Dog Day Afternoons

These are the Dog Days. Dies Caniculares, the Romans called them, attributing their peculiar qualities to the influence of Sirius, the Dog Star. Falling between mid-July and mid-August, they’re often the hottest days of the year: airless, stifling, sultry, days, when everything’s dried-up and dusty, without any prospect of rain to cool the air, or any relief from the dull, exhausted grind. Hardly surprising that many people decide they’ve had enough, and buzz off to Tuscany or (in these post-downturn days) to Walberswick or Padstow.

For some of us, though, it’s business-as-usual. Stuck here in the middle of the city, in midsummer, with nothing to do but go on with whatever it is one’s been working away at all year – and nothing to look forward to but the prospect of more of the same, come September, when the rest of the world returns from its summer by the sea.

At least this summer has been an exceptionally good one, so that one doesn’t have to envy the travelling hordes too much. Aren’t there wonderful things to do in London, after all? Walks along the South Bank. Visits to Tate Modern, the Royal Academy, and the London Library. Cycle rides in Surrey and day-trips to the South Coast. One need never be bored – especially when one has a new book to research, write, redraft and (eventually) publish…

Ah, yes – the new book. For the past few months, when anybody’s asked me what I’m doing, I’ve never been short of an answer. ‘I’ve just finished a novel,’ is as good a conversation starter as any – as is ‘I’m publishing a novel online’. Then – with one novel finished and ‘being looked at’ and another ‘out’ – there’s been the (to me) no less interesting process of re-publishing an earlier novel, and of thinking about doing the same with the rest of my back-list.

Except that… well, it’s starting to get embarrassing, not having done anything new for so long. It’s already six months since I finished my last book, Variable Stars, and three since I published the previous one (The Dark Tower). Revising and re-typing Undiscovered Country almost made it feel like a new book – but of course it wasn’t. It did make me realise, though, that this is the first time in almost twenty years that finishing one book and starting another haven’t happened simultaneously.

The trouble is, I just can’t work up the enthusiasm. The Dog Days have got to me, alas. Every time I sit down at the computer to begin work, my mind goes blank, and I find myself staring out of the window at the far more interesting goings-on in my New Cross street… or wishing I could be far away, in some beautiful Italian hill-town, or on some windswept Cornish beach.

I’m tired of words, I find. I’m tired of my characters, too. They seem to have gone on strike for the duration – refusing to talk to one another except in leaden monosyllables. Refusing to let themselves be drawn…

No, it’s hopeless trying to fight the cafard that comes with summer. One might as well accept that there’s nothing to be done. Time enough, when the nights start drawing in, to settle down to scribbling again. Until then, those struggling – as I am – with the tedium of this particular Dog Day Afternoon, might like to amuse themselves with a story about a cat…

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ANGEL TIGER

She does have one memory of her father before his incarceration; although, given that she was but two years old at the time, it is as much about the cat. A kitten, he was still, all paws and eyes. Her father had picked him out of his coat pocket and dropped him into Polly’s lap, little bristling orange thing that he was, with his tail sticking up and his pointed ears, that seemed too large for his face.

Her sister had cried out – as much in pleasure as alarm.

“Nay, do not scream so, for you will frighten him,” their father said, “and then he may bite…”

This resulted in another access of screams and wriggling.

“Take him away, the nasty thing!” cried Polly, now really afraid, where she had been play-acting before.

“Do not call him so,” replied their father, scooping the little creature up out of harm’s way. “For he is of the tribe of Tiger, and therefore deserving of our respect… Are you not, Sirrah?” he went on, addressing the animal himself, which now lay quiet in the crook of his master’s arm, its eyes that had flashed out green fire, narrowed to contented slits. A strange, soft roaring came from the tiger’s throat.

“There, you see – he agrees with me,” said their father, sleeking the ruffled fur on the kitten’s back with an index finger. “He is not fierce, unless he is made angry, or afraid. Come, Bess, would you like to hold him? For he is at rest now, as you see…”

Then she had held out her arms, and her father had placed the sleeping cat into them. She had hardly dared to breathe, so anxious was she not to disturb him. The roaring sound grew louder, however, until it was as if she felt it within her own breast: a comforting music, like the soft ticking of a clock.

“You must hold him – so,” their father continued, the hand that had stroked the little cat’s fur now smoothing down his elder daughter’s tousled curls. “Never upside-down – for he is not one of your dolls – and never by the tail. Nor must you serve him as I have seen you serve your sister, on occasion, with pinches and scolding. For he will not be scolded – being, as I have said, a respectable and dignified creature…”

These remarks he accompanied with kisses, which took away the least suggestion of severity. For he loved Polly above all others – even more than he loved their mother, and that was a great deal.

“Moreover,” their father was saying, still apropos of the cat, but perhaps having heard his wife’s footsteps upon the stair, “you must love him as you would a brother – for are you and he not of the same complexion?”

With this, he gave a tug to one of Polly’s golden curls, so that she shrieked again, to their mother’s consternation (she having just entered the room).

“Ah, here is another of the Tiger’s tribe,” said their father, still in his waggish humour. And it was true that the colour of their mother’s hair – a darker shade than Polly’s – could not have been told apart from that of the cat.

At which observation, their mother only frowned.

“What nonsense are you filling their heads with now?” was all she said.

And whether Tigress or no, she was not best pleased by the newest addition to the household.

“For who is to feed it, and clean up its messes, if not I?” she complained. “As if we did not have enough mouths to feed, you must bring us another…”

“Charity, dear wife, is a Christian virtue,” had been the reply. “Unless they do not teach it in that Church of yours…”

After that, there was no more playing and no more laughter.

Instead of tumbling about on the floor with babies, her husband ought to be giving some thought to how they were to pay the rent, their mother said. Three months was owing, and Mr Newbery would not wait any longer. Nor was it right and fair that he should be made to wait…

“Even though he is your father.”

“He is not my father. He is my mother’s husband.”

“Even so…”

“It makes no difference. We must still eat.”

“Ah, yes. And drink, too, you were going to say…”

“I did not say it.”

“No, but you thought it. I saw it in your eye.”

That was the beginning of a bad time.

She remembers but little of it, she is glad to say. Only that her father had been ill with fever, and had lain in bed for many days. She and Polly had been sent to stay with Mrs Fleming, across the way. She was fat, and cross, but sometimes she gave them sugar-plums.

When her father was recovered from his fever, he had begun praying. At first it was not very much – only at meal times, and when he went to bed; later, it got to be more often; nor did he leave off praying before his voice was hoarse. He would pray aloud in the street, and at all hours of the day. Once, in St James’s Park, he prayed so loudly and so long that he routed all the company. The watchman had taken him up, and brought him home.

Soon it got so that he would knock on doors in the middle of the night, and demand that his friends should come down from their beds, and pray.

“For I bless the Prince of Peace and pray that all guns may be nailed up, save such as are for the rejoicing days,” he would cry. “Rejoice in God, O ye tongues, give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb…”

At last, it got so bad that Mr Newbery had locked him in his bedchamber, and taken away the key. He had shouted and wept for an hour, begging their mother to release him.

“Alas, alas! Have pity on me – a poor prisoner,” he cried. “For I am in jeopardy, and they that should comfort me have turned their faces away…”

Their mother had told them to pay no attention, for their father was sick, she said. If he would learn to be quiet, he might grow better. But he had not grown better, and at last, he had been taken away. This was to Dr Battie’s, in Shoreditch, where he was to be made well again. He had stayed there a year, during which they had not been permitted to visit. For the sight of those he had once loved might unsettle his mind, Mr Newbery said. Only when his wits had returned, would he be allowed to come home.

During that time, she had learned to read, and to write her name: Elizabeth Anne. She had told her father so the day he came back to Canonbury.

“Dear little Bess,” was his reply, “you must give over reading, and writing, too – for it will only bring trouble upon you, as it has upon me.”

He had said little else, only reaching to stroke Polly’s hair, in his old way.

For the rest of the time, it had seemed as if his mind were elsewhere. He had sat in his chair and gazed out of the window, at the trees that were swaying about in the wind. From time to time he had sighed, as if his heart would break.

There was no more rolling about the floor, and no more playing with the cat.

“For he, too, knows what it is to be a prisoner, having been my companion in adversity.”

To their mother and grandfather he had spoken not a word.

“They conspire against me,” he said. “For I preach the very gospel of Christ, and yet they would have me shut up.”

And indeed it was not long before he was again taken away. A carriage had come, and waited in the street outside. There had been raised voices, the slamming of doors; then silence. She and Polly had been sent to bed, but they had sat on the landing and waited, until they heard the carriage drive away.

“We will never see Papa more,” Polly had said, and burst into a passion of tears.

She would rather not think about that time now. Now she must compose herself, and smile, and remember only that he is her father, to whom she owes (if nothing else) a duty of respect.

She folds her hands in her lap. Her gloves are new, and she has taken pains with her appearance. She is wearing her blue dress, and a new ribbon in her cap, and she has her best kid slippers on.

Polly said she might have spared herself the trouble.

“For where you are going will not be very pleasant or clean.”

“Will you not come with me?”

“You know that I cannot.”

In the end, her sister had relented enough to say that she would go with her to the door.

“But no further. I will wait for you in the carriage.”

She had had to content herself with that.

Now, as she sits waiting for the summons that will surely come soon (for Mr Smart had need of a few moments to tidy himself, said the bluff gentleman who had admitted her), she recalls the last time they met – her father and Polly, that is. Was it really nine years ago? It had been at the madhouse in Bethnal Green. She had also been there, but it was Polly who had had the worst of it. Their father had made her kneel down beside him on the floor of his cell, and had prayed aloud that she might be delivered from the power of the Adversary. That was his name for the Evil One.

Then he had wept, and said it was not her fault she was baptised a Moabite (his name for Catholics). No indeed, he had continued, for it was the fault of her mother…

At which Polly – then nine years old – had sprung up, and cried that he must not say bad things about Mama.

“Marianne, my dear child,” he had then said, quite gravely, “do not weep so. For I would cut out my tongue before I would slander thy mother. It is only,” he went on, still kneeling before them (and how piteous was the expression in his eyes!) “that I cannot bear the thought that either you or she should be in peril of your Immortal Souls, all for a fault which was of neither’s choosing…”

At these last words, Polly had said she would stay to listen to no more.

“Come, Bess. Mama will be waiting.”

He had followed them to the door – where Dr Potter, having heard the disturbance, now stood to prevent his going further.

“It is not Bess I mean,” he had earnestly said. “For she is baptised in the True Faith of Christ the Redeemer.”

“Goodbye, Father.”

“Fatherless children and widows are never deserted of the Lord…” came his voice, down the corridor, after them.

“I would to God our mother were a widow,” said Polly.

“You do not mean that,” she replied.

“Do not tell me what I mean, or do not mean! He believes me damned, and our mother too, all because we are baptised Catholics. You, of course, can count yourself safe…”

“Polly!”

“Do not speak to me, and – if you must speak – do not mention his name again.”

Nervously tapping her foot, in its fine kid slipper, on the dusty prison floor, she wonders if her father will talk to her of Redemption again. She very much hopes not. For while it is true that she, unlike her sister, was not baptised a Catholic – an agreement her parents had reached before she was born – she has spent the past three years being educated by the nuns at the Ursuline convent in Boulogne.

She is not sure if her father is aware of this fact, which seems calculated to annoy him. But then, she supposes that there is a great deal he does not know about her life. Not that she knows a great deal about his.

She knows he is a poet, because Mr Newbery told her:

“Your father had a fine intellect, before his troubles came on.”

He had won ever so many prizes for his verse, which had been much admired, her grandfather said. Dr Johnson and Mr Garrick had admired it, and Dr Burney, too – and they were none of them fools. It was a pity he had written nothing of any value since. In the madhouse, he had covered ream upon ream of paper, but it was all of it found to be trash…

Now, apparently cured of his madness, he is in prison once more. But since this – as he remarked in the letter she received from him a week ago – is for “refusing to render unto Caesar that which is rightfully his”, rather than for intemperate praying, she hopes that there will be no more talk of her immortal soul.

“Come, Miss.”

She follows the man upstairs, to her father’s apartment. Even though it is a prison, it is not too bad, she sees. There is a sitting-room, in which her father sits, with a good (if threadbare) carpet upon the floor and some almost-decent furniture: two armchairs – a little broken-down; a table; four dining chairs. A bedchamber lies beyond. There are books, and papers. He has the freedom of the ‘grounds’, such as they are. Her uncle has purchased this small concession for him.

“How do you do, Father?”

The first shock is how thin and ill-looking he has become – his complexion a bad yellow, his once-dark hair gone grey. He is dirty, too, her once-fastidious father, whose fondness for fine linen and silk waistcoats had nearly landed them in the poorhouse – “if it had not been that he was sent to the madhouse first,” their mother had said, in a moment of bitterness.

Now his waistcoat is greasy with spilt food, and his coat-cuffs worn. His shirt is none-too-clean, and his neck-cloth a mere rag. Lowering her eyes from the contemplation of these distressing sights, she sees that there are holes in his shoes, and in his stockings, too…

“Well, Bess. I am glad to see you.”

At the sound of his voice, she lifts her gaze once more, and encounters his dark eyes. These, at least, are the same as she remembers them – although the sadness in them is enough to pierce her heart.

“No Polly with you, then?”

She shakes her head.

“Cat got your tongue?”

He is smiling as he says it, and she thinks, with relief, he is not mad.

“Where is the cat?” she thinks to ask.

Now it is her father’s turn to shake his head.

“I have left him with Dr Burney. For I could not ask him – noble creature that he is – to share a prison cell. A madhouse, yes…”

“I remember he was with you at Bethnal Green,” she says.

“In the days of my jeopardy. Yes, yes…” He seems agitated at the remembrance. His words begin falling over themselves, in the old way. “A terrible time,” he murmurs. “A terrible time. We will not speak of it. No, no. We will not speak of it.”

He is silent a moment.

“At least here…” He spreads his arms wide to embrace the threadbare-carpeted room. “There are no madmen – only publicans and sinners, and those, like myself, who have taken a vow of Poverty…”

“I am sorry to see you in such a sad case, Father.”

“Dear Bess. You were always kind-hearted. My kind-hearted child.” He regards her fondly, and for a moment, she basks in the warm glow of his attention. “How old are you now? You must be sixteen at least…”

“I am seventeen, Father.”

He smiles.

“Quite the young lady. And what of your sister, Miss Marianne?”

“She is not well, else she would have come, too.”

The lie brings a blush to her cheek.

“That is a pity.”

Again, he falls silent.

“Mother is quite well,” she ventures.

But he says nothing to this. From outside, comes the sound of voices raised in anger.

“It is dinnertime,” he says, by way of explanation. Then seeing that she does not understand: “They have given sixpence to the turn-key, to buy a piece of mutton, and he has returned with tuppence-worth. All the quarrels here are about money – as indeed is very often the case in the world outside…”

At this reminder of why she has come, she fumbles in her reticule. There is four guineas in her purse, and another two promised by Mr Carnan.
“Although it is better that your father does not have too much money about him,” her uncle had said. “Given his unfortunate weakness – and the evil influences which surround that place…”

She places the purse upon the table.

If her father has given into his weakness lately, there is no sign of it – other than his bad colour; that, and the faint trembling of the hand he now stretches out to retrieve his prize.

“Thank you, my dear,” he says. “I might have known that you, at least, would not desert me.”

She bows her head. Then for a while longer, they sit there without speaking.

On the windowsill is a pot of geraniums. He sees her looking at it.

“Red was ever my favourite colour. For it is a gift from God to gladden the sense of sight…”

At the mention of the Creator, she stiffens slightly. Perhaps, after all, he has not mended his ways…

But then he gives a rueful smile.

“I have not, of late, been on such intimate terms with God as I was wont to be.”

“No, Father.”

“You are a good girl, Bess. I wonder if you will understand me when I say that, though being mad was terrible, it is still more terrible not being mad…”

“I think I understand,” she says, although of course she does not.

He closes his eyes a moment.

“For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls,” he murmurs, so softly that she is not sure whether it is meant for her or no.

It does not seem the kind of remark that expects an answer, and so she says nothing.

“I had my vision,” he goes on. “And very beautiful it was, with all its angels and demons; its lions and tigers and great Leviathans. Very terrible, too. Now it is gone – and with it, all my poetry…”

“You still have your poetry, Father.”

He opens his eyes.

“There, dear child, you are mistaken,” he says.

After this, he falls into a reverie, from which even the fact of her getting up to go barely rouses him. His eyes, once so bright, are cloudy now, and have an inward-looking gaze. As she bends to kiss him, she thinks how old and worn he has become, although he is not yet fifty. She straightens up, and he catches her by the wrist, detaining her a moment longer.

“Be sure and give my love to Polly,” he tells her.

“I will.”

She picks up her bag – now lightened of its burden – and moves towards the door, glancing back to where he sits, carelessly sprawled in the broken-backed chair. His gaze is directed, not towards her, but at something outside the window.

He does not seem to hear when she says goodbye.

Had she known, then, that it was the last time? She supposes that, in her heart, she must have known it.

She descends the stairs, to where the bluff man stands, paring his nails. He lets her out, and she walks across the prison yard. The turn-key opens the gate, and she crosses the street, to where the carriage is waiting.

As she does so, she looks up at the window that she knows to be his, and sees him standing there. She raises her hand, but if he sees her at all, he does not return her wave.

“You were a long time,” says Polly, as she gets into the carriage. “I had almost given you up. What did he say to you? Was he very mad?”

“Oh no,” she says. “Not mad at all. He sends his love.”

Her sister pulls a face. “I do not want it.”

“You are hard to him,” she cannot forbear from saying.

Polly turns to look at her. “And you have always been too soft,” she says. “You seem to forget he broke our mother’s heart.”

“I do not forget it,” she says.

As the carriage starts to move off, scattering the crowd of dirty children that has been hanging about it in the expectation of ha’pennies, she glances up at the place where her father was, hoping to catch sight of him again.

But the face at the window has gone, and the curtain is pulled across, so that it is as if no one was ever there at all.

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ANGEL TIGER is the first of a series of stories about the poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771) – seen from different points of view: the poet’s own, that of his wife, Anna Maria Carnan, his daughter, Elizabeth Le Noir, his friend, Charles Burney, and others. It will be published in November in the new Oxford university anthology, Initiate.