Michael Irwin - The Skull and the Nightingale

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 laughter lest she should feel obliged to join in.

The wider discussion lurched between local and national concerns. Such political comment as I heard was so fanciful that it could have concerned the government of Japan: but after all these folk were a hundred country miles from London – two full days of travel. Hurlock blustered, Thorpe was emollient, Quentin brusque. Yardley spoke but little. My godfather was the best informed of the company, and showed considerable social address. With no attempt to dominate he yet led the conversation, his manner dry and sometimes satirical. He took in all that passed, and had a word for everybody at the table.

Certain fragments of talk stayed in my memory. At one time my attention was caught by a sudden intensity in my godfather’s voice.

‘We are told,’ he said, ‘that the Almighty requires praise. I cannot understand why. Is it not as though I should want my dogs to praise me for feeding them?’

‘Perhaps, sir,’ ventured Thorpe, ‘you are interpreting the instruction too literally. Might it not be a figure – a mode of enjoining us to an active appreciation of our existence in a miraculous universe?’

‘You men of the cloth are all alike,’ cried Hurlock, through a mouthful of food. ‘If we question any mystery of religion you tell us that it is no more than a damned figure. What do you leave us of substance to believe in?’

His truculence momentarily silenced the table.

‘There are the commandments,’ said Thorpe, mildly. ‘Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.’

Hurlock made to expostulate further, but Mr Gilbert spoke up before him.

‘Yes,’ said he, with an emphasis that concluded the exchange, ‘those would seem to offer us something to steer by – and something to fear.’

When the ladies retired the conversation took a different turn. My godfather, who had drunk frugally, seeming to enjoy his sips more than Hurlock his mouthfuls, proceeded to draw out Mr Yardley, who had hitherto been almost silent. With a little prompting he was induced to address the company on the subject of poisons. He spoke in a high, wavering voice, chuckling from time to time at the curiosities he mentioned:

‘We have little understanding of susceptibility. A substance that will gratify one organism may prove fatal to another. You gentlemen drink brandy with pleasure, but it is known that a small amount of that beverage will kill a cat. Heh, heh! Sheep thrive on grass, but clover may prove fatal to them. We know that a snake-bite may kill, but what shall we say when a man dies from the sting of a bee, as has happened in this very parish? Heh, heh! This is the mystery of reaction: the element introduced combines fatally with something in the constitution of the victim.’

My godfather had been listening intently: ‘Might not such an external element equally prove advantageous? If brandy can kill a cat, what say you to the possibility that a saucer of burgundy might transform its intelligence?’

Yardley sniggered. ‘The example is grotesque, but in principle your hypothesis is just. The world is young: there are a million possibilities still unexplored.’

‘What possibilities?’ cried Hurlock, crimson with drink, ‘I don’t follow you, sir.’

‘For example,’ said my godfather, evenly, ‘the possibility that when A is randomly made subject to B – A being a human-being, and B a substance, a situation, or even an idea – some unpredictable outcome may result.’

This proposition being beyond Hurlock in his fuddled state, he flew into a passion.

‘Then let us fly to the moon, gentlemen,’ he shouted, banging his fist on the table. ‘Let us fly to the moon and have done!’

Nothing exceptionable had taken place during the course of the evening; yet I could not rid myself of a sense of oppression. The guests had seemed constrained by Mr Gilbert’s presence, as though a little cowed by him. Even Hurlock’s outbursts had had a quality of nervous defiance. Might my gentlemanly godfather be intimidating?