The Skull and the Nightingale. Michael Irwin

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      I woke from a dream in which I was fumbling a plump whore in a dark street in Rouen. The impression stayed with me as I lay half insensible: I could smell the horse-dung on the cobbles and feel the girl’s damp warmth. Only gradually did I come to myself and recollect that I was in bed in my godfather’s house. Even then the idea was so strong upon me that had a maid-servant chanced to enter the room I might have sleepily seized on her, and perhaps derived a flesh and blood child from my fantasy. But the illusion thinned and my intellects began to confront the day. I arose, groped my way to the window and threw back the heavy curtain. On the instant I was myself again, looking out upon green lawns shining with dew below a bright morning sun. It was a sight to fill me with hope and energy. The day might hold revelations, but I felt ready to face them.

      Having arrived too late on the preceding evening to see my godfather I had now to impress the man on whom my hopes depended. What manner would be best calculated to win his favour? I concluded that a respectful but easy bearing, quickened with a hint of mischief, should do the business. As I washed and dressed I tried to think myself into this demeanour. Even a hint of importunity concerning my future would be unbecoming. Pleasure at the reunion, gratitude for past kindnesses: these were the emotions to display.

      Downstairs I learned that Mr Gilbert had already breakfasted. I was directed to meet him later that morning in the drawing-room at the rear of the house. Arriving before he did I had time to survey, through broad windows, the slopes of Flint Hill fringed, in the distance, by black-branched woodland. On the nearside of those trees everything I could see belonged to my godfather and might one day, conceivably, belong to me. Behind me several family portraits gazed down. I turned to stare back at my adoptive ancestors. In life they might have been formidable: in death they were so many planes of pigment. It could not be many years before my godfather would be similarly reduced. Perhaps he had aged in my absence. Perhaps he would totter in to say, ‘Let me be plain with you: I have but one month to live. This estate and all my wealth are to be yours. I wish you joy of them.’

      When he did enter, however, it was with no such cadaverous air. He looked as I remembered him, lean, but by no means frail, his face shrewd and thin-lipped. As ever he was neatly groomed: the taut little wig could have been his own hair.

      If he was overjoyed to see me he contrived not to show it. I adapted my manner to his, and our first exchanges were courteous rather than familiar. I had brought gifts from abroad, which I formally delivered to my benefactor rather as a visiting English ambassador might present diplomatic offerings to a Chinese potentate. He received them with corresponding decorum. Thoughtful questions were asked concerning people and places, and suitable answers given. The little minuet of civilities was creditably performed by both parties.

      Later, in response to his promptings, I told him various tales of my travels, speaking, I thought, gaily and well. He listened with attention, seeming by degrees to relax his customary reserve: I could even fancy that he looked at me with approval. On occasion our dialogue all but quickened into raillery.

      ‘I inferred from your letters,’ he said, with lizard-like dryness, ‘that throughout your travels you conducted yourself in an exemplary way.’

      ‘It seemed appropriate, sir, to represent myself in a sober light.’

      My godfather allowed himself a ghost of a smile: ‘I hope this sense of propriety did not circumscribe your pleasures.’

      ‘I was at pains to resist that possibility,’ said I, with a reciprocal hint of self-mockery.

      He looked me directly in the eye, still faintly smiling.

      ‘I notice a scar on the back of your hand.’

      ‘You embarrass me, sir. It goes back to a small encounter in Florence.’

      ‘A matter of honour?’

      ‘Of intoxication, rather. It was a foolish incident, but no great harm was done.’

      He nodded to close the subject, and then turned a sudden conversational corner.

      ‘It is two years since last you were here. Have you perceived any differences?’

      ‘Only that the great oak tree has gone that once stood beside the house.’

      ‘It had become too old and brittle. It reminded me too much of myself.’

      Taken by surprise I could fashion no suitably consoling response, but my godfather did not seem to notice. He sat staring at nothing before speaking again: ‘I hope you will stay for some few days, and gain a sense of my life here.’

      Two evenings later some guests from the neighbourhood came to dinner. I was curious to meet these people, since I might one day have to live on terms with them, and curious, too, to see how my reticent godfather would comport himself in company. But equally it would be my task to rise to whatever the occasion was intended to be. I should think of myself as in some sense on display.

      How much the visitors would know of my situation and prospects I could not guess. I would probably be the youngest person present and the one of least social consequence. On the other hand I was educated, gentlemanly, and had recently travelled. It would not do to be ingratiating nor yet forward. I resolved to stay out of general conversation, as far as possible, but to show myself attentive to individuals.

      The loudest of the company proved to be Mr Hurlock, a florid squire with a buxom wife. He was a rattling, rallying fellow, aggressive in his manner, with a laugh like the bray of an animal. I saw in him an ageing country bully, coarse and discontented. Mr Quentin, a dark man with a brooding gaze, conveyed more intelligence with greater sobriety of manner. Of a different cast altogether was Mr Yardley, as lean as my godfather, with the stooped shoulders and sallow cheeks of one who devoted many hours to reading. I remembered to have heard him mentioned as a naturalist and collector. There was also Mr Thorpe, a young parson, new to the village. He wore a propitiating smile under an alert eye.

      Hurlock greeted me boisterously: ‘So you come here from France, young gentleman. Here in Worcestershire we turned against that country in ’45, when the Jacobites reached Derby and we felt French breath on the back of our necks.’

      I soon diverted him to the subject of hunting, on which he had much to say. Eventually relieved of his company by my godfather I escaped to Thorpe, who proved to be a former Oxford student and quizzed me amiably about university matters.

      At dinner I had Mrs Hurlock on my right hand, and found my eye taken more than once by her prominent bosom – a former attraction declined, it seemed, to a feeding apparatus, since she confided that she had borne several children. I could see that twenty years before she must have been a covetable young lady; but time and a coarse husband had diminished her assurance. ‘I believe you are a scholar,’ she told me, ‘and already a man of the world. Alas, I am merely a mother.’ To keep her conversing about her surviving offspring was as simple as whipping a top.

      On my left sat Mrs Quentin, another dilapidated beauty. I first saw her from behind, and fancied from her slim figure that she was hardly more than thirty. She had merely to turn around to age twenty years, her face being faded and unhappy. When I tried to converse with her over dinner I noticed a reticence and an odd cast of expression apparently attributable to the same cause, namely her desire to keep concealed a set of blackened teeth. I talked to her in a free and lively vein to create the illusion of an exchange, but avoided provoking СКАЧАТЬ