The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds Page A

children of God.’ He felt splendidly paternal and sincere when he gave his sermons, looking out over his flock of patients, their stricken eyes latched onto him. He sensed his wife seated behind him at the organ, saw three of his children seated before him. Fulton had his hair combed differently, somehow, perhaps in the opposite direction to usual, and this made him seem independently attentive, his own man, making his own decisions, and voluntarily there, voluntarily following his father into medicine. Dora, the quietest of his children, well matched with her betrothed, appeared to be trying to stop Abigail kicking her legs under the seat. Among the others, George Laidlaw’s gaze was particularly direct. He waited each day for the evening prayers; they brought him his only short hours of relief from the terrors of the National Debt for which his mind told him he was solely responsible.
    Dr Allen enumerated several categories of peacemakers, among them those who bring an end to wars and discord. But there were other kinds of peacemakers, those who bring an end to the bitter strife of internal discord. Margaret knew that he meant himself and scorned his weakness for saying it. She almost pitied him the affliction of his vanity. Friends are such peacemakers, he went on, who bring peace through calm and the nourishing atmosphere of affection. It is not only those we know as peacemakers - curates, ambassadors, doctors - who bring these resolutions, then, but all of us, in our fellowship.
    John knew what would bring him peace: his wives, Mary and Patty. Peace would have been lying beneath an oak with them on either side in a sweet, heavy smell of grass, the sun warm on them, thick curds of summer cloud moving slowly over. He turned from the sight of Matthew Allen rocking up onto his toes with each commonplace preacher’s phrase that pleased him, and stared into the fire. His thoughts began picking up uncomfortable speed as he looked and realised that those were particular logs being consumed, logs from particular trees burning with particular flames in that exact place at that specific hour and it would only ever occur once in the history of the world and that was now. Birds had landed on them, particular birds, and creatures had crawled across them, light had revolved around them, winds swayed them, unique clouds passed over them, and they would be ashes in the morning. There was so little time. He needed to be free with his wives in each living day, not consuming them here. Forked or foliate, the flames themselves were as singular as the trees, eternal and vanishing in quick snaps.
    Hannah ignored her father’s words, looked past the tails of his coat, his hands floating from the sides of the lectern to pat his pages square, to where the Tennysons were sitting. Alfred Tennyson’s face was pensive, brooding - how else would it be? - but she couldn’t keep her eyes on him.To his right, his brother’s face seemed as set as a death mask, his eyes lightly closed, but down his cheeks ran tears. Eventually she saw him part his sore lips to inhale. Without opening his eyes he dried his cheeks with a handkerchief. As he then wavered to his feet with the rest, Hannah realised it was time to sing again.
    Tennyson stood and sang as all of the afflicted opened their valves to God. The sermon had been decent, in his estimation, clearer and more clearly delivered than those of his own deceased father, more generously and compassionately addressed to his congregation. Afterwards, as the patients handed their hymnals to the attendants and began to leave, and Septimus hobbled away,Tennyson approached the doctor to offer his compliments. Hannah saw him do this and hurried to her father’s side.
    Tennyson took Allen’s hand and shook it. ‘I thought that sermon fine,’ he said.
    ‘I’m pleased at that,’ Allen replied.
    ‘It was excellent,’ Hannah chipped in.
    Allen turned with some surprise at this interjection from his unusually