The Skull and the Nightingale (15 page)

Horn, Latimer, and I plan to attend a masquerade. This species of entertainment is familiar to them, but will be new to me. I look forward to describing it to you.

I am, &c.

I had several reasons for sending Mr. Gilbert this more sedate letter. As yet I had received no reply to my earlier communications: once again I needed to mark time until I had confirmation that I was writing what he wanted to read. Nor would it do for him to expect bloodshed and maidenheads from every epistle: at that rate I would soon debauch myself into imbecility. To do him justice I suspected that, despite the bias of our recent conversation, he would still prefer our correspondence to be leavened with some little show of urbanity and reflection—as I would myself.

Even this subdued letter had had to be composed with care. Having written a paragraph about the possible usefulness of a camera obscura to an invalid who craved a glimpse of the outside world, I eliminated it, as seeming to offer a metaphor too awkwardly apt to our own contrivances.

I had touched upon my encounter with Mrs. Jennings because it seemed likely that my godfather would in any case learn that I had met her. The truth was that our conversation had been long and frank, and had begun from her recollections of my father. Gaudy in pink silk, she was a droll old creature with a humorous eye.

“I see at a glance,” she said, “that you are the son of Roger Fenwick, once a famous breaker of hearts. Are you not? I was sure of it. You have the same smile, the same dark eyes, the same turn of the head. I must warn you, young man, that if you hint at elopement I shall immediately take you at your word. We can enjoy a life of gaiety, you and I, and my husband will never miss me: he has scarcely heard a word I have said these five years. I once hoped that your father would make me such an offer, but the cruel creature never did.”

When I mentioned my godfather she smiled and tapped my arm with her fan:

“Mr. Gilbert knew my family well at that time, and I met him often. He was a friend of your father, and forever at his elbow, watching and listening as though trying to learn the secrets of charm. To do him justice he was a pretty fellow himself in his thin way, and by all accounts clever; but he was so cautious, so circumspect. His reserve made him dull company: he sought out the ladies, but had nothing to say to them. Imagine a vast bottle of wine with an orifice no bigger than the eye of a needle: you could taste no more than a drip or two of his thoughts and feelings. I expected that such a calculating, close-knit gentleman would find political preferment. Instead he settled for rural life. But who knows—perhaps his talents are more healthily occupied in overseeing an estate and a parish?”

When she asked me for my opinion of him as he now was, I tried to be circumspect, but she listened to my observations with a satirical smile.

“You are loyal, Mr. Fenwick, as you should be,” she said. “I will say only that it is my personal belief that most men who fail to marry go a little mad.”

I further learned from Mrs. Jennings that it is no mere chance that her nephew is employed at Fork Hill:

“I hear from several sources that Mr. Gilbert sees his relatives and friends as constituting a web, with himself at the center. One may apply to him Mr. Pope’s words: ‘The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!/Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’ The living held by my nephew is in Mr. Gilbert’s gift, and you may be sure that he remembered the family connection. He enjoys exercising patronage, and perhaps sometimes withholding it.”

Mrs. Jennings and I viewed my godfather’s life from opposite ends: she had seen the young man and could only surmise the older; I was in the converse position. Having encountered him solely in his own domain, austere and authoritative, I had now been enabled to glance back thirty years or more to see a diffident prig. Was the personality I was familiar with a transformation of that former self or a mere protective shell—or perhaps something of both? At least it had become clearer to me why he might want me to reenact his youth for him in lustier terms.

As regards myself I was reminded again of a deficiency. When Mrs. Jennings spoke of my father and his charm, she plainly, and reasonably, felt that I would be gratified and would wish to hear more about him. I felt no such curiosity. If there was music in that forgotten past, I was deaf to it: I lived in the present.

Chapter 9

O
ne morning I was surprised by a visit from Crocker, who climbed up to my rooms with difficulty, huffing and puffing, his hips pressed against the wall on either side. He emerged from the staircase, as he himself said, like a cork from a bottle. If I had fed him a hearty meal, I fancy he might have been unable to descend.

Subsiding into a settee, he told me that he had called because his spirits were low and he needed distraction. He looked so hugely disconsolate that I could hardly suppress a smile.

“Shall we sing?” I ventured.

He heaved a monstrous sigh, but launched into “The Gentle Doe That Lurks Unseen.” I chimed in, both of us warbling rather sweetly. No sooner were we done than he struck up “The Kitchen Maid.” My ceiling being low, our combining voices fairly shook the windows. We concluded with great vigor:

“You find my ways too easy, sir,

But I care not a fig.

And if my hands are greasy, sir,

I’ll wipe them on your wig—

I’ll wipe them, I’ll wipe them,

I’ll wipe them on your wig.”

The silence that followed made us conscious of the din we had created.

“That was intolerable,” said Crocker. He toppled himself upright. “I must apologize to your landlady.”

He spoke heartily, as though taken with the idea. Seconding his whim, I followed him down the stairs. He found descending them simpler, his method being to press his bulk against the walls for stability and let his feet stumble rapidly from step to step.

When Mrs. Deacon greeted us in her own parlor, Crocker vouchsafed her one of his minimal bows, delivered by the head alone.

“Madam,” he said, “I am here to apologize for the disgraceful noise that has disturbed you. The blame is entirely mine. Feeling melancholy, I began to sing, and Mr. Fenwick joined in to humor me. Please pardon our discourtesy.”

My admirable landlady responded in kind.

“No apology is needed: I enjoyed the performance.”

She and Crocker exchanged a humorous glance that showed them aware of the absurd element in these formal courtesies. I was pleased to see Crocker cheerful again: he had found the diversion he sought. Almost at once he hit on a way of prolonging it.

“I am told that your daughter has an extraordinary talent for the game of chess.”

I had made some such comment in passing, but would not have expected Crocker to remember it. Mrs. Deacon was plainly gratified to hear her daughter praised. After further conversation Charlotte was sent for and introduced to our guest. She was too shy to venture more than a few words, but proved willing to be drawn into a game.

The chessboard was set out on a low table between Crocker, whose haunches filled most of a settee, and Charlotte, whose slender form was perched on a stool. To the eye they were comically mismatched. Mrs. Deacon and I sat side by side watching and exchanging occasional remarks. I found the scene pleasing, partly for its peacefulness, partly because it held four such contrasting individuals in unlikely equilibrium.

Crocker was probably a more skilled player than I, but he fared as badly: a brisk defeat, which took him by surprise, was followed by a longer, more considered game in which he was again the loser. He had tried his best (as he later confirmed to me), but was delighted to be beaten, shaking his head in bewildered admiration for his opponent’s skill. Before leaving the house, he took Mrs. Deacon aside and insisted, despite her protests, that she accept five guineas to be put toward the education of her daughter.

“You have produced a young prodigy, madam,” said he. “I feel honored to be able to offer this small gesture of further encouragement.”

Crocker’s cheerfulness was by now entirely restored. He and my landlady parted on excellent terms, pleased with one another.

“You are fortunate,” he told me. “Female company is a fine thing: it civilizes a man.”

I described this interlude in my journal as an odd fragment of London life agreeable to me but quite outside my godfather’s range of interest.

My dear Richard,

I have read your recent letters with close attention. Your life has become interestingly turbulent. The nocturnal entertainment that you describe would seem to have been the kind of revelry I shunned as a young man. But I was glad of the chance to glimpse it through the window of your narrative. If I had been present Miss Cartwright’s excesses would have put me out of countenance, yet I found pleasure in reading about them. As to the brawl that ended the evening, it may be that a powerful nation needs to tolerate such aggression in its day-to-day doings as a resource it can turn to account in time of war.

Mrs. Jennings I remember well. She was Arabella Thorpe when I knew her in London, a lively coquette admired and courted in fashionable circles. She married Ben Jennings, a bluff soldier, and had several children.

The highwayman, Gardiner, whom you mention, is well known in these parts. He was born in Worcester and commenced his career within the county. Rumor has it that he has left more than one local girl with child.

You have been frank in your communications; let me reciprocate by admitting to a certain envy as I read of your doings. Given that I myself had these desires and capacities, why was it that I could not achieve the satisfactions you have achieved? How mysterious and devious I always found the negotiations needed to bridge the great gap between the social proprieties on the one hand and shared animal nakedness on the other. Where is a young man to learn—where did you yourself learn?—the art of these transactions? Starting from mere conversational exchanges, somehow the deed is brought about, somehow the genitals are brought into conjunction. One day you must explain the transition to me. Those like Miss Cartwright would seem to offer a welcome shortcut through these complications: so much money is to be paid for so much in the way of intimate display. Here, it would appear, is a clean bargain, well understood on all sides. Such performances suggest the nature and the extent of the furtive hungers in our society—I mean among men, for I cannot imagine that a Mr. Cartwright would be in request to reveal his body to an audience of ladies.

To particularize further: I am in some admiration at your conquest of Miss Brindley. She would surely have wanted far more than you were ready to give. Yet there was something sufficiently appealing in your advances to persuade her to accept an arrangement both precarious and temporary. I assume that a decisive element in such a case must be the woman’s gratified awareness that she has excited the desires of an eligible man. But could she be sufficiently inflamed if the man in question behaved with the respect that polite conduct dictates? Somehow animal responses must be signaled from both sides. It seems that, like your father, you have mastered the secret language that resolves this dilemma.

I look forward to hearing more about Miss Brindley. You must let me know whether your desire for her person has been dissipated by that one night of copulation, or whether hot blood and imagination may in time revive it.

In the course of our moonlit conversation, however, you mentioned your interest in a married woman. I would be glad to learn more, since such a pursuit would surely provide a greater challenge, and therefore shed a stronger light on the strange operations of lust.

I remain interested in your unusual friend Mr. Crocker, and would even infer that there might be an improbable element of affinity between him and myself. The eccentric man who has resources without responsibilities is equipped to experiment with life.

I have told you of my interest in the working of the Passions. It has traditionally been argued that a man’s character is defined by the predominance of some single Passion, such as Pride, Avarice, or Ambition. My own belief is that the determining impulse derives from a combination of passions. Thus we see in Shakespeare’s Moor a fatal blending of Pride and Jealousy. It may be that Mr. Crocker is doubly driven—it is to be hoped to less deadly effect—by his love of novelty and a need to be distracted from his physical condition.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

I remain, &c.

This was by far the longest and frankest letter I had ever received from my godfather. I read it repeatedly, anxious to grasp everything that was implied. At first sight I thought it a pitiable production; Mrs. Jennings’s opinions about him were proved to be well founded: it seemed that his habitual correctness was indeed a mask for timidity. Yet here he was, so hungry to glimpse what he had been too hen-hearted to experience, that he was willing to set aside his hard-won dignity and show himself envious and inquisitive. Was it not demeaning to be the partner in prurience of such a man? Yet there was an underlying wistfulness in these admissions. I could almost find it in me to be sorry for the old fellow.

It occurred to me that these disclosures could strengthen my position. After the years of formality my godfather and I were sharing an exchange of confidences. When I next met him, how would he be able to retreat into his distant, authoritative manner? Had he not put himself, at least to some small extent, in
my
power?

Unfortunately it was easy to turn these arguments about. Would he have taken such risks unless he knew me to be inescapably a dependent? All my hopes remained vested in him: he had nothing to fear from me. Nor did I doubt that his remarks concerning the Passions were seriously intended. I had seen ample evidence of his speculative bent. His fastidious mind could readily set aside his own erotic appetites to enable disinterested speculation on the workings of the Passions at large. There could be a clue in his suggestion that such Passions might work in combination. Perhaps in his own case Lust was awkwardly allied with Circumspection, or—as he had shrewdly hinted concerning Crocker—with a growing awareness of his own mortality.