Aislinn Hunter - The World Before Us

The way that William’s words turned into images reminded us that once, at the Whitmore, there had been a magic show. The preparation took weeks, with various permissions needed in order for the inmates to perform certain tricks. There was to be no sawing of anyone in a box, no escape from shackles, though Professor Wick was allowed to rehearse privately with his own top hat and one of the farm rabbits. The best deception was the sleight of hand, when Hopper made billfolds, pipes and a pocket watch disappear, only to have them turn up in the hands of his assistant. This is what it was like for us at the lecture: it was as if we were a magic show audience asked to pay attention, every ounce of energy we had expended in concentration. But a pocket watch is easier to follow than a story; it has a chain one can see as it slips into the magician’s sleeve.

We know that it was Norvill who suggested that photographs should be taken, souvenirs of the weekend compliments of the Farringtons, who had, once or twice a year for the last six years, employed a photographer from a nearby village to take portraits of the family and once, the previous summer, a postcard of the house and gardens. We suspect that the Chester children were allowed to play by the lakeside that afternoon because there is a photograph of them in that year in the archives at the Chester Museum: a small ambrotype of the children in flouncy swimming costumes, their arms roped loosely around each other’s waists, Celia’s hair wet and plaited under her bonnet, its ribbons untied.

The photographer’s name was Thwaite and we can envision him appearing just after lunch on the trail side of the lake, hailing the party self-consciously and waving his hat back and forth to garner attention. Norvill and Rai would have rowed over to assist him with his tent and equipment while Charlotte, artfully arranged in a blue dress under the uplifted arms of a hazelnut tree, might have called the children out of the water and instructed them to dry off as best they could. The photograph of the children is the only one that Jane has seen, although some of us know that Thwaite also took the obligatory group photos under the long face of the cliff, the gentlemen standing, George with a rifle over one shoulder, Rai behind him staring out of the shadows and Cato sprawled in front of the blankets. In one of them, Charlotte’s hand is a blur on the dog’s neck as if she was petting him, and Norvill is beside her, his gaze meeting the camera but his body oriented in Charlotte’s direction as if they had been conversing and, on being called to pose, he simply turned his head. In what would have been the last photograph of the day, taken after Thwaite had returned to the trail side of the lake, the group appears small, as if forgotten, as if glanced at over one’s shoulder when one is already too far away to discern faces and relations. In that photograph the rock face above them is an almost sheer sheet of limestone already bearing traces of the plants George had brought back as seeds the previous winter: alpine anemones set against his prized mosses, the tiny white stars of the tubergeniana gawping beautifully out of their crevices.

Once Thwaite had departed, George, in the role of congenial host, turned his attention to Charlotte. She was sitting on the blanket nearest the water, the skirts of her dress spread flatly around her from the lack of crinoline or bustle, which she had been told to leave off if she desired to venture into the cave at the end of the walk. All morning George had been noticing his brother’s darting looks in Mrs. Chester’s direction, but rather than judge him, or the two of them, he decided to walk over and see for himself what the fascination was.

Charlotte smiled up at him as he approached, and when he stood in front of her she tilted her head in inquiry. Up close he could see that she was lovely in a young motherly sort of way, with the slightly frazzled look of one who doesn’t rely on her lady’s maid. Her bodice was overly snug as if she’d recently put on weight, and her breasts bulged slightly above her neckline because of it. She had a mole — as perfectly circular as the brown centre of a calderiana he’d once seen blooming in Bhutan — that peeked out beside the gauzy frill of her vest, and George, surprised at himself, had to fight the urge to touch it. Her conversation thus far had been expected and conventional: the positive qualities of vernacular architecture, the value of schooling the poor and the merits of an icehouse. Earlier she had also started to engage the Suttons on the politics of sugar but one look from Edmund had put a stop to that. For the past hour she’d been working idly at a sketch, and George’s shadow fell over it as he studied the quick strokes she was making with her gloveless hand.

“May I?”

“Of course.” She handed her papers up to him.

He smiled politely at her landscape and then turned the page to a fresh sheet.

“I did tell you this was a shooting party, did I not?”

“I believe you called it an exploring party , Mr. Farrington. You indicated we were to take a long walk, a cave was promised and some of your—” She searched for the words he’d used and then settled for “alpine gardens.”

“Have you travelled much, Mrs. Chester?” He sat down beside her and glanced around for Norvill.

“If you are asking me if I’m worldly, Mr. Farrington, I couldn’t say.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m unsure of the categories or means by which you’d gauge it.”

George smiled thinly at her. He liked her calling him Mr. Farrington because he knew that is what she would call Norvill when they were not alone, which meant that in some small cleft of her thinking he and his brother might be interchangeable, even fleetingly the same.

“Allow me to explain.” He smoothed a clean cream page with his hand. “By shooting, I meant, of course, pheasants, but I also meant seeds. By projecting the seeds from the shotgun into the rock face I have discovered a means by which to better integrate my alpine species into the landscape.” He dipped the nib of the pen she’d been using into its inkpot and then dashed out a few black lines to form a cliff and a lake. “In Wallanchoon,” he continued, “the natural order of things is to see flowering plants like the Rhododendron and yellow rose thriving on the lower part of the pass while the heartier tenants take up residence in amongst the lichen and sedge.”

Charlotte watched studiously as the cliff he’d outlined was endowed with inky smudges and crevices.

“At first I attempted to plant my seeds here in a similar fashion, in two bands on the mid and upper ledges of the cliff, but few of the plants took and it cost me three-quarters of my supply. Last summer, I had a better idea.” He set the sketchbook down, leaned back on his palms, and looked over his right shoulder at the Suttons, who were craning their necks up at the rock face above them. “Rather than climb it again, scattering the seeds as I went, it occurred to me that shooting the seeds toward the cliff might better mimic the dispersal of the wind.”

Charlotte tilted her head, trying to picture George climbing the cliff, imagining him first in some sort of harness, and then climbing a laddered rope, though attached to what she couldn’t say.

Returning to the paper in front of him, George drew, in five sure lines, a rowboat, then added a dashed-off human form and a shotgun from which ten lines of India ink sprang. “Shall I demonstrate?” he asked, leaning intimately over Charlotte’s lap to set the sketchbook down beside her.

“Please do,” she replied with a teasing expression that seemed to indicate that she knew exactly what George was doing and why.