Hamnet(40)

She sees, too, that all six children flinch if John gets suddenly to his feet, like animals sensing the approach of a predator. She sees Mary blink slowly, as if closing her eyes to what might occur.

There is a dinner when Edmond is tired, fractious, hungry but somehow unable to eat, unable to see the connection between the food on the plate and the nameless discomfort in his belly. He grizzles and moans, thrashing his head from side to side. Agnes sits beside him, slipping morsels into his mouth. His gums are red and sore, the peaks of new teeth poking through, his cheeks livid and hot. He fusses, he squeezes pie between his fingers, he tips over his cup, he leans on Agnes’s shoulder, he grabs at her napkin and drops it to the floor. Agnes’s husband, on the other side of her, puts on a mock-rueful face and asks, Not happy today, eh? Their father, however, looks blacker and blacker, muttering, What ails the child, can’t you take him away? When Edmond, losing patience with the meal, hurls a piecrust across the table, hitting John on the sleeve, leaving a brown stain, there is a long, stretched moment of silence. Mary bows her head, as if interested by something in her lap, Eliza’s eyes begin to fill with tears, and John lurches from his stool, yelling, By God, that boy, I will—

Agnes’s husband springs to his feet and is around the table before Agnes realises what is happening. He is putting himself between his father and the boy, who is wailing now, mouth wide, as if sensing the change in atmosphere. There is a scuffle, her husband holding back his father, some oaths, a shove of chest against chest, a restraining hand on an arm. Agnes can’t quite see because she is lifting the child away from the table, easing his feet out of the bench, holding him to her as she runs with him from the room.

After a while, her husband comes and finds her. She has Edmond in the yard, her shawl wrapped twice around his short frame, and he is restored to good humour, feeding grain to the chickens. She holds the grain bowl for him, saying just a little, just enough, the hens dart-darting at the ground. Her husband comes to stand next to her, watching. Then he leans his head against hers, sliding his arms about her. She thinks, as she holds the grain, of that landscape of caverns and hollows she sensed within him. She thinks of the seams of a glove, running up and down and over each finger, keeping close the skin that does not belong to the wearer. How a glove covers and fits and restrains the hand. She thinks of the skins in the storeroom, pulled and stretched almost – but not quite – to tearing or breaking point. She thinks of the tools in the workshop, for cutting and shaping, pinning and piercing. She thinks of what must be discarded and stolen from the animal in order to make it useful to a glovemaker: the heart, the bones, the soul, the spirit, the blood, the viscera. A glover will only ever want the skin, the surface, the outer layer. Everything else is useless, an inconvenience, an unnecessary mess. She thinks of the private cruelty behind something as beautiful and perfect as a glove. She thinks that if she took his hand now and pressed her fingers to it, she might see the landscape she found before but she would also see a dark and looming presence there, with tools to eviscerate and flay and thieve the essence of a creature. She thinks, as Edmond scatters food for the hens, that they will perhaps not live long in this apartment: soon it will be necessary for them to leave, to take flight, to find a different place.

Eliza comes out into the yard, signalling that the dinner is at an end. Her face is set, her eyes damp. She picks up Edmond and takes him back into the house. Agnes and her husband look at each other, then walk towards the back door of their apartment.

It is evident to Agnes now, as they enter the kitchen, as he stirs the fire and throws on a log, that her husband is split in two. He is one man in their house and quite another in that of his parents. In the apartment, he is the person she knows and recognises, the one she married.

Take him next door, to the big house, and he is sullen, sallow of face, irritable, tetchy. He is all tinder and flint, sending out sparks to ignite and kindle. Why? he challenges his mother. Whatever for? he snaps. I don’t want to, he retorts to his father. She had never understood why this was so but the coiled fury she witnessed in John, as he raised himself from his stool, told her everything she needs to know.

In their apartment, he lets her take his hand, lets her lead him from the fire to a chair, lets his eyes lose focus, lets her rub her fingers through his hair, and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.





hree heavy knocks to the door of the apartment: boom, boom, boom.

Hamnet is closest so he goes to answer it. As it swings open, he cringes and yelps: on the doorstep is a terrifying sight, a creature from a nightmare, from Hell, from the devil. It is tall, cloaked in black, and in the place of a face is a hideous, featureless mask, pointed like the beak of a gigantic bird.

‘No,’ Hamnet cries, ‘get away.’ He tries to shut the door but the creature puts out a hand and presses it back, with horrible, preternatural strength. ‘Get away,’ Hamnet screams again, kicking out.

Then his grandmother is there, pushing him aside, apologising to the spectre, as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about it, inviting it to step into the house, to examine the patient.

The spectre is speaking without a mouth, saying he will not come in, he cannot, and they, the inhabitants, are hereby ordered not to go out, not to take to the streets, but to remain indoors until the pestilence is past.