The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds Page A

is,’Tennyson replied, lifting his pipe from his lower lip, ‘to dry it out for a while beforehand. Then you get a good full flavour.’
    ‘I see.’
    With the tea things cleared away,Tennyson smoking, and the dim early evening light falling heavily into that untidy room, the conversation was now hard to keep alive. Hannah felt isolated on her chair. He produced smoke in incredible volume and it was the strongest Hannah had ever smelled. It scraped her throat while he sat calmly at its source, far away, silent, his gaze unfocused. She had lost him to the marine element of his private thought. And the silence was thickening, becoming harder and harder to break. In her imagining beforehand the conversation was supposed to have become music by this point, a duet, but their voices now were separate and sparse. She thought of a question that might startle him into a renewed appreciation of her. He would know at least how advanced, how daring she was.
    ‘May I ask you, what is your opinion of Lord Byron’s poetry?’
    He did indeed raise both eyebrows at that, blowing long cones of smoke from his nostrils. He answered quite wonderfully with a revelation.
    ‘A very great deal. His poetry, well . . .’ Here he perhaps decided against a critical disquisition. She thought he might not think her up to it, but what he said instead pleased her just as well. ‘I remember when he died. I was a lad. I walked out into the woods full of distress at the news. It was the thought of all he hadn’t yet written, all bright inside him, being lost for ever, lowered into darkness for eternity. I was most gloomy and despondent. I scratched his name onto a rock, a sandstone rock. It must still be there, I should think.’
     
    Ezekiel returned with two panting terriers and a sack over his shoulder. The dogs leaned against his ankles as he dumped the contents onto the ground. Three hedgehogs bounced heavily. Ezekiel picked one up with his coat sleeve pulled down over his hand.
    ‘Told you,’ he said.‘Best time of year for them. Good thick fat on him, get through the winter. Here, let them settle a moment.’
    He put it down with the other two and waited, whispering, ‘Come on, old boys, don’t be feared’ to them while the prickly balls loosened, long reaching feet were planted on the ground, and shy, snuffling faces emerged. With a thick short stick he knocked the head of one. Then with a knife he cut around the back of its neck, pushed downwards through its spine, turned it and split along its belly. He pocketed his knife and pulled the head down, removing spine and guts together, and tossed aside the expressionless face and dangling violet tubes. The dogs chased the scrap. The body he gave to Judith to pack in stiff clay and went on to the next one. Judith made a smooth ball around the animal and placed it in the fire.
    ‘Good for clay round here. Good sticky yellow stuff.’
    ‘Northamptonshire gypsies,’ John said,‘bury the balls under the fire in a little pit.’
    ‘Do they now. They have their ways, I suppose, but they’re wasting time. Come out perfect like this.’
    An hour later the baked spheres were rolled out of the fire with a stick, cracked open, and the cooked hedgehogs were lifted out naked and steaming. Their prickles remained stuck in the clay and pulled easily from the flesh. Judith made slices through their stippled backs and the fine-smelling meat was passed around.
    John ate. It tasted as well as he’d remembered: a sweet, earthen, secret flavour. The meat was tender. Warm grease coated his lips.
    ‘Told you him had good pork on him,’ Ezekiel said, eating a slice from the side of his knife.
    A bottle of whisky was passed around to accompany the food. John took a swig, letting its fire wash loosely down into his chest. ‘Old John Barleycorn,’ he said, saluting with the bottle. ‘Now there’s a fighting man. Seen him dust out many a strong fellow.’ The others laughed.
    ‘Let’s be having you,