63

VI

If the reader is wondering what on earth became of Mr. Gwent, having conducted such a stunt, then behold this account: we were able to find ourselves accommodation in Carshalton that evening, after waking up an innkeeper and his truculent wife. The following morning, we journeyed back to Oxford, Mr. Gwent chuckling to himself as he turned the pages of the newspaper, for on the front page was the headline stolen!, accompanied by a picture of the hot air balloon suspended above the city. Drama and retribution soon followed our arrival back in Oxford, however. I heard the servants gossiping about the news first and then Father confirmed it over our lunch of mutton: the constabulary had presented themselves at Mr. Gwent’s house and arrested him. Father said he was still uncertain as to why this injustice had occurred, and I quickly busied myself with my mutton, declaring that Mr. Gwent had been a well-behaved guardian in London, for after we had wept heavily over the drowning scene in The Colleen Bawn, he had sent me to bed early.

Every newspaper soon carried the story of his balloon adventure, and all painted him as a dashing, heroic eccentric. The Times declared him the ‘chevalier of the skies’, while the Telegraph argued that all authors would be hastening to mimic his innovative methods of advertising. 64Every bookshop sold out of The Perilous Mr. Petticoat and his publishers, John Murray, hastily and frantically arranged its reprinting, and then another, and another. Indeed, its sales were now surpassing that of Great Expectations. Mr. Gwent, locked away in his cell, heard the clamour of crowds outside Gatehouse Prison, calling for his release so that he might sign their copies of his ‘masterpiece’. When Queen Victoria announced that she was reading certain passages from it to Albert at night in bed, Mr. Gwent was released with an official royal pardon, and found his mantelpiece filled with invitations to every dinner party in the country.

While I was vivified by all this amusement, I ached to see Rachel again, to apologise for my distant manner to her following our beach excursion. However, when I asked to pay a visit to the Carmichaels, I was informed that Eleanor was sick and no visitors were permitted.

How long would it take her to recover, I wondered, and would I even have a chance to see her governess before I left? I would be returning to Eton in less than three weeks. I do believe that my mind was so coloured and blinkered by the revival of my love that I failed to attribute much meaning to the curious events that were occurring in the city. There were no more sudden flurries of snow; but the governess of Miss Fairchurch, a grim and discontented woman, was found in a bedchamber, reduced to no more than a severed leg surrounded by a layer of ash, and the room smelling foully of burning flesh. When I heard from my father that she had suffered from spontaneous human combustion, I am ashamed to admit that I fell into a fit of laughter, for it seemed like an ailment that Mr. Gwent 65might invent for one of his novels. The Vicar’s Sunday sermon warned us that it was a sign of devilry in our midst and thereafter I became anxious every time I felt any sort of heat in my body.

The day after the sermon, I took a stroll down to the churchyard, distressed to see how quickly the grass and brambles had writhed their way across my mother’s stone, obscuring the carving. There, stumbling across the sunny hillocks of the graveyard – the mounds formed as though those restless souls had punched up the earth and grass – I chanced upon Rachel. Thrusting my hands in my pockets, I edged towards her. Her expression was drawn, her eyes hollows of sadness, but when she saw me they lit up.

‘My dear Thomas!’ she cried. ‘I am glad to see you fit and well, for poor Eleanor is still in quarantine.’

Her tone was yellowy with a forced brightness, and I desired that she might forget social customs and confide in me. I stated in a solemn tone that Divine Will had led us both to be present in the same place at the same time and that to ignore it, to fail to seize it, was to induce it to become lazy in creating such marvels and find more willing subjects. In short, I requested that we sit on the grass so that I might make a confession.

Under the cool green of the hawthorn we sat, Rachel bisecting a dandelion stem with her thumb so that its juices glinted on her nails.

‘I – I love you,’ I confessed. The words were huge inside me, but as I spoke them they seemed as light as a thrush 66hopping between branches. ‘I love you!’ I attempted to add gravitas by increasing the volume of my voice.

‘Shush, Thomas,’ Rachel whispered, looking around furtively.

‘I love you,’ I whispered. This tone seemed more fitting, as though the words became concentrated in their quietness. ‘Oh Rachel, I do love you.’

She reached out to touch my cheek with her fingertips. I flung her hand away.

‘I know you think I am just a silly boy, but I am more than that!’ I cried.

‘Oh Thomas, I can see that,’ she replied. ‘There have been times when you have seemed like a man beyond your years. But we have to accept reality. I am ten years older than you, and I am only a governess. By the time you are fit for marriage, I shall be a grey-haired spinster with prissy habits and an over-fondness for escaping into novels, while you will be a man in your prime. Your father will want you to marry a beautiful young woman.’

‘I can persuade Father!’ I reached into my pocket and extracted a dog-eared roll of paper with trembling fingers. ‘Look, I have written down why we must be together. Father says that Mr. Darwin did this when he was debating whether to marry his wife, Emma. If I can prove to my father that sound scientific logic supports my desire, then in a few years’ time, when I am of marrying age, we can be together.’

My gaze was fierce on her as she perused the list. In the ‘Pros’ column, I had written ‘fiery beauty, bizarre mind, energy like a thunderstorm’. Father had said that Darwin’s list had included virtues such as ‘constant companion 67(& friend in old age)’ and ‘better than a dog anyhow’. The ‘Cons’ column of my list was a blank.

I saw the liquid in her eyes as she let out a small laugh. She folded up the list into a square the size of an insect. I was afeared that she would give it back to me, but when she tucked it into the pocket of her skirts, I was filled with hope; I seized her hand and gently traced the pattern of lines, as delicate as the veins of a leaf. Slowly, she raised her eyes to meet mine; they seemed to be offering permission. Yet now that I was on the brink of such exquisite fulfilment, I became paralysed. The heat that burnt inside me was not a pure flame, for it felt familiar, coloured dirty by the song of the Hurdy-Gurdy Man. The clouds passed over the sun, rendering the graveyard overcast, so that the church behind us acquired a portentous air. A crow swooped and stared at us, as though an agent of the Vicar’s.

Rachel leant forwards, furrowed my hair roughly with her fingers and kissed me. I was shocked by the fluttering that sullied her breathing, for I had expected desire to be something I would gradually unpeel, petal by petal, coaxing it into a bloom. I was about to push her away and demand to know if she had ever kissed anyone else, when physical sensation overwhelmed this scatter of thought. We lay down among the graves in sweet pleasure, nervously glancing about for strangers, and then laughed and kissed and then kissed again; an insect flew on to my nose and she blew it away with a gusty breath, and we laughed and I asked if I might speak, but she silenced me with another kiss, and I was aware of the pleasant tickle of grass beneath my skull, and the hot blue of the sky above us, and still we kissed. It was intoxicating, to go on and on 68like this, to sink into a state where speech was no longer possible, where emotions had become shades of colour, impulses an intuitive blur.

A voice, deep and hoarse, announced: And so Thomas kissed Rachel and they burnt with a fiery, illicit passion. I broke off in a fit of horror. The voice had sounded akin to the Vicar’s, only more sly in tone. Yet there was nobody to be seen; I thought the culprit must be hiding behind a gravestone, or perhaps the trunk of an oak tree a few feet away.

‘What’s the matter?’ Rachel asked, caressing my cheek.

‘Did you not hear it? It seemed—’ I broke off, for once more the voice sounded, this time speaking with a grandeur and authority: Thomas began to search in vain for the source of the mysterious voice.

‘Can you not hear it?’ I rose to my feet. ‘There is a man, speaking. He seems to be watching us, narrating our every move!’

‘I heard nothing,’ Rachel insisted.

Rising to my feet, I paced around the graveyard, searching for the source, but it only confirmed my suspicion: we were alone. I turned back to Rachel in dismay.

‘What have you done to me?’ I said. ‘I have caught your madness. Now tell me how I shall be cured!’

Rachel fixed me with a look of the bitterest disappointment. She reached into her pocket and unfolded the sheet of paper I had penned for her, passing it back to me. I nodded stiffly, then turned and hurried away without bidding her goodbye.

69I ran through the streets as though pursued by crows, terrified of being pecked by the voice again. Back home in our garden, I sat on the wall and listened to the soft murmur of the clucking chickens and the distant sound of rolling carriages, but my heart still felt like a wound-up spring; I expected the voice to return. The anticipation was so great that to have heard the voice would have been something of a relief. I turned to my neglected church, and brushed away a few leaves. It was still only as high as my knee. In a fit of anger I kicked at it savagely. As the stones collapsed in a cacophony my father appeared.

When he asked what the matter was, I wept. My father’s lips trembled and I wished I could have laughed with him, for it felt so painful to conceal my terrible truth. He lectured me to stop my tears and be a man.

‘But I am worried, Father,’ I cried. ‘What if I have caught Eleanor’s illness? She has caught the illness of hearing voices from her governess, has she not?’

‘Not at all,’ my father returned, surprised. ‘Eleanor has a simple case of measles. As for her governess, she has inherited her mother’s affliction.’

‘Her mother?’ I asked, conscious that Rachel had never mentioned her to me.

‘She resides in Hanwell asylum, in London. She has neurasthenia, which means she can suffer from terrible fits of hysteria.’ Father touched my cheek softly. ‘Rachel will follow in her footsteps and be committed to the Oxford asylum a week today. Mrs. Carmichael is due to sign a lunacy certificate any day now. Do not be sad, Thomas, for they will seek to make her well again.’