begin
to lay down another. Her works (beginning with Edith; or, The Last of the Fitzalans, of
1826) are now quite unremembered – it would be disloyal to her memory if I say
deservedly so; but in their day they enjoyed a certain vogue; at least they found sufficient
readers for Mr Colburn? to continue accepting her productions (mostly issued
anonymously, or sometimes under the nom de plume ‘A Lady of the West’) year in and
year out until her death.
Yet though she worked so long, and so hard, she would always break off to be
with me for a while, before I went to sleep. Sitting on the end of my bed, with a tired
smile on her sweet elfin face, she would listen while I solemnly read out some favourite
passage from my precious copy of Monsieur Galland’s Les milles et une nuits, in the
anonymous translation published by Bell in 1706; or she might tell me little stories she
had made up, or perhaps recount memories of her own childhood in the West Country,
which I especially loved to hear. Sometimes, on fine summer nights, we would walk,
hand in hand, out onto the cliff-top to watch the sunset; and then we would stand together
in silence, listening to the lonely cry of the gulls and the soft murmur of the waves below,
and gaze out across the glowing waters to the mysterious far horizon.
‘Over there is France, Eddie,’ I remember her saying once. ‘It is a large and
beautiful country.’
‘And are there Houyhnhnms there, mamma?’ I asked.
She gave a little laugh.
‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘Only people, like you and me.’
‘And have you been to France ever?’ was my next question.
‘I have been there once,’ came the reply. Then she gave a sigh. ‘And I shall never
go there again.’
When I looked up at her, I saw to my astonishment that she was crying, which I
had never seen her do before; but then she clapped her hands and, saying it was time I
was in my bed, bundled me back into the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed
me, and told me I would always be her best boy. Then she turned away, leaving me on
the bottom stair, and I watched her go back into the parlour, sit down at her work-table,
and pick up her pen.
The memory of that evening was awakened many years later, and has ever since
remained strong. I thought of it now, as I puffed slowly on my cigar in Quinn’s,? musing
on the strange connectedness of things: on the thin, but unbreakable, threads of causality
that linked – for they did so link – my mother labouring at her writing all those years ago
with the red-haired man who now lay dead not half a mile away in Cain-court.
Walking down towards the river, I felt strangely intoxicated by the thought that I
had escaped discovery. But then, whilst paying my halfpenny to the toll-keeper on
Waterloo Bridge, I noticed that my hands were shaking and that, despite my recent
refreshment at Quinn’s, my mouth was dry as tinder. Beneath a flickering gas-lamp, I
leaned against the parapet for a moment, feeling suddenly dizzy. The fog lay heavy on
the black water below, which lapped and slopped against the piers of the great echoing
arches, making a most dismal music. Then, out of the swirling fog, a thin young woman
appeared, carrying a baby. She stood for a few moments, obliviously staring down into
the blackness. I clearly saw the blank despair on her face, and instantly sensed that she
was about to make a jump of it; but as I moved towards her, she looked at me wildly,
clutched the child tightly to her breast, and ran off, leaving me to watch her poor phantom
figure dissolve into the fog once more.? A life saved, I hoped, if only for a time; but
something, perhaps, to set against what I had done that night.
You must understand that I am not a murderer by nature, only by temporary
design. There was no need to repeat this experimental act of killing. I had proved what I
had set out to prove: the capacity of my will to carry out such a deed.
to lay down another. Her works (beginning with Edith; or, The Last of the Fitzalans, of
1826) are now quite unremembered – it would be disloyal to her memory if I say
deservedly so; but in their day they enjoyed a certain vogue; at least they found sufficient
readers for Mr Colburn? to continue accepting her productions (mostly issued
anonymously, or sometimes under the nom de plume ‘A Lady of the West’) year in and
year out until her death.
Yet though she worked so long, and so hard, she would always break off to be
with me for a while, before I went to sleep. Sitting on the end of my bed, with a tired
smile on her sweet elfin face, she would listen while I solemnly read out some favourite
passage from my precious copy of Monsieur Galland’s Les milles et une nuits, in the
anonymous translation published by Bell in 1706; or she might tell me little stories she
had made up, or perhaps recount memories of her own childhood in the West Country,
which I especially loved to hear. Sometimes, on fine summer nights, we would walk,
hand in hand, out onto the cliff-top to watch the sunset; and then we would stand together
in silence, listening to the lonely cry of the gulls and the soft murmur of the waves below,
and gaze out across the glowing waters to the mysterious far horizon.
‘Over there is France, Eddie,’ I remember her saying once. ‘It is a large and
beautiful country.’
‘And are there Houyhnhnms there, mamma?’ I asked.
She gave a little laugh.
‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘Only people, like you and me.’
‘And have you been to France ever?’ was my next question.
‘I have been there once,’ came the reply. Then she gave a sigh. ‘And I shall never
go there again.’
When I looked up at her, I saw to my astonishment that she was crying, which I
had never seen her do before; but then she clapped her hands and, saying it was time I
was in my bed, bundled me back into the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed
me, and told me I would always be her best boy. Then she turned away, leaving me on
the bottom stair, and I watched her go back into the parlour, sit down at her work-table,
and pick up her pen.
The memory of that evening was awakened many years later, and has ever since
remained strong. I thought of it now, as I puffed slowly on my cigar in Quinn’s,? musing
on the strange connectedness of things: on the thin, but unbreakable, threads of causality
that linked – for they did so link – my mother labouring at her writing all those years ago
with the red-haired man who now lay dead not half a mile away in Cain-court.
Walking down towards the river, I felt strangely intoxicated by the thought that I
had escaped discovery. But then, whilst paying my halfpenny to the toll-keeper on
Waterloo Bridge, I noticed that my hands were shaking and that, despite my recent
refreshment at Quinn’s, my mouth was dry as tinder. Beneath a flickering gas-lamp, I
leaned against the parapet for a moment, feeling suddenly dizzy. The fog lay heavy on
the black water below, which lapped and slopped against the piers of the great echoing
arches, making a most dismal music. Then, out of the swirling fog, a thin young woman
appeared, carrying a baby. She stood for a few moments, obliviously staring down into
the blackness. I clearly saw the blank despair on her face, and instantly sensed that she
was about to make a jump of it; but as I moved towards her, she looked at me wildly,
clutched the child tightly to her breast, and ran off, leaving me to watch her poor phantom
figure dissolve into the fog once more.? A life saved, I hoped, if only for a time; but
something, perhaps, to set against what I had done that night.
You must understand that I am not a murderer by nature, only by temporary
design. There was no need to repeat this experimental act of killing. I had proved what I
had set out to prove: the capacity of my will to carry out such a deed.
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