Page 23 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

—O— ARTHUR

By the River Thames, 1871–2

T he months following the lecture at the Society of Biblical Archaeology rush by in a blur. Arthur receives invitations to speak at educational societies, and his company is requested at gentlemen’s clubs. They greet him politely, these men with silk cravats and suave manners, inviting him into their smoking rooms. He tastes delicacies he has never heard of, partaking in twelve-course meals served on fine porcelain. Roast goose, lobster salad, rabbit pudding, turtle soup, the last of which he struggles to eat once he learns it is cooked by removing the turtle’s head and then dropping the rest of the animal into boiling water, complete with its shell.

In the houses of the wealthy he marvels at gilded mirrors, golden candelabra, solid-silver cutlery, and sips champagne served in opaline flutes … As he admires the paintings on the walls, he wonders how the old masters would have depicted the settings in which he now fortuitously finds himself. Meanwhile, keen to converse with him, people flock to his side. Neatly coiffed women in swathes of silk and satin smile when he stammers and blushes at their compliments – his shyness and awkwardness rendering him all the more endearing.

Week after week, Arthur raises toasts and shares desserts with bankers, lawyers, politicians and philanthropists, but, deep down, he feels increasingly frustrated. For, even though everyone pronounces his lecture a success and congratulates him for deciphering the cuneiform, his mind is on the missing portion of the Flood Tablet, lost somewhere in Nineveh.

It is on one of those evenings, at a house in The Boltons, that he is introduced to a fetching young woman. Mabel comes from a solid, well-to-do family, and, while she has had some education, she is not especially well read. But she seems intrigued by him, and curious about his work. Her smile is unaffected, and her flawless alabaster skin, flushed with warmth, makes her eyes sparkle. When she talks her speech is fast yet hesitant, and her hands idly touch her throat as if checking her words one last time before they leave her. Arthur is aware that his colleagues and friends are trying to matchmake, and does not question or resist it when he keeps running into her in different settings, by seeming coincidence, certain that she will soon tire of his eccentricities and reticence towards her, though she shows no sign of doing so.

As Arthur spends more time in middle-class circles, he becomes aware of something about them that he did not know previously: their preoccupation with marital bliss and domestic life. Neither the slum dwellers who struggle every day to keep body and soul together nor, he suspects, aristocrats, interested as they are in preserving their inheritance and fortunes, share this notion of marriage as a romantic ideal, almost to the point of holiness. Over and over he is told that the matrimonial home is an Englishman’s personal fortress against the entire world. But Arthur has far more pressing matters on his mind. There is not a single day, not a single hour, that is not dominated by the Mesopotamian tablets.

He doesn’t have words to convey that most marriages seem unhappy to him, and, if not unhappy, then tedious, bleak and repetitive. In any event the appeal of many women is a mystery to him. He has never tried to draw their attention, make himself special in their eyes. For the truth is, he has long accepted that this is the way with him; he could easily spend a whole life without touching another human being.

One gusty autumnal afternoon, as the church clock strikes two, Arthur receives a summons from the editor of the Daily Telegraph . He attends the meeting expecting yet another hour of empty prattle, planning to leave as early as he can. But, to his astonishment, the man informs him that the newspaper would like to sponsor an archaeological excavation. They are ready to offer a thousand guineas. To give others a fair chance, they will run an advertisement asking volunteers to come forward and then select the best candidate. This is a mere formality, as far as the editor is concerned, because he can think of no one more suitable for the task than Arthur himself.

All week long, Arthur waits for the advertisement to appear and, as soon as it does, he dashes off a letter. A few days later, the newspaper announces that ‘the genius from the slums of Chelsea’ has been chosen for the enterprise.

For the first time in his life Arthur feels like the Fates, the trio of capricious goddesses who weave the destinies of mortals, are smiling down on him. He takes a six-month leave of absence from the British Museum and starts making preparations. Only then, as he sets out to calculate the price of each item needed for the journey, does he realize that the funds offered, which sounded so generous at first, are actually rather limited. He must be careful with his personal budget, including his food expenses. But it does not matter. Intent on his goal, he is ready to set off for the land of Gilgamesh. King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums will finally reach the banks of the River Tigris.

Mabel’s father is struck by the brilliance and potential of the young man his daughter is seeing. He expects Arthur to return from Nineveh either with a considerable fortune or great fame, or, ideally, both. He contrives a separate meeting with him, urging him to propose to his daughter before he heads off for exotic lands. It is steadying, he says, for a young man on his travels to know that someone waits for him back home, an anchor of sorts, otherwise a fellow might simply drift. A woman needs this solidity, too, a course for the future securely mapped out. At his prompting, the couple take a boat trip on the Cherwell, with Mabel’s younger brother playing gooseberry. Arthur watches as the sun dapples her dress under the frilled parasol, making patterns like water, swirling, dreamlike. At first they sit in a companionable silence that is only interrupted by polite remarks about the weather and the scenery. But soon Mabel starts peppering Arthur with questions. She sounds like she shares his passion for travel – a similar thirst for adventure, for the unknown, confined as she is to a world where everything feels too familiar. As they are disembarking, he holds her gloved hand as a courtesy and, to his surprise, she lets her fingers linger for a few moments. Slowly and without preamble, she draws closer, so close that Arthur can see the golden flecks in her blue irises. She gives him the smallest of kisses on his lips.

Arthur is stunned. He feels obliged to say something nice, but what that could be he has no idea. He stammers, ‘Thank you for liking me, but I’m not very likeable.’

Mabel laughs, and, although her laughter has a tinkling quality like glass bells, Arthur loses the courage or the will to say anything else. When he replays this moment in his mind later, he convinces himself that it is healthy to forge a connection with another human, perhaps even start a family, just as riverside willows dipping their boughs into the current might feel less alone. And, though he cannot quite conjure up the image of himself as a doting spouse, and he fears he will fail to match Mabel’s expectations, he yearns for a stable home life, a sense of belonging. An ideal engagement should last no more than twelve months, he is told, and in that time Arthur will be back from Nineveh.

Towards the end of the month, arrangements complete and goods packed, there is one more thing he needs to do before leaving London: he must visit his mother. Even though his requests to see her have been declined since she entered the sanatorium, now that he is famous, suddenly, he is allowed to visit her.

On Thursday morning he takes a carriage to the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell, on the outskirts of London: an imposing red-brick building with two wings and sash windows, nestled in the middle of a barren garden behind high walls. Arthur presents himself to the gatekeeper, who records in a logbook the entrances and exits of every visitor. Once registered, he climbs down from the carriage and proceeds on foot. Over the past decades, there has been an increasing need for mental hospitals, accelerated by the spread of syphilis. More than sixty new facilities have been built. This is said to be one of the best in the country.

Inside he is greeted by the doctor in charge of the ward and a middle-aged nurse with lips so thin and brittle that her smile resembles a wound. Not that she smiles that often. But the doctor, a stout man, his face barnacled with moles, seems a jolly chap, perhaps too jolly given his location. He has heard that Arthur’s lecture was attended by the prime minister and wished to meet him personally. But, for once, Arthur has no desire to discuss the Mesopotamian tablets. All he wants to talk about is his mother.

‘Well, I’d say, it is a typical case of melancholy,’ says the doctor.

‘And how exactly would that be defined?’

The physician explains that in a recently published article on insanity by his esteemed colleague Dr Blandford, four different types of melancholy have been identified: gloomy, restless, mischievous and self-complacent. Each has a different root cause, and thus requires its own treatment.

‘Which one afflicts my mother?’ Arthur asks.

‘Restless melancholy,’ replies the man firmly.

‘And is that very bad?’

‘A rather precarious combination, I am afraid. The restlessness exhausts the mind, making it extremely hard to quieten down. Meanwhile the melancholy, an unreasonable sadness, paralyses the body. It is almost like being pulled in two opposing directions at the same time.’

Arthur wonders if sadness can ever be unreasonable. What if it has its own reasons, even if they may not be obvious to others? He asks tentatively, ‘Has she shown no signs of improvement since she was admitted?’

‘It will take time,’ is all the doctor says.

They usher Arthur into the bowels of the building. He treads long, dimly lit corridors, hearing murmurs from behind the walls. He catches glimpses of the patients, some shuffling around, others confined to their beds or restrained by harnesses, more than a few with their heads shaved.

‘Lice,’ says the nurse. ‘A terrible nuisance. There is no other way to deal with it.’

‘But why are some chained up?’ asks Arthur.

‘They must be. Otherwise, they’d injure themselves.’

The same nurse warns him that his mother has tried this desperate path several times, cutting her fingers on broken glass and pulling her hair out in clumps. He should not be surprised to find straps around her ankles.

A claw of anxiety clutching at him, Arthur follows the nurse into a room with iron bars on the windows. He halts, barely breathing. There are eight patients in here, and he almost does not recognize her amongst them. It is not so much her body that has changed as her eyes. There is an emptiness in her gaze, the irises almost swallowed up by the darkness of her pupils. A brokenness to her expression, which reminds him of the cracks cutting deep into river mud. In front of her rests a tray topped with leaves plucked from a horse chestnut tree. One by one, she picks them up, smooths them out, sets them to one side. She seems immersed in the task, although she does look up when he approaches.

‘Mother … It’s me, Arthur. I have come to see you.’

Her face brightens a little.

‘You seem well,’ Arthur says. His brow crumples as he struggles to find the words. ‘The doctor said you are doing fine. I attempted to visit you many times before, but they always told me to wait until you were feeling better … you must have improved a lot, because here I am.’

He wishes, with an excruciating yearning, for her to say something in response. But she doesn’t. There is a sluggishness to her posture, a listlessness so palpable that he doubts whether the doctor has any right to call her state of mind restless . If anything, she looks quiescent, sedated.

He had planned to tell her about Mabel and their recent courting, if it can be called that. But instead he finds himself relating the story of Gilgamesh and his insatiable quest, his sense of disquietude, which carries him to the ends of the world. As he speaks, some of the other patients draw closer to listen. For a moment it feels as if they are sitting around a sparkling, popping fire in the open air, the wind laced with smoke and words, held together by a common thread of narrative. It feels ancient somehow.

‘I will soon be travelling to find the missing lines of the poem,’ Arthur says. ‘I won’t be able to visit you for a while. I’m going east – to Ottoman territory. They say the sultan’s harem has four hundred and forty women.’

Someone chuckles. Not his mother.

‘Wish me luck, will you? When I return to London, perhaps the British Museum will promote me. Then I will have a proper salary and I will get you out of here. You will have clean bedsheets, fresh bread every day. A scullery maid! She will light the fire in the mornings and your hands won’t be cold any more.’

Outside the barred window a branch rustles, as if trying to break in – maybe the same horse chestnut tree whence the leaves came, demanding the return of its foliage. It starts to rain – a thin, sullen drizzle.

‘I want you to be proud of me,’ Arthur says. And, even though he can see his mother is slowly drifting off, her movements and gestures sluggish, he cannot help talking animatedly, as if words might have some power, an invigorating influence upon the soul.

‘I remember when I first saw you, Mum. I remember the sound of the river, the freezing wind, the snow falling from the sky … You were so beautiful … you are always beautiful.’

From his pocket Arthur pulls a small, wooden object. He has whittled a tiny lamassu . A lovely, lively creature, though it does not match the craftsmanship of Mesopotamian artists. But it is a guardian spirit, and he will place it by his mother’s side to protect her when he leaves London.

In three days he will be on his way to Nineveh.