Wilberforce (64 page)

—Don't worry, he said. No one hates you.

Morgan spat out the cigarette:

—You can't keep me here!

The Captain of the Guard gave a signal and they hoisted him out of the water and lay him dripping on the flagstones.

—But no one's keeping you, he said. You came to us, Dicky.

*   *   *

Gasp, stiff, sore, dark.

When he was too afraid to come to her room, she always answered his call. She would bring him a glass of water and something from her bedside table. When he stopped crying, she would speak of what they would do tomorrow, and the things they had to look forward to.

If he needed her hard enough and called even harder, couldn't she come, just for a moment, here where no one would see? He'd whisper in her ear—
they said I'd come to them
—and when she'd heard, it wouldn't be true anymore; it would be absurd and taste of barley sweets and her cool hands. What was the cry that could make her,
make
her—

 

56

Mrs. Hallows woke him from dead sleep.

—Up you get, she boomed. Bath's drawn. Prayers in half an hour. St. Luke's.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to make sense of her words.

—Chop-chop.

*   *   *

—Sir, Morgan said upon entering the red room downstairs, there's something I need to say.

No one's keeping you. You came to
—

—What I have to say, sir …

The Bishop paused in his arrangements. Morgan tried to get his footing.

—Sir, you know how I feel about religion. I'm afraid I can't go in for all this praying.

The Bishop turned to him:

—Do you have prayers at school?

—Yes, sir, but—

—Morning or evening?

—Both, sir, but they aren't—

—And did you stage conscientious objection at St. Stephen's?

—No, sir—

—Then I see no obstacle to your joining Morning Prayer here. Before, when I was proceeding in error, I reasoned that you were in desperate need of sleep and that you required delicate handling. Thus, I did not press the point.

—Thank you, sir.

—But now that I've determined to treat you as my child, I expect your presence at quarter past seven daily, except Sundays, when we shall depart for the cathedral at half past nine sharp.

—But, sir—

The Bishop moved abruptly near:

—It is the way things operate in this family. I can only say how sorry I am it took me so long to cotton on.

The Bishop did not explain what he had cottoned on to. Instead, Mrs. Hallows entered with Maryanne, the Bishop indicated where Morgan ought to sit, and together they began to say Morning Prayer.

Morgan tried to focus on what was being said and read, but all he could think of was William, so glaringly absent, sacked because of Morgan's selfishness. When would the ruthless business end? He'd been careening from one error to the next since … at least since he tackled Spaulding. Back in the Tower after knocking himself out, he had sensed a shadow beyond the curtain and knew it wanted to savage everything. Did he not determine to thwart it? And did he not fail absolutely? Had the thing distracted him? Stalled him off? Or had Morgan enlisted it—
refusing to believe won't make it untrue
—was he sunk to his neck in it, deeper than he'd realized, deeper than he could stand to know?

*   *   *

Breakfast, silent, searing. He could scarcely swallow his porridge.

—Sir, I can't bear it.

—I think you can, said the Bishop.

Morgan poked at his bowl.

—And we aren't going anywhere, the Bishop said, until you've finished that.

—I'm not hungry, sir.

—It is a moral duty to maintain one's health and one's strength. I won't have you shirking because a proper sense of remorse is making you uncomfortable.

The word
uncomfortable
didn't cover anything. If this was what the Bishop meant by treating him as his child, Morgan thought he'd prefer the orphanage. He forced down the porridge. The Bishop ate beside him, silent, holding him as if by the scruff of the neck.

Yet, holding him.

*   *   *

—I know you're angry, sir, Morgan said as they reached the study, but—

—I'm troubled, Morgan, and I'm most painfully let down.

Panic rising, neck, chin—

—Please, sir, send me away instead of William.

The Bishop pushed him into the usual chair, and then, rather than sitting himself, the man began to pace.

—I don't see how you can sack him, Morgan continued, and have me back in your house.

Not to mention treat him as …

—There was a reason I asked you not to flirt with my staff. It's why you mustn't flirt with anyone's staff.

The Bishop came to stand at the corner of the desk.

—Your position and William's are different, and your actions carry different consequences. You've very little notion of your privileges. I intend to see that you learn to take them seriously.

Dread again—had he no reserves?—stinging eyes, snipping breath.

—But what if I never…? What if I can't?

—You can.

Morgan swallowed.

—I also mean for you to try harder with your studies next term. You've a perfectly good mind, but if you don't make an effort, you're going to grow up muddled and ignorant.

—I'm nowhere near the bottom of the class, sir.

The Bishop raised his eyebrows. Morgan dried up.

—My point is that you ought, if you weren't so accustomed to muddle, to acknowledge that your errors with William turned upon the sin of disobedience.

That?

—Sir, if I'd known why you didn't want me to do it, I wouldn't have!

—But you didn't know, did you? There's a world of things you don't know.

—Obviously!

The Bishop began to pace again.

—Do you trust me, Morgan?

—Yes, sir.

—To what extent?

—To every extent.

—Then why, the Bishop reeled on him, did you not trust me enough to obey me?

*   *   *

He knew nothing, understood less. Every thought cast him back to the cold fear of the moat. He couldn't put things right with William. He couldn't put anything right.

—You ought to whack me from here to Christmas, sir.

His voice without strength.

—I deserve it. I'm vile. If you only knew the truth—

The Bishop turned:

—
There is no health in us
. That is the truth.

The words echoed from before, that voice like the hands in the garden.

—There's a reason we say that prayer every day. It isn't theater.

The man came to sit beside him.

—And it's why we ask forgiveness.

Except he didn't deserve it.

—None of us deserves it, the Bishop said, but we've been commanded to ask for it, and to accept it.

He reached for Morgan's chin.

—Just you concentrate on getting that through your head. Or should I say heart?

His heart rose up in fear—or was it protest?

—As for your punishment, I'm not prepared to consider it when distressed, as I presently am. So you can just be patient.

A flicker.

—But for now, perhaps you'd indulge me?

—
Anything
, sir.

—And tell me about that prize-giving.

*   *   *

He tried not to fight, but the truth was so abysmal.

—Then he started acting like an octopus and saying not to go.

The Bishop continued raking over the horrific afternoon, returning like the worst kind of bully to the moments that most made Morgan want to pull out all his teeth. He spared him nothing, not a single admission of a solitary discomfort. When the Bishop finally allowed a silence to develop, Morgan felt as though he'd been thrown down three flights of stairs.

—Distress is not merely something to suppress or flee from, Morgan. It can also constitute a … nudge.

Morgan scowled.

—You liked helping those boys, didn't you? You liked them. You felt wretched having to leave them. Perhaps you even felt you were abandoning them?

Something blocked his throat.

—How cruel to have to face Twist, whom I always pegged as a favorite of yours—am I wrong?—to have to face his unfettered grief.

—Don't try to tell me there's any point to grief, sir.

—There is in this case.

—What, a nudge? By whom? For what?

—You do some work for a change.

Morgan wriggled his shoulders.

—All I know is that pottering about with them was the only time I haven't been appallingly unhappy in a long while.

—Good.

—So it isn't fair to have it end.

—And yet it has to end because you have to go back to St. Stephen's, don't you?

—Exactly.

—And yet, you've discovered you're rather good at that type of thing. You rather like it.

—So what!

—So, my
dear
boy, you are very shortly headed back to a school which is in great disarray and which contains many boys in need of rather similar attention. Are you not?

 

57

Being treated as the Bishop's child was every bit the ordeal he feared. Whatever imperiousness the Bishop had once displayed vanished before this new overbearing. Before, Morgan realized in retrospect, the Bishop had taken care to acquire and retain his explicit consent; now, that was swept away before a superior authority. The Bishop did not ask Morgan's consent because he was treating him as a son, with every permission fathers enjoyed. He demanded Morgan's presence at prayers (which Morgan disliked, even as he felt calmed), he instituted a bedtime (hateful, healthful), arranged a program of regular exercise (respite in the day), he assigned reading (discussed each evening), labor (removing tree stumps from the edge of the property), and letter writing (a fixed rotation through his father and sisters). The Bishop dictated Morgan's every activity, even down to which rooms he was to use for his reading and writing. Despite the variety of pursuits, Morgan felt under arrest.

The worst was a practice called examination. Each evening before lights-out, the Bishop would come to Morgan's room, sit on the chair as he had done that night, and take Morgan through a point-by-point examination of the day. The first night it had taken over an hour. When they finished before Morgan's bedtime, the Bishop made him lie down and close his eyes while he read to him. Although Morgan considered this a childish practice, he always fell asleep before the Bishop had finished.

After a week, the Bishop broke routine by summoning Morgan to the study rather than coming to his room. Morgan felt exposed walking across the Rectory in pajamas, dressing gown, and slippers. He passed Mrs. Hallows, who was dressed. The Bishop, too, wore ordinary clothes. Apparently Morgan was a child soon to be sent to bed after a talking-to in his father's study.

Unlike the examinations in Morgan's room, during which they sat knee to knee, this one the Bishop conducted from behind his desk. Morgan stood before him like some boy summoned to his Housemaster, except that his actual Housemaster never summoned anyone anywhere. Something unnerving was afoot.

The Bishop told him to begin, and as Morgan raked over the day, the Bishop pressed harder than usual on Morgan's errors and into the decisions he had not even realized he was making.

—I wasn't thinking about it, sir.

—And that, as previously discussed, was your first error. How long do you intend to squirrel round with this, Morgan, before you start thinking?

—But, sir, you can't go through the day thinking and thinking and thinking!

—I'd settle for one thinking, the Bishop retorted.

They were speaking again of the sin of disobedience. Another regular item on the list was fleeing the truth. The Bishop seemed to think many of Morgan's errors sprang from these seeds.

—Sir, Morgan said, may I ask something directly and not have it be an impertinence?

The Bishop nodded.

—People have been trying to reform me forever and a day, but I keep winding up in the most appalling messes. Last resort, they shipped me down here. You're the biggest expert in England on sorting people out, and I got into just as much trouble with you.

—What is your question?

—How will you know when to give it up?

The Bishop thought. Then he got up from the desk and told Morgan to sit. Morgan fell into his usual chair.

—You're right that you've haven't been behaving as my child.

It hurt.

—My children would have stumbled into a good deal more trouble.

—Sir?

—You heard me. They would have behaved worse and trusted me more.

He had been trusting the man. As much as he knew how.

—But, the Bishop said, taking a seat beside Morgan, perhaps the time has come to stop pad-footing and swallow the toad.

—Sir?

—It's time, I think, to put some screws to you, young Morgan.

Everything previous had not been screws enough?

—We've built up your terrain and got you started down a few good habits; I think you're just about ready to handle some distress.

He was using that word again.

—I suppose you're going to make me learn how to suffer, like Dr. Sebastian said.

—He said that, did he?

Morgan had expected the Bishop to treat his remark as impertinence, but now he was looking as though Morgan had cottoned on to his true purpose.

—Exactly what kind of suffering did you have in mind, sir? Morgan asked wryly.

—Every kind.

The Bishop's expression was not wry. Morgan laughed.

—I'll take that as evidence for my hypothesis, the Bishop said.

Morgan tried to look grim, but his mouth kept laughing. The Bishop smiled along with him.