Actaeon's Staircase

Now husband and wife. We picked our way among the sodden earth and toppled graves stepping out onto shifting wet leaves.  The Reverend sealed the church doors behind us. The chill bit and chewed upon our ears.  A shudder rolled down the length of me. The trees, birdless and slender, their clean lines, black and sharpened to a point, appeared to turn their backs. A vixen, mating, screamed far off in the distance.

We emerged from behind our mask of spiny branches.  Onesiphorus saw the manor first. His eyes were immediately caught in its shadow. No longer shielded, the white gloom of the sun hurt my eyes. The jointed fingers of the iron gate seemed to recede and curl back to allow for the front door to dominate our line of sight.

The house belonged to my new father in law, Coleman Senior, and if I could have seized my husband’s hand at that moment and run from that inhospitable fortress I would have. Coleman had been experiencing significant health problems. It had been implied that he would step down from the physical and mental rigours of work, to allow my husband full control of the firm and oversee the management of the estate. I knew that an arrangement which allowed Onesiphorus to keep his ageing parent cosseted within the bosom of his new family sat well with his conscience, and his heart. At this thought of him, my face naturally swung towards his looking for some indication of feeling.  We smiled, thankful for one another. Wordless joy turned to laughter and my fear momentarily subsided as he lifted me off my feet and carried me up the steps.

Coleman stepped into this moment filling the whole doorway with his presence. I was dropped back to my feet.  I saw as the Senior’s small hidden eyes cast a downward glance towards his poor son it was quite honestly beneath him to give mutual recognition to a fellow living creature.  

‘Papa?’ Onesiphorus offered.

I felt the need to place myself between him and my husband. I held up my hand, brandishing the ring, picturing his little wrinkled head being snipped off between my fingers.

‘We are back from church,’ my husband persisted. ‘It was a beautiful service’

Still, Coleman said nothing. His stare was unflinching.

‘Now what about breakfast?’ I continue, ignoring this attempt at intimidation. ‘I’m famished.’

‘Yes, let’s eat!’ said Onesiphorus. Sounding like a man who would agree to anything, so long as he wouldn’t have to continue looking up at his father maintaining that ridiculous, excessive, look on his face.

I proceed with forced confidence, giving the impression I would be willing to bowl the man over if necessary.   A hairy hand shot out like a bolt across the door frame, I saw that Coleman wore a ring fashioned out of a molar plated in gold. I’m sure I did little to hide my distaste. I pictured some poor unfortunate, the nameless lackey, perhaps a diamond miner, who must have unwillingly surrendered his tooth bent over a barrel with Coleman’s boot on his arse, pair of pliers in hand. Who would wear such a thing, and why? He saw this question in my look and grinned.

‘Kiss your, Papa.’

I leaned in, keeping a fist between his chest and mine. He squeezed my wrist hard so that I was forced to flatten my hand against him. ‘Closer’ he said. I obeyed though not one muscle in my hand relaxed. ‘Better...’ he added, through a restrained snarl. I pressed his rough cheek with my tight lips, in the same manner, I would squash a greenfly with the top of my thumb. I smiled in an attempt to consolidate some agreement to which I didn’t know the terms.

‘You will do better.’ He said. Then sagged away from the door and tumbled back ever deeper, I imagined, into the pitch bottomless depths of the house. I held out my hand for Oneshiporus to take it. Instead, his shaking hand went to his forehead.

‘Let's go in.’

‘We don’t have to.’ I say.  ‘You don’t need the firm.’

‘Don’t be absurd! I would have nothing to give you . . .’

That was the first time I witnessed any resemblance to his father in him. That same deep-seated, boiling reproach. Something learned rather than innate. I looked out at the cloud-blank sky and filled my lungs with the crystal-furred air. I thought about myself as an old woman standing on this very porch. Certainly, any chance at another life had been receding from our grasp from the beginning. First through contrived invitations to afternoon teas, formal dinners, soirees. Then a ring, then there we were on bended knee before God. The course had been set months ago and the last fading view of the divergent path now vanished with the closing of the door behind us.

We had let the winter sun creep in behind us upon our return from the church. Now, in the light of day, I could see the true state of my inherited domain. Every shaft of light seemed to reveal some new form of neglect or decay. I removed my glove only to disturb dust, or discover some island of sticky sugary gum formed from spilt alcohol or an unpleasant surprise of grease.  I resented the Coleman coat of arms above the fireplace with his grimly life-like portrait underneath. A suit of armour with the helmet and right gauntlet missing stood directly in the path of the cloakroom, as such any capes and frock coats had just been slung over the top where the head should be. I made my way from the hall deeper into the heart of the house.  Flock patterned walls continued to twist away from me, there was always some new door, or some dour new painting or trinket; a broken cricket bat, a silver sugar dish, a pair of ladies’ lorgnettes yellow gold and painted with white apple blossom, some rusty trimming scissors, just lying abandoned, forgotten, missed by no one. There was one door right at the end of an especially narrow passage it was carved with mockingly Arthurian-looking swords and a Latin inscription – I traced the markings with my fingers, the moto had something to do with the words ‘Courage’ and ‘Darkness’ as far as I was able to make out. My hand was on the brass handle, all but ready to venture into the unknown when I heard my husband calling. With relief I caught my breath, somehow I found a way to answer and hurried towards his call.

*

That last Breakfast seemed so blissfully perfect, a glimpse of what our lives might have been. We ate so heartily, scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, french toast. I poured Onesiphorus his tea. His hand rested on mine as I placed the pot back on the table, it looked as though some great weight had been taken from his shoulders. We talked about Paris, the honeymoon we had planned to take after the papers for the business had been signed and everything made official. We talked about doing up the house. The estate, raising the standard of living for all of the tenants. There would be no attention great or small that would be considered undeserving of our care.  What with the weather and the excitement of it all we were both famished, feeling loathe to disturb the servants again, since we were both of us, quite capable, Onesiphorus had just stood to go and get us both a second helping. We were joking that I had tricked him into it and that it would be my turn next. Then the door opened. It was Krell, Coleman’s physician – a bony, stunted, child-like sort of man, prone to making odd little clicks and grunts. He looked at me then to my husband.

‘Well . . . might we be of some assistance?’ I prompted, finding the suspense all too much.  

‘ . . .Yes come, come, your father . . . very ill.’

The stairs far from being some discreet access route to my father-in-law’s apartments were immense. The oak was so seasoned the wood looked almost ebony. The bannisters were fashioned like stag’s antlers. When one looked closer one saw that carved into the supporting post was a man and the antlers were growing out of his head. This then was, Actaeon, the Grecian hunter; after inadvertently shamming and angering the goddess Diana, she had turned him into a stag only then for him to be hunted to the death by his own men and hounds. He had no voice to call to them, he knew no mercy. The second segment of bannisters which veered round to the left showed the actual hunt. Out of the posts, the hounds leapt with teeth and lolling tongues and murderous men’s arms grabbed Actaeon’s antlers. The pity hit me, the hopelessness of it. Diana’s power, her entitlement; though perhaps Actaeon’s sense of entitlement had been the same as this Goddess - and so his downfall. Diana then had merely been shown a mirror.  I looked back down towards Acteon’s horrified face. I saw the inevitability of it all.

Coleman’s chambers. The smell, urine, damp, sickness, sweat, all this assault on the senses, before my eyes had even adjusted to the darkness. Onesiphorus sensibly went straight to the curtains. They went right to the floor and he had to use his whole body to push them back. Light flooded in, the room I knew at once, had, at one time, been very fine. A woman’s quarters filled I imagined, with porcelain figurines of Seventeenth-Century courtiers. On the nightstand, there would have been a gold-gilded picture frame of a single laughing, happy boy. A long, bulbous silver filigree locket filled with the boy’s curled black hair would have hung suspended from the mirror frame on the days when it went unworn. There would have been a walnut dressing table covered with perfume bottles, sprigs of dried lavender inside linen. A tea table with bone china cups and sugar spoons. A writing slope and ink well for the trying days, for reaching out to relatives far away.  Piles of books too, some for serious days to indulge earnest enquiry. Books to remember the time before any mistakes had been made when everything in life was still before and nothing behind.  Others would speak purely of longing, perhaps crafted to quicken the pulse, or more innocently, contain the dislocated meandering thoughts of one isolated soul, most feeling, most aware and sensitive, reaching out to another, in need of some new light.  Now gloom and dust mingled with trails of detritus which spread from end to end. If there was a cup left off, it was broken, one looked to see a plant, some shred of green and it was dead, all trace of green had long since drained out. Chamber pot unemptied, ashtray overflowing, papers torn, crumpled written words, sentences unfinished, ink pots spilt, pens broken in two, glasses smashed, linen soiled, unspeakable squalor.

Coleman was sitting up in a chair his coat slung over the back, his collar loosened. He was indeed ill - though it would have been difficult to tell from looking at him what the matter might be. His wide shoulders squaring off the top of his thick frame made him look as though he would be impervious to most injury.  

I turned accusingly to Krell, perhaps a little too eager to flaunt my new status in front of Coleman, ‘What mean you, allowing my father-in-law to reside this filth, it could hardly be thought advantageous to his health.’

Krell was speechless.

‘I can only second my wife’s sentiment’s Krell, this simply won’t do at all. I don’t wish to embarrass my father further here by pointing out the obvious in this deplorable situation but is it any wonder, my father is so unwell? it’s a wonder the man can even breathe!’

And as my husband spoke thus in support of me, I watched as Coleman slowly rose from his slumped position I could see his clenched jaw and a wormy little vein pulsing in his temple.

‘Get her out of here.’

So spoke a man who knew his word was law. He did even not have to raise his voice.

‘But father . . .’

‘Do as I say.’

And with Coleman’s blessing, Krell was emboldened enough to escort me to the door from the elbow.

‘Take your hands off me. I can escort myself if you please!’

‘Forgive me, Mrs Coleman’

‘Don’t you lay a finger on her, Krell! Father, I beg you.'

I dug my heels into the carpet to make it harder for Krell to shift my weight.

Onesiphorus turned to his father ‘Eleanor is my wife now, already she has made me bolder. Did you imagine I would not open my heart?’

The puppet Krell had finally battled me to the edge of the room, the door was closed abruptly behind me.  The voices were quiet now inside, the walls thick. I had no hope of hearing. Instead, I sat upon the great staircase and mused upon the fear in Actaeon’s eyes, feeling the same surge within myself. A servant, crossing the hall, started a little when she saw me sitting like some little girl lost. I fine sight, I must have made. The mistress of the house, aimless, friendless with nothing better to do on her wedding day. Her eyes were fixed upon me as she walked. I could tell she did not mean to stare so I looked down again and pretended not to see.

I wondered if there could be any change in Actaeon’s fate. If at any point he could have fought against Diana’s power. If he could have done or said anything that would have altered Diana’s opinion of him - could he have beguiled her? Seduced her? Challenged her? Could he have halted his transformation, reversed the will of the Gods? Or, what if he had outrun his men, what if they had seen that his eyes did not belong to a stag at all, but to their master? What if they had heard the pain reverberating between his vocal cords?   

*

I was already in bed when Onesiphorus returned to me, what he and his father could have been discussing for so long I could not imagine though I assumed clearing the air at this juncture would work to everyone’s advantage come morning. In the darkness it took me a moment to realise that my husband was limping towards the bed and clutching himself like a man lost in the desert, not believing he had found a real oasis. I logically told myself this was the result of overwhelming tiredness, I sat up on my knees and started to help him off with his clothes. In a manner which seemed uncharacteristically off-hand, he attempted to swipe me away once or twice, preferring to struggle himself. Blaming sleepiness and confusion I ignored this and continued. Coatless and unbuttoned I couldn’t help but run my hands inside his open shirt against his hair, his cool skin, my body ached for his, my hands moved outwards across his chest confirming for myself his capacity to enfold and protect me, he was all I would ever want. Unthinkingly, my hand moved inwards now to rest in the well above his heart. What I felt made my blood run cold, fumbling I reached for the lamp and pulled it towards us. The light revealed that my husband had a cross-shaped wound, neatly stitched. Streams of dried blood had poured from each of the tips like newborn veins and spilt down one side of his ribs. I would have screamed only my husband stopped me with a violent and hungry kiss. He took the lamp from me and placed it on the side, we pressed ourselves against each other desperately licking up the last traces of love residue that Krell’s scalpel had left behind. Come morning when the night’s darkness had receded back into the walls and we saw each other’s exquisite nakedness. Onesiphorus felt only emptiness, and I, his coldness.

In a single stroke, Coleman Senior had brought his fist crashing down and decimated us. Onesiphorus and I sat down to breakfast just as the day before, in similar dress, with the same food, sitting with the same view out of the window overlooking the lawn. Yet the happiness of yesterday, it seemed, was not even a recent memory for my husband. He had the same beautiful face, though he had not brushed his hair and the morning’s growth of whiskers still shaded his jaw. His movements were, slow, small. Our plates were set down on the table. Onesiphorus picked up his fork in a manner that suggested he had never so much as even held one before as if he knew it should remind him of something that was already floating away from him, already worlds away.    

‘Onesiphorus?’

He gave no response.

‘Onesiphorus, eat your food, Darling. While it’s nice and hot.’

He did not stir.

I rang the bell. Kitty, The Coachman’s ward, entered. ‘Yes M’Lady?’ I motioned for her not say anything, my face must have betrayed my anxiety.

Accordingly, she looked from me to Onesiphorus, ‘Sir?’

My husband had dropped the cutlery now, he was slumped back in his seat, staring at nothing.

‘Kitty, my husband is not well. Go and fetch Dr Krell.’

‘Yes, M’am.’

With a brisk courtesy, she backed out the door and ran. I knew that her urgency would make no difference. I did not even rush to prompt Onesiphorus into life with a glass of water. I sat and stared trying to find some sign of the man I knew, thinking of some way to reverse Coleman’s doing, knowing there was no such way to reverse this physical raid upon his person, he would forever be this way.

Kitty flew into the room, ‘M’am?’ breathless.

‘Tell me’.

‘He’s gone!’

‘Coleman is Dead?’

‘Krell, Madam, I spoke with the master’s man. He said that Krell had left early this morning, on business . . .’

 ‘Business?’

‘He said that all the papers had been signed . . . he said that Krell was the master now.’

 ‘My God . . .’

The floor began to sway beneath my feet, such dread in the pit of my stomach, ‘Some water my lady?’ Kitty helped me to a seat and as I drank from the glass my eyes turned sideways towards the shell of my husband.

As though I were a stranger he leaned in close and asked ‘Are you quite well, My lady? Are you lost? And in the next instant ‘Really Eleanor, you shouldn’t make such a fuss!’ I ran from the dinning-room deep into the most forsaken recesses of the house. I passed the bottom of Actaeon’s staircase feeling compelled to make my way back to the little room with the carved door, I don’t know what business I had going there, it was someplace abandoned and uncared for. Perhaps then, a fitting place to let go of my sorrows. When I reached the door I noticed another part of the carving I hadn’t glimpsed before, a pictogram of sorts, an outstretched hand holding a knot of fraying rope. This time I attempted the handle in earnest, it was locked.

*                                                                                                                                                             

For weeks I lived in a cycle of grief, keeping to my room, not bothering to dress, staring out the window down at the driveway, waiting for letters, a messenger, some hope, some change that would never come. There was no riddle here, I knew the nature of the assault which had been so mercilessly carried out. Coleman had Krell cut out my husband's heart so that he might use his flesh and invigorate his own. When one met Coleman one saw he was completely capable of such monstrosity. The question now was, how could such an act be challenged and our fortunes reversed?

Life has a way of falling into routine despite what sadness presides over one’s hearth. I busied myself restoring the house to some sense of former glory. I told myself that one day Onesiphorus would awaken, that he would appreciate the bright walls, the vases of flowers and fresh linen or the fires in the hearth, I found too that the staff became an extended family I otherwise might not have had. I never spoke about my husband’s misfortune and they never questioned me. We even ate together downstairs and they were very supportive in my desire to learn more about running the estate. First, I learned how to keep the books, in a year or two we were running at a profit from all the various sources of income we took from farm produce and the livery and so on. I was able to increase wages and do up the workers’ cottages. Krell knew all about these enterprises, of course, but would not dare make an issue of it to my face.  As such, I was able to keep the promise that Onesiphorus and I had made. I was only sad that he did not know to be proud of me.

Since Krell was now the proprietor of the company he saw to it that Onesiphorus be given a job on the factory line in the Rubber Division. He would stumble in from work, his hands covered in deep nicks and smeared with black rubber from head to foot. He would deposit his meagre wage packet into my hand not even knowing what it was for. My one consolation was that Coleman Senior kept out of my way. He did not make any demands upon my behaviour or seem to expect any income from the estate. We had no rightful claim and often I would wonder that he should make this aspect of his betrayal so easy for us to bear, but then I would remember the price we had paid and all such concessionary thoughts evaporated from my mind. At worst, I would occasionally spy him from a window galloping across the meadow, gun in hand with some poor assassinated creature slung over his shoulders, looking healthier then I had ever seen him, like a man half his age.

One evening I was washing Onesiphorus’s hands in the bath when he moved my head up to study my face. Onesiphorus of old would have done this when he was moved by some urgent desire in his soul to feel me close. Be it a time of deep anxiety or great happiness. Any time he did not have enough words. Now though, when he said the word “Eleanor” there was no feeling behind it, but on this occasion he looked at me, pleading with me, knowingly, like he once again, perhaps even, at least only momentarily, recognised that the world for him had been blocked.

‘That’s right, My Darling. It’s Eleanor. Can you remember? Do you remember anything of what was done to you?’

Nothing. And then . . .

‘Eleanor is a silly little bitch, Onesiphorus! She’s a whore!

I was shocked initially, distraught, and then I realised . . .

‘Tell me more about your wife . . .’ I say.

‘Wife! You think I wouldn’t do some digging around, see what I’m wasting my money on? Some say, the bitch is really a Frenchman’s bastard and that the fortune isn’t even hers, certainly nothing compared to what it might have been . . .’

‘He’s lying.’ I say. Knowing he couldn’t hear.  

Connections . . . You defied ME! YOUR FATHER, you think, I’m going to just hand it all over? You weak, ugly little worm! Look at you, begging, making excuses . . .  Krell, do what you have to do. Let’s put an end to it.’ At this point he started to wrestle with the memory, ‘No, no, don’t do this, don’t . . . must get his key, must stop . . .’

‘Calm yourself Onesiphorus, you’re safe now, tell me what key? Who has the key?’

‘Krell, his fingers, icy cold . . .’

‘Of course . . .’

My mind was racing.  I quickly saw my husband into bed. I knew I would not wait for Krell to return. Explanations seemed less important to me than the chance of restoring Onesiphorus to his former self. I went directly to the kitchen and called upon the men, the Coachman, the Smithy and his lad accompanied me.

‘So old, don’t need no key, bit o’ brute should do it.’ One shove from the solid Smithy and we were through. He cast an eye over the carved panels, ‘All flounce and no strength, look.’

It took a moment for us to take stock. We now found ourselves in some sort of unfurnished antechamber, flagstones, walls, unfinished, backed onto a room, equally pitiful. There were several stacks of books piled up and toppled over. Many of them had grown fat having taken on water from the damp in the walls. An engorged and brittle engraving of Donne emerged from the top of one pile, claiming sorry ownership of the now indistinguishable pulp between the two spineless folds of board and frayed cloth. I stuffed his image back down under the cover pressing down harder than was required.  John, the Coachman still back in the antechamber, spied a sink with a sluice and draining board above a set of cabinets.

‘What’s this then?’

He nudged the cabinet doors open with the roughly spit-polished toe of his boot. Inside was a jar, against the light the glass looked grimy and through it, the world appeared to fall and slide vertically down in a way that left nothing to cling to.

The organ, pickling as was in its slick and suckering yellow womb-fluid, seemed worm-eaten, like an apple from the inside out, but worse, whole pieces of flesh had piled up in flakes on the bottom of the jar and now they had been disturbed, they were floating like disinherited globules of spawn. Coleman Senior’s heart, discoloured as it was with purple pinches and marred with tiny fissures, was not diseased in the manner which the physician would recognise it. This was a transformation of an entirely separate nature.

These things are connected. Nerve to muscle, blood through vein. We are more than meat and frame, it is our philosophies which infuse this life and change the tide of nature for good or ill. It is our thoughts which quicken our hearts or stop them dead. As I held Coleman’s heart in my hand I was confronted with the true extent of his cruelty, and he was still laughing, he had triumphed. This very essence of mockery in my hands made the heart swell into life once more, I saw it beat. My pulse surged, I clawed at the lid of the jar but it would not budge so I dashed it to the ground with full force. I picked up the gelatinous mass and squeezed till my fingers penetrated the insides of the heart meat. I ripped and I tore and stamped until the lump had been flattened between the ground and the heel of my boot.

‘All right, My Lady’, said the Smithy. ‘I don’t like to see a pretty lady, such as thee getting all upset. Let’s get you cleaned up, come on now. You ain’t no good to the master Onesiphorus like this.’

‘We should seal the place up properly this time, Albert.’

‘Be my pleasure, John. What th’ ‘ell ‘appened in ‘ere?

As we made our way back towards the front of the house, I felt a pang before I knew the truth of what was happening to Onesiphorus above stairs.

I took my leave of the men, telling them not to send anyone, I would give someone a fright, the state I was in. I would dress my self. I entered our quarters to discover that Onesiphorus was gravely ill. At some point, he had collapsed he was still on the floor where he fell. Had he felt my distress? Had Coleman? And so my husband through him? I pushed this thought aside and helped him to the bed. He looked ashen now and his skin was so sunken one could see the line of his skull.

‘Please you must drink water.’ I say ‘I beg you, you must!’

I held the glass to his lips.

‘Why do I feel so . . . it . . . it’s like a weight. My bones ached. My head. I couldn’t think. You’ve been most kind, tell me your name I’ll . . .

‘You know my name, please tell me now, you will truly remember!’

I placed his hand over his wound. I could see that certain images bled into his mind’s vision as if painfully piercing the side of his brain with a syringe.

‘Eleanor?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘Then my father, he . . . he . . .’

He pulled his shirt wide open now he ran his fingers over the cross of the wound expecting there to be deposits of warm blood upon his fingertips and at the point where he realised the scar was old, he was seized in a paroxysm from which he died the next moment.   

*

The smell of winter, the wind buffeted and slammed against my body. I leave the path. Trailing through the meadow I seek the woman of the fountain, Cyane weeping into her pool of tears. Her breasts, her cheek, the dramatic folds of her gown, all were merged with the flow of water, all save her head which was thrown back to the heavens, her mouth contorted, her anguish remembered for eternity.

The young buck detached itself from the glabrous trees and snipped through the slender verdure with such grace and poise as would have kept the globe right upon its axis. We saw worlds in the other’s eyes, grief meant nothing. Pain was transient. Life was all. Vitality.  Sustenance. Survival. Unafraid, his soft muzzle hovered close above the pasture floor.

Coleman stepped out from his lair and into the clearing. The barrel was locked into position. The deer affronted at having to abandon his feed raised his head level with the gun. The man paused, waiting longer than was necessary to take the shot, the animal stood his ground daring him to act. A heartbeat longer and the deer was gone. A heartbeat more and Coleman was on his knees. I did not stay to hear his cries. Onesiphorus had triumphed at last.

I step into the coach.  I sense the breath of the house upon my neck, that rumbling defiant beast. Unflinching, she would circle in on herself and hoard her secrets to the last.

Robyn Hunt (c) April 2016

Blog Image: Robyn Hunt