Rustication

  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 4th 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 5th 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.

  Suddenly I found myself outside Boddington’s office. I don’t know how long I lingered, leaning against a doorpost nearby.

  He came out at last and I stood in his way and spoke his name. He looked green when he saw me. I said: I have to speak to you. You can’t keep hiding behind your clerk. He smiled—smiled!—and said he had no idea what I meant and he had heard I had called while he was out and it would suit him better if I could come back another day. I said I was sure it would but it suited me to see him now and he said Very well and turned and led me upstairs. There was nobody in the house but the two of us. We went into his office. The fire had been smothered and the room was cold.

  He started asking about the health of my mother and sister and I could see that he was making every effort to disarm me. I told him bluntly that I wanted to talk about my mother’s affairs. How was it that everything had vanished: the furniture, the investments, the pension? He said in his lawyerly fashion that without my mother’s permission he could tell me only what was publicly known: That my father’s estate had been declared bankrupt on the motion of his creditors, of whom the principal one was the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral. All his assets had been seized.

  I said I could not understand how everything could have gone and I wanted to see full accounts. Instead of becoming indignant as an honest man surely would have, he smiled and told me he would have a copy posted to my mother the very next day and it would be for her to show it to me if she chose to.

  Then he starting trotting out homilies about how he knew how hard it was to be my age—how could he remember that far back! He talked of his own son Tobias and compared him with me: Tobias had lost his mother just as I had my father. How dare he make any comparison between us! Tobias is a bousy wastrel and good-for-nothing.

  I was not going to let him off so lightly. I told him I wanted to know about the Chancery suit that he had sold. Why had he obtained so little for it?

  He gave the same answer: Only your mother can tell you about it.

  I said: It was your fault. You encouraged her to make her doomed claim. You just wanted her to run up expenses and fatten your fees.

  He didn’t like that. He flushed and said: We will discuss it no longer. With those words he rose and unceremoniously ushered me out to the stairs.

  When we reached the front-door I passed into the street without a farewell.

  The fog had thickened and it was now dark and I had great difficulty finding my way even though I know the streets so well. I followed the rising ground since I knew where it would lead me. As I went up and up my footsteps rang on the rounded cobbles that were wet and slippery with dew. Somehow I found myself near the Castle. The town lay at my feet but I could see nothing but a wall of grey mist.

  I decided to go down Hill Street. By now I could make progress only by feeling my way along the walls or scraping my foot along the kerbstone to find the edge of the pavement. Like a blind man I used my hands and followed the railings and as I descended the street I became aware that there were footsteps behind me. I could not tell how close. When I stopped they seemed to stop. The person was tagging me, was staying behind me and not passing me. I became sure he meant harm to me. I turned and called out Ho there!

  Silence. I continued and I came to an entrance with steps where the railings rose into an arch. I reached up. I felt the snuffer—that damned boar’s head.

  I waited there. I could detect nothing above the hiss and tumble of the water passing under the bridge at the bottom of the street.

  I don’t know how much time had passed—a couple of minutes, half an hour—when I heard the footsteps again—at least, they seemed the same. I called out and there was no response but I saw a movement and assumed the man was attacking me and I hit out where I believed him to be but my fist struck empty air.

  A sound came from another direction and I ran at it and I hit someone or something with my shoulder. It seemed harder than a body should have been. The pain made me mad with rage. I heard steps some yards away and rushed at the source of the sound and this time I encountered a person—we buffeted into each other striking shoulder to shoulder—and I swung my fist and it met something and there was a choked exclamation.

  I was sure it was my enemy and I gripped him and hel
d onto him by the coat and hit him again and then again though we were so close that my blows were ineffectual. I thrust him from me intending to aim my fist at him but he vanished into the mist. I heard a sound of metal hitting stone and I thought he had dropped a knife or a gun. I was determined to stand my ground and I remained listening for at least three or four minutes. There was nothing. I wondered if he were crouching a few yards from me waiting for me to go. Or to turn my back and then he would retrieve the weapon and strike at me or shoot. There was complete silence. Nothing but the rustling of the water.

  After a while I began to walk slowly and quietly towards the High Street. I was sure there were footsteps behind me. Someone was following me once again. Every time I stopped, he stopped. Whenever I looked round, he halted and pressed himself into the shadows. I joined the crowded streets in the centre and wove my way through the throng and must have thrown him off.

  I passed through the town. Once I was away from those streets and out in the hollow of the valley, the mist thinned and I was able to quicken my pace.

  I don’t regret it. I hope I hurt him. It is an outrage that he walks the same earth as I, that I have to breathe air polluted by him. Such creatures should not live: He was born to wealth and privilege and he has thrown aside the obligations that went with them and squanders his money on gambling and whoring.

  Yet it is not his wickedness that disturbs me. Nor even the vile pandaring of Bartlemew. What shocks me is to learn of something evil in one who has been so near to me all my life. My father was always secretive. Now I’m starting to uncover his nakedness. I understand now why the Precentor made such efforts to keep him from the choristers. Has everyone in the diocese known these things about my father but I? Is that why Mother and Effie and I have been shunned or have received pitying looks or at best been patronised by those kind enough to overlook the sins of the father? And once the Precentor had closed the door to him, Bartlemew’s role was to introduce him to The Dolphin and supply him with fresh meat from the Choir.