Restoration

mithridate which, in turn, has inflamed his eyes. He is, all in all, a wretched sight.

Though Quakers are not fond of sermons, Pearce lying on a straw mattress and dribbling mithridate into his nostrils, earnestly delivered himself of a sermon upon the perfidy of the Stuart Kings. 'None of them were,' he said, 'nor none will ever be worthy of the nation's trust. For the good of the nation is never first with them. What is first is their supposed Divinity that puts them outside or above the law, so that in all their actions they are accountable to no one, neither in their public nor their private life…'

While listening to this sermon, I found myself pondering not the truth or otherwise of Pearce's words, but my own absence of anger in the whole disastrous matter. Wounded, disappointed, afraid, melancholy: these I am. What I do not seem to be is angry. So, refraining from agreeing or disagreeing with Pearce's diatribe against the Stuarts, I simply burst out: 'Why do I not feel angry, Pearce?'

'John.'

'John. Why do I not feel angry, John?'

'Because you are a child.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'A child, punished by selfish parents, does not feel anger. It goes to its little private corner to weep. Exactly as you have done. And if the parents should again hold out their arms, why then the child will come running into them, all glad to be returned and forgiven for something it did only in answer to their greed.'

'But Pearce – '

'Just as, if the King were to call you back, you would go running!'

'He will not call me back. It is quite finished.'

'No. But were he to do so, you would go. And this is how it is revealed to me that you are still a child, Robert. But, mercifully for you, your state of homelessness brought you to Whittlesea. Our task here is to cure you of childishness just as we are trying to cure the lunatics of their insanity. For the man in you could be most splendid, Robert. I saw the shaping of the man – before you reverted to being the child – and it is that man we shall restore to you.'

I glanced down at Pearce. I noticed that by him on the floor, within reach of his cadaverous fingers, he had placed his precious soup ladle. And I smiled.

After that first night, I found that Pearce was not interested in discussing my past life or my loss of it. He wished me to put it out of my mind, as speedily as possible and so from the following day (during which I was given the drab clothes I have described for you) I was expected to join in the work of the Keepers exactly as if I were one of them and a born Quaker.

'Robert is well qualified to help us,' Pearce announced to Ambrose, Edmund, Hannah, Eleanor and Daniel over our dawn breakfast of barley and water porridge. 'He is not squeamish or frail. He claims to have forgotten medicine, but I know that he has not. So let us give thanks to Christ that He has sent Robert to us and ask Him to sustain him in the work we shall find for him to do.'

There followed prayers of touching simplicity. 'Lord, send a light to show Robert the way,' said Ambrose. 'Dear Jesus, be with Robert,' said Eleanor. 'God in Heaven, take Robert's hand and be at his side,' said Hannah. 'And even when night comes, still be at his side,' said Daniel. 'Amen,' said Edmund.

I look round at the little company. Alas, I think, they do not know me. I am John's friend, and he has vouched for me and so they have taken me in. But they do not know how afraid I am. They do not know that I have long been parted from God. They do not know there is a madness in me which renders grass and trees as lunatic lines and splodges. They have taken me in to Bedlam, but they do not know that my spirit rejoices in chaos. I am wrong for them and I will do them wrong, and they do not know it. I opened my mouth to begin upon telling them what kind of man I was, but no words came to me except mumbled words of thanks for their prayers, 'for which,' I told them, 'I hope to make myself worthy.' And I saw Pearce nod approvingly at my sudden humility.

And so my first day at Whittlesea began. In the company of Ambrose and Hannah I was taken on a tour of the Hospital. The rain I had been spared on my journey was now drenching the featureless plain, swept into squalls by the wind.

As Ambrose unbolted the door of George Fox and it swung inwards, I, all unthinkingly, hurried in to be out of the wet and so drew suddenly upon myself the nervous glance of some forty men lying in two cluttered rows the length of the barn.

At once, a commotion began. Some of the men stood up. I saw one clutch the hand of another, as if in fear. Some laughed. Others moved forward and stared at me, as at a strange exhibit. One rolled up his filthy nightshirt and giggled and bared his buttocks that were covered in sores. The stench of the place was very bad, the night pails being full and all the 'Decayed Friends' (as Ambrose termed the mad people) appearing lousy and unwashed. But none was shrieking or crying, as I has been told the mad of the London Bedlam did constantly. None was chained up, but could move freely about the big barn. And they were not in darkness. Four small, barred windows let sufficient light into the place for me to see that at the further end of it had been constructed a gallery, reached by two ladders and on this high gallery stood an enormous loom.

'I see there is a loom,' I said to Ambrose. 'Do these men weave things upon it?'

'Yes,' said Ambrose, rubbing his large hands together. 'The loom. Transported by cart from the workhouse shut down at Lynn.'

My thoughts, which the man with the naked bottom still sought to preoccupy by jigging up and down in front of me, returned at once to Justice Hogg and my lost role as Overseer. Now, I would never succour the poor but serve the mad instead. But there appeared to be little difference between these two categories of people, many of the faces staring up at me having about them the same look of despair as I had perceived in the paupers gathering sticks near Bidnold.

'What is manufactured on the loom?' I enquired of Ambrose.

'Sail!' he said.

'Sailcloth? For Men-of-War?'

'No, Robert. For the fishing fleet at Lynn. They send us herrings in payment.'

Ambrose then addressed the occupants of George Fox. He spoke to them kindly, as to a child, and they were mainly silent while he talked except for two at the further end who began to swear at each other in some of the foulest language I have ever heard. Ambrose instructed the men to roll up their pallets and take their slop pails to the cess pit and to put out the trestles for breakfast. I know now that this same routine is followed every morning, but Amrbose gave the instructions with great enthusiasm, as if he were announcing some happy new tiding. And indeed, when he had finished, one old man, around whose scrawny limbs were wound a great quantity of bandages, began to applaud. And Ambrose nodded at him and smiled. He then said: 'And I will tell you now that great good fortune has come to Whittlesea. Behold Robert. He has come from Norfolk to help us all in our work for the Lord. Say his name to yourselves. Say Robert. And keep the name precious. Because he is your Friend.'

The company then, to my embarrassment, started to mumble my name over and over again. Almost all were saying it, except one who began to utter a small piercing noise resembling very well the cry of the peewit. I did not know what was expected of me in the way of words, so I said nothing but performed a little obeisance such as I used to perfect before a looking glass in my Whitehall days. And I followed Ambrose out and we walked in the rain to Margaret Fell.

We found Hannah and Eleanor here. The pallets had been rolled away and the night pails emptied and bowls of cold water had been brought, in which the women of Margaret Fell were washing their faces and hands with a blackish soap. They were about thirty-five in number and of all ages, the youngest being no more than twenty or twenty-five.

'Tell me,' I whispered to Ambrose, as I was shown the carding combs and spinning wheels with which the women worked to produce a grey lumpy yarn that was made into mops, 'how have such young people been brought to madness?'

'By a hundred ways, Robert,' he replied. 'Madness is brother and sister to misfortune, not to age. Poverty is a prime cause. Abandonment another. We have one here, Katharine, who was deserted by her young husband in the middle of the night and now she will not, cannot, sleep and all her madness is from the exhaustion of her brain and body.'

'Which one is Katharine?'

'There, washing her neck. With her clothes very torn. For this is what she does in the night: sits and tears to