The Poets' Wives (9 page)

And then he comes and takes my hands in his and it is as if he can see the pain in them so he tells me that old things will pass away and all things will be made new and soon there will be no more suffering of the flesh because I shall exist only in the freedom of the spirit. I want him to hold me, to embrace my loneliness, for after almost forty-five years of marriage it is a strange and difficult thing to be separated in body if not soul, but he never comes closer than to hold my hands or fleetingly kiss my brow and I know I cannot press for more. Once I ask if I can draw him and he nods and smiles and I try to capture him with all the light in his eyes but although I work at it, the pencil gripped awkwardly in my hand, when I glance up at him he is gone and the page on which I thought I had captured him is blank.

When William comes through the door I know without words being spoken that he is acquitted and as I hurry to him he holds me tightly then lifts me off my feet and spins me so hard it makes me dizzy and when he puts me down he has to hold me upright as I stagger away from his arms and with a playfulness he asks me if I have taken strong drink in his absence. And Scofield is shown to be a man not to be believed, a soldier who lost his rank through drinking, and the blessed testimonies of the villagers clear Will of all charges of sedition. So together we sing a hymn of praise and thanks and then he grows thoughtful as he takes a seat at the fire I have kept lit for him and as he leans towards it to warm his hands the ridge of snow on his shoes begins to melt and dampens the floor. He stares into the flames, his face suddenly pale and drawn, and it is as if he sees in it a different outcome. Then he looks at me and I hear him say:

And because I am happy, & dance & sing,

They think they have done me no injury:

And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King

Who make up a heaven of our misery.

I nod my understanding and after I have found him simple food and drink he appears replenished in both body and soul and as his custom when in good spirits he starts to talk of the work that he must do and how he will ‘labour upwards into futurity’ and he shows a renewed belief that we have overcome the dangers that have beset us and so are free to venture towards new and greater things. Even the fire itself seems to flicker with renewed strength as the words tumbling out of him are set free on a wave of excitement and anticipation. I like it much when he talks like this and it feels as if it is when he is at his most happy and unencumbered by the world’s indifference. He drinks the wine I have given him and the fire deepens its redness so that its cheapness is turned in appearance into something richer.

Something flecks across the window and we both turn our heads to see that it has started to snow again and the wind feathers it against the glass. He goes to it, the wine still in his hand, and calls me to come and look and while the fire flickers we watch the snow falling in heavy squalls on the slumbering city. It seems to sense us behind the glass and flurries again as if desirous to cover us as it does the city’s streets. And all the world outside seems to fall silent as we stand watching it being slowly lulled into some long sleep in this midnight hour and then he turns to me and whispers, ‘It is a mystery,’ and his breath is warm on my cheek and when he kisses me I taste the sweetness of the wine on his lips.

There’s something I’ve never told William about because the memory causes me shame but although I don’t know why, it too demands its time and will not be denied even though it happened a lifetime away when I was a child in Battersea. It concerns a traveller who came to the district at intervals and it was said that he was the seventh son of a seventh son and that he had healing hands. He travelled in a covered wagon that served as his home and in it he carried all manner of goods for sale – cloths and beads of coloured glass, little mirrors and purses, bottles of perfume and medicine that he claimed could cure all sorts of maladies. He’d take the covering off the wagon and set up his stall on the green opposite the tavern and at night he’d sing and tell stories for the price of a drink. And he knew how to play a crowd better than any preacher or those who stand for election and he could make them laugh or cry with equal ease. There were those too who were ready to claim that by the laying on of his hands or by taking some of his medicine they had been miraculously cured of some illness so it was said abroad that Mary Clark had conceived a child after many years of barrenness and that Henry Smith had been healed of the ague. It is also true that in the fullness of time there would be those who whispered that Mary’s child bore a singular resemblance to the traveller rather than her husband.

In a place where nothing much happened his arrival was welcomed and he had a handsome charm for all the women and friendly good humour for the men and was able to tell them stories of foreign countries and their strange customs. He wore a leather waistcoat and a spotted handkerchief at his throat and in his swarthy skin there was much of the gypsy about him. Although many sneered he claimed he could tell fortunes and at night a succession of women made the journey to his wagon to have theirs told. My own mother went secretly, instructing me to tell our father that she was gone on a message to her sister if he enquired about her absence. When she returned she was breathless and on my persistent questioning claimed he knew everything about her and told her things about her situation that none without a special gift could possibly have known. But when I asked her what had been foretold she grew flustered and said she couldn’t share it with me or anyone and I wasn’t to ask. And she’d bought a little cloth purse embroidered with coloured beads and so pretty I always desired it and when possible I liked to touch it and think it mine.

As a girl I suffered from cramps and sore pains beyond what might be expected when it was my time and I was always frightened that something terrible would happen to me and that the bleeding would never stop. None of the old remedies seemed to bring any relief and it was one summer when everyone worked the long hours of the day to bring in the harvest that I fainted and had to be carried home on my father’s shoulder and put to bed. We told my father it was just the heat but my mother knew better and as she pressed the damp cloth to my brow she asked me if I wanted to try a cure from the traveller. And somehow I hoped that from such an encounter I too might get a pretty purse. I was no more than thirteen or fourteen then and foolish in my thinking. When I agreed my mother told me that it must be my secret because my father would not approve the cost and had expressed no faith in what he called foreign scamps.

That night my mother told him she was taking me to her older sister’s house who had girls of her own and would know what was needed and we left him sitting drinking in the evening sun after his long day’s labour. When we got to where the wagon was settled for the night under a hedgerow flecked with white blossom and beside a bank where foxgloves lolled in thick swathes, rabbits scattered at our approach. The covering was up and at our call there were whisperings and then a sudden hush for silence before we heard his voice asking what was wanted and when my mother explained, also in a whisper that I couldn’t hear, he said we must return in an hour but that I must come alone.

My mother asked me if I was willing and in truth thinking of nothing more than I might gain one of the purses or have my fortune told I said I was and so when the time was up I stood before the wagon once more. He let me wait there for a few moments then opened the flap and helped me inside. I was struck by an intense curiosity about how he could live in this little space with not much more than a straw-filled pallet and pillow along one side of the cart and a chest that I assumed contained all his possessions and wares along the other. He beckoned me to sit on a stool and although not tall my head was not far off touching the canvas canopy. He had an oil lamp but the summer’s evening had no need of it yet and behind his head hung a mirror and a ring of silk scarves.

The first thing he asked me was my name and the second if I had the money. As I gave it to him my fingers touched his hand briefly. Then he told me I had a pretty name and a pretty face and he asked me my age and when I told him he said why I was almost a woman and no longer a child. Then he talked of how I must trust him for the cure to work and if I didn’t trust him or questioned him then I could never be made well. And when he asked me did I understand I nodded, my eyes all the time looking at the chest where I guessed he kept the purses and wondering if the few coins I had would be enough to buy one.

Abomination to use a child so and I have often prayed that he will find his just reward either in this life or the next. And I see him now standing so close to me that there is less than an arm’s length between us and I stare into the darkness of his eyes and hear him say he must touch where needs healed, feel the breath of his speech on my face. Then he places his hand where none has ever been and when I flinch then squirm away he tells me that I must trust him if I am to be made well and his other hand touches my hair and I am suddenly frightened that he will grab it tight and hold me there so I stand motionless and shamed until a few moments later both his hands drop away and he smiles at me and tells me that I have the cure. I am shaking a little but when he tells me to go I show him the coins and ask if I have enough to buy one of his purses but he only smiles and shakes his head and I rush away as quickly as I can and find a place to cry where no one will see.

I have never told William of my shame and even then I said nothing to my mother or anyone else. The shame is my secret but there are times when I think that Will sees and knows everything that has ever happened to me and there are times also when his words salve the pain as I recite over the bitter memory,

Cruelty has a Human Heart

And Jealousy a Human Face

Terror, the Human Form Divine

And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron

The Human Form, a fiery Forge.

The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d

The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

What evil hunger the traveller’s heart sought to satisfy through the rest of his life I shall never know but we never saw him after that summer. The village gossip said some cuckolded husband had sworn death to him if he ever showed his face again but I cannot say if this is true or merely tittle-tattle. What I do know is that time and God’s providence cured me.

And I want to tell William that these might do so again God willing but I am unwilling to hurt his tender care so that now in my old age I submit myself to this strange treatment that his friend Dr Birch has developed and my rheumatism is to be helped by electricity, something that I don’t fully understand but that William avows his confidence in and I have no wish to be ungrateful for their ministry to me. We go to his medical rooms that are full of strange items and machines such as I have never seen before or since and William takes a deep interest in everything, and then the doctor, who is small and bird-like but kindly in his manner, tells me that there is nothing to fear and that I shall come to no harm. There are jars and cylinders, a glass-mounted object with a wooden handle to the end of which a brass ball and wooden point are fitted. I am placed in what he calls the insulated chair and then he applies the ball of the glass-mounted object that has been connected to what he names as the prime conductor by a wire to the parts of my body that are afflicted by the pains, and then as I gasp there is a stream of electric sparks and Dr Birch asks me to trust him as he applies the brass ball to my spine. He tells me that passing these gentle shocks through my body will serve to free it of its malignancies and William comes and stands close to me but at the doctor’s orders does not touch me and I feel no pain only a curious creeping sensation and the sparks still flicker across my eyes even after they have faded into nothingness. I think it helps and I tell William so but mostly because I don’t want to disappoint him and as we walk home he talks of the sparks and there is an excitement in his voice and I think in truth he would like to experience the sensation. Then as we pass some street-sellers, their wares spread out under the shelter of arches, on impulse I make him stop and I buy a little purse all embroidered and shiny with beaded glass.

What have we to fear in death, William is always saying, when it is nothing more than walking from one room to the next and his words make me remember the death of his younger brother Robert. For fourteen days and nights in the exercise of the utmost faithfulness William sat at his brother’s bedside and ministered to him both in body and spirit. At the final moments William saw his beloved brother’s spirit departing his body and ascending skywards with a joyous clapping of hands to be with Christ. Afterwards William fell into a deep slumber and slept for three days and nights.

When it is our appointed time he tells me we must also rejoice but I am fearful when I think of him being called before me. And so I do not like this life mask that Deville asks to make because although he calls it a life mask I know that he’s thinking of preserving Will’s image in anticipation of his death. So Will sits with his face covered in wet plaster until it hardens and two straws are the only means by which he breathes. It becomes increasingly hot and unpleasant and when in the fullness of time it is removed the plaster pulls out some of his hair. I am not much in favour of the final head – it makes Will look unnaturally stern and because his eyes are closed it shows none of the light that burns there and the tight press of his lips transport him into the realms of unresurrected death. Afterwards I bathe his face with warm water until it soothes away the mottled redness but even when he smiles at me I think of the mask with its closed eyes and then when I shiver a little turn away so that he doesn’t see.