The Pagan House Read online

  Edgar wondered if he should have brought a gift or at least some grapes, but then he hadn’t known he was coming.

  ‘It’s kind of you to visit me. I know boys are very busy.’

  His dread lifted immediately as it always did in her company. He liked Fay. He enjoyed her flattery. ‘That’s okay. How are you feeling?’

  She lifted a hand and it slowly moved, flooded by the bedside lamp, fragile bones lit by angel light, pale rivers of arteries and veins. ‘I’m fading away,’ she said.

  He wanted to protest but he didn’t have the words to use or the tone so he imagined he was his uncle Frank and he jutted his chin and stuck out his chest and was about to tell Fay how robust she looked, when she asked him, in a heartbreakingly humble voice, if he would brush her hair.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  He used the middle-sized silver hairbrush, which was agreeably cool to his hand, and heavier, he fancied, than Fay’s head, which, he horrified himself by imagining, could be batted away from her frail neck with a single confident swing.

  ‘Try to keep your hand steady.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He found a pleasure in the operation. He worked, pulling at the fine white hairs that clung to the brush, gently lifting them away from the tiny red dots on her scalp that reminded him of the spots on eggshells.

  ‘Where’s Warren?’ she asked.

  ‘He was doing something with a spanner.’

  ‘He must be trying to fix the faucet. I’ve got used to it. It reminds me of me. Do you like it here? Do you mind being here with us? You must miss all your London friends terribly.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Edgar said.

  ‘I’m so sorry your father hasn’t come yet. I wish he could be more relied upon. At this rate he won’t be with us till the Blackberry Festival and what will be the point of that?’

  ‘Yeah. Well,’ Edgar said.

  ‘Don’t get old. It’s the worst mistake I ever made.’

  Edgar snuffled to suggest laughter but he couldn’t tell if Fay was making a joke or not.

  ‘Have you been over to the Mansion House yet?’

  ‘Uh. Not yet.’

  ‘The Mansion House is living history. Rather like me. Except it will last a lot longer.’

  He managed one jocular, Frankish ‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ but Fay waved that away with her translucent hand, which rested, in exhaustion or benediction, on the side of Edgar’s head.

  ‘I think you should try the smaller brush now. You’re very good at this. I knew you would be when I saw you grooming Tom.’

  Edgar returned to the dressing-table. He put down the medium-sized brush and picked up the smaller one and resumed his task.

  ‘Um. Tom,’ he said.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and shut again.

  ‘I hope he’s not dead.’

  He hated himself for even this softened brutality. He waited for his grandmother’s tears. She didn’t provide them.

  ‘It was time for him to go,’ she said.

  Fay smiled or it might have been a wince of pain, from Edgar’s strokes, or from the loss of her cat, which, although fat and ginger and leaking, might still be, conceivably, an object of love.

  Edgar wanted to give her something to make up for her loss but he couldn’t think of anything he had to give, other than the facts that he could successfully masturbate, that Jerome gardened illicitly, and that his mother had a boyfriend called Jeffrey. But the first didn’t seem appropriate and the other two he had promised not to tell.

  ‘You know, my real name isn’t Edward?’

  Fay nodded, encouraging him to go on, but that snagged the brush with a clump of hair that he had to twist and roll to remove from the bristles before it tore away from her scalp.

  ‘I’ve got like a secret name? It’s Edgar.’

  He had expected to feel ridiculous saying it, but it had worked with Electa and with the Indian Fighters so he assumed it would work here too; the saying of it aloud and bold always made Edgar feel strong and it induced respect in his listeners.

  ‘Why Edgar?’

  ‘It’s my real name. It’s kind of a secret, but I don’t mind if you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Edgar.’

  ‘That’s all right. You can call me that, but not in front of, you know, people, my mum, or anyone like that?’

  ‘Warren?’

  ‘No, not Warren either. He doesn’t know.’

  She seemed pleased by the confidence.

  ‘It’s nothing against Warren, you understand.’

  ‘Of course. I’m very glad to have been chosen to know.’

  She said this solemnly, and he wondered for a moment if she was laughing at him, but then decided that that was a suspicion born of the moments spent in the derision of Electa.

  Warren was in the corridor when Edgar left Fay’s room. He looked past Edgar and was about to say one of his pleasant Warrenish things but stopped when he saw Fay sitting up in bed, her hair perfectly straight and brushed, and he looked sharply at Edgar, out of jealousy, Edgar supposed.

  16

  In the Kingdom of God the intimate union that in the world is limited to the married pair extends through the whole body of communicants; without however excluding special companionships founded on special ability. (John 17: 21)

  The System of Complex Marriage, John Prindle Stone and

  Mary Pagan, editors, 1849

  I appeal to the memory of every man who has had good sexual experience to say whether, on the whole, the sweetest and noblest period of intercourse with woman is not that first moment of simple presence and spiritual effusion before the muscular exercise begins.

  But we may go farther. Suppose the man chooses for good reasons, as before, to enjoy not only the simple presence but also the reciprocal motion, and yet to stop short of the final crisis. What if a man, knowing his own power and limits, should not even approach the crisis, and yet be able to enjoy the presence and the motion ad libitum? If you say that this is impossible, I answer that I know it is possible—nay, that it is easy.

  Paul intimates that some cannot ‘contain.’ Men of certain temperaments and conditions are afflicted with involuntary emissions on very trivial excitement, and in their sleep. But I insist that these are exceptional, morbid cases that should be disciplined and improved; and that, in the normal condition, men are entirely competent to choose in sexual intercourse whether they will stop at any point in the voluntary stages of it, and so make it simply an act of communion, or go through to the involuntary stage, and make it an act of propagation.

  You have now our whole theory of ‘male continence.’ It consists in analyzing sexual intercourse, recognizing in it two distinct acts, the amative and the propagative, which can be separated practically, and affirming that it is best, not only with reference to prudential considerations, but for immediate pleasure, that a man should content himself with the amative act, except when he intends procreation.

  The System of Male Continence, John Prindle Stone, 1850

  The communitarians wear the short hair and self-devised uniform of God’s soldiers. In the main hall of the Mansion House, they listen to their general.

  ‘We wrestle not with flesh and blood,’ Mr Stone says, ‘but with principalities and powers. We have abolished marriage. Soon we may abolish death.’

  George Pagan’s ardour for his wife, of whom he is unworthy, will never diminish. Nonetheless, he had realized that he was in love with Mrs Stone also. And when he announced the fact—having received permission first from Mrs Stone, a request made, and granted, in a letter—he was neither surprised nor happy to discover that his state mirrored others’.

  Charles Skinner and Charlotte Fletcher revealed a similar amity. So did Miss Glass and Mr Newhouse, and Miss Markham and Mr Fletcher—and Mr Stone and Mrs Pagan, the other half of the original quartette.

  With the consent of the community, Mr Pagan was joined in fellowship with Mrs Stone, and with the consent of the communi
ty Mr Stone was joined in fellowship with Mrs Pagan, and Mr Fletcher with Miss Markham, and Mrs Fletcher with Mr Skinner, and Mr Newhouse with Mrs Holt rather than the more skittish Miss Glass, of whom it was decreed better that she should be united this initial occasion with Mr Hamilton, and so it went on. Later, it would be suggested that this was all a manoeuvre of Mr Stone’s, that he and Mrs Pagan had already begun the practice that was once called adultery but in this dispensation is the godly principle of Complex Marriage. In a community of love there can be no fixed objects. In heaven, as Paul said, there is neither a giving nor a taking in marriage. In the supper of the Lamb, every dish is free to every guest.

  There are to be no special loves. George Pagan must not show too great a pleasure in his business position, nor may he play the violin as much or as heartfelt as he would choose. And yet Mrs Pagan and Mr Stone are closeted together more than most. This is, of course, because together they are writing editorials for the Spiritual Moralist, but there are gossips—and there are gossips, even in this garden of heaven—who call her his consort.

  Mr Stone has recently returned to his family. He takes frequent absences, to preach to the unenlightened, to rest his fragile throat, for the purpose of his own investigations and contemplations, and for the benefit of his flock to develop its own principles with no shepherd or star to guide them. Sometimes Mary accompanies him, other times one of the younger women of the family, whom he has been instructing in the tender ascension of Fellowship. Rumours have recently been circulating that John Prindle has made an approach to Hester Lovell, his once-fianced, to join the community. George Pagan has not been above feeling a small measure of happiness at this news.

  ‘To be full of happiness,’ John Prindle continues, as he approaches the conclusion of his Home Talk, ‘is to be full of liberty, genius, inspiration and everything that makes man fruitful. The true economy of life consists in finding out a way to have abiding communion with God, so that we shall be kept full of life; that is the great victory of our existence.’

  The original quartette continues to be. Most of the committees have at least one of the quartette presiding upon them. And the quartette sustains at night too. Beside Harriet, who had been and is still known as Mrs Stone, the comfort of the bedchamber can be gentle. George has if not mastered at least accomplished, sometimes unsteadily, the doctrine and practice of male continence. And in the absences of John Prindle, it falls upon other senior members of the community—Erasmus Hamilton, Matthew Fletcher, Seth Newhouse, George Pagan—to bring the new converts unblushingly into the light.

  These are rare nights, the interviews with the converts, touch reaching down in descending fellowship, and he is gentle, he is careful, there is a distance that the Devil must not be permitted to cross between spiritual sensuality and licentiousness; but these girls, no matter how eager for perfection, are still sometimes not so fluttery as one might expect, not so nervous or unbidden at an older man’s hand; but such delicacies do not seem to trouble John Prindle—certainly after time spent in fellowship with him, the girls’ ardour and aptitude for perfection, and its chief proponent, is only increased.

  George is on the correct path, of that he is sure. He has cast away so much that was bulky. John Prindle Stone is anointed in divine commission, there is indisputable proof of that. He has abolished marriage; he will soon abolish death. But happy? George’s happiness is dependent, or so he used to imagine and sometimes still does, upon the woman who had been his idol and his wife.

  ‘We each must do all things,’ Mr Stone says. ‘If we don’t know, we will learn from each other. Tomorrow I am going to build a stone wall. I have never built a stone wall before. Mr Miller will show me how.’

  The wall shall enclose the southern perimeter of the community graveyard. As the family grows, despite its soon-abolition of death, the cemetery receives. Mr Short lies there, father of the gloomy Mordecai. The headstones are simple, undistinguished, modest: there is no distinction of spiritual rank in life or temporary death. Mr Short’s stone is the same as the one that George frequently visits.

  Mary’s twins, her second and third children, were born eight months after Complex Marriage was adopted: Henrietta survived a few hours; Henry Stone Pagan flourished.

  ‘One twin each,’ George murmured to John Prindle, who was holding baby Henry in his arms after the funeral service—the heartbreak of an infant coffin lowered into hard ground, the empty consolation of God’s love—and John Prindle had been wise enough not to reply.

  On some debased Spanish square …

  George awakes, pulsing, spurting, appalled, remembering little of the dream place, except that Mary had been there, Spanish lace, Spanish leather, fingers stroke a guitar, sunlit verandas, a mocking duenna.

  Other men abide by this regimen so why mayn’t he? His incontinence exposes him. His body, his sin, betrays him. In daylight hours he is the very model of the Perfectionist; his energies bring doubtless credit to the community and its endeavours. At night, in storm-tossed disarray, the truths of his incapacity reveal themselves in brute expulsion.

  George shivers. His bedclothes are damp with his shame. The only consolation is that he may sleep now without fear of further crisis. But he is not ready for sleep yet. He removes his nightshirt, dabs it against the stains on the sheets. He sits on his bed naked in voluptuous unease. The Mansion House is alive. Floorboards creak as lovers return to private beds. Prayerful cries of ecstasy echo along metal pipes. Seth Newhouse snores. Mary calls John Prindle’s name. George calculates. Are the moments of his shame coincident with the visits of John Prindle Stone? In some bitter harmony do his crises occur when John Prindle and Mary renew their Fellowship? Are the moments of his incontinence simultaneous with the highest pitch of their delights? Does one, somehow, depend upon the other?

  He knows—or at least can be fairly certain he knows—that this is early-hours thinking. A world twists and distorts at night remaking itself in the images of a drowning man’s fancy. George Pagan prays. And in some debased Spanish dream square, Abram Carter fingers a guitar, Mary preens and stretches in sensuous gratification, and John Prindle struts amid shafts of suspicious sunlight, shadows and lace.

  George, gratefully alone with his figures, tots up the account books. His ploughing days are over. They may one day resume. John Prindle urges a permanent revolution upon the community. One day a farmhand, the next an accountant. Soon a cook, a baker, trap-maker, salesman. The trick is to show no special love for any occupation; one learns how to hide in some favoured spot behind a mask of enthusiastic duty. Here, in the business room, there is little traffic. Ledgers sit on sedate shelves. Dry correspondence waits in pleasant trays. George taps his pen into the inkwell. He hears Mary’s voice in the schoolroom. Slyly, he ambushes her when the bell sounds for lunch.

  She discerns his embarrassment. Perhaps she might also discern its cause. ‘It is a personal matter,’ he blusters. She is at first concerned, for his health, for Georgie’s.

  ‘No, it is not that,’ he says.

  ‘You are unhappy,’ she says.

  To this he agrees. He has never been able to lie to her. He should not want to have the skill.

  ‘But that is not, what …’

  She takes his hand, in a gesture he cannot mistake as signifying anything other than sisterly affection. She declares herself always, as ever, willing to be, a confidante of his heart.

  ‘That is not what …’

  ‘What then? What?’

  Her spirits rise; good humour is ready to take the place of concern. He has always aroused in her an amusement as well as a protectiveness.

  ‘I would ask …’ He clears his throat. In anticipation of this conversation the request had not been so hard to make.

  ‘Ask what?’

  He should like to be looking at her. He should like to be holding her hand with simple, unambiguous pressure. He should like to be playing his violin or dancing. In music he feels his connection to the Lord most freely.
r />   ‘In fellowship, you, and I.’

  His tongue fails him. He is grateful that she is looking neither reproachful nor amused. She does not say, ‘Oh George!’ She does not make light of the request or of him. Neither does she reject him. She will give herself to him, if that is what he wishes, and it is what he wishes, beyond anything; but in her demeanour and in her use of the word ‘wish’ rather than ‘desire’, it is clear, to both of them, that her acquiescence is unmistakably a duty, an honour owed, and it hurts him all the more.

  George puts the request in to the Committee in the usual way. Yes, the matter has been previously initiated and discussed, yes, both parties are willing for the Fellowship to take place, yes. And when George looks at the paper, where he has written down his wife’s name and his conjoined, is he reminded of their wedding day? Their names have been together on other official forms, most recently on the birth certificates of the twins Henry and Henrietta and on the death certificate of Henrietta. Henry Stone Pagan is a boisterous, lustrous child, fast on the ground, big-boned, his restless spirit pardoned by his sincere heart, but who knows what damage he wreaked in the womb? Henrietta Stone Pagan was frail, sickly; she languished, dead within two weeks, and sentimental George took the lineaments of the dead infant for the embodiment of his once-marriage.

  The past is gone. John Prindle Stone laid claims to Mary’s future and his own. ‘Little’ Henry flourished then, he flourishes still, he towers over his playmates in the Children’s House, and much as George would like to lay claim to his putative namesake, it is the boy’s turbulent heart, no less than his red hair, that marks out his undeniable progenitor.

  The committee headed by Harriet Stone turns down his application for a night with Mary. He knows this is the correct decision: there are to be no special loves in the Association. God says no.