Awakening (28 page)

Beatrice has learned better how to receive her husband's passion. Happily the act does not go on for long. He is courteous and kind and thanks her afterwards. Is he disappointed, to have waited all these years to mate with what she sometimes tells herself must seem a log? If so, he doesn't betray his disappointment. Now that the baby is inside her, he holds back. That's the best of it. She enjoys the caressive intimacies he offers.

In Christian's absence she's once more her own master. No sooner is Mrs Ritter's husband out of the door than Miss Pentecost rises from her grave. Sickness and inertia lift. Beatrice awakens, bored with the meaningless patterns on the bedroom wall, the dull view from the window. She bounds downstairs, to gobble bacon, egg and sausage, with fresh bread spread with lashings of butter. Never has food smelt or tasted so good. Grease all round her mouth, Beatrice sops up spilt yolk with a crust, to her sister's astonishment.

Then she waits to throw it up. And doesn't. Beatrice puts on flesh; her hair grows lustrous and her face, rounding out, becomes bonny. In the mirror she sees a glowing woman in a state of surprised euphoria; the years have fallen away.

Anna and Will must live at Sarum House. Everything will be done to ensure this; nothing to endanger it.

Poor Mr Kyffin's funeral is held in pelting rain at the chapel at Fighelbourn, since Prynne and the Prynnites have locked the Kyffinite congregation out of Florian Street. Mr Prynne has personally crossed their names off the membership list. While this tumult continues unabated, the dead man has to be buried. Mr Montagu, conducting the service, contributes the briefest of brief obituaries to the
Baptist Journal
: ‘The Revd John M. C. Kyffin, late pastor of Florian Street, Salisbury, died in the forty-seventh year of his age. He laboured for the good of his flock. Well loved and loving.'

Mrs Kyffin writes from Bradford on Avon that she cannot help but feel injured by this brevity. Other ministers are accorded three pages honouring their godly works. Was Mr Kyffin unworthy of more than thirty-two words? But she reminds herself that Love is all the law and the prophets. Antigone enjoys the company of her young nieces. Most of the time. Her room looks over the vegetable garden. Her closest companion is a kitten. Her daughter Ellen is at school in Kensington, training to be a governess. Charlie is studying to become an analytical chemist, apprenticed to Mr Lee, the freethinking disciple of Mr Darwin. But Antigone assures herself that her son's mind will remain untainted by these errors. Charlie's face flames with eczema and he refers to Prynne as an assassin, alluding approvingly to Jael's hammer in the Book of Judges, the lady who drove a nail into the infidel's skull.

Beatrice sits with her knitting in her lap while the others discuss the situation. She's constructing dainty boots for her little boy. Will his feet really be so small? She's sure it's a boy she's carrying. She smiles gently, without needing to assert herself. Anna is also knitting for Baby, and so is Mrs Elias, though the logic of Loveday's garment is cryptic: it's a sweet little jacket, she says, as they will shortly see. The fingers of young Patience Elias have contributed something to its grubby asymmetries.

And now, while they're discussing the coming Awakening, the miracle occurs.

To no one but Beatrice, seated there by the open window, a friendly company on one side and birdsong on the other. There's a faint flutter in her womb. A creature with softest wings, a being made of light called forth from the darkness, makes itself known. The needles fall from her hands. She sits upright, listening.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the waters.

Life acquaints Beatrice with its presence. Life speaks to her, confiding, ‘Wait, I am coming. Only for you.' She listens again. No. Now there's nothing. No movement at all and perhaps she imagined it, though she doesn't think so.

‘What date is the happy day, Anna?' asks their guest, Mr Idris Jones of Bedwellty. Two of his sons sit at the table demolishing a seed cake. They have strange coxcomb-like hairstyles and address one another in Welsh. The middle son is busy with a revival on the island of Ynys Môn. Their talk, in so far as it can be construed, is all of bringing the Welsh Revival over the border. To Liverpool, home of thousands of Welsh chapel-goers, to Shrewsbury, to Ludlow and the border towns, Welsh evangelists will carry the sacred coals. All England will be alight, then Scotland, then the Reformed Churches of France.

With God's help, the continent of Europe will fall to the new Puritanism. This is the day, the happy day. The Spirit has no limits. Swiss missionaries will convert Russia and Turkey.

And it comes again. The mothy fluttering. Today, thinks Beatrice. Today is the happy day.

She beams, straight into the eyes of Will Anwyl – who colours up, disconcerted, and is caught on a hook Beatrice had no intention of baiting. The smile was not designed for him or for anyone in the room, come to that. But Will is smitten. Well, let him wonder. Let them all get on with their business in their petty antechamber to life. For everything Beatrice has ever desired is here within the compass of her own person.

Quickening. Awakening.

Chapter 16

The Holy Spirit landed first in Wales, from America.

This is how Mr Jones of Bedwellty phrases it to the Chauntsey congregation. Beatrice, absorbed in the wonder of her own ripening, attends with only half an ear. Mr Jones is proud, he tells them, to be the bearer of this news – modestly proud – or in truth not proud at all, humble rather – for Christ's is the glory. The elders of the Cymric churches have seen revival at least fifteen times in the past century, most recently in South Wales during the cholera epidemic of '49. When the Welsh leaders heard of the new American Awakening, they prayed: ‘Quicken us again, Lord, here in Wales!' One hundred thousand spectacular conversions have been achieved in his homeland at the last count.

Mr Jones has left dear Mr Anwyl and his bride in Aberystwyth. Fishing, he says, I left Mr and Mrs Anwyl fishing! They are fishers of men. Even now they are walking by the seaside netting fishermen and sailors. This doesn't sound much like Anna to Beatrice. Granted that marriage does incalculable things to the soul, she'll wait and see before applauding.

Change is coming, Mr Jones says. Be ready, Wiltshire! At Frongoch Lead Mine miners sank to their knees at six in the morning and rose at two in the afternoon: no lead was extracted that day. At Trefeca College the young ministers-to-be sang all night, repeating one hymn over and over. These radiantly touched pioneer spirits, Mr Jones has no doubt, will bring their spark, their
hwyl
, to English altars. And thence to India, Africa, China, the world.

Mr Jones moves on from Chauntsey and preaches outside the locked door of Florian Street Church to Mr Kyffin's congregation and several local reporters. Beatrice and Joss perch on the wall to participate. She can see little from here but she can hear. From within comes the sound of the Prynnites, bawling their way through the Baptist Hymnal. Mr Jones is more than equal to this. He enjoys preaching in the open air. Nearer to Him, he says, gesturing towards the cloudless sky. The congregation swells until the churchyard cannot hold them all. They spill onto pavements and climb trees. And now the graves and pavements and trees are singing: not only Baptists and Congregationalists but Wesleyans, Unitarians, Calvinistic Methodists, evangelical Anglicans.

In his sermon, Mr Jones describes Mr Gwilym Anwyl's visit to his home village and the surrounding hills, taking his bride, together with Isaiah Minety. The boy speaks to the Welsh of his friend and pastor John Kyffin, now with God, and how Mr Kyffin had been a bruised reed but never a broken one, how it had been given to this saintly man to foresee the Revival, and lastly Isaiah tells of Little Harry, who died of a cough and saw angels. And how Harry dreamed that he went out into the fields with a butterfly net and caught, not butterflies, but winged spirits.

Mr Jones has seen the effect of the child-preacher's powers with his own eyes; otherwise he'd hardly have credited it. Isaiah's hearers become prophets; folk begin to sing, weep, pray as the Spirit takes them. The boy has latterly grown quiet as the result of a sore throat.

And this, says Mr Jones of Bedwellty to the hundreds outside Florian Street, will be coming to Wiltshire. Let us prepare our hearts to receive the seed. And let usurpers tremble.

*

‘There it is,
cariad
. There!'

They're in mountainous country miles out of Aberystwyth. At first she sees nothing but rough pasture, stunted trees, a couple of huts. Her husband leads Anna to the broken door of the nearer hut and tramples a path through nettles, striking them back with a stick. Inside is a single room with a dirt floor and a collapsed chimney. One small window. A stench. Here all the washing, cooking, baking, weaving was done; here her husband's parents and six children lived and slept, their few possessions tucked into corners; from the rafters hung dried fish, salted meat and bacon. The walls are black with soot and birds have nested in the chimney. Here Will was born; here he saw his pauper
Tad
die of consumption; here his
Mam
gave up the ghost two years later of the same disease, followed by three of Will's five brothers and sisters. And then the pastor took Will under his wing.

‘Mr Owen's cottage was no palace,' Will says, as they come out. ‘There it is, adjoining the chapel. More like a shack than a house – it's used as a stable now. It had a few pieces of furniture, a couple of chairs and a bed supported by stone slabs. The roof was so low that Mr Owen could barely stand upright. A big man he was, mind – and looked a bit of a brute if you didn't know him. But to me, Annie, it was a rich and lovely place. Always plenty to eat and drink – no whippings – always a good fire in the grate – and books. Mr Owen taught me English. Mrs Owen was a second mother. She had no children of her own. I owe them everything. If only I could introduce you to them.'

Anna puts her hand in her husband's as they circle the chapel to the graveyard. Chauntsey has never really comprehended Will, she sees that. His frivolity and flirting are in part an adaptation to a foreign culture. Here he's respected for his genial warmth. Not that he won't revert when they return home: how can he not? – unless whatever happiness he can find in Anna can persuade him that he belongs. In Aberystwyth Anna is ‘the Englishwoman'
,
the
Saesnes.

The Owens' tombstone has not been allowed to moss over. Whoever attends to it has left daffodils in a clay pot. The Welsh inscription Anna cannot construe for herself. She stands back as Will kneels. The song of building birds cascades around them.

Back in Aberystwyth Will preaches at Bethesda Baptist Chapel. Anna understands scarcely a word except that
Duw
is God,
Gwaredwr
is Saviour,
cariad,
love. She feasts her eyes on her husband's beauty. Her marriage has been a success beyond Anna's expectations. Yes, I love you, Will.
Dw i'n dy garu di
. She never expected to. Not in this way. In that love are coiled complexities she cannot begin to untwist. There's a sense of what her sister has forfeited; the sharp pangs that must have pierced Beatrice when she relinquished Will. And the compassion sparked by this awareness also triggers possessiveness. He's mine. Not yours. I shall have him.

When Anna sees Will's beautiful hands, gesturing as he speaks of
Duw
and
Gwaredwr
and
cariad
, she thinks of their intimate times, close and warm, his hands that seemed so surprisingly to know her from the start. And did Will wonder when they first lay down naked together that she was at home in her body and understood its capacity for pleasure? Did he ask himself whether she was a virgin? Anna couldn't tell. It was all done in silence. The only sound was the faltering and quickening of their breathings. She melted. She opened softly to receive him, aching for him to slip into her. There was scarcely any pain. And he knew how to give her pleasure. Knew it all apparently. How? Wasn't he a virgin then? Or did men just know? Or was it that he himself loves to be touched tenderly and for that reason understands a woman's desire? Anna proved her virginity by bleeding. But very little.

She's beyond the reach of Quarles, that's for sure. The memory that has branded Anna fades, leaving hardened scar tissue.

Out in the moonlight the Anwyls walk where the stars are so close to the hills that they hang like lanterns. The silence is unqualified until they catch a murmur which at first Anna takes for the rushing of a brook. The Anwyls stand still, listening. Presently she sees a light and hears music.

Men and women holding torches sing their way along the glimmering path. All her life Anna will see this procession, hear this music, the Lord's people walking the mountains from village to village, turning the Welsh hills into a Bible landscape. There's a Presence, she too feels it in her infidel heart. It is real, then? Our Jesus walked this earth before us? He really did. He was here just moments before us. He remains over there somewhere, just out of sight, and these folk are going to meet him. As Anna and her husband stand to one side of the bridle path, every passing face reveals itself in a flare of torchlight, each ordinary, peerless person, as if about to depart this earth for the other world.