Awakening (41 page)

And the child is gone, racing down the nave and out into the brightness.

Beatrice's heart squeezes at the painful resemblance to Magdalena. She lingers at the aristocratic tombs. You can't help but notice, at the feet of the effigies, the touching little dogs and horses eternally watchful at the corners of the great warriors' stone beds.

She's glad when the Quarleses arrive with General Fox the antiquary: not the kind of company Beatrice could ever have expected to keep but Christian is a great and celebrated man now. Doors open to you and there's some obligation to go through them, according to her husband. You might prefer it on occasion if they remained closed.

At the dinner they are consuming the Great Bustard.

The last Great Bustard in England. An exclusive treat! The bird, a member of the turkey family, was once so common, General Fox is saying, that every mediaeval family in England could enjoy a roasted bird for its Christmas dinner. And the creature has been extinct in our land for forty years.

‘So, if they are extinct,' says Beatrice, ‘how come we are eating this?' The scent of the meat as it's carved is delicious. Her mouth waters and she swallows hard. Her pregnancy has reached the stage which succeeds the nausea, when you feel elated – and hungry. Always ravenous and always eating. Forever pregnant and never your own. And years of the same to come. She feels as if she could consume the whole thirty-pound bird herself.

‘Ah, well, it must have blown in from the Continent. From France, I assume,' explains their host, Mr Stevens, the director of the Museum. ‘This hen bird was sighted in a group of four above the Downs at Shrewton by, of all people, a bird scarer. The lad saw it was a big bird and took aim. With a marble. Quite a feat – to shoot a hen bird from 132 yards with a marble! He duly passed it on to the farmer. Who sent it on to me.'

‘A thoroughly honest bird scarer,' comments Mrs Quarles.

Maybe, thinks Beatrice, there's another bustard the enterprising lad kept for his own table. The plates are set before them. The ten guests taste the novel flesh – oh, luscious, the most succulent Beatrice has tasted. The meat melts in her mouth.

Anna turns her head, looks into Beatrice's eyes. The last of these creatures on your earth and you are devouring it. You are just a stomach on legs. All of you. What are you doing cheek by jowl with these Tories of the shires? Beatrice lays down her knife and fork. She can't swallow. Come on, chew. The meat wedges in her throat. Beatrice takes a drink of water; coughs the morsel into her handkerchief without drawing attention to herself.

‘The taxidermist has stuffed the very bird we're eating,' Mr Stevens goes on. ‘And we have displayed it behind glass, to honour the last Great Bustard – and immortalize, so to speak, our meal. Some memorable facts about the bird for you. Its wings can stretch to seven feet. Its flesh was prized by the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle calls it flavoursome. It appears from General Fox's investigations that the Great Bustard was relished in the Stone Age.'

Mrs Stevens, proud of her cook's prowess, tells the guests of a recipe in the book of a French chef, Grimod de la Reynière. ‘It begins, Stuff an olive with capers and anchovies and put it in a garden warbler. Put the warbler in an ortolan – I'm not familiar with an ortolan, doubtless a French bird. Then put the ortolan in a (was it, Mr Stevens?) lark, the lark in a thrush
…
and so on and so on, a quail … in a partridge … a teal … a duck … put the duck in the turkey and, finally, the turkey in a bustard. I forget all the avians in the recipe – sixteen in all. You cook it for a whole day.'

‘Now that I should like to have tasted,' says Dr Quarles.

‘Does it not seem sad to you, Dr Quarles,' Beatrice hears herself say. ‘To rejoice in the extinction of one of God's creatures?'

‘Well, yes indeed, dear Mrs Ritter. A signal loss to modern sportsmen. And to modern eaters. Game birds require careful management.'

‘I didn't quite mean that.'

Beatrice is looked at with some condescension. It's just the sort of priggish thing a Baptist lady might be expected to say. A Baptist lady, moreover, who has just consumed her portion of the last of the species with gusto and perhaps exhibiting less than perfect table manners. Nobody likes to remind Mrs Ritter that the animals were created by the Almighty for our use. Or to pour scorn on the current fad for subsisting on vegetables and objecting to vivisection.

‘Extinction of species is indeed a lamentable fact,' says Mr Stevens. ‘But a fact nevertheless. Here at the Museum we've done our best to record the local flora and fauna that have been, in the course of things, sadly (as you say) lost. Natural selection, if you take that view, is the law that creatures who cannot adapt must die.'

‘Oh no,' says Beatrice, blushing deeply. ‘I don't take that view.' She says no more.

Christian does take that view, of course, and sees no discrepancy between Genesis and Mr Darwin's revelations. So much of what ten years ago was regarded as atheistic has lost its sting and been assimilated into an idea of progress. When the ladies retire for coffee, Beatrice, feeling queasy, eyes the Great Bustard she has just devoured in its glass case. A beautiful piece of work, as the ladies agree.

*

Magdalena is out playing in the wilderness. Again. She has given Beatrice the slip. She's always doing it. And of course she has taken Florence with her – Florence who'd never have gone of her own volition and really doesn't like to dirty her pinafore but who can rarely say no to her strong-minded cousin. She cannot say no to her mother either, or Papa, or anyone in the world, which places her in a constant dilemma. A premature frown mark has imprinted itself between Florence's eyebrows. Sitting with her eldest daughter, Beatrice often finds herself trying to smooth the frown mark away with her finger tips. Florence wants to please, to defer, but will do it promiscuously, without regard to the structure of the hierarchy.

All this changes when Florence's Papa is at home. A model household greets Christian, dreading his awe-inspiring silences, the straight blue looks from his handsome all-seeing eyes. Christian never raises his voice; never has to. Sitting each child in turn on his knee, he enquires after their little deeds and offers them loving counsel, as once he did to Beatrice as a youngster. A great man in the church, known on five continents, a powerful speaker and a tireless fund-raiser, Christian has founded an orphanage and an almshouse. Mr Beecher, the subject of sexual scandal in his New York church, is no longer Christian's watchword. His gaze is bent on the momentous business in which God has engaged him. We all creep on tiptoe, Beatrice thinks, around the aura of perfection Christian carries. Those tender moments when their firstborn died seem like dreams.

And of course we have to welcome his protégées. Ruth Leyton has given place to Esther, the daughter of the missionary Herbert Thoms. Esther, who is being educated in London, spends her vacations at Sarum House. She's a pious child rather too eager to declare herself a backsliding daughter before any and every congregation where personal testimony is sought. Beatrice has given up attempting to warn her high-minded husband. She locks herself into the room Anna used as her study when she can stand it no more.

Florence appears as if on cue and looks at her mother with melting eyes. She holds up her hand, dripping with blood where a blade of crabgrass has pierced the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Making no complaint, she brings her hand to her mouth and sucks it, then takes another look. To her dismay beads of blood seep out. It's bleeding rather freely and must be smarting. Florence seldom acknowledges pain in front of the spartan Magdalena, who now appears beside her, skirt hitched up in her belt, and says, ‘Flossie's cut her hand, I'm afraid. A little bit.'

‘I can see that. We'll bind it up for her now. And where's her hat? Pull down your skirt, Magdalena, do. I've told you before about that. Haven't I?' She binds the cut, which is tiny. ‘Hundreds of times. You're a young lady now and must behave like one. I saw a little girl in the cathedral close turning cartwheels. And she reminded me of you, darling. You are nearly a young woman now and cannot afford to behave in this way. It will be thought immodest.'

Obligingly Magdalena drags down her wayward skirt. Beatrice, who has indulged her niece more than any of her own, is concerned for Magdalena. Have I spoilt her? No, but I've come close to it. She's so original – and along with this goes such a blitheness of disposition. She'll achieve something in the world, the child has recently announced, something
tre-men-jous
!
Isn't that pride, Magdalena dear? Yes! Good pride, proper pride! Hopping from foot to foot, she spun like a top until she tumbled in a heap. With every minute Magdalena draws nearer to obstacles that will floor her or force her to fight. The leaking of blood, the griping of pain, sensations of shame, tight corsets. Beatrice winces at the premonition of what is about to thwart agile, intelligent, never-say-die, affectionate Magdalena, who now comes up close to say, ‘Sorry, Auntie
cariad
. It's up the tree, her hat.'

‘For goodness' sake! I hope you've not been luring Florence up trees. It's so dangerous and it's not ladylike. Is it?'

‘Not really.'

‘Not at all. Which tree?'

‘Oh no, I wouldn't let her climb. I was the one who threw it. We were playing catch; it skims really well. The beech tree.'

The straw boater is resting on the cross-bough. Beatrice hoists Magdalena so that she can grab for it. As she brings the child down, the scallywag's dark, sparkling eyes arrest Beatrice's and although Maggie is flaxen-haired where her mother was dark, they're Annie's eyes and also the eyes of Will. Beatrice's heart squeezes, a double pang. She holds Magdalena's lithe, light body up against her own for a moment and feels the drumming heart under the layers of cotton. In her mind's eye a dead sister is whirling round the Pentecost lawn, face brown as a labourer's, around and around until you're dizzy watching her. Papa is egging her on, her stepmother's asking, ‘Who'll have dear Anna if she grows up like this?'

‘Don't lead Florence on, Maggie my sweetheart. Now don't. She's only a little person, isn't she? And small for her age. She could hurt herself badly and you wouldn't want to have caused that.'

‘All right, Auntie Bee. I won't.'

‘Don't just promise, do it – or rather don't do it. Florence would follow you anywhere, you know that. It gives you a special responsibility. Do you understand that?'

‘Yes.'

A small hand with grime under the fingernails, stained with juice from stolen berries, is placed on Beatrice's own. The raspberry mouth comes close and offers a kiss. Anna's daughter waits to be absolutely sure she is forgiven. There's that urgent look on her face: she cannot
live
if she is not certain of forgiveness. Beatrice can't help but smile. There's purple juice round Florence's mouth too.

‘Ah, Maggie, whatever shall we do with you?'

Magdalena's promises don't mean a thing, when it comes down to it. I really should speak to Will about this, she thinks, when he and Jane visit. But I might not.

Mr Moody the revivalist and Mr Sankey the singing evangelist have been staying with the Anwyls in Manchester. This is where the future lies, according to Will, in mass meetings staged at the Free Trade Hall, witnessing tens of thousands of conversions. Powerful forces are required in this day and age to defend against the tides of atheism and secularity. Beside Moody and Sankey the Welsh Revival seemed a sideshow. The Chauntsey Awakening could only be accounted a brief prelude. For the Holy Boy of West Grimstead, the great hope of Wiltshire Dissent, burnt out. Occasionally you see Isaiah Minety at the back of his father's shop, taking batches of loaves from the oven or pummelling the dough. And what to make of this Beatrice has no idea. Isaiah stretched himself too far, is Mrs Elias's view: the odd lad had no background, no education and perhaps in the end no calling. Her own sons have avoided the ministry. Piano tuners and music teachers, they have quit the nest for Huddersfield and Sheffield. Of the new generation not one has entered the ministry.

Will uses such horrible slangy language; he has caught the modern idiom. The American missions to Britain leave Beatrice cold. To her the old ways still seem best: what she has received from her father and her father's father stand her in good stead. Will's mind at the best of times resembled the feather they used to blow round the drawing room in those games that seem so long ago.

‘Businesslike evangelists!' Will has said. ‘That's what we want. Modern professional men, oh, and ladies, of course, like my wife, who know how to stage events. Conversions by the thousand – tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands. The Florian Steet Awakening was less a precursor than an echo. Using up-to-date methods, if you add up the figures, you'll have the whole population of our islands Christian within twenty years. That's the modern way! How else could we stem the rot of freethinking and scepticism? Ah, Beatrice, you should have heard seventeen thousand people singing “There is a fountain filled with blood!” It nearly took the roof off! Music you'd normally hear in a tavern or music hall is now captured for God! And then we were all asked to bow our heads in silent prayer. As we did so, a whisper began, the organ sighed. And then, oh so softly, Mr Sankey was singing a solo – “Come home, come home, o prodigal child”. And the massed choir took up the chorus, with the organ bursting out in majesty. Come home, come home. Knocks poor old Spurgeon into a cocked hat. We were all in tears.'