The Essex Serpent(57)

Then drab little Samuel Hall – behind whose glasses muddy eyes blinked resentfully out at the world – had fallen in love. In a dim bar near Embankment they’d seen him, and seen how he’d laughed, and exchanged his dull coat for a bright one; how he’d kissed a woman’s hand, and how she hadn’t minded. Nothing could’ve been funnier, it seemed: nothing – by the light of the lamps and the warmth of the beer – more absurd. Burton could not remember what it was that was said, or by whom, only that there’d been a moment when he’d had the woman, bewildered, in his own arms; that he’d been kissing her with a gallantry all too obviously mocking.

‘I meant nothing by it – it was done to make them laugh – I went home that night and wouldn’t even have been able to tell you where I’d been.’ But all the week that followed, Hall’s desk had been empty, though no-one thought to ask where he’d gone, or why; it did not occur to them that alone in his single room with its single chair all the accumulated resentments of Hall’s life – all the slights both real and imagined – had united in an implacable loathing of Edward Burton.

‘I’d stopped to look up at St Paul’s – I’m always wondering how the dome holds up, aren’t you? – and there were black birds on the steps and I remembered being told as a child how one rook is a crow, and many crows are rooks. Then someone stumbled against me – that’s how it was: as if they’d lost their footing. I said “Watch out!”, and there was Samuel Hall, not looking at me, just running on by, like I’d made him late.’ On he’d walked in the shadow of St Paul’s, and felt all at once very weary; he’d put a hand to wetness on his shirt, and withdrawn it gloved in blood. Then night had fallen early, and he’d lain down on the steps to sleep.

The room was dim; he reached for a lamp, and lit it; in the slow-bloomed light she saw the lean face turned from her in shame and shyness, and how he flushed across the high bones of his cheek.

‘It’s not a question of guilt and punishment,’ she said. ‘It’s not how the world turns. If we all got what we deserved –’ It felt to Martha as if he’d given her a gift that was easily broken. Something had altered between them – she owed a debt of trust. ‘We cannot help it, if we are to live,’ she said. ‘Causing harm, I mean; how could it be avoided unless we shut ourselves away – never speak, never act?’ She wanted to repay the debt, and casting about for sources of her own guilt it was Spencer’s face that first came to mind, and would not be dispelled.

‘If we all got what we deserved I’d be waiting for my punishment,’ she said. ‘It would be worse, I think; a knife in the heart would be the least of it – you did not know what you had done – but I know, and still I do it!’ And she told her quiet companion about the man who loved her (‘He thinks he conceals it, but no-one ever does …’); his shyness, and how he grasped after goodness for its own sake, and because it might please her. ‘Spencer’s wealth is obscene, it is obscene – he has so much he doesn’t know how much of it he has! If I let him love me, and pretend I might return it, and it makes him do something good – is it really so bad? Is a broken heart too high a price to pay for a better city?’

Burton smiled, and raised his hand: ‘I absolve you,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Father,’ she said, laughing. ‘You know, I always thought that was the great benefit of being religious: get the guilt over and done with, and move on to another sin. Well,’ – she gestured to the window, and beyond it to the lowering sky – ‘I must go, or miss my train.’ When she took his hand to bid him goodbye he held it, and drew her down, and kissed her once; and she saw for the first time what vitality had once been in those long fingers, in the legs outstretched beneath the blanket.

‘Come again,’ he said, ‘come soon’; and after she’d gone he sat for a long time in the chair she’d left, making plans of a garden for neighbours to share.





6


In Colchester the rain was mild and barely seemed to fall, only hang in the air as if the whole town were enveloped in pale cloud. Thomas Taylor had rigged up a tarpaulin and sat contently beneath it sharing cake with Cora Seaborne, who’d come to town for papers and books, and better food than could be had in Aldwinter (‘It’s all right for bread and fresh fish,’ she’d said, ‘but no marzipan to be had for all the tea in Yorkshire’). He suspected passers-by were pleasantly shocked to see so obviously wealthy (if untidy) a woman at his side, and hoped he might see an increased profit in the afternoon. In the meantime, they had a great deal to discuss.

‘How’s Martha?’ he said, on first-name terms with the girl who, each time she came to town, contrived to disapprove of him vocally but leave him in a good temper. ‘Still got those ideas?’ He licked a crumb from his finger, and watched the sun look coyly out from a cloud.

‘If there were any justice,’ said Cora, ‘which you and I know there isn’t, she’d be in Parliament, and you’d have a house of your own.’ In fact, he had a neat flat on the lower floor of what had once been one of Colchester’s townhouses, being in receipt of a good pension and a better wage, but it would not do to disappoint his friend. ‘If wishes were horses,’ he said, sighing, and rolling his eyes towards the trolley that would later convey him home, ‘I’d make my fortune in manure. And what about the village folk, over Aldwinter way? Has the Essex Serpent come crawling up and eaten them all in their beds?’ He gnashed his teeth, and thought she might laugh; but instead she gave a frown that scored her forehead with lines.