A Maggot - John Fowles Read online

  common bawd, Fanny, or a crone in the poorhouse. If the pox has not already claimed thee. Or think'st thou to multiply thy sins and swell to another Claiborne in thy after-years? That will not save thee.' He waits, but the girl does not speak. 'What stops thy tongue?'

  'I would not be what I am, sir. Far less Mistress Claiborne.'

  'The virtuous wife, no doubt. With mewling brats at thy skirts.'

  'I am barren, sir.'

  'Then thou art a prize pigeon indeed, Fanny.'

  Slowly her head rises and she meets his eyes; it seems more in puzzlement than in outrage at being taunted so, as if she were trying to read on his face what she could not comprehend in his words. His next action is even more incomprehensible, for of a sudden that arctic face smiles - it is true, hardly an unmistakably human smile, yet neither is it a cynical or sneering one. Most singularly, it is nearest to an understanding one. Greater strangeness still follows, for he takes three or four steps, plants himself in front of her; bends and takes her right hand and raises it briefly to his lips. Having done which, he does not release the hand, but holds it, staring down at her face, and still not without a smile. For a moment they are, Mr Bartholomew with his bald head, Fanny with her painted face, like pantaloon figures from some fete galante by Watteau, despite the very different environment. Abruptly, he drops the hand and turns away to his original chair, where he sits, leaving her to stare in shock after him.

  'Why did you that, sir?'

  'Know you not why gentlemen kiss a woman's hand?' That final surprise, in his change of person of address to her, is too much. She lowers her head, and shakes it. 'For what you are about to give me, dear lamb.'

  Her lost eyes seek his again.

  'What shall I give, sir?'

  'We are come near those waters I spake of, that shall cure me. Tomorrow we shall meet those who keep them, and who have it in their power to advance my most cherished hopes. I would bring them a present, a token of my esteem. Not of money, nor jewels, they care not for such things. It shall be of you, Fanny.' He contemplates her. 'What say you to that?'

  'What I must, sir. That I am bound to Mistress Claiborne, and sworn to return.'

  'A bond with the Devil's no bond.'

  'That may be, sir. But she's worse than the Devil to those that forsake her. She must, or we should all run loose.'

  'Have you not said, but a minute past, that you wish you were not what you are?'

  Her voice is almost inaudible.

  'I would not be worse still.'

  'Did she not say when we engaged that you must please me in all?'

  'Yes, sir. But not that I must please others also.'

  'I purchased you for three weeks, did I not?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Then I have two weeks' use of you yet. And in that use that I have purchased, and dearly, I command this. You shall tomorrow essay to please those we hope to meet.'

  She bows her head, as if in reluctant submission, and he continues.

  'I would have you mark my every word, Fanny. You must not mistake the manner and appearance of those who keep these waters. They are but late arrived from their native country. It is most far from this of ours, and they do not speak our tongue.'

  'I know some little French, of Dutch some words also.'

  'Nor that neither. With them you must converse as you have learnt with Dick.' He is silent, staring at her still bowed head. 'You have shown well enough there, Fanny. My displeasure was semblance, to test you for this my real intent. But listen well. In their country there are no women like you. You have a faculty of playing the prudish virgin. Such I would have you be tomorrow. No paint, no finery, no London manners. No knowing looks, no sign of what you truly are. Demure in all, a young woman brought up in country modesty, one innocent of men. They we meet would see respect in you, not your practised lust, not such as you showed me but this half-hour gone, and have showed a thousand others besides. Is that understood?'

  'So be it they would have me to their beds, I must?'

  'What they shall plainly want, that you must do.'

  'Whether I would or not?'

  'I tell you you shall do their will, that is mine. Doth Claiborne let you pick and choose, as you were fine lady?'

  She bows her head again, and there is silence. Mr Bartholomew surveys her. His expression now is without cynicism or sarcasm, or the former cruelty. If anything it shows a strange patience, or calm; from anachronistic skinhead he seems now become something even more improbable: Buddhist monk, praeternaturally equable and contained, drowned in what he is and does. Yet there is a hint of something else in his eyes, that is more unexpected still. Nothing in his seeming behaviour until now has predicted this: a contentment, a satisfaction of the kind his servant Dick had momentarily shown when the papers were burnt. Nearly a minute passes, and then he speaks again.

  'Go to the window, Fanny.'

  She looks up at him, and her side of the silence at least is explained. Her eyes are wet with tears again, the small tears of one who knows herself without choice. Her time has little power of seeing people other than they are in outward; which applies even to how they see themselves, labelled and categorized by circumstance and fate. To us such a world would seem abominably prescribed, with personal destiny fixed to an intolerable degree, totalitarian in its essence; while to its chained humans our present lives would seem incredibly fluid, mobile, rich in free will (if not indeed Midas-rich, less to be envied than to be pitied our lack of absolutes and of social certainty); and above all anarchically, if not insanely, driven by self-esteem and self-interest. Fanny does not weep with frustrated rage, from a modem sense of self, because life obliges it to suffer this kind of humiliation, but much more with a dumb animal's sadness. Such humiliation is as inseparable from life as mud from winter roads; or as child-death from child-birth (of the 2,710 deaths registered in England in the by no means unusual month previous to this day, very nearly half were of infants below the age of five). The conditions of such past worlds were more inexorably fixed than we can imagine; and as little worth expecting sympathy from as seems proven by Mr Bartholomew's impassive face.

  He says quietly, 'Do as I say.'

  She still hesitates, but then abruptly stands and goes to it.

  'Now open the shutter and look out.' He waits till he hears, for he does not turn in his chair to look, the shutter open. 'Do you see the Redeemer on His throne in the heavens, beside His Father?'

  She looks back to where he sits. 'You know not, sir.'

  Then what instead?'

  'Nothing. The night.'

  'And in that night?'

  She glances quickly out of the window. 'Nothing but the stars. The sky is come clear.'

  'Do the beams of the brightest shake?'

  Again she looks. 'Yes, sir.'

  'Do you know why?'

  'No, sir.'

  'I will tell you. They shake with laughter, Fanny, for they mock you. They have mocked you since your day of birth. They will mock you to your day of death. You are but a painted shadow to them, and all your world. It matters not to them whether you have faith in Christ or not. Are sinner or saint, drab or duchess. Man or woman, young or old, it is all one. Whether Hell or Heaven awaits you, good fortune or bad, pain or bliss, to them it is equal. You are born for their amusement, as you are bought for mine. Beneath their light you are but brute, as deaf and dumb as Dick, as blind as Fate itself. They care not one whit what may become of you, no more for the courses of your miserable existence than those on a high hill who watch a battle in the plain below, indifferent to all but its spectacle. You are nothing to them, Fanny. Shall I tell thee why they scorn?' She is silent. 'Because thou dost not scorn them back.'

  The girl stares across the room at the oblivious back of his head.

  'How should I scorn stars, sir?'

  'How do you scorn a man?'

  She is slow to answer.

  'I turn away, or flout his desire.'

  'But say that man's a ju
stice, who would have you whipped and clapped in the stocks without fair cause?'

  'I should protest I was innocent.'

  'And if he doth not hear?' She is silent. 'Then you must needs sit

  in the stocks.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Is such, true justice?'

  'No.'

  'Now say the justice who gives you such justice is no man, but you yourself, and the stocks you sit in made not of iron and wood, but of your blindness for the one part and your folly for the other? What then?'

  'I am bemused, sir. I know not what you would have of me.'

  He stands and walks to the hearth.

  'What I should have of far more than thee, Fanny.' 'Sir?'

  'No more. Get thee to where thou must lie, until thou wak'st.'

  She does not move for a moment or two, then starts to cross the room towards the door; but stops behind the stool, and looks obliquely at him.

  'My lord, I beg you, what would you have?'

  But the only answer she receives is his raised left arm and hand, that point towards the door. He turns his back upon her, in final dismissal. She gives Mr Bartholomew one last look, and an unseen curtsey, and leaves.

  For some time in the silence he remains standing and staring at the now dying fire. At last he turns and looks at the stool; and a little later goes to the window. There he looks out and up as she had done, almost as if he wishes to assure himself that there are indeed stars alone in the sky. It is impossible to read by his face what he is thinking, although there appears on it now a last paradoxical metamorphosis. If anything it seems a translation, in terms of his own sex and features, of the meekness the girl's face has shown him during their one-sided conversation. In the end he quietly latches the shutter close again. He walks towards the bed, unbuttoning his long waistcoat. As he comes to it, he sinks to his knees on the broadplanks and buries his bald head against its side, as a man seeking undeserved forgiveness or the oblivion of infancy might, against a mother's skirt.

  HISTORICAL CHRONICAL April 1736

  Barnstaple, Thursday, June 17th. The Discovery six Weeks since, in a Wood of a Parish some 10 Miles from this Place, of a Stranger hang'd by his own Hand, or so adjudg'd by the Coroner, whose first Inquiries could find no Name to this Felon de se nor Cause for so ghastly a Deed, now raises upon fresh-found Informations Alarm of a far greater Crime. It is now learn'd he was Manservant, tho' deaf and dumb, to a Gentleman named Bartholomew that pass'd for Bideford, with three others, in April last, but not heard of, nor his Companions, since that Time. 'Tis thought the mute Servant may have kill'd all, and hid their Corses, in a fit of lunatick Madness; then overcome by Remorse, or Fear of justice, ended his wretched Days; but the more to be wonder'd, that to this Present no Inquiry is made by Mr Bartholomew's Friends.

  The Western Gazette, 1736

  The Examination and Deposition of

  Thomas Puddicombe

  the which doth attest upon his sworn

  oath, this one and thirtieth day

  of July in the tenth year of the

  reign of our sovereign Lord George the

  second, by the grace of God King of Great

  Britain and of England, &c.

  I am three score years and six of age. I am landlord of the Black Hart Inn. I have been so nigh upon these forty years and my father before me. I am capital burgess of this town. I have been thrice its mayor, and justice also, in that office.

  * * *

  Q. Now, Master Puddicombe, I would have you first affirm that this portrait in miniature I have shown and now show you again is that of the younger of the two gentlemen that stayed in this your inn some three months past.

  A. To the best of my belief, sir. 'Tis very like. I will swear thus far. Tho' he was dressed less fine.

  Q. Look upon his face. The dress matters not. A. So I judge it. 'Tis he.

  Q. Very well. When came they?

  A. The last day of April past. I remember it well, I shall never forget it.

  Q. At what hour?

  A. The man came first, a three hours before sunset, to command chambers and victuals. For he said they had dined ill, and had empty bellies.

  Q. His name?

  A. Farthing. Then rode back to conduct them, and they came as he promised, a little after six of the clock, or thereabout.

  Q. Five in all?

  A. The uncle and nephew. The two men and the maid.

  Q. Mr Brown and Mr Bartholomew, they so gave themselves?

  A. That they did, sir.

  Q. Marked you whatsoever untoward in their manner?

  A. Not at that time. Until what ye know of was discovered.

  Q. But on this night they stayed?

  A. Why, sir, they seemed in all what they said, that is, journeying for Bideford. I spake very little with either gentleman. The younger went straight to his chamber on the coming and did not show his face outside until he left. I know no more of him than one I might pass in the street. He supped, he slept, woke up and brake his fast. 'Twas all within these four walls. And then he went.

  Q. And the uncle?

  A. I can tell ye little else, sir. But that he took chay after supper with Mr Beckford and -

  Q. Who is this?

  A. Our curate. For he came with his compliments to the gentlemen.

  Q. He knew them?

  A. I think not, sir. When I told them he was below, they seemed not to know him.

  Q. How soon was this upon their coming?

  A. An hour, sir. Mayhap more. They had supped.

  Q. But they did speak with him?

  A. Mr Brown came down, sir, in a few minutes. And sat with Mr Beckford in the private parlour.

  Q. That is the uncle? The nephew was not present?

  A. But the uncle, sir.

  Q. How long?

  A. Not an hour, sir. I think less.

  Q. Did you hear the subject of their conversation?

  A. No, sir.

  Q. Not a word?

  A. No, sir. My maid Dorcas served them. She said -

  Q. I will hear that from her. Tell what you know of your own eyes and ears.

  A. I took Mr Brown to where Mr Beckford was in wait. They bowed and sat, there was manners and compliments, but I did not mark them, I went to see for their chay.

  Q. Met they as strangers - or as men who had fore-acquaintance?

  A. As strangers, sir. Mr Beckford does often thus.

  Q. How so?

  A. Why, with they of quality who pass here. They who have letters and Latin:

  Q. In sum, two gentlemen encountered by chance?

  A:So I thought to it, sir.

  Q. Did Mr Beckford speak to you afterwards of this meeting? Of what passed?

  A. No, sir. Save as he went, he said I should see the two gentlemen well served and lodged. That the uncle was a worthy person of London, on Christian business. He said that, sir. Christian business.

  Q. To wit?

  A. He did not say, sir. But the man Farthing had spake in the kitchen of why they travelled. Of the young gentleman's a-coming to court his aunt, at Bideford. A rich lady, he said, sister to Mr Brown. Rich as a sultaness, so 'twas said. And the maid carried from London to serve her and dress her hair, the like.

  Q. But there is none such at Bideford?

  A. No, for they have lately inquired. And when I said I knew her not, this Farthing said 'twas not to be wondered, for she lived much retired, and not in Bideford town itself, but near. But he lied, the rogue, they have asked all about, and there is none such lady of that name.

  Q. What said Farthing of Mr Brown's profession?

  A. That he was London merchant, and alderman of that city, and had children of his own, but was left guardian of the nephew on his parents' decease. For he was child to another sister, who was dead, and her husband also.

  Q. And he had inherited no fortune of his own, this nephew?

  A. All spent and wasted. So I took the man to mean. Tho' he lied in all.

  Q. Was
aught said of Mr Bartholomew's dead parents?

  A. No, sir. But that their son had grown above himself.

  Q. Very well. I would have your closer remembrance of the servants.

  A. One is easy said, sir. The nephew's man, he that was found,

  him I might make nothing of.

  Q. His name?

  A. They called him Dick, no other name, sir. Farthing told tales of him, of a kind I would not have had my maids hear. I had a scolding for that, when Mistress Puddicombe came home. She was away to Molton for our youngest daughter's lyingin, who bore a -

  Q. Yes, yes, Master Puddicombe. What tales?

  A. Why, that he was moon-struck, and a lecher into the bargain. But I put no credence in Farthing. He was Welsh. They are not to be believed.

  Q. You are sure he was Welsh?

  A. As I am of my own name, sir. By his voice, first. Then his bluster and bragging, for that he was ancient sergeant of marines, or so would have us believe. He was one who would seem to know much, to be wiser than us. He boasted but to make favour with my maids. And as for the lechery, it turned out he could have better charged himself than him they called Dick.

  Q. Why?

  A. I did not hear till they was gone, sir, the girl was afraid to tell till then. My maid Dorcas, sir. He would have made free of her in the night. He offered her a shilling for it. Though she is a good girl, and promised, and gave no encouragement.

  Q. What else did he speak of?

  A. Much on military matters, and his past prowess therein. Then he would have us believe him better than he was. Thus always he spake of my friend Mr Brown when 'twas clear he was servant to the gentleman. He made more noise than a company of dragoons. I counted him an idle fellow, sir, and well named. As hollow as brass, and as bold. And then his going off before sunrise, there was more to that than met the eye.

  Q. What was this?

  A. Why, sir, he was saddled and gone before dawn, and ne'er a word of warning.

  Q. He was sent ahead for some purpose?

  A. He was gone when we rose. 'Tis all I know.

  Q. You would say, without his master's knowledge?