Fludd: A Novel (20 page)
Authors: Hilary Mantel
Because in the work of transformation, there are conditions of success. The art requires the whole man; and besides the alembics and retorts, the furnace and the charcoal, there must be knowledge and faith, gentle speech and good works. And then when all of these are brought together, there must be one further thing, guarantor of all the rest: there must be silence.
Fludd looked around the room, attracted the attention of the waiter, signalled that they were ready for their next course. The waiter brought other plates, and then a little spirit-burner, which he set up on their table. He whipped his white napkin around in an ostentatious way and flipped it over his arm; he seemed to be
looking around, out of the corner of his eye, to see whether his colleagues were observing him.
looking around, out of the corner of his eye, to see whether his colleagues were observing him.
Then some meat came along, in a sauce, and Roisin O’Halloran watched the waiter put it over the spirit-burner to warm it up for them; then he poured something over it. A moment later he set fire to the whole lot. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment for him. It was something even Sister Anthony had never managed. On the stove, yes, often: not at the very table.
But Fludd didn’t seem to mind. He looked at her steadily from behind the blaze. She supposed the meat would still be edible, and she would try to get through it: to please him.
At that moment when the blue flame leapt up between them, illuminating the starched white cloth and his dark face, tears sprang into her eyes. This is all very well, she thought, while it lasts, but it won’t last, will it, because even Hell comes to an end, and even Heaven. “Champagne,” Fludd said to the waiter. “Come on man, look lively, didn’t I order champagne?”
When she woke next morning, and the bed was empty, she cried a little; in fright and panic, like a sleepy child in a strange room. It did not surprise her that she had slept so soundly that she had not heard him go; it had been a willed, furious sleep, the kind of sleep that perhaps felons have the night before they are hanged.
She got out of bed stiffly and, naked, groped about on the dressing table. Sunlight crept around the edges of the heavy curtains. She looked about the room; she was casting around for something, but she hardly knew what.
But very soon, she found what she was looking for. Her eye fell on a paper. He had left her a letter, it seemed.
The eiderdown had fallen to the floor. Roisin O’Halloran pulled a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She did not want to draw back the curtains; she switched on the lamp.
Then she took up the paper. She unfolded it. His writing was
strange, black, cramped, old-fashioned, like a secret script. The letter was brief.
strange, black, cramped, old-fashioned, like a secret script. The letter was brief.
The gold is yours. You will find it in the drawer.
Not a word, not a word of love. Perhaps, she thought, he does not love in the ordinary way. God loves us, after all; He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.
She sat down on the bed with the piece of paper, holding it in both hands, as if it were some State Proclamation. She twisted her bare foot on the carpet, right and left, left and right. It was a slip of the pen, she thought, when he put “gold.”
Presently she got up, laying the note down on the pillow. She pulled open the top drawer of the tallboy, where his things had been. Now the drawer was almost empty.
But he had left her the railwayman’s kerchief, which he had torn from the fence pole as he crossed the allotments on his way to the station. “I left them something of my own,” he had said. “I did not wish to go from the parish having made no mark.”
She picked the kerchief up, shook it out. She held it to her face. It smelled of peat and of coal fires, of fog and hen-houses, of the whole year past. She folded it up and laid it on the tallboy’s polished top.
Apart from the kerchief there was nothing but a drawstring bag of grubby calico; the sort of bag the children kept their marbles in, but a good deal larger. She picked it up and felt it; it was bulky and heavy. She pulled at its mouth and stretched it open. Inside, banknotes.
Jesus, she thought, has he done some robbery? Is it spirit-money, or would they take it in the shops? She took the first sheaf out onto her lap and held it as if she were weighing it. It looked real enough. It seemed that those little sixpences that he had put into his handkerchief had multiplied. There were notes of a denomination she had never seen before.
Roisin O’Halloran emptied the bag. She turned the bundles
about in her hands and riffled their edges. She did not know how much cash there might be. It would be a body’s work to count it. She felt sure that it would be enough for anything that she might want to buy.
about in her hands and riffled their edges. She did not know how much cash there might be. It would be a body’s work to count it. She felt sure that it would be enough for anything that she might want to buy.
So. She sat for a while, thinking about it. She wanted him back, yes; she imagined the hours, days, months, years, when her heart was going to ache. But leaving that aside, did she not feel remarkably consoled? After all, she would not be going begging to a farmer now. She would not be knocking on some convent door. Nobody would have to take her in and give her charity; not while this lasted, and with her frugal habits she thought it would last a great while. By the time this money runs out, she thought, I shall be somewhere else, somebody else; life will have its second chance with me.
And why indeed should it ever run out, was her next thought. This was no ordinary coin or common gold. This money is like love, she thought at once. Once you have some, once it has come into being, it can go on multiplying, each part dividing itself, doubling and doubling like the cells of an embryo.
She glanced down at her paper wedding ring. I could get a real one, she said to herself. Her spirits rose. She picked up a wad of notes and pressed it to her cheek. And they say it’s the root of all evil. Well, Protestants say that. Catholics know better.
She replaced the money, bit by bit, each sheaf nestling against its fellow; then she drew up the string and put the whole carefully into the bottom of her Gladstone bag. Then she took the letter from the pillow and folded it, and put that in too. It was quite clear, if anyone should challenge her; the gold is yours, it said.
She stood at the washbasin and watched hot water gush from the taps; she took her flannel and wetted it and squeezed it, and washed herself all over with scented soap and then let the water out, and refilled the basin, and washed herself again with water that was clear and almost cold. People live like this, she thought. Every morning they can get up and do this if they want.
She dressed herself. There was only the costume to put on. She had become used to it. After all, she thought, there are more important things to worry you than what other people think.
She made the bed; then she sat down on it and cried for five minutes. She timed it by the clock; she felt it was as much as she should be allowed. Because she had known he would leave her; she did not imagine it could have been different.
When her five minutes were up she went to the washbasin for a last time, ran a corner of the flannel under the cold tap, and bathed her eyes. She straightened up and looked at herself in the mirror. She tied on her checked headscarf; public opinion might not matter, but she told herself that it would be a pity if she were taken up and sent to an asylum. Then she drew back the curtains. A great wave of sunlight poured into the room and washed over the wardrobe and the tallboy and the newly made bed. She stepped back and looked at it in astonishment.
Then, timidly, she quit the room and crept down the corridor; past the large windows curtained with grease and soot, and then with greying net, with crimson velvet drapes restrained by gold ropes and tassels, like a cardinal’s hat in a coat of arms. She descended the wide stone staircase and approached the mahogany altar, behind which the personage stood and gave her a civil greeting. She offered to settle the bill: to which the personage, much surprised, said that the doctor had already done that. Where was the doctor, he wanted to know? Already left, she said.
Oh, I see, then we’d better have you out of here right away,
Mrs.
Fludd, the man said. She noticed that his manner had changed and become markedly less civil; but she simply said, mildly, that she was leaving at once, did he not see that she had her bag? Oh you could have called a porter,
Madam,
the personage said, you wouldn’t want to strain yourself: and when she had handed him the key and was crossing the slippery expanse of the foyer, that waste of marble like an iced lake, she heard him say to some colleague of his, well, would
you credit it, Tommy, I thought I could spot one a mile off, I’ve never seen such a bloody strange-looking tart in twenty years in the hotel trade.
Mrs.
Fludd, the man said. She noticed that his manner had changed and become markedly less civil; but she simply said, mildly, that she was leaving at once, did he not see that she had her bag? Oh you could have called a porter,
Madam,
the personage said, you wouldn’t want to strain yourself: and when she had handed him the key and was crossing the slippery expanse of the foyer, that waste of marble like an iced lake, she heard him say to some colleague of his, well, would
you credit it, Tommy, I thought I could spot one a mile off, I’ve never seen such a bloody strange-looking tart in twenty years in the hotel trade.
It was one of those days, rare in the north of England, when a pale sun picks out every black twig of a winter tree; when a ground-frost forms a gilded haze over the pavements; and great buildings, the temples of commerce, shimmer as if their walls were made of air and smoke. Then the city casts off its grim arctic character, and its denizens their sourness and thrift; the grace of affability dawns on their meagre features, as if the pale sun had warmth in it, and power to kindle hearts. Then office workers long to hear Mozart, and eat Viennese pastries, and drink coffee scented with figs. Cleaning women hum behind their mops, and click their stout heels like flamenco dancers. Canaletto pauses on Blackfriars Bridge to take a perspective; gondoliers ply their trade on the Manchester Ship Canal.
Roisin O’Halloran hurried to the station. She passed under the great advertisers’ hoardings that wound their way up London Road, and if anyone noticed her blue serge suit and her black plimsolls, they took them as part of the novelty of the day. Her eyes stung and her cheeks burned; but it was an exhilarating cold, and everything about her—the gilded pavements, the faces of Mancunians, the coloured pictures above her head—seemed to her to have been freshly created—made overnight, manufactured by some new and ingenious process that left them clean and hard-edged and resplendent, faces immaculate, hoardings immaculate, pavements without a stain. I could go anywhere, she thought. Back to Ireland. On a boat. If I liked. Or not.
When she entered London Road Station, its clamorous darkness full of smoke and steam, its railway noises breaking like waves against the roof, she put her bag down carefully, between her feet, and looked up at the destination boards. Then she picked one out.
Father Angwin woke late; Miss Dempsey brought him tea in bed, the first time in all their years together that she had ever done such a thing. The Children of Mary would be scandalized, she thought, if they knew I was in a priest’s bedroom while the priest was in his bed. Perhaps I would be drummed out, and disgraced for ever.
Anyway, it would prepare him to face what the day must bring: questions, circumventions, realizations. The time will come, she thought, when we will look back on what has occurred and account it an Age of Miracles. She touched the spot where her wart used to be; these last two days, whenever she passed a looking-glass-and she had plans to hang many more—she would pause, and gaze at herself, and smile.
Meanwhile there were the police to be dealt with. At nine o’clock the Chief Constable came in person. He was a modern policeman, fresh-faced and cold-eyed, and he liked nothing better than to tear around the county in his big black car.
You are familiar, no doubt, with Sebastiano del Piombo’s huge painting
The Raising of Lazarus
, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges, and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people—presumably the neighbours—cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. His graveclothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously, and seem to confer; what he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly censorious. Here—in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud—one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman—Mary, or maybe Martha—is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched: so many rounds down, five to go.
The Raising of Lazarus
, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges, and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people—presumably the neighbours—cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. His graveclothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously, and seem to confer; what he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly censorious. Here—in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud—one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman—Mary, or maybe Martha—is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched: so many rounds down, five to go.
The Church in this story bears some but not much resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church in the real world,
c
. 1956. The village of Fetherhoughton is not to be found on a map.
c
. 1956. The village of Fetherhoughton is not to be found on a map.
The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar, and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical.
Every Day Is Mother’s Day
Vacant Possession
A Place of Greater Safety
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
A Change of Climate
An Experiment in Love
The Giant, O’Brien
Vacant Possession
A Place of Greater Safety
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
A Change of Climate
An Experiment in Love
The Giant, O’Brien
In paintings, there are various guises in which angels come to make their annunciation. Some have bird-bones and tiny feet, and wings that shimmer like a kingfisher’s back. Others, with delicate, crimped gold hair, have the demure expression of music-mistresses. Some angels appear more masculine. Their feet, huge and simian, dig into the marble pavements. Their wings have the wet solidity of large marine animals.
There is a painting, a Virgin and Child, by Ambrosio Bergognone. The woman has a silvery pallor; her child is plump and well-doing, the kind of baby, ready to walk if it were not so idle, that makes your arms ache. She supports him with one hand; his feet are set upon a deep green cloth.
On either side of her is an open window, giving out on to a dusty street. Life goes on; in the distance is a bell-tower. Approaching, a figure carries a basket. Walking away from us are two other figures, absorbed in conversation, and following them closely is a small white dog with a plumed tail. The infant plays with a string of rosary beads: coral, perhaps.
An open book is propped before the woman. She is reading the
First Psalm, with its message of utter reassurance: “For the Lord knoweth the ways of the just; and the ways of the wicked shall perish.”
First Psalm, with its message of utter reassurance: “For the Lord knoweth the ways of the just; and the ways of the wicked shall perish.”
The Virgin’s expression, at first sight, seems unfathomably sad. It is only on closer observation that one notices the near-smirk on her dimpled mouth, and the expression of satisfaction in her long, duncoloured eyes.
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