His Last Fire (12 page)

He scratches his lice-thick hairiness. Curses. Thinks how to burn off some hair. That's not
cutting
, is it? But how can he do it without setting his head alight?

Feet hurt. He saws the nails with a knife. Powyss won't know: they'll grow again. But they're like horn. Tries forcing a foot up into his mouth but his body is thick and stiff with inactivity. Topples off the chair; lies on the patterned rug bemused. Why move? For what? Until he gets cold.

And when the meal comes creaking down it disgusts him. Pieces of soft fish hidden in thick, winey sauce. Unknown vegetables. Freezing ice-cream. Powyss somewhere above, eating the same. He scrapes it into the traps.

More blank hours. Fear runs across his mind like black beetles. He closes his eyes, dozes. Dreams prompt memory. They thought he was a fool. Are they right? Fifty pound. Fifty pound. He wants someone to tell him he was right to agree.

Mother was always old, working, never still until the end. Had no time for any of them. Hannah is already like her. His father was trampled, crushed by a bolting horse and cart. Then he and the rest scared crows, dug ditches, hauled branches for their keep until old enough to plough.

Only Mary looked at him without loathing or annoyance. With sweetness. His sister Mary. He refuses to think of her end. She, now. She'd tell him what's right.

*

One day he hears sounds above. Close. Realises they've always been there. All the years.
John Warlow 4 7 yers old
. Listens. Moves away from flames cracking in the grate. Listens. Silence for minutes. Someone, he's sure of it. Someone way above, listening. Listening to him listening.

Scraping sound. Then he knows they've gone.

Came from the ceiling. He takes the lamp, chair. Reaches up, feels with big hands, black now from no washing, dried scabs. Planks, beams. Cries out as a splinter jabs into his flesh.

Knot-hole. No. He puts two fingers in it. Feels metal. Sticks a broom handle into it. Way up.

Powyss listens through this hole! He made it to listen. Damned Powyss. Never
said
, did he! Listening all this time! Can he
see
? Is he
watching
him, too? Shove the broomstick in his eye!

Everything changes with this knowledge. Powyss could be listening at any time. So he fills the day with tasks. Clears out the ash, sweeps the hearth, brushes mats, writes in the journal, cleans out the traps, takes the books off the shelf, puts them in a pile, replaces them, opens one, holds the illustrations under the lamp to fathom the story. Raises the organ lid, pumps with his feet, plays a note, another, closes the lid.

Screws a piece of foolscap into a ball, rams it in the hole.

Later he finds it on the ground. Searches through the box of kindling. Finds thin sticks to jam in the hole, but they, too, are on the ground the next day.

Does
Powyss know he knows or doesn't he? He dips the pen:

Mr Powis I no yor lisnin

Sends it up with his soil pot.

No reply.

‘Damn Powyss! Damn! Shut me down here. Yes, I said yes. How did I know? It's prison! For science, he said. What's science? It mean no Freedom. No Freedom for likes of us.'

Remembered phrases bubble like gas.

‘Them as has money does what they likes. Puts people in prison for science. Damn to Powyss! Damn to the government! Damn to the King!'

He paces about, shouting, relieved it all makes sense. Men painting on the market cross ‘Liberty'. And that other word. He, here, is part of the great stirring that began before he came below. The great grumbling that grew in the taverns. Men shooting an effigy of somebody. He hopes Powyss can hear him.

He tires of bawling. But can't stop thinking of Powyss in his fine black velvet coat. Listening through the hole at every moment. Easy smiles. Proud. Of all this! Picks up, flings shovel and tongs down onto the hearth. What he'd do if only he could get upstairs! Give me an axe!

But wait. He's got fire. Can fire the house. Tonight when Powyss has gone to bed, no longer above him. Stuff more paper through the hole. No, strips of linen. He's already ripped a shirt for a length to tie back his hair. Smear them thick with butter. Push all the way up. Light a taper. Blow bellows! It'll soon catch fire, then boards, carpets, furniture.

He knows men do it these days, pull down houses, fire them. He's heard. Bands of men; but he'll do it on his own. Praise in the village. Not the fool they said he was.

Flames, big flames, tall as houses, licking chimneys. He's seen it. Houses that burned in Moreham when he was a boy. Burning ember began it, they said. People and animals jumping out, screaming. Streams of rats and mice. Stood and watched in huddles. People counted. Only the end house when all had burned to nothing. Two bodies in the cellar.

‘Aah. Aah!' Bangs the table with huge fists, head. ‘Ah, how can I do it? Cannot get out. Must get out.' Howls. Overturns table. Glass shatters from pictures hurled. Howls. Ripped books shower their shreds.

‘Pump with your feet!'
Howls. Presses both arms hard on the keyboard: howling crowd of sounds, takes the chair to it, poker to the case, pulls out wood shards with his hands, bloody with cuts, crumples, falls exhausted. Sleeps.

*

Wakes to the creak of the dumb-waiter. A meal descends. Half a roast fowl, bacon, peas. A salad. Redcurrant tart. Pint of porter.

He kicks paths through the debris. From bed to close-stool to dumb-waiter. Most days he lies in bed wrapped in the smell of himself. Cares not for the outside world. Listens to mice back and forth beneath his bed, infernal buzzing of flies. Another summer passes. He is defeated.

Lying on his back in the dark he hears a distant shout above. A high cry. Open window in the house.

Sleeping, waking, there is little difference. Dreaming of Mary. Mary coming towards him arms wide open, calling his name. In the dark after he'd scared crows all day from first light.

Is it morning? He lights the stump. Plates on the table. Congealed lamb's fry. Empty beer jug. His full pot on the dumb-waiter. He'd returned to bed, not rung the bell.

Suddenly he knows he wasn't asleep. Drags the table over, gasping for breath, places the chair on top of it under the hole. Kneels on the seat. Ear to the hole. Nothing. Something blocking. Climbs off. Smashes broom on the flags to break off the head. Climbs up again. Breathless. Pushes it in with another broom beneath to make it go further. Up, up. Something light shifts away. He stops panting. Slides the handles down. Listens.

‘See to it, Stephens.'

‘Yes, sir.'

A door closes. Silence.

He smiles, smiles at the reversal. Laughs.
He
will listen to
Powyss
.

He does it with diligence. No sound for ages. Powyss is solitary. Reads books for hours. He may wait for days. Sits contorted next to the ceiling. Hair sticky with cobweb. Sleeps at night with neck and shoulder aching. Returns to his cramped post each morning.

‘Here we are again, Polly! Which flowers did you look at in the garden on your way here?'

‘Big red daisy flowers, Mr Powyss. I likes them.'

The voices move away down the room. He hears tones not words. Still he listens, immobile. Polly his child. Baptised in remembrance of his sister Mary. Sweet face. His beard is wet with tears.

N
O
A
PPLAUSE

H
ogweed heads stand dry in late September fields; a spring-tide of goosegrass shrivels to crisp cobwebs. On the hot stone terrace cats bask. Prowl half-heartedly. Fitz stretches out, dozes, nose between huge forelegs.

She watches them. Stands at the window watching them and the sky: the subtle shift into a new season; the day's magnificent protest.

Here's Mitchell.

‘Will you take your tea at the little table, your ladyship?'

‘Yes of course I shall. You know perfectly well I shall want to see the sunset, Mitchell.'

Mitchell's as old as me. Looks dreadful, but she will frown so when she speaks. I know exactly what the woman's thinking, but I'm not changing now.

‘Mitchell, when did Mrs Dent say she'd come next? She is supposed to bring me one of those new German songs. For Haydn is dead of course. And Handel a thing of the past.' She sighs.

When it's dusk she'll read. The new gaslight is a wonder. She's kept up with the times. Mrs Dent brings the latest novels.
She, too, looks at me as though to say ‘if only you'd . . .'

Here's Gerald.

‘Lady Gatcombe, the carriage, your ladyship.'

‘Yes, what of it?'

‘It have dropped all to pieces. Will you not come and see with your own eyes, your ladyship?'

‘Dropped to
pieces
? Why would it do that?'

‘It have not been used these twenty year, your ladyship. It is eaten away.'

‘Clear it out then, Gerald. Build a huge fire for the poor children in the village. There
are
still poor children in the village? I'll look out for the blaze from the upstairs drawing room. Col. Corbett can buy fireworks when next he goes to London. That will cheer everyone.'

A small disagreement with a servant is nothing. Servant resentment was a familiar at my birth. And Mrs Dent and Col. Corbett will never say what they think to my face. They live off the dregs of my reputation.

She drums the window frame in mild annoyance. The dog's ears prick up, he looks round. She smiles at him and he sleeps again.

Snubs. Rebuffs. Animals never snub you. Backbite. Vilify.

Fireworks make her think of violent death. Mrs Clitherow and her family in Half-Moon Alley, up all night stuffing paper tubes with fuses and gunpowder for November 5
th
. Burned to death, the whole lot of them, running in and out trying to save each other amid dazzling explosions and showers of brick.

And
that
always reminds her of her first marriage, for she saw the illumination, not yet knowing what it meant, standing outraged at the window of her bedroom. Harriet Sayles, 16, to the Revd. Mr J. Bone, 42. Her impoverished father, Sir Richard Sayles, relieved of the cost of her, her mother relieved of the responsibility, a girl already striking, headstrong, wayward. Mr Bone's furtive authority would keep her from straying, they thought. And he hated music.

Of course I ran away
. And was found bemused in the street by Mrs Clavering on the look-out for new girls for her ‘nunnery'. Powdered, perfumed, fashionably dressed, Mrs Clavering flattered her, smiling through steeliness, bought her clothes, took her several times to Jefferey's jeweller. Discovered and
adored
her singing voice, bought a harpsichord, briefly hired Vercelli, a singing master not attracted to women. The penury of Harriet's childhood was swept away in a month of apparently unrestrained spending.

But she was not malleable. She had shone at her girls' school in Chelsea, reaped incessant praise, expected listeners to attend to her and none else. What her mother took to be waywardness was confidence, determination, stubbornness. Mrs Clavering perceived that the girl had more education than she. Might strike her with a Latin tag. She met her match.

‘I'll be no common harlot!'

‘Why Harriet, no girl in my establishment is a
harlot
. Look at where we are,' she said in an unusually wheedling tone. ‘Jermyn Street, just by St James's. Gentlemen who call here are the greatest in the land. They expect only the highest quality. Not merely are you beautiful. You have a voice they will long to hear.'

‘I am willing to sing.'

‘And make conversation too, Harriet.'

‘By ‘conversation' I mean speaking about poetry and music, Madam. There is to be no bed. My bedroom must be elsewhere.'

‘Then you cannot have a special mattress.'

To Harriet the advantages of this arrangement were considerable. She was fed, clothed and groomed to a standard higher than she'd ever known, surrounded by handsome, expensive if somewhat miscellaneous furniture and paintings. The harpsichord was excellent and tuned daily. She slept alone.

And Mrs Clavering soon saw a return for her investment in Harriet's unorthodox behaviour. Although she was costly in trinkets and gowns she'd required no training, having excellent manners already. Her voice really was exquisite as was her haughtiness, so that Mrs Clavering's reputation rose magnificently in the firmament of the demi-monde. The more refined clients, often the grandest, paid well to listen and be disdained.

To prevent lascivious talk Harriet would on occasion read to them. Poetry, the tedious parts of novels, then, once, found lying under folders of lewd drawings,
The Rights of Man
. She chose passages with which to insult her listeners yet what did they do but revel in the castigation, licking up the words like cats with sly eyes.

‘Oh! To watch those impertinent phrases drop from such lips! Listening to Harriet Sayles read the traitor Paine is better than a good whipping, by
far
,' said Lord M.

The sun has burned down with casual brilliance and she rests with her newly-cut novel brought by assiduous Mrs Dent, cats beside her, dog at her feet. She consumes novels like daily bread. Thus absorbed she can exclude memory.

Sometimes she sings. Late at night when the servants are in bed. For once, trying out her new fortepiano, there was applause outside the door. Her voice is not what it was.

I didn't just sing for the ‘gentlemen'. I sang for myself.
When the novelty of material advantage ceased she looked about her with dismay. She had no friends among the girls who regarded her arrangement as cheating, abhorred her superiority. However much Mrs Clavering claimed that her establishment in Jermyn Street was no different from any house within easy walking distance of the palace, Harriet could hardly help overhearing the evidence of Mrs Clavering's trade: squeals, groans, moans, hoots, roars, snores, running feet, lurching steps, thud of falling bodies.

She sang to drown the sounds around her. The more she heard the more she sang. Of love, death, longing, despair. Of hopeless loss and glorious adoration. She flooded her being with passion and ardour amidst the mêlée of tangling limbs, jangling coins, rattling pill boxes.

There was a fatal flaw in Mrs Clavering's plan: Harriet was never corrupted. She sang all day.
I cannot live alone without my love. My dearest woodlands, farewell. Ice and snow have finally melted. I feel within my heart such pain and sorrow. Lascia ch'io pianga. Figlia mia, non pianger, nò. Lasciate mi morire.

She
was
Ariadne, Eurydice, Dido, Almirena.

And came to realise that the gulf between her sung life of wonderful suffering and the world of Jermyn Street was absurdly great. Somewhere,
surely
she could find love?

‘I wish to leave,' she announced. Soon after, Mrs Clavering presented her with a bill for £1,354, 12 shillings for eighteen months' board, lodging, gowns, kerchiefs, ribbons, hairdressing. A further £500 for jewels or she must return them. Then told her the story of the girl who'd protested, whom she turned onto the street quite naked.

There was only one way to get out.

She'd had many offers, though few of marriage. Lord this, Lord that promised huge yearly allowances, a house in Grosvenor Square, clothes, diamond necklaces, her own carriage and liveried servants, such was their proclaimed Ardour and Passion.

In the end she accepted Gatcombe's offer of marriage. It was by no means the best, but he was a little younger, slightly less odious than the rest. It wasn't love of course. The gulf was not filled. He was certainly an improvement on Revd. Mr Bone (who, meanwhile, had conveniently died) for he liked a good tune, but his interests were not hers and his attention span was small.

There's no stopping memory now.

‘No. Mitchell, I shall go to bed later tonight. I'll ring when I need you.'

She lifts a cat onto her lap, pats the sofa for Fitz to join her which the huge wolfhound does delicately, like a small horse.
Mitchell disapproving again.

Gatcombe's family was old, his money evident enough if not overflowing, but neither was enough to counter obloquy. The marriage was an affront. No one
wanted
to approve of it. Harriet Sayles had been a demi-rep; marriage into one of the country's oldest families could not disguise a past at Mrs Clavering's. Gatcombe was a fool. She couldn't possibly be accepted by the best in society.

She sees herself at a ball approaching a battery of
grandes dames
, formidably coiffured. Fifty-four-gun women of war in formation.
What
did she say her name was? Pray, repeat it, would you? Greetings that barely slip through lips, tones of dismay, breaths sucked in disgust; fingers held out, limp with distaste; eyes sidling; sudden cessations of speech; her name caught muttered behind fans; sniggers, snubs, sneers, men's leers.
Morning Post
. Satires. Smears. Tide of retreating gowns.

He took her to Italy where surely no one would know. In golden Florence the British Envoy received her; in sunny, stinking Naples they barred the doors.

She rings the bell, hastens to bed. Counts out her drops, adds fifteen or twenty more and sleeps.

Next morning, brushing the thin strands, Mitchell says:

‘Lady Gatcombe.'

‘You're going to tell me off – I can hear it in your tone.'
See how she frowns at the back of my head. Look at my face now. Surely Harriet Sayles still glares with the same old fire?

‘No, my lady, certainly not. It's the Colonel. He has confided in me.'

‘Goodness, Mitchell! Really?'

Mitchell knows her mistress is difficult in the morning.

‘He has asked that you inspect his new spinet.'

Mitchell and Harriet Gatcombe see more of each other than most married couples. Mitchell's loyalty is faultless, her guile not at all.

‘He told me there could be no better person to assess his new purchase and that he would send his carriage with curtains drawn.'

‘
With curtains drawn
! Mitchell, how can you imagine that I do not see straight through your strategems, your conspiracies with Colonel Corbett.
With curtains drawn
! I shouldn't do it if the entire carriage were shrouded in black crepe! I shall not do it.
You
know I shall not. Tell him all spinets are the same!'

They abandoned abroad. Gatcombe was surprised by their reception. Annoyed, for it touched his own reputation. Had he imagined that he could sweep all before him? Had he been too stupid to anticipate it? Considerate at first, his patience quickly fled and Lord and Lady Gatcombe returned to England where an old disease caught up with him at last.

She didn't miss him, except that there was no one to share humiliation. Her confidence was shot ragged by fleets of well-aimed cannon. Determination exploded amid showers of brickbats.

Only stubbornness remained.

Her house is fine, remote from the metropolis, the vistas from the windows pleasing, unpeopled. There's an income; she wants for nothing. Here she's safe. She has no expectations. The gulf was never bridged. Longing, love, grief remain hers to enjoy alone.

Each day she discusses the menu with the cook. She has become fat, her once glorious hair now thin and faded beneath its cap. Her life is dull but safety and certainty defeat loneliness. The servants are used to her, know what she wants. They only look at her that way out of habit.

I know what they say among themselves. If only she'd go out. It would do her good, they say. She hasn't left the house for twenty-three years.

Her breathing is poor. She refuses to be bled but summons a lawyer.

‘Mr Bearcroft, I shall leave £20 a year for each cat, £25 for Fitz. Until their deaths.

‘I leave £2000 each to Mitchell and Gerald. Oh and to Mrs Ramp, my cook. Mrs Dent can take as many of my novels as she likes and the Colonel. Hmm. Would it be cruel to leave him my fortepiano when he can hardly play?

‘£1000 each year to provide loaves for the poor of the village. How many that will be per week I've no idea. Someone will have to do the sums.

‘There's to be a special fund of £5,000 for poor girls of the district to keep them at home or in service nearby. It must be well invested. On no account are they to go to London.'

The streets of St James's surge through her memory and with them a realisation she faces suddenly for the first time.

I shall be taken out of the house! I have stayed indoors for twenty-three years but I shall be carried out! Of course I'll be dead, but all the same, they'll get me out at last; what they've wanted all this time, Mitchell, Dent, Corbett, Gerald.