The Underground Man (28 page)

Eventually my feet came down upon paving stones and I could tell by the change in temperature and the quality of the air that I was in the Wilderness. I came to the bottom of the old steps. The stone over the entrance was ajar, as I had left it, and a slice of moonlight shone through. I shouldered it open and the night air slid slowly in. Then, like a natural man, I crept out of the cold earth and into the mumbling wood.

I eat just about next-to-nothing these days and sleep right through the afternoons. But each morning, before the aching dawn, I take my private stairwell down to the grotto and, with my lantern out before me, creep undergroundly out to the Wilderness. Down the earthy-reeking tunnel I go, with the spirits of the bony monks.

Have recently been giving some thought to clothing and begin to grasp how, for far too long, collar studs and cuff links have been keeping me locked-up. How, since infancy, I
have been bound by belts and buttons, by too-tight jackets and over-starched shirts. Fairly got myself in a tangle with it. I became angry and stamped about the place. So now, on my nightly trips down the monks' tunnel, I pause at the bottom of the stone steps before emerging and remove every last constricting thread. Only the insects bear witness to this ceremonial casting-off. The earth finds nothing wrong with me.

In the Wilderness the lost moments give themselves up. The terrible grinding between Past and Future is quietened, calmed. There is something at work in the soil – something industrious – which fills up every last atom, emboldens the very bark on the trees. It gives the insects their tiny intensity, the birds the courage to call.

But all the little Lucifers are also out there, with their little forks and their eager grins. One of them told me how he fancied looking at my blood. But I find a modest garland of ivy keeps them at a distance. I knocked it up in no time and wear it with pride.

The last hour before daylight is the hour I love most. I go between the trees. My bare feet listen and Nature's ticking clock comes through to me. I hear the fixing of bayonets. I hear the buds contemplate their cannonade.

About this time I began to receive messages. Slipped under my door in the middle of the night and waiting for me when I got up.

The first one I got was on a Tuesday. or something along those lines. Well, I must say I considered it for quite a while, but it still meant nothing to me.

I didn't mention it to anybody at first. I was rather hoping it might be from one of the girls. A late ‘Be my Valentine'. But the next night I got another one which said something like,

and then I knew it had to be His Grace.

I must have said something to one of the other lads on the Wednesday, most likely, who said he'd just received his first that very morning, written on a scrap of paper and slid under his door, just like mine. His had something to do with sarsaparilla.
Sarsaparilla – fact or fiction?
I think it was.

It turns out we were nearly all of us getting them. Maggie Taylor claims she opened her door and saw him scampering away.

He must have been using the secret passages he had put in for the tunnels. I should know because one of them goes right
past my room and sometimes I would hear him sneaking about. That's a very peculiar feeling, I should say, to be lying in your bed late at night and hear someone creeping up and down between the walls.

Out in the Wilderness late last night or very early this morning. The moonlight came down through the trees and dappled me but there was some mist to be waded through. I stopped to relieve myself against a bush. When I looked about to see where I might go stalking next, my eyes came to rest on an ivy-coated rock some twenty yards away which was picked out by the moon.

I approached, naked, garlanded, thinking, ‘It is a very slim rock … No, not a rock at all. Too square and upright for a rock.' And even then some instinct warned me. Some doomy inner-voice started up.

I tugged at the ivy but it bound the stone like string. Was reluctant to give its secret up. But I persisted and found that the stone beneath was smooth and flat with perfectly finished corners. This was no natural rock, crouched in the undergrowth. This was the headstone to a grave.

And horror quickly filled me up. I was weeping before the first word was revealed. Slid my fingernails under the moss and tore it back. There was twisting and snapping as I hacked it away. But I kept on tearing, desperately tearing until the headstone was bare. And I saw my own birth date chiselled in the stone.

I heard me say, ‘I am a dead man.'

Read the words,

and the sky presses right down onto me. And I am running for all I am worth.

I run through the mist just like a madman. Then I am out of the woods and into an open field. As I run I let out a miserable groan, but it will not fill my ears. I am an old man trying to outrun a memory, but my footsteps only drum it up. And now the memory is almost on me. Looming up. Slowly descending. No mercy. Merciless.

The memory carries me through the early morning mist and sweeps me towards the house.

The house is all in darkness. I grab a frock coat from the cloakroom and race straight up the stairs. But Mrs Pledger is on her way down in her slippers, with her lamp held out in front. She catches sight of me. Lets out a terrible scream.

‘Your head, Your Grace!' she cries.

And then I am charging up and down the corridors and I
am bouncing from wall to wall. So late in the day yet I am still chasing, still searching for that one elusive thing. And I find myself at the door to the attic. Locked. I hammer at it with both hands. And now my hammering and Mrs Pledger's screaming have the landing filling up with staff. Their staring faces all lit with their candles and lamps. All wanting a little look-see at the mad, bald, beardless Duke.

They congregate at the bottom of the attic steps and watch me scratching, scratching at the door. Until at long last Clement – dear Clement – appears among the throng.

‘The door's locked, Clement,' I call down to him. ‘Where's the key, man? Where's the key?'

Mrs Pledger comes along beside him. Her eyes look straight at me but she speaks to Clement out of the side of her mouth. And I pay close attention to these sideways words.

‘We have sent for Dr Cox,' they say.

And then I am filled up with all sorts of panicky feelings which make me rush at the faces, waving my arms about. And every last one of them is scattered, and the maids go shrieking down the corridors. I battle my way down to my bedroom door and the next minute I am back here in my hidey-hole, with the bolts all firmly locked.

I must have stood at the door a full five minutes, trying to catch my breath. And the noise in the house slowly subsided and there was less and less scurrying about, until at last I found myself wrapped in silence. All the beautiful voices had raised a finger to their lips.

I waited. O, I can be a patient man. I waited until one of the voices got around to whispering to me. And in time, deep inside, I felt some connection coming about. The planets slowly aligned themselves. I came over to the bureau and looked it up and down.

My fingers began working it over. Eager fingers, searching
out its little switches and nooks. But I was like the conch-boy who fails to produce a note. The thing just sat there, unmoved by my embrace. I covered every last inch, but it refused to let me in. And then my patience failed and I was in a frenzy again, kicking at it and howling and rocking the whole thing back and forth.

And as I rocked, the middle finger on my right hand found an unfamiliar purchase at the back. A square of wood which was loose and very well hidden away. I pressed it and deep inside the desk heard an old spring being triggered. A slim drawer popped out at me.

Two folded pieces of paper trembled in the tiny drawer. I reached in and picked them out. The first was a Christening Certificate. My name, in a barely legible hand. The name of another boy next to it. The word ‘twins' somewhere.

The other was a Death Certificate, for the same boy, filed four years after the first. In a column on the far right of the paper I read,
Drowned, Grange
-
over-Sands
.

And then there is silence. A terrible silence. A cavernous pity with no way of filling it.

When I have finished setting down this entry I shall take the staircase to the tunnels. I shall go out into the Wilderness and wait to hear what is to be done.

Mostly I would use the bag-net or the gate-net or a simple trap or snare. Some nights I might take along a dog or ferret but very rarely would I take my father's old fowling gun. Too much noise and, of course, being caught with it would only make a bad situation worse. But it had been a moonlit night and I had a lucky feeling so I took the wretched thing along.

Well, I was about to head home and was moving up the hill from the lake, with the gun primed across my arm. I came up alongside the Wilderness, where I've had some success before, and decided I would have a look around.

I was in quite deep when I heard something stirring. Like a panting or a groaning sound. So I slowed right down and crouched there, very still, to see where the noise were coming from. Then, quite close by, there was the sound of grinding stone – an awful rumble, it was – no more than thirty feet away. Well, I did not dare move a muscle.

And I saw how he came up out of the ground. Crawling. A fleshy creature. Never seen anything like it before in my life. He came out on all fours and slowly turned himself about. Went over to a nearby stone, as if he might bask upon it. And by now I was sick with fear.

I was so afeard I must have shifted. A twig snapped under my boot. And the creature swung round to see what went on there. He looked all around him from the stone where he squatted and I saw how his eyes settled themselves on me.
On my life, I thought he were some sort of monster-man. I thought he were after doing me harm. And in a second I had brought the gun up and let it go. God have mercy on me, but that's what I did. And he flew up and back, twisting every way. And he fell back into the ferns.

When I was sure he was not moving I went up to him and turned him over with my foot – like he were nothing but a dog – and straight away I saw how it were a man that I had shot. An ordinary man, but bald and naked, with a great hole in his chest where I had shot him, lying there among the leaves.

Astute readers will have noticed that I used as my point of departure for this novel the life of the fifth Duke of Portland, William John Cavendish-Bentinck-Scott. They will also recognize just how swiftly and significantly the lives of the real and invented dukes diverge and the downright liberties which have been taken.

I am deeply indebted to the following people who, one way or another, helped me convert a handful of ideas into some sort of book …

Kevin Hendley, who first brought the story of the real duke to my attention and gave me his own guided tour of the estate; his parents, Tom and Win Hendley, who made me very welcome in their home while I was researching the project and his sister Diane for ferrying me about the place.

The Worksop Trader, Iris Exton, Caroline J. Bell, Doreen Smith, Jack Edson, Brenda Penney and Margaret Carter.

David J. Bradbury, a local historian and author of several publications on Welbeck Abbey.

The local studies departments at Worksop Library and Mansfield Library (where George Sanderson's map is on display); Miss E. Allen, The Hunterian Museum, London; Richard Sabin and Ben
Spencer, The Natural History Museum; Professor M. H. Kaufman, Department of Anatomy, the University of Edinburgh and The Wellcome Institute.

The University of Nottingham Library for their kind permission in allowing me to reproduce the recipe for ‘rheumatics' (ref: Pw K 2739) and the advertisement for ‘Essence of beef' (ref: Pw K 786).

Joe Mellen, Tony and Mary Laing, Wendy Jilley, Ian Jackson and Adam Campbell for help with some of the more arcane details.

Rose Tremain for much-appreciated encouragement.

And, as always, my friend and mentor Peter Kiddle who got me chasing after the green man fifteen years ago.

Most of all, special thanks to Cath Laing for providing me with the time and space to indulge myself in the writing of this book.