The Underground Man (11 page)

This confounded me somewhat. He smiled most beatifically, which did not help at all.

‘Just
my
bread, Mr Peak, or everybody's bread?'

‘O, everybody's, Your Grace. Every loaf in sight.'

He stretched out both arms as far as they would go, so that his tiny wrists protruded from his jacket cuffs and he swept his hands backwards and forwards to draw my attention to acre upon acre of holy bread. Throughout our conversation he had a tendency to gesticulate, as if he were preaching from some lofty pulpit. Once or twice he went so far as to clench his fists and raise them above his head, as if summoning his own thunderbolts and lightning. There appeared, however, to be little correlation between these grand gestures and the actual words as they came hurtling from his mouth.

‘What is the quotation I found in my mouth just now?' I asked, and handed him the scrap of paper.

He barely glanced at it before rolling his head back on his shoulders, screwing up his eyes and addressing the ceiling in such a calamitous tone I nearly jumped right out of my skin.

‘“
We are joined together into one mystical body, and declare ourselves to be so, by our fellowship together in the ordinance of the Lord's supper; for the bread we there eat is one bread, and the wine we drink is one wine; though the one be composed of many grains of corn, and the other made up of many particular grapes
…” One Corinthians, ten, seventeen.'

His eyes stayed tightly shut the whole time but his arms flapped wildly about, continuing to flap for several seconds after his recital had reached an end. Then, quite suddenly, they foundered, as if they had been shot out of the sky, and fell dramatically to his side, where they knocked two new clouds of flour down his trouser legs

‘And what does it mean?' I asked him.

‘Fellowship through the Lord, Your Grace,' he replied.

I considered this for a moment, watched keenly by my baker-man. Then I asked if his bits of paper did not burn in the ovens, but was informed that the quotations were, in fact, inserted after the loaves had been baked.

‘I just makes a little cut with a palette knife and slides the fellows right in.'

I nodded at him, finding myself in something of a quandary. I had originally called Mr Peak in to see me in order to reprimand the man but I was having difficulty finding suitable grounds on which to do such a thing. ‘You don't worry you might choke someone?' I asked, rather hopefully, thinking that if I could locate somewhere in him the smallest kernel of guilt I would at least have made a start.

‘None have choked so far, sir,' he said, smiling. ‘They are only short quotations, after all.'

‘And do you always use quotations that are to do with bread?'

‘In the main, sir. Yes, I do, sir … It seems appropriate somehow.'

I agreed that it did. I was completely at a loss as to what to do with the fellow. Clearly he had done nothing gravely
wrong (or, more to the point, nothing which
he
thought was wrong). A heavy sigh rose up in me. The pain in my ribcage gnawed away. On a whim, I asked, ‘I don't suppose you happen to heal, do you, Mr Peak?'

He looked at me for a moment, before launching into, ‘The
Lord
heals, sir. “
Lest they see, and convert and be healed
.”'

‘Yes, I'm sure. But it is healing of the body I'm after, Mr Peak, not healing of the soul.'

‘He heals the body too, Your Grace. “
I will heal thee of
thy wounds, saith the Lord
.”'

He was quiet for a second and I felt a deep despondency creeping through my bones. Here was a man who was utterly and happily immersed in his faith. He knew his way around it (or at least its vocabulary) like the back of his hand; seemed to have no doubts at all about the world and his place in it. This depressed me mightily. I think perhaps I envied him more than any other man I have ever come across. He stood before me with bowed head – busy, I felt sure, digging ever deeper into his memory for other, more impressive passages from the Good Book. At last he looked up and asked,

‘Have you ever seen the Oakleys, sir?'

Now, if the name of the man before me had conjured up a craggy mountain-top, the Oakleys put me in mind of a range of low hills, such as the Malverns, or some other lush terrain. But, as Ignatius Peak informed me, the Oakleys are in fact two sisters living out at Whitwell who are said to have the rare ability ‘to look deep inside a man'.

‘Are you poorly, Your Grace?' he asked me. I told him I thought perhaps I was. ‘Well, they're the women you're after. They are the best diagnosers in the county, those two. They'll diagnose where all others fail.'

So I thanked him and wished him well with his quotations. Then, as an afterthought, suggested he might consider attaching them to the loaves with string. That way they would tend
to remain intact, would not risk being eaten and could be read by the recipient at their leisure.

‘O, no, sir. That would be no good. You see, the surprise of the discovery is what makes the sinner stop and think. That is how we win him over.'

‘I see,' I said.

He smiled broadly, gave me a brisk little bow and marched off towards the door.

It was a second or two after his departure, while I was wondering if I should chase these two weird sisters up, that I noticed on the rug where Mr Peak had stood two perfect footprints in a small heap of flour.

Straight after breakfast I had Clement go out to the Oakleys' and by ten o'clock he was back with news that they would be happy to receive me this afternoon. A price, agreeable to both parties, had been arranged and by two o'clock we were clear of the North-west tunnel and making our way through the village of Whitwell. We had especially taken the fly to tackle the steep hill but Grimshaw soon found it difficult to keep the horse moving and it became necessary for Clement and me to alight and walk the last few hundred yards.

The dull throb in my ribcage had rather been keeping its head low and I was worried I might reach the Oakleys' with no discomfort to speak of at all, but as we reached the crown of the hill and stopped to admire the cold corner of Nottinghamshire spread out below, the throbbing suddenly returned and I drank in the view before me, strangely relieved to have relocated my malaise.

What little I knew of the Oakleys I had picked up from Mr Peak – namely that they were middle-aged sisters with a reputation for possessing some peculiar spiritual power which enables them to see right inside a man. It was said they could observe a functioning organ as if it sat before them twitching on a plate. As we stood there, looking out over the fields and woods, I asked Clement what he reckoned to such claims of visionary powers, but he politely declined to comment. I don't mind saying that there are times when his unflagging diplomacy can be more than a little irritating.

Five minutes later we had reached the Oakleys' and Clement went off to take tea with Grimshaw, whose cousin lives nearby, and I found myself before a modest stone cottage on the top of the hill, with an overgrown garden and a marvellous view all round. As I rapped on the knocker I noticed how all the curtains were drawn and wondered if perhaps the sisters were taking an afternoon nap. Then I heard the clatter of the latch and the door swung back to reveal two splendid women – in their late forties, I should say – with jet-black hair down to their shoulders and both dressed in starched white pinafore. Mr Peak had failed to mention that they were, in fact, twins and made a most striking combination. Not quite identical-looking, but plainly cut from the same stone.

One of the two raised her eyebrows and smiled at me. The other whispered, ‘Won't you please come in?'

I was shown into the front parlour, the room which had all the curtains pulled to. It was very sparse, the ceiling so low it almost grazed the ladies' heads. The only ornamentation was two framed pictures on the mantelpiece – one of a Russet apple in cross-section, the other of the same fruit hanging on the bough. I accepted their offer of tea and, a few minutes later, all three of us sat round the table with only the squeak and rattle of our cups and saucers to disturb the
growing silence. I eventually felt obliged to venture a little polite conversation. ‘I'm an apple-grower myself,' I announced gaily, nodding towards the pictures. But the sisters simply smiled their tiny smiles and continued to sip at their tea.

After another lengthy silence I expressed some enthusiasm for their brew of tea, saying how it was ‘very fine indeed'. But my words hardly seemed to register with the women, who kept their gaze firmly fixed on the table top, both apparently wrapped up in some profound and unspoken exchange.

I was wondering what other trifles I might be obliged to bring to their attention (the weather perhaps, or the tablecloth) when they rose simultaneously from their chairs without the slightest warning.

One said, ‘Would you care to follow us, Your Grace?'

I rather hurriedly returned my cup to its saucer, catching the teaspoon in the process and causing quite a fuss, by which time both sisters were over by the door and gently beckoning me towards the neighbouring room.

Like the parlour, heavy curtains shut out the daylight. The whole place was lit by a pair of ceiling lamps which between them effused a good deal of warm and amber light. Two long-case clocks faced each other across the floor and knocked the seconds between one another like a tennis ball. Both sisters waited patiently by the door for me, standing so still and silent that as I entered the only movement in that warm, velvety room seemed to be the pendulums in the bellies of the clocks. The atmosphere was so altogether slow and syrupy that I found myself becoming quite alarmed. It was as if I was being invited to jump into a very deep pool. My breathing quickened, my head began to spin.

One of the sisters took me by the hand. The other said, ‘It is all right, you know?'

And with that, I have to say, all my fear evaporated and I
felt only embarrassment at the beads of sweat on my brow. I can only imagine that some animal instinct had momentarily surfaced, prompting in me the irrational urge to run right from the place. But the sisters had recognized my anxiety and, in an instant, had soothed it away. They had said, ‘It is all right, you know,' and, just like a child, I was assured that it was.

One sister helped me off with my jacket, the other asked me to lift my shirt. And there I stood, in the middle of that honey-warm room with my shirt pulled up around my chest.

The sisters began to slowly circle me. The clocks ticked and tocked in counterpoint. Every pendulum swing sliced away another moment of time. One called, the other replied.

‘What a strange little world,' I thought to myself, feeling buoyed-up and beginning to float. I felt increasingly calmed as, one by one, the years of my life slipped away and from deep, deep inside a child's voice whispered to me, ‘I have a tummy ache.'

‘Where is the ache, Your Grace?' asked a sister.

I touched my stomach, just below my ribs. I pressed, to show how deep it was. Then one of the sisters took my hand, moved it aside and positioned herself in front of me. She settled herself there and proceeded to stare at me. The other positioned herself behind. And as the seconds slowly unfolded and the twins dwelt on me I felt myself sway a fraction of an inch from side to side. But I never feared I might take a tumble, for I was pinned securely in place by the sisters' powerful gaze.

And the room had become perfectly quiet now. One sister nodded her head before me, the other hummed in agreement behind. The whole place was awash with the most unusual atmosphere. Unseen currents shifted everywhere. And it dawned on me, in the most agreeable way, that the sisters were, in
fact, observing the tea inside of me. Were following it as it steadily made its way. They had given me a cup of tea to sip at and now watched to see how my organs dealt with it.

I felt not the least bit troubled by their penetrating eyes. In fact, for the first time in my life, became quietly conscious of the independent existence of each organ as they worked away. The sisters' nods and gentle ‘ums' and ‘ahs' flew back and forth and I nodded forward and looked into the lovely redness of my lids. And, gradually, I came to picture, in quite vivid detail … my liver, my heart, my lungs. I had no idea of their size or their colour, or the tubes which connected them up. Had no idea what stopped them slipping from their separate shelves. But they were no longer raw, anonymous entities but individual beings with their own characters and important duties to perform.
Fishes
… that is how they seemed to me. Fish, nestling at different levels of my pool. Like the trout I had once seen just beneath the water, sleeping by a stone, their whole bodies gently swelling and contracting inside of me.

‘Finished, Your Grace,' one of the sisters whispered.

The clocks' tick-tock suddenly returned to fill the room.

Both sisters now stood before me. It was a while before I recovered myself. And by the time my feet felt the earth beneath them one of the sisters was indicating towards the door. The other was smiling.

‘Shall we?' she said.

As I followed along behind them, tucking my shirt back in, I noticed how my gums ached, as they do when I have dozed off in the afternoon. We each took our place around the table and both sisters looked across at me.

‘If you don't mind me coming straight to the point,' I said, ‘ … what exactly did you see?'

They looked at one other while they decided which one was to speak.

‘You have been eating beef,' she said. It was more of a statement than a question.

I thought for a second, before spluttering out, ‘Yes. Essence of beef, I ate … and very foul stuff it was too.'

‘Beef does not agree with you,' said the sister.