The silence factory, p.27
The Silence Factory, page 27
He obeyed. The touch of the necktie against his skin reminded him of something, or rather made some flicker, some trapped bubble tremble under the layer of deadening bog. He let his arms drop to his sides. His hands felt like gloves full of mud.
‘Now,’ Worsley said, ‘I am proposing to pull this handle, which will raise the hoop above your head. I take it you have no objections. You may answer me.’
‘I cannot think of any.’
‘No. Although it may be uncomfortable. Your death.’
Henry understood, of course. He understood that if Worsley raised the hoop, he would find himself strangled on the end of his own necktie. And he did not disbelieve Worsley, when he said he would do it. But any fear he might have felt was buried too deep – was, somehow, over-sludged too thickly. If any emotion did ripple a perceptible tentacle, just beneath the surface, it was relief. He said, ‘I suppose it may.’
‘Then …’ Worsley took in a breath, and jerked on the rope.
There was a shout of, ‘Mr Worsley!’ There was a tightening – a black cloud boiling, a pressure around his jaw and windpipe, a sickening sway – he was up on his toes, suspended by his throat … And then it subsided, and he was on the floor. Someone reached underneath the lowest hoop and cut the tie with a pair of scissors. Then the cage rose, glimmering, and reality flooded in. Henry lay still, his face against the stone floor, as though he had washed up on some strange shore.
Fifteen
He sat at the bench with a glass of water in his hands, tilting it, watching the liquid obey its laws no matter what he did. Gower was clearing his throat over and over, as if he had a blockage he could not quite cough up; Worsley was standing with his hands in his pockets, half turned away, looking out over the canal. Henry sipped the water. It tasted of metal. His larynx hurt when he swallowed.
Worsley said, ‘Rather impressive, don’t you think?’
‘Of course it was only – he was only making a point, you were perfectly safe,’ Gower said.
‘I’ll concede it was a little theatrical, Mr Latimer, but I did so want you to appreciate all the possibilities. To be the object of an experiment gives you a real comprehension, much more than someone else expounding on their findings. Don’t you think? Your elaborately furnished house is really only the same thing, isn’t it?’
Gower said, ‘Are you all right, Mr Latimer? It can take a little while to come back to yourself. Drink your water, that’s right.’
‘It’s very concentrated, the effect, in that apparatus,’ Worsley went on. ‘It’s very good for demonstrations. Less so, for wider applications – you couldn’t keep someone under that thing for very long – but we’re working on that. And it serves its purpose. It has even come in useful, once or twice—’
‘In theory,’ Gower said. ‘We can see its theoretical usefulness.’
‘But the principle … Oh yes. And we have you to thank for the principle, Mr Latimer. Or rather Sophia Ashmore, and her pagan friends.’ He nodded, as though to acknowledge praise, although Henry had not spoken. ‘Yes. Good God, man, you’ve been barking up the wrong tree, with silent this and silent that – cots for infants, for heaven’s sake, when we’ve invented this! You know what is worth most, in this world, Latimer? Submission. Find a way to sell submission – to make other men into willing slaves – and you will be a wealthy man. Well. I shall be a rich man. And so will Sir Edward.’
But submission, Henry thought, was the wrong word. What he had felt was more an erasure of self: a silence that had left him not without a voice, but without anything to say.
‘Now, you will probably think – and you’d be right – that unquestioning, indiscriminate obedience is of limited use. Imagine what would have happened, back there, if Gower had started to give you orders too!’ He sniggered. ‘But imagine this, instead: an army of workers who never argue. Who never strike, who never ask for more, who are content.’ Perhaps Henry had moved, because Worsley raised a hand. ‘No, really – they will be content. Or as near to it as such people can be. They will work in the factory as they have always done, but when they return home, any little complaints, any inappropriate yearnings, will be smoothed away. No political leanings, no problematic discussions, no sedition. No bloody lending libraries, and no evening classes, because once they’re indoors, it’ll be the factory bell that summons them out again.’ He smoothed his hair down at the back of his head, like a preening bird. ‘It sounds like a castle in the air, doesn’t it? But it will be reality, very soon. Our model housing will show the world what can be done. And so cheaply, considering! Yes, arain silk is expensive, by weight – but only a few strands, cunningly constructed, can do it – a few threads in the walls, set apart by exactly the right amount of space – it’s precision that’s needed, attention to detail, and then … oh, I have been inside a room that has already been finished, and it is astounding. So subtle one can hardly feel it, and yet unmistakable when one knows that it’s there.’ He paused. Henry thought he would say more, but he only stared into the middle distance for a moment before he continued. ‘Sir Edward wondered – knowing, of course, how contrary the workers are in this damned town – whether they might decline, if rumours started to circulate. But the way they live now – how could they? The men might try, but their wives will wear them down. Spacious, light, sturdily built – gas and water laid on, roofs that you can trust, walls that are not running with damp. Even if they knew …’ He shrugged. ‘And in the worst case, there are always the Irish.’
There was a vibration in Henry’s bones: a long, low thunder that he could not identify at once. He turned his head, stiffly, and saw the sliding shadows of rain on the silk-blinded windows. It was darker, suddenly. The hut trembled and thrummed as water hammered against the walls and roof.
Gower walked his fingers over the bench, back and forth. He said, staring at them, ‘The houses will really be very nice.’
‘No more strikes,’ Worsley said. ‘Everything running as it should. Yes, I think we can congratulate ourselves. Every factory owner in England will want to use the silk, once they see how it transforms our workers. That should be enough to make us millionaires.’ He gave a satisfied nod, staring into the middle distance; then a slow smile spread over his face, as if he had seen an old friend. ‘But that is only the beginning. Ah, Latimer, it should have been obvious. We should not have needed the journal of an hysteric to make us think of it. The world is divided into predators and prey, do you not agree? It is only a question of deciding who is which …’ He made a weary gesture, sighed, ‘Oh, be still, Gower, I am not talking about Darwinism, only reality!’ then he looked back at Henry. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘if the order was established, once and for all. In every country, in every town, in every street, in every house. Those who are prey will feel no pain. They will fall easily, softly, into their fate – no suffering, no fight, no tiresome resistance. Servants will serve. Children will obey. Women will lie down and give themselves, and never say a word. Men like you …’ He paused, deliberately, as if he were teasing out a long thread, seeing how long it would stretch. ‘Well, who knows? Perhaps men like you – parasites, I mean – will die out naturally.’
Gower cleared his throat. ‘The experiments on … on animals,’ he said, ‘weren’t … I mean, that was only incidental. We weren’t trying to hurt them. No one will ever use the silk for that. Not now. What we’ve invented eliminates any need for – that sort of thing. It’s much better this way, you see.’
There was another silence. A trickle of rainwater seeped under the door. ‘I suppose,’ Worsley said at last, with a sort of snort, ‘that you are sitting there feeling hard done by. But you mustn’t flatter yourself. Blocking out organ-grinders, or helping old biddies to sleep, or preventing a lady’s digestion from distracting her companions … it is so trivial. A nice money-spinner, but that’s all. Who cares if the baby wakes? Insane asylums and Quaker meetings and concert halls – women’s business!’ He shot a malicious smile at Gower. ‘When it can do this … Just you wait. Sir Edward won’t just be a millionaire. He’ll be the most powerful man in England.’
‘And there may be other uses, too,’ Gower said. ‘If the other things in the diary are true. Surgical chambers. Religious buildings. It will be a – a blessing to mankind.’
‘The details are all secret, of course,’ Worsley said, ‘in spite of the announcement yesterday. You are honour-bound not to mention it. Not that we have competitors – the spiders are ours, and we have no intention of letting anyone else get their hands on them – but we will be announcing our new products in our own way, at our own pace.’
The rain went on hammering on the roof. The scent of water on bone-dry earth blew in on a chilly draught from the window.
Henry heard himself say, ‘And Sir Edward knows of all of this? He knew what you were doing, all along?’
‘Naturally he did. He employs us, does he not?’
Henry stood up, picked up his hat, and opened the door. A gust of rain hit his face as the noise rushed into his ears. It was falling so heavily the air seemed to be full of glass rods, drilling down, splintering on the standing water. His feet and ankles would be wet the moment he stepped out, and the rest of him would be drenched within a few seconds. But after all it did not matter, it did not seem real, there was still a kind of numbness under his skin. Worsley said, ‘We won’t see you again, I hope.’
He did not answer. He stepped into the yard, and cold flooded into his shoes and socks, climbing up his trousers so they clung to his calves. The ground had been baked hard by the long weeks of heat: now the water stood on the surface without soaking in, already a hand’s breadth deep. He walked, picking up his feet like a wading bird, towards the alley that led back to the main yard. The noise was so thick it was as though he had gone deaf: he could perceive no individual sounds, only a featureless, dizzying roar. But as he stepped into the alley he looked back. Gower was splashing after him, careless of his own wet feet. As he approached, Henry caught a few not-quite-overwhelmed syllables; then Gower was close enough to make himself heard above the storm and the machines. ‘You mustn’t think,’ he said, ‘you were in any real danger. You weren’t, I promise.’
Henry stared at him. The rain was driving under his hat. When he blinked, water trickled off his eyelashes and down his cheeks, and it took a heartbeat before he could see clearly again.
‘Even had he wanted to, I would not have allowed it,’ Gower said. ‘Please believe me. I would not have let him … kill you.’
Henry felt again the necktie under his chin, and saw the black clouds waiting to engulf him. He said nothing.
Gower chewed his lip, squirming a little, his spectacles spattered and the hair on his bare head beaten down by the rain. He said, ‘It isn’t our fault, you know. It isn’t. We are not bad men. It is men like Ashmore-Percy. The ones in control. We cannot stand up to them. No one can.’
Henry turned and trudged through the rising flood, his head lowered, without replying.
He crossed the threshold of the Angel like a survivor of a shipwreck: wet to the skin, and so chilled that he could hardly turn the handle of the door. He went to the bar and asked for brandy, mumbling through cold lips. Water crawled like lice over his scalp and down his face. The publican put a glass in front of him and he drank, hardly tasting it.
‘Christ, I need a drink,’ someone said behind him, with a grim sort of laugh. ‘This damned weather. Haven’t seen it this bad for years. Factory side of town it’ll be nosebleeds and headaches tonight, and suicides tomorrow.’
‘It’s not the suicides I’m worried about,’ another man said, ‘it’s the river. This rain, after the spring we’ve had … It’ll be coming down off the moors in torrents.’
‘Ah, well. I expect it’ll stop,’ the first voice said. ‘Glad I don’t live on Leat Street, though.’
‘They’ll be putting sandbags down in Sharland’s Court, I bet.’
Henry set his glass down. ‘A room,’ he said, and a maid showed him up a narrow staircase and into a dingy bedroom. He did not take off his wet clothes; he got into the bed as he was, and buried his face in the limp pillow, shivering as though his bones would break. He did not want to think, or feel. But he could not keep it at bay forever.
Sir Edward. Sir Edward, whom he loved. Whom he had – no, still loved, oh God, yes, still loved. That kiss, how could he forget that kiss, when he had dreamed of it for so long? Nor could he regret it. Or rather, if he had the choice to do it again or turn away – to take back what he had said … No, he would not. I love you. He would say it again. He would do it all again. He would do anything …
No. It was too late.
He did not want to believe that Sir Edward knew of the ghost cage. Surely he could not have known of the obscene experiments, the catatonic puppies, the child’s handprint on the floor of the laboratory. No, it was impossible. He was a decent man, full of humanity and generosity – he had said, take heart; he had been kind, he was kind …
But he must have known. Of course he had. Worsley had said as much. And the speech at Sub Rosa … An end to every crime of insubordination. Was that what he had meant?
Henry pushed his face deeper into the pillow, but it was no good. Miss Fielding had been right. If he had listened to her, instead of letting his own desires deafen him – his desires, and his ambition … The silk was an atrocity. He knew that now, and nothing else could ever be the same again: even the memory of Sir Edward’s mouth against his. He saw again the silk-covered windows of the east wing, and the little-old-man child who had crawled under the looms. No one would ever help it. No one cared.
He could not lie still, after that. He got to his feet and stumbled to the window, wanting to distract himself. It was later than he had realised, and the light was failing. The rain was still falling in sheets, pattering on the window pane so thickly he could hardly make out the buildings opposite. In spite of his efforts he thought of the women at the mill, sending their children to nurses who fed them syrup of opium to keep them quiet; he thought of Mercy’s boy, driven out of his mind by the noise of the machines; he thought of Philomel, deafened in the womb by an accident that had not been an accident.
In the room below, a raised voice cut through the hubbub of the public bar, followed by a mess of scraping chairs and footsteps. He peered through the window to see several men spill out into the street and hurry away down Silver Street, their heads lowered against the pouring rain. Another figure darted off in the other direction. It had fallen oddly quiet in the bar below.
After a moment he rang the bell. When the maid appeared he said, ‘What is happening?’ and when she looked blank he nodded at the window. ‘Where did they go?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes. Urgent call for men. They’re putting up barriers on Percy Street in case it floods. The silk warehouses.’
‘What about the factory?’
‘What about it?’
‘Is that in any danger? The mill leat—’
‘No. You ever seen in there? The leat’s got brick walls the height of a man. The water couldn’t get that high. Anyway, the Tell never floods as bad as the Exe.’
‘All right. Thank you,’ he said, and she left, shutting the door after her. What was he going to do? The question had been hanging in the air for as long as he’d been in this room, with the damp and the smell of wet wool; it was only now that he acknowledged it, and he couldn’t think of an answer. Well – go home. What else? Back to London. Back to Argyll. Back to the silent house and Madeleine dead and no child—
He was halfway across the room before he decided. Before he knew what he was doing he had stepped out of the door, banged the door behind him and was running down the stairs. He dived through the bar and out into the rain. The cold water stung his face; either it was icy cold, close to sleet, or he was feverish. He hunched his shoulders and battled through it, while the wind blew soaking gusts into his coat and drove drips down his collar.
He had not formulated a plan, but he knew where he was going. He could not rest anywhere else … He had not known what he was hoping for, until he’d asked whether the mill leat might flood: and then the leap of his heart, the flash of exhilaration, had told him. For that split second he had felt a savage joy at the prospect of destruction – the same that had crackled like fire when he imagined the bales of silk in the warehouses floating from their shelves and losing their glimmer in polluted water. He crossed the bridge and turned towards the factory gates – which were closed, of course. It was dark now, and the lanterns on their posts were dim and wavering, the glass streaming. He looked through the wrought-iron bars. He could not see any other light.
He shut his eyes. He could feel the echoes washing over him, carried like the pounding of the rain on the wind. It was like being drunk: the world slid away and resettled, again and again. How had he ever enjoyed the sensation? He grabbed for the gate, pulled himself up in a slippery scramble until he was straddling the topmost curlicue – appalled at both his lack of agility and his own daring – and dropped painfully down on the other side, ankle-deep into a puddle. It had happened so quickly he could not quite believe he had meant to do it: but here he was.
He paused for a moment, but the same sense of unreality cushioned him. He was not really here; he was not really trespassing on Sir Edward’s property; he was not really intending any harm … No one could see him. He was invisible in the wet rushing dark. He splashed a little way forward into the wide expanse of the yard, and with every step he grew more certain that no one would challenge him. The nightwatchmen, the repairmen who worked overnight, the rat-catcher – or whoever, he thought, conscious of how little he knew, after all, of the factory’s workings, whoever might ordinarily be here – had all been summoned to protect the warehouse. He was alone.
Nonetheless some instinct made him keep to the deepest patches of darkness as he skirted the yard and slid into the alley that led to the laboratory. His feet were so cold they had begun to go numb, and the noise echoed as though he was in a tunnel, coming from every side. He started to wonder if somehow he had lost his bearings. But just as the panic threatened to master him, he came out into the smaller yard. He waded forward – the water here was up to his knees – and understood why he had been so disorientated: the quiet flow of the leat had been transformed into a thundering torrent, so loud it caught in his throat and made his ears ache. There was no word for the cacophony, the growling wail, the suck and swirl and crunch. He put his hands up to block it out. With the sound deadened, he knew it was only the flood, carrying debris down from the moors. But abruptly he was afraid that the echoes would overwhelm him, and he struggled through the dragging water to the door of the laboratory.
