Awakening (10 page)

That
evening, when the precious books were filched, Anna watched a plume of smoke rise in the wilderness. Next day she had Joss push her there in the wheeled chair. She examined the blackened circle of grass and plucked a few charred scraps of paper from a broom bush. They are now between the pages of her journal, like pressed black flowers of mourning. In that hour Beatrice passed beyond Anna's trust.

She'd only skimmed the first page of Baines's book. Well-written. A touch bombastic. A woman looking not wholly unlike Anna herself was sitting in a window. The townsfolk were all peering in the window and gossiping about her. But, Beatrice, books are immortal, she thinks. Publications can't be extinguished. How on earth can you have ignored the fact that replacements are always available? When you're away, she thinks, I can order the books. I have money of my own, you simpleton. The small allowance from her aunt Anna never spends: it mounts up, not enough to emancipate her but a nest egg. If you destroy the copies, I'll replace those. Obviously. But where to hide them?

‘Annie, I've said I'm sorry,' Beatrice repeats, with slightly less conviction.

Anna smiles. ‘Oh, well, never mind. I expect I provoked you. It's all in the past. Shall you not say goodbye to Mr Anwyl?'

Beatrice shrugs and flushes. ‘Why should I?'

Mr Anwyl comes and goes, taking little notice of Beatrice, chatting instead with Anna, annoying Joss by bestowing attention on the Rubenesque servant, Amy Light, and any other female visitors to Sarum House below the age of forty. Anna watches Will winding tendrils round women's hearts; observes Beatrice ignoring him; catches a sour whiff of mutual mortification, high as hung game on a hook.

*

On the verge of sleep you occasionally startle: you're falling. Suddenly you're wide awake. You've seen something dreadful. But what was it?

In the darkening garden after supper, Beatrice informs Will, ‘I am going to London to see Christian Ritter.'

‘Then I am done for,' Will says. ‘You'll come back engaged. I shall have to turn to Anna.'

They stand in the shadow of the chestnut. Unseen lives settle in the branches above. Beatrice teeters off-balance and Will reaches out to steady her. He understands me, she thinks; in some way he intuits me: why is this not enough? His hand slides slowly across her breast, just above the stays. Through every layer of fabric, she feels the warmth of his palm nakedly; ripples spread, out and out.

Everything melts inside Beatrice.
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter. Those troublesome disguises which we wear?

A cobweb stretches between twigs in the shrubbery; by day you're blind to its filaments but moonlight picks out the web's complications. Will opens his arms to Beatrice; then with his fingertips on her shoulders, he draws her closer. He lets out a faltering sigh. She cannot allow it; does allow it. A tear sparks in Beatrice's eye for she has no one, her parents are dead, it's dark, they're buried over the road, her father died cursing, her sister is mentally and mortally ill, she herself is going away, faith burns low.

Beatrice observes Will Anwyl's mouth come down, come close … receives it, no, not on her mouth but the corner of her eye which at the last moment closes. A planet swims towards another planet, horizon-filling. She discerns each lash and the crook of his eyebrow as he kisses the tear away; feels the soft push of lips on her eyelid, a sensation that persists like eucalyptus oil when he has drawn back.

She runs. A barn owl's out hunting and she catches his territorial call. Reaching the candle-lit interior, Beatrice glances back and sees no one, for the dark beneath the chestnut is impenetrable. Amy lollops about the kitchen, a lump of a girl, heavy-footed. Joss is sitting with his feet raised against the fender, chair balanced on its back legs, eating a scone loaded with blackcurrant jam. She rushes past them.

I am compromised, Beatrice thinks. This phrase chimes throughout the evening, as she superintends this, arranges that, says good night to Jocelyn and Mr Elias smoking a pipe in the stinking snuggery. On the stairs she pauses and covers her left breast with her hand; it remembers.

But nobody saw. Pleasure licks out from her hardened nipple along a network of nerves. Shakily, Beatrice undresses, turning from the mirror, catching a side view of a woman's face like a cat's, sleek, well-fed, slyly knowing. She lets down her hair and takes the brush to it till it crackles. In her imagination, Will has wound her hair around his fist and is drawing her head back on the pillow.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry
. Will's wide open eye is approaching her eye, forcing it to blink and close.
For it is better to marry than to burn.
Picking up the candle, Beatrice bends forward; the hair singes; a whiff of burning is on the air. She pinches the charred tress and some falls away into her hand; she hurries to her bed and blows out the flame.

Nobody saw. It can be denied. The intimate touch. The kiss. But either Beatrice cannot now marry Mr Anwyl, ever, or, having permitted indelicacy, she
must
marry him. And if she does not, surely Anna will.

Chapter 6

‘It has all come to a
climax
at Florian Street,' Mrs Elias, bonnet strings hardly loosened, loses no time in informing Anna. Clearly she'd rather have told Miss Pentecost but in her absence the younger sister will have to do. ‘Mr Kyffin has
resigned
. Prynne and the Prynneites were accuser, judge and jury. Odious fellow! At the best of times he seems to have a bad smell under his nose. Rising in a prayer meeting to beg the Almighty to forgive Mr Kyffin's
heinous
offences! Mind you, Mr Kyffin does seem to be behaving strangely. The young Kyffins are distraught. I am distraught, come to that. Do you happen to have any port wine, Anna?'

‘No, we did have some. But it was unholy apparently. Beatrice gave it away. A little brandy and sugar?'

‘Oh, thank you. What are you reading, Anna?'

‘
A book of sermons
, Loveday.' Anna locks the volume away in her portable desk. The parcel has just arrived, with the new copy of
Adam Bede.

The poor Kyffins: the disgrace will mark them for life. Mean tongues will wag through every church and chapel in Wiltshire. Anna promises herself to visit tomorrow to offer Antigone what comfort she can. She's now mistress of Sarum House, and how it invigorates her. The costiveness in her bowels has eased. Anna has been eating peaches till the juice runs down her chin. And what one feels for books is also appetite. A good book, said Milton, is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. Yes, Anna thinks, but to me it's a peach, succulent and delicious. She has written to her friends in St Ives.

‘But what worries me,' says Loveday Elias, sipping the hot brandy gratefully, ‘is where is all this going? What can be done when a minister of the Baptist Church turns Methodist?'

‘Turns
Methodist
?'

‘So I hear. Though whether Wesleyan, Free Methodist, Primitive Methodist or whatever else, is not known. Mr Kyffin is not himself. Quite frankly, his sermon here was – indelicate – don't you agree? Naked bodies! In front of ladies and children.'

‘Well, in all fairness, naked
feet
only,' Anna puts in. ‘And not even naked: wearing sandals. From what my sister told me. I was not present.'

‘Oh neither was I, dear; I accompanied Mr Elias to Salisbury to hear Mr Anwyl, as you know.'

‘So neither of us is in a position to judge.'

‘But from what I'm reliably informed …
well.
Especially when we consider our young people, who face numerous temptations in this day and age
.
Mr Elias has remonstrated with Mr Kyffin, in a tactful way of course. He has put to him that our true enemy is the spirit of secularism. We worry that all ministry will be tarred with the same brush.'

‘Oh, I don't honestly think Mr Elias need worry, Loveday.'

Such an insipid speaker as Mr Elias leaves only the faintest impression upon listeners' minds. You know you've sat through a sermon but what it was all about, who can say? Mild tosh, like tasteless soup. No pepper. Anna wonders at Loveday's indignation. Generally the soul of tolerance, Loveday has struck up against the outermost limits of her blandness. ‘About the nakedness, Loveday. I don't think Mr Kyffin was saying what you've heard. It was all allegorical.'

‘Allegory, fiddle-de-dee. As Mr Spurgeon says, go to the Gospels. Call a spade a spade. Allegory is Popery.'

*

The boy-preacher of West Grimstead is a puny, tow-haired lad, his skin ingrained with the flour of his parents' trade, lending him an albino appearance. The heckling schoolboys and apprentices massing outside the public house seem to trouble neither him nor the village lads he has gathered as disciples. The youngest, scarcely more than an infant, is dressed in the girlish skirts of infancy. This dribbling child, whose name is Harry, is much invoked by the young prophet as one of the helpless babes in whose welfare Jesus is supremely interested. Isaiah Minety has trained his followers to shout ‘Halleluia!' and ‘Selah!' at a gesture from himself.

Anna, accompanying Mr Anwyl to West Grimstead to examine the callow revivalist, is surprised at her companion's enthusiasm. Will wonders if placid Wiltshire might be roused to the mass conversions seen in his homeland. Not since John Wesley's field meetings, camps and love feasts has the county seen a spiritual kindling, and if an Awakening could be harnessed to the Baptist denomination, they could be harvesting souls by the hundred.

‘Harry here will be first in Heaven,' Isaiah Minety proclaims during a pause in the apprentices' braying.

‘Not too soon, we hope,' Anna can't help exclaiming.

‘No, Miss, but if our Saviour decides to take Harry unto himself, he'll be sitting in Jesus's lap or standing between his kindly knees. Won't you, Harry?'

‘Yuss,' the cherub agrees, taking his thumb from his mouth and slipping it straight back in. Mucous hangs from his nose and he coughs round his thumb. Looking at the sea of faces, Harry takes refuge behind Isaiah.

‘Praise the Lord!' call the disciples.

‘Kindly Knees! Kindly Knees!' bellow the apprentices.

‘I call upon you all,' cries the boy-preacher. ‘To become as little children …'

‘How come it's allowed?' asks an onlooker, who's told that the constable has on several previous occasions dispersed the rabble. The vicar has remonstrated with Mr and Mrs Minety; the boy has been taken before the magistrate and warned. He is incorrigible.

‘For unless ye become as little Harry, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.'

‘Sheer blasphemy. And look at the urchin, crossing his legs, he'll wet himself in a minute.'

‘Wet yerself! Wet yerself!' bawl the apprentices. ‘Go on, Holy Moses, wet yerself!'

It's now that the young prophet makes a tactical error. ‘Yes, my friends. But I
shall
wet myself. I acknowledge it! I shall wet myself before the Mercy Seat!'

Pandemonium. Ironic apprentices are holding themselves between their legs and hopping in circles.

‘Baptism by total immersion is what I mean – dipping!'

‘Duck him! Duck the rat!' The apprentices bolt with their victim toward the Avon as the heavy-footed constable arrives from Mill Street. Mr Anwyl follows the crowd, to return with a saturated and shivering Isaiah. Anna hears Will telling the child that, whereas he himself is a minister of the Baptist church, Isaiah is just a lad.

‘Yes, Mister, but a child of God.'

‘I hope we are all that.'

‘I am chosen, Mr Anwyl, I am picked out of the rubbish. I know I am.'

‘But how do you know, dear, that's the question? And why do you call people rubbish?'

‘The Spirit tells me.'

‘You can't read, can you, Isaiah?'

‘I can so!'

‘Well, I don't think you can. You've truanted from school. Learn your letters and study the Word – sedulously – and then consider where the Spirit leads you.'

‘There may not be time for all that,' the child objects. ‘Who knows how long we've got left in the mortal world? Sometimes there are extraordinary Dispersatans.' He lifts his right hand, looking up soulfully at Mr Anwyl in a spirit of brotherly correction. ‘I often wish I was in China, India or Africa, that I might preach, preach, preach all day long. It would be sweet to die preaching.'

Anna, amused, waits quietly while the martyr is delivered to the care of his parents. Isaiah has done her good: no pain all morning after a breakfast of new-laid eggs. Fresh energy licks along her veins.

And when she wants to laugh aloud, she'll have her laugh out. Tuck her skirts up and climb a tree. Stay up into the early hours.

Travelling home, Will angles for information about Beatrice and her visit to the capital.
Anna reads the play of emotions in his face. Will is all too legible. But how deep is the root of his attachment to Anna's sister? How long till the Fighelbourn congregation begins to murmur against its pastor's frivolities? And yet this is a man who'll sit long at a bedside, hearing the repetitions of senility with good humour. She's seen him playing on the common with the small boys after Sunday School, a flour bag on his head. Shouldn't warm-hearted humour count for something in the great tally?