The Ingenious Edgar Jones Read online

  Eleanor held out her arms. “Let me see him.”

  “In a moment, Mrs. Jones.”

  The midwife took a length of cotton and bound the boy up tight. Placed in his mother’s arms, he stopped his howling.

  “So small,” said Eleanor. “Can you be sure that he will live?”

  “He’s a fighter,” said the midwife. “He’s got a determination about him.”

  “A boy and a fighter.” Eleanor gazed into the boy’s dark and wrinkled face and saw nothing she recognized.

  WILLIAM SCUTTLED AROUND the edges of the quad and took the shadowed turning to the cloisters. The vaulted ceiling stretched above his head; the wooden lattice of the rafters sparked with reflected light, carving a great gold net out of the darkness. But this was nothing compared to the fire burning at the heart of the place.

  The walls of the cloisters embraced a square of lawn, with a huge tree at the center, and the tree was aflame. The ancient oak, older than the bricks and stone, older even than the idea of learning, was bursting with light. The branches caught the reflection of the star shower, and the tree was flame-leaved and beautiful. The tower reared above, and the streaming stars picked out the gargoyles cresting the battlements: one open-eyed and laughing, peering down from the eaves as if balancing himself on the edge of the stone to gain a better view; another, turning his back to the spectacle, shoulders hunched, face buried in his hands, as if bearing witness to the end of everything. And rampant above these creatures stood the dragons, roaring out into the night.

  By the foot of the tree was a great thundering hole. William peered down into it. Stuck a foot below the earth was a nugget of rock. He scooped it out and rolled it in his palm. It was still warm. It seemed impossible that something so small could cause such walloping damage. Even more impossible to think that, only moments before, this dull bit of stuff was flaming across the sky.

  William placed the meteorite in his pocket. He felt the greatness of creation stretching all about him, the infinity of it crackling through the darkness. The flaming fretwork of the heavens seemed to him the wings of an immense angel, beating across the firmament. No sooner had he thought this than the wings folded in upon themselves, sparked once more, and were gone. The gap in the sky closed as swiftly as it had opened. William was left stranded in the night, star blind.

  He groped his way around the college walls and returned to his watch. Above him the sky seemed fragile, a curve of black glass that might fall and shatter in a moment. His reverie was broken by a rap at the door. A boy came tumbling into the quad. A young boy, hatless, gownless, out of breath.

  “Porter Jones?” he gasped.

  “The very same.”

  The boy handed over a scrap of paper. The words were scrawled at an angle, as if trying to escape the page: “A BOY.”

  WHEN THE DAY PORTER ARRIVED TO ASSUME THE POST, William could not run from the college quickly enough. The crossroads at the top of Broad Street was already a scramble of activity: traders were bringing their wares to set up their stalls along Corn-market. William dodged between the wheels of the carts and the hooves of the horses. Men sneered down from their perches, souring the air with their curses. William cried back, raising his hat in his hand, “I have a son! A boy!” but his declarations were lost in the cracking of whips and the thrumming of wheels.

  Once the words were out in the air William could not contain them. He went striding down St Giles, hollering up at the college walls as if he were a boy himself: “I have a child! A boy, a boy! A son and heir!”

  And as he ran, there was a voice at his back.

  It caught him just by the door of St John’s College.

  “Are you sure?” A laughing voice, as sharp as steel. “Are you quite, quite sure?”

  William turned. There was no one, just the wide empty street on either side of him, with the Martyrs’ Memorial anchored into the ground like a great spike. He squinted up into the cloud line: there was nothing but the scree of the college roof, studded with the bulge-eyed gargoyles, peering out from corner and crevice.

  William shrugged aside the voice. It was a trick of the wind, or of the mind, or both. In either event, not a thing to be listened to. He picked up his step again, broke into a brisk trot, down into the lanes of Jericho. He passed the town houses, with their curtains still closed against the day. He turned the corner by the bridge and there, just before the canal separated the streets from the wide-open meadow, sat the cottage. It seemed to William that morning as if his home had been plucked from the street by the hand of God and set apart from the rest of the world for His special consideration. And inside the cottage, the bedroom, were his wife under the blankets and a cradle sitting in the bow of the window.

  William kneeled down by the cot and lifted the boy out. He could not comprehend the smallness of him, the way the head of the child was dwarfed by the span of his hand, the way the bound-up body was less than the length of his forearm. It gave him a dizzying feeling, a sense that the world had suddenly become unfathomably large. The walls of the room retracted, the ceiling lifted, and he felt stranded in the center of an echoing chamber. Looking down at the child, he found it unimaginable that this was how all men began; that poets, priests, and thinkers all came into the world as sour-smelling babes. He pushed back the swaddling bands. The cloth fell away, and there was a scrunched-up parchment face and a high forehead crowned by a crest of black hair.

  “Welcome to the world, my son,” William whispered.

  The boy opened his eyes and stared straight back at his father.

  William looked into those deep, dark eyes and saw an undeniable attitude of wisdom. This was no ordinary child—that much was clear. This was a boy who had come into the world before his time, as if he had business to be getting on with that simply could not wait. This boy, made by Eleanor and himself, and yet, also, so utterly other-worldly, was a gift from God. The child came from a place of truth and light. No wonder the sky had flamed at his arrival.

  “What have you seen, little man,” William whispered, “on your journey?”

  The boy blinked but did not answer.

  Banked up on the pillows in the bed, Eleanor began to stir. She opened her eyes and saw William, with their tiny son held in his hand, pulling at the bands that contained him, as if he was unknotting a parcel. And with each unraveling, hair, and leathery skin.

  William pulled at the binding cloth until the boy was gloriously naked. He held him up into the sunlight, turning him about. The more William looked, the more he saw that he was holding his own body in miniature. It was all apparent in the detail: the high forehead, the long thighs, the way that one ear was a fraction higher than the other. It gave William an overwhelming sense of pride to think that his son, like himself, was destined to make his way in the world wearing his hat at a slant.

  “We have a boy, Mrs. Jones,” he said softly, “and a handsome one at that.”

  William took the child to the bed. He kissed his wife’s cheek and stroked his son’s hair. Eleanor watched impassively as the boy settled at her breast. “A strong child is worthy of a strong name,” said William. “We shall call him Edgar.”

  Eleanor looked down at Edgar, suckling greedily at her.

  She found it difficult to hold him.

  IN THE TIME before Edgar, William would return from his night-watch and settle himself down to sleep. But not on this day. Now he sat by the fire and turned the meteorite over and over in his hand. Upon the mantelpiece crouched his telescope. William looked up at it, indifferent; there was no need to magnify the mysteries of the sky now that the greatest wonder of all had fallen into his house, bound up in skin and hair, and lay in the room above, sleeping. He took the Bible from the shelf. On the front page there was his name, the dark ink turned rust red through the passing of the years. William Jones, b. 1800? Underneath, Eleanor Jones, m. 1845. He took out his pen and wrote Edgar Jones, b. 28th February 1847.

  William. Eleanor. Edgar. Names that followed each other
well.

  It was quite a thing for William to look down upon a page and see his name nestled in among the company of others, to have a family written out so straight and sure. William was a foundling child, gifted to the college in the dead of night, left shivering and silent by the back gate. He gave the porter who found him no name, and no explanation. But he was a meek and obedient boy, and while he was too young to harbor much memory of his origins, he was quite old enough to be of service.

  As he worked his way up the ranks of the college, scrubbing at the cooking pots or bringing a shine to the mirrors in the scholars’ rooms, he was haunted by his own features. His profile was a map of questions. Did he gain his high forehead from his father or his mother? And his fair hair? And his blue eyes? His questions seeped into his dreams. William would find himself a small child again, walking a maze of unknown streets with a mother or father, or both, holding his hand, pulling at his arm, urging him onward, faster, faster. And William would be racing at their heels, desperate. But no matter how much he strained to see, their faces were always turned away from him.

  William took his dreams and his questions to the college chaplain, the man who had given William his name—William, after free will, Jones as the universal adjunct of the common man.

  “You must ask yourself which matters most in a man’s life, my boy,” the chaplain said firmly. “Is it where one has come from, or where one is destined? Has the college not been good to you?”

  “Yes, sir, but I would still know my own family.”

  “The college is your family now, Master Jones. I suggest that you apply your attention to your future, rather than chasing the ghosts of your past.”

  And so William did. Under the tutelage of the chaplain he pursued his learning through his letters and his Scriptures; he chased his ambitions through the mechanisms of the college, up, up, and up until he emerged at the gate. And then, in his recent years, he chased the possibility of happiness in his pursuit of Eleanor. But, in truth, all the while there was always a part of him that was rootless. Even when he said his vows at the altar, in the sight of God and the college, he still felt adrift in his own history.

  But now all that was corrected. William was no longer anchorless. He was a link in a chain; his blood flowed through the veins of another. He had a boy: a son who had hidden in his wife’s belly under the guise of a girl. And this, William, was sure, would just be the start of his cleverness. Edgar. The good son. And accordingly, he would have a good life. He would never be abandoned in the dark night. William would love his son and watch over him. Edgar Jones would know himself and his way through the world, and his life would be full of possibilities.

  Despite the thrill in his blood and the joy of the new arrival, sleep reached out to claim William. His eyes closed, his pen sagged sickly in his hand, and the soft spitting of the flames was a lullaby. In his dream William was as he was: sitting in his parlor, the Bible balanced upon his lap and Edgar’s name upon the page. The fire roared and the wood rattled against the grate. The fire roared and the fire laughed. William turned and saw his son, sitting there atop the logs. Edgar, naked, bristle haired, laughing, with flames licking up the range of the chimney—gold wings sparking from his back. William grabbed at him, but the fire flared, and he clutched only ashes. Edgar laughed and laughed, ran up the curve of the flames, and was gone.

  William woke with a start. The ink from his pen had run, staining his fingers soot black. He snapped the Bible shut and posted it back upon the shelf.

  AFTER THE SHOCK OF EDGAR’S ARRIVAL, THE HOUSEHOLD soon settled back around him. Days passed, with William shored up in bed dreaming of his son’s future. In the parlor beneath, Eleanor sat by the fire and nursed Edgar. She became accustomed to the pull of him against her, but she still found it hard to look at him, at his sallow skin, at his dark eyes that seemed to stare into the very heart of her and read all her ungenerous thoughts. How she wished a child was a thing that could be undone. Just as when a dress came together crooked, it could be picked apart stitch by stitch and made anew.

  Nights passed. William watched at the college gates and Eleanor watched over the edge of the cradle. Edgar kicked in his sleep, as if the bed was a wooden womb that he was eager to break free of. Eleanor’s belly ached with the memory of his passage into the world. And her heart ached for the girl he was not.

  Then one morning Eleanor was woken as she always was by the creak of the bedroom door and the change in the light as her husband filled the frame. She watched as William knelt by the cradle. He babbled wordless nonsense and Edgar chirruped back in kind. Eleanor went to stand beside them. Edgar had William’s finger caught in his fist and William was grinning down at him as if this was the most astonishing thing he had ever witnessed.

  “He’s got a good grip on him,” he said. “It shows determination.”

  “He’s a child a month old,” snapped Eleanor. “He can’t see farther than his own nose. Of course he’s going to hang on to whatever is thrust before him.”

  Eleanor went downstairs and set the fire. She put tinder to it and it sparked, spitting her frustration back at her. She drew her chair close and began to pin up her hair, coiling, plaiting, and stabbing all into place.

  Above her there was the familiar thud of William kicking off his boots. Eleanor shook her head. It was no good throwing her dissatisfaction back at William, as if his love of his son was a thing to be punished. As if he had willfully cheated her out of a daughter. She rose from her chair and unlocked the door of the second parlor. The room had been left untouched for a month, and dust was gathering over the silks. She looked down at the tiny dresses. A rainbow set across the tabletop: pink, green, blue, purple. All embroidered with flowers and fringed with lace. All useless.

  There was a hammering at the front door. Insistent. Fit to shake the walls, fit to wake Edgar. Eleanor ran through and hauled back the latch. And there, standing on the step, was the woman with the gray hair and the gap-toothed smile. She was wrapped in a velvet cloak and had a bunch of lilies cradled in the crook of her arm.

  “I wonder,” she said, “do you remember me at all?”

  She thrust out her hand. The jewels sparkled. “We never quite had the chance to introduce ourselves. I am Mrs. Simm.”

  The old woman had a strong grip. Eleanor thought of herself with her skirts pushed up around her waist and the hands pummeling at her belly, and she blushed.

  “Eleanor Jones,” she said. “And I do remember you, and the great kindness you did to me.”

  “My dear girl, you were screaming fit to shake the street. I would have been a heartless woman indeed if I had not come to your rescue.” Mrs. Simm gestured behind her. “We have been near neighbors for the past year. I have seen you and your husband many times, walking the rounds of your garden and getting yourselves ready for the child.”

  Eleanor did not like the thought of this woman peering into her life as if it was a kind of cheap amusement. And she could not help but wonder what else Mrs. Simm had seen. Had she been there from the start, when William struggled to lift her across the threshold, his back sticking, almost pitching her into the brambles. And then what? She and William embracing by the window, and the beginnings of Edgar?

  “So,” said Mrs. Simm, “shall we go in? Or would you prefer that we discuss our business on the street for the whole world to hear?”

  “Business?”

  “Women’s business.”

  Mrs. Simm bustled into the parlor. She shrugged off her cloak and smoothed down her skirts. Wide skirts of green silk and a tailored bodice to match. Eleanor was put in mind of the armies of ducks that paraded through the meadow, slipping in and out of the canal, shaking their sheen and honking out their greetings.

  Mrs. Simm thrust the flowers into the water pitcher.

  Eleanor put her hand under the ledge of the parlor table and lifted it an imperceptible inch. The pitcher stayed put.

  “I know it is a little early for you to be receiving visitors
.” Mrs. Simm chuckled. “But I confess my curiosity got the better of me. I am most eager to see the child.”

  “The child is sleeping,” said Eleanor curtly.

  “Then you are blessed indeed. And we shall be most careful and quiet in our conversation.”

  Eleanor stood stranded in the center of her parlor as Mrs. Simm circled around the room. The tavern had taught her the ways of unwanted guests. She knew how to unwrap the hand of a drunkard from about her waist, how to herd crowds of men out of the door through the ringing of a bell and the flicking of her skirts. But with this woman, who strode up and down before William’s books, peering at the spines, who tipped the telescope and chuckled at the sway of its brass belly, who seemed amused by everything she saw, well, she was like nothing Eleanor had ever encountered and she did not know how to begin to shift her from her moorings.

  Once she had done her rounds of the front parlor, Mrs. Simm strode straight through to the back, marched over to the table of dresses, and began turning them this way and that.

  “What a lucky little thing she is, your daughter, to have such a clever mother.”

  Eleanor turned her face to the window, the dead world of the garden clouded with her tears.

  Mrs. Simm stopped. “Forgive me. She came out before her time, did she not?”

  Eleanor nodded.

  “There was a deformity, I take it? You must not despair, the doctors are getting cleverer by the day.”