Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Dick roared with laughter. “Thinking of your girls, Jim?”

“Girls no longer, alas. They are past their last prayers.” He got to his feet. “I am sorry to have missed Richard. I had thought to see him back here, as in the old days before Habitas.”

“The old days are gone, do I need to tell ye that? Look around you! The place is empty, and the quays boil with those poor sailor bastards. How virtuous are our genuine registered parish poor, and how indignant! They cast rocks at their wretched brethren in the pillory rather than pity them.” Dick pounded his fist on the table. “ Why did we ever go to war three thousand miles away? Why did we not simply hand the colonists their precious liberty? Wish them well of something so ridiculous, then go back to sleep, or go fight France? The country is ruined, and all for the sake of an idea. Not our idea at that.”

“You have not answered me. If Richard has no job, where is he? And where is William Henry?”

“They walk together, Jim. Always to Clifton. They go-up Pipe Lane-down Frog Lane-across the Brandon Hill footpath to Clifton Hill-chase the cows and sheep in the Clifton Pound-then come back along the Avon, where they throw stones into the water and laugh a lot.”

“That is William Henry’s version, not Richard’s.”

“Richard tells me nothing,” said Dick sourly.

“You and he are different natured,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, going to the door. “That happens. What ye ought to be thanking God for, Dick, is that Richard and William Henry are like as two peas. It is”-he drew a breath-“quite beautiful.”

On thefollowing Sunday after Church and a bracing sermon from Cousin James-of-the-clergy, Richard and William Henry walked to the Hotwells end of Clifton.

A decade or two ago Bristol’s own watering place had come near to rivaling Bath as a spa for high society; the guest houses of Dowry Place, Dowry Square and the Hotwells Road teemed with elegant visitors in expensive array, fabulously bewigged gentlemen in embroidered coats mincing along in high heels with bedizened ladies on their arms. There were balls and soirées, parties and routs, concerts and entertainments, even theater in the old Clifton playhouse on Wood Wells Lane. For a while an imitation Vauxhall Gardens had seen its share of masquerades, intrigues and scandals; novelists had situated their heroines at the Hotwells, and society doctors had extolled the medicinal properties of the waters.

And then the fabric of its fascination fell apart, too slowly to call disintegration, yet too quickly to call a rot from within. Fashion had made it: fashion unmade it. The elegant visitors moved back to Bath, or on to Cheltenham, and the Bristol Hotwells became mostly an export industry of bottled spa water.

Which suited Richard and William Henry very well, for it meant that a Sunday outing saw no more than a handful of other visitors on the horizon. Mag had packed them a cold dinner of broiled fowl, bread, butter, cheese and a few early apples her brother had sent from the farm at Bedminster; Richard carried it in a soldier’s pack athwart his shoulders, where it rested next to a flagon of small beer. They found a good spot beyond the square bulk of the Hotwells House, which stood on a rock shelf just above the high tide mark where the Avon Gorge terminated.

It truly was a beautiful place, for St. Vincent’s Rocks and the crags of the gorge were richly colored in reds, plums, pinks, rusts, greys and off-whites, the river was the hue of blued steel, and a wealth of trees conspired to hide even the chimneys of Mr. Codrington’s brass foundry.

“Can you swim, Dadda?” asked William Henry.

“No. Which is why we are sitting here, not right on the edge of the river,” said Richard.

William Henry eyed the spate thoughtfully; the tide was still flooding in, and the current curled and swirled visibly. “The water moves as if it were alive.”

“You might say it is. And it is hungry, never forget that. It would suck you down and eat you whole here, ye’d never see the surface again. So no high jinks anywhere near it, is that understood?”

“Yes, Dadda.”

Dinner eaten, the pair of them stretched out on the sward with their coats rolled up to serve as pillows; Richard closed his eyes.

“The Simp is gone,” said William Henry suddenly.

His father opened one eye and grinned. “Can you never be still and quiet?” he asked.

“Not often, and not now. The Simp is gone.”

The message sank in. “You mean that he does not teach you? Well, ye’ve just begun your third year at Colston’s, so that was to be expected.”

“No, Dadda, I mean that he is gone! Over the summer, while we were on holidays. Johnny says he was too sick to stay any longer. The Head asked the Bishop if he could go to one of the almshouses, but the Bishop said they were not for the sick, they were for the in-in-I do not know the word.”

“Indigent?”

“That is it, indigent! So they carried him in a sedan chair to St. Peter’s Hospital. Johnny says he cried dreadfully.”

“So would I, were I to be carried to St. Peter’s,” Richard said with feeling. “Poor fellow. Why wait until now to tell me?”

“I forgot,” said William Henry vaguely, rolled over twice, kicked his heels bruisingly against the grass, sighed deeply, flapped his hands, rolled over again, and began to pluck the detritus from around a promising stone.

“Time to go, my son. I recognize the signs,” said Richard, getting to his feet, stuffing their coats into the soldier’s pack and shouldering it. “Shall we hike up Granby Hill and look at Mr. Goldney’s grotto?”

“Oh yes please!” cried William Henry, scampering off.

They looked,reflected Mr. George Parfrey from his perch on a shrub-shrouded ledge above them, as if they had not a care in the world. And they probably did not have a care in the world. The boy was a paying pupil; though they were not ostentatiously dressed, Mr. Parfrey had taken due note of good fine cloth, the absence of frayed or darned hems, the shine on their silver-buckled shoes and a certain air of independence.

He knew everything about Morgan Tertius’s father, of course; Colston’s was a small place, its paying pupils dissected in the masters’ commonroom all the more minutely because in a starved existence there was so little else to talk about. A gunsmith in partnership with a Jew, and who had earned a small fortune out of the American war. Not often a boy as beautiful as the son appeared. Nor, when such a boy did appear, was he usually as unaffected and unspoiled as Morgan Tertius. However, the boy was not yet old enough to realize what capital he could make out of his beauty.

That had to be the father with him. They were too alike not to be closely related and the odds favored paternity. A sketchbook lay upon Parfrey’s knee, on its top page a drawing he had taken of the pair of them resting beside the Avon. A good drawing. George Parfrey himself was a handsome man, and when younger, his looks had effectively scotched any hope of a career as a drawing master in some rich man’s house, seeing to the limited education of the rich man’s daughters. For no rich man in his right mind would hire a handsome young man to peer over an heiress’s shoulder and catch her fancy.

Though his heart had not been touched, he was missing poor Ned Simpson more than he had counted upon; the others of their persuasion at Colston’s were paired too neatly to think of switching their affections. With Ned’s departure-he had died soon after going into St. Peter’s-no one needed him. Neither the Head, the Bishop nor the Reverend Mr. Prichard approved of Greek love, each of them having a suitable wife and other fish to fry. So the discreet liaisons which were conducted within the walls of Colston’s were fraught with a thousand tensions. Schoolmasters were a ha’penny a dozen, for who in choosing them cared a straw about whether they could teach or not? They were selected upon the recommendation of a board, a Church committee, an eminent cleric, an alderman, a Member of Parliament. None of whom would approve of homosexuality, no matter how discreet. Supply and demand. Sailors might drink themselves sodden, curse and brawl, ram every arse between Bristol and Wampoa, and still keep their reputations as good workmen intact; no ship owner bothered his head about booze, brawls or bums. The same could probably be said of lawyers or bookkeepers. Whereas schoolmasters were a ha’penny a dozen. No booze, no brawls, and-God forbid!-no bums. Especially in a charity school.