Frank stuck his little fork in the earth, rolled his body over and squatted on the brick path. ‘I am so tired. I could sleep for ever.’
‘It is because they drug you.’
Frank nodded. ‘To murder grief.’
‘What? Do you grieve? Why?’
Frank shook his head but did not answer.
‘They tell me you saw a ghost,’ Holdsworth said, speaking casually, as though seeing a ghost was of mild interest but nothing more. ‘I suppose it was Mrs Whichcote’s?’
Frank let his head fall forward to his breast.
‘So it was? How did you know it was she?’
‘Who else could it be?’ Frank muttered. ‘Where else would Sylvia walk?’
‘Why? Because she died there?’
With his forefinger, Frank drew a circle, a zero, in the earth.
‘Tell me, pray – why did you go outside that night? Were you going to the necessary house?’
Frank shook his head. His face filled with flickering animation, the muscles twitching and dancing under the skin. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘Wanted air. Nothing mattered.’
‘You went outside,’ Holdsworth said. ‘You wanted air, and nothing mattered. I see.’
Frank shook his head with a vigour that was almost manic. ‘You don’t. You’re stupid. I could do anything. Don’t you understand? I was free. I was God. I was the Holy Ghost.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘And now I’m mad. My wits are disordered, do you hear? I do not understand anything. Nor do you. You’re a perfect blockhead.’
Holdsworth stood up. A shift had taken place in the conversation. Frank had spoken to him as an angry young gentleman talks to an inferior.
‘I am the Holy Ghost,’ Frank went on in a quieter voice. ‘And so I saw a ghost. Quod – quod erat demonstrandum.’
‘Are you happy here?’ Holdsworth asked after a pause.
‘I hate the place and all who live here.’
‘If you wish, perhaps you may leave.’
‘I cannot go home,’ Frank said. ‘I will not go home.’
‘Is that why you attacked Mr Cross? To stop them sending you home?’
Frank lowered his head and drew another circle in the earth, another zero. ‘Poor Cross. The fit was upon me – I could not help it. I can help nothing now. It would be better if I were dead. I wish I were.’
Holdsworth had felt the same way himself when they brought first Georgie home and then Maria. Unhappy people spoke a common language. He would have given his life for Georgie. Hadn’t Maria known that? He would have given his life to save hers too, but instead he gave her a wound the size of a penny piece and a desire for death.
Forgive me.
‘Tell me,’ he said to Frank. ‘What if I could persuade her ladyship to order Dr Jermyn to release you into my custody?’
‘How can I trust you? You would take me back to my mother. You would take me somewhere worse, for all I know, worse than this.’
‘I cannot force you to trust me. So let me appeal to your reason.’
‘I have no reason.’
‘You have enough reason for this, sir, I think. At all events, let us suppose you have. If I ask her ladyship to release you into my custody, and if we find somewhere quite retired where we shall live – will that not be better than this? As for this matter of trust – consider it from my perspective. I can only carry out this suggestion with your mother’s agreement. If anything happens to you, if anything at all undesirable occurs because of this move, then her ladyship will lay it solely at my door. Simply for reasons of self-interest, I cannot afford to do you anything but good. Even if there is nothing I can do to cure you, at least you will be away from here. You will be away from Dr Jermyn and his moral management.’
Frank drew another zero in the earth. ‘I do not want to see my mother or Cross or Whichcote or Harry Archdale or my tutor or any of them. Anyone at all.’
‘That would be entirely understood. If you permit me to raise the matter with her ladyship, I shall say that you and I must live in seclusion. That would be a necessary precondition.’
Frank looked up sharply. ‘What if I shouldn’t want to be cured? Have you thought of that? What then?’
Before Holdsworth could reply, there was a sudden commotion behind them. Holdsworth and Frank turned. Two men had come into the kitchen garden – Norcross and Jermyn himself. Norcross had a mastiff on a short leash. The other attendant leaped to his feet, his newspaper fluttering to the ground. The only people who appeared quite unaffected were the two middle-aged patients, who continued with their work as if nothing had happened.
‘Shall I write to her ladyship?’ Holdsworth said in an undertone. ‘Yes or no?’
‘You, sir,’ Jermyn called. ‘Come here this instant or I shall order my man to unleash the dog.’
‘Yes,’ Frank whispered. ‘Quickly.’
19
After divine service, a sea of caps and gowns flooded through the doors of Great St Mary’s and gradually dissipated itself among the streets, alleys and colleges. Holdsworth paused outside the railings of the Senate House to watch the spectacle. Most of the worshippers were in academic dress, and their gowns and hoods were of many colours and textures. Some slouched, some strolled; some walked in chattering groups, others in silence, one or two with their noses in books. Here was the University in its Sunday finery, and the sight was both magnificent and slovenly.
Holdsworth was in no hurry to reach Jerusalem. On his way back from Barnwell, he had called at Lambourne House in Chesterton Lane, but the little footboy who answered the door told him that Mr Whichcote was not at home to visitors. Holdsworth declined to state his business. As he had turned to leave, he had glimpsed a gentleman with a lean, handsome face looking down at him from an upstairs window. Whichcote probably took him for an importunate tradesman with an upaid bill, and the footboy had fobbed him off with a polite fiction.
Afterwards Holdsworth had walked about the town at random. Cambridge was like a place in the grip of an occupying army. The streets were mean and crowded, the houses small and ugly, huddled in among themselves as though for protection. The citizens scurried about with surly faces as though they had little right to be there – the true masters of the place were the gowned figures who lived behind the gates and walls of the colleges. Occasionally he had glimpsed above the rooftops a tower, a soaring pinnacle or, through a great stone gateway, a quiet grassy court surrounded by gracious buildings, some modern, others Gothic and picturesque. In Cambridge, he thought, appearances were deceptive: it was a place that jealously guarded its secrets and its beauties. And perhaps its ghosts, as well.
When the crowd outside Great St Mary’s had diminished, Holdsworth crossed the road and walked into St Mary’s Passage, which ran along the south side of the church. He saw the dapper figure of Mr Richardson thirty yards ahead, walking beside a tall, stately man swinging a gold-headed cane. Another, smaller figure sauntered behind them, swaying with exaggerated motions from side to side in a manner that caricatured the movements of the man with the cane. It was young Mr Archdale indulging in his sense of humour.
Holdsworth followed them back to Jerusalem. Mepal made his obedience with particular reverence as the little party passed the porter’s lodge. The three men paused in Chapel Court, standing in the watery sunshine. The tall man looked about him with a proprietorial air. Holdsworth, judging that his presence might not be welcome, was about to slip by when Richardson murmured something to his companions and turned aside to greet him.
‘Mr Holdsworth – this is well met, sir: I had hoped to see you before dinner. You will be in the library after dinner, I apprehend? I shall be with Sir Charles. But Soresby will be your guide – he is very able – he knows almost as much about it as I do, I believe. I saw him after chapel this morning and reminded him of the engagement. Pray ask him anything you want. He will place himself entirely at your service for as long as you wish.’