Lambert The Bone Flower

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-447-7
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

On a November evening in Victorian London, the moneyed but listless Edward Monteith stokes the fire at his local gentleman's club, listening to stories of supernatural experiences and theories of life after death.His curiosity leads him to a seance, where he falls under the spell of a beautiful flower seller. But Victorian society does not look kindly on love between a gentleman of means and a Romani girl, and when he faces being cut off by his family, Edward makes a decision with horrifying consequences.Two years later Edward is married and anticipating the birth of his first child, in a beautiful house lined with orange blossom trees. But the wrongs of the past are not so easily forgotten, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to thin...A deliciously chilling Gothic novel, The Bone Flower is a deeply human story about guilt, betrayal and the cruelty of social expectations.

Charles Lambert is the author of several novels, short stories, and the memoir With a Zero at its Heart, which was voted one of The Guardian readers' Ten Best Books of the Year in 2014.In 2007, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story The Scent of Cinnamon. His first novel, Little Monsters, was longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Born in England, Charles Lambert has lived in central Italy since 1980.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lambert, Charles

Leseproben

Chapter One

One cold November evening in 188– six men were sitting around a cheerfully blazing fire in a club in the centre of London, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly. The room, its walls lined with portraits of earlier club members, the severity of its hardwood floor softened by the deep and elaborate weave of a Persian carpet, was a shade too warm, and smelt of cigar smoke, a cloud of which had gathered above the heads of the seated men. They were of various ages and professions, or of good enough family to have no profession, and were united less by common interests than by their common standing, of which club membership was a guarantee. They were drinking brandy and talking, in a desultory way, about life after death. The oldest among them, a portly man with an off-white beard that reached the second button of his waistcoat, was making the case for reincarnation. He had a dog, he told them, who was the spit and image of his nurse, a dour woman with a whiskery mole on her cheek in exactly the same place – he repeated this with considerable emphasis, beating his free fist on the arm of his Chesterfield – as a liverish spot on the jowl of the dog. An ill-tempered beast, he added, as further proof. The company was amused, with the exception of a bald man, in his forties and bony as death itself, who was sitting in an armchair as far from the heat of the fire as could be achieved without leaving the circle. His name was Arthur Poynter.

‘There are excellent reasons,’ he said in his quiet, dry way, ‘for believing in the principle of reincarnation.’ He leant forward.

‘The number of souls is finite, according to an early heresy, which, assuming this to be the case, would render reincarnation not only plausible, but of an absolute necessity. Waste not, want not.’

‘Those of the Hebrew persuasion believe in a tree that furnishes souls willy-nilly,’ said another. ‘It is situated in the Garden of Eden.’

‘I have known Congolese bearers with the souls of English gentlewomen,’ said a man whose face was burnt ochre by the sun, dressed in the khaki suit of an explorer.

Arthur Poynter nodded. ‘That only confirms my belief,’ he said. ‘The right to possess a soul should resemble the right to vote before it was so sadly extended. The possession of a soul should be restricted to gentlemen with a decent income.’

This was greeted by grunts of approval and a burst of laughter, abruptly stifled, from the youngest man in the room. His name was Edward Monteith and he was twenty-three years old, recently down from Cambridge and wondering what he might do with his life. His more than decent income made doing nothing an option, and he was tempted by that although he would deny this if asked. He had looked at the explorer several times and tried to imagine himself in a similar outfit, on his feet a pair of highly polished boots that were oddly reminiscent of hooves, his skin like leather fresh from the tannery. The fog had been so dense this evening, and the cold so biting, he had felt a sort of winter in his soul. Yes, there it was, his soul. His soul had craved the company even of these men, as old or older than his father, world-wise, world-weary. He had eaten with them, the usual club fare, and followed them into this room, where every painted face looked down on him, and had taken a stool near the fireplace. A manservant furnished the coal that was required, but Edward had seized control of the poker, and the blaze was his.

‘It’s a well-established fact that working-class women have no soul,’ said a tall man seated next to the bearded fellow with the reincarnated nanny. Edward knew the man by name, which was Frederick Bell, and by reputation, which was bad, but had never spoken to him before this evening. He was some years older than Edward. Born in Scotland, he had qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh but, to Edward’s knowledge, had never practised, having no need. ‘Imagine if that were not the case,’ he added, relighting his cigar. ‘How complicated life would be.’ He looked at Edward and smiled, a complicit smile that both intrigued and unnerved the younger man.

‘But if the number of souls is finite,’ said the other occupant of the Chesterfield, who had appeared to be asleep during the discussion, ‘what on earth will happen on the Day of Judgement? Bodies will resurrect and find their souls already taken. They will be like shells without a snail to reside in them. They will be empty boxes.’

This was met by silence, as though the subject had finally been exhausted. Poynter called the manservant over to replace the empty decanter of brandy and refill their glasses. Edward’s eyes drifted towards Bell and were apprehended by the doctor, who smiled again and gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if of recognition. Edward turned away, discomfited. When all the men had brandy in their glasses, Poynter raised his. ‘To our eternal selves,’ he said. The other men, without exception, lifted their glasses and toasted their eternal selves before falling once again into a companionable silence.

After some minutes had passed, the silence was broken by the explorer, whose name was Rickman. ‘I must say though,’ he said, ‘I have seen certain manifestations that make me, how shall I put this, a little apprehensive about the possibility of life after death.’

‘On your travels, I imagine?’ said Bell. ‘In Africa.’

Rickman assented to this with a nod.

‘Perhaps you would like to enlighten us?’

‘I’m not sure that enlighten is quite the word,’ Rickman said. ‘I fear that my story will induce more gloom than light.’ He shifted in his chair until his face could be seen by the other men. His eyes were sapphire blue in the tanned skin. He drew on his cigar and examined the burning tip for a moment before continuing. ‘I had been there for some months,’ he said, ‘with the same small group of men, who had become as friends to me, comrades one might say, despite their origins. We were equals, gentlemen, as we are equals here. We had crossed deserts and hacked our way through jungles. Waterfalls that would dwarf St Paul’s twice over had marked our path, animals whose paw prints would fill that tray’ – he indicated the tray on which the brandy decanter stood – ‘had crossed it, and left us whole. We had a language in common that we had fought to achieve and part of its vocabulary was fear. Make no mistake, gentlemen, the continent of Africa is grand and terrible, more grand and terrible than you can imagine.’

‘And the manifestations of which you spoke?’ said Poynter, with the slightest trace of impatience.

‘Forgive me,’ said Rickman. ‘I was told this by my closest companion, a young man I called Joshua, his own name being unpronounceable to me. Joshua was my guide and friend, and he would amuse me as we walked by telling me tales from his childhood. One of these has remained with me, for reasons that will, I hope, become clear as I speak. His grandfather had a house at the edge of their village. He lived alone, his own wife having died some years before and his children having constructed their own houses in other parts of the village. I use the word house to describe the simplest of structures, a central pole, a weaving of local grasses, fragile and easily moved. One night, he was woken by a presence in his house, a shaking, a trembling, Joshua said, caused by no earthly wind. The spirit of an ancestor, known in that part of the world as obambo, had come to visit and the purpose of his visit was that Joshua’s grandfather should build him a house for his return. Normally, such a desire would have been met and would have provided an occasion for celebration in the tribe. But the old man knew this ancestor as someone evil, as someone who had brought the tribe and his own people into disrepute, and refused. The obambo began to dance and wail, beating his fists against the pole until the whole house shook and neighbours arrived, including Joshua and his father. Joshua was no more than a child at the time but he has never forgotten what he saw.’

Rickman paused.

‘Which was?’ said Poynter.

‘A spectral being, more bones than flesh, the skin stretched over the bones but ripped and incomplete so that tangled plants could be seen inside the ribcage, the head a skull but with sharpened teeth that could rip the arm off a man, the white hair tangled with sticks and vines. Its eyes were bright as stars, he told me, and when the obambo looked his way he began to cry, which made the creature cackle and dance with even greater fervour. But the worst thing was the stench of decaying matter, of leaves and roots and human flesh, so strong the people in the house began to fall to their knees and retch. And the obambo laughed even more and shook the central pole until the whole house collapsed in a rain of dust and rat droppings and dried grass onto their heads.’

Rickman paused once more.

‘And you believe this?’ Bell said, with a slightly mocking laugh. ‘You believe your young friend Joshua?’

‘I would not have believed it,’ Rickman said slowly, ‘if I had not seen an obambo with my own eyes.’

Bell laughed again.

‘It was in our last camp, no more than a month ago. The...