Awakening (4 page)

As the workmen came out on strike, so too did Jesus. What was Jesus but a workman with lathe and saw? A radical workman who wants for his workfellows homes, food and hospitals, decent working conditions and a fair wage: aye, and a vote for every man in this land. John Clifford has since studied law and moral philosophy, geology and palaeontology and oh so many ologies. At base he remains not just the jacker-off of lace but his mother's child. ‘John,' Mrs Clifford said when he left for the Academy in Leicester to be trained for the ministry. ‘Find out the teaching of Jesus, make yourself sure of that, then stick to it no matter what may come.'

‘How simple,' Mr Clifford says. ‘And how profound. Her voice still rings in my ears. The mother is the first educator of and minister to the child. In her gentleness, her humility, her grasp of the great simple Truth.'

Simple Truth in the person of Jack Emanuel Elias is chiefly under the pew, entangling himself with the Pentecost sisters' skirts as he tunnels through to the aisle. His plump, bonny face pops up open-mouthed, bobs down again; he rams his way past his dreamy mother and is gone.

Mr Clifford looks down at an urchin pointing up. ‘Come on then, my little fellow. Up you come.'

Jack, hoisted up by the deacons, slips his right arm round the minister's neck and sucks the thumb of the left.

‘We'll change our text to the Book of Isaiah:
And a little child shall lead them.
'

Soft laughter pulses round the congregation; Mr Elias swivels round to his wife with a happy shrug; curly-haired Mr Anwyl also turns, winks, raises an eyebrow and grins at Beatrice, who pretends not to see him. Anna observes a small smile twitch the side of her sister's mouth.

Restored to earth, Jack kneels on his father's lap and seems to reflect on recent events, his flight to the kindly skies and his safe descent. He worms a finger into his father's beard; half his face peeps round at the congregation. Hooking his chin over Mr Elias's shoulder, Jack topples into sleep.

Mr Clifford's social radicalism flings open the chapel's doors and windows. He raises the roof like an awning to allow Anna, all of them, to peer for miles. The congregation's eyes speed west towards the dying iron mines of Merthyr and its stinking slums, north to the sweat shops of Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Sheffield. They see as angels see – but without the comforting immunity of angels.

Yes, this is the real thing, thinks Anna, this slaughterhouse of civilisation, policed by the birds of prey who rule us. These are the matters dearest Lore opened to Anna: the political meanings of the feeding of the five thousand, how the first should be last and the last first, how the leper begging at the gates would be fed and clothed and set in judgment over the rich. ‘Revolution will come, Annie, for God will no longer tolerate these injustices.' Her father had been wounded on the barricades in Dresden in 1848, not so much fighting for democracy as standing for it, weaponless, a quietist. A quiet firebrand was Lore too, if such a thing can be said to exist. How I loved her, thinks Anna, and the pain shakes her again.

If Beatrice were to marry Lore's cousin, a mirror of their stepmother would be forever haunting Anna. But it would be an authoritarian likeness. Christian's a man who knows what he wants and will have it and can wait until he does. He terrifies Anna. It's not that she dislikes him: he forces you to like him. His great height gives him a ridiculous advantage – and even tall Anna is dwarfed. There's a glamour about him. Papa meant Christian for Beatrice. And now? Christian's letters arrive weekly from America. Anna does not ask to read them, for her sister's puzzled blush tells the story.

Mr Clifford makes other preachers, even the sublime Mr Spurgeon, look trite: they're constantly referring you to the umbilicus of your own salvation. She forgets her belly's gripings and clasps John Clifford's wing as he soars. Anna sees it all now.

Half the congregation reaches its hands deep into its pockets; the remainder, uneasy about the political message, values the spiritual fare at sixpence.

Introduced to Mr Clifford at the door, Anna squeezes his hand. If she were to fall in love with one of these flying visitors, she thinks, it must be one like this, for sincerity and righteous anger are lovable beyond beauty. I want to tell you about Lore, she thinks. I want to tell you that Lore taught me all this before I heard it anywhere else. And yet what in Lore was theory and idealism, Mr Clifford has lived. Anna suffers herself to be lowered into the wheeled chair and to drop below the general regard. Mr Clifford chats with her sister and Mr Anwyl; he will gladly sup with them, he says, and perhaps, if they have a bed for the night? The weak light greys around them, lending an ashy pallor to skin and hair, as though all those lingering on the chapel path between the grave mounds were ageing by the moment.

Chapter 2

It's like having a rat in the cellar. You make sallies with a broom and lay down poison. You invoke the rat-catcher. But what woman can be thinking of her depravity and its antidote every minute of every day? Too busy. Meanwhile vermin down there stealthily multiply into a colony. Beatrice hides her streaks of lust and greed, cruelty and envy as best she might – but your sister sees through every veil with eyes of caustic.

Beatrice wishes daily for some outlet for her own turbulent spirit but submits to her lot: catching the blood from the slaughtered sow, testing the rennin in junket and blackleading the fireplace. Feeding her guests.

Knives clink on plates; the company consumes scraps for dinner, odds and ends of cold pork, potato, egg. ‘Delicious! Miss Pentecost is a miracle worker!' Conversation flows. Beatrice, who was faintly alarmed at the preacher's political message, finds herself liking the unpretentious Mr Clifford and sees the point of him. He has a modest and kindly manner, a knack of listening, which, Heaven knows, not all the ministers she feeds at Sarum House share.

Mr Anwyl has not come.

A visitor of Mr Clifford's stature can hardly be expected to lie in another guest's sheets as the lesser ministerial fry cheerfully do. Where is Sukey when wanted? Would Joss help turn the heavy mattress? But Jocelyn and Mr Elias are moving off towards the smoking room to fill it with fug and spittle. Sukey follows with the pipes: Joss makes way for her, his arm stretched out like a courtier's, a soft smile on his rosy face. Tobacco rots the moral being, it's a scientific fact. Most male visitors reek of smoke. What's worse, their offspring also sin in this way. The race is degenerating. Beardless Charlie Kyffin from Salisbury, a virtual child, not only out-smokes them all but consumes beer under his father's very nose, and nothing is said.

Mr Anwyl will hardly come now.

John Clifford is explaining why, in his view, the church should not fear the new Biblical criticism that has come from Germany like a high wind. The more accurately we understand the Gospels, the clearer our faith will be. Why fear radicalism when our Jesus was himself a radical? Anna is expressing fervent agreement: but what does she know? Has she read Strauss and Feuerbach? Of course she hasn't. She takes the Salas' word for it.

The latch clinks. Beatrice's spirit bounds up and races to the magnet of Will; she wraps her arms around his neck and he lifts her clean off the ground, whirls her round, skirts belling out, and oh, be careful! we'll fall, put me down, you ruffian!

Of course she does nothing of the sort. Miss Pentecost sits still, feigning deafness. The hairs stand up on her neck; a tremor shakes her body. He's wiping his feet, exchanging a few pleasant words with Sukey, who loves him, they all love him, though most have reservations: somehow, pastor or no pastor, ‘Mr Anwyl is Miss Pentecost's inferior.' That's what they say. He's the son of a labourer in some unpronounceable part of west Wales and it
tells
, every time he opens his mouth. His words tumble over themselves and stammer to a halt. Granted, our Saviour was the foster-child of a Nazareth carpenter but there the comparison ends. Sloppy manners, singsong accent – impoverished, overfamiliar, playful. Lackadaisical in his pastoral duties, by Papa's standards, Mr Anwyl is unequal in status, education and property. Yes, yes, we know all that.

None of this need matter. No, it's something to do with the honey of his attraction that rouses Beatrice as though she'd been bee-stung. It hurts.

Everything hurts. Her body rings with pleasurable pain. She withstands the throb at Will's approach, welcoming him coolly. She avoids his gaze. What choice has her suitor but to retaliate by seating himself beside Anna; bending his head to the younger sister, speaking with quiet attentiveness? There's a burst of laughter, as if he and Anna were sharing a private joke and the joke is Beatrice.

Anna's languid body on the sofa looks sensuous, sinuous – and though she has lost weight, the drapery of her dress expresses the curve of breast and hip. But Anna is not paying full attention to Mr Anwyl's blandishments, Beatrice sees: she has darkly lustrous eyes only for Mr Clifford, who is married already. And in any case, how could Anna marry? Her health would never stand it.

*

Mr Clifford has departed after his three-night stay. Anna's upstairs resting. And Will arrives, the Peck girls in tow and callow Mr Crisp, suitor to one or the other. They've walked across the fields from Fighelbourn, whipping one another with long grasses, playing tag and gathering spring flowers, which Will presents with a bow and a grin. The Peck girls chirrup and whirl, to show off the gowns their aunt has made from imperfect stock: the mass of the skirts trailing behind them, the front being flattened, and this, claims Rose, is how skirts are worn in
Paris
now, a big bustle at the back, see?

‘My oh my. So that's what the Roman Catholics are wearing in Paris,'
Beatrice manages not to say. The Whore of Babylon dresses flaunt the rumps of the two plump, sturdy girls; the hems have picked up cuckoo spit and burrs and must be sponged down. Beatrice takes in her hands the wilted celandines, periwinkles and buttercups Mr Anwyl and his fashionable disciples have brought.

Let's play parlour games! Yes, do let's!

Blowing the feather. First find the feather. Beatrice lets go of constraint. She races Will around the arbour walks. Here we are! Will snatches the feather; holds it out of reach and laughs into her face as she jumps. He puts the feather to his lips; tickles hers with it. Beatrice's mouth opens slightly, lax. Something in the depths of her secret body seems to be tickled too. Sensations ripple there. The cellar-rats all run together this way and that. Her gut knots. Beatrice steps back.

‘Do you give in?'

No, Beatrice will never give in. She twists away and hurries back indoors.

Chairs are positioned in a circle. Sukey angles to join in the fun and has to be frozen out. Mr Anwyl explains the rules. No touching the feather; keep it in the air at all times. Once the feather touches you, you're out, starting … now.

John Crisp leaps up and puffs for all he's worth, whisking the feather out of reach of all players and chasing it round the room; he is sternly disqualified and ordered out of the circle. Players may lean. Like this. Mr Anwyl leans over Rose and sends the feather twirling up: Rose shoots Mr Crisp a look that says: You're an inferior article, you booby, and I'm only putting up with you until someone better comes along, so there.

‘What about “Poor Pussy”?'

The chairs are pushed back. The pastor of Fighelbourn Baptist Chapel falls on his knees within the ring, raises his paws and meows. Uproar. He slinks round the circle, glancing up at each young lady with predatory eyes. Rose Peck places her hand on his springy brown hair and buries it in his curls. Pussy smiles and snarls and pads on. As Will angles his furry head sidelong at Beatrice, querying, tantalising, she has a sense of someone … over there, looking on, repelled.

The parlour door stands ajar: Beatrice rises. There's no one outside. She turns, leans on the door and views the scene through Papa's eyes. What have I let into my father's house? Behind Papa looms the man Papa intended – destined – for her. Mr Ritter, who so possessed her childhood as to deprive her of it; who fashioned her like a clay pot. She views the young folk – and Beatrice's no longer quite young self – romping like hectic children behind their parents' backs. The pastor of Fighelbourn crawls on hands and knees mewing ‘Poor Pussy!' to gales of laughter.

Lily is down. Down where she belongs, the cat. Down in her bestiality, not too strong a word, it's in us all, the fangs and the claws and the heat that call the tom to the molly. They rub up against you in oestrus, they lick their genitals, yowl for days on end, they present their rears and spray out malodorous fluid. That's how they are, they are beasts, they cannot help it. He made them so and blessed them.

But we are the tarnished children of the Redeemer; immortal souls immersed in carnal slime. Beatrice is ashamed, and crimson. And the fact is that, if Miss Pentecost so much as clapped her hands, they'd all have to disperse: she holds the authority. Then what does she do but rush back into the delirium? Harmless pleasure is not forbidden, after all.

*

Anna frees her hair from its coils and lets it flop into waves all down her back. She shudders her nightgown on, uses the chamber pot, creeps into bed. Lying listlessly, she listens in to the muffled hilarity downstairs. She sips wine and teaspoonfuls of the jelly Mrs Quarles sent round. As long as Mrs Q does not send her husband, everyone is happy. The pain gradually abates, allowing her to think of Lore. Her dear face, scarred as it was by
variola
,
held such an expression of benign intelligence that
you thought of her as handsome. Well, Beatrice didn't, but I did. And this despite some spinal deformity that was also the result of smallpox. It thrust her head forward, giving Lore a questing look. Had she lived into old age, she'd have been a hunchback.