Rustication (26 page)

Up here absolute silence. I stare out and the window is black like the back of a looking-glass. If I cover the candle with my hand a weirdly distorted face appears on the pane: my own. I could fancy that the rest of the world has died mysteriously and there is nobody on the planet except myself in this ancient house sinking into the marsh.

· · ·

Rotten fruit from a rotting tree
. I am the fruit. Father the tree. Why are they saying those things?

· · ·

I have been cruel and stupid and yet I believe she forgives me. There was that moment during Evensong when she turned and gazed straight at me. She was saying:
Come to me
. She needs me. I should have gone to her by now. She must be wondering why I have not come.

½ past 11 o’clock.

I do not understand why she spoke to me like that.

At the door I knew the maid-servant was disobeying her mistress’s orders so I pushed past her but she clung onto me and screamed. That dwarfish man-servant came hurrying from the back of the house and seized me. Hearing our voices Mrs Paytress came down the stairs. For some reason she asked me to leave her house. I said I had to speak to her alone. I had something urgent that was for her ears only. She indicated that I should go into the drawing-room and told the man to wait at the door. We stood just inside the room. I tried to tell her how sorry I was for the things I had thought about her and I told her I had been deceived into believing lies and I saw in her face that she was upset to think that I had mistrusted her. I said:
I must have been insane to have given any credence to that rumour about your man-servant. And even though everyone thinks it, I was mad to have believed that allegation about the earl
.

For some reason she failed to understand me. Or she pretended not to. She said:
You are being very impertinent
.

I said I would die to defend her honour. I was ready to go anywhere with her at any time of the day or night. We could go now, this very minute. She moved towards the door. I stood in her way and said I felt about her as I knew she did about me. I don’t remember the things I went on to tell her for I found myself speaking without choosing to do so and without thinking of what the consequences might be or even knowing what I was going to say until I heard the words. I don’t recall what I said but I know my language was passionate and heart-felt.

She put her hand on the door-handle and when I moved to prevent her leaving she asked me to stand aside. I did so and she went into the hall and told the man-servant to make sure I left the house immediately.

There is only one explanation: She has been told wicked lies about me. She has been made to believe that I am the person responsible for those letters!

Who has turned her against me? Who has poisoned her mind with lies about me? It must be Lucy and her damned parents.

4 o’clock in the morning.

I have just seven shillings and three ha’pence. Half a crown should be enough. If it’s just cash she wants, that suits me very well.

A ¼ past 5 o’clock.

Went to her room. Showed her the half-crown. She nodded and tried to snatch it. I said:
When I’ve had what I want
.

She said:
You can’t come into me for that. It ain’t enough to be worth the risk
.

Like the other time she got me to straddle her and she pulled up her own nightshift.

She started stroking me and touching herself and she put her hand on mine and directed me to where to place it in order to pleasure her.

After a minute or two she began breathing heavily. Then she said:
You can come in but you shan’t spend in me, sir. Do you promise?

I nodded. I thought this was the moment and started to try to insert myself.

She said:
Not yet
. She put her hand on my neck and brought my head down so that I could nuzzle at her nipple. Then she grabbed one of my hands and placed it over her most private part and started rubbing. I continued that motion. Now she began to gasp.

She shoved my hand away and began to frig herself, greedily slurping shamelessly in front of me. There was the smell of her sweat and other uncleanlinesses. She was panting for breath as fiercely as if she had been running and now she clutched me almost roughly and at last she pulled me into her.

I stayed hard and I thrust but I didn’t feel any pleasure. She was gasping and crying out. Screaming as if I were murdering her. I was afraid she would wake the house. I spent suddenly and joylessly.

Ω

She nudged me away and vigorously rubbed at herself with her head thrown back and then gasped and moaned and cried out and shook and then fell back against the pillow.

We lay in silence for a while. Then in a heavy, sleepy voice she said:
I didn’t ought to have let you do that. What if I’m caught again?

It was her fault. She had pushed me into her. I hadn’t even enjoyed it. She had become carried away by her own gross appetites. Gorged on pleasure she drifted into sleep, slumbering like some piglet at the sow’s teat.

Was that what it was supposed to be like? I had derived no gratification from it.

After a while she started shaking and crying in her sleep. A few minutes later she woke herself up with her movements and I said:
What were you dreaming about?

She said:
I dreamed I was back at my dad’s
.

You mean home?

She said:
No, my dad’s. This is my home. All the home I’ve ever known
.

I asked her why she did not think of her father’s house as her home.

She looked at me in amazement and said:
I got took away on account of what they was doing to me there, my dad and my brothers
.

They slept with you!
I exclaimed.

Bless you
, she said.
I dunno about sleeping but they fucked me from as soon as I can remember. They stopped when I got old enough to get into trouble. But my dad was drunk one night and he did it again and I got caught. That was when the parish found out and took me in
.

And the baby?

Didn’t have it. Died when I was four months gone
.

I had been deceived. I had taken her for an innocent girl and now I found she had committed incest. I felt I had done something wicked. I had allowed myself to be contaminated by impurity.

She must have seen the disgust on my face. She looked at me in alarm and then made the strangest remark:
We can’t help what our dads do. None of us
.

What do you mean?
I asked.

She looked frightened and refused to say any more.

What can she possibly have been hinting at? Has she heard some story about Father?

I stood up and began to leave the room. At the door I remembered something and said:
You haven’t asked for the money
.

She said:
I don’t care about it
.

I threw the coin onto the bed.

I was disgusted. She wasn’t doing it for the money. She had come to like it so much that she was allowing me to do it for nothing. It was her own pleasure she was thinking of rather than mine! And she had acquired the taste for it by the most degraded and unnatural means.

Because I was distracted, I walked past Mother and Effie’s rooms instead of taking the back stairs. At the end of the passage, I looked back and there seemed to be a figure at Effie’s door—though it might have been a shadow.

Memorandum:
OPENING
BAL
:
7s. 1½d
.
EXP
: To B:
2s. 6d
.
FINAL
BAL
:
4s. 7½d
.

6 o’clock.

No time to sleep since I have to set off for Thurchester. Mother has given me three shillings for it.

Monday 4
^th
of January, after midnight.

∑

When I saw that loathsome creature I wanted to smite him to the ground and spit on him. I understand now why Mother and Effie hate him. He dragged my father down into the mire with him. And it was I who first brought him to our house.

The town was like a dark pit, a miasma of foulness, streets strewn with ashes. The uncleanliness. I feel contaminated merely by having been there.

When I grappled with my tormentor in the mist and we wrestled thigh to thigh, I was fighting not a man but a demon. He was delivered into my hands for me to punish according to his deserts. The rushing of the waters sounded in my ears and I wish I had had the strength to hurl him into the racing torrent.

Tuesday 5
^th
of January, 7 o’clock.

I
’ve slept for a few hours. I must write down everything that happened yesterday while it is vivid in my memory.

I left the house long before it was light. Just beyond Stratton Peverel I was passed by a carriage going very fast. It was hard to tell but I thought it looked like Mrs Paytress’s landau.

Reached Thurchester late in the morning. Went first to The George and Dragon and booked rooms for the night of the ball. Then I went to a livery-stable nearby and ordered a post-chaise.

Then to Boddington’s office. Gave my name. Cocky little pen-pushing clerk went into the inner sanctum and came back and told me with a saucy grin that the old man was out. Sure he was lying and Boddington was cowering behind his desk. Hiding from me like a frightened rat squatting in its filthy drain.

Looked at the posting-box in front of the post-office. It’s the only one in the county. But who is putting the letters in there on behalf of the old trout? She certainly can’t be getting into town every few days any more than she can be sneaking around the fields at night with a knife and pot of paint.

After a quick dinner in a tavern I made my way to Trinity Square and found Mulberry House: a big cheerless old place that looks as if nobody has lived there for years, with tall, blind windows that have bars on the top floor that give it the air of a prison.

I walked up the hill to look at the earl’s townhouse on Castle Parade. The street is built only on one side and Burgoyne House is the largest of the houses and slightly at an angle to the others so that it looks out over the town with an arrogant squint. Its back is on Hill Street. I walked down that street and I was sure I had identified the house where the cur lodges: It has a torch-snuffer above the entrance in the form of a boar’s head—the Burgoyne crest. It should be a boor!

The Dolphin is up a dark alley off Angel Street. I had to find out why Davenant Burgoyne mentioned it when he spoke of Father. I went into the taproom and at the bar the landlord looked at me in surprise and then smiled and asked:
Are you here to meet someone?

I should have told him to mind his business but I blurted out:
That’s what I’m hoping
.

He said:
I’m sure that can be arranged
.

While he was speaking he was pulling a pint of ale and he now handed it to me. When I made to pay he shook his head and said:
Take a seat, young fellow
.

I picked up a newspaper and positioned myself on a bench by the door.

After about fifteen minutes a boy came in. He was about fourteen. I had a feeling I recognised him. I think he is in the Cathedral choir. He didn’t go up to the bar but the landlord nodded him over to a seat by the chimney.

A few minutes later a man entered. He looked at the landlord who turned his head briefly towards the fireplace. The newcomer did the same and then nodded and went to the back of the taproom and passed through a door. After a few minutes the boy got up and went through the door at the back.

I understood everything. All the hints and half-confirmations I had heard. I was about to leave when the street-door opened and Bartlemew came in. I raised the newspaper to hide my face.

I looked at him around the corner of the paper. That wide thin mouth with the slippery smile. Those bright guileless-seeming eyes that miss nothing. He was far from a dunce at school but he is not interested in anything abstract, anything not of immediate use to himself. He is cunning, crafty, manipulative, intuitive—all the characteristics that make someone successful, if that’s the appropriate term, at exploiting other people. There is not a thoughtful, introspective, altruistic bone in his body. I wonder what turned him into such a creature, an abject slug that feeds off other’s weaknesses without a trace of self-respect. The only honesty in him is that he knows you can see what he is, and yet even so he manages to surprise you by further betrayals.

I was paralysed as I sat there. I wanted to hurt him. It horrified me to realise how strong the desire was to inflict pain on him. He had done so much harm to us. And yet it was my fault. Mother was right about that. It was I who introduced him into the family circle last summer. He had been poverty-stricken then but now he was prosperously dressed in a good surcoat and jacket while an expensive watch hung from his fob-chain. I knew precisely where the money had come from to buy him his finery.

I was afraid that at any moment the landlord would point me out to him. But after a whispered conversation, he went out through the back-door. I decided it was cowardly to do nothing and that I would challenge him when he returned.

I went up to the bar and ordered a double measure of brandy. The man waved away my money but I insisted on paying for it and for the ale and that seemed to make him angry.

I drank it quickly and demanded another. This time the man made no attempt to stop me paying. When I went back for a third brandy he must have seen how enraged I was for he said:
I don’t want trouble here. I’m not serving you no more
.

I said:
Damn your eyes for a low sneaking rogue
.

He gestured at the door with his thumb. I walked out. I had forgotten my resolution to wait for Bartlemew but my head was spinning by now and I wasn’t thinking clearly. A thick mist had formed while I was in the public-house and I was lost for a while and wandered blindly, not caring where my feet were taking me.