Rose Tremain - Restoration

The tiding is your house has passed and land and all to a French noble, Le Viscomte de Confolens, and a most forwardy, ticklish man preferring to regard his own wig and nose and Beauty Spots in the glass than to note any good thing at Bidnold.

Merciful thanks Le V. is not much visiting here. But when he comes, comes with a retenue of ladies, all French. Some very common seeming and shrieking out in their language and showing their feet.

I am and M. Cattlebury to be kept hired here and so too the grooms and maids, according to Sir J. Babbacombe.

But we are not paid our money. We have no wage from Le Viscomte, Sir Robert, and I have writ to Sir J. Babbacombe to tell him this.

My Lady Bathurst did arrive here in May and says to me 0 Mister Gates what is to become of this place! And truly I did not know what to answer. And she then weeping. And as I am a Norfolk man and so backward in grace could not stop myself weeping also. But I am sorry for it. So keep you well, Sir and Mister Pearce also. And if you can write me any letter, I will be happy.

Your still remaining Servant,

Wm. Gates

I folded this letter after I had read it once and stowed it away in the sea chest, thus hoping to put it out of my mind, for I do not deny it made me feel sad. Pearce, as it chanced, came seeking me on some errand just as I was putting the thing away and saw at once (for nothing that I feel can I seem to conceal from him) that some portion of my past was once again preoccupying my mind, which should have dwelled only and entirely on my great Cure by Dancing that was to be tried the next day. He stood at the door and regarded me and without asking me what my letter had contained, he said, in his sternest voice: "I presume you are familiar with the Act of Praemunire, Robert?"

"No," I replied, "I am not, John."

"Let me enlighten you then. The Act of Praemunire permits the confiscation – immediate and without redress, upon the presentation of a warrant of Praemunire – of property, goods and chattels as a punishment for Non-Conformity. Hundreds of Quakers have lost their houses and their land under the terms of this loathsome edict. The suffering caused by it has been beyond what you could imagine. So do not believe you are singled out, Robert. You are merely one of many. The King has behaved towards you as towards a Quaker, and this is all."

Before I could make any answer to this, Pearce had turned and walked away leaving behind him in my room a faint smell of the mithridate with which he continues to dose himself, his cold and catarrh yielding to no cure at all, not even to the hot, dry weather.

When I woke the following morning, I was aware of a strange sound in the room, a sound with which I knew myself to be familiar, yet could not for a moment interpret.

I lay and listened. I knew it to be very early, for the light at the window was grey. And then it came upon me what I was hearing. I sprang out of my cot and drew back the hessian drapes at the window and I saw that I was not mistaken: a great sheeting rain was coming down upon us and upon all the preparations we had made for the dancing. The Airing Court, baked to a hard, yellow dryness by the sun, was to have been our dancing floor. Now it was already returning to slimy mud.

The Keepers (who are not usually cast down by any occurrence) seemed sad – every one of them including Pearce – at the cancellation of the dance. Into this sadness I cast a question that had been troubling me for some time: "When we at last begin the music and the occupants of George Fox and Margaret Fell come out, what is to happen to those in William Harvey?"

"They cannot dance, Robert," said Pearce.

"We cannot unchain them," said Edmund.

"But they will hear the music," said Ambrose. "We will open the doors of William Harvey so that the sounds reach them."

I was forced to be content with these answers, but was vexed to find a terrible pity for the men and women of WH coming over me, such as I had never felt before, not even upon my first sight of them in their rags and straw. And I remembered my journey to Kew with the tilt-man, how I had passed Whitehall and seen light at the windows and heard laughter and yet myself been outside on the flat, dark water; and I knew that what I detest about the world is that one man's happiness is so often another man's pain.

It rained for two days and in that small bit of time Daniel and I, to divert ourselves, invented some sweet harmonies and variations to my old tune, Swans Do All , so that it was transformed from a dull little song into music of great prettiness. And after supper of the second day, we got our instruments and played it in the parlour for the Keepers, and the thing which pleased me about our playing was that I could tell that Pearce was very moved by it, though he would say no more to me about it than, "Progress, Robert. You are making progress."

So it was on the last day of June, just past the summer solstice, that we opened the doors of Fox and Fell and led out the people. On a trestle table were three pails of water and some cups and ladles, and I watched how some of the men, before any dancing had begun, started to ladle water over their heads and laugh. And then others joined them and this playing with the water seemed to preoccupy them utterly, as if it was the thing on earth they most loved to do. But then Daniel and I began on a polka and slowly all the group clustered near to the wooden podium on which we stood and stared at us, their mouths gaping and some putting their hands over their ears. It was most difficult to play with this press of people on us. And then I saw Katharine push her way from the back of the group to the front, and she stood so close to me that I had to turn aside a little for fear of poking my oboe into her eye.

We finished the polka and I wiped my brow and some of the people applauded with their fingers splayed out like children and some laughed and some went back to the water buckets.

Ambrose then came and stood with us on the podium. Addressing the multitude of mad people, he said: "Today, instead of walking round the tree, we are going to dance. Robert and Daniel will play and we are going to skip or gallop. What steps we do, what patterns we make, do not matter. We can dance in a square or in a circle or each on his own like a dancing dot. Your Keepers, all of us, will dance with you. And now we are going to begin."

Ambrose stepped down and he and Hannah and Eleanor and the others each took one man or woman to be their partner and so we struck up another polka and the press of people turned away from us a little to watch those now skipping about, among whom was Pearce who had not the least idea how to dance a polka but was jumping up and down, holding the hands of an elderly woman, as thin as he, who began to cackle with a laughter so violent that she could scarcely breathe.

After the third or fourth time, perceiving that only a few joined in any kind of dance and many only stared about them in confusion and outrage, I saw that my experiment risked turning into a lamentable failure. Katharine had now sat down on the ground and was holding onto my boot, thus causing me to feel as if I was chained to the floor like those in WH, from which building we could now hear shouts and cries and a loud banging on the wall.

I felt very sick with embarrassment. "It is not working," I whispered to Daniel. "They do not understand what to do."

Daniel put down his fiddle and took off his waistcoat. His face was red and sweating. Then he picked up the violin again, twanged the A-string to tune it and said to me, "Try the tarantella."

I sighed. I thought of all the hours we had spent rehearsing the difficult Tarentelle de Lyon . They seemed utterly in vain. I blew some spittle from my reed, then I bent down and took Katharine's hand from my foot and lifted her up. And I spoke out to the so-called dancers: