Bellman & Black (8 page)

They said nothing about having arranged their neighbor’s skirt to cover her calves. It was not seemly to mention it.

William, like a bystander, witnessed his uncle receiving the news. It seemed to him that the world had taken a wrong turning: it needed only a word or a gesture from him to set it on track again, but he was paralyzed and his tongue was frozen, and so, temporarily, he was unable to restore the world to what it ought to be.

Only when the old Miss Young turned to him with the bowl, so that he might see for himself, was his tongue released.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I see. Not a crack in it.”

·  ·  ·

That evening and for the next few days, Paul kept his nephew under his wing. He ceded to the Misses Young in their wish to be helpful, and it was clear that Will would not go cold or hungry or lack for clean shirts. Paul’s job was to find occupations for Will. It was not difficult. Decisions had to be made: Wednesday or Thursday for the funeral? Eleven o’clock? Which hymns? Letters had to be written to Dora’s brother at Nether Wychwood and other relatives. And then there were the visitors. Singers from the choir, workers from the mill, drinkers from the Red Lion, spinsters whose fences he had mended, men with whom he’d once had a game of cards, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, and the sisters of all these, and the daughters. In fact Paul had not realized so many pretty girls lived in the town. Was there anyone that his nephew didn’t know? A hundred hands wanted shaking, a hundred tongues expressed their condolences.
Thank you,
said William, and
Kind of you,
endlessly.

Between his uncle and the helpfulness of the Misses Young and all these other people, William was never alone, not for an hour, except to sleep. He went to bed with the distant, certain expectation that overnight the world would put itself right. He slept for long hours: endless, dreamless sleep, which did not refresh, and when he woke the world bewildered him by persisting in its wayward course. He felt weighed
down and dreary. A fog settled between him and his own thoughts, and behind it, unformulated, unexamined, was this:
How long before things go back to normal?

His mother was dead: he had seen the body; yet this knowledge refused to find a settled place in his mind. It came and went, surprised him every time he chanced upon it, and there were a million reasons not to believe it. His mother was dead, but look: here were her clothes and here her teacups, here her Sunday hat on the shelf over the coat hook. His mother was dead, but hark: the garden gate! Any moment now she would come through the door.

The feeling that it was all a charade persisted, and on the morning of the funeral he was more than anything irritated that it had come to this. He dressed in his Sunday suit and laced his good shoes, but nothing altered his expectation that the next caller at the door would be his mother herself.
All dressed up on a Wednesday? Whatever’s got into you all?
As the procession of men left for the church, inside the cottage the Misses Young were making tea so that the women could do their feminine mourning in domestic comfort. She will be here by the time I get back, he thought.

William had sung at a good many funerals. He knew the service well. All the same, today everything appeared false to him. He was in the front pew and not the choir stall. The church was not the church he knew but a stage: Reverend Porritt masquerading as himself, the coffin an ugly prop. It was unsettling. When Dora Bellman’s name emerged, in slack mournfulness from Reverend Porritt’s lips, Will wanted to give him a punch on the nose.

At the singing, Will’s voice cracked.

Something in his chest was restless. It expanded painfully inside him, pressed against his heart, compressed his lungs.

What on earth was the matter with him?

After a few bars of croaking he reduced his effort to a mumble, and without his shepherding the communal voice strayed and wandered most painfully.

And now a new discomfort. He wanted to scratch the back of his neck. Below his hairline, that place under the collar, a vertebra near the top of the spine, the one where the bone marrow stirs when someone has their eye on you . . .

Will wanted to rub the back of his neck, and he wanted to turn and see who was staring at him.
Don’t fidget in church!
He could hear his mother’s voice speaking the words. Today was hardly the day to disobey. He repressed the urge.

How did he come to be here, anyway? How could such a thing—such a stupid thing—have come to pass?

He sighed, exasperated, and his hand twitched with the urge to rub his neck, but the thing that was pressing his lungs and squeezing his heart turned the sigh into a cry, and he felt Paul’s arm around his shoulders. His uncle was still supporting him as they walked from the church and into the open air.

At the graveside, fingers of lucid September sun pointed at the coffin and at the pit. How had Reverend Porritt and the coffin seemed so unreal a moment ago? Look at them now . . .

The thing from his chest had grown into his throat and he couldn’t swallow. It had locked his jaw. It was pushing from behind his eyes . . .

Clusters of mourners stood around the grave: Dora’s brother and nephews were there, and some cousins, her neighbors and friends, people who had liked and admired her, those who had gossiped, those who had listened to gossip and those who had not.

It was the smallest of movements that caught Will’s eye. Someone at the back. Just a glimpse. There and gone again—the merest impression . . .

The man who had been staring at him in church! He knew it!

Will shifted his weight a little, swayed to the left, trying to get a view of him. Nothing. The fellow must have moved. He leaned fractionally the other way. Between two mourners a sturdy shoulder was visible. Was that him? Or there, that edge of a cape? But in the mass
of black, among all the downcast faces, it was impossible to distinguish one man from another.

Paul, taking the swaying for faintness, grasped his shoulder more firmly.

The thing inside was rattling him. He could not keep his arms still, his legs vibrated dangerously under him. He was cold in his stomach, cold down his spine, his rib cage was locked, his throat was blocked, he couldn’t breathe—

William closed his eyes in a slow blink.

Nothing will ever be the same again, he thought.

When he opened his eyes it was to the glare of sunshine and tears. Was that someone signaling to him on the far side of the grave? Some gesture, it seemed to be. Exhorting him? Encouraging? Will blinked and squinted. A raised arm, he thought. The wide drape of a black cloak, splayed fingers emerging from the cuff. Something glittering. Dazzled he could look no longer. His eyes sought respite in the darkness of the grave. At the edge of his vision he was aware of the great sweep of the cloak as it blacked out the sky and the sun, the mourners, everyone and everything, and last, Will himself.

·  ·  ·

Later. By some tacit arrangement, it was his friends from the mill who had the care of him for the night. Will’s mind was dull and blank already so he didn’t see what help cider and whiskey could be to him, but others knew better and they took him to the Red Lion. After three days of sympathetic ironing from the Misses Young, he welcomed the rougher way in which the men from the mill administered their consolation. There was a jug of cider on the table, and no sooner was it empty than it was filled. Fred from the bakery dropped in to clasp him in his arms and nearly lifted him off the ground. “She was a good’un, your ma. Can’t stay. Must get home. Got a littl’un now, you know?” Hamlin and Gambin the shearers came in especially to shake his hand; their words were inaudible above the hubbub of the inn, but the sense
was clear enough. Thank you, Will said, Kind of you. A jolting blow on his shoulder was Rudge’s leather hand dealing out robust sympathy. Mute Greg made a delicate display of compassion, fingertips and temples expressing fellow feeling in a mime that came closer to touching Will than anything else. Some left and others came, and every minute, Poll the landlady was there, refilling the cider jug, giving him a pat or a stroke as if he were a nice stray dog, taken in at the Red Lion to be the inn’s pet. In the hubbub around him, men were smiling, men were laughing. At the edge of Will’s mouth a muscle twitched. Some raucous shouting burst out, someone accusing someone of exaggerating . . . Will listened as men leaned in toward each other to recount lewd and improbable stories about respectable women. “On us, eh?” Poll ruffled his hair as she refilled the jug for the goodness knows how manyeth time.

The current was strong, Will let himself be carried by it.

The cider bore his mind to a silent place far from all the commotion. When he was restored to his senses, it was to discover himself bellowing the words of a vulgar song. Hoarse his voice was, a rusty croak.

Someone leaned over his shoulder to place a whiskey in front of him. “See if that mends your voice.”

He felt slow. He lagged a few seconds behind everyone else. He organized some words and spoke them to the blacksmith’s son he’d known once. “Luke! Thank you. Not having one yourself?”

Luke pulled a face. “Poll’s only serving me for ready money now.” His hair was dulled with grease, his skin yellow and stringy. “Can’t blame her.” He shrugged. “All right, are you? Saw you keel over up the churchyard this morning.”

“Oh. You were there, were you?”

“Dug the grave. I’ve covered her up, nice and cozy.” A grimace, black sticks of teeth in his gums. “Well, you know. Best I could.”

What to say? “Thank you. Kind of you.”

“She was all right, your mother.” His good eye drifted, either to a
place where Will’s mother was still opening her pantry for a hungry boy or to nowhere. “Well, I’ll be off. Nothing worse than watching men drink when you’ve got a thirst on, eh?”

“Let me get you something.” Will stumbled up, swaying.

“No need.” He opened his jacket and Will saw a bottle. Something noxious and cheap.

“It’ll kill you, you know.”

A farewell salute, another flash of the black stubs. “And if not that then something else!”

Poll refilled the cider. Laughter. An arm thrown across his shoulder. Singing. Poll patted him and refilled the cider. Someone vaguely familiar said, “Ee’s all right now, an’t yer, me old mate?” Singing. Poll refilled the cider and stroked his shoulder. Singing. Someone put a hand on his two shoulders and gave him a slight shake, to see if he fell to pieces. He didn’t. Laughter. Singing. Poll refilled the cider . . .

·  ·  ·

All was silent. Will opened his eyes. No one. He was lying on the settle under the window of the Red Lion; the gray blanket draped over him had slipped to the floor, and he was chilly. Outside the sky was growing pale. He put his feet to the floor and stood up with a groan.

A door opened. Poll’s head appeared, strands of crinkled hair sticking out from her nightcap. “All right?”

He nodded.

“You off?”

Another nod.

“I’ll have that blanket back, then.”

He crossed the room to give the blanket to her, kissed her. In her little bed she pulled her nightdress up. The next moment he was inside her and with a few thrusts it was done.

“There,” she said. “Take a bit of bread to eat on the way. There’s some on the shelf over the big barrel, out the back.”

Will followed the hedgerow home. He broke off a piece of bread,
mashed it in his mouth, swallowed. Hungry, he ate another piece, and another, then vomited wetly into a ditch. Good, he thought. He expected something vile to emerge in the cascade of fermented apple, something rank and bloody, a clot of something decomposing, darkly foul and liverish. But there was only this golden stream of pippin juice, and a gob of sweet froth to spit out.

Then he felt something else in his gut. Hard and painful. This will be it. He opened his mouth again, but it was only a sharp-cornered belch—
CRAA!
—that emerged.

A rook in the branches of the elm looked down askance.

·  ·  ·

After an hour’s sleep William went to the mill. He sweated the rest of the alcohol out with heavy work. Against the clamor and the shouting, there was no room for thought. The next day he sat for thirteen hours in the office, motionless except for his fingers tapping ceaselessly at the abacus, and caught up a backlog of number work for the ledgers.

The mill had its own energy, its own rhythm, and a man could give himself up to it. As the wool was drawn by the shuttle, so he was drawn by the demand of the work itself. Like a piece of the machinery, a wheel turned by the force of the river, he did what was necessary. He never tired, he rarely faltered, he moved from one task to the next without a break. Sleep was easy: he never remembered putting his head on the pillow, and the moment the sun was up he was up and on his feet.

Between the mill and his bed he made sure there were as few hours as possible. Sometimes he played cards. He won a bit; he lost a bit. Sometimes he went to the Red Lion. Once or twice he stayed on when everyone else had gone home. “Don’t go thinking you can make a habit of this,” Poll warned him. On Sundays he sang in the choir—his voice clear and effortless—and in the afternoon he went fishing a few times with Paul.

“Are the Misses Young still cooking and cleaning for you?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

He knew what Paul meant. The Misses Young had hopes. Hopes had a habit of growing into expectations.

“I’ll get a woman to come and clean for me. Someone to leave me a dinner ready.”

“Good idea,” Paul said.

·  ·  ·

In early advent, William broke a teapot. He wasn’t even using it, had barely touched it in fact, yet it toppled and fell plumb to the flagstones, as if some vengeful spirit was trapped inside and knew only this way out. He swept up the pieces and buried them, then a gulf opened beneath his heart, and a fearful vertigo took hold of him.

It wasn’t the first time. This one you could understand: his mother’s teapot, a burial, reminders of a loss he preferred not to think about. But the feeling—a sinking diaphragm, nausea stirring, darkness gaining on him—came upon him at other times. He couldn’t predict these crises. It might be an unexpected interruption that set it off or the gap between one task to the next; it might be waking too early and being alone in the dark.