The Pagan House

The lounging youths were walking slowly through, and now he could feel the attention of their unfriendly scrutiny. One of them jostled against his shoulder as they passed into a back room, where they drowned the friendly noises of the machine with loud lurching music, guitars and drums, clattering, angry, incompetent sounds that made the back of his neck vulnerable with their bad intent.

The second ball built up his score, and he was unlucky to lose it, just before he was about to hit the drop-down targets again to claim a free ball, but the pressure was on him, the music had stopped as abruptly and pointlessly as it had begun, and the hoodlums were back jostling behind him, so before he plunged the third ball into play he put another quarter on the glass top to reserve his next turn. The third ball was a disaster, swooping through the gate, down the alley, it took an awkward carom off his left flipper, bounced against the grinning monster face in the middle, which he had learned must be avoided, and fell through the impotent rise of his flippers.

Edgar felt sick. He had confirmed whatever low opinion of him these dangerous thugs might have. He had performed badly under pressure, like a boy, and the largest one, the Indian Fighter with the blond hair and the paper cap, reached for Edgar’s next quarter and said, ‘Unlucky, kid,’ and slotted it into the machine and pushed him aside.

‘Let’s see the master at work.’

‘But that’s—’ said Edgar.

‘I need some room here.’

A hard elbow cracked into Edgar’s ribs.

‘Tough luck, kid,’ said the weasel, unsympathetically. ‘You gonna order something?’

‘No,’ said Edgar.

‘We’ll see you later, kid.’

Edgar stood disconsolate. They were gathered by the machine with their backs to him. The player used his whole body, flicking the flippers double-fast, hips pushing the path of the ball into the desired lane, his hands slapping the sides of the machine. ‘Sky is so good,’ he said, supplying his own commentary. ‘He’s got all the moves.’

Stubborn Edgar, alarmed at his own impulses, pushed towards the machine. ‘I want my quarter back,’ he said.

Ignoring him, Sky flipped and shoved and jerked his head to tell the ball where to go, and miraculously it did, and miraculously his paper hat stayed on his head.

‘You’re gonna lose it,’ said the weasel.

‘It’s outta control,’ and ‘You is fucked,’ said the other two, simultaneously, then glared at each other so violently that they had to be brothers.

‘In your face. Watch me and weep, you suckers.’

‘I want my quarter back,’ Edgar said.

Someone else had come into the pizza parlour, another enormous boy—they grow them big here—closer in age to the hoodlums than to Edgar. He carried himself awkwardly, as if he was making a perpetual apology for his size, the fluff of his incipient beard, the cleanness of his jeans and the T-shirt he wore over his sweatshirt, the pimples across his broad Scandinavian forehead.

‘Now look what you done made me do! Lost the fuckin’ ball!’

Edgar wished the gang’s inattention back. The sight of them all staring at him was not a comfortable one. He had met their type before, in London, brutalists, torturers of boys and beasts; they immediately went to the top of his list of suspects. He hoped the bulky stranger would intervene. Maybe their attention would turn to him.

‘I want my quarter back. You took my quarter. I want it back.’

He had established his position. There was no turning back. So this was how he was destined to die, friendless and forsaken in a pizza parlour in Creek. He supposed even his mother wouldn’t be able to recognize his battered remains after they had been dredged out of the river. No, no. That’s not him. That’s not my son. It can’t be!

I’m afraid there’s no mistake, ma’am. Dental records and DNA and suchlike prove it. That’s your boy, or what they left of him. Just for God’s sake get that, that thing into the ground quick, the sight of it is making decent men weep.

‘What did he say?’

‘I didn’t hear him. You hear him?’

‘I don’t think he spoke. Did he speak?’

‘You must have heard. He’s got a really funny voice.’

‘Did you speak, kid?’

‘My name’s Edgar.’

It was the first time his secret name had been spoken in public, and how he hoped it had the magic it promised.

‘What? What he say?’

‘He says his name’s Edgar.’

‘He’s got balls.’

‘Where you from, Edgar?’

‘Are you British, Edgar?’

‘Have you got balls, Edgar?’

‘He’s got balls. Edgar’s got balls.’

‘I thought the British were famous for having no balls.’

‘You got balls, Edgar?’

‘He’s not talking now.’

‘I don’t think he talked before.’

‘If you’ve got balls, Edgar, I think you’re gonna have to prove you got balls.’

‘You going to show us your balls, Edgar?’

‘He might be leaving.’

‘I think Edgar’s leaving. Are you leaving, Edgar? You didn’t say anything and now you’re leaving and we’re not going to see you again? Give Edgar some room. I think he’s leaving.’

‘I want my quarter back.’

Edgar had gone beyond being astounded by his own behaviour. He was reconciled to it now and fixed to his path and would take it to its inevitable violent end.

‘Did Edgar say something?’

‘I think he’s definitely got balls.’

‘Almost definitely.’

‘I think Edgar talks too much.’

‘I like how he talks, though. I warnt my quharrrrtarr. It’s funny.’

‘Edgar’s talking is going to get him into trouble one day.’

‘He’s in trouble now.’

‘Let’s see his balls,’ said the weasel, trying to incite his more powerful friends.

‘You took my quarter. I want it back.’

They were about sixteen or seventeen years old and they had muscles that were streaked with motorcycle and pizza grease and they wore tufts of hair on the chins of their hard, unforgiving faces, and he was almost thirteen and lightweight and maybe they’d go easier on him because of that. He wasn’t reassured by the affectionate way they were sneering at him. He had seen enough playground massacres to know that the bully loves his victim.

‘Give him a quarter, Ray.’

‘Wha’? Why me?’ whined the weasel. ‘I don’t have a quarter.’

Sky cuffed Ray on the side of the head and kept hitting him until he pulled out a quarter.

‘Shit,’ said Ray, enviously. He flipped the quarter to Edgar, who predictably dropped it. He didn’t suffer the kicks to the head he was expecting as he retrieved it from the grease-spattered red lino floor.

His new name had proved itself, and this was a good transaction, his father’s coin exchanged for the currency of the community.

‘Okay,’ he said.

The pinball machine sparked back into life.

‘Goodbye,’ he said.

He was ignored. They clustered around the machine again. Sky pulled back the plunger to propel the ball, but was interrupted by the stranger saying, ‘Hi,’ and Edgar—shocked at his own malice and ignobility of nature—hoped to see the bad intentions going his way.

‘Hey Marvin.’

‘Husky! What’s up.’

‘Guys.’

Sky released the plunger and headed for the back room, with the others following, the ball jittering and pinging, it and the machine and Edgar ignored. He braved himself to leap in to play the rest of the game, as the band clattered back into action with the same mistimed vigour of delivery, but they had a vocalist now, Marvin, he guessed, who sang in a beautiful and reckless low voice that Edgar hated him for possessing.

When Edgar returned to the house, hoping to get to his bedroom, to collapse into solitary consolation, Warren called him into the kitchen, where he was emptying the dishwasher. Warren peeled off the black rubber gloves he wore for the performance of domestic tasks. His hands were, Edgar inconsequentially noticed, slightly paler than his arms.

‘You missed your dad.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your dad called.’

On his way back to the house Edgar had slowed his heart, calmed the wild pumping of adrenaline by throwing sticks at a pine cone and then pine cones at a stick. He had triumphed in a staring contest with a glum red bird. He had paused on the bridge and tossed pine cones into the brown-stoned stream until a passing car slowed down and a bald man had snapped at him to stop what he was doing. He had killed time until it became a point of honour to kill more of it, to sicken himself back into boredom. And meanwhile his dad had phoned and he’d missed the call. Edgar scratched at the inside of his arm until he was alerted to the fact he was doing so by Warren’s curious, slightly concerned expression.

‘Does he want me to call him back?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure where he is, actually. He says sorry and everything but he’s been delayed. Business to take care of. He’ll be arriving a bit later than he thought.’

‘Tomorrow evening?’

That was Edgar’s furthest projection: the morning was unachievable, the evening made sense, his father driving through the day, birthday gifts carelessly scattered in the back seat of his open-top car, to stay overnight in his mother’s house, his house—they were always saying how much time had passed since his last visit. Edgar and his father wouldn’t want to begin their own drive until the morning, after breakfast: it was a long journey they would be making together.

‘Not quite, Eddie.’

Warren was very good at breaking bad news. He should have had a job as one of those army men who stand at front doors and aren’t allowed to touch or hug the broken women who’ve just been told that their boys have died.

‘He’s been delayed. He won’t be able to make it tomorrow.’

‘The day after?’

‘Probably not till the end of the week. But I’m sure we can keep you entertained up till then. He says, sorry. So. I hope you’re hungry. Fay will be down just after she’s done her exercises.’

At supper, after Warren had checked that Fay had taken her evening medication, he asked Edgar about his walk.

‘It was fine,’ Edgar said, and Fay, seeing something sad in Edgar’s eyes, had the delicacy to prevent Warren enquiring further.

‘These mushrooms are delicious,’ Fay said. ‘Is there garlic in them?’

‘I just stir them around from time to time while they’re cooking, with a fork that has a clove of garlic on its, you know, prongs.’

‘Tines,’ said Fay.

‘Excuse me?’ said Warren.

‘The prongs of a fork. They’re called tines.’

‘Oh yes, that’s right, of course they are.’

Warren seemed to like being corrected by Fay, the passage of wisdom down the generations. Paintings hung on the white walls of the kitchen, most of them Fay’s own watercolours of riverside scenes executed when her sight was still largely intact.

‘Have you found the cat yet?’ Edgar asked.

‘How’s your ankle?’ Warren asked.

‘It’s a lot better. Edward was terrific looking after me. I didn’t miss you at all.’

She dazzled Edgar with her smile.

‘That’s good to hear,’ Warren said. ‘How’s the rash?’

‘I think it’s getting better,’ Fay said, covering her throat and chin with a hand.

‘We should get Newhouse to take a look at it.’

‘No more medication. If you shook me I’d rattle. Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll make it through till the Festival.’

‘May I leave the table?’ Edgar said.

‘Of course you can, my dear. I love your manners.’

Edgar escaped to the Music Room, where he compiled a list of cat-napping suspects, which did not exclude his mother—was it accidental only that she had left on the day that Tom disappeared? And then he counted his money, which amounted to seven dollars and forty-nine cents, and went through the record albums, sorting them into separate piles according to likely interest. The interesting pile he further subdivided into those he thought belonged to his father and those to his uncle Frank. He imagined Frank to have a taste for flowery illustration and fanciful covers. His father he allowed all those simply designed albums with the group’s photograph glowering on the front. On the window-ledge, he arranged the ones with girls he wanted to look at on the covers, blocking out the shallow lights of the Mansion House opposite.

8

We believe that Kingdom now coming is the same that was established in heaven at the Second Coming of Christ [70 AD]. Then God commenced a kingdom in human nature independent of the laws of this world. We look for its reestablishment here, and this extension of an existing government into this world is that we mean by the Kingdom of God. I will put the question. Is not now the time for us to commence the testimony that the Kingdom of God has come?

The Spiritual Moralist, John Prindle Stone, 1845

Mary is gone, in zealous spirit, to accompany Captain Carter on a missionary visit to an infant Perfectionist congregation in Greencastle. Little Georgie is with Mary’s sister in Rochester. George spends his hermitry in work upon the land and studies of the Bible. He has never felt quite so lonely. His spirits and vitality are sinking. He can hardly rouse himself to go to the general store on Turkey Street. Even blind Jess grows peevish with lack of use. In compensation he feeds her too many turnips.

He had not realized how dependent his energies are upon Mary’s. In the absence of his wife, he is without initiative, petulant and doltish. His beard grows. His clothes are dirty. Each day he resolves anew to abandon this place, to follow the missionaries to Greencastle, to join his child in Rochester, to visit John Prindle Stone in Vermont, or else return to New York City, where he might taunt his sluggish spirits with the sin he has left behind. Each night he falls sleepless into bed, the day ahead of him stretching out as empty and useless as the previous one. He sets himself small tasks that seem, in their midnight contemplation, manageable. Each morning he fails to accomplish or even begin any one of them. He has become accustomed to rising late, to sit out the lethargic death of the morning at the table in the parlour, still in his night-clothes and sleeping cap.

He can play the violin, that at least he is capable of: the sounds he coaxes from it, the action of the strings beneath his fingers, bring the image of his wife closer.

They had met for the first time on the Bowery. George was walking back to his lodgings from the newspaper office to wash and change before setting out for the weekly meeting of the Moral Reform League at Mr Green’s townhouse on Fifty-Third Street. An Irish urchin running pellmell through the crowd collided with George Pagan, who held him, looking for the purse in his pale hand, the pursuing robbed gentleman. The boy’s hands were empty and the only pursuer was a young lady, who smiled at George as she took hold of the urchin. The child twisted and struggled and wept and surrendered. George asked if he should fetch an officer. Her amused eyes reached straight into George to a place that he had no prior acquaintance with or even knowledge of. She told him she was the child’s teacher, bringing her charge home.

‘This happens at the end of every day. He tries to run back to school. It is my task to persuade him home.’ She stroked the child’s hair and brow. His shoulders relaxed. She wiped the tear tracks off his face. She whispered to him, comforting words to the melody of a Congregationalist hymn, and George was startled by a stab of jealousy for this child, who could so unthinkingly provoke such actions of heart and hand.

‘This is surely a novelty,’ George said. ‘I would have thought it a unique case, a schoolboy that cannot bear to be absent from school.’

‘We fail the ones who love us best. Education affords a glimpse of somewhere else, a preferable place, without always offering a way there.’

And then, with that quality of quickness that would always so enchant George Pagan, she interrupted his considerations of a reply with a curtsy, as if the drab crowded street were a débutante ball. ‘Mary Johnson,’ she said.

‘George Pagan. At your service.’

‘Good afternoon, George Pagan,’ she said, and, businesslike, she led the spent, unresisting child to his unwelcome door.

Mary lived, as Mr Stone would later remark, in the perpetual now. Everything moved fast with her as if without precedence or consequence: her decisions, her wit, her curiosity. Where George’s understanding crabbed from ignorance to knowledge, dimly inching through objections and inconsistencies like a blind man tapping along a nighttime street, the speed of her attention annihilated the distance between darkness and light.

Her pastoral task achieved, she seemed unsurprised to be walking in step up Second Avenue with George Pagan, and her consent to accompany him to the meeting at Mr Green’s was only slightly more miraculous than his boldness in issuing the invitation.

At Mr Green’s townhouse on Fifty-Third Street, the congregants drank tea and lemonade from Mrs Green’s pale blue china. Marriage rights were discussed, and the liquor question, and universal suffrage was allowed, and slavery abolished, and faith-healing argued for and against, while Mrs Green poured tea, and the philanthropist Mr Green blinked merrily at the enthusiasm in his parlour, but for Mary this was never going to be quite enough. Speed of progress, if only in talk, had to keep up with the quickness of her heart.

No photograph could picture her. In photographs—taken at the end of the Prince Street school year, three short lines of pupils and staff, or at the penultimate meeting of the Reform League at Mr Green’s, or at their wedding, with her preacher father already standing aloof from his unmanageable daughter—her slim face looked pinched and narrow, her chin and brow too mannishly strong, her eyes wide and impatient. George looked at his best in photographs. His strongly carved features became sculptural, implying all the power he knew he lacked in life. Mary’s vivacity charmed and beautified everything around her. Later, he would encounter the ferocity of her temper, which—until events gave her greater opportunity for remorse—was the ashamed subject of her largest self-reproach, flaring with a sudden heat, but then, as abruptly, it would dampen, abate, the flames clearing, her true nature revealed again, unscorched, her good fellowship and ardour and sympathy reestablishing themselves as the ruling agents of her passions.

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