His Last Fire Read online

  I’d never travelled north with him. When I first arrived, I was sceptical of the tales about him and the Lappish women. I’m not impertinent; I wouldn’t question him. Pieced together for myself all I needed to know.

  He was ravished by Lapland. When young he’d read everything known, steeped himself in Schefferus’s History of the place. Then, because of a stupid wager, he’d travelled there, come back with two reindeer and two Lappish women. Had learned more. The women went back. I could see he was haunted; understood from gentle intimations there was a child.

  He sought to expel desolation through travel south, east, incessant buying. The collection became huge. Yet each return to his neglected estate reawoke the discord. Rejected in Lapland, he recreated it in Herefordshire. Knew it wasn’t the place itself (that summer light could never come again, he said), but fusing knowledge, memories, precious objects, believed it was.

  Come winter solstice he moved his couch to the north end of the collection room, its window tree-darkened, cases and drawers full of Lappish artefacts. Each day he read a portion of Schefferus, chanted repetitively. Made fires from a great pile of sticks, encouraging smoke into the room, begriming his face and hands. Sat for long hours unmoving in a space apparently cramped by shadowy bodies.

  In summer he slept outside. Became lively. I helped rebuild the Lapp women’s tent, its poles and material an infested heap at the back of a stable. He had clothes made from reindeer skins, the women’s bedding. Ate fish mashed with boiled strawberries, dried meat shredded with a whalebone knife. Blood boiled in water to the consistency of hasty pudding. He persuaded known poachers to hunt game with him on his own land. The same men he’d paid for birds’ eggs when they’d all been boys.

  I knew that neighbours and servants were greatly entertained. Edward had always been unfathomable, people said. They listened eagerly for tales to enliven winter months.

  It was poachers who told of prostration before trees, of rock ‘altars’. The runes drum with its jingling rings. Then everyone saw him daub the church doors with stick-like men and beasts and ran to restrain him. He was a tall man, fought them, struck out windmill arms, injured someone.

  I’d seen the magistrate gawp and laugh behind his hand at other times. But his estate bordered Edward’s. He felt embarrassment of class, dismissed the crime as lunacy, ordered confinement.

  Opinions ran about like rats: madness was curable, a distemper of the body, like gout or asthma; it was caused by weather, such extremes of heat and cold these days; by too much rich food; too much inactivity in the library; too much travel in foreign lands.

  ‘Let him take Balm of Gilead daily,’ someone instructed me. ‘I could not live without it,’ he said in an exhalation of brandy, cardamom, Spanish fly. The servants were sure it was the Lappish women who’d addled his mind and body with their heathen ways. The things they’d seen and heard!

  Edward had no family. The end of his line. Neighbours, worried by threat of anarchy, named a private asylum in London. I begged to keep him at home. Was ignored. Edward consented to what he thought was punishment.

  The owner was Dr Foart.

  ‘Nowadays we use management for the insane,’ he told me when I left Edward, exhausted, asleep.

  ‘What prison is this?’ Edward had said, seeing comfortable, almost elegant furniture, a window without bars.

  ‘Neither beating, mechanical restraints, purges of white and black hellebore, nor spring blood-letting. Management not medicine. And analysis.’ He tapped a newly-bound volume on the table in his fine study. His house for the reception of insane persons was advertised ‘in an excellent air, near the City, for persons of condition only’. Was once a manor house on the corner of Ashby Street. Painted, papered, superior.

  Foart was modern. Quick-witted, scholarly. Prurient, bullying. I read the title: Alexander Crichton’s Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement.

  ‘I have attended his lectures at the Westminster Hospital, Mr Sanders.’

  ‘I know nothing of mad-doctors,’ I said.

  ‘I need as many details of Edward Gage’s life as you can give me for my analysis.’

  ‘Ask him yourself, sir.’

  ‘You have been close to him. You have observed him intimately. What of his dealings with women? Is he a debaucher?’

  ‘Let me tell you about his great collection. I am familiar with most of it.’

  There were no more than six patients. Although Foart’s income was less with so few, his rates were high, five guineas a week. A small number meant a greater chance of cure. Meals were regular, cooked well. Inmates were clean, dressed by nine o’clock; at all meals sat together, conversed rationally.

  Edward wouldn’t leave his room, wouldn’t eat until I persuaded him that appearance of conformity might release him sooner. I went with him to breakfast in a pale green dining-room, its painted panels hung with engravings of mob-capped beauties; large, brown oils of anonymous ancestors. Dr Foart sat at the head of a polished table with plentiful silverware, covered dishes. I stood opposite Edward and wrote down this conversation soon after.

  ‘Mr Gage, we are not quite a full house. But, let me introduce you to James Hadfield, soldier and latterly silversmith; Richard Broughton, preacher, yes, a famous preacher.’

  He indicated next an old lady in archaic clothing. Tiny, concentrating on her plate. ‘Miss Addison, daughter of the famed writer and editor. And we yet await Mrs Bewdley. Edward Gage has a fine collection, I am told. Mr Sanders is with him temporarily.’

  Edward acknowledged each barely. Hadfield groaned, put his hand to his head, began to push back his chair. Scarred across the eye, down one cheek, his expression was fearsome.

  ‘Don’t go, Mr Hadfield,’ Foart said. ‘He has suffered great wounds in the war, you know.’

  ‘Three hours in a ditch. Left for dead. Fought for King and Country. Fifteenth Light Dragoons.’ I saw the regimental buttons on his waistcoat.

  ‘It cannot be done,’ said Broughton, a smooth man, alight as if addressing an adoring crowd. ‘You cannot serve two masters, Hadfield.’ Hadfield sat down, groaned again.

  ‘You cannot serve the King and the Lord God.’ Broughton turned to Edward. ‘That’s why I left the Royal Navy, Mr Gage. I was a lieutenant. They paid me off handsomely. Left me to do my work here in Babylon.’

  ‘Prisoner of the French,’ Hadfield ground his teeth. ‘Persecuted. But I have not yet been sufficiently tried. I know what I have yet to endure.’

  ‘The angel never mentioned you to me, Hadfield. In that whole long and lovely address for which I was chosen, I never heard mention of your name. Not once.’

  ‘I have received a divine commission.’

  ‘I have received a divine commission.’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Foart said, looking up from his dish of kidneys.

  ‘Ah!’ Broughton suddenly exclaimed. ‘It is she!’ A woman of thirty entered the room, fashionably dressed, her gown gathered under the bosom, hair in the natural style. Smiling, steadying herself on the back of Edward’s chair, she sat next to him.

  Broughton continued: ‘I have been expecting you, heavenly lady! You have brought me love, happiness, riches! Descended from the clouds!’

  Hadfield growled. ‘Said that yesterday, Broughton.’

  Mrs Bewdley took pieces of buttered toast, giggled.

  ‘Mr Broughton, look through the window. It is a sunny day, the sky is cloudless. I have descended from my room by the staircase. Dr Foart, I am sorry to be late once more. The time I need to take the drops!’ She murmured to Edward. ‘Four hundred drops of laudanum a day you know. There now, what do you think of that? But the time it takes to get it all down!’ She smiled at him with the beauty of complete joy.

  ‘We shall reduce that number, Mrs Bewdley,’ said Foart, looking hastily at me. ‘Management not medicine.’

  ‘Oh n
o, I don’t think so, Doctor. Do you?’ Edward didn’t answer.

  ‘If you are not she, then I shall heal you, dear lady. For the Fall will come. It will come. It has only been postponed for a while. And I hear it. At night I hear it approaching Babylon. Dragging, dragging its great, scaly body. So, dear lady, I shall heal you before that dreadful day.’

  ‘You are so kind. But, really, Mr Broughton, I am not in need of healing. As to the Fall with which you threaten us daily, shall I weep or laugh? What say you, Miss Addison?’ Mrs Bewdley beamed at the old lady, whose tongue captured crumbs from her tiny fingertips like a chameleon catching flies.

  Miss Addison rolled her eyes. ‘Tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet’s thoughts. An author might as well think of weaving the adventure of Aeneas and Hudibras into one poem, as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow.’

  ‘Stop her!’ Hadfield urged under his breath at Miss Addison’s relentless, tinkling monotone.

  ‘But the absurdity of these performances is so very visible that I shall not insist upon it.’

  ‘She knows her father’s works by heart. Every word. Come Miss Addison,’ said Dr Foart, ‘let me take you upstairs.’

  Hadfield, Broughton and Mrs Bewdley fell on the remaining dishes. Edward signed to me and we left the room.

  Foart had a botanic garden behind the asylum for the recreation of his patients. He had little success; they saw no point in taking on the work of their inferiors. After I left, Edward, shunning company, agreed to dig the ground, though he would eat the herbs, set traps for birds among the bushes. He told me how Foart found him there, absorbed. How he’d questioned him, elicited nothing. Persisted, broke his own declared intention not to use threats, mentioned the new electrical treatment for melancholy. Left Edward weeping.

  Foart believed in the importance of forgetting. When he learned enough for his analysis he decided there was over-exertion of Edward’s mental faculties with, he surmised, some disappointment of passion. He must forget Lapland! All objects and books that might remind him were forbidden. The subject must not be discussed. Not that anyone around the table was likely to raise it. Only metropolitan food was provided, dressed, devilled, fricasséed, jellied.

  The pistols were Hadfield’s. Although forbidden him, since he must forget his attempt on the life of the king, they’d easily been secreted by his old friend Mrs Mason. Hadfield was plotting escape with Broughton and Edward, who borrowed the firearms to practise the hold and feel of them.

  I heard what happened from Edward and the doctor both. It seems that in following Crichton’s Inquiry Foart must go through the exercise of self-analysis, to abstract his own mind from himself, place it before him, as it were, and examine it with freedom and impartiality. This he was doing when Edward burst upon him with two cocked pistols.

  ‘Where is my reindeer? You have stolen my little reindeer!’

  ‘Mr Gage, put down the pistols and let us talk together. You know there are no animals in the house. They are not allowed.’

  ‘You’ve taken my reindeer because you want me to forget. Forget, you say. I cannot, will not forget. It is in your clothing, the reindeer. You’ve stolen it. Take off your clothes!’

  Foart was not within reach of his bell. He took off his well-cut coat. Edward waved a pistol at his stomach.

  ‘Empty the pockets!’

  Foart pulled out paper scraps, coins, a box of snuff. He scoffed: ‘A reindeer in my pocket!’

  ‘Cameo. Rose-pink agate.’ Tears welled. ‘You’ve hidden it in your clothing. Off! Off! Take everything off!’

  Foart kicked off his shoes, stripped breeches, stockings, waistcoat, shirt, began to remove the undershirt when his servant stepped into the room behind Edward and snatched the pistols. They were unloaded.

  The doctor never used strait-waistcoats. Edward, crushed, was easily locked in his room. Toast and a basin of tea were given but not taken. Crouching on the floor in misery, he found the reindeer cameo under his bed and holding it tight in his fist beat his head against the floorboards in joy and wretchedness.

  He was confined for days. When at last I was told, Foart said:

  ‘A case of hallucinatio maniacalis. I cannot let him out.’

  He rejected my pleas; furibund patients were a danger. Then suddenly he allowed Edward into the garden which was badly in need of weeding. From where, having encouraged him to eat himself back to strength, it was not hard with signals, rope and a waiting trap to have him over the wall.

  Once more he roamed his land. Among rocks and bilberries. The magistrate relented, with assurances from me. But Edward was broken. He would not go indoors, for doors could close, be locked. Even near to the house someone might assault him with Babylon, ditches, laudanum, tragi-comedy. Electrical treatment to the head.

  He moved the tent far into the woods, stoked a continuous fire, dosed himself with brandy, ate meat raw or ashy, blackened in the flames. He would countenance no one, scarcely even me. I kept some watch but wouldn’t spy. He knew quite well that nobody would come if the tent caught fire in deep night and cooked him, stupefied, curled like an infant under piles of skins.

  I returned to Brighthelmstone. Sold my valuable knife collection, opened a house for so-called lunatics. In Edward’s library I’d found Locke’s essay. Madmen have not lost their reason, he says, rather, ‘having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths.’ My asylum was no Collegium Insanorum. Certainly there were no strait-waistcoats, mechanical aparatus, bleeding, blistering. No well-clad mad-doctors. No self-analysis. Above all, no confinement.

  I sought out Maria. The daughter of my employer before Edward. She had chosen to rehabilitate her dead mother’s muddied reputation, rather than marry me, her mother’s footman. By now her mother was surely forgotten by the world and I had something more to offer her. We could run the place together, treat madmen with understanding, common-sense, kindness.

  Approaching her house, I relived her mother’s incessant demands, domination. Maria’s eager grasp in dark corridors and stairwells. Perhaps she had married, I thought, moved away.

  Her mother’s portraits covered the walls; her mother’s novels filled shelves; her notes, poems, letters were piled in boxes, mounds, scattered over tables, floorboards. Maria sat in her mother’s chair, by the window’s perfect seascape, stout but recognisable. Looked round at me, her hands scuttering like mice among papers on her lap. Stared, unblinking. Turned back to the sea.

  FORGIVEN

  ‘You’ll be dead within the month,’ apothecary Sawbridge tells him.

  That’s how it is with Sawbridge. Their friendship, Harley’s only friendship, has grown out of the muck of truth. Has sprung up like rhubarb, bold and sour, its leaves poisonous, its body acidic, curative. They’ve never lied to each other, never eased discourse with sweet deceit.

  Everything is grist: Reform, finally in place, trade unions, Ireland, cursed evangelicals, geology, dissection, Shelley, the railway, God. Sawbridge is moderate; Harley, the school-teacher, still radical. They set out their life-stories like specimens pinned through the heart, to closely scan and criticise. All is admitted, nothing discarded.

  For years they argue over the tale of the dog so loyal that it would let no one approach the body of its dead master. Famished, it ate the upper part of the man’s face, some of his neck, one of his shoulders. Sawbridge sees it as a simple demonstration of the limitations of the animal mind. Harley insists it is an emblem: the master freedom, dead, the dog revolution, intractably loyal to the concept, able to survive only by doing it violence.

  Sawbridge examines Harley, his pulse, tongue, eyeballs, temperature. He listens to rasping breaths through his new stethoscope.

  ‘You might not last a fortnight, Harley.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting since ’
95. Thirty-nine years.’

  ‘You know my opinion of that.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I shall increase the laudanum.’

  ‘I’m sorry I shan’t be there to give your eulogy, doctor to the humble. Sawbridge. Sawbones.’

  There’s little for Harley to do. He’ll tell the Board to advertise for a new teacher. He’s already willed his books and rickety spinet to Sawbridge. He’s written to his daughter. The first child, a boy, died years ago. He’d left his wife before the girl was born, at the start of the new century. She might want to know why her father moved miles away from London, why they’ve never known each other. She’ll be thirty-four now. Perhaps she will forgive him.

  *

  The harvest shrivelled in 1794. Then came a freezing winter. Ripples of ice crimped the shores of the Thames, leaving a central channel into which a man, drunk with warming brandy fell, froze to death and floated downstream. Harley provided food and fuel for his wife and baby from his wages as a hairdresser; his wife sewed linen bolster covers. The marriage was an obligation, the baby a sickly, squalling thing that broke the night to pieces.

  ‘My father fought for the king in America,’ he tells Sawbridge. ‘A lieutenant. What glory! For nine years he sat all day in a chair by the fire with his bloody stump and mad eyes. Never spoke. I was terrified. Yet my mother bore him three more children.

  ‘I was the eldest. When he died I could no longer hide behind the few volumes given me out of pity by the schoolmaster. A hairdresser nearby offered work. I had no choice.

  ‘It seems to me that we powdered every head in the West End. I learned to curl, crimp, frizz, place false hair and hair cushions. I smeared scented pomatum, my fingers dipped in brick dust for the grip, combed, parted, pinned, scraped greasy foreheads with the powder knife and puffed superfine jasmine, attar of roses, heliotrope powder at four shillings a pound.