‘Enough of that,’ pronounced Mr Madden from the other end of the table, without looking up. He was examining his hands intently and his face was dark.
‘I’m simply longing for tomorrow evening!’ said Pamela brightly. ‘It’ll be the first time we’ve all been together as a family since — since when?’
She looked wonderingly about the table.
‘Since the last time,’ said Martin morosely.
Chapter Twenty-Four
That night I dreamed of Edward; but even the dream itself had the guilty atmosphere of a concession, as if my subconscious was manifesting a concern more dutiful than sincere. The dream took place in Franchise Farm, where I was attempting to show him the house and gardens and tell him about my new life. In the dream I kept forgetting him, like a reluctant promise or some newly acquired but not yet treasured object, and would experience rush after rush of anxiety as I remembered him and went chasing back to where I had left him. The most arduous aspect of this peculiar cycle was that each time I went back to retrieve him, finding him sitting helplessly as a baby in the room in which I had last deposited him, I was forced to explain to him not only what I had been doing, but how I had been able to do it. In other words, I was compelled to spell out to him over and over again the principles of will and motion, of which he did not seem to have the faintest idea. Each time he gazed at me with an expression of almost idiotic incomprehension, and I would feel a sense of intolerable pressure or enclosure; and each time, just as I felt this, I would remember something persistently forgotten and look down and see that he was sitting in a wheelchair.
Eventually this dream yielded to a mute, horrible nightmare in which I lay in my bed in the cottage while birds flew about the room, diving and pecking at my body; and I woke sweating and aching, with the sense of some imminent and unavoidable misfortune lying in wait for me. Outside the window the day wore the ripeness of mid-morning, and I could hear faint sounds of industry, the buzz of a farm engine, the distant murmur of can. A sharp consciousness of time scythed through these languorous apprehensions. I bolted up in panic, the bedclothes flying back, before remembering that Pamela had taken the boys to see Aunt Lilian and that I had the day to myself. There are few things more pleasant than this type of realization. One is acquitted not only of the original crime, but also of the suspicion that one might in fact under other circumstances have committed it and of the consequences of having done so; all of which, in addition, are washed away in a matter of moments by some anticipated pleasure. I have often wished that I could make other problems vanish in a similar way. Subsiding back into the pillows, I considered my twice-granted liberty and wondered what I would do with it. With Mr Madden occupied at the ferm, both the day and the rest of the property were mine. In my mind I toured its facilities, inspecting them anew with a proprietary gaze. I was surprised to find myself so shamelessly sizing up what did not belong to me, as if I had merely been awaiting the opportunity to do so. Dimly it struck me that this was a consequence of my disfranchised state. Those aspects of life I would previously have regarded with the mild eye of entitlement now lay tantalizingly under lock and key. With the door to privilege left ajar and unattended, I could no more prevent myself from trespassing beyond it than a pauper could stroll past a banknote lying on a pavement.
Having established what I intended to do, and made my dark commitment to it, I found myself in no hurry to begin. I lay for a further half-hour, only vaguely aware of the fugitive motion of thoughts flitting from beam to window sill; until the sudden consciousness of my empty mind seemed to invite more predatory notions. Quickly I got up to escape them; but crossing the room to find my clothes I glimpsed myself unexpectedly in the wardrobe mirror. Before I could fend it off, the sight had filled me with a sense of my destitution. Not being braced against my reflection, I had caught myself unawares and through this brief gap had seen the thing which presented the unfortunate but irremovable obstacle to my own disappearance. What surprised me was to realize how familiar this sight was. I had seen it on busy London pavements, amidst a throng of faces: one or two whose eyes looked out from their bodies as if from behind bars, as they paid for the crime of permitting their misfortunes to outweigh the space their flesh was entitled to occupy.
Some ten minutes later, I was washed and dressed, in the cut-off trousers — the only item, despite the freight of association they carried, that I did not now regard as a ‘uniform’ — and a short-sleeved T-shirt. I had become so used by now to the heat that I had stopped expecting it to change — indeed, I had forgotten the cadences of weather entirely. Even so, I was forcibly struck as I opened the cottage door by the charged fury of the day. Something brutal had invaded the air. It rushed at me, unnatural and molten, and as I stepped out into the garden I felt the agony of it on my skin, fighting it into my mouth and lungs. I was becoming frightened of the heat. It was out of control. What if it just kept getting hotter? What were we expected to do? I had a desire for some authority to whom I could report it, and wondered if I should go and tell Mr Madden. It was quite some time before the idiocy of this notion struck me. I set off down the garden in search of some shade. It was by now almost midday, and due to my oversleeping and general languor about the bedroom I had had no breakfast. The thought of food was repellent to me, but I felt this to be a trick of the heat and determined to go over to the house and find myself something to eat.
The back door was unlocked, and as I entered the dark passage its abrupt cool and shade caused my head to spin. For some seconds I was entirely blinded by the change, and I loomed dizzily, bumping against the cold, stony flanks of the walls. I was alert nonetheless for signs of Mrs Barker, for although I was not personally troubled by my intention of scavenging for food in the Maddens’ kitchen — given that they had not yet offered to advance me any money with which I might buy some myself, nor indeed appeared to have given the matter of what I was eating for breakfast much thought at all — I recognized it to be rather indefensible — or at least to require an energy to explain it which I did not in that moment possess — to others. The house was quiet, and I deduced from the pungent scent of polish which harnessed the air that Mrs Barker had completed her morning’s ministrations and gone home. Reassured, I stole up the passage and into the empty kitchen. The room was immaculate and oddly unwelcoming without its usual occupants. The neat arrangement of chairs and table, the scrubbed surfaces and gleaming floor, had a suspicious, superintendent air, as if they were witnessing my intrusion and would register any betrayal — a stray crumb or fingerprint — of it with disapproval.
With an artificially casual motion I strolled to the refrigerator and opened it. Its contents — carefully sealed dishes of leftovers, leafy fronds of salad, silver bricks of butter, packages of raw, pink meat, a number of expensive-looking jars of relish and suchlike — seemed both horribly private and utterly inaccessible. Any incursions there would, I felt sure, be complex both in execution and concealment. My appetite began to retreat. I made to shut the door again in defeat, but as I did so a large bottle lolled forward from the bottom shelf. Anxious that it would fall, I lunged down and caught it by the neck; at which point there was a terrific explosion which almost knocked me over with fright, and a geyser of foam spurted up from the mouth of the bottle and splattered over my legs. It all happened so quickly that I could not comprehend the nature of the disaster for some seconds. My heart thudded in my chest as the sour smell of wine gave off its terrible clue. I lifted the bottle with a trembling hand. The dark green glass with its elaborate gold label confirmed what I already suspected. It was champagne, of a variety, moreover, which I knew from my previous life to be inordinately expensive. A shred or two of foil clung to the bottle’s lip, from where its cork had evidently blasted as a result of my inadvertent agitations. I was surprised to see how much remained: despite my dripping legs, the bottle was still three-quarters full.