The Quickening Maze Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Autumn

  Winter

  Spring

  Summer

  Autumn

  Winter

  Spring

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for The Quickening Maze

  Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize

  “Exceptional . . . like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic—the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and novelist’s limber reach.”

  —The Times (London)

  “[Foulds is] one of the most interesting and talented writers of his generation.”

  —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “Impressive . . . simultaneously poised and flowing in its urgency.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “The world [Foulds] evokes . . . is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means. It is impossible to guess where Foulds will travel next in his fiction, but it is safe to assume that the journey with him will be well worth taking.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  “This poetic novel soars. . . . All is raised in pitch and definition by the prurient excitement of Foulds’ very twenty-first-century lust for life. . . . deeply believable . . . alluring.”

  —The Independent (London)

  “The Quickening Maze is a remarkable and passionate book. The worlds it creates, the forest and the asylum, and the characters that inhabit them are drawn with a wonderfully strange poetic intensity. It is a wholly original vision, impossible to forget.”

  —Patrick McGrath, author of Spider and Trauma

  “This is a novel that sees its varied cast of compelling characters, all travelling their separate but interlocking journeys, as it sees the natural world—with a tender and scrupulous eye. What I love most about The Quickening Maze is its quietness, the silence that makes you lean in until you hear its lovely song.”

  —Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE QUICKENING MAZE

  Adam Foulds was born in 1974, took a Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia and now lives in South London. His first novel, The Truth About These Strange Times, was published in 2007 and he was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2008. His book-length narrative poem, The Broken Word, was shortlisted for a number of awards, including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and won the 2008 Costa Poetry Award.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape,

  an imprint of The Random House Group Limited 2009

  Published in Penguin Books 2010

  Copyright © Adam Foulds, 2009

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Foulds, Adam, 1974-

  The quickening maze / Adam Foulds.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44220-3

  1. Clare, John, 1793-1864—Mental health—Fiction. 2. Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892—Fiction. 3. Poets, English—19th century—Mental health—Fiction. 4. Psychiatric hospitals—England—London—History—19th century—Fiction. 5. Mentally ill—Commitment and detention—England—London—History—19th century—Fiction. 6. London (England)—Social conditions—19th century—Fiction. I. Title. PR6106.O95Q’.92—dc22 2009040218

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  to my parents

  Prologue: The World’s End

  He’d been sent out to pick firewood from the forest, sticks and timbers wrenched loose in the storm. Light met him as he stepped outside, the living day met him with its details, the scuffling blackbird that had its nest in their apple tree.

  Walking towards the wood, the heath, beckoning away. Undulations of yellow gorse rasped softly in the breeze. It stretched off into unknown solitudes.

  He was a village boy and he knew certain things. He thought that the edge of the world was a day’s walk away, there where the cloud-breeding sky touched the earth at the horizon. He thought that when he got there he would find a deep pit and he would be able to look down into it and see the world’s secrets. Same as he knew he could see heaven in water, a boy on his knees staring into the heavy, flexing surface of the gravel-pit ponds or at a shallow stream flashing over stones.

  He set off, down into the wide yellow fragrance. The wood he could collect on his return.

  Soon he was further from the village than he had ever been, furthest from the tough, familiar nest of his cottage. He walked quite out of his knowledge, into a world where the birds and flowers did not know him, where his shadow had never been.

  It confused him. He started to think that the sun was shining in a new quarter of the sky. He felt no fear yet: the sun lit wonders in a new zone that held him in steady rapt amazement. He did wonder, though, why the old world had not come to an end, why the horizon was no closer.

  He walked and walked and before he’d thought the morning passed, the light was thickening. Moths flittered under the bushes. Frogs fidgeted along the rabbit tracks and mice twittered their little splintery cries. Overhead trembled the first damp stars.

  It was the hour of waking spirits. Now he was afraid.

  He hurried around with a panicking heart and found behind him a splay of paths. By chance he got on the right one. As the darkness grew, gathering first in the bushes and trees, then soaking out from them, he found himself approaching his own village. At least it looked like his own village, but somehow the distance he’d travelled made him uncertain. It looked the same. It definitely was the same, but somehow it didn’t seem right, in place. Even the church, rising over the wood, the church he’d seen every day as soon as he could see at all, looked counterfeit. Frightened, racing, like a lost bird he flung his light body towards what he hoped was home.

  His name. He heard his name being called. John! John! Jo-ohn! Village voices. He could put names to them all. He ran now, not answering, to his own cottage, feeling a tumult of relief as he approached. When he stepped through the open doorway his mother yelped at the sight and flew towards him. Her strong arms encircled him, her bosom crushed against his face.

  ‘We thought you was dead. In the wood. They’re out looking for you.We thought you was struck down by a falling . . . Oh, but you’re home.’

  Autumn

  Abigail started neatly at a walk as her mother had just smartened her, plucking and smoothing her dress into place. She had run a fingertip d
own Abigail’s nose as she bent down with a crackle of her own dress and repeated the message to carry. But outside the door and with the sun warm through the trees and the path firm under her tightly laced boots, Abigail couldn’t help it: after a few paces she broke into a run.

  She ran across the garden and over into the grounds of Fairmead House, then along its side and past the pond where Simon the idiot was throwing stones; even she knew he’d been told not to do that. He looked round sharply at the sound of her footsteps just after he’d launched one. It couldn’t be stopped: their eyes met at the moment it plopped in and slow circles widened across the green water. It was only the child, though. He smiled naughtily at her, knowing she wouldn’t tell. She ran round the corner past Mr Stockdale the attendant whom she did not like. He was large and strict and when he tried to play with her it was not meant, not meant properly, and his hands were heavy. But there was Margaret sitting on a stool, sewing. She liked Margaret, her thin, sharpchinned face like a wooden toy, and wide, clear, kind eyes. She was a peaceful lady, mostly, and now Abigail walked over and leaned against her knees to be for a moment inside that calm. Margaret didn’t say anything, stroked once the back of Abigail’s head as the child looked down at her sampler. There were three colours of thread: green for hills, brown for the cross and black for lines coming out of the cross. Abigail put out a finger and felt the bumpy black stitches. ‘God’s love,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Beams.’ Briefly she wound the thread she was working with a couple of times around Abigail’s finger. ‘Wrap you up in it.’

  Abigail smiled. ‘Good day,’ she said and set off running again, past some others strolling there, and then when she saw him, with greater speed towards her father.

  Matthew Allen swung the axe down onto the upturned log. The blade sunk down into it, but it didn’t split, so he raised the axe and log together and brought them down hard. The log flew apart into two even pieces that rocked on the grass. ‘Nothing to it,’ he remarked. He stooped and added the new pieces with their clean white pith to the barrow and stood another log on the stump.

  Seeing Abigail bouncing towards him, he handed the lunatic the axe and grappled her up into his arms. ‘Just go on like that until you’ve filled the barrow, please.’

  Abigail could feel the warmth of his body through its compress of clothes. She wriggled at the sensation of his humid whiskers against her as he kissed her cheek.

  ‘Mother says to come now because they’ll be here pleasantly.’

  Allen smiled.‘Did she say “pleasantly” or “presently”?’

  Abigail frowned. ‘Presently,’ she said.

  ‘Then we’d better set off.’

  Abigail leaned her head into his neck, into the smell of him in his cravat, and felt her feet swinging in the air with each of his steps, like riding a pony.

  Patients greeted her father with a nod as he passed or with some rearrangement of their posture. Simon the idiot, who definitely was not throwing stones into the pond, waved with his whole arm.

  Outside the house Hannah stood waiting, holding her sharp elbows and thoughtfully drawing a line on the path in front of her with the toe of her boot. She looked up at them as they arrived and spoke as if to justify herself.

  ‘I thought I ought to wait to greet them, given that there was no one else.’

  Allen laughed. ‘I’m sure even a poet is capable of pulling a door bell.’ He watched his daughter ignore the comment, staring at the ground. Abigail was twisting in his arms now the ride was over, and he set her down. She ran off a few yards to pick up an interesting stick.The front door opened and Mrs Allen walked out to join them. ‘Fine weather,’ she commented.

  ‘Are we not too many now?’ Hannah asked. ‘The brother may be a little overwhelmed.’

  ‘They both might be,’ her father rejoined. ‘But a warm family welcome will do neither of them any harm.’

  ‘I’ll only wait with you a moment,’ Eliza Allen said. ‘I’ve things to do, only I saw you all standing out here in the sun. Oh, look, there’s Dora seeing us now.’

  Hannah turned and saw her sister’s face in the window. She wouldn’t come out, Hannah knew. She didn’t like extraordinary people. She liked ordinary people and was preparing for her wedding, after which she could live almost entirely among them. She retreated out of sight like a fish from the surface of a pond, leaving the glass dark.

  ‘Abi, put that down,’ her mother instructed. ‘And don’t wipe your hands on your pinafore. Come here.’ Abigail joined them in a mildly shamed, dilatory way and allowed her mother to clean her palms with a handkerchief. ‘Where’s Fulton?’ Eliza asked her husband.

  ‘He’s occupied, I’m sure. We don’t have to be all arranged here like this. We’re not having our portrait painted.’

  This was not how Hannah had arranged this meeting in her imagination. She would not have had the clutter of her family around her, not at first, and she would have happened by at the right moment, or at least could have easily dissembled her preceding vigilance. She could have been a solitary, attractive girl of seventeen, a wood nymph even, discovered in her wandering. She stared along the road as far as she could: it turned sharply to the right a little way ahead and the forest cut off the view down the hill.Through the trees she felt them approaching, an event approaching.Who knew how significant it might prove to be? She should try to expect less; there was little chance it would match her hopes. But it might. Certainly, something was about to happen. People were about to arrive.

  And then it was happening. The carriage from Woodford was approaching, trunks strapped to its roof, the horses bowing their way up the hill, the driver dabbing at their broad backs with his whip. Quickly, hoping not to be seen, Hannah pinched colour into her cheeks. Mrs Allen picked up Abigail and held her on her hip. Matthew Allen smoothed his whiskers with both hands, tugged his waistcoat down, and enriched the swell of his cravat.

  As the carriage slowed beside them, the driver touching the brim of his hat, Matthew Allen stepped forward and opened the door. ‘Misters Tennyson,’ he said in his deeper, professional voice.‘Welcome to High Beach.’

  A cough and a thank you was heard from the shadowy interior where long limbs were moving.

  Hannah stood a little closer to her mother as the two brothers emerged.

  The two Tennysons were tall, clean-shaven and darkly similar. They greeted the three females with courteous bows. Hannah felt close to saying something, but didn’t. She heard her mother say, ‘Gentlemen, welcome.’ One Tennyson mumbled a reply as they both stood blinking, shifting on their feet after the confinement of the carriage. Both began lighting pipes.

  The trunks were unfastened and brought down by Dr Allen and one of the Tennysons. Both the Tennysons were handsome, one perhaps more sensitive in appearance than the other - would that be the poet or the melancholic? Hannah waited for them to speak some more. She wanted desperately to know which of these two men her interest should fall upon.

  John woke up without any feeling down one side. He reached a hand up to his face to feel for the rough crusting of frost and drag it off, but there was none. So either he wasn’t outside or the weather was mild. He felt that the air wasn’t moving over him, wasn’t alive. He was inside, in a shut room.

  He kept his eyes closed, floating there in his own inner darkness, wanting to delay the knowledge of which room he was in, although in truth he knew. But it might not be there, it might be the right room, with Patty first up from the bed and busy with the children.

  He opened his eyes by fractions and saw a dark grey room. The imagined biting rime on his sky side was the old numbness from sleeping out years ago, not a real touch of the world, and he wasn’t home. There was the window, glowing dimly with wet autumn light. It showed its view of two trees bent by the wavery glass.

  Below he could hear other inmates moving and the brisk voice of Mrs Allen. She would collect him shortly to accompany her across the garden to the doctor’s house for breakfast, him having been a good lad.
/>
  He lifted the blanket, swung his softening white feet onto the clean wood floor, and stood up, and immediately wanted to lie back down again and not lie back down again and go and not go anywhere and not be there and be home.

  John spread butter thickly on his bread and bit. Those considered constitutionally able had cutlets to eat and sawed at their meat, including Charles Seymour, the aristocrat who wasn’t mad at all. He’d condescended to join them this morning. The doctor had listed his pedigree to the new man as though presenting a prize mastiff. There had been polite talk, mostly about Cambridge, that lucky, unknown world, while John said nothing. Now the table was silent. George Laidlaw was talking to himself, almost inaudibly, his lips fluttering with his habitual fantastical calculations of the National Debt. Fulton Allen ate with a lad’s appetite, sweeping up juices with a chunk of bread on his fork. Margaret ate morsels silently. Hannah Allen kept glancing at the new man, Septimus Tennyson, whose head trembled and whose gaze seemed too sensitive to look at anything for long, but shrivelled back from what it hit like a snail’s wizening eyes. Tall and faded he looked. Why didn’t Hannah glance instead at John? He licked silky butter from his teeth and would much rather have been eating her, the prettyish, pale thing. He wondered how she tasted in the nest between her legs. He’d have liked to see her cheeks flush and hear her startled breath. The doctor smiled over his chewing at everyone. ‘Do we all have plenty to do today? George, you’ll be working in the vegetable garden, won’t you?’