Gates of Paradise (5 page)

When a man looks pale

With labour and abstinence, say he looks healthy and happy

And when his children sicken, let them die, there are enough

Born, even too many, and our Earth will be overrun
…

Preach temperance: say he is overgorged and drowns his wit

In strong drink, though you know that bread and water are all

He can afford
.

Mr Hayley's upper class voice pushed into his thoughts. ‘You can do that, can you not?' he insisted. ‘With the greatest possible expedition.'

So a dish of his favourite coffee with milk was taken, the two men parted amicably and Blake walked back to his cottage, commission in hand, weighed down by the pressing need to earn a living but with his own lines fresh and singing in his head. He would commit them to paper before he began work on the ballad. They would not be lost.

In the kitchen of Turret House, Betsy Haynes was plucking a fowl, the white feathers sticking to her fingers and floating into her hair. She would rather have been sewing the new petticoats, for stitching was cleaner work than dressing chickens, but Mr Hayley had invited company for dinner that evening and Mrs Beke was determined that he should have a fine table so they were all set to work in the kitchen. The one good thing to come of it was that Johnnie had been in and out of the place all morning delivering fruit and vegetables but they were all so hard pressed that even the delights of flirting with him were beginning to fade.

‘Get out my light do,' she said to him, flirting and scolding at the same time, as he stood in front of her for the seventh time. ‘I can't see what I'm a-doin' of.'

‘I just seen that Mr Blake,' he told her, importantly. ‘Walkin' out the gate with a paper in his hand. What do you think a' that?'

She didn't think anything of it. ‘I got enough on my plate without Mr Blake,' she said. ‘Go back to the garden, for pity's sake.'

‘Shall you walk to church with me tomorrow?' he hoped.

‘If I aren't drowned in feathers.'

‘And shall you wear your new cloak?'

‘I might,' she conceded. ‘If 'tis cold enough.'

Outside in the garden it was certainly cold enough. A breeze had sprung up and was whipping the dead leaves from the elms and making the holly bush rattle. The sound reminded Johnnie that autumn was coming. In a week or two it would be Harvest Home. Maybe he could persuade his father to get him invited to the feast, the way he did last year, and then maybe he could get an invitation for her too and she could come with him and sit beside him in her red cloak and eat Mr Sparkes's harvest pie. And after that they might walk out together. Was it possible? Oh, he did so hope it was possible.

The breeze was blowing the leaves from the great elm behind Blake's cottage. They tumbled in the air like golden birds, scurried across the road, spotted his dark thatch with colour. Their brightness
cheered him, despite the weight of the work before him.

‘We can have fires in all the rooms now my love,' he said to Catherine as he stepped into the kitchen. She was concerned about the damp, which was rather marked. ‘Here's a commission will keep us in fuel and vittles for a good long time. I shall start on it directly and you will help me to print it, will you not.'

She would indeed. Had she not always been his helpmate? ‘I've found us an excellent butcher while you've been with Mr Hayley,' she told him. ‘Meat is a deal cheaper here than in London and a deal fresher into the bargain, and there's fresh fish to be had when the tide's right. I've been talking to Mrs Haynes about it.'

The name was new to her husband. ‘Who is Mrs Haynes?' he asked.

‘Why, the woman who lives across the way,' Catherine told him. ‘Our nearest neighbour you might say. Her husband is the miller's servant so she's up on all the local gossip. Oh, and there's a letter come for you from Mr Butts.'

Mr Hayley's dinner party that night was a huge success. The wine he'd chosen was excellent, the meal well cooked, and after he'd treated them to a reading of his latest ballad, his guests were full of praise, both for his literary skill and for his latest charitable endeavour.

‘That widow woman will count herself blessed to
have you as a friend,' Mr Cunningham said, sprawling back in his chair. ‘Damme if she won't. When are we to see the finished print?'

‘Mr Blake has given his word that it will be ready for sale by the beginning of October,' Mr Hayley said. ‘All proceeds to go to the lady.'

‘I shall take three copies.'

‘You are pleased with your new assistant then, William?' another guest asked.

‘I find him admirable in every respect,' the celebrated poet told him. ‘Engraving, of all human works, requires the largest portion of patience and he possesses more of that inestimable virtue than I have ever seen in a man. Moreover, he is modest of his abilities and not a man to speak out of turn. If he does well with this commission, I shall make him my secretary. I might even set him to work to paint some portraits for the library. I have a set already planned.'

‘He's a lucky man,' Mr Cunningham said. ‘I hope he appreciates what you are doing for him.'

Mr Hayley preened. It was always a pleasure to hear his charitable nature being given due praise. ‘I do what I can,' he said, modestly. ‘Little enough in all conscience when I consider all the troubles of the world, but I am a man of principle. I do what I can. More port, Mr Cunningham?'

Back in his damp workroom, William Blake had stoked up his log fire, lit two tallow candles to give him enough light to see what he was doing and was
bent over the round table, engraver in hand, ready to start work. He had decided to print Mr Hayley's ballad using a new method, which he called woodcut on pewter, in which the ground of the pewter was smoked and the outline cut into the darkened surface. He hoped it would make for greater clarity in the final printed work but of course there were risks entailed as he had never done it before and this was an important commission. He steadied his hands and made the first scraping incision, carving the first of Mr Hayley's trite words. I will start my own work tomorrow, he thought, and when the village is at prayers, Catherine and I wall walk along the shore and take our own communion there. My sister will keep within doors I fear – she was never much enamoured of fresh air – but Catherine will join me.

After the heavy winds and high tide of the previous evening, the beach was scoured clean. The incoming waves rolled joyously into shore, their onward movement a rush of rhythmical sound, their tips frothed into snow-white foam above glass-green water, where the sunlight reflected, bright and bold as if the surface of the sea was a mirror. The sky above their heads was heaped with rolling billows of blue and white cloud, and was higher than he'd ever seen it, and the morning sun, half hidden by a cloud, sent out visible beams of pale golden light. It was all movement, freshness and promise. The very air seemed to sparkle.

And as he stood with his feet on the dry white sand, shapes rose from the surface of the sea, at first faint and transparent like steam or smoke but then as they rose higher and higher into the busy sky, elongating until they were six foot, ten foot, fifteen foot tall, and he recognised the forms of human beings, noble and benign, gazing down upon him with intelligent eyes and infinite compassion, and knew he was being blessed with another vision, and stopped, still and entranced, to receive it in all its glory.

Minutes passed and he didn't move. His breathing was so shallow it was a wonder he didn't faint, but his eyes were wide open and full of wonder. Catherine could see nothing but sea and sky, but she knew that a vision had come upon him and stood beside him quietly until he could recover himself sufficiently to tell her what it was.

‘Isaiah!' he said at last. He spoke faintly, like a man in a fever. ‘Ezekiel. I am given a fourfold vision. The Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters. The Lamb of God descends through the gates of Jerusalem. As a man is born on earth so He is born of fair Jerusalem. We delude ourselves when we speak of three dimensions. Vision is fourfold.'

He was beginning to tremble as he so often did at the end of a vision. ‘We will sit down, my dear,' Catherine said to him. There was a large piece of driftwood a little further up the beach. It looked fairly dry and would serve until she could coax him home.

He allowed himself to be led, his face still glowing from his enchantment. She knew he couldn't see her although his eyes were blazing. ‘To justify the ways of God to man,' he said, ‘is a mighty work for any man to undertake. Milton gives evidence of that. But no less will suffice. I must begin at once.'

‘And so you shall,' Catherine assured him. ‘Are you ready to walk my love?'

‘Aye. I am,' he told her. ‘To walk and to write.'

But she noticed that he was glad of her arm on their way back to the cottage.

His sister was aggrieved that they were so late. ‘I've been waiting on you this last hour,' she complained. ‘It's unkind to leave me so long. What have you been doing?' Then, as Blake walked past her towards his workroom, she noticed the pallor of his face and knew. ‘Oh, not again!' she said. ‘I thought he'd done with such folly.'

‘'Tain't folly,' his wife cried, defending him at once. ‘'Tis a vision.'

‘Folly or vision, 'tis all one,' his sister said tartly. ‘It makes him ill and does him no good. You shouldn't encourage him. Unless you wish to be married to a madman.'

‘My William is not mad,' his wife said fiercely. ‘He is a visionary.'

‘He's a fool,' his sister said scathingly. ‘And you're another to believe his nonsense.'

‘I wonder at you,' Catherine said. ‘If you can hold such an opinion of your brother, you do not
understand him. His visions are no folly. They're the stuff of life to him.'

‘They're unhealthy nonsense. Papa would have whipped him for imagining things.'

The two women were toe to toe, glaring at one another, too deeply into another quarrel for either to back down. ‘And he would have been wrong,' Catherine said hotly.

‘My father was never wrong. He did as any father would have done, took a stick to chastise a bad child, which is the right and proper way for a father to behave.'

‘It was wrong,' Catherine said, fighting on. ‘You should never hit a child.'

‘This child was telling lies,' her sister-in-law said, ‘pretending he could see God looking through the window, if you ever heard such nonsense, and him only four years old, and screaming blue murder into the bargain. Do you tell me that a child should be allowed to scream?'

‘I tell you that a child should be loved, or how else is he to learn to love? A screaming child should be comforted not beaten. Any fool could tell you that.'

‘What do you know of it? I see no children in this house.'

‘Nor in yours neither.'

‘You overstep the mark, Catherine. I will not be spoken to in this way. I shall speak to my brother.'

But William was working in his badly lit room
and not writing but engraving. He looked so cast down and so weary that his warring women grew quiet at the sight of him. ‘I cannot write,' he said wearily. ‘I have to finish the ballad.'

Half a mile away, the congregation of St Mary's church were gathering on the church path in their Sunday finery. There was no rush to enter the building for, apart from the necessity to wait until the village worthies had made their more important entry, this was a time for parents with working children to become a family again, for daughters to kiss their mothers and fathers to extend a gruff welcome to their sons. The vicar was well used to delay for such Sunday rituals were long established in a place where so many children went straight from their own hearths as soon as they were twelve years old – or big enough to be considered twelve – to live and work in a great house.

Betsy Haynes had dressed with more than usual care for the service that morning, for she was wearing her new red cloak for the very first time and she wanted to cause a stir. She was the prettiest girl in the village so why shouldn't she cause a stir?

She did, but not quite in the way she'd planned. As she came skimming up the path with her hood over her cap and the scarlet cloth wrapping her in warmth, she knew she was the cynosure of all eyes and was cheerfully proud of herself. But then she reached the porch and came face to face with her
mother and realised with a painful sinking of the heart that her mother was not pleased.

‘Borrowed finery now is it?' she said and her mouth was down-turned with disapproval.

Betsy decided to confess at once. ‘No Ma,' she said, lifting her chin, ‘tha's mine. Paid for fair an' square. An' so warm you wouldn't imagine.'

Mrs Haynes was blue-eyed like her daughter but there the similarity ended. Where Betsy was all burgeoning curves, glowing skin and shining eyes, her mother was all uncomfortable angles, with bony hands and sharp shoulders, her face wrinkled and her eyes guarded, her mouth pulled sideways by disapproval. Now she looked as if she could cut the air by breathing it. ‘And where d'you get the money from, if I may make so bold as to ask?'

Betsy was stung. ‘I saved it from my wages,' she said. ‘Two whole years it took me.'

Her mother snorted. ‘What nonsense. An' we so short we can barely manage. If you'd money to spare you should have brought it home to us an' we'd ha' made
proper
use of it. I don' know what the world's a-comin' to, I don' indeed.'

Tears welled from Betsy's eyes. She couldn't stop them. To be scolded for thrift was so unjust. Thrift was one of the virtues. Wasn't it what the vicar kept dinning into them week after week? And anyway, they were
her
wages. Why shouldn't she spend them on a cloak? Other women did. Mrs Beke had had
her
cloak for years and years.