Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

William Henry. The double name suited him, a nice conceit which age might perhaps confirm as a wise choice. All the masters had seen the potential in Morgan Tertius, though his beauty warped the judgment of some. As indeed it had Parfrey’s judgment, until exposure to Morgan Tertius in Latin class had shown him that the face merely reflected the beauty of the soul as a clouded mirror did the sun. What he had not seen until today was the naughty little boy, for in class William Henry was an angel. Because, the child had explained gravely as they cantered across Durdham Down, he did not want to get the cane and he did not want to be noticed.

How to tell him that he would always be noticed? Interesting that the father, so like him in the face, lacked the son’s vital spark. Richard Morgan would never turn heads, never stop the world spinning. Whereas William Henry Morgan did the first every day of his life, and might possibly manage to do the second one day. His conversation was typical of his age, though it did indicate a careful upbringing-until, that is, he got onto tavern doings and betrayed that there were few of the baser human passions he had not witnessed, from flashing knives to lust to manic furores. Yet none of it had tainted him; not the faintest whiff of corruption emanated from him.

So when they walked together out of the Hotwells House it seemed perfectly natural to turn their footsteps in the direction of the place where William Henry had picnicked with his father, and George Parfrey had watched them from above. Not a large spot, nor contiguous with the long stretch of the Avon bank on the Bristol side of the Hotwells House. A mere twenty feet of grassy verge between St. Vincent’s Rocks and another, lower outcrop. Inside a forest, it would have been a dell.

Though nine months had gone by since the day the two Morgans had picnicked there, the scene was curiously static; the Avon was at exactly the same level, flooding in toward its full, the grass was exactly the same shade of green, the cliffs reflected exactly the same intensity of light. Time out of mind. A chance to put one foot into the future and keep the other in the past. As if today were plucked from existence, time out of mind.

William Henry sat while George Parfrey produced his sketchbook and a piece of charcoal.

“May I watch you, Uncle George?”

“No, because I am taking your likeness. That means you must keep still and forget that I am looking at you. Count the daisies. When I am done, you may see yourself.”

So William Henry sat and George Parfrey looked.

At first the charcoal moved swiftly and surely, but as the minutes passed the strokes on the paper grew fewer, and finally ceased to be made. All Parfrey could do was look. Not only at so much beauty, but at the shape of his fate.

The timing is wrong-utterly wrong. I am fathoms deep in love with a complete innocent who is over thirty-five years my junior. By the time that I could awaken him to love, he would find nothing in me to love. Now that, Bill Shakespeare, is a tragedy worth the writing. When he is Hamlet, I will be Lear.

The hair ribbon had long fluttered away, so the dark mass of curls fell around the face with the same drama as dense coal smoke taken in a high wind. The skin was satin-peach-ivory-the thin blade of aquiline nose as patrician as the bones of the cheeks, and the mouth, full and sensuous, creased in its corners as if on the verge of a secret smile. But all that was as nothing compared to the eyes!

As if sensing Parfrey’s change in mood, William Henry looked up and directly at him, the enigmatic smile suddenly seeming to the dazzled Parfrey an invitation offered from some part of himself that William Henry did not know existed. The eyes filled with light and the dark flecks danced amid the gold because the sun, glancing off a water-slicked rock, was caught up in them too.

He could not help himself. It was done before a thought could flicker into his mind. George Parfrey crossed the distance between himself and his nemesis and kissed William Henry on the mouth. After that he had to hold the boy-could not bear to let him go-had to sample the skin of brow and cheek and neck with his lips-caress the small body which vibrated as a cat purred.

“Beautiful! Beautiful!” he was whispering. “Beautiful!”

The boy tore himself away frantically, leaped to his feet and hovered, eyes rolling in shock, uncertain which way to run. Terror was not yet a part of it; all of him was concentrated upon flight.

As his madness lifted Parfrey rose to stand with one hand outstretched, not understanding that he was blocking the route William Henry saw as his only avenue of escape.

“William Henry, I am so sorry! I did not mean to harm you, I would never harm you! I am so sorry!” Parfrey gasped, spreading his arms wide in an appeal for forgiveness.

Terror came. William Henry saw hands reaching for him, not the appeal, and turned to flee another way. There at his feet lay the Avon, the color of blued steel, coiling and twisting as it poured out of the gorge in a sinuous torrent. Mr. Parfrey was edging closer, his arms wanting to grab and imprison, a smile on his mouth that was no smile. The Cooper’s Arms had taught him what such smiles meant, for while Father and Grandfather were not looking other men had smiled so, whispered invitations. William Henry knew the smile was false, yet he mistook the reason for its falseness.

His head came up, he gazed into the sun blindly.

“Daddaaaaa!” he wailed, and jumped into the river.

The Avonin this place was not swimmable, nor could Parfrey swim. Even so, as he ran madly up and down the short piece of bank between the rocks looking for anything in that tide, he would have leaped into the water at the glimpse of a hand, an arm- anything! But nothing appeared. Not leaf, not twig, not branch, let alone William Henry. He had sunk like a stone, unresisting.

What had the child thought? What had he seen as he stood on the brink of the river? Why so much horror? Had he actually preferred the river? Did he know what he was doing when he jumped? Or was he incapable of reason? He had cried out for his dadda, that was all. And jumped. Not stumbled. Not fallen. Jumped.

At the end of half an hour Parfrey turned away. William Henry Morgan was not going to bob gasping to the surface. He was dead.

Dead, and I have killed him. I thought of self and self alone, I wanted an invitation and I deluded myself into believing he was giving me an invitation. But he was nine years old. Nine. I am cast out. I am anathema. I have murdered a child.

He found his horse, mounted it slackly and rode toward Bristol, oblivious to the interested regard of one old lady and two crippled women. How extraordinary! There went the man, but where was the dear little boy?

The horse he abandoned outside Colston’s gates and passed into the mourning institution without seeing a soul, though some saw him, and looked startled. In his cubicle he put the sketchbook on his table where he could see William Henry’s face from every corner, then took a small key from his fob and unlocked the wooden box which held those objects he did not want the likes of snooping Reverend Prichard to see. Inside among an untidy collection of memorabilia-a lock or two of hair, a polished agate stone, a tattered book, a painted miniature-lay another box. Inside it reposed a tiny gun and all the paraphernalia necessary to keep the gun in working order. A lady’s muff pistol.

Ready, he went to the table, sat upon the narrow chair, dipped his quill in the inkwell, automatically wiped its tip free of excess ink, and wrote across the bottom of the sketch.

“I have caused the death of William Henry Morgan.”

He signed his name and shot himself in the temple.