The Underground Man (10 page)

Golden hinges and handles and brackets are cold to the touch the whole year round. Every corner and moulding and edging is hewn from the finest woods. One chap said he had never seen so much amboyna lavished on a single piece. But when one's eyes have done feasting on the bureau's beauty and one's nose has drawn in the many elements of its complex bouquet, when one's fingers are sure they have found out and fiddled in every last nook and cranny, a dozen secret drawers and compartments will still have eluded one's eager grasp.

For the whole cabinet is riddled with hidey-holes which only give themselves up to the most intimate acquaintance. Pick the right panel to press or the right latch to twist and some swivelling chamber will reveal itself. Pull the top drawer out altogether and another drawer comes into view. A whole series of springs and levers are sunk deep in the carpentry so that a handle tugged here releases a catch over there and what appeared just now to be solid becomes a tiny sliding door. The whole thing is a great hive of recesses which rarely see the light of day. I only wish I had more valuables which needed hiding, with so many little places they could be hid. Some old coins, a few private letters and documents are tucked away here and there, but more for the clandestine fun of it than necessity truly demands.

Whilst making this entry I have paused several times to look out on the day. The grounds seem utterly deserted, as if humanity has been erased from the face of the earth. Now
that the trees are bare I can see in every direction, but whichever way I look there seems not to be a single soul about. Contrary to popular wisdom, I believe winter actually greases the world's wheels. When the weather is kind we are more inclined to stop and have a chat, for in the summer it is pleasant to let the sun warm us, so we take our time between one thing and the next. But when the weather turns cold and the frost comes we want to be back indoors as quick as we can so we hurry through the landscape, leaving it altogether barren and sad.

The frequency of my evacuations is returning to normal, though the stools are quite painful to expel. I have heard (or perhaps just imagined) that consumption of eggs may impede one's movements and have a tendency to generally clog up the works. So, no eggs – at least for a fortnight – to see if this does any good. After a breakfast of kippers, toast and marmalade, washed down with a tablespoon of cod-liver oil, I felt nothing if not lubricated. So much so that as I sat there letting it all settle I felt as if I might slip right off my chair.

Though every tree on the estate looks haggard and wretched, the sun shone all around and as the morning unfolded I found myself tempted out of doors. Dressed myself in a lime double-breasted frock coat with fur collar and a knee-length burgundy cape. At the door I picked out a grey, wide-brimmed top hat, a pair of goatskin gloves, cream lambswool scarf and a cane.

I had planned to go as far as Creswell but was not a hundred yards from the house when I felt some sort of fearful
shudder pass through me, as if someone had stepped over my grave. For that fraction of a second I felt utterly vulnerable – was almost quaking in my boots. An awful, anxious moment which came from I know not where. Then it was gone. The sky was clear, a slight breeze blew. Most perplexing. Perhaps I have been holed up in the house for too long.

Creswell suddenly seemed a long way away so I changed course and aimed for the lake, thinking I might go on after toward Wallingbrook and march some circulation back into my frame. I reached the lake in a matter of minutes and stood on the old landing bay, looking out over the water which was perfectly solid and still. At that corner of the water's edge stand plenty of horse chestnuts and sweet chestnuts and I bent down to pick up one or two of their rotting leaves. I might have derived some pleasure from their splendid colours if I had not so wished that they were still up in the trees. I held one sad specimen up to the cold sun. ‘Did you jump?' Iasked him.

His thin veins seemed to map a river's tributaries. I thought to myself, ‘You have fingers like me. You are just a flat hand.'

And then, ‘A tree is a many-handed man.'

I was dwelling on the precise impracticabilities of one year sticking all the fallen leaves back into the trees when a noise, close by, broke the silence and caused me to look up.

A fish had leapt out of the water. Its silver back caught the sun. But before I had begun to properly grasp the situation it was back in the water and gone. How shockingly odd. The lake, which but a minute before had seemed so dull and lifeless, had thrown a fish up into the air, then swallowed it again. I looked about me, stupidly – as if needing confirmation from someone else. But I was the only witness. The fish had jumped only for me.

From the spot where it had re-entered the water – and a fair-sized fish it was, too – a dozen ripples gently spread
across the lake's oily skin. And like those circles rolling over the water and now delicately reaching the shore, the picture of the fish – the sheer surprise of it – kept recurring in my head.

It was a few minutes before I recovered myself and, even then, the splash and glint of the creature would suddenly leap back into my mind. I found myself looking out at the water, half expecting it to jump a second time. But nothing stirred. The lake was flat and solid again.

Several minutes passed, full of the lake's silence and punctuated by my memory of the jumping fish, before I slowly began to make sense of what I had seen. In my pocket I found a scrap of paper and a pencil and noted down my thoughts …

I concluded with a thick full stop. Listened to my thoughts a second and found myself apparently not the least bit alarmed by what I had just jotted down. On the contrary, I felt quite exhilarated. I returned the paper and pencil to my pocket and set off back home.

After lunch I became increasingly listless, which is by no means exceptional for me this time of year. I do sometimes wonder if we human beings are not meant to hibernate in the dark months, along with the squirrels.

My stomach is not yet sorted out and my lower back has been uncomfortable the whole day and I thought a good walk this afternoon might do me the power of good.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that perhaps the autumn air is bad for me. So I decided to walk to Creswell, as I had originally planned to yesterday, but to do so underground. I forwent the lime frock coat for a light-coloured paletot and took a fur muff instead of gloves. Otherwise I was dressed much the same as yesterday when, around two o'clock, I set off down the Western tunnel. The coach rode twenty yards behind me, with both Grimshaw and Clement aboard. Clement insisted he come along, bringing with him blankets, sweet biscuits and a pot of cold rice pudding in case I required sustenance on the way.

A grand walk it was, too. I had not examined the tunnels so closely since they were finished and I must say I was very pleased with what I saw. The brickwork is quite magnificent and the Western tunnel in particular runs about as straight as an arrow. One problem which neither Mr Bird nor I had reckoned on was that the tops of some of the skylights have got covered over with fallen leaves. I made a mental note to have some lads sent out and sweep them clean as soon as we returned.

Felt altogether quite bright and cheery as I headed underground towards Creswell village, so I set up a little singing session, starting off with ‘Johnnie Sands' – an old favourite of mine – then on to a few rounds of ‘I Am Ninety-Nine'. The
many echoes at first interfered with my performance and made me lose my place but in time I managed to gauge their duration and incorporate them into the song, so that I was able, after a fashion, to duet with myself. I broke the song up, line by line – one harmony placed carefully upon another – until at last the whole tunnel rang with a chorus of my voices. I sang the lead and I sang the alto, had a stab at treble and a breathy ‘profundo' bass. Like a military man I marched along and opened my lungs right up, once or twice even managing to knock together some semblance of a descant on the top.

Reached Creswell in next to no time. As I emerged from the tunnel the sun did indeed dazzle me and a light breeze goosepimpled my flesh. Mrs Digby was hanging out her washing so I raised my hat to her and asked after her cats. But by the time the carriage had come out of the tunnel and pulled up alongside of me, our chit-chat was drawing to a close and I was having trouble remembering why Creswell had seemed such an attractive prospect. Came up with no good answers so I cancelled the rest of the expedition on the spot. Turned, waved goodbye to Mrs Digby and set up another singing session as I passed through the tunnel gates.

Sang mainly ballads returning home – my father's bird song and an old sea shanty. Most of the shanty's verses had slipped my mind, which rather obliged me to fill in with some of my own. Amused myself with the thought of the cows above, lazily munching in an empty field, and the sound of some old fellow coming up from the ground, roaring on about the rolling waves and the hunt for the great white whale.

All in all, a most satisfactory day. I am sure tonight I will sleep like a top. But something has been troubling me. As I looked back just now on the day's events and saw me striding
down the Western tunnel, I saw not a man who strode along on his own. I had the impression that… how can I put it … that I had
company
with me. Not entirely visible, perhaps, but company just the same.

A very young fellow – that is all I can come up with. A young fellow who generally hangs about.

I have often wondered if the chap I engage in conversation when I debate some issue with myself is within me or without. Maybe this is my man? What's more, now that I turn my attention to it I rather think he has been there for a very long time.

Not quite right yet, by any means. The discomfort comes and goes. Gave myself a dry-rub with a bath towel to invigorate me (what my father used to call an ‘Aberdeen bath') but succeeded only in adding exhaustion to my list of ills. What was last week most definitely a twinge has developed into more of a throb. Very strange – the damned thing appears to move about. I feel sure it is deeper inside me today and further up toward the ribs.

At lunch I had just drunk the last of an excellent oxtail soup and was chewing on a piece of bread when my teeth clamped down onto something which they had difficulty getting through. ‘A bit of gristle?' I thought, and fished about with my tongue. The matter had lodged itself between my teeth. Then, with finger and thumb, I picked out what proved to be, on closer examination, a tightly-packed papery wad.

‘Paper in my bread,' I said.

With a good deal of effort I managed to unravel the scrap
which, when flattened out on the table, measured some two inches by half an inch. I could just about make out on it a message of some sort, written in pencil. The paper was damp from its short stay in my mouth but, in time, I was able to decipher the following words:

Well, this meant absolutely nothing to me – rang no bells at all – and I soon concluded that it must be but a fragment of a longer piece. Quite frankly, I found the whole thing more than a little disturbing, partly due to the text's declamatory tone. Someone is sending me messages, I thought. Messages to do with bread and wine. And if I was in possession of only a fragment of what I took to be a much longer tract, then who was to say I had not swallowed the rest, which would be sure to upset my digestion even more? I called Mrs Pledger in.

‘Mrs Pledger,' I explained, calmly, ‘I have found some words in my bread.'

After the situation had been laid out before her she asked to see the scrap of paper. Her eyes swept over the handwriting and she gave a knowing nod. ‘Ignatius Peak,' she said.

The name was completely new to me. It conjured up some craggy mountain-top. But, as Mrs Pledger informed me, Ignatius Peak is an employee in our bakery. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, said she believed him to be ‘… an overly-religious man'.

Twenty minutes later he stood before me in my study, still dressed in his apron and white cap and dusted all over with flour, as if he had been put in a cellar and forgotten about. The robustness evoked by the fellow's name was decidedly lacking in the man himself. He stood there and did not say a word. I had, I think, expected an apology without his needing
a prompt. He was a small man, with well-trimmed whiskers, but when he spoke he fairly brimmed with God.

‘I believe you put some words in my bread, Mr Peak.'

‘Not just words, Your Grace, but religious words. They are from the Bible, which means they are sacred. They are holy words, Your Grace.'

As he spoke his short arms waved all about the place, causing a gentle avalanche of flour to fall down his jacket and settle on the floor.

‘And why were these holy words put in my bread, Mr Peak?' I asked.

‘Well now,' he said, staring in to the distance, ‘I believe that this morning, while I was about my baking, I got the sudden inspiration to do so, sir. It happens on occasion … the inspiration to spread God's Word.'