The Syme Papers (53 page)

(I should say now that we have never had a cook; have never
known a cook; and that Sam for one has never bought the butter,
nor dressed a roast. I was charmed, however, at the thought of it.)

‘These are not household duties,’ he continued, ‘accomplished
smoothly and cheaply at their best. Our birth is awkward –
our lives
short –
our death unpleasant, too
often desired. If in
the
meantime I look around –
let me not belong to those wealthy men
who pay their servants to attend to the tasks they should perform
themselves. Let me belong to the servants, if you grant me leave to
go over even old ground with afresh hand, a clear head, and a
curious heart. I have done so –
and this is what
I have found.’

A muffled applause, as ten men, myself among them, smote
perspiring red hands, swollen with blood in the heat, and shuffled
immediately after to the punch table and began drinking silently.

Syme limped to where Tom was sitting and sat down beside him.
Tom put an arm around Syme’s neck, briefly. He was well pleased, 
for he had seen towards the end of Syme’s peroration a tall, compla
cent man enter the back of the large hall to listen silently, slinking
out when the punchbowl was invaded. His name was Ezekiel
Harcourt, and he became an important figure in our lives over the
next year. But Syme had no hope of the good things to come. Nor
did I after such a discouraging day. He turned to Tom only briefly
in
his great fatigue. Their anger had not yet
dried –
how
could it in
the soaking air?
–
and he soon rose to his feet, stepped slowly down
the platform stairs and walked out between the rows of chairs, a soli
tary, disappointed, but most of all bone-weary figure, turning to his
temporary bed. Mr Cooling did not see him go.

Tom quickly took Sam’s place at the pulpit and began banging.
‘For
those of you who would like to read more of the great Doctor,’
he cried, ‘he is producing a pioneering journal, the
New Platonist,
for only threepence an issue. My associate, Mr Mooler, is available
at the punchbowl with a list for names and addresses.’

Mr Cooling soon noticed Syme’s departure and enquired after
him. He nodded his head in great loops at Tom’s apologies. The
churchmen were a stony bunch, no ground for talk. All except
Henry, who tugged at his father’s thumb and asked him from time
to time when ‘they was going to begin the –
Volcanoes’.

There would be no volcanoes, the father explained.

‘That’s science’, the boy said, considering, ‘all over.’

Tom had a sickness brewing and could not even summon up a
smile. My heart hurt for Syme. Only the old man had been atten
tive, mentioned that he had speculated as much, suggested the same
to his wife, God rest her soul –
she wouldn’t have none. Explained a
great deal: how could a man walk steady with all them crowns
gyrasticating down there below him, and him only with two good
feet? Vacuii, too, that was a thought. All seven of them ever been in
a row? That would give old Widder Thompson her Doomsday, ha!

And my heart rose a little. I remember leaving, looking back at
the bowl of punch. The heavy ladle lay in a shallow pool, could dip
no further. They stood around it with empty cups, none of them
daring to lift the bowl and effect a more complete evacuation. None
of them leaving while there was still punch in the bowl. Three men 
signed the list.
Henry’s father, a Mr
Irving,
by way
of apology, I
believe; the old man; and Mr Cooling, by necessity.

Tom and I walked back through the white streets to the cabin
behind Mrs Bevington’s house. ‘His aunt’s lodgings were Mr
Cooling’s springboard to high office in the Oceanic Society,’ Tom
mocked in a quavering voice. He shook already with fever. He had
been calm and assured during Syme’s talk, as he needed to be. Now
that it was over he was free to wheeze and shiver. The afternoon’s
speech was a hard event now and could be dislodged. Harder things
were to come. We returned to the cabin, whence Syme had preceded
us, and I collapsed on a long draped ottoman in the swimming air. I
could see Syme through the open door, writing at his desk. Tom, as
was his wont after a lecture and despite his overcrowing illness,
entered his chamber and leaned his back against the open door. I was
shut out for the second time.

And gladly, too. I heard only a few words of Tom’s early conversation, including his favourite dictum, ‘Simplicity, brevity and Fires.’ But I knew that Sam had not spoken. ‘Volcanoes’ also slipped through the keyhole and made its escape to me. Just in time, too. For by now Sam had risen and I could hear his voice growing and dwindling as he paced from desk to door: ‘To be prodded and pricked like … come this way to preach at a watering-hole … the less intelligent bison … Harcourt will promise nothing … why did he come do I suppose? … a liaison with Mrs Cumberland … perhaps Cooling’s aunt … do not talk tome of … what do you suppose my sacrifices have been? … to exchange your bed for a baker’s fortune … with a baker’s looks … that needs no explanation … I am on the verge of great discoveries and you bring me to Middletown … I WILL NOT BE BESTED BY ANY MAN.’ He stopped there. ‘I WILL NOT BE BESTED … airs? what airs? I have never given myself – airs … Phidy has nothing to do with it … nothing to do with us, I should say … do not talk to me of my heat or the temper … yes, it’s true, it’s true … of course it’s a strain, who set the pace? … I will not have you pecking around me … if I need physic, Phidy will attend to it … I am done with you … I WILL NOT BE BESTED BY ANY …’

I
could bear it no longer. Tom’s quiet, assured responses,
running just too
low
for me to hear, chilled me as much as Syme’s
clamour, which hurt me palpably, as if I were a child still who over
heard a father’s rage. So I fled, into the shimmering streets.

When I returned, Sam sat reading on the ottoman. He looked up
and said, ‘Tom fainted. I had to carry him to bed.
He is properly –
soaked. Take a look at him, will you –
there’s a good Phidy?’

I knocked and entered. Tom lay swathed in sheets like a beast in
seaweed. There was no comfort to be found anywhere. His every posi
tion seemed to neglect a leg or an arm or the neck. His skin looked
chafed and his feet were swollen. But he did not complain, did as
I
told him; drank deep of the potion I prepared, breathed the spirit of
camphor through a laden cloth. As ever he was patient and detached.
Nothing could touch him in his fever, neither Syme’s anger nor my
good offices. He was unreachable, dwindling into the distance like an
object seen at the wrong end of a telescope. The nearer I peered, the
farther he seemed to perch, a small, neat soul at a great height.

Sam and I spent the remainder of the evening in the adjoining
room. Mrs Bevington brought us our supper, chops and potatoes,
speaking shrilly and tiptoeing like a shadow (a heavy shadow with a
propensity for knocking over cabinets), so as not to disturb ‘Dr
Phidy Miller’s patient, poor dear Tom’. (All ladies ‘of a certain age’
instantly took to Tom, loved and fretted over him at once.) Sam read
and wrote. I
thought,
happy enough in the summer-loud silence,
having ample material for contemplation: the lecture and the myste
rious Harcourt; our present plans; Tom’s illness, no doubt brought
on by yesterday’s gentle shipwreck; that more
spiritual leak
in
our little vessel, the rift
between Tom and Sam
…
I
delighted with the curious inward satisfaction that feeds quite hap
pily on any serious event, sustained equally by fortune and
misfortune.

Sam’s throat hurt him from the hot weather, the lecture, the argu
ment with Tom and the late night. It had been a filthy day. The air
was soaked but no rain came, and the evening did not fall, but stick.
On such nights we sprout thoughts and desires, like roots coming
out of a broken flowerpot. At last, nightfall brought a more delicious 
air. When I saw a curtain shiver, then belly with wind, like a
woman’s dress; collapse and sag
again, like loose skin; then billow
–
my heart rose with it. I removed my jacket and shirt and sat in my
undershirt in the grateful breeze. Syme wore only his pantaloons.
His feet were bare, in easy fellowship with his bare chest and hang
ing arms. Tom lay ill and feverish in the bedroom next door, for
once the object and not the engine of our cares. But we are never like
our styles in the end, thank God. The lot of sickness should by right
have fallen to me. But I was only hot and hoarse and happy, sitting
beside Sam’s work table.

‘How could you begin?’ I asked, with a rare though over-earnest
pluck. ‘What courage you must have needed. Settled in the army,
well placed to satisfy an ordinary ambition. What did your mother
think? How could you desert a solid world and decent prospects for
such bottomless fantasies and a life like this?’

‘Most ideas’, he said, going over old ground, ‘begin as the answer
to an unimportant problem –
soon forgotten –
a stone washed away
once the stream is crossed. So it was with me. A simple calculation
to occupy an idle
hour led
me to a quite different question –
a ques
tion of mass and Newton.
My breath stopped, as at a blow to the stomach.
So true it is that we are at the mercy of our own
…
inspiration –
that is too
grand a word, which means nothing more
than the ability to begin in idleness and end in faith.’

He paused and began again –
some
new thought had teased him
from the repetition. ‘I believe greatly in
profusion, in
…
You may
wonder at the labour of it –
how
hard I work
at dull
connections and
tedious proofs. But, for me, precision is only one kind of
abundance. Such colours, such magnificent explosions! Is not the
magnesium torch glorious? The endless turning of these intricate
spheres? Am I not fertile ground? Was anything ever born without
heat and accident?’

I waited on his word, leg bent over the arm of the chair, long chin
cupped in the heat of my palm. ‘There are always a dozen answers
to any question,’ he said at last, ‘and then the question changes. We
want
…
satiety, more than satisfaction. We wish to be sated from
time to time
–
to desire nothing. I suppose I began in
search of that. 
I suppose I will find it
–
that is one consolation. We all do. I earned
my dishonourable discharge within the month.

‘Tom is a different creature altogether,’
Sam added after a short
pause, touching my knee lightly and winking his eye at the sick
room.
How
I thrilled at the confidence! ‘He has only temperament
–
a fine thing, certainly, and very useful. But it leaves no room for
temptation –
and what
comes after temptation. You and I have
character
–
a more unhappy gift.’

There were only two beds in the cabin, and Tom and I had shared
one the night
before. ‘You should not disturb the patient, Phidy,’
Sam said. ‘Come to bed with me.’ We undressed together and
stepped into the rough cold sheets. I babbled beside him, happy with
talk and ‘the whispered thoughts of hearts allied’. But Sam soon fell
asleep, with that great weariness that can be quenched as readily as
thirst. Then I lay restless and awkward at his side deep into the
night. I could not turn my thoughts to anything else with Sam so
close, and at last, unconsciously, began to count the soft breaths
from the still figure beside me.

It was two days before Tom was well enough to travel. Sam and I
both nursed him, though he required little. They were significant
days to me. One swallow doth not a summer make, they say in this
strange tongue; and that night of close companionship in the close
air with Tom so close at hand was only the first appearance of the
swallow. The next two days ushered in summer. Sam and I delighted
in our new freedom. We spent two long days by the cabin, as idle
and busy as children. ‘What shall we do after breakfast, Sam?’ I
asked, still awkward in our young intimacy.

‘Go to the water,’
he said, with a broad smile on his face.

That morning, we dredged the sunk boat from the bottom of the
river. Syme stripped completely and dived in with a rope round his
waist, while I held the other end from the shore, well hedged in shirt
and waistcoat, tie and coat, all white in that white heat. Sam proved a
strong swimmer in the event, a second Byron, exuberant in the water,
like water itself, a strong fountain leaping and pushing away its own
kind in a white shower. Down he went and pulled the boat from 
where it lay sucking in the mud, a titanic effort, and attached the rope
to the cross-benches. He shot up for breath, a suddenly young man,
sweeping wet hair from his forehead.