Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (16 page)

‘I don’t know though,’ said Maureen finally. ‘I mean, I don’t hold with this afterlife business, do you? It’s so—like—unnecessary, isn’t it? I mean this life’s bad enough really, you don’t want any more of it after. Do you know what I mean? The whole thing gives me the creeps. I told him straight. He seemed to understand and he told me he was arranging things so I wouldn’t have to worry. Then he wanted me to sign something, so he could guarantee no worries.’

‘Sign what exactly?’

‘Well, I don’t know really. It was all in funny writing, like the olden times. I said I wasn’t sure about this signing business. Anyway he took the paper away, saying he’d come back another time.’

I said: ‘Before you sign anything, tell Mr Pigsny I want to see him and talk to him.’

She agreed at once to this, and appeared to be relieved that I had taken the matter out of her hands.

A few days later I was taking a shortcut across the Fellow’s Garden on my way to a seminar. There was enough time, I thought, to greet Nickolds, the College Gardener who I thought was looking rather disconsolate. I asked him what was the matter.

‘We’ve been invaded, that’s what,’ he said in his distinctive, laconic fashion. He pointed to the bed of Gloxinias and Hostas in which he took a special pride. Even I could tell they were in a bad way. The leaves had been gnawed into shreds by some creature or other.

‘Slugs,’ said Nickolds, pointing to an unusually large specimen, dark and glutinous. With one neat thrust he bisected it with a spade.

‘I’ve put down beer traps and caught dozens, but they keep coming. Where are they from?’

I expressed bewilderment and sympathy in the best way I could and began to move off to my seminar.

‘If you see one of them bastards, professor, you bloody well smash ’em,’ said Nickolds. I said I would not fail him, hoping devoutly that the eventuality would not arise.

As I was returning from my seminar across the main quad, our porter George approached and informed me that there was someone at the lodge asking to see me. Something about his look told me he was more than usually troubled. I was therefore not surprised to find little Mr Pigsny pretending to study a noticeboard under the great entrance arch of St Jude’s.

‘Come to my rooms,’ I said.

As we walked there Mr Pigsny trotted beside me, chatting inconsequentially about the weather and other trivial topics. I was conscious of him deliberately keeping the talk light and free of significance, perhaps to tease or torment me in some way. One thing he said, however, struck a different note.

‘Your college here, St Jude’s. It’s always been a favourite of mine.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘In what way?’

‘Oh, I’ve been familiar with it over the years. Did you know about Dr Barnsworth committing suicide in your rooms?’

I was shocked. Yes, I had heard about Barnsworth, but it was well before my time, over sixty years ago. ‘What about Barnsworth?’ I said angrily.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Mr Pigsny. ‘Some people have claimed it was some sort of erotic strangulation, but it wasn’t, you know.’ After that we walked to my rooms in silence.

It was a bright hot day and the windows of my rooms were open, so that the faint murmur of normality could be distinctly heard from the quad below. I offered Mr Pigsny a sherry, the only drink I had available, but he refused, so I then asked him for an explanation. Of what? he asked. I repeated the catalogue, from his appearance in my quad and at the Greek play to the prints and the paper he was wanting Maureen to sign.

‘You people always want an explanation, don’t you?’ said Mr Pigsny. ‘Well, what if there isn’t an explanation? Or what if there is one, but I couldn’t make you understand it, not in a million years? What if just there aren’t words in the poxy English language to express a meaning, you bone-headed little shit?’

I think there was a long silence after this, or perhaps it was the shock I felt which made it long in my memory. When he began again, his speech was low and level again, almost too quiet to hear, but not quite.

‘Your friend Reg wanted an explanation, so I gave him what he wanted. He wanted to know if there was life beyond death, so I told him that he might never die. But he wanted a guarantee that he would never die, so I gave it to him. He signed and he had it. He wanted folks here to go on worrying and thinking about him. He wanted people to go on saying he was a diamond geezer, so I gave it to him. What a muppet! What a moron! As if anybody gives a damn!’

‘I do!’ I said.

‘No, you don’t. You’re like the rest! You couldn’t give a toss. All you care about is that stupid Ming vase he gave you. Anyway, what’s it to you? He got what he wanted, didn’t he? Got what he deserved. He’ll never die! He’ll never never die! He’ll crawl on his knees through shit, begging for death, fucking begging for it, but he’ll never, never bloody die!’

By this time Mr Pigsny’s voice had risen to a shrill scream and he was dancing about the room, thundering on the floorboards so that I could feel them bowing under his weight.

‘Stop!’ I shouted. He did so, and for a long time we stood staring at each other without speaking while the breath went rasping in and out of Mr Pigsny’s stunted little body.

Then Mr Pigsny opened his mouth wide but this time out of it came no speech or noise, only a vast writhing darkness. His mouth widened still further and I saw that it was filled with slugs, boiling and wriggling like the tormented souls they were. Soon they were spilling onto one of my precious rugs in great vomited legions, some great, some small, all of a blackish colour but carrying a faint iridescent sheen of red and green and blue. The larger slugs had faces which bore the semblance of humanity, traces of the cruelty and lust they had once fondled in life. There was no sound but the rustling, seething sound of Mr Pigsny’s possessed souls, as he belched them into my Cambridge study.

Did I really see this? Or did I see it with the eyes of madness and illusion. I only know that I saw and nothing else. I only know that what I saw filled me with white rage and the strength of seven men, so that I picked up little Mr Pigsny almost without effort and threw him out of my open window into the quad.

For some seconds I was in a daze, horrified at what I had done. I did not dare look out of the window but stared only at the floor where the writhing slugs were slowly evaporating into foul-smelling smoke leaving behind several dark, glutinous stains on my lovely Bokhara rug. The college servant who cleans my rooms has complained to me bitterly about it several times, but I have offered him neither apology nor explanation.

When finally I looked out of the window I saw that a crowd of curious undergraduates had gathered round the place where Mr Pigsny must have fallen. It was onto the flagstone path that surrounded the grass of the quadrangle and not onto the soft earth. Mr Pigsny could not have survived the fall without, at the very least, suffering very serious injuries.

The crowd looked up and saw me, and, as they did so, I caught a glimpse of what they were surrounding. It was not the body of Mr Pigsny at all. On the pavement lay the shattered fragments of the Ming vase that Reg had left me in his will.

‘Dear me,’ I said fatuously for the benefit of the spectators. ‘What a terrible thing,’ and hurried downstairs to clear away the shards.

By the time I reached the quad most of the crowd had dispersed. Cambridge takes eccentricity in its stride and, if my conduct in throwing a priceless vase out of my window was regarded as odd, no-one, happily, thought it warranted more than a raised eyebrow. I began to pick up the fragments of the vase and put them in a plastic bag I had thoughtfully grabbed on the way out of my rooms. As I did so I heard flute music. My heart seemed to stop, but then I noticed that it was coming from the open window of our organ scholar. I could even see him innocently playing. I returned to my gathering of the shards. It was then that I discovered a roll of paper lying on the grass beside the shattered Ming. It was the print that I had put inside the vase, the print which Mr Pigsny had left for me at the porter’s lodge after the Greek play.

I took it up with me to examine at leisure in my rooms. The picture was in many ways as before. Under a lowering sky of thick, dirty cloud was stretched a vast frozen lake. Its distant edges were fringed with jagged pitiless mountains whose peaks and ridges were laced with snow. But there were no figures on the frozen lake neither in the foreground nor the middle distance. Nothing now relieved the perfect desolation and loneliness of the scene.

I might even have thought of framing it and hanging it up as a curiosity; but the condition of the print was marred irrevocably. It was criss-crossed by lines of some dark viscous, oily substance which looked to me like the trails of slugs.

THE BRIGHTON REDEMPTION

Extracts from the journals of the

Rt. Rev. Cyprian Bourne-Webb
(
1863-1955
)

Friday 6th March 1885

There is a very great deal of vice in Brighton. Even though I arrived here only a few days ago, I have already seen it with my own eyes. But that, I suppose, in a way, is why I am here. I am not saying that Brighton does not have its wholesome aspects. Brighton is bracing, and the long white stucco terraces that face the sea have a kind of robust beauty. There are many churches in Brighton, not the least of which is St Simeon’s in Albion Street to which I have been appointed as curate. The rector is the Reverend Arthur Devereux, or Father Devereux, as he likes to be styled.

Everyone has been saying how lucky I am in my first appointment since ordination, and if you can call my uncle’s influence luck, then I suppose they are right. St Simeon’s is one of the largest parish churches in England and was actually built by Father Devereux himself, largely out of his own very considerable personal fortune. Father Devereux, as you may guess from his favoured nomenclature, is the highest of High Anglicans and he has constructed and adorned his House of God accordingly.

Father Devereux likes to say that he has two passions in life: building churches and saving souls. He is a big, fleshily handsome man of some fifty summers with a voice that can be heard in the farthest recesses of his basilica of a Sunday. I think he regards me with a kind of benign suspicion. He is not at all sure whether I will be adequate to his needs—nor am I, for that matter—but he is prepared to tolerate me for the sake of my uncle, the Bishop.

At Father Devereux’s insistence, I live with him at the Rectory next to St Simeon’s. Needless to say, he has built it himself. It is very large and spacious, with many modern conveniences, such as a bathroom, hot water pipes, and two inside water closets; nevertheless I do not like the Rectory. It is very dark within. The windows are large enough but many have stained glass in them, mostly depicting martyred saints, but the chief one above the staircase in the hall is emblazoned with the Devereux family arms. The woodwork is in dark oak, and where he has used wallpaper, it is in rich, sombre colours. He has made abundant use of Mr William Morris’s designs which I have never cared for. My bedroom walls are adorned with a particularly intricate pattern of curling, stylised vegetation. If I stare at it too long, I feel as if I have become lost in a dense medieval forest, and may never come out of it into the nineteenth century again.

I eat every day at Father Devereux’s table, except when he has important guests, and am fed plentifully and well. At dinner he even offers me a glass of wine which I have not yet had the courage to accept. Father Devereux is a bachelor, and his housekeeper, Mrs Price is an excellent cook. She is a tall, thin, bony woman in her sixties with the palest blue eyes I have ever seen. She does not look at me, even on the rare occasions when she addresses me.

Father Devereux is always kindness itself, but I am not quite at ease with him. He has very strict principles. On the days when I take early communion at seven for him in St Simeon’s, he insists that I must be there an hour before the service praying on my knees in the chancel. Once he came into church shortly after six to reassure himself that I was following his instructions.

Sunday 8th March 1885

Something rather shocking occurred at breakfast today. Father Devereux is at his most expansive on Sunday mornings, after early communion and before matins. He had been talking about the Home for the Recovery of Fallen Women which he had set up at Brighton when Mrs Price entered with a fresh pot of tea.

He said: ‘You see Mrs Price here? She is herself a repentant Magdalene. One of the first people in Brighton that I turned away from the path of perdition. Is that not right, Mrs Price?’

Mrs Price put down the teapot on its stand and stared expressionlessly at Father Devereux. Finally she nodded.

‘It is so,’ said Father Devereux. ‘And what was your
nom de guerre
in those unregenerate days?’

‘Long Sal, father,’ said Mrs Price.

‘Long Sal. That is correct, but your real name is Price. You were never married but we have given you the courtesy title of Mrs, in honour of your status as my housekeeper, have we not?’ She nodded again, but otherwise remained motionless.

I could not help staring at Mrs Price. The idea of her having once been a harlot astonishes me. Even in her youth, whenever that was, she could hardly have been a very prepossessing specimen of womanhood. I searched for a vestige of her lurid past in her prim and angular person, but could find none. Mrs Price finally noticed me staring at her and turned her cold blue eyes directly upon me for the first time. They were full of melancholy hatred. I immediately looked down at my devilled kidneys, ashamed of the interrogating stare I had given her.

It is not my place to pass judgement but I have to confess to the thought that Father Devereux’s revelations about Mrs Price were—no, not cruel. Father Devereux is incapable of cruelty—but a little thoughtless.

When Mrs Price had left the room, Father Devereux said: ‘This is a part of my work—the recovery of lost souls, like that of Mrs Price—that I value most highly. It is the work of salvation, no less. I hope that very soon you will be joining me in this sacred mission.’

In the mornings before seven when I am on my knees in the icy vastness of St Simeon’s I pray that I may be delivered from this ‘sacred mission’ for as long as possible.

Wednesday 11th March 1885

After lunch Father Devereux asks me to join him in a constitutional along Brighton front.

‘You have no doubt been wondering where I have been these last few days,’ he said. ‘My dear man, I have been in prison!’ When he saw my expression of wonder he gave a hearty chuckle and clapped me on the back. ‘No, it is not what you think! But I
have
been in a prison. You have heard of Hurst Prison just North of Hove? It is a small women’s penitentiary. The Governor, who is a good friend of mine, has some very enlightened ideas. The inmates there have been engaged in making a mosaic pavement for the floor of our sacristy at St Simeon’s, according to a design of my own naturally. I began to go there initially simply to inspect progress, but I have become increasingly interested in the welfare of its inmates, and one in particular. Can you possibly guess who that might be?’

I shook my head.

‘Does the name Alice Southern mean anything to you?’

I explained to him that I had been orphaned at an early age and had spent much of my youth in India with my Uncle, the Bishop of Calcutta. My knowledge of English
causes célèbres
was therefore slight. Nevertheless the name Alice Southern did seem faintly familiar.

‘Let us sit down on this bench here,’ said Father Devereux, ‘and I will tell you the whole tragic story.’

And so we sat on a bench overlooking the sea and the West Pier that thrust its way arrogantly into it. And while the spring sunshine glittered on the waves, and the ladies paraded their fine feathered hats and little boys in velveteen knickerbockers bowled their hoops along the promenade, he told me about Alice Southern. Was it, as Father Devereux believed, a ‘tragic’ story, or merely terrible and savage? I will leave it to you to decide.

‘Alice was the daughter of Henry Southern, a relatively prosperous physician in the town of Ramsgate in Kent. When Alice was nine, her mother, to whom she was deeply attached, died, but within a year Dr Southern was married again. His bride was a Miss Danby who had been appointed as governess to young Alice in the Southern household during the final year of Alice’s mother’s life. There had, naturally, been rumours that an improper relationship had sprung up between Dr Southern and Miss Danby during the first Mrs Southern’s lifetime, but nothing was proved and it was fiercely denied by both parties concerned. Very soon after the marriage, the second Mrs Southern gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. It was at this point that young Alice’s troubles truly began. The Southerns, by all accounts, doted on the new arrivals to the almost complete exclusion of young Alice. Her place in the household slipped almost to that of a servant. She was expected to defer in everything to her stepmother and her half-siblings. The room she once occupied in stately solitude was appropriated as the nursery for the younger offspring, and she suffered the indignity of having to share a bedroom with the scullery maid.

‘The twins were a little over three years old when one morning they disappeared. The nursery maid, much criticised for idleness and inattention at the trial and afterwards, had been sleeping in a little bedroom adjoining the nursery. On waking she came into the nursery to find that they had vanished from their cots. A search was instituted and the remains of the two infants were finally found stuck down a disused outside privy. The bodies had been much cut about, as if they had been victims of a savage attack with a knife, but death itself in each case had been caused by strangulation. They had both been garrotted with a length of scarlet silk ribbon which had been left tied around their little throats. It had been a full moon on the night of the disappearance which no doubt aided the abduction.

‘The ribbon was very soon identified as identical to some in Mrs Southern’s workbox. The police were therefore looking for an assassin within the house.

‘Suspicion fell first on the wretched nursery maid, but it was realised that she was quite incapable of such a calculated act of viciousness. Very soon the police were interrogating Alice, because it had been found that a nightshift of hers was missing. It was conjectured that this item of clothing must have become stained with blood during her frenzied attack on the children and had to be disposed of. Many people however thought it was quite impossible for a young girl of thirteen to have lifted two young children from their cots and then destroyed them in such a way. Alice calmly denied all responsibility for the crime during police interrogations. Her composure was seen by some as proof of innocence, by others as evidence of a calculating heartlessness. Finally the matter was settled by the discovery of the shift, buried beneath some laurel bushes in the grounds of Dr Southern’s house. It was stained with the children’s blood. There was a short trial during which Alice continued calmly to maintain her innocence but to no avail. She was too young to hang, so was condemned to a prison sentence of ‘no less than twenty five years’. Those are the bare facts. It is now twenty two years since those incidents during which she has maintained a complete silence about them, neither confessing nor denying her guilt.’

There was a pause in which the world of Brighton was restored to me, the slap of sea, the laughter of children. During Father Devereux’s recital, bald as it was, I had entered a dark place, shut away from the open air. I had felt the pangs of hatred, jealousy and despair; I had almost seen the blood and the scarlet ribbon cutting into the soft childish flesh.

‘I have met Alice at Hurst Prison, and talked with her,’ said Father Devereux. ‘She is now a woman of thirty five, quiet, sensible, a model prisoner by all accounts. Her artistic skills are considerable and she has been put in charge of the mosaics for my sacristy.’

‘Did she talk about the past?’

‘She did not, and I made no effort to bring the matter up. We must, as the bard says, “use all gently”. I spoke to her in general terms of the unfailing love of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and of the possibility of redemption by His blood, and she responded well. She seems to have read and studied the Bible very intently. I then spoke about the beauty of the sacraments. I did not talk specifically about the sacrament of penance, but I think she understood.’

‘You want her to confess?’

‘My dear man, I do not want
her
to do anything. I simply want God’s will to prevail, and that I believe must involve a full act of contrition on her part.’

‘I suppose she would have a better chance of being released if she confessed.’

‘You must try not to be cynical. It is the sign of an immature mind.’

‘I was merely pointing out—’

‘Of course you were, and I do not reproach you. All I am saying is that I believe I—perhaps both of us in the future—have business with this lost soul. The outcome we can safely leave in God’s hands. . . . What a pretty child that is playing on the beach there below the pier! Such innocence! How I should like to pat those golden curls. And is that her father with her? It must be. Such an obvious sinner. Do you see the half bottle of gin poking out of his coat pocket? Sometimes I come to this bench, just to watch and weep. Oh, Brighton! Brighton. . . !’

I knew which part of the gospels he might have quoted next—for Brighton, substitute Jerusalem!—and was greatly relieved when he refrained.

Maundy Thursday 2nd April 1885

Three elderly ladies and one old gentleman are my usual companions at early communion. I have come to love this quiet sacrament: the dim light of the sanctuary lamp, the weight of incense in cold air, the slow opening of the chrysalis of dawn. I feel most myself at these times because, paradoxically, I am least myself. I have no opinions to deliver in a sermon, no exercise of musical or vocal prowess, no counsel to give. I have only some words, not of my making, to say quietly, words I know so well I could say them in my sleep. In a sense I do. My ordinary self sleeps while my inner self is alive in the words of the liturgy. This morning I had served the mass (as Father Devereux likes to say) almost in a trance which is why I gave a violent start as I entered the sacristy after the service to find Father Devereux standing there. His eyes were shining and he too seemed to be in a state of exaltation. He was holding a letter in his hand.