An Instance of the Fingerpost (82 page)

‘In that case He is no God of mine,’ she said, with a sneer of contempt. ‘I hate Him, as He must hate me and all of His creation.’

I stood up. ‘I think this has gone far enough,’ I said, appalled at what she was saying and alarmed that someone downstairs might overhear. ‘I will not have this sort of talk in my house. Remember who you are, girl.’

Thus earning from her a scornful look of contempt, the first time I had so totally and instantly lost her affections. I felt it deeply,
being distressed at her blasphemy but even then more pained by my loss.

‘Oh, Mr Wood, I am just beginning to know,’ she said and walked straight out, not even doing me the honour of slamming the door. I, my good humour gone and strangely unable to recover my concentration, spent the rest of the afternoon on my knees, praying desperately for relief.

The loyal celebration that evening was everything that good Royalists could have hoped for: town and university vied with each other to be the more zealously loyal. Starting with my habitual friends (I had by that time made the acquaintance of Lower and his circle), we drank our fill of wine at the fountain in Carfax, ate beef at Christ Church, then proceeded to more wine and delicacies at Merton. It was a delightful occasion, or should have been; but Sarah’s mood had affected me, and taken away my joy. There was dancing, which I merely watched; singing, where I was without song; speech-making and toast-giving, where I kept my silence. Food for all, and myself without appetite. How could anyone not be happy on a day like this? Above all someone like me, who had hoped for His Majesty’s return for so long? I did not understand myself, was desolate, and not good company.

‘What is it, old friend?’ asked Lower, pounding me merrily on the back as he came back breathless from a dance, already slightly the worse for drink. I pointed at a thin-faced man, dead drunk in the gutter, saliva dripping down his chin.

‘See,’ I said. ‘Do you remember? For fifteen years one of the elect, persecuting loyalty and applauding fanaticism. And now look. One of the king’s most devoted subjects.’

‘And soon to be thrown out of his places as he deserves. Allow him a bit of oblivion for his troubles.’

‘You think? I don’t. Some people always survive. He is one.’

‘Oh, you are an old misery, Wood,’ Lower said with a great grin. ‘This is the greatest day in history, and you are all sour-faced and glum. Come, have another drink and forget about it. Or someone might think you a secret Anabaptist.’

And so I did, and another, and another. Eventually Lower and the others wandered off, and I couldn’t be bothered chasing after them; their simple (to my mind) good humour and careless pleasure made me melancholy to tears. I wandered back to Carfax, which was a fateful thing to do. For as I got there, and helped myself all alone to another cup of wine, I heard a cackle of laughter from a side street; normal enough that evening, except this time there was that slight but unmistakable edge of menace which is difficult to describe and impossible to miss. Made curious by the sound, I peered down the alley and saw a group of young oafs gathered in a semi-circle against a wall. They were laughing and shouting, and I half-expected to find in the centre of the crowd some charlatan or raree man whose wares and tricks had failed to please. But instead it was Sarah, her hair astray, her eyes wild, her back against the wall, and they were taunting her mercilessly. Harlot, they said. Traitor’s bastard. Witch’s daughter.

Bit by bit they were working themselves up, taking a little step further each time, edging towards the point when words ceased and assault began. She saw me, and our eyes met, but there was no entreaty in her; rather she bore it all herself, almost not seeming to notice the foul words hurled at her. Almost as though she wasn’t listening and did not care. She might not want help, but I knew she needed it, and knew no one but myself would lift a finger for her. I worked my way through the crowd, put my arm around her and pulled her out and back towards the main street, so quickly the mob hardly had time to react.

Fortunately it was not far; they did not like the theft of their entertainment and my status as scholar and historian would have served me little had the spot been any more isolated. But there were people drunk, but still civilised, only a few yards away, and I managed to get us close enough to safety before the insults erupted into actual violence. Then I pulled her through the cheerful, good-humoured celebrations until, seeing their prey lost, the mob dissolved and went in search of other sport. I was breathing hard, and the fright and the drink made me slow to recover my wits. I’m afraid that physical danger is not something to which I am used; I emerged more shaken than Sarah.

She did not thank me, but just looked at me, with what seemed
like resignation, or perhaps sadness. Then she shrugged and walked away. I followed; she walked faster, and so did I. I thought she was walking home, but at the end of Butcher’s Row she turned and cut across the fields behind the Castle, walking ever faster with myself now maddened by my beating heart, swirling head and confusion.

It was in the place called Paradise Fields, once the most beautiful of orchards and now fallen into a sad and infertile neglect, where she stopped and turned round. As I came up to her, she was laughing but with tears coming down her cheeks. I reached out for her, and she clutched hold of me as though hanging on to the only thing left in the entire world.

And, like Adam, in Paradise I sinned.

Why me? I don’t know. I had nothing to offer her, not money nor marriage, and she knew that. Perhaps I was gentler than others; perhaps I comforted her; perhaps she needed some warmth. I do not deceive myself that it was much more, but nor do I lower myself now to think that it was any less: perhaps no virgin, she was no harlot either. Prestcott lied cruelly there; she was virtue itself and he was no gentleman to say otherwise. Afterwards, when her tears had stopped, she got up, straightened her clothes and walked slowly off. This time I did not follow. The following day, she cleaned my mother’s kitchen as though nothing had happened.

And I? Was that the Lord’s answer to my entreaties? Was I sated and satisfied, the demons exorcised from my soul? No; my fever was stoked up even further, so that I could hardly bear to see her for fear that my trembling and pallor would give me away. I kept to my room, and alternated between sinful thoughts and atonement through prayer. By the time she came up to my room a few days later I must have looked like a ghost, and I heard the familiar steps coming up the stairs with a mixture of terror and joy such as I have never experienced before or since. And so, of course, I was rude to her, and she played the servant with me, each settling into our roles like actors in a play, but all the time willing the other to say something.

Or at least I did; I do not know about her. I told her to tidy up
better; she obeyed. I instructed her to lay a fire; she dutifully and without a word did as she was told. I told her to go away and leave me in peace; she picked up her bucket of water, and opened the door.

‘Come back here,’ I said and she did that too. But I had nothing else to say to her. Or, rather, I had so much. So I went to embrace her, and she allowed me; standing upright and still, enduring a punishment.

‘Please, sit down,’ I said, letting her go, and again she obeyed me.

‘You ask me to stay, and to sit down,’ she began when I said nothing. ‘Do you have something to say to me?’

‘I love you,’ I said in a rush. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You do not. How can you?’

‘But two days ago . . . Was that not something? Are you so coarse that it meant nothing to you?’

‘Something, yes. But what would you have me do? Wilt in the despair of love? Become your woman twice a week, instead of cleaning? And you? Are you going to offer me your hand? Of course not. So what is there to be done or said?’

It was her practicality which maddened me; I wanted her to suffer as much as I, to rail against the unkindness of fate that so separated us, yet her robust common sense did not allow that.

‘So what are you? You have had so many men that one more has no effect on you?’

‘Many? Perhaps so, if that is what you want to think. But not as you mean; only ever for affection’s sake, when I was given the choice.’

I hated her for that frankness; had I taken her virtue, and had she been weeping with remorse at her fall in value I would have understood and comforted her; I knew the words for that because I had read them somewhere. But to regard her loss as of so little moment, and to discover that it had not been given to me but to someone else was more than I could endure. Later, although I could never condone something so obviously in contradiction to God’s word, I accepted it, as much as possible, for she was her own law. However much she might obey my orders, she would never be obedient.

‘Anthony,’ she said gently, seeing my distress, ‘you are a good man, I think, and you try to be Christian. But I know what you have been doing. You see me as a fitting recipient of your charity. You want me
to be good, and virtuous, at the same time that you want to roll with me in Paradise Fields before you go off and marry a woman with as much of an estate as you can find. Then you will convert me into a harlot who tempted you to sin while you were in drink, if that makes your prayers easier and gives your soul comfort.’

‘You think that of me?’

‘I do. You manage easily enough when you are talking to me about your work. Then your eyes light up and you forget what I am, in your pleasure at talking. Then you treat me honestly, without foolishness or awkwardness. Only one person has ever done this before.’

‘And he was?’

‘My father. And I have just learned that he is dead.’

I felt a wave of compassion for her as I heard her words, and saw the sadness in her eyes; it was something I understood well, as I had lost my own father when I was scarcely ten, and I knew well how painful it is to be brushed by such grief. I felt even more sad when she told me the details, for she was told (cruelly and falsely, it now seems) that her father had been killed when going back to his old habits of disobedience and trouble-making.

The details were unclear, and likely to remain so; the army was never punctilious about giving details to the families in such cases. But it seemed then that Ned Blundy’s agitations had finally become too much: he was arrested, given a military trial, and hanged forthwith, the body cast into an unmarked grave. The courage of his last moments, which Thurloe knew of, and Wallis discovered, was concealed from the family even though they would have taken great solace in it. Even worse, neither Sarah nor her mother were told where he rested, and did not even discover for some months that it had happened.

I sent her home to be with her mother, and told my own that she was not well. She appreciated the kindness, I think, but presented herself again the next morning, and never mentioned the matter again. Her mourning and grief she kept entirely within her and only I, who knew her better than most, caught the occasional glimpse of a distant sadness in her eyes as she worked.

Thus my love for the girl had its birth, and my misery should be talked of no more. I still waited eagerly for her twice a week so that I could talk to her and, for a while, she went with me on occasion to Paradise Fields. No one ever knew of this, and my discretion was not because I was ashamed to consort with her; it was too precious to be the occasion of laughter in a tavern. I know how other people consider me; the ridicule of my fellows, even those I have helped, is a cross I have borne all my life. Cola, in his manuscript, repeats the remarks of Locke and even Lower, both of whom were pleasant to my face and whom I still count almost as friends. Prestcott took my help and laughed behind my back, Wallis did the same. I would not tarnish my affections with the scorn of others, and my regard for that girl would certainly have excited great ridicule.