Bedlam (38 page)

“Yes I do,” Mr. Garwood shot back, still staring at me, “but she lives on in my heart. Did you know I greet all royal personages in
my capacity as pillar of fire? But I need to be sure who they are. Would you, in that case, be the sadly missed Princess Caroline?”

“Mr. Garwood,” Haslam interrupted him, “whose idea was the streamers?”

The little man’s attention returned to Haslam. “Mr. Fox’s, I believe, sir.” Now he grew confidential. “I wonder, sir, if you’ve noticed, as they flap away, they snap and tap and whap away, but by God—” twisting his hands—
“is there a reason?”
He moved closer. “You need only say the word, sir. Nothing’s simpler for a pillar of fire—”

“Than what?” Haslam wanted to know. “Ignition? And if Fox should need them for another occasion—?”

“You mean only not this one?”

“Exactly. Where is he?”

“In back. I’m loath to take you through indoors only to burn down the house—”

“You came to us just now from indoors,” Haslam reminded him.

“What,
this?
” Mr. Garwood replied, looking down at himself. “This was nothing. A mad dash—”

Haslam was glancing to the side. “We’ll go round—” he murmured.

“Keep to the path!” Mr. Garwood cried as we left him. “Watch those rose thorns don’t thrash, slash, and gash you!”

The south wall was indeed roses to the eaves. The voices grew steadily louder until the sights and sounds of a sizable gathering of lunatics and their families and friends burst upon us, with everybody so finely dressed and chattering away so animatedly it was difficult to distinguish which were truly mad. It was like a royal garden party, with numbers of poets and painters in attendance,
and every host and guest charmingly insane. White wicker lawn-chairs stood in casual arrangements. Tables were set about containing bouquets and punch bowls and plates piled with delicacies. It was the cheerfullest, sunniest get-together I ever saw, excepting only a Negro John-Canoe Day that Mr. Lewis once took me to in Black River, Jamaica. At Fox’s a string quartet was poking around in their instrument cases with the pasty-faced, dishevelled look universal with musicians who find themselves abroad in daylight.

I was scanning for Jamie. “Where’s my husband?” I called to Haslam, but he was too busy storming ahead with bellows of “Fox!”

Suddenly a snow-haired, flush-faced gentleman wheeled from a confab with a Methodist-looking family, the parents gazing in alarm at their daughter as she spoke with mad force yet was so emaciated she looked ready to clatter to the grass in a heap of bones. “Why, John!” the snow-haired man cried, riveting me with a quick-study glance. “How delightful—”

“Shears and a ladder, Fox!” Haslam barked. “All streamers down forthwith. It was made perfectly clear:
No bloody show!
”

Fox’s surprising response to this outburst was to indicate with one arm the blue sky and the sunny gathering, while the other he folded across his belly in a dramatic bow—which caused the frail girl to emit shrill peals of laughter but Haslam to veer off, ferociously annoyed.

“Where’s Rankin?” he shouted over his shoulder, heading toward double doors standing open at the back of the house. Like a pet on a rope, I followed but soon fell behind, slowing to a halt in a large parlour with the sun warm on my back.

“Rankin!” Haslam continued roaring from deeper inside the
house. At one point he must have descended to the cellar, for several
Rankins
boomed beneath my feet.

I had just turned to go back outside, thinking I had missed Jamie in the crowd, when a familiar voice called from an upper floor, “John! He’s up here! Hanging one of my engravings!”

“Jamie!”
I cried, but as in a dream it came out a piteous mew. I gathered my skirts and raced to a central hall, where Haslam stood gazing upward.
“Tell him to get the deuce down here now!”
he bellowed. I couldn’t see at whom or what. The space was a flood of light. At last, balusters emerged from the glare of a sky-light, bordering galleries on the first and second floors, yet nothing could be seen to break the line of them until a head poked out over the upper one, and whose was it but my dear beloved husband’s and who was he looking straight at but me?

“Mags!” Jamie cried. “You’re back, at last! Where’s Jim? Wait there!”

I glanced at Haslam, who was grimacing at the second floor.
“Rankin!”
he shouted.
“Get the bloody hell down here, now!”

From the sound of it, Jamie was taking the stairs two at a time.
“Please don’t fall,”
I whispered.

“He could,” Haslam said, still looking up. “Sometimes does.
Rankin, goddammit!
”

Now an ancient head showed itself over the top balustrade. “Guv’nor?”

Jamie descended the last flight carrying under his arm an enormous portfolio in mustard-coloured pasteboard, which, the felt slippers he wore causing him to slide on the polish of the second stair, caught on the banister, flipping from his grasp and skidding across the floor, its contents fanning over the polished surface, some piling in a drift against Haslam’s leg—and then Jamie was in my arms.

How insubstantial he felt, how unfleshed.

“Where’s Jim?” he asked again, looking worried, when we separated.

I drew a deep breath, but Mr. Rankin, a tall, taciturn old fellow
with a touch, I would say, of Negro blood in him, was already with us, and Jamie turned to introduce him, even as Haslam stepped up to order Rankin away to fetch shears and a foot-stool. For a moment we all three stood and watched him laboriously go, until Haslam, thinking better of it, hurried after to move him along. Jamie then stooped to begin gathering up his drawings, every one of which, I noticed as I helped him, was architectural: omni imperias asylums and mad palaces. Once he’d tucked all back safe into the portfolio, he drew me into the sunshine of the parlour. There we sat on a brown canvas sofa in a bower of ferns, squeezing hands and drinking each other in.

How like Jim he was! How amazing to see the father again after seven years of seeing him only in the son: the intelligence in the eyes, the stubborn line of the mouth—yet so very old, his hair now grown out pure white. It was like seeing Jim, half a century later. When I tried to say this another way, I sobbed.

“Don’t cry, Mags. Crowther was right. The country air’s done me good. That ulcerous growth in my back has remitted to next to nothing. I as good as thrive here. Fox and I talk every day. I help Mrs. Fox with the domestic arrangements, see to the books, make out the bills, compose the correspondence, and letter everything. I must show you the vegetable garden, which last winter I entirely rethought. Greenhouse cabbages and turnips is next. I’ve reduced our butter consumption by half: too bile-conducing. Also, knowing as I do each of the fourteen other patients and their histories—think of it! only fifteen of us!—Fox invites me along when he shows visitors through. I’m his best advertisement for how we do things here. With a private madhouse, half the work’s fundraising. I do my best to place a positive, forward-thinking cast on
my commentary—Say, Mags! I know! You could work here too! I can put in a word—”

“Jamie, my work is getting you out—”

This pulled him up short. His eyes went to his hands then returned to me. “This is my home, Mags. It’s important work I do here. Everybody here is a citizen.”

“And what am I?”

“The bride of my life and mother to my son. A woman who knows this: Outside it’s the modern age, where every day the truth is buried deeper and legions of honest men and women go mad with delving. What we offer here at London House is sanctuary from the burying and the delving both.” He looked about him then tipped his head closer. “Here’s something else: Haslam’s broke free of The Schoolmaster. Here the gang has no agents and no Air Loom inside a mile. To put it plain, I’ve slipped their clutches. But this could change any time—”

“Jamie—We lost Jim.”

As he stared at me, more sober than stunned, only no longer talking, I recounted the unremarkable, horrific sequence from first scratch to last breath.

He was quiet a moment before he said, “So they made their move—”

“Not the gang, Jamie—”

He nodded. “From what you’ve just told me, Mags, Jim died not three weeks after I first came here. You don’t escape without consequences. The matter is simple: Jim died so I might live. Until now, even I wouldn’t have thought they could be so heartless, but it happens I know their energy has lately been going into the study and spread of infectious diseases—”

Someone was standing so close he was pressing against us.

“William—” Jamie said, not needing to look to know it was Mr. Garwood, “my wife, Margaret.”

The sun coming through the doors made a blazing nimbus of Mr. Garwood’s hair. “The King’s here,” he said. “I greeted him in my capacity as pillar of fire, but he showed no interest.” He turned to me. “Margaret, what’s happened? You look devastated.”

“She is,” Jamie said. “William, pray inform Mr. Fox the King’s arrived.”

As we watched Mr. Garwood pass out the doors to the garden, Jamie said, “Jim was the hero of my dreams, Mags, but that don’t mean I can’t understand it’s a thousand times worse for you. I’m sorry. I never in my worst nightmares dreamed they’d go this far.”

“Jamie, our son died of an infection.”

Grimly knowing, he shook his head. “There are infections, Mags, and infections.” He was reaching for his portfolio. “He wants to see these.”

“Not the King, Jamie. Nobody’s laid eyes on the King in seven years. Even I know that, and I’ve been out of the country that long.”

“Well, it looks like eyes are to be laid on him today,” he replied, stretching one arm long to achieve a grip on the portfolio and taking my hand with his free one. “Come on!”

Mr. Garwood having left the front door standing wide open, it framed an interesting scene. Immediately to the left, just outside the entrance, old Rankin stood at full attention on a foot-stool, gripping a pair of shears, apparently for snipping the streamer wire (which he hadn’t yet done). Farther down the walk a short distance, on the other side, John Haslam stood with his hands clasped behind his back. At the foot of the walk, making his way slowly
through the gate, followed by four men who even at that distance had the look of doctors, the group of them visible against the shining black, gold-trimmed, eight-horse carriage they all must have just climbed out of, was a tall old gentleman leaning on a walking stick. With his long white hair and flowing beard, he might have been King Lear fresh off the heath, except he was outfitted in fine black leather riding boots and a glorious military-style outfit of midnight blue and gold turned up with scarlet, like a Hussar.

“Come,” Jamie whispered. “We’ll sneak up close as we can before he sees us. Once he does, protocol says we can only stand still or back away.”

By the time we took up places as far down the walk as we dared, the King had reached Haslam, who was on the other side of the walk from us, closer to the gate. Though stooped, his Majesty was taller than Haslam and stood very close to him, peering nearsightedly into his face. The doctors had halted several paces behind. Like Haslam’s, their hands were clasped behind their backs. “Don’t we know you, sir?” the King demanded of Haslam in a loud voice.

“John Haslam, your Majesty. Your Majesty may remember I was for some years apothecary to Bethlem Hospital. I now—”

“What? Bethlem? What?
What
?” Abruptly the King turned and walked back to his doctors. Haslam’s eyes followed him. “He says he’s apothecary to Bethlem.”

One of the doctors coughed into his hand and said, “Was, your Majesty. That’s John Haslam.”

“He told me who he is!”
the King shouted, and then looked about him in the silence, seeming quite lost until, spotting Haslam, he headed back to him. “Was it not on your watch, sir, Bethlem at Moorfields grew a stinking Hell-pit?”

“We all did our best, your Majesty, in conditions a consequence of government neglect.”

“What? What?
What?
” The King returned to the doctors. “He says the problem at Moorfields was government neglect.”

This information caused the superior sniffs and lowered lids of fastidious sufferance. Briefly, the King studied these responses before he returned to Haslam with another question. “Ever much call at Moorfields, sir, for strait-waistcoats?”

“No, your Majesty. I never believed in them.”

“What?—
what?
” the King cried. “What, sir, if I told you a strait-waistcoat was the best friend I ever had?”

“Then I would say his Majesty has been in the care of Mr. Willis.”

Here one of the doctors seemed to receive a sharp stab in the arse.

The King too felt the prick. “How now, sir!” he exclaimed with an eye-popping glare. “Is this insolence?”

“I don’t intend it as such, your Majesty.”

“You don’t intend it as such,” the King replied sarcastically, eyeing Haslam darkly a few moments before seeming to forgive, or forget, and waxing conversational once more. “So what’s your opinion, sir, of New Bethlem?”

“An ostentatious blazon of national degradation, your Majesty. More of the same as the old, only by policy and more out of sight.”

“He says New Bethlem’s a blazon of national degradation!” the King shouted over his shoulder to the doctors. “He says it’s more of the same, only more out of sight!” To Haslam he said, “Is this, sir, how you brought universal ruin on yourself? By saying things nobody wants to hear?”

“It was less anything I said, your Majesty, than the need of a parliamentary committee to discover someone to blame.”

“Scape-goated, what?”

“In a word, your Majesty.”

“And not just the one you say over and over to yourself, so you can sleep at night?”

“As to my conscience, your Majesty, there was one patient I might have done more for.”

The King looked grimly at this. “Not Peg Nicholson, I hope. It was my particular instruction she be well cared for.”

At the mention of Peg Nicholson, Haslam’s expression went a little grim too. “No, not her, your Majesty. Though she’d thrive better at the new place if your Majesty paid her the visit she’s been expecting now over thirty years.”

“Good God! It’s high time we visited—” And over his shoulder the King shouted, “Next week, gentleman, New Bethlem! A lunatic has too long awaited an audience with her beloved sovereign!” Returning to Haslam he said in a confidential voice, “And Hadfield—? There was a low creature, sir. He tried to shoot me, you know.”

“An evil business, your Majesty. The man is very mad. But likely to outlive us all.”

“At least he’ll have that,” the King replied before adding, with satisfaction, “and then the flames. And yourself, sir? I suppose they packed you off with a fat pension.”

“No, your Majesty, with nothing.”

“You must be very bitter, sir.”

“Not bitter, your Majesty. But it would have been only fair, when—”

“Fair,” the King said, cutting him off. He returned to his doctors. “He says a pension would have been only fair.”

The doctors’ response to this assertion was noncommittal. “Winthrup!” the King cried at the youngest. “What d’you think? No pension for Haslam. Fair? Not fair? What? What?”

Winthrup cleared his throat. “I think, your Majesty, the Committee made the decision it did based on the evidence before it.”

“That passes for thinking with you, does it, Winthrup? One of you, an opinion! Has this man received justice or has he not?”

But no doctor being willing to venture out on that particular ice, the King swung away in annoyance from them all. Ignoring Haslam, he continued down the walk, followed by the doctors. Fox had by this time taken up a proprietary stance in his doorway, close by Rankin, still at attention on his stool. But it was us next on the royal route, and when the King came even with Jamie, than whom he stood more than a head taller, he leaned down and peered at him very close. “And who are you, sir?”

“James Tilly Matthews, your Majesty.”

“Look at this!” the King called round to the doctors. “The very fellow I’m here to see!” But when he turned back, it was me he peered at. “And who’s this?”

“My wife, Margaret, your Majesty.”

“Is it, now?” and the great florid face swept in so close to mine that to this day I don’t know whether to say it was the noblest or most grotesque I ever saw. I do know the teeth were in good repair, the breath passable, the eyes protuberant in the Hanover way, the nose large, the lips fleshy, and the forehead somewhat receded. But the royal visage was too close, too famous, too insistent with its own abrupt and hectoring energy, for any judgment to be renderable then or now by this cowering witness to it.

“You’re a dear little one,” the King was saying, “aren’t you? Do you stay here at Mr. Fox’s to look after your husband?”

“No, your Majesty. I’ve just come from Jamaica.”

“Jamaica!”
he cried in astonishment. “Truly? So what’s your view? Do we free our slaves or not?”

“I think it must be done, your Majesty.”

“What? What?
Must?
What?—what?”

“Nothing could be more barbaric,” I said in a shaking voice, “than for human beings to buy and sell one another.”

“Not buy and sell, madam,” the King reminded me gravely. “The
trade
is no longer permitted.”

“To own, then.”

“Ah, yes, yes, yes.” He turned away looking disappointed and walked back to his doctors. “She says people should not own one another.” Returning to me, he confided in a lowered voice, “Let me tell you, my dear, why I hate the abolitionists. First, they’re in league with the French, and look what happened there. Second, they spout the vulgarest rhetoric you ever heard outside a military jakes. Third, they once counted among their allies not only my former Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt, a blade-nosed milksop and (though I loved him once) the closest thing to a weasel on two legs, but also the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Fox, who once declared the storming of the Bastille by far the best and greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world and would have sent me to the guillotine if we had one. Like attracts like, and those two together with the abolitionists made the traitor John Wilkes, who would have enjoyed nothing better than to see me skewered on a stake and pecked at by vultures, appear a demigod. Such men are low creatures when you compare our Prime Minister today or his father my good friend of beloved memory Lord
Liverpool, both staunch (by the way) against abolition.” When I replied nothing to this—what could I?—he continued to gaze at me with an inclination of his head, like a man mentally reviewing what he’s just said, before at last returning his attention to Jamie.