SUSSEX, ENGLAND
I
Three times in her life Mrs Eliza Finn had cause to consider that she had made some more than usually severe error of judgement in the upbringing of a boy whom she had raised as her own, he who now walked about the world as Jacob Berry.
The first was when he was ten years old and had been returned from school along with a letter which suggested that it would be best for all concerned if he did not return (a situation which was eventually resolved only by the liberal application of both diplomacy and money). The second occurred five years later, not long after the death of her husband, Mr Thaddeus Berry, and her introduction of the boy to the man (Mr Walter Finn) whom she intended to take the place of the recently deceased around the matrimonial table. On this occasion, the juvenile had disappeared for two days and a night, returning home in a state of extreme sullenness, refusing to admit where he had been, looking as though he had engaged in fisticuffs and bearing upon his sleeves and collars a sequence of troubling discolorations. The third time was this very morning, in the small village church where Eliza had long worshipped, when, at a tender recitation of the nativity of the Christ-child, he had barked out a laugh so sardonic and so blasphemous that his adopted mother would, had it been uttered by any other than he, have considered him to be unequivocally of the Devil’s party.
“Jacob!” She spoke sharply but under her breath, so as not to draw attention to the pair of them from the other worshippers (of whom there were many, this service being still, in spite of the godlessness of the age, the most well-attended of the year). “You cannot make such noises.”
“Forgive me,” murmured her son, though in truth he looked very far indeed from penitence. “It’s just the sight of all this… mummery. Hypocrites everywhere.”
“Hush!” She glared and Jacob fell silent.
She was about to suggest that he was not too old to be put across her knee but something in his eyes – some new, unfamiliar intensity – made her hold her tongue. You’ve changed, she thought later as she knelt beside him as they prayed together at the end of the service and gave thanks for the miracle of which the day was a commemoration.
But what has changed you? And to what end?
II
After they had returned home from church, the remainder of the Christmas morning was passed in silence or else in vague, elusive chit-chat. Mrs Finn had a good deal of work to do in the kitchen in order to prepare the luncheon while her adopted son, though he offered his assistance, spent much of the time stalking through the sparse little rooms of the cottage or standing outside in that small patch of garden which Eliza had, in the long years of her second widowhood, worked at and nurtured until, in defiance of the unpromising clay of the ground, it had become a respectable, well-tended plot. Even today, overcast and chill, it looked orderly and patient, the neat rows of flowerbeds waiting for the rebirth of spring.
Not that Jacob saw any of this. Mrs Finn caught sight of him through the window, pacing with apparent nervousness up and down and then stopping, as though caught by a sudden thought.
He seemed to be muttering to himself. Once, when she was checking the progress of the roasting goose, she thought she heard her son laugh again, a high wild noise which didn’t sound much like him at all.
As they sat down to their food (which, although prepared by Mrs Finn herself had all been bought and paid for by Jacob), Eliza was surprised to find him on theatrically cheerful form, smiling, complimentary and attentive.
“I’m so sorry about this morning,” he said once their plates were laden high, just after he had taken his seat and, at his own instigation, said grace with a careful, earnest eloquence.
“It’s not for me to forgive,” said Mrs Finn, sniffing, although of course she had already done so. “It’s for the Lord to give you absolution.”
“Well, He does have a reputation for mercy,” said Jacob, slicing happily into the hot gooseflesh and adding to his forkful a hunk of roast potato.
Mrs Finn gave him a hard, old-fashioned look. Yet Jacob grinned back, just as he so often had as a little boy, and her heart was melted just as easily.
“Let’s not quarrel,” he said. “Not today on all days. And not when I’ve come so very far to see you.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” Eliza said, somehow contriving to make a compliment sound accusatory. “Don’t think I don’t. You coming all this way to see your old mum and being so kind and generous to her.”
“Oh… well…” Berry spread wide his hands, in an indication of magnanimity. This, thought Mrs Finn, was not a gesture which she could recall her son ever having made before. “It really is my pleasure.”
The mood between them leavened now. A thaw was well under way. Mrs Finn even found herself able to remark, a fork halfway towards her mouth, the gravy dripping back onto her plate, “And so very good of your employer to give you these days of leave.”
Jacob seemed almost to flinch at the mention of the man who was, in a sense, the founder of the feast. “Yes, yes,” he said but he would not meet his mother’s gaze. “Mr Vaughan was very insistent that I take some time… away.” He paused and, his lips twisted in indignation, withdrew a piece of gristle from his mouth and placed it daintily before him. “He was very insistent about the significance of the season.”
“He sounds a most Christian gentleman.”
At this, Jacob all but snarled. “He’s not that but at least he’s no hypocrite. He’s never hidden what he is or claimed to be a better man.”
Mrs Finn wondered. It was as though, for an instant, someone else entirely was sitting at the table, a person she had suspected before but only ever glimpsed. A shadow version of her son. All she could say was: “Jacob?”
But the storm had passed again and, with palpable effort, her boy was smiling once more and carving at his food. “Please. You should ignore me. I’m very tired, that’s all. The stress of my work. The responsibilities…” He seemed to have to force himself to look his mother in the eye. “Let us talk of other things. Let’s speak not of London matters. Tell me of village things. And, perhaps, after lunch we should take a walk together? As we used to do?”
“Of course,” said Mrs Finn, bending once again over her luncheon. “I’d like that very much.” But she watched him now with an emotion which she had not felt with such intensity since he had been a boy; she watched him, fearful for his very safety.
III
Later, just as he had promised, the two of them went for a walk, through the English village and out onto the Downs beyond. They had left their departure too late and had lingered too long over luncheon with the result that the light was already beginning to dim by the time that they set foot outside. Nonetheless, it was pleasant enough at first, at least before the day soured irretrievably.
In the village itself, the couple passed several acquaintances and they were able to nod politely and call out “Merry Christmas!” together with various seasonal platitudes. In such moments, it felt to Mrs Finn almost as though nothing was awry, that the dark clouds above them did not exist.
When they passed out of the village and onto the Downs (usually so picturesque but today somehow glowering), Mrs Finn’s son seemed once again to retreat into himself, turning grim-faced and monosyllabic. He had not been like this for years; often, in fact, to her circle of friends, Mrs Finn had spoken of his natural charm and easy way with people. Why, only last month she had remarked to the postmistress that her boy had “such a quality of happiness. Folks is drawn to him. They put their trust in him and they tell him their secrets.”
This description did not seem in that darkening afternoon to hold water at all, as this morose man stalked ahead of her, at one with the lengthening shadows.
Two incidents unsettled them further. The first was when a pheasant, startled by their approach, emerged, squawking, from a bush. Its wings whirred in alarm. Both of them were surprised but Mr Berry, although the creature surely meant him no harm, flung up his hands in front of his face. There was a cringing quality to him which Mrs Finn had never seen before.
Later, as they turned about to come home again, the light now almost entirely gone, Berry let out a cry of revulsion. He had stepped inadvertently in what looked to be a decaying rabbit, torn apart by dogs, and left to moulder on the ground. It was hardly a pretty sight – scraps of fur, a smear of dark blood, a handful of small organs, liberated by the evisceration and abandoned by the corpse – but the countryside provided such scenes, and worse, daily. Yet he squealed, like a child awaking from a nightmare.
Gently, carefully, Mrs Finn touched her son’s arm. “There,” she said. “There’s nothing to fret about. Only a coney, torn asunder.”
“Did it suffer?” Berry asked, his voice a high wavering thing.
“No,” said Mrs Finn. “Leastways not for long. It wouldn’t have known all that much about it.”
Berry breathed out noisily. “That’s good.”
“Let’s get ourselves home,” said Mrs Finn. “Get in front of the fire with a nice hot toddy. You’ve not been yourself, you know. Not at all.”
“I know,” said Mr Berry, “I do know that,” and walked ahead of her again. She knew better than to press him. He was moving too fast in any case for her to catch him. She trailed behind at a distance and, in her mind, she asked for help and intervention.
IV
Back home, in the light and the warm, her son rallied. He was talkative enough as they sat by the fireside and almost too grateful for the toddy that she made him. He seemed to want to speak not of recent events but of the distant past. He talked of his boyhood but in a queer, idealised fashion which surprised her. It was as though he had smoothed away all the elements of his youth which had been less than ideal, as though he had edited his own history to make of it a kind of child’s fable. She let him speak and did not correct his misrememberings.
It was only on his second glass that a few shards of real truth emerged, and these seemed to fall from his lips almost without his realising.
“They’re building something,” he said suddenly, hard on the heels of an odd reminiscence about his schooldays.
“Who is?” Mrs Finn asked. Drowsing under the influence of firelight and drink, she wondered whether she had missed some necessary context. “Who’s building what?”
Her son stared into the flames. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Shouldn’t tell you anyway. More than my life’s worth. Perhaps even yours.”
“Oh, but you’re being dramatic, surely. What could be so bad about a building?”
Her son did not turn to face her but kept his eyes trained upon that which was burning. “It’s not one building,” he said softly. “But many. A city. A city underground.” He reached his right hand up to his forehead and wiped away the considerable amount of perspiration which had accumulated there. “And then… what they mean to do with it. How they’re going to people it. They’re going to just take them. Just scoop them up and steal them away and put them in this new place.” He sighed. “The scale of it, ma… Why, the sheer bloody audacity of it.”
He drifted into silence then and Mrs Finn felt a surge of fresh concern. He had not called her “ma” for many a long year.
“Who is doing all this?” she asked.
“Powerful people. Wealthy people.”
“But why? Why are they doing these things?”
Her son laughed then, a single bark. “Do you know,” he said, “I think that’s the worst of it.”
“Why?” asked Mrs Finn. “The worst of what?”
Her son sighed again. “I’ve said too much. Ask me nothing further. Please, let’s forget we ever had this conversation.”
“But why? I’m not sure I can.”
Her son rose to his feet. “I’ll leave in the morning,” he said. “And then, please, think no more about any of it. Just say to yourself that I was drinking. That I have a wild imagination.”
“Oh my darling,” she said, and her voice was very quiet and kind, filled up with all the complicated love that she had for this man. “I think that’s what worries me the most. For you have no imagination at all. You never had.”
He smiled, bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks for everything, ma.”
Then he turned and left the room and went to bed.
Mrs Finn found that she could not retire just yet, her mind whirling with vague terrors. So she sat up awhile in front of the fire and she prayed again softly, under her breath.
Eventually, weary from the stresses of the day and comfortable in her chair (the same one in which she would die, quietly and without a fuss, fourteen months from now), Mrs Finn descended into an unhappy sleep. In this state, she dreamed unusually vivid dreams of a distant place, one full of sun and hot sand where the screams of the dispossessed could be heard upon the breeze.