34

II

The Vicar broke off from his speech to frown and tug at his ebullient mutton-chops, before resuming his impassioned tirade:

‘Imagine yourself in the Garden of Eden! Imagine the moist fruit hanging from the branch, the seduction of the forked hiss in your ear, advising you to taste its succulence – can it be said that it is possible to resist such temptation, day after day? Nay, I say it is! As Ecclesiastes reminds us, “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”. Eve’s decision cannot be deemed purely one of inevitability – nay, it was her choice to pluck the licentious bloom, to sink her teeth into its flesh, to gain awareness of her nudity, and may I surmise that she no doubt found its taste was bitter with consequence. Thus, like all sinners, she made the assumption that she knew best, forgetting that it is God who knows best, that we should choose to surrender our will to his commandments, and choose to become the blank page for his dictation …’

The parishioners clasped their hymn books as though they anchored them to the earth, or tugged their shawls more tightly around their shoulders, and mouthed a silent prayer; no doubt even the bats in the cloisters were wrapping their wings about their ears. I was confused by their foolishness. If God was dictating our lives, as the Vicar 35had so often expounded in his sermons, then we could be happy, safe in the knowledge that He was looking after us. The thought was so reassuring that I began to feel bored, and an urge came over me to shuffle my feet. I peered down at my hand. Move, I instructed my forefinger. It disobeyed and then, as though with a will of its own, it shuddered. What power made it still or lively? Was I the God of my own body? Or had He written down all of humanity’s actions in a very large book and on some page, maybe page 32,989,122,000, it was written that Thomas shall move his finger? I glanced once more at the lady sitting by Eleanor and wondered if God had been in an especially good mood when he made her; Nanny, meanwhile, had obviously been composed from bile after the consumption of some particularly indigestible food.

‘For those brave men who have fought in the Crimea, their fate is in God’s hands. Only He and He alone decides the hour of our death …’

I was startled to observe a blur in Nanny’s eyes that she quickly dabbed away. Father had said that she had a sweetheart whom she wrote to, who was fighting at the front; when I remarked that he was probably glad to escape her, he chided me for being unkind and I felt quite meek.

The service over, the congregation trailed outside, lingering to converse and gossip. How gratefully did I breathe in the air, chirpy with birdsong and sugared with summer delights. I observed that my father was quite engrossed in chatting with his friend, Mr. Gwent. Eleanor waved at me and I sidled over to her. The beautiful woman stood beside her, and I was quite shocked, as I noticed her plain clothing, to realise that she was Eleanor’s governess. When she 36flashed a smile down at me, I was unable to speak, and as for perusing her – well, a glance that lasted more than a few seconds became unbearable. Perceiving this, Eleanor laughed and her governess gave her a firm look; not the caustic type that I had become accustomed to from Nanny, but one that contained affection, like a pinch on the waist or a tickle under one’s armpit.

‘Come,’ said Eleanor. ‘Let me show you something.’

I wanted to linger near her governess, but she smiled and encouraged us: ‘Do explore. Enjoy yourselves!’

I replied with a knowing glance, asserting that we were the adults and that I was engaging in this theatre only to humour Eleanor, before following the latter to a large grave:

in loving memory of
william fever berril
born on 17 november 1796
who entered into rest
1 september 1856

‘Look!’ Eleanor touched the stone. ‘This man lived until he was sixty! So very old!’

I knew that the correct return was, ‘Well, he is now at peace in Heaven’; words which had been spoken a hundred times to Father and me, often with so little feeling that I wanted to spit and roar. Instead, I turned to Eleanor and solemnly replied with, ‘I suspect he is now in Hell, his feet being devoured by rats.’

She looked aghast and giggled. Everything that I did and said felt as though I were parading on a stage beneath a 37spotlight, gazed at by an audience of a thousand chestnut-haired governesses. But when I glanced over at her, she was with my father, addressing him with that deferential air that he inspired in all.

‘We may be visiting her grave soon,’ Eleanor said in a cold voice.

‘Your governess has scarlet fever?’ I asked fearfully.

‘Oh no.’ Eleanor picked up a piece of briar, touching its thorns with the tips of her nails. ‘She is quite mad. Mother says that Rachel hears voices.’

‘Rachel? Is that her name?’

‘Did you not hear me? She hears voices.’

‘She seems kind enough to me,’ I remarked. ‘She looks like an angel. God will surely cure her.’

Eleanor pressed the briar against my skin so that I cried out.

‘She will soon be in an asylum,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘And you can send her love letters there, if you like her so much!’

That night, as I lay in bed and gazed through the gap in my curtains, up to a slit of starry sky, I mused on a telegram I wished to send to God. It would enquire as to why Mother, aged twenty-eight, had died of tuberculosis when she was such a kind woman, while other, cruel and unpleasant folk lived until they were sixty. In church we had been assured that everything was fair and just, yet it seemed to me as though God, having laid down a set of rules for writing our lives, had decided to disregard his own plan. 38

If I was always agitated after our trips to the graveyard, my father often had a softer look in his eyes. On our journey home, he gazed up at the billows of wandering clouds, pointing out stratocumulus and other formations, as well as species of birds such as honey buzzards and magpies, for he was as well acquainted with the landscape of the sky as with the creatures that flew in it, and was beginning to inspire in me a love for our feathered friends.

During my first year at Eton, I had missed my father very much, and written him frequent letters. When we had travelled back to school for Hilary term, he had bade me farewell with a stern countenance, pressing a letter into my hand. The instructions therein had advised that I should refrain from ever touching my member with the intention of extracting idle pleasure from it, for such an act was degenerative and poor marks in my studies would ensue. It had concluded with the words: ‘We will never speak of this letter or acknowledge its existence.’ When I arrived home for the summer holidays, I blushed in his presence, but his face remained set; he behaved as though he had never dipped his pen into the inkwell and committed such words to paper.

Lying there, my hand twitched in temptation for one brief moment, but a triptych of correction loomed above me, formed of the Hurdy-Gurdy Man, Father and Nanny. I wished that I could take leeches for lust, that they might be applied to my mind and suck out the sins therein.

Nay, it was more than lust. I was in love with Rachel. When I thought of Eleanor presently, she was like a wildflower from a meadow set next to the rarest species of orchid. I felt sad at the thought that my love might be 39God’s creation, an emotion that did not really belong to me – that I might just as easily have fallen for a chambermaid. Yet when I recalled Rachel’s beauty, I felt determined that this love was mine. Like my father with his experiments, my heart had combined a medley of chemicals to form a frothing, beautiful feeling; one that contained colours beyond the rainbow’s spectrum.

I fixed my eyes on one of the more prominent stars visible through my bedroom window. Its beauty intensified the amorous joy in my heart, such that an energy seemed to fire through me. When it happened, I was quite stunned – the sudden drop of gold, a star falling to earth as though unable to disobey my command; I pictured it lying in some field, leaving its echo burning in the night sky. Quickly, I pulled my covers over my head, suddenly afeared by my power, and ardent to tell myself that it was just a coincidence.