Restoration Page 26

  The tiding is your house has passed and land and all to a French noble, Le Viscomte de Confolens, and a most forwardy, ticklish man preferring to regard his own wig and nose and Beauty Spots in the glass than to note any good thing at Bidnold.

  Merciful thanks Le V. is not much visiting here. But when he comes, comes with a retenue of ladies, all French. Some very common seeming and shrieking out in their language and showing their feet.

  I am and M. Cattlebury to be kept hired here and so too the grooms and maids, according to Sir J. Babbacombe.

  But we are not paid our money. We have no wage from Le Viscomte, Sir Robert, and I have writ to Sir J. Babbacombe to tell him this.

  My Lady Bathurst did arrive here in May and says to me 0 Mister Gates what is to become of this place! And truly I did not know what to answer. And she then weeping. And as I am a Norfolk man and so backward in grace could not stop myself weeping also. But I am sorry for it. So keep you well, Sir and Mister Pearce also. And if you can write me any letter, I will be happy.

  Your still remaining Servant,

  Wm. Gates

  I folded this letter after I had read it once and stowed it away in the sea chest, thus hoping to put it out of my mind, for I do not deny it made me feel sad. Pearce, as it chanced, came seeking me on some errand just as I was putting the thing away and saw at once (for nothing that I feel can I seem to conceal from him) that some portion of my past was once again preoccupying my mind, which should have dwelled only and entirely on my great Cure by Dancing that was to be tried the next day. He stood at the door and regarded me and without asking me what my letter had contained, he said, in his sternest voice: "I presume you are familiar with the Act of Praemunire, Robert?"

  "No," I replied, "I am not, John."

  "Let me enlighten you then. The Act of Praemunire permits the confiscation – immediate and without redress, upon the presentation of a warrant of Praemunire – of property, goods and chattels as a punishment for Non-Conformity. Hundreds of Quakers have lost their houses and their land under the terms of this loathsome edict. The suffering caused by it has been beyond what you could imagine. So do not believe you are singled out, Robert. You are merely one of many. The King has behaved towards you as towards a Quaker, and this is all."

  Before I could make any answer to this, Pearce had turned and walked away leaving behind him in my room a faint smell of the mithridate with which he continues to dose himself, his cold and catarrh yielding to no cure at all, not even to the hot, dry weather.

  When I woke the following morning, I was aware of a strange sound in the room, a sound with which I knew myself to be familiar, yet could not for a moment interpret.

  I lay and listened. I knew it to be very early, for the light at the window was grey. And then it came upon me what I was hearing. I sprang out of my cot and drew back the hessian drapes at the window and I saw that I was not mistaken: a great sheeting rain was coming down upon us and upon all the preparations we had made for the dancing. The Airing Court, baked to a hard, yellow dryness by the sun, was to have been our dancing floor. Now it was already returning to slimy mud.

  The Keepers (who are not usually cast down by any occurrence) seemed sad – every one of them including Pearce – at the cancellation of the dance. Into this sadness I cast a question that had been troubling me for some time: "When we at last begin the music and the occupants of George Fox and Margaret Fell come out, what is to happen to those in William Harvey?"

  "They cannot dance, Robert," said Pearce.

  "We cannot unchain them," said Edmund.

  "But they will hear the music," said Ambrose. "We will open the doors of William Harvey so that the sounds reach them."

  I was forced to be content with these answers, but was vexed to find a terrible pity for the men and women of WH coming over me, such as I had never felt before, not even upon my first sight of them in their rags and straw. And I remembered my journey to Kew with the tilt-man, how I had passed Whitehall and seen light at the windows and heard laughter and yet myself been outside on the flat, dark water; and I knew that what I detest about the world is that one man's happiness is so often another man's pain.

  It rained for two days and in that small bit of time Daniel and I, to divert ourselves, invented some sweet harmonies and variations to my old tune, Swans Do All, so that it was transformed from a dull little song into music of great prettiness. And after supper of the second day, we got our instruments and played it in the parlour for the Keepers, and the thing which pleased me about our playing was that I could tell that Pearce was very moved by it, though he would say no more to me about it than, "Progress, Robert. You are making progress."

  So it was on the last day of June, just past the summer solstice, that we opened the doors of Fox and Fell and led out the people. On a trestle table were three pails of water and some cups and ladles, and I watched how some of the men, before any dancing had begun, started to ladle water over their heads and laugh. And then others joined them and this playing with the water seemed to preoccupy them utterly, as if it was the thing on earth they most loved to do. But then Daniel and I began on a polka and slowly all the group clustered near to the wooden podium on which we stood and stared at us, their mouths gaping and some putting their hands over their ears. It was most difficult to play with this press of people on us. And then I saw Katharine push her way from the back of the group to the front, and she stood so close to me that I had to turn aside a little for fear of poking my oboe into her eye.

  We finished the polka and I wiped my brow and some of the people applauded with their fingers splayed out like children and some laughed and some went back to the water buckets.

  Ambrose then came and stood with us on the podium. Addressing the multitude of mad people, he said: "Today, instead of walking round the tree, we are going to dance. Robert and Daniel will play and we are going to skip or gallop. What steps we do, what patterns we make, do not matter. We can dance in a square or in a circle or each on his own like a dancing dot. Your Keepers, all of us, will dance with you. And now we are going to begin."

  Ambrose stepped down and he and Hannah and Eleanor and the others each took one man or woman to be their partner and so we struck up another polka and the press of people turned away from us a little to watch those now skipping about, among whom was Pearce who had not the least idea how to dance a polka but was jumping up and down, holding the hands of an elderly woman, as thin as he, who began to cackle with a laughter so violent that she could scarcely breathe.

  After the third or fourth time, perceiving that only a few joined in any kind of dance and many only stared about them in confusion and outrage, I saw that my experiment risked turning into a lamentable failure. Katharine had now sat down on the ground and was holding onto my boot, thus causing me to feel as if I was chained to the floor like those in WH, from which building we could now hear shouts and cries and a loud banging on the wall.

  I felt very sick with embarrassment. "It is not working," I whispered to Daniel. "They do not understand what to do."

  Daniel put down his fiddle and took off his waistcoat. His face was red and sweating. Then he picked up the violin again, twanged the A-string to tune it and said to me, "Try the tarantella."

  I sighed. I thought of all the hours we had spent rehearsing the difficult Tarentelle de Lyon. They seemed utterly in vain. I blew some spittle from my reed, then I bent down and took Katharine's hand from my foot and lifted her up. And I spoke out to the so-called dancers:

  "We shall play a tarantella for you," I announced. "This is a whirling dance. So why do you not whirl and turn and jump, or do anything you will? Pretend you are leaves flying, or children skipping."

  There was some laughter at this. I smiled, trying to pretend I was very pleased and happy, then prepared myself to play. As I lifted up my instrument, Katharine reached out and caught hold of my arm and said to me, "Dance with me."

  "I cannot…" I said.

  "Robert cannot," said
Daniel. "Robert is the music!"

  "Dance with me," said Katharine again, and she began to pull at me, so that I was nearly toppled from the podium.

  But Edmund was at Katharine's side now, having seen what was happening to me.

  "Come," he said to her. "I shall show you a proper tarantella." And she let herself be led away.

  "Save us from this, Daniel!" I whispered.

  And he smiled that smile of his which is like the smile of a child.

  So we began on the dance. The heat of the afternoon and fear of the failure of the venture made us play it as fast and urgently as we had ever done and, as we entered upon the second rondo of it, I began to have cause to give thanks to Ch. de B. Fauconnier, whoever he may have been, for he had indeed written a strange and stirring piece of music. As we neared the end of it, I whispered to Daniel that we should recommence and keep on because I saw that it held the attention of almost everyone assembled and that in their uncoordinated ways they were struggling to move about.

  We played the tarantella five times without stopping and the sweat poured down my forehead and stung my eyes so that the scene in front of me became shimmery and lit with a strange bright winking light like the étincellement of a star. But I knew by the end of the fifth tarantella that everyone was moving, trying to spin and whirl and clapping their hands and some trying to sing and some wailing and some shrieking like the devil.

  I have never seen nor heard nor been any part of any thing that was like this hour. And when it was over and we stopped playing and wiped our faces, I felt for the briefest moment of time that I was no longer merely myself, no longer Merivel, nor even Robert, but joined absolutely in spirit to every man and woman there, and I wanted to make a circle with my arms and take them in.

  That night in William Harvey, Pearce and I, at the hour of the Night Keeping, found a dead woman.

  The clamour and agitation in WH was terrible to witness and I knew that the music had caused it.

  As we covered the dead body, on whom, Pearce informed me, we would perform an autopsy the following day, I said to him, "For two or three we have helped in George Fox and Margaret Fell we have sacrificed one here." He nodded. "None of us," he said, "gave this sufficient thought."

  We administered a dose of belladonna to every inmate of WH who allowed himself to swallow it (Piebald spat his into my face) and left them to a misery that none of them had words to express.

  It was a great relief to come out of WH and to go into Margaret Fell where, notwithstanding a very strong stench of sweat, there was a feeling of calm in the place and we saw at once that all the women were sleeping. Katharine, alone, was awake. She was sitting up and holding the doll to her breast – which was naked and out of her torn robe – as it might be to suckle an infant.

  "Stay with her a few minutes," said Pearce, "and I will go on to George Fox. It's getting towards morning and your tarantella has made me tired, Robert."

  It was my vow, these days, never to be left alone with Katharine. Ambrose and Edmund had helped me to see what harm I had – all unintentionally – done to her by causing her to feel for me an affection (a love even?) that I could not return. Since understanding this, I had stayed more aloof from her, sometimes getting Hannah or Eleanor to take over the task of rubbing her feet and once telling her that I was too busy to stay and listen to the stories of her past.

  On this night of the tarantella, however, I did sit down beside her and took her feet in my lap and began rubbing them, being once again very moved by her condition of sleeplessness.

  She sat quite still and watched me. After a few moments, she set her doll aside, then slowly, with a self-caressing hand pulled aside her nightgown and exposed her other breast to me. She licked her lips and regarded me, and in her exhausted eyes I could discern a slow, sleepy, all-enveloping lust. I let go of her feet and made as if to get up, but she reached out and held me, and moved the heel of her right foot up into my groin where, to my great shame and fear, I knew she would find me hard.

  I prayed.

  I prayed for Pearce to return.

  I prayed to God to give Robert the strength to walk away and not let Merivel do as he wished, which was to lay the madwoman down beneath him.

  And after a moment or two, in which I did not move, I heard a voice calling me softly from the door. "Here I am, John," I said. And I got up and followed my friend out into the cool air of four o'clock.

  Chapter Nineteen. In God's House

  At the back of WH, enclosed by a low fence, is a graveyard. I was not shown this when I first came to Whittlesea, but discovered it for myself soon afterwards. There are at present six graves in it and I have been told that they were dug by the men of George Fox, "one of whom in his life before he came to madness was a grave-digger and can dig a very perfect and neat grave."

  I asked Ambrose whether, when a man or woman died at Whittlesea, the body was not given back to relatives for burial in some place that might have once been their home. Ambrose replied that if the relatives came and asked for the dead person the corpse would be put in a coffin and given to them, "but few do ask, Robert, it being the case that very many of those here are deemed by their families to have died already." It was this remark of his, upon which my mind has often dwelled, that has helped me to believe in the death of Merivel and his replacement by Robert. Alas, however, Merivel now and again finds the grave an excruciatingly boring place and clamours to come out of it. I fear he may never be entirely quiet and obedient to death until he is actually buried (here at Whittlesea?) and the only sound to be heard near him is the sound of the Fenland wind in the grasses.

  As Ambrose, Pearce and I began, then, on an autopsy of the woman found dead in Willian Harvey, a grave-digging party, under the care of Edmund, set out with picks and spades. The day was once again hot and I saw that as they assembled in the Airing Court, a cloud of flies gathered round their heads. These flies made me feel depressed. In what had remained of the previous night, I had had a dream of Fabricius at work in his little anatomy theatre. He had been in an angry, difficult mood and had told us, his students, that we preyed on his knowledge – having so little of our own – like flies on a cadaver.

  Towards ten o'clock, the body of the dead woman was laid on the table in the operating room in Margaret Fell. (There is, as I have told you, such a room in all three houses, but very few operations are performed in that of WH, the noise coming from the stalls of the inmates being too disturbing and distracting.) Ambrose, Pearce and I, wearing our leather aprons, slit open and tore away the ragged clothes that covered her and then we stood silently for a moment, each looking at the body and taking note of what we saw of external wounds and marks.

  The woman was old, of more than sixty years, and the skin greyish and wrinkled and the muscles of the limbs and of the stomach seeming wasted and slack. The hair on her pubis was sparse and white and there was some of this same hair sprouting on her chin and on the aureoles of her nipples.

  Ambrose began to record all abnormal things he found upon her, such as a red soreness of the naval and a bruising on the area of the sternum and Pearce wrote each thing down. I went to her head and took the jaw in my hands to open it and examine the teeth, which were very black and decayed and reeking of putrefaction, and so I reported out loud on my findings to Pearce. But I was so affected by the sight of the body that I could not refrain, at length, from saying: "Does it not strike you as a most terrible but true thing, that men in this world and age can come by fortune in many ways and have many currencies with which to barter, but that women have only one, and that is the currency of their bodies, and when this is spent they must all, high or low, depend upon the charity of some overseer or other?"

  "In a Quaker house," said Ambrose, "all are equal before God."

  "I know," I said, "but not in society. In society, all women who come to forty come to an impoverishment of a certain kind."

  "For this and a thousand other reasons," said Pearce, "have we turned our back
on society. Neither Hannah nor Eleanor will ever be 'poor' in the sense that you mean."

  "No," echoed Ambrose, "they will not."

  "So be glad that you are here, Robert, and not where you once were."

  In this way, adding a sniff that was like a neat full-stop to his sentence, Pearce declared the subject I had raised to be closed. Many of my utterances he believes to be a waste of my breath-"and we are allotted just so many breaths, Robert, and no more" – and indeed this one was a digression from the main purpose of the morning, which was to ascertain how the old woman had died.

  None of us had been aware that she had been suffering from any illness, only a debility coming on her with old age and the ravages of her madness. Upon the opening up of her chest, however, we found the organ of the heart to have an encrusted and scabby appearance and the blood of her arteries and veins to be dark and sticky like treacle; and it did not take Pearce long to conclude that death had come with the cessation of the heart's pulse, the blood being too heavy to move. Ambrose and I nodded our agreement and I, for one, was relieved that we did not have to proceed to an examination of the liver or bowel. The autopsy concluded, Ambrose left Pearce and me to sew up the incision we had made and to clean and wrap the body for burial. I took a suturing needle from my box of instruments and Pearce was measuring for me a length of gut when he suddenly declared: "I am afraid of death, Robert."

  I looked up at him, surprised. Towards the great subject of mortality Pearce had always shown an enviable indifference. When, on one of our angling trips near Cambridge, he had fallen from a little wooden bridge and almost drowned in the blanket-weed, he had shown neither fear of death nor gratitude towards me for saving his life by thrusting towards him a landing net with which I towed him into the bank. I had always believed that he thought of death as a kind of reward for his earthly goodness and abstemiousness and that in his hard-working life he sometimes found himself looking forward to it.