful nor gentlemanly to disengage myself, however delicately, from her grasp, but I find justification in the reflection that a more welcoming response would have been a less honest one. We walked on in silence, Ann limping slightly, until we reached the junction of the two footpaths. I made some show of willingness to accompany her further on her way but I was, to tell the truth, relieved by her refusal.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You go on down. There’s no point getting wetter than you need to.’
I turned to go, but as I did so she stepped hurriedly forward and clutched at my sleeve, drawing me back to her.
‘A kiss,’ she whispered. ‘You might give me that.’
Her face was cold but there was a subtle warmth on her lips which, just for an instant, raised a corresponding warmth somewhere far down in my own chilled body. I pulled away.
‘I want to see you again,’ she said. ‘Soon. There’s so much to talk about.’
I could think of nothing I wanted to discuss with her. Nothing whatsoever.
‘Soon,’ I said, turning away again.
Mrs Haskell emerged from her parlour as I entered the house. The encounter was not, I think, as purely accidental as she would have liked it to appear.
‘It’s no night for walking out, Mr Stannard. Look at the state of you.’
I must indeed have presented an abject picture, my hair plastered to my forehead, my face rigid with cold, my clothes soaked and filthy. I stood stupidly in the middle of the hallway, rainwater pooling at my feet while she fussed around me.
‘Let me have that. And your jacket. And just look at these – mud all over. Whatever have you been up to?’
‘I slipped and fell. Coming down the hill.’
‘I can’t imagine why you should have been out there in the first place on a night like this. You’ll be lucky if you haven’t caught your death.’
‘I shall be fine, thank you, Mrs Haskell.’ I took off my shoes and moved stiffly to the stairs. ‘Would you be good enough to bring me up a hot drink in a moment or two?’
Once in my room, I stoked up the fire and changed my clothes, but I had been so thoroughly chilled that, even after gulping down the steaming toddy provided by Mrs Haskell, I was still shivering. My body ached and my mind worked restlessly, alternately circling and veering away from the disquieting events of the evening; and finding it impossible to settle, I retired early to my bedroom.
I undressed and poured a little water from the ewer into the basin. Forehead, cheeks, chin; and as I ran my hand down my face I became aware of the smell of her – not on my hand alone, but rising from my body like a subtler version of the smoke I had observed emanating from the loins of the stranded lovers in the doom. I poured more water and began to scrub at myself with the wetted corner of the towel, lightly at first, and then with a frenetic energy, chafing and reddening the soft skin of my belly and the insides of my thighs, desperate to be clean.
Yet I could still smell her as I slipped into bed, fainter now but unmistakably present; and though I fell asleep almost at once, I awoke repeatedly during the course of that long, confusing night imagining, with the strangest commingling of shame and pleasure, that she was there in the bed beside me.
15
I rose early the following morning, hoping that a brisk start might help me to throw off the morbid clutter of the night. But my throat was tight and dry and my head throbbed painfully, and by the time Mrs Haskell came in with my breakfast-tray I had exhausted what little energy I had woken with and was sitting limply in my chair, staring out of the window.
‘See if I wasn’t right,’ she said, scanning my face narrowly, not without a trace of satisfaction. ‘You go running about the countryside at all hours in the wind and rain and you’re bound to come a cropper, one way or another. You’re sickening for something, I can tell just looking at you.’
‘I’m well enough, Mrs Haskell. A little under the weather, that’s all.’
‘A good deal under, I’d say. If you value my advice you’ll stay home today and let me take care of you.’
An unappealing prospect, I thought, imagining the incessant intrusions, the hours of inescapable chatter.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but that won’t be necessary. I’m tougher than I look. It would take more than a slight chill to put me out of action.’
‘And you’ll have more than a slight chill, I can tell you, if you don’t look after yourself. It’s a holy place you’re working in, but not a healthy one – musty as an old henhouse, and all those draughts whistling around you.’
‘I’m needed
there, Mrs Haskell. In half an hour’s time, in fact. So if you don’t mind …’
She did mind, of course, and her expression said as much; but she withdrew without further debate, leaving me to my breakfast and my sombre reflections on the unfortunate events of the previous evening.
I struggled on in the church for as long as I could, but it became increasingly apparent that I should have to admit defeat. My limbs were heavy and unresponsive and my body had begun to shiver again, deeply, as though the icy rain to which it had been exposed on the hillside had penetrated skin and flesh and pooled at its dark centre. I was able, by and large, to attend to the modest tasks I had set myself, but I seemed at times to be moving in a cloud or shadow, and at some point, I think early in the afternoon, I found myself seated on a pile of discarded floor-tiles with Harris leaning above me from what appeared to be a considerable height, one hand extended towards me, his heavy features creased with concern.
‘I’m all right,’ I remember saying, waving him away. ‘It’s nothing serious.’
He withdrew his hand and stepped back a little. ‘Maybe not,’ he said, ‘but you look sick as a dog, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘I’ve taken a chill. I need to rest.’
‘No sense resting here, sir. I’ll see you back to your lodgings.’
I drew myself together and rose unsteadily to my feet. ‘There’s no need,’ I said. ‘I can see myself back. I’d like you to work on as usual in my absence. Keep Jefford at it too: he’s still inclined to take it easy when he thinks he can get away with it.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Harris quietly, ‘sickness gives a man a sharper understanding of other people’s sufferings.’
The observation was so oblique, and my mind so clouded, that I failed at first to see the mischief in the words. When I realized what he was driving at, I began to explain the difference between Jefford’s case and my own, but in so confused and elaborate a fashion that I eventually lost the thread of my argument and ended up talking stark nonsense. Harris might well have pressed home his advantage, but he turned away and took up his tools again; and I, with the disquieting impression of having been dismissed, gathered up my belongings and left.
Mrs Haskell was all too obviously delighted to find herself vindicated. I had barely eased myself into my chair before she came hurrying in, eager to remind me that she had told me so, tiresomely anxious to be of service.
‘If you’d be good enough to draw up the fire, Mrs Haskell, and see that I’m well provided with coals, I shall want nothing else.’
‘But you’ll need to eat. I’ll bring you a bowl of broth.’
‘Thank you, but I’m not hungry.’
‘A pot of tea, then? A hot toddy?’
I shook my head, and the room seemed to blur and swim.
‘Nothing, thank you, Mrs Haskell. Nothing but peace and quiet.’
‘You should be in bed. Shall I warm the sheets for you?’
‘No,’ I said, leaning back and closing my eyes against the sick sway of my surroundings. ‘No, I shall be comfortable where I am.’
Nothing could have been further from the truth. As the afternoon wore on, my headache and giddiness worsened, while the constriction which had begun in my throat spread down to my chest, making a painful chore of the simple act of breathing. By nightfall, restless and feverish, I was more than ready to retire to my bed.
I lit the lamp and managed to reach the door without undue difficulty. But as I stepped out on to the landing and looked up, the stairway seemed to tilt and recede and I lurched sideways, striking my shoulder violently against the wall. My cry brought Mrs Haskell running into the hallway below.
‘Did you call, Mr Stannard?’
I am not sure that she caught my feeble reply, but she was at my side within seconds, visibly flustered, peering anxiously into my face.
‘Do you want me to send for Dr Barratt?’ she asked.
‘No doctors, thank you. I just need sleep.’
‘Give me that,’ she said, easing the lamp from my grasp. ‘Hold tight to the stair-rail as you go. I’ll follow you up.’
At the top of the stairs she took my arm and I let her guide me into my room. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching in a kind of stupor as she bustled about – drawing the curtains, raking up the fire, shaking out my crumpled nightshirt and draping it across the back of the chair to warm in the glow of the turned embers. And then she was in and out with this and that – an extra blanket, a warming-pan, a cup of hot milk – until, presumably recognizing that she had done all she could, she wished me goodnight and left me to myself.
I was relieved, undoubtedly, when she finally withdrew; but a few moments later, curled on my side in a darkness that seemed, to my fevered mind, even more intense than usual, I came close to wishing her back. At one point, indeed, I even imagined her sitting there at my bedside, not as herself but, most implausibly, as an upright pillar of unperturbed white light. I tried to fix my attention on her – on this manifestation, I mean – but she faded under my gaze, and the dreams came flooding in.
I can see the folly of attempting to impose a spurious order on an experience marked by nothing so strongly as its incoherence, but I find it possible to isolate from that terrible welter of dream-nonsense one or two passages which lend themselves – though not, I admit, very readily – to some form of articulation. This, for example. I was standing on the scaffold high above the nave, hacking the plaster from the wall as Jefford had done. The surface crumbled away like pie-crust, the shameful images proliferating beneath the chisel blade as though I myself were their author. I worked frenziedly, choking on dust, oppressed by the stench that rose inexplicably from the painted surface. All about me (and it is only as I relive this that I realize that at some unspecifiable point I ceased to be a spectator and became a participant in their sufferings) the pale bodies squirmed and sighed in what I remember as a shallow wash of warm salt water; and I writhed among them, aching for contact but knowing that if I were so much as to brush against their tormented flesh I should be marked for ever. And all the time I seemed to burn inwardly, so that when one of the figures leaned forward, holding a flask in her slender hands, offering it with a gesture so disturbing, so darkly enigmatic that I tremble now even as I think of it, I seized it and drank.
And then the hands took over, soft hands slipping me, by some bewildering sleight, out of my clothes and laying me down in the salt wash, working my body as a modeller might work his clay. I remember trying to interpose my own hands between the kneading palms and my nakedness, feeling my flesh loosen and melt beneath their blind ministrations. Sssh, they whispered, moving easily to and fro over the slackening surfaces, sweeping aside my resistance. And perhaps it was then, perhaps a little later – for I know that far more was compressed into that indeterminate span than I can now lay hold of – that I felt them beginning to peel the skin back from my chest, carefully at first, the fingertips sliding cleanly under the raw, parted edges; and then more savagely, tugging and tearing until, looking down, I saw my entire rib-cage laid bare, its contents glistening in the attenuated light. I watched helplessly as the hands reached in and fastened on what looked like a small black coal, easing it gently out between the ribs; and knowing that this was my heart, I lunged forward to snatch it back. But hands and heart withdrew or, more accurately, effaced themselves; and as they faded, I heard a grieving voice ring out through the darkening waste. Lost, it cried, or gone, or perhaps some other word; monosyllabic certainly, but deeply resonant, setting my stripped frame vibrating in mournful response.
And thinking about it now, it occurs to me that the voice might well have been my own, echoing through the house as I started up with my drenched nightshirt tight as a winding-sheet around my body. What else would have brought Mrs Haskell hurrying to my door? I can see her there, framed in the doorway, one hand clutching a frayed woollen shawl about her shoulders and the other holding up a flickering candle, her eyes wide in her round face.
> Nothing of what followed is as distinct as that luminous image. I suppose, since I remember sitting slumped in the chair while something went on around me, that Mrs Haskell changed my sheets; and I am tolerably certain that a conversation of some kind took place between us, though I am unable to recall a single word of it. More vaguely still, I have the impression of having sensed, as I sank back into sleep and the fever took hold again, that whatever I was dealing with had only just begun its work on me.
16
When I try to reconstruct the events of the succeeding days and nights, I find myself at something of a loss. Many of my memories have proved, in the light of subsequent knowledge or sober examination, to be imaginary constructs or, in some cases, misinterpretations of actual occurrences, while others were apparently authentic; the problem has been to distinguish between the two. Talking at length with Banks during my convalescence, discreetly questioning Mrs Haskell, I was able eventually to make some kind of sense of it all; but engaging once again with that welter of fragmented and equivocal impressions, I can hardly avoid registering something of my original confusion or acknowledging areas of continuing uncertainty.
The exercise of reason may give us some grip on our illusions but it cannot entirely dispel them. I know now, for example, that my father was never at my bedside and that our argument could not have taken place; but I can still recall with disquieting clarity my own frenzy of impotent rage as he hauled me head foremost from the bed, his looming face expressing anger and disappointment by turns, his stick raised as though to beat me. ‘I’m not a child,’ I cried over and over again, ‘I’m not a child.’ But for much of the period in question that is precisely what I was; and I still flush with shame at the thought of Mrs Haskell’s breast pressed to my mouth, the nipple swelling against my teeth and tongue. For days afterwards I retained the most acute apprehension of that moment – the expansive pressure, the sweetness at the back of my throat, my own greedy nuzzling – so that I was obliged to remind myself, as Mrs Haskell herself entered the room with my tray or stooped over me to rearrange the blankets, that our perverse intimacy had been nothing more than the invention of a fevered mind.
